MoviesOnline.ca - The Waterhorse Cast & Crew Interview (2007)
MoviesOnline.ca
December 2007
By Sheila Roberts
MoviesOnline sat down recently with director Jay Russell and actors Alex Etel and Ben Chaplin to talk about their new movie, "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep,” about a young Scottish boy, Angus (Etel), who finds an enchanted egg. Taking it home, he soon finds himself face-to-face with an amazing creature: the mythical "water horse" of Scottish lore. Angus begins a journey of discovery, facing his greatest fears and risking his life to protect a secret that would give birth to a legend.
"I was really excited by the chance to show Angus’s friendship with Crusoe,” says Alex Etel. The young actor, acclaimed for his starring role in Danny Boyle’s "Millions,” plays the boy who finds Crusoe and raises the magical creature from birth to adulthood over the course of a few weeks. For Russell, that relationship parallels an important aspect of Angus’s life. "The relationship between Angus and the Water Horse is of great importance, because as the creature grows, it really becomes a quite beautiful metaphor for the relationship Angus once had with his father,” notes the director. "Crusoe helps him grow from a young child towards maturity. That’s the simplicity of this story; it’s just a wonderful way to tell the story of a child growing up and accepting the realities of life.”
Ben Chaplin plays Lewis Mowbray, the handyman for Angus’s mother and one of the most secretive and enigmatic characters in the film. As an accomplished stage actor, Chaplin was nominated for a 2004 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for "The Retreat from Moscow.” In Great Britain, he received an Olivier Award nomination for Best Supporting Performer in the Donmar Warehouse production of Tennessee Williams’ "The Glass Menagerie.” He has also appeared in productions at both the National Theatre and The Royal Court in London.
Following early roles in "The Remains of the Day” and TV’s "The Return of the Borrowers,” "A Few Short Journeys of the Heart” and "Resort to Murder,” Chaplin was cast as Matthew Malone in the popular British series "Game On!” Next, he was offered the starring role opposite Uma Thurman in "The Truth About Cats and Dogs,” which Chaplin soon followed by leading roles in Agnieszka Holland’s "Washington Square” and Terrence Malick’s "The Thin Red Line.” In 2005, he reunited with Malick for "The New World” and was most recently seen opposite Sally Field in "Two Weeks.”
Jay Russell’s most recent features were "Ladder 49” and the highly acclaimed "Tuck Everlasting,” based on the magical, award-winning book by Natalie Babbitt and starring Academy Award winners Sir Ben Kingsley, Sissy Spacek, and William Hurt. In 2000, Russell directed and executive produced the critically acclaimed hit family film, "My Dog Skip,” based on Willie Morris’ best-selling memoirs starring Kevin Bacon, Frankie Muniz, Luke Wilson and Diane Lane.
"I look for stories that say something about the human spirit,” says Russell. "I’m fascinated by our place on earth and all the other creatures that share it with us and how each affects the lives of the other. Because this tale taps into the universal themes of magic and friendship, it applies to anyone of any age. It really is a film for everyone: it is for kids on one level, for their parents on another, and for their grandparents on yet another.”
To bring this very special animal to life, the filmmakers called upon the visual-effects wizards at Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, who previously created the effects for "The Lord of the Rings,” "The Chronicles of Narnia,” and "King Kong.” "This is exactly the kind of movie we love making,” says Richard Taylor, workshop supervisor for Weta Workshop. "We get to develop a beautiful little creature like this, but the fact that it transforms over the length of the movie and grows ultimately to become the adult water horse gives a huge opportunity for design exploration for us. We were able to interact with Jay Russell and ultimately with our team to make some very special things for a really lovely film. It is not often a movie like this comes along in your career.”
Here’s what the director and cast had to tell us at the Los Angeles press conference:
Q: Alex, what was the hardest part of making this film: the swimming or the green screen work?
Alex Etel: The green screen work because it was weird trying to speak to a tennis ball on a stick.
Q: What did you do to make it believable for yourself?
Jay Russell: Before every shot we would talk about what the creature was doing and how it would react and behave off Alex so it wasn’t just a one-way street. That gave Alex things to do and we also talked about how this creature would behave as a real, live animal. If you reach too fast, it will snap at you. I was always reminding him that this thing is an animal and it’s not gonna behave as a human does. If you reach to pet a dog, it might snap at you. That’s what I recall of some of the ways we tried to make it believable.
