Will to star in I am legend

[Mr K]

Look at this...this one of the few sources on the internet that I actually respect when it comes to reviews.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/reviewsnews.php?id=39899

I don't think this is a good sign...as a matter of fact I believe that a massive "OH Fu*k" is in place given how much we all wanted this film to work.

Me especially since I'm not too convinced about the premise and what we've seen so far from "Hanocck" and the premise of "Seven Pounds"...

Will, for God's sake - focus!! And get rid of Akiva Goldsman already. He's clearly not the right way for you if you want to be treated and respected as a serious actor.

Cheers

[Jazzy Julie]

Too late i think i already know the ending. :shakehead:

[Hero1]

With a stronger director—originally Ridley Scott was meant to tackle it—this could have been a sci-fi classic,

This was always my problem.. pretty scathing review

[Ale]

I Am Legend - Cast and Crew Interviews

By Locke Webster

http://img474.imageshack.us/img474/3791/siggypy2.jpg

I Am Legend, the new Will Smith sci-fi hits theaters on December 14th, but this past week we had a chance to catch up with the Ex-Fresh Prince along with Brazilian cast member Alice Braga (pronounced ah-lee-see), director Francis Lawrence, and writer/producer Akiva Goldsman to hear their thoughts on creating the film. In true fashion, Smith was quite the charmer, providing insights to his process of becoming the last man on Earth as well as what shutting down New York can do to your star persona.

Akiva, you're a big fan of the original story, at what point did you start writing the screenplay for I Am Legend?

Akiva Goldsman: I hired the writer, me, about 2, 2 1/2 years ago.

Francis Lawrence: Almost 3.

AG: Warner Brothers had yet again decided that the movie was in the broken toy pile, which Warner Brothers had a tendency to do with this screenplay. It had had about a zillion incarnations. They said, "anybody want it?" and I raised my hand. It was probably Mark [Protosevitch]'s 719th draft or so.

You really had great access in shutting down parts of Manhattan, how difficult was that?

AG: We had almost every problem you could imagine you would have in New York if you tried to shut the streets down. I am a New Yorker. By the end of the shoot, which was endless, none of us would tell anybody what we did for a living. You'd be at a cocktail party and hear from across the room "oh you're that motherf**ker!". There was not one person we hadn't stopped from getting somewhere.

FL: The city was really helpful. They let us shut down pretty much everywhere we wanted to shut down. I mean, you name it, we shut it down.

Will Smith: Shooting in New York, especially something on this level, is difficult. I'd say, percentage wise, it's the most amount of middle fingers I've ever received in my career. I was like "I'm used to people liking me, when I come to town people have fun". We shut down 6 blocks of 5th Avenue on a Monday morning. That was probably poor logistics. But you realize that you've never actually seen an empty shot of New York. When we were doing it, it was chilling to walk down the middle of 5th Avenue. There's never an opportunity to walk down the middle 5th Avenue. Two o' clock in the morning on a Sunday you can't walk down the middle of 5th Avenue. It puts such an eerie, icky kind of feeling on the movie when you've seen those shots. Logistically it was a nightmare, but it absolutely created something that you can't do with green screen and that you can't do shooting another city for New York City.

What was the total time you shut down the streets?

FL: Wow I don't know. 40 plus days for some of the stuff. We did 6 days alone up at Grand Central by the Viaduct. It was tricky.

How significant do you think it is that an african american is the last man alive?

WS: Well first and last baby! (laughter) You know I rarely think about that until someone brings it up. It never crossed my mind in that way. For me, at least, the acknowledgment of those kinds of ideas put a weird boundary on my thoughts that I can't allow myself to be a part of. It sort of makes me think smaller if that makes any sense.

What did you do to help create the future New York for the film?

FL: We did a lot of conceptual work on this world before we got started. What we didn't want to do was the same grim world we see in movie after movie after a situation like this. So we started to do research and we talked to scientists and ecologists and people and really started looking into what would happen to a city once a population disappeared and the truth is nature would start to reclaim the city. And there have been since our film, not because of our film, there have been scientific studies and we're sort of in line with that -- the types of animals that would start to repopulate, the types of plant life that would start to repopulate. How the air would start to get cleaner. The water would get cleaner. It would actually probably become a more beautiful place.

AG: One of the big changes from the source material obviously is the relocation to New York. Novelistically it's really very effective to render Los Angeles empty, but cinematically Los Angeles is always empty. Once we got to New York, we just picked a specific date and we built a present [time], and then I took every DC poster and character that I could think of that Warner hadn't made and slapped them up there. Some of them we got cleared and some of them were just slowly stalled so the clearance never saw them. So I'm pretty sure someone owes somebody a lot of money.

