How not to start a conversation with Helena Bonham Carter – and the story behind the Blues Brothers' Ray-Bans
Foxing Helena
Jason Flemyng is fast becoming the Kevin Bacon of British film. The amiable character actor clocks up his 90th film with Mike Newell's adaptation of Great Expectations this week, and there's hardly anyone he hasn't worked with, either here or in Hollywood, from Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp to Nick Moran and Sting. He is currently filming Sunshine on Leith, his Lock Stock… mate Dexter Fletcher's second film as a director (it's a love story set to the music of the Proclaimers and also starring Peter Mullan and Jane Horrocks). Recalling his time on the set of Great Expectations, in which he delivers a deftly tender performance as blacksmith Joe Gargery, Jason told me of the first time he came across Helena Bonham Carter, who'd just been cast as Miss Havisham. "I saw her walking across the set," he said, "and she's one rare person I hadn't worked with yet so I bounded up to her wanting to make a good impression and I said, 'Wow, that's a brilliant costume, you're going to be so perfect for this part.' And she just looked at me, witheringly, and said: 'What are you on about? I've just arrived, I haven't even been to wardrobe yet.' We did go on to have a few giggles later, but it was touch and go for a moment."
Landis ahoy!
Talking to Professor Deborah Landis is inspirational. Not only has the Hollywood Costume exhibition she curated now become the V&A's most popular-ever display, she is also a passionate head of costume design at UCLA and USC. She also did the costumes for Indiana Jones (did you know Tom Selleck was originally cast as Indy?) and for The Blues Brothers. The latter was directed by her husband, John Landis, and at a packed, costumed, special screening of the film at Everyman Islington last week, she revealed to me during an onstage conversation how she came up with the iconic Blues Brothers suits, which also feature in the V&A exhibition. Although Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi had previously forged the look for their Blues Brothers sketches on Saturday Night Live, Deborah refined it with sharper silhouettes and also sourced a discontinued style of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses by scouring obscure pharmacies across America. "I must have collected about 15 pairs of these sunglasses but, over the days of the shoot, Belushi would use them to flirt with girls and give them away if they slept with him. They were disappearing fast, I can tell you. And when the shoot finished, another production came straight on to the set and Belushi gave the two remaining pairs of our glasses to a young actor who had spotted them and said he'd like to try them for his character. The kid was Tom Cruise and the film was Risky Business. Ray-Ban reissued those glasses 18 months later and they've never been out of production since."
Product placement? I'll drink to that
Blatant product placement doesn't seem to have done Bond any harm at the box office. Indeed, everyone's getting in on it here now. London-set caper Gambit this weekend is bursting with plugs for the Savoy hotel – no location fee, I'd wager – Co-op Bank, Rolls-Royce, Bollinger, Monocle Magazine and much more. However, French film You Will Be My Son (Tu Sera Mon Fils) has perhaps the classiest promotion du jour. The film – a very fine one, starring the excellent Niels Arestrup, from A Prophet – is set in the St Emilion vineyard of Clos Fourtet and its owners have shipped over a few cases of their 2006 vintage to offer audiences a free glass with every ticket over the film's opening weekend (7-9 December). The 2006 retails at around £40 a bottle, so we're not talking plonk. And if you don't drink it, maybe it'll be worth more than a Millennium Falcon one day.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/nov/25/trailer-trash-jason-flemyng-landis
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