Alex Etel: When it was the puppet, I tried to picture it with wrinkles. You just try to picture an image of the creature in your head instead of the tennis ball.
Ben Chaplin: It’s very childlike in a way, you’re playing unadulterated make believe. The tennis ball is no more than an eye line and the rest of it is in your head. It’s something you do as a kid all the time, but when you do it as a kid you don’t tend to have a film crew around you. So you struggle with the self conscious feeling of that, but that’s a good thing as an actor, to struggle with that and get over it. That’s the basic struggle of being an actor – don’t be self conscious, be relaxed. It becomes its own little performance art form in a way.
Q: Was it easier when he was the size of a puppy rather than the size of a house?
Alex Etel: It was easier when it was younger because it was the puppet and that was easier to react to because it was moved by the puppeteer. But I don’t think it ever gets easy to react to a tennis ball. It’s never easy. It gets more and more natural but it’s never really easy
Q: Do you have a pet that’s your best friend?
Alex Etel: I have a hamster but I can’t imagine it being my best friend because it’s always trying to escape from the cage. So I don’t really know if it could be my best friend, but I like having pets and things
Q: You had to learn to swim for this too, didn’t you?
Alex Etel: Yeah, I wasn’t really a strong swimmer before.
Jay Russell: He swam like a piece of wood when he started. They described you as a floater.
[Laughter]
Alex Etel: The last question Jay asked before he gave me the part was ‘Can you swim?’ which he really should have asked at the start. Augie (Davis), the head stunt man, taught me how to swim better and he helped me stay calm in the water.
Q: So you’re okay now?
Alex Etel: Yeah, I’m better.
Jay Russell: You told me you were a certified Scuba diver.
Alex Etel: Yeah I got my certificate in Greece this year.
Q: Did the fact that you couldn’t swim well help you with your character who can’t swim well either?
Alex Etel: Yeah. It did help quite a lot actually because you don’t feel stupid trying not to swim when you can. It was quite hard but it was alright.
Ben Chaplin: He was a trooper in that tank. It was pretty frightening in there sometimes.
Jay Russell: Yeah, it really was. There were certain occasions in the film where the storm is brewing and he’s out on the water horse and, in this tank that we had built especially for the movie, we had really large waves going out there with wind machines and driving rain. I used to run up to the edge of the pool every two minutes and say, ‘Alex, are you okay?’ because I was looking through the lens and it looked horrifying. It was nearly so in reality but I would always run and check with Alex. He’s the bravest kid I ever met. He’d always say, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, let’s do more.’ He did everything. He was above water in these giant waves and all that and he was underwater. Again, it’s something that hopefully you take for granted when you see the movie. I wouldn’t want you thinking about it, but if you do stop to think about it, in all of the underwater stuff, he really is underwater and he’s having to act while underwater and then when he finally just runs out of air, there would be somebody there to stick an air tube in his mouth. I was very nervous and tense through that whole part of shooting for this young man.
Q: Did you do any research on the history of the Loch Ness monster?
Alex Etel: You always hear stories about Nessie and then you see the pictures living in England but you never really think that much of it. But when I got over to New Zealand, Jay had put together a massive box of books and videos and stuff about it and when I was getting up at 5 in the morning with jet lag, I’d put a few of those on. You do start to believe in it more and more when you watch all the videos and things. So I think it would be quite cool to look into that.
Q: How often did you look at the final product to make sure you were getting the look of the creature right?
Jay Russell: This is one of those films that involves so much blue screen and creature work. We did as much of it in advance as we could. We pre-vised, pre-visualized, a great deal if not all of the effects sequences so that if there were moments that we didn’t feel were quite working, we would try to ID those in the pre-vis because it would be quite costly to go back and rebuild this big tank. We had to get it right the first time. So we kept going back to the pre-vis and looking at it over and over again and I thought that was a really helpful tool on this film.
Q: How does the finished film compare to what you imagined seeing on the set?
Alex Etel: it was weird because, apart from the pre-vis, you didn’t really see any proper pictures of it. I didn’t even know what sound it made. So when I went to see it for the first time, at the end of it I just sat there and went ‘Wow, that’s good.’ It was just a complete shock for me because it went from a tennis ball on a stick to that. It was amazing how they did it. Weta did an amazing job on it.
