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How the cast and crew came
together.
 Jackson’s decision to keep the tale in its original time and setting—the Depression Era of 1933—was a simple one, based on two deciding factors: “I just wanted to be able to have the climax of the film—which is obviously the iconic sequence of the biplanes attacking Kong on the top of the Empire State Building—and I couldn’t figure out a way that you could ever justify having biplanes attacking him if it was set in the modern day. Also, I think it gives the film a little kick sideways into a slightly fantastical realm as well. I think that there’s no real sense of mystery or discovery in the world anymore today. Yet in the 1930s, you could believe that there was one tiny, uncharted corner that hadn’t been discovered by man yet…this one tiny, little speck of an island on the ocean that could have slipped through the net.”
This world of 1933 New York is also of significance to the central female character of the story, Ann Darrow. As an actress in vaudeville, Ann earns a living by entertaining, by making people laugh—in songs, skits and with physical humor. Though her onstage persona is a happy one, her life away from the theater is hardly lighthearted. The inherent sadness in her character is palpable—in some ways, her outlook is mirrored by the Great Depression around her. (When she later meets Carl Denham, she offers a particularly character-defining line: “Good things never last, Mr. Denham.”) And now, Ann finds that her particular theatrical dedication has become a dying art form. She turns up to work one day and finds the theater shuttered, her job ended. It is this desperate situation that sends her out into the streets where she meets Denham, who convinces her to board the Venture…she just has to take the first step down a path towards her destiny.
When trying to find an actress who could play the multilayered levels of Ann’s character—the survival instinct, the grit, the underlying melancholy—the filmmakers had long wanted to work with Oscar® nominee Naomi Watts. Jackson had seen her revelatory performance in Mulholland Drive (and in other films) and had kept her in mind for the possibility of a future collaboration.
He says, “I thought, ‘Wow, I’d love to work with her one day.’ You know, she’s such a great actress—she’s so true, so honest. I mean every moment that she is playing she’s playing it from a place of complete emotional honesty. You can see it in her eyes. And so we’d really admired her work; we were fans of hers. But I’d never met her. And when the notion of doing King Kong came up, we knew that we had to cast somebody in the role that had been immortalized by Fay Wray. And we thought, ‘Well, this could be our opportunity to work with Naomi.’”
Jackson and his team were in London, completing post-production for The Return of the King, when Watts came to a meeting over dinner…and left agreeing to assay the role that had made Wray a star.
The draw for Watts was immediate. She explains, “When you choose a film, there are so many elements that you have to think of. But for me, generally speaking, the first thing is the director. Having seen most of Peter’s work, I was hugely excited when I got the call to come and meet. There was no script at that point, but I did know the original film and it seemed like a great idea. And with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, and the great scripts they’ve produced before, it seemed like a very full package. So I actually agreed to do the movie before having read it!”
Much further down the road, when the script was drafted, Watts’ expectations were more than met. She continues, “When I finally got the script, I just thought, ‘Wow, there’s so much in it.’ It was different than anything I’d done. Although it’s an event-spectacle film, the characters have a huge amount of depth. The story is incredibly human.”
Watts adds, “The other thing I look for in a project is the dynamics, usually in the relationships. And the ones here are rich—I love trying to work out the human behavior that goes into everything. On top of that, there is a wealth of great stuff—action, chases, humor, song and dance even—so much more than I ever thought would be in it.”
It was later that Jackson arranged another meeting for Watts, Walsh, Boyens and himself—this time with the actress whose career became forever linked to the role of the beauty that bewitched the beast called Kong: Fay Wray. Not only were the filmmakers hoping that Wray would agree to complete a cameo in the film, they were also interested in simply spending time with the legendary screen beauty—the only surviving principle cast member from the original film.
The mid-winter meeting took place in the New York apartment of a friend of Wray’s. During the evening, talk turned to what it was like to be an actress working in the film industry in the 1930s, which was of particular interest to Watts. Wray had completed around a dozen pictures the same year she made King Kong—there was not the luxury of a long rehearsal process or leisurely breaks between projects. Work was work, churning out entertainment to divert the nation’s attention from the dire economic conditions during the Depression. The filmmakers and Watts peppered the conversation with dozens of questions, which Watts confesses she thought might overwhelm the elderly woman, but that Wray answered with clarity and vigor—“It felt like old-fashioned movie dialogue,” supplies Watts.
