LOS ANGELES TIMES | ENTERTAINMENT: "Shallow Hal" Fat Suit Not Just Skin-Deep
'Shallow Hal' Fat Suit Not Just Skin-Deep
Even behind the scenes, Gwyneth Paltrow's form-fitting costume takes on a larger meaning.
Audiences have come to expect the outrageous from the Farrelly brothers, the directing duo behind the gross-out gags of "There's Something About Mary." But their new comedy, "Shallow Hal," offers perhaps the most shocking sight of all: famously svelte Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow emoting while encased in a fat suit.
In the 20th Century Fox film, which opens Friday, the looks-obsessed title character, played by "High Fidelity's" Jack Black, receives the ability to see women's exteriors reflect their inner beauty. Thus he sees Paltrow's good-hearted Rosemary as the actress' 120-pound self, while others see Rosemary in all her 350-pound girth.
The challenge of making Paltrow recognizable through the prosthetic makeup, wig and layers of foam and spandex fell to makeup-effects designer Tony Gardner. "No one had really taken a woman in a [fat] suit this far before," Gardner says.
Beginning with a body cast of Paltrow, the makeup effects team took three months to perfect the heavy makeup and construct her form-fitting suit, which actually weighed only about 25 pounds. Working on someone as thin as Paltrow was a plus, because her body formed a very solid, non-flabby understructure. The makeup was more difficult because Gardner had to preserve her most distinctive facial features, her cheekbones and jawline.
"It's a weird Catch-22," Gardner says, "because you need for people to see her enough to know that it's her, but you need to bury her in it successfully enough so that it moves realistically."
Paltrow's suit needed to be designed for mobility as well as form; ultimately, Gardner had multiple suits built at his Los Angeles shop to simulate how weight shifted when she was sitting, standing and running. The suits were built in pieces: an upper body that zips up the spine and a lower half, from the 48-inch waist to the kneecaps, that zips up the front like a pair of pants. In addition, there were separate pieces for each calf and gloves for her hands made of silicone. (The prostheses were built by Artist's Asylum.)The first time Paltrow saw herself in the full suit and makeup, at a test in a New York hotel room before filming began, she was overwhelmed. "I had a thousand emotions. I was laughing and crying, and I was shocked and loved it," she says. "It was very intense."
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FILM COMMENT Magazine cover for "Me, Myself & Irene" article.
FOXNEWS.COM: Meet the Real Grandpa Behind the Oscar-Nominated "Bad Grandpa"
Meet the Real Grandpa Behind the Oscar-nominated “Bad Grandpa”
Johnny Knoxville's old man character first sprang to life in 2001 on the "Jackass" television series as more of a disguise for Johnny Knoxville's antics. “Then, when Johnny was paired up with an elderly actress named Dottie Barnett as his character’s wife for the first film, we decided to lighten up the old man's look, and actually re-sculpted several of his facial prosthetics with less intense features. For the finale sequence of the first feature, 'Jackass: The Movie,’ we were tasked with putting all nine of the cast members into old age prosthetics as elderly versions of themselves, including Johnny, so we ended up altering Johnny’s prosthetic makeup yet again so that the new version was more of a physical match to Johnny’s features."“'Irving Zisman proper' was actually created in 2006 for ‘Jackass Number Two,'" said Gardner. "Johnny was up for going into prosthetics again for the sequel to the first film, and Producer Spike Jonze wanted to get involved in the antics as an old lady, so ... the characters of Irving Zisman and his lady friend Gloria were born.”The intent with Irving for ‘Jackass Number Two’ was to revise him to make him a kindler, gentler Grandpa figure, but one that was doing things that weren’t so kind. One of the skits for the 2006 film (titled appropriately “Bad Grandpa,” http://alterianinc.com/
“The Grandfather that we referenced for Irving back then was my own Grandfather, actually,” admitted Gardner. “Mr. Fred Cooke from Fairview Park, Ohio….my mother’s father. We had his photos around the shop back then, and used them as character reference for Irving. We used him for so many elements, really... the mustache, the glasses, high collared shirt, the receding hairline, length of sideburns, the shape of the nose, the jawline....the only changes that differed from our reference material were minor. We whitened up his hair and messed it up, gave him rosacea, and turned his mustache into more of a handlebar mustache … little character traits, really, with the hope that people would notice and focus more on those aspects than on the fact that they were interacting with a thirty-something actor wearing prosthetic makeup.”
