P ERSONA

Crossing the Uncanny Valley

ANGRY SUSPICIOUS MISCHIEVOUS

DISGUSTED HYSTERICAL CONFUSED

FRIGHTENED CONFIDENT HOPEFUL

OCT 2017

P. 37

ISSUE XI

AmericanBlockbuster BubbleWhat will it take to start the next New Wave?

Harrison FordDéjà vu: Rebooting Jones, Solo, & Deckard

ACTOR INTERIVEWBlackPantherThe black actors of anew generation join forces

CASTING BUZZ

ZoeSaldanaThe multi-colored actresswith the giant box office

NOTABLE PERFORMANCE

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NOTABLE PERFORMANCE

Zoe SaldanaThe multicolored actress with the giant box office

WRITERS’ ROOM

Rainbow CastingIt’s here to stay, so what are the pitfalls?

The AmericanBlockbuster BubbleWhat will it take to start the next New Wave?

ACTOR INTERIVEW

Harrison FordDéjà vu: Rebooting Jones, Solo, & Deckard

ON THE COVER

Death of the ActorCrossing the Uncanny Valley

SEASONED PERFORMER

Sissy SpacekThe face of 70's New Hollywood

CASTING BUZZ

Black PantherThe black actors of a new generation join forces

ntentsCO

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18

23

31

37

42

46

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Crossing the Uncanny ValleyBY TIM BAUMANN

The movies sit in a strange zone for us; we know that they are chimerical, fanciful things, and yet we still react to them with such force. Advances in CGI technology threaten the character authenticity we value in our actor performances—a thread of reality in movies that is already tenuous.

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ky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,

directed by Kerry Conran in 2004, is typically

recalled—if people remember it at all—as “the

movie where Angelina Jolie wears an eyepatch.”

Set in an alternate version of the late 1930s

during which human technology is significantly

more advanced than our own real past, extensive

CGI was used to give the movie its unusual look.

Like most CGI from the aughts, it looks goofy

to contemporary viewers. For one thing, the vast

majority of Sky Captain was filmed on a stage laid

out for CGI to fill in later. Before-and-after shots

reveal scenes dependent upon a blank bluescreen

canvas, with little more than furniture, the odd

prop, and other actors for Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow,

and Jude Law to draw inspiration from. The film’s

unconventional plot and dated special effects

robbed it of its status as something of a

groundbreaking movie.

Among Sky Captain’s odd features is the

hologram villain played by Laurence Olivier. The

hologram isn’t terribly interesting in and of itself.

It’s a standard blue head not unlike the holograms

projected by R2-D2 in Star Wars. What’s interesting

is that Olivier—who from his days on the Old Vic

stage into his film career, had been lauded for his

incredible physical acting technique—had no use of

his physical body for a good fifteen years before Sky

Captain was released. He had, in fact, gone to earth

months before the Berlin Wall did the same.

The weightily named Dr. Totenkopf hangs like a

specter over the events of Sky Captain. (Totenkopf

is the German term for the skull-and-crossbones,

which takes on a macabre connotation considering

who was “playing” him.) Totenkopf is like Harry

Lime in The Third Man—often referenced but

revealed late in the picture. The reveal of Totenkopf

is not so dramatic as the reveal of Lime, but it does

save us from having to see a more fully fleshed-

out Olivier. It turns out that Totenkopf is no more

than a mummified corpse; the hologram itself is the recording of the same man but

much younger. What appeared to have been an eugenicist’s ongoing plan for a new

humanity is no more than lingering horrors. It is revealed that Totenkopf died before

he could build a self-destruct system into his plan; in fact, the last testament he made

is an apology, not a crowing. “The World of Tomorrow,” the young Totenkopf’s

name for his sadistic and unstoppable plan, is an arrogant promise for the living to

confront in the film’s final act.

Thus we are saved Olivier, even though we see him in “hologram” form and hear

him say things like, “I am the last, desperate chance for a doomed planet” and

“Who dares come before me! Who dares enter this place!” These statements were

culled from some amount of archival footage of the young Olivier held by the BBC;

it is very much his voice we hear as well as his face we see.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was never a box office success, and

for all its inventiveness remains a fairly obscure picture. If it had been received

more warmly—or even if it had been competitive with other effects-heavy pictures

of that year, such as The Polar Express or The Day After Tomorrow—we might

have stumbled into a debate rather like the one triggered by Rogue One and its CGI

resurrection of Peter Cushing that we are now having more than a decade later.

Movie history tells us that a prematurely dead actor in a movie can be good

for business, although the picture itself needs to pull its weight. It stands to

reason that had Carole Lombard’s last movie been more along the lines of Twentieth

Century or My Man Godfrey —that is, a screwball comedy with a handsome man

alongside her—audiences would have flooded theaters to see the final performance

of the wife of Hollywood’s king, Clark Gable. To Be or Not to Be, an Ernst Lubitsch

comedy starring Lombard and the funny but homely Jack Benny, was ill-timed.

