喜貓在唱歌

很喜歡看電影的幕後花絮, 深覺電影工業很了不起, 從無到有, 將作品呈現出來, 啟發並感動世人; 從一個idea, 到說服電影公司老闆, 拿錢出來, 結合各種幕前幕後人才, 與物力, 過程中需要很強的想像力, 行政執行力, 與說服力.  是全方位挑戰. 從<幕後花絮>中, 往往能學習到若干較為隱性的事情, 也能瞭解整部電影是如何被執行出來的; 以下是About a boy的幕後訪談~~~

Writer: It’s called about a boy, but I suppose there are probably two boys, really. The original idea was that I thought of this guy who invents a child, so that he can meet single mothers. So he invents a child and goes to a single-parent group. That was the initial germ of idea.

Director: It’s based on a book called, appropriately, About a boy, by Nick Hornby.  Which came out in England about seven years ago, and was a huge hit there and did very well here.  He kind of addresses man’s fate – especially 30-something-man’s fate- in the modern world.

Hugh Grant:   I love Nick Hornby.  He gets London life so right and is so funny about it. Particularly male bachelor single London life, which I know extremely well.  So I thought “This is right up my alley.”(這是我拿手的)  And you know, on top of that, it’s actually quite moving, and I’ve never really done “moving”.

Writer:    I suppose the kind of comedy that I’m drawn to, I don’t want it to be purely farcical and I want it rooted in something(言之有物).  And I think, after High Fidelity (another book), I wanted to try and push that a little bit harder, the idea that you could write a comedy which includes people having a hard time.

Directors:   When we firstly read the book, a lot of scenes felt like they were  from a classic comedy, so a lot of stuff we kept, but the last third of the movie is an invention of ours that we worked out and then worked on with Hugh Grant, our real partner in terms of someone to bounce our writing off and get ideas from. So we knew that when we started shooting we were on the same  page. (有共識)

We wanted to make something in the vein of older filmmakers we like, like Billy Wilder, who’s a tremendous influence on our doing this movie, just because of the mixture of cynicism and hope at the same time.

We harassed (蹂躪) the producers, Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro, endlessly.

I think at first Jane didn’t get why the American Pie directors should direct this movie I mean, It’s a comedy, but on the surface it’s a really different kind of comedy. Hugh was equally horrified as was Nick Hornby.

(註: 美國派, 一部低級搞笑片, 同樣出自本片導演的作品; 最初製片, 原著作者, 以及休葛蘭都不解為何找此片導演?…).

Writer:  I think, probably like a lot of people of my generation, I did think “Oh, my god.” Partly because I’d never seen American Pie.

Hugh Grant:   I adore American Pie, I really did, but I thought “That’s completely  wrong.” Our film’s funny, but not as determinedly  lowbrow-funny (低俗搞笑) as American Pie. But then you meet them, and they’re these learned, scholarly, intelligent guys.

Hugh Grant:    Nicholas is a freak.  He’s so focused and grown-up, and know   his lines and has immaculate instincts.  Which is lovely. It’s not something you always find in a grown-up actors.

Rachel:   I felt like I learned a lot from working with him, because he hadn’t learned all the acting tricks that grownups do. He’s just a pure, instinctive performer, so there’s nothing better than that.

Toni   :I love working with kids because I think that they have what every actor wants, which is an ability to be in the moment.  They haven’t developed this brick wall of neuroses that most actors find so difficult to jump over.  So it’s nice to be around that kind of sense of freedom in terms of acting.

Hugh Grant:    I think Weitz brothers (本片導演, 一對兄弟), comedy is their first instinct, and I’m a tart for a laugh and I now find that Toni Collette is, too. (Toni, 劇中那個神經兮兮的母親). 

So everyone’s sort of pulling in that direction.  I just hope we don’t pull too far and things are as sad and resonant as it should be.

Dirctors: The whole movie is a balancing act between humor and pathos, and if you go too far in one direction, you lose your balance completely.

Hugh Grant:  You’re absolutely on a knife edge.  It’s not “Man falls into   room, takes his trousers down, slips on a banana skin,  farts…” which are all hilarious, by the way, and that’s my  favorite kind of comedy.  No, but it’s light delicate stuff.  And if you’re on that knife edge of tone, it can freak you out.

Writer:   I think that idea that you can switch from rather depressed empathy to laughter is an attractive one for a cinema audience, because contemprorary films, especially tend to take very much one tone.  We’ve not become very good at switching moods like that, and I think it would be a terrible thing to lose from the cinema.

Toni:   It’s not a candy-coated comedy.  It deals with really serious subject matters quite gracefully.  It creates really poignant and moving moments and a lot of depth.  Which I think makes you appreciate the humor of it even more.

Hugh Grant:    I think all good comedy’s based in sadness in a funny kind of way.  It you’ve got that core, the funniest is usually funnier. In this film, there’s a lot of sadness, particularly in the boy’s life, and the comedy plays all the stronger against that.