| PRODUCTION
NOTES
ABOUT
THE PRODUCTION
Urban
legends: The most enduring are often the most disturbing—stories
of murder and mayhem happening to ordinary people that are shared
around campfires, retold at slumber parties and spread through chain
emails. Some may have started as simple gossip or rumors that, like
an old-fashioned game of telephone, were embellished and eventually
grew into myth as they passed from person to person. However, there
is one terrifying thought about any urban legend…that it may
have been born of the truth.
"There is a viral aspect to an urban myth—the way it's
told, the way it's repeated, the way it catches on… No one
can ever really know the truth that possibly lies behind it. Kôji
Suzuki's book Ringu was supposedly based on an urban myth. But it's
a 'chicken and the egg' thing; I don't believe we'll ever know the
origins for sure," director Gore Verbinski remarks.
Kôji
Suzuki, who wrote the book—actually a series of novels—was
once a somewhat obscure writer, but is now referred to as the Stephen
King of Japan. Japanese director Hideo Nakata brought the story
to the screen in his gothic horror mystery "Ringu," which
was released in January 1998. It quickly became a phenomenon, spawning
the most successful horror film franchise in the history of the
Japanese cinema, as well as a television series, and Manga, a kind
of Japanese comic book or graphic novel. Soon after the release
of "Ringu," a whole new genre of Japanese films emerged—psycho-horror,
or J-horror as it's often called—which exploded into Japan's
multiplexes. Whether or not it had its origins in an urban legend,
"Ringu" resulted in one that transfixed readers and moviegoers
alike in Japan and much of Southeast Asia, and would soon capture
the attention of people on the other side of the world.
DreamWorks
executive Mark Sourian was the first at the studio to see the movie,
and immediately called producers and co-heads of DreamWorks Pictures
Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. "Mark said, 'I've just
seen the scariest movie I have ever seen in my life. You have to
see it right away,'" Parkes recalls. "Laurie and I cancelled
everything and watched the movie on videotape, which, come to think
of it, was appropriate for this film. We were both frightened and
mesmerized by it, and immediately decided we were going to remake
this movie."
MacDonald
adds, "We felt from the beginning that it was a strong idea,
and the Japanese movie had given us a great template for our movie,
not just in the premise, but tonally. Another of the movie's strengths
was its wonderfully incongruous marriage of a kind of pop teenage
story with a high concept movie that revealed itself in a very surprising
way—more mysterious, more evocative, and with underlying emotional
issues that you wouldn't necessarily expect from the genre."
"The
allure of good thrillers is to get that adrenaline rush, to be on
the edge of your seat without actually being in danger. The best
ones are equal parts intellectual exercise, emotional exercise and
visceral experience. They engage your mind and involve you intellectually,
but the payoff is the scare…the scream. I guess that's why
as filmmakers, we look for them, and as moviegoers, we can't wait
to see them," Parkes comments.
To
direct the movie, the first and only person the producers approached
was Gore Verbinski, who had made his feature film directorial debut
on DreamWorks' offbeat comedy hit "Mouse Hunt." "The
main reason we chose Gore was that he is just a consummate visualist,"
Parkes says. "Having worked with him before, we felt his sensibility
was right for this and that he would be intrigued by both the story
possibilities and the visual possibilities. He has the expertise
and the artistry to create images that in and of themselves can
involve you and truly scare you."
Verbinski
relates, "The first time I watched the original 'Ringu' was
on a VHS tape that was probably seven generations down. It was really
poor quality, but actually that added to the mystique, especially
when I realized that this was a movie about a videotape. There is
something about that image of a seemingly innocuous videotape…just
sitting there…unlabeled. If you are aware of the myth, the
object itself becomes both tempting and haunting."
"There
are unmarked videos in everyone's house," MacDonald notes.
"There are always those unlabeled tapes where you can't remember
what's on them; and the television is another thing that is part
of everyone's life. The idea that these two everyday items could
be at the center of this, could lead you to your death, can really
get under your skin."
Verbinski
expounds, "In 'The Ring,' there is a tape, seemingly like any
of those unmarked tapes, but if you watch it the phone rings, and
then there's the warning that you have seven days left to live.
So it is not enough that you will die; for seven days you know you
are going to die. There is that desperation as you get closer to
the end and start to feel the walls closing in on you. And that,
I think, brings a uniqueness to the horror.
"Our
central character, Rachel, is an investigative reporter, who learns
about the tape through a personal tragedy, when her niece, Katie,
becomes its latest victim," the director continues. "Then
the questions begin: Where is the tape? Where did it come from?
Who made it? Is it haunted?… When Rachel finally gets her hands
on the tape, she watches it—of course."
Naomi
Watts, the Australian actress who last year drew critical and audience
acclaim for her work in David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive,"
stars in the pivotal role of Rachel Keller, whose investigative
curiosity puts her in a race against time to cheat the deadly curse
of "The Ring."
"I
saw 'Mulholland Drive' and immediately responded to her performance,"
Verbinski states. "I think Rachel is a tough role, and Naomi
is a very gutsy actress."
