Fred Claus
Pinewood Studios, London - 2006
Probably the most unrewarding career low involving an interesting salad of creative abilities mired in clawing a plot and morsel of humor from a lame script. The only saving grace was working at Pinewood Studios. Pinewood had an interesting birth; starting life as a Victorian mansion Heatherden Hall. J. Arthur Rank, a flour miller turned film producer, bought it in the mid 30's. The original mansion was retained and made several appearances in movies over the years. The story goes that Pinewood got its name from the many Pine trees surrounding the Hall married with the desire to emulate a Hollywood studio.
Fred Claus was developed as Warner Bros. annual 'holiday' movie for Christmas 2007 and a vehicle for lead actor Vince Vaughn; a towering brute with a mean pair of eyes set in a potato face carved with a threatening scowl. He seemed to bulldoze his way through each day as he had probably done ever since high school. Even his loyal and mild mannered director, David Dobkin, was not spared his brash aggressive idea of charm. No one but Vince will know why he chooses to work on this type of visual wallpaper; I'm sure there is a much better actor hiding in this pool of download dross, but he seems to not want to challenge himself? There is a film where Vince takes a cameo part and proves his acting ability, Mike Mills' American Indie, 'Thumbsucker'. Vince plays the head of a school debating team and is relatively unrecognisable, reeling in his usual machine gun delivery. However 'Fred Claus' did not required Vince to plough too deep within that field of skills he clearly can do when called upon.
Day one at Pinewood Studios I was introduced to American publicist John Pisani who I later concluded was not so much a traditional unit publicist but a form of chaperone, someone who was paid to stay shadow close to Vince ensuring he didn't bump into the social furniture. John always seemed to have a guarded, worried expression when talking about Vince and I was to discover why this was as the shoot unravelled over the next few months.
VINCE VAUGHN
I would be given random instructions about what scenes Vince would permit being filmed. You have to remember this movie was not Citizen Kane, the script no deep multilayered construct. It must have required the minimum of ability or effort to turn words into action and yet Vince seemed to maintain a mercurial and capricious control of what I did. So sometimes I would set up shots on set and then as Vince would arrive be told to leave. I realised that if I was going to get any shots worth using I had to rethink how to work on set. I decided that hiding was the only option. Ideally I would have gone for Harry Potter's invisibility cloak but settled for a large piece of black 'Bolton' cotton cloth which I cut a hole just big enough for the lens to poke through. I then positioned the tripod in the corner of the set and hid under the shroud. It was a mixture of the filming techniques employed by wildlife photographers stalking camera shy species and military surveillance. The camera crew were very supportive helping me cover up, even standing in front of the hide as Vince arrived on set. The technique was dubbed 'burkavision' by publicist Pisani, who had now been renamed John Pastrami by my sound recordist, Mike Donald, which I think was a genuine malapropism, and in no way derogatory.
Of course Vince eventually twigged that the burka on set was me, so I had to devise increasingly low profile locations to film from. I revised 'burkavision' by laying the camera flat to the studio floor, again with the lens poking through a hole in black cloth then lay on floor with my eye to the viewfinder as the crew would add extra random bits of grips boxes around the 'blob-vision' hide. Of course I would have to set this up in advance based on rehearsals then just lay there, hidden waiting for Vince to arrive. So I'm laid prone on the studio floor wondering if this was a normal way to make a living? Vince arrived, walked on set, his legs virtually brushing the lens. He then turned, his head dropped, his eyes swiveled directly to the 'blob-vision' hide and barked: “Is that the EPK camera?” Rumbled, I rose from the black blob clutching the camera and tripod and toddled off set again.
The other actors never made a comment about my filming, Kevin Spacey, Paul Giamatti (Santa), all seemed fine, but Vince just seemed to inexplicably relish this control game. I'm not sure if his fractious behaviour was because he was, if you follow and believe the celebrity gossip magazine, going through a storm with girlfriend Jennifer Aniston. She did turn up on set one day and spent several hours watching proceedings standing over Vince as he sat reviewing a short edit of the film. Jennifer was dwarfed by Vince perhaps both physically and emotionally? She had the appearance of being a coat hanger for skin that wrapped tightly around a bony frame; they really looked an odd couple. Within days of this visit they officially announced their separation. Wise move.
