Famous Characters: Recast

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 31st August 2010.

The Australian Box Office figures for the past week have Salt, starring Angelina Jolie, in the top spot, grossing a very healthy $5200000 in its first week of release. Directed by Australia’s Phillip Noyce, who knows his way around a spy thriller having previously helmed Clear and Present Danger (1994) and Patriot Games (1992), Salt features Mrs Pitt as a CIA agent who must run for her life when a KGB defector names her as a Russian sleeper assassin.

Whilst Australian cinema goers clearly appreciate Jolie’s assets, that is, her ability to jump off bridges onto moving vehicles and smash her enemies in the face with various objects, looking beautiful the whole time, something inside of me still wonders what Salt may have been like if its original star had actually agreed to make the movie.

Originally, the titular character was supposed to be a man. That’s right, Salt was written to be a vehicle for Tom Cruise. Ultimately, he jumped ship to make Knight and Day with Cameron Diaz instead. By the way, does anyone know what the title Knight and Day is supposed to mean? There’s also talk of a third Mission: Impossible sequel that may have been a little too close to Salt in terms of its spy on the run storyline for Cruise’s liking. So the producers simply rewrote Mr Salt into a Mrs Salt and a box office hit was born.

There are several iconic film characters that were originally slated to be portrayed by a different actor. No matter the reason for the recast, it must be difficult as a performer to see someone else rise to fame in “your” role.

It is hard to imagine anyone else as adventuring archaeologist and snake hater Indiana Jones. In 1981, at the time of casting Raiders of the Lost Ark, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s first choice for the man in the hat was Tom Selleck. Lucas wasn’t keen to work with Harrison Ford so soon following their collaborations on American Graffiti and the first two Star Wars films (or fourth and fifth if you want to be a nerd). The producers of Selleck’s hit TV series, Magnum P.I. would not release him, so Ford got the gig three weeks before shooting was to begin.

A similar situation occurred in 1986 when Pierce Brosnan was slated to replace Roger Moore as the new James Bond in The Living Daylights. Brosnan’s commitments to his TV series, Remington Steel, appeared to have concluded with its cancellation that year, so the timing seemed perfect. Unfortunately, a spike in interest in Brosnan with the announcement of the Bond offer led to NBC renewing Remington Steel for another year and the contract bound Brosnan had no choice but to decline the role. Of course, he eventually did get to play Bond a few years later, following on from Timothy Dalton in GoldenEye and three other film adventures.

Whilst on the subject of Bond, is he the same man in every film, or is “James Bond” a code name that gets passed on between different 007’s? Just thinking out aloud…

Finally, can you imagine anyone else as time travelling Marty McFly? How about Eric Stoltz? Star of Mask (1985) and Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), Stoltz filmed Back to the Future for six weeks before being recast by director Robert Zemeckis. According to Zemickis, Stoltz lacked the humorous feel that was required for the role. With short notice, Michael J. Fox, the director’s first choice for McFly but initially unavailable, was able to split his time between the film and TV sitcom Family Ties.

For the trivia buffs, Fox’s middle name is Andrew but chose “J” when he discovered that Michael Fox was already registered with the Screen Actors Guild and he disliked Andy Fox as a stage name.

For the record, a similar thing has happened to me. Way back in 1998, I auditioned for the role of Choi in The Matrix. Choi is the character who buys illegal software from Keanu Reeves’ character, Neo. This scene then leads Neo to start his awakening by “following the white rabbit.” Unfortunately, there is no great scandal or controversial recast to be found here, I just did a truly terrible audition.

Published in: on August 30, 2010 at 20:58  Leave a Comment  
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Film Props: The Ultimate Collectible

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 24th August 2010.

Are you the ultimate movie fan? Is there one film that floats your boat the most? The problem is, how do you show your true devotion? Buying the DVD or blu-ray disc is an obvious choice, but anyone can do that. You can tell the world online, but who cares what a bunch of nerds think? You might buy the poster and frame it on your wall, but between your local cinema and the video store, posters are a dime a dozen.