Parkes
agrees, "Naomi is a very serious actress, and I think her role
within the particular story we are telling required that. What Rachel
Keller has to go through has to do with not only her own survival,
but also that of her child. As a result, the part demanded some
very intense, very real, acting moments. Naomi has the ability to
be extraordinarily intense, yet she delivers those moments in a
way audiences will be able to relate to."
Watts
offers that the demands of the role were only part of what drew
her to "The Ring." "This is definitely a genre film,
but what I think sets it apart is the story is very clean, very
straightforward and moves with a lot of momentum. You watch this
video—which is incredibly scary on its own—then the phone
rings and you're told you have seven days to live. Right there,
that one sentence sets up the kind of suspense that makes your skin
crawl and the hair stand up on the back of your neck."
The
actress adds that she also responded to the character of Rachel,
whom she describes as "very driven and strong, but at the same
time, she's a flawed person, which made her more interesting to
play. She's a mom, but perhaps not the best mother. She is obsessed
with her own life and career until her sister asks for her help
in finding out the cause of her daughter's—Rachel's niece's—death.
At first, all this information is coming at her about a videotape
that seems ridiculously implausible…nothing more than teenage
gossip. But then she finds it and watches it and the phone rings...
She gets more and more scared as coincidences begin to happen that
really start to tap into her own psychological beliefs and self-doubt.
Could this be true?"
As
Rachel's skepticism is gradually eclipsed by fear, she turns to
her friend Noah, whose own cynicism takes over. "Noah represents
the devil's advocate in the beginning of this whole thing. He thinks,
'A videotape that kills you? You've got to be kidding.' He doesn't
take it seriously until he's forced to," Verbinski says.
New
Zealand-born actor Martin Henderson was cast as Noah, and Parkes
notes that it was more than acting ability that made him right for
the role. "Martin is so at ease, with a natural charisma and
an ability to occupy a role effortlessly. What was also great about
him for the part of Noah was that his natural exuberance and charm
is a great counterbalance to Naomi's intensity on screen. The two
of them were fantastic together. I thought it was interesting that
Martin is from New Zealand and Naomi's from Australia, but you'd
never know it to hear them do American accents. When Martin came
in for the role, you would have thought he was a kid from Long Beach
or something."
Naomi
and Martin's dueling accents led to some good-natured ribbing on
the set. "Between takes, we'd joke around with each other's
accents and play into the whole New Zealand-Australia rivalry,"
Henderson smiles.
Long
before he came to the set, however, Henderson recalls reading Ehren
Kruger's screenplay and being immediately hooked. "I thought
it was extremely scary, and every time I read it I became more aware
of the little subliminal things that you don't notice at first.
I think that's the beauty of this movie; you don't know where the
evil is coming from. There are images on the tape, and as the movie
progresses, you begin to see the connection and understand the origin.
Hopefully, the audience will be taken on that ride."
In
many ways, the characters of both Rachel and Noah are along for
that same ride, though, Henderson acknowledges, Noah is decidedly
reluctant to be taken in. "There's this very sarcastic attitude
to my character at first. His expertise is in the world of cameras
and videos, which is why Rachel enlists his help, but it makes him
very disbelieving. He thinks, 'It's a videotape, a piece of plastic,
get over it.' But as things start happening to him, he starts to
wonder if there may be some truth to the story, and when it becomes
irrefutable, he pretty much freaks out and jumps on the train and
they're off. The stakes get higher and higher as they go on."
The
stakes reach their breaking point in one devastating turn when,
to Rachel's horror, her son Aidan watches the tape. Child actor
David Dorfman plays Aidan, and Verbinski says he had an understanding
of the role that belied his years. "David really is brilliant.
He was smart enough to know what his character was thinking and
to understand the emotional core of the role. It didn't blow his
mind when we talked about things on that level, and that is really
wonderful when you're working with someone so young."
The
director has equal praise for Daveigh Chase, the young actress who
plays Samara, the girl who holds the key to the mystery of "The
Ring." "Daveigh is great. We were so lucky to find such
talented young actors with whom you could talk openly about not
only the internal mechanisms of their characters, but what we were
trying to achieve with them in the context of the story."
Rachel
and Noah's desperate search for the answers that might save their
lives and the life of Aidan eventually leads them to Samara's last
living connection to the world: her father, Richard Morgan, played
by veteran, award-winning actor Brian Cox. "From the very start,
I had Brian Cox in mind for the role. I couldn't imagine the part
being played by anyone else," Verbinski states.
Like
his fellow actors, Brian Cox was captivated by the screenplay. "I
thought it was a great yarn, a real page turner," he remarks.
"I was intrigued by it, by where it was going…the twists
and turns in the story. That's basically what makes a good script
in my opinion."
Although
Richard Morgan parts with little information, Cox felt he understood
what had brought his character to the point at which Rachel and
Noah find him. "He is a tragic character. He's a man who has
lost everything in life. Now, he seems to be rattling around on
his ranch, which was once a horse ranch, but is no longer for reasons
you'll come to understand. He lives in a sort of half-dead world,
a man who has been left behind by terrible events."
