If IMDb is correct in listing Ang Lee as Cleopatra's director, we can be assured that the material is in very capable hands. But there has been no news confirming that an offer has been made to Lee or that he has accepted. Usually, in the absence of an official announcement, IMDb qualifies the listing by indicating that it is merely "rumored". There is no such qualification here and I suspect they may have just overlooked adding it. If Ang Lee has indeed been hired, it would be announced formally and with much fanfare.
From The Playlist
Retrospective: The Films Of Ang Lee
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For a filmmaker who’s tackled a wide range of genres, from minor-key Chinese-language comedies to epic kung-fu action, from nuanced literary Americana to iconic CGI-driven superheroics, it’s actually relatively easy to spot an Ang Lee film if you know what you're looking for. Superficially, the Taiwanese-born, American-trained filmmaker has an deeply eclectic and diverse taste in subject matter, setting and even style (one could never imagine that “Sense & Sensibility” and “Hulk” came from the same director from the shooting techniques used alone), but all kinds of thematic links recur across the director’s work -- family, repression, duty, thwarted love or desire. Whether it’s 1940s Shanghai or Civil War-era Missouri, you can find the same humanistic concerns, even as the filmmaker finds new things to say about them.
Lee’s latest, the long-awaited adaptation of Yann Martel’s “Life Of Pi,” again sees the director moving into new territory with an effects-heavy, 3D, visually extraordinary adventure that might be the director’s most spiritual film to date. With the movie opening this Wednesday, and looking all but certain to win Lee his fourth Best Director Oscar nomination (and possibly even his second win), it seemed like a good idea to look over the director’s complete career to date. You can find our verdicts on the first 20 years of Ang Lee films below, and one can only hope there’s plenty more where that came from.
Essentially unemployed for years after graduating from NYU, Lee finally got a break in 1990 after two of his screenplays, co-written with regular collaborator James Schamus, placed first and second in a competition organized by the Chinese government. Initially, they refused to fund the winner, "The Wedding Banquet," because of its gay subject matter, so instead "Pushing Hands" was the one which ended up in production. A gentle culture-clash comedy-drama, the story follows Mr. Chu (future Lee regular Sihung Lung), a t'ai chi instructor who leaves China to live with his son Alex (Bo Z Wang) and his neurotic writer wife Martha (Deb Snyder) in New York. It's a modest but sweet little film that pits Chu's traditional family-led values against the harsh, selflish world of the U.S., while also giving him a faltering romance with Taiwanese widower Mrs .Chen (Lai Wang). It is also very much a first film. Lee's direction is a bit scrappy, the script doesn't quite cohere, and while Sihung Lung is wonderful, carrying much of the film on his shoulders, Wang and Snyder feel somewhat amateurish. But still, it's intriguing to see where Lee began, and how the themes of much of his work are already in place so early on. [C+]
"Pushing Hands" won some acclaim at the Berlin Film Festival, but it didn't see the light of day in the U.S. outside the festival circuit until after the release of "Sense & Sensibility." But Lee didn't have to wait too long for his breakthrough in the States. He returned to Berlin the following year with the second of those two award winning scripts with "The Wedding Banquet," which proved to be a serious crowd-pleasing hit, winning the Golden Bear. Forming the second part of his family values trilogy, it's got a premise that almost could have come from a mid-'90s mainstream rom-com. Gay couple Wai-Tung (Winston Chao) and Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) are happy in their lives, but Wai-Tung's traditional Taiwanese parents, oblivious to their son's sexuality, keep pushing for him to get married. To get them off their backs, he decides to have a sham marriage with Chinese tenant Wei-Wei (May Chin -- who's now a politician in China), who needs a green card. Inevitably, Wai-Tun's parents arrive to throw him the titular celebration, and things become increasingly complicated. Lee seems to be much more confident with actors, and virtually all the cast are wonderful, including a returning Sihung Lung. The comedy, both broad and subtle, is effective, and there's more going on under the surface, with a similar culture clash dynamic to "Pushing Hands" surfacing, argably in a more-effective way. Lee has real love for his characters, letting them surprise the audience, and the whole thing is enormously likeable. It might not be the most ambitious film the director ever made, but it's where he really started to hit his groove. [B+]
