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Post by jo on Jan 7, 2013 21:12:17 GMT -5
I've not read these comments from Hooper before -- what is the scene that makes him cry...and why ?
>>>Emotional Reserve
I point out the irony in someone so reserved being so keen
to tackle sentiments.
“I’m English,” he says with a nervous laugh. Then comes a quiet confession: The Valjean death scene in his own movie still makes him cry.
“Why am I crying?” he wonders aloud. “My father, who’s alive and well, will one day face this, and it’s hard not to think about it when you’re watching it.”
Before filming started, he remembered his father’s own words. “He said I want to master the art of dying well,” recalls Hooper, “in a way that causes you and your brother and sister as little pain as possible, and I want to have left you as happy as possible.” It might as well be Valjean speaking.<<<
Jo
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Post by chessie on Jan 7, 2013 22:26:20 GMT -5
[quote I wonder if all behind this - is some jealousy from stage actors because they did not get the movie parts?? I can understand that ... but they should have been professional enough not to poke fun at their colleagues, whether in the theatre ( Jackman, Tveit, Barks) or just in the movies. Jo[/quote ] The instantaneous nature of Twitter results all too often in people tweeting without taking the time to think through what they're saying. I can only hope that this is the case with Stephanie and the others who expressed similar thoughts. If they were to take a moment to think about it, the glaring differences would be obvious. Still, you do have to wonder if some degree of jealousy might be present. On a lighter note - I just heard the unmistakable strains of "Look Down" being played by one of the bands at the Notre Dame - Alabama game. Les Miz is everywhere!  Carol |
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Post by Jamie on Jan 7, 2013 22:36:22 GMT -5
One thing these performers should consider is their own reputation. Once someone is known as a person who bad mouths their fellow entertainers, the jobs can dry up pretty darn fast. You don't have to love everybody and everything, but you do need to learn when to be discreet.
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Post by cccartzee on Jan 8, 2013 3:36:47 GMT -5
I agree; it seems that some celebrities spend so much of their time tweeting that they get carried away and fail to use good judgement when they tweet their snarky and jealous comments.
Carol
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Post by birchie on Jan 8, 2013 20:40:13 GMT -5
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Post by jo on Jan 8, 2013 22:24:22 GMT -5
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Post by Jamie on Jan 9, 2013 8:27:09 GMT -5
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Post by birchie on Jan 9, 2013 13:14:24 GMT -5
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Post by njr on Jan 9, 2013 13:57:05 GMT -5
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Post by njr on Jan 9, 2013 13:57:53 GMT -5
Can't access this site.  |
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Post by jo on Jan 12, 2013 18:41:57 GMT -5
Another interview with a Filipino journalist ( when they were promoting the movie in Tokyo) --
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The Hugh Advantage
CONVERSATIONS With Ricky Lo By Ricky Lo (The Philippine Star) | Updated January 13, 2013 - 12:00am
For Jean Valjean (far left), the character he’s playing in Les Miserables, Hugh Jackman went on a near-starving diet and did rigorous workout, not drinking a drop of water 30 hours before the shoot of his soliloquy scene, thus looking so dehydrated that even his wife and good friend Barbra Streisand didn’t recognize him when they watched the movie
TOKYO — The first question that I popped on Hugh Jackman during this Conversation at a suite of Ritz Carlton (Roppongi Hills) was the same one I asked of the other members of the Les Miserables cast (Anne Hathaway as Fantine and Amanda Seyfried as the grown-up Cosette), and the talents behind this $61M film version of the long-enduring musical, co-producer Cameron Mackintosh and director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) — did the movie make him cry?
The hunky Australian actor, who’s playing Jean Valjean, broke into a smile as wide as his favorite beach in his native Sydney and admitted, “Yes, I did — more than I thought I would. I’ve seen it once, not so much my own stuff, and when I saw Anne in the scene where she’s singing I Dreamed A Dream I must admit that I became misty-eyed. Sometimes the music alone can make me emotional. It’s so beautiful!”
In Les Miz (or Les Mis), you still see a Wolverine-like Hugh Jackman but with a big difference: Inside the big man beats a big, loving heart, exactly the way Jean Valjean is portrayed in the 1832 Victor Hugo novel about (not the French Revolution as often misconstrued but) the barricade set up in the streets of Paris by a group of mostly students demanding for change in a vastly economically-divided society. The theater-trained Jackman fleshes out Valjean with his own unique touch, sacrificing so much both physically and emotionally for what he considers one of the most demanding roles in his career.
Fans used to seeing Jackman as Wolverine in the X-Men franchise will be pleasantly surprised to know that Jackman has an extensive theater background. For his portrayal as the 1970s singer/songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, he won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical and the Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle and Theater World awards. His other theater credits include Carousel (at Carnegie Hall in New York); Oklahoma! (at the National Theater in London, for which he got an Olivier Award nomination); Sunset Boulevard (for which he won an Australian “MO” Award; and Beauty and the Beast, for which he also received an Australian “MO” nomination.
In the flesh, Jackman was just as engaging and engrossing as he always is on stage or in film. He’s a dream interviewee who gives the interviewer maybe the same attention and importance that he gives his every role. Stay tuned. (Also starring, among others, Russell Crowe as Javert, Samantha Barks as Eponine and Isabelle Allen as the little Cosette, Les Miserables is opening nationwide on Wednesday, Jan. 16, released locally by Solar Entertainment.)
According to Mackintosh and Hooper, you can do anything, just anything. What scene in Les Miz was the most difficult to do?
(Thinks a while) “I think all the scenes were difficult; there’s not an easy scene in Les Miz. In some way, I think they are all difficult. The soliloquy at the very beginning of the film was one of the first scenes that we shot. Tom and I talked a lot about it. It’s important that you see a man who has gone as low as he can go. And by the end of that three-minute song, you have to believe that he can do anything. So it has to touch a place that is deep, emotionally, and at the same time, vocally, it’s about two to two-and-a-half octave rhyme. It’s a very challenging song. The ending is difficult as well because I’m playing someone who’s 40 years old without any prosthetic make-up…and I have to make the audience believe that I am sick and still singing.”
Anne Hathaway lost 25 pounds for Fantine and you, too, shed about that much for Valjean. You now look fit and fabulous. Are you back to your normal shape?
“Hmmmm, I’m probably normal right now.” (Laughs) “I don’t know what normal is anymore. Really, to be honest, being normal is tall and very skinny. Losing weight was probably easy for me. But Jean Valjean is most known for his strength. In fact, Javert years later only remembers Valjean when he sees Valjean lifting a very heavy piece of wood. Valjean is probably the strongest man on the planet.”
How did you lose all those pounds for you to look emaciated?
