Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty
Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty
Cast: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott
Director: Ben Stiller
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Rated: M
Running Time: 114 minutes
Synopsis: Walter Mitty: n. An ordinary person given to adventurous daydreams far grander than real life.
No one really knows the power of the private dreams inside our heads... until they inspire our reality. That's what happens in Ben Stiller's contemporary rethink of one of the most influential fantasy stories of all time – indeed the quintessential tale about the irresistible allure of fantasising: James Thurber's The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. Stiller has taken that two-and-a-half page 1939 classic and opened it up into a 21st Century comic epic about a man who finds that his real life is about to blow his wildly over-active imagination out of the water.
This Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) is a modern day-dreamer, an ordinary magazine photo editor who takes a regular mental vacation from his ho-hum existence by disappearing into a world of fantasies electrified by dashing heroism, passionate romance and constant triumphs over danger. But when Mitty and the co-worker he secretly adores (Kristen Wiig) stand in actual peril of losing their jobs, Walter must do the unimaginable: take real action – sparking a global journey more extraordinary than anything he could have ever dreamed up.
For Stiller, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty offered a rare chance to look at a touchstone American tale afresh, from new times. Way back in high school, he first encountered Thurber's story – a story that almost as soon as it had been published in The New Yorker began making an impact that belied its ultra-brief length. It inspired a beloved 1940s screen comedy, numerous theatre works, and sealed the phrase 'he's a Walter Mitty" into the popular lexicon, referring to anyone who throws more energy into diverting daydreams than into real life.
Now, Ben Stiller saw a chance to take Thurber's endlessly escapist character into the full-scale complexity of our social networking, down-sizing, re-tooling times – and to push his story further, comedically, dramatically and cinematically, bringing the full visual spectacle of modern filmmaking to the mix.
'What I love about this story is that it can't be categorised," Ben Stiller says. 'It has comedy, it has drama, it's an adventure story, it's real and it's fantastically hyper-real. Yet at the heart of it all is a character who I think everyone can connect to – someone who appears to be just going through the motions of modern life but is living a whole different life inside his head. To me, he embodies all those things we imagine about ourselves and the world but that we never say."
The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty
Release Date: December 26th, 2013
A Very Modern Mitty
The exuberant hilarity and bittersweet poignancy of people chasing crazy dreams has always underscored Ben Stiller's comedic storytelling approach. As an actor, he has become one of the world's biggest comic stars with a chain of Everyman characters facing outrageous circumstances – whether a man trying to impress his terrifying in-laws in the Meet The Parents series, a lonely museum night watchman who can't believe his eyes in the Night At The Museum romps, or a guy who gets a second chance with his high school dream date in the boundary-pushing comedy There's Something About Mary.
As a director, he has garnered critical acclaim for his own brand of sharp yet sweet comedy, including his affectionate send-up of the fashion world in Zoolander and his triumphant satire of action movie madness and camaraderie in Tropic Thunder. But The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty took Stiller to places he has never been before, both in front of and behind the camera. It is at once his most visually adventurous epic and his most stirringly human tale.
The film lovingly winks back at the great American humourist Thurber's timeless fable about a mild-mannered man's need to turn his failures into something far more astonishing in his head. But Ben Stiller's Mitty is very much a man of our times. Like so many of us, he feels hemmed in by an increasingly depersonalised, electronic world that is rapidly changing everything – one that is making his very way of life obsolete. His only out is a madcap barrage of reveries that keep him a constant hero battling for a better, fairer world. It's his own private realm he shares with no one . . . that is, until his search for a famous photographer's (Sean Penn) missing negative gives him an unexpected chance to connect with another.
It was the tug-of-war between Mitty's shaky, uncertain reality and the beautiful impulses behind his eye-popping dreams that first drew Ben Stiller to Steven Conrad's adaptation of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. He'd seen other attempts at re-visiting the story, but none had hit home.
'Steve Conrad's script wasn't trying to revisit the 1940s Danny Kaye classic, which was so wonderfully unique to its time. He found a different way of telling the story, one that was smart and compelling but that created a modern context for this character that audiences can relate to," says Ben Stiller. 'I loved that the script honoured the idea of an ordinary guy as hero in a way that's lyrical, soulful and funny. Steve Conrad said to me, -inside the breast of every American man beats the heart of a hero' -- and I wanted the film to have that kind of respect for all the things ordinary people go through and how challenging life is for all of us whether you're a guy that nobody pays attention to or you're the President of the United States. Walter's journey celebrates the potential that everybody has."
