Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my first ever report from WonderCon.
Today was a fun, full day. It started off with an early morning run to Emeryville that had me exploring the Pixar grounds and seeing the first 35 minutes of WALL-E… And… It was great, but I can’t say any more than that now. Hopefully the embargo will be lifted soon and I can spill my copious guts.
I got back with just enough time to conduct a hilarious interview with 7 (count ‘em 7) of the cast and crew from FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. That one will hit you as soon as I can force Muldoon to transcribe it. I got an offer for a tongue-kiss from one of the cast members, but you’ll have to wait until the full interview before you find out if it was from Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Jack McBrayer, Jason Segel or Russell Brand. Although, I will say that some of Kristen Bell’s first words to me were “You’re going to pop the cherry.” Lordamercy!!!
Had half an hour with those guys and that left with me just enough time to head to the convention center, pick up my badge, grab a $9 sandwich (I hadn’t eaten anything in about 24 hours at that point) and head into Hall A for the one interesting studio panel for today, Universal’s panel on FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL and WANTED.
FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL
They showed a 6 minute clip that included everything from the trailer, plus extra bits, add-ons if you will. It’s like they cut in the full scenes of many of the moments glimpsed in the trailer.
There’s a bit where the lead, Jason Segel, is on the phone with Bill Hader who is telling him he needs to get out and meet some people. Segel says there’s only a few guys he’s met in Hawaii… and they’re weird.
We see a few, including one bit with the choice phrase from the lips of Paul Rudd as he and Segel scope out Segel’s ex, Sarah Marshall (played by Kristen Bell)… “I like her hair. I wonder if the carpet matches the pubes.”
We meet Jack McBrayer’s character for the first time. If you’re like me, then you’ll be pleased as punch to see McBrayer turn up in this flick and he was awesome. He plays a newlywed… an uptight newlywed whose bride is starting to show some kink and freaking his uptight ass out. “The wife wants me to do… certain things that I find… inappropriate.” Then we see him in bed with his wife as she ducks under the covers. He scolds her like you’d scold a dog who lifts his leg on your 360.
“No! NO! God put our mouths on our head for a reason! No!”
Then we’re back in the bar with McBrayer and Segel as he explains. “Let’s just say if God was a city planner he would not put a playground next to a sewage system.”
Probably the most added stuff was the budding romance between Segel and Mila Kunis, an employee of the Hawaiian hotel that serves as the setting for this flick.
The biggest moment is the lead up to the moment in the trailer when she jumps off the cliff. Here he leans in for a kiss and she turns and jumps off. Segel screams and runs around frantically. “Oh, God! I made her kill herself!”
She calls up from the water, “Are you going to jump or what?” “No!” he screams back. “Oh, come on, Peter. I can see your vagina from here!” “Um… I mean… I’ll jump…” and then we get the jump, trip, caught in vines moment from the trailer.
We get another moment with Paul Rudd out on the ocean, both him and Segel sitting on surfboards. “When life gives you lemons, I say fuck the lemons and bail!” Then the surf crash from the trailer and coral in the leg bit (except we actually see it lodged in there here).
Then it wraps up with a few more quick bits… McBrayer saying when they combine the sex and the violence… he likes it, a big Hawaiian dude standing over Segel, naked in bed. Segel screams and pulls the blanket up, rustling a bunch of used Kleenex. The big Hawaaian dude says, “Are those sad tissues… or happy tissues?” Russell Brand saying he can’t have a drink in a restaurant because if he does he’ll end up “rimming the waiters just to get my hands on a rock.” A gangsta with an obsession with accepts a fish-naming challenge from McBrayer and succeeds with flying colors, saying something in I couldn’t even begin to spell for you and following that up with a “booya, yeaaahh, bitch!”
And then a little bit of Segel singing a Romanian Dracula romance song he wrote.