The last of the trilogy that kicked off Lee's career, and his first film set entirely within his native Taiwan (as well as his second film in a row to earn a Foreign Language Oscar nomination), with Sihung Lung once again returning to the patriarchal role, "Eat Drink Man Woman" isn't perhaps as effective all around as its predecessor, but again demonstrates Lee as an empathetic, humanistic filmmaker. It also joins the ranks of "Babette's Feast," "Like Water For Chocolate" and "Big Night" as one of the great foodie films ever made (it was also remade as the Latino-flavored "Tortilla Soup" eight years later, to lesser effect). This time out, Lung plays Chu, a master chef at the Grand Hotel in Taipei, who lives with his three grown daughters: Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mei Yang), Jia-Chien (Chien-lien Wu) and Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang). Each have tangled love lives, and are keen to leave the family home and a father who's long since thrown himself into his work at the expense of his family relationships. In terms of the filmmaking, it's easily Lee's most accomplished film to date, and it's a near impossible feat to watch DoP Lin Jong's work (his last collaboration with Lee) and not rush to the nearest Chinese restaurant afterwards. And while it's gently funny and touching, the characters aren't drawn with the complexity that you'd perhaps like, and it sometimes feels like an extended TV episode as a result. The structure too, which jumps between the family's regular Sunday meals together, is a little counter-intuitive to the story-telling sometimes. The performances are, as ever, marvelous, particularly from the ever-great Lung, and it's a perfectly enjoyable family drama. But better things were to come from the director... [B-]
On first glance, Lee was far from the obvious choice to direct an adaptation of the Jane Austen period classic, which had been penned by Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson. Indeed, Lee had never heard of Austen, and later said he thought at the time, "I thought they were crazy... what do I know about 19th century England?" But it's easy to see what Thompson and producer Lindsay Doran saw in Lee off the back of his previous films, and the gamble paid off as "Sense & Sensibility" is one of the best cinematic Austen adaptations ever made, with Lee's sense of manners and family life, as well as his warmth and humor, shining through. Plot wise, the story follows Mrs. Dashwood (Gemma Jones) and her daughters Elinor (Emma Thompson), Marianne (Kate Winslet) and Margaret (Emilie Francois) after their death of their father (Tom Wilkinson). Elinor begins to fall for her brother-in-law, Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant), while the young Marianne is loved by the older Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman), but instead is smitten by the less-than-trustworthy John Willoughby (Greg Wise). It's staple Austen fare, but Thompson's screenplay is an exceptional adaptation, arguably funnier than the source material. And yet in Lee's hands, it never feels stuffy or dusty. The director brings out the heartbreak from the repression, thanks to an exceptional cast, not least his two leads in Thompson and Winslet (in her first role after breaking out in "Heavenly Creatures"). Almost single-handedly reviving interest in Austen (it was the first English-language film based on the writer's work for half a century), it doesn't exactly reinvent the medium, but it's hard to imagine a better take on the novel than what the director comes up with here. The Academy certainly agreed, giving the film seven Oscar nominations, including Lee’s first Directing nod, and a win for Thompson for Best Screenplay, making her the first, and so far only, person to win both writing and acting awards. [A-]
Curiously undervalued on release (it won Best Screenplay at Cannes, but failed to pick up a single Oscar nomination, and proved a box office disappointment), a decade and a half of passing time, and a Criterion release, has seen "The Ice Storm" takes its rightful place as one of Lee's finest achievements. Based on Rick Moody's acclaimed 1994 novel, it sees Lee once again turn his lens on family, but for the first time looking at WASP-ish American suburban life, through two families in 1970s Connecticut. Ben and Elena Hood (Kevin Kline and Joan Allen) are hardly happily married. Ben is having an affair with promiscouous neighbor Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver), whose own teenage son Mikey (Elijah Wood) is experimenting with the Hood's daughter Wendy (Christina Ricci). Meanwhile, older son Paul (Tobey Maguire) has sex on the mind too, hoping to beat his roommate Francis (David Krumholtz) to sleeping with classmate Libbets (a pre-"Dawson's Creek" Katie Holmes). Everything comes to a head as an ice storm hits the town, leading to tragedy. It's rare for an ensemble piece such as this to give everyone a fair shake, but almost every character (even one like Janey's husband, played by "Homeland" actor Jamey Sheridan) gets material of real weight to deal with, and the cast continually surprise with the deftness of their performances, from career-best turns from veterans Kline and Weaver to head-turning newcomers like Maguire (in his first major lead role), and Holmes. James Schamus' screenplay is sharper and darker than anything he'd done with Lee up to this point, marking a shift away from the comedies of manners of the director's first four films to more complex territory, but his trademark empathy is retained too. And Lee has evolved as a filmmaker too; the closing sequences during the storm are among the most beautiful things he's filmed to date. Overshadowed by near-contemporary fare like "American Beauty" and "Happiness," it might be actually be smarter and more moving than either. [A]