“It was a most difficult kind of body to get. I was in the gym for three hours every day and eating no carbohydrates for months. It was a very strict diet. Thirty hours before we shot that first scene (showing Valjean carrying the heavy piece of wood), I didn’t drink water and the effect was that my eyes look sunken and my cheeks shrunken. When my wife saw that first scene, she could barely look at it because she was really worried for me.”
Oh, she didn’t recognize you!
“No, she didn’t. I just heard from my friend who watched the movie that Barbra Streisand, who’s my good friend, also watched the movie and it was only 20 minutes into the movie that she realized that it was me. So that’s a good sign.”
What’s your regular diet and workout?
“Again, I’m not sure what it is anymore because for 10 or 12 years I’ve been playing Wolverine. My Wolverine diet involves eating more often; I used to eat three meals a day…breakfast, lunch and dinner…and now I’m taking five to six small meals a day. My energy is much better. Even when I was losing weight for Les Miz, I was eating six or seven times a day because that way your metabolism keeps going.”
The scene showing the love between Valjean and Cosette is very moving. What was on your mind when you were doing that scene?
“Well, I’m a father. That’s where I differ from Valjean. He says that when he meets Cosette, he experiences love for the first time in his life. He’s 51 years old. He has never had a girlfriend, a wife, parent, sister or brother. None of them. So it actually describes the love as an avalanche of feeling, an overflow of love — the love of a father, of a brother, of everything! When I was playing that scene, it was not just I was imagining as a father and Cosette as my daughter, I was imagining myself as a father, a wife, a parent, a sister, a brother…everything! Anything and anybody that you care about in one instant, all rolled into one.”
Talking about being a father and a husband…what’s your priority, being an actor or being a family man?
“Ever heard of the saying you can’t serve two masters at the same time? The Bible talks about you can’t have two gods. You know, it’s very true. So in life, you have to choose which is No. 1 and to me, it’s my family. So at any point along the way, I just ask a simple question, ‘Is this good or bad for my family?’ If that means I have to slow down or not choose a job or whatever…I mean, by the way, it doesn’t mean that I won’t work at all because that would make me very unhappy, and my family and I also have to eat, you know.” (Laughs) “It’s just a matter of deciding what’s your priority. Actually, I’m happy with what I’m doing so I don’t feel like I’m working at all.”
The scene showing Valjean and Javert singing together is, well, very impressive.
“We rehearsed that scene several times, two months before we shot it. Russell and I were syncopating what we were doing with the sword and the wood which were going against the singing. And Russell really beautifully choreographed that. He has a very, very good reaction; he was very musical. It was one of the most exciting scenes that we did. The first time we rehearsed, Russell rang me up at 10:30 in the evening and said, ‘Come to my house; let’s start rehearsing.’ I said, ‘It’s 10:30!’ and he said, ‘So what?’ So I quickly drove to his house.”
Fame and fortune have a way of sweeping stars off their feet. I wonder, how do you keep yourself grounded?
“One of the joys of doing Les Miz is you get to read this great piece of literature. It’s about human nature and about happiness. And that life is not actually about the tiny things, life is not about possession…life is about loving the people around you. It has nothing to do with fame and fortune. None of that makes any difference. And if you have the first 60 pages of Victor Hugo’s novel, he paints a portrait of a man, one of the most beautiful portraits of a human being I’ve ever read. Material stuff or possession or power, ultimately will never bring you happiness. True happiness comes from within.”
And how do you protect your voice?
“That’s the most difficult of all. No coffee. For six months no coffee. And I love coffee! Because coffee is dehydrating. Your vocal cords are this big (Drawing a small circle in the air), and you are relying on a muscle that big for 12 hours a day. My singing teacher has been telling me, ‘Your vocal cords must be like a rainforest.’ If you ever see a singer, like an opera singer, on a plane she holds her wet hands close to her nose and starts breathing in moisture. Of course, you have to eat the right food and get enough sleep. I’ve been having singing lessons once a week but leading up to the shoot of Les Miz I did it thrice a week.”
So it’s true what great singers say that singing in the shower is good for the vocal cords.
“I always warm up in the shower because the breathing in the steam is very good for your voice. I don’t know why. Everybody sings in the shower, right? It’s a good place to start a band. If showers were invented in 1932, we could have done the whole thing in the shower.”
(And then, to cap the enjoyable Conversation, Hugh launched into a song, performance-level like he did in all his scenes in Les Miz.)
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Post by jo on Jan 14, 2013 22:03:01 GMT -5
He flew back to Atlanta right after the GGlobes for the start of filming of PRISONERS, yet he still found time to attend a SAG screening for Les Miserables! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hugh Jackman at Atlanta “Les Misérables” screening8:50 pm January 14, 2013, by Jennifer Brett   Hugh Jackman and Kenny Leon at the movies. Photo by Matt Courtoy We saw “Les Misérables” with Hugh Jackman today. We don’t mean we saw the movie and he was in it. We mean, we saw it and he was there. Magnifique! Jackman, who is here to film the movie “Prisoners” with Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Melissa Leo, Maria Bello and Paul Dano, stopped by a private screening of the movie held at Regal Atlantic Station exclusively for local SAG-AFTRA members. Afterward Atlanta director Kenny Leon conducted a brief Q&A. “This is one of the great American directors,” Jackman said of Leon, who is the head of True Colors Theater Company. His long list of credits include the recent remake of “Steel Magnolias,” which aired on Lifetime. Leon, on the other hand, marveled that Jackman collected a Golden Globe trophy on Sunday night and was standing before an Atlanta audience less than 24 hours later. “It was a thrilling night. I think I still have a slight bruise here from where my wife grabbed me,” he said, rubbing his arm. He is also nominated for an Academy Award. “It’s still sinking in,” he said of the Oscar nod. He then told an amusing tale of growing up in the suburbs of Sydney, where his dad worked for Pricewaterhouse Coopers. On Oscar night (the night after its American broadcast) back in the day, the most thrilling moment for his family was when PWC accountants briefly appeared to authenticate the results. “That’s as close to the Oscars I thought I was going to get,” he said. Jackman also related an amusing tale regarding his leading role as Jean Valjean in “Les Miz.” He’d planned to ride his bike to the audition but someone stole his wheels (nice, huh?) so he hefted the frame and jogged, arriving breathless. Once the role was his the real hard work began. First, he lost 25 to 30 pounds. Then, to achieve the gaunt frame of his character in the first scene, when Valjean is still a prisoner forced into backbreaking labor, he literally went without food or water for 36 hours and dropped 10 pounds of water weight (something he does not recommend). “Twenty hours into that I really regretted it,” he said. Performing on Broadway helped him prepare his voice for the role. Leon asked him to discuss the differences of acting in front of a camera or in front of an audience. “Really, acting is an emotional truth,” he said. “The foundation has to be the same.” Leon asked why Jackman feels “Les Misérables” is so universally appealing. “First, Victor Hugo wrote this incredible novel,” said Jackman, who read the classic ahead of filming. “The story is relevant today. The line, ‘To love another person is to see the face of God,’ that’s universal. To show grace, love, redemption is what spirituality is about.” Leon asked how Jackman achieved the anguish of Valjean’s final scene. Answer: Being away from his wife and family throughout the movie left Jackman with real longing, and he drew on that. “This is the first time I have ever done a film away from our family,” he said. “I left my wife with the kids. It was really difficult. It really is the most inconvenient job. Very rarely do you shoot right down from the road where you live!” Before departing, Jackman said he embraced the message of his movie. “It is cathartic. It does take you through a lot of emotions. Playing Jean Valjean reminds me of how much further I have to go as a man.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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Post by jo on Jan 18, 2013 18:14:15 GMT -5
