Showing posts with label Making of. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Making of. Show all posts
Saturday, August 14, 2021
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
How Angelina Jolie Perfected Her 'Maleficent' Laugh http://t.co/oT2AP2t5WF
— Yahoo Movies (@YahooMovies) June 4, 2014
Kevin Polowy Senior Editor Jun 4, 2014
Maleficent took in an impressive $70 million haul on its opening weekend,
maniacally laughing all the way to the bank. However, the witch’s
memorably devious laugh didn’t come easy for the actress; she had to
practice it over and over again in front of a mirror to figure out the
character, which isn’t as fun as it sounds. “It’s hard to laugh,” Jolie
tells Yahoo Movies. “Anybody that reads this should try this: Go into
your bathroom and actually try to do the biggest laugh you can possibly
do [into the mirror]. It was one of the hardest things to do.”
Jolie, who said she didn’t need to look beyond the villainess in Disney’s animated classic Sleeping Beauty for inspiration (the onscreen laugh we see in Maleficent is
actually a blend of Jolie and Eleanor Audley’s original), explained an
exercise she partook in during production that helped her find the
perfect bellow. It involved creating a circle of people, each laying on
their backs with their heads on someone else’s stomach. One person
laughs, “And somehow the absurdity of that makes the next person laugh,
and the next person laugh… they’re pushing on the part of you that makes
you express. So if you do this weird exercise it makes everybody bring
out their biggest laugh.”
Added Jolie, “These are the things we were doing on set.” And then she laughed.
Friday, April 18, 2014
latimes
Angelina Jolie breaks the curse of 'Unbroken'
The amazing tale of Louis Zamperini remained untold on film for 56 years because there was just too much to tell.
Director-producer Angelina Jolie and Garrett Hedlund on the set of the movie "Unbroken." (David James / Universal Pictures)By John Horn
April 18, 2014 , 7:00 a.m.
OXENFORD, Australia — Angelina Jolie was ready to step behind the cameras again. Her directing debut, "In the Land of Blood and Honey," hadn't been a box-office or critical hit, but making the 2011 Bosnian war drama had fueled her desire to become a filmmaker. So Jolie started looking for a follow-up movie, knowing she had to choose carefully.
"I was very nervous," Jolie said about transitioning from acting into directing. "It was like starting over. All of the things that were in your favor before are no longer there."
Finally, in late 2012, she stumbled on a talent agency's log line for "Unbroken," a feature adaptation of the Laura Hillenbrand blockbuster bestseller about the Olympic runner turned World War II bombardier Louis Zamperini, who survived 47 days in a life raft only to be tortured for more than two years as a Japanese prisoner of war.
Jolie hurriedly took the idea to Brad Pitt.
"Oh, honey," her longtime partner told her, "that's been around forever."
And then some.
Hollywood history is filled with tales of movies that have taken decades to coalesce. Screenwriter Craig Borten started working on last year's "Dallas Buyers Club" in 1992, and a sequel to 1988's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is still little more than a thwarted idea.
Yet those delays are just a blink of an eye compared to Zamperini's story — an epic tale of survival, despair, heroism and redemption — that has been kicking around Universal Pictures for more than half a century. The studio bought the rights to his memoir, "Devil at My Heels," in 1956, and penciled in Tony Curtis to star. But the actor signed on to "Spartacus" instead, and like Zamperini himself the movie was cast adrift.
It was not until one especially determined producer decided in 1998 that bringing Zamperini's true-life drama to the screen would be his crusade that the movie was revived. And yet for all of the producer's resolve, the movie still died countless deaths, its fate likely doomed until a writer battling chronic fatigue syndrome made the transformative choice to select Zamperini as the subject of her next book.
Re-create B-24 crash
Inside a cavernous soundstage at Village Roadshow Studios near Australia's Gold Coast in January, scores of people looked on — costume designers, prop assistants, extras — as Jolie's production team prepared to re-create the crash of Zamperini's ungainly B-24, known to all the people who dreaded flying in it as the Green Hornet.
