Jamie Bell not only supplies the main character’s voice in “The Adventures of Tintin,” Steven Spielberg’s animated adaptation of the Belgian comics hero, he also provides the movement via motion-capture technology.

Who better than the erstwhile Billy Elliot to make Tintin spring to life?

The young British actor confesses his first virtual acting assignment caught him flat footed.

“I thought that it would be genuinely challenging and difficult, and I’d have to change my approach … even how I would work within that medium,” the classically trained dancer tells Big Hollywood. “It turns out that it’s exactly the same.”

It helped that he had the premier motion capture actor by his side during the shoot.

Andy Serkis, the man who gave life to Gollum as well as Caesar from this year’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” co-stars as Captain Haddock, the drunken seaman who teams with Tintin to find a hidden treasure.

“When you work with the masters of something, and I consider Andy to be one of those people, you don’t ask questions. You sit back, watch, listen and learn,” he says of the experience.

Elliot is no slouch in the motion department himself. He went from obscurity to stardom by playing the dance-obsessed lad in “Billy Elliot.” And he’s been working steadily ever since, including high profile projects like “King Kong,” “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Defiance.”

Being a dancer made the motion-capture demands feel like second nature at times.

“It means that you don’t need to think twice about what you’re doing with your body,” he says. “It became second nature to me. It’s hardwired into my acting brain.”

For “Tintin,” Bell was asked to bring to life an inscrutable character beloved by generations of comic readers. That meant his research could only reveal so much.

“I had a lot of questions about this character … he was very undefined,” he says. “There’s a mystery that surrounds him, he’s a bit of an enigma. It’s alluring to people … they can access him on a universal level. So many varied cultures can access him.”

The 25-year-old Bell has the kind of deep resume that belies his age, but he’s not taking his good fortunes for granted. He’s worked with some of the biggest directors in Hollywood, like Spielberg, Peter Jackson and Clint Eastwood, and he makes sure not to let the experiences fade over time.

“I’m always taking mental notes,” he says. He particularly recalls the “maverick” approach Eastwood took on the set of “Flags of Our Fathers.” Bell played one of the soldiers who iconically raised the American flag at Iwo Jima.

Bell emerged from the making of “Tintin” “loving” the motion-capture process. And that’s a good thing, since Spielberg is on record saying a second “Tintin” installment is already being planned with producer Peter Jackson assuming the director’s seat for round 2.

You won’t hear Bell complaining.

“As soon as I made my first movie I had the bug, I wanted to keep on working,” he says. “I love acting, the energy. I had a real sense of family on a movie shoot. I like the traveling circus idea that was attractive to me,” he says.

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Fast-talking producer Arthur P. Jacobs had been looking for a King Kong like story to bring to the screen when he found the next best thing, French writer Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel La planète des singes, or Monkey Planet, later renamed Planet of the Apes.  Early in the project’s development Jacobs came up with a dazzling inspiration. Unlike the book, which mostly took place in an alien world, what if the main character was on Earth the whole time and both he and the audience didn’t know it?  Jacobs took the story idea to the creator of TV’s The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling.  A former Purple Heart recipient who had been wounded in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, the very anti-war Serling wrote an extremely serious, almost humorless screenplay set in a simian city that resembled 1950s New York and initially proved far too expensive for any Hollywood Studio to produce.

“Imagination… its limits are only those of the mind itself.” – Rod Serling

After making the rounds and being soundly rejected by Hollywood executives,  the ever-hustling Jacobs approached the forty-two year old former John Charles Carter, who upon deciding to become an actor had renamed himself after his mother, Lila Charlton, and his stepfather Chet Heston.  By that time a well-established movie star, Charlton Heston was going through a political metamorphis.  A lifelong Democrat, Heston had been shooting the historical drama, The Warlord, on location in Northern California in 1964 (the film was released in 1965).  Each morning on his drive to work the Lyndon Johnson supporting Heston passed by a campaign billboard that pictured GOP nominee Barry Goldwater with the caption, “In your heart you know he’s right.”  One day, it simply hit Heston that the sign was true, Goldwater was right!  Heston still voted for Johnson in 1964 but was on his way to becoming a well-known champion of conservative causes.  Although he later called Jacobs “a slippery character” Heston was intrigued by the Apes script and committed to the project almost immediately with the suggestion that Warlord director Franklin J. Schaffner be added the creative team.  Not only did he smell a hit, but Heston also felt Apes could make a powerful statement about the flawed nature of man.