A Mitty In The Family
The meshing of material, director and actor was especially vital to the film's producers: John Goldwyn and Samuel Goldwyn Jr., respectively the grandson and son of Samuel Goldwyn, who produced the 1947 version of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty directed by Norman Z. McLeod; and Stuart Cornfeld, who has collaborated with Ben Stiller on many of his films including Zoolander and Tropic Thunder.
For the Goldwyns, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty has always been a part of their family history. 'My grandfather was, in every sense a true pioneer of the motion picture industry, part of a group of people who wanted to tell stories in a different way, to show us a view of life in a way that no painting, no novel, no play could ever do. And since Walter Mitty was a very big success for him, we wanted to be part of something that could live up to that," John Goldwyn explains. 'In 1947, they engineered a movie story that really lifted off from the original source material into something very different and we wanted to follow in those footsteps."
Adds Samuel Goldwyn, Jr: 'We saw a chance to do something new and creative with a story that continues to reverberate in the world, and that was worth fighting for. I've always believed that great movies begin with great writing – and Thurber's story is so rich you could take his character and ideas in many different directions. The 1947 film spoke to that time, and we were determined to find a script and an approach that would speak equally to ours."
It would take many years and a quixotic quest to wrangle the rights and develop the film through myriad incarnations. Things began to change, however, when John Goldwyn met with screenwriter Steven Conrad, known for such deftly crafted scripts as Will Smith's The Pursuit Of Happyness and Gore Verbinski's The Weather Man.
John Goldwyn recalls: 'Steve Conrad said, -I want to make a movie about a man who to the world is completely undistinguished, yet who constantly dreams of a better life – and who learns that the only way that he will ever become the man that he knows he can be, is to get out of his head and step into life. He realises a life discovered is better than a life imagined.' And I said, -You have the job. This is exactly what we needed to hear.'"
When Steve Conrad's first draft came in, John Goldwyn sensed right away that it was not going to be your everyday high-concept comedy. 'It was very unique. It is not like anything we'd ever had before. It bore no similarity, really, to the first movie other than the idea that it was about a daydreamer. It was so original, there was really nothing to compare it to. And everybody was very excited about that."
That excitement gave way to a long and winding road to finding the right director. Somewhere in that journey, Ben Stiller came in, originally to talk about taking the role of Mitty. Yet it was clear from the get-go that he had a passion for the material that went straight to its very heart.
'Ben Stiller had prepared a set of notes that I read before I came into the meeting," John Goldwyn remembers. 'And the notes were, without a doubt, the best précis I'd ever seen of what a movie could be. In my life. The specificity, the eloquence, the care with which they were written, the clarity of the thinking about what the script could become - it was an astonishing document. I saw in his notes a movie that would be very, very distinctive."
'Ben Stiller had a real vision for this movie," says Stuart Cornfeld. 'It's a story where I think he knew he could have a lot of fun but he also saw a real beauty and a power to it. He wanted the audience to go on a journey with Walter Mitty as he begins to engage with life and realise it is amazing, worthwhile and magical in its own way." Ben Stiller was gratified to have the Goldwyns on his side. 'They have such a connection with the history of the project, such amazing taste and also a lot of experience with the entire process," he comments. 'This movie didn't fit into any single genre and we knew it was going to take a lot faith for the studio to take that chance. I give the Goldwyns full credit for gaining that trust because they really believed in it. They've been great partners, gave me a lot of support and they were instrumental in making it all happen."
Of Stuart Cornfeld, Ben Stiller says: 'Stuart Cornfeld and I have been working together for many years and we've been through the fire together. We've done a lot of movies together, so there's real shorthand there and we just trust each other creatively. I've never really met anybody who's better at working on a script than Stuart Cornfeld – he is always asking questions and pushing it to be better, better and better. And when you're doing a movie like this, and you are sort of going out there a little bit, that kind of relationship is really invaluable."
