Author: The Awardsline Team

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Behind The Scenes On Flight

Diane Haithman is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Dec. 5 issue of AwardsLine.

One thing’s for certain about Flight: The Robert Zemeckis-directed drama starring Denzel Washington as an alcoholic pilot will never be a popular in-flight film. “After this movie, people are going to be waiting out on the steps for the pilot with a Breathalyzer test,” Washington recently joked in an interview.

Denzel Washington plays a pilot with a substance-abuse problem in Flight.
Denzel Washington plays a pilot with a substance-abuse problem in Flight.

Flight screenwriter John Gatins also does not recommend his story for in-flight reading. “I’ve gotten emails from people saying:, ‘Man, I made the mistake of opening your screenplay on a plane,’ ” Gatins says with a laugh. His fictional concept is not too far from recent fact: In 2009, not one, but two pilots were arrested preflight at London’s Heathrow Airport after failing Breathalyzer tests. Both planes, one American Airlines and one United, were coincidentally headed for Chicago.

That basis in reality might be why Flight is taking off at the boxoffice. In fact, it’s impossible to avoid the aviation metaphors when describing the success of this $30 million action film. With Oscar buzz for Washington’s performance and an estimated $80 million domestic boxoffice take through four weeks, it’s soaring, flying high, and taking flight simultaneously.

However, as with the occasional airport experience, Flight didn’t exactly take off on time: Gatins’ ETD for his Flight was 1999; ETA on the big screen, more than 12 years later.

Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) safely lands a jet after a catastrophic failure in Flight.
Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) safely lands a jet after a catastrophic failure in Flight.

Gatins based his tale on two of his own worst fears: Getting killed in a plane crash and dying of an overdose. After moving to L.A. and living the hard-partying life as he struggled to become an actor, Gatins, 44, says he finally got sober at age 25 and started sketching out this story at age 31. He wanted to examine the conundrum of a successful, talented man who had functioned with addiction for years but was now “circling the drain both physically and emotionally.”

Gatins also sought to explore society’s desperate need to anoint heroes but remain blind to their human faults. The screenwriter compares Washington’s smart, arrogant Whip Whitaker to bicyclist Lance Armstrong in terms of being stripped of hero status once a tragic flaw is revealed.

Besides having to work out the puzzle for himself, Gatins also quickly discovered that Hollywood was not exactly waiting for this story—part plane-crash thriller, part character study of a troubled antihero. The script stayed in his back pocket for years, partly because of his own stop-and-start struggle to put together what he calls a personal Rubik’s Cube of an idea, and partly because he knew that an adult drama about substance abuse was a tough sell. “It’s like, ‘Show me comps of addiction movies that have made $100 million,’ ” Gatins says, describing the initial reaction of film executives to the idea.

Actors, however, always responded to the textured characters, Gatins adds. “Actors always said, ‘There is a way this movie could get made if we got an ensemble of actors together that kind of moved the   needle,’” Gatins explains.

In the years since the idea began to take shape, Gatins pursued other film projects, including writing and directing 2005’s Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, for DreamWorks. Around that same time, a partial draft of Flight was gaining traction at DreamWorks but got shoved to a back burner when Paramount acquired DreamWorks, also in 2005.

Flight came back on the radar in 2009, when Zemeckis’ producing partner, Jack Rapke, brought him the script and let the director know that Washington was interested. “So I called up Denzel and said, ‘I just read this. Are you really interested in doing this?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, are you really interested in this?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Well, let’s do it.’ ” (During this time, Gatins was also at work as one of the writers on the 2011 film Reel Steel, executive produced by Zemeckis).

Added Zemeckis:“Of course, that was fun. And then it got crazy. And then it got fun again.”

The “crazy” was coming up with a plan that would make Paramount willing to take a chance on an adult drama. In a nutshell: Keep the budget at $30 million, a tall order for a film that requires a jet to fly upside down.

“Here’s the thing: The guys who are running the studio, they love this kind of movie—we all grew up on these movies. That’s why we got into the business,” Zemeckis says. “Conventional wisdom is that people don’t generally go to see adult dramas. It’s sad that these are the hardest movies to market.

“When I approach a movie, my attitude is, I just want it to make $1 profit, then nobody gets hurt,” the director continues. “But Denzel and I realized that what we’d have to do is waive our fees and make the movie for the $30 million number that Paramount wanted. And then they basically said, ‘Go with God, and make the best movie you can.’ ”

Like Washington, Zemeckis declined to give his actual salary figure, but Washington says both artists were working at one-tenth of their usual pay for a major film. And, in term of amping up the visual sizzle while staying on budget, Zemeckis observes, “We’ve got maybe the greatest actor in the world, so that’s pretty great—you’ve got the spectacle of a Denzel performance, so that’s cool. And then what I can bring to the party is that I’ve got so many years of experience, I know a lot of great (visual effects) artists who can deliver, so I was able to bring them into the movie. That allows the movie to look a lot more expensive than it really is.”

Both the director and the writer acknowledge the movie might not have happened without the commitment of Washington, but the nuanced roles also attracted a celebrated supporting cast including Don Cheadle, John Goodman, and English actress Kelly Reilly, who portrays the vulnerable recovering addict who helps lead Whitaker to face his demons. “It’s a brave movie,” says Reilly. “They do things head on. It’s not cool or clever—there’s no vanity in it.”

For Zemeckis, Flight marks his first return to live-action cinema in 12 years after directing and producing films that use motion-capture technology, including The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol. He thinks too much has been made of this fact. “Making movies never really feels good, it’s always a lot of hard work,” he says. “But doing a live-action movie after not doing a live-action movie for a couple years, it didn’t matter. It’s kind of like riding a bicycle—it all came rushing back.”

For his part, Gatins hopes that Flight helps take the stigma off serious adult dramas when it comes to boxoffice potential. “That’s what the conversation has been like—will there be a turn back to these sorts of films, like the great cinema of the ’70s?” he says. “We were helped by True Grit and Black Swan and The Fighter—movies that had tougher issues at their core. This is a grownup drama.”

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Supporting Actor Category Full Of Scene-Stealers

Pete Hammond is Deadline’s awards columnist. This article appeared in the Dec. 5 issue of AwardsLine.

In a year when the leading actor race is full of major heavyweight contenders—many going for their second or third Oscars—the supporting actor category is no less competitive and also chockful of major names in the hunt for another Oscar. With certified leading men like Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tommy Lee Jones, Russell Crowe, Ewan McGregor, and Matthew McConaughey in the mix, the supporting contest is easily one of the most fascinating to watch. And it begs the question: What really is a supporting role? Is it playing a major title role in The Master or could it be just one 5-minute scene as a cancer patient in Flight? Is it a collective award for a trio of scene-stealing roles in one year, such as John Goodman’s 2012 résumé indicates, or will it honor a return to critical acclaim for a legend like Robert De Niro who hasn’t been Oscar-nominated since 1991? Whatever the case, this is the starriest group of contenders we have seen jockeying for best supporting actor in many years. Here’s a rundown of the major players.

ROBERT DE NIRO |SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

As Pat Sr., the obsessive-compulsive father and Philadelphia Eagles fan, two-time winner De Niro wowed critics and immediately elicited strong Oscar buzz for the first time in a couple of decades. He hasn’t been nominated since 1991’s Cape Fear and hasn’t won since 1980’s Raging Bull. Now he’s back in the supporting category where he first triumphed in 1974 for The Godfather Part II. Will history repeat itself? He’s a hot contender to do just that.

Tommy Lee Jones plays abolitionist Senator Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln.
Tommy Lee Jones plays abolitionist Senator Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln.

TOMMY LEE JONES | LINCOLN

As the spirited and scene-stealing political powerhouse Thaddeus Stevens, Jones livens up the film with a rip-roaring turn that puts this leading actor squarely in the hunt for a second statuette in the supporting category. He won for 1993’s The Fugitive and was last nominated five years for the first time in the best actor category for In the Valley of Elah. His acclaimed turn opposite Meryl Streep in the summer release Hope Springs further enhances his chances of scoring another Oscar for his mantel.

John Goodman, left, and Alan Arkin play Hollywood insiders who collaborate with the CIA in Argo.
John Goodman, left, and Alan Arkin play Hollywood insiders who collaborate with the CIA in Argo.

ALAN ARKIN |ARGO

Playing the veteran Hollywood movie producer called upon to create a fake film in order to help some hostages out of Iran, Arkin drolly nails the role and gets the laughs in Ben Affleck’s otherwise serious thriller set against the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. The veteran star finally won an Oscar in this category six years ago for Little Miss Sunshine after being AWOL from the Oscar competition for a record 38 years. But he’s back with a vengeance, and somehow one Oscar just doesn’t seem enough for this beloved actor.