Set in Nazi-occupied Poland and released just two months after Pearl Harbor, it

was—suffice it to say—not a hit. From a safer distance, To Be or Not to Be has been

recognized as one of Lubitsch’s best pictures, and the Maria Tura character one

of Lombard’s best roles.

The quintessential dead Hollywood actor is undoubtedly James Dean, who lived

long enough to hear a few months of good press for East of Eden before dying in

a legendary car wreck at 24. His ultimate star-making role, Jim Stark in Nicholas

Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, debuted just weeks after his death in September 1955.

Rebel Without a Cause was a major hit. More than a year later, with the cult of

James Dean already gaining steam, George Stevens’ Giant was released. Both East

of Eden and Giant earned Dean Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, and

Rebel Without a Cause effectively placed Dean at the forefront of our collective

American consciousness when we remember actors who died tragically young.

Dean is hardly the only actor to scrounge up Oscar nods after dying. Although

the second Academy Awards, held in 1930, did not strictly nominate anyone, we do

know that Jeanne Eagels was reviewed for her scandalous role in The Letter. Eagels

died at 39 after a long struggle with drugs and alcohol. Besides Dean and Eagels,

there are other major names: Spencer Tracy in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,

longtime Olivier collaborator Ralph Richardson in Greystoke. Peter Finch won for

playing TV news demagogue Howard Beale in Network.

Heath Ledger, who died exactly a year before his nomination was announced

for Best Supporting Actor as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight,

won that prize posthumously. The phenomenon of Dean in Rebel Without a Cause

was repeated, and watching a star who had died young in his penultimate role

made the film that much more electrifying in the moment. Roger Ebert wondered

if Ledger, the “key performer” in The Dark Knight, would follow in Finch’s

Watching a star who had died young in his penultimate role made the film that much more electrifying in the moment.

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posthumously victorious footsteps. Andrew Sarris, Carrie Rickey, and Peter Travers

all banged the Oscar drum for Ledger as well. Bill Goodykoontz even compared the

fullness of Ledger’s performance to Daniel Day-Lewis’ work in There Will Be Blood,

which is the best-reviewed acting of the 21st century.

The novelty and tragedy of seeing a recently departed actor on screen is a selling

point for any movie and a focal point for viewers. In the case of Heath Ledger, a

popular (and incidentally untrue) rumor opined that playing the Joker had brought

him into such darkness that caused him to abuse drugs in the first place. The thrill

of knowing that a movie could be behind an actor’s death has a certain cachet for

viewers: aside from Ledger in The Dark Knight, an obviously unwell Tracy in Guess

Who’s Coming to Dinner has invited interpretations of a popular figure knowing

that he was facing his final days in front of a camera. Ironically, this prestige factor

declines when the dead actor’s movie comes out too long after his or her passing.

Just as Rebel Without a Cause is essential to Dean’s mystique but his last movie

Giant is not, the same is true for Ledger: The Dark Knight has far outstripped

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus in our cultural imagination.

Sometimes, the death of the actor is not merely sensationalized but results in

real difficulty for directors and their crews. The first major incident of a director

forced by the Reaper to use CGI to place one person’s face onto another was in

Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Oliver Reed, in the role of the slaver and gladiator trainer

Proximo, died before he had finished shooting his scenes. The CGI result shows

up in one scene where Russell Crowe’s Maximus is speaking across iron bars

to Proximo, whose face is sometimes placed in shadow. The CGI is very solid,

especially for 2000, and the reality is enhanced by Scott’s lighting effects.

For Furious 7 released in 2015, director James Wan had to navigate the untimely

and ironic death of 40-year-old stunt driver Paul Walker, who died in a car crash

in 2013. Walker had shot some scenes but Wan, who did not want to kill Walker’s

character Brian O’Conner, combined two methods previously used by directors

whose stars had died during shooting. Using body doubles—namely, Walker’s two

brothers—and technology to “graft” Paul’s face onto Caleb and Cody Walker in

head-on shots, Wan managed to create a virtual send-off for Brian O’Conner which

proved satisfying for The Fast and the Furious fans worldwide who were perfectly

aware of Paul Walker’s untimely death. Furious 7 boasts the sixth-highest worldwide

gross in history.

Rogue One, Gareth Edwards’ 2016 entry into the new Star Wars anthology,

has to hold some kind of record for repurposing the most actors. Using archive

footage from the original 1977 Star Wars, Edwards returned characters Garven

Dreis and Dutch Vander—that’s “Red Leader” and “Gold Leader” to you—to action

in the climactic space battle of Rogue One. CGI was used to replace the face of

actress Ingvild Deila with the 20-year-old face of Carrie Fisher for a short scene at

the end of the film; we thus see young Princess Leia as she appeared in A New Hope.

