FILM NEWS

Dolphin Tale – questions and answers

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:43

Alcon Entertainment – the producers of Blind side – will release the star-studded Dolphin Tale on 6 January 2012.

Dolphin Tale is inspired by the amazing true story of a brave dolphin called Winter and the compassionate people who banded together to save her life. The film stars Morgan Freeman, Harry Connick Jr, Ashley Judd and Kris Kristofferson.

Here follows a Q&A with director Charles Martin Smith.

QUESTION: When you said, ‘I’ve got to have Kris Kristofferson in this - we worked in Pat Garrett and the Billy and the Kid,’ what did people say to you?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Well, it was one of those things that came up in meetings, like with Andrew Broderick, one of the producers. We’re sitting around trying to come up with the cast and names come up, and they said, ‘What about Kristofferson?’ I said, ‘I know Kris. Kris is a great idea.’ I have to say it came from one of the sort of group meetings. Actually, all the casting did, just talking about who could do these roles, and the wonderful thing is they all said yes.

QUESTION: What was it like to be with Kris, what is it, 40-some years later?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: It was terrific. Yeah, 40-some years later. I bumped into him once briefly about 20 years ago. But it was great. It was terrific. And the first thing I wanted to do was—I know I embarrassed him, but when I did Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, I was 19 and had really done very little. I had just filmed American Graffiti, but it hadn’t come out yet. It was during the time that Graffiti was in post. And it was a bunch of rough cowboys, and Sam was the kind of guy that Sam was. Yeah, a tough guy, although he really liked me. But I just felt kind of out of place, and Kris was so good to me. He was so welcoming back on that film. He was great, and I’ve never forgotten his kindness. So, I reminded him of that, and he was, ‘Aw.’

QUESTION: This movie seems about that too, about acts of kindness and so many broken people putting themselves together.

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Yeah, it is, exactly. It is. And by team effort. I mean, I think there is a real genuine sense of family, you know? And I like that. I was always really wanting the movie to be about that. Even when Sawyer is rescuing Winter on the beach, I wanted that feeling when the truck drives up and the rescue team gets out, that they’re a family that Sawyer doesn’t really have, and that he’s attracted to this idea that they’re all gathering around with so much nurturing to look after this dolphin, and the sense of camaraderie in the family, which is what draws the boy to go sneak into the Marine Hospital in the first place.

QUESTION: What did you learn from when you did Never Cry Wolf with Carroll Ballard because he was really into nature and reality in movies.

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I learned everything. I mean, I walk around on set thinking, ‘How would Carroll shoot this?’

QUESTION: Did you really?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Oh, yeah, I actually do. He does amazing things. I learned so much from him on that film. I worked on that for years, actually. A year and half of acting in it and then I was in for post-production where I was one of the writers on the film as well. So, I wrote all this voiceover that we did in post-production, so I was actually there in post. And I remember how we shot all these scenes, and I would watch Carroll edit them, and I learned really what editing is and the post-production process. I don’t think a director can begin to make a movie unless you understand editing.

QUESTION: You’re working with three difficult things in this movie: water, kids and animals.

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Yeah. I know, I’m crazy. And I love all three. The water’s a little sketchy, but the kids and animals, I really like working with them. I think there’s something wonderful about capturing that. It’s a little bit, I think, of a documentary impulse, which is certainly what Ballard has.

With a kid, you want them to bring what they are and who they are, and you want to create an atmosphere where they’re relaxed. I told these kids—we’d change lines all the time because I want the kids to be able to be real and to be who they are. I think as soon as you start imposing a performance on a kid, you get a lifeless performance. And I think the same is true with an animal. I wanted to see what Winter really does, and then I wanted to capture that. Everything she does in the movie are things she really does.

When I first came on to the film, the first thing that I did was come to Clearwater and sit here for three days and just watch her and see what she does. Like, she makes this Tweety Bird sound all the time, so I added that in. And then, she has this mattress that she loves to float around on, so I added that in.

QUESTION: That was her favorite toy.

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Yeah, well, it isn’t, actually. I made that up, too, but I noticed that she likes to swim around with these toys and put these rings on her rostrum, so I added in that we were going to do this and designed this rubber duck for her and stuff.

