Entertainment In Brief
A tough ride on Pelham 1 2 3; Year One’s little works of art; Woody Allen goes with Whatever Works
Stressful Commute
Remaking the revered Hollywood thriller The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 was stressful enough, but that didn’t stop director Tony Scott and stars Denzel Washington and John Travolta from keeping the tension on high while shooting.
The movie, which focuses on bad guy Travolta holding a subway car full of passengers ransom while beleaguered train dispatcher Washington attempts to defuse the situation, was filmed in New York using the Big Apple’s subway system. (The title refers to the station, Pelham Bay Park, where the train begins its run, and the time of its first run, 1:23 p.m. After the release of the first film in 1974 the New York City Transit Authority changed the route’s starting time.)
To ensure the cast and crew knew how dangerous it was to work around live subway rails — the system’s electrified third rail houses 800 volts — they were required to take an eight-hour safety course, which included squeezing along the side of the tracks while trains rumbled by.
And since most of the film finds Washington and Travolta sparring over the phone while negotiating the release of the hostages, Washington decided he and Travolta shouldn’t meet until near the end of the shoot. He felt the distance would fuel their antagonism towards one another.
Director Scott told the L.A. Times, “That was Denzel’s idea. A dynamic tension came out of that where you can see both guys springboard off each other on the phone. They were on separate sides of the studio for the entire shoot.”
—Ingrid Randoja
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Artifact
This month’s objet de film
Year One idols
Sodom came to Louisiana last year, and surprisingly it had nothing to do with Mardi Gras.
The re-emergence of the Old Testament’s Sin City came courtesy of Jack Black and Michael Cera’s Biblical comedy Year One,
which was shot in Louisiana in early 2008. When the set decorators
needed clay idols to fill a Sodom marketplace they turned to Matt
DeFord, sculptor and assistant art professor at Northwestern State
University in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
DeFord, an award-winning fine artist, was paid $20 each for the
little fellas, which were fashioned after Mesopotamian altarpieces.
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He made 50 of them, none of which he’ll ever see again.
“I was told the cast and crew usually grab souvenirs,” says DeFord, “and they will probably end up in 50 different houses.”
—Marni Weisz
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We see you, Woody
As a game, picking the Woody Allen character out of a Woody Allen
movie is about as difficult as playing hide-and-seek with a
four-year-old. Diane Keaton, John Cusack and Mia Farrow are among those
who’ve stepped in as Allen’s surrogate, playing neurotic intellectuals
looking for love, often in unexpected places.
But Allen’s latest, Whatever Works, knocks the game down from hide-and-seek with a four-year-old to peekaboo with a four-month-old.
Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David plays Boris, a misanthrope who marries a young runaway played by 21-year-old Evan Rachel Wood.
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And before you fear drawing parallels to Allen’s marriage to the younger Soon-Yi Previn is simplistic, know Allen makes no attempt to distance himself from the character. “I wrote the script, so of course it is the way I see things,” he says in the film’s production notes, adding, “As you go through life it’s a tough struggle and whatever works that doesn’t hurt anybody is fine. So however bizarre a romantic relationship may be: if it works, it works.”
Famous for exploring May-December relationships since his middle-aged character dated Mariel Hemingway’s high-school student in 1979’s Manhattan, Allen further commented in the New York Observer, “My philosophy has been consistent over the years, and it appears either persuasive or idiotic depending on how good the film is. If I make a film and the film itself works, then I feel people come away saying, ‘Gee, the philosophy here makes sense.’ And if I make a film where I’ve struck out and I’ve made bad artistic choices and the film is not good, then they think, ‘His ideas are stupid and narcissistic and irrelevant.’”
Yet, if you think the story was inspired by Allen’s experience with Previn, you are wrong. Allen wrote the script in the 1970s for the late Zero Mostel. When he decided to return to his beloved New York after making his last four films in Europe, he dusted off the script.
—Marni Weisz
Del Toro’s Re-Strain-t
Mexican director Guillermo del Toro is known for filling his movies with outlandish creatures. His last two films, Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, starred beings with clusters of arms, tusks, horns and confusing orifices.
So the first description of the blood-sucking vampire at the centre of his new novel, The Strain (released June 2nd), caught us a little off guard. “A thin, black shadow appeared before his eyes. A vertical slash of darkest black.” What? No bulbous eyes? No fangs like razor blades? Such uncharacteristic restraint.
The book, which del Toro co-wrote with horror author Chuck Hogan, is the filmmaker’s first novel (although he has published collections of short stories), and is expected to be the first of a trilogy.
—Marni Weisz
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On home turf
Films shooting across Canada this month
If you’re in Toronto, keep an eye out for Kevin Spacey who’s in town shooting the Jack Abramoff story, Casino Jack.
Abramoff, you may remember, was the most hated high roller with a
name ending in “off” until Bernie Madoff stole that crown earlier this
year. After a booming career as a Washington lobbyist, Abramoff quickly
went from beloved friend of political movers and shakers to toxic
pariah when allegations of fraud and corruption involving a casino deal
emerged. In 2006, Abramoff pled guilty to those charges. He’s currently
serving
a four-year sentence at a Maryland prison where, word is, Spacey
visited him to prepare for the role.
—Marni Weisz
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