Lee spent his first five films going from success to success, but came unstuck somewhat with "Ride With The Devil," a $40 million Civil War movie that received more muted reviews than its predecessors, and buried by strong competition at the box office, failed to make back even $1 million. Again, a Criterion release (of Lee's longer director's cut) has helped to restore the film's reputation, but in our eyes, it still falls a little way short of the lost masterpiece some have claimed it as. Based on Daniel Woodrell's novel "Woe To Live On," it centers on Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire), a German-American in Missouri who, with best friend Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet "Johnny Depp Was Unavailable" Ulrich), join the guerilla-style Bushwhackers on the Confederate side after Chiles' father is murdered by Jayhawkers. Along the way, they join up with freed slave Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), and both fall for pro-Confederate widow Sue Lee Shelley (country star Jewel, in her only major acting role). Looking at the story of the war from the perspective of the South feels unusual, even a little daring these days, and Lee certainly brings a fresh perspective; it' s a gritty, brutal, ground-level view, owing almost as much to Vietnam as to other Civil War movies. And one has to admire the meditative pace (especially in Lee's two-and-a-half hour director's cut) and the complex, novelistic nature of the film; there's no attempt to shoehorn in a traditional narrative or anything similar. But it ultimately makes the film something of a difficult watch, not helped by the way in which Lee's instincts for putting the right person in the right role seem, for once, to have failed him. Wright is the stand-out, but much of the cast, from Maguire downwards, feel miscast. It's not so much that the likes of Jewel and Ulrich are bad, it's more that they're merely adequate (especially given that Schamus' dialogue here isn't his finest),and when Mark Ruffalo crops up in a smallish role, it's hard not to wish he'd been given something more prominent, over someone like Maguire or Jonathan Rhys Meyers. There are some exceptional scenes and moments in there, but it still feels like something of a misstep for the director. [C+]
Tail somewhat between his legs after "Ride WIth The Devil," Lee returned to Taiwan for his next film, and triumphed, with his most successful film up to that point, and one that firmly launched the next act of his career. Once more turning to literary source material, in this case the "Crane Iron Pentalogy" by Wang Dulu (and more specifically the fourth book in the series), "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" was Lee's take on the martial arts genre, melding the instinct for character and emotion he'd displayed across his work with kung-fu action courtesy of Yuen-Woo Ping, who'd come to international fame with his work on "The Matrix" the previous year. The plot sees warriors Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) and Yu Shu LIen (Michelle Yeoh) on the trail of a stolen sword, the Green Destiny, taken by the evil Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-Pei) and her young apprentice Jen (Zhang Ziyi). It's epic, soaring stuff, and very much a traditional wuxia tale, but Lee brings contemporary sensibilities to it, with strong female characters and an arthouse feel. Not that the action isn't cracking, because it is; the fight scenes are among the best genre, even if some of the superpowered leaping doesn't quite hold up on second viewings. And it should be said that the structure doesn't quite work, the extended flashback romance between Jen and bandit Lo (Chang Chen) stopping the film dead in its tracks for twenty minutes or so. But it's the lovely performances (particularly by Yun-fat and Yeoh, playing out a sort of wu-shu version of "Howard's End"), the very deep vein of feeling, and the stunning photography by Peter Pau that really linger after the fact. The film was a monumental success, earning ten Oscar nominations, and becoming the most successful foreign-language film ever in the U.S, and it put Lee on the top of many studio wishlists. For better or for worse... [B+]
