'It was meant to be a message about ... job growth and the spirit of America,' filmmaker/actor tells Fox News. By Eric Ditzian
Clint Eastwood Photo: Getty Images
Clint Eastwood is not going to take your crap. Don't accuse him of anything. Don't even look at him the wrong way. Mr. Eastwood will not stand for it.
And so the 81-year-old Hollywood legend has spoken out following the strange — though not entirely unexpected, based on the political rancor in this election year — fallout from his Super Bowl commercial that aired on Sunday night. In an otherwise lackluster year for big-game ads, Eastwood's inspiring Chrysler spot about the rebirth of Detroit stood out from the pack of ho-hum beer and junk food ads — not only because of its utterly awesome Clint Eastwood-ness, but as a result of the hot air it generated on both sides of the political spectrum.
And that's not cool, Eastwood told a producer of Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor." "I just want to say that the spin stops with you guys, and there is no spin in that ad," he said. "On this I am certain."
Eastwood, who has been politically active for decades, supporting John McCain in the 2008 presidential election and expressing admiration for Ron Paul in this year's GOP primary, went on to say, "I am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message about, just about job growth and the spirit of America. I think all politicians will agree with it. I thought the spirit was OK."
Not everyone agreed. Former George W. Bush advisor Karl Rove accused the Obama administration of having a hand in the ad following the White House's costly bailouts of the auto industry. "The leadership of auto companies feel they need to do something to repay their political patronage," Rove said, according to Reuters. "It is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising."
The Obama administration, for its part, seized on the ad as a high-profile affirmation that its auto bailouts, while controversial, were ultimately the right call made by a gusty leader. At a White House briefing, Obama press secretary Jay Carney said, "This president made decisions that were not very popular at the time that were guided by two important principles: one, that he should do what he could to ensure that 1 million jobs would not be lost, and two, that the American automobile industry should be able to thrive globally, if the right conditions were created."
That's certainly not a bad message to broadcast to the 100-plus million people who tuned in to see the New York Giants surge past the New England Patriots to win Super Bowl XLVI. Eastwood, while continuing to decline to endorse a candidate, explained that anyone who embraces the ideas in the Chrysler spot is OK by him.
"I am not supporting any politician at this time," the five-time Oscar winner explained. "[But if] Obama or any other politician wants to run with the spirit of that ad, go for it."
How did the film do so much with so little? Simon Hansen tells MTV News. By Kevin P. Sullivan
Alex Russell in "Chronicle" Photo: 20th Century Fox
This weekend, the teenage superheroes of "Chronicle" edged out Harry Potter himself at the box office with their amazing abilities. Made on a relatively tight budget of $12 million, the found-footage superhero movie made almost twice its budget back in domestic ticket sales alone.
Part of the reason for the success, no doubt, was due to the work of visual-effects supervisor Simon Hansen and his team in South Africa. They created all the usual sights of a superhero flick but with a fraction of the budget.
MTV News spoke with Hansen to find out how he did so much with so little. (There are minor spoilers ahead.)
MTV: Where does work begin when trying to tackle something like "Chronicle" on such a low budget?
Simon Hansen: That was obviously the challenge of the film and one of the reasons that I was keen to get involved with the project from the beginning. I get to play with commercially viable films that are also cost-effective to make. Having read the script, it was a small film. It's supposed to be low-budget, relatively. I started making notes when we read the script, noting down all the effects. By the time I got to the third act, I put my pen down because it got so hectic that making notes at that point was a bit of a waste of time. There was clearly a hell of a lot more work that needed to be done. From that point of view, it was a really big film for a low budget, and that was what excited me and what excited everyone on the project. This was the little film that we were going to push further than smaller films normally go.
MTV: What's your approach for doing what the big-budget movies do but with a fraction of the money?
