He may have been absent, but Roman Polanski made his presence felt at the Venice film festival today, September 1, with his comedy “Carnage,” in which Oscar-winner Kate Winslet's projectile vomit prompted the biggest laugh.
Some of the adaptation of Yasmina Reza's stage comedy “The God of Carnage” was written by the Franco-Polish film maker while he was under house arrest in Switzerland last year.
Unsurprisingly, Polanski was not on the Lido waterfront to present the world première of his latest picture, one of 22 in the main competition lineup in Venice. But three of the four cast — Oscar-winners Winslet and Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly were at the annual cinema showcase to promote the movie. Jodie Foster rounded off the cast, but did not attend the press conference in Venice.
Polanski set the comedy of manners in New York but filmed it in Paris, and would have been warmed by the loud applause after a press screening which elicited plenty of laughs.
Winslet, playing investment broker Nancy Cowan, won the biggest cheer for her on-screen vomit, an experience she later described as “hilarious.
It was absolutely hilarious shooting the vomit sequence. We were all completely beside ourselves with laughter. I had to contain a lot of vomit in my mouth which is not possible for a person to do. So without going into too much detail, it was a fairly complex rig and there was some extremely clever CGI involved.
My kids came to work … for the vomit day and I'm so thrilled that they were there because they literally haven't stopped talking about it since.
via Reuters
Photo by Chrisa Hickey – 2009 Oscar Ceremony
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