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the charismatic leader of a cult in The Master.
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the charismatic leader of a cult in The Master.

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN |THE MASTER

As Lancaster Dodd, the leader of a cult-like religion in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1950s drama, Hoffman is riveting and every bit the match for Joaquin Phoenix’s Freddy. But in order to avoid Hoffman and Phoenix competing for votes in the same category, the Weinstein Company is campaigning Hoffman in supporting, which gives him a meaty opportunity to swamp the competition. Polarized reaction to the film among some voters could hurt his overall chances, but a nomination seems like a no-brainer.

EWAN McGREGOR |THE IMPOSSIBLE

McGregor is another leading man going for his first dance with Oscar as the real-life father and husband who searches desperately for his wife and oldest son when their family is divided after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. With one highly emotional scene to boost his chances, McGregor strongly delivers in a role to which any father will relate. And there’s a lot of them in the Academy.

JOHN GOODMAN |ARGO & FLIGHT

Goodman has had an embarrassment of riches this year with scene-stealing roles. He was particularly well-received in Argo as the real-life Hollywood makeup man who helps the CIA pull off a daring plan to rescue six Americans in 1979-Tehran and as alcoholic/addict Denzel Washington’s enabler in Flight. Unfortunately, both roles are being campaigned by their respective studios, and he’s in danger of cancelling himself out. Every actor should have this kind of problem.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays plantation owner Calvin Candie in Django Unchained.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays plantation owner Calvin Candie in Django Unchained.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO |Django Unchained

DiCaprio, a three-time Oscar nominee and certified superstar could compete for supporting honors as the deliciously villainous slave owner Calvin Candie in Quentin Tarantino’s wild ride of a western. The Weinstein Company recently moved costar Christoph Waltz up to lead actor, where he will square off with star Jamie Foxx, leaving the supporting field in the film largely to DiCaprio (though Samuel L. Jackson could also be a small fly in that ointment once the film is more widely seen by voters).

MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY |MAGIC MIKE

Leaving behind a string of romantic-comedy roles, McConaughey completely reinvented his career with a series of strong, offbeat performances in 2012, including the murderous hitman in Killer Joe, the Texas prosecutor in Bernie,and a pair of well-received performances in movies that debuted in competition at Cannes, The Paperboy and the upcoming 2013 release Mud. But it’s his flashy strip-club veteran Dallas in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike that has put him in the supporting actor conversation.

JAVIER BARDEM |SKYFALL

He already has one supporting Oscar for playing evil in No Country for Old Men, but could Bardem be the first Bond villain ever to win an Oscar nomination? As the sexually ambiguous Silva, a wicked mastermind of all things bad, Bardem brings real dimension to what could have been a comic-book portrayal in lesser hands. In doing so, he lifts everyone’s game in the most successful James Bond film yet.

RUSSELL CROWE |LES MISÉRABLES

Oscar-winning leading actor Crowe gets to once again show his dramatic chops as Javert, the singularly focused policeman who hunts down Hugh Jackman’s Valjean in the musical Les Misérables. What might really make voters stand up and take notice is Crowe’s singing ability here, and that can be a real plus for Academy voters, who love to see their Oscar winners stretch.

Also in the mix…

BRYAN CRANSTON |ARGO

With costars Alan Arkin and John Goodman already standing in line, Cranston’s equally terrific turn as a CIA boss might get lost in the crowd.

DWIGHT HENRY |BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

A baker in his native Louisiana, Henry is a non-pro who knocks it out of the park as the suffering dad of young Hushpuppy stuck in the middle of a crisis on the bayou. Against stiff marquee competition, he probably has a better shot at success at the Independent Spirit Awards.

ALBERT BROOKS |THIS IS 40

After being robbed last year for going evil in Drive, Brooks is back in familiar territory as Paul Rudd’s needy father in this terrific adult comedy. He nails it, as usual.

HAL HOLBROOK |PROMISED LAND

Holbrook has a couple of strong scenes, including a heartfelt monologue, but he might not have enough screen time, though the same problem didn’t seem to hurt when he was nominated for Into the Wild a few years back. His few moments in Lincoln and veteran statusalso bolster his case.

MICHAEL PENA |END OF WATCH

Playing a good cop on patrol in Southeast L.A., Pena is every bit the equal of costar and partner Jake Gyllenhaal, but the distributor doesn’t want them competing in the lead category. Having Pena in supporting might confuse actors who could want to put him in the upper category with Jake because of the size of the role.

EZRA MILLER |THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

Miller was evil personified in last year’s We Need to Talk About Kevin,but he’s truly a revelation here in a complex turn in this fine drama about real teens. In a year with less competition, he would make the cut.

BILLY CONNOLLY |QUARTET

Connolly is vibrant as part of the ensemble of great actors in Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, and voters could single him out, but it’s a longshot.

WILLIAM H. MACY |THE SESSIONS

As the priest confidante of the horny but physically challenged Mark O’Brien, Macy gets the laughs, but the film really belongs to his costars.

NATE PARKER |ARBITRAGE

As a street-smart kid who helps star Richard Gere out of a jam, Parker gives the role three dimensions, but his chances for a surprise nomination are slim with this killer group of contenders.

JAMES GANDOLFINI |NOT FADE AWAY

As a 1960s Jersey dad trying to discourage his son from musical ambitions, Gandofini is once again working with David Chase and back in the home territory of Tony Soprano but showing a completely different side of his talent. Getting the film seen could be a problem.

IRRFAN KHAN |LIFE OF PI

As the older Pi telling his story in flashbacks, this acclaimed Indian star is effective and low-key, but most of the emotional stuff is left to his younger self, played by Suraj Sharma.

GARRETT HEDLUND |ON THE ROAD

Hedlund shows off real star power, along with other things, as the mystical Dean Moriarty in the Jack Kerouac adaptation. He’s a breakout, but Oscar will likely have to wait for another year.

JAMES BADGE DALE |FLIGHT

With just a single scene as a cancer patient, James Badge Dale makes an indelible impression that has fellow actors singing his praises. But at five minutes’ screen time, it’s the longest of longshots.

CHRISTOPHER WALKEN |SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS

Walken’s dog-napper of a con steals the show from his costars, and the Oscar winner is always respected by fellow actors. Don’t discount his ability to break through, but CBS Films will really have to campaign him.

JOHN TRAVOLTA |SAVAGES

Oliver Stone’s Savages seems to be on the sidelines this awards season, but attention must be paid to Travolta’s corrupt and deliciously slippery DEA agent, his best work in years.

ANDY SERKIS |THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

With another performance-capture turn as Gollum, has this actor’s Oscar time finally come? Judging from past Academy voting habits, don’t bet the farm on it.

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Composer Mychael Danna Discusses Scoring Life Of Pi

David Mermelstein is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Nov. 28 issue of AwardsLine.

For Life of Pi, his third collaboration with director Ang Lee, composer Mychael Danna incorporated the sounds of Asia—especially India—into a multicultural stew of a score. Along with a full studio orchestra, accordion, piano, celesta, and mandolin, Danna added Balinese gamelan, Persian ney, basuri (an Indian transverse flute), Indian percussion, and, of course, the sitar. Plus, the venerable Pandit Jasraj (still going strong at 82) contributed vocals.

Composer Mychael Danna's biggest challenge was scoring a vfx-heavy film before many of the major sequences were completed.
Composer Mychael Danna’s biggest challenge was scoring a vfx-heavy film before many of the major sequences were completed.

“Pi is a 21st-century citizen; he belongs nowhere and everywhere,” says Danna of the lead character in the film, based on an acclaimed novel that blends adventure and spirituality. “It’s set in India but in a French colonial town. So we have accordions and mandolins playing Indian melodies and sitars playing French melodies. We also have an English boys’ choir singing Sanskrit and a Tibetan chorus singing in Latin. The goal was to carefully—and, hopefully, artfully—blend every culture that Pi comes across and then makes part of his own essence.”

Combining the tale’s fantasy elements with its more profound truths didn’t come easy. “Most of the film depicts Pi as a young boy or young man,” Danna says, “and for the music to connect to him, we needed that sense of boyish wonder, that sense of awe and youth to the sonorities. My first drafts didn’t have that.”

Complicating matters for the composer was the film’s great reliance on CGI. “It technically makes it much more difficult to score,” Danna explains, “because those elements don’t come in until the very end of the process. So for a lot of things, I had to rely on Ang’s descriptions. I’d be working with storyboard or crude versions of a scene. There’s an extra layer of removal from what you’re scoring when you work like that. I think it worked out fine, but it was a bit scary.”

