Anyhoo... I read The Lovely Bones a while back and while I liked it, I wasn't quite as taken with it as I think I was supposed to be. It was a national phenomenon!! For me? Eh, not so much. Still, I was following the status of the movie and felt bad for Ryan Gosling when he was unceremoniously dumped as the father. Rumor was that he was either (a) too fat and Peter Jackson didn't like it but Ryan felt he looked too young at a lesser weight; or (b) a prima donna that rankled everyone and no one was sad to see him go. However, recent developments may shed some light on the production and clear Ryan's name a bit.
This report about a temporary set shut-down surfaced on Friday, courtesy of Defamer.com. The basic gist is:
It was Ryan Gosling who was originally blamed for being the temperamental artiste gumming up the works on the set of Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, but recent mumblings suggest it is the exacting director who is proving to be his own worst enemy: Production has reportedly temporarily shut down as Jackson battles with his art director over how to best depict the movie's version of Heaven. On top of that, Susan Sarandon has grumbled on the Speed Racer red carpet about how she was instructed to play her character. From Flicks.co.nz:
"I play the comic relief, an alcoholic grandmother - my first grandma - but she doesn't really seem like a real grandmother because she has a lot of hair and jewellery and nails and liquor. I don't think I ever talk without a cigarette and a drink in my hand."
"Peter Jackson is really a nice guy and very interesting. It was really a very different way of working. We had a good time, I'm really curious to see what it's like because he kept pushing me to be more and more extreme and sometimes that's when you make your big mistakes so I'm not sure how it will come off - it will be interesting to see it from the point of view of the audience."
Portraying Heaven on screen is a far dicier proposition than, say, the Fires of Mordor—all those feathers, fluff, and pearly gates threaten to tip your vision too easily into the Realm of the Cheesy Afterlife. Still, we have high hopes for any Jackson film, and we only pray he doesn't use this production to indulge his more volatile creative instincts, pushing a tray of painstainkingly hand-sculpted femurs and ulnas into his prop master's face, screaming, "These bones aren't nearly lovely enough!" before storming off to his trailer.
Yet further ominous news for Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones: the badandugly.com reports the movie's release date has been pushed from March 13, 2009 to the far more vague "fall 2009." First Valkyrie, now this: We'd just gotten used the fact that we'd have to wait months for our one-eyed Hitler-hunter yarn. But at the rate things are going now, it seems like we'll never get a change to enjoy kicking back to a brutally raped and murdered tween's mile-high observations about the family who has yet to discover her skeletal remains. It's no fair!
While I don't doubt that Ryan's very likely eccentricities played a part in his dismissal, it doesn't look too good for ol' Peter these days, either. I definitely think the story is a difficult one to portray on film but that's why Jackson makes millions and billions of dollars and I get paid in gum and quarters.
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