Ben Chaplin: What always amazes me, and not that I’ve done anything on this scale in terms of special effects, is that you feel slightly embarrassed about the fuss that you may have kicked up on set about what it’s going to look like. Because you’re putty in their hands, which with any good director you are actually, but more so with this. It’s a trust exercise and you’re doing responses that are based on something that’s not there. It’s a great relief when you don’t see anything that you’re ashamed of. You do sometimes see in films reactions that are totally disproportionate to the CGI action that occurs so that’s your greatest fear, but Alex and I were always careful to get on the same page so that we weren’t stitching each other up behind the other one’s back. [Laughter] While he’s playing abject terror, I’m just giving it a more gently raised eyebrow. [Laughs] That’s always my greatest fear. So what you do is you find ways of looking over your shoulder sort of surreptitiously checking out your co-stars. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Terror.’ ‘What are you doing?’ "Terror.’ I learned that on "The Thin Red Line” big time. [Laughter]
Q: Were you in school while you were in production?
Alex Etel: I was supposed to have school. I tried to do a lot of school but considering most of it was on the water, I was usually completely drenched all the time. It was hard to do school once I started that. I’m still catching up at the minute.
Q: What grade are you in now?
Alex Etel: I think it would be 7 or 8 over here.
Q: Do you plan to continue your education and go to college at some point or do you want to act?
Alex Etel: My mum has always said and I believe this, if it doesn’t go through and I don’t get into acting, I should always have something behind it and that’s what I’m going to do.
Q: Is there anything else that interests you?
Alex Etel: Football. Sports and things.
Q: Are you good at that?
Alex Etel: I’m alright.
Ben Chaplin: He’s from Manchester. He’s got a great tradition to uphold.
Q: The two of you seem to have really hit it off, what did you do to get to know one another better?
Ben Chaplin: On any film set there’s a lot of time when there’s not much to do. You’re trapped in one location and particularly on this, relatively remote locations. So you end up doing things like skimming stones for hours. Potatoes I remember were quite big—there’s a lot of stuff involving potatoes. There’s a scene where I use a potato to get Crusoe to swim out [in the lake] when we’re leaving him. There were a few potatoes on set so there were hours of fun.
Alex Etel: Yeah. Hours of fun with hood (?) filled potatoes!
Ben Chaplin: Alex was such a joy to be with.
Alex Etel: Oh cool!
Ben Chaplin: I have to say going into it that that was my biggest apprehension. You know the old cliché of never work with children or animals. The animal wasn’t real. Crusoe definitely was a diva, but Alex put us all to shame. He really did in terms of stamina, fortitude. his positive attitude, and he kept us all in line. We all felt like moaning divas in comparison. If he could handle it, then we had to. It went from one of the biggest fears to one of the happiest surprises of the film.
Q: Did you do any rehearsing to build that relationship?
Jay Russell: There was a bit of rehearsal. What I saw happening in real life off the set was the arc of their relationship in the film because the more they got to know each other, the more fun they started to have. The initial space that everyone has when you jump into a movie because we’re always strangers when we first get together and you hope it’s one of those experiences that as the project goes, you become closer and closer and I saw that with these two guys. Whether they know it or not, I observed it and saw them became closer and closer and I felt it worked for their relationship in the film as well.
Q: Does an actor with a theater background who is used to acting with a painted backdrop and things not always being there have an advantage when it comes to doing a film like this?
Ben Chaplin: I don’t know. In theory you should have. If you can act, then you can act. It doesn’t matter if it’s real or imaginary. But that’s a good point. I’ve never been somebody who’s fussy about eye lines, you know, everyone clearing the eye line. I’ve never been somebody who’s fussy about everything being real because of course it isn’t. There’s 50, 100 people watching you. There’s a big hunk of metal with a lens on it. I just think it’s really missing the point to make a fuss about it. Find your own reality within the chaos. I like people being in my eye line. It’s actually something specific to look at. If you register that it’s one of the crew, it’s not going to look like you’re looking at one of the crew on film. I’m a big fan of using what’s in front of me rather than working against it. I don’t know if a theater background helps that. More than the set being artificial, you’re used to an audience and I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be used to an audience even when there’s a camera. I don’t think that’s a bad thing to have a third eye. It shouldn’t be dominant, but it should be there. There’s always an eye. There is an audience and in this case it’s a camera.
