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Jon Movie News
12.2.1999
From the Reuters newswire:
Transcribed by: mcdlancer@aol.com
Jon Movie News
FEATURE - WWII U-boat movie gets true-grit treatment
09:13 p.m Feb 11, 1999 Eastern
By Jude Webber
ROME, Feb 12 (Reuters) - ``Saving Private Ryan'' did it for the Normandy landings. ``U-571,'' a new World War Two epic adventure, aims to do it for the battle of the Atlantic.
The film tells of a bold bid by U.S. sailors to steal the German coding device, Enigma, from a stranded U-boat in 1942 and so to turn the tide of the war.
``The texture of the movie is completely authentic,'' director Jonathan Mostow told Reuters Television at Rome's legendary Cinecitta studios where filming started last month.
``The guys who were on the submarine were young, like our cast. All the details of the submarines, all the technical aspects, the commands issued, the type of things that happen are all based on reality. This is the way it was,'' he said.
Mostow's movie, starring Hollywood tough guy Harvey Keitel, Matthew McConaughey and singer-turned-actor Jon Bon Jovi, is veteran Italian producer Dino De Laurentiiis' 600th film.
Set as the Allies were reeling from British prime minister Winston Churchill's warning that they were about to lose the war in the sea, the film takes its inspiration from two operations in which German U-boats were captured by U.S. and British ships.
``Like in 'Saving Private Ryan', the story is a story that weaves together a lot of incidents that are based in fact into a fictional story,'' Mostow said, stressing the qualities he wanted to bring to the fore were ``realism and authenticity.''
ON SET WITH SUBMARINES
``I have to confess -- I feel moved,'' De Laurentiis told reporters in front of the replica of a German submarine in Cinecitta's Studio Five.
``The last news conference I did here in this studio was for the filming of 'War and Peace' in 1954, 45 years ago,'' said the diminutive 79-year-old. ``I'm happy I'm still here.''
The price of making movies has shot up in that time -- De Laurentiis said ``U-571'' would cost $90 million, mostly because engineers had to construct replica U.S. and German submarines.
``We searched for World War Two submarines everywhere in the world but didn't find one so we had to construct one in the shipyards in Malta,'' he said. The film will shoot on location in the Mediterranean island later this year.
Mostow said the crew had ``spared no expense and made every effort to ensure the texture is real.'' One stroke of luck was finding a mint-condition, original Enigma in Dortmund, Germany.
One of the production designers, Goetz Weidner, worked on the German-submarine movie ``Das Boot'' and scriptwriter David Ayer is a former U.S. Navy sonar operator who served on a nuclear attack submarine during the Cold War.
>From the outside, the sub sets where the interior shots will be filmed look like large grey tanks with green and red tubes feeding into them from above and wooden planks outside.
But step inside and it's like going back in time.
In the German U-Boat, a period gas mask is left on one of the narrow bunks. The smell of grease and paint hangs in the engine room and there is an old-fashioned, German-labelled tin of condensed milk in the galley kitchen.
Designers have built a special machine onto which sections of the sets can be mounted to simulate underwater movement.
``The most difficult part of the film will be the sequences we film on water,'' Mostow said. ``Water is not a friend to film, they don't mix. But we have absolutely the best people. We have the guy from 'Titanic' who's our marine coordinator, who did 'Waterworld', who did 'Amistad' -- so we're in great hands.''
Although James Cameron's ``Titanic'' won 11 Oscars, it also turned into the most expensive film ever made -- costing $200 million to make and another $100 million to promote, even more than ``Waterworld,'' Kevin Costner's 1995 flop that similarly ranks as one of Hollywood's most cash-guzzling pictures.
``Amistad,'' another boat movie, is not considered one of Steven Spielberg's major achievements.
But Mostow said he was confident ``U-571'' would successfully negotiate the perils of running overbudget.
``You never know with water and we have Mother Nature you can't control but we'll make every attempt to keep ourselves from falling into the problems that, say, a movie like 'Waterworld' did,'' he said.