The biggest challenge came in the “Storm of God” scene, in which Pi and a tiger named Richard Parker lose the raft of supplies roped to their rowboat. “It’s a very complicated scene in the sense that the CGI was crude when I wrote the music. The score has to get harsh and big—this concept was very important to Ang—because the God of the storm is the real true God, and that God has no personal connection to Pi, no compassion for him. He’s a God far removed from puny human endeavors—as opposed to the gods Pi knew as a child, the mythological Indian gods. And Ang wanted a big transfer here, a shift to awesome and frightening and powerful and overwhelming That’s a shift in color and theme, and it had to be anchored in other places in the score where Pi comes to know God with a big ‘G.’ And we wanted to do this on a very big scale, with big orchestra and big choir, because Pi kind of has a Job-like moment, and God smashes him with the back of his hand into the water and crushes him. That scope was very challenging to do. It’s the biggest group of musicians we used, with a large percussion section and choir. It was very wild, with everyone playing with abandon and a great deal of power and passion.”

To get there, Danna worked closely with Lee. “He’s very involved,” the composer says. “It’s a true collaboration. We did a lot of talking about the best role for the music before shooting, but when we saw the film, we shifted our ideas of what the music should be doing. It’s a film about big questions, and it seemed that the music had to acknowledge that. But underlying it had to be a kind of simplicity and a line that helps join everything together from beginning to end and emotionally guides us through Pi’s life. That’s something we worked on very carefully, music as a compassionate guide. And we wanted to show that compassion to both Pi and the viewer.”

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Behind The Scenes On Wreck-It Ralph

Thomas J. McLean is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Nov. 28 issue of AwardsLine.

For Wreck-It Ralph, Disney’s animated hit about an arcade videogame villain who wants more out of life, the movie hit its critical mass and graduated from an idea to becoming a real movie came via a tool borrowed from TV animation: the table read.

Director and cowriter Rich Moore, who spent the better part of two decades working on series from The Simpsons and Futurama to The Critic, Drawn Together, and Sit Down, Shut Up, imported the practice for the spring 2010 meeting at Pixar that included cast members Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, and Alan Tudyk. “It’s a very, very useful tool for the filmmakers—to hear the characters come to life and to hear the dialogue, and to get a good pace for the movie, a feeling for the movie,” Moore says.

A videogame villain wants to be a better character in Wreck-It Ralph.
A videogame villain wants to be a better character in Wreck-It Ralph.

The result was so well received—even by absent lead actor John C. Reilly and executive producer John Lasseter—that the studio brought in producer Clark Spencer and a storyboarding team to kickstart the 3D CGI movie into full production.

Thanks to that energizing read in 2010, Wreck-It Ralph has become an animated hit for Disney, earning rave reviews since its Nov. 2 release and a $49 million opening weekend domestic gross. There’s also some Oscar-season buzz surrounding the film, despite an already-impressive animated slate from Disney that includes Brave and Frankenweenie.

Awards talk aside, Wreck-It Ralph’s success vindicates Disney’s long-held faith in the idea of an animated feature about videogames, which stretches back to the 1990s when the studio tried to develop projects with titles like Game On and Joe Jump. The idea still appealed to Disney Features Animation chief Lasseter in 2008, when he suggested it to studio newcomer Moore.

Director Rich Moore and producer Clark Spencer at a press day for Wreck-It Ralph.
Director Rich Moore and producer Clark Spencer at a press day for Wreck-It Ralph.

While Moore shares Lasseter’s affection for vintage arcade games, Moore says it was his teenage son who assured him youngsters still know Pac-Man and Space Invaders. “I never saw a Laurel and Hardy movie in a theater in my life, but I knew who they were as a kid,” says Moore. “And I think it’s kind of similar with these game characters.”

Moore passed on looking at previous attempts to develop a gaming movie and began with the characters. “I fell in love with this idea of telling a very kind of personal, internal story about a character that’s wondering, ‘Is this all there is to life?’”

Moore brought on writer Phil Johnston to flesh out the characters and come up with a story—often going down some admittedly weird roads on the way. “There were several days where we were convinced the best way for them to travel from game to game was through a portal in the toilet, like a vortex in the toilet,” says Johnston. “And that made sense to us for at least a week.”

“There was no screenplay at that point, it was a bunch of index cards and ideas being told through talking in the room,” says Moore. “Once we had those beats down, once we kind of knew what our story was and how we were going to get there, and the different worlds we have, Phil went about writing the screenplay.”

The characters were the key for the writing crew, which grew to include Jim Reardon and Jennifer Lee. Moore says they knew so early on they wanted Reilly, Silverman, McBrayer, and Lynch that they were able to tailor the characters to them. “It’s so rare for animation, but I knew the voices I was writing from the beginning,” says Johnston.

Positive reaction to the 2010 table read pushed the story from development into production. “We always knew that this was a movie that was probably going to get made, but the table read is kind of the moment where John (Lasseter) and the company say yes,” Spencer says.

As is the norm for today’s animated features, the story was constantly tested and revised: Spencer says it was put up on reels about seven times over an 18-month span. “I think that this is what makes animated films—when they’re done well—sharp, and gives them depth, because we are really going in and making each scene the best it can be and testing the relationships between the characters in a way that I don’t think exists in live action,” Moore explains.

Moore says the animation process for a feature differs little from television, save for the amount of time available. Production went so smoothly on the picture that Moore and Spencer were able to accommodate an earlier release date so the studio could give more time to Pixar’s upcoming Monsters University.

“Otherwise, we would have been coming out in spring of 2013, and it just seemed like a holiday release date better suited the movie, and it felt like we were in a place where we could pull it off,” says Moore.

Much of the buzz around the film stems from a wide range of videogame cameos, a move that was inspired by Moore’s affection for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? “I wanted to use the actual game characters in it, rather than creating kind of stand-in characters that evoke certain characters or that felt like they were an ersatz version of characters that people knew, because it really seemed like that would really lend an authenticity to the whole idea,” he says.

The filmmakers approached the story as though they had the rights to any game character they wanted, then Moore and Spencer themselves pitched the story to the game companies personally and got permission to use virtually every character they asked for.

While Ralph features fun moments for classic gaming characters from Pac-Man to Street Fighter, there was one obvious candidate—Nintendo’s Mario—who is not in the movie because the right moment for him just never came up. (Reports that Nintendo turned the movie down on financial grounds are false, Moore says, stemming from a joke Reilly made during a Comic-Con panel about Mario wanting too much money.)

Mario might get his chance to face Fix-It Felix Jr. and Wreck-It Ralph in a sequel, which Moore says he would be happy to tackle again for Disney; a work place he arrived at late in his career. “It was never someplace that I said, ‘In my career, I must work at Disney,’” Moore says. “But to be here now, I really feel like I am in the right place. Creatively it’s been the most satisfying project and job that I’ve ever had, and this is after working on amazing projects with wonderful people.”

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Composers And Lyricists Discuss Their Entries In The Oscar Race

Keith Urban, pictured, and Monty Powell wrote "Only You" for Act of Valor.
Keith Urban, pictured, and Monty Powell wrote “Only You” for Act of Valor.

ACT OF VALOR

“For You,” Monty Powell & Keith Urban

After watching Act of Valor, country music icon Keith Urban sat down at his Nashville home with his cowriter Monty Powell to discuss their feelings about the military action film they just saw; an anomaly that specifically cast active U.S. Navy Seals performing fictionalized missions.

“I asked myself, ‘Was there something I would die for?’  Certainly, in my case, it was my family.  That was the spirit of the song for me,” explains Urban about the film’s sacrificial theme. “It’s easy to watch a military film and have an opinion, but for me it wasn’t about those things, rather, if I had to take a bullet, I would do it for them.”

It was that kind of heart that brought soul to the end-titles song for Relativity’s hit winter film ($70 million), not to mention resonating with Urban’s fanbase and sending “For You” to the No. 6 slot on Billboard’s Country Songs chart.

When writing the opening lines of “For You,” the duo drew inspiration from a moment in which one of the Navy SEALS jumps on a grenade and gives his life for the team. “We decided to start the song seconds after he died, and that if he came back from the dead, here’s what he would have to say,” explains Urban.

Urban and Powell used banjo to construct an up-tempo signature riff to pull the listener in before segueing to acoustic guitar and climaxing with a Strat guitar solo to “respond to the epic landscape of the music,” says Urban.

Shooting the music video proved exhilarating, as a number of the Bandito Brothers production crew reconvened on the original California desert site, the Silurian Dry Lake, where they shot Act of Valor four years prior. A particular high point during the video was the detonation of explosives in the background of Urban’s performance.

Given the amount of music-themed films that his wife, Nicole Kidman, has headlined, Urban looks forward to contributing a track to one of her projects down the road. In fact, director Lee Daniels reached out to him about the possibility of contributing a song for Kidman’s latest movie, The Paperboy. But when you’re a country recording artist with 15 million album sales under your hat, a world tour, and American Idol judging duties, timing is key.

