Join the Upri-sing: Les Misérables Singapore press call

For F*** Magazine

JOIN THE UPRI-SING
F*** Magazine peeks behind the barricade at the Les Misérables press call
By Jedd Jong

It has been 22 years since the barricades arose at the Kallang Theatre, when the blockbuster musical Les Misérables first arrived in Singapore. Arguably the best-known adaptation of Victor Hugo’s landmark 1862 historical novel, the story is predominantly set against the backdrop of 1832 June Rebellion in Paris. Composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyricists Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel’s original French-language musical debuted in 1980, with the English adaptation featuring Herbert Kretzmer’s lyrics opening in 1985. Les Misérables has since become the longest-running musical on the West End, and has celebrated its milestones with all-star anniversary concerts. A feature film adaptation of the musical was released in 2012, winning three Oscars.

On Thursday morning, F*** was in attendance at the Esplanade Theatre as a press preview was staged, followed by interviews with the cast and crew. This production is at the tail-end of a two-year tour, which began in Australia and is fresh off their Philippines leg. This staging is different from how fans of the original might remember it; the show was reworked for its 25^th anniversary with new set designs and a re-orchestrated score. While iconic elements like the turntable and the barricade set that splits in half have been excised, Matt Kinley’s set design takes inspiration from the paintings of author Hugo, who was also an accomplished visual artist. The paintings, projected onto the backdrop, further enrich the depiction of 19^th Century France.

“We’re getting older, but it looks like the show is never aging, and is [in fact] getting kind of younger,” Boublil said. “All the people who play in the show now were not born when Claude-Michel and I were writing it!” Boublil told us about the process of adapting the 1500-page book into a musical. When it debuted in 1985, the English-language version was four hours long; this has now been whittled down to around three hours. Boublil stated that the novel is required reading in most French schools, “but you don’t understand it - you know it’s about injustice, but apart from that, you don’t get the heart and soul of it.”

Boublil is of the opinion that not everything makes a good musical, and described how he and Schönberg were convinced of Les Misérables’ potential. “Many of them are musicalized in an opportunistic way, or they don’t last,” he said of other source material. When asked whether or not he remembers the feeling of first seeing the musical on stage, Boublil replied “I remember it very well.” On the cast of the original West End production, which included such luminaries as Colm Wilkinson, Frances Ruffelle and Patti Lupone, Boublil commented “We had the crème de la crème of musical theatre, but we didn’t know it yet! We didn’t know that they would each become a star in his or her own right.” It might be hard to imagine now, but the show opened to scathing reviews on the West End. Boublil remembered a headline in an English daily which read “What can be worse than a bad musical? A French musical.” “That day was like a death sentence is ringing,” he recalled, thinking that the show would surely close inside of a month after those notices. “To my amazement and pride, it has become the world’s longest-running musical,” he said.

The lead role of Jean Valjean is played by Australian actor Simon Gleeson, who won a Helpmann award for the role. The character, an escaped convict who embarks on a journey of redemption, is one of the most prominent roles in musical theatre. When asked what aspect of Valjean he most connected with, Gleeson answered “My job is to connect with all of them. The frustration that he feels at the start, the anger that he feels towards the world at the start, the joy he gets when he meets little Cosette, I connect with all of them.”

The part Gleeson most looks forward to during each performance might surprise audiences, since it isn’t the grand solos like Valjean’s Soliloquy or Bring Him Home. “It’s meeting little Cosette. Meeting the little girl is the first time the character gets to smile. It’s the first time he goes ‘I can live for something now’.” He had quite the heart-warming story to relate about his daughter. “When I first was rehearsing for the audition years ago, I would sing Bring Him Home in the house and she actually said ‘I forbid you to sing in the house’.” Gleeson related to us. “I didn’t realise it was because she would go to her room and cry, because she locked on to the fact that something was wrong, that I wasn’t happy, that I was in pain and something was going on and she couldn’t comprehend it, she understood just from the music alone.” His son’s reaction after watching the show was a little less complicated. “He just liked the guns,” Gleeson chuckled.

Gleeson played Raoul in Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom of the Opera. “The role I played was a horrible man – alcoholic, abusive, he was a terrible father, he was all the things that Jean Valjean isn’t,” Gleeson remarked, admitting “I had such a good time! It was really great.” Gleeson said the music plays an enormous part in helping him get into character. “The music is so evocative that you can’t helped but be seduced into where you need to be. Good luck if you can resist, you’d be a fool to try.” Gleeson worked briefly with Hugh Jackman, who played Valjean in the 2012 film. “He actually said to me ‘I don’t know how you do it eight times a week,’” Gleeson revealed. Gleeson said that, “frustratingly” enough, Jackman lives up to his reputation as being an affable person. He’s so generous and an incredibly talented guy, I can’t speak highly enough about Hugh.”

Valjean’s arch-nemesis Inspector Javert, a dogged police officer who pursues the fugitive over the course of almost two decades, is played by Earl Carpenter. The English actor has played Javert on Broadway and the title role in The Phantom of the Opera on the West End. He also performed in the 25^th anniversary concerts of both shows. “Everyone says he is a bad guy! Not at all!” Carpenter insisted, describing Javert as “a robust individual that knows one thing, which is his belief in the law”. “At that last moment, you see something very different happen to him, which is the fact that somebody has knocked his beliefs off the track and there’s no other way for him to deal with it, he doesn’t have the capacity to deal with it,” Carpenter said of Javert, who is ultimately undone by his own unwillingness to see Valjean as anything other than a criminal. Recalling his first time seeing the show at age 21, Carpenter said “it was just incredible to see something so epic but live, rather than seeing it on the screen, it was extraordinary.”

