The opening scene of Parfum (2006), where we witness the terrifying birth of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille on the pavement of a market, was filmed in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, which takes the place of Paris in 1738. To recreate a period market, the production purchased 2.5 tonnes of fish and a tonne of meat, which were used …
What films wasted a lot of food to shoot a simple scene? Read More »
There is no film that has won the Oscar for Best Picture and then disappeared. There is, however, one Best Picture Oscar winner that has partially disappeared. This is The Broadway Melody (1929). It was the first talkie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. This musical had the particularity of containing a sequence filmed in Technicolor, …
To all credit, a rather terrible accident happened to an extra on the set of Lord of the Rings . In The Two Towers , during the big battle scene at Helm’s Deep, the orcs throw large grappling hooks over the ramparts to raise their ladders. These large grappling hooks pass over the battlements and are then pulled by …
What is the worst accident that ever happened to an extra on a film set? Read More »
In early 1997, Speed 2 was in production. Fox studio is financing the project. The film team, starting with the director, Jan de Bont, is enthusiastic. Fox invested nearly $150 million in the budget. Even if Keanu Reeves did not reprise his role, Sandra Bullock is there and we are convinced that the film will be a success. Only …
Do filmmakers who make bad films realize that they are making a mistake? Read More »
Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (2010)—about a tortured-minded police officer’s investigation into a mysterious hospital—was filmed entirely under cloudy skies. The bad weather gets worse as we get deeper into the plot. It only changes at the end of the film, when the sun appears during the final scene. Far from being a purely aesthetic choice to …
During the filming of Poltergeist (1982), directed by Tobe Hooper and produced by Steven Spielberg , there was one such incident during filming. While the young actor Oliver Robins, 10, was acting out the scene where his clown puppet strangles him when he is in bed, the doll’s arm, which was supposed to wrap around his neck, was …
Christian Bale is known for investing himself completely in each of his roles, never shying away from any sacrifice. His spectacular weight losses and gains have already been widely commented on. But he also did something quite extreme for a role, without much talk about it: he had all his teeth done to star in American Psycho … …
It’s common for an actor to be forced to wear the same dirty outfit for days or even weeks at a time. But although the clothes look covered in stains and dirt, they are actually clean. Since it would be inconvenient for the actors to put on the clothes they sweated in the day before …
