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Topic: King Kong (NSC) Return to archive
December 3rd, 2005 03:28 AM
Ten Thousand Motels And the Prophet said - - And, lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty.
And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead.
- "Old Arabian Proverb"

King Kong: Everything You Need to Know
http://www.aboyd.com/kong/kongfaq.html

Here are some basic facts and ideas about “King Kong” and its remakes.
From: http://emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=475

Miscellaneous links for King Kong (1933)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024216/miscsites

Production:

The movie was produced by RKO and co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. David O. Selznick served as executive producer.

High Concept:

Though the notion of high-concept didn’t exist in the 1930s, “King Kong” epitomized it since it was based on a single idea-image that reportedly inspired Cooper to make the movie. As he put it: “Let’s have a beast so large that he could hold the beauty in the palm of his hand, pulling bits of her clothing from her body until she was denuded.” It’s noteworthy, that “King Kong” was one of the last movies made before the Production Code was established as Hollywood’s moralistic guide

Location:

The movie was filmed between June 1932 and February 1933 in various locations in California, among them San Pedro, the Bronson Canyon, and, yes, the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Settings:

The set of the scary Skull Island ruins was a leftover from Cecil B. DeMille’s silent epic, “The King of Kings,” used again for the movie “She” (1935). This set went up in a blaze as part of the burning of Atlanta in “Gone With the Wind” (1939), one of the first scenes to be shot.
Running Time:

The running time of the 1933 film is 100 minutes, of the 1976 remake 135 minutes, and of Jackson’s version rumored to be close to three hours!

Size Matters Not:

While producer Cooper promised leading lady Fay Wray “the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood,” the great ape was really short, only 18 inches, to be exact 95 inches taller than the Oscar statuette!). Kong’s flesh and bone consisted of rabbit fur, which covered molded sponge rubber on an aluminum frame.

Scale Matters:

In the jungle scenes, the basic scale ratio for its size was one inch to one foot. However, the city scenes required a larger Kong that stood 24 inches tall on the same scale so as not to be dwarfed by the skyscrapers. While Kong was a monkey-size doll, the parts of him that engaged with human actors were built on a massive scale. These included a foot, lower leg, and giant furry paw, a crane like device about 8 feet long, in which Fay Wray writhed sexily and was lifted 10 feet over the studio floor for her big scene atop the Empire State Building.

Technology:

At the time, state-of-the-art technology was used. The derailed miniature sets were merged and composited with glass paintings, rear-projection backgrounds, stop-motion animation sequences, wooden puppets, and full-size actors. By today’s standards, the film’s special effects look primitive, but “King Kong” was the first film to pioneer the basic machinery and techniques that modern filmmakers, such as Spielberg and Jackson, later refined with the help of electronics and computers.

Human Monster:

King Kong became the most fearsome creature of all movie monsters. A huge head-and-shoulders portion, made of rubber and bearskin for close-ups and holding three men who operated a compressed air device, produced a variety of facial expressions in the monster, which the directors thought surpassed the capacities of professional actors.

The Big Climax:

Scenes of the four biplanes that finally bring down Kong consisted of naval aircraft, intercut with model planes in miniature projection. The co-directors played the pilots in the plane mock-up that kills Kong. (The flight commander of the real Curtiss trainer aircraft died in a crash only a few weeks after the scene was filmed)

Sound:

Most of the sound was dubbed in post-production. Wray’s famous scream took a whole day in the studio to shoot. The many animal sounds were either actual or human imitated, recorded at various speeds, and then played backwards.

Fay Wray:

The actress always discounted the many horror films she made, favoring her earlier work for famous directors, such as Erich von Stroheim (“The Wedding March”) and Josef von Sternberg (“Thunderbolt”). Nonetheless, the 1933 film remains her best-known work, and her career after 1935 is marked by mostly minor films.

As was the norm at the time, Wray hopped between sound stage, making radical wardrobe changes for her two other films: “Doctor X” and “The Most Dangerous Game,” which used some of the same jungle sets as “King Kong.”

Blonde Heroine:

Fay Wray was a natural brunette and usually appeared as such in her movies. For King Kong, she wore a wig, which gave her a blonde image for the rest of her career. The future versions had to stick to blonde, and indeed, in the 1976 film, the role was played by Jessica Lange, in her very first movie, and in Jackson’s film, it’s played by Aussie blonde Naomi Watts.

Hybrid of Genres:

Though most Hollywood genres at the time were clear-cut and well defined (the crime-gangster, musical, Western, melodrama, “King Kong” was a new type of film that represented a hybrid of genre conventions. “King Kong” is not jus a horror picture; it's a romantic adventure fantasy, an absurdist love story. There was erotic electricity between King Kong and Fay Wray that is absent from the 1976 version and hopefully will be evident in Jackson’s movie.

