Cannibalism a Tough Sell for Director

“I’m 0 for 2 now.”

Frank Marshall can’t help but laugh a little about his inability to make movies that can be shown on commercial airplanes. After producing some of the biggest blockbusters of the ‘80s for Amblin Entertainment, Marshall made his directorial debut in 1990 with “Arachnophobia,” a horror movie about killer spiders as big as a can of Spam.

Forget it, the airlines said unanimously.

“When you’re watching a movie on a plane,” explains Marshall, 46, “you’re a captive audience. You can’t really look away. And they thought the spiders would freak people out.”

Marshall’s new movie, “Alive”--based on the true story of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes Mountains in 1972--also won’t be screening in the friendly skies. Not so much because of a five-minute scene in which the survivors of the crash are seen eating crash victims, but because of the plane crash itself, which says Marshall, “capitalized on everything I’ve ever learned about making movies.”

That said, Marshall pauses. “I want to make it clear,” he says, “that this movie isn’t just about the crash or the cannibalism. It’s about a lot more than that.”

But conveying the film’s content to prospective moviegoers has proven to be tricky for Touchstone Pictures, the movie’s domestic distributor. Originally scheduled for release last Nov. 6, Touchstone, (Paramount, co-owner of the rights, will release the movie internationally) decided to hold off the launch of “Alive” until Friday largely, says Marshall, because the marketing campaign just wasn’t gelling.

“We hadn’t really come up with a complete campaign that worked until recently,” says Marshall. “And that’s not any one person’s fault. It’s just a tough movie and a tough sell, so we kept searching.”

The original trailers for “Alive” were a pastiche of the spiritual and the sensational. Survivors were seen huddling in the fuselage of their plane, hiking out for help, and discussing the cannibalism. Those trailers were quickly yanked.

“I didn’t want people to think this was a disaster movie like ‘The Poseidon Adventure,’ or a TV movie thing,” says Marshall. “And certainly none of us wanted to push the eating aspect and make this seem like a slasher movie, because it’s far from that. It’s a movie about human interaction on this mountain and the will to survive. To live. And so we pulled the trailer and the spots and changed them.”

The new television ads and trailers revolve around the film’s survivor/narrator (an uncredited John Malkovich), who talks about brotherhood and sensing God on the mountain and thus sets up the film as a human endurance/bonding epic. Malkovich’s scenes are bookends in “Alive,” and contrary to rumor, Marshall says they were not last minute additions.

“They were always in there, from John’s first draft on. I mean, if you’re seeing the movie and you haven’t read the book if you don’t have a survivor of this horrendous ordeal setting things up, you don’t realize that some of them lived. And it would be a horrific experience to sit there and think ‘My God, this movie is just going to be about everybody dying.’ ”

The crash scene opens the movie, although it wasn’t always this way. Kicking around since 1974 at over five different studios, “Alive,” based on Piers Paul Read’s best-selling 1974 book, has gone through over 10 drafts in 18 years.

“My view, and John Patrick Shanley’s view (Shanley wrote the shooting script), was ‘we know there’s going to be a plane crash. So let’s just get it over with.’ And in doing that, I wanted it to be the biggest, most realistic plane crash scene ever.” The scene took$1.5 million out of the movie’s budget of $25 million and is a combination of live action, stunts, blue-screen work and model and miniature manipulation.

It just may be the movies’ most realistic plane crash scene, and the airlines aren’t the only ones who have found the scene disturbing. The Motion Picture Assn. of America also balked, and because of the crash tableau, slapped the film with an R.

When Marshall was shocked. “I asked them ‘is there one particular moment you object to?’ They said, ‘no, it’s not that it’s too gory, or exploitative. It’s just too intense.’ They didn’t ask me to trim it, but I wouldn’t have anyway.”