“As much as any character I have ever played, Taylor reflects my own views about mankind. I have infinite faith and admiration for the extraordinary individual man – the Gandhi, the Christ, the Caesar, the Michelangelo, the Shakespeare – but very limited expectations for man as a species. And that, of course, was Taylor’s view. And the irony of a man so misanthropic that he almost welcomes the chance to escape entirely from the world finding himself then cast in a situation where he is spokesman for his whole species and forced to defend their qualities and abilities – it was a very appealing thing to act.” — Charlton Heston.

With a bankable movie star as part of his pitch, Jacobs found Apes to be an easier sell.  After expressing reservations about humans in monkey make-up being taken seriously by audiences, Twentieth Century Fox studio President Richard Zanuck, son of the legendary producer Darryl Zanuck, shelled out fifty grand to film a screen test showing Heston facing off against an intelligent ape, played by Charlton’s former co-star from The Ten Commandments (1956) Edward G. Robinson; the results were convincing enough for Planet of the Apes to be green lit.  To save money the fictional Ape City became primitive, rather than the modern metropolis imagined by Boulle and Serling. Principle casting included former child star Roddy McDowall as the sometimes sarcastic, but ultimately well-meaning chimp archaeologist Cornelius.  Kim Hunter, a previous Oscar winner for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), whose career had slowed after being accused of having communist sympathies and being blacklisted, played McDowall’s soon-to-be mate, the empathetic animal psychologist Dr. Zira.  When Edward G. Robinson could not handle the daily arduous Apes make-up process he was replaced by Shakespearian actor Maurice Evans as the orangutan Minister of Science and Keeper of the Faith, Dr. Zaius, Heston’s main adversary in the film, who had no compunctions about performing lobotomies on humans.  And the beautiful twenty-two-year-old Linda Harrison, who at he time was dating and would later marry studio boss Zanuck, was hired to play Heston’s love interest, the mute, animal-like Nova.

I had never thought of this motion picture in terms of being science fiction. More or less, it was a political film, with a certain amount of Swiftian satire, and perhaps science fiction last.” – Planet of the Apes Director Franklin J. Schaffner

Blacklisted writer Michael Wilson, whose credits included another Boulle novel-turned-into-film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), was brought in to add both political messages and some needed laughs to the script.  The different ape species took on varying characteristics, the chimpanzees were depicted as both seekers of knowledge and pacifists, the orangutans became politicians and not surprisingly were portrayed as hypocrites, leaving the military operations to be carried out by the very threatening gorillas.  In one of the movie’s most frightening scenes, the human hunting gorillas are momentarily hidden behind eight-foot-high swaying corn stalks, before both the audience and Heston get their first view of the menacing creatures on horseback (one possible explanation for their aggressiveness may have been that there were no female gorillas in the movie).  When Heston’s astronaut character, George Taylor, was put on trial by the orangutans, Michael Wilson wanted the scene to resemble the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1951 where Wilson had given the impression that he was a communist sympathizer.  Heston and Schaffner tried to lighten things up by suggesting the orangutan tribunal cover their mouth, ears, and eyes, imitating the famous 17nth Century Japanese monkey carvings: “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”;  Heston later admitted the ape’s facial gesture scene was over-the-top and clichéd and was a bit embarrassed that it was left in the finished picture; he blamed the inclusion on Apes testing well in sneak previews and the producers not wanting to take a chance on changing anything.

