Issue Date: November 1, 2009
12 Things You Don't Know About Upcoming Movies
By Jamie Malanowski
Hollywood usually saves its best for last. And this year, the field of Best Picture nominees will be doubled to 10, which makes it more likely that when you hit the multiplex this fall, you'll see a contender. Here, a peek behind the scenes:
A Christmas Carol (Nov. 6) Motion-capture animation makes this Dickens classic current, but the Jim Carrey vehicle has a special connection to the 1843 novel: Cast member Cary Elwes is related to the man who inspired Scrooge. His ancestor John Megid changed his name to Elwes to impress a rich uncle with no heir. "And it worked," he says. "John became one of the most famous misers in English history, renowned for never changing his clothes."
Precious (Nov. 6) Sometimes actors build their characters literally from the bottom up. Pop star Mariah Carey plays a decidedly unglamorous social worker in this film about an overweight, illiterate, pregnant teen who enters an alternative school. "You have to understand, Mariah always wears stilettos," director Lee Daniels says. "Even when she's barefoot, she walks on tiptoe. But her character wears sneakers, so she had to adjust. She developed a walk, a very un-Mariah-like duck walk, that suits the character perfectly."
2012 (Nov. 13) Just before the 2008 presidential primaries, screenwriter Harald Kloser worked with director Roland Emmerich on the script about (gulp!) the end of the world. "Since a lot of the story takes place in the White House," Kloser says, "we thought, based on [the consensus at the time], that the president should be a woman. But I remember when the results of the Iowa caucuses came in, I went to Roland and said, 'Maybe we ought to rethink this.' " In the film, the president is played by Danny Glover.
Planet 51 (Nov. 20) For this animated film about an astronaut who lands on a planet inhabited by little green people, the animators based their drawings on video they took of themselves performing the script. Nothing unusual there, until it came time to act out the big battle scene. "We took over the parking lot outside the studio," says producer Ignacio Perez Dolset, "and for three hours, about 45 animators were running around with plastic guns, shooting each other, rolling on the ground. I can't imagine what the other tenants thought we were doing."
The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Nov. 20) For efficiency's sake, all scenes with water effects were shot in a single day in this sequel to last year's vampire hit. "One scene called for Kristen Stewart to float completely still in a pool under 12 feet of water," director Chris Weitz says. "She seemed apprehensive, so I thought, 'I'll show her it's no big deal' and put on a wet suit. I was at the bottom for no time at all before I freaked out." Weitz adjusted the shot; now she floats atop the water. "I learned my lesson: Never ask an actor to do anything you won't do yourself."
The Blind Side (Nov. 20) After seeing this drama about a young man's journey from poverty to the NFL, college football fans can stop debating which coach is the best strategist and start debating which is the best actor. Alabama's Nick Saban, Ole Miss' Houston Nutt, South Carolina's Lou Holtz and Auburn's Tommy Tuberville all play themselves.
Brothers (Dec. 4) Stage actors adhere to a playwright's words. But movie actors, more committed to the action portrayed, often change dialogue. For a dinner scene in this ensemble about a family changed by the war in Afghanistan, director Jim Sheridan remembers actors Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire talking about who would say what: "We were having a grand old time rewriting the script, when in walked Sam Shepard, who was playing the father but who, of course, is a great playwright. And Sam said, 'Isn't this a fantastic scene?' Immediately, we shut up and performed David Benioff's scene just as he wrote it."
Up in the Air (Dec. 4) Like the lonely exec played by George Clooney, director Jason Reitman is an obsessive flier, and a lot of the character's quirks, including the driven way he collects frequent-flier miles, come from the director: "One year, I had accumulated just under the number of miles I needed to bump my membership to the next level, so I flew to Chicago, got a Giordano's deep-dish pizza and flew back to L.A., just for the miles."
The Lovely Bones (Dec. 11) "It was a harrowing shoot," says Rachel Weisz, who plays the mother of a murdered child in this adaptation of Alice Sebold's best seller. "It was difficult to play someone so full of dark emotion. What kept me sane was Susan Sarandon, who plays my mother. She is an endless source of absolutely unrepeatable stories, not one of which is PG. She kept me in stitches."
Nine (Dec. 18) It's not easy to surprise or impress a veteran of 90-plus films, but in this musical based on Fellini's "8 1/2," Sophia Loren found herself consistently challenged by co-star Daniel Day-Lewis and director Rob Marshall. "Daniel is very secretive, so when it came time to play a scene, it was always a surprise how he would approach the material," Loren says. "And Rob would do little things. There was one scene where we had to cross the floor, all the women wearing high heels, and instead of a flat panel for the floor, Rob used a board with waves. It forced us all to focus and be in the moment."
Avatar (Dec. 18) In Hawaii to shoot reference scenes for this film set on a distant moon, director James Cameron grabbed a camcorder, tossed leading man Sam Worthington a thong and said, "Let's go into the bush." Soon, the nearly naked Worthington was surprised by a policeman who asked what he was doing. "Making a movie, mate," the Aussie actor replied. "With whom?" asked the cop. "Jim Cameron," replied Worthington, pointing to the man with the camcorder. "Wow," the cop said. "He sure has come a long way down since Titanic."
It's Complicated (Dec. 25) During a break on this romantic comedy, Steve Martin delighted everyone by unexpectedly playing his banjo. "It was wonderful," says director Nancy Meyers. "One by one, the members of the crew gathered around. One put a light on him, and he performed this impromptu concert."
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The Men who Stare at Goats (Nov. 6) To call the filming of this George Clooney comedy about a psychic military unit stormy is an understatement. "I could understand it when we were in Puerto Rico and we were shut down by a hurricane," says director Grant Heslov. "I could even understand it when we were shooting in New Mexico, and we had a terrible sandstorm in which we lost a camera and nearly the cameraman that went with it. But I began to take it personally when we moved to another part of the desert to shoot a scene set in Iraq, and the temperature dropped below freezing. Once it began snowing, we packed up and went to a soundstage in L.A."
