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NEW!! 2006/07/01
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Horatio Hornblower:The New Adventure
Transcript from Extra Feature Commentary DUTY
Voices of Producer Andrew Benson & Director Andrew Grieve
with John Mollo, costume designer.


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Part2 of 5

HH3 Duty Commentary 15:24 Scene-Nighttime, Storm and a ship.

BENSON: And then I always know that Andrew curses me because that means days and night shoots.

GRIEVE: And we all get wet.

BENSON: You'll get wet. So John, you have to miraculously dry everything off before we start shooting again in a few hours time.

MOLLO: Well, these scenes really do tax the wardrobe department. First, everything has to be dried before the next day, and secondly it does quite a lot of damage to particularly hats, um suffer. We-um, I don't know if whether in the earlier films you discussed whether people complained about things that are wrong in the Hornblower series but I had one or two complaints from grumpy Admirals, that we hadn't got the right sort of foul weather clothing. And in fact we don't really know what they actually had. I think they had watch coats, which were these big coats and capes and I think they were for people who were on watch. The ordinary sailors didn't have them.

GRIEVE: So they would collect one, to go on watch?

MOLLO: So they would collect them to go on watch. And in this particular sequence, we introduced the south-wester, which Andrew was not too keen on.

GRIEVE: You can't tell who everybody is, they all look the same.

LAUGHTER

HH3 Duty Commentary 16.54 Scene of Betsey and Boney being rescued in the storm

BENSON: And it's night. I mean this is a combination of these rowing boats which is a tank here at Pinewood with wind machines and wave machines creating a storm. And the Hotspur is on the famous set on the airport to the west of London.

GRIEVE: And the motion of the ship is done by moving the camera up and down, not moving the set. One way of making motion is to move the set, putting them on gimbales and move it, but it's very noisy and very expensive, so we came up with this alternative of just having the camera go up and down. But in order to do a storm sequence, you really have to move the camera up and down violently. It's going about 6 foot, which is not very good for the back of the camera operator. But I think it's really effective.

BENSON: But we've been very lucky, haven't we Andrew, that we've had 8 films with superb camera operators.

GRIEVE: We have.

BENSON: Steve and Paul who, if they are not fit at the beginning of the film, they damn well are by the end of it.

GRIEVE: I think they are both fit guys, and they need to be with the amount of physical work they have to do. It's quite difficult anyway, even on the real ships, just trying to keep your balance with the camera, let alone having it go up and down as well.

HH3 Duty Commentary 18.22 Scene-In water, pulling Betsy out of the water

MOLLO: This particular sequence, I think the girl whose playing Betsy, I think this was rather rough on her.

GRIEVE: She did. She got knocked clean out of the boat. She was looking the wrong way. What happens, somebody had a switch which would release the water tanks which drops water down to make the waves. Someone had a switch for a left hand one, and a right hand one. He pressed the wrong button and got knocked clean out of the boat. So she wasn't very happy about that.

MOLLO: She was quite game before that.

GRIEVE: She was very game.

MOLLO: Course she's got a wet suit on underneath all that.

GRIEVE: Her language wasn't very nice.

LAUGHTER

GRIEVE: She was, she was very gamey. It gave her a terrific whack, actually. And we are lucky that she wasn't hurt because rather than being knocked out of the boat, she was knocked back into the boat.

BENSON: Which is the whole storyline which we are about to discover about young Bonaparte being married to an American, which is based on fact.

MOLLO: Jerome Bonaparte, he was a French naval officer, stationed in the West Indies and he then went to America. He was then hanging around Philadelphia, rather showing off. And he met Betsy Patterson, who was the belle of Philadelphia and the daughter of a very wealthy merchant. And they got married. He tried to get her back to France and he traveled historically on an American ship and did actually get back to France, whereupon Napoleon . He refused countenance the wedding because he had rather grander things n mind for Jerome. And poor old Betsy was sent back to England, and I think she eventually married again.

GRIEVE: But that came from one line in the book, Andrew, that you found.

BENSON: Yes, it was, one quite small thing in the book that inspired something that we then take and enlarge upon it. This was factually accurate we took this one line, that said...somewhere out there at sea, was Napoleon's own brother and his American wife on route to Europe. And I thought, well that sounds interesting. I remember talking to John who filled me in on those details at great length. And there is actually a book, about the Bonapartes in America, the progeny. They finally died out in the 1930's. And we thought that would be interesting, and what would happen if Hornblower came across them. And that's how this storyline started. So, when people say, where did you get the idea, the line originally came from one line in the book but the rest from looking back and doing the research on the history of what happened to the real characters.

GRIEVE: Then thinking of what would happen if they fell into the hands of our characters.

BENSON: Which is, probably, what Forester did.

GRIEVE: Yeah.

MOLLO: Yes.

HH3 Duty Commentary 21:30 Scene-Styles, Matthews and crew belowdecks.

GRIEVE: This is the introduction of our new Irishman. So he's got to be a villain.

LAUGHTER

MOLLO: Not another Irishman.

BENSON: I'm afraid he will be. He's bound to be.

