- Title: USA: FILM PREMIERE OF PAUL VERHOEVEN SCI-FI FILM "THE HOLLOW MAN"
- Date: 6th August 2000
- Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) SCU [SOUNDBITE] (English) BACON SAYING "I was pleasantly surprised (when I saw the film) because I felt like the work was worth it, you know, because I know when I look at those things that every single nuance of what you do see is mine and not somebody else's. And, all I ask is to be able to have control over my character, to be able to ... Let's say it's a digital man that throws a punch. I want it to be my punch. It's hard sometimes when you have a stuntman double you, because I don't like to hurt myself, but at the same time when I see it - maybe the audience doesn't see it- but, I see someone else, you know? So, when I see the film, I'm amazed at the effects, and I think they're really stunning. And, I also feel like yeah it was worth it. I'm glad I was there. I'm glad I went through it."
- Embargoed: 21st August 2000 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, US AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVA85CSSCJ5JT5TGAPTLHSFPDECX
- Story Text: The human fascination with invisibility and its potential are well documented throughout entertainment history. References in literature date back to Plato, Christopher Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus" and H.G. Wells' "The Invisible Man". Hollywood has used the concept in too many films to mention, but director Paul Verhoeven ("Basic Instinct" and "Starship Troopers") returns to the story's origins with the addition of computer-aided special effects to create "Hollow Man," starring Oscar nominee Elisabeth Shue and Kevin Bacon.
You would think that making people invisible in Hollywood would be pretty easy and cheap - now you see them, now you don't.
But the makers of "Hollow Man" say they had no idea how difficult, expensive and time consuming it would be to make a gorilla invisible and then make actor Kevin Bacon vanish digitally layer by layer: first the skin, then the muscles and finally his skeleton.
"It was definitely like nothing I've ever done before, and everyday was a new and bizarre experience," Bacon said in a recent Reuters interview.
"There were things that we did and I would just go 'my God', this is the strangest thing I've ever been through."
In the film, which opens in the US on August 4, Bacon plays Sebastian Caine, an arrogant but brilliant scientist who tests an invisibility drug on himself with disastrous effects.
The leader of an elite team of scientists, Caine discovers the serum that triggers invisibility, decides he likes his new power and becomes a threat to the existence of fellow scientists Linda McKay (Elizabeth Shue) and Matthew Kensington (Josh Brolin), who are trying to reverse the effect.
Director Paul Verhoeven, who also directed the sci-fi dramas "RoboCop" and "Total Recall," said he was partly inspired by Plato, who claimed that invisibility would make people immoral because no one would be around to put the brakes on what they do.
"The fear would always be 'can you make it believable?' Can you make the muscular man, for example, so believable that people will think 'yes this is what happens when you take the skin off, '" Verhoeven said.
"It took a gigantic amount of software and hundreds of computers to do it, but ultimately, when you look at it and I saw the first time they did that after a year of testing, and I saw him moving and sitting on the bed and getting up, I thought it's going to work."
While Bacon and his costars are respected Hollywood figures, the real stars of the movie are the special effects team headed by Scott Anderson, who won an Oscar for visual effects in the 1995 for the film "Babe."
He and his cohorts worked for more than a year after the movie was shot to make Bacon disappear and reappear throughout the film in spellbinding ways.
The film has 560 special effects and was rumoured to cost upwards of $100 million -- a vast sum compared to what invisible man movies cost in the 1930s and 1940s when the idea of a special effect was to have a cigarette dangle in midair, held up by an unseen string.
Anderson said that the scene in "Hollow Man" in which a gorilla disappears when injected with the serum took 10 months to finish.
Another scene that is brilliantly executed is Caine's brief eerie reappearance when he splashes water on his face.
To get an accurate picture of the constitution of the human body, Anderson and his team attended dissections and examined films of cadavers.
Bacon too had his share to play in the special effects by wearing a skintight leotard painted in garish colours and covered in gooey substances.
The people behind the movie said Bacon put in one and half hours to get ready for a scene and almost the same time to remove all the grime.
"There was this guy named Charlie who'd come on right before a shot," recalled Bacon. "I'm covered in green paint and then right before we were ready to go, he'd have to put dots on me for some reason. I had no idea. I never figured out what the dots were for. They would just put like 50 or 60 dots all over different parts of my body and then they would change colours. They would put red ones and blue ones. And then one day the size of the dots changed. They decided to put bigger dots. I was really convinced it was a plot to drive me insane."
Elizabeth Shue said she developed a great respect for Bacon during the course of the shoot.
"We never laughed because ... We laughed amongst ourselves and Kevin kept us laughing most of the time," said Shue. "He never made us feel bad for what he was going through and I'll always respect him for that."
The film also gave her a chance to do a physical role, a far cry from the emotional prostitute she played in her most memorable and much acclaimed film "Leaving Las Vegas."
As for her costar, Bacon saidmost definitely justified the means.
"I know when I look at those things that every single nuance of what you do see is mine and not somebody else's.
And, all I ask is to be able to have control over my character," said Bacon.
"So, when I see the film, I'm amazed at the effects, and I think they're really stunning. And, I also feel like yeah it was worth it.
"I'm glad I was there. I'm glad I went through it." - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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