The Scream:

One of the most powerful, frightening, and surreal images in American film history, Fay Wray’s scream continues to haunt us 70 years after the movie was made. Master of Suspense Hitchcock is said to have been influenced by Wray’s scream, recreating that image in “Psycho,” “Frenzy,” and many other films.

Sequel:

While there have been many pale imitations, there was only one direct sequel, “Son of Kong” (1933), rushed into production in the wake of the huge success of the first film. Many inferior rip-offs followed in the next decades.

Remakes:

The 1976 remake of “King Kong” was followed by “Kong Kong Lives,” in 1986.

Oscar Awards and Nominations:

How many Oscar nominations will Jackson’s film garner? Hard to tell.

Despite the fact that ten movies were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar that year, the original “King Kong” failed to garner any nod from the Academy. Was it the film’s huge popularity that worked against it at the Oscars?

The inferior 1976 remake, however, received the Special Achievement Oscar for Visual Effects, for Carlo Rambaldi, Glen Robinson, and Frank Der Veer, and was also nominated for cinematography (Richard H. Kline) and sound (Harry Warren Tetrick, William McCaughey, Aaron Rochin, and Jack Solomon).

Audience Reaction: Mixed Signals

Ideologically, “King Kong” was a quintessential Depression-era product, for reasons that I’ll explain in a future essay, but the movie was ahead of its time in its moral ambiguity and mixed signals it sent to the audience. In fact, the movie elicited contradictory reactions from the viewers. On the one hand, it produced fear for the survival of society since the Empire State Building was brand new. But on the other, the movie encouraged viewers’ pleasure and sympathy with King Kong, as a doomed creature venting its rage and frustrations at a troubled society with severe economic and political problems.

Global Phenomenon

A huge commercial success in every country it has played, “King Kong” was the most popular movie of 1933, grossing in the U.S. alone over $5 million in domestic rentals, which is equivalent to over $100 million today.

[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
December 3rd, 2005 03:44 AM
Ten Thousand Motels This gorilla of a film is blockbuster of the year
by BAZ BAMIGBOYE, Daily Mail

2nd December 2005
King Kong: The film stars Naomi Watts

Just over a year ago, Oscar-winning film-maker Peter Jackson stood on the mammoth Skull Island set he had built on a peninsula in New Zealand and told me why he loved King Kong.

Speaking about Merian Cooper's classic 1933 movie, Jackson said: "The original Kong is a wonderful blend - probably the most perfect blend - of escapism and adventure, mystery and romance. It does everything an escapist movie should do: it takes you places you are never going to see and gives you experiences you are never going to have."

Jackson's words came back to me as I sat in the back row at the Loews Cinema complex on New York's West 68th Street this week, watching the first screening of his new version of Kong.

The very next morning, Jackson started creating stop-motion films using Plasticine.

This time round, the director had some much bigger toys - 21st-century humdingers - to play with.

And he has made a picture I can only describe as jaw-droppingly brilliant: the most entertaining blockbuster movie this year.

But all this monkey business wouldn't amount to a hill of beans if the movie didn't have a heart, and boy, does it.

Kong's the last of his race. He has withdrawn into himself, and the occasional sacrificial native (he plays with them for a while and then tosses them away like chicken wings) is merely a distraction from the pain of his lonely life.

Then along comes beauty, in the shape of Ann Darrow, a Depression-era vaudeville performer living on the breadline, who lands a role in a madcap director's fantasy feature.

Ann, as played by Naomi Watts, is pretty weary herself. And somehow, the great ape and the lovely, lost woman recognise they are kindred spirits under the skin. Or, in his case, fur.

There's a beautiful moment with Kong sitting on top of a mountain, Ann in the palm of his hand, both watching the sunset. I actually heard one tough broad of a movie executive sobbing. Jackson evokes such a sense of empathy for his beast that Kleenex should be sold along with the popcorn.

King Kong truly is an 8,000lb gorilla of a movie. I'm still marvelling at a scene where a herd of brachiosaurus stampede as they are pursued by predators with teeth the size of carving knives.

Then, just when you think such a sequence can't be topped, Kong pounds to rescue his damsel in distress when some hungry velociraptors mistake her for a snack.

An almighty battle ensues and it's at this point Kong goes from super monster to super hero in Ann's eyes.

Jack Black, who plays preening, self-promoting movie maker Carl Denham, told me that, in the original movie, his character was older and more of a "kick-ass action hero".

"This Denham is darker," he says.

"He has an obsession with accomplishment. He's got insecurities and has this fear of not accomplishing something great before he dies.

"Fran Walsh [Jackson's life partner] told me my Denham has to have a little bit of Willy Loman from Death Of A Salesman to him. There's fear and arousal on my part. Certainly that's what Denham is feeling when he captures Kong on Skull Island."

Jack tells me all children - "at least all boys" - love King Kong.

"He is the king of all the monsters, even better than Godzilla. Kong is stronger and smarter than Godzilla, who's just a stupid, slimy lizard."

He was referring to the original Kong and the gormless 1976 remake with Jessica Lange.