Stuart Cornfeld was especially excited to see Ben Stiller have the chance to simultaneously stretch himself as an actor and as a director taking on a world of unbridled visual imagination. 'Ben Stiller brought a very sophisticated eye to this," Stuart Cornfeld concludes. 'In the look of the film and his performance, he has created something strikingly vibrant – an experience that is full of fantasy but is a celebration of real life."
Larger Than LIFE
Screenwriter Steven Conrad was exhilarated by the challenge of taking on James Thurber's literary hallmark from the POV of a very different generation. He says he wanted 'to re-conceptualise the classic idea of Walter Mitty as a guy with all the kaleidoscopic colours of modern life."
That's what led him to place Walter Mitty at the crossroads of life and LIFE – LIFE Magazine that is. Steve Conrad reimagined Mitty as a 'Negative Assets Manager" at a modern incarnation of the magazine, a devoted worker who wishes he could live out all the astonishingly brave and bold moments he has seen parade past him in his from the confines of his office. He also envisioned Mitty as a man at the brink -- a man who is being left behind as LIFE, once the ultimate visual chronicle of American culture, is being shifted from a magazine that inspired and informed into yet another corporate dot com.
The real LIFE Magazine went through several incarnations since its founding in 1883, reaching its heyday when it was turned into the nation's preeminent photojournalism weekly by Henry Luce, and finally folding into life.time.com in 2009. Steve Conrad's LIFE is fictionalised but very much based upon the breathtaking photographic legacy of the real thing.
'I liked the idea of Walter working at LIFE Magazine in the photo-negative room, because it makes him a sort of human repository for the most significant photographs that have been taken in the last 70 years," explains Steve Conrad. 'He's surrounded by images of the most essential moments of our times. In a sense, he has seen everything that's out there, yet nobody really sees him. It seemed like a good place from which you could really root for Walter, because all of our jobs can begin to feel like that. You can feel lost in them, or like they don't afford you the chance to really live."
For Ben Stiller, Mitty's job at LIFE was a beautiful way of tapping into themes that feel very resonant right now. The backdrop is relevant I think to where we're at in the world," the director and actor comments. 'Steve's idea that the iconic LIFE Magazine is basically becoming an online photo archive is a great metaphor for the transition we're all making from the analogue world into the digital world and how it can make a guy like Walter, who has done his job meticulously for years, obsolete."
He continues: 'It's really a transformative moment in Walter's life, and yet he finds the courage to go out into the world rather than retreat."
Indeed, with LIFE under threat, this becomes the moment that Walter Mitty's reality begins to overtake his fantasies.
In order for that transformation to work, Ben Stiller believed that he would have to find a way to stitch together Mitty's typical workaday world with his out-there daydreams -- in the seamless way that it actually happens deep inside the human mind. As he developed the final screenplay with Steve Conrad, this entwining of daily life and imaginary life became their biggest challenge. Just as James Thurber had spurred Mitty's fantasies on with a single word or event, Ben Stiller and Steve Conrad architected their narrative around tangible connections between the actual and the fantastical.
'Ben Stiller felt it was vital that the movie not feel split between a real world and a daydream world," Steve Conrad explains. 'So that meant we had to create all of Walter's daydreams right in the stream of his daily life. We don't go away into a fantasy realm and then come back. We stay right with him so that you get the chance to be part of his fantasies, to see what he gains from them and also what he loses in real life by having checked out. You see what he's hungry for, what has eluded him and what he has the potential to do but hasn't yet had the opportunity to do. Ben's conception was that the daydreams should show you real facets of Mitty's personality, not imaginary ones." In his dreams, Walter is powerful, decisive and follows his instincts wherever they might lead. In real life, however, he is nothing if not cautious, especially since he has felt a responsibility to take care of his family since his father died when he was just a teenager. That's why Steve Conrad had to find a very strong motivation for Mitty to throw that caution to the wind – by setting him on an obsessive, detective-like quest to uncover a lost negative, the negative that contains his favourite photographer's chosen shot for the final historic cover of LIFE.
He also incorporated another inspiration for Mitty: LIFE Magazine's famous motto, which encourages people to 'see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to . . . to see and be amazed."
'It's a really cool motto because it essentially says it's our business to go deeply into the world and to really see other people," muses Steve Conrad. 'It's a great directive to take personally, to say this might be what all we need to do sometimes."