(Fisher was still alive during the production of

Rogue One; she died less than two weeks after the

movie premiered.)

Most famously of all, Peter Cushing was brought

back to life, as it were, by extensive CGI. His

character, Grand Moff Tarkin, is in truth the

primary antagonist of Star Wars; Darth Vader,

though far more iconic, has a smaller role. Tarkin

is returned to that role in Rogue One, despite the

fact that Cushing and his indelible cheekbones

died in 1994. The body and voice for Tarkin were

provided by Guy Henry, a British actor who bears

some resemblance to Cushing just as Deila looks

a little like Fisher. Perhaps they would have borne

more resemblance to the forty-year-old characters

with the help of costume and makeup than the CGI

effects; the phrase “uncanny valley” entered the

cultural vernacular all over again thanks especially

to Tarkin’s revival. The movie was well-received by

critics and audiences alike, but the critical response

to the CGI face of Tarkin in particular was panned

by critics. For every James Berardinelli who called it

“ground-breaking work,” there’s half a dozen other

reviews which have some scathing critique of the

technique. Ty Burr said the new Tarkin was “not

all that convincingly pixelated,” and Matt Zoller

Seitz went full tech talk: “a bunch of ones and zeros

badly imitating a dead man.” Christopher Orr,

aside from noting that the special effects didn’t look

great, wondered about whether it was “tasteful” to

replicate a dead actor’s face.

Guy Henry did a more than passable impression

of Cushing’s voice, although it was clearly a

recreation of Cushing’s famous clipped English

accent that was also the voice, to many cinephiles,

of Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps in the future, even

Cushing’s voice could be fabricated to a higher

standard of indistinguishability. A program created

at the University of Montreal called Lyrebird can

recreate someone’s voice with just a minute of

recorded speech. Granted, in its beta state, the

difference between a person’s real voice and his

or her Lyrebird voice is as plain as the difference

between Peter Cushing and Peter Cushing’s CGI

face. Yet Lyrebird is already facing the difficult—

and obvious—ethical dilemma of what it means

to create a perfect syndication of a person’s speech.

In the movies, that could go further in crossing the

uncanny valley.

As long as that tricky little aspect of life called

mortality is in play, studios, producers, and

directors will have to find ways to manage the sad

deaths of actors. But Rogue One has changed the

game. With an army of technicians and coders who

have taken “Death be not proud” as a mantra,

any actor—regardless of how little archive footage

may remain or how unique his or her facial

structure may have been—can be brought back to

the point of clear recognition. In Sky Captain and

the World of Tomorrow it may have suited the plot

for Olivier’s Totenkopf to be no more than a dried-

up corpse, but would Conran have changed his

mind if he could have had Olivier himself, albeit

digitally imaged?

It is no secret that the majority of blockbuster

films are sequels now. As Neil Gaiman puts it:

“Fans know exactly what they want. Fans want

more of the last thing they read and they liked.

That’s what fans want. They liked that thing

you did, they would like another one of those,

please.” Studios, having made the decision to

choose properties which are frequently low-risk

and high-reward rather than more unusual and

uneven projects like Sky Captain and the World

of Tomorrow, are likely to continue catering to

the desires of fans of those franchises.

Fans know exactly what they want.Fans want more of the last thing they read and they liked. That’s what fans want. They liked that thing you did, they would like another one of those, please.

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The history of Hollywood suggests that studios can handle it when the souls of their actors become flight risks.

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Dreamworks and Paramount, the distributors behind the Shrek and Transformers

franchises, respectively, hold an advantage. Mike Myers or Peter Cullen could

drop dead tomorrow, but their voices would be replaceable should the studios

and moviemakers choose to do so; Shrek and Optimus Prime would merely

sound different. Should Lyrebird’s technology improve significantly, perhaps even

“sounding different” could fade away. Universal could not easily replace its other

The Fast and the Furious stars. Ludacris is an only child; Dwayne Johnson’s brother

Curtis Bowles never earned the sobriquet “the Rock.” Even when the Harry Potter

movies were originally cast, it was assumed that Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and

Emma Watson would be replaced at least once by new boys and girls; fans became

attached, and the trio (and all of their peers!) stayed on board for eight movies.

Rogue One raised a new question which before had gone unasked: how essential is

it to maintain visual character continuity in a series which is four decades old? As

Hollywood doubles down on the belief that no plot should be rejected because of

its age, no matter how tired it is, will we see moviemakers reach back for the people

who made the plot come to life? Will it always be Janet Leigh screaming in the

shower, or Judy Garland staring up at an unseen rainbow? (Will they superimpose

Toto’s face on the new Toto?)