But I think Jackson's version, which he wrote with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens (the trio also adapted The Lord Of The Rings for the screen), is accessible to all.

I don't know what the rating in the UK will be for the film - which also features Jamie Bell, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Kyle Chandler and Colin Hanks - when it opens in the UK on December 15. (It will have its London gala next Thursday, December 8.) But it might be a bit much for tiny tots.

As I write this, I'm getting shivers thinking of the moment when Andy Serkis - who plays a double role, but more of that later, as they say - encounters a giant insect that extends itself horribly and slurps him down head first.

It terrified me, but then I'm the guy who, years ago, ran from a Manhattan apartment I'd rented because there were cockroaches in the oven. Forget roaches - the bugs in this movie are the size of Agas.

Serkis was at the screening, along with most of the cast. The Londonbased actor told me the final version had only been wrapped up this Monday.

Andy's two roles are that of ship's cook (his speciality is porridge al la walnuts) - and Kong.

He went to Rwanda for a few weeks to study the gorillas - in particular, to observe how they moved and communicated with each other.

Jackson had Andy act out Kong's role and then digitalised it, using the same technique employed with Gollum in the Lord Of The Rings films. Richard Taylor, Jackson's long-time technical collaborator, explained: "Today, as an audience, we crave an emotional relationship, so we used Andy to drive Kong. To make him convey the toughness of this giant silverback, but also to give a sense of empathy.

"In Lord Of The Rings, we used an orange ball to denote something the actors would be acting to, and we added the special effects later. Here, we used Andy or a series of sculptures of Kong's face."

The Kong busts took a long time to make. Just punching in the 40,000 yak hairs took three-andahalf weeks for each one.

Monday will be the world premiere of King Kong, with cinemas around New York's Times Square showing the movie.

Some critics will carp about its length - three hours - but for me, the time sped by.

Jackson opens his movie with Al Jolson singing I'm Sitting On Top Of The World. And that's where the director is - with the competition far, far below.

December 3rd, 2005 04:15 AM
the good I have always hated King Kong. No way he would have killed T rex!!!!! The most amazing predator to ever walk the face of the earth !!
December 3rd, 2005 04:55 AM
Monkeytonk-man Is it just me or does this film local a load of shite?
December 3rd, 2005 05:06 AM
the good One of Hitler's favorite movies...
December 3rd, 2005 07:44 AM
corgi37 Naomi Watts is fucking gorgeous! Normally, i would say she lived in Oz near me and i met her and all that.

But she is too lovely to bullshit about.
December 3rd, 2005 07:53 AM
Voodoo Scrounge King Kong looks like its a right load of shit
December 3rd, 2005 12:46 PM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:
corgi37 wrote:
Naomi Watts is fucking gorgeous!



December 3rd, 2005 03:06 PM
Steamboat Bill, Jr. I just bought the Best Buy exclusive version of the original King Kong, a large box set with a two-disc version of the movie in a beautiful tin, along with Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young.
December 3rd, 2005 06:04 PM
Dan i scored a VHS of "The Most Dangerous Game" in a bargain bin somewhere a few years ago. A lot of the same people and sets were involved. Great movie, also quoted by the Zodiac Killer in some of his letters.
December 3rd, 2005 06:34 PM
exile As long as Kong dosent say goodbye to everyone for 40 minutes, Im cool with it.
December 4th, 2005 03:19 PM
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
quote:
i scored a VHS of "The Most Dangerous Game" in a bargain bin somewhere a few years ago. A lot of the same people and sets were involved. Great movie, also quoted by the Zodiac Killer in some of his letters.

Great little film. There's a quality DVD version available from the good folks at the Criterion Collection.
December 4th, 2005 03:53 PM
Joey
I seriously thought this thread was about one of my shits !

Oh , OH !!!!!!


**** KING ***** END TRANSMISSION ***** KONG *****



[Edited by Joey]
December 5th, 2005 08:38 AM
Ten Thousand Motels The Times December 05, 2005

Film: King Kong
Kevin Maher

YOU’RE Peter Jackson. Your previous movie, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, scooped 11 Oscars. Your international box office tally is up there somewhere round the $3 billion mark.

So what do you do next? A low-budget ghost story? A Rings spin-off? No, you plough more than $200 million , including a hefty chunk of your own fortune, into a three-hour remake of a camp 1933 classic with B-list actors, a bucket-load of computer effects, and a giant gorilla. That Jackson’s King Kong upgrades the now hammy original with wit, heart and humour is a pleasant surprise. That it does so by reinventing the action blockbuster, in form and emotional impact, is nothing less than an act of cinematic alchemy.

The opening sequence sets the tone — a montage of Depression New York that skips from impeccably realised CG cityscapes to portraits of the homeless and the dispossessed. It’s here that we find our heroine, the actress-waif Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts).

Darrow is doomed. “Every time you reach out for something you care about,” observes an acquaintance, “fate comes along and snatches it away.” She joins the Pacific Ocean expedition of adventure movie director Carl Denham (Jack Black) because of an interest in the work of playwright and fellow passenger Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody).