“Masks are in the oldest tradition of the theatre and there is something exciting about reviving an ancient art.” — Roddy McDowall

Planet of the Apes was a difficult shoot for practically everyone involved.  The early scenes that took place after the space ship crashed into what appeared to be a desolate planet were filmed in the Arizona desert; one of Heston’s doomed fellow astronauts fainted in the over-100 degree heat.  The kind-hearted and very professional Heston helped his on-screen love interest Linda Harrison, still a novice at film acting, learn how to work the camera to her best advantage.  Heston, who bragged about never being sick, spent a challenging summer getting clubbed, being dragged around by a leash, hanging in nets, being pelted with fruit, running through poison oak, and standing naked in front of the company during the trial scene; the happily-married star laughed when a coffee girl complimented him on his buns.  At one point Heston came down with the flu, he made the most of it when in a very hoarse voice (fitting, since his character had been shot in the throat) he uttered what many considered the signature line of the film, “Take your stinking paws off me you damn, dirty ape!”  Method actress Kim Hunter spent a lot of time studying monkeys at the Los Angeles Zoo, took tranquilizers each morning so she didn’t squirm out of the makeup chair, suffered through nightmares in which she was uncertain of her humanity, and got sick of joking crew members who kept offering her bananas.  The illusion was so complete that after months of working together when Hunter greeted Heston in her natural, Homosapien form at Planet’s first screening he had no idea who she was. Before the film, Hunter and Maurice Evans were good friends but on the set in between shots the make believe chimps, gorillas, and orangutans only associated with their own kind. The English born Evans noted that after spending long hours in an orangutan mask laced with 180 proof alcohol he was too buzzed to drive himself home. On the other hand traffic came to a halt one day on the Pacific Coast Highway from the sight of a station wagon that had been commandeered by what appeared to be a bunch of gorillas.  And the chain-smoking Roddy McDowall loved driving down the 405 freeway in his full ape costume, waving at the other motorists while stuck in traffic. Roddy also had fun at the expense of his old friend and co-star from Broadway’s Camelot, Julie Andrews, who was working on the Fox lot.  Late one afternoon an exhausted Andrews, who was then undergoing psychoanalysis, returned to her dressing room and shut the door. What looked like a giant talking chimpanzee popped out from behind a cabinet, and gave the actress the fright of her life.

“The Forbidden Zone was once a paradise. Your breed made a desert of it, ages ago.” —  Maurice Evans, as Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes.

Planet of the Apes was very well received, spawned several lesser-thought-of sequels, and largely because of it’s surprise ending, generally credited to Rod Serling, was considered to be a classic by many critics and cinemagoers.  In his later years Charlton Heston became the President of the National Rifle Association and to the chagrin of many of his liberal colleagues in Hollywood, some who lived in mansions with signs on their lawns that said “armed response,” proudly expressed the quite logical viewpoint that the Second Amendment which protected individual gun rights was the key element in the US Constitution, without it none of the other promised liberties would survive.  His pro-gun sentiments seemed to be at odds with the powerful anti-war message of Apes.  Looked at another way, with the remains of the Statue of Liberty on the beach, revealing that New York was destroyed by an apparent nuclear attack, the film’s ending perhaps indicated what would happen to America if she couldn’t defend herself.

Tags: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

The knowledge that I’m now old enough to have my youth remade is too depressing to offer much insight here. Has it really been 27 years since the winter of 1984 when the original came out? And yet somehow, after over a quarter century later, the soundtrack is still seared in my memory as a never-ending playlist loop of Kenny Loggins demanding I get footloose.

—–

This looks ridiculous. Story-ridiculous, special effects-ridiculous. Give me “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” any day. To mine eyes, all this expensive, modern CGI looks less convincing than the masks, costumes, and make-up we saw in the original “Apes” franchise, including the later films which had been victims of larger and larger budget cuts with each new chapter. 

