Entertainment In Brief
Earth’s polar bear expert relives nights in Svalbard. Plus, the vampire book that started it all
How not to be eaten by a polar bear
Filming polar bears for a movie like Disney’s Earth isn’t at all like filming meerkats or penguins.
“With most species, as a wildlife cameraman, you spend a hell of a lot of time trying to get close to your subject, trying not to move for many hours on end,” says Jason C. Roberts, field producer for Earth’s polar bear segments, on the phone from his home in Longyearbyen, Norway. “Polar bears are a little bit different. You can spend a long time looking for them, but quite often they’re looking for you.”
Roberts (a transplanted Australian who did similar work for Eight Below, Die Another Day and The Golden Compass) and cameraman Doug Allen spent two months living in a 1930s hunting cabin on the archipelago of Svalbard — midway between Norway and the North Pole — while recording the life of a mother polar bear and her two cubs. Each day they lugged all of their equipment (by foot or ski) eight kilometres to the film site, shot for 16 hours, and then lugged it all back. Back at the cabin they took turns getting up throughout the night to ward off their movie stars, who’d come looking for whatever was giving off that tasty smell.
So how do you ward off a hungry polar bear?
“I have a system that I’ve worked on for a long time,” says Roberts, who’s been doing this for 19 years and shudders at the thought of actually harming any bear. “We have signal pistols we can shoot at a distance, which puts off an explosive flare that scares them away, the type of thing you use for boating emergencies. Then we have little hand grenade crackers we can throw at them closer to scare them away. If we had to, we could use pepper spray. I don’t like using pepper spray because the bears definitely don’t like it.”
There are also rubber bullets, which Roberts seldom uses, his credo being “We’re in their environment, so we’re their guests.”
“Of course, we do have the last resort, where we would have to shoot at a bear to kill it. But I’ve never, ever shot at a bear to kill it, I’ve never even come close to that,” he says. “That would be the most disastrous thing.”
—Marni Weisz
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Artifact
This month’s objet de film
Dracula
Their skin may be cold and clammy, their eyes like ice, but thanks to Twilight, its upcoming sequel New Moon and the Underworld movies, vampires are red hot.
Yet it’s doubtful any of them would exist had it not been for
Irishman Bram Stoker’s 1897 epistolary novel (a story told through
journal entries, letters and documents), which popularized the idea of
the sensual, blood-sucking undead.
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This first-edition Dracula — signed not only by Stoker,
but by many of the actors who brought his characters to life in
20th-century movies, including Bela Lugosi — goes on sale April 30th as
part of Profiles in History’s Spring Auction of Hollywood Memorabilia
(Profilesinhistory.com) and is expected to fetch as much as $8,000
(U.S.).
The book comes from the personal collection of the late Forrest J Ackerman, a notable science-fiction writer, editor and bit-part actor known for coining the phrase “sci-fi.” Ackerman passed away in December.
—Marni Weisz
The original pen-and-ink Scott Pilgrim
and his human version, Michael Cera
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On Home Turf
Shooting across Canada this month
Toronto boy Michael Cera is home shooting Scott Pilgrim vs. the World from now until mid-summer.
For the second time in two years Cera plays the bass player in a rock band (following Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist).
This time it’s the titular Scott Pilgrim, who falls for rollerblading
delivery girl Ramona Flowers (May Elizabeth Winstead) but must defeat
her seven evil ex-boyfriends in order to win her heart. It’s a comedy
based on Canadian cartoonist Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels.
And it’s no coincidence (or tax-credit grab) that the film’s
shooting in the Big Smoke, the books take place in Toronto too — in
very specific locales like Casa Loma, Honest Ed’s, Sneaky Dee’s and the
Dufferin Mall. So if you’re on the Cera search (or looking for his
co-stars Chris Evans, Kieran Culkin, Brandon Routh and Winstead) the
novels should offer a whole bunch of clues.
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You can also check out director Edgar Wright’s (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) myspace page, where he’s been posting updates and photos (myspace.com/ edgarwright).
—Marni Weisz
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The Skinny on Hunger
Actors know how harmful it is to gain and lose weight for movie
roles. (Just ask Jared Leto, who says his body will never feel quite
right after he gained 62 pounds to play Mark David Chapman in Chapter 27.)
But what if it’s a role that demands a dramatic physical
transformation? That was the challenge facing Irish actor Michael
Fassbender (pictured left), who plays imprisoned IRA leader Bobby Sands
in Hunger. In 1981, Sands and nine of his fellow IRA prisoners
engaged in a hunger strike at Maze Prison. Sands lasted 66 days before
he died. Fassbender gave himself 10 weeks to lose the 30 pounds needed
to get down to 128 pounds, the cut-off point before potentially
damaging his kidneys and other organs.
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He subsisted on a few nuts and berries during the day, and then ate
a can of sardines and a little salad for dinner. The London-based
Fassbender told Little White Lies magazine what helped him
survive was the fact he did it while living in Los Angeles: “It was
winter time so to have blue skies every day really helps a lot, and
you’re not cold so the hunger thing doesn’t really kick in as badly as
it would in [London].” Plus he got to use the Jerry Hall - Yogacise DVD left by his house’s previous renter.
—Ingrid Randoja