t the time of its release in 1956, the original Around the World in 80 Days was heralded as a masterpiece due to expansive cinematography and exotic locales, the likes of which had never been seen by film audiences. Despite its sluggish pacing, the film went on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and has since gone down in history as one of American cinema's great adventure films.
Flashing forward to 2004, however, the film does not hold up nearly as well as memory serves, and with a deluge of travel shows appearing on nigh every network, its exploration of foreign territory seems positively quaint by comparison. Recently, director Frank Coraci (The Waterboy) enlisted the likes of international stars Jackie Chan (The Medallion) and Steve Coogan (Coffee and Cigarettes) to remake the film for modern audiences, and to update its pace so the film doesn't feel as if its running time matches the length of the characters' journey. Coogan plays Phileas Fogg, an inventor who bets he can circumnavigate the globe on 80 days; Chan is Passepartout, the inventor's valet, who holds secret motives for wanting to make the journey with Fogg.
Chan, Coogan and Coraci all recently spoke to Science Fiction Weekly about their experiences on this updated Jules Verne adaptation, and discussed bringing a beloved screen voyage into the modern era, complete with fast-paced, intricately choreographed fight scenes, sharper-edged punchlines and a story that evokes the ebullient essence of the author's original story.
Steve Coogan, how did you feel about making the leap from comedian to action hero?
Coogan: Well, I wouldn't call it a leap to action hero. I did do a little bit of action, because Jackie did actually share a little bit. Really, part of the joke in the movie is that I don't actually do any fighting at all. He does everything, even when it's behind my back, unbeknownst to me. But at the end, part of the joke is that in one of the penultimate scenes in the movie, I rescue Jackie. He does all this fighting all the way through, and at the very end, in a slightly ham-fisted, incompetent way, I go back and I do something brave for someone else. Because all through the movie I'm trying to win this bet, and he's trying to get back to his people in Lang Xao.
Did you go back and look at the original to prepare for the role of Phileas Fogg?
Coogan: I went back and watched the film again, and I read the book. David Niven's rendition of the character [in the 1956 version] is very close to the way it's written in the book. He's kind of passive, inscrutable, undemonstrative about emotion and utterly confident of his ability to win this bet. Even though he did it very well in the original one and pulled it off very well, to me, that doesn't appeal as a performance. It's actually more comical sometimes, and it's more appealing to have somebody who on the outside is very confident, on the inside is slightly vulnerable and nervous about his ability. He's unconvinced that he can pull it off. I think most people have those kind of insecurities, so it makes the character more human and more vulnerable. And also gives you more opportunity for comedy, because it's always funny when someone's trying to appear one way but inside they're feeling something different.
Jackie Chan, did you refer to the original film for your character?
Chan: After I know I'm making that movie again, I see it again. But I would see it very fast, on fast forward. I wanted to see the whole look, but I don't want to get into it. I want it totally new. I think the writer was very clever for the new character, so I don't have to copy somebody else, just be me. It's more easy for me.
Was there a Chinese translation of the book you read as reference material?
Chan: No, no. I don't think they've translated it into Chinese.
Steve, do you find that there are a lot of difference between American and British comedy?
Coogan: There are differences, particularly with this film, but I don't think it's particularly an American or British sense of humor. The humor in this movie is more kind of a gentle humor and isn't as sharp. Or some of the humor I've done in the past is quite bleak and slightly twisted, and this is a family film, so you have to have a lightness of touch and be more generous and gentle with the humor. Some humor can be vicious, and of course that wouldn't be appropriate to this film. In terms of American and English, I think there are some differences, but I think good comedy transcends those things. There's really great British comedy. I think if there's any difference, it's that a lot of British comedy is about people who are inadequate and are losers, whereas American comedy is about people who are smart and witty and cool with their funny lines. Also, British comedy is often about people who are kind of unattractive, whereas I think Americans like funny lines, but they don't like to look at ugly people.
You're a writer yourself. Did you make any changes to your dialogue or your character?
Coogan: I'd add on little lines. We'd be doing a scene and I'd say to Frank, "What about this line here?" When Daniel Wu sticks a sword in my face, I made up a line about it being silly, which wasn't in the script. I just say, "Your silly blade" or something like that, and then it slashes out, I go, "Oh, it's not silly." Little lines like that, I would add on. With Frank I'd say, "Can I try this?" And he'd say OK, let's try something. So even throughout filming, if there was opportunity, I would try and do something. So there were only minor alterations. I think the way the character was written was more or less how I played it, but I wanted to push the self-doubt a bit more because I think people seem to respond to that. Audiences seem to respond to someone—they feel more like they want someone to succeed who's not completely confident. They want to push them and go yeah, you can do it, whereas if someone goes, "I know I'm going to win," the audiences thinks, "Well, you don't need our help."