FL: We did some kinda fun stuff too. There are certain things in Times Square. A bunch of a scene takes place around a tickets kiosk where you can buy tickets for Broadway plays. That's actually not built yet, but we got the designs from the city and actually built our set to be how it will look in the year that our apocalypse is supposed to happen.

Will, can you talk about creating the persona of the last man on Earth?

WS: It was such a wonderful exploration of myself, because what happens is, you get in a situation where you don't have people to create the stimulus for you to respond to. So what happens is, you start creating the stimulus and the response. So there's a connection with yourself where your mind starts to drift to in those types of situations that you learn things about yourself that you would never even imagine. To prepare for that we sat with former POWs and people who were in solitary confinement. That was sort of the framework for creating the idea. They said, first thing is a schedule. You will not survive in solitary unless you schedule everything.

What about I Am Legend had you attached to the project for such a long time before finally going into production?

WS: With movies, I am really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious. There are things that we all dream, that each one of us has thought that connect to life, death, sex... There're things that are beyond language. And to me, this is one of those concepts. You've been on the freeway many times and wished everybody was dead. (laugh) There've been times where you just wish you were by yourself, you don't need any of these assholes, you just want to be by yourself. And I love this concept because it connects to ideas that a 4 year old can understand.

What was it like working with Will?

FL: Now I know all of you guys have heard stories, so its a bit of a cliche, but Will's a pretty great guy to work with. He's as professional as can be, he's as positive as can be. His energy is always fantastic. He's really smart. He's really good with story. He's a really good actor. He's inventive and creative and has great instincts. You can't ask for a better person to work with. Other than Alice.

Alice Braga: It's an enormous pleasure to have a chance to work with someone that just wants to give you more and more and more and just wants to open the door for you to be really comfortable... and as he says "search magic". Which is wonderful. He just all the time, was pushing me harder and harder and look in my eyes and say "do you want one more?" "Do you want to try this?" "Do you want this?" Or pushing me to go somewhere that he wanted me to go, which is so generous. This is the best thing you can have from someone that is like him. It was an enormous pleasure and opportunity.

Will, when was the last time you were called the Fresh Prince?

WS: 4 seconds ago. (laugh) On July 6th, 1996 Fresh Prince stopped. That Monday after Independence Day was the first time someone called me Mr. Smith. And I'm like "what the hell"? I specifically remember that morning when the box office numbers came in people started calling me Mr. Smith.

http://www.ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id=18...amp;sectionId=2

Edited June 1, 2014 by Ale

[Ale]

SMITH COULDN'T SURVIVE ALONE LIKE I AM LEGEND CHARACTER

2007-12-05 03:18:26 -

WILL SMITH fears he couldn't survive all alone - and he'd kill himself rather than face the prospect of becoming the last man on earth.

The movie star plays the last surviving, living person in New York following a terrible disaster in new film I Am Legend, but he admits he couldn't exist without human contact for real.

He says, "I'm outta here. I'm going to the nearest bridge! "It's such a primal, childlike idea to wish everybody was gone and you were by yourself, but, as much as people get on your nerves on the freeway, as much as people irritate you through your daily life, if you took everyone away and had it exactly the way you want it, it would be the most miserable existence.

"I walked down the middle of Fifth Avenue (in New York), which we had cleared out for six blocks... and, as cool as that is, it's only cool because when we yell 'Cut,' there's 10,000 people on the other side.

"There was absolutely no pleasure for me at all experiencing that amount of loneliness and solitude in the film. I love people, so that's hard for me not having anybody else around." The Ali star reveals he studied prisoners of war to get into the mindset of a person who spends days after days alone: "I found a guy, Geronimo Pratt, who had been in isolation in prison. He said, 'You would schedule things like cleaning your nails and you'd have two hours to clean your nails and that was the only way to maintain sanity.

"But he struggled - he remembers sitting in his cell one time and for about four hours he was trying to remember what his fingers were called!"

http://www.pr-inside.com/smith-couldn-t-su...e-i-r332585.htm

[Ale]

NEW PICS!

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/16/87416500cl5.jpg

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/3503/11660659jl3.jpg

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/3663/14409147qp6.jpg

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/2526/89624339ae7.jpg

Edited June 1, 2014 by Ale

[Ale]

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/6484/legend1lo8.png

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4387/legend2cj0.png

http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/6381/legend3pp9.png

http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/698/legend4ia4.png

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/7275/legend5do6.png

http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/1722/legend6so7.png

http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/9196/legend7tn7.png

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/3387/legend8wv1.png

Edited June 1, 2014 by Ale

[Ale]

The 'Legend' of Will Smith continues . . .