With Zamperini (newcomer Jack O'Connell) and crewmates Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips (Domhnall Gleeson) and Francis "Mac" McNamara (Finn Wittrock) braced for impact inside the mocked-up bomber, the "Unbroken" effects team rocked the plane violently, filling its fuselage with an explosion of seawater. After checking to make sure all of the cast members were uninjured, the cast and crew applauded loudly, Jolie accepted congratulations and an assistant director called for a lunch break. As everyone filed out, one straggler hung back, beaming. It was producer Matthew Baer, finally witnessing his dream materializing.
Baer knew for years that he had been the butt of Hollywood jokes.
Matthew Baer's on the line again. I wonder if it's about "Unbroken"?
When are you finally going to give up and do something else?
Is he still talking about Zamperini?
"It was embarrassing," Baer said. For 11 years, he didn't make a film, his last producer credit coming with Gwyneth Paltrow's quickly forgotten 2003 comedy "View From the Top." His wife, studio executive and producer Amy Baer, was the one cranking out movies. "Every producer has his or her passion project," said Baer, a quiet and thoughtful 49-year-old father of two. "And they may be laughed at for having it so long."
The ribbing might have stung, but Baer knew that abandoning the movie altogether would have been far more painful. "I never considered stopping," he said. "Never."
Baer first encountered Zamperini through a CBS documentary assembled for the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan. The circumstances carried particular relevance, because Zamperini had competed in the 1936 Games in Berlin, where he ran but did not medal in the 5,000 meters. His promising track career was cut short by the war when Zamperini enlisted in the Army Air Corps.
His malfunctioning plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1943 miles from land, killing eight of its 11-man crew. Zamperini, Phillips and McNamara — with no meaningful rations or supplies in their raft — had to subsist on rainwater and raw birds, fish and shark liver. McNamara died at sea, and after 47 days in their boat Phillips and Zamperini became prisoners of war, with the former track star singled out for torture by the particularly sadistic guard Mutsuhiro Watanabe, nicknamed by his captors "The Bird." Zamperini's story seemingly had everything Hollywood wanted: an extraordinary hero, a contemptible villain, epic scope, war action and rich parts for an array of young actors.
Zamperini's son-in-law, television writer and director Mick Garris, sent the documentary to his talent agent, who forwarded it to Baer, then the head of Brillstein-Grey Films. Given that relatively few people at the time knew Zamperini's story and that studios in that era were not afraid to make serious war dramas like "The Thin Red Line" and "Saving Private Ryan," the source material generated immediate enthusiasm. Baer met with Zamperini and Garris, told them how impressed he was by Zamperini's life journey, and the movie rights were soon in Baer's hands. "We knew immediately he was the right guy — you could sense his passion," Garris said.
Having bought Zamperini's memoir more than 30 years earlier, Universal still controlled Zamperini's life rights for a movie, and Brillstein-Grey had a deal there. Nicolas Cage, then a recent Oscar winner for "Leaving Las Vegas" and hot off the hits "Con Air" and "Face/Off," was attached as a star. The search for a director and screenwriter commenced.
In short order, though, Baer and everybody else involved in what was called "Untitled Louis Zamperini Project" came to recognize that the story was as vast as the ocean waters in which Zamperini had floated for nearly two months: They simply had too much material, and no one could figure out precisely which parts of his story to tell and which to leave behind.
Zamperini's chapters
Inside the Hollywood Hills home where he has lived since 1957 — he bought the house with Universal's original $8,000 book purchase a year earlier — Zamperini, 97, is as sharp as some people decades younger. While he is less active than in recent years, he still makes the occasional motivational speech and answers a steady stream of fan mail.
There are distinct chapters to Zamperini's life — running as a young man at Torrance High and USC, competing in Hitler's Olympics, surviving the war and his tormentor, and his religious conversion after becoming an alcoholic when he returned home.
Even today, Zamperini can surprise family and friends with stories he hadn't shared before, such as how Watanabe loosened a molar by cuffing Zamperini in the jaw. "He hit me just like that," Zamperini demonstrated. "And after I was finally rescued the doctors said they needed to replace the tooth."