While Thurber's Mitty was a henpecked husband whose fantasies carried him away from his marriage, and the first movie Mitty was unenthusiastically engaged to be married, Steve Conrad took another route. His Mitty is a typical modern bachelor who starts out more likely to dream of romance – or play around at it on the internet -- than to wholeheartedly go after it. But one thing the screenwriter never saw Mitty as was ineffectual. His dreams reflect not only his hopes, but also the inner strength he has yet to prove.
'It was really important to us that he not be passive or weak," he says. 'This Walter Mitty has a keen mind and constitution. He's ready to go if events would just unfold and let him out. Our job was to take him to that place where he could release his soul."
The screenwriter had faith that Ben Stiller was the director who could do exactly that -- while keeping audiences highly entertained. 'I've always loved the way that Ben's movies are so light on their feet in terms of making you feel good – but they are not at all light in terms of what they're about," Steve Conrad comments. 'He creates such a unique balance between the two that no one else could make Ben Stiller's movies."
Later, it was equally exciting for Steve Conrad to see Ben Stiller finally step into the role they worked on so closely for so long. 'For two years, we did really rigorous work where Ben Stiller was primarily the director," he notes. 'Then suddenly, he was also Mitty. I knew he was going to be funny, but the remarkable scope of what he brought to the character was a real surprise."
Mitty's Dream Girl
While Walter Mitty ponders the problems with his eHarmony profile, his romantic dreams hone in on his co-worker in accounting – the easy-going Cheryl who frequently morphs into the object of his heroic rescues and escapades.
The role as Ben Stiller saw it was not just comic relief, but a major catalyst for Mitty's journey. 'It is Walter's tenuous connection with Cheryl that becomes the impetus pushing him out into the world," he explains.
As such, it demanded someone who could leap from the everyday world of a single mom in fear of losing her job into the high-wire drama of Walter's daydreams and back again, without ever losing a beat, or the core of who Cheryl is. To do all this, while also creating the snowballing effect of a relationship in its first throes of attraction, the filmmakers cast one of today's most intriguing comediennes: Kristen Wiig, who cut her teeth as one of 'Saturday Night Live's" biggest stars before kick-starting a wide-ranging screen career.
Ben Stiller had her in mind from the get-go. 'Kristen Wiig is someone who is so, so relatable," he comments. 'She's so real, and so naturally funny, and I also really wanted to see her doing something like this – something that's not quite the broad, crazy comedy we're used to. Her personality is so likeable and warm, I felt she could instantly give the audience a shorthand as to why she and Mitty might actually belong together."
He continues: 'Kristen Wiig is also terrific at playing many different attitudes and characters. She was able to juxtapose that kind of comedy with Cheryl's very real personality where she's just a little bit intrigued by Walter. I think her character gets to something that audiences really connect with: the idea of that some of the littlest things that happen to us in life – even just saying hello to somebody when they give you a certain look – can affect us in big ways."
Kristen Wiig says that her initial conversations with Ben Stiller were key to winning her over. 'The script was absolutely wonderful but it's hard to go on script alone because there are so many ways to interpret a story like this," she notes. 'So the tone of our conversations was really important. I felt that what Ben Stiller wanted to do with Walter Mitty was very interesting. I loved that he wanted to take this classic story, modernise it in a fun way and really touch on elements of our lives right now."
She goes on: 'It's one of those stories that leaves you feeling like there's a great big, world for you out there – and that if there are things in life we really want to do, whether it's connect with our families or travel the globe, it's worth trying to go out and do them."
It was easy for Kristen Wiig to see why Cheryl might have just the tiniest twinges of interest in Walter that blossom into something more as they embark together on solving the mystery of the lost negative. 'I think she likes that he leads a quieter kind of life and that he also kind of sees something better out there," she explains. 'They both are leading lives that maybe they wish were a little spicier, so it's perfect that they end up going on this unexpected adventure together."
Kristen Wiig especially enjoyed bursting into Mitty's daydreams, with Cheryl appearing in numerous thrilling scenarios that took Kristen Wiig to new places., including performing a one-woman Bowie song. 'I loved doing the fantasy sequences," she says. 'In one of Walter's first fantasies, he runs into a burning building and saves my three-legged dog. I'd never been in a scene like that before – one involving big explosions and fires -- and it was really exciting for me as an actor."