It’s all about suspending disbelief and no matter how “cool” the effects, CGI makes suspending disbelief much more difficult than something organic. This is true of”King Kong,” as well. At no time does the stop-motion in the 1933 film take me out of the story. In fact, it still delights me to no end, especially Kong’s fight with the T-Rex. The big-budget 2005 version, however, with tens of million in sci-fi wizardry, might look more real to the eye, but the brain just doesn’t buy it. 

When it comes to computer effects, something in my mind always fires off a warning labelled “artificial.”

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Hollywood is a competitive place to live and work.  People who live and work there know that it might be the most competitive place to live in the entire world.  The drive to succeed, to find an edge that propels you to the next level can be very compelling for those who are weak.  Of those who crave the sort of attention that might compel them into the snake pit that is Hollywood, psychologists could agree that components in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are lacking in key areas such as confidence, friendship, and even morality.  All of these mid-level needs should be met for healthy development of creativity, intellect, problem solving, and other high-level needs.  Maslow might reason that in the desperate setting of Hollywood, the underdevelopment of needs like morality, confidence, respect of self and from others might lead to the malformative finding of one’s self at the top of the triangle, with many of the more basic needs still lacking.  In Abraham Maslow’s terms, this is a recipe for disaster of philosophical incorporation.

Other factors contribute to misintegration of philosophical synthesis, as well.

Artists are often dependent on state funding.  This may elicit a reactionary response whereby an artist who might otherwise be conservative is immediately comfortable with the idea of government finance and control in order to meet her basic needs as enumerated in the physiological component of Maslow’s needs (food, water, sex, sleep, survival).

Artists know that success is often found in pushing boundaries.  Art is usually only cutting edge once, and genres tend to have a shelf life.  There is only one O’Keefe, only one Eastwood, only one Bach.  Those genres, recomposed for today, would not have the impact because they already did.  The easiest way to create a niche is to push a boundary (for example, Ke$ha, Katie Perry, Madonna). Preserving tradition often results in preserving the status quo, and taking that to a level of marketable creativity is only for the artistic genius (It’s a Wonderful Life; The Passion; The Blind Side; Amazing Grace).  The reality is that not all artists are geniuses.  Therefore, they will be tempted to crutch on breaking norms to accomplish notoriety, rather than rely on genius they don’t have, or hope to have.

Erich Fromm said, “If I am what I have, and I lose what I have, who am I?”  His ominous warning told a tale of the reality of someone who does not properly and systematically actualize.   

Creativity is usually born of deep emotional angst.  In order to tap into the deepest of creative ability, it is often necessary to dwell on emotions others have the convenience of glossing over.  We are all sad when we experience the death of a pet.  The creator of King Kong had to not only experience the death of an animal, he had to think of every complexity, and focus in depth on the emotional trauma in order to invite his audience to experience it on film.  While we all at some point are witness to the death of an animal, the writers and producers of King Kong had to delve into every painful portion of those experiences, contemplate it, ruminate on it, and experiment with it in order to assure that his audience would live the most compelling parts of that loss in the movie.  The result of all this is that the artist dwells in the realm of emotion.  While all of us experience emotion, the rest of us have the luxury of moving on.  Not the artist.  He has to dissect it, magnify it, and live it for months on end.  Then, like some cruel joke, the artist is often rewarded for his attention to detail in describing for all of us the precise most painful components of pain, loss, grief, insecurity, and other emotional parts. Thus, the artist is conditioned in a Pavlovian way to act based on emotion. It would seem natural that he would then transpose that action on other elements of his life, including his marriage, his friendships, and his politics.

