issue xi oct 2017 persona - amazon web services...stage into his film career, had been lauded for...
TRANSCRIPT
P ERSONA
Crossing the Uncanny Valley
ANGRY SUSPICIOUS MISCHIEVOUS
DISGUSTED HYSTERICAL CONFUSED
FRIGHTENED CONFIDENT HOPEFUL
OCT 2017
P. 37
ISSUE XI
AmericanBlockbuster BubbleWhat will it take to start the next New Wave?
Harrison FordDéjà vu: Rebooting Jones, Solo, & Deckard
ACTOR INTERIVEWBlackPantherThe black actors of anew generation join forces
CASTING BUZZ
ZoeSaldanaThe multi-colored actresswith the giant box office
NOTABLE PERFORMANCE
OCTOBER 2017 | PERSONAPERSONA | OCTOBER 2017
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NOTABLE PERFORMANCE
Zoe SaldanaThe multicolored actress with the giant box office
WRITERS’ ROOM
Rainbow CastingIt’s here to stay, so what are the pitfalls?
The AmericanBlockbuster BubbleWhat will it take to start the next New Wave?
ACTOR INTERIVEW
Harrison FordDéjà vu: Rebooting Jones, Solo, & Deckard
ON THE COVER
Death of the ActorCrossing the Uncanny Valley
SEASONED PERFORMER
Sissy SpacekThe face of 70's New Hollywood
CASTING BUZZ
Black PantherThe black actors of a new generation join forces
ntentsCO
12
18
23
31
37
42
46
/4 /5
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Crossing the Uncanny ValleyBY TIM BAUMANN
The movies sit in a strange zone for us; we know that they are chimerical, fanciful things, and yet we still react to them with such force. Advances in CGI technology threaten the character authenticity we value in our actor performances—a thread of reality in movies that is already tenuous.
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ky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,
directed by Kerry Conran in 2004, is typically
recalled—if people remember it at all—as “the
movie where Angelina Jolie wears an eyepatch.”
Set in an alternate version of the late 1930s
during which human technology is significantly
more advanced than our own real past, extensive
CGI was used to give the movie its unusual look.
Like most CGI from the aughts, it looks goofy
to contemporary viewers. For one thing, the vast
majority of Sky Captain was filmed on a stage laid
out for CGI to fill in later. Before-and-after shots
reveal scenes dependent upon a blank bluescreen
canvas, with little more than furniture, the odd
prop, and other actors for Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow,
and Jude Law to draw inspiration from. The film’s
unconventional plot and dated special effects
robbed it of its status as something of a
groundbreaking movie.
Among Sky Captain’s odd features is the
hologram villain played by Laurence Olivier. The
hologram isn’t terribly interesting in and of itself.
It’s a standard blue head not unlike the holograms
projected by R2-D2 in Star Wars. What’s interesting
is that Olivier—who from his days on the Old Vic
stage into his film career, had been lauded for his
incredible physical acting technique—had no use of
his physical body for a good fifteen years before Sky
Captain was released. He had, in fact, gone to earth
months before the Berlin Wall did the same.
The weightily named Dr. Totenkopf hangs like a
specter over the events of Sky Captain. (Totenkopf
is the German term for the skull-and-crossbones,
which takes on a macabre connotation considering
who was “playing” him.) Totenkopf is like Harry
Lime in The Third Man—often referenced but
revealed late in the picture. The reveal of Totenkopf
is not so dramatic as the reveal of Lime, but it does
save us from having to see a more fully fleshed-
out Olivier. It turns out that Totenkopf is no more
than a mummified corpse; the hologram itself is the recording of the same man but
much younger. What appeared to have been an eugenicist’s ongoing plan for a new
humanity is no more than lingering horrors. It is revealed that Totenkopf died before
he could build a self-destruct system into his plan; in fact, the last testament he made
is an apology, not a crowing. “The World of Tomorrow,” the young Totenkopf’s
name for his sadistic and unstoppable plan, is an arrogant promise for the living to
confront in the film’s final act.
Thus we are saved Olivier, even though we see him in “hologram” form and hear
him say things like, “I am the last, desperate chance for a doomed planet” and
“Who dares come before me! Who dares enter this place!” These statements were
culled from some amount of archival footage of the young Olivier held by the BBC;
it is very much his voice we hear as well as his face we see.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was never a box office success, and
for all its inventiveness remains a fairly obscure picture. If it had been received
more warmly—or even if it had been competitive with other effects-heavy pictures
of that year, such as The Polar Express or The Day After Tomorrow—we might
have stumbled into a debate rather like the one triggered by Rogue One and its CGI
resurrection of Peter Cushing that we are now having more than a decade later.
