“We got lucky twice,” says Jinks. “Who could wish for two better actors to play Sandra, and who could deny the similarities - the cheek bones, the smile, the same feminine physicality.”
For Lange, the power of Big Fish was in its evocation of the magic realism style of such giants of literature as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Juan Rulfo. “It was a unique script for an American film,” says Lange, “a wonderful fable, beautifully written, with interesting movement through time. And the setting was terrific, the wintry woods of Alabama, very haunted, very surreal.”
Spending time in Alabama, where she had shot her Oscar winning Blue Sky, Lange again found herself in the thrall of her environment. “There’s great mystery down here, it’s deeply unsettling and absolutely fascinating. That magic, mystery, and a kind of sorrow that exists in Alabama truly permeates the film.”
At its heart, beyond all the larger-than-life adventures, Lange sees Big Fish as essentially a love story. “I wanted the audience to be able to understand immediately that Edward and Sandra are still madly in love after 40 years, that this practical down-to-earth woman fulfills all his fantasies. Sandra is a wonderful character. She has a wonderful acceptance of the world, of letting things be.”
In portraying the young Sandra, Lohman was captivated by the romance of the story. She says she was overwhelmed by the depth and tenacity of Edward’s passionate courtship, which starts out when she receives 10,000 daffodils. “You just never imagine that love can be like that. This man would do anything for her,” says Lohman. “And I found that beautiful, poetic, like a fairytale.”
The romance in Big Fish was so palpable for Lohman that it has almost made a believer of her. “I hate to be pessimistic, but in real life you don’t really see that kind of love. You think it only happens in movies. But it’s almost like this film is so believable it makes you rise to the level of actually thinking it could happen. That’s what I think is so powerful about this movie. It gives you hope.”
The final significant casting challenge was the role of Will, the estranged son who lives in his father’s shadow, a character August developed from the novel’s abstract narrator. The actor Burton had in mind was Billy Crudup, who had received a Tony nomination for his performance as “The Elephant Man” and is best known to film audiences from his starring roles in Almost Famous and Without Limits.
Will is a journalist who has moved to Paris because in Ashton, Alabama and perhaps the entire South, he would always be Edward Bloom’s son. “So he escaped to carve out his own place in the world and claim his own identity,” says Burton.
One of the attractions for Crudup was to work with Burton. “It’s hard to find a director with such a unique voice who has been so consistent over a period of time,” he says. “In order to be prolific you have to be successful and it’s hard to be successful when you’re speaking in your own voice. I can’t think of any other director who has done that for so long.”
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