Posted on 04/28/2004 12:48:00 PM PDT by LurkedLongEnough
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "The Interpreter," a Universal Pictures thriller starring Nicole Kidman and set in the United Nations headquarters, began shooting late last month in New York. It immediately made history as the first movie to gain permission to shoot in the United Nations since the organization built its Big Apple headquarters in 1953.
Yet it almost didn't happen. To the dismay of director Sydney Pollack and his New York crew, the production was in real danger of moving to Canada for about half of its 16-week shoot because of the world body's long-standing policy of not allowing any film shoots, apart from news and occasional documentary crews. Even Alfred Hitchcock was famously turned down when he was directing "North by Northwest." (Hitchcock had to construct U.N. interiors on a soundstage.)
"When I came on the movie, I was let to believe we'd be able to shoot inside the United Nations," Pollack says. "You can't fake the United Nations."
But two months before the shoot, he was told no access would be given.
"They'd actually started building sets in Canada," says Pat Swinney Kaufman of the New York Governor's Office for Motion Pictures and Television, "and we knew we were going to lose like seven or eight weeks to them and many jobs."
Says Pollack: "I was very depressed. Finally I got angry, and I set out to get a meeting with (U.N. Secretary General) Kofi Annan."
It wasn't as easy as it sounded, but after much effort, he finally secured an appointment.
"Sydney has spent a lifetime making films of a certain quality," says Kevin Misher, one of the film's producers. "And Sydney being able to tell Kofi Annan that the movie we were making, though a thriller, would ultimately be representative of the ideal of the U.N. was something that ultimately the secretary general could get behind. But without Sydney's relationship with Kofi Annan, this would not have happened."
The headquarters, about 18 acres overlooking the East River, is officially international territory and not part of the United States. Among its buildings are the 550-foot-tall, 39-story Secretariat Building, which houses the international civil service, and the General Assembly Building, which is topped with a shallow dome and contains the Dag Hammarskjold Library.
"There's no place like it for a film set," Pollack says. "The size of it, the detail of it, the period of it ... It's one of the few buildings that is designed to make you feel what its purpose is. How would you build it? It would be millions and millions of dollars to build."
In addition to the United Nation's permission, "The Interpreter" also secured a $100,000 grant from Empire State Development -- the first time the state public agency ever doled out such an incentive to a production -- as well as some goodwill from New York unions.
"The community made a real effort to bring this in at a price," Kaufman says. "They had an amount that they needed to save to make it work, and many entities did their part in meeting that need."
A U.N. thriller? What could possibly be thrilling about what the U.N. does?
"Gasp as the U.N. ignores genocide in Africa. Thrill to the sight of the U.N. cutting and running from Iraq. Cheer as the U.N. helps loot the Oil for Food program. And cry as the U.N. coddles and succors unloved, unwanted despots and their henchmen."
John / Billybob
You got that right.
Why am I not surprised that a Hollywood movie producer pitched a hissy fit after being told "no" because he believes rules apply to others and never to Hollywood? Wonder how much the US taxpayer will be paying for the added security?
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LOL!
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