Given the rich details and broad sweep of his experiences, it's not surprising that screenwriters who tried to squeeze his life into a two-hour movie struggled mightily. In 1999, playwright Robert Schenkkan ("The Kentucky Cycle") wrote a draft, calling it "Iron Man," which covered most of Zamperini's life, including after the war. Universal wanted to hire an A-list director, but Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Ron Howard, Robert Zemeckis and Mel Gibson all passed. "It was probably too broad of an approach," Kevin Misher, Universal's production chief at the time, said of Schenkkan's draft.
Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day") briefly joined the project in 2002 but left to direct "King Arthur," and Tom Shadyac ("Bruce Almighty") subsequently flirted with the project but ultimately left. Neil Tolkin ("The Emperor's Club") rewrote the script in 2004, and even though it landed on Hollywood's coveted "Black List" of the best unproduced scripts, Universal couldn't land the director it wanted. By then Cage was too old, and Ashton Kutcher was mentioned as a possible star.
"The story is undeniable, but these kind of films need the right author, the right stewardship," said Scott Stuber, Misher's successor at Universal.
Thousands of miles from Hollywood, in a 1,500-square-foot row house in Washington, D.C., that very person was about to change the course of the movie's history.
Subject of book
When Laura Hillenbrand was researching her previous book, "Seabiscuit: An American Legend," she would stumble on Zamperini's name as she pored over sports pages chronicling the thoroughbred's races. She decided to make him the subject of her next book, and news of her decision reached Baer.
Around the same time, in 2003, Universal was putting out its movie adaptation of Hillenbrand's bestseller; "Seabiscuit" pleased critics and moviegoers alike, grossing more than $120 million in domestic release. Whether the author's decision gave Baer's Zamperini movie any noticeable impetus was unclear.
"There was no evidence when the book would come out," Baer said. Having left Brillstein-Grey, he tried to raise financing for the project. Every possible suitor passed, worrying that it would be a costly, hard-to-cast period drama.
Owing both to Hillenbrand's debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome and meticulous research, it would take her until 2010 to complete the manuscript for "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption."
When the book was finally released it became a publishing phenomenon (it's still on the best-seller charts nearly four years later and has yet to be released in paperback), Baer's "Untitled Louis Zamperini Project" immediately became "Unbroken." Its journey to the screen would still take several more detours.
In 2010, Francis Lawrence ("Water for Elephants") was briefly attached to direct but left to helm the "Hunger Games" sequels. Working with even more source material than Zamperini's memoir (Hillenbrand's encyclopedic book is 496 pages), several more screenwriters, including Richard LaGravanese ("The Fisher King") and William Nicholson ("Gladiator"), tried to adapt the book but again struggled with what to include, with one draft even incorporating the 1998 CBS documentary and a non-existent meeting between Zamperini and Watanabe, which Zamperini's family objected to strenuously.
The challenges were understandable. Unlike "Captain America" or "Inglourious Basterds," the story was going to be a serious World War II drama that dealt with unimaginable suffering and Japan's inhumane treatment of its prisoners — nearly one in three Americans died in Japanese captivity. For all of Hillenbrand's exhaustive and exhausting reporting, Zamperini does not come across as particularly reflective. Finally, with hundreds of thousands of "Unbroken" books in print, every material departure from Hillenbrand's book potentially would spark complaints.
After her 2012 conversation with Pitt, Jolie read the latest screenplay draft and realized, like many before her, that it didn't quite work. But she picked up Hillenbrand's book and, in a home not more than a few hundred yards from Zamperini's — "If he looked out his window, he would have seen me devouring it," Jolie said — she lost herself in the tale.
"I wasn't really looking for something of this size," noted the 38-year-old star. "But the way Laura writes about him is the way I like to read about people. It was like I was witnessing the birth of a man — it was something I wanted to tell my sons about."
A few weeks later, at 2 a.m. while in Cambodia, Jolie awoke with the movie suddenly and clearly in her mind. She asked to meet with Donna Langley, chairman of Universal Pictures, to pitch her take on the movie, which would end with Zamperini's liberation but not include his bout with alcoholism and Billy Graham-inspired religious conversion. Jolie arrived at the studio lot with a garbage bag full of "ridiculous" charts outlining her plan — "They still laugh at me about it" — and "pitched it as hard as I could," Jolie said.