In an era of interchangeable superhero adventures, "Hulk," which came towards the end of that first wave of 21st century movies in the genre, still stands as something genuinely different. Eschewing the typical structure and action beats of the superhero movie, the film instead turns the psychological and physiological freak-out of scientist Bruce Banner (Eric Bana), Lee’s most repressed character in a career full of them, into a kind of grotesque Greek Tragedy, while emphasizing the pop art sensibilities of the comic book medium. For better or worse, stylistically the film was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. In particular, the way that Lee would parcel up the frame into "panels," turning the whole thing into a living comic book, remains a shocking, unparalleled stylistic flourish amidst a sea of blandly spruced-up epics. (And by all accounts this was the tamest version of "Hulk" Lee fashioned. A New York Times story that came out around the same time as "Hulk" that quoted someone close to the production as saying, "You thought that was weird, you should have seen it six months ago.") While "Hulk" doesn't completely work – the pacing suffers due to a lack of forward momentum and conflict, plus sometimes Lee's editorial tics become distractingly odd – it is a movie overflowing with personality, with lots to love (Nick Nolte, as Banner's father, memorably chews the scenery). And what other comic book movie in recent memory has something as plain out bizarre as Nolte turning into a giant jellysfish? [B]
Some would say the tone of Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” is elegiac, beautifully tragic and timeless, the time period of the '70s and '80s set aside to present a mild west where cowboys are forever retreating to explore their deep longing. Others would blast the sheepish refusal of topicality, given that “Brokeback Mountain” (which won Lee his first Best Director Oscar) manages to be a watershed film in queer cinema without a character once uttering the word “gay.” Lee’s obliviousness towards the legacy of gay cinema does indeed lead to a narrative where one of two men refuse to acknowledge their own natural orientation in favor of a single true love, one that follows the popular formula where homosexuals must always be punished in some ways for their identity. But it’s also impossible to miss how Lee shatters the hetero-normative idea of a bucking cowboy with beautiful, square-jawed Ennis, brought to life by a titanic performance by the late Heath Ledger. The legacy of this film amongst the simple-minded will likely turn to jokes and mimicry of Jake Gyllenhaal’s fey Jack Twist (an affecting turn unfortunately susceptible to casual mockery), but Lee lands a strong punctuation mark in a carnival sequence where Ennis defends his family from a couple of drunken hooligans, displaying protective fury before basking in an all-American tableau of his eyes hidden underneath a cowboy hat, fireworks blasting in the background. [A-]
While it won him his second Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival in two years, "Lust Caution," Lee's return to Chinese-language filmmaking, ultimately proved to be one of the more divisive films of his career, even aside from the controversy resulting from its semi-explicit sex scenes. A wartime thriller owing more than a little to Hitchcock's "Notorious" in its premise, it sees Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei), a student in Hong Kong who becomes involved in the resistance against the Japanese invasion. Four years later, in Shanghai, she's tasked with seducing senior collaborator Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) as part of an assassination plot. Visually, the film is terrific, with fine period detail and wonderful photography from "Brokeback Mountain" DoP Rodrigo Prieto. But the film is hampered by the indulgence that a success like "Brokeback Mountain" often brings, mostly spinning its wheels for the first hour of a luxurious 160 minute run time. And for all of the supposedly boundary-pushing sex scenes, the central romance, and the characters living it out, feel a little thinly drawn, Lee's pristine filmmaking can never quite scratch the surface of his story, and it feels curiously distant as a result, although the ending packs an undeniable punch. It's a handsome and absorbing film, but one easier to admire than to really like. [C+]
Overlooked upon its initial release, "Taking Woodstock" is one of Lee's most purely enjoyable movies – part coming-of-age comedy, part dramatic historical recreation, all LSD-tinged fun – mixing the director's technical playfulness with genuine emotional underpinnings. Comedian Demetri Martin stars as the kid who brought Woodstock to his small town in upstate New York (depending on whose account you believe), and Lee wisely chooses to center the movie around Martin's family motel and not the concert. In fact, you never see one performance, which is sort of a running joke that the Martin character can never make it to see any music, but is also an ingenious way of covering material that has already been analyzed, documented, and dramatized to death (and one suspects, helpful when it comes to the budget). Lee gives shout-outs to the original Woodstock documentary and iconography from the concert (including the couple from the VW van), creating a freewheeling, goofily enjoyable atmosphere for his crazy cast of hippie characters (including Liev Schreiber as a transvestite and Emile Hirsch as a Vietnam vet). "Taking Woodstock" is as buoyant and bubbly as "Brokeback Mountain" was heartbreaking and bleak. The music, of course, is great, and augmented by a lovely, twangy score by Danny Elfman. Just because this is one of Lee's "minor" efforts, and it is a little too breezy and congenial for some tastes, doesn’t mean it should be ignored. [B-]
From Newsweek
My Favorite Mistake: Ang Lee
The ‘Life of Pi’ director on his greatest balancing act.
