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 tories
about survival are a hot thing these days, just think of Survivor, the surprise TV blockbuster this past summer. Now, in
the new contemporary drama Cast Away, Hollywood's famed "nice
guy" Tom Hanks is marooned on a remote desert island, fighting for
his life. There's no million dollar cheque waiting to reward Hanks character, Chuck Noland. For
him the prize is life itself as he struggles against hunger and insanity.Noland is a Federal Express troubleshooter and a compulsive control freak workaholic. He has a girlfriend, Kelly (played by popular leading lady Helen Hunt (As Good As It Gets), but not much of a personal life. His life is as predictable as clockwork - until one day Noland's charter flight crashes into the South Pacific and he crashes into a nightmare of fear and danger. Stranded - all alone - stripped of all modern conveniences, he's a modern day Robinson Crusoe without his Man Friday. Back home, his girlfriend and co-workers assume that Noland is dead. |
actors Tom Hanks Helen Hunt director locations outtake |
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Hanks came up with the original idea
for the movie more than five years ago. He began to develop it with
screenwriter William Broyles while the two worked together on Apollo 13. "Cast Away is really the story of the best thing that ever happened to this guy but through a very particular brand of cruel fate," says Hanks. "He survives a plane crash, then total despair and isolation for four years. It's a story that offers high adventure, but at the same time a simple Zen-like understanding of what things in this world are truly important." The movie's production schedule was highly unusual. Filming began in Moscow where the first part of the movie was shot. Then the production team moved to one of the uninhabited Fiji Islands to film Hanks' arrival on the deserted island. In the middle of the Fiji-based production schedule, the entire team went on a year-long hiatus to give Hanks time to undergo a complete physical metamorphosis. During that hiatus, director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) and his crew moved on to film the thriller What Lies Beneath. In the meantime, Hanks went on a super radical diet. He lost over 50 pounds in order to get that gaunt haven't-seen-decent food-in-twelve-months look. He grew a long shaggy beard which he really hated and turned himself into a bearded and bony shell of his former self. His goal was to dramatize the passage of time and the ravaging effects of four years of isolation. Filming Cast Away brought Hanks face to face with a very different kind of challenge - acting solo on an isolated tropical island - and sometimes the pressure of it got to him: "It makes you crazy. You are not sharing the story telling with someone you can react off of. It's almost like making a silent movie. You have to tell every aspect of the story physically and being totally alone." "He (Chuck Noland) has not had a conversation, been soothed by music, or been inspired by a good story in years. That takes its toll on a man," Hanks told Premiere Magazine. In fact Noland eventually does speak to someone, or rather a mysterious something - a volleyball with a blood-painted face which he calls Wilson. The filmmakers insist that Cast Away is not a Gilligan's Island/Blue Lagoon concept. This is a human drama about the greatest possible challenge: the survival of the human spirit in total solitude and great physical danger. Tom Hanks is just the performer to explore that fascinating territory. - Brigitte Berman |