For the hardcore movie devotee there is a new level of fandom, owning a genuine prop from the production. Why worship a poster of that Predator when you can actually buy a genuine life size Predator costume?

Classically, film studios warehoused and archived their costumes and props to be reused. In recent times, modern manufacturing techniques combined with the sheer cost of storing and maintaining all of these items have resulted in film studios beginning to offload these props and costumes to collectors.

Fox Studios currently operate an ebay store called VIP Fan Auctions. Collectibles from such films as G.I. Joe, Up in the Air and Shutter Island have been up for auction recently. I would think that the most highly prized collectible from Shutter Island would be the script. If I owned that, I might have a chance to work out what exactly happened in that brain boggling flick. The script for G.I. Joe would also be valuable and rare, especially since I’m not entirely sure that the movie was made with one.

By the time you read this column, auctions will be closing on a bunch of items from recently axed Fox shows Ugly Betty and 24. Fancy owning Betty Suarez’ rabbit fur scarf or Jack Bauer’s long-sleeve thermal shirt? Bid now, but be warned. The latter is currently sitting at US$630.

The best source of film props and costumes I have found so far is The Prop Store. Based in London and Los Angeles, they will ship your collectible to anywhere in the world, for a price. Their website is a film geek’s paradise, but be prepared to pay top dollar. Rest assured though, they do offer an interest free payment plan. With fixed prices, there’s no chance of that annoying last second ebay gazumping.

Perhaps you’re a fan of the Batman movies? For just US$12000 you can own Val Kilmer’s cowl and chest armour, complete with those controversial nipples. Lovingly mounted on a custom build frame, you’ll be pleased to know that your bat ears have been stuffed to keep them “looking pointy and ready for business.”

Gremlins 2: The New Batch was a fun sequel which took Gizmo and pals to the Big Apple. With a price tag of US$4995, you can take home a real Gremlin, which featured in the background of the film. Constructed of foam latex, this trouble making critter has animatronic arms and moving clawed fingers.

At the more affordable end of the scale are smaller prop items which were usually mass produced for the production. A bus schedule from Speed will only set you back US$145. A chocolate bar label from Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a bargain at US$59. Three balloons featuring the face of Orlando Bloom (or Orloondo Bland as I like to call him, sorry Miranda) used in the film The Calcium Kid can be yours for only US$12.

So in these uncertain financial times, why risk your future on gold or stocks? The only sound investment nowadays is in Alien egg sacs and Back to the Future hoverboards.

http://www.vipfanauctions.com

http://www.propstore.com

Published in: on August 26, 2010 at 13:08  Leave a Comment  
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Television’s Guilty Pleasures

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 17th August 2010.