—Anthony D’Alessandro

CHASING ICE

“Before My Time,” J. Ralph

Composer J. Ralph, who has scored two Oscar-winning documentaries, The Cove and Man on Wire, was drawn to his latest project by a somewhat difficult challenge. In working on the climate-change doc Chasing Ice, he wanted to bring a voice to the ice.

“I wanted to create an awareness of feeling, a spiritual and visceral projection of the ice breaking up,” says Ralph, who enlisted the vocal talent of his friend Scarlett Johansson for the title track, “Before My Time.”

Johansson is paired with violinist Joshua Bell on the song, which brings an emotional close to the powerful examination of the changing glaciers. “I wrote the song as a meditative and endless look at the feelings we face daily when governments and corporations neglect the changes in climate control,” Ralph says. “Scarlett provided the Mother Earth feeling that I wanted to express in the song. She knew where to find and emphasize the specific emotional beats in the tune. The one instrument that spoke to me was the violin, and that’s where Joshua Bell complemented Scarlett’s voice so well. Her voice and his violin are the only two instruments you hear on ‘Before My Time.’ ”

Ralph admits he was tempted to ask Carly Simon or other well-known singers he’s worked with to sing “Before My Time,” but the first person he played Johansson’s vocals for—rock legend Stephen Stills—echoed his enthusiasm. “She can really sing and knows how to act out the song,” Stills says.

Ralph, who would love to write an original score for a feature film, realized from the beginning of Chasing Ice that audiences would have to pay attention to the scientific details discussed on screen. “You can have any opinion you desire on climate control, but when you see glaciers physically disappearing before your eyes, it’s hard not to be emotionally moved,” he explains. “The movie grinds to a halt at the end then becomes surreal, so the song gives clarity to the audience. I wanted the lyrics to say that you can’t protest or think you are bigger than Mother Nature. Just look at the news footage of Hurricane Sandy.”

—Craig Modderno

The original composers of Les Misérables wrote a new original song, "Suddenly," for Hugh Jackman to perform in the film.
The original composers of Les Misérables wrote a new original song, “Suddenly,” for Hugh Jackman to perform in the film.

LES MISÉRABLES

“Suddenly,” Alain Boublil & Claude-Michel Schönberg

After nearly 30 years and one of the longest runs in musical history, the much-touted film version of Les Misérables includes a new song, penned and composed by the musical’s original lyricist, Alain Boublil, and original composer, Claude-Michel Schönberg.

Both Boublil and Schönberg are quick to credit the notion of adding a new song to the film’s director Tom Hooper, who’d pinpointed a chapter he wanted to incorporate from Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, upon which the eponymous musical is based.

“It is the first time Jean Valjean meets the young Cosette, just as he rescues her from the Inn of the Thénardiers,” explains Boublil. “We called the song ‘Suddenly’ because (Jean Valjean) suddenly discovers the world is not all bad, it’s not about revenge and hatred. Hugo described how two people who’d been unhappy—the girl and Jean Valjean, who was in jail for 19 years for nothing—can come together to create happiness. This song is a discovery of love.”

“There’s a good reason for this very tender, very moving song,” Schönberg adds, “and it’s much easier to show this on the camera, with a hand stroking the head of a little girl, than it is to capture that (detail) on stage.”

Both Boublil and Schönberg started out as pop songwriters in France, and throughout their three decades of collaborating—which also included the musical blockbuster Miss Saigon—their process has remained unchanged. First, they discuss at great length what a song is going to be about, then Schönberg composes the music, and last, Boublil writes the lyrics.

Both claim they’ve always been open to a film version of their musical Les Mis, but nothing ever came to fruition. “We went as far as we could, but projects have their own strength, they carry on or they don’t,” says Boublil. Then they were introduced to Hooper, who’d just won the Oscar for The King’s Speech. Hooper insisted the film version of Les Mis be the musical in its entirety and not a movie crafted around songs. He also insisted it be shot live rather than lip-synched, which had been the standard method for filming songs.

“We were working with a director for a new medium with new avenues for ways things couldn’t be said on stage,” Boublil says.

Aside from the addition of “Suddenly,” the film remains true to the original musical. “No songs have been removed,” assures Boublil. “That would have been a sacrilege.”

—Cari Lynn

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Diane Warren penned the song “Silver Lining” for the Weinstein Co. film Silver Linings Playbook.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

“Silver Lining,” Diane Warren

“When it comes to the Academy Award, I feel like Susan Lucci,” jokes songwriter Diane Warren, who has six best song Oscar nominations but no wins. Her last nom was in 2002 for a song featured in Pearl Harbor, but Warren has a good chance again this year for penning “Silver Lining,” the romantic theme song for director David O. Russell’s offbeat comedy-drama Silver Linings Playbook. Warren’s lyrics, performed by Jessie J, highlight a dance-rehearsal scene between Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence at a crucial moment late in the picture.

Though she wasn’t able to see the completed film before setting to work, Warren says she loved the script. “As soon as I read the script, the computer in my brain started putting together the song, which was a little more up-tempo and soulful and more retro than the version in the film,” Warren explains. “The idea was to show an important change in the temperamental relationship between the two leads that reflected the fun and romantic joy of going crazy.”

Warren’s hardest problem was convincing executive producer Harvey Weinstein to let her friend Jessie J sing the song in the film. “Harvey kept saying, ‘Get me Beyoncé or Adele.’ Harvey wanted a name, a star to sing it. Later on, he suggested turning it into a duet with Bruno Mars and any female singer the public would know. When Jessie J closed the Olympics, Harvey, to his credit, claimed she was now a star and gave us permission to use her.”

Warren, who has written songs for three different testosterone-driven Jerry Bruckheimer-produced action films, enjoyed the challenge of writing for a gentler film. “You get big-bucks royalties from writing songs for extremely popular male-bonding movies like Con Air, Pearl Harbor, and Armageddon,” she says. “This time, it was nice to do a zany romantic song that showed more of my
feminine side.”

—Craig Modderno

STAND UP GUYS

“Old Habits Die Hard” & “Not Running Anymore,”Jon Bon Jovi

When Jon Bon Jovi received an Oscar nomination almost 22 years ago for his composition “Blaze of Glory” from Young Guns II, he didn’t think it would take him that long to try again. “I was watching an awards show earlier this year, and I thought to myself, Why haven’t I written a film score lately? Oh, yeah, it’s because I made six albums in the past decade, and I forgot about my film work,” he says, somewhat amused at his benign neglect of his scoring and promising acting career. (Though he had a small part last year in director Garry Marshall’s New Year’s Eve.)

But Bon Jovi has finally turned back to his film work, writing two songs—“Old Habits Die Hard” and “Not Running Anymore”—for the gangster movie Stand Up Guys, starring Al Pacino and Christopher Walken. Though he wrote them off the script prior to shooting, the New Jersey rocker’s follow-through was quite unconventional. “Originally, I played my guitar and sung my songs on my iPod for the filmmakers. Then, when they started shooting, I went on location, and I became these guys in my head. I was very low-key and absorbed the atmosphere to fine-tune the songs, which are very specific to the action onscreen.

“The funny thing is, I love writing songs for films,” Bon Jovi continues. “My band is very supportive of me doing this because it teaches me humility. Musicians are in awe of actors and both respect each other’s craft. After he saw the film, Al wrote me a nice letter saying it was the best song he heard in a movie since Bang the Drum Slowly. That’s the kind of compliment that makes me want to do more movies.”

Bon Jovi admits his life would change a bit if either of his songs were to get attention from the Academy. “I may have to shift some things since my band will be on the road then. I can afford to give up the day job (for that)!”

—Craig Modderno

Matt Thiessen, pictured, wrote "When Can I See You Again?" with Adam Young for Wreck-It Ralph
Matt Thiessen, pictured, wrote “When Can I See You Again?” with Adam Young for Wreck-It Ralph

WRECK-IT RALPH

“When Can I See You Again?”Adam Young & Matt Thiessen

When Adam Young received a call from Disney Animation asking him to pen an original song for the animated film Wreck-It Ralph, it almost seemed too good to be true. It hadn’t been that long since Young was an anonymous kid experimenting in his parents’ Minnesota basement with some keyboards and his computer, then uploading the resulting songs to MySpace. A longtime fan of Alan Menken, who scored Disney’s Aladdin among others, Young was told it was his electronica sound that would be a perfect fit to close the 3D film about videogame characters.