On Russell Crowe’s much-maligned portrayal of Javert in the 2012 film version, Carpenter pragmatically stated “There’s a reason for everything. Everybody makes decisions. That film had to appeal to a massive audience and to do that, maybe just Les Mis as a musical, wasn’t going to be enough to sell the film. It’s incredibly expensive to put a film on these days.” Coming to Crowe’s defence, Carpenter said “I know he confessed to being very nervous, in front of musical theatre singers. It was an incredibly scary time for him.” Carpenter shared that he thought that “there were moments of Russell’s character that were just absolutely spot on. His persona, for that role, was great.” Quite graciously, he added “there could be people who probably don’t like my singing, it doesn’t matter.”

Central to the story is the love triangle between Valjean’s adoptive daughter Cosette, the dashing, rich young Marius and Éponine, whose parents mistreated Cosette when she was in their care. Emily Langridge plays Cosette, Paul Wilkins plays Marius and Kerrie Anne Greenland plays Éponine. Most fans gravitate to the character of Éponine, who is placed squarely in the ‘friendzone’ by Marius. “Actually, the funny thing is that especially in the rehearsal room, I get to see a lot more of A Heart Full Of Love, where Cosette and Marius finally get to really see each other for the first time, and it’s so beautiful,” Kerrie admitted. “I know I’m Éponine, but it’s really awesome what they’ve got going on!”

“I think it’s hard for Cosette because she actually has gone through a lot,” Langridge said. “We see Cosette as a child and we see Éponine as a child and their roles really swap when they’re older. I think they’re really similar. Maybe if Éponine didn’t die, then they would be friends.”

Commenting on the perceived obtuseness displayed by Marius in his interactions with Éponine, Wilkins said “I think that comes with the territory of young love and experiencing it for the first time and kind of not knowing the signs.” He related a story from his own youth: “When I was in primary school, a girl used to kick me under the table in music. She kicked me, and I thought she hated me – little did I know, months later, that she really, really fancied me!”

Greenland added that Éponine might have stood a chance “if she had a bath”.

The actors spoke of going back to the source material, since much of the material was cut down in the adaptation process. “Cosette as a character has so much description in the book and in so much detail, where in the musical, her role is scaled down quite a lot, so I really try to get as much detail as I can from the book to give the role the most amount of depth in a short time,” Langridge said. This process was also helpful for the actors in creating something that resonated with them, rather than attempting to replicate past portrayals.

Out of all the characters, Fantine, Cosette’s biological mother, probably has the most number of tragic calamities befall her. Fantine sings what is arguably the best-known song in the show, I Dreamed a Dream. Australian actress Patrice Tipoki, who has starred in productions of The Lion King, Wicked and Beauty and the Beast, plays Fantine. She has been a fan of Les Misérables since she was young. “I used to sing Master of the House when people would come to the house, I don’t know how appropriate that was for a seven-year-old girl!” she laughed.

“It took a while for me to shake other people’s versions of this song, especially in my head, because I grew up with it,” she said, on the subject of making the role her own. “It was nice to have the rehearsal process that we do to be able to find my voice and my story that I wanted to tell. And of course, that still changes every night, depending on how I’m feeling and how receptive the audience is. It’s nice to know that everyone already loves the song, so it’s starting on a good note.” Fantine’s appearance in the musical, while impactful, is relatively brief. “Every night I go ‘maybe I’ll live tonight!’ It’s never happened yet, still trying!” Tipoki joked.

Co-director James Powell explained the lasting appeal of the show, saying “The story itself is about the human condition. It’s a classic story that’s just as relevant today as it was 400 (sic) years ago. The generosity of spirit is what I think people are moved by, in the face of adversity, they come through, and I think that’s what people find very uplifting. And the music helps a bit.” Working for super-producer Cameron Mackintosh has kept Powell on his toes. “When you work for Cameron Mackintosh, you are always evolving, you don’t stay still,” Powell said.

So, why should audiences go see Les Misérables? Producer Nick Allott, who is the managing director of Cameron Mackintosh Ltd., has the answer. “This is a story that covers everything: it covers love, it covers conflict between two people, it covers the triumph of good over evil, it has battles, it has epic scale and it has fantastically strong characters, characters you can fall in love or identity with,” he enthused. “I can’t think of anyone sitting there being bored. This is a show that picks you up and carries you through in this extraordinary way.”

Les Misérables runs from 31^st May to 24^th July at the Esplanade Theatre. Please visit http://www.sistic.com.sg/events/mis0716 for ticket information.

In Civillised Company - Captain America: Civil War Team Cap Singapore Press Conference

For F*** Magazine

IN CIVILLISED COMPANY

Team Cap and co-director Joe Russo touch down in Singapore to talk Captain America: Civil War
By Jedd Jong

                It seems our tiny city state has been in a bit of a tizzy, ever since Marvel announced that Singapore would be one of the stops on the promotional tour for Captain America: Civil War, the 13^th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). A brouhaha erupted over the obscenely high ticket prices that were being charged for premium access to the blue carpet – the passes, priced at $688 and $1288, did not even guarantee actually meeting the celebrities, and a discussion on the exploitation of geek interests for profit spread across social media. It was later clarified that these were package deals, and fans were welcome to line the blue carpet in the hopes of a selfie or autograph for free.

                This morning, stars Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America), Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier), Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson/Falcon) and director Joe Russo, one half of the Russo Brothers filmmaking team, fielded questions from the local and regional press at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre, including F***. Deejay Glenn Ong moderated the press conference, as Team Cap laid out their plans for domination.

                Civil War sees the Avengers fractured after politicians around the world propose a governing body to keep superhero activity in check, so as to prevent the wanton collateral damage the Avengers have incurred in the past from happening again. Half the team sides with Iron Man, who is for regulation, while the other backs Captain America, who is against it. Stars Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Don Cheadle (James Rhodes/War Machine) and Emily VanCamp (Sharon Carter/Agent 13), with co-director Anthony Russo, threw down the gauntlet by lighting up the Eiffel Tower in red and gold with blue ‘eyes’ during their press tour in Paris. Presumably, VanCamp was brought in as a replacement for Scarlett Johansson, seeing as Agent 13 really is on Team Cap in the movie.