HOLLYWOOD LOVES A WAR
``U-571'' is the latest example of Hollywood's ongoing love-affair with World War Two. After ``Saving Private Ryan,'' Terrence Malick's long-awaited ``The Thin Red Line'' opened in the United States and is already a box-office hit.
But Mostow insists submarine tales are something different and belong in the ``great tradition of sea stories'' that started with Homer's ``Odyssey.''
To widen the appeal to the movie-going public and prevent ``U-571'' being pigeon-holed as a macho film for men, there are some well-known names and young, chiselled faces.
``What woman wouldn't want to see these gentlemen all sweaty and with their shirts off,'' Mostow joked, prompting a rare smile from Keitel -- who, pushing 60, is the odd man out.
Keitel, who joined the Marine Corps after leaving school, said the patriotic story took him back to his Brooklyn childhood when he watched war films. ``I was trying to find my own courage, my own place in the world, watching grown men struggle.''
He smiled wryly when the subject of his age came up. ``I play the senior enlisted man on the boat...and (supermodel) Cindy Crawford was not available,'' he said.
Bon Jovi relished ``U-571'' as a departure from the boy-meets-girl film roles he has done to date. ``I've never been on a submarine. I'm claustrophobic,'' he laughed. ``Talk about facing your fears. So it's been a great learning curve already.''
Mostow concluded: ``My ambition is simply to create a story that will appeal to modern audiences and give them some appreciation of the strategic issues, all in the context of making a big Hollywood entertainment movie.''
From the Reuters newswire:
Transcribed by: mcdlancer@aol.com
Jon Movie News
FEATURE - WWII U-boat movie gets true-grit treatment
09:13 p.m Feb 11, 1999 Eastern
By Jude Webber
ROME, Feb 12 (Reuters) - ``Saving Private Ryan'' did it for the Normandy landings. ``U-571,'' a new World War Two epic adventure, aims to do it for the battle of the Atlantic.
The film tells of a bold bid by U.S. sailors to steal the German coding device, Enigma, from a stranded U-boat in 1942 and so to turn the tide of the war.
``The texture of the movie is completely authentic,'' director Jonathan Mostow told Reuters Television at Rome's legendary Cinecitta studios where filming started last month.
``The guys who were on the submarine were young, like our cast. All the details of the submarines, all the technical aspects, the commands issued, the type of things that happen are all based on reality. This is the way it was,'' he said.
Mostow's movie, starring Hollywood tough guy Harvey Keitel, Matthew McConaughey and singer-turned-actor Jon Bon Jovi, is veteran Italian producer Dino De Laurentiiis' 600th film.
Set as the Allies were reeling from British prime minister Winston Churchill's warning that they were about to lose the war in the sea, the film takes its inspiration from two operations in which German U-boats were captured by U.S. and British ships.
``Like in 'Saving Private Ryan', the story is a story that weaves together a lot of incidents that are based in fact into a fictional story,'' Mostow said, stressing the qualities he wanted to bring to the fore were ``realism and authenticity.''
ON SET WITH SUBMARINES
``I have to confess -- I feel moved,'' De Laurentiis told reporters in front of the replica of a German submarine in Cinecitta's Studio Five.
``The last news conference I did here in this studio was for the filming of 'War and Peace' in 1954, 45 years ago,'' said the diminutive 79-year-old. ``I'm happy I'm still here.''
The price of making movies has shot up in that time -- De Laurentiis said ``U-571'' would cost $90 million, mostly because engineers had to construct replica U.S. and German submarines.
``We searched for World War Two submarines everywhere in the world but didn't find one so we had to construct one in the shipyards in Malta,'' he said. The film will shoot on location in the Mediterranean island later this year.
Mostow said the crew had ``spared no expense and made every effort to ensure the texture is real.'' One stroke of luck was finding a mint-condition, original Enigma in Dortmund, Germany.
One of the production designers, Goetz Weidner, worked on the German-submarine movie ``Das Boot'' and scriptwriter David Ayer is a former U.S. Navy sonar operator who served on a nuclear attack submarine during the Cold War.
>From the outside, the sub sets where the interior shots will be filmed look like large grey tanks with green and red tubes feeding into them from above and wooden planks outside.