Driscoll, Denham and the rest of the voyagers on board the SS Venture (destination: Skull Island) are drawn with equally quirky brush-strokes. The narrative pacing, especially in these early scenes, seems leisurely — 55 minutes elapse before we catch a glimpse of the island. For a three-hour movie this could seem like padding, yet these scenes are simply a measured intake of air before one of the greatest dizzying sprints in cinema history.

Once we hit Skull Island everything changes. Jackson picks up his own movie and spins it wildly into a visceral frenzy of hyperkinetic action — one that simply refuses to stop. There are killer zombies, gunfights, random executions, and human sacrifices aplenty.

Then Kong appears, snatches Darrow, and he’s gone. Brontosauri stampede, then raptors attack, then giant insects, then giant slugs. And still Jackson refuses to pause, even for a second. Some of the scenes are grisly and dark, but they’re gone in a flash. Some of the effects are slightly ropey, but you don’t care. There are more dinosaurs. Three T. Rexes versus Kong, with Darrow in the middle. Then giant bats, then more guns, and more chasing, all the way back to New York, to the Empire State Building and to a morbid appointment with destiny.

Of course, the real star here is Kong. This Kong is a breathtaking testament to the power of cutting edge hyper-realism. Yet the real genius here is not in the realisation of Kong’s loping walk or expressive features but in his simple scripted character. Like Darrow, he is an outsider in his own environment.

What Kong craves from Darrow is not a chance to see her naked, but simple human companionship. So the queasy racial and sexual subtext (Kong as the libidinous native) that plagues the original and all subsequent Kong tales is eradicated. What we are left with is an outstanding film imbued with childlike wonder, both at the mysteries of human intimacy and at the seemingly limitless possibilities of the medium.
King Kong is due in British cinemas on December 15


[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
December 5th, 2005 08:40 AM
Jumacfly I hate when Kong dies in NYC...very sad scene.
December 5th, 2005 01:05 PM
Monkey Woman 'Twas beauty killed the beast -- and Peter Jackson killed disbelief dead.

http://img-tbhl.theonering.net/news/kingkongcomic.jpg
December 5th, 2005 01:10 PM
Ten Thousand Motels Remakes of classics are hard to pull off. The original King Kong was made right around the time that sound was just being added to movies. The world was a much different place in 1933. I think we tend to forget awfully easily that recorded music and film have only existed for less than 100 years. We're still techno-babies, haven't even reached toddler stage yet. It's too easy to grow cynical too quickly. I don't know if I'll like this movie or not, I hated that Jeff Bridges/Jessica Lange one. I don't know if this director is just ballsy or blindly arrogant.
December 5th, 2005 03:39 PM
Steamboat Bill, Jr. I don't like that Kevin Maher guy's condescending attitude toward the original.
December 5th, 2005 04:40 PM
Scottfree
quote:
the good wrote:
I have always hated King Kong. No way he would have killed T rex!!!!! The most amazing predator to ever walk the face of the earth !!



Besides Godzilla of course....
December 6th, 2005 05:31 AM
corgi37 I actually quite like the 76 version. Thought it was good for its day.
December 6th, 2005 06:06 AM
Jumacfly
quote:
corgi37 wrote:
I actually quite like the 76 version. Thought it was good for its day.


the one with Ronnie on guitar??
December 6th, 2005 09:24 AM
Joey
quote:
Jumacfly wrote:

the one with Ronnie on guitar??




Funny !

That's what my little friends and myself running around the Plains of Nebraska with knickers on and stick ball bats in our hands used to call "Postin'!"

You're POSTIN' baby!

The Joey - As seen on the reality show "That's Postin'!", 10:00 PM CDT Sundays.



December 6th, 2005 10:38 AM
Ten Thousand Motels KING KONG TO CHALLENGE ALL-TIME BOXOFFICE CHAMP
Drudge Dec 6,2005

$1,845,034,000 worldwide and $600,788,188 are the all-time boxoffice records for a single movie, TITANIC, first released on December 19, 1997.

Now roars along another December blockbuster, KING KONG, a film many top Hollywood executives predict will break the record!

The movie opens wide as Victoria Lake next Wednesday, but recent screenings by UNIVERSAL have left the audience cheering and sobbing.

"Grown men around me were crying," says one Hollywood insider.

"Yes, I think this will do TITANIC numbers. It is going to be a huge movie."

Complaints the Peter Jackson movie starts slow and is too long [more than 3 hours] will fill critics' columns.

"The human relationships are s**t ... the dialogue is piss poor and there is a scene of Jamie Bell shooting gigantic bugs off of Adrian Brody with a tommy gun ... those are the bad parts," says a Hollywood reporter. "But.... the scenes between Kong and Naomi Watts tug at the heart strings big time. And the final scene was just great! There were one too many longing looks between the ape and Watts ... but the audience around me ate it up."