Many
times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But
even if a film isn’t a hit, you shouldn’t view it as a mistake. My
mistake is having two sides to my character. When I’m not working, I get
very down, but when I am working, I get very immersed in it.
For
six years, from 1985 to 1991, I felt pretty weak and useless. I was at
home, working on scripts and cooking and taking care of the kids, while
my wife, who’s a very strong woman, steady and pragmatic, really
stabilized the family. She was working as a medical researcher. I didn’t
have much self-esteem, because I’d pitch so many scripts and get back
rewrites. It was just endless frustration. I got moody and fell into a
near depression. But then I became an older, more mature person who was
much more prepared to direct a feature-length film.
Years
later, when I was making Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hulk, I was
hardly at home. I spent two years on Crouching Tiger and then another
year promoting it all over the world. After the Oscars, I went right
into working on Hulk, which took two years. This meant that during my
son’s teenage years, I didn’t spend a lot of time with him. I grew up in
Taiwan, where those years are all about academics, so I didn’t feel as
though I had a lot of life experience to share with him while he was in
high school. American high schools are psychologically more complicated.
When your children are little, you educate them and share your
experiences, but when they’re older, it’s harder, and I wasn’t home
enough to give him guidance. There was a level of detachment and a lot
of sparse phone conversations. “Work?” “Fine.” “Girlfriend?” “No.” By
the time I finished Hulk, he was 17 and already preparing for college,
so I had missed out on a lot. I should have made more of an effort.
After
that, I tried to be there more for my second son. My next film,
Brokeback Mountain, involved just two months of shooting, and I did the
editing in Rye, N.Y., near my then-hometown of Larchmont. I also did
postproduction on my next film, Lust, Caution, near my home, so my son
would come to the editing room and watch. He wanted to play football,
and I tried to talk him out of it because he was so small, but I was
there for every game. When he made his first catch, I was so beside
myself, I screamed louder than when I won my Academy Award. Once he got
to high school, it seemed suicidal to play football, so I finally talked
him out of it, and he went into drama. I went to every performance and
came home every night to cook dinner. He had a good time working as a
production assistant on my film Taking Woodstock and then played Teddy,
the boy who gets lost in Bangkok, in The Hangover Part II. He recently
graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, just
like I did.
My
wife is now retired, and we’re normal people with good kids. Thinking
back to those earlier days, I felt I was weak when I wasn’t making
movies, and then when I was, I thought I was weak as a family member.
It’s more of a big regret, because I truly, honestly wish I could do
better as a father and a husband.
Interview by Marlow Stern
From THR
Why Fox Gambled $100 Million on Ang Lee: The Making of 'Life of Pi'
This story first appeared in the Nov. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
Visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer won't ever forget the night he rode out a storm on a Taiwanese coast guard cutter with Ang Lee. The sturdy craft, buffeted by 9-foot waves, thrashed about relentlessly. Venturing into the storm surge was intentional -- Lee wanted his team on Life of Pi to experience the ocean's personality firsthand -- even though the movie was shot entirely on dry land inside elaborate water tanks in Taichung, Taiwan.