Some insights shared by casting director Nina Gold -- carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/in-a-dingy-room-making-hugh-jackman-audition/----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- January 18, 2013, 3:32 pmComment In a Dingy Studio, Making Hugh Jackman Audition By MELENA RYZIK No matter where the “Les Misérables” folks end up on the Oscar stage, it will be a long ways from their humble beginnings with the movie. Yes, humble: All of the marquee singer-actors – even Hugh Jackman, known Broadway star – auditioned live for Tom Hooper’s film, in a variety of rundown, run-of-the-mill audition studios. “You know, you’ve got Tap Dance 2 in one studio and Jujitsu 3 in the other studio, and Hugh Jackman and me and Tom in the other one,” said the casting director, Nina Gold. “There’s different dingy rooms all over the world, but they were all really, really repulsive.” It didn’t faze Mr. Jackman, though, as he tried out for Valjean in New York (eventually winning the part and a best-actor Oscar nomination). Casting that part was the lynchpin of the movie, said Ms. Gold, who has worked with Mr. Hooper since he was fresh out of college and directing commercials. “We know each other so well that we don’t have any problem talking to each other very, very directly,” she said. Which meant that they had no trouble vocalizing their worry that they wouldn’t find a Valjean. “There was no one in the world who could do it — well, there is obviously Hugh Jackman, but he’d never sung in that register before,” Ms. Gold said.His audition lasted three hours. “We had the pianist there, and he said, ‘O.K., let’s just mess around with this,’” she recalled. “And he opened his mouth and sang, and literally, you felt like you were going to be blown out of the window. It felt like my hair was on fire.” Ms. Gold said that “until that moment, you just thought, ‘Is it actually possible to do this?’ ”--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And the vision turned to reality! Jo |
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Post by birchie on Jan 19, 2013 10:18:04 GMT -5
A fascinating article by Herbie Kretzmer about writing the lyrics for Les Miserables and his new adventures with the film version. (The slightly exagerated headline does not relate to anything in the article!) I didn't realize he also wrote "Yesterday When I Was Young" which I always loved. He showed a talent for emotionally impactful lyrics even then! www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2264848/Audiences-sobbing-Les-Mis-laughing-way-bank-says-ex-Mail-TV-critic-wrote-lyrics-spare-time.htmlAudiences are sobbing, but Les Mis has me laughing all the way to the bank (says ex-Mail TV critic who wrote lyrics in his spare time)
By Herbert Kretzmer
PUBLISHED: 20:44 EST, 18 January 2013 | UPDATED: 07:14 EST, 19 January 2013
When we didn’t win the Award for Best Song, I thought my chance of enjoying a moment of personal Golden Globe glory had probably gone.
In fact, I’d suspected as much from the minute we arrived at the Beverly Hills Hilton last Sunday and discovered that our table, although having a clear view of the stage, was an awfully long way back.
I sat down, quietly relieved that I wouldn’t have to be making a speech, to enjoy the extraordinary — and very long — spectacle that is a Hollywood awards evening.
And then Les Miserables won the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy, as I hoped it would, and I realised to my pleasure and surprise I was expected to join director Tom Hooper, the film’s several producers and stars Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway — both of whom had already won individual Golden Globes — on the now worryingly distant stage.
I’m in pretty good nick for 87 but by my calculations it was going to take me about half an hour to get there. But adrenalin and applause are potent drugs and, along with Claude-Michel Schonberg, the French composer who wrote the score, and Alain Boublil, who first conceived the idea for a musical version of Victor Hugo’s novel and wrote the original French lyrics, I positively cantered to the stage to join the rest of the team.
It was there, amid the blinding television lights and the gratifying cheers and whoops of the audience, that something rather special happened.
As I stood there, trying both to catch my breath and to savour what I knew was a very special moment — a moment of almost infectious joy, if you like — I felt someone gently slip their arm through mine.
I didn’t look round at first to see who had made this simple, small but much appreciated gesture of support and comfort.
But when I finally did, I discovered it was the beautiful, talented and just terribly nice Anne Hathaway. Almost 30 years ago, I wrote a lyric — I Dreamed A Dream — Ms Hathaway sings so beautifully in the film that it can break even the stoniest of hearts.
But, as I sat in my Knightsbridge flat all those years ago, agonising over whether the line about ‘but the tigers come at night’ would work or not, I never dreamed of what Les Miserables would become. Like Hugo’s novel, it’s one part chase story, one part moral fable and one part love story, but when you put those elements together the result has proved irresistible.
The musical has run in London’s West End for 27 years and has been seen by more than 60?million people in 42 countries. And that’s just the stage production: now Tom Hooper’s riotously successful film version, which is No 1 at the UK cinema box office, is introducing a new audience to the show.
But stage or movie, there is absolutely no doubt that Les Miserables has completely changed my life.
It all started in January, 1985, with me picking up the phone to hear five life-transforming words: ‘Hello, Herbert, it’s Cameron Mackintosh.’
At the time, I was television critic of the Daily Mail and Cameron (now Sir Cameron) was the rising star of musical theatre production, still basking in the afterglow of the phenomenal success of Cats.
Put like that, you’d think we’d have little in common and certainly nothing worth a personal phone call, but Cameron knew I had another string to my professional bow.
Ever since I’d settled in London from South Africa in 1954, my career had followed two parallel paths. My day job was as a journalist working for the likes of the Daily Sketch, Sunday Dispatch, Daily Express and now the Daily Mail.
But my passion, born out of childhood trips to the cinema in my home town of Kroonstad in the Free State, was for song-writing — and lyric-writing, in particular.
This was the Golden Age of the American musical and my heroes were the likes of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. I vividly recall watching films such as Gold Diggers Of 1935 and thinking: ‘I can do that.’
So I did. I wrote some songs at school and for a couple of revue-style shows in South Africa. But it was when I came to London, and discovered that the streets were positively awash with composers far more talented than I, that I decided to concentrate on lyric-writing.