                “I saw what Downey did in Paris, and it was great, but I think we can really do something special here in Singapore and show ‘em it’s all about Team Cap,” Evans declared. He was referring to the plan to light up the three towers of the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort in red white and blue; the light-up will be accompanied by a fireworks display. “The more buzz, the more energy that can be created, the conflict between the two camps is going to help the film,” Evans said, tacitly conceding that the rivalry is obviously manufactured to keep the sales machine going.

                The Russo brothers return to the MCU after helming the much-loved Winter Soldier movie. They are also signed on for both parts of the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War cinematic epic, which will see the Avengers finally come face-to-face with their ultimate foe, the intergalactic warlord Thanos. Russo cited the interplay between the characters as a key component in the MCU, saying “I think this movie has more character interaction than any movie that has preceded it in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Civil War is couched as a culmination of plot lines that have been fomenting across the earlier Avengers and Captain America movies, with Russo promising a film that’s “Heart-breaking but also a great deal of fun and “a well-rounded experience at the movies.”

                “It’s a Steven Soderbergh-level of cast,” Russo said of the ensemble he and his brother presided over. “Marvel has done an amazing job of filling out the Marvel Cinematic Universe with some of the best actors in the world, it makes my job very easy.”

                “They have a wonderful understanding of cinema,” Evans said, returning the praise. “A lot of directors don’t always want to reference other movies, but Joe and Anthony are true cinephiles.”

                The Russo Brothers are known for their work on television comedies like Arrested Development and Community. They slipped Community cast member Danny Pudi into The Winter Soldier, and Jim Rash has a cameo in Civil War. Russo drew a parallel between shooting comedy and staging action sequences, saying “When you execute a comedic gag, there’s a lot of correlation to action: spatial relationships on screen, editing, rhythm.” Russo acknowledged the “incredible support” rendered to them by the Marvel Studios brass, calling the visual effects team “unbelievable”.

                In order to decide who would be on whose side, the Russo Brothers sat in a room for months with writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to hash out the story beats. We went through the cast we had available us and the cast we didn’t have available to us and we thought very hard about who would line up against who based on their motivations up to this point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Russo added that “surprises for the audience” were on the agenda too.

                Throughout the press conference, Stan seemed the most withdrawn, while still projecting a certain sweetness, whereas Mackie was gregarious and game. Perhaps Stan was freshly defrosted from Winter Soldier hibernation. Mackie was handy with the disses aimed at Team Iron Man, like so many bullets from flip-out submachine guns. “We try to get to know the culture that we’re in, eat the food and meet the people,” Mackie said, tacking the colloquial Singaporean interjection ‘lah’ onto the end of a few sentences. “Whereas Team Iron Man, they’re more about just going from the press conference to the spa, and then from the spa to their jet, stuff like that. We hitchhike. They hang on to me, I put on the jetpack and we go straight across.”

                In the film, Falcon’s get-up is referred to at one point as a “bird costume.” Mackie reacted with mock indignation when a reporter reminded him of this, replying “say that one more time, homie? I’m described as what?!” When egged on to denigrate Team Iron Man’s outfits, Mackie offered that Stark himself looks like “a coke can”, that Vision looks like “someone just drew over him”, that War Machine resembles “a trash can” and that Black Panther’s suit seems like it’s made of “Michelin car tyres.” He could not bring himself to insult Black Widow, whom he described as “perfect.”

                When quizzed on how they get in superhero shape for the films, Evans said there was no magic bullet, “Any type of secret workout, diet, doesn’t really work,” he insisted. “We go to the gym, we pick up heavy stuff, we put that down, we do that until we can’t do that anymore and we get big.” Sounds so easy when he puts it that way, doesn’t it? Mackie jests that Evans really is an Ultimate Frisbee enthusiast. Evans admonishes him, saying that his quip is bound to get lost in translation down the line and invariably get taken seriously by somebody.

                The film pushes the relationship between Rogers and Sharon Carter/Agent 13 further along, with Rogers learning that she’s actually the niece of Peggy Carter, the co-founder of S.H.I.E.L.D. who fell in love with Rogers during his WWII days. Evans stated that it “follows in the lineage of what Cap considers his home to be with Peggy Carter, and Sharon Carter is kind of an incarnation of something familiar.” He said he is intrigued by the suggestion of a romantic bond between Cap and Black Widow, which Mackie objected to, since he has his eye on Black Widow. “They come from different backgrounds and find comfort in each other at different times of distress,” Evans reasoned. “I always thought that would be a really interesting dynamic to pursue, but at the same time, it’s very sweet and very pure that they’ve kept it platonic.”

                Russo delivered the closing salvo of the press conference, calling Civil War an “incredibly important” entry in the canon. “Winter Soldier changed the external structure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the dissolution of S.H.I.E.L.D. I think that this movie changes the psychology of the Marvel Universe in a very significant way,” Russo continued. Teasing what’s to come, he said that “the ramifications of Civil War are not over, they’re going to carry over significantly into Infinity War.” So, from the ashes of war, there is rebuilding to be done.

Captain America: Civil War opens in cinemas 28 April 2016

F***’s coverage of the Team Cap festivities in Singapore will continue.

Photos by Tedd Jong

Spectral Emotion: Ghost The Musical Press Preview

For F*** Magazine

SPECTRAL EMOTION
F*** takes a sneak peek at Ghost The Musical
By Jedd Jong

The dead are alive in Ghost The Musical, based on the 1990 film starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg. The romantic fantasy that swept audiences off their feet with a tale of love transcending death has taken a new form as a stage musical. We were at the Sands Theatre in Marina Bay Sands, Singapore on Wednesday morning to catch a press preview of the production ahead of its opening night in Singapore.

