Logos?!

A whole galaxy of stars on Mars
By GARRY MADDOX, Film Writer
It's day 40 on the set of The Red Planet and there's a hitch. One of the five astronauts strapped inside the Mars landing pod has lost communication. Benjamin Bratt, of Law and Order fame, is having trouble hearing his instructions. In real space, major problem. In a studio, surrounded by a director and more than 60 crew working on the latest Hollywood film to shoot in Sydney, it's a minor hiccup in a vastly complex production.

     "Tell him to turn off his helmet fan," someone calls. That seems to solve the problem, so the director, Antony Hoffman, briefs his astronauts - played by Val Kilmer, Terence Stamp, Tom Sizemore, Simon Baker and Bratt - for a shot in which their tiny pod heads for the surface of the red planet.

     In their blue, logo-laden spacesuits and helmets, the astronauts brace and rock as the crew films the next stage of their mission. It's no small mission - in 2050, with Earth dying, the sole hope for humanity is that Mars can support a colony. And when their equipment is damaged, the astronauts have to depend on each other for survival. Sounds like Mission: Impossible 3.

     The film is Australia's contribution to the new space race - the Hollywood rivalry to bring Mars projects to the screen. The Red Planet is backed by Warner Bros and Village Roadshow, the combination behind such hits as The Matrix and Analyse This. Brian De Palma is also making Mission to Mars for Disney and James Cameron is working on both a Mars television drama and IMAX film. Given his Oscars claim to be "king of the world", he's no doubt aiming to be "king of the solar system", too.

     The Australian producer, Andrew Mason, plays down the competition. "Yes, there are other films and television projects set on and involving Mars, but there have been in the past and there no doubt will be again. It's not going to be a damaging coincidence. A Bug's Life and Antz both made money." Fair point. Deep Impact and Armageddon both found an audience, too.

     The Red Planet, which is due for release next March (now June-Bert), came to Australia after a week of filming in Jordan, a late change from Iceland after the film-makers discovered grass growing on the planned location. There were three weeks of filming in Coober Pedy before the production moved to various studios and warehouses in Sydney - a byproduct of heavy bookings at Fox Studios.

     Even with a budget that Mason says is "slightly less than The Matrix" (which was reportedly about $100 million) it's clear that Hoffman, a South African who made his name with big-budget commercials, has not shirked a challenge on his first feature film.

     Severe heat in both Jordan and Coober Pedy made it tough for a cast wearing elaborate spacesuits that take 30 minutes to don. Even with helmet fans and cooling vests underneath the suits, one of the actors reputedly fainted twice in 50C-plus heat and there were also problems with claustrophobia. In the outback, there were dust storms and strong winds. Even at Fox Studios, a crew member sweeps red dust from a truck. Mason admits the film has had its difficulties, including the late change to Jordan and "pure physical difficulties" in Coober Pedy. But he says production has settled down at the halfway stage of the shoot.

     According to Australia's Simon Baker, every film has its own environment, its own challenges. In that sense, he says, it's no different from Ang Lee's Ride With The Devil, the American Civil War film that he worked on last year.

     Tom Sizemore, the American actor who comes to The Red Planet after Saving Private Ryan and Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out The Dead, agrees it's all relative.

     "We hung together and we're making a hard movie, but it's been worth it," he says. "Any movie takes some coming to terms with whatever it is you have to do if it's difficult."

     "In Saving Private Ryan, we had to come to terms with the sea for a month. Tom Hanks and myself started out in the Irish Sea every day, soaking wet, running up a beach. That wasn't easy either, but that also was worth it. I don't know what it is about me and hard movies, but I've been attracted to a couple of them." Mason says Hoffman wanted to use real locations instead of shooting the entire film in the studio and relying on post-production effects."

     Australia obviously has some big red expanses. Jordan gave us some dramatic height that isn't present [in the outback] - some big cliffs." Even though the film is Hollywood in both scale and ambition, Mason stresses the international nature of the lead actors. "There are six key roles and there are three Americans [Kilmer, Bratt, Sizemore], an Australian [Baker], a Canadian [Carrie-Anne Moss] and a Brit [Stamp]. That's a reasonably eclectic group."

     Now that there's virtually a production line of Hollywood films in Sydney, Mason says the novelty of having stars in town seems to have worn off. He has found that Australians don't hassle the big-name actors - even those, like Bratt, who fraternise with Julia Roberts in their spare time. "In LA and lots of other places, people would be coming up to them all the time. But it doesn't happen here ... There's no mobbing of people."

The production takes a break. As the caterers finalise their own challenge - lunch for 150 - Kilmer strips off the top half of his spacesuit and clunks to the catering tent, past befeathered dancers on a break from rehearsing Moulin Rouge on the next soundstage. Other crews are shooting a commercial and a Channel 9 spot nearby.

In his trailer, which still carries some of that Coober Pedy dust, Baker
says it is more than just an adventure film. The journey to Mars becomes a virtual survival mission which forces the characters to deal with such issues as God v science.

His character is a biologist who wants to make the new planet habitable:
"They need to globally warm Mars ... to create an atmosphere."

Baker is delighted to be filming in Sydney after a series of Hollywood
films, notably L.A. Confidential and Judas Kiss, but points out that he was cast out of the States. No-one knows him here, he says. He recognises the economic benefits of the production, "but I baulk at [people] saying it's great for the Australian film industry. The Australian film industry is Australian films."

The film-makers say they will spend almost $40 million and employ 360 people in NSW. For the State's economy, the latest space race has its advantages.