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The Thunderbird Gang is GO!We chat with the director and stars of the new space-age rescue actioner!by Lynn B.
“Star Trek” veteran Jonathan Frakes directs this sci-fi family actioner. Young actors Brady Corbet, Vanessa Anne Hudgens (who already worked together in the searing drama about a teen girl, Thirteen) and 13-year-old Soren Fulton joined him in L.A. recently to chat about playing family (they behave like they ARE family, including tattling on each other), working with effects and how to stay normal in show biz etc. AGW: Jonathan, do you enjoy directing movies for young people and families? Jonathan: There are worst fates, aren’t there? I don’t think this is all a kid’s movie, it just happens to star three great young adults. I think the idea of hiring somebody who had done visual effects movies and had worked with kids was not lost on Universal. I have a lot of kid in me, and I have kids of my own and I like the energy. So it’s not a bad lot. AGW: Can you tell us the challenges you had working with green screen effects and have you left Star Trek for good, Jonathan? Jonathan: I’ll do the second one first. I don’t think you ever leave Star Trek for good. We’ll wait to see what happens. I hear (William) Shatner’s going on “Enterprise”. Have you heard that rumor? And I also hear there’s a prequel in development – “Starfleet Academy”. I’m actually having dinner with all those guys tonight, I’ll get all the dish for you and tell you what’s really happening with “Star Trek”. AGW: Cool, and as far as working against a screen with things that aren’t there? Jonathan: I think it challenges the actors. These guys learned the technique. Soren: I love green screen. It wasn’t too hard for me because I’ve got a really big imagination, I read a lot of books. It’s just like a little bubble inside of my head, like those thought bubbles when you’re picturing everything – that’s what I do. Jonathan: We’re also lucky because we developed a lot of what the movie was going to look like in pre-production, so I was able to share with these guys what would be out the window of the spaceship, out of the cockpits, what the silos would look like. The visual effects team would come to our rehearsals and then come when we were preparing to shoot, and there were visual stimulants that would help us. It was more pretending to be moving when you’re not that is always a challenge. AGW: The bad guy who plays your nemesis The Hood is very accomplished Oscar-winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley. What was working with him like? Soren: I was a little afraid of him at first. I remember one time we were shooting in the Thunder One silo and he’s like, ‘If this shot’s going to work, it all depends on you.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ But I guess I made it work because it’s in the film. Vanessa: No, I remember when you were intimidated to go down and get his signature. Soren: I got my script all signed with all sorts of people, and wanting all the actors, and after awhile Vanessa’s like, ‘Go, go ask him.’ Vanessa: And he wouldn’t go, so I had to grab him and pull him down the stairs because he wasn’t doing anything. I really didn’t get to know him that much. He seems like a great guy and the times that I have talked to him he’s just amazing. Jonathan: He’s fabulous. He came in to meet me, we offered him the part obviously, and we’re thrilled that he took it – but he came in and the timing of having had done Sexy Beast and House of Sand and Fog was the gift that we got, because he was ready to drop some of that emotional, exhausting, suicidal, painful acting that he’d been doing and embrace a family film. AGW: We hear that Sir Ben’s kids wanted him to play the role. Jonathan: His kids encouraged him, because they were “Thunderbirds” fans (from the TV show) and they encouraged him to play The Hood. He also does a great Patrick Stewart impersonation, which wasn’t lost on me. He’s from that wonderful school of actors who have come up from the theatre. They come to the set and they’re ready to go and game for anything. He played the Hood in this wonderful, mad way. We all discovered together, that the character was a few bricks short of a load. Brady: You know what, I was always on completely cordial terms but I didn’t get to know him particularly well outside of the working environment. But he was always really lovely. I’ve seen him a lot since, and it was just incredible to be working with such a legend. I’ve been a film junkie my whole life, I’ve grown up watching him so it was particularly incredible for me. AGW: Were you guys aware of the “Thunderbird” TV fan culture? Jonathan: I wasn’t. Brady: I was, I’m a bit of an insomniac, I don’t sleep very much, and it comes on at like 3 a.m. on Tech TV now, and it was always on my periphery, it was that kind of thing. Jonathan: Did you see it when you were a kid in Europe? Brady: No, I didn’t see it when I was a really little kid, I’ve probably seen it in the past three years, but I’ve always known what it was but I don’t think I’d ever seen an entire episode, maybe one entire episode, or two. Soren: I thought it was a car. Jonathan: It’s a nice car. [They called the characters Marionettes] – super marionation (?) It wasn’t on my radar when I was a kid. Everybody wanted to do their marionette impersonation, but we spared you most of them. AGW: Does it concern you at all that your target audience doesn’t know “Thunderbirds” from TV?