What was it like working with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has a cameo in the film?
Coogan: He was a very pleasant man and very chatty. I chatted to him about his Humvee vehicles, and I'm kind of a fan of those, too, so I had a chat with him about those. I didn't chat about politics with him. I have my own political views, and I don't think this is the forum to air them. But I find him very affable and friendly, and there's no big entourage with him. He was just with his wife and his kids. I think it's a smart thing for him to do, because in this part he's mocking himself and people like that. It's like people who say, "No, no one must ever laugh at me," it's not an endearing quality. I think people warm towards people who don't mind laughing at themselves.
Chan: I thought he was coming, [gruffly] "Good morning." No, he's just, "Well, good morning," very friendly, lovable and a giant big guy doing tiny things; sitting in the corner playing chess like this. I look at him, ooh, that's Arnold. He's a lovable person.
Jackie, are you beginning to slow down as an action star as you get older?
Chan: The good thing is I always choreograph myself. I know how far I can go, and there are so many tricks to help me. Right now, I probably cannot do the jumping turning kick. But what can I do? I will design [a fight where] you push me. You push me back, I throw the things, then I can take two steps and do the jumping kick. But you can't tell on the screen. You push me, then I run and do the jumping kick. It's the same thing, but not like the old days. I can use the tricks to help myself two more steps or three more steps. Like go out the window. In the old days, I can stand, boom, I'll do a somersault. Now I have to run, so I might use Chris Tucker to say, "Jackie, don't," and pull me back. I would never let audiences see I back up. That looks stupid. I have to do something. I use those kinds of things to make myself able to do a lot of action things, because I don't think the audience likes to see Jackie Chan slow motion on the beach kissing Sharon Stone. They don't like that. So they will see pow, good to see Jackie do this. I cannot speak like you [pointing to Coogan], think of so many jokes. When you listen to him talking, you smile. I only can do action-comedy.
Are you hoping this movie sort of brings the world together, given today's turbulent political atmosphere?
Coogan: This film has a kind of message which is about celebrating different cultures. And Jackie Chan is from China, is from a very different background to me, and I'm from England. He's probably got different views and attitudes to things than I have. You don't all have to make everyone the same. It's not about everyone agreeing with each other. It's about tolerance, I think. I think the film preaches that, and I think there are very few people who could still come out against that or try to take away from that. It's an affirmative film. It's a positive film.
Frank Coraci, what made this movie so difficult to get made?
Coraci: Basically, my casting choices weren't orthodox Hollywood choices, and I wanted to cast the best person for the role. Jackie Chan made everyone happy because he's a worldwide star, and then for Phileas Fogg I just thought Steve Coogan was the best person for the role. And they were hesitant, and they were very honest, and they said we're very good at marketing big movies when we have big movie stars, and this is not something we're used to doing on this scale of a movie. Because of that, Walden chose to be brave and go forward and make this film basically independently; it would be financed alone by Walden alone without a full distribution deal.
How protective is the Jules Verne estate?
Coraci: As far as I know, it's in the public domain, so my experience was, here's the book, and this is how I want to interpret it, and I never really had to deal with that. I actually read a quote from, I think, Jules Verne's great-grandson, and he said filmmakers shouldn't literally translate from his great-grandfather's book, because they were written at a time in a certain perspective, ahead of its time, and maybe the ideas then wouldn't exactly translate to the way things are now.
Looking back at it now, the first film is kind of boring. What did you do to reinvent the story?
Coraci: I think at the time it was one of the first Cinemascope widescreen movies, and again it's almost like the Jules Verne thing, from the perspective then, people went to the movies and were amazed to see a widescreen movie. And for people to go to the theater and be able to feel like they're in this widescreen world, where they go into a tunnel and through the Alps or whatever it is, it's really boring for us now, but then it was cool and even trippy. They don't get to see that, because TV didn't have video, and I looked at that and I thought, that's not what everyone wants to see, it's not I want to see, but I took the things that I thought were really clever in the book and the movie.
What were some of the things you kept from the first film, and some of the things you changed?
