Word: clooneys
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...Andrea Gail, a 72-ft. swordfishing vessel that sailed from Gloucester, Mass., on Sept. 20, 1991, into a meteorological hell. After looming ominously in the distance for a while, the storm moves in for the kill, drowning a rescue worker, swallowing a helicopter, attacking a freighter and upstaging George Clooney, who stars as the Andrea Gail's captain, Billy Tyne. Let it be said right up front that Clooney is a terrific actor, a funny guy and a sexy movie star (he and co-star Mark Wahlberg never looked better, by the way, than they do here), but even director...
...Gail was harbored in a large tank 22-ft. deep (the same tank where Spencer Tracy sailed in The Old Man and the Sea 42 years ago). In front of a blue screen, mounted on a gimbal, the Andrea Gail tossed and turned while the actors (in addition to Clooney and Wahlberg, the boat's crew includes John C. Reilly, Allen Payne, John Hawkes and William Fichtner) employed their craft amid wind machines and torrents of pelting water. Meanwhile, just up the California coast at ILM headquarters in San Rafael, near San Francisco, animators awaited footage so it could...
...jostle it further after scanning footage into the computer. And since no miniatures were used, "for a very wide shot," says ILM's associate effects supervisor Doug Smythe, "the boat would be computer-generated as well." At times, so were the actors. During a sequence in which Clooney climbs an outrigger to cut loose a flailing stabilizer, a CG double was created for certain camera angles. (Basically, when you're not seeing Clooney's face, you're seeing a digital dummy...
...since, for reasons we can't explain, none of the crew would talk to him. The book was as much a history of commercial fishing as a story of one ship in a storm. So screenwriter Bill Wittliff has given a little storyline to Tyne (George Clooney) and the other Andrea Gailers--except for the black in the crew; he is allowed to provide only background nobility. Murph (John C. Reilly) gets all sniffly and teary bonding with his son. Sully (William Fichtner) is the class malcontent; Bugsy (John Hawkes), the likable loser. Bobby's in love. They...
...Angeles correspondent Jeffrey Ressner spoke to movie director Wolfgang Petersen on the Gail, but the ship was rocking back and forth so badly that the cast and crew were not at their peak. Mark Wahlberg looked as gray as a ghost from vomiting throughout the morning, while George Clooney was recovering from a bout of the flu. During a lunch break, Ressner spoke to Petersen, who happily chomped away at a boxed lunch of chicken as the mock swordfish ship swayed like a toy boat in a bathtub...