Ghost The Musical tells the story of Sam Wheat, a Wall Street banker hopelessly in love with his artist girlfriend Molly. Following a violent mugging, Sam dies and finds himself stuck in limbo as a restless spirit, caught between this world and the next. As he uncovers the truth behind his murder, he attempts to warn Molly. He eventually reaches her through Oda Mae Brown, a con-artist and phony medium who comes into genuine contact with the deceased for the first time. Molly, along with Sam’s best friend and colleague Carl, are initially wary of Oda Mae, and Sam has to come to grips with his newfound afterlife as he watches over Molly from beyond the grave.

Ghost won two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress for Goldberg and Best Original Screenplay for Bruce Joel Rubin. Rubin adapted his own script into the musical’s libretto, with original music and lyrics from multiple Grammy Award-winners Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard. Stewart is known as one-half of Eurythmics and Ballard co-wrote Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill and Michael Jackson’s Thriller, amongst other well-known pop hits.

In order to portray the other-worldly effects so integral to the film, Ghost The Musical employs much buzzed-about illusions designed by Paul Kieve. One of the signature scenes of the musical has its protagonist Sam walk through a solid door. Another has subway train commuters flung out of their seats by paranormal activity. Moviegoers will know Kieve’s work from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Hugo, for which he served as a magic consultant. Kieve holds the distinction of being the only illusionist to net the New York Drama Desk Award, which he won for Ghost The Musical.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any of the illusions at the press preview, which was a bit of a bummer after hearing so much about them. Thankfully, there is far more to the production than the novelty factor of its special effects, and three musical numbers were staged for us. These comprised the iconic pottery scene featuring The Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody, Nothing Stops Another Day and Oda Mae Brown’s big show-stopper I’m Outta Here. I’m Outta Here, in which Oda Mae fantasises about what she can do with an unexpected windfall, put some fancy choreography on display, with back-up dancers clad in glittery sequined suits and sunglasses.

After that, we got to talk to the cast, including Liam Doyle as Sam, Lucie Jones as Molly, David Roberts as Carl and Wendy Mae Brown as Oda Mae. The touring cast and crew, the majority of whom hail from the UK, have just arrived from the China tour, which took them to Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Chongqing, Zhuhai and Taipei. Preparations were in full swing for the show’s Singapore engagement in the background as the interviews were conducted, and while jet-lagged and exhausted, the performers were friendly and, if you’ll pardon the pun, in good spirits.

Doyle’s big break came when he won the reality competition show The Search for Troy Bolton as a teenager and got to play Troy Bolton in the UK touring production of High School Musical 2. Since then, Doyle’s credits have included Link Larkin in Hairspray (there’s a bit of Zac Efron theme going) and Fiyero in Wicked. “Whether you’ve seen the film or not, it doesn’t matter,” Doyle told us, calling Ghost “a timeless love story”. Discussing the emotional content of the show, he said “Everybody’s had that one person, or God forbid, might have that person that they didn’t get to say goodbye to and it helps so many people in the audience, you can hear them every night.” Doyle remarked that the show is physically and vocally demanding and it does take a lot of out of him, since he’s the lead. “I’ve worked it out: I’m off stage for three minutes in Act 1 and seven minutes in Act 2 and the show’s two and a half hours long,” he stated. “The music is very hard to sing, but so rewarding to sing.”

Jones’ career also has its roots in a reality TV singing contest, albeit a higher-profile one: she was a finalist in 2009’s season of The X Factor. She has since had roles on the TV shows Midsomer Murders and The Sarah Jane Adventures and has been a cast member in musicals like Les Misérables and American Psycho. Her preparation for the part of Molly in Ghost included taking pottery lessons and visiting a medium. She has not had any supernatural encounters of her own, but was open to learning about various beliefs in life after death. “The more you understand the mind-set of people who believe in these things, people who don’t believe in these things, people who have had experiences, people who think it’s all a load of rubbish, it’s so amazing to then find your journey through it and understand it yourself,” she said. Jones told us that she was rejected for many jobs “because people said I couldn’t act, and now I’m doing a huge acting role and am really enjoying it.”

Roberts’ West End credits include Mamma Mia and Assassins “He’s a character that you could feel sorry for,” Roberts said of Carl. “He’s jealous of Sam and what he has and even though they’re two best friends, they’re like brothers, he’s not happy with that. He’s always wanting more, such is his life, he’s always striving for that. When asked what advice he would give to actors considering a theatre career, he said “Don’t give up, if it’s what you love to do, stick with it. You need to love it, because otherwise it can be a very, very hard thing to do, hard business.” Roberts isn’t a fan of the way reality TV contests like X Factor promise instant stardom. “It’s a cattle market, it’s getting worse and worse every year. You’ve got an audience screaming numbers of people they don’t want.” He clarified that he doesn’t blame the participants (his co-star Jones was an X-Factor finalist after all), but rather the process, which he likens to “a machine”.

One could say that Wendy Mae Brown was destined to play Oda Mae Brown, based on her name. Brown’s has acted in productions such as Rent, Porgy and Bess, Little Shop of Horrors and South Pacific. The character of the phony mystic who is suddenly contacted by an actual ghost is arguably the most memorable in the movie. Brown said she was given “absolute freedom” to make the role her own, adding “Your first thought is ‘oh, this is Whoopi Goldberg, I’ve got to top this,’ but then you have to let it go. So I let it go.” She had a particularly memorable story about her first time watching the film. “I remember really clearly because I’d just done a terrible audition for Trevor Nunn,” she recalled. Dejected after failing in front of the renowned theatre impresario, she slinked into the cinema to watch the film Ghost, which moved her to tears. “It takes a lot to make me cry at a movie. I’m not really a crying woman, but…I went on the journey from the start.” Possibly displaying a hint of psychic ability, Brown told us “I always said to myself, ‘this would be a great musical’.”

From what we’ve seen today, ditto.

Lucie Jones (Molly) and Liam Doyle (Sam)

Ghost The Musical is produced by GWB Entertainment in association with BASE Entertainment Asia and is running from 4 – 15 November 2015 at the Sands Theatre, MasterCard Theatres at Marina Bay Sands. Ticket prices are from S$85.