PHOTOS: The Making of 'Life of Pi'
"It was very rough," says Westenhofer. "But it goes back to one of Ang's chief qualities: authenticity. He's also incredibly artistic and very symbolic."
For all involved, the making of Life of Pi -- which opens Nov. 21 -- was a long, painstaking odyssey. The film pushes the boundaries of 3D technology and visual effects as well as cinematic storytelling. It is Lee's first 3D movie and his most ambitious technical endeavor since 2003's CG-heavy Hulk.
Many thought it would be impossible to adapt Yann Martel's Man Booker Prize-winning 2001 novel about an Indian boy named Pi (played by Suraj Sharma) who is lost at sea after the ship he's aboard with his family -- along with the animals from their zoo -- capsizes during a violent storm. Everyone is killed but Pi, who ends up on a small dinghy with an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
There also was near-heartbreak. At one point during preproduction, Fox 2000 president Elizabeth Gabler received word from higher-ups that the studio wanted out -- the risk was simply too great. Movies shot on water are notorious for coming in late and over budget. Plus, the film had no major stars.
"I had to call Ang in Taiwan and tell him we were giving the movie back to him," recalls Gabler, who had long wanted to work with the filmmaker. "I thought he'd say, 'I'm so sad.' It was midnight his time, and he told me he was getting on a plane and coming to L.A.
"He arrived, and we all went into a screening room -- [Fox co-chairmen] Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos included -- and Ang showed us previsualizations of the entire shipwreck sequence and the audition tape of Suraj. At the end, they said that if Ang could get some money out of the budget, we'd go ahead."
The budget was trimmed to just north of $100 million, and the soft-spoken 58-year-old filmmaker -- who was nominated for a best director Oscar for 2000's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and won for 2005's Brokeback Mountain -- flew to his Connecticut home, approval in hand. "It's the hardest movie I've ever made," confesses Lee. "I worked on it for nearly four years."
For Gabler, the journey began a decade ago when she was on maternity leave. Producer Gil Netter and screenwriter Dean Georgaris had discovered the book and wanted a meeting.
Says Netter: "I called her at home and convinced her to let us come over and pitch her. That was a Wednesday. The deal was closed by Friday."
Georgaris worked on the adapted screenplay before M. Night Shyamalan came aboard to write and direct. But wooed by other projects, including 2008's The Happening, Shyamalan eventually fell off. Two more directors, Alfonso Cuaron and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, would come and go before Lee signed on.
Screenwriter David Magee was on the set of director Marc Forster's Finding Neverland when he was handed Martel's book. "I spoke with Marc the next day, and he asked if it could be a movie. I said no. How could you sustain the story? I set the book aside, but then, 3½ years later, my agent called and said Ang Lee was interested in making the film," says Magee. "It's every screenwriter's dream to work with one of the most talented directors in the world."
Magee and Lee met at a sushi restaurant in New York and together set about trying to figure out how to reframe the book's story, which initially is set in India and opens with Pi studying various religions.
Not long after, Magee's nephew told him about Steven Callahan, a naval engineer and inventor who was lost at sea for 76 days. Callahan chronicled his survival in the best-selling book Adrift, which Magee immediately read. Magee tracked Callahan down in Boothbay, Maine, and asked if he and Lee could visit.
"We met Steve at his home, and Ang had this idea that we should go out in a lifeboat and bounce about for a few hours," says Magee. "I thought it was a horrifying idea, and I quietly told Steve we shouldn't do it. Instead, Steve took us out on his boat. At some point, Steve took the sails down, and we lurched about. It was about 40 degrees and freezing with the wind."
Their initial travels didn't end there. Lee and Magee went to India and visited every place described in the opening part of the book. "It was then that we found our framing device," recalls Magee. "We would have the adult Pi telling the story of what happened to the young Pi. I wrote some scenes right away. This is a film about how stories get us through life, so that life isn't just chaos and mystery. And when Pi is out on the boat, it's the stories that help him survive."
Lee originally cast and shot Tobey Maguire -- who first worked with the director on 1997's The Ice Storm -- as the journalist who comes to interview the adult Pi about his adventure. But midway through, Lee decided it would be too jarring to have a big star, and Rafe Spall replaced Maguire. "Tobey was very nice about it. We just didn't need someone who was that famous in that role," says Lee.