Tapping his friend and frequent collaborator Matt Thiessen, of the Christian rock band Relient K (the two are so close they refer to each other as Brother Bear), they were shown only a handful of storyboards and the last five minutes of the film. “(Disney) said, ‘We don’t want to show you too much because that can sometimes be counterproductive,’ ” Young explains. “I agree, and it was great to have just broad strokes and the general feeling.” Thiessen, too, felt that the sentiment in the clip was enough to inspire, and they set about creating a song that was optimistic but somewhat open-ended.

On past collaborations, they worked together in the same room, but this time, they were both on separate tours with their bands so they had to make do. “Adam cooked up a track and sent it my way, and I started singing over it, then sent it his way,” says Thiessen, who wanted to focus the lyrics around the exploration of new worlds, of getting out there and living. The track went back and forth via email as they both changed and added elements, and an MP3 demo eventually went to Disney.

“They were very open-minded to how rough the quality was,” Young says. “They weren’t quick to criticize anything, which I hadn’t expected because there’s nobody who does this better than they do.”

When asked about the Oscar buzz surrounding their song, both were genuinely humble. “It’s hard to grasp what it means just to have a song in a Disney Animation film,” says Young, “and you can see it in the theater and see my name in the credits. To bring in the subject of Oscars, it’s crazy.”

“It’s one dream outshining another dream,” says Thiessen.

—Cari Lynn

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Behind The Scenes On Rise Of The Guardians

Thomas J. McLean is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Nov. 28 issue of AwardsLine.

As a child, William Joyce wanted more answers about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and other holiday figures than his parents were able to give him.

“I know where Superman came from—from planet Krypton!—so what about this guy, the Easter Bunny?” says Joyce. The typical parental answer to queries about how Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy did what they do was, “They just do,” which Joyce found dissatisfying, even years later when he became a father.

Jack Frost teams up with Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman to save the world in Rise of the Guardians.

“I wanted to come up with something better for my kids,” says Joyce. “And it really galvanized when my daughter asked me one hot August day—after her little brother lost his tooth—‘Do the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus know each other?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ ”

Joyce, a celebrated illustrator, children’s book author, and filmmaker, began filling in those blanks, creating detailed backstories and a shared universe robust enough to fill a Guardians of Childhood book series. His imaginative work ultimately provided the foundation for DreamWorks Animation’s hottest contender in this year’s Oscars race, the 3D animated Rise of the Guardians.

It is a project Joyce calls his magnum opus. He directed a Man in the Moon short film as proof of concept, but found himself turning down offers from the likes of Pixar before hearing exactly what he wanted from DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg.

“Jeffrey was the only guy from any of the studios who was willing to take on the bigger picture I wanted, which was books and a movie,” says Joyce. “Everybody else just wanted to do a movie, and they didn’t want me to do these books, and that was a deal-breaker for me.”

DreamWorks' Rise of the Guardians puts Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy in charge of saving the world.
DreamWorks’ Rise of the Guardians finds Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy charged with ensuring that children continue to believe in them.

Joyce’s feature animation credits include concept art for the original Toy Story; he was production designer and producer on Blue Sky Studios’ Robots; and saw Disney adapt one of his books into the animated feature film Meet the Robinsons. For Rise of the Guardians, he came on as codirector but had to step back into an executive producer role when his teenage daughter, Mary Katherine, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. (She died at age 18 in 2010, and Guardians is dedicated to her memory.)

Stepping up to the director’s role was Peter Ramsey, an animation veteran who had just come off directing DreamWorks’ Monsters vs. Aliens Halloween TV special. He joined playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, who wrote the screenplay, production designer Patrick Marc Hanenberger, and producers Christina Steinberg and Nancy Bernstein in developing the project, with input from director Guillermo del Toro.

“A lot of my thinking dovetailed well with what David Lindsay-Abaire was doing, which is not doing a satirical take but actually meeting it head-on and making the core story about the belief in the characters and this new vision of what the characters actually represent and mean,” Ramsey explains.

Del Toro was particularly helpful in restructuring the story, which incorporated an idea Katzenberg pitched to Joyce in their first meeting on the project: to introduce a new Guardian. That crystalized the story around Jack Frost and made children’s belief in these characters the central theme of the story.

Key to Joyce’s take on the characters was the need to treat them seriously and make them cool in a way that decades of bland holiday TV specials could not.

“We knew that we didn’t want to go the postmodern, wink-wink route,” says del Toro. “What we aspired to was to make them feel alive, to make them really have a personality, and that they would have a personality where you as a kid have an option of saying they were cool without sounding childish.”

Most of the characters took their cues from Joyce’s ideas, such as North, a.k.a. Santa Claus, being a swashbuckling Cossack complete with Russian accent and tattoos. The Easter Bunny changed the most, with Joyce adopting the movie’s boomerang-wielding outback warrior for his books over his original idea.

“The Easter Bunny that Bill originally had was something a bit more Beatrix Potter-y and a bit more ‘fussy professor,’ ” Ramsey says. “We just couldn’t pull him off that way, so we decided to keep him a little more in line with our superhero idea.”

Joyce, who launched Moonbot Studios in his native Shreveport, LA, and wrote and codirected the Oscar-winning short The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, says he was very comfortable with the studio’s approach. “I really felt like the studio and Peter wanted to tell the story that I wanted to tell,” says Joyce. “Then it was easy to stand back.”

Katzenberg was essential in getting the studio’s first choices for casting: Alec Baldwin as North, Jude Law as the villain Pitch, Isla Fisher as Tooth, Hugh Jackman as E. Aster Bunnymund, and Chris Pine as Jack Frost. Voice work was new to Pine, who says the one day he worked directly with Baldwin was surprisingly counterproductive.

“I had all of my actorly hopes that it would help ground the experience, but it really didn’t help,” says Pine. “It actually worked out better, I found, after three years of doing it, to just go section by section by myself and play with the lines and with volume.”

The animators developed different styles of movement for each of the characters. Steinberg says teams were assigned to each character, but by the end of production those styles were so well defined it was second nature for animators to work on any or all of the characters.

“We started calling it ‘method animation’ because we were trying to get as much naturalism into the performances as we could,” Ramsey says.

The look of the film borrowed heavily from Joyce’s illustrations. “Most animated movies drink from the fountain of pop art,” says del Toro. “We wanted to go for a more painterly look and a look that felt like it was based on a production design more in tune with illustrated books of the past, rich and lush and embroidered and detailed.”

Joyce, whose next animated project is the feature Epic, due out next year from Blue Sky Studios, is more than pleased with Guardians and has high hopes for a sequel. “There’s two things that aren’t the way I wanted them to be: I wanted Bunny to have a cape, and I wanted the Tooth Fairy to be a little bustier. But other than that, it’s what I hoped.”

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Behind The Scenes On ParaNorman

Craig Modderno is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Nov. 28 issue of AwardsLine.

Details are everything in animation, but ParaNorman producer Arianne Sutner knows all too well how difficult it can be to get them right. Her seemingly simple suggestion to add a shower cap in a scene in the 3D stopmotion film quickly became a question of balancing creativity and schedule.

“There’s a scene where Courtney comes to the door looking for Norman and is met by Mitch, who is wearing a towel,” Sutner recounts. “I thought having Mitch wear a shower cap would be funny. The trouble came when I remembered in stopmotion you can only do a minute a week.”

The title character in ParaNorman fights off zombies, parents, and other distractions to save his town in this clever horror spoof.
The title character in ParaNorman fights off zombies, parents, and other distractions to save his town in this clever horror spoof.

Fortunately, Sutner had codirector Sam Fell, codirector and writer Chris Butler, and fellow producer Travis Knight—who’s also the CEO of the financing company Leika—on her side.

“We had an unspoken rule that if anyone had a change that could improve the film, we would try it,” Knight says. “We were working from an excellent script, so we looked at ideas like hers as basically tweaking the source material, which we all loved.”

The resulting feature film took two years to complete and is the biggest stopmotion 3D animated film ever produced, employing 320 designers, artists, and animators who worked on 52 separate shooting units. It’s also one of the 21 animated films that qualify for the 2012-13 Oscar race, an exceptionally long list of toons that will result in five nominations for only the fourth time since the category’s debut.

The film’s production team is hoping that ParaNorman will follow a successful path similar to its previous stopmotion animated effort, Coraline, a dark-themed story of a family coming apart in parallel universes that earned more than $125 million worldwide and was a 2010 Oscar nominee. In fact, Coraline’s success allowed the creative team behind ParaNorman (many of whom worked on Coraline) to self-finance and shoot in the laid-back environment of Portland, OR.

Being out of the critical eye of Hollywood meant fewer egos to deal with, but they knew that having a good story is important no matter where the production is based. “The trick is to sell good scripts, no matter who the buyer is,” Sutner says. “Audiences may be attracted to a certain type of film—animation versus live action for example—but they’re always attracted to a good emotional story.”