Blade Runners: Dragon Blade Singapore Press Conference

For F*** Magazine

BLADE RUNNERS

F*** meets Jackie Chan and the stars of Dragon Blade in Singapore

By Jedd Jong

From left: Choi Siwon, Mika Wang, John Cusack, Jackie Chan, Lin Peng, Adrien Brody

                A week ahead of the Chinese New Year release date of Dragon Blade, the film’s cast arrives in Singapore to meet fans, grace the red carpet premiere and speak to the press. It is a Tuesday morning and F*** is at the Pan Pacific Hotel Singapore as Jackie Chan, John Cusack, Adrien Brody, Choi Siwon, Lin Peng and Mika Wang enter the ballroom for the press conference. Surely one of the most eclectic casts ever assembled, it’s not every day that an Asian action star sits alongside an Oscar winner and a K-pop singer to field questions from reporters.

                Photographers go into frenzy, jostling each other as they crowd around the stage to snap a shot of the actors. “Please, sit down. Let’s have some order, thank you,” Jackie exhorts in Mandarin. They obey. “Ah, now, much, much better!” he says, satisfied. Used to wearing many hats, Jackie is the producer, star and action director on Dragon Blade. Jackie plays the protagonist Huo An, a general of the Silk Road Protection Squad who is framed for treason and forced to work in a slave labour camp on the outskirts of China. He explains that he spent seven years preparing the film, which was filmed in the harsh climes of the Gobi Desert. Jackie rattles off some staggering figures: 350 crew members, 800 extras and 200 horses were required to pull the movie off. “It doesn’t matter how difficult the filming process was, if the audience enjoys the film, all the sweat, blood and tears are worth it,” he says.

                The involvement of Hollywood actors Cusack and Brody is unprecedented in the history of Chinese cinema. For both of them, it was a thrill to participate in a martial arts movie, seeing as they grew up on classic Golden Harvest Hong Kong movies. “We were great Jackie Chan fans, Bruce Lee fans, and saw all the martial arts movies so to be able to work with Jackie as an actor but also a visionary choreographer of actions and stunts, all the standards he puts in his movies, it was quite a thrill,” Cusack says. He portrays Lucius, a Roman general in exile who meets Jackie Chan’s character Huo An in the desert. Though initially wary of each other, Lucius and Huo An put aside their differences to concentrate on rebuilding the outpost of Wild Geese Gate.

                Brody agrees, saying “this is my childhood and adolescent fantasy, not only do we get to collaborate in a deeper dramatic capacity, in a creative way, but in a martial arts sense, it is such a thrill, it is beyond a thrill to learn from Jackie and to be able to play together, it was really very exciting.” Brody plays the villain of the piece, the tyrannical, power-hungry Tiberius, who has pursued Lucius across the desert.

                Jackie says that having worked in movies for 54 years, he has gotten used to the pressure of making a movie and that he believes that the old ways are often the best. “These days, audiences enjoy films like the Transformers movies and Spider-Man, as well as wire-fu action movies,” he says, saying he is adamant about retaining traditional ways of performing stunts, which he jokingly calls “stupid methods”. “Today, in Hollywood movies, there would be a piece of green cloth wrapped around the sword so it would look like the sword is slicing in real close without hurting anybody. Our method is really stupid – we did it for real. I feel that it’s a miracle that I can still be making action films at my age.” Jackie reveals that Cusack hit him twice in the hand by accident while filming a sword fight scene.

                “Well, we had a very long fight in the middle of the desert and sooner or later, you hit each other!” Cusack says sheepishly. Cusack and Brody were able to offer their input on the English segments of the script to ensure the dialogue sounded natural.

                Jackie may not feel the pressure, but actress Lin Peng certainly does. “Working with this director and cast, the pressure was immense. In this film, I’m playing a fierce warrior woman, so it was very demanding in terms of the martial arts. Jackie has very high standards for martial arts, so the pressure was on,” she says.

                Lin Peng has a scene where she is seen nude from behind. Jackie explains that he gave her the option of using a body double, but the actress decided to go the full Monty for real. Emphasising that he didn’t intend on leering at her, Jackie says “only I could see her naked body, but I assured her, ‘I’m not a pervert, I’m not looking at you in a sexual manner’.”

When Lin suggests that this is probably the most challenging entry in Jackie Chan’s recent filmography, Jackie admonishes her, saying all his movies are challenging to make. “Every film I make is challenging, it’s just that you don’t know it,” he counters. He elaborates on coordinating the casting of all the extras, including the actors playing Roman soldiers and the multi-ethnic schoolchildren. “They would say ‘it’s because of you, Jackie, that we’re here’. We had to teach them all the basics of acting. We needed to take care of these extras and create a friendly atmosphere for them. I’d make sure to eat with them and chat with them, because I didn’t want their first experience on the set of a Chinese film to be a negative one,” he says.

                Jackie emphasises that no matter how physically strenuous the shoot was for the actors, the crew had it worse. “I always say, actors have to be considerate of and grateful to all the crew members on set. Actors have it the easiest! They come to set late and leave early. Anywhere I go, I say the crew has it the hardest and we all have to recognise the contributions of those working behind the scenes.”

                Relative newcomer Mika Wang plays the other lead female character, a schoolteacher who is married to Huo An. “This is my first time working with Jackie and I feel very lucky to have the opportunity. Jackie has taught us so much, both in terms of filmmaking and in life,” she says. When she describes the finished movie as “awesome”, Jackie interjects with a rebuke again.

                “Never call your own movies ‘awesome’.” Jackie says in a finger-wagging tone. “Say they’re ‘okay’. You have to be humble always, that’s what I’ve taught you!”