Artists are not paid for tapping into the power of rationale, but rather, the power of emotion.  Therefore, they have no real reason to exercise or even acknowledge the rational argument of a situation.  Much of art is fantasy to begin with, for example, one would not appreciate the movie King Kong if the artist explained how a giant gorilla couldn’t really do what his movie depicted.  The Harry Potter films would flop, Poe would be a side note, Monet would have sunk right into his pond, and the Twilight would be bankrupt.   When an artist takes a look at how to “fix” a social or economic problem, it shouldn’t surprise us that they are looking for heroes and villains, for victims and perpetrators, and for bigger than life fantasies that aren’t based in reality (and therefore won’t work).

Artists are not trained to delve into the gray.  They are trained to define the absolutes such as living, dying, good, bad, heaven, and hell in ways that most of us never really have to face.  Therefore, when it comes time for an artist to consider possibilities, and rational conclusion in areas like politics that they don’t know, their mind immediately goes to the dramatic—the victim, the hero; the winner, the loser; the angel, the demon.

To further complicate matters, man has an innate need for God, or religion.  Conservatives argue that such needs are God breathed, but liberals have to try to push those needs aside.  Artists, who tend to be deeply emotional, sociologically less adept, and psychologically needier than the basic population, arguably have a deeper need for God than any other professional population. Liberalism, in it’s cult-like compulsion toward legalistically defined behavior as dictated by leaders (bankers, producers, dealers, funders) in Hollywood, and one that provides a sort of moral promise of victory, can be very alluring.  This allure meets the higher level Maslovian esteem needs that the artist may not be prepared for if he has not met the lower level needs, as he has not in many cases.  Thus, liberalism becomes a pseudo religion whereby answers to other unmet Maslovian needs promise to be met somehow; some way.   As the expectation continues to exceed the outcome, the artist may grow weary of their religion of “Liberalism,” and make the switch!  This may explain why many artists become conservatives later in life (Mark Twain, Charlton Heston, Ronald Reagan).

This predisposition toward emotionality and validation would make the most sound minded, conservative-leaning artist somewhat reactionary.  The combination of gratification for emotional response to stimulus, and the fact that most artists deal in a fictional depiction of absolutes would naturally lead to a skewed perception of how people really work.  Artists are not rewarded for reality.  They are rewarded most often for their dramatic, condensed representation of what reality could be.

So the question becomes then—why do artists feel compelled or qualified to delve into the political when they have no training for it at all, and even their life experience lacks credentials necessary to relate to real Americans who don’t live in Hollywood?  Should they not simply exclude themselves, much like a judge does when she knows she has conflicting experience that might impede her rational judgment in a case?   Well, no, because we believe in freedom under the US Constitution—even under the knowledge that freedom could result in loss of liberties for having them.

In Frontpagemag.com, John J. Ray has a theory about fame and ego that is too good to paraphrase:

My basic proposal, then, is that most (but not all) Leftists/liberals are motivated by strong ego needs — needs for power, attention, praise and fame. And in the USA and other developed countries they satisfy this need by advocating large changes in the society around them — thus drawing attention to themselves and hopefully causing themselves to be seen as wise, innovative, caring etc. Rightists by contrast have no need either for change or its opposite and may oppose change if they see it as destructive or favour  change if they see it as constructive.

We will see below why one of the most consistent themes to emerge from the Leftist’s love of change is the claimed need for “equality”. And the belief in “equality” also tends to lead to support for such things as redistribution of wealth generally, heavily “progressive” income taxes, inheritance taxes, foreign aid, feminism, gay rights and socialized medicine. Again for reasons explored below, Leftists also tend to oppose religion and the churches and this in turn tends to mean that they favour abortion and oppose or obstruct religious schooling in various ways. So let us now briefly look at some of these characteristic Leftist/liberal themes to see how they relate to basic Leftist motives.

And he concludes:

But in all cases, bitter experience has shown that Leftists in power are very dangerous and destructive people. Where their power is effectively unchecked, they generally seem to resort sooner or later to mass murder (as in the case of the French revolutionaries, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Jim Jones and many Communist regimes and movements worldwide) and where they are partially thwarted by strong democratic traditions and institutions, they at least bring about large-scale impoverishment (as in post-independence India and pre-Thatcher Britain).