Really funny stuff. Then the cast took the stage. We had Nick Stoller come out and, before bringing out the cast, he announced that he had the entire IRON MAN film for us. The crowd cheered and laughed, then he brought out the cast. Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, Jack McBrayer and Shauna Robertson.
Like usual, I’ll go over some bullet-hits of the panel and post some purty pics along the way:
- Segel has a lot of nude scenes in the movie and he spent most of his time during these scenes actually naked. There was a cock sock, but it was flesh-colored and he said when he wore it he was “as smooth as a Ken doll,” he almost preferred it flopping around.
- Also, Shauna Robertson apparently hates Segel’s nipples and kept trying to hide them during the course of the movie… behind a blanket, whathaveyou.
- Russell Brand, a well known UK comedian, was hysterical. He’d throw out random tangets… answers to questions like “What was your most difficult part of making this movie,” would be “There was a surfer, a surfing instructor who was so full of sexual charisma, I turned a little gay…” then he’d wait for the audience’s laughter to die away and add, “Mike, his name was.” He’s the one sitting next to Mila.
- Jack McBrayer was forced to reveal a dirty secret. “Tell them what’s in your backpack,” director Nick Stroll said. McBrayer grinned sheepishly and said he has a tendency to steal free food and his backpack was filled with Mountain Dew and Bottled Water. Everybody in the audience was dying of laughter, then he dropped, “Food is expensive, y’all!” Slayed ‘em, but not as much as…
- McBrayer’s second audience killing line. Someone asked him if anyone ever mentioned to him that he looks like a young Tom Cruise. McBrayer said, “Tom Cruise has filed a restraining order against me… but Katie’s already pregnant again, y’all!” God, I wish I got that on tape. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard… his delivery and the whole thing coming so far out of left field… that dude has a great voice for comedy… his accent in 30 ROCK is really him. Amazing.
- Brand described Apatow’s group as “underlings, his sperm, his ejaculation.” I don’t know why, but it was funny.
- Kristen Bell was asked about a return to VERONICA MARS and she said that nothing’s going yet, but she’s still good friends with everyone involved and there’s talk of a movie, but if it happens it has to happen soon, “before we’re geriatric.”
That’s about all I can remember from the panel. The interview we did is great. I’ll get that one out to you as soon as I can.
WANTED
Timur Bekmambetov recorded a video to introduce an extended action sequence from the movie. The only real bit of useful information gleaned from the footage was that they are going to do “additional photography” on the film soon and that he’s currently scoring the film with Danny Elfman.
The footage:
Starts mid-action as Anjelina Jolie holds a frightened James McAvoy by the collar in a crowded supermarket. Down at the other end of the aisle is a bald assassin trying to take them out. Jolie whips her folding gun monitor thing (from the trailer) around one side, then the other, finally spotting him. He fires, and we follow the bullet as it rips through cereal boxes and finally through the wood shelving they’re using for cover, just over McAvoy’s head.
He freaks out, breaks free of Jolie’s grip and, in a panic, runs down the aisle… toward the assassin. The assassin sees him and brings his gun up (in slow motion of course) for the kill shot. Jolie can’t get to them in time so she shoots at a propane tank on the wall in between them, blowing it up in a huge fireball that gives McAvoy time to duck out of the store.
The assassin chases him out. McAvoy runs down the parking lot and the baldy steals a pet food truck (Nibblers is written on the side with big cartoony dogs… and the truck’s dash is covered with dog bobble heads) all T-1000 style, throwing its occupant out the door.
He charges down McAvoy when Jolie’s red sports car zooms in. She hits the brakes, skids, throws open the passenger side door and scoops McAvoy up and out of the path of the truck.
Then there’s a huge chase where McAvoy yells “Fuck” over and over again as Jolie shoots behind her, dodges cars, side-swipes cement tunnel surfaces, rear-ends cops (adding to the chase) and the assassins bullets take out the rear windshield.