Kristen Wiig says that excitement was continuously stoked by Ben Stiller no matter the scene. 'I don't really know how Ben Stiller could have done so much on this whole project," she muses. 'He was intensely involved with every single aspect of the movie, wearing all these hats and then he'd step into the scene as an actor, too. It was inspiring to watch and I felt that I learned a lot from him."
Ben Stiller's visual aplomb amazed Kristen Wiig as well. 'The look of the movie is so very specific and beautiful, which is part of what makes it so special. Ben Stiller had a vision for every single shot, every frame," she says.
Kristen Wiig was especially impressed by what Ben Stiller brought to Mitty. 'His Walter Mitty is a guy who really does have a voice -- he just doesn't quite know how to use it yet. Ben Stiller brings so much warmth to the character that you just want to hug him and beat up everybody who's mean to him."
The Nightmare In Management
Walter Mitty's greatest nemesis in his everyday life is the new Managing Director in Charge of The Transition: the consummately arrogant, presumptuously inconsiderate and endlessly intimidating Ted Hendricks. Screenwriter Steve Conrad says he wrote the character to push all of Walter Mitty's buttons. 'Ted Hendricks is a kind of a feeling to me," Steve Conrad describes. 'He's the way you're always made to feel by coaches or older brothers, teachers, policemen – that feeling where the best thing you can say back to them you can't think of until two minutes after they've left the room, and when they're in front of you, nothing useful comes out. Or the worst thing comes out. Ted embodies that feeling."
Taking the role of Ted is Adam Scott, who plays Ben Wyatt on the hit television comedy Parks and Recreation. 'In real life, Adam Scott is just the sweetest, nicest guy," says Kristen Wiig. 'But in this movie he's the biggest douchebag. And he's so good, he makes that a lot of fun." Ben Stiller had him in mind from the beginning. 'I always wanted Adam Scott in the film because he's so funny and he also has a very specific kind of presence," the director notes. 'There's a reality to Mitty's world but it is slightly stylised and I thought Adam Scott could really play to that tone. He gives you who Ted is – cold and mean but also ridiculously self-involved – very quickly."
Adam Scott was instantly drawn to the screenplay. 'I thought it was amazing the way that Steve Conrad and Ben Stiller had taken this classic story and let it blossom into something that feels very epic and very now," he says. 'The script felt like something special – funny yet also truly moving. The depth of the writing was something I think a lot of people aspire to."
As for who Ted is, Adam Scott describes: 'He's basically a heartless corporate ghoul roaming the halls of this great American institution. He has absolutely no regard for the humanity of this wonderful magazine that has been a marker for American culture for so long. And in Walter, he mostly sees a guy who he thinks is pathetic in a very funny way. He gets a kick out of him, because Walter makes his bloodletting even more interesting. I think he rather enjoys Walter, until the point where he begins to ruin Ted's life!"
Adam Scott says that in calibrating the role, he used Ben Stiller as his measuring stick. 'I think Ben Stiller is one of the funniest men ever in Hollywood, so just getting him to laugh even once or twice through my performance was a huge deal to me."
He also buried himself beneath a rather extensive statement beard that came to define Ted. 'Wearing that huge beard felt a bit like I had cake frosting on my face every day. But it was worth it because it was the perfect look. It really adds to the impression that this guy is a human bullet," he laughs.
Ben Stiller was also awed by the facial hair. 'I felt it gave Adam Scott this unique thing that we really haven't seen him ever be in a movie before," he says.
Ted might be just the kind of guy Walter Mitty would like to escape, but he is at the very center of Mitty's most elaborate fantasy – an elevator encounter that transforms into a flying battle through mid-town Manhattan. For Adam Scott, the experience of shooting that scene was a first.
'The battle sequence was absolutely one of the most incredible experiences I've had," the actor confesses. 'Ben Stiller and I were hanging from wire rigs, battling it out, while the streets were just teeming with tourists. It was really, really intense – I've never done else anything like it."
Despite the newness of it all, Ben Stiller made it seem exhilarating, says Adam Scott. 'Ben Stiller has a way of talking with actors that really makes you feel so comfortable and so taken care of," he summarises. 'And yet, no matter how precise his preparation was, once we were filming everything felt very alive. I think part of what makes him able to do that as a director is that he's a great actor in his own right."