When Jackson introduced Naomi as the woman playing Ann Darrow, Wray responded jokingly, “I’m Ann Darrow!”—Wray was still possessive of the role that brought her fame, despite the nearly 100 motion pictures she completed during her career. She later quizzed Watts about her weight, and remarked that she herself weighed “100, but 99 in the morning”—once an actress, always an actress.
Watts remembers, “One of the key things for me signing on was that Peter had lived with this film in his head since he was nine years old. I watched him that night, and how he was with Fay. She really moved him, I think. Can you imagine as a nine-year-old boy, falling in love with this actress? And then, being in her presence? I think he was so touched by her—it was really lovely.”
At the close of the evening, when Wray whispered to Watts, “Ann Darrow is in good hands,” the actress felt that she had been blessed and entrusted to honor both the character and the woman who originated the role.
Wray’s failing health and passing in August 2004, ultimately prevented her from performing the cameo role in Jackson’s film. When her death was announced, Jackson responded: “Fay’s iconic beauty has been immortalized forever on film, but for those lucky enough to meet her, it was her wit, energy, style and charm that stayed with you.”
If Ann Darrow is best remembered as the beauty of the story, then it is Carl Denham who must be classified as the brains behind the scheme that drives the events of King Kong. Whereas filmmakers chose to flesh out Darrow more than reinvent her, they were committed to finding a different take on the character of the flamboyant showman and auteur.
Jackson explains, “We were thinking, initially, of an older Carl Denham, like the original film—I mean, Robert Armstrong is probably around 50 years old. And so, we were thinking of what actors around in that age group that would be an interesting Denham. Then we started to think, ‘Well, maybe, he should be a little younger?’ That coincided with The School of Rock coming out and our children being obsessed with it—we ended up watching it 10 or 12 times over the Christmas holiday, and we liked Jack a lot in that. Then we started to think of the idea of him being Denham.”
Until the idea of Denham being a younger, showy creative force of nature took root, their initial thought seemed somewhat incongruous; the image of such a real-life filmmaker helped bring it all into focus. Jackson continues, “We imagined him being an entrepreneurial, young Orson Welles-type filmmaker, who in the 1930s was running the Mercury Theatre in New York. Denham has a sort of energy and vibrancy and an ability to sweep people along with his vision—he’ll do whatever he needs to do to get the film that he wants made. He’s ambitious and he’s a little bit of a scoundrel…in the way that Orson Welles was. I mean, Orson would take money for a film and go and make a completely different film—that sort of devil-may-care kind of approach. We started to realize that if we took that approach, then Jack Black makes perfect sense.”
Though sure of himself on the outside, Denham is driven by a desperation similar to that which compels Ann Darrow to agree to his questionable proposition of accepting a role in an arduous location-shot movie. Jackson elaborates, “Everybody in the movie, in one way or another, really is driven by a certain desperation—whether it’s the desperation of the Depression or the desperation of being a filmmaker and not being completely honest with your investors, trying to be overly ambitious. It’s a good pressure situation that pushes our characters together and propels the story forward.”
With the clock ticking, Denham must replace his now absent leading lady and get his crew (and his stolen, incomplete film) onto the Venture and out of the docks before the police (who have been summoned by the angry studio executives) apprehend the filmmaker and seize his film. Carl’s one hope of making history lies in reaching the mythic Skull Island—he’s recently come into possession of a crude map detailing an approximate location of this fabled, ancient world. There, he hopes to prove his naysayers wrong and complete his film by adding spectacular footage of a never-before-seen locale to his latest action-adventure opus.
Jackson elaborates on Denham: “Jack brings a wonderful sense of humor—obviously, it goes without saying—to the role, which is important for the character because in some respects he’s flawed. We didn’t want him to be a villain. He’s simply somebody whose sense of excitement, his over ambition and his enthusiasm sometimes mean that he makes decisions that he shouldn’t really have made. And what Jack brings to the character is this wonderful sense of humor and this ‘rascalness,’ if you like, which means that we never judge him as being villainous…we just judge him as being flawed. In the context of the film, we wanted Denham to be somebody who’s not a bad person, but somebody who makes bad decisions.”
Black met with the filmmakers in Los Angeles and readily agreed to play the role. Jackson remembers, “There’s another situation where our first choice for the role agreed to do the film. It’s a wonderful thing if you’re a filmmaker and the actors that are number one on your wish list jump onboard the movie. It just feels like you’ve got to such a good start, like sailing away with the movie that you have imagined with the people that you’ve imagined in the roles.”
