Veteran actor Ed Harris talks about his upcoming film Snowpiercer while promoting his latest feature, Phantom.
On what attracted him to join a project like Snowpiercer.
HARRIS: I saw three of director Bong’s movies and I said, “I want to do this. I don’t care what he’s asking me to do because he’s a really great filmmaker.” His friend and fellow filmmaker is director Park, who did Stoker. I met director Park when I was in Prague. He came by the set and actually produced director Bong’s film. He seemed like a really interesting guy, and Oldboy just blew me away.
On his role in the film.
HARRIS: I play a guy who owns and runs a train. You don’t see me until the end. There’s a revolution going on with all the poor people that starts in the back of the train and moves its way forward. They finally get up to the front where I’m at. It was trippy. The sets were unbelievable. They had these big train cars that they build on a soundstage, and the whole thing was on this gimble deal. I hope the film works. I can’t see that it won’t, but it was amazing. That was really a trip, working on that. His whole way of working is so different. He’ll just shoot bits of a scene at a time. Normally, you’ll shoot a master and shoot the whole scene on one person and then shoot the whole scene on another, but he’ll shoot a little bit one way, and then shoot a couple lines another way. He just constantly gets the pieces that he knows he wants. And he had the editing thing down below the stage where the trains were, and the editor was cutting while he was shooting. It was out there.
Set in a second Ice Age, we should probably expect some breathtaking visuals from Joon-ho Bong's feature. With an all star cast that includes Chris Evans, Ed Harris, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Olivia Spencer, Alison Pill and Jon Hurt, Snowpiercer is expected to arrive in U.S. theaters in the fourth quarter of 2013. The film is based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette. With a relatively modest budget of only $39M, if the visuals and tone are right, this should be a moneymaker for The Weinstein Company if it receives a wide release.
Snowpiercer is set in a future where, after a failed experiment to stop global warming, an Ice Age kills off all life on the planet except for the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine. A class system evolves on the train but a revolution brews. The remaining populace aboard the train have been divided into strict social classes with the poorest at the back of the train and high society at the front. A revolution begins at the back that will not be deterred until it reaches the very front.
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