"She was really impressive — thoughtful and thorough," Langley said. The studio had been considering hiring a veteran filmmaker, and giving him (no women were on the list) a $120-million budget. Atfer meeting wih Jolie, Universal changed its mind, scaled down its investment to $65 million and took a leap with an unproven director. "It wasn't an immediate and obvious choice for everybody," Langley said. "But she won the day. She earned it."
PHOTOS: Images from Angelina Jolie's 'Unbroken'
Joel and Ethan Coen, who share Jolie's talent agent, UTA's Rich Klubeck, and had a rare opening in their work schedule, loved Hillenbrand's book and were soon hired to collaborate with Jolie to revise the screenplay. By summer 2013, even after co-financier Walden Media dropped out at the last minute and was replaced by Legendary Pictures, all of the pieces finally fell into place.
Fifteen years after Baer saw the CBS documentary, and 56 years after Universal bought Zamperini's memoir, "Unbroken" had a green light.
Deep respect
From even a quick visit to her Australia set, it's obvious that Jolie has a deep respect, if not reverence, for Zamperini — Pitt even commissioned an oil painting of him for a Christmas present to Jolie — and Hillenbrand. The author is a consultant on the movie, has read many screenplay drafts, and frequently talks to Jolie.
"It's a huge responsibility," Jolie said. "And I'm constantly asking questions. 'How do you really catch a shark? What does the liver look like? How do you eat an albatross? How do you sink a plane?'"
To bring her ideas to life, Jolie hired some of Hollywood's top department heads, including "No Country for Old Men" cinematographer Roger Deakins and "Life of Pi" editor Tim Squyres as collaborators. Last month, at a convention for theater owners in Las Vegas, Jolie showed several minutes from the film, which suggested "Unbroken" will have both a glowing, Americana feel — particularly in its depictions of Zamperini's youth — and a much darker rendering of the prison camps, which call to mind Sebastião Salgado's grimy photographs of Brazilian gold miners.
"In the end, its message is one we all need now more than ever — the journey of a man finding his way through the darkness and into the light," the filmmaker told the exhibitors, adding that the film had particular modern resonance as Zamperini is "someone who helps to remind us all what each of us is capable of."
In hindsight, it's clear even to Baer that Hillenbrand's book was needed to make the movie. "One could argue before the book came out that I was one of the leading experts on Louis' life," Baer said. "But what Laura did made me seem like I knew nothing. Absolutely, positively 100% Laura is the reason for 'Unbroken' finally happening."
As the movie approaches its Dec. 25 release, Baer looks back at all of the false starts and believes that all of the frustration and heartache was ultimately worth it. Had he somehow been able to make the movie earlier, it wouldn't have been to his mind as good as it is today.
"Everybody used to tell me, 'Why are you still talking about Zamperini?'" Baer said of all the doubters over the years. "And I said, 'Because I believe in it. And it's an amazing story.'"
john.horn@latimes.com
Read the full post (with some new photos from the film) at latimes
#Unbroken "Oh, honey," Brad told Angelina, "that's been around forever." But soon she was helming long-stalled film http://t.co/ToTR8WHxn7
— bret israel (@bretisrael) April 18, 2014
.@JGHorn joins Angelina Jolie on the set of "Unbroken," a story that took 56 yrs. to make it to the big screen. http://t.co/wcREsd7Ln9
— LAT Entertainment (@latimesent) April 18, 2014
Exclusive first look: Angelina Jolie breaks the curse of 'Unbroken' http://t.co/0PXrdzB1Pl
— John Horn (@JGHorn) April 18, 2014
Monday, November 7, 2011
Making of Blade Runner
Mindhole Blowers: 20 Facts About Blade Runner That Might Leave You Questioning Ridley Scott's Humanity
By Cindy Davis | Posted Under
(For the record, I watched The Final Cut, the director’s preferred version. Most of this information came from the documentary, as Scott’s commentary was nearly entirely self-masturbatory egoism and pointless.)