Once he had accepted, Black theorized on how he could create the character of Denham and felt like he had a workable concept…at first. Black explains, “Well, when I first got the part, I thought a lot about it. I was wondering if maybe Peter cast me because I kind of look like him—we’re both about the same height, the same build. ‘Hey, he’s a director, and he’s casting me as the director of this movie within the movie. Maybe he wants me because I remind him of him.’ Then I thought, ‘I know what I’ll do. I’m just going to base my whole character on Peter Jackson, and I’m just going to follow him around all the time, and that’ll be my secret.’ But I realized, ‘No, it’s not right. Peter’s not insecure like Carl is. He’s not exploding with anger and obsession. And he’s not anywhere nearly as desperate as I wanted Carl to be.’”
When Black offered that he felt his character was part P.T. Barnum, the filmmakers responded with their already well-conceived take on Denham (“a much less successful Welles”). “He’s very much the struggling artist, or so he thinks,” Black continues. “He has a huge ego and thinks he deserves great recognition. But underneath it all, he’s on thin ice. He’s afraid he’s not going to accomplish anything at all, and that’s what drives him.”
Jackson, Walsh and Boyens went even further afield with their take on the character of Jack Driscoll (who in the 1933 version is the rough-and-tumble first mate to the captain of the Venture). Jackson shares, “I do want to remake the original film—I don’t want to create a new vision of King Kong. I want to honor the original story. But we do have very different characters in our film. We couldn’t quite figure out how we could have a macho, sort of he-man hunk in the Jack Driscoll character, which is the role that Bruce Cabot played. We couldn’t quite figure out how you end up with two macho guys on the same film…because you’ve got Driscoll and you’ve got Kong. We didn’t really want to go down that road. And we thought it would be more interesting to play against that.”
Once again, Jackson and the writers turned to other artistic figures of the time for inspiration, transforming Driscoll from an adventurous seaman to an intellectual, New York playwright, one who pens stage works of social consciousness and relevance…someone along the lines of Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets or Arthur Miller. (One of O’Neill’s works includes a character by the name of Jack Driscoll, and it is rumored that O’Neill was a friend to one of the filmmakers involved in the original film version.) But as socially relevant works don’t sell as well as escapist entertainment in 1933, Driscoll has agreed to moonlight as the screenwriter of the latest exciting action yarn from his friend, Carl Denham.
“We thought of that approach first, without really thinking of an actor,” Jackson continues. “We just thought about changing the character. When we started to think about casting that particular character, Adrien Brody was right at the top of the list. We were in London, there for the BAFTA awards. Adrien was shooting up in Scotland, and he flew down and met with us in the hotel; he agreed to do it.”
But the sensitive playwright doesn’t stay the armchair adventurer once he sets foot on Skull Island. “When the circumstances arise, Driscoll becomes a man of action. It’s a fairly tough role to play. We’d obviously seen a lot of films that Adrien had done, and The Pianist had come out a couple years before we started our film. And we thought that he would be just absolutely wonderful for the role. So again, for the third time, it was a case of our first choice agreeing to do the part. That’s a fantastic thing when you’ve got your dream cast in these roles,” Jackson comments.
Brody remembers his London filmmaker meeting: “I’m a fan of the original film. I remember it from when I was younger, but I also revisited it before I met with Peter and actually had notes and was ready to discuss what I thought could be improved upon the original, even if they weren’t going to hire me. I heard that Peter wanted to meet me, and I was shooting a film in Scotland. We ended up meeting in London, and apparently they were very interested. Normally, when there’s a meeting, there are a number of other people being considered for the role, but they basically said, ‘We’re trying to work this all out, but you are who we’d like to play this role.’ That was pretty amazing.”
“What I had been looking for,” Brody continues, “was a leading role that wasn’t stereotypically the leading man ‘action hero’ guy, but is capable of that. And I’ve always wanted to get involved with something that is a kind of timeless fable, in a sense.”
Much like Watts, Brody was drawn to the expansiveness of the project, but his commitment was cemented by the filmmaker’s belief in the reality underlying the fantasy of the tale. He provides, “One of the many things that impresses me about Peter, Fran and Philippa is that they are really focused on the reality of the circumstances within this unrealistic world, down to the connection between the characters. I never lacked faith in any way, because Peter’s proven himself. He has this vision, and you have to expand your thought process to exist within that and forget all of your surroundings and imagine yourself in another world.”
