With the title “Four days to bury a movie” (“4 Days to bury a film“), the French screenwriter and director Thomas Bidegain brought to light the vicissitudes around the production of the movie “Soudain Seouls”a film that was originally going to feature the collaboration of a stellar duo of Hollywood: actors Jake Gyllenhaal y Vanessa Kirby.
The first version of the film would have fallen due to a series of behaviors that the screenwriter reproached the historic actor Gyllenhaal during an interview given in Technikart.
For Thomas Bidegain, it was a very important project in his professional career, as it involved his first film in English.
The film is based on an “intimate” story taken from a book by sailor Isabelle Autissier, which focuses on the dramatic situation of a couple shipwrecked on a lost island off the coast of Chile. Since then, the protagonists are forced to survive in extreme living conditions, from hunger to the hostilities of the Antarctic climate.
Since the first version of the film would have fallen after a series of disagreements between the screenwriter and his main actorsthey finally decided to replace the Hollywood stars with the talented actors Gilles Lellouche and Mélanie Thierry.
As Bidegain admired established actor Jake Gyllenhaal, he gave him a copy of the script he had in progress. Finally, the star contacted him by phone and told him that He thought it was “wonderful” to be part of the project.
Hollywood’s reaction to the Epstein documents and the fake news about Stephen Hawking’s sexual tastes
However, despite this first favorable approximation, The illusion of filming with the dream cast did not last more than four daysaccording to Thomas Bidegain’s story in the aforementioned medium.
The preliminary meetings to begin shaping the film took place via zoom, but in 2021 -eight weeks before filming- Bidegain He met with the actors in Iceland and everything began to go wrongeven causing million-dollar losses to the production company.
Thomas Bidegain
Later, in another interview published in Variety, Bidegain denied the alleged loss of 26 million dollars and tried to qualify his criticism of the actor.
There, the screenwriter warned that the project did not fail because of Gyllenhaal, but because both had a different creative vision that they were not able to amalgamate during the filming of the film.
Be that as it may, the scriptwriter’s statements in Technikart They were forceful since accused the actor of a string of inappropriate behavior which meant the collapse of that first version of “Soudain Seuls”.
China seeks to strengthen local cinema: links with Cannes, five-year plan and goodbye to Hollywood
“It had two Anglo-Saxon stars and a huge budget of 26 million dollars. And everything exploded…”lamented Thomas Bidegain when recapitulating his moments with Gyllenhaal.
When the Zoom conversations began, the actor began to intervene in the script -which had been completed since 2020-, practically becoming a co-producer of the film.
Once they defined the setting to begin filming in Iceland, the prominent actor had one of his first whims: for fear of the coronavirus, he ruled out traveling to the place by plane like the rest and asked for a car, with a striking observation: The vehicle should not be white or red..
An actor who questioned the script again and again
According to Bidegain’s statements, The actor was not happy with the script or the location chosen for the film and did not fully understand the project.
He even threatened to abandon filming and at the end of the day he sent a contradictory message to the director, affectionately clarifying that he “adored him.”
Gyllenhaal’s comings and goings began to bother Bidegain.
Jake Gyllenhaal.
The next day, the actor proposed rewriting the project with a change in the main theme: instead of love between human beings, the story had to expand on the love of nature.
For his part, Kirby also wanted to interfere in the script and adapt it to her own requirements: the character played by Gyllenhaal according to the actress had to die in the ending and the film had to convey a “more feminist” content.
Later, when the scriptwriter asked all the actors to tour the majestic Icelandic landscapes, Gyllenhaal had the idea of suddenly jumping into the icy water to swim.
Scene from “Suddenly Alone”. Photo: technikart.com
When everything seemed to be back on track and Gyllenhaal returned to rehearsals with renewed enthusiasm, Bidegain sighed.
But it was all a mirage: that same night the actor He once again questioned the script and once again showed off his eccentric requests: For fear of the spread of Covid-19, he asked some bricklayers who would arrive the next day to sleep in their respective cars. He also threatened again to abandon the project and Bidegain, who had lost patience, encouraged him to leave the film permanently.
According to the screenwriter’s story, actress Kirby later offered to buy the script from Bidegain so she could film it with her colleague Gyllenhaal, but Alain Attal, the film’s producer, emphatically expressed his refusal. “Fuck them, you’re going to rewrite it in French and we’re going to shoot it with great French actors.”he claimed.
In Variety, Thomas Bidegain tried to tone down the accusations made against the actor and said that they simply did not share the same vision in the creative field: “Each one had an idea of what the message of the film was”.
At the same time, he denied that the production company had lost 26 million dollars after the failure of the first version of the film.
However, he did not deny the eccentric anecdotes attributed to Jake Gyllenhaal during filming.
CA/ED