Night at the Museum
Interview: Shawn Levy On Night at the Museum
“Almost certainly the entire visual effects
team that worked on the movie said this is far and away the most improvisational
adventure/effects movie they have ever heard of,” said director Shawn
Levy. “Whether it was Rickey Gervais or [Steve] Coogan or Owen, often
times with Dick [Van Dyke], Mickey [Rooney], it was a heavily improvisational
process. In fact, many of my favorite scenes are almost entirely improvised.”
The only difference is, improv takes a lot longer when you’re waiting
for reaction shots. “The interesting thing about those scenes is literally
the way we did it, because Ben and Owen weren’t even in the same country.
So, literally we shot the scene with Ben talking to a toothpick and then
he would say the scripted line to the toothpick and then he would do 20
variations on the scripted line to the toothpick. Then I would literally
have to watch it all and write down every variation that Ben did. Then three
months later when Owen Wilson showed up, I would sit there and I would feed
him all 20 versions so I could get twenty possibly reactions. And then literally,
I figured out editorially which ones I wanted to put together. So, it is
improvisational, but it’s unlike any improv I’ve ever been a
part of.”
For the non-dialogue creatures, Levy had to perform
for Ben. “In fact like 80% of the monkey’s sounds in the movie
is me. You can’t do it justice in print so I won’t bother humiliating
myself but literally 75%-80% of the monkey is actually me on set playing
the monkey.”
One improvisation that did not require special effects was having the old
security guards break out into dance. “It was literally just an idea
that came to us on the day. It was never in the script and we just played
some music very loudly and said, ‘Dance! Dance!’ And first of
all Mickey Rooney was kind of confused and then he was like, ‘You
really want me to dance?’ and then they all really committed to it
like you can see, but none more gracefully and with such agility as Dick
Van Dyke. I’m not sure if you stuck around that long in the credits,
but my personal favorite is Dick, after doing a weird, sinewy, Axel Rose
snake-like move, just turns his back to the camera and does a pure booty
shake for about five seconds. I hope you caught that because that’s
a gem.”
Night at the Museum opens to theatres on December 22nd.
For the trailers, posters, stills, more interviews and more movie info,
go to the Night
at the Museum Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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