Thursday, December 06, 2007

By JOHN URBANCICH

LOS ANGELES Ten questions for Will Smith, who takes command of the big screen as the last man on Earth with the Dec. 14 release of "I Am Legend."

You've had a passion for this project since you were going to do it with Michael Bay about 12 years ago. Why has this Robert Neville character stayed with you all this time?

When it comes to movies, I think I am really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious. There are things we all dream, things that are beyond language, things that each one of us has thought which connect to life, death and sex. To me, this is one of those concepts.

There are times you've been on the freeway and wished that everybody were dead (laughs). There've been times you just wish you were by yourself; you don't need anyone, you just want to be by yourself. In this movie, that couples with that kind of separation from people, of being ripped away and connected with the unknown.

It's how we would fair against whatever is in that unknown that is a really primal idea. I couldn't always articulate it like that, but I've loved this concept. It connects to ideas that a 4-year-old can understand.

What about the loneliness of this character and also the madness? And, how about basically acting for half of this movie or more by yourself?

It was such a wonderful exploration of myself. You get in a situation where you don't have people to create the stimulus for you to respond to. Instead, you start creating the stimulus and the response. You learn things about yourself that you would never even imagine.

To prepare for that, we sat with former POWs and with people who had been in solitary confinement. They said, "The first thing is a schedule. You will not survive in solitary if you don't schedule everything." That even includes cleaning your nails or watching roaches, whatever, but making sure it's at the same time each day.

For me, the thing was to get into the mental space where whatever the truth was for Robert Neville didn't matter. The only thing that mattered is what he saw and what he believed. It was such a great exploration of what happens to the human mind that is trying to defend itself. For me, I'm a better actor for having had to create both sides of the scene, with no dialogue.

What was the experience of shooting in New York like?

Shooting in New York is difficult, especially something on this level. Percentage-wise, it's the most amounts of middle fingers I've received in my career (laughs). I'm used to people liking me; when I come to town, it's fun. This time, I was starting to think my name started with "f" and ended with "you."

But, hey, we shut down six blocks of Fifth Avenue on a Monday morning. That was probably poor planning. You realize you have never actually seen an empty shot of New York. When we were doing it, it's chilling to walk right down the middle of Fifth Avenue. I mean, there is never an opportunity to do that, even at 2 o'clock in the morning on Sunday. It created such a creepy energy. Logistically, it was a nightmare, but it absolutely created something that you can't do with green screen and you can't do shooting in any city other than New York.

How significant do you think it is that the last man alive is African-American?

First and last, baby (laughs). It's almost a metaphysical idea for me. I mean, I rarely think about that until someone brings it up. Then, I say, "Oh, wow! That never crossed my mind in that way." Acknowledgment of those kinds of ideas puts a weird boundary on my thoughts. I can't allow myself to be a part of it because it sort of makes me think smaller, if that makes any sense. I've never really thought about the significance of that with the film.

A recent magazine article alluded to the idea that, like your wife Jada, you may have converted to Scientology. Any truth to that?

I don't necessarily believe in organized religion. I was raised in a Baptist household, went to a Catholic church, lived in a Jewish neighborhood and had the biggest crush on the Muslim girls from one neighborhood over.

Tom (Cruise) introduced me to the ideas. I'm a student of world religion so, to me, it's hugely important to have knowledge and to understand what people are doing. What are all the big ideas? What are people talking about? I believe my connection, to my higher power, is separate from everybody's.

I don't believe the Muslims have all the answers, or the Christians or the Jews, so I love my God, my higher power, mine and mine alone. I create my connection and I decide how my connection is going to be.

Was that gray hair a special effect or is it really Will Smith?

That was a special effect. We had the world's best gray hair people come in from . . . uh, from Europe. Yes, that is a European GH, or GHI, or Gray Hair International, and they just do that (laughs).

What about working with your daughter, Willow?

You kind of don't work with Willow, you work for Willow. Jada and I carry on the age-old debate of nature vs. nurture. Is it because two actors went to Mexico and drank some tequila and made a baby? Does that make the baby an actor? Or, did she grow up in a house where that is what is in her house, that is just the life, and that's the experience that she knows?

When I look at Willow, I believe that it has to be neither one of those. There has to be something else. She just knows and she just loves it.

When we were shooting the bridge sequence, there was a building nearby with a temperature gauge on it. We started at sunset and it was probably 29 degrees or something. Then, we watched it go down to 1 and then to negative numbers.

Willow is out there, and she's cold and getting a little irritable. She looks at me and says, "Daddy, I don't care how low it goes, I'm going to finish." I thought, "Wow!" I said, "That's good, baby, because Daddy is leaving if it goes any lower than that 1."

Willow just wants it. She has a drive, an energy, and she just connects to human emotion. A big part of it is probably Jaden (Christopher Smith, Willow's brother). After "The Pursuit of Happyness" and she saw what Jaden did, she thought, "I want that."