1. Blade Runner is based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The title came from the William S. Burroughs novella, Blade Runner (a movie), which was a proposed film adaptation of another novel, Alan E. Nourse’s The Bladerunner.
The first script was written by Hampton Fancher, primarily a television actor (“Gunsmoke, The Fugitive, Bonanza”). A friend of his told Fancher, “I think science fiction is going to happen,” and suggested Dick’s novel. Fancher said he didn’t like it much, but he came up with the idea of a detective who chases androids; they just wanted to make money.
2. Producer Michael Deeley (The Deer Hunter, The Italian Job [1969]), read both the book and Fancher’s script ideas and didn’t like either very much. Deeley said he thought the script “dumbed down” the book. Fancher found a comic book he liked called “Mechanismo,” in fact, he wanted to give the film that same name. He wrote another script that Deeley thought was much better, but Deeley didn’t think the name worked. To try to get financing, they decided to call the film, Dangerous Days.
Ridley Scott was beginning work on Dune when he got the Dangerous Days script, he turned it down. Then, Scott’s brother Frank died and the director pulled out of Dune, saying it was partially because of a poor script and the time that was going to be necessary to put into the film.
3. Some time later, Associate Producer, Ivor Powell (Alien) was working on a commercial with Ridley; Powell read the DD script, thought it was powerful and convinced Scott to re-read it. This director finally decided to take on the project and called Michael Deeley. They were originally financed by Filmways Pictures, but the company was small and having financial difficulties, so though they were already building sets and doing pre-production, the group sought out new financing. The film was eventually financed partially by Warner Brothers and other investment groups.
4. Unsatisfied with the script as it was and unable to get quick and accurate revisions done by Hampton Fancher (who also resisted the changes), Scott brought in a second script writer, David Peoples (12 Monkeys, Unforgiven). Overworked and emotional, Fancher said he cried after reading the new script. Peoples said he understood Fancher’s exhaustion after having revised the script at least ten times already.
5. Scott began doing drawings; his creativity was inspired by the look of a French Comic, Métal Hurlant (Screaming Metal).
6. The character of Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) was changed a lot. One script opened with Batty crawling out from under a pile of “dead” replicants. Another had Batty killed at the beginning of the film. Production Executive, Katherine Haber showed Ridley Scott several of Rutger Hauer’s films and Scott hired the actor without having met him. When Hauer first came in, he wore a zippered nylon jumpsuit, a sweater with a fox on the front; he had cut his hair the way he thought Batty should look and wore green “Elton John sunglasses.” Haber said she loved the look on Scott’s face. Over their first lunch meeting, Scott bonded with Hauer over Métal Hurlant, with which Hauer was already familiar. The actor gave his own ideas about the character and felt Scott was receptive to them. It was Hauer’s idea to hold the dove when he was dying, at the moment of his death the dove would be release and fly away. Because there was so much rain, the bird was too wet to fly and just hopped around the roof. Hauer also came up with his character’s often quoted ending words: “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
7. Hampton Fancher wrote his script with Robert Mitchum in mind for Rick Deckard. Other actors listed on his script as possibilities were: Dustin Hoffman, Peter Falk, Al Pacino, Nick Nolte and Burt Reynolds. Hoffman was interviewed by Scott for “hours and hours” and “months” were spent trying to make it work, but Hoffman had his own ideas which kept getting further and further from the story they wanted to do. Actress, Barbara Hershey suggested Harrison Ford to Deeley (and possibly Scott). Ford was doing Raiders of the Lost Ark at the time, so Deeley and Scott flew to London to watch dailies; they loved him. Ford was unhappy that he was not (as he had been used to with previous directors) a part of the whole filmmaking process and that Scott did not tell him what to do. He was said to have only come out of his trailer when he was shooting scenes.
8. Elaborate screen tests were done for the Rachel (Sean Young) character. Scott preferred an unknown actress and said that Young reminded him of Vivien Leigh.