By day, as a journalist, I interviewed some of the world’s best known writers, fighters and film stars — John Steinbeck, Truman Capote, Groucho Marx, Sugar Ray Robinson, Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich, to name but a few — but by night I wrote songs for anyone who would buy my wares.
I wrote the comedy hit Goodness Gracious Me for Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren, Kinky Boots for Honor Blackman and Patrick Macnee and all sorts of songs for the satirical, late night TV revue, That Was The Week That Was, and its star, Millicent Martin.
In 1964, Millicent starred, alongside Kenneth More, in a musical I’d written, Our Man Crichton, based on J.M. Barrie’s play, The Admirable Crichton, which ran for a not entirely disgraceful eight-and-a-half months. Twenty years later, it was my hope of reviving that musical that first led me to Cameron Mackintosh’s door.
Was he interested in backing such a revival? He sat on one of his many sofas (Cameron famously didn’t believe in desks, back then), gave it some thought and duly pronounced: ‘No.’
So I was surprised, six months later, to find him on the end of the phone and apparently keen to meet up. He had suddenly remembered that I had also written some songs for the great French singer, Charles Aznavour.
I’d written the lyrics of Yesterday, When I Was Young for him and, in 1974, at the behest of London Weekend Television, which was looking for a theme tune for a drama series called Seven Faces of Women, I wrote She, a song which went on to become a Top Ten hit and virtually introduced Aznavour to the English speaking world.
This was what might be termed my French connection.
When Cameron rang me, he had a problem. Committed to staging an English language version of what had so far been a modestly successful French musical called Les Miserables, he already had a theatre, the Barbican, two Royal Shakespeare Company directors (Trevor Nunn and John Caird) and Boublil and Schonberg’s invigorating score.
But with opening night barely seven months away he had no English libretto.
The distinguished poet James Fenton had been working on it for a year-and-a-half but without showing any sign of actually completing a usable script. The phone call to me was Cameron pressing the panic button. Apparently he’d woken up that morning, sat bolt upright in bed and instantly thought of me.
Another meeting at his desk-free office was swiftly followed by lunch at the fashionable Ivy restaurant and, in due course, by me walking into my editor’s office at the Mail to ask for five months off.
‘Why?’ barked my old and much lamented friend, David English. ‘To write a musical.’
He looked unhappy. ‘I can’t lose my television critic for five months.’
Fortunately, he relented and when, some years later, our paths crossed in New York, I asked him why he had caved in.
‘I could see in your eyes you were going to do it whatever I said.’ And he was right.
So on March 1, 1985, the most extraordinary period of my life began. My flat (once owned by John Cleese) became the place where I worked, slept occasionally and lived in the land of my imagination.
We all knew our English version of Les Miserables would be one third longer than the French original — British audiences weren’t familiar enough with Hugo’s story for the curtailed two-hour Paris version to make sense — which meant my writing a new prologue, half a dozen new songs and ‘reconstructing’ those that survived from the original.
I don’t believe a song can be translated: it is what is and means what it means in the language it was written in. But you can reconstruct it for a new culture and that’s what I did with Les Miserables.
I barely speak French so had been provided with a literal translation of the French songs, but far more important to me was Hugo’s original novel and listening to Claude-Michel Schonberg’s score.
What did the story need to say at that particular point? How was the music inviting me to say it? Sometimes I retained a word or two of the original. A rebel anthem, for instance, called At The Will Of The People duly became Do You Hear The People Sing? I am a lyricist, not a translator.
With rehearsals drawing nearer, I was working at an insane pitch, often through the night. Bring Him Home, which had given me more trouble than any other song, finally came to me in a three-hour creative burst that began at two o’clock in the morning.
Trevor Nunn and John Caird had been round to my flat to discuss the problems I’d been having with this one particular song, whose stately melody seemed totally at odds with the agitated emotions that the song was trying to convey. As John Caird left, well after midnight, he turned to me and said, almost as an aside: ‘Sounds to me like a prayer.’
I realised he was right. As a prayer suddenly everything fell into place. 'God...on...high, hear...my...prayer,...in...my...need, you have always been there’
I took Bring Him Home into rehearsals the next morning and hearing Colm Wilkinson, our original Jean Valjean, sing it for the very first time, I knew we had discovered something special and thrilling.
It’s a popular myth that all the critics panned Les Miserables, but that’s not altogether true.
There were bad reviews certainly, including, sadly, one from my friend and colleague, Jack Tinker, with whom I’d shared a nest of desks at the Mail. Our friendship did survive — eventually — but only just.
He referred to the show as The Glums, apparently unaware that our cast had already bestowed the same nick-name on the show.
I took comfort from knowing that Hugo’s novel was similarly ill-treated by critics when it was published in 1862. But for every bad notice we received, there was a good one.
So while Michael Radcliffe in the Observer wrinkled his nose as if he’d just smelled a rotten fish, John Peter in the Sunday Times described our show as ‘blazingly theatrical’.
American papers drowned us in praise and eight Tony awards. Time Magazine and Newsweek raved. So did the all-important New York Times.
In the 19 years that the show ran at the Palace Theatre before transferring down the road to its current home, The Queen’s, I went to see it only two or three times.
But I did fly to first nights in distant places — Tokyo, Cape Town, Budapest... Seeing Tom Hooper’s film version a month ago, brought all the excitement rushing back. I loved his brave innovation of having the actors sing live in every take.
Hugh Jackman later told me it was like being ‘set free’ to find a ‘heightened reality’.
And, most gratifyingly of all, at least from a lyricist’s point of view, you can hear and understand every word, including those to Suddenly, the one new song we wrote for the film and which now has an Oscar nomination to go with the one for a Golden Globe.
And yes, that does mean that in about a month’s time we will be heading back to Los Angeles for the Oscar ceremony, a prospect that, in my current jet-lagged state, fills me with equal measures of anticipation and dread.
But whatever the outcome, I’m gratified to learn that people all over the world are coming out of cinemas, drying their tears and singing our songs.
The film has been out only a week in this country and already I’ve met someone who’s seen it six times. Mind you, they’ll have to go some to beat the apple-cheeked Canadian chaplain I met in New York who’d seen the Broadway stage show 87 times.
Les Miserables changed a lot of things for me, although I did return to my job at the Mail for a year before I realised the show was clearly set to run and run, and that I really could, at the age of 61, finally consider giving up the day job.
As a man who’d arrived in this country with only £150 in his pocket (which, by the way, I immediately lent to someone and never saw again) I marvel at the transformation in my fortunes.
But I didn’t stop writing songs. Since Les Miserables, I’ve worked with Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, of Abba fame, on a musical called Kristina and teamed up again with Boublil and Schonberg to create a show named Marguerite, this time with the music written by Michel Legrand.
