In the newly Oscar-winning film ‘The Descendants’, Alexandra‘s overbearingly boyish and goofy best friend Sid, played with abandon by rising teen star Nick Krause, is an interloper into the King family who winds up making his own iconoclastic mark on their road adventure. “Sid kind of serves as Alexandra‘s comic relief,” Krause says, so they hang out together, especially in troubled times.

Sid is so laid back that he‘s completely forgotten any social standards. He never knows what to say or how to put anything tactfully. Even though he always means well, he just doesn‘t know how to express it.

That dismaying lack of tact often leads Sid into trouble — as it does when Alexandra‘s grandfather hauls off and socks him for giggling at his wife. The scene became one of author Kaui Hart Hemmings‘ favorites on screen. “I like it because it’s absurd but it also feels so real,” she says. “It‘s almost all dialogue. I really like the moments in a film where not a lot happens, and yet a lot happens.”

“I mean, how often do old people just haul off and cold-cock you in the face?”

– Sid

Yet, no matter how much Sid provokes the people around him, he also becomes an unlikely uniting force. “I think Sid really grows to be a part of the family while they deal with all these crazy situations that are just stacked one on top of another,” Krause says. “His journey is about becoming part of a new family. He starts out as this kind of stoner guy meeting a friend‘s dad but by the end of the story, he and Matt have a deeper understanding of each other.”

Note: There may be spoilers in the following.

Producer Jim Burke sees Sid as an essential link in the story. “He winds up allowing Matt to connect to his daughters in a way that he never could have if Sid was not there,” says the producer. “Towards the end, he realizes Sid might be the only guy he has to talk to.”

Sid becomes his confessor, although a very unusual one. Like Sid, Matt‘s long-time friends Mark and Kai have a galvanizing effect on the King family — as the only ones who have the real scoop about with whom his wife was cheating. Taking the roles are two actors who both emerged from the comedy world, Rob Huebel and Mary Birdsong. Huebel was excited to be part of one of the film‘s most dramatic scenes, as Matt bursts into their house out of the blue, demanding immediate details on his wife‘s affair, even as she lies in a vegetative state.

Huebel and Birdsong had to walk a tightrope balanced between angst and absurdity. “It‘s a tricky scene because it‘s serious but it has to be funny, too,” notes Huebel. “Mark and Kai are horrified because they knew this was going on and we‘re supposed to be Matt‘s best friends. We try back-pedaling, we try getting out of telling him, we try defending Matt‘s wife, but it only makes Matt angrier. In the end, Mark wants to retain his friendship with Matt, so he tells him the identity of the man his wife was sleeping with. I think that‘s what most guys would do.”

The nervy, multi-layered scene worked, Huebel says, mainly because of Payne‘s ability to set his cast completely at ease. “He‘s just the most precise director I‘ve ever worked with,” he observes. “He had already imagined every nuance and every gesture by the time we were doing the scene and you really feel like ‘oh we‘re going to be fine, because he‘s driving the boat’.”

Birdsong sees Kai as being in a particularly precarious position when Matt finds out about the affair because her loyalties are split. “Matt‘s wife Elizabeth was her closest friend,” she explains. “Now she‘s torn between her devotion to Elizabeth and telling the truth. To her, Elizabeth was this amazing free spirit and now she wants to protect her.”

Like Huebel, Birdsong gives credit to Payne for taking a chance on casting actors from diverse backgrounds. “He has a very original and individual brain,” she describes. “And I think the casting of the film is a testament to his sensibility. He saw something in each of us that would help the story.”

The article Friends in Need: Quirky Characters of ‘The Descendants’ appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Some of the filming for Alexander Payne’s ‘The Descendants’ took place off terra firma – in swimming pools and the ocean. Legendary underwater photographer Don King came in to help with the scene where Shailene Woodley releases a primal scream while at the depths of the family swimming pool.

Recalls Woodley, “He waited for me underwater with this crazy-looking camera. I would submerge myself and swim towards him and he would swim backwards super quickly, timing it perfectly with me. It was a fantastic scene to shoot.

Note: The following may contain spoilers.

One of director of photography Phedon Papamichael‘s favorite experiences on ‘The Descendants’ was filming the climax of Matt‘s road trip as the Kings arrive at their ancestral land on Kauai and young Scottie makes Matt rethink the idea of selling it to strangers. “We designed the shot so the family drives up the mountain but you‘re not really aware of what‘s coming.

It almost feels like a normal tracking shot but then, as they come to the edge of the land, we boom up and reveal this spectacular view, and suddenly, the characters are overwhelmed by the beauty. That was one of my favorites,” sums up Papamichael.

Payne also reunited with production designer Jane Ann Stewart, who has worked on all of his films since the very beginning of his career. Stewart says that Payne‘s aesthetic instincts jibe with hers. “His sense of humor is very much like mine – absurd, a little macabre and where nothing in the human condition is above comedy,” she says.

She knew her work was cut out for her when Payne approached her for this film. “We both had to learn a lot about Hawaiian culture, and really immerse ourselves in it, so we could get to the history, the sense of place and the texture behind the story,” she explains.

In creating Matt King‘s house, Stewart consulted both with the novel and its author, Kaui Hart Hemmings. “Kaui‘s advice was invaluable,” says Stewart. “For example, she introduced me to the punee [the casual Hawaiian daybeds often used as sprawling sofas] and helped us to reflect the family‘s history in the details.”

When Stewart found a local house that had the right feel, it was missing one key element – the sprawling banyan tree that graced the front yard in the book. So Stewart had one transplanted. “It kind of reflects the idea of family because of the way each branch reaches in and plants itself,” she observes.

As with the cinematography, Stewart‘s challenge was to keep things in Payne‘s favored realm of stark reality, but with a tropical twist. “Alexander always wants the veneer to be authentic, even a little bit banal. But this film was a chance for me to stretch things a bit with the colors and exotic essence of the place. I just had to have a very good reason for putting anything, a piece of furniture or painting, in a room. It had to support the characters and stay true to the place.”

That authenticity to Hawaii deeply moved Hemmings when she visited the set — and she could see her story coming to life, reflecting the funny and fraught ways that families, on or off the islands, really interact and bond. “It was amazing for me to be back in Hanalei Bay, where my own descendants first landed,” she says, “and it meant a lot to see the cast and crew getting to know this special, special place.

It was a chance for me to reconnect with my own family and it brought the community together. Writing a book is such a solitary thing, but with a movie, the beauty is in sharing the experience.”

The article Hemmings’ Book Comes Alive: Filming ‘The Descendants’ appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.