But step inside and it's like going back in time.
In the German U-Boat, a period gas mask is left on one of the narrow bunks. The smell of grease and paint hangs in the engine room and there is an old-fashioned, German-labelled tin of condensed milk in the galley kitchen.
Designers have built a special machine onto which sections of the sets can be mounted to simulate underwater movement.
``The most difficult part of the film will be the sequences we film on water,'' Mostow said. ``Water is not a friend to film, they don't mix. But we have absolutely the best people. We have the guy from 'Titanic' who's our marine coordinator, who did 'Waterworld', who did 'Amistad' -- so we're in great hands.''
Although James Cameron's ``Titanic'' won 11 Oscars, it also turned into the most expensive film ever made -- costing $200 million to make and another $100 million to promote, even more than ``Waterworld,'' Kevin Costner's 1995 flop that similarly ranks as one of Hollywood's most cash-guzzling pictures.
``Amistad,'' another boat movie, is not considered one of Steven Spielberg's major achievements.
But Mostow said he was confident ``U-571'' would successfully negotiate the perils of running overbudget.
``You never know with water and we have Mother Nature you can't control but we'll make every attempt to keep ourselves from falling into the problems that, say, a movie like 'Waterworld' did,'' he said.
HOLLYWOOD LOVES A WAR
``U-571'' is the latest example of Hollywood's ongoing love-affair with World War Two. After ``Saving Private Ryan,'' Terrence Malick's long-awaited ``The Thin Red Line'' opened in the United States and is already a box-office hit.
But Mostow insists submarine tales are something different and belong in the ``great tradition of sea stories'' that started with Homer's ``Odyssey.''
To widen the appeal to the movie-going public and prevent ``U-571'' being pigeon-holed as a macho film for men, there are some well-known names and young, chiselled faces.
``What woman wouldn't want to see these gentlemen all sweaty and with their shirts off,'' Mostow joked, prompting a rare smile from Keitel -- who, pushing 60, is the odd man out.
Keitel, who joined the Marine Corps after leaving school, said the patriotic story took him back to his Brooklyn childhood when he watched war films. ``I was trying to find my own courage, my own place in the world, watching grown men struggle.''
He smiled wryly when the subject of his age came up. ``I play the senior enlisted man on the boat...and (supermodel) Cindy Crawford was not available,'' he said.
Bon Jovi relished ``U-571'' as a departure from the boy-meets-girl film roles he has done to date. ``I've never been on a submarine. I'm claustrophobic,'' he laughed. ``Talk about facing your fears. So it's been a great learning curve already.''
Mostow concluded: ``My ambition is simply to create a story that will appeal to modern audiences and give them some appreciation of the strategic issues, all in the context of making a big Hollywood entertainment movie.''
From the Reuters newswire:
Transcribed by: mcdlancer@aol.com
Jon Movie News
FEATURE - WWII U-boat movie gets true-grit treatment
09:13 p.m Feb 11, 1999 Eastern
By Jude Webber
ROME, Feb 12 (Reuters) - ``Saving Private Ryan'' did it for the Normandy landings. ``U-571,'' a new World War Two epic adventure, aims to do it for the battle of the Atlantic.
The film tells of a bold bid by U.S. sailors to steal the German coding device, Enigma, from a stranded U-boat in 1942 and so to turn the tide of the war.
``The texture of the movie is completely authentic,'' director Jonathan Mostow told Reuters Television at Rome's legendary Cinecitta studios where filming started last month.
``The guys who were on the submarine were young, like our cast. All the details of the submarines, all the technical aspects, the commands issued, the type of things that happen are all based on reality. This is the way it was,'' he said.
Mostow's movie, starring Hollywood tough guy Harvey Keitel, Matthew McConaughey and singer-turned-actor Jon Bon Jovi, is veteran Italian producer Dino De Laurentiiis' 600th film.
Set as the Allies were reeling from British prime minister Winston Churchill's warning that they were about to lose the war in the sea, the film takes its inspiration from two operations in which German U-boats were captured by U.S. and British ships.
