The Fall
“A Little Blessing In Disguise.“
Lee Pace as Roy Walker / Black Bandit
Directed by Tarsem Singh
Written by Dan Gilroy & Nico Soultanakis
Release Date: May 30, 2008
Also starring: Catinca Untaru, Justin Waddell, and Emma Johnson
Genre: Adventure | Drama | Fantasy
MPAA Rating: R
Synopsis
In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastical story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances.
Trivia & Facts
• This movie is inspired by the Bulgarian movie Yo ho ho (1981).
• The film was shot on 26 locations over 18 countries in 4 years.
• The director claims that there are no special effects in the film despite its surreal looks. Everything was shot on real locations.
• A miscommunication between the casting agent and Catinca Untaru led her to believe that Lee Pace was a real-life paraplegic. Director Tarsem Singh found that this brought an added level of believability to their dialogue, so he decided to keep almost the entire cast and crew under the same impression. Apparently it was hard to keep up the lie – a makeup artist walked into a room to find Pace standing and almost passed out from shock.
• The cinematic poster for this movie is based on the Salvador Dali painting, “1935_03_Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment”, circa 1935.
• During the first 2h meeting between Tarsem and Lee, the director asked Lee if he had a penis. “Hopefully he didn’t need an answer to that question. That meeting wasn’t going to go there,” Lee commented. Lee was previously only known for his role in Soldier’s Girl.
Memorable Quotes
Roy Walker: Are you trying to save my soul?
Roy Walker: Next was the English naturalist: Charles Darwin. He loved all living things. Creatures, plants… everything alive.
Roy Walker: It was the natural order of things… all things must die.
Quotes About The Film
“Whenever I get recognized, it’s from The Fall.”
“I’m so proud of The Fall that I’m incredibly excited when people recognize me from that. I just want to tell stories from shooting it because I loved making that movie so much.”
“South Africa was a really exceptional place. I loved it there.” (On his favourite place when shooting.)
“He said that it was the way he wanted to work with this little girl, so that she would truly believe that I was paralysed and that everyone on the set would believe it, because if they didn’t believe it then she would figure it out pretty quickly. The thing about that was that originally I thought that it was all about her performance, and trying to find a way to help her to make her performance really authentic, when she’s not really an actress. But it helped me, actually, an incredible amount. It put me in a place. Lying to everyone that I was paralysed – they were all the way on one side of Cape Town and I was all the way on the other side of Cape Town – it took a lot out of me.” (On Tarsem’s idea of pretending Lee’s paralysed.)
“You sit there and lie to people and you think it’s all to make it a good movie, but these are still people you consider your friends after a while, and I’m sat there talking about a motorcycle accident that never happened.”
“I just thought, “Who knows what this movie is going to be, but I think it’s going to be fun to work on it.” And he didn’t disappoint. One of the things he said in the meeting was, “This is the type of movie they will teach in film school.” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every director says that kind of thing.” But when I watched it again last night at a screening, it absolutely is the kind of movie they’re going to teach in film school. It’s very layered and very complicated. Every time I watch it, I get more out of it.”
“When we were shooting it, they would pull the curtain around the bed and cut holes in it for the camera, and she had no idea she was being filmed.” (On his young co-star.)
“What I learned from this movie is that you just gotta be game for anything.”
“It was a big part of my job to just make her feel comfortable and make her fell that she could tell me anything. I say it like it was a chore, but it wasn’t. She was a pleasure to fall in love with and to get to work in that way with, where it’s just about being simple and being honest. And the other thing is, by the end of the shoot in South Africa, she figured it out. She figured out that there was a camera filming her and that she was adorable.”
“I was really depressed being in that wheelchair. It was depressing having to lie to people about a motorcycle accident that I was in.”