[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
December 6th, 2005 10:40 AM
Jumacfly
quote:
Joey wrote:



Funny !

That's what my little friends and myself running around the Plains of Nebraska with knickers on and stick ball bats in our hands used to call "Postin'!"

You're POSTIN' baby!

The Joey - As seen on the reality show "That's Postin'!", 10:00 PM CDT Sundays.







you got your own reality show Joey??
Im so impressed ...and jealous!

"this guy is a A+ poster Ronnie" !!
December 6th, 2005 10:54 AM
Ten Thousand Motels Premiere in New York.

http://movies.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1066893.php/In_Photos_Premiere_of_King_Kong_in_New_York
December 7th, 2005 03:52 AM
Ten Thousand Motels Exclusive Interview: Naomi Watts
"King Kong"
Monday, December 5th 2005 1:19AM
Author: Paul Fischer
Location: New York, NY


Thirteen years after they first met in Australia, Naomi Watts has finally fulfilled the dream she was idealistically pursuing back then. Now, in the city that never sleeps, Watts talks frankly to Paul Fischer about why she loves to act, working with a massive gorilla and her personal hopes for a slowed-down Hollywood career.

Naomi Watts looks radiant, even at the end of another gruelling day of press interviews. Beautifully attired in a Calvin Klein-designed winter white, flowing tent-like dress with no waist and Chloe beige, short leather jacket, Watts is perching on a couch in a New York hotel room, probably glad the day is almost over. Chatting to the 37-year Australian, it is hard to believe that my first interview with the actress- conducted in a Sydney coffee shop 13 years ago - was with a complete unknown.

As we reminisce, Watts agrees that "There I was in that café chasing a dream but it was never this big." While here she is being feted and courted by the world's media as the female lead of Peter Jackson's monolithic King Kong, that reality is far removed, she says, from the more naïve dreams she held onto as a young actress who first appeared substantially on screen in Flirting, before garnering strong reviews for the Australian TV miniseries Brides of Christ. "I always just wanted to work and certainly didn't know that the dream would continue outside of Australia, let alone, be in this giant movie."

Attaining success and critical acclaim with Mulholland Drive, it's been full steam ahead for the British-born Aussie, who has elected to work on Indie projects, rather than big-time Hollywood fare, The Ring notwithstanding. Yet she says had it not been for Peter Jackson, she would have been less likely to take on the role of Ann Darrow, the 1930s would-be starlet who forges an unlikely bond with the gargantuan Kong. "I don't think I could have just signed on had it not have been someone like Peter as I would have been concerned that it would have just been too much of an action movie and a damsel in distress. But when I first heard about it, and I heard that Peter was doing it, I thought, 'Wow, that's interesting. This is the guy who is pretty much the front runner in terms of the effects world as well as the man who made Heavenly Creatures, which was such a beautifully complicated movie about very emotional stuff.' So then I went and met with him as well as Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyens, heard them speak about it, that it was the legendary King Kong but with a number of great new ideas and how they definitely wanted to change the female role into something much more than just a screaming beauty."

Watts, who spent several months in New Zealand shooting the film, said that it was ultimately it was "a very cool" experience and she has no regrets taking this on. "I'm thrilled with the way it's all turned out. It was a very different movie for me and certainly not one that I would have imagined myself in but the very fact that I've never done anything like this made me curious and what better person to do it with than Peter Jackson," With the film's success an inevitability, Watts admits that her initial reluctance taking this on was the real possibility of being permanently associated with the role, as was her first predecessor, Fay Wray. "One of my fears in the beginning of taking on the part was that this is such an iconic movie and iconic part, so how do you survive those comparisons that are naturally going to be drawn? But then I also thoughts, 'Well, I have done quite a bit of work beforehand. Maybe it won't be just this one role that people will think of me as.' I'll continue to do lots of other diverse work as well but this was different for me and it was fun. It's an adventurous film with all kinds of other elements from romance to great humour."

Over 30 films later, Watts has reached the pinnacle of her career, and derives real passion for her acting. Peter Jackson cast her in Kong because he believes she is an actress who is very real, he said in a recent interview. Watts insists that there has to be more to acting than the ideal of movie stardom. "You know, you'd better know why you're here as an actor, because if you're reaching for fame and fortune then you're nothing more than whores and thieves." The actress says that's NOT why she's here. "I'm here to work out my shit, what my problems are and know who I am, so by cracking open these characters perhaps that shines a light on it a little bit better." After 13 years, one wonders whether she has achieved what she has been looking for beneath the often intense women she has played over the years. "No because the search and journey continue. After all, who can say declaratively 'I know myself'. I mean, of course I know myself better but the journey and search continue because hopefully we're evolving and growing all the time."

