The Mighty Dragon vs Phillip Noyce – part 2 #podcast
Phillip Noyce talks to The Mighty Dragon about the challenges of filming at sea for the film Dead Calm, where Mother Nature called the shots.
Dead Calm is a 1989 Australian psychological thriller-horror film directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. The screenplay by Terry Hayes was based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Williams; the film represents the first successful film adaptation of the novel after Orson Welles struggled for years to complete his own film, The Deep. Filmed around the Great Barrier Reef, the plot focuses on a married couple, who, after the tragic loss of their son, are spending some time isolated at sea, when they come across a stranger who has abandoned a sinking ship.
Ref: Wikipedia.
Check out the other The Mighty Dragon podcast episodes:
As you know we have been joined a few times on The Mighty Dragon by actress Chelsea Jurkiewicz . Chelsea messaged me the other day letting me know The Crumbs, which she had mentioned on our last interview, was available on Amazon Prime UK. I popped it on pretty much immediately to review here, but felt a podcast with the director and writer would be far more exciting. After all, this horror to me, felt unique and the characters a depth about them that was quite refreshing after a few weeks of constant horror films leading up to Halloween.
The interspersed highbrow English accents when the Crumbs family spoke when they were alone to their American “country” accent wth strangers was fascinating. I could only imagine an upper class background and advancing “Victorian” education (or even earlier) which lead them to settle in the States way back. What was their family profession? In early surgery? How did Doctor Benjamin end up in his current position in the workroom.
It was an absolute honour to be joined by David Espinosa and Craig Ahrens for an in-depth look into The Crumbs and moving making in general. We discuss how important lighting and music are to a film and where, perhaps, silence could be more powerful.
We explored how Indie films may have more creative license particulary with darker sides of a story and what inspired this tale of this bizarre family who in all their weirdness, reflect most modern family struggles and dynamics.