QUESTION: Can you talk about casting Morgan Freeman to play Dr. McCarthy in this film. It was a surprise to see him in the trailer.

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Yeah, I know, I love that. Well, I’d always wanted McCarthy to be quirky and funny in a kind of irascible way, you know? Having him call the dolphin a fish all the time. And you know you say, how many actors can really kind of pull off both the believability of him being a scientist and being a very accomplished guy that makes this and designs these tails, but also can be that kind of that fellow? And it was Morgan’s idea to actually wear a bowtie and that little hat. And he was terrific.

QUESTION: It was a little surprising nobody ever corrected him on when he called it a fish.

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Well, I know. Somebody, actually, had written a line about this, ‘I don’t understand. Why does this character keep calling him a fish? He’s supposed to be a scientist, and he would know that it’s a mammal.’ And I’m thinking, ‘No, because it’s a joke. He’s being funny.’ I think kids get that, that that’s his running gag. McCarthy’s just that kind of guy.

QUESTION: How did you stage the hurricane scene? It looked fairly real.

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Well, thank you. I couldn’t figure out any way to get real jeopardy to this animal. You do an animal movie, and if it’s Black Stallion, the horse gets loose and runs around, or in My Dog Skip, which was Alcon’s film, the dog gets loose and runs around. Well, this dolphin’s not going to get loose and run around. How do I create a story where you bring some jeopardy towards the end of Act 2 to this thing? I thought, well, bring the jeopardy to her. Let’s have a hurricane come in.

So, I began asking people around here what it’s like and how does it work. I’d never been through one myself, but how it was all to be done. I knew I was going to use some stock footage. And, actually, I remember telling [producer] Andrew Broderick, I was describing all this, and they were looking at me like, ‘Okay, there goes our budget.’ [Laughs]

I said, ‘No, no, no. We’ll use some stock footage.’ And you know what happened? I had planned to shoot most of it inside and to have them running around. One day, we’d been filming already for, I don’t know, eight weeks, I guess. One day we woke up, and it was just dark clouds and this howling wind. And, well, the First AD and I both had the same idea. Scrap the call sheet, we got to shoot the hurricane sequence.

So, we ran out there, and those sails overhead they’re trying to reel in and this howling wind—that was real. That just happened to be the weather that day. It was really bad wind. It would’ve been early December probably. So, we just shot. It was crazy. It was like nature had given us exactly the weather we needed to shoot this sequence, and we just shot fast. All this stuff was blowing around and Kristofferson was out there on his boat and so on. We just shot as quick as we could.

QUESTION: How tricky was it to do the pelican scenes?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Yeah, they’re notoriously birdbrains. But these were really well-trained pelicans. They were really nicely done.

QUESTION: There were two of them?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Yeah, there were two of them, identical, named Ricky and Lucy. So, sometimes it’s Ricky, sometimes it’s Lucy, and I’m not telling you which is which. But they were all right. They were good. They were well done. I mean, I think they’re a little bit hard to get the shots that you need to work with. My favorite scene is with Ashley [Judd]. I have her being attacked by the thing. I just thought it would be a fun scene for whoever was playing the mom and a fun scene for the kids.

The way that we actually managed to do it was they filled her purse, that bag, with fish. And the pelican trainers worked with both pelicans for two weeks, training them that this bag is full of fish, so that on the day that we shot, there weren’t any fish in the bag. Oh, they also didn’t wash the bag, this cloth bag. This thing reeked. It just stank. And there was Ashley trying to hold this thing. But, as far as the pelican knew, there were still fish in there. So, that’s how we got that scene.

QUESTION: And Ashley was game for that?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Oh, she was really game. She loved it. She was great. You should see the outtakes. In between the times the pelican’s going after her, she’s saying, ‘Oh, good pelican. That’s really good. Oh, good girl. Good girl, Lucy, good girl. Okay, let’s try it again.’ So, she was kind of directing the pelican while she was actually acting the scene.