As the captain of the Venture—which takes the leading lady, the director, the playwright and the crew to the lost world of Skull Island—the filmmakers chose accomplished German actor Thomas Kretschmann, who had also starred with Brody in The Pianist. Captain Englehorn has made a living piloting the rusting vessel around the globe, capturing exotic wildlife and peddling the caged animals to zoos and other not-quite-above-board business enterprises.
Kretschmann was fascinated by his new work environment. “When I saw The Lord of the Rings, I imagined that it came from this big studio down in New Zealand, it was so beautifully made and an amazing accomplishment. Then when I got here, I was surprised to find that it’s more of a big playground, with some scenes being shot in a parking lot, of all places. But what matters is what is done with those shots—clearly magic is being created, to transform a scene shot in a parking lot into something as amazing as King Kong,” he comments.
Cast in the role of Preston, Denham’s tireless assistant and quasi-conscience, was Colin Hanks (interestingly, Black’s co-star in the film Orange County). Preston begins the film as a hardworking, but long-suffering, right-hand man to his boss. As the journey becomes more arduous (and the cost of the film begins to be measured in lives lost), the young idealist is slowly transformed into a realist with his own conscience—a man who can no longer keep step with Denham as he begins his slide down a slippery moral slope.
Hanks, like Kretschmann, was awed by the arsenal of film wizardry being aimed at the story of Kong—but perhaps even more by the amount of feedback the filmmakers solicited from the cast about their characters and then folded into the evolving screenplay. He relates, “It is a huge movie and yet, at the same time, it feels like the most personal story that I’ve ever been involved in telling. It’s been really interesting for me, because never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that one of the biggest movies that I’ll probably ever be in would have allowed me so much input about my character. One of the most interesting aspects of working on this film was that Peter’s very much like a kid playing with toys, except the toys are very big and expensive. But even in the midst of all of the fantastic elements, you still understand the human story at the center. You understand it, and that’s because Peter likes telling personal, dramatic stories…but he likes telling them on a really big canvas.”
The character input that helped to define Preston was also very much at work in the character of Jimmy, the youngest member of the Venture crew, played by 19-year-old Jamie Bell. The street-smart orphan sees his chance for adventure and becomes a stowaway on the Venture. While maritime law dictates that he be left at the next port of call, his toughness and willingness to learn impresses the World War I veteran and first mate Hayes, who allows him to remain onboard. He encourages Jimmy to further his education, to become more than just a sailor on a tramp steamer. Jimmy takes this encouragement one step too far when he steals a copy of Joseph Conrad’s 1902 classic, Heart of Darkness, from the New York Public Library, believing it to be a light-hearted adventure story.
Bell sees direct parallels between Marlow, the narrator of Conrad’s novel, and the character of Carl Denham. He relates, “Carl Denham is taking all of these people on a dangerous journey into the unknown for no real reason. He knows something’s out there, but he’s not quite sure what it is. Why doesn’t he just turn back? Hayes wraps it up very well in the film when he says, ‘There’s a part of him (Marlow) that wants to, Jimmy… but there’s another part, that needs to know, that needs to defeat the thing that makes him afraid.’”
Evan Parke’s character, Hayes, is a seasoned veteran of the 369th division of the 24th infantry in the American army—one of the first all-black, American units to serve in World War I. While the character’s history prepared him for the unexpected, Parke notes that the journey the entire crew and passengers of the S.S. Venture take will be unlike anything they’ve known…from the beginning of the trip. He offers, “The sea represents adventure, an opportunity to learn. It’s funny, even now, people say we’ve discovered everything that we need on earth.” Just as his character soon discovers, Parke quips, “Of course…we know now that’s not fully true.”
Not all on the vessel had the training to weather the storm. Kyle Chandler’s “B”-movie-level leading man Bruce Baxter is a character who was created in homage to actor Bruce Cabot, the actor who played Jack Driscoll in the original 1933 film. Arrogant and brash, Baxter presents another wild card on the ship.
For Chandler, the idea of a Kong remake is a compelling proposition. He remarks, “Tell me a kid down the street that doesn’t want to see a 25-foot gorilla fight with some dinosaurs and then get taken back on a boat to New York City, only to escape and start ripping through the city to find his girlfriend…and he climbs up on top of the highest peak, where airplanes are coming to shoot him down. It’s a great story. That’s why, I think, Peter made it—it captured him like it’s going to capture people all over again.”
Next: Building A Shrewder Ape
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