         

       K-pop star Choi Siwon of Super Junior fame plays Huo An’s right-hand man in the film, Yin Po. Jackie had requested that he be cast in the film after positive experiences working on charity shows with the singer, who is hugely popular across Asia. Most of the fans at the mall appearance and red carpet premiere later that night are there for Choi Siwon alone. Choi likens learning fight choreography to learning dancing, and hopes he will get to showcase his moves by actually dancing in a future film project. “I love Singapore”, he says at one point.

                “That sounds like insincere flattery,” Jackie remarks.

                East-meets-west films haven’t exactly had a sterling track record – 47 Ronin, anybody? On what gives Dragon Blade its, well, edge in this subgenre, Cusack says it’s that “the quality control standards of Jackie and [director] Daniel Lee are incredibly high so this a very top-of-the-line movie.” He states that the production value was on par with that of the Hollywood blockbuster 2012, which “played here in China.” Perhaps he’s just a little jet-lagged, we’ll forgive the one-off geo-confusion – after all, Singaporeans are pretty used to having their country mistakenly thought of as a part of China.

                Jackie has lofty ambitions for this film and is particularly enamoured with its message. He says the one phrase that jumped out at him in the screenplay for Dragon Blade was “live for peace, turn foes into friends”. “Today’s world is in such dire need of peace that I felt I had to make this movie,” Jackie proclaims. “I felt that I had a mission with this film. With Chinese Zodiac, it was about the conservation of antiques. In Dragon Blade, it’s all about peace. I think everyone must have a sense of responsibility to create peace. My hope is that everyone can watch this movie and be touched by its message – Al Qaeda, the Middle East, the United States, my hope is that everyone can watch this movie and learn the value of peace.” Terrorists being compelled to put down their arms after watching a Jackie Chan film? You never know.

Stranger Than He Dreamt It: Strange Magic Press Conference

 For F*** Magazine

STRANGER THAN HE DREAMT IT

George Lucas talks his new animated film Strange Magic

By Jedd Jong

“No questions about Star Wars, please” – that is the mandate we’re repeatedly reminded of. George Lucas is here to discuss Strange Magic and Strange Magic alone. It is a Thursday morning and reporters are gathered in the screening room at the Sandcrawler building, Lucasfilm’s Singapore headquarters. Following a screening of the film, Lucas, Rydstrom and producer Mark S. Miller enter the screening room to field questions from the press, with F*** in attendance. Lucas is clad in his signature chequered shirt and jeans and it is certainly a thrill for many in the room, this writer included, to see the Star Wars creator in person.

Strange Magic, directed by Gary Rydstrom and executive-produced by Lucas, is the first feature film created predominantly at the studio’s Singapore facility. An animated comedy musical, the film takes place in a fantastical realm populated by fairies, goblins, elves and assorted enchanted creatures. Alan Cumming voices the Bog King, a tyrant who despite his best efforts, is eventually overcome by love. Evan Rachel Wood voices Marianne, a headstrong fairy who opposes her father’s intent for her to marry the vain prince Roland. A “jukebox musical”, Strange Magic has its characters singing a number of pop hits such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, “Love Is Strange”, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” and, of course, “Strange Magic”.

From left: animation supervisor Kim Ooi, director Gary Rydstrom, executive producer George Lucas, producer Mark Miller, VFX supervisor Nigel Sumner

With Strange Magic, Lucas has set out to make a family movie geared more towards an adolescent female demographic, as opposed to the adolescent male demographic targeted by Star Wars. Lucas shares about the long journey the film took from concept to fruition, how his own relationship with his daughters and his wife are reflected in the story, the decision not to cast marquee names, the competition with other more established animation studios and comments on the marked resemblance that the Fairy King in the film shares with himself.

What was it like making the film in Singapore?

It’s great to be here. I share this with a few other people, especially the few people that have been here for the entire run of us coming to Singapore. We started in a very small, humble abode, out by the airport, training people. They’ve had experience with cel animation or experience with computers, but we didn’t have anybody who’s had experience with both. We’ve come a long way, this film is the final goal we were trying to reach. I’ve said in a few press conferences like this from time to time, “we will make a feature film here”, and now we’ve done it and I’m very proud of the film that got made. It’s better than I had hoped it would be. The only other time I had this experience really was on Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark, where everything came out better than I hoped it would come out.

This has been a long journey, this is a testament to the great talent that’s been assembled here in Singapore. I’d like to thank the Media Development Authority and the government for bringing us here in the first place. It’s been a hugely successful experience for us. I just went through a tour with all the people who worked on this film and some of them have been here the 8 or 9 years we’ve been here. We’ve really come a long way and done a film that everybody can be proud of. Now we just have to wait for the results. It’s like an election. On Friday we’ll find out whether anybody voted for us but that does not have anything to do with whether the film is good or not because the film is brilliant. Gary and Mark, the producer and the director, came in at the end here, the last few years, and used it to make this film. They have nothing but wonderful things to say about the crews here and the work that’s been done. I think it’s the best.

I’m sure, you know, we do have some competitors, even within the same company; some started with me in the same company and then they moved on and got bought by the same company. Three different animation companies in the same corporate shell and we’re the junior one, but I think we’ve surpassed anything the other guys have done. That’s the one thing I grew up with in film school which is what I call the “Steven Spielberg-Martin Scorsese syndrome”, which is when we all try and outdo each other. I think at least for the moment, we’re ahead. 

The Fairy King looks vaguely familiar. Knowing that you have a few daughters, how much has your life as a father influenced the story?

My life as a father influenced it a lot because I had two daughters when we started and I have three daughters now. A part of it was that I decided Star Wars was a mythological adventure for 12-year-old boys, although it appealed to everybody from eight months to 80, as well as girls; not so much as popular with girls as it was with boys. I thought “maybe I’ll make a fairy tale adventure for adolescent, 12-year-old girls”. I hope that boys will go and see it, it’s got adventure, monsters, sword-fighting, that type of thing; I figured I’d do the same thing again. Obviously, a little bit more upbeat and funny and magical in a way than Star Wars was, but I was doing it primarily for my daughters.