So what’s your favourite television guilty pleasure? Something probably from the seventies or eighties that you’ve bought on DVD but have to hide at the back of your shelf for fear of friends finding it. Someone must be buying those Baywatch boxed sets, especially season three which sees the introduction of renown Shakespearian actress Pamela Anderson as pneumatic lifeguard C.J. Parker. How the Baywatch team saved anyone from drowning is beyond me, considering that every time they ran across the beach, it happened in slow motion. Perhaps the name Gordon Shumway floats your boat? A wise-cracking alien from the planet Melmac, ALF starred in his own sitcom from 1986 to 1990 and for a short time, was so popular on Aussie television that he was regularly beating Sunday night juggernaut 60 Minutes in the ratings. Seasons one and two of ALF have recently been released on DVD. My rather embarrassing guilty pleasure features a completely bizarre concept. Take the classic American sitcom family and teleport them into an all singing, all dancing variety show and you have the notorious Brady Bunch Variety Hour. The original Brady series aired on US network CBS and closed up shop in 1974 due to falling ratings, however, with syndication, the show became even more popular. It is claimed that since 1975, an episode of The Brady Bunch has aired somewhere in the world every single day. At the time of its demise, the Brady cast were not aware of their status as American cultural icons and were keen to escape their Brady alter egos. In 1976, producers Sid and Marty Krofft of H.R. Pufnstuf and Banana Splits fame managed to coax the entire Brady cast, with the exception of Eve Plumb (Jan), to US network ABC for a one-off hour long special, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour. Out of the returning Brady kids, only Barry Williams (Greg) and Maureen McCormick (Marcia) considered themselves capable singers and dancers. Florence Henderson, who portrayed wholesome matriarch Carol Brady, was a veteran of musical theatre. Strangely enough, the most enthusiastic of the Brady cast was Robert Reed (Mike), who hated his on-screen goody two shoes persona but was intrigued by the prospect of showing off his (limited) singing and dancing abilities. Jan Brady was recast in the guise of talented country singer Geri Reischl. So as the theme tune goes, here’s the story. The Brady family gets the opportunity to star in their own variety show. Leaving behind Mike’s architectural job and the original house, the Brady’s move to Los Angeles with housekeeper Alice in tow. Their neighbour, camp comedian Rip Taylor, also participates in the hi-jinks. Makes perfect sense, yes? No seventies show is complete without a kitsch set and the Variety Hour was no exception. Imagine a psychedelic glittered set, with its centrepiece, a swimming pool. The Krofftettes, a troupe of synchronised swimmers and dancers, featured heavily in the show, splashing around to the Brady clan badly singing and dancing to disco versions of such gems as Yankee Doodle Dandy, Al Jolson’s Toot Toot Tootsie and most bizarrely, Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die. The Brady Bunch Variety Hour staggered on for a total of nine episodes, featuring guest stars such as Donnie and Marie, Tina Turner, Vincent Price and Lee Majors. American magazine, TV Guide, recently pronounced the Variety Hour as the fourth worst television show of all time. Only two episodes of this cult classic have been released in the US on DVD. In fact, Aussie pay TV channel, TV1, was integral to the rediscovering of this long forgotten series, re-airing it in the late nineties for the first time since its original broadcast. Highlights of the series can be found on YouTube and are well worth a laugh. The Brady Bunch Variety Hour is my favourite television guilty pleasure because it represents a (perhaps imaginary) time of innocence, where sequined jumpsuits were perfectly acceptable for women (and men) and the lack of singing and dancing skills was no obstacle to shaking your groove thing around the swimming pool on the sparkly set of your family’s very own musical variety show. Any time the Bunch is on my TV, all is right in the world.

Published in: on August 17, 2010 at 11:35  Comments (2)  
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A MacGuffin with bacon please

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 10th August 2010.

Remember Quentin Tarantino’s classic 1994 film, Pulp Fiction? Some of the many intertwining plot strands involved a mysterious briefcase, the contents of which were never revealed. As frustrating as that may be to die-hard fans, what was really important to the storytelling process was how the briefcase motivated the characters to pursue it, kill for it or protect it. The contents were irrelevant. Anything could’ve been in there. It doesn’t really matter. In filmmaking, that briefcase is known as a MacGuffin.

Defined as a plot device that catches the viewers’ attention, or drives the plot of a work of fiction, the term MacGuffin was possibly coined by Alfred Hitchcock, who first mentioned the screenwriting technique during a lecture in 1939. In fact, Hitchcock’s celebrated 1934 spy thriller, The 39 Steps, revolves around the search for a MacGuffin. In the final minutes of the movie, it is revealed that the MacGuffin is actually the top secret plans for a silent plane engine.