More important, Lee held an open casting call in India for the role of Pi, seeing more than 3,000 teenage boys. Suraj Sharma, then 17, never intended to try out for the role when accompanying his brother but ended up auditioning and was called back.
"I asked him to take his glasses off," remembers Lee. "I did a reading and gave him some direction. He's one of those rare talents, a gift from God -- as if God was saying, 'Go ahead and make this movie.' "
A vast majority of the film was shot at an abandoned airport in Taichung. The government of Taiwan, where native son Lee is a national hero, refitted the property with a large tank, a smaller deep-water tank and a large enclosure for the four Bengal tigers used in the movie. The hangar became the production office, and another building was a soundstage.
"The best way to achieve the effects we wanted was to build our own tank, in terms of size and the number of wave makers," says production designer David Gropman, whose credits include Doubt, Hairspray and Lee's Taking Woodstock. "Our tank was 200 feet-by-100 feet and 9 feet deep. There were walls on three sides made up of five stories of shipping containers and a movable wall."
Adds Netter: "We could make over 50 kinds of waves. We put sandbars and rock piles at the bottom of the tank, and we had pilings at the end that could absorb water."
As for the tigers, most of the shots are CG. "We broke new ground with this movie," says Westenhofer, who had worked on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, "because the animals didn't have to talk like they did in Narnia." Westenhofer says he collected 100 hours of reference video of the real tigers so as to replicate their expressions and behavior.
STORY: 'Life of Pi' Author Yann Martel Weighs in on Ang Lee's Film
But 24 shots did involve the actual tigers, and their compound was a curiosity for all involved in the production. Three were from France -- King, Minh and Themis -- while Jonas (by far the most mellow) was from Canada. "The French tigers were not nice," says Gabler.
The production also had a hyena on site. "Hyenas are very dangerous, but Ang said he scratched her chest once," adds Gabler. "I would go and talk to her. She was so weird and would pace back and forth. She once chewed a metal can when she was mad."
The animals provided relief from an intense and arduous shoot. Water is notoriously difficult and, combined with wave machines and 3D cameras, can slow the process to a snail's pace.
"We had one day which I've never had -- we didn't get a single shot," says Netter, who also produced The Blind Side, Eragon and Flicka, among others. "There haven't been many movies on water that have been on time and on budget. In the end, we were."
Adds Lee: "Many days, it was the worst. The 3D lens would keep fogging up because of the weather we were creating. Nobody could figure out how to fix it."
Sound also was problematic on Life of Pi, thanks to the cacophonous wave machines used in the water tanks. According to supervising sound editor Philip Stockton, nothing recorded live on set was usable, forcing Sharma to ADR everything.
Sharma had his own challenge: His role called for losing 30 pounds during the course of the shoot. Lee didn't want to break for the weight loss, so the movie was shot chronologically. The young neophyte had gained the weight beforehand by feasting on dumplings, noodles and bagels lathered with Nutella.
"The hard part was losing the weight. It was intense. I would eat lettuce and tuna and work out," says Sharma, whose father lived with him during the Taichung shoot. He also had to learn to swim -- something of a prerequisite for a shipwreck movie.
Today, Sharma is studying philosophy in Delhi and doesn't have immediate plans to continue acting. The first time he saw the finished film was at the New York Film Festival.
"I was quite speechless," says Sharma. "When we shot the movie, everything around me was mostly bluescreen. There is so much going on now, and it's really quite something to see."
For editor Tim Squyres -- who also worked with Lee on Taking Woodstock and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon -- the hardest task was solving some of the tricky story's structural issues.
"There's a scene, late in the voyage, when Pi is starting to become unhinged. Richard Parker is on the boat washing himself, and Pi starts imitating him. He gets annoyed and chases Pi off. It's a really fun scene, and it was heartbreaking to cut it," says Squyres. "There were a lot of smart reasons to take a scene like that out. The film started to feel like it was drifting. That's the inherent difficulty of a shipwreck movie: Whenever you have a character that's bored, it's hard to portray that to the audience without the audience feeling bored. There's no cause and effect."