AGW: Brady, you’ve seen the TV show and do you think it was weird that it was puppets? Brady: Not entirely. As a kid, it totally would have captured my imagination. I loved Jim Henson, I loved the Muppets, I grew up with Labyrinth and all that, so to me it’s not massively different that that. It’s not wacky and crazy, it’s kind of stern but it’s something that I appreciate more than enjoy, but I’m not really into sci-fi anyway – Jonathan: Oh, you will be. I was the same way. I said the same things in the ‘80s. AGW: Vanessa, what was the hardest thing about working with so many guys? Vanessa: Well, I wouldn’t really consider saying that I look at them just as guys, I seriously look at them as my friends. Me and Soren grew really close. Soren: I guess you could say, she’s like a twin sister that’s three years older than me, but she’s also a little eccentric. It’s like Dory (the Ellen Degeneres character) from Finding Nemo. Vanessa: Dory’s amazing. Jonathan: Vanessa was one of the guys, in the story and out. She would try anything that I would ask her to try. I must say, all my talent (actors) were really up for it, and they didn’t have to do some of the things I begged them to do. AGW: Let’s talk music. Can you tell me what your favorite music is? Brady: Busted. I’m a total music geek, I’m a multi-media geek. I love Wilco. I listen to the new Wilco album a lot, Tender Sticks, Tom Waits, all sorts of stuff. Vanessa: I listen to a lot of things, everything, rap, reggae. I love Bob Marley, Modest Mouse Foot or the Ya, Ya ,Yas and pretty much everything …well rounded. Soren: I listen to The Clash, you heard that right, the Clash from the London invasion, and in my family’s car right now is Elvis’ number one hits. I got that for my birthday. But I listen to a lot of the Clash, they’re great. Jonathan: I listen to Nora Jones a lot, I listen to Billie Holiday a lot, John Mayall (Blues guy). You know the Busted video’s number one – top of the pops. It’s the first time they ever went number one. AGW: Former child stars burn out – are you being counseled for that time in your life when you won’t be a kid any more? Brady: Your career, no matter what age you are, is entirely up to you to do what you want with. I’m not in any kind of particular fear of being pigeon-holed into, ‘Oh look, little blonde Aryan superhero.’ In ten years if I mess up, then I’m entirely responsible for that and I can deal with that. Unless there’s a sequel of course, this is the only family film that I’ve ever done and, at least for the next several years, will do. AGW: You were in a totally different kind of film… Thirteen. Brady: And as soon as I got home from that I did a film called Mysterious Skin with a director that I’d always dug named Greg Araki. I’ve no desire to be famous, but what I do have a desire to do is to be working on the kind of projects that I’ve always wanted to. AGW: Are you all worried about peer pressure or the competition? Worried about leading normal lives? Brady: Peer pressure, that has nothing to do with the business, or with film or anything of that nature, that’s just – it is a generation thing where everything is getting younger and Thirteen did explore that, a lot of films have explored that. But I don’t go to school, I’m home schooled. I have quality over quantity kind of friends, and I have a couple of very close people that I spend time with, so I don’t feel any kind of particular pressure to do anything. I’m sure some people do. Soren: I just turned 13 and basically I don’t know why I would do drugs. What’s the point of burning out your mind? People who do that want to escape and I’m hoping to have a good future, and it’s kind of hard to have a good future if you don’t know which end’s up, with a bunch of holes in your wrists and tar in your lungs. That’s my two-cents. Vanessa: I spend a lot of time with my family and we just go out and have fun and we do lots of theme parks, and when I do get stressed I go to the gym and work out, which is also good, because it relieves the stress and I get a good workout so I stay fit. But I really don’t have that many friends, because I’m also home schooled, I used to go to real school, but I lived 50 miles away from where I live now, so my close friends that I have there, I have to drive a long way to see, so now I only have one friend that’s really close. I pick out who I hang out with. The people I do hang out with I really trust and they are always there for me.
Pictures copyright Universal Pictures 2004 |
 
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Were
you into Transformers as a kid? Did you think the “Power Rangers”
were awesome? (hey...you were a kid!) Then, get amped up for Thunderbirds.
It’s a family-run rescue business that gives the Spy Kids
Cortez family a run for their space bucks as teens jump into some really
tricked-out and specialized vehicles and do a number on bad guys. The
film is based on a popular 1960’s British TV show on which the Tracy
family and friends were played by some human-looking puppets.
Jonathan:
No, not at all. One of the things about making a film like this is that
for an audience who knows the Thunderbirds, all of their precious icons
are in the film, and for an audience who doesn’t, they get to go
on this adventure with this international rescue organization. It was
very much like the Star Trek movies, if you didn’t know
anything about Star Trek and you went to see First Contact,
for instance, you needn’t know anything about any of these people,
and you get introduced to them.