A Photographer At The Ends Of The Earth
For all his fantasies of becoming a hero, Walter Mitty has his own very real hero: the famed LIFE photographer Sean O'Connell, an elusive adventurer who has become a kind of rock star of the photographic world, renowned for his relentless commitment to chasing a story no matter the cost. It seemed just the right match to cast Oscar®-winning actor and director Sean Penn in the role of the mysterious icon who beckons Walter Mitty into the big, wide open world.
'Sean O'Connell is a guy who represents creative integrity and he had to have this amazing presence that the audience connects with instantly when Walter finally meets him. That's why Sean Penn was really my first choice because Sean Penn embodies all that in life for me," says Ben Stiller.
Ben Stiller was also keen to cast Sean Penn in the kind of role where one of the leading dramatic actors of a generation wouldn't normally be seen. 'Sean Penn actually has a really great sense of humour," he notes, 'which I think doesn't get showcased that often in his film work, so it was fun to give him a chance to do something different."
Adds producer Stuart Cornfeld: 'Sean O'Connell has a certain kind of mystique, as does Sean Penn. What was amazing about his performance and the way the character is written is that when Walter finally does meet Sean Penn, he's everything that Walter was looking for, but he's also completely different at the same time. For all of us, Sean Penn was just amazing to watch in action."
Rounding out the main cast of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty is an ensemble that includes Kathryn Hahn (Parks and Recreation) as Mitty's performance artist sister, comedian Patton Oswalt as Mitty's eHarmony counselor, Ólafar Darri Ólafsun as Mitty's unlikely Icelandic pilot, and, appropriately, a true screen legend as Mitty's mom: Academy Award® winner Shirley MacLaine who also starred in a film Stiller considers an inspiration for some of his film's design, Billy Wilder's The Apartment. Fantasy Made Real
In 1939, when James Thurber first published The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, he brought a playful, modernist style to the story that lured readers directly into the experience of Walter Mitty's fantasy life.
In 2013, Ben Stiller hoped to do something similar, using modern cinema to open the story up visually in a way that couldn't have been imagined in James Thurber's day. He knew there were several ways to approach Mitty's fantasising. But there was only way he felt that was right for what he wanted audiences to feel: using a deftly crafted hyper-reality that merges Mitty's inner stream of consciousness into the fabric of what's going on in his outer world.
'Everybody can connect with the idea of talking to somebody while actually having this crazy, imaginary fantasy going on in your head of where you'd rather be in that moment," he explains. 'That's what we wanted to capture."
Ben Stiller thought intensively about how to achieve that. Creating Walter's fantasies would certainly involve many moving parts, and a sense of spectacle, but Ben Stiller used his effects judiciously, with an eye towards unbroken integration into the flow of the action.
'In terms of visual effects, we wanted the overall approach to be very photo-real," he says. 'I've always found that the best results come from doing as much as you can practically in real-life situations and then just tickling that with the digital effects."
Ultimately, Ben Stiller would put together a visual design team including Oscar-nominated director of photography Stuart Dryburgh (The Piano), production designer Jeff Mann (Tropic Thunder, Zoolander), editor Greg Hayden (Tropic Thunder, Zoolander), costume designer Sarah Edwards (Salt, Michael Clayton) and visual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron (Life of Pi.)
Early on, Ben Stiller made the decision to shoot The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty on film, a decision that seemed to echo Walter Mitty's image-laden world and his search for authenticity. 'Film is just such a special thing – it at the heart of the history of movies and the whole tradition of filmmaking – and it's something that is going away very quickly, disappearing from the world," Ben Stiller says.
They also chose to have the camera slowly awaken, moving from static to dynamic, as Walter's life follows a similar trajectory. Ben Stiller explains: 'We create a world that is very graphic and linear in the first part of the movie. So the camera is quite still and hardly moves at all and then . . . gradually . . . as Walter starts to connect with life and go out into the world, the camera loosens up. We loosen up with him and the colours become more saturated and we enter into this fuller life experience with him."
The constant yin and yang of dreams and reality in The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty made for an extremely ambitious production – one which would take on the rigors of shooting in the middle of New York City then jet off to the other-worldly environs of Iceland, where cast and crew moved from volcanoes to helicopters to the middle of the frosty ocean.