While there have been times that Naomi was ready to give up her dream, she remains surprised that she is in a New York hotel room talking about the biggest film of her career, but also laughs at the outcome of that fulfilment of her dreams. "It surprises me that it's ended up this way, and I mean it's fantastic. All that struggle paid off and then you have all this great fulfilment of all the things that you've been working hard for suddenly becoming realised." Yet ironically, once afraid of the dream ending, she now finds herself craving less work and more time for herself. "I do feel now like it's not that I want to give up, but I do feel I've made so much room in my life for this - and it has fulfilled me in many ways and now I want to make room in my life for other things," admitting that she would love to start a family. Watts, who has remained fiercely private, admits that her private life "has suffered properly, And so that's sort of what makes me clear about what I need."

Watts has just one other film due for release next year, a marked contrast to Kong, as she stars in a film version of W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil, which she filmed in China, opposite Liev Schreiber and Edward Norton. "Liev plays my lover - the other. I have a husband and a lover; It's one of those," she says, laughingly. "We filmed in Beijing, Shanghai and then down to the rural part of China and it was wonderful because you've got the great role, the great writing and all the great elements of the film juxtaposed with this fabulous setting, a wonderful culture and you're seeing things that you've never seen before almost on a daily basis. It just made the whole experience so rich, fulfilling and an adventure."

Watts says this kind of experience, as well as King Kong, reminds her of why she loves to act, the chance, she says, to immerse herself in another world. "I mean it's weird because the thing that I love about acting is the fact that I can help people feel things, know themselves or feel less alone. It's my form of expression, in the same way that someone might paint a picture or sing a song in that you're hoping that it moves somebody outside of their own way of thinking."

While Naomi divides her time between New York and Los Angeles, she remains very much the Australian girl I first stumbled across over a decade ago, and she says that 'Australianness' keeps her in check, not to mention her constant flow of Australian friends and family members who ensure she's not taking all of this to seriously. "That's why people are like: You have so many Australians around you as if we're some type of cult or something. And, um... and the answer to that is because they tell the truth, that's who we are. You know, even it hurts my Aussie friends tell the truth and they kick me up the butt if I'm behaving strangely or if I'm starting to believe these other people around that kiss your ass too much."
December 7th, 2005 04:07 AM
Ten Thousand Motels Interview: Peter Jackson
"King Kong"
Posted: Monday, December 5th 2005 1:19AM
Author: Paul Fischer
Location: New York, NY


New Zealand's Oscar winning Peter Jackson first fell in love with the 1933 King Kong when he was a mere 9 years old. Now, a few decades later and the gargantuan success of Lord of the Rings behind him, Jackson has fulfilled his life long ambition by bringing the mighty Kong to the screen as only this director can. Looking far more svelte than the last time we met and surprisingly more subdued, Paul Fischer caught up with the director in New York.

Question: As an auteur, how do you keep your vision pure when you're known for these large spectacles?

Jackson: Well, it's an interesting question. I don't quite know what an auteur is. I've never quite understood that term because filmmaking is such a huge team effort. I regard myself as being the final filter so everything that ends up in the movie is there because it's something that I think was cool if I saw the film that somebody else made. I'm very much trying to make the film that I'd enjoy but I'm open to ideas and I need a huge team of people to help me. Everybody contributes and I try to encourage people to contribute as much as possible, so I think that the job of a director really is to sort of funnel all the creativity into one centralized point of being. And the marketing is sort of something that really happens with other people and not something that I'm at all an expert in and I regard my job at the end of the day as to make the best possible film I can. And that's really where my job stops and marketing people take over after that.

Question: We all know about your weight loss. How is your life now as a filmmaker and a person different with this new body?

Jackson: I'm exhausted and just absolutely tired. I felt fit for a while but then the film has been such a gruelling marathon to do. We literally finished the movie about ten minutes before we got on an airplane to come over here. We were leaving, we were flying out of New Zealand at 9:30 in the morning and at nine o'clock I was at the visual effects house approving the last two or three shots in the movie. Then at 9:15 we dropped by the dub stage to look at a couple of changes that we had made to the dubbing and approve them and then we got on the plane. So I haven't enjoyed being healthy yet, am absolutely shattered and I haven't really had a life. I've been making movies for about 10 years solid now with the Lord of the Rings films and straight on to Kong and I'm very pleased that we did that because we were able to utilize a great creative team that we'd assembled for the Lord of the Rings films. One of the reasons why I wanted to make Kong very quickly when the opportunity to do Kong came up, was because I wanted to keep this team together and be able to just channel that creativity into another project. We were in a situation, people didn't really know it at the time because you obviously don't talk about it, but when we flew over to Los Angeles for the Oscars for Return of the King, we were in a Kong production meeting the following day. We had a Universal script meeting the day after the Oscars and the day after that, I got on a plane and flew to New York and met with Fay Wray. We got a tour up the top of the Empire State Building and we were taking photos and videotaping the top of the Empire State Building for building our sets. We were already in the middle of doing Kong, so it's been sort of a continuous journey for me the last few years.

Question: How did you decide what to keep and cut from the original?