Of the 27 who lived through the crash, only 16 made it off the mountain. The world’s fascination with the Andes survivors was not lost on Hollywood. Read’s book was first acquired by United Artists in 1974. Decades later, Disney Studio’s Jeffrey Katzenberg--who has been interested in the tale ever since his days at Paramount--had acquired a draft of the story he felt was filmable.

Marshall and Kennedy, who produced the film, first heard about the script during a meeting with Katzenberg. “Why don’t you read this and tell me what you think,” said the studio chief. Marshall--who was going to direct a World War II musical for Disney called “Swing Kids”--was so taken with the idea that he moved immediately onto “Alive.”

Shanley was brought on and wrote an entirely new draft in four weeks. “Kathleen and I wanted John because he got the emotion of the story, and also because we wanted a playwright. This story is like a play, in that it all takes place in one setting--the mountain.

“The thing that hooked all of us I think was the challenge. I wanted to see ‘can this be done? And be done tastefully, in the spirit of the survivors?’ ”

That was not the case with the 1976 cheapo Alan Carr exploitation movie “Survive!” Very sensational and very gory, “that movie,” says Marshall with a wince, “was all about the eating. When I talked to the survivors, I learned they were all very upset with that film. It made them look bad. I told them they wouldn’t have that problem with the film we were doing.”

Along with the challenge of the 82-day shoot (most of which occurred on a glacier in British Columbia), Marshall says his biggest concern was the casting.

“I didn’t want people who were 27 who could look 20 or 21, which was the age of most of the guys on the mountain,” Marshall says. “I definitely did not want that ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ cast-meets-the-Andes approach.”

Of all the cast-members, only two--Vincent Spano and Ethan Hawke--are movie veterans. Hawke has the lead role of survivor Nando Parrado, who himself was the film’s technical adviser.

Having Parrado over his shoulder, says Marshall, was both nerve-racking and emotional. Parrado was unconscious for the first two days after the crash, when both his mother and sister died on the mountain. When he lived through their deaths for the first time watching the daily rushes, he bolted from the room in tears.

“It was a very emotional, painful experience, this is true,” says Parrado. “The story is so intense that I think some people will have difficulty believing it was true. But I’m very pleased with the movie. To me, the film looks like Frank was with us at the crash site with a camera. What I like the most about the movie is that it is accurate. I hope people will see it and understand why we did what we did.”

Parrado is referring to the film’s cannibalism scenes. Some filmgoers at preview and press screenings have bolted from the theater during these moments, a fact that does not surprise Marshall.

“It’s tough to watch, but that’s what they had to do,” he says. “You think it is hard to see? Well, it was even harder for them to do that, believe me. I felt you had to show them eat at least once, and once you did that, you could move on. And if you skirted those scenes, well, that would be a cop-out.”

While some will find the cannibalism scenes difficult to take, others, certainly, will be drawn to the theaters because of them. “I know some people will come just for those scenes because they’re curious, and that doesn’t bother me,” says Marshall matter-of-factly. “They had to drink, they had to stay warm, and they had to eat--period. We’re obligated to show all of it. But hopefully, you will feel the survivors repulsion during that first cut. I want people to feel what these guys went through.”

But what Marshall left out of the film is just as interesting, and perhaps disturbing, as his final cut.

After being airlifted off the mountain two months after their ordeal began, the survivors made a pact: They would not reveal that they ate the dead to survive. But when the picked-over bodies were discovered on the mountain, the press broke their secret, initially causing them great shame.

The Roman Catholic Church, however, absolved them, and the survivors--all of whom are still alive and keep in touch--explained their actions at a press conference.

With “Alive” done, Marshall is looking for other projects. Last week, he moved from offices at Universal, where Amblin, the company he formed with Kennedy and Steven Spielberg, is housed, to a suite at Paramount, where he and Kennedy have a production deal. “There really is only room for one director at Amblin, and that’s Steven,” he says.

But Marshall is quick to add that the break has not interfered with his and Spielberg’s friendship. “Steven has been very supportive and we talk all the time. Actually, he sent me a snowmobile for Christmas.”