10. Daryl Hannah (Pris) auditioned—the fight scene—in a gymnasium. Having been a gymnast her whole life, she asked Scott if she could incorporate some gymnastics; Scott didn’t know what she meant so she demonstrated her flips. However, when it came time to film a male stunt double was used to do the flips, after a female stunt woman was run through so many rehearsals that she became exhausted. For her screen test, Hannah found the blonde wig and inspired by Klaus Kinski in Nosferatu the Vampyre, gave herself the black eye make-up. Daryl said Harrison Ford insisted that when she stuck her fingers up his nose and grabbed his head, she “really do it.” She felt badly because his nose was bleeding and she was really hurting the actor.
11. Edward James Olmos (Gaff) was known and brought in by the casting director. Olmos came up with the idea of Esperanto/Cityspeak and went to the Berlitz Language School to learn different languages to put together.
12. Joanna Cassidy (Zhora) worked with her own pet snake, “Darling.” Scott originally envisioned Zhora doing an elaborate “mud dance,” where she and the snake transformed into each other and then into one being, but it would have been too expensive to do.
13. Visual Futurist/Illustrator Syd Mead was brought in; Scott said that Mead “nailed the future of cities like Tokyo; he knew where cities were going.” The artist was brought in for a few days, but ended up staying months (which added a large over-budget cost). He designed Sebastion’s car and the “killer” parking meter, everything in the future world.
14. The ongoing actor’s strike gave the art department a big advantage, they had nine months in pre-production. According to Michael Deeley, Ridley Scott “micromanaged” the art department, looking at every single drawing done by Mead and illustrators, Sherman Labby, Mentor Huebner and Tom Southwell. Auto fabricator, Gene Winfield said 27 vehicles were made from Syd Mead’s drawings; he had 50 people working in 3 shops (18 people working on fiberglass), 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. It took them 5 1/2 months to complete the cars. The taxis were built on VW van chassis and the sedans on VW chassis lengthened by 12 inches. The spinners had working gears (with all the inside gadgets functioning, as well) and were on rolling tables; the one flying spinner was on a lift and had no engine, but everything else worked.
15. The Hades landscape was all miniatures set up on a plywood table. Thousands of etched brass cutouts gave the illusion of a dimensional scene. They filled the darkened miniature room with smoke, then using fans and smoke detectors (the detectors would sense when the smoke level dropped and cause more smoke to puff) to maintain the same level of smoke at all times during filming. This was done because if the smoke level changed, it would cause flickering on film. Around 20,000 light tubes were used to light up the miniatures. The explosions were previously shot on 35 mm film. White cards were placed behind the towers, the explosions projected with the 35 mm camera and then the whole thing reshot with 65 mm camera.
16. The two locations Ridley Scott liked and wanted to use were LA’s Bradley Building and Union Station. Because the Bradley Building was occupied, shooting could only be completed from 6 pm to 6 am and it had to be clean every day. Cork substituted for dirt and it effectively soaked up the rain water, so every morning after filming, the cork could easily be swept up.
17. Shooting conditions on set were considered horrendous and miserable by most; to try to get the look on film that he wanted (while attempting to keep under budget), Scott filmed at night on the New York street set, in rain and smoke. There were about 33 days of night shooting. Cast and crew often had to wear masks because of the never-ending smoke being pumped in. Edward James Olmos marveled at how realistic it looked, adding that Scott brought in giant theater speakers and set them up on the building roofs. The score (by Academy Award-winning [Chariots of Fire] Greek composer, Vangelis) was then blasted during filming, causing the set to come alive.
18. In an interview, Ridley Scott said he’d rather work with English crews than American, because when he’d ask for something, they would just say “Yes, gov’nor, and go get it.” This so upset the crew that they got t-shirts made-up and wore them on set; the shirts read: “Yes, gov’nor, my ass.” In response, Scott wore a shirt that read “Xenophobia sucks.” Almost all the on-set accounts of the production were of constant tension between the director and just about every person involved with the film.
19. Toward the end of production, when the budget had been exceeded and the schedule overrun, studio executives came on set several times, threatening to shut down filming. Though the crew would always expect production to end, it was said that Scott always prevailed after contentious meetings and he would just keep going. At one point, notices that everyone was fired were sent out, but again, Scott refused to quit until the film was done.
20. Though he only saw a segment of the film’s special effects on the news, Philip Dick said, “It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly.”
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