And next year, I’m hoping, finally, to revive the musical that first put me in touch with Sir Cameron Mackintosh. Yes, 50 years after its first run, I’m hoping we can bring Our Man Crichton back to the London stage, this time with a harder satirical edge.
‘Do you hear the people sing?’ asks the chorus of Les Miserables. As long as the answer is ‘yes’, I’ll keep writing the songs.
*Snapshots, an anthology of Herbert Kretzmer’s showbusiness journalism, featuring interviews with Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich and many more, will be published later this year by Bank House Books Sue |
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Post by birchie on Jan 20, 2013 14:21:25 GMT -5
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Post by mamaleh on Jan 20, 2013 17:45:03 GMT -5
Yes, that appears to be from yesterday's SAG screening in NYC. I hope it impressed the audience enough to vote for Hugh for the SAG award.
Ellen
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Post by jo on Jan 20, 2013 17:51:28 GMT -5
Thanks! That was just this past Saturday? They're still doing screenings for guilds or the Ampas?
Isn't this near the Lincoln Center - I remember watching AUSTRALIA in that Loews complex.
Jo
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Post by birchie on Jan 20, 2013 18:14:14 GMT -5
Yes, that appears to be from yesterday's SAG screening in NYC. I hope it impressed the audience enough to vote for Hugh for the SAG award. Ellen Your lips to God's ear...and the voters ears too while we're at it. ;D Have you been able to attend any of the NY screenings Ellen? Sue |
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Post by jo on Jan 20, 2013 19:00:16 GMT -5
The Screen Actors Guild ( film, TV and background performers) has a membership of upwards of 100,000!
Their vote is a very key Oscar precursor award - as its over 1,100 representatives at AMPAS are almost 20% of the voting bloc.
Hugh has been working the night shifts now of the Les Miserables promotion team as he has continued to do the promotion work up to now (recently in Atlanta and now in NYC).
They do not have a BP award - rather, the Best Ensemble Award is considered its most major recognition of acting achievements. Plus of course the individual awards in separate categories.
Jo
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Post by mamaleh on Jan 20, 2013 20:29:53 GMT -5
Yes, I was able to attend some earlier screenings in NYC. That Lincoln Center Loew's is a great place to see movies. I wonder if the SAG screening was in IMAX? That theater has the only real IMAX facilities in the city.
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Post by jo on Jan 21, 2013 10:42:36 GMT -5
Nice post on the IMDB Hugh Jackman Page from someone who attended the SAG/AFTRA screening in NYC -- He will always be Wolverine  Jo |
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Post by Jamie on Jan 21, 2013 15:30:01 GMT -5
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Post by jo on Jan 22, 2013 9:30:37 GMT -5
If you liked how Russell sang STARS, he has posted a video of him singing it with only a piano accompaniment.
I do like his rendition!
Jo
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Post by jo on Jan 22, 2013 9:54:10 GMT -5
I don't remember coming across this panel interview earlier ( some details were familiar from previous interviews) but not this entire session . Sorry, if someone has posted this earlier.
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Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, and Samantha Barks Talk LES MISERABLES, Singing, and Bonding on Set
by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub Posted: December 23rd, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Opening on Christmas Day is director Tom Hooper’s fantastic adaptation of Les Miserables. Loaded with great performances and top notch filmmaking, Les Mis is absolutely a contender for all the year end awards and it would shock me if Anne Hathaway doesn’t win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her incredible work as Fantine. Her one take rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” was incredible and it’s the type of performance that’s unforgettable. For more on the film, here are five clips and all our previous coverage.
At the recent NYC press day for the film I got to participate in a press conference with Hathaway, Hugh Jackman (Jean Valjean), Amanda Seyfried (Cosette), Eddie Redmayne (Marius), and Samantha Barks (Éponine). They talked about making the film, how they prepared for their roles, their characters, singing live on set, and so much more. Hit the jump to either listen to the press conference or read the transcript.
If you’d like to listen to the audio from the press conference click here. Otherwise the full transcript is below.
Question: First of all it was fantastic. There’s a lot of crying in this film-
Anne Hathaway: From the audiences or the actors?
Anne, Tom mentioned that you practiced crying while singing, and Samantha, you sang with rain coming down onto your face. I’m always curious about how actors cry on film, the secrets to that, and also how you managed to cry and sing at the same time.
Hugh Jackman: Go, Annie.
Hathaway: Alright, first one up. I don’t know that there’s any secrets to it, it’s just- it’s a pulse, it’s a vein that you follow. In my case there’s no way that I could relate to what my character was going through. I have a very successful, happy life and I don’t have any children that I’ve had to give up- or keep. [Laughs] And so what I did was I tried to get inside the reality of her story as it exists in our world. And to do that I read a lot of articles and watched a lot of documentaries and news clips about sexual slavery. And for me and for this particular story I came to the realization that I had been thinking about Fantine as someone who lived in the past, but she doesn’t. She’s living in New York City right now; she’s probably less than a block away. This injustice exists in our world and so every day that I was her I just thought this isn’t an invention, this isn’t me acting, this is me honoring that this pain lives in this world. And I hope that in my lifetime, in all of our lifetimes, like today, that we see it end.
Eddie Redmayne: It was certainly a sense also, from the student’s point of view, that this book that was written in the 19th century had such relevance, contemporary relevance. So with songs like “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables” and all the stuff that happened at the barricade, all you had to do was open a contemporary newspaper to see equivalents happening whether it was protests in New York, or in the Middle East; this idea of young people lighting a flame to try and expose truths or pursue their own passions for a greater good. So I think there was relevance across the board for all of us to tap into as actors.
Was it difficult, Samantha, crying in the rain?
Hathaway: Have you cried in the rain in your real life? While singing?
Samantha Barks: I don’t know. I came at it from a point of view of I’ve done this show as a theater production and so for me when there’s rain pouring on your face, and you’re crying and you’re sniffley, and you kind of have to leave a bit of your vocal vanity at the door a bit. Because at first you’re thinking “Does it sound nice? Is it sounding right?” But I think that kind of realism in your voice kind of adds to the emotion of that live singing. Especially moments like “A Little Fall of Rain” with me and Eddie it allows you to sort enter into real crying, but trying to add that to your voice. Because when you speak and you cry you can hear it in someone’s voice, and I think to be able to hear that when somebody’s singing that only adds to the emotion of it.
Jackman: I’ll just maybe add a little light to the process. Tom Hooper from the beginning told us all there was going to be rehearsals. I’m not sure any of us expected nine weeks of rehearsals. I’ve never been on a film when an entire cast signs up for the entire time. I come from the theater, so for me rehearsal is vital and a way of life. There are many film directors who don’t believe in it and some actors who prefer not to rehearse, but with a musical you have to. We would rehearse full out, it wasn’t like a half-hearted thing, and Tom would be sitting here, he would in fact move his chair often to a very uncomfortably close place and do this the whole way. So everything that we ended up doing, it was brilliant. By the time we got to the set it was not uncomfortable having the camera that close. There had been times when I had, Annie, all of us had done a version of the song where there’s snot coming out of our noses and Tom would be like, “That’s a little too much.” So everything was really tested properly, and I mention that because I am so grateful to Tom and everyone at Working Title and Universal that they spent the money and time on that to make it possible.