I used to read The Wizard of Oz to my daughter every night for years and she also thought the king looked a lot like me. Gary was a little upset about that, I think Mark was more upset. They didn’t realise in the beginning that…this has gone on for 15 years, so there have been a lot of people involved over a long period of time. These guys came in as the last ones, we’re at the Alamo and it’s all over, and they are the cavalry that came to the rescue. Fortunately, nobody died in the process, saved us all! They kept making him fatter and fatter; I got upset about it. The joke is that he can’t fly; that’s the reason he can’t fly, because he’s so fat. I said “same thing happened to me. I started out skinny.” [Chuckles] Whether it really is me is a mystery. Somebody along the line designed him [to look like me] and it stuck.

What was the original idea behind the film?

The original idea was that I wanted to do a fairy tale for girls. On top of that, I had so much fun making American Graffiti that I wanted to put music in it; I love to make musicals. So, I said “well maybe I can tell a complete story using the lyrics from existing songs.” So it started that way and I needed a MacGuffin, something that starts the whole thing off and makes it work, which was love dust, which is from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It worked there, so I figured it would work anywhere. With the love dust, the music and wanting it to be about fairies and trolls, it moved from there to tell the story.

I ultimately wanted the story to be about the difference between infatuation and true love. Infatuation is like love dust, it’s like a disease. You kind of get it, you go crazy for an amount of time, then you wake up and go “who’s this, why am I with this person?” or they leave you and you have a heartache that comes out of that. So I said “you should focus on what’s behind that, what’s in the book, not the cover.” It’s an old story, it’s been told over and over again, but my feeling is that you can never tell these stories too often because each generation must have it told in their own language, so this is that story told for this generation. It’s like Star Wars, there’s nothing new in it, it’s just done in a different way.

Was this intended as a spiritual successor to fantasy films from the 80s like Labyrinth, Willow and Dark Crystal?

I’ve always loved fairy tales, I’ve always loved music. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, it’s like Labyrinth, Willow or any of the other things I’ve done. It’s something I like and I started it when I came up with the idea, saying “maybe I’ll do a little fairy tale.” I was doing it on the side, I had a group of about half a dozen people. We started doing stuff, designing stuff and I was really doing Star Wars, but I was doing this on the side because again, we’ve been doing this for 15 years. It’s something I was just doing for the fun of it, for my own enjoyment.

How did you go about picking the music?

This was started a long time ago and this was started because I just wanted to have fun and what I did was I went into my music archives, which is the same archives I went into for American Graffiti, and started finding music that I liked. Part of the development process was listening to the music, listening to the lyrics, trying to design the story where you could fit songs in it to tell the story. This went forever because we were constantly changing stories, taking music out because it was too expensive, or we had to shorten the film which meant we had to put in a new piece of music to sort of cover the glitch when we jumped from A to C instead of B. This is just movie music that I like. This is just my own personal favourite music. The real defining factor was the lyrics to tell the story and did I like the music, is it a nice song that I like to listen to? Part of it was as we work on it, I like to listen to it. Like Gary thinks the same way, it’s much more fun to be able to tap your toes while you’re working.

What is your favourite song in the movie?

[Groans] That’s terrible! This is my top 25! Apart from the top 25 that were in American Graffiti. The first song that got picked was the opening song…uh, “Can’t Help Falling in Love”. To me, that summed up the whole movie when I was starting. That was the inspiration, this is the kind of thing it should start with to tell you what the movie’s about. There’s a lot of other songs in there that also sum up the movie – “Strange Magic” is one of them, of course. It’s fun to be able to do this when you have songs that say what you’re trying to say. That was the original idea. Popular music, especially about love, goes into the categories of “disappointment, sorrow, heartbreak, unhappiness” and that’s two-thirds of it and one-third of it is the happiness of falling in love and having a great time. Obviously, there’s a lot more spent on the more tragic side of love than the happy side of the love and the movie kind of reflects that.

Have your daughters been waiting for this film and what did they think when they watched it?

Only one daughter’s seen it. She saw it at a press screening in Los Angeles yesterday and she loved it. So, that’s one out of three. The other one is married and just has a three-month-old baby so it’s going to be a little while [before she can see it]. She doesn’t live in L.A. like my other daughter, she lives in Las Vegas so she won’t be able to see it until this weekend. And then my other daughter, she’s only 18 months old, she has not seen it yet but I’m sure she’ll love it when she grows up.

Which part did your daughter who’s seen the movie like the most?

Well, she fancies herself as Marianne. Well, she liked the part about the king and his daughter. Listen, she’s 26 so we’re still at that same phase. She’s struggling to take over the kingdom [laughs]. That’s the part she liked the most. She liked the idea, the idea that real love is more than skin-deep and the way people think and what they feel about other people, the things they have in common are more important than what they look like.

Do you think the movie is a reflection of your own romantic relationships?

Well, in a way it is. I didn’t know it at the time, let’s put it that way, but it grew into it as we came along. I had gotten married, got divorced and never thought that I would ever find someone to love again. I was 40, I was a bachelor, I was raising one child by myself and then I had two more. For 20 years, obviously I wanted to get married again but I couldn’t find anybody. I had outgrown the infatuation part, which is another way of saying “actors, singers, models” [All laugh]. So, I had basically just given up. I just said “it’s never going to happen”. And then, I met somebody who was very different from me, looked very different, was in a different business, a child of the 60s, anti-government, anti-Wall Street, anti-everything, so I met a woman from Chicago and I’m from California, we’re from different countries [all laugh]. She’s from the financial business and I didn’t think we would have anything in common but as we got to know each other, I realised we had everything in common. We were just soulmates. That happened to me at 60. I just never thought it would, and it did. It’s just one of those miracles. No pixie dust was involved [all laugh].

Lucasfilm has always been on the forefront of filmmaking technology. Were there things in this film that you were able to bring in that you weren’t able to do about 10 years ago?