ParaNormanKnight, however, thinks animation might just have to try a little harder. “Animation has been ghettoized through the years by giving the impression we only do the same kind of stories,” he says. “(But) the classic Walt Disney films have a perfect balance of darkness and light.”

Like Coraline, ParaNorman, which came out on DVD this month, strikes a similar balance between darkness and light and could be enough of a commercial and critical hit to make the Academy take notice. But two years ago, any thought of Oscar gold was the furthest thing from the minds of ParaNorman’s creative team. They needed the right voice talent.

“We wanted to have kids be kids, not over the top. We wanted naturalism and people playing the same genders. Little things are important, like having older characters sound older,” Sutner explains. “Age is really conveyed in the voice. It’s hard to fake a life fully lived through your voice. Elaine Stritch, who plays the grandmother, earned her life history!”

“Each vocal performance is a symphony,” Knight continues, adding that they tried to cast against type when reviewing vocal performances. “When you think of the warm grandmotherly type of character, you don’t think of Elaine Stritch. But she was perfect because you could hear the rough life in her voice.”

Having a very specific vision for the type of family film they wanted to make also helped keep the production focused. “People now look at animated and stopmotion films like ParaNorman as movies with character and heart, unlike the comic-book pictures that dominated the multiplexes all summer long,” explains Fell.

“It was a film made by grownups who see themselves as kids, that is aimed at kids,” Butler continues. “We wanted to catch the suburban underbelly of a John Hughes picture and combine it with the eerie atmosphere of a John Carpenter picture. If it wasn’t so scary this might have been—with a few major adjustments, of course—a Scooby-Doo adventure.”

While Butler and Fell were in sync on the concept, their opinions diverge when it comes to how technology supported their efforts.

“Part of the reason the film took so long to make was the emerging technology,” Fell says. “We could see the performance unfolding during the day, which made it easier to expand the film by adding big-ass special effects without harming the story. We believe ParaNorman is a game-changing film in combining new digital technology and old-craft technology.”

However, Butler says the emerging technology they employed for ParaNorman was not without its own set of challenges. “I disagree with Sam in that I think it’s not easier to film animation because of the evolving technology,” Butler reveals. “You can have digital background extras and a lot more people handling a lot more things with a lot more questions. A fundamental truth of filmmaking is just because you can do more things with the technology doesn’t mean you won’t have to face newer, more complicated problems.”

Planning ahead helped the team face those complicated problems without the production’s pace grinding to a halt. It also helped to refine the details, such as Sutner’s shower cap addition, somewhat on the fly. “We very rarely reshot,” Fell says. “It’s a big deal in animation because we do such extensive preproduction in every department. In stopmotion, you are actually capturing the performance because we shoot on digital camera now instead of film.”

Butler and Fell ultimately found a creative shorthand in their two-year working relationship. “You play off each other’s creative energy, because you’re not cans of beans for two years,” Fell says. “You get excited when you push the story, and the next year your characters come to life. Then you look at each other, and you realize your film is giving birth to itself. It’s a joyous but difficult feeling to describe!”

“We were a good complement (to each other) really since it was my story and his vision at the start,” offers Butler. “At the beginning it was tough, but then we realized how much we liked each other. Sam and I had a marriage that worked, but now we need a little distance to enjoy our creation. I’d love for us to work together again, and Sam’s indicated the same feeling to me.”

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Composers Zeitlin And Romer On Scoring Beasts

David Mermelstein is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Nov. 28 issue of AwardsLine.

Convincingly relating a child’s sense of wonder in a movie for grownups is never easy. But Benh Zeitlin and Dan Romer managed it handily in the music for Beasts of the Southern Wild, which Zeitlin also directed and cowrote.

Set in the wetlands of the deep South immediately before a major storm (presumably Hurricane Katrina), the film combines expected musical choices—country fiddle, accordion—with some unconventional ones—celesta and pop-music beats—to create a satisfying gumbo rich in character, mood, and atmosphere.

“I think the world looks down on these places,” Zeitlin says of his film’s setting. “I wanted to make this film about why people stay, about how beautiful and how much freedom there is in this culture. I want audiences to understand that places like this have found freedom and joy, and the music takes you there.”

To convey that sense Zeitlin and Romer used music of indigenous Cajun bands, especially the celebrated Balfa Brothers, but they also didn’t shy from incorporating other elements from their eclectic playbook. “Me and Dan have diverse taste,” Zeitlin explains. “We listen to a lot of Rachmaninoff and Michael Nyman. We both write pop music. Kate Bush was a big influence on us, also Beyoncé and Rihanna.”

Their big challenge was creating a sound that simultaneously incorporated a sense of place with a child’s sense of self. “Our star (Quvenzhané Wallis as Hushpuppy) is 6 years old, and modern pop music is what she loves,” Zeitlin says. “We wanted the score to have an indigenous texture, but also have kick-you-in-the-face energy that modern pop music is so good at, and we wanted to find a bridge to all those things.”

They found it toward the beginning of the film, as a parade makes its way through the area affectionately known as the Bathtub in the movie. The scene culminates in a fireworks celebration that also serves as the film’s title sequence. “That was pretty much the first idea we had when we sat down,” Romer recalls. “Benh wrote me that there would be a Cajun band early on. He asked what musicians should be there at the shoot. We talked about two violins and a guitar. We wanted a Cajun band playing in the scene, but then something else is playing in Hushpuppy’s head. We wanted Hushpuppy to augment the live music in her brain. To the rest of the world, it’s just a Cajun band, but in her head it’s reharmonized and orchestrated.”

The pair got the Lost Bayou Ramblers to play Balfa Brothers songs, including “Balfa Waltz” (or “Valse de Balfa”). “When I listened to that song, I realized we can do so much with it because it’s basically only one chord,” Romer says. “We can completely reharmonize this. We can add cellos or whatever. It just worked out perfectly. That was our first big idea together. The fireworks sequence is the big takeoff, blending the traditional music with the Bathtub anthem. The full anthem doesn’t come back until the credits, though it does come back in smaller bits in between.”

For Zeitlin, that cue was the movie in nutshell. “The purpose was to make you fall in love with this town and culture in a very short period of time,” he said. “We had to sell audiences on this place that they might normally be afraid of. And music was a key to making that happen. This world may look reckless or dangerous, but for Hushpuppy it’s what she loves more than anything else in the world.”

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Hair & Makeup Artists Are Key To Believable Characters

Monica Corcoran Harel is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Nov. 28 issue of AwardsLine.

Publicists, producers, personal trainers? Ha. Let’s face it: When it comes to nailing a role, a fantastic hairstylist and extraordinary makeup artist are an actor’s best friends. Where would Nicole Kidman be without her exuberant Virginia Woolf prosthetic nose? Oscarless. Ditto for Meryl Streep, who even name-checked her loyal hairstylist J. Roy Helland of 37 years at last year’s Academy Awards for her The Iron Lady victory. “I want to thank my other partner,” said the actress.

This year, the Academy tweaked the categories to include hairstyling in the makeup award for the 86th annual ceremony. It’s a smart inclusion, considering the two departments work incredibly closely, and the right period hair is essential to any film—even a post-apocalyptic one. Case in point: Hunger Games hairstylist Linda Flowers bleached 500 people’s eyebrows for the film and dyed the hair of 75 extras. With a team of 45 stylists, she also created 450 original wigs and hairpieces.

This year’s likely contenders for hair and makeup run the gamut in scope, from doctoring huge ensemble casts to refashioning lead actors into famous characters. For Hitchcock, hairstylist Martin Samuel had to recede Anthony Hopkins’ thick snowy mane with a partial shave and dye it brown at the sideburns. He also had a very sparse toupee made for the actor’s crown to simulate a balding man’s pate. “We kept it up every day for the 40 or so days of shooting, and Anthony was very patient,” says Samuel, who collaborated with Howard Berger on the prosthetics and makeup. It took 2½ hours each morning to turn handsome Hopkins into the homely, weak-chinned director.

Of course, it’s a tricky negotiation to conceal an actor’s most important means of expressing himself. Daniel Day-Lewis, in Lincoln, underwent just a scant hour and 15 minutes of cosmetic overhaul each morning to play the stately but physically craven 16th president of the United States. Instead of relying on prosthetics—which could easily encumber emoting—makeup artist and longtime Steven Spielberg collaborator Lois Burwell studied photos and casts of the president and then used a method called “stretch and stipple” to age the actor 10 years. She also dyed Day-Lewis’ natural beard darker and thinned it out.

“Lincoln had a soft chin and Daniel doesn’t, so we structured the beard to give that impression,” she says, adding that the Oscar-winning actor was new to the extreme makeup process. “You can’t just put one face on another. It’s not like you are working on a mannequin.”