Movie history tells us that a prematurely dead actor in a movie can be good
for business, although the picture itself needs to pull its weight. It stands to
reason that had Carole Lombard’s last movie been more along the lines of Twentieth
Century or My Man Godfrey —that is, a screwball comedy with a handsome man
alongside her—audiences would have flooded theaters to see the final performance
of the wife of Hollywood’s king, Clark Gable. To Be or Not to Be, an Ernst Lubitsch
comedy starring Lombard and the funny but homely Jack Benny, was ill-timed.
Set in Nazi-occupied Poland and released just two months after Pearl Harbor, it
was—suffice it to say—not a hit. From a safer distance, To Be or Not to Be has been
recognized as one of Lubitsch’s best pictures, and the Maria Tura character one
of Lombard’s best roles.
The quintessential dead Hollywood actor is undoubtedly James Dean, who lived
long enough to hear a few months of good press for East of Eden before dying in
a legendary car wreck at 24. His ultimate star-making role, Jim Stark in Nicholas
Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, debuted just weeks after his death in September 1955.
Rebel Without a Cause was a major hit. More than a year later, with the cult of
James Dean already gaining steam, George Stevens’ Giant was released. Both East
of Eden and Giant earned Dean Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, and
Rebel Without a Cause effectively placed Dean at the forefront of our collective
American consciousness when we remember actors who died tragically young.
Dean is hardly the only actor to scrounge up Oscar nods after dying. Although
the second Academy Awards, held in 1930, did not strictly nominate anyone, we do
know that Jeanne Eagels was reviewed for her scandalous role in The Letter. Eagels
died at 39 after a long struggle with drugs and alcohol. Besides Dean and Eagels,
there are other major names: Spencer Tracy in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,
longtime Olivier collaborator Ralph Richardson in Greystoke. Peter Finch won for
playing TV news demagogue Howard Beale in Network.
Heath Ledger, who died exactly a year before his nomination was announced
for Best Supporting Actor as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight,
won that prize posthumously. The phenomenon of Dean in Rebel Without a Cause
was repeated, and watching a star who had died young in his penultimate role
made the film that much more electrifying in the moment. Roger Ebert wondered
if Ledger, the “key performer” in The Dark Knight, would follow in Finch’s
Watching a star who had died young in his penultimate role made the film that much more electrifying in the moment.
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posthumously victorious footsteps. Andrew Sarris, Carrie Rickey, and Peter Travers
all banged the Oscar drum for Ledger as well. Bill Goodykoontz even compared the
fullness of Ledger’s performance to Daniel Day-Lewis’ work in There Will Be Blood,
which is the best-reviewed acting of the 21st century.
The novelty and tragedy of seeing a recently departed actor on screen is a selling
point for any movie and a focal point for viewers. In the case of Heath Ledger, a
popular (and incidentally untrue) rumor opined that playing the Joker had brought
him into such darkness that caused him to abuse drugs in the first place. The thrill
of knowing that a movie could be behind an actor’s death has a certain cachet for
viewers: aside from Ledger in The Dark Knight, an obviously unwell Tracy in Guess
Who’s Coming to Dinner has invited interpretations of a popular figure knowing
that he was facing his final days in front of a camera. Ironically, this prestige factor
declines when the dead actor’s movie comes out too long after his or her passing.
Just as Rebel Without a Cause is essential to Dean’s mystique but his last movie
Giant is not, the same is true for Ledger: The Dark Knight has far outstripped
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus in our cultural imagination.
Sometimes, the death of the actor is not merely sensationalized but results in
real difficulty for directors and their crews. The first major incident of a director
forced by the Reaper to use CGI to place one person’s face onto another was in
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Oliver Reed, in the role of the slaver and gladiator trainer
Proximo, died before he had finished shooting his scenes. The CGI result shows
up in one scene where Russell Crowe’s Maximus is speaking across iron bars
to Proximo, whose face is sometimes placed in shadow. The CGI is very solid,
especially for 2000, and the reality is enhanced by Scott’s lighting effects.
For Furious 7 released in 2015, director James Wan had to navigate the untimely
and ironic death of 40-year-old stunt driver Paul Walker, who died in a car crash
in 2013. Walker had shot some scenes but Wan, who did not want to kill Walker’s
character Brian O’Conner, combined two methods previously used by directors
whose stars had died during shooting. Using body doubles—namely, Walker’s two
brothers—and technology to “graft” Paul’s face onto Caleb and Cody Walker in
head-on shots, Wan managed to create a virtual send-off for Brian O’Conner which
proved satisfying for The Fast and the Furious fans worldwide who were perfectly
aware of Paul Walker’s untimely death. Furious 7 boasts the sixth-highest worldwide
gross in history.