Now, we make our kids audition and all of that; we don't do the whole nepotism thing. We always call the family in and announce good things that happen so everybody shares in it. Well, we say, "Everybody, we just want to congratulate Willow. She got 'I Am Legend.' " She immediately turns around to Jaden and (posing aggressively) goes, "What's that? What was that?" Never had she talked about any feelings she was having, but it was like, "OK, I'm plotting on you, dude."

When we look at Jaden and Willow, we say Jaden is Johnny Depp because he just wants to do good work. He doesn't care what money he gets, he doesn't care if people see it or don't see it. He just loves acting and wants to make good movies.

Which child demands more money?

Willow is Paris Hilton (laughs). She wants to be on TV. We are managing both of those in our household.

Are you still in contact with DJ Jazzy Jeff?

Jeff and I perform a couple of times a year. We're going to go out big in July, figuring out some places around the world to do some big shows. It's about that circle back to the golden age of hip-hop, starting to be a little resurgence, so we're planning some things.

As far as the Fresh Prince, it's interesting. On July 6, 1996, the Fresh Prince stopped. After "Independence Day" came out on that Monday, it was the first time anyone called me Mr. Smith. I was like, "What the . . . ?" All through "The Fresh Prince" (on TV), all through the music, it was like, "Hey, Fresh Prince, Fresh Prince." That morning, when the box office numbers came out for "Independence Day," it was evryone saying, "Good morning, Mr. Smith." Just so bizarre.

What is next for you in film?

I'll be working with (director) Gabriele Muccino on something in March called "Seven Pounds." Gabriele has a wonderful insight on who I am and how to get the best out of me. Michael Mann and Gabriele Muccino you know how people can have X-ray vision on you? Like, how there are some people you can't pull tricks on, they know exactly what is going on? They see you, right to the heart of who you are, and what you are feeling. That's the relationship I have with those guys. I'm definitely looking forward to getting back in there with Gabriele.

We've already completed "Hancock" for the Fourth of July, with Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman. Peter Berg directed; Akiva Goldsman, Michael Mann and myself are producing. If you can imagine, it's the Michael Mann version of an alcoholic superhero it is so bizarre. Jason Bateman plays a publicist and I save his life. Then, he begins to rehabilitate me in the eyes of the public.

http://www.cleveland.com/sun/intermission/....xml&coll=4

[Ale]

Legend's Smith Goes To Dog

Will Smith, who shares the screen in I Am Legend with a German shepherd, told reporters that he quickly bonded with the dog. "Abbey is the dog's real name," Smith said in a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., last week. "And, yeah, when I was probably 9 years old, I had a dog, Trixie, a white golden retriever, that got hit by a car. So ... I refused [to have one since then]. ... And then [trainer] Steve [berens] brought that damn Abbey on the set."

Abbey, a 3-year-old German shepherd rescued from an animal shelter, plays Sam, the constant companion to Smith's Robert Neville, the last man on Earth.

"You say a smart dog? It's like, it got to the point with Abbey, she'd be playing, playing, playing, she'd hear 'Rolling!' and she'd run over to her mark and get ready," Smith said. "And I was like, 'What in the hell?' It's like she would know when I wasn't doing my lines right. If I would get lost in the scene, you know, she would just go [tilts his head]."

To cement the bond between man and dog, director Francis Lawrence issued a directive: No one pets Abbey except Smith. (Though Smith's co-star, Brazilian actress Alice Braga, admitted that she snuck in a few scratches behind Lawrence's back.)

"There was a rule on set that nobody could interact with her other than the trainer and Will," Lawrence said, adding: "Everybody was dying to pet her, because she was the most beautiful, friendly dog that I had ever seen, but nobody could touch her. Except Alice told me today that she touched her all the time. ... When she was finally wrapped, ... it was the one day that everybody could finally go and pet her, and she was very excited that she got all that attention from everybody that she had been dying for."

At the end, Smith admitted that he wanted to take Abbey home. "It was the first time I had ... allowed myself to be fond of a dog since [Trixie], and I was like, ... 'Steve, please, Abbey has to live with me. Please.' And he was like, 'Well, this is how I make my living, man.' ... I experienced the pain again, because he was like, 'I'll bring her over every weekend, Will, but you know, she has to work.' It was painful, but, yeah, she was great." I Am Legend, based on Richard Matheson's novel of the same name, opens Dec. 14

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?c...=3&id=45972

Edited December 6, 2007 by Ale

[Jazzy Julie]

What about his 4 Rotties, i guess he prefers Abbey lol.

Oh and i love that pic of Will and the zombie.

