OlderBrad & Cate Do ‘EW’
Wahoo!! Oscars all around!! I present to you the inside photo spread of Babel’s Brad Pitt & Cate Blanchett inside this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly November 3, 2006 issue. Here’s an excerpt from the article (full article after the jump):
Cate Blanchett was marinating in a puddle of blood on a dirt floor somewhere near the southern edge of the Sahara. Brad Pitt sat nearby, slumped over on a rock, sweat pouring off him. The temperature hovered near 112 degrees in the tiny Moroccan village that had become home to the cast and crew of Babel, the politically charged four-part epic from Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams). This place was seriously primitive, beyond the reach of electricity and, for the most part, running water. Air conditioning? Not a chance. Indoor toilet? There’s only one: See the village elder.
Lost in Translation
How the director of ”21 Grams” pushed Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, and a multinational cast through ”Babel,” his epic four-sided saga of sex, drugs, guns, and terrorism spanning three continents and several gulfs of misunderstanding
Cate Blanchett was marinating in a puddle of blood on a dirt floor somewhere near the southern edge of the Sahara. Brad Pitt sat nearby, slumped over on a rock, sweat pouring off him. The temperature hovered near 112 degrees in the tiny Moroccan village that had become home to the cast and crew of Babel, the politically charged four-part epic from Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams). This place was seriously primitive, beyond the reach of electricity and, for the most part, running water. Air conditioning? Not a chance. Indoor toilet? There’s only one: See the village elder.
To make matters worse, González Iñárritu, in his quest for supreme naturalism, had just asked them to perform Cate’s near-death scene for the 73rd time that day. The pressure was off the charts and there was just one distraction powerful enough to keep the two actors from going completely bonkers¦
”It felt out of control,” Pitt says over a year later, in a luxurious, climate-controlled Los Angeles hotel suite, recounting the weeks he spent in a state of ”frenetic anxiety” on the Babel set. ”I thought it was going to push me over the edge.” Suddenly, the 42-year-old actor leaps to his feet to demonstrate that crucial survival tool. With a hint of dramatic flourish, he grabs hold of his belt loops and yanks his jeans up to his armpits, giving himself a deep-impact wedgie of what must have been the most painful sort. ”Throughout the movie, I’d walk around like this,” Pitt says, thrusting out his backside and waddling around like a duck. It must be said that watching Pitt transform himself into an Urkel-like superdork is a sight so perplexing, it could divert a person from just about anything. ”You’ve gotta find things to make you laugh during the shoot. Cate called it the Hungry Bum.” He pauses and chuckles to himself. ”When your bum’s so hungry it’s trying to eat your pants.”
González Iñárritu’s globe-trotting melodrama was shot in six languages and on three continents. As ambitious as it is intimate, the narrative interweaves a quartet of sorrow-soaked vignettes: An American couple vacationing in Morocco (Pitt and Blanchett) are forced to depend on the kindness of strangers when struck by catastrophe; a family of Berber goatherds unravels after buying their first gun; a nanny (Amores Perros‘ Adriana Barraza), torn between work in San Diego and family obligations in Mexico, is thrown into an immigration quagmire; and a deaf-mute Japanese girl (Rinko Kikuchi) tries to cure her loneliness by prematurely uncorking her sexuality.
Babel (see EW review here) takes its title from the biblical allegory, in which man’s hubristic attempt to build a tower to the heavens compels a vengeful God to create a cacophony of different languages that stymie communication and isolate people from one another. Using this as his metaphorical jumping-off point, González Iñárritu tackles some of the most provocative issues of our time post-9/11: globalization, immigration, the spectre of terrorism. ”The film is about prejudice,” the director says, ”and the dangerous borders and walls we build that affect [communication] personally. And on a global scale, between George Bush and the Muslim world.”
Mixing politics and moviemaking has always been a dangerous game. One false move can mean the difference between Traffic and All the King’s
Men. But González Iñárritu’s single-minded determination about the project persuaded some of Hollywood’s biggest power players — Pitt, Blanchett, and Paramount’s Brad Grey, who agreed to back the movie in his first week on the job as the studio’s new chairman — to take a risk. It’s a gamble that’s already begun paying off: González Iñárritu collected the Best Director award at this year’s Cannes film festival, and the movie drew a raft of raves at Toronto. Now Babel looks poised to be one of this year’s leading dark-horse Oscar contenders. And Pitt’s nakedly emotional performance has placed him in the Academy Awards running for the first time since being nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1996 for 12 Monkeys.