Rogue One, Gareth Edwards’ 2016 entry into the new Star Wars anthology,
has to hold some kind of record for repurposing the most actors. Using archive
footage from the original 1977 Star Wars, Edwards returned characters Garven
Dreis and Dutch Vander—that’s “Red Leader” and “Gold Leader” to you—to action
in the climactic space battle of Rogue One. CGI was used to replace the face of
actress Ingvild Deila with the 20-year-old face of Carrie Fisher for a short scene at
the end of the film; we thus see young Princess Leia as she appeared in A New Hope.
(Fisher was still alive during the production of
Rogue One; she died less than two weeks after the
movie premiered.)
Most famously of all, Peter Cushing was brought
back to life, as it were, by extensive CGI. His
character, Grand Moff Tarkin, is in truth the
primary antagonist of Star Wars; Darth Vader,
though far more iconic, has a smaller role. Tarkin
is returned to that role in Rogue One, despite the
fact that Cushing and his indelible cheekbones
died in 1994. The body and voice for Tarkin were
provided by Guy Henry, a British actor who bears
some resemblance to Cushing just as Deila looks
a little like Fisher. Perhaps they would have borne
more resemblance to the forty-year-old characters
with the help of costume and makeup than the CGI
effects; the phrase “uncanny valley” entered the
cultural vernacular all over again thanks especially
to Tarkin’s revival. The movie was well-received by
critics and audiences alike, but the critical response
to the CGI face of Tarkin in particular was panned
by critics. For every James Berardinelli who called it
“ground-breaking work,” there’s half a dozen other
reviews which have some scathing critique of the
technique. Ty Burr said the new Tarkin was “not
all that convincingly pixelated,” and Matt Zoller
Seitz went full tech talk: “a bunch of ones and zeros
badly imitating a dead man.” Christopher Orr,
aside from noting that the special effects didn’t look
great, wondered about whether it was “tasteful” to
replicate a dead actor’s face.
Guy Henry did a more than passable impression
of Cushing’s voice, although it was clearly a
recreation of Cushing’s famous clipped English
accent that was also the voice, to many cinephiles,
of Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps in the future, even
Cushing’s voice could be fabricated to a higher
standard of indistinguishability. A program created
at the University of Montreal called Lyrebird can
recreate someone’s voice with just a minute of
recorded speech. Granted, in its beta state, the
difference between a person’s real voice and his
or her Lyrebird voice is as plain as the difference
between Peter Cushing and Peter Cushing’s CGI
face. Yet Lyrebird is already facing the difficult—
and obvious—ethical dilemma of what it means
to create a perfect syndication of a person’s speech.
In the movies, that could go further in crossing the
uncanny valley.
As long as that tricky little aspect of life called
mortality is in play, studios, producers, and
directors will have to find ways to manage the sad
deaths of actors. But Rogue One has changed the
game. With an army of technicians and coders who
have taken “Death be not proud” as a mantra,
any actor—regardless of how little archive footage
may remain or how unique his or her facial
structure may have been—can be brought back to
the point of clear recognition. In Sky Captain and
the World of Tomorrow it may have suited the plot
for Olivier’s Totenkopf to be no more than a dried-
up corpse, but would Conran have changed his
mind if he could have had Olivier himself, albeit
digitally imaged?
It is no secret that the majority of blockbuster
films are sequels now. As Neil Gaiman puts it:
“Fans know exactly what they want. Fans want
more of the last thing they read and they liked.
That’s what fans want. They liked that thing
you did, they would like another one of those,
please.” Studios, having made the decision to
choose properties which are frequently low-risk
and high-reward rather than more unusual and
uneven projects like Sky Captain and the World
of Tomorrow, are likely to continue catering to
the desires of fans of those franchises.
Fans know exactly what they want.Fans want more of the last thing they read and they liked. That’s what fans want. They liked that thing you did, they would like another one of those, please.
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The history of Hollywood suggests that studios can handle it when the souls of their actors become flight risks.
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Dreamworks and Paramount, the distributors behind the Shrek and Transformers
franchises, respectively, hold an advantage. Mike Myers or Peter Cullen could
drop dead tomorrow, but their voices would be replaceable should the studios
and moviemakers choose to do so; Shrek and Optimus Prime would merely
sound different. Should Lyrebird’s technology improve significantly, perhaps even
“sounding different” could fade away. Universal could not easily replace its other
The Fast and the Furious stars. Ludacris is an only child; Dwayne Johnson’s brother
Curtis Bowles never earned the sobriquet “the Rock.” Even when the Harry Potter
movies were originally cast, it was assumed that Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and
Emma Watson would be replaced at least once by new boys and girls; fans became
attached, and the trio (and all of their peers!) stayed on board for eight movies.
Rogue One raised a new question which before had gone unasked: how essential is
it to maintain visual character continuity in a series which is four decades old? As
Hollywood doubles down on the belief that no plot should be rejected because of
its age, no matter how tired it is, will we see moviemakers reach back for the people
who made the plot come to life? Will it always be Janet Leigh screaming in the
shower, or Judy Garland staring up at an unseen rainbow? (Will they superimpose
Toto’s face on the new Toto?)