[Ale]

Smith Says Film Not Yet OK'd in China

HONG KONG (AP) — Will Smith's new sci-fi thriller, "I Am Legend," is hitting movie theaters across Asia later this month — but not in China.

The delay in the film's approval comes amid a report that China has issued a temporary ban on American movies to boost the country's domestic film industry — a move the country's regulator has denied.

"We struggled very, very hard to try to get it to work out, but there are only a certain amount of foreign films that are allowed in," Smith told reporters in Hong Kong on Friday.

Smith said he had met with China Film Group's chairman, Han Sanping, and is working with him to secure a release date for "I Am Legend."

Smith said he has discussed other movie projects with Han and mentioned that he's exploring the idea of a remake of "The Karate Kid," possibly set in Hong Kong or Beijing.

"I am Legend" has already received a green light for release in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

Although Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, the territory has maintained a certain amount of autonomy, with its own financial, legal and regulatory systems.

Smith's comments came a day after Hollywood trade publication Variety reported that Chinese authorities have decided to ban American movies for three months to protect the local film industry.

But an executive at the import and export arm of state-run China Film Group on Thursday denied there was a ban, saying the company is still reviewing Hollywood movies for release in the country.

In the past, Chinese regulators have tried to maximize revenue for Chinese studios by banning foreign films from theaters during holidays and school vacations, when audiences are biggest.

"I Am Legend," based on the Richard Matheson novel by the same name, is set in New York where Smith is one of the lone survivors of a deadly global epidemic. It has been adapted for the big screen on two previous occasions — first as "The Last Man on Earth" in 1964 and then as "The Omega Man" in 1971.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jlc94tb...N3PILwD8TCKVN00

Edited June 1, 2014 by Ale

[Ale]

An Exclusive Interview with Francis Lawrence

Source: Ryan Rotten
December 7, 2007

The last man on Earth is not alone. What an understatement. The last man - in this case, actor Will Smith - was definitely not alone on the set of Warner Bros.' big budget adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic tale I Am Legend. Descending on Manhattan with a colossal crew, the production shut down entire city blocks while Smith played - as WB's aggressive marketing campaign reminds you - Robert Neville, the supposedly lone survivor of a virulent outbreak that wipes humankind off the planet. Leading this army and pushing Smith through solitude and flirtations with madness was Francis Lawrence, director of Constantine and this latest undertaking that has seen directors (Ridley Scott) and actors (Arnold Schwarzenegger) come and go.

Initially published in 1954, "I Am Legend" spawned two big screen adaptations, the Hammer Films-rejected Italian production "The Last Man on Earth," starring horror's sinister Vincent Price, and Boris Sagal's "The Omega Man" with Charlton Heston as a square-jawed, gun-totin' Neville and Anthony Zerbe sporting albino makeup and contact lenses. "Omega" hit theaters in '71 and in the subsequent decades, Hollywood knew a modern re-telling was due. Enter Lawrence.

ShockTillYouDrop.com caught up to the director for a one-on-one chat following a press conference at The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills.

ShockTillYouDrop.com: Post-"Constantine" you probably had a wealth of projects to choose from. Why rescue "I Am Legend" from development hell?
Francis Lawrence: I read one of [screenwriter Mark] Protosevich's drafts before I did "Constantine" and it stuck in my head. I hadn't read the novel before that draft. When I was finishing "Constantine," Akiva and I were talking about working together again and Warners gave him that project to resurrect 'cause they thought it was dead. He brought it up to me, and I finally read the novel. Even before these projects, I was always intrigued by someone surviving in an abandoned urban environment. Back when I was doing music videos I'd try to do that with some of the artists I worked with. Trying to sell this feeling of isolation and emptiness. I said, Let's take a crack at it, and we went off with our own take from there.

Shock: Like Jack Finney's "The Body Snatchers" - which was coincidentally published the same decade as Matheson's novella - "I Am Legend" is one of those timeless stories that demands to be re-told on the screen every couple of decades. Why do you think that is?
Lawrence: I think people are really intrigued by the idea of the last man on earth. That concept is really interesting and in that there are different ideas to play with. Matheson, when he wrote his novel...his ideas are durable. You can transplant them in almost any generation. You look at "Omega Man" and they apply in a very different way than they did in the '50s and they do now. It's a classic idea of what do you do when you're the last person on earth?

Shock: Then why do you think this incarnation has been such a tough nut to crack? The words are on the page and the themes are there.
Lawrence: I think there are a lot of reasons, I think the original material is not built like a feature. The original material, although a novella and a fair amount in terms of page count, structurally does not have a motor. And it's sort of, as a film, structured like a short film 'cause it's got a button. That's what is tough about it, trying to create a motor. I also think that the creatures - the infected, vampires, however they exist in whatever form the story has taken - are difficult, because based on how much lucidity you give them, intelligence you give them, what can they do, what can't they do, what do they represent - that's been tough. We chose to tell the story of Neville and really create a hero's journey, a character piece about somebody who is struggling to survive after so much loss.