Q: What attracted each of you to this project?
Jay Russell: The project came to me almost seven years ago originally. I had just finished My Dog Skip at that point and I felt that it was a natural extension for me, similar themes, similar philosophy to explore, a character’s relationship with an animal. I fell in love with it right away. Interestingly, because of technology, where it was then, where it is now, and the cost of that technology, it was a project that wasn’t gonna happen then and I’m just happy now that it didn’t because I could do so much more now with the advances and what Weta is able to do. For me, it was like ‘we’ll serve no wine until it’s time.’ Now was the time to make this movie so I’m happy I was able to convince enough people to help me make it. That was my feeling about it.
Alex Etel: Being my age, you go to the cinemas on rainy days, especially in England and I checked some of the cinema listings and there was absolutely nothing except for 15s and 18s. That attracted me to the film because it is a family film and any age can go see it. I wanted to make a film that anyone could go and see
Ben Chaplin: For me, it was the script. It was a quality screenplay. The fact that it was a family film was irrelevant. It was a genuinely good story with grown up themes, with challenging themes that are in any quality drama. I hadn’t read many family films in the few years I’ve been doing this. I wanted to be part of this straight away. I was lucky that I ended up in it.
Q: What did you take away from the experience?
Alex Etel: I took away more acting skills because people like Ben and Emily and David were all great to work with. They taught me a lot and I came away with a lot.
Q: What do you hope an audience will take away from the experience?
Alex Etel: Never let your imagination go. I hope they really like it and I hope they go and see it.
Ben Chaplin: I’m with him. That sounds great. I wish I’d thought of that in the junket earlier. Never let your imagination go. I said something like ‘Well, it’s to do with faith…’ [Laughs]
Q: Why make a period piece? Does it have something to do with what people don’t understand or have forgotten or the need to remind them about the sacrifices that were made then?
Jay Russell: This is the second film that I’ve made that’s set during World War II and particularly with children during World War II and I think it’s an interesting time for me as a filmmaker because war was very different then. I hope that when kids go and see this film that they’ll realize that it was very different then. Now war takes place on television and it’s this thing that happens over there and unless there’s someone next door to them, you might not be affected. In this war, everyone was affected on a daily basis even in this little place in Scotland. It was a time of sacrifice and war having a meaning. It takes lives.
Q: If there was a sequel, would it continue with Alex or jump ahead?
Jay Russell: (teasing) I wouldn’t want to do anything with Alex again! No, the ending says everything I wanted to say and makes a point about the circle of life. If there was another film made, I would hope it would be wildly different and modern would be good. The film I wanted to make, I feel I’ve done it.
Q: Is there a stigma to the family film label?
Jay Russell: I don’t mind it. In the old days, they called them general audience. Because of the story and the themes, this notion of family films has more to do with what the studios feel is marketable rather than what’s right for the film. I never think about what the rating is going to be. And I don’t believe in talking down to kids or being patronizing. Make a film and hopefully kids will enjoy it like their parents will.
Q: What’s next for you?
Ben Chaplin: I don’t know. I’m keeping my options open. I just finished a long run at the National Theatre in London.
Jay Russell: I saw it, it’s called The Reporter and it’s one of the best plays.
Ben Chaplin: I’d like to bring it here.
Alex Etel: I’ve just done a series for the BBC called Cranford. That’s coming out in the spring over here.
Q: What do you play?
Alex Etel: I play Harry Gregson. It was a different role for me. It’s a period drama and it’s got Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins in it.
Ben Chaplin: Two dames! Eileen played my mom on Broadway.
Q: Did you have any time to explore New Zealand?
Alex Etel: Apart from freezing every day, we did get a few days off.
Jay Russell: I wouldn’t let him do anything
Q: Like bungee jump?
Jay Russell: Right
Alex Etel: I took a jet ski ride, which I don’t think you knew about at the time. And I’m afraid of heights. I hate planes and stuff.
Q: Was the ending inspired by Free Willy?
Jay Russell: We thought of ways he could get through that net and jumping seemed like the way to go. The thing is always jumping in the movie, out of the bathtub, and that’s where we got the idea, from his own behavior, not from Free Willy. And he actually didn’t jump over but on top of it
Ben Chaplin: There’s nothing wrong with Free Willy, if you’re from England! Dick for free.
"The Water Horse” opens in theaters on December 25th.
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