Hugh, an awesome performance, people say that they didn’t even know that it was you when the thing begins, and I think Anne said last Friday you lost thirty pounds for this role. Can you talk about that? Did you have to torture yourself? How did you see this character to present it to the world?
Jackman: I’m so thrilled to hear you say that and I want someone to pass it on to Tom because we talked form the beginning, and it’s a very big part of the story, this relationship Javert has with Valjean and they know each other right through the story. When they meet in the play it’s probably five minutes in where they re-meet nine years later and Javert has no idea who this guy is. And it’s plainly clear to everyone that the guy’s just taken a fake beard off and put on a grayer wig and it’s exactly the same guy. And Tom says “We actually have an opportunity here for all the characters to show time, scale, all these things.” So he said, “I want to make you unrecognizable and if people in your life aren’t saying ‘Man, you’re sick. Something’s wrong, what’s wrong with you?’ Then we haven’t gone far enough.” So I did lose a lot of weight, and then had the joy of putting weight on, which was a thirty pound journey from the beginning. But I have to say all that pales in comparison to what this lady next to me did because at least I had time to prepare and do that. Annie was doing it over fourteen days; I think you lost about 300 pounds in fourteen days.
Hathway: [Laughs]
Jackman: I’ll just share a little story, and I can talk too much so just shut me up, but I had my hair cut off with those gashes in it and Annie had been talking about cutting her hair. She came in for her consultation with Tom and she walked in to the makeup room, where I was sitting there with my head shaved and I saw the look on her face, the reality dawning on her. And as she was talking to Tom and her makeup artist- and if you watch the movie again her hair stylist is a man, but obviously in the film was dressed up in a dress, because you need an actual hair stylist to cut her hair, right? So if you notice man-hands in a dress, you’ll see why. And I remember Annie going “Now, by the way, if you end up cutting my scalp and there’s blood- fantastic, let’s go for it.” Tom was standing behind, and I put my hand up and said, “For the record I would like makeup. Fake scars, please.”
Can you talk a little bit about how you saw the character of Jean Valjean?
Jackman: He’s obviously one of the great literary characters and I kind of see him as a real hero; quiet, humble. And Annie and I were just talking, there has been such a great reminder in the press today of the New York City cop who bought the shoes for the homeless man. To me Jean Valjean comes from a place of the greatest hardship that I could never imagine, I don’t think any of us here could, and manages to transform himself from the inside. Obviously on film we wanted to show the outside change as well, but actually Victor Hugo uses the word transfiguration, it’s even more than a transformation, because he becomes more god like, it’s a religious, it’s a spiritual change, it’s something that happens from within. It’s to me one of the most beautiful journeys ever written and I didn’t take the responsibility behind the role lightly. I think it’s one of the greatest opportunities I’ve ever had and if I’m a tenth of the man Jean Valjean is I’ll be a very happy man.
One of the most powerful and culminating lyrics is “to love another person is to see the face of god” and I wanted your personal takes on that.
Hathaway: Amanda, why don’t you start? You’ve been all pretty and quiet over there.
Amanda Seyfried: I don’t know, it’s the most profound thing I think that you can ever hear someone say, and for it to be sung is just that much more powerful. It’s what we’re left with in the end and that’s why Les Mis has been such a phenomenon for so many years, because of the theme. What it’s about really in the end, to love. Through Claude-Michele’s music too. It’s the combination of everything that we’ve watched, and everything that we all are looking for.
Barks: I agree with you about the themes, because it’s that thing of redemption and hope. I think the lyric, “to love another person is to see the face of god,” for my part I felt that growing up in the world of the Thenardiers, and however hilarious as they are they’re very twisted, dark people. So for a character like Epionine whose never experienced good people, when she meets somebody like Marius who is a good man, and that kind of effect on her and love actually redeeming her. In one sense she does chose the natural path to her riches, which is she’s a criminal so it’s not the correct path to be on, but in the end she does do the right thing because I think love has actually redeemed her -although her ending is tragic, she does do the right thing. So I think love redeems her.
Redmayne: I felt like a sense as well, relating it to Claude-Michele’s score, that the tune that Colm Wilkinson, as the bishop, sings to Hugh at that moment in which god is placed into Jean Valjean’s life for the first time, how that recapitulates throughout the piece. And when I saw the film, the bit that absolutely stunned me is when Hugh and Isabelle [Allen] are running away from Javert and they come into the convent and you suddenly hear these nuns singing that piece, and its suddenly a choral piece, and this idea that Tom has woven in religious imagery throughout the piece, but suddenly to hear this music in an ecclesiastical setting. Something transcendental hit me in that moment, and I think it is something that Tom was very conscious about and sort of in some ways Claude-Michele and Alain [Boublil] and Herby [Kretzmer] in the last moments of the film conclude with something that they’ve woven throughout the entire piece.
Hathaway: Yeah, I think that it’s the answer to the question that Jean Valjean asks in the prologue, “What spirit comes to move my life?” And he spends the rest of the film answering that question. And a brief sidebar, I just wanted to make sure that I impress upon everyone in this room, I don’t want you to walk out of here charmed by Hugh Jackman. Because we all know that he’s a miracle and we all know that he can get up and make friends with everyone and be totally friendly and sometimes I think that keeps people from seeing his genius as an actor. And I just want to say the reason that that line resonates with you is because we’ve witnessed it in his performance the entire time. What he does in this film is inspiring, and we were all inspired by him, he was absolutely our leader. So I just don’t want his nice guy thing to distract you from the fact that he is a deep, serious and profoundly gifted actor.
Jackman: I’ll shut up then
Hathaway: [Laughs]
Jackman: Thank you, Annie. I think you’ve hit on, to me, the most powerful line of the musical and what Victor Hugo was talking about. And of course for Victor Hugo there’s a large comment in the book about the church at the time, it made him very, very unpopular when he wrote it. It was a big behemoth, powerful, distant, quite excluding thing. There’s a lot of fire and brimstone and I think he was reminding everyone at the time of the Jesus Christ example, which is to love people. And it’s never been more relevant. I mean we saw it on the street with the cop. There could be a fair dose of that right now in the Middle East, dare I say it, I think in many places. I think for all of us the idea, the philosophy that actually you don’t need to go to the top of a mountain in Tibet to find self-realization. You don’t necessarily need to do great things or listen to spiritual leaders, or whatever it is. The first thing you have to do is be present, know what you stand for in life and face what is in front of you. And as Annie reminded me this morning, that’s that cop in Time’s Square, the humanity of just seeing what was required. That’s real love and that’s probably the point of Victor Hugo, and I agree with him the answer is to love. So I think you hit right on it, thank you.
