- Title: Keeping Brad Pitt safe shooting space movie - 'Ad Astra' director shares fears
- Date: 18th September 2019
- Summary: VENICE, ITALY (RECENT - AUGUST 29, 2019) (REUTERS) ***WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** ACTOR BRAD PITT AND DIRECTOR JAMES GRAY TALKING ON RED CARPET PITT AND GRAY POSING FOR PHOTOS WITH ACTORS RUTH NEGGA AND LIV TYLER (SCREEN RIGHT IN BLACK DRESS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) DIRECTOR, JAMES GRAY, SAYING: "The hardest part for me was the zero gravity, trying to make it look like there is no gravity. I mean, you have both a horizontal set and the same set is built vertically, so the camera is looking up and you have actors hanging on wires, 30 feet in the air and then other times, the horizontal, they are just on a kind of a dolly, to try to make it look zero gravity. And you don't ever love to see your actors hanging 40 feet in the air, 30 feet in the air, it's a very frightening prospect. And I hated going to work in the morning seeing Brad in this harness, you know, basically flying around on wires. I'm always in fear that something bad will happen so that was terrifying for me."
- Embargoed: 2nd October 2019 11:12
- Keywords: Ad Astra movie director James Gray Brad Pitt space movie zero gravity
- Location: VENICE, ITALY AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
- City: VENICE, ITALY AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment,Film
- Reuters ID: LVA002AX6OVNX
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Watching Brad Pitt hanging from wires during the making of space thriller "Ad Astra" was so terrifying director James Gray says he hated going to work.
In the movie Pitt plays astronaut Roy McBride, who travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father, confronting a mystery along the way that threatens humanity's existence back on Earth.
Gray said he created vertical and horizontal sets to shoot the film's zero gravity scenes.
Watching his A-list star hanging 30 feet in the air was "frightening", he said.
"I hated going to work in the morning seeing Brad in this harness, you know, basically flying around on wires. I'm always in fear that something bad will happen so that was terrifying for me," Gray told Reuters on the sidelines of the 2019 Venice Film Festival, where last month the movie received its world premiere.
The 55-year-old actor takes audiences to the far reaches of the solar system in his role as Roy McBride after a new threat causing disastrous power surges threatens Earth.
McBride sets off to find his pioneering astronaut father, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who went missing more than a decade earlier while on a mission to Neptune.
Set in the near future when mankind has set up living stations and research centres on the moon and Mars, the film follows McBride as he makes his way into the vast abyss through spectacular landscapes and empty space.
"I made a mistake by saying I wanted to make the most realistic movie about space travel several years ago but really the truth is we weren't worried about realistic, we were worried about plausible," said Gray.
"There is no rocket that can take you to Neptune in 80 days or whatever, that's 2.7 billion miles away. But maybe there will be. So, we tried to keep it plausible. And I think pretty much everything in it is plausible."
McBride narrates his history and relationship with his father throughout the odyssey, where he faces challenges as well as enemies in an inhospitable and lonely environment.
Human connection and the need for shared experiences is at the core of the movie, Gray said.
"I think it says that human beings need other human beings," he said.
"You know, we seem to be so obsessed with space and looking in the distance and sometimes we don't look around us on the earth. That's what I think the core of the film is about really."
"Ad Astra" - whose Latin title means "to the stars" - is released across Europe and Asia on Wednesday (September 18) and Thursday (September 19). It opens in U.S. theatres on Friday (September 20).
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