Hansen: My background was actually pursuing that as a goal from a very early age in the industry, trying to make things that looked great but didn't cost a lot. It wasn't a new idea from that point of view. It wasn't daunting or hindering; it was actually the most exhilarating part of the process. The superhero genre is a good comparison, which I think has too much money. Having these large budgets is removing the innovation from the project. Capping the budget is a way to force that ingenuity and innovation into the project, which I think does come across. I think "Chronicle" has that feel of being a higher-budget film than it is, but it always has a kind of edginess to it at the same time.
MTV: Was there a question of "Can we do everything that's in the script?"
Hansen: Yes, the first question is, "Read the script and tell us how much of it we can do and what you think we can't do." My pitch that [producer] Adam [Schroeder] and [director] Josh [Trank] bought on "Chronicle" was that the first thing I was going to try to do was reduce the number of visual-effects shots in the film, because even though my background is visual effects, I like to think of myself as a filmmaker first. I'm not in love with CGI for its own sake. I'd rather do things in camera, and I think most directors would. I think audiences really appreciate the grittiness and edginess of stuff that's real. If you're forced to do CGI, try to do it in a way that's really minimalist, where most of what you're doing is real.
MTV: What was the most challenging shot on the film?
Hansen: The most important and the one I considered the biggest challenge was any kind of flying. What ended up happening was we ended up designing brand-new rigs to actually make people fly that worked out really well. It's probably my favorite part of the process. It's weird in effects how some shots start out one way and they don't seem that difficult, and they end up being really difficult. The most difficult sequence was where Andrew beats up the thugs and tosses them around the street because we had to shoot that all in one day and all those different people were on wires and rigs. We had to do it in different parts and put it all together. You get tripped up by the sun moving during the day when you have to shoot it all in one day. The light's changing all the time, and you're shooting different elements together. For the level of complexity of that shot and the time we had to do it, that was definitely the most difficult.
MTV: How did you come up with the solution for making the characters fly?
Hansen: I'd been very frustrated, even with big-budget films and how they've done flying. Some of the bad examples, not to knock anyone, "Armageddon" 's weightless sequence, for example, was a movie that had a lot of money and didn't get it right. Lots of films don't get it right. I knew it wasn't necessarily about the budget. It was about the technique to get flying to work. I spent a lot of time analyzing footage of sky diving and looking how bodies move in free motion. As a result, I ended up designing a big hamster-wheel rig that the subject would be strapped to in the center and he could be spun within this rig, which could turn itself. You'd get two axes out of it. The actors called it the Wheel of Death because you actually get strapped into this thing and a motor spins you around while the wheel is actually turning. You can do full-on McTwist-type movements. What I tried to get away from was a situation where you pick someone up on wires and move them from one side of a soundstage to another in front of a green screen.
MTV: Was there anything you simply couldn't accomplish with the budget?
Hansen: I think we pretty much did just about everything that we wanted to in the script. There were some shots that didn't work out the way that we wanted them to, where we had to reshoot them or come up with another way to do them. The closest we came to cutting things — we didn't in the end — but the closest we came was not the kind of effect that you'd even be aware of. When Andrew films himself in the mirror and we're using a considerably larger camera than the one he's using, we needed to shoot with one camera and replace it and Andrew in the mirror with the smaller camera. Those turned out to be really difficult shots to plan and get right. No one will really pay them any attention. It's amazing how that always happens.
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From VW's 'Star Wars' spots to Brad Pitt's Heineken run, advertisers have long used films in their Big Game commercials. By Eric Ditzian
Matthew Broderick in his Honda CR-V commercial Photo: Honda
Super Bowl kickoff is just days away, and while we couldn't be more psyched to watch the New York Giants dismantle the New England Patriots (because, folks, that's what will happen, end of story), we're nearly as pumped to check out the game's high-profile movie ads.
Every year, corporate America pours millions of dollars into movie-related spots — some starring Hollywood A-listers, others riffing on classic films — in an attempt to convince inebriated football fans to buy cars, beer, junk food, deodorant and whatever else we probably don't need but which might make our sad, empty lives have more meaning. At least that's how we think ad agencies approach the biggest sporting event of the year.
