First up, Tom Hanks and Renee Zellweger are
earning rave reviews for their portraits of
real-life legends.
Two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks channels the
warmth and compassion of children's television
host Fred Rogers, or "Mr. Rogers" to most
of us, in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood."
Mr. Rogers: We are trying to give children
positive ways to deal with their feelings.
Ramin: In "Judy," Oscar winner Renee Zellweger
captures the fragility and fears of Judy Garland
as she embarks upon a set of London performances
in the final year of her life.
Judy Garland: They hound people in this world,
anybody who's different.
They can't stand it.
Tom Hanks: What is the first thing you do
when--I mean, the legend is--like, playing
Judy Garland, that's like playing Elvis, or,
you know, it's like playing John Lennon or
something.
What's the first thing you do?
Renee Zellweger: Well, I mean, there's a lot
of material, thank goodness.
Tom: You watch everything.
Renee: You watch everything, all of her, you
know, her body of work.
Tom: Did you have a--well, did you have an
overabundance of information you had to sift
through?
Renee: Well, you try to be judicious about
what it is that you take as fact, you know,
consider the source.
Tom: Right.
Renee: So there was a lot of contradictory
information, and a lot of it was--it seemed
like, oh, the truth is in here somewhere,
but that's not it.
It sort of lies in between these bits of information,
and there are so many biographies out there
of people who claim to have known her that
don't get mentioned in the biographies of
the people, or the autobiographies, rather,
the people who we know knew her from public
record or because it's a familial connection,
you know?
Tom: You look at that output prior to "The
Wizard of Oz," and she had already--I mean,
she had all--they worked herself into a puddle
in that backbreaking, kind of, quick--like,
all those big musical numbers for those Andy
Hardy movies and everything else that she
did.
And how old was she when she made-- Renee:
"Wizard of Oz"?
She said she was 16.
Wasn't she 15 or 16?
Tom: Oh, man, oh, man, that's tough.
Renee: Yeah, she was just starting to--her
body was just starting to change, and I think
that one of the tools that they used to keep
her slim besides binding her and tryin' to
keep her weight down--because they didn't
want her to be voluptuous because they had
finally found a way to market her as the girl
next door, and God forbid that Dorothy be
sexy, you know, so they bound her and kept
her, you know, her weight down.
Tom: I was disappointed that we didn't get
to see you recreate moments like from "The
Harvey Girls" or "Meet Me in St. Louis," or
these other ones where she had--but this is
from what the reading that I did--was she
had that kind of, like, negative self-image
that she wasn't the prettiest woman on camera,
and, yet she's the only one you look at, you
know?
Renee: I know, she's just ethereal, wasn't
she?
She was so beautiful.
It's impossible to imagine that she had that--I
don't know--that she'd been broken down to
where she couldn't see it.
Tom: The expression that she was able to put
into what was, I'm guessing, was prerecorded
tracks--you know, the songs were all prerecorded?
Renee: In the MGM movies?
Tom: In the MGM days.
Renee: Yeah, she talks about that, yeah, that
they would go in the morning and lay down
the tracks, and I heard that she did something
like 28 takes of "The Man That Got Away,"
until she could recognize that everybody in
the room was feeling it the way she was feeling
it, and then she was happy.
Tom: But then the recreation of that on camera
to a playback in which you're not really impacting
the soundtrack because you are--essentially,
you're miming or mimicking or recreating something,
but her eyes and her face and the emotion
that she put into that is--I wouldn't know
how to do that.
Renee: I did know that Rupert wanted to establish
the story in a way that you would understand
where she was in terms of her ability to access
her instrument at that time, so you wouldn't
be quite sure whether or not she was going
to succeed.
He wanted to set that up so that it seemed
a precarious moment when she stepped onto
the stage.
Tom: When you finally sing and the fireworks
go off and everybody who's watching the movie
has to collect the back of their head because
you've blown them away so much, those weren't
prerecorded songs.
Did you do you those--you were recording those
live?
Renee: Yes.
Tom: And did you do them all in a row because
of the block shooting?
Were you always in that space?
Renee: No, we could do a couple numbers a
day.
Oh, there were a couple of days when we would
have to cram in a lot of things on the side.