The Box (Nov. 6) In this movie about a couple, played by Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, who find a mysterious box that brings on terrible consequences, Frank Langella plays a villain who is missing half of his face. To create this effect, Langella had to cover part of his face with special paint and small sensors. "Frank became very protective of the mystery of the process," says director Richard Kelly, "and he refused to allow anyone to photograph the part of his face that had the sensors, a decision he came to regret. Our set photographer published a book of photos from the shoot, and Frank was sorry that there was no record of the way this very cool effect was created."
Pirate Radio (Nov. 13) If you're going to make a movie about the crew of 1960s DJs that worked on an underground rock radio station broadcasting off the coast of Great Britain, you're going to need a boat. When writer-director Richard Curtis found a beat-up former hospital ship, he was pretty sure he had his vessel. "I knew for sure," he says, "when I went below and found two doors, rather enigmatically marked 'survivors' and 'non-survivors.' I thought, 'Well, if that isn't a perfect metaphor for this film, I don't know what is.' "
The Messenger (Nov. 13) Woody Harrelson has been a star for more than 20 years, but in this film about soldiers who tell military families their loved ones have died, Harrelson does something he has never done before: He cries on camera. "Right before we shot this particular scene, Woody told me it might be slow going," recalls director Oren Moverman. "But Woody got it on the first take. ... And then he kept crying, all through the takes we took when Woody was [off camera for co-star Ben Foster close-ups]."
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Nov. 13) Some actors think they'll have it easy when they take a job on an animated film. After all, most just have to sit in a booth and record dialogue. In this film, based on a Roald Dahl novel about a sly fox, director Wes Anderson had them perform together and act out the onscreen action. Actor Jason Schwartzman recalls having to go into a studio and record some additional lines. The tape was then played over the phone to Anderson, who was in Paris. "They sound too good, too sterile," Anderson said. He instructed Schwartzman to do the lines again, but to move around when he performed them, and to have an engineer follow him with a handheld microphone.
Old Dogs (Nov. 25) Audiences accustomed to seeing actors using stunt doubles and performing feats of derring-do in front of the safety of green screens will be impressed that for the scene in which Robin Williams soars 300 feet above the ground in a jet pack, they'll actually be seeing Williams, the recently recovered heart patient, up in the sky. "I spent a year and a half with Steven Spielberg being hauled around on wires for Hook," Williams told director Walt Becker, dismissing the offer of computer assistance for this comedy. "I don't do green screens."
Me and Orson Welles (Nov. 25) In this Zac Efron film about a young man who lucks into a small part in Orson Welles' production of Julius Caesar on Broadway in the 1930s, the role of the fabled Mercury Theatre was won by a venerable playhouse located on, of all places, the Isle of Man, in the Irish Sea. "Welles used a lot of effects," says director Richard Linklater, "including having actors appear onstage through trapdoors. This theater had the appropriate kind of space under the stage, but everybody who went down there noticed this funky smell. Later, we learned there was a long-standing tradition, dating back more than a century, for actors to instruct that their ashes be deposited under the stage of this theater - 100 or so had done so. When we heard that, our initial reaction was [to be creeped out], but in no time, we realized that we were making a movie about actors, and here we were among actors who chose this theater as their resting place. It seemed kind of cool."
Transylmania (Dec. 4) This "American Pie"-meets-"Twilight" comedy was shot in Romania, eight hours north of Bucharest. Directors Scott and David Hillenbrand praised their crew, but they estimate that only about a dozen of the 125 workers spoke English. This led to some amusing translation issues. "One scene called for the character to be riding a vintage motorcycle with 1930s-type goggles," Scott says. "The costume designer brought out a set of Bausch & Lomb ski goggles." Another time, the script called for a character to be wearing a dress in a Princess Leia-type maiden style. "Instead," David recalls, "we got a French maid outfit."
Everybody's Fine (Dec. 4) British director Kirk Jones had the idea to write a film about a man, played by Robert De Niro, who travels cross-country to reconnect with his grown children, but in order to deepen and develop his characters, he traveled from New York to Las Vegas by bus and train. "I met a lot of fascinating people, who I then tried to work into the film," Jones says. Perhaps the person who made the deepest impression was an elderly man Jones encountered in a Manhattan elevator. "He just looked at me and offered me a piece of candy." He turned out to be a 94-year-old furrier. "He had amazing stories, and we wanted to use him. But, of course, we couldn't really write lines for him. When it came time to film him, I sat opposite De Niro with topic cards, and whenever the conversation would flag, I would hold up a card that said, for example, 'brother,' and De Niro would say, 'Do you have any family? Tell me about your family.' He gave us amazing stuff."
Did You Hear about the Morgans? (Dec. 18) For writer-director Marc Lawrence, the most memorable part of filming this comedy about an estranged couple (Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker) in witness protection was the experience of working with Bart the bear. "It was shocking to to see him," Lawrence says. "He's enormous, and initially, we were all terrified. His trainers had all assured us that he was a very nice bear, but you couldn't help but think, 'What if this is the day he decides not to be nice?' But as the day went on, he seemed like just another actor - a little neurotic and concerned about his performance. You could see that. His trainers put up wires, and I don't know what happens to Bart, but he doesn't go near the wires. One time we put a mark on the ground where we wanted him to be for the camera, and I guess it was a little too close to the wire, because he moved the mark."
Cover and cover story photographs of Anika Noni Rose by Marc Royce for USA WEEKEND Magazine
Cover clothing: Dress by Carmen Marc Valvo
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