听 Despite being an A-List star, Robin Williams occasionally likes to mix it up with low-budget features like The Big White. Unfortunately, this dark comedy about a man trying to pass off a random corpse as his dead brother for the insurance payout was a good idea marred by "cheap and obvious" gags. It went straight-to-video in the US, but it is doing a fair trade on the small screen.
Gaining Altitude
Canada doubled for the wilds of Alaska in the movie and in the featurette Adventures In Filmmaking we get a glimpse of the daily battle against the elements. British director Mark Mylod (Ali G Indahouse) bemoans delays caused by whiteouts, but overall the cast and crew seem to relish the challenge. "There's a certain pioneer spirit," says Williams, "because you could really freeze to death..." Besides a brief look behind the scenes, the featurette basically retells the story and hypes up the leading cast. Williams explains that co-star Holly Hunter was hired because she is "a weird combination of child and ferret."
Snow Problem
Mylod uses the same bizarre analogy to describe Hunter in his commentary for the main feature. Inevitably he talks a lot about the weather as well ("I've never been so cold in my life") although it comes as a surprise to hear that post-production took ten months because blue skies had to be converted to white with digital mist. Apparently the bulk of the shoot took place during the summer in Winnipeg and they even flew as far as New Zealand for the opening scenes of Hunter running through the mountains. Mylod explains that this was a pickup shoot (after principal photography) when most snows had melted in the northern hemisphere.
Perhaps the most revealing thing we learn from this commentary is that financiers wanted Meg Ryan to play Holly Hunter's role. She flirted with the idea for about a year before eventually dropping it. "No disrespect to Meg," says Mylod, "but I wanted Holly in the first place." (Ouch.)
Rounding off the extras package is just over eleven minutes of b-roll where you get to see Mylod trying to give Williams direction. Naturally we're also treated to The Hairy One's manic improvisations, which in this case include wearing a chicken on his face...
It's a small set of extras and while there are a few interesting behind-the-scenes notes, overall it's pretty banal. There's no word from Holly Hunter or co-star Giovanni Ribisi and not a peep from the writer either. Like the title suggests, this DVD is marked by blank spaces.
EXTRA FEATURES