The team working on the science-fiction epic Cloud Atlas, which wildly spans generations, had a Herculean undertaking in that they had to metamorphose dozens of actors into myriad characters. Consider Halle Berry as an elderly Korean man or Hugo Weaving playing a blonde, female nurse and you quickly get the idea. The film’s six storylines are directed by Tom Tykwer or the Wachowskis, and makeup artists Daniel Parker and Jeremy Woodhead worked with the directors, respectively. At the same time, the two had to constantly compare their sketches and visions to be sure that they weren’t repeating looks.

To transform Berry into an Asian elder, Woodhead used a wig, implants, contact lens, facial hair, and prosthetic teeth. “There was the added complication of an implanted eyepiece that covered the whole of one of Halle’s eyes and had to look like it was embedded in her skin,” says Woodhead. “Halle just sat there and laughed with delight as each layer went on and the character gelled together.”

Parker, who delighted in re-creating Weaving as the brutish, voluptuous Nurse Noakes, adds that last-minute directorial decisions to have an actor join another sequence as a different gender, age, or ethnicity intensified the workload. Still, he insists “this was a dream project for an artist.” He adds that the actors embraced the process and didn’t grouse about the marathon makeup sessions that took as much as four hours.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Bill Murray’s portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson. In this case, the director Roger Michell instructed Morag Ross to employ a subtle touch in physically refashioning the actor as the jovial president. “The M.O. for the whole look was less is more. Nothing heavy-handed,” says makeup artist Ross, who added a mole to Murray’s right cheek and a swath of melanoma above his left eyebrow.

A 1939 Life magazine photo of FDR became the inspiration for Murray’s hairstyle. Norma Webb made an educated guess on the hair color, as her historical references were all in black and white. “I proceeded to cut the hair as for the period,” she says. “But the cut needed to reflect Roosevelt’s seeming disinterest in ‘conservative’ behavior and image.” The translucent actress Olivia Williams also plays Eleanor Roosevelt with a soft wink. She’s not nearly as equine-looking as the First Lady in the end, but Ross added prosthetic teeth that altered both her profile and the shape of her face. Webb added hair wefts and colored Williams’ mane to reflect the First Lady’s unruly tresses and disdain for vanity.

Channeling Russian high society of the 1800s for Anna Karenina required some artistic license. Back then, women didn’t wear makeup but relied on creams to enhance their looks, notes makeup artist Ivana Primorac. Still, she and director Joe Wright wanted “to appeal to the modern audience without looking wrong for the period.” Actress Keira Knightley underwent a minimal change with a slight darkening of her fair coloring and hair. Jude Law, however, needed to be aged and refashioned as a bit of an “egg head.” To do that, Primorac altered the shape of his temples, receded his hairline and lengthened his jaw with a beard.

The near 40-artist team that tackled the hair, makeup and prosthetics on The Hobbit probably needs a long vacation. With 13 lead characters and stunt and scale doubles often needed, the crew helmed by lead makeup and hair artist Peter King had to oversee the transformation of no less than 36 actors. Even more challenging was the need to distinguish characters of the same race—such as dwarves—in appearance as well as silhouette. “Audiences must be able to recognize them by the head and body shape as they’re walking up a mountain,” says Richard Taylor, cofounder of special effects company Weta Workshop.

Realizing the vision of director Peter Jackson before filming even began required about 800 illustrations and 1,000 sculptures. New characters like goblins required their own physical evolution, but it was the high-resolution camera that made fabrication and application an arduous endeavor. “It’s exponential how much more challenging prosthetics and makeup have become because of the clarity of this camera,” says Taylor. “It sees everything. Everything!”

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Composer Alexandre Desplat On Scoring Five Awards Season Contenders

David Mermelstein is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Nov. 28 issue of AwardsLine.

Alexandre Desplat is nothing if not prolific. This year the quadruple Oscar-nominated composer will have five films in theaters. And, as is typical for him, each score is completely different from the others—much like the movies themselves. “If I only did thrillers, I would kill myself,” he said by phone recently from Majorca. “Seriously, I would want to change jobs.”

What keeps him in the game is the opportunity to play with various styles in different genres and compose music that challenges and delights him. “They’re all my babies and all so different,” he says of his scores. “They have different faces and shapes and costumes. Some are big, some are small—and some are huge. Some are talkative, and some are quiet. But I try to give the best of my energy to all of them.”

The most time consuming of these recent projects was his soaring music to DreamWorks’ Rise of the Guardians, which marked the first time Desplat wrote for animation on such a vast scale. “It was three months altogether, writing and recording,” the composer says. “When you work on animation, the music has a great task: to create a sound and melodies and mood and atmosphere and energy dedicated to these extraordinary characters. And you see they are very specific, very clearly designed. Each has a personality that is different. It’s fun and moving and very emotional.”

For Ben Affleck’s Argo, Desplat merged western and eastern sounds to evoke the film’s Iranian setting. “As soon as I heard about the project,” Desplat says, “I got masters of the ney, oud, kemenche, and Persian percussion. And we also had vocals by the Persian pop singer Sussan Deyhim. I could write anything because these are incredible musicians.” But the driving element was never exotica for its own sake. “Ben was mainly interested in emotion,” Desplat says. “He wanted to hear despair, fear, hope. That was always the main thing with Ben.”

With Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, Desplat’s challenge was finding room for his own voice in a film dominated by the strains of Benjamin Britten. “Britten became this thread through the film,” Desplat explains. “And I had to be smart and get inspired by that and convey the love story, the quirkiness, the adventure—but in a weird, restrained, childlike way. I couldn’t have music that would be too adult in terms of harmonies. I tried to stick to what the picture was offering me and be in the heads of the characters and almost in the landscape.”

The French-language Rust and Bone marks Desplat’s sixth film for writer-director Jacques Audiard, their most recent before this being the Oscar-nominated A Prophet (2009). “There’s something that makes a real collaboration,” Desplat says. “You can tell it’s the same director and composer. There’s a real continuity in the work, the style, the orchestration. It allows both director and composer to blossom and find a way through cinema to develop a style like no one else. There’s a word we use with Jacques, ‘modest grandeur’—something really noble but still modest. And I wanted to find that in the music. It couldn’t be symphonic or emphatic. It had to be constrained, restrained, but with fire burning. And it had to be emotional. This is a story about love and how it comes toward you without you noticing.”

Desplat wraps up his fecund year with one of the most awaited films of the season, Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, her follow up to the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker (2008). “It’s a very delicate subject,” Desplat explains, referring to the killing of Osama bin Laden. “There is this sense of inexorability. But it’s also about a war between two cunning and ruthless camps with no limits. Kathryn doesn’t show evil and good battling. The audience is wise enough and adult enough to choose. War is ugly, and both sides are ugly. Never mind who started the war. So the music is very dark. Many times I mentioned (director Akira) Kurosawa to Kathryn, and the musical world Toru Takemitsu created for him in Ran. We use no violins. I use only the low side of the strings. And for brass, the same—so 12 trombones, 12 horns, three tubas. It creates an army of sound, dark and earthy. And I think that works pretty well for a film about desert war.”

The composer makes an unexpected comparison when describing his career at this stage. “As I get further along, I feel more like an actor in these films. I try to disappear with everyone else. I’m not detached but rather part of the game. And when music is not a character, it’s an issue.”

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His Drama Zone: Walken Sparks Somber Stride in A Late Quartet

Craig Modderno is an Awardsline contributor

“I make movies that nobody will see.  I’ve made movies that even I have never seen,” exclaims actor Ronald Walken who has been working in pictures since director Sidney Lumet cast him in his first showy role as the kid in 1971’s The Anderson Tapes when the world met him as Christopher Walken.

“My hair was famous before I was!”

Even off camera, the actor’s wry sense of humor exudes. Blessed with a self-punctuated, Queens cadence, which he can easily massage from cryptic to sarcastic, Walken at 69 is continually in demand across every genre. His dramatic flair is so iconic, comedians from Jay Mohr to Kevin Pollak impersonate him.  Heck, Walken even impersonates himself (check out this hysterical video of him reciting Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”)

Early this fall, Walken walked on the wild side in CBS Films’ shoot-em up comedy Seven Psychopaths as Hans, a rambling dog-napper who doles out screenplay advice until he dies (literally).  In the upcoming Stand Up Guys, Walken gets guffaws as a geriatric gangster. But it’s his turn as Peter Mitchell, a renowned New York City cellist who contends with his Parkinson’s disease, in A Late Quartet that has awards voters buzzing.  Rather than playing the heavy this time around, Walken’s Peter is one of his heaviest roles in years, rivaling his Oscar-winning supporting turn as Nick, the Russian Roulette Vietnam soldier masochist in 1978’s The Deer Hunter and his second Oscar-lauded role as a failed father to Leonardo DiCaprio’s master grafter Frank Abagnale, Jr. in 2002’s Catch Me If You Can.