All people including artists want to believe that their work is meaningful and significant.  For artists, this propels their belief that human nature is changeable with proper “education” which thereby gives credence to their work.  Thus, to believe in their own meaningful output of work product, they must fancy themselves “educators” capable of changing people in important ways.

If you believe, as I do, and as John J. Ray does, that liberalism is inherently destructive and conservatism, while imperfect, is the far better alternative, then you need to know that my psychological training perceives hope on the horizon, because of the current liberal artists’ dilemma: the liberal artist is marketing today to a glowingly conservative consumer.  Conservatives are crying out for family oriented, morally compelling, traditional values that once graced the silver screen and our television sets.  The heart of America is sentimental for a turn back to the roots of Hollywood.  If the market is demanding enough, it just might result in the artists resorting to Maslow’s Hierarchy to make a living to meet their basic needs, and that might look a lot like the recent mid term elections when we just threw the bastards out and changed the course of history.

Bravo, Hollywood.  The best is yet to come.

Creepy, right? I have not seen Haunting and will probably wait for DVD or pay cable, but that is a weird, startling, attention-grabbing image. As a movie junkie, I love good movie art. The best movie posters are evocative. They capture what a movie is all about without giving away the mystery. There are certain movie posters that instantly put me back in that theatre experiencing the film for the very first time. The best movie posters are not just promotional tools. They stand as a work of art on their own. These are my favorites, buit it is by no means a definitive list. Feel free to add your favorites (and subtract any of mine).

#1 – JAWS
I saw this all-time classic as a 9-year-old on opening day, and saw it a second time at the Saturday matinee. To this day, I am afraid to swim in the ocean. That shark is always there in my imagination. The poster is literal, but haunting.

#2 – CHINATOWN
This is truly a work of art. The smoke shrouding the ultimate mystery of Evelyn Mulwray, and the stylized version of Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson), the hard-boiled detective who unravels it all.

#3 – THE DARK KNIGHT
Impossible to separate Heath Ledger’s death from his remarkable interpretation of The Joker. This is an amazing image. In 30 years, I will look at this poster and immediately feel the impact of Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece.

#4 – BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
You can almost hear Audrey Hepburn warbling “Moon River” at the sight of this iconic poster. Every woman wanted to be her and every man wanted to be with her.

#5 – SECRETARY
The 2002 cult classic about a sadomasochistic relationship between a demanding lawyer (James Spader) and a submissive secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The movie is an under-appreciated gem. The poster may be even better.

#6 – UNFORGIVEN
This is my favorite poster made for Clint Eastwood’s masterful revisionist Western. Simple. Classic. Tells you everything you need to know about Clint’s Bill Munny character.

#7 – AMERICAN BEAUTY
A beautiful image that suggests the perversity that lies just beneath the surface of the suburban neighborhood created by screenwriter Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes.

#8 – SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
“You will let me know when those lambs stop screaming, won’t you?” You can almost hear Dr. Hannibal Lecter say it. The Death’s-head moth “lodged” in Clarice Starling’s throat. Brilliant image.

#9 – VERTIGO
An ode to acrophobia as Detective Scottie Ferguson (as played by Jimmy Stewart) battles his fear of heights while becoming obsessed with Madeleine Elster (the stunning Kim Novak). This kaleidoscopic design immediately brings the strains of Bernard Hermann’s amazing score into my head.

#10 – PULP FICTION
Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace in all her swagger. Yes, she does wind up with a sharpie circle on her chest and a shot of adrenaline, but the whole gritty movie is captured with this image.

HONORABLE MENTION
- in no particular order -
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
SWEENEY TODD
MEAN STREETS
AMADEUS
GONE WITH THE WIND
METROPOLIS
KING KONG (1939 Fay Wray version)
CLOVERFIELD
THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.