I eventually got fed up with the edicts and started to ignore Pastrami when told Vince did not want a scene filmed and just hid well and carried on. One scene involved Vince dancing to an Elvis track on a table as the 'elves' danced around him and it sounded a classic behind the scenes scene to cover. Astonishingly this was on his 'prohibited' list. Not sure if it was because he was worried he would look a total chump doing it but the reality is major box office stars like Vince have final say what material is used so I decided to ignore the prohibition order and pulled off a classic of covert filming. The set was the North Pole toy factory stacked with every kid’s idea of presents heaven. A pyramid of toys in boxes near to the table Vince was to dance on became the perfect spot to position the camera. I took one of the boxes removed the toy car and cut a circular hole big enough to poke the camera lens through. Then rebuilt the pyramid around the camera and for extra protection reinstated the 'burka' to cover myself just in case. Well, it worked perfectly, great shots, EPK gold as we referred to this classic stuff. I scooted off set before they had completed shooting just in case Vince started to become paranoid between takes that he could not spot 'burkavision' anywhere.
Unfortunately I then made one regrettable mistake, I told 'Pastrami' of my unapproved triumph and I could see blood draining from his face at the news. He asked me to show him the shots, which I did. As his eye peeled away from the viewfinder after watching the shots another armful of blood vacated his face. He said Vince would go bananas if he found out, I pointed out he already was bananas so one more banana would just add to the bunch. John in a mild flap insisted on confiscating the tape rather than send it off to Warner Bros and I have never found out to this day if the tape ever saw the light of day. It was all too silly and made me question what was the point in making the effort. I tried to plead with John that Vince would be on his next couple of movies by the time this one was released and he would never remember what he had or had not whimsically agreed to be filmed. Besides he did not look like a lunk, it was quite a cool and fun sequence so he would have probably approved it for use anyway?
Finally I had clearly tugged too much on the end of Vince's self constructed tether while filming on the North Pole set. The North Pole townscape was built inside an enormous disused hanger originally built to house the R101 Airships during the second World War. We were there to cover scenes and do some interviews and despite the cavernous nature of the set Vince still put out an embargo on filming. The reasoning here was he had to be on ice skates and so would probably at some point greet the ground. Well I couldn't resist this one so broke out ‘burkavision’ one more time and did get some shots of him landing on his butt (no doubt they too were excised from any edit) but while waiting to do an interview with the Producer I just happened to be looking through the viewfinder scanning the set and did happen to catch Vince's gaze as he stood waiting for a lens change. I quickly panned the camera away and stared at the ceiling. Vince marched back to his chair and moments later Pastrami approached me and said Vince wanted to talk to me. Well, I knew this was not going to be anything good, and I was right. I approached the brooding bulk hunched in his chair sat next to the director Dobkin and one of the producers and here is the exact conversation that followed:
Vince:
“You've just been filming me, I told you not to film”
Me:
“No, I wasn't”
Vince:
“Yes, you were you were pointing the camera towards me, you were filming”
Me:
“No, I was just panning around planning shots but we are waiting to do an interview, that's all”
Vince:
“I don't believe you”
Me:
“Well, I could rewind the tape and show you if you want?”
Vince:
“Well, you probably just switched tapes, I don't trust you anymore; YOU’RE FIRED...”
So that was it, ignominiously booted of the movie by the star for the third time in front of the entire crew taking the walk of shame off set (I have not written about forced exit number 2 when Daniel Day Lewis virtually chased me off the Dublin location of, ‘In the Name of The Father’). It was quite distressing to know this million dollar movie ground to a shuddering halt for a moment while the 'money' castigated the stupid documentary cameraman, I was angry and embarrassed in equal shades of red. I will admit that the reason I offered to rewind the tape and show Vince what was on it is not because I had switched tapes but because I had switched cameras with another crew on set; so I did not really lie to him but in the end what does it matter if I was recording or not. It was a meaningless edict based entirely on paranoia and control.
Hope he managed to struggle through the rest of the film without the distraction of having to worry about where I was hiding. Quite rightly the film was roundly panned as a cynical Christmas Turkey. The internet film review website, Rotten Tomatoes, made this comment on the movie:
“A slew of talent is wasted in this contrived and overly sentimental Christmas film, which can’t quite get the balance between slapstick humor and sentimental family moments”
Although of course this did little lasting damage to Vince's bankability.
Production budget $55 million
Worldwide box office $97 million