 

Seven Psychopaths
Walken, left, relentless talks himself into danger in CBS Films’ Toronto Film Festival fave Seven Psychopaths

AWARDSLINE: What drew you to three distinctively different roles in A Late Quartet, The Stand Up Guys and Seven Psychopaths?

CHRISTOPHER WALKEN: I liked the scripts, and the directors. It’s strange that all these films are coming out now since they were all made during the past 2 years. I have no specific criteria — except the rare one that doesn’t have me kill someone goes to the top of my reading pile. (Laughs) It’s true. When I read a script that I cut out in my mind — all punctuation and directions which is the reason for my unusual screen patterns on camera– that process helps me find the character on my own and probably makes it easier for comics to impersonate my characters.

AWARDSLINE:  A Late Quartet seems like your most serious film in a while. Why is that?

WALKEN: Well if you won’t tell anyone it’s because I don’t kill anybody in the film. As I get older, I start to get parts for grandfathers and people who give great advice…the parts Michael Caine will seemingly be able to play forever.  I will still play wise guys, troublemakers because I like playing crazy guys and villains. Plus the economics of making films today are so unpredictable that even small films fall apart often right before shooting.

AWARDSLINE: What did you do to research your role in A Late Quartet?

WALKEN: I don’t like to discuss my process generally in preparing for a role. If I tell you I studied cello then you’ll watch my playing more carefully and perhaps pay less attention to the story.

AWARDSLINE:  Was it a competitive atmosphere between you and your co-stars on the film?

WALKEN: No, only what the script called for. They were all excellent actors and very nice people. We all knew we were making a very special film.

AWARDSLINE: Do you look for something specific in a dramatic role that tells you it will be a challenging part?

WALKEN: No for me it’s more of a feeling:  “Am I good at playing the part?” I read scripts for myself, which is why I erase punctuation because sometimes a question could actually be a statement. I read the scripts as if they play the way I think my character would respond, not what a reader would think how they would play my part.

AWARDSLINE: At this stage of your career what do you want from a director?

WALKEN: To hire me! (Laughs) I want him or her to be sure about the information and history of the project, so the actors become kids in a sandbox; feeling free, playing together. If you don’t cast well, the movie has a hard time getting a rhythm of its own. The best directors like Mike Nichols, Sydney Pollack, Marty Scorsese and Paul Mazursky to name a few who direct, are also excellent actors so they’re careful choosing the right actor. Besides Sidney Lumet, Michael Cimino and Steven Spielberg, who taught me a lot about my craft, I’ve been lucky in taking chances and calculated choices with some of the best directors of our times.

AWARDSLINE: What impact did winning the Oscar have on your career?

WALKEN: It was enormous. It brought me recognition from the industry that resulted in me receiving better scripts and for the most part not having to do auditions.

Christopher Walken
Walken logged a riveting Oscar-winning turn as the Vietnam soldier Nick in Michael Cimino’s 1978 film The Deer Hunter

AWARDSLINE: How competitive was campaigning for an Oscar in the 1970s?

WALKEN: I never campaign for personal attention from the media. I do go on press junkets when the film warrants that kind of attention because I consider that part of the job. Most films’ press peters out quickly, which is the good thing about the so-called awards season is that a fine film like A Late Quartet gets a special spotlight shown on it. I used to never do internet interviews because I don’t own a computer or a cellphone. My friends are surprised that I don’t, but sometimes I think we’re in an age of too much information.

AWARDSLINE: What was it like being at the ceremony where your film The DeerHunter faced strong competition from another Vietnam War film Coming Home?

WALKEN: I’ve been there as a nominee twice and there’s nothing better than winning. But I remember exiting the ceremony the second time and truly believing we were all winners even though only a few of us were holding statues. Then they give you a really nice dinner even if you didn’t win an Oscar.

AWARDSLINE: You co-starred in Heaven’s Gate, which is considered one of the biggest disasters in film history. What did that negative response do for your psyche?

WALKEN:  It wasn’t anything good. I never really understood what the enormous fuss was about. There was lots of stuff written at the time that was over the top, especially books written on how the failure of the film sunk United Artists. But since (director) Michael Cimino’s previous picture The Deer Hunter had won several Oscars, it created a new area of opportunity to bash Heaven’s Gate because the expectations were higher.

AWARDSLINE: You were supposedly the number two choice to play Han Solo in Star Wars. How did you feel when it became a classic worldwide hit?

WALKEN: No feeling because I was only one of hundreds of other guys who auditioned for the role. I don’t think I’m the best actor to play a role that spins off into an action figure doll.

AWARDSLINE: Another film you almost got the lead in was Love Story. Could you have said the line “Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry” with a straight face?

WALKEN: It was just as well that I didn’t get the role.  I believe an actor gets certain jobs at the right time in his or her career.  A critic once wrote of my stage performance as Shakespeare’s Romeo is that one of my unique qualities is everything I said sounded so sarcastic. Maybe if I had done Love Story then comics today would be having fun doing me doing my dialogue from the film!

AWARDSLINE: Is it true that at age 10 you did a TV Comedy skit with Jerry Lewis and he encouraged you to pursue a career in show business?

WALKEN: Yes. It was The Colgate Comedy Hour. They recently found a kinescope of it which I saw. I had a couple lines in the skit and it was shocking that I hadn’t changed my acting style at all. (Laughs) I’m amazed I’ve gotten this far. Knock wood, they let me continue. Maybe part of the reason is I don’t live my characters — many of whom scare even me — off screen. Perhaps the one little kid quality that I’ve duplicated was during the making of The Deer Hunter, I would hide in the shadows and watch my fellow actors because I knew how good they were.

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Composer Dario Marianelli On Scoring Anna Karenina

David Mermelstein is an AwardsLine contributor. This story appeared in the Nov. 28 issue of AwardsLine.

For Dario Marianelli, who has scored all but one of Joe Wright’s five films, Anna Karenina presented exciting challenges. Wright’s fragmented telling of Tolstoy’s great novel afforded the composer new opportunities for musical expression—even as the film hewed to the story’s period setting.

“There were huge opportunities by the film not being literal,” says Marianelli, who recently spoke by phone from England. “But because those opportunities were opened up, they had to be taken, and that’s hard work. I can’t remember a film where I worked so hard and so long. For more than a year, on and off.”

 

Composer Dario Marianelli, left, with director Joe Wright.
Composer Dario Marianelli, left, with director Joe Wright.

Beyond that, Wright’s film was heavily choreographed, so Marianelli’s music had to be ready especially
early. “It was a lot of work up front, written before the script was even finished, particularly the two waltzes. I had to write them first, then adjust them when they were shot and then adjust them again during the editing. It was an inordinate amount of work, but all worth it.”

The freedom extended to the kind of music Marianelli would write, and its instrumentation, including a surprising amount of brass. Anyone expecting buttoned-up strains will be surprised by the pulsing passion and robust comic flair of the composer’s score, which despite such indulgences remains appealingly tasteful and elegant.

“We started with the idea of two opposites,” Marianelli says, “the folk music, the earthy music toward which the character of Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) is attracted, and then the more sophisticated music of the aristocracy and also the pretense, the life on a stage. Then gradually more ideas came in, and they started interbreeding. We ended up with a lot less folk music and more of this new entity of the bands—rougher sounds coming into the sophisticated orchestra but still very pure high violin over simple piano or music-box notes.”

But a third element soon forced its way into Marianelli’s musical consciousness. “There was a necessity to have something that could give voice to the aspirations Anna (Keira Knightley) and Levin have to lead a life away from the stage. So I have a compass with three points, the third being this otherworldly music that had to be very pure and simple, and that represented the truth of a life they all wanted but couldn’t have—the escape they desired.”

The hardest part, of course, was getting started, and Marianelli points to that first waltz with particular affection. “I remembered recently that was the very first tune when I put my hands on the keyboard and wanted to send something to Joe to start the conversation,” the composer recalls. “This was May of last year, a full four or five months before the scene was shot. But I wanted to find something tender that could be danced to but that I could use at the end as well for when Anna dies. That slowly descending harmony—I’ll whistle it badly for you—that theme is particularly dear to me because it’s the first.”

He is equally partial to the clarity—rare for him, he says—that accompanied its articulation. “At that point, it was clear that it had to be something that could take this whirling moment when Anna falls in love with Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), when she’s enraptured or entrapped by him, but could also be used as a mournful commentary on her death. And I never let go of that in the months that followed. I found variations on the piano, in the orchestra, but substantially it was the same tune I had from day one. It’s like an old friend now. And if I have to go to the piano and play a bit from Anna Karenina, that’s what I will play.”