Inside Man's Review #4: Vanilla Sky

(2001) **



So here’s Vanilla Sky, pretty much the last film in the series of Movies-I’ve-Worked-On-That-Could-Remotely-Be-Construed-As-Horror genre. I knew I was totally pushing it with Meet Joe Black last year, available for review here, and now, with Vanilla Sky, not only have I pushed the envelope, I have split its seams and then eaten the envelope. Although I’m sure I can find some arcane reasoning for The Love Letter or The Guru, so stand by for THOSE doozies.

(And for the record, my Horrorthon contributions in recent months have been abysmal, and I’ve missed all of you even while still checking the site regularly, and I just didn’t have the time to get re-addicted to the wonderful brilliance available here on a daily basis. Thon!)


"What did you DO with my scale model of Xenu's mothership?!?!??!?"

Anyway, on to this piece of shit movie: Tom Cruise plays David Aames, a billionaire writer-or-something that closely resembles Tom Cruise. Cameron Diaz plays Julianna Gianni, the totally hot babe girlfriend that he’s kind of tired of having sex with. Just like in real life. Penelope Cruz is Sofia Serrano, the exotic awesome babe that he meets at a party and totally falls for. Just like in real life. The day after the party, Julianna is driving David up the West Side Highway, and totally flips out after delivering a line that should be good, but actually just makes you squirm (“David, I swallowed your come!” o-kaaaaaayyyy…) Then she purposely crashes the car over an embankment, killing herself and horribly disfiguring Tom Cruise.

Just like in real life.





On that note, much was made of the makeup job on Cruise, and during shooting we went to ridiculous lengths to “conceal” this,, as if the world was waiting breathlessly to finally see what Tom Cruise would look like after gaining 20 pounds and having a stroke. Like, if his ears had to be re-stiched onto the center of his face, and his one working eye had to be re-drilled into his forehead, THAT would be one thing, but basically it just looks like half his face melted about three inches. Whoop-de-friggin-do. (We were shooting in some cobblestoned neighborhood in Brooklyn, and in order to prevent the paparazzi from getting a “money shot” of this ridiculous makeup, the grips had to show up like 4 hours before the rest of the crew, and erect massive black vertical blocking tarps between street corners on both ends of the block, reaching as high as 75 feet. If I were a grip, I’d be pretty f’n impressed with that.)

Back to the plot, which I guess I can sum up in a couple sentences: the movie shifts gears about eight times, then grinds the gears, fucks up the transmission, and eventually gets out of the smoking, flaming, wrecked car and gets on a unicycle and pedals along the highway, then on a whim, heads into the forest. In a manner of speaking. What starts out as a billionaire-finds-true-love film morphs into a psychological Elephant Man societal acceptance film, then lurches headlong into It Was All A Dream perception-of-reality sci-fi territory. I’ll tell you what, the “memory implant” thing comes up about an hour and a half in, and the only thought I had at the crew screening was, “I liked this movie better when it was called “Total Recall.” Same exact stuff, but at least Total Recall had the decency to START the actual movie with that as the theme. Total bunch of crap.

Here’s what would have helped. More of this:





(I’m really glad DCD broke the Nipple Seal on posted pictures. I was nervous about being the first, as this review hinges on it…)

Anyway, as wonderful as topless Penelope Cruz is, the important bit is the Empty Times Square shot, which film crew people and some of the public still talk about to this day. (On the day we shot it, the Gaffer (head electrician) brought New Year’s Eve 2001 glasses, and a sign reading, “Where Is Everybody?” Great stuff…)

I was one of 10 Key Production Assistants, each of whom had an intersection as his or her domain. Mine was 47th Street. I had 10 other P.A.s, and at 3am on a Sunday morning, we fanned out into position. Two P.A.s went to 6th Avenue, two P.A.s went to 8th Avenue, and started to tell people they “couldn’t come down this street because we’re shooting a movie .” (I did that sort of thing for years, and I can tell you, being on the front lines SUCKS. New Yorkers do NOT give a shit what you’re doing. I always thought Green Lantern’s Power Ring would be of immense help in these situations, just to levitate people for a minute or two.) The remaining six P.A.s were the last line of defense, clustering strategically just off of 7th Avenue and Broadway right at Times Square. So what I did was multiplied by 10, and we had the blocks from 51st to 41st completely locked up and totally empty. I would later replicate this feat on I Am Legend, as the 2nd Assistant Director in charge of the whole operation, only upped by a factor of about 1000, which you can read about here.

So we had Times Square emptied out as of about 5:30 am, and we rehearsed and rehearsed the shot, which was a pretty complicated Steadicam move around Cruise’s approaching car, then the Steadicam guy backs up, and retreats onto a waiting crane platform, which raises him up to reveal the true immensity of the emptiness of the whole thing. We did this while it was still too dark to actually commit to film, and it was at precisely 6:14 am that we rolled film, and got the shot. Only 3 takes. And weeks later, the CGI guys in Post Production got word back to us that they didn’t have to alter a pixel of any frame, even on the deep blocks that we didn’t control. New York looked deserted, all thanks to the 90 P.A.s that were there, and, of course, me.

Sidebar Anecdote: We had a New York “wrap party” at a bar in the East Village, and Cruise showed up. He got the attention of the bar, gave a speech saying how easy it was to type the words, “Ext. Times Square – Empty,” but how unbelievably hard it was to make that a reality. He profusely thanked the NY crew, and then toasted everybody and CHUGGED a pint of Gunniess. Then left in his car. But I was always really impressed with his words and his chugging ability. Gay or not, crazy Scientologist or not, the guy is in my Cool Book.

I know I have wasted a LOT of everyone’s valuable October minutes (and I hope you all have some horror movie on in the background while reading this tripe), but like last year, I’m going for quality, not quantity, which is of course completely opposed to the entire original concept of this whole site. My personal favorites thus far: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, and Dad’s Not So Excellent Adventure.. Octo made me want to go see that movie right away, and Miko made me laugh and cry almost at the same time. There is something very special about Miko’s review, and I just wanted to echo it here. I love all of y’all.

So, based on my really weak Meet Joe Black hypothesis, here’s what’s Horrifying about this move:

Tom Cruise In Recent Years: Horrifying personality, and is pretty much scary in general
Cameron Diaz’s “Come” Line: Totally Horrifying
Plot: Ridiculously Horrifying and Terrible
Makeup: should be horror-esque, and thereby Horrifying, but isn’t, which is Horrifying
Reviews: Horrifying

After typing that word that many times, is “horrifying” even a word?

And the only reason this gets two stars instead of one is because I worked on it.

Also, JSP, you’d be interested to learn that Sigur Ros did a few songs on the soundtrack. Interested, but not totally psyched. And Happy Birthday.