'Shooting in New York was essential because that was the only way to deliver the strong sense of place that Ben envisioned," says Stuart Cornfeld. 'He really wanted to capture the energy and intensity of the city."
The producer continues: 'Iceland is just an amazing place, where the quality of light is truly different from anywhere on Earth. One of the real benefits of having shot on film is that we got to take full advantage of that light. There's not much pollution in Iceland so when you look off into the distance, you can see forever. It's like going from a 35-millimeter world to a 70-millimeter world. You get a scope of natural beauty you just don't find many places."
Each location would host scenes that could not have been filmed elsewhere in the world. In New York, Stiller had the chance to shoot the epic chase between Walter and Ted in the live-wire dynamics of a typical crowded day in the city. To simulate Walter and Ted flying and bounding through Manhattan on makeshift skates and skis, Ben Stiller and co-star Adam Scott were placed in a mobile rig that suspended them while weaving through New York City's infamous traffic.
'The Ted battle was really fun to shoot," remarks Ben Stiller. 'There we were riding skateboards and rollerblades down Sixth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street on a Sunday morning and it was just an amazingly surreal experience. We really tried to do as much of that scene for real as we possibly could – and then we augmented it with the visual effects."
'Shooting in New York was a big part of the conversation when Ben Stiller first got involved with the movie. He wanted Mitty's fantasies to feel as photo-real as life – because for Mitty they are that real," adds John Goldwyn. 'He didn't want to use a green screen and then impose the city behind it. The audience had to feel Mitty's actual experience. But it was a bit of a logistical nightmare. Flash mobs were showing up all over the place, we had to close down lanes, we had to reverse lanes because we got very bound up in making sure that the geography was accurate and we had Ben Stiller and Adam Scott on a very complicated rig. Luckily we had a crack team who helped us to pull that off."
In Iceland, Ben Stiller would shoot a scene that pushed him to new edges both as director and actor: when Walter jumps into the raging waves of the North Atlantic, which Ben Stiller simulated with his own plunge into the ocean. 'It was really important for me that we not do that scene in a tank," he recalls. 'I felt we had to shoot in real high seas, with a real boat there, a real helicopter and real waves," he explains.
'That's when Mitty literally dives into life," muses John Goldwyn. 'It's the big transition moment of the movie, and it looks incredibly real, because most of it is."
The scene turned out, just as it does for Walter Mitty, to bring a bit more reality than even Ben Stiller anticipated.
'We were about a mile out at sea with seven-foot swells -- which, when you're in the water, are really big," admits Ben Stiller. 'The boat with the camera in it went away to come back and do the shot, but there was this two-minute period where I was just in the North Sea with nobody around. I was in the ocean just by myself with a briefcase, floating there waiting for the camera to come back and was thinking, -I hope they can find me when they come back for the shot,'" he laughs. 'There was a real sense of danger and it was one of those moments when I thought, -oh, this is what real filmmaking is all about.'"
LIFE At The Office
As Ben Stiller first began contemplating the scope of creating Walter Mitty's real and fantasy lives on screen, he knew without a doubt he would require a production designer with an unalloyed sense of creative experimentation. Fortunately, he knew just the person: Jeff Mann, with whom he worked on Tropic Thunder.
'Jeff Mann and I were really in synch creatively and visually," says Ben Stiller. 'He was integral in designing the fantasy sequences, the whole Ted battle, the LIFE Magazine offices and how the magazine covers relate back to Walter's fantasies. It was a great collaboration."
Adds John Goldwyn: 'Jeff Mann was really Ben Stiller's creative partner on this film in every sense of the phrase."
Jeff Mann was exhilarated by the unusual task Ben Stiller laid before him. 'We had the opportunity to create a tone in this movie that is very original. We have these fun, outrageous fantasies but we also wanted to walk a fine line to create an integrity for Mitty's overall reality," he says. 'The whole idea was that Walter starts out only really living in his head, and he ends up on a journey living as a human being in the world."
The challenge was to make that inner transformation outwardly thrilling. 'I've had the chance to do some outrageous visual things in my career, but to do something like that resonates on so many different fronts, was really the pinnacle for me," says Jeff Mann. Jeff Mann especially had fun creating the LIFE Magazine offices, which, much like the film, mix reality, history and fantasy elements. He and Ben Stiller were gratified to have the support of the Time-Life Corporation.