Coraci: From the movie, I thought cameos was a great idea. I thought, let's do the cameos from the original. But when I read the book and then saw the movie, Phileas Fogg was a very secure, confident person, and he was a wealthy man who made a bet. He traveled the world, and he didn't really change enough for me to make the story worth telling for now. So I thought, let's make Phileas Fogg more in the spirit of Jules Verne, let's make him a dreamer, he can see the future, and that's what Jules Verne was; he was amazing. He was a guy with dreams, but really insecure, because I think that's a likable quality, especially for kids. Have the dreams, but it's OK to be insecure.
Jackie Chan's character in the original was pretty sexist.
Coraci: That's funny, because that actually came up. I thought it would be funny, but with Jackie it just felt that he feels like your safe uncle, there's something really safe about him. I didn't want to be the person who portrays him as the guy who chases women all the time; it just didn't feel right. It's not what he does well. It's kind of old hat now, it's kind of "been there, done that," and you couldn't do it with Jackie. It just doesn't feel right. I thought Jackie, who has done all this acrobatic stuff, would be perfect when I read the book and watched the movie; it really needed a lot of action and drama and excitement in traveling. If he was Passeportout, I would be able to infuse that into the movie, and it wouldn't feel just added on. It would be done, in a way, kind of like movies I grew up on, like Willie Wonka, Indiana Jones and even James Bond with the inventions. Jackie would be able to do action, and it would still be family-friendly.
How much freedom did you grant your performers to improvise?
Coraci: That's the great thing about the people I had. Steve is a great comedian, a great writer, and Jackie is just a great physical comedian and comedian in general. We were writing stuff, Steve would give me notes and we'd rewrite stuff. As we got a cameo we'd rewrite stuff as we went, so suddenly it's Arnold and we'd have to change the scene. We would get the casting as we went. Me, Steve and the writers would then rewrite it. Try this line, then try that, that went on a lot with Steve, and then with Jackie I'd ask, "Can we do that?" and he'd say, "Yeah, yeah." I'm glad it was not my first film, because on your first film you're really afraid to do anything but what is in the script. It started out as an independent film, so there was no studio, so I constantly got to do things that you don't normally get to do, especially on this scale and with this budget. I hope that this made the movie seem more fresh and less stale and more funny.
How tough was it to enlist big-name actors for the cameos, since you were independently financed?
Coraci: It was tricky at first to get people, because it was an independent film and all the agents don't want their actors to be in something until they know it's for real. I thought, let me go to somebody who I know would be great in the role, and I went to Kathy Bates, who had done The Waterboy with me, and said, "Kathy, you want to be the queen?" and she said, "Yeah, that would be so much fun." Here I have Kathy Bates, an Academy Award winner, and we already had Jim Broadbent, and everyone loves Jackie Chan, and when you put all those elements together you think, well, something is happening here. And then Rob Schneider got available and said he wanted to be in it, and then we got Arnold, and Owen and Luke Wilson.
How did Jackie Chan change the fight scenes from the way they were originally written?
Coraci: I wrote them with him, because it is the only time Jackie has not worked in, like, eight months, and that's never happened to Jackie. He usually goes movie to movie. He doesn't like to not work. When we were developing the script, I basically went back and watched even more Hong Kong movies I had never seen. I knew all his American films, and I was like, "Jackie, let's come up with stuff that you never did." That is really hard. I'd say, "How about a fight on a Ferris wheel?" He's like, "No, no, I did that at this movie." I'd say, "I didn't see that one." So I would come up with things with him, like the Statue of Liberty, and I tried to hone it into the set pieces and some of the things that would happen. My idea was to just grab a couple of things that are classic Jackie Chan, because the greatest stuff, people that know him will appreciate it. I know the bench fight, I know the handcuff thing from Project A, and the people that hadn't seen it will get to see my favorite stuff that Jackie had done in Hong Kong but not here. So it was sort of fun to just formulate it ahead of time, and then when I had Jackie there, I'd try to put a lot more dialogue into the action scenes. I wanted it to be more integrated into telling the story. I think because I got to sit with him eight months before we even shot and we already had a relationship, we were comfortable, even though he was the master. And then I could say, "Hey Jackie, maybe you could jump out the eye?" and he'd be the first person to say, "That's the stupidest idea I ever heard," but he was lending himself in collaborative stuff that was amazing. It makes me look great, because he's the best in the world at it.
Back to the top.
Also in this issue:
Ray Bradbury