All this comes at the end of a long, tough slog. The Pitt/Blanchett story line was just a quarter of the journey for González Iñárritu and the rest of the core crew, who crisscrossed the globe for more than a year, shooting under arduous circumstances.
Dehydrated crew members in Mexico, for example, had to be hospitalized. Appropriately enough, communication was particularly difficult: The young deaf actresses in the Japanese plotline required a series of translations, from González Iñárritu’s native Spanish to English, English to Japanese, Japanese to sign. ”I had three pains I thought were heart attacks during production,” recalls González Iñárritu. ”To make this film was to give birth to a boy with four heads. Painful.”
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alana - she’s doing a movie, i don’t remember the name
thanks 4Q. =)
Thanks 4Q. I should do more investigating before I ask questions. :lol:
Hiya AG, how are you girl?
Thanks 4Q for the Babel news. It’s also reported on Yahoo movie news. They used the word “towering” to describe the first weekend success. The departed is still #2. I am so thrilled for BP.
Alana - Julia Roberts is shooting a movie in Morocco call Charlie Wilson’s War. I think it has Tom Hanks in it. There was a picture of her on People’s web site.
African Girl- ITA. This new format is freaky but atleast we still get to comment. (thanks Jared). It reminds of the X17’s website.
Yes BABEL did very good at the Box-Office since Saw III which debuted at # 1 this weekend with 3,000 theaters made just over $10.000 per theaters. The biggest per screen average so far is Brokeback Mountain with a whopping $103,000 per theater. That’s really something! But overall, good job Brad, Cate, Gael & other cast you deserve our applause. I can’t wait to see it on Nov. 3rd in Toronto, Canada at Cumberland cinema.
So fellow Torontonian fans be there next weekend for the Babel screening. I am sure will be there.
Told you guys this was fast - it’s almost like IM’ing or chatting real time eh?? I gotta run do some errands, but I’m kind of hoping this format is still up when I get back - lol. I love it! :-D
MF
Yeah it’s fast but different, yesterday it was slow but normal. Oy….it’s never boring in JJland is it?
Hey Alex, how are you?
ntt - and RWS is also in the top 10…. i really happy for Brad….
AG - I am good, just here relaxing, did my laundry already, getting ready to start dinner, and the best news of all, I am going to England for Christmas and my brother and his wife, they are in Germany, is going to go to England for Christmas as well, so I am so excite about that :)
I am so excite about Babel, it is doing great already, can’t wait to see it.
These two are great together. I look forward to seeing it
4Q, that is wonderful news for Brad, Babel is doing great, and The Departed and RWS are also doing great, it is good to be Mr. Brad Pitt :)
Alex
I’m fine thanks for asking. I’m still on nanny duty for my Aunt, which means I can be summoned any moment. :(
Stardust
Yes! That’s what it reminds me of…the x17 site. No wonder I was all freaked out….*whispers* I’m not really a fan of that site….it think it’s because of that girl/guy, who always posted under x17, she/he never had something nice to say about Bamzs (I know, I know…it’s silly, believe me, I am working on my issues)
Hi Alex, I was late in church. I just got home from grocery.
Hi AG, it’s freaking me out too!
I’M SCREAMINGGGGGGGGGGG… I don’t like itttttttttt.
Jared , sorry for MF attitude , she just need to learn to adjust.
It’s cool!! awesome!
Do i have to post in order for me to see the next comment?
MF, I just refresh the page.
Alex
Take me with you, take me with you….pleeeeeeeeeeeeease take me with you! Lucky you, I have no idea what I am doing this christmas. My travel companion (my cousin) is married now….so everything is about her husband, what about me huh…huh? I tell ya, you grow up with someone, share clothes with them, get into mischief with them and just when you think you know them, you found out how wrong you are. Soooo wrong, wrong, wrong. The alternative is to go with younger cousins…..Alex, if there’s one thing you don’t want to do, it’s go on a trip with a bunch of 20yrs old. Nope….I’d rather spend the holidays in my room and be done with it.