The real question, as we begin our trek across this uncanny valley, is how effective
it can become. No matter how good the CGI or the image captures are, can they
ever meet audiences’ ever-heightening standards for authenticity? Instinctively, one
assumes that a CGI Janet Leigh—or even a CGI Martin Balsam—being stabbed to
death would be less frightening than the real people facing their own fake deaths.
Instinctively, one assumes that a CGI Ingrid Bergman tearing up at a CGI Humphrey
Bogart on a North African airstrip would fail to rouse our sympathies like the
unfailing real thing.
The movies sit in a strange zone for us; we know that they are chimerical, fanciful
things, and yet we still react to them with such force. The thread of reality in
movies—a rope bridge across the uncanny valley, perhaps—is a flimsy one indeed.
As viewers, people tend to handle a single bold unreality well enough; if this weren’t
true, Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki would be anonymous and we’d be put off
by The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ in the Rain. But no one can doubt the genuine
feeling in Gene Kelly’s electric dancing or Mickey
Mouse’s joyful cavorting; unreality is balanced by
authenticity. A CGI actor, glaringly inauthentic
with our technology, is like extra weight on a
scale that can only handle so much heft. The CGI
replication takes the viewer out of the flow of the
movie and into the flow of outside-movie thoughts.
Aside from immersion, we crave connection in our
movie experiences. Even experimental films like La
jetee or Koyaanisqatsi appeal to our environments
and surroundings and in so doing trigger recursive
emotional responses that the CGI Tarkin or CGI
Leia could not create. Bringing out the dead seems
doomed to fail even with perfect recreation, for
no unreality in the human mind is so fantastic as
raising the dead.
As long as consistency and is a prized element
for moviegoers—in performers, in plot points from
adapted text, in visual motifs—the possibility
of computer generated actors becoming more
widespread exists. The history of Hollywood
suggests that studios can handle it when the souls
of their actors become flight risks. Right now,
Hollywood’s present has started to wonder if our
technology can clip wings in advance.
Will it always be Janet Leigh screaming in the shower, or Judy Garland staring up at an unseen rainbow?
PL
AN
B
Sometimes studios and directors have to adjust on the fly when the star of one of their pictures dies during the shoot. When actors die on set, then the adjustments are a little tougher than merely reshooting or doubling.
1923WHOHOW
PLAN B
Martha Mansfield
Her highly flammable dress caught fire on set
when someone haphazardly tossed their cigarette.
Though Mansfield was playing the protagonist,
shooting continued. Her scenes were close enough
to completed that the movie was largely unaffected. 1937
WHOHOW
PLAN B
Jean Harlow
Kidney failure
Harlow, the original blonde bombshell, was the
female star of the film Saratoga. Director Jack
Conway needed a body double to finish her scenes
with co-star Clark Gable. The film was still a huge hit.
1981WHOHOW
PLAN B
Natalie Wood
Drowning
Wood was almost finished shooting Brainstorm,
and the director had to alter the plot slightly to
accomodate the missing scenes. Whether her death
was a tragic accident or murder is unknown. 1982
WHOHOW
PLAN B
Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le & Renee Shin-Yi Chen
Helicopter accident. Morrow was piloting in a scene
for the Twilight Zone movie. Dinh Le and Chen were
two child actresses who were being paid illegally.
The plot for Morrow's character changed significantly,
eliminating the Vietnam War scene entirely.
1993WHOHOW
PLAN B
Brandon Lee
Accidental gunfire
Lee was an up-and-coming actor and stuntman.
After dying of gunshot wounds on the set of The
Crow, multiple stuntmen were brought in to play
Lee's character. Makeup was used to hide the change.
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HeadlineThis is a subhead
The movies sit in a strange zone for us; we know that they are
chimerical, fanciful things, and yet we still react to them with
such force. The thread of reality in moviesis a flimsy one indeed.
As viewers, people tend to handle a single bold unreality well
enough; if this weren’t true, Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki
would be anonymous and we’d be put off by The Wizard of Oz.
THIS IS A CAPTION & PHOTO CREDIT
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GOTHAM CONDENSED | LIGHT | 24 PT; 24 LEADING
SABON | ROMAN | 9 PT; 14 LEADING; 0.125 INDENT
GOTHAM CONDENSED | BOLD | 10 PT; 10 LEADING
The history of Hollywood suggests that studios can handle it when the souls of their actors become flight risks.
GLYPHA | 55 OBLIQUE | 18 PT; 24 LEADING
Will it always be Janet Leigh screaming in the shower, or Judy Garland staring up at an unseen rainbow?GOTHAM | BOLD | 24 PT; 32 LEADING
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