A Christmas Carol

Written by Judy Sloane Tuesday, 03 November 2009 20:24

Interview

As Robert Zemeckis puts his own unique, 3D spin on A Christmas Carol, we catch up with him and his cast!

A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens, tells the story of the miserable Scrooge (played by Jim Carrey, who also portrays the spirits) who is confronted by the three ghosts of Christmas and changes his ways. It's been adapted for the screen many times, but director Robert Zemeckis knew he could bring something new to the traditional tale, using the latest motion capture and 3D technology - not to mention a stellar cast including Bob Hoskins, who plays Mr Fezziwig, Robin Wright Penn, who plays Belle, and Colin Firth, who plays Fred - to bring it to life for a new audience...

ROBERT ZEMECKIS The idea was exactly what you just mentioned, falling in love with this digital cinema. Ever since Polar Express I’ve been on this quest to think of movie ideas that can be presented in this new art form, and I just got hit with the idea that it could be A Christmas Carol, and I immediately went back and read the book to refresh my memory, and I realized that Dickens, being the great writer that he is, it hadn’t been realized in the way that it was actually imagined by him as he wrote it. So I said, okay, we could take a classic story that everyone is familiar with and re-envision it in a new and exciting way.

Jim, I would imagine it was a big challenge working in this kind of format, where you have all the dots, but it’s not voice over, a lot of people get this process confused thinking you’re going in and doing a voice over performance, this is not that?

JIM CARREY No, they’re full performances by actors. There are certain aspects of the technology that are so exciting and amazing creatively that you can’t wait to see what they turn into, certain aspects of the technology make it easy for Bob to create the world he wants. For an actor there are extra challenges, you have to create the ambiance and the belief in your surroundings in your head. And often times, like when Robin (Wright Penn) and I did our dance, you’re clacking these inserts together with cameras on them and going clack, clack against each other’s head and it’s really disconcerting. Gary Oldman at one point said to me, ‘I wanted to work with you, man, but I don’t know, I never imagined it would be like this.’ And he not only had the cameras staring at his face, but he had a crane up his butt, he was on a crane for 90% of his performance [when he played the ghost of Marley].

Why did you want to play Scrooge?

CARREY It’s the whole picture, it’s a dream of every actor to have the greatest material in the world, the greatest talent in the world to play with, and a top flight artist as a director, and we have all of that. I’m completely honored to be a part of this cast and a part of this whole experience. I can’t wait to do this process again. And watching it you never know where it’s going to go, he has to go through months of panic where I go, ‘Is it going to look like that?’ but he knows where it’s going and as time goes on you just start to slowly fall in love with it, and go, ‘Oh my God, look what they’ve done.’ It’s unbelievable, really magical.

ROBIN WRIGHT PENN Even more so with this one because the technology has so far advanced from Beowulf even, where our eyes, every moment, the minutia of the acting that we all did, you see on the screen, and yet we could change the size of the eye with animation. Because I said to Bob at one point I wanted her to look like the Whoville girls, big blue eyes, kind of droopy, and he said, ‘Yeah, we can do that.’ But your every moment is captured and it’s fascinating to watch. It’s so moving, it’s like watching a 2D performance but you feel like you can reach out and grab Jim’s hand and feel the snow falling on it at the same time, you are actually in the environment. That’s what is incredible about it.

BOB HOSKINS He hasn’t changed, I feel like a really old man. This guy walks in and he’s exactly the same. What does he take? What was extraordinary was the fact that before everything had to be dressed, and we shot the film and then they blew up big frames and painted on the characters. But this they shot all the performances and then they painted the background, they put on the costumes, so it was the complete reverse. And what was extraordinary was the fact that once you’re covered in all this stuff you’ve got nothing else to do but concentrate on your performance, they’ve taken all responsibility away from you. It’s extraordinary.

Colin, what was this experience like for you? 25 years of making movies and TV but nothing like this is on your resume.

COLIN FIRTH I think my acting contribution probably tallied at about four hours in the entire job. Life in the volume is good. I would echo Jim a little bit that being given all that freedom takes adjusting to, when I was on I talked a lot, and you have to know your stuff quite well if you’re going to be word perfect. There’s a old Lord Olivier quote, ‘It’s not how well you know it, it’s how long you’ve known it.’ And I realized a week before, I think I have to start now because we do not, like in the theatre, have four weeks rehearsal here to get it all set in, or in a conventional film set where it’s all chopped up into little pieces and you know it to death by mid-day. This was a whole run at a whole scene with no reason to stop. You’re never off camera. If you stumble, it’s in the movie. It’s not, ‘Don’t worry, we won’t use that.’ This is all being used, this is all stuff that’s going in there. So in some ways you have to rise to the occasion of having all that freedom. Again there’s no third eye, there’s no proscenium, there’s no camera to play to, but having said all that, it’s fantastic. It’s even more authentic in a way than doing theatre, because there is no imaginary fourth wall, or even if you’re doing theatre in the round, you’ve still got to worry about the people in the gallery up there that might not hear you or masking someone, none of it, you can do exactly what you want at any time. Where I put the hours in was being prepped, was having my head immersed in a gummy thing that dentists use to take your teeth, you have your whole head froze in that. You’re standing there in your underwear and you’re scanned within an inch of your life.

What was it like when you finally saw the finished movie?

CARREY Can I tell you how freaky it is when I saw the movie? One of the first things I said upon the first close-up image of Scrooge, was ‘My family is going to have a heart attack, because that is my father.’ Not his mood, he was the happy version. It’s unbelievable, it’s really a look into the future for me, not the long chin and the long nose, but the look is what I’m going to look like when I’m old.

You had to do parts with yourself, sometimes there are three of you on the screen that the same time – how did that work for you?

CARREY I will avoid the masturbation joke. I had the most incredible help anyone could ever have asked for in Cary Elwes, Cary Elwes did sacrifice fly for me, he really was there for me all the way. He played opposite me in all of the scenes, playing the other character to give me a reference and to give me someone wonderful to play with, and he’s a genius. He was also very helpful as far as accents, I call him accent man, because you can literally name any country on the planet and he knows the accent. So he was absolutely invaluable to me, he’s a brilliant actor and he’s wonderful in some of the parts he does in the film as well. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude, because he supported me completely. Scrooge was actually based on one of Cary Elwes great-great-great-great uncles, I think his name was John Elwes, he was a member of Parliament and he was so cheap that he would wear the same clothes all the time until they were in tatters, he wore a wig that he found in the garbage and he wouldn’t buy new game until he had eaten all the meat that he had, even if it was rancid. He was the character that Dickens’ based the story on.

HOSKINS As soon as those 3D glasses go it will be standard. We’ll be watching football in 3D!