In preparation for the commercial excellence coming our way Sunday, we took a look at Super Bowls past — as well as this year's pigskin classic — to pick the 10 greatest movie-related ads of all time.
10. Honda's Riff on "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" This one sneaks onto the list neither because it's a great commercial (it's not) nor because it's hilarious to see Matthew Broderick once again telling us that life moves pretty fast (it's just depressing). No, this 2012 Honda ad makes the cut because there's never, ever going to be a "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" sequel, and if this is a close as we get, hey, we'll take it.
9. Nissan's "Top Gun" Pigeons Imagine being inside an ad agency when some creative exec pitches an ad in which a bunch of flyboy pigeons take flight, to the tune of "Top Gun" hit song "Danger Zone," and attempt to poop all over a Nissan Maxima, but the car is too damn speedy and the birds — one of them voiced by "Cheers" mailman John Ratzenberger — can't unload on it. And the Nissan suits say, "Hell yes! Let's fork over a million dollars and air this baby during the Super Bowl." The late '90s were weird. And awesome.
8. Budweiser's Alcoholic Dog Would a dog's most traumatic memory be the time he tried to chase after a Bud truck? Would this be the recollection a dog, in the best tradition of a method actor, turns to on a movie set to cry on cue during a maudlin death scene? Do dogs drink beer? Listen, it's the Super Bowl. These things don't have to make sense.
7. Visa's Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Everyone's favorite movie-related drinking game made a very amusing appearance in the 2002 Super Bowl, as Kevin Bacon attempted to pull off what just might be a bit of credit-card fraud. Now drink!
6. Heineken's Brad Pitt Beer Run We suppose there's a world in which Brad Pitt doesn't have an army of underlings to send out on a beer run and instead has to stroll, under cover of darkness and as a thousand rabid paparazzi converge on him, to the market to pick up a six-pack. In a far different world, Heineken spent roughly the GDP of a third-world country to hire Pitt, license the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" and produce a classic Super Bowl a classic Super Bowl ad in 2005.
5. FedEx's "Cast Away" Resolution Who didn't want to ring Tom Hanks' neck in "Cast Away" and be like, "Dude, just open that FedEx box, 'cause there's totally a satellite phone, a GPS locator, a fishing rod and a water purifier in there"? This 2003 Super Bowl ad gave us the next best thing.
4. Noxema's Cream Ad with Farrah Fawcett and Joe Namath This ad, starring the movie star and the New York Jets QB, might not make it by today's network censors. So it's simply amazing that it aired during the 1973 Bowl and had Namath cooing, ''I'm so excited, I'm going to get creamed!" as Fawcett slid into frame.
3. Pepsi's Michael J. Fox Apartment: "Apartment 10G" (1987) In 1987, Michael J. Fox had it all — except some Diet Pepsi to offer his very new, totally bodacious next-door neighbor. So MJF does what anyone in his position would do: He jumps out his window in the rain to fetch her some calorie-free pop. Gentlemanly! Of course, when he returns with soda can in hand, he learns the new gal has an equally gorgeous roommate. Both of them love Diet Pepsi. And Michael J. Fox. City living is the best!
2. Volkswagen's Bark Side Eleven dogs. One "Star Wars" theme song. Nothing more needs to be said. In fact, nothing is said the entire time (in the same, savvy style as Budweiser's 1995 frog spot). Just watch it before it airs during this year's game. Genius.
1. Volkswagen's Force When a little boy clad as Darth Vader held up his hands, attempting to use the Force to start a Passat, he also jumpstarted the hearts of every Super Bowl viewer on the planet. Last year's classic ad was the perfect synthesis of everything a Big Game spot should aspire to be: cute but not too cute, funny without trying too hard, nostalgic yet utterly fresh. Though we somehow doubt parents raised on "Star Wars" rushed over to the local VW dealership seeking the sense of familial togetherness apparent in the commercial, that's not really the point (at least outside ad agencies and automobile manufacturers). Honestly, most of the people talking about the ad probably couldn't even name what kind of car the kid Force-ifies. What's key is people were talking — and still are talking a year later.
For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.
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