My question is for Hugh Jackman, you got to sing a brand new number, talk about the new song.
Jackman: The song emanated from Tom Hooper’s realization in the book Victor Hugo talks about two lightning bolts of realization for Jean Valjean, one is of justice- virtue in fact. One is of virtue with the bishop, and one is of love when he meets Cosette and it describes that for the first time in a fifty-one year old man’s life he experiences love. I’m not sure if any of us can ever say we experienced that, but Tom said, “This is one of the most incredible dramatic moments ever written about and we don’t have a song for that? How could we miss that moment?” And it propels the entire second half of the movie for Jean Valjean and also adds the complexity, which Tom is about, which was really about-it’s not just simple, he doesn’t just look after Cosette; he’s terrified, he’s full of love and anxiety like every parent, and it’s a beautiful impulse. So he asked the guys to write a song. And I think I’ll count it definitely as one of the great honors of my life to have these two incredible composers write a song with your voice in mind, with my voice in mind. Whenever I get through singing it I feel like I’ve been singing it my whole life. It was an incredible honor.
I have two questions and I’m going to ask my first question with a disclaimer because it comes from a ten year old girl, her username on my website is Glittergirl and she would like to know did you really cut your hair and are you sorry?
Hathaway: First of all Glittergirl, where are you, slacker?
Fourth grade.
Hathaway: A likely story. I did cut my hair and I’m only sorry when I get to spend time with Amanda Seyfried, whose hair is so beautiful. I don’t feel sorry. Sam you’re lovely too, but you get it.
Barks: No, she’s got miracle hair.
Hathaway: I offered Tom the option of cutting my hair. It was always something I knew in the back of my mind that I would be willing to do for a character if it was ever the right thing to do. So when I got cast and I read the script and I knew that they were keeping the hair-cutting in, and then I read the book and it’s such a devastating scene in the book. I thought doing it for real might raise the stakes a bit for the character. And I guess I thought in the back of my mind if it was a painful experience watching her hair cut, then watching her teeth get pulled would be really painful, and then of course when she becomes a prostitute I just thought they’re going to be with her, feeling that alongside of her. And as an actor it was great to be able to authentically communicate a physical transformation.
Second question comes from Gleekout: in Glee we see the musicians playing music, where are the musicians and what are you singing to?
Jackman: Great question
Barks: We all have an earpiece in our ears, and we can hear the piano, but the piano is in a box just off set. So when we watch the film we can hear these big sweeping orchestrations, but actually what you can hear in your ear is a tiny piano. So you had to use your imagination for sure to create these epic orchestrations, that’s what we could hear. But it was funny, because if you don’t have the earpiece in then we all just look mad, like were just singing to nothing.
Seyfried: I also feel like we- did you ever forget that you were singing on set?
Hathway: Yes.
Jackman: Yeah.
Seyfried: Because you only do hear a teeny, teeny bit of electric piano and it was such a strange experience, like I’ve never experienced before, because you really are, you’re singing your emotions, you’re singing your feelings and thoughts when you would normally be speaking them, and it kind of goes away and all becomes one. So it’s good that we couldn’t hear the orchestra, because the orchestra actually didn’t exist at that point.
Redmayne: The other thing is the sort of unsung heroes of the film in some ways were the material accompanists Roger and Jennifer. We would have one scene and go off and someone else would come in and they had to play every single take flawlessly and with the most stunning sensitivity, that if suddenly half way through a phrase I decided to stop because I felt like it, they would have to stop with you. And of course they were replaced by this seventy, eighty piece orchestra but their contribution; I think it was Hugh or Annie who described them as the other character in the scene. They were extraordinary.
First of all, I though all five of you were extraordinary and if I had five little gold statues I would give them all to you. I’m a parent so I thought about this as a mom, I’m not sure that I’m ready for my daughter to see this film yet, but I want her to understand the themes. I’m wondering Hugh as a parent, how do you talk to your kids about these kinds of things so that they’re ready to see these movies and understand the themes?
Jackman: It’s such a great question. What amazes me, I have a twelve year old as well and a seven year old, is how naturally they’ll go to that subject and how often they will see it and pick up on it. And we are lucky enough to have traveled to many places, sometimes with organizations like World Vision or whoever it is and the subject is natural for them. I think for kids in particular equity is the way the world is meant to be. And of course they have very little control over their life, where they live, or their dress, all those things, but they naturally see the good in everyone around them and the equality in wherever they go. So we do talk about it. We often talk about contribution, about community, about giving back and I don’t know if it’s just me, but the school my kids are at, it seems now kids are way more connected to these issues than when I was young. Global Poverty Project is really a bunch of young 20 year olds whose mission is to see the end of extreme poverty in their lifetime. And they are committed to it; nothing’s going to stop it. So I’m a 44 year old guy who basically gets on their bandwagon. They’re smart and they’re passionate and I think it’s an exciting time, because I think it’s a subject that totally resonates with young people. My father worked at Price Waterhouse his whole life and he said by the end of his time, young kids would come there and they weren’t asking about the perk package or car they were going to get, they wanted to know about the corporate responsibility that the firm had. That was the most important thing to them. So I think it’s exciting and it’s a great idea to keep the conversation going whenever possible. I think my son will see it, it’s a good point. I hadn’t even thought about Ava seeing it yet, I think it may be times at times a little too brutal, but certainly the themes will resonate for sure.
Tom and the producers had talked about the camaraderie amongst the cast, I was wondering if you guys did anything to commemorate it, like tattoos or anything?
Seyfried: Oh, I wanted to get them last night. We were at the IFC. We were right next to like eight tattoo parlors.
Redmayne: 24601.
Jackman: 24602, 24603, 24604.
Hathaway: Honestly the person who I think was the beginning of glue that we wound up developing isn’t even here unfortunately, and that was Russell.
Jackman: Yeah
Hathway: I mean, you cannot underestimate Russell’s contribution and influence on this cast. He was the first one to say, “Hey, everybody come to my house on Friday night. My voice teachers going to play piano well have a couple drinks and we’ll sing.” That was such a key part of the process because up to that point we were at rehearsal with each other, we were very serious, we’re spending all day crying, but then in between I don’t think we had gotten to the point where we thought of song as a way of communicating with each other. I think we thought this is what we have to do, this is a technical thing that we must accomplish. Those nights Russell let us approach it from a completely different perspective, which is this is the way we are going to communicate, this is the language we speak, these are our shared experiences. I know for me, I can’t speak for everyone, but it made me so much more invested in the totality of the film. You know, being in the small part of the film that I am, I could have easily just gone home and forgotten about it all. But I cared so much when I left, I needed to know how did “On my Own” go? “In My Life”, how did that turn out? And I think it really cemented the bond between us, and now we kind of say we’re camp Les Mis.