The real question, as we begin our trek across this uncanny valley, is how effective

it can become. No matter how good the CGI or the image captures are, can they

ever meet audiences’ ever-heightening standards for authenticity? Instinctively, one

assumes that a CGI Janet Leigh—or even a CGI Martin Balsam—being stabbed to

death would be less frightening than the real people facing their own fake deaths.

Instinctively, one assumes that a CGI Ingrid Bergman tearing up at a CGI Humphrey

Bogart on a North African airstrip would fail to rouse our sympathies like the

unfailing real thing.

The movies sit in a strange zone for us; we know that they are chimerical, fanciful

things, and yet we still react to them with such force. The thread of reality in

movies—a rope bridge across the uncanny valley, perhaps—is a flimsy one indeed.

As viewers, people tend to handle a single bold unreality well enough; if this weren’t

true, Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki would be anonymous and we’d be put off

by The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ in the Rain. But no one can doubt the genuine

feeling in Gene Kelly’s electric dancing or Mickey

Mouse’s joyful cavorting; unreality is balanced by

authenticity. A CGI actor, glaringly inauthentic

with our technology, is like extra weight on a

scale that can only handle so much heft. The CGI

replication takes the viewer out of the flow of the

movie and into the flow of outside-movie thoughts.

Aside from immersion, we crave connection in our

movie experiences. Even experimental films like La

jetee or Koyaanisqatsi appeal to our environments

and surroundings and in so doing trigger recursive

emotional responses that the CGI Tarkin or CGI

Leia could not create. Bringing out the dead seems

doomed to fail even with perfect recreation, for

no unreality in the human mind is so fantastic as

raising the dead.

As long as consistency and is a prized element

for moviegoers—in performers, in plot points from

adapted text, in visual motifs—the possibility

of computer generated actors becoming more

widespread exists. The history of Hollywood

suggests that studios can handle it when the souls

of their actors become flight risks. Right now,

Hollywood’s present has started to wonder if our

technology can clip wings in advance.

Will it always be Janet Leigh screaming in the shower, or Judy Garland staring up at an unseen rainbow?

PL

AN

B

Sometimes studios and directors have to adjust on the fly when the star of one of their pictures dies during the shoot. When actors die on set, then the adjustments are a little tougher than merely reshooting or doubling.

1923WHOHOW

PLAN B

Martha Mansfield

Her highly flammable dress caught fire on set

when someone haphazardly tossed their cigarette.

Though Mansfield was playing the protagonist,

shooting continued. Her scenes were close enough

to completed that the movie was largely unaffected. 1937

WHOHOW

PLAN B

Jean Harlow

Kidney failure

Harlow, the original blonde bombshell, was the

female star of the film Saratoga. Director Jack

Conway needed a body double to finish her scenes

with co-star Clark Gable. The film was still a huge hit.

1981WHOHOW

PLAN B

Natalie Wood

Drowning

Wood was almost finished shooting Brainstorm,

and the director had to alter the plot slightly to

accomodate the missing scenes. Whether her death

was a tragic accident or murder is unknown. 1982

WHOHOW

PLAN B

Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le & Renee Shin-Yi Chen

Helicopter accident. Morrow was piloting in a scene

for the Twilight Zone movie. Dinh Le and Chen were

two child actresses who were being paid illegally.

The plot for Morrow's character changed significantly,

eliminating the Vietnam War scene entirely.

1993WHOHOW

PLAN B

Brandon Lee

Accidental gunfire

Lee was an up-and-coming actor and stuntman.

After dying of gunshot wounds on the set of The

Crow, multiple stuntmen were brought in to play

Lee's character. Makeup was used to hide the change.

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P ERSONALOGOTYPE | EUROPA LIGHT 100 PT; 200 TRACKING

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HeadlineThis is a subhead

The movies sit in a strange zone for us; we know that they are

chimerical, fanciful things, and yet we still react to them with

such force. The thread of reality in moviesis a flimsy one indeed.

As viewers, people tend to handle a single bold unreality well

enough; if this weren’t true, Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki

would be anonymous and we’d be put off by The Wizard of Oz.

THIS IS A CAPTION & PHOTO CREDIT

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GOTHAM CONDENSED | LIGHT | 24 PT; 24 LEADING

SABON | ROMAN | 9 PT; 14 LEADING; 0.125 INDENT

GOTHAM CONDENSED | BOLD | 10 PT; 10 LEADING

The history of Hollywood suggests that studios can handle it when the souls of their actors become flight risks.

GLYPHA | 55 OBLIQUE | 18 PT; 24 LEADING

Will it always be Janet Leigh screaming in the shower, or Judy Garland staring up at an unseen rainbow?GOTHAM | BOLD | 24 PT; 32 LEADING

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