Well, what we did was when I started 15 years ago, I had this little group of people who were designers. They designed the characters and environments and things, and we had another little group that started working on technology because I wanted to do a lot of things that couldn’t be done. So, we were working at that point with ILM to develop new technology to be able to create the movie that I wanted to make within financial reason. They worked on that at the same time and that took a long time; that’s where a lot of the work was. I knew we couldn’t do it at that time and about 10 years was spent doing that stuff. In the last 5 years, we were able to take advantage of that and even over the last year we were improving things.

We tested it basically on a TV series we did here in Singapore, which was The Clone Wars. It was technically very advanced for a TV show; we were doing things with lighting, characters and all kinds of esoteric technical things that couldn’t have been done before. We were testing things out on that show, as I like to say. That went on with The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, [through] Episodes I, II and III of Star Wars, of developing technology so we could go to the next level.

Do you think modern cinema achieves the same magic associated with films like Star Wars, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Back to the Future? If not, why not?

Well, the magic you’re talking about is very hard to come by. You couldn’t just “do” it. It takes a very magical situation of creative talent, resources and all kinds of things to make something like that happen. It doesn’t happen very often. Otherwise, you’d see 20 or 30 of those movies every year. For somebody like me, I’m not looking to make a hit movie. I’m just doing something that I want to do for my own reasons. Some of them are hits, people like them, some of them aren’t. That’s not the real thing, for me, the real thing is doing it, and experimenting and doing things. That’s where I’m moving now, making experimental films. They won’t even be released because people will say “why did he do that, I didn’t like that.” I don’t really care, I just want to do it for myself and find out what happens when I do things and not worry about it.

Obviously, I’ve done some films that haven’t worked and I’ve done a lot of films that have worked. You never know…I have absolutely no idea how this movie will be received. I love it. I’ll always be happy with it. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the world is going to like it. I’ve had a lot of films that I really liked that nobody liked and I’ve seen a lot of films that I didn’t think were that special but everybody seems to like them. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of that part. You’ve got several groups that are going to come in and make decisions: the audience, in the form of now bloggers, the audience in the form of people who actually go to see the movie, then you’ve got the press and people who write about it. They all have different things about everything. There’s never any way to know what people are going to like. My worst-reviewed movie was Star Wars [Episode IV] and it seems to be the best [all laugh].

Voice acting is a key component of animated films. Did you envision Evan Rachel Wood and Alan Cumming as your voice actors when you first conceptualised the project and at which point did you settle on them voicing Marianne and the Bog King respectively? Dreamworks goes after a lot of big names to put on their posters, why did you pick these two actors?

The casting was done back when, I did casting by tape. I was looking for a good singer, I was looking for a good actor, I was looking for people who could be the characters. I was just listening to tapes to pick the cast and obviously, Elijah Kelley had worked with me on Red Tails and I knew I wanted him to be Sunny, the elf.

Gary Rydstrom: In Alan Cumming’s case, what I’m really amazed by is that character in this movie has to go from a scary, bad guy character to somebody you want to see fall in love and that you actually can stand to see being kissed. Alan Cumming is a great actor and so he brought a lot of emotional weight to this character; he could change from being a scary bad guy to a gentlemanly, heartfelt person you want to see fall in love by the end. Great actors as well as great singers, that’s what the casting for this film is about. Elijah Kelley was one of George’s first picks for this movie because Elijah Kelley is a force of nature and makes Sunny a force of nature. Casting is a pretty key element in an animated film. It’s more important that they create a character you remember. It’s not important, for me, that they’re famous names. The combination of the voices and the great animation makes it come alive in a way that really is magical.

George Lucas: I don’t believe in movie stars. I’ve never put a movie star in my movie, except for Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Other than that, anybody who’s in my movie who becomes a movie star, I’ve never hired a movie star to promote the movie and I don’t know why you need movie stars, except some of them are really great actors, why you need them in an animated film. In the beginning of animated films, they didn’t have a lot of money to get people like that and this is a reasonably low-budget picture. As a result, we had to use our wits to do it. In the beginning, there were a lot of challenges put in there by me, because I wanted to see if it would work; slightly experimental. One of them which was the love story, the first thing everybody said when they saw the designs was “she’s not going to actually kiss him, is she?” I said “yeah, they fall in love, they get married, they have kids, but we won’t go into that.” Everybody said we couldn’t do it, it wouldn’t work. People would go “ew” and I said “then, we didn’t do our job.” Our job is to say “everybody needs to be loved. Everybody deserves to be loved.” That was a big challenge that these guys pick up and that we’ve been fighting the whole time.

The other one was that I’ve been using this delicate line between photo-real and animation. I had a photo-real background but animated characters that are stylised like animation characters should be. I didn’t want it to look like Final Fantasy [The Spirits Within]. They’re slightly animated characters but they live in a real world, to not have that be jarring. Technically, trying to do that, bringing it up to being realistic and making it match was a huge challenge and the guys here in Singapore did a fantastic job in blending that to a point where it all works together.

It kind of looks like what you would find in your own backyard, which is one of the original concepts is if you’re seven years old, you could go out and see a butterfly, see a cockroach or praying mantis or something and look and it and say “I wonder if that’s really a fairy or a goblin?” It brings a sense of reality or as [Akira] Kurosawa said, “a great movie is made out of immaculate reality”. I turned that into Star Wars, which had that. It’s completely fanciful, there’s nothing real in it. But I managed to make it feel real and am trying to do the same thing here, which is trying to make something that’s completely concocted and animated feel like it’s a real place with real people, even though they’re bugs.

Is there a sequel being planned?

I started this when I was just playing around by myself and now it’s being owned by Disney, so it’s their decision about whether there’s a sequel or not. The big thing is if it does well, then they’ll start talking about things like that. If it doesn’t, they won’t.

Strange Magic opens in Singapore cinemas on 29 January 2015.