Shock: And that falls all on the shoulders of Will Smith - was he signed on prior to your commitment to the film?
Lawrence: This project has been around fourteen or fifteen years. Somewhere along the way Will had been on board for a while. I think it was before "28 Days Later" and then that version fell apart. When I came on with Akiva, we both had relationships with him and thought he'd be perfect. We told him our version of the movie, he started to get interested in it again, liked what we had come up with - he also liked some of the old stuff he had been working on and we came up with our version.

Shock: The cause behind Neville's isolation has always been a virus that wipes out mankind, but the origins of that virus has changed somewhat in your film. I thought for certain your would have fallen back on bio-terrorism, however, the cause is simply a cure for cancer gone awry. So, kudos for not taking the obvious route...
Lawrence: It was interesting because, in talking with the CDC, we learned this is how some of these things come to happen. These horrible viruses can pop up out of nowhere, it's not just bio-terrorism. It can be a change in the environment that brings an unseasonable grain to the area which attracts an animal with a disease and something is born and spreads. That stuff is interesting to me, when it's unexpected.

Shock: We've heard that you tried to portray the infected through practical means. Did you find something comfortable in doing them CGI?
Lawrence: We had a change. Originally, I might have wanted to do them digitally, but it was a very expensive ordeal so we decided to do everything live. We hired all of these actors, dancers and stunt people, put them through a boot camp, shaved all of their heads and put them through the makeup process. But what we found after literally one day of shooting is that real people couldn't have the abandon we needed. There was going to have to be some digital augmentation anyway because there were attributes we needed to see - their jaws distending, hyperventilating because their metabolism is all jacked up. These are things people can't do. We said, We just have to do these digitally. You get this different feeling from our creations because of their extended jaws and rapid breathing, their skin is sorta transparent. You get these subtle differences that I really liked.

Shock: And there's a conscious decision to make them more animalistic, more primal than what they were in the book. This goes back to what you were saying about making Neville the focus, but did you and Akiva consider making the infected more human?
Lawrence: We have about an hour of footage that's not in the movie, there are other things we have with the creatures. But the cleanest, clearest, most emotional through line we have in the movie is Will's character. That's the path we chose.

Shock: Downstairs Akiva told us "Legend" is a mix of Matheson's book and elements from "Omega Man." There's a scene in the latter where Charlton Heston enters a theater and watches "Woodstock" - here, you have a touching moment of levity that has Neville watching "Shrek." Was the film your choice? "Shrek" is a far cry from "Woodstock"...
Lawrence: For a while we had a movie theater sequence, then light became a very important thing in our story. Neville doesn't go in the dark spaces. The idea of "Shrek" for us was that there's something nice about a guy who has lost his family - it's not nice - but there's something nice about the experience of coming downstairs to find a child in front of the TV and "Shrek" is on. If you think about it, the last time he has seen that image was when his daughter was alive. There's something powerful in that and then, beyond that, I liked the counterpoint. Here's a film that's fun and whimsical in this desolate world.

Shock: What are your thoughts on the last two adaptations - "The Last Man on Earth" and "Omega Man"?
Lawrence: "Last Man on Earth"...Vincent Price is one of my favorite actors, I think he was miscast. It just didn't capture it and Price is not Robert Neville. The film also has big pacing issues. "Omega Man" is a little too tied to a specific generation, and a little cult-y to me. But both have very interesting ideas. You look back at "Omega Man" and you're like, Oh, it's all shot on the Warner Bros. lot.

Shock: There are a lot of afros on display, too.
Lawrence: There's one mannequin in our film with a giant afro in the background - not sure if you saw that, but that was my homage to "Omega Man." I got really paranoid about it on set that day because it's kind of funny and I didn't know if it was a mistake. But it's just far enough away that it's not corny.

Shock: Can you talk a bit about your representation of New York City? This is set in the near future. The fact that much of the drama takes place in the daylight belies the usual post-apocalyptic dismal fare we've seen on screen before.
Lawrence: New York City is such a great city to shoot in, but to be in such iconic places like the front of Grand Central Station. Will Smith shooting a machine in front of Grand Central was pretty great. We did a lot of conceptual work on this world and what we didn't want to do is the grim stuff we see in movie after movie after a situation like this. We talked to scientists and ecologists and started looking into what would happen to a city after the population disappeared. And the truth is, nature would start to reclaim the city. It'd become a slightly more beautiful place.