QUESTION: A fun aspect of this film is the reunion of Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd, who worked together on a few films. Was it fun seeing those two together again, and is it just coincidence, or did one mention the other?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Just coincidence, but I believe Ashley signed on before Morgan did. But when I talked to him on the phone, he said, ‘My favorite lady is in this movie. I love Ashley.’ And it was great. Harry and Ashley knew each other, and they all knew each other. It was wonderful.

QUESTION: Alcon also did The Blind Side, which was another feel-good movie based on a true story. Did they give you any kind of directive at all?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: No, they were great. As producers, they’re extremely supportive and extremely collaborative. We obviously worked together on story ideas and script ideas and dialogue and everything. And they were extremely supportive.

QUESTION: Nothing bad really happens in this film, yet it never seemed corny.

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: Well, I’m glad that it doesn’t. That’s one of the things I wanted to try to do was to keep it as much as I could absolutely grounded in reality and to always have what the kids are saying, what the kids are doing, to be like real kids. I never wanted them to feel like movie kids, and I felt like it needed to have that kind of grounding in reality to keep it from getting too sappy.

I mean, I thought early on, ‘Well, you know? This business of the tail and the dolphin, it’s true. The kid part isn’t true, but the dolphin’s true. And as long as I stick to the truth, as long as you tell the truth, you’re going to be all right.’ That was my focus. I thought the emotional stuff would be there anyway. It’ll take care of itself. You don’t need to force it or try to make things maudlin.

QUESTION: In the film, there seems to be attraction between Harry Connick, Jr. and Ashley Judd’s character, yet it doesn’t go where you think it will. Michael Roark plays the swimmer who seems like he is going to be a bad guy but isn’t. What’s the trick about not doing what’s expected and why did you choose to do it that way?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: It’s absolutely intentional. I didn’t want to do the expected stuff. There was some talk during the script process of whether Clay and Lorraine should get together, and I said, ‘No, absolutely not. That is the expected thing.’ This movie is really about families coming together and the way Winter brings people together.

And even with Michael Roark’s character, Donovan— he’s really good, too, by the way—I wanted him to be brought into the fold, too, even where you think there might be rivalries and there might be antagonism. Winter brings everybody together, and that way it’s a positive thing, without doing the obvious stuff.

QUESTION: In the real story, did the aquarium actually have someone come in and provide money for it to continue?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: No, they didn’t exactly. But what happened was that gradually, as word got out about Winter, more people did begin donating and kind of coming to the hospital, and they got more tourists. They got more people arriving.

The same is true with the children that come that are disabled, and kids with prosthetics and so on. When I first came out here, when I started on the thing, I saw a little boy, six years-old, with a prosthetic leg who’d lost his leg to cancer. And seeing him and his mother being in there with Winter and seeing how moved they were, how much it meant to them—that’s where I came up with the idea of the little girl in the wheelchair. I wanted her to represent all of those things. I always refer to her as the angel character, because she comes in and when Sawyer sees how she’s moved and what that means, that gives us the whole idea then to go on and to act brave. Everything kind of follows from her appearance. And I intentionally did that—an empty parking lot with just one little car just pulling in. This little girl in the wheelchair coming out, and she’s such an angelic little kid, another local Florida girl.

QUESTION: Did you shoot all of it in Clearwater or were there some surrounding areas that were incorporated in?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: We went all the way to Dunedin, Tarpon Springs. We shot it all pretty much around here. The VA Hospital is Admiral Farragut; that’s in St. Pete. It was a great location. I was so worried about finding that location, about being able to find a spot where we could do this. That was the hardest location to find.

QUESTION: Are you a little concerned that you’ll be considered the nature director now that you’ve been so successful in acting in and directing these movies?

CHARLES MARTIN SMITH: As a matter of fact, I like it. But I get asked that occasionally. I thought, well, Wes Craven just makes horror movies and that’s all right. Hitchcock made suspense pictures; that’s all right. It’s a field and a genre that I really like. I’m really proud of this movie, and I was proud of Snow Walker, too, the Canadian film I made up there in the Arctic. The collision between man and nature is, to me, endlessly fascinating, and I would be happy to continue to make movies on that theme. I really would be.

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