Like, we had a week or something to get all
that stuff together.
I was curious of a couple things in your process.
I mean, by the way, congratulations.
What a beautiful representation.
Tom: Oh, well, thanks, thanks.
Renee: I mean, really.
Tom: Likewise.
Renee: But that's just somethin' that you
do.
You have this--it's so-- Tom: Oh, it's scary.
It's scary, isn't it?
Renee: It's weird because you're such a recognizable,
unique person, and, yet you disappear in whatever
it is that you do.
It's really magic.
In the experience of playin' him, how was
it different to you?
Tom: The biggest challenge I felt, as portraying
Fred, was the genuineness of him.
You think about it: He's not goin' through
an extraordinary crisis.
He's literally just being Fred Rogers being
interviewed by a journalist, and there was
no agenda.
There was no--he was just simply a guy who
worked very hard at his job and took it very,
very seriously, and I think that when the
job you're taking seriously is to make two-year-old
kids feel safe in the world, that's not necessarily
a real active choice.
You know, that's not-- there's not a lot of
"Sturm und Drang" to it.
There's no, you know, train for that.
You don't learn how to fly a plane or something
like that.
You don't--you're not dealin' with it.
You have to, instead, just embody this kind
of ministerial quality 'cause he was an ordained
minister.
He was a Presbyterian reverend, you know,
but his church was this television show, and
if you're not specific about that, you're
just gonna come off as some sort of, like,
saint that always has benevolent, beguiling
eyes, you know, and always has a gentle manner.
Renee: Well, and then the voice and the lilt
in his voice, and his movement, the way that
he carries himself, he's such a gentle presence.
Tom: I had a great difficulty slowing down.
Renee: Interesting.
Tom: And if I was going to show you--we were
gonna sit down in the movie, I would get to
a point and say, "Okay, that's my first day
of shooting."
They had more--they had been working for two
weeks, and this is my first day of shooting.
Renee: Yes, 'cause there's a stillness that
you embody.
Tom: Yeah, but compare that first day of shooting
stillness to a week later in which, first
of all, Marielle Heller is, you know, kicked
my butt just enough, and I have learned how
to feel as though I'm not just wearing clothes,
but that the clothes are wearing me, and I
become somethin' else.
That--I'm a wise acre, and I talk a lot, and
I have a lot of energy, and to slow down like
that, how often does a director come to you
and say, "Take more time with this"?
They never say that.
Renee: Oh, no, no.
Most of the direction that you get in a career
is "All right, speed that up.
Talk."
Tom: "Just say the words."
Renee: "Act faster."
Tom: Yeah, yeah, "Act faster.
Say the words."
And you as Judy, I mean, you had this ongoing,
constant twitching that was going on that
came from, you know, a different source besides
just her personality, but were you exhausted
at the end of some working days?
Renee: Well, probably, but, you know, that's
one of those things that you train yourself
not to pay attention to.
Tom: Yeah.
Renee: Yeah, 'cause it's irrelevant.
You can't do anything about it, so there's
no reason to-- Tom: Oh, if you look at a clock--there's
a reason why, you know, your clocks, your
watches never work when you're performing
'cause if you actually keep track of the time,
you're doomed.
Oh, my God, we are gonna be here-- Renee:
Twelve hours before breakfast.
Tom: We're gonna be here till 10 o'clock at
night.
You can't let that happen to you.
Renee: No, definitely not.
And with--you know, there are certain things
where you don't want to stop anyway because
you get greedy, and you just want more materials
so-- Tom: And it happened, I might say, particularly,
when we were working in the "Land of Make
Believe," and the opening, I could not get
enough of Fred in Fred's house.
I actually--I took naps on the set just because
I-- Renee: Oh, you're kidding.
Tom: Well, there's a comfy couch there, and
so I don't wanna go all the way back to a
dressing room, and there it is.
Renee: And it just felt-- Tom: I wanted to
stay there all day.
When they finally wrapped, it's like, "I gotta
take off these clothes?
I'm gonna go back and be myself again?
I'd love being in Mr. Rogers' house.
Renee: Ensconced in that?
Tom: Yeah, as Mr. Rogers because it was just
so wonderfully soothing.
Renee: Oh, how special.
Tom: It was just beautiful.
