More of this Feature ADDITIONAL INTERVIEWS: • Emile Hirsch ('Sedgewick Bell') and Kevin Kline ('William Hundert') • Steven Culp ('Martin Blythe') • Edward Herrmann ('Headmaster Woodbridge') • Jon Voight ("Holes") • Jorja Fox and Archie Kayo ("C.S.I.") • Rachel Boston and Sarah Ramos ("American Dreams") • Danica McKellar ("Talking In Your Sleep") • Camille Winbush ("The Bernie Mac Show") and Model Irina Voronina ADDITIONAL "The Emperor's Club" INFORMATION: • Photos from the Premiere of "The Emperor's Club" • "The Emperor's Club" News, Trailer, and Websites • "The Emperor's Club" Production Photos

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ETHAN CANIN (Author, "The Palace Thief")

What do you think about this adaptation of your short story, “The Palace Thief?”
They say that writers always get their hearts broken. I did not at all, I got my heart lifted by this. It's really quite wonderful. From the beginning, it was a different kind of production. People were very serious about this. They wanted to make a serious movie, a high-minded movie, a moral movie - not the usual Hollywood stuff. And to be involved with Kevin Kline, who is an extraordinarily serious actor, and a comic actor too, but a very serious guy, I won't ever have this again. This was a great experience.

When you were writing the short story, you weren't thinking about making it into a movie. When it got to the filmmaking stage, did you picture Kevin Kline in the lead role?
I never thought that this would be a movie. A movie? It's about a history teacher so how could that be a movie? Kevin Kline was associated with it, from my point of view, from the beginning. I thought of him as it; I never thought of anybody else. I don't think anybody else could have done it.

What do you think about the young cast? Do you think they capture the spirit of the students?
Well, I'll tell you. When I first realized that there would be a lot of young actors I thought, “Oh no, that's the kiss of death.” But these kids are really, truly wonderful. They are not just good-looking kids - they are good-looking, too - but Emile Hirsch has a real magnetism on the screen. He's able to go head-to-head with a 50-something year-old man in there. The other two kids, Jesse Eisenberg and Paul Dano, are just wonderful. They are terrific. You like them, they are subtle, they are funny, they are sympathetic. They are not just TV stars, they are real actors. Emile, I know, studied this role. He wanted to play the older version of Sedgewick Bell as well. Emile at the time was 15. He's very serious about his acting. He's a serious guy and he pushes himself. He'll go far.

Did they make any changes to your story that you weren't exactly thrilled with, such as the love interest for Kevin Kline's character?
I didn't like that addition but that's one of those things. Movies are a group project and I work by myself so I don't have to make any of those compromises. That's one of the things that I didn't like. There are two or three things I didn't like, but I love the movie. I think it's a rare experience for Hollywood to make a movie with a moral quandary and a moral decision and not be really uplifting. It is an uplifting movie but it's not a sugarcoated movie in any way.

I think people really do like it. Besides for myself, I want it to do well for Kevin and Andy [Karsh], I want it to do well for everybody. But I want it to do well because I want Hollywood to know - I mean Universal took this risk and I want them to be rewarded for taking this risk. People will go to see movies in which nobody has to get shot, nobody has to get blown up, and there's no sex. There is a gun but it's never fired. I would love to send that message. This is the type of movie that I want to see and I can't find movies that I want to see.