``Like in 'Saving Private Ryan', the story is a story that weaves together a lot of incidents that are based in fact into a fictional story,'' Mostow said, stressing the qualities he wanted to bring to the fore were ``realism and authenticity.''
ON SET WITH SUBMARINES
``I have to confess -- I feel moved,'' De Laurentiis told reporters in front of the replica of a German submarine in Cinecitta's Studio Five.
``The last news conference I did here in this studio was for the filming of 'War and Peace' in 1954, 45 years ago,'' said the diminutive 79-year-old. ``I'm happy I'm still here.''
The price of making movies has shot up in that time -- De Laurentiis said ``U-571'' would cost $90 million, mostly because engineers had to construct replica U.S. and German submarines.
``We searched for World War Two submarines everywhere in the world but didn't find one so we had to construct one in the shipyards in Malta,'' he said. The film will shoot on location in the Mediterranean island later this year.
Mostow said the crew had ``spared no expense and made every effort to ensure the texture is real.'' One stroke of luck was finding a mint-condition, original Enigma in Dortmund, Germany.
One of the production designers, Goetz Weidner, worked on the German-submarine movie ``Das Boot'' and scriptwriter David Ayer is a former U.S. Navy sonar operator who served on a nuclear attack submarine during the Cold War.
>From the outside, the sub sets where the interior shots will be filmed look like large grey tanks with green and red tubes feeding into them from above and wooden planks outside.
But step inside and it's like going back in time.
In the German U-Boat, a period gas mask is left on one of the narrow bunks. The smell of grease and paint hangs in the engine room and there is an old-fashioned, German-labelled tin of condensed milk in the galley kitchen.
Designers have built a special machine onto which sections of the sets can be mounted to simulate underwater movement.
``The most difficult part of the film will be the sequences we film on water,'' Mostow said. ``Water is not a friend to film, they don't mix. But we have absolutely the best people. We have the guy from 'Titanic' who's our marine coordinator, who did 'Waterworld', who did 'Amistad' -- so we're in great hands.''
Although James Cameron's ``Titanic'' won 11 Oscars, it also turned into the most expensive film ever made -- costing $200 million to make and another $100 million to promote, even more than ``Waterworld,'' Kevin Costner's 1995 flop that similarly ranks as one of Hollywood's most cash-guzzling pictures.
``Amistad,'' another boat movie, is not considered one of Steven Spielberg's major achievements.
But Mostow said he was confident ``U-571'' would successfully negotiate the perils of running overbudget.
``You never know with water and we have Mother Nature you can't control but we'll make every attempt to keep ourselves from falling into the problems that, say, a movie like 'Waterworld' did,'' he said.
HOLLYWOOD LOVES A WAR
``U-571'' is the latest example of Hollywood's ongoing love-affair with World War Two. After ``Saving Private Ryan,'' Terrence Malick's long-awaited ``The Thin Red Line'' opened in the United States and is already a box-office hit.
But Mostow insists submarine tales are something different and belong in the ``great tradition of sea stories'' that started with Homer's ``Odyssey.''
To widen the appeal to the movie-going public and prevent ``U-571'' being pigeon-holed as a macho film for men, there are some well-known names and young, chiselled faces.
``What woman wouldn't want to see these gentlemen all sweaty and with their shirts off,'' Mostow joked, prompting a rare smile from Keitel -- who, pushing 60, is the odd man out.
Keitel, who joined the Marine Corps after leaving school, said the patriotic story took him back to his Brooklyn childhood when he watched war films. ``I was trying to find my own courage, my own place in the world, watching grown men struggle.''
He smiled wryly when the subject of his age came up. ``I play the senior enlisted man on the boat...and (supermodel) Cindy Crawford was not available,'' he said.
Bon Jovi relished ``U-571'' as a departure from the boy-meets-girl film roles he has done to date. ``I've never been on a submarine. I'm claustrophobic,'' he laughed. ``Talk about facing your fears. So it's been a great learning curve already.''
Mostow concluded: ``My ambition is simply to create a story that will appeal to modern audiences and give them some appreciation of the strategic issues, all in the context of making a big Hollywood entertainment movie.''
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