REMINISCENCE ( aka THE JADE EARRING) -- Potential Spoilers
Oct 20, 2019 10:56:25 GMT -5
mamaleh likes this
Post by jo on Oct 20, 2019 10:56:25 GMT -5
As Hugh winds up his music tour...
he is likely moving on immediately to his new film project!
Let me refresh some notes from the first report from Deadline when they interviewed Lisa Joy Nolan --
Re-reading this -- has further increased the expectations from the intended movie!
Hope everyone delivers as hoped for!
From Lisa Joy and her co-producers, her co-creative team, her cast!
Jo
he is likely moving on immediately to his new film project!
Let me refresh some notes from the first report from Deadline when they interviewed Lisa Joy Nolan --
A little bit about the characters and the love story. The beating heart of this, is the love story. For me, there’s a reference within the film, but it’s loosely inspired by that myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus is this man who’s a wonderful singer, and the love of his life, Eurydice, dies. She’s bitten by a snake and goes down to hell and Orpheus’ grief is so extreme that he descends into hell, of his own volition, to try and barter with the devil and get his love back. And the song that he sings, is so beautiful and pure of heart, that it even moves the devil himself. He says, you can have your life back, you can take Eurydice back to the world, on one condition: don’t look back. As you’re descending up to the mortal realm, you can’t look back at her. The struggle is, will he or will he not look back. It started me thinking about love, itself. Both my philosophy on love, and there’s this meta-philosophy about film.
For me, love, and I married my love and we’ve been married a long time, but love is an ever changing thing. You fall in love with one person, but that’s not who they are, entirely. An entire person takes awhile to discover. It’s not just the glossy exterior. There are regrettable moments, from their past and that will happen in the future. There are flaws and darkness, along with the light and the beauty. For me, true love means not just seeing the good and saying I love you, but rather seeing all of it, the entire portrait of a human being, flaws and all, and saying, you. I love you. The greatest act of love is seeing, unconditionally, and accepting. In this movie, in order for Bannister to be reunited with his love, that’s exactly what he has to do. He has to learn to see her.
For me, in terms of film and TV, and it’s something I think about a lot on Westworld, it’s the ideas of tropes in femininity and masculinity. Film has this way of being able to say, push closer. Look at this person, fully. Don’t just look at who they should be, or who society thinks they should be. Try to embrace all of them. For me that’s really important for the women and the male characters. A lot of time in thrillers and any kind of major genre films, the women are either the good girl, a little bit passive and waiting around for love. Or they’re the bad girl, that comes with sexuality and all sorts of things that are thought of as more risqué. And the truth is, that’s complete nonsense. Women have just as many multitudes as men. And men have more dimension to them than we are usually allowed in film. This odyssey in love is seeing characters, fully. Both the women and the men.
That’s why casting was critical for these really challenging roles. For the woman, you have to be the romantic hero, the siren, the girl who needs saving, the girl with secrets. All twists and changes. While Bannister is discovering that about the woman, he’s going through his own changes and you see different sides of him. He starts just as the laconic veteran of a war who’s a bit closed off. He opens up into this emotional creature with this woman. He goes through these twists and turns within his own arc that take him through from hero to villain and potentially back again. And you have to be with all of these characters and totally understand their emotional landscape, throughout.
All the years I was writing this, I would see the scenes fully in my mind and I was directing it and planning the set pieces and drawing the artwork for the world. The one person who was always in my mind, from the first day, was Hugh Jackman. It’s this crazy love story and it’s totally unreal to me. I drew his costume on him, I have all these sketches and I thought, it has to be him. This is a man who, whatever character he inhabits, whether it’s in Prisoners, or The Greatest Showman, he has a range that’s like that of a character actor. You always believe his characters. He has so much heart. Even if he’s playing a flawed character. You can just see that heart underneath that and you forgive him because you see in his flaws, your own.
Then you couple that with, my God, he’s Wolverine. The most charismatic, handsomest movie star. The idea he’s all those things combined, with the sensitivity and the action, the sheer physicality to pull off this physically demanding role. He was all I could picture. I didn’t talk to anyone else. I sent him an email and went out to meet him and we talked about the script. I stayed so long, they were like, you want to have dinner here? We were in his living room that long. I decided to leave him to dinner with his family and not encroach anymore. It was an instant connection in that way. He totally viscerally understood and inhabited that character.
I just recorded some voiceover with him and it was so moving to see him say these words that I’d imagined in my head so long. The life he brought to them was even better and more nuanced than I had imagined. That’s my lead.
Once I started talking to Hugh, it was, who do I find for May, his romantic partner, this mysterious and elusive woman? For me, these films are always about the woman. It has to be someone who, you want to be her, you want to be her friend, you understand her, even if she’s doing something morally compromised. When I started watching Rebecca Ferguson, I was blown away. In very intense scenes with huge movie stars, my eyes would drift to her because she was this powerful core in the center of this whirlwind film. She has this intelligence to her eyes and her performance speaks volumes. You just want to keep looking closer to figure out who she is. She’s got this timelessness to her performances that defies expectations and she’s beautiful and sexy. But that is literally just the tip of the iceberg.
