It was corny but cute, just like many of the filmmaker's movies, including New Year's Eve. Indeed, Marshall is becoming a movie man for all holiday seasons.
There was last year’s Valentine's Day, and now he's getting festive with his latest, which opens in theatres Dec. 9.
Can a back-to-back twin bill of Mother's Day and Father's Day be far behind? Maybe or maybe not. All Marshall knows for sure is that the key to a multi-story approach, holiday film or not, is to hire good actors.
"What is very startling is they can all act," said Marshall after the bongo beating. "So it all worked."
In New Year's Eve, Marshall dusts off his formula from Valentine's Day, presenting a series of intertwining vignettes underscoring love, loss and lust, during the renowned end-of-year celebration at Manhattan's Times Square.
And why wouldn't the director re-do what he's done before? Valentine's Day was a smash in 2010, earning more than $216 million US worldwide.
This time around, the ensemble includes a few Oscar-honoured actors. Robert De Niro plays a man on his deathbed. Halle Berry is his thoughtful nurse. Hilary Swank plays a stressed-out producer of the Times Square activities, and Michelle Pfeiffer is a dowdy secretary who decides to realize her resolutions.
That might be enough for any old romantic comedy, but this is a Marshall all-star love-fest, after all. So Jessica Biel shows up as woman about to give birth. High School Musical's Zac Efron plays a delivery dude with a plan. And Glee's Lea Michele is a backup singer who gets stuck in an elevator with a cynic (Ashton Kutcher). She also gets to sing. As does rock singer Jon Bon Jovi, typecast as a rock star.
And there's more. Katherine Heigl is a caterer forced to work on the party night of the year. Toronto comic Russell Peters and Modern Family's Sofia Vergara are her harried cooks. Rapper Ludacris co-stars as a cop at Times Square. Sarah Jessica Parker is an over-protective mother suffocating her daughter (Abigail Breslin). Josh Duhamel is a businessman nostalgic for the previous New Year's Eve.
And, of course, there is Elizondo, featured in his thirteenth Marshall movie. This time, he plays a mechanic assigned to fix the disabled Times Square countdown ball that signals a start to the new year.
To that end, Marshall shot some of his sequences during the 2010 Times Square end-of-year festivities, then later in March of 2011 in and around Manhattan. Certainly, the timing posed some problems for the performers.
"I had to hug them, not because they liked me, but because it was freezing," said Marshall, who has 1990's Pretty Woman and 2001's The Princess Diaries on his resume.
Elizondo agreed that the cold presented challenges. "What I was always looking forward to was the word, 'Cut,'" he admitted.
Mostly, they survived in good humour. That was especially true of Efron, who happily reunited with his Hairspray co-star Pfeiffer, by playing the messenger who tries to make Pfeiffer's secretary's wish list come true. During their mini-story, they ride a motorcycle together, and Efron said he "enjoyed the cuddling." They also kiss at midnight.
"I am the envy of every girl across the planet, at the ripe old age of 53," said Pfeiffer, referring to the High School Musical star's teen poster-boy status.
Michele, the Glee artist, understood the sentiment. She was looking for a non-musical role for her movie debut, but she couldn't resist the New Year's Eve offer. "I got to be a backup singer for Jon Bon Jovi, which is awesome," said Michele, who sings a solo rendition of Auld Lang Syne in the film.
Swank, an Oscar winner for serious roles in Boys Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby, says she was thrilled to finally get a job in a comedy. "Usually, I die in my movies," she said. "I don't live to see the credits."
Not this time. She had the added bonus of acting opposite one of her heroes, De Niro. In fact, she clearly remembers her first day on set with the actor. It was a hospital scene in which De Niro's character is in his bed, near death. She was standing next to the bed, getting into the actor's "method," as he lay there with his eyes closed.
A few minutes into Swank's process of immersing herself in the De Niro moment, she realized, when he came to, that he had not been in deep preparation, but was having a nap before the scene started.
"Oh my god," Swank recalled thinking to herself, "he was sleeping."
That's show business.
No comments:
Post a Comment