Interstellar at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum
Posted on November 10, 2014 at 3:25 pm
Copyright 2014 Nell Minow
Every element of Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” was really happening in front of the camera. Well, they didn’t actually go into space and explore other planets, but they did build every piece of equipment and they did seek out landscapes around the world that would seem like other planets. The spaceship they built is now on display at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia, and I drove out there to take a look. The detail work is spectacular.
Copyright 2014 Nell Minow
They also have an Oculus Rift virtual reality “Interstellar” experience that is completely immersive. You feel as though you are floating in zero gravity through the interior of the spacecraft. It will be there through November 20, 2014, and it is definitely worth the trip. And you can see the movie when you’re there, on one of the biggest screens in the world.
Red Carpet: The Theory of Everything with Eddie Redmayne and Screenwriter Anthony McCarten
Posted on November 6, 2014 at 10:16 pm
Copyright 2014 Nell Minow
Tonight was a special screening of “The Theory of Everything” and I was very lucky to be at the red carpet, with star Eddie Redmayne, who plays physicist Stephen Hawking, and screenwriter Anthony McCarten. Redmayne told me about the meticulous chart he created to keep track of exactly which stage of the motor neuron disease Hawking was in for each scene. He also spoke about how inspired he is by Hawking’s passion for learning in all categories. He said that Hawking has now created a Facebook page, where he wrote:
I have always wondered what makes the universe exist. Time and space may forever be a mystery, but that has not stopped my pursuit. Our connections to one another have grown infinitely and now that I have the chance, I’m eager to share this journey with you. Be curious, I know I will forever be.
Screenwriter Anthony McCarten spoke to me about Jane Hawking, whose book inspired the film. “Just as much as I was in awe of Stephen and his ideas, the man, the concepts he was revealing for us about the universe, when I read Jane’s book, that was the catalyst for me, that was when I knew I wanted to make this film. This young woman who had only just begun to fall in love with this guy who was diagnosed with ALS and given two years to live. Most people would walk away. Her internal conviction, her love for him, made her decide to fight this thing with him and not allow him to be silenced. He credits her with taking him out of his depression and allowing him to work. We have to be truly grateful. Without her, we might not have his ideas. But also, Jane was a forerunner herself. She was a woman of the 50’s, but he had her own ambitions. She raised three children, supported Stephen through all his travails, and somehow managed to get her own work done and go on for her PhD.”
I asked what he had learned from the cosmology he studied to write the film. “How very small we are. We believe that our galaxy is one of 170 billion galaxies. A recent simulation by a German team suggested there might be 500 billion galaxies. That would mean for every star in our galaxy, there’s a corresponding galaxy. Our problems may seem very huge, but as Einstein would say, it’s relative.”
By coincidence, I just finished a book by the author of that screenplay, Noel Langley. The book is The Land of Green Ginger and it has a lot of the charm and whimsy Langley brought to his adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s novel. Maguire writes:
The differences between this version and the final shooting script? Hardly a page escapes without crossed-out speeches and handwritten substitutions. Plot points abound that are later abandoned (the Wicked Witch of the West has a son named Bulbo?). Only a couple of scenes refer to singing, and none of the famous lyrics appear. What would become “Over the Rainbow,” which I call America’s unofficial national anthem, is referred to as “the Kansas song.”
What this draft achieves is the compression of choice elements from a best-selling, although rambling, children’s book. In the original novel, the Wicked Witch of the West dies on Page 155, but Dorothy doesn’t leave Oz until 100 pages on. If Langley stuffs in extraneous characters for ballast (a Kansas farmhand and his sweetheart among them), he also abbreviates the trajectory of the story so that the demise of the Wicked Witch of the West kick-starts Dorothy’s return to Kansas.
The American author-illustrator Maurice Sendak believed that The Wizard of Oz film was a rare example of a movie that improves on the original book. I agree with him. Langley consolidates two good witches into one. He eliminates distracting sequences involving populations Dorothy encounters after the Wizard has left in his balloon—the china people (porcelain figures) and the Hammer-Heads (a hard-noggined race).
No one has engaged more deeply with the Oz story than Maguire, whose book about the Wicked Witch of the West inspired the Broadway smash hit. What I thought most interesting were his thoughts on Langley’s choice to make the visit to Oz a dream. Well worth a read. Here’s “Frozen’s” Idina Menzel singing “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked.”