Movies

‘The Whale’ star Brendan Fraser apologizes in San Francisco

October 14, 2022

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Brendan Fraser was in attendance last night for the screening of Darren Aronofsky’s new film “The Whale” at the Mill Valley Film Festival, and he had a few words of apology for the city of San Francisco and the wider Bay Area.

In a red carpet interview with SFGATE ahead of the movie, Fraser recounted an incident that happened while filming the 1997 comedy “George of the Jungle.” Set and filmed in San Francisco, the film features an iconic scene showing Fraser (as George) hanging from the top of the Bay Bridge (Fraser incorrectly referred to the Golden Gate Bridge, but it’s been 25 years, so we’ll give him pause ).

“I almost have to apologize,” Fraser said.

“When we were doing ‘George of the Jungle,’ George is going to rescue a skydiver tangled in the Golden Gate Bridge. That means Disney put a mannequin suspended by a parachute from the uprights.”

“It paralyzed traffic on either side of the bridge,” he said. “My trailer was on the other side in a parking lot. I just remember looking at the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s this dummy skydiver hanging over it. I had the TV on and ‘Oprah’ was interrupted because there was a special report with helicopters saying a parachute is hanging over the deck. And I’m going – wait a minute, I’m watching the helicopters and the TV – someone didn’t pull out a permit, someone going to be in trouble with the mayor’s office. So I can only apologize for that.”

An hour later, in an introduction to the screening, the Mill Valley Film Festival showed a highlight of Fraser’s career and presented him with a lifetime achievement award. As he received a small statue, Fraser said a gracious thank you…and then launched into a retelling of the same “George of the Jungle” anecdote.

“One more quick thing – I just want to quickly apologize. A few years ago I did a movie called ‘George of the Jungle’.” He went on to describe the scene again, to the cheers of the crowd.

“So, that said – my bad, it won’t happen again,” he added, slipping into Fraser’s vintage blunder mode.

Brendan Fraser in “The Whale”.

Courtesy of A24

The lights then went out and the movie began. In “The Whale,” Fraser plays Charlie, a reclusive overweight man who teaches English lessons online with his webcam turned off. Charlie, who is immobile and days away from dying of heart disease, tries to reconnect with his daughter Ellie (played by Sadie Sink from “Stranger Things”). The film takes place entirely in Charlie’s cramped apartment, giving it the feeling of an intimate room (it was adapted from a theatrical production).

The film received a six-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, and Fraser is likely an Oscar contender for his understated and poignant portrayal of a man struggling with obesity. After the film in a Q&A, Fraser recounted the lengths he went to portraying the 600-pound character. Physically, it took four hours a day to get him into the huge suit. Emotionally, Fraser worked with the Obesity Action Coalition, a psychiatrist who specializes in eating disorders, and met 10 people who had lived with varying levels of obesity.

On the verge of tears, Fraser recounted the experience.

“They had this in common…I noticed that at the beginning of their stories, very early on, there was a character, sometimes a parent, sometimes a father, who spoke vindictively to them when they were children about of their body weight. It sparked a pattern that stayed with them for the rest of their lives,” he said. Then Fraser referred to an experience he had while visiting a Buddhist temple in Bangkok. , where he read a plaque that read “painful is indeed vindictive speech”.

“I put the two together and I realized that words have consequences. What we say to each other, what we say to our children, how we talk to each other, it can hurt. A film does not will never solve anyone’s problems, but it can eventually help influence the culture, how we think, how we feel, how we talk to each other… So I felt a moral obligation to give it my all. “

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