'The cooperation of Time-Life was always going to be crucial to the look of the movie," says the designer. 'But it wasn't a slam dunk. Once we sent them the script, we were put in contact with a gentleman named Bill Shapiro who, as luck would have it, was basically as close to the Walter Mitty character in his job description as you could get. He became a very big proponent of the script because there were a lot of parallels to his experience. Then, once we had access to all these iconic images, we came up with all kinds of opportunities to incorporate them into the sets. There's something for everyone in the audience to key into – from celebrity shots to sports figures to environmental elements that come into play in the movie."
Ben Stiller and Jeff Mann also did a lot of research into the history of the Time-Life building, which opened in 1959, garnering fame for its design by the architectural firm of Harris & Abramowitz & Harris, and for its outsized modernist murals by the artist Fritz Glarner – which made the lobby a one-of-a-kind artistic experience.
'The architecture is just quintessential Mid-Century," marvels Ben Stiller. 'The building is so beautiful to photograph, especially when seen from above where you can see the terrazzo patterns in the plaza outside. It really helped contribute to the slightly retro, fading feeling of the world that Walter works in. And then we were inspired by photographs of the interior in the 50s and 60s, where you see photojournalists and editors with their sleeves rolled up and their horn-rimmed glasses and we wanted to echo that vibe."
While Ben Stiller was able to access the exterior and lobby of the Time-Life Building, it fell to Mann to recreate the interior of the defunct magazine's offices from scratch on soundstages at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens. There, he worked out a unique floor plan that would allow Stiller to play with his frame compositions.
Jeff Mann especially enjoyed creating Walter's photo editing area as both a lonely oasis (where only his co-worker Hernando, played by Adrian Martinez, keeps him company) and an entrée to all that goes on inside his brain. 'The concept was that you can see the digital era has already reduced the employees at the magazine, so you see empty workstations near Walter, yet you also see this treasure trove of imagery behind him that is pushing him forward," Jeff Mann comments.
With such a vast tangle of logistics and design elements to juggle, Jeff Mann says he was amazed by how Ben Stiller kept it all part of one harmonised vision in his head. 'Ben Stiller's capacity on this movie really impressed me," he says. 'He brought an enormous energy level to the production and at the same time, he was basically acting in almost every scene. We had this juggernaut of information and complex visual effects we were working with – things that he couldn't know what they were going to look like specifically for months, if not a year, from the time we were doing it. It took a lot of planning to make the right decisions."
As much as they explored each and every visual decision, Jeff Mann notes all that fell away when Ben Stiller was in front of the camera as Mitty. 'He took all the information he had about this world and delivered something right on the mark," says the designer. 'I've never experienced anything like the energy he brought to this, and then he added to that an extremely special performance."
The finishing touches of the film came together in post-production, as Ben Stiller convened with his frequent editor Greg Hayden to weave the footage into its final form. Music became another essential strand as Ben Stiller worked with composer Theodore Shapiro, with whom he also collaborated on Tropic Thunder, to write the score. He also brought in Swedish indie singer-songwriter José González to contribute songs, and recording artist Ryan Adams to pen the end title song that Jose González sings, which all became part of a soundtrack anchored by David Bowie's ode to a man floating in outer space, 'Space Oddity."
For Ben Stiller, the music was one more chance to add multi-chromatic shadings to Walter Mitty's journey. 'I was looking for a way to express the idea of the hero inside this ordinary guy musically," summarises Ben Stiller. 'I felt that Walter's incredible imagination deserved a very noble and epic score. Teddy Shapiro wrote such a beautiful theme for Walter, and then he built it throughout the movie in an amazing way. It's a theme that has a bit of melancholy to it, but over the course of the film it becomes something uplifting."
That melding of a sweet and funny melancholy with an expansive view of inspiration seems to be what hooked everyone involved in the The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty.
'To make a movie that honours the audience's intelligence, and then takes them somewhere where they have never been before in a way that's both entertaining and emotionally satisfying – that's something unbelievably rewarding," concludes John Goldwyn.
The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty
Release Date: December 26th, 2013
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