Pigs Might Fly
Me and a prosthetic pig, made for NANNY MCPHEE AND THE BIG BANG (but never used).
Photo by Sue Osmond. Possibly the best picture I’ve ever been in.
Emma Thompson is a big fat liar!
Here she is talking about the field of barley grown for her (very enjoyable) new movie:
“Afterwards they harvested it by hand. It had to look like it was harvested in the era the movie’s set in. Now it’s all been sold, because I think it was about £11,000 worth of barley that was there. I said, ‘Can’t we make Nanny McPhee beer?’ But they told me that was inappropriate. So they sold it to thatchers.”
In fact, all the barley rotted as soon as it was harvested.
The pigs used on the movie were successfully recycled, however. As sausages. It’s true! They could only shoot the piglets for a few weeks each, as they grew too fast, so they had a constant influx of fresh piggies and the overgrown ones went back to the farm and hence into the food chain. Hearing about how bright and cooperative the pigs were on set, hitting their marks and learning their lines (“Oink!” isn’t too hard to memorize, but I bet Val Kilmer could still screw it up), so that the prefab prosthetic porkers were barely needed, it’s enough to make me contemplate giving up bacon. I mean, who eats actors for breakfast? Now that Otto Preminger’s gone?
April 10, 2010 at 2:11 pm
“I mean, who eats actors for breakfast? Now that Otto Preminger’s gone?”
LOL! Another lovely tradition of Classic Cinema lost forever! Where are the Premingers, the Fords, the Sternbergs, the Hitchcocks of our days? Nobody treats actors like cattle anymore *sigh*
I have at home a copy of an early development of The Naked and The Dead (the aborted Laughton project): There is a sketchy resume of the novel, and then some indications about places scouted to do the shooting: I remember there was an indication about the requirement of sowing grass seeds a number of weeks before the shooting started in order to have it at the right height.
Now, the idea of making beer from film-shooting crops looks quite bright, marketing-wise: present film moguls could make a thriving cottage industry out of it, come to think.
April 10, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Although the idea of a green film shoot, with recycled elements, hasn’t quite come off in this case, maybe it will in future, as we all become more careful and aware. In which case, you might get movies where the green possibilities become a factor in the decision to make the film at all. No more firebombing jungles, more planting trees?
Nah.
Of the current directors, James Cameron seems pretty mean, and Polanski can certainly be tough on his crews. Barbara Jefford, the wheelchair lady in 9th Gate, says there’s days when you can see he’s putting it on. He’s decided it’s time for a temper tantrum and, being a great actor, he can produce one on cue.
April 10, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Well he’s got a lot to be pissed off about.
I seem to recall an image of a flying pig in Children of Men. Am I correct?
April 10, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Heh! No, but Battersea Power Station, as featured on the Pink Floyd album cover with the flying inflatable pig, does appear, as Danny Huston’s hideaway. As I’m sure you know.
April 10, 2010 at 5:02 pm
i remember the pig in CHILDREN OF MEN too.
here’s val kilmer getting his oink right after the millionth take
April 10, 2010 at 5:15 pm
I know a good story about Willow.
Really, the pig is in Children of Men? That’s rather daft, isn’t it?
April 10, 2010 at 5:34 pm
April 10, 2010 at 6:05 pm
1) i very much want to hear the story about WILLOW.
2) yes it is a bit silly but i liked that they soundtracked it with king crimson
April 10, 2010 at 7:08 pm
This probably isn’t true, but a screenwriter friend said they had lots of problems on Willow with the dwarfs. “The dwarfs had never seen so many other dwarfs before so they were all fucking each other. And then the dwarfs all wanted to fuck the big women too, and the big women all wanted to fuck the dwarfs to see what it was like… Nobody could get any work done, they were all too busy fucking dwarfs.”
April 10, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Barbara Jefford’s scene in THE NINTH GATE is one of the best bits in about 3-4 Polanski films in either direction. There’s usually at least one moment in any of his films that announces (and I don’t mind a bit) “master-class filmmaking, your attention please.” The card hand-off in THE GHOST WRITER is another; the unfortunate resolution of the love affair in BITTER MOON; just about the whole of CHINATOWN.
One doesn’t get very far trying to find connections between a director’s on- (or off-) set behavior, or demeanor, and their art. The former is very frequently embellished or worse – not to say it doesn’t have its place, just that, if you tried to chart the relationship between behavior and art, you would probably give up almost immediately. Ozu and Preminger, for example, seem to embody perfect opposites, but they left behind a great body of work.
April 10, 2010 at 10:12 pm
David, what did you do for MCPHEE? You probably already mentioned it, sorry if I was inattentive.
April 10, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Oh no, I didn’t work on McPhee, I just know an informant who did.
Polanski can get quite irate about simplistic connections between his life and his art. He admits connections exist, but says that a case of indigestion during a day’s shooting might be as significant as major life events that have made the papers. He’s simultaneously a bit disingenuous and completely right.
April 11, 2010 at 4:25 am
“. . .but some animals are more equal than others.”
April 11, 2010 at 11:46 am
Probably my favourite CIA-funded Orwell adaptation! Voiced by Maurice Denham, who appeared in last week’s The Forgotten…