Shock: I was visiting New York when you were shooting near 4th Street, where Tower Records used to be. You ran a tight ship - the production assistants were pretty sharp and aggressive.
Lawrence: [laughs] We'd have 150 to 200 P.A.s working on a given day, depending on where we were. There were so many of them and some of them were so distant, on the fringe of where we were shooting. I'd take a break, go to Starbucks, come walking back and I would get some dude who'd say, Sorry, man, we're shooting. And I don't have my badge and I'm like, I swear I'm the director. Yeah, right, he says. I would get stopped, Akiva would get stopped. We had to give speeches all of the time telling them they had to stay mellow, they can't actually touch anybody, they have to be polite. There's a core group that went through training with the city on how to treat people with respect 'cause you can't actually stop people.

Shock: And what's up next for you - "I'm a Bigger Legend"?
Lawrence: I'm working on a couple of things: I might do a pilot for NBC. Then there's a movie at Disney that I've been talking to them about. It's a re-telling of Snow White in 19th century China - that's a cool project. And there's a Chuck Palahniuk project that I'm working on, "Survivor," that a friend of mine did an adaptation for.

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=3957

Edited June 1, 2014 by Ale

[Ale]

Legend's Smith Researched Prisoners

Will Smith, who plays the last man on Earth in the upcoming SF movie I Am Legend, told reporters that he researched the lives of prisoners of war and convicts in solitary confinement to get into the mindset of an isolated, lonely man.

"It was such a wonderful exploration of myself, because what happens is, you get into a situation where you don't have people to create the stimulus for you to respond to," Smith said in a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., last week. "So what happens is, you start creating the stimulus and the response. So there's a connection with yourself that where your mind starts to drift to in those types of situations, that you learn things about yourself that you never would even imagine."

In the movie, based on Richard Matheson's novel of the same name, Smith plays Robert Neville, the lone survivor of a viral plague that has wiped out the population of New York. Smith's Neville sticks to a rigid routine to govern his isolated life, but as the film progresses, his mind begins to unravel.

To achieve his performance, Smith said that he talked with former POWs and prisoners in solitary.

"That was sort of the framework for creating the idea," he said. "They said that [the] first thing is a schedule. That you will not survive in solitary if you don't schedule everything. And we talked to Geronimo ji-Jaga--he's formerly Geronimo Pratt of the Black Panthers--and he was in solitary for over three months. And he said, 'You plan things like cleaning your nails. And you'll take two hours, [and] you have to [do it], because it's on the schedule, that you have to just clean your nails.' He said that he spent about six weeks, and he trained roaches to bring him food. And, you know, I'm sitting, I'm like, 'Oh, my God.' The idea of where your mind goes to defend yourself. And either he really did train the roaches, which is huge, or his mind needed that to survive. Either way, you put that on camera, and it's genius."

The film, which is told from Neville's point of view, even equivocates about whether Neville is really seeing what he thinks he's seeing. "That was the thing, to be able to get into the mental space where what the truth was for Robert Neville didn't matter," Smith said. "The only thing that mattered was what he saw and what he believed." He added: "It was such a great exploration of what happens to the human mind that is trying to defend itself. And, for me, I'm a better actor for having to create both sides of the scene with no dialogue." I Am Legend opens Dec. 14

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?c...=3&id=45973

[Ale]

Mr. Smith Goes to New York

By A.C. FERRANTE

As a celebrity, Will Smith is used to getting high-fives. But while in New York City filming I AM LEGEND (the third film version of Richard Matheson’s classic horror novella), he found himself on the receiving end of a completely different kind of gesture from the public.

“I’m used to people liking me, but I would say percentage-wise, it’s the most amount of middle fingers I’ve received,” Smith says with a smile. “We shut down six blocks of 5th Avenue on a Monday morning. That was probably poor logistics and poor planning.”

While Manhattan residents were understandably frustrated by the accompanying traffic delays, the end result of this shutdown is some of the most eerie scenes of an deserted Big Apple ever committed to film, which Smith says is part of the magic of the movie (opening December 14 from Warner Bros.). “You realize you’ve never seen an empty shot of New York,” he notes, “and when we were doing it, it was chilling to walk down the middle of 5th Avenue. There’s never an opportunity to do that, even at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning. It created such a creepy energy, and there are [scenes involving] iconic buildings as well. There’s a shot of the UN. There’s Broadway. It puts such an eerie, icky kind of feeling in the movie, when you see those shots. Logistically, it was a nightmare, but it absolutely created something you couldn’t do with greenscreen or shooting another city for New York.”