Lee and Gabler understand the inherent challenges in selling Life of Pi to audiences but believe Pi's journey and survival is a mainstream theme that will resonate with all age groups.
"Special effects and 3D are very expensive, but they are great tools for artistic endeavors and expression," says Lee. "But many of the moments when I worked with Suraj were the best. I learned about surviving -- how does Pi survive with his sanity and not go crazy? The personal journey and the filmmaking journey became one."
HOW LIFE OF PI RELIED ON A SOLE SURVIVOR'S TRUE STORY
In 1982, Steven Callahan's sloop Napoleon Solo, which he designed and built himself, was damaged severely during a storm seven days out from the Canary Islands. He abandoned ship and escaped on an inflatable six-person raft, drifting for 76 days, subsisting on fish, birds and rainwater until he landed on the tourist island of Marie-Galante, south of Guadeloupe. His tale of survival during the long journey -- chronicled in Callahan's Adrift -- would end up playing a key role in Life of Pi.
Sought out by Ang Lee and screenwriter David Magee at his home in Boothbay, Maine, Callahan served as a consultant on the movie, spending months on set in Taiwan. Callahan writes on his website: "Many people have noted similarities between Adrift and Life of Pi, both in details of the marine environment and of Pi's and my experiences within it and more broadly in terms of overall themes. I had always considered Adrift to be an allegorical tale, so perhaps the author Yann Martel and I have written mirrored images from fictional and nonfictional views about the spirituality, power and grace of the natural world."
POOL RESOURCES: Hollywood's Love Affair With Water Tanks
The Perfect Storm: Stage 16 on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank houses a 22-foot-deep tank. For the $140 million production, director Wolfgang Petersen's crew built a gimbal-mounted mockup of the Andrea Gail that could be pitched, tilted and rotated.
Titanic: In 1996, 20th Century Fox built a 360,000-square-foot tank in Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico, for James Cameron's $200 million-budgeted film. When filled, the ocean side of the tank forms a 420-foot infinite horizon with the Pacific behind it.
Runaway Horse: The 2007 German production shot at Mediterranean Film Studios in Malta, which houses a shallow tank that's 400-by-300 feet but only 6 feet deep. Built in 1964, the tank has been used for such films as Orca, Cutthroat Island and White Squall.
From Variety
Posted: Fri., Nov. 16, 2012, 12:53pm PT
Fincher eyes first-look deal at New Regency
'Dragon Tattoo' helmer in talks to make his first production pact
David
Fincher is in discussions for a deal at New Regency, which would
further the auteur-minded company's goal of producing more adult fare
and put the in-demand helmer into his first pact with a studio or
shingle.
Fincher has never made a movie with New Regency. Though he's not yet
officially chosen his next project, the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"
director has been actively tinkering with Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea," courting frequent collaborator Brad Pitt for a role and
waiting under a three-month hold while the Mouse House decides whether
to move forward.
A first-look deal would make sense for both Fincher and Regency, which has committed to making edgier, more adult fare since founder Arnon Milchan reshuffled the executive ranks last year. The company behind last year's "What's Your Number?," "Monte Carlo" and "Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son" has already become more director-minded, boarding projects including Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave," Darren Aronofsky's "Noah" and Allen Hughes' "Broken City."
Sony's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" grossed more than $230 million worldwide. Fincher's involvement with the sequel has been a lingering question in Hollywood while Steve Zaillian works out the script.
Regency next has "Broken City," which 20th Century Fox will release in January.
A first-look deal would make sense for both Fincher and Regency, which has committed to making edgier, more adult fare since founder Arnon Milchan reshuffled the executive ranks last year. The company behind last year's "What's Your Number?," "Monte Carlo" and "Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son" has already become more director-minded, boarding projects including Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave," Darren Aronofsky's "Noah" and Allen Hughes' "Broken City."
Sony's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" grossed more than $230 million worldwide. Fincher's involvement with the sequel has been a lingering question in Hollywood while Steve Zaillian works out the script.
Regency next has "Broken City," which 20th Century Fox will release in January.
Contact Rachel Abrams at
Rachel.Abrams@variety.com