Clues
to those terrible events are buried in the haunting images burned
into the mysterious videotape that leads those who view them to
their own horrifying end. Rachel Keller comes to know all too well
that the video brought her niece Katie, played by Amber Tamblyn,
to her death. And while she never watched the tape, being a witness
to Katie's unspeakable final moments drives her best friend Becca,
played by Rachael Bella, to a mental ward.
For
Gore Verbinski, one of the first and most daunting challenges was
to create the ominous videotape that is at the center of "The
Ring." "The tape had to serve two functions," he
notes. "It had to contain clues to its origin and to understanding
why it was created. As abstract as it appears at first viewing,
as you progress, those images have to have a reason to be. The video
also had to be bizarre, to shock you without seeming to have been
designed to do so. That's a tricky thing to do. I started with some
of the key images from the Japanese film, because when you remake
a movie, you want to keep the great moments from the original. Then,
for me personally, I drew on what scared me, my own kind of horrors,
and tried to include them in a way that was compelling, but could
also make sense from the perspective of the person who made the
video."
The
director continues, "I am a big fan of horror films. But there
are the ones that simply shock you, and there are the ones that
operate more subversively. These have a particular psychological
manipulation going on that the viewer is not completely aware of.
When they work, there can be a tremendous residual effect—those
films stay with you longer, because they get under your skin. All
horror films are derived from an essentially very simple premise,
as it is in our film. It is only in the execution that certain films
elevate themselves beyond the genre. These are the ones that inspire
me because they scare me the most. Ultimately, it is about the craft."
Crafting
"The Ring" involved a creative team that included director
of photography Bojan Bazelli, production designer Tom Duffield,
costume designer Julie Weiss, editor Craig Wood, Oscar®-winning
composer Hans Zimmer, multiple Oscar®-winning special make-up
effects artist Rick Baker, and Oscar®-winning visual effects
supervisor Charles Gibson.
While
much of the principal photography was accomplished in and around
Los Angeles and on soundstages, portions of "The Ring"
were filmed on location in the state of Washington. The Pacific
Northwest winter provided a seemingly perpetual overcast and cold,
gloomy weather that only added to the story's atmosphere of dread.
The lack of sun also lent itself perfectly to the soft light and
lack of shadows that Verbinski and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli
were employing to complement the story's surrealistic moments.
Bazelli
expounds, "In lighting the sets and the actors, we tried to
eliminate all the shadows cast by the actors, which is meant to
subconsciously alter the viewer's sense of perception and add a
heightened sense of ambiguity."
While
the gloom and doom were integral to the story's themes, the cold,
wet weather was not as welcome a climate for production designer
Tom Duffield and his team. "The toughest thing for me creatively
was trying to build sets standing in six inches of muddy water,"
Duffield says ruefully. "It was also quite an experience trying
to make the paint stick. Paint doesn't stick in the rain, and it
rained nearly every day."
Duffield
states that renowned New England painter and illustrator Andrew
Wyeth heavily inspired the overall palette of "The Ring."
"In Wyeth's work, the trees are always dormant, and the colors
are muted earth tones. It's greys, it's browns, it's somber colors;
it's ripped fabrics in the windows… His work has a haunting
flavor that I felt would add to the mystique of this movie, so I
latched on to it."
The
primary exception to the film's subdued color scheme was a fiery
red Japanese maple—seen in the cursed video and acting almost
as a signpost along the way. "The tree is a focal point of
the movie. It kind of unifies the different elements—everything
always seems to come back to that tree," offers Duffield.
Nicknamed
"Lucille" after a certain red-headed actress, the tree
was actually artificial, built by the design team out of steel tubing
and plaster, and painted silk for the leaves. Perhaps because it
was not natural, it seemed especially susceptible to nature. "Every
time we put it up, the wind would come up and blow it over. In Washington,
we put it up three separate times, only to have it knocked over
by nearly 100-mile-an-hour wind gusts. We tried it again in Los
Angeles when it wasn't windy at all, and that night we had 60-mile-an-hour
winds that blew it down all over again. It was very strange,"
Duffield comments.
The
red maple was also one of the designer's homages to the story's
Japanese origins. Others that might be picked out include an American
version of a sliding luminous door, and a Japanese wall hanging
seen at the Morgan ranch.
Throughout
the movie, Duffield also incorporated a ring motif wherever possible—like
the ring-patterned carpeting and wallpaper, and the circular knobs
in the kitchen—which calls to mind the film's enigmatic title.
"One
of the things I first loved about the project was the title,"
Walter Parkes says. "Within the context of the movie, it could
have a number of different meanings: the ringing of the telephone,
the ominous image of an eclipse-like ring of light, or perhaps it
is the circular storyline that leads you back to the beginning…"
"Our
journey began with a videotape that comes with a warning. Yet, it
is the very warning that makes it all the more interesting to us,"
Gore Verbinski muses. "Taboos are always accompanied by temptation;
it's an essential quality of human nature—to discover the forbidden.
Knowing this about us is what makes the evil essence of 'The Ring'
all the more horrifying."
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