I don’t really care what format JJ has, as long as it’s running and is fast! ;)
Forgot to say hi to all BAMZS fans, and thank you Jared for your hard work.
Alex, lucky you, you get to spend Xmas with your family in London. I was there once, love that city.
# African Girl Says:
October 29th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Alex
I’m fine thanks for asking. I’m still on nanny duty for my Aunt, which means I can be summoned any moment. :(
Stardust
Yes! That’s what it reminds me of…the x17 site. No wonder I was all freaked out….*whispers* I’m not really a fan of that site….it think it’s because of that girl/guy, who always posted under x17, she/he never had something nice to say about Bamzs (I know, I know…it’s silly, believe me, I am working on my issues)
_________
:lol: :lol: - at your issues with x17.
Personally, I hate the fact that they ARE the REAL PAPARAZZI.
That is why I dont go there to post.
Cliniqua, thank you! I think I need to go back to YG for now.
The Savannah Film Festival was this weekend, and Babel opened it — the following is a glowing review for the film from the Savannah Morning News — I though you guys might like to read…(talk to ya later!) –
Unrelated lives intertwine in stirring, realistic ‘Babel’
A Review | Sunday, October 29, 2006 at 12:30 am
“Babel,” the film that opened the Savannah Film Festival on Saturday evening, is an amalgam of stirring, visceral stories that explore the human condition.
Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, writer of “Grams” and “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,” is known for telling stories out of sequence. He uses the same device here, but not distractingly so. Although the movie bounces from the rocky landscape of Morocco to the arid desert of Mexico and then to the technology-infused atmosphere of Japan and back again, the characters involved are so compelling that you don’t mind being hustled out of one storyline and into the next.
The movie begins with a rifle being sold to a Moroccan goat shepherd, who instructs his two sons to use it against jackals. One day, the boys grow restless and start to complete in marksmanship. Their one-upmanship sparks a series of events that ripple throughout the lives of a Mexican nanny in California, a grieving husband and his wife traveling in Morocco, and a surly deaf/mute schoolgirl in Japan.
Each character in the film is fully flesh-and-blood, which is a feat, considering they get a quarter of screen time, all told. One is a typical Asian teenager, interested in boys, fashion and friends. But she’s also a grieving daughter who is driven to seek attention through any means possible.
The Moroccan brothers live in a squat house with their parents and sister. Their lives and livelihood revolve around goats. But by the end of the film, we see the younger is smarter, braver and more foolhardy than his prudent sibling. In Mexico, a loving housekeeper, who is usually invisible in feature films, has a vibrant life on the other side of the border, filled with color, music, food, family and a passion of her own.
Brad Pitt, haggard and gray, is by turns outraged at the futility of bureaucracy and quietly amazed by the extreme kindness of a virtual stranger.
As his wife, the screen character played by Cate Blanchett is utterly believable as a woman in terrible emotional, then physical pain. They, along with Gael Garcia Bernal, might be the most recognizable names in the credits, but “Babel” by no means is their movie alone.
The haunting soundtrack deserves equal billing. From a pulsating dance club to a middle-class Mexican wedding band to a haunting Moroccan ballad, the score of “Babel” ushered the audience along with each transition.
Midway through the movie, connections between each storyline start to reveal themselves. As the tension picks up, you know that things are going to end badly for someone, but it isn’t clear until the final minutes of the film. In those same minutes, the other characters find healing in various resolutions that seem entirely plausible.
Some people would say “Babel” is a film about miscommunication in a multicultural world. It is that. But what struck me the most is the utterly real way the film depicted the widely diverse cultures of America, Mexico, Morocco and Japan.
The film also stands out because of the way it infuses each character with life - these people want things, are afraid of things. They love their families. They are suspicious of unfamiliar things. Their authenticity keeps our attention, all the way to final credits.
http://savannahnow.com/node/168428
Oh thank you Alana! I thought I have to go back & forth.
Thanks Cliniqua for that review!
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