Barks: You were so passionate about music and that’s what was so exciting for us, that’s what links us all together is that passion. Because this is my first film, but there was something new about this to all of us, and there was this link that bonded us all together, which was our shared passion for music and I think just all singing. We sang a duet from RENT, we sang the Adele song both back and forward, and it made us all so comfortable with each other. And we were all just like, “I’ve always wanted to sing that.” It was singing in this group of people that no one’s judging you. It’s kind of like you said, we were communicating and sharing that bond of music, our love for music. It was really very cool.
Who was Joanne and who was Maureen?
Barks: I was Maureen.
Hathaway: You were Maureen, I was Joanne.
Barks: It was so much fun.
Hathaway: Yeah, I gave her the high part.
Redmayne: There was also something wonderful, I mean the process felt so new that the extraordinary thing about this project was that none of us really knew what we were doing. It was this wonderful mixture of the theater world and the film world meeting together on a process that felt unique and original to all of us and none of us knew the right answer. So what was the most leveling and bonding thing, I felt, was on day one we had all gone through an incredibly rigorous audition process to get the parts and we arrived there going “Alright, Annie, how are you going to do that? Hugh, how are you going to do that?” Literally asking each other for advice, and never feeling like we found the answer either, but constantly aspiring to do as best as we can because we are fans ourselves.
Hathaway: Sorry to answer twice, but I also think it cannot be understated we are all massive Les Mis geeks.
Jackman: Yeah.
Hathaway: I mean from before and I think we’re all kind of slightly worried that this is not really happening. That we’re all in some strange, odd mutual trip and were all hallucinating.
Redmayne: Yeah. That’s true.
Hathaway: But we were all such fans of it that I think we all showed up on the first day with enormous gratitude, as you said, that the responsibility of telling this story was entrusted to us. And it was great to share stories. When was the first time you saw it? Who did you want to be at first? I mean Eddie, I think he’s still envious of Daniel [Huttlestone] for getting to play Gavrosh.
Redmayne: Genuinely envious. I watched the entire film going “God, Couldn’t I be him?” And he was so good.
Jackman: On stage you could do it, I think.
Redmayne: Bit of powder.
Jackman: Yeah, a bit of powder.
Hathaway: Do it on your knees.
Redmayne: But I literally watched the film and he was so brilliant, as was Isabelle, they were so effortless and wonderful, and my inner seven year old was so happy as well as being deeply jealous.
Seyfried: Izzy actually gets to do it back on stage.
Jackman: Yes.
Hathaway: Is she doing it?
Barks: Right now on the west end
Seyfried: She’s so lucky.
Hathaway: She is? I’m her mother and I didn’t know? I’m terrible.
Seyfried: I just found out yesterday.
Hathaway: Oh that’s so cute; good, good.
Jackman: I remember one of the first days of filming I was singing the soliloquy, that first number in the church and I remember we were down in the church. It was this beautiful place in London, real old church. I came up the steps, these winding, stone steps and Annie was at the top there and she just came over and she had tears in her eyes and she was hugging me, and she goes “I’m not going to miss this for the world.” It was like that. I’ve never known that on a film before. We were all kind of there for each other. It had the feeling of the closest stage show I’ve ever been involved with, but it was a film, which is unusual. Yeah, we’ll be bonded for life for what we went through.
Moderator: We have time for one more question.
Thank you so very, very much for for reminding us of the relevance for today, you mentioned that you watched documentaries about sexual slavery I wonder if you could tell us which ones you watched.
Hathaway: I watched a documentary piecemeal; kind of through different YouTube clips. I’m afraid I can’t give you those sources, I’m sorry. Can she ask another question? I made it sort of a dud.
Well I was just very curious to know how you researched.
Hathaway: I’ve been very inspired and moved by the work that Emma Thompson has done. I mean the internet is a spectacular tool to answer any questions you might have. I just started reading various articles. I mean, it stays with you, and I read things that are unimaginable and you just think these human beings have experienced them. I remember a few images that jump out at me. I remember there was a police raid on one of the brothels and a camera crew went along. There was a crawl space up in the ceiling, oh my god, it was probably about four of those long and one wide, and fourteen girls came out of it. And they were all so tiny and scrunched up there together, and when they came out they weren’t shocked that there was a camera there, they weren’t worried about getting arrested. They were gone, they were numb, they were unrecognizable as human beings and my heart broke for them. There was another piece where a woman, she was blacked out because she didn’t want her identity revealed, she sat there and she kept repeating, “I come from a good family, I come from a good family. We lost everything and I have children so now I do this.” She doesn’t want to do this but it’s the only way her children are going to eat. Then she let out this sob that I’ve never heard before and she just raised her hand to her forehead and it was the most despairing gesture I’ve ever seen, and that’s when I realized that I wasn’t playing a character. This woman deserves to have her voice heard and I needed to connect to that honesty and recreate that feeling. She’s nameless, I’ll never know who she is; she really was the one who made me understand when Fantine says “shame”. What it’s like to not just go to a dark place but to have fallen from a place where you didn’t imagine anything bad was ever going to happen to you. The betrayal and the rage that you feel at life because you’ve gone into a place that, by the way, I don’t think this woman would have gone to, that Fantine wouldn’t have gone to if she didn’t have children to support. I think she would have just let herself die. And so it all just added up to be, you know, Fantine is so heartbreaking and it just kind of all layered within me.
What emotional toll did this material take on all of you and how did you recover at the end of the day after the cameras stopped rolling?
Redmayne: Sacha Baron Cohen. There was this wonderful thing. It was such a rigorous shooting process and fueled by passion, but my god, yet there were hard days. And the way Tom likes to work, he likes to create real scenarios so Sam was singing in freezing rain. Hugh was carrying me, carrying me through disgusting sewer stuff.
Hathaway: Tom told me it was chocolate.
Redmayne: But there was this wonderful thing where about three-quarters of the way in Helena [Bonham Carter] and Sacha arrived and just this lightness that, my god, we needed.
Jackman: Yes, yeah. [To Seyfried] What was that?
Seyfried: Hmm?
Jackman: I thought you were going to say something.
Seyfried: Oh, I created an alternate reality for our characters. However, I think I was the most comfortable of all of us because physically I literally did nothing but stand and sit. So I’m blown away by the fact that you all got through it and did so unbelievably-
Hathaway: You hit a C, you hit a high C.
Jackman: Yeah, come on.
Seyfried: I hit that C once out of like seventeen takes.
Hathaway: That’s why film is awesome.
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Post by jo on Jan 24, 2013 1:30:46 GMT -5
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