Sometimes the MacGuffin is not a thing, but a meaning. Orson Welles’ brilliant Citizen Kane, released in 1941, is acclaimed as one of the best motion pictures of all time. A critical depiction of the life and times of media magnate William Randolph Hurst, the film centres on the meaning of renamed lead character Charles Foster Kane’s dying word, “Rosebud”. With the storyline following a newsreel reporter desperately seeking to find the meaning of this word, the film climaxes with said reporter unable to solve the mystery, concluding that perhaps “Rosebud” represents something that Kane had once but lost, or could never attain. Before the credits roll, it is revealed to the audience that Rosebud is a childhood toy from Kane’s past: a sled. Citizen Kane is a truly great film, and proof that the smart use of a MacGuffin can weave a breathtaking tale, no matter what the MacGuffin ultimately ends up being.

MacGuffins are utilised regularly in modern cinema, especially in espionage thrillers. This year’s Knight and Day, starring Tom “Xenu” Cruise and Cameron Diaz, revolves around a never ending battery. Mission: Impossible 3 (2006), also starring Cruise, features the mysterious Rabbit’s Foot. John Frankenheimer’s action thriller, Ronin (1998), stars Robert DeNiro chasing after another enigmatic suitcase. All are perfectly good MacGuffins.

Even last year’s mega money maker, Avatar, featured a MacGuffin. Strip away the motion capture technology and immersive 3D layering and what do you have left? You have mercenaries killing smurfs to get something and the blue natives fighting the invading forces to protect the very same something. What is that something? It’s the rather obviously named Unobtainium. Talk about a MacGuffin with cheese.

So keep an eye out for MacGuffins in your favourite movies and television shows. They are everywhere and you are bound to recognise them easily now. Remember, it is not important what the MacGuffin is, but how it catches the audience’s attention. Perhaps the MacGuffin phenomenon is even creeping into real life? Tony Abbott’s boat people MacGuffin anyone?

Published in: on August 17, 2010 at 11:32  Leave a Comment  
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Unsolved Great Mysteries

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 3rd August 2010.

One of my fondest memories of childhood was going to stay at my grandmother’s house every Saturday night whilst my parent’s went to work at the family restaurant. My Nanna spoilt my brother and I, feeding us whatever we wanted and giving us free reign of the television. I remember staying up late to giggle my way through Hey Hey It’s Saturday when it was a late night show (and funny). It later moved to an earlier six thirty timeslot, creating a major dilemma for a young lad. Do I watch Daryl and Ossie or Young Talent Time?

VCRs weren’t readily available in the mid-80’s so I usually compromised by watching YTT which ran for an hour, switching over to Channel Nine just in time to catch Red Faces.

My all time favourite Saturday evening show was Great Mysteries of the World. Airing in the five thirty timeslot on Channel Seven, the series was essentially a repackaging of the US show In Search Of, which originally aired between 1976 and 1982, bookended with an introduction and final thoughts from Australian TV personality (at the time) Scott Lambert. With narration by Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy, I was transfixed to the tube by spooky investigations into UFOs, Bigfoot, The Loch Ness Monster, ghosts and The Bermuda Triangle.

My love for the paranormal continued with Unsolved Mysteries, an American series which ran from 1987 until 2002, hosted by The Untouchables star, Robert Stack. Unsolved Mysteries featured a mix of stories on unexplained phenomenon and crimes (including dodgy reenactments). I was always perplexed as to why Mr Stack implored Australian viewers to “contact the FBI or your local law enforcement authority” in regards to crimes which took place over 15000 kilometres away.

I’ve recently rediscovered two memorable television specials which some sad person has preserved and uploaded to youtube. UFO Cover Up Live was hosted by Mike Farrell of M*A*S*H fame who introduced the world to anonymous government informants Condor and Falcon. Airing live in the US in 1988, this was the first televised mention of Area 51, an air force installation in Nevada which is supposedly where the US government stores crashed alien spacecraft. This prime time special is fondly remembered within UFOlogy circles as the program in which it was revealed that aliens have already made contact with our governments and more importantly, love strawberry ice cream.