MOLLO: Slightly easier than the last Irishman. I think we discussed Mr. Wolfe.

GRIEVE: Well, we haven't discussed the problem he had with his boots.

LAUGHTER

GRIEVE: But we said what a fine actor he is, John.

LAUGHTER

BENSON: Tell us about the problem with his boots, John.

HH3 Duty Commentary 22:06 Scene-Betsy visits Horatio's Cabin.

MOLLO: This is Betsy appearing. She actually had a splendid wardrobe, because actually, she did all sorts of things which were later cut out of the script.

LAUGHTER

MOLLO: She had a lot more clothes than was strictly necessary. And for some who were washed up in a sinking lifeboat, we gave her a very rare chance to have some nice things made.

GRIEVE: I was amazed at the kinds of things she was able to produce from her tiny valise, I must say. All sorts of dresses and cloaks came out of it.

MOLLO: Yes, she was very well supplied.

BENSON: When you look at Duchess and the Devil and you see how much luggage she comes on board with, and how many outfits she subsequently wears, I think there's a little bit of artistic license. Now it's also interesting that she has a locket around her neck. Which later, is used as a device which Hornblower later deduces her true identity and of her husband. And we had some discussion about that, didn't we John? What kind of emblem we could put on it.

MOLLO: Yes, my original suggestion was that we have J.B. on it and in fact I found in one of Christie's catalogs a wonderful J.B. locket which I probably passed on to the art department but I think eventually it was decided to have a bee on it. A bee as in buzzing bee, not the letter B. Uh, which of course was the crest or family insignia of the Bonapartes and was afterwards used by Napoleon on all his imperial robes and all that.

GRIEVE: But it was very useful for that little play on words when Hornblower says, whose bee is this?

MOLLO: Yes, indeed.

BENSON: It enabled us to show Hornblower's ingenuity, that he could deduce the secret that the other people wouldn't have had an idea.

MOLLO: Yes.

HH3 Duty Commentary 24.19 Scene-On deck

MOLLO: You're coming out to sea now, where people can see all the different members of the crew quite clearly now. The one whose got the hat going across is Prowse the Master, who is a professionally roughish seaman who isn't completely informed. Then you've got Bush on the right, as Lieutenant and then you've got Hornblower whose uh, in command. And in the background...

HH3 Duty Commentary GRIEVE: The redhead is David --, who is the actual Master of the real ship. He's the real skipper, dressed up.

MOLLO: That's right, he's dressed up as a warrant officer. That's our midshipman with the white patches on their colors. There you have the whole gang of them standing on the quarterdeck.

HH3 Duty Commentary GRIEVE: And there's our wreck.

MOLLO: Looking at the wreck.

BENSON: So, John, why do some people wear their hats fore and aft and some people wear them side to side.

MOLLO: Well, it all changed. And some older people didn't want to change their ways. Admirals and those people still wore them side to side. But everybody else started wearing them fore and aft.

GRIEVE: Why did they do that, so they could swing their swords?

MOLLO: It was a sort of fashion thing. It sort of came in round about the campaign in Egypt in 1801. Ahah!

HH3 Duty Commentary 25:24 Scene-bringing the shore boat to the beach

BENSON: Happening again! In the water!

MOLLO: Yes, once again in the water.

GRIEVE: That was a very rough day. We couldn't actually put the rowing boat out to sea then so we had to actually walk it out and then run it back in. And from behind that rock the original intention was to have them row ashore, but we couldn't do that. Um, because of the waves.

BENSON: Now when we see the marines there, John, of course another change in the marines uniforms.

MOLLO: The marines in 1801 became Royal Marines as opposed to just marines and they changed their uniforms to blue collars and cuffs. So we had to make new ones for that.

HH3 Duty Commentary 26:13 Scene of Grounded ship-heeling over.

GRIEVE: Can I just interject here, John. It's actually level and the actors are acting as if it's on the skiff, and we put the cameras on in the previous scene. So the ship was not, in fact heeling over. So they've done leaning acting. Jolly good.

HH3 Duty Commentary BENSON: When we come out on the other shots, what appears to be a wreck on the real rocks, but it's a model. Superimposed in post production.

GRIEVE: Here's Ioan doing leaning acting again.

BENSON: So that's actually, Andrew, right-side up. So it's the camera and the actors on a tilt there.

GRIEVE: So if you look at it sideways...

LAUGHTER

GRIEVE: And that's another fancy reflection put inside a glass so you can superimpose it later.

MOLLO: All done on the stage.

BENSON: Yes indeed.

GRIEVE: This was very difficult filming, because we were round the corner from the main beach. When the tide came in, you could get trapped right here. I mentioned in the previous film, that on several occasions, we had to rush to get back round the corner, to avoid being cut off.

BENSON: And you could see that, as you said Andrew, this was quite a rough day out to sea. Not helped as the tide comes in.

GRIEVE: And the tide would have come right over these big rocks when it came in so.

HH3 Duty Commentary BENSON: Well, we're about to meet, one of our favorite characters and one of our favorite actors. Mr. Bracegirdle played by Jonathon Coy.

MOLLO: Indeed, indeed.

