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Haley
Joel Osment plays introverted 14 year-old
Walter in Tim McCanlies' new Secondhand
Lions who finds himself spending the summer
with two great-uncles (Michael Caine and
Robert Duvall). He says working with the
two veteran actors was quite something.
"There's
so much to learn from those guys. Everyday
on the set was a learning experience,
whether they were trying to teach me anything
or not, because they were wise enough
not to feel the need to tell you anything.
It was pretty much they just did what
they did on the set, you know, and you
watched and learned from how professional
they were."
The
casting of Caine and Duvall wasn't the
only thing that attracted Osment to the
project. "The script was very appealing,
I mean it just really came alive on the
page. It had really strong deep characters
on it. Even before we found out that Michael
and Robert were attached, we just saw
that the script just had so much depth
to it. Tim had 10 years really to pull
all his heart and all of the life into
the script to where the characters, really,
you could see everything to them. Then
of course when these two guys signed on
there's every reason to do it."
Part
of the fun of Walter's dilemma is how
much he is going to believe of the uncle's
tale in the movie. "Oh yeah, I think
everyone, initially, is going to want
to buy into that. I like how these sequences
themselves are really shown through Walter's
eyes because it's really unlocking his
imagination for the first time. Before
this film starts, he has no convictions,
he doesn't believe in anything and he
really has this really incredible imagination
and the first time it's unlocked is when
he meets these two old men and they finally
give him something that he's interested
in and that he wants to believe in. That's
why the sequences are so effective. When
I first read the script I really did wanna
believe in it, just like Walter does."
Haley
also got to work with many animals while
shooting, including a lion which his character
wrestles with. "I did not get to
wrestle with the lion, I really wanted
to. They were a little bit hesitant about
that, understandably, because it was a
dangerous animal. But you know, just the
way that the animal interacted with the
trainers and everything, it had such an
intense training program that when it
was on the set, it was pretty much well
rehearsed. It knew exactly what it had
to do. So when the scene came up where
we were supposed to wrestle with the lion,
everybody was very scared about it. And
I was ready to go jump in that cage with
that lion. But I suppose they weren't
too comfortable with that."
The
dogs were a little less dangerous. "The
dogs were great. They actually had photo
doubles! So there was actually 10 or 12
dogs running around the set at all times.
It was pretty entertaining to have this
heard of animals that really added a lot
of character to the film. We ended up
putting them in a lot more scenes than
they were originally allotted because
they have such great character and they
made such great humorous moments."
Haley's
most memorable scene to perform was one
with Robert Duvall down at the lake. "That
was a really emotionally-charged scene.
That's why it was so memorable I guess,
because of the level of emotion that we
had built up. Through the entire film,
Hub [Duvall's character] is communicating
with Walter pretty much in one word snippets.
And now he's speaking to him in such detail
and depth, I think the level of emotion
we got in that scene was really genuine.
It was exhausting because we had to put
so much into that."
There's
lots of humor in the film, though the
actors didn't think they were being funny.
"It's not about jokes that are planned,
its about the humor in the characters
themselves. It's about laughing at the
ridiculousness just of who they are as
people and the way they interact with
each other, you know there are individual
instances that are gags and stuff. But
the funniest parts are just the characters
of these old men. If this was real life
they wouldn't be trying to make the audience
laugh. There's no audience there. So it's
even funnier when the character is just
doing what he sees as normal and it's
funny to us."
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