Jackson: It's a good question and really just sort of instinct to some degree. It doesn't reflect a right and a wrong way of doing anything obviously because every filmmaker that would make a version of King Kong would do a completely different film. I've just wanted to make this movie for a long, long time and I've had images and ideas in my head for years and years and years. To me, it wasn't a particularly difficult situation to figure out what should be in and out. I just really wanted to play down a movie in my head that is the sort of film that I enjoy. And there are actually a few scenes we shot, like we shot a version of the [scene] in the original film where they cross the swamp and they're attacked by a creature. We actually shot that scene and it didn't end up in the cut. Even though the movie is three hours long, there are quite a few scenes that we filmed that didn't make it into the finished movie. So some of those things that you're missing from the original film, I guess if we did an extended DVD which hopefully we'll get a chance to do, you might see them popping up again.

Question: Why the passion for King Kong in particular and its inspiration for you as a filmmaker?

Jackson: Well, it did inspire me to become a filmmaker, absolutely, to such a profound effect that I saw the original Kong on TV when I was nine on a Friday night in New Zealand. That weekend, I grabbed some plasticine and I made a brontosaurus and I got my parents' super eight home movie camera and started to try to animate the plasticine dinosaur. So really it was a moment in time when I just wanted to do special effects and do monsters and creatures and ultimately led to becoming a filmmaker. I didn't really know what directing was when I was nine, but more about the monsters at that stage. The original Kong to me is just a wonderful piece of escapist entertainment. It has everything that's kind of really cool about movies, such as a lost remote island and a giant ape and dinosaurs. It also has this wonderful heart and soul with this empathetic creature who when I was nine, made me cry at the end of the movie when he was killed on the Empire State Building. That moment of shedding tears for him has stayed with me and to me that level of emotional engagement and just pure escapism as well. People go to the movies for different reasons. Everybody has different takes but for me that's a great piece of escapist entertainment, the original King Kong.

Question: Why did you go with James Newton Howard's score and where's the scene on the beach from the teaser?

Jackson: Well, Howard Shore was an original choice as composer but we're very good friends and it just came to a point where it seemed like our sensibilities for the film were somewhat different. So we decided as friends that it was better not to go down that road any more for this film. James Newton Howard was a composer that we've obviously admired for a long, long time and we'd used some elements of his earlier scores in some temp tracks that we'd done, and his sensibility and feeling for the music seemed to relate really well to the pictures that we'd shot. What was also fun with the music was finding a little opportunity to pay homage to Max Steiner. We used some of his original score in the New York show where Kong is put on display on stage, so that was a nice way to keep an homage and a sort of compartmentalized way. The scene on the beach was a scene, it was like I was saying before. There are a lot of scenes that we shot that didn't make it into the movie. The movie's three hours long. It would probably be if we included everything that we shot, it would be near four hours long. That was a scene that we had filmed and had obviously been used as an important part of the teaser trailer, but subsequently when we were dealing with this big length of film, we started to refine it and started to look at it and trim it down as you do. Again, there are no real rules about what you do. It's just you just use your instincts as to the pacing of a film and what is repetitive and what is the minimum amount you can get away with to tell the story. That scene didn't make it in.

Question: What was the balance of making Kong human versus an animal?

Jackson: Obviously, as a filmmaker, you are going to manipulate the character as you need to make the scenes work. I certainly don't deny that, but we did set out to base him on a real gorilla as much as we possibly could. We thought at the very beginning, what is Kong? What is he? Is he a monster? Is he some sort of a missing link or an aberration? We thought just making him a gorilla, a silverback as genuine as we possibly could would be a really good way to go. Everybody thinks of him as being a gorilla anyway although various versions of Kong have been a little different. So we studied Silverback gorillas. Andy Serkis who obviously did a lot of the performance of Kong for us, he especially studied gorillas in the mountains and he went up and tracked a group of them in the Rwandan mountains for a couple of weeks and he spent a lot of time at the zoo studying their behaviour. So everything in the movie is based on some form or another on what a Silverback gorilla would do. But obviously with a little bit of cheating and manipulation on the behalf of the filmmakers. But it was interesting because we found that with silverback gorillas, a lot of character or personality is expressed through simplicity. And I think that probably studying gorillas so much, if it had any profound effect on us, it would be in simplifying his characterization and making him less emotive. They're very- - they don't really give away a lot, gorillas. It's all to do with eye contact and whether they're looking at you or turning away and how their body language is. There's not a lot of expression on their faces, so we tried to rein it in. We tried to pull it back as much as we possibly could. It's interesting. One of the interesting things that I found in telling the story, it's something I've been thinking about in the last few months as we've been doing the animation and kind of refining Kong is the fact that I also didn't want to fall into the trap of making him too cute and making his behaviour too cute. The point in the story where we want an audience to start to empathize with Kong, I didn't want to stop him being dangerous. I didn't want to stop him at that point being a wild creature who can kill characters that we've gotten to know in the story. So it was interesting the balance of wanting people to empathize for him but also keeping that edge to his character, making him unpredictable and always a wild animal at heart.

