Page 29 - Fujifilm Exposure_20 Bend It Like Beckham_ok

WIND
WIND
The world’s youngest astronaut flies by the seat of his “Thunderpants”
in production
dled that okay. I wasn’t interested in doing a fart movie as such. There’s nothing lavatorial about it, he’s just a windy boy. It’s an absurd premise but it’s actually a very touching movie.”
“The tone of the movie was very sweet and funny,” adds producer Graham Broadbent. “We’re not going for gross out comedy. It’s very moving about these two kids. Two losers who have no friends, who meet, become friends and eventually succeed.”
Reuniting with DP Andy Collins, with whom he had made his gradua- tion film from The National Film School, Hewitt assembled a great cast including Ned Beatty, Paul Giamatti, Simon Callow, Stephen Fry and Harry Potter’s Ron Weasley, Rupert Grint, as carrot-topped Alan A. Allen. As Patrick, the director cast 10 year old newcomer Bruce Cook.
One of many challenges for Hewitt was keeping his two young stars focused on and interested in the pro- ject, especially as they came to it with contrasting previous experience.
“For both the Patrick and Alan parts we saw hundreds of boys,” Hewitt continues. “We decided to have a look at Rupert not thinking that he would be famous by the time our film came out but just because we wanted to find the right guy.
“He read it and was simply miles better than anybody else. I had a very specific idea of what Alan should look like so we sort of messed him up. A lot of people have said that it didn’t really occur to them that this was the same actor that played Ron Weasley because he’s such an utterly different character. That’s a testament to his acting prowess.
“Rupert is a very professional actor and he takes direction well. He can do things many different ways, and understands — I guess from the intensive training he’s had on Harry Potter - all the stuff about finding his light and hitting the mark.
“For Bruce it’s different, this is all completely new to him. It’s more a case of trying to get him to do it in a
certain way. He was able to do Patrick Smash somehow and he was just what I thought that Patrick was like. A smi- ley sort of cherub.”
Other key challenges came in try- ing to match the careful design of the film with the limitations of a very mod- est budget. Knowing that one of the main sequences in the story had to be set in a NASA-like establishment where young Patrick finally fulfils his destiny, production designer Chris Roope and Collins had their work cut out.
“We didn’t have a big budget and we wanted to do a great deal of stuff,” Hewitt adds. “NASA was busy that day, so our NASA was the disused building that the National Grid used near the M25.”
The fact that Hewitt’s body of work seems to exist in a good- natured fan- tasy world that is subtly different in so many ways from the grim realities of real life obviously pleases him. The idea that Borrowers can really exist or that a lonely little boy can enhance his only gift to heroic proportions is, for the director, the stuff of true cinema.
“I think that’s something that film is abundantly good at doing. It’s the only medium where you can construct an entire universe, sustain it and immerse yourself in it for two hours. I want to take advantage of that.
“I don’t ever make up those details for the sake of it. It’s about creating the best stage in which the events in the script can happen in the fullest way. You have the ability when you’re making a film to, for example, get rid of all the modern cars and replace them all with green Morris Minors.
“That not only looks nice but also has other subliminal messages of what kind of world this is. This is a very ordered and regimented world so you’re actually getting an additional message across ... as well as being able to create pretty pictures.” ■ ANWAR BRETT
Thunderpants, which opens in May, was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture negative
THE DP VIEW
ANDY COLLINS
F
We were very lucky that day, we had glorious sunshine with nice little Florida type clouds in the sky. That was obviously a major concern beforehand. We warmed it up a bit, put some filters on to make it seem more American.
For the rest of the film we’d been shooting with a filter called Antique Suede which is a sort of sepia/tobac- co filter. It’s quite subtle, but if you were to look at white you would see it go a slightly yellowy green.
We established a few very simple rules like that. If we were in Patrick’s world we would have a filter on and when we go to America — in the story — we have a different filter. You have to keep on top of it but it’s not complicated.” ■
or one of our American exteri- ors, we went to Northolt to film the space agency buggy with Patrick in it driving towards the rocket.
Photos opposite page top left: Rupert Grint as Alan A Allen and main, Bruce Cook as Patrick Smash in Pete Hewitt’s Thunderpants