Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Keanu Reeves - SciFi Weekly: Behind the Scenes with Cast & Crew

At SciFi Weekly:

(Please follow the link for the complete article.)



THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL: KEANU REEVES, SCOTT DERRICKSON, JON HAMM

Go behind the scenes with the cast and crew as they update the 1951 classic. See who jokes about the possible sequel, Six Months After the Night Following the Day That the Earth Stood Still.



INTERVIEWS

December 10, 2008

Keanu Reeves and company stand up to build a better Earth

By Patrick Lee

Director Scott Derrickson took on a daunting challenge in remaking Robert Wise's much-lauded 1951 classic SF movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, but he was persuaded by the chance to update it for a 21st-century audience.

The remake, starring Keanu Reeves as the alien Klaatu and Jennifer Connelly as astrophysicist Dr. Helen Benson, also makes use of 21st-century visual-effects technology to bring to life Klaatu's otherworldly ship and robot guardian, Gort.

Derrickson, Reeves, Connelly and co-star Jon Hamm spoke with reporters in Beverly Hills, Calif., over the weekend about the remake, which opens Dec. 12. Following is an edited version of that news conference.


A brief excerpt:

... Was the chalkboard scene with John Cleese designed to be musical?

Reeves: That was intentional. We were thinking about it as a kind of dance and conversation.

Derrickson: It's a real math equation about a real significant high-physics theory about the universe, and we tried to be truthful to the scientific aspects. I just did an interview with Discover, and the interviewer was really surprised at little things in the movie, but that being the biggest one. We had an astrophysicist who worked with Keanu and John. I still remember watching them for quite a long time. I don't remember where we were in the production, but for quite a long time in a room working out the back-and-forth of that, and then we added material to make it longer at one point ... just to get that kind of flow and rhythm to it. I didn't have much to do with that. I'm just remembering, because it was really Keanu and the math guy, the theoretical physicist, and John Cleese. The three of them just kind of figured that out, and I saw it and thought it was fantastic ...


And there's a companion article at SciFi Wire.

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