Question: What was most important to you in adapting the material?

Jackson: Well, I think what was most important was to have people be able to connect with Kong, both in the way that he is portrayed in his performance, his character and also just technically to make him believable. I knew going into this that the movie was ultimately going to live or die on whether you believed in Kong and whether your suspension of disbelief - - because all movies are a suspension of disbelief and you hope that people will engage in the film on some level and be prepared to go along for the ride. The biggest concern that I had in terms of the film completely failing would be if Kong wasn't believable, if you didn't connect with him. It was a difficult thing to pull off. It was much more difficult than the Gollum character that we did on Lord of the Rings. Gollum talked the whole time, so much of his character and so much of his role in the story and what he was able to be presented with his dialogue. And you got to know him a lot through what he said and yet Kong is completely mute. He has so much screen time and so many close-ups as a character. He's not only mute but we deliberately reined him in and didn't want him to express very much most of the time. So I think that was the biggest challenge, the thing that we were most scared about.

Question: Talk about working with working with Naomi and getting the performance out of her with Kong not really there?

Jackson: Well, Naomi was our first and only choice for the role of Anne. I think we responded to her because she's so honest as an actor. She doesn't pretend in the films that she does. She makes it as believable as possible. She's one of those actors that if she's shedding tears in a scene, it's because she's thinking of something that makes her cry. She's really in the moment and I don't know what it is, how she does that but she's utterly believable which obviously for this particular role in this particular movie was essential for us. Naomi was also hugely helped by Andy Serkis. I think people would obviously think of Andy being the guy who does the motion capture for Kong which he does. And he's in a suit and he acts out the role and we did all the motion capture of the character with Andy and then that was put into the animation and into the performance. But for me, as the filmmaker, possibly one of Andy's greatest contributions was actually being on set with the actors when they originally shot the scenes. Now none of that was recorded for Andy. He wasn't captured on set. That was done in post production. He wasn't even filmed. It was like Andy was just there for the other actors. And every single shot in the movie, and I don't think there's an exception, I really don't, every close-up of Naomi when she's looking at Kong, she's actually looking at Andy. Andy would get himself into her eye line so that whenever she looked at Kong's face, that would be where Andy was which was in a cherry picker, up a ladder or suspended on something. He was always there and he was acting his heart out as Kong. I think that was hugely beneficial for Naomi obviously and the other actors. And it was also great for me because it was the beginning of us creating Kong as a character too. I was able to talk to Andy when we were doing those scenes. It wasn't just Naomi and me. It was Naomi, Andy and me. It was the three of us that we were able to rehearse the scene and block the scene and talk about how Kong would be behaving. And it was the beginning of the creation of that character that would then take it through the motion capture and into the animation and finally into the film. So it was a hue contribution, more than what people would imagine from Andy.

Question: Is the Bad Taste/Dead Alive type of filmmaker still inside you?

Jackson: Oh, absolutely. I hope one day that I'll get to make another low budget horror film. I'd love to. And I certainly feel in a way now that I just want to rest and recuperate from this last 10 years of filmmaking and be able to do some more interesting things, other low budget ideas and horror movies and other types of films. It's kind of weird but it's only just recently that I've realized that for the last 10 years, I've just had two projects. I've had The Lord of the Rings and King Kong because we were originally trying to make King Kong after The Frighteners. So that was back in 1995 into 96 and then that got canned and we went into Lord of the Rings and then we went back to King Kong again. So I've had two projects in the last 10 years so it's an exciting time to be able to rest up and recover a little bit now and just think of other ideas, think of things beyond those two projects.

Question: You're still producing Halo?

Jackson: Yeah.

Question: What attracted you to Halo?

Jackson: I'm a fan of the game.

Question: But video game movies suck.

Jackson: They do.

Question: So what will be different?

Jackson: Hopefully it won't suck.

Question: But why not direct?

Jackson: I want a break. I want to have the fun but not the hard work. I just want to be part of the creative team but not actually have the pain.

Question: Is there a director?

Jackson: Not yet, no. We're talking to some people but we're going to be shooting that next year.

Question: Should we plan an Oscar party?

Jackson: I don't think so. I don't think these are the types of films that get Oscar attention. That was never the intention with Kong. I don't necessarily think that will be the case.

Question: Are you doing Lovely Bones?

Jackson: Yeah, that's the plan.

Question: Have you started thinking cast?

Jackson: No, no. I'm just going to have a break first and then we'll do the script to that.

Question: Any special features on the DVD?

Jackson: Well, I think there's a two disc one coming out for sure and then if there's an extended one, it'll probably be three or four discs if they do that.

Question: Are you surprised with the positive reaction to the Halo script?

Jackson: Well, I'm pleased, yeah. You never know what to expect.

Question: How did you lose the weight, special diet?

Jackson: No, it was just cutting out junk food.
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