Hey folks, sorry for the delay in updates, but yesterday when I came on to update, the site went down in Santa Monica, so me (here in Austin) wasn't able to log on to update anything. Once again, I'm sorry. Also, I didn't ban JMS, Father Geek did, and if JMS writes me with the email address of his registered TALK BACK, I'll bring him back. Somebody pass it on to him. Now I have to do more updating. Here's a bit on McCoughnahey's latest film...
I'm just back from a few days in Malta where the movie U-571 is now filming on location at Mediterranean Film Studios (MFS). Some of the crew from the 2nd unit was at my hotel and local paper The Maltese Times just put out a two-page article from an interview with director Jonathan Mostow from which I've extracted highlights below.
The film producer is Dino De Laurentiis and this is the second collaboration between the two men - the first was Breakdown (1997). Mostow calls De Laurentiis 'one of the legends of show business' and says Dino backed him where nobody else would.
The cast includes Harvey Keitel, Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Jake Weber, David Keith and Jon Bon Jovi. Apparently Harvey Keitel contacted Mostow directly seeking the role as he'd grown up watching submarine movies and had always dreamed of starring in one. There were a couple of location photos of Mostow with McConaughey - one nighttime, one daytime - but I don't have a scanner, will try to send these separately.
The movie takes place during WWII in 1942. As you can probably guess from the title the action takes place aboard a submarine - a U-boat. Mostow describes the movie not as a war movie, but as a submarine story set in WWII, a seafaring tale. He is conscious of inevitable comparisons with Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line and says it has a different focus, calling it "a film about heroism" and that he wants to portray the tension the submariners are constantly battling with, where "the biggest enemy is not even the enemy, it's the surrounding sea". He says "the movie's architecture is based on suspense: all I want is to offer audiences the opportunity to live the visceral, submarine experience".
"U-571 is probably the last gasp of real, old-fashioned film making" says Mostow, who predicts that within a few years all acting will take place in front of blue screens until acting itself became obsolete, at which point he would stop making films.
The set is on its 70th day of filming and the action is taking place at the Rinella water tanks in Malta which are the world's second largest studio tanks after those in Mexico built for Titanic (apparently Mostow visited these but decided for Malta). The set is described as 'raging flames, explosions, debris, floating bodies and a 600-ton, life-size U-boat'; SFX include bodies spinning through the air and patches of burning oil. So far to Mostow's surprise the water sequences have run completely to schedule and on budget, with good weather, little wind and "everything has worked out really well". For these sequences, Mostow is working with Lance Julian who was involved in Waterworld, Amistad, The Beach and Titanic. The movie is due to be released next summer.
Don't think I'll be back in Malta soon but with filming well underway further reports should start appearing.
My all-time classic submarine movie favorite is Das Boot, which shows the claustrophobia of being in a closed tin can hundreds of feet underwater better than any other movie I've seen -- there's one shot where the camera follows a crewman running down the length of the ship which is fantastic. I look forward to see how this film turns out, and I hope they get the 'ping' sound effect right - it's essential!
Signing off,
Timezone