In this sequence, Jolie pulls guns from everywhere… armrest, visors, in-between seats… at one point, she shoots the front windshield out. McAvoy says, “What are you shooting the car for?!? Are you crazy!?!”
She tells him to take the wheel and she slides out over the hood and fires back at the car. McAvoy isn’t steering well enough, so she just kicks him and pins him to the seat with one high-heel while driving with the other… still leaned out. She shouts for him to hand her more guns… “UNDER THE SEAT!” He pulls out a sawed off shotgun.
She fires back, hits the truck and it looks like they’ll make it when the assassin shoots a bullet around a bus using that trailer bullet-curve thing. It hits their rear tire, nearly putting that little car out of control. Jolie climbs back in and they see a Blues Brothers-esque police roadblock ahead of them.
Jolie looks around for a moment, then speeds up… sparks flying everywhere. Just as she’s about to hit the squad cars, she whips the wheel sideways and in their sideways spin the now rims-only front and rear right tires hit a giant crack in the road, sending them flipping… rolling in the air, over the cops. In slow motion, you see the cops look up in disbelief, the car inches from the tops of their heads.
One shot had a good close shot of a cop as the car sails overhead, the roof spinning in front of his face revealing McAvoy mouthing the words, “I’m sorry!” which we hear in slowed down form.
The car flies over the police blockade and hits a bus, nearly knocking it over. It crunches in and then Jolie hits the gas and it speeds up, over the roof of the bus and over the top, hitting the ground before speeding away, sparks flying everywhere.
It was an incredibly fun sequence. Some of the effects in the chase were unfinished, with some cars looking kinda ridiculous, but even in this unfinished state it was pretty heart-pounding.
McAvoy came out to talk to the audience a bit:
- An audience member asked about how close it sticks to the graphic novel, asking about the addition of superheroes and supervillains. McAvoy responded that there’s not really any of those in the movie, but there is an opening for them… and they might be explored in further films.
- Mark Millar has seen an early cut of the film and he enjoyed it.
- Timur Bekmambetov is a visual director, but is he an actor’s director? “The first thing he said to me, the director, was “We have to always look for the conflict,” and immediately I kinda felt more comfortable with him. As an actor, I’ve always used conflict… external, internal, environmental... to find an energy to create something interesting. Because without conflict it’s not very interesting… So, yeah, I think he is a bit of an actor’s director.”
- STATE OF PLAY – His character from the original, Dan Foster, won’t be in the US remake. Kevin McDonald (who worked with McAvoy on LAST KING OF SCOTLAND) is directing and he offered him the part he originated, but McAvoy looked at the script and said, “He’s not going to survive, is he?” “Do you mean we’ll kill him off?” “No, when you finally get to make the film this character isn’t going to make the cut, is he?” They decided no, he wouldn’t, so that was that.
- He was attracted to it because the main character was a little bit of a loser… “And also there’s a 14 year old boy inside of me that watched LETHAL WEAPON and watched Michael J. Fox in all the BACK TO THE FUTURE movies and even though he’s never really done an action movie he jumped over more things in BACK TO THE FUTURE than Mel Gibson did in all 4 LETHAL WEAPON movies… So, I thought, “This is my chance to get to jump over things!” And I jumped over a bridge at one point in this film, which I’m really pleased about. Michael J. Fox used to jump over the hood of the DeLorean and I jumped over a bridge!”
- STARTER FOR 10 is one of the favorite films he’s ever done. His favorite genre to work in is comedy. But ATONEMENT is the thing he’s most proud of. “And it’s the saddest film you’ll ever see… so, go figure.”
And that was that.
Wow, 6 pages over to presentation and one panel. Tomorrow’s going to kill me… We got panels on GET SMART, 10,000 BC, WALL-E, PRINCE CASPIAN, X-FILES 2, SHUTTER, HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY and IRON MAN.
Must get my Rocky super endurance rest! Be back tomorrow with updates on all of those as quick as I can!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