She’s riveting and you can see all these emotions, roiling underneath her surface. One of my favorite actresses is Lauren Bacall, especially in To have And Have Not. I thought, who’s the actress today who could do that line, “You know how to whistle, don’t ya?” Who is that person who can have every man, woman and child lean forward and just stop breathing for a second? For me, that’s Rebecca Ferguson. Then, unbelievably, this builds into a love connection where my emails are now just filled with the back and forth with Rebecca Ferguson, where we are finishing each other’s sentences when we talk. It’s a really great creative match, and they have great chemistry. They worked together before, and I thought, I want to see more of you guys together. I want this to be the main story and now it can be.”
For me, love, and I married my love and we’ve been married a long time, but love is an ever changing thing. You fall in love with one person, but that’s not who they are, entirely. An entire person takes awhile to discover. It’s not just the glossy exterior. There are regrettable moments, from their past and that will happen in the future. There are flaws and darkness, along with the light and the beauty. For me, true love means not just seeing the good and saying I love you, but rather seeing all of it, the entire portrait of a human being, flaws and all, and saying, you. I love you. The greatest act of love is seeing, unconditionally, and accepting. In this movie, in order for Bannister to be reunited with his love, that’s exactly what he has to do. He has to learn to see her.
For me, in terms of film and TV, and it’s something I think about a lot on Westworld, it’s the ideas of tropes in femininity and masculinity. Film has this way of being able to say, push closer. Look at this person, fully. Don’t just look at who they should be, or who society thinks they should be. Try to embrace all of them. For me that’s really important for the women and the male characters. A lot of time in thrillers and any kind of major genre films, the women are either the good girl, a little bit passive and waiting around for love. Or they’re the bad girl, that comes with sexuality and all sorts of things that are thought of as more risqué. And the truth is, that’s complete nonsense. Women have just as many multitudes as men. And men have more dimension to them than we are usually allowed in film. This odyssey in love is seeing characters, fully. Both the women and the men.
That’s why casting was critical for these really challenging roles. For the woman, you have to be the romantic hero, the siren, the girl who needs saving, the girl with secrets. All twists and changes. While Bannister is discovering that about the woman, he’s going through his own changes and you see different sides of him. He starts just as the laconic veteran of a war who’s a bit closed off. He opens up into this emotional creature with this woman. He goes through these twists and turns within his own arc that take him through from hero to villain and potentially back again. And you have to be with all of these characters and totally understand their emotional landscape, throughout.
All the years I was writing this, I would see the scenes fully in my mind and I was directing it and planning the set pieces and drawing the artwork for the world. The one person who was always in my mind, from the first day, was Hugh Jackman. It’s this crazy love story and it’s totally unreal to me. I drew his costume on him, I have all these sketches and I thought, it has to be him. This is a man who, whatever character he inhabits, whether it’s in Prisoners, or The Greatest Showman, he has a range that’s like that of a character actor. You always believe his characters. He has so much heart. Even if he’s playing a flawed character. You can just see that heart underneath that and you forgive him because you see in his flaws, your own.
Then you couple that with, my God, he’s Wolverine. The most charismatic, handsomest movie star. The idea he’s all those things combined, with the sensitivity and the action, the sheer physicality to pull off this physically demanding role. He was all I could picture. I didn’t talk to anyone else. I sent him an email and went out to meet him and we talked about the script. I stayed so long, they were like, you want to have dinner here? We were in his living room that long. I decided to leave him to dinner with his family and not encroach anymore. It was an instant connection in that way. He totally viscerally understood and inhabited that character.
I just recorded some voiceover with him and it was so moving to see him say these words that I’d imagined in my head so long. The life he brought to them was even better and more nuanced than I had imagined. That’s my lead.
Once I started talking to Hugh, it was, who do I find for May, his romantic partner, this mysterious and elusive woman? For me, these films are always about the woman. It has to be someone who, you want to be her, you want to be her friend, you understand her, even if she’s doing something morally compromised. When I started watching Rebecca Ferguson, I was blown away. In very intense scenes with huge movie stars, my eyes would drift to her because she was this powerful core in the center of this whirlwind film. She has this intelligence to her eyes and her performance speaks volumes. You just want to keep looking closer to figure out who she is. She’s got this timelessness to her performances that defies expectations and she’s beautiful and sexy. But that is literally just the tip of the iceberg.
She’s riveting and you can see all these emotions, roiling underneath her surface. One of my favorite actresses is Lauren Bacall, especially in To have And Have Not. I thought, who’s the actress today who could do that line, “You know how to whistle, don’t ya?” Who is that person who can have every man, woman and child lean forward and just stop breathing for a second? For me, that’s Rebecca Ferguson. Then, unbelievably, this builds into a love connection where my emails are now just filled with the back and forth with Rebecca Ferguson, where we are finishing each other’s sentences when we talk. It’s a really great creative match, and they have great chemistry. They worked together before, and I thought, I want to see more of you guys together. I want this to be the main story and now it can be.”
Re-reading this -- has further increased the expectations from the intended movie!
Hope everyone delivers as hoped for!
From Lisa Joy and her co-producers, her co-creative team, her cast!
Jo
