King Kong (Movie - 2005), Adrien Brody, ...
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King Kong (Movie - 2005)

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But for all the old-school tricks — down to fashioning animal dung from brown paint, cereal, and rubber cement — Jackson's vision still called for digital effects on a staggering scale. With more than 80 percent of the film involving major computer-generated elements, the cast had to indulge in endless hours of make-believe. ''I was constantly trying to imagine something that would get me scared,'' Black says. ''I'd think, Okay, I'm being chased by a half shark, half tiger that can run on land but has the mouth of a shark and it's f---ing stinky and spitting and yelling at me. I thought of that a lot.''

If the actors had to strain their imaginations conjuring fantastical worlds, the sense of real-life pressure was all too real. The record of other highly anticipated remakes is not always encouraging — see: Godzilla — and in this case, we're talking about a three-hour giant-gorilla movie where everyone knows the ending. For the entire first week, Black was convinced he'd be replaced just like Stuart Townsend, the actor originally cast as Aragorn in Lord of the Rings: ''I couldn't remember my lines. I kept thinking, In one week, Viggo Mortensen could be taking over my role.''

In the end, Brody says, all the cast could do was simply to put their trust in Jackson and hope he doesn't make monkeys out of them. ''It's so beyond most people's comprehension what's entailed in making a film like this, you have to relinquish it all to Peter,'' he says. ''It's out of our hands.''

(This is an online-only excerpt from Entertainment Weekly's Nov. 18, 2005, cover story.)

Originally posted Nov 10, 2005 Published in issue #850 Nov 18, 2005 Order article reprints
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