Irving and Gloria were a big hit in “Jackass Number Two,” which meant they'd be back for the next film, and their appearances would need to be altered yet again, but for different reasons. It had only been two years since “Jackass Number Two” had been released, and "Number Two's" version of Irving was all over the Internet. “The whole point originally was to make Johnny unrecognizable so that he could blend in with real people and prank them, and now all of a sudden we had to disguise these fictional characters from looking like the last public incarnation of these same fictional characters. So, Gloria gained about 200 pounds, and Irving’s cheekbones and chin were built out to make his face more angular, his skin texture was roughened up, and we made him a bit better groomed overall."
"Cut to six years later, and we’re getting ready to start work on what would become 'Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa,' knowing that we have to change up Irving’s look yet again, to 'disguise Irving from being recognizable as Irving.' Without intending so, by reducing the mass of the makeup overall, we really fell back into the “Jackass Number Two” / Fred Cooke look for the character."
"My intent was to alter the broad shapes of his silhouette, but also bring the makeup in closer to his real features everywhere else so that it could be thinner and Johnny could be more expressive. The ears would be bigger and the hair altered so that his outline was different from the front, and altering his nose and hairline would change his appearance in profile. Smaller things were tweaked a bit as well, like widening the base of his nose."
“Once we had our first makeup (and only) makeup test at Alterian, we all agreed to thin out Irving’s hair as one more way to make the character look different from his previous incarnations. I had done a test makeup on a bust of Johnny Knoxville in advance of our makeup test on the actor just for peace of mind, and once we had that new thinner wig, I put it on the bust …and well, Fred Cooke just kind of jumped back out of the design again.”
“I think that subconsciously maybe I was steering the ”Bad Grandpa” character in that direction as we were putting him together. The hair, the style of glasses, widening the nose, all of that. By the time it all came together you’d only need to darken the hair and add a bolo tie to channel Fred Cooke...or at least his brother. Then on set our lead artist on this character, Steve Prouty, gave Irving a bit of a tan and slicked his hair down a bit flatter too, which made him appear even more like our original reference material. We weren't trying to create a likeness makeup of Fred, obviously, but from certain angles he'd show up every now and then.”
“What would make more sense than to base a “grandfatherly”
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT: The Independent film "Robot and Frank," featuring Alterian, Inc.
The World of Tomorrow on the Tiny Budget of Today
To create a world set in the “near future” on an independent filmmaker’s budget, director Jake Schreier made some creative decisions while shooting his robot buddy caper “Robot & Frank.” The film debuted this past weekend at the Sundance Film Festival.
Instead of setting his film, which stars Frank Langella as a former jewel thief, in the city, Mr. Schreier opted for a rural backdrop to avoid having to showcase too many urban technological developments. He also called in favors from friends at special effects houses to design, for free, “Minority Report”-like cell phones with clear swipable screens.
To portray the robot of the title, Mr. Schreier hired Los Angeles-based special effects studio Alterian Effects, which also created the fat suits for movies like “Shallow Hal” and “Hairspray,” to build a white, plastic suit that allowed its wearer room for movement.
“We were looking for something that was achievable but would also look realistic and grab people,” he says.
Mr. Schreier also had Alterian built the suit specifically for a petite-sized friend, who was to play the robot until a claustrophobia attack in the suit forced her to drop out of the movie two days before the start of production. Luckily, the filmmakers were able to quickly find a similarly-sized substitute — the freelance dancer Rachel Ma — to replace her.
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