In 1991, Bill Bixby, from The Incredible Hulk TV series, hosted an investigative special called Is Elvis Alive? Focusing on photos allegedly of The King after his death and the fact that Elvis’ tombstone spells his middle name as “Aaron” whilst his birth records document it as “Aron”, the show is great fun. A follow-up special, The Elvis Conspiracy, followed in 1992, which basically rescinded all of the allegations of the first show. For the record, the image of “Elvis” from 1984 only looks like him in newsprint and The King sought to change his surname to the more biblical Aaron towards the end of his life.

I’ve since moved onto such spooky TV fare as Ghost Hunters and Most Haunted on pay TV, where brave (or stupid) people lock themselves in supposedly haunted buildings with only a camera crew for protection. There is much amusement to be had witnessing these investigators scaring themselves silly in the darkness whilst never actually capturing any real evidence.

Despite my love for a great paranormal mystery on TV, I wouldn’t exactly consider myself a believer. I’m more of a bemused spectator. To me, shows about unexplained phenomenon are modern society’s way of passing along legends, much in the same way that our ancestors would’ve told stories around the campfire, but with far fewer ads for funeral insurance plans.

Published in: on August 8, 2010 at 12:04  Leave a Comment  
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A Comic Afterlife

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily in Tuesday 27th July 2010.

I’ve written previously about the disappointment of having your favourite television show axed with no storyline resolution, denying you the opportunity to say goodbye to much beloved characters. I’ve since discovered that several of my favourite shows live on, but this time they’re back in comic book form.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran from 1997 to 2003. Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and created by Joss Whedon of Firefly and Dollhouse fame, Buffy is still a fan favourite and continues to sell extremely well on DVD. The final season of Buffy, the seventh, culminates in an all-out battle between the Scooby Gang and the bad guys, known as the First Evil. Whilst delivering a satisfactory ending, many fans felt that there were still more stories to tell.

In 2007, Dark Horse Comics began publishing Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 in illustrated form. With writing from Joss Whedon, the comic picks up directly from where the television series left off. Initially proposed to be a 25 issue limited series, the comic proved to be so popular that it was expanded to 40 issues. With number 35 recently hitting the shelves, Season 9 in comic book form has now been announced. First edition copies of Season 8 issues have become highly collectible items, but for the non-collector, much of the series has been reissued in graphic novel format.

Angel was a spin-off TV series from Buffy and starred David Boreanaz, who later went on to feature in hit crime procedural dramedy, Bones. Airing from 1999 to 2004, Angel ran in parallel with Buffy storyline-wise for its first three years, with multiple guest appearances from the titular cheerleader (and vice versa). Angel’s final episode ended with an ambiguous cliff hanger which frustrated many loyal fans.

Angel: After the Fall began publication by IDW Comics in 2007. Buoyed by the success of Buffy Season 8, Angel’s comic incarnation also follows in a canonical extension of the live series. Running for 17 issues with Joss Whedon contributing to the writing, it has since evolved into an ongoing title.

Similarly, the Aaron Spelling produced series Charmed is soon to continue on in comic form. Ceasing production in 2006 after 178 episodes, the comic adventures of the Halliwell sisters will take place following the events of the final and eighth season. It could be argued that the storylines of Charmed were already two dimensional prior to the comic but I wouldn’t want to offend the show’s whacky wicca fans.

A comic afterlife is also planned for the much missed and prematurely cancelled Pushing Daisies.

For those of you who can’t get enough of current hit shows, further comic book adventures in the worlds of True Blood, Eureka, Doctor Who and Supernatural have been released.

Comic book continuations of television franchises are a great way for fans to follow the ongoing trials and tribulations of their favourite characters. Whilst television shows are slaves to production budgets, ratings and the contract lengths of its stars, comic books can keep both the studios and fans happy with storylines limited only by the writer’s imagination.

Published in: on August 8, 2010 at 12:02  Leave a Comment  
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