First published in 1954, Matheson’s story was previously filmed with Vincent Price as 1964’s THE LAST MAN ON EARTH and with Charlton Heston as 1971’s THE OMEGA MAN. The new movie, directed by Francis (CONSTANTINE) Lawrence, casts Smith as Robert Neville, the last man alive after a virus has wiped out almost all of the world’s population. Those who haven’t succumbed have evolved into nocturnal, vampire-like creatures who come out at night to feed and hide underground during the day. Neville barricades himself in a Washington Square apartment between sundown and sunup as he tries to find a cure for the plague—but once he makes his presence known, he soon becomes the hunted.

“[Doing this role] was such an exploration of myself,” Smith says, “because what happened was, I got myself in a situation where I didn’t have people to create the stimulus for me to respond to. So I started creating the stimulus and response and there was a connection with myself, which my mind started to drift to in those situations. I learned things about myself that I could have never even imagined. To prepare for that, we sat with former POWs and people who sat in solitary confinement. That was the framework. First thing is a schedule: You will not survive in solitary if you don’t schedule everything. I talked to Geronimo Pratt of the Black Panthers, who was in solitary for over three months. [He told me] you plan things like cleaning your nails. You will take two hours, and you have to, because it’s on the schedule. He said he spent about six weeks where he trained roaches to bring him food. The idea of where your mind goes to defend yourself… Whether he did train the roaches or not, he needed that to survive either way, so if you put that on camera—it’s genius.

“For me, that was the key thing—to get into the mental space where whatever the truth was for Robert Neville, it didn’t matter,” the actor continues. “The only thing that mattered was what he saw and what he believed. It was such an exploration of what happens to the human mind as it’s trying to survive, and I’m a better actor for having to create both sides of scenes with no dialogue.”

Warner Bros. has tried to launch an updated film of I AM LEGEND for years, with directors as varied as Ridley Scott and Michael Bay attached to direct and, at one point, Arnold Schwarzenegger set to star. Smith, who has hung onto the prospect of playing Neville since the time Bay was first attached, was always intrigued by this character who spends the movie isolated and alone, with only his dog Sam as his companion.

“I was really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious,” he says. “There are things we all dream, things each one of us thinks about that connect to life, death, sex—things that are beyond language, and this is one of those concepts. You’ve been on the freeway many times and wished everyone was dead. There have been times you wished you were by yourself, and didn’t need any of these assholes and just wanted to be alone. That separation from people, being ripped away from everyone and being connected with the dark—that’s a primal idea. I couldn’t always articulate it like that, but I loved this concept, because it connects to an idea that a 4-year-old could understand.”

With nobody but a few mannequins to “communicate” with, Neville has to form a very tight bond with his dog Sam (played by a German shepherd named Abbey)—an attachment that Smith found himself sharing. “When I was 9 years old, I had a white golden retriever named Trixie that got hit by a car,” recalls Smith, who refused to own an animal since then because he didn’t want to become “emotionally connected to a dog anymore. Then [trainer] Steve [berens] brought that damn Abbey to set,” Smith laughs. “You talk about a smart dog—it got to the point where Abbey would be playing and hear ‘Rolling,’ and she’d run over and hit her mark. She would know I wasn’t doing my lines right if I got lost in a scene. It was the first time I connected and allowed myself to bond with a dog since that experience.

“I said, ‘Steve, Abbey has to live with me,’ and he said, ‘She’s how I make my living,’ ” Smith continues. “I said, ‘Tell me what you need—a house in the hills.’ She was so smart and fun and warm that I experienced the pain again. He said, ‘I’ll bring her over every weekend, Will, but she has to work.’ She was great. Abbey is way on another plane, connecting to what your energy is, what your feelings are. It’s beautiful.”

With or without a canine companion, Smith says he’s not sure he would be cool, calm and collected if found himself in a situation similar to Neville’s, but admits, “That’s what’s interesting about playing characters like this, because you get to explore and wonder how would you react. To me, [starring in] ALI was the greatest time of asking myself that question. When Ali didn’t step forward because they wouldn’t call him Muhammad Ali, he knew he was going to jail, he knew what the situation would be, but he couldn’t do it. I remember reading this, thinking, ‘What would I do?’ I just don’t know if I would be enough man, to give up everything I have right now, the way Ali did.
“I thought about Robert Neville,” he continues. “What is there to live for, to hope for; to wake up every day to try to restore something that is good and gone. I like to believe I would put my chest up and stand forward and march on and continue to fight for the future of humanity. It’s a tough question. I don’t know. There’s a part of me that wants to be tested to know what you would do…but you don’t really want to be tested. That’s the space I’ve lived in with quite a few of the roles I’ve played.”

http://www.fangoria.com/fearful_feature.php?id=5590

Edited June 1, 2014 by Ale

[Ale]

I AM LEGEND - Interview w/ Alice Braga

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSbwK5_sJjk