BENSON: Who was with us, right at the very beginning, John out in the Ukraine.

MOLLO: He was with us in the Ukraine, and he was with us in Portugal. Um...

GRIEVE: He won't be with us again.

MOLLO: No, very good, very good character.

GRIEVE: Because we've killed him off.

HH3 Duty Commentary BENSON: I know that a bunch of people were disappointed that we brought back this favorite character to kill him. But I think that it's very important that if you have an instant, particularly the blowing up of the row boat, is that you don't just blow up an inanimate object. But that you do something to somebody that Hornblower actually cares about, because the dramatic resonance is that much greater. So, yes indeed, we did bring Bracegirdle back only to kill him off.

LAUGHTER

BENSON: But for a very good reason. But when we had him here alive, he was great fun to work with. He's a very terrific professional.

GRIEVE: He did a great stumble just then. Completely by accident.

BENSON: And he didn't mind getting his costume, wet, damp and dirty.

GRIEVE: He fell flat on his face, and it was completely unintentional.

BENSON: Well, this was a completely new uniform for him, because as you know John, because when last we saw him, he was a lieutenant.

MOLLO: He was a lieutenant. Indeed yes. Um, I think we started with Bush. We started making their uniforms out of moleskin as opposed to woolen cloth. And I think you will see quite well in this sequence, that the moleskin gets much more broken down than cloth. And it gets more creases and wrinkly and it's much easier to age. Also it's washable, so you could wash them afterwards. They get wet in the sea, and they don't shrink. It's sort of ideal for this sort of thing.

GRIEVE: So all the uniforms...

MOLLO: Yes, all the ones we make now, the boys, Styles and um, Matthews.

HH3 Duty Commentary 30:15 Scene on Beach...cannon falls from cliff.

BENSON: Now this was interesting. How far from them, did this canon really fall, Andrew?

GRIEVE: Far enough, but not that far.

LAUGHTER

GRIEVE: It took them 5 paces to run up to. But it was hoisted on a crane above them, and then just dropped in when we said RUN. So it was up to the person who was working the crane, to make sure it didn't hit them. But I think we must have had a line that said, don't go any..

BENSON: Further than that. And they listened to us.

GRIEVE: Yes, they tend to, when their lives are in danger.

LAUGHTER

GRIEVE: It's amazing how many Frenchmen we manage to kill.

BENSON: So that isn't actually there.

HH3 Duty Commentary 31:06 Scene-Frenchmen looking out to see at ship.

GRIEVE: No. The ship's not there.

GRIEVE: Neither is that. That was quite good, because we managed to pull focus on it afterwards, didn't we? I thought it went rather well. And there's Wolfe.

BENSON: He's in another uniform, John.

MOLLO: Yes, I mean,

GRIEVE: He was happy with this uniform, wasn't he?

MOLLO: Yes. This we actually made ourselves.

GRIEVE: There was the one in the Napoleonic coat.

MOLLO: Yes, this was an amendment to the Napoleonic coat.

GRIEVE: And the problem with the boots, was that he didn't like his little legs sticking out the bottom of that huge coat without having a nice pair of boots on. He did look a bit of an idiot without them on, I must say.

MOLLO: But there was fine results, very impressive.

GRIEVE: Very Napoleonic.

MOLLO: Yes.

HH3 Duty Commentary 32:01 Scene aboard Hotspur in cabin with Bracegirdle and Horatio.

BENSON: When we reintroduce characters, for people who do know the backstory, there's some resonance to things that have happened before. But for people just joining the story, it's not too confusing.

GRIEVE: Do you think people would remember? Yes they would.

BENSON: Well, if they've got their entire dvd set from A&E, they could play them over and over again.

LAUGHTER

BENSON: And who wouldn't want to do that?

GRIEVE: Bracegirdle has lost his ship, and so he's going to have to be court martial.

MOLLO: Yes, that was the normal custom if you lost your ship, and it still is. If you lost your ship, you had to account it in a court martial.

GRIEVE: The captain of the Norfolk had to account it after he ran onto a reef in Australia and did 50 quid of damage.

MOLLO: He was actually on shore, at a party at the time.

BENSON: He wasn't totally to blame, but he still gets court martial.

MOLLO: Yes.

GRIEVE: That's what would have happened in those days.

BENSON: So that's what any officer would fear, including Hornblower.

MOLLO: Yes, if you lost your ship in any way, if it was captured or whatever, you still had to account for it.

BENSON: Well, I don't know what his pain remedy is but it looks quite pink and disgusting, made up by the props department.

HH3 Duty Commentary 33:38 Scene of ship in storm.

GRIEVE: That's a model. We were talking about the camera moving up and down to create motion. That's interesting. That's just a plain shot treated to make it look like it's coming through a telescope. That's the camera moving. The camera is flying up and down. So it looks as if the horizon is going up and down behind them.

BENSON: And this was shot on a bright sunny day, one of the nicest, sunniest days of the summer. The rain has been added and ..

GRIEVE: In the middle of the English countryside.

MOLLO: And the actors are all wearing their heaviest clothing and heaviest coats.

BENSON: And it was 90 degrees.


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