The Eye: On Set with Director David Moreau and Stars Jessica Alba and Alessandro Nivola
Los Angeles, CA
By: BC

Sydney, a young, blind violinist is given the chance to see for the first time since childhood through a miraculous corneal transplant. As Sydney adjusts to a dizzying new world of colors and shapes, she is haunted by frightening visions of death itself capturing the doomed and dragging them away from the world of the living. Terrorized and on the brink of insanity, Sydney must discover whose eyes she has inherited, and what secret visions they have held.

There’s an old saying common to Los Angeles residents: “Never go downtown unless it’s for a set visit or an open bar.” Sadly this was not the latter, but we did get hummus.

Yes, Bloody-Disgusting (along with several of our esteemed fellow websites) was cordially invited to a set visit for Lionsgate’s upcoming The Eye, based on the Chinese film of the same (translated) name. The film is being directed by French sensations (for their film Ils, a.k.a. Them) David Moreau and Xavier Palud, who are making their US debut. In a weird coincidence, both the original and remake share the rather uncommon stigma of having two directors (the original was directed by the Pang brothers). Both men, along with stars Alessandro Nivola (Face/Off) and Jessica Alba (Idle Hands) talked to us for a bit at the Standard hotel (a very annoyingly designed building that many will recognize from the finale of Crank) over the aforementioned hummus before we all went to the set to watch some filming take place.

Now, being a horror film journalist, it’s not always fun to see bloody action, full makeup appliances, and such when you go to a set. Sometimes, you just want to stand around and watch a street get watered down and then see someone get out of a cab in the rain. That is the stuff that makes the job worthwhile. Thanks to Lionsgate, we got to see just that.

Lionsgate is of course the top genre studio, thanks to the Saw and Hostel franchises, so they are able to provide the makers of The Eye with the absolute best in street-watering technology. You will not be able to tell it’s fake rain when the film is released. And of course, Jessica Alba is generally considered one of the top 5 “Getting out of a cab” actresses in Hollywood, so we were NOT disappointed with this portion of the day. Genre fans will be talking about this scene for years to come, and we were there to see it brought to life!

Before this thrilling on-set action, we were given some time to interview the four. Now, the roof of the Standard (or any roof, really) is not the ideal place to record an interview, as there is a thing called wind that tends to hog the audio when you playback later. So my apologies if some of this is incorrectly transcribed, I did my best. Plus, I don’t really know how many “W”s there are in FWWWWWRRRRRRRRRR.

And while it’s great that Jessica, David, and Xavier would take time out of filming to talk to us, I would like to take the time to give additional props to Alessandro Nivola. He wasn’t even on call today for shooting, so to come in on his day off and subject himself to the “Dr. Seuss on crack” bullshit of the Standard hotel is above and beyond admirable. Thanks to all four for giving us their time!

First up was our interview with Alessandro Nivola:

BD: Can you talk about what The Eye is, how you got involved, and what it’s like working with Jessica?

Nivola: It’s a thriller; about a girl who has been blind most of her life. She gets a cornea transplant, and has real trouble making the adjustment into the seeing world and starts hallucinating. I play a neurophysiologist that she goes to see to ease her transition. He is initially fascinated by her disorder and then starts to fall for her a bit, and he ends up jeopardizing his career to try to help her track down who the donor was.

The movie was just something that came along. I had just finished a movie at the end of last year in New York. I came and met the two directors; two French boys about my age, and they had done this one film in France that was called, “Them” (note – a.k.a. Ils). It was also a thriller. And they had an almost old-fashion style about it. Nowadays everything is chopped up so much, you know? Every two seconds there is an edit. But they had this sort of confidence to hold these shots for much longer and created a reality in the world of the film that I feel is crucial to the fear factor in these kinds of movies. Because if you are able to disassociate too easily with the world of the film, it becomes hard to imagine yourself in those type of circumstances. The more real the world is, I think the more scary it is. And they had a real knack for that.

BD: How is it working with two directors at once? Had you done that before?

Nivola: I never have. I didn’t know how that was going to work. I kept asking them, but they couldn’t seem to explain it. But once we started working it was obvious how it worked with these two. David is a very extroverted, sort of charismatic, persuasive guy who has an easy time talking to the actors, and can corral everybody on the set. He’s very dynamic that way. Xavier is much shier and quieter and more visual. There was a sort of ying and yang to their dynamic together. They didn’t seem to argue much. The only time I heard them argue was when we had been filming nights all week and Xavier was afraid to have David drive him home, because he had nearly crashed the car the night before. Other than that it seemed to go very smoothly.

BD: Over the last few years we’ve had The Ring and The Grudge and all these other movies that have come here and done very well. Do you think this is the next step in that continuation or is it completely different?

Nivola: The challenge anytime you’re making a movie and trying to test the genre is to bring something that feels different. I think, from what I can tell, they’ve set out to make a movie that has some kind of feeling of reality. Increasingly, the horror movies that I’ve seen just dispense with any kind of attempt to create a reality in the world of film, and it’s just one kind of ghoulish moment after another. I think this was a perfect movie for Jessica to do also because she has ambitions to be taken really seriously as an actress and she hasn’t had the opportunity until now to do a role that enabled her to play a real character, and to behave in ways that didn’t involve action and comic book heroes and all that kind of thing.

BD: Do you have any “Laurel Canyon” style love scenes in the film?

Nivola: Sadly not. I’m doing a movie with Jessica Alba and there’s no naked scene in the pool! (laughs)

Next, we spoke to Jessica, David, and Xavier (who WAS there, he just didn’t say much)

BD: How do you guys work together, and how is it working with Jessica and Alessandro together?

David Moreau: Working with Jessica was a nightmare, but hopefully she’s not here. (laughs) Working with Xavier is great. We basically do everything together. And when we are on the set, maybe there is one who speaks more than the other. It is pretty similar to working with one director.

Jessica Alba: They’re excellent. They really compliment each other. They’re like a great married couple - the ideal marriage. They really are each other’s ying and yang.

Jessica, what made you choose to do a thriller? It’s something we haven’t really seen you get involved in.

Alba: I wanted to do it for a long time. I wanted to do something that transcended the genre. “Fantastic Four” is a big Hollywood comic book movie, but what attracted me to it is that the female superhero was more a maternal character in a family dynamic, and to me that was more interesting than just a girl in leather, cutting people heads off. And in this I think it’s really intelligent and it’s a beautiful story, of this girl’s journey about gaining her sight and dealing with it. And it just happens to be wrapped up in a horror movie. I just think that is so much more interesting than just running around in a white t-shirt or something.

BD: What was it like learning the violin?

Alba: It’s bullshit! (laughs) It’s absolutely impossible. And [the director] picks really difficult music so the music I am learning is the music people play in university after they’ve been playing since they were five. So they play their entire life, go to university, and then they play Mozart. No! That’s what I’m doing now. Three months learning how to even hold the instrument.

Moreau: All the notes are accurate.

Alba: All the notes are accurate. I am playing the actual notes of the music. It just sounds like a cat in heat (mimics screeching violin sound).

BD: How many hours a day you rehearsing for that?

Alba: About an hour and a half, when I can. Three hours yesterday. Fifteen minutes during my lunch because I’ve been working 16 hour days, so I really only have 15 minutes to study this wonderful piece that he chose to be in the movie. It’s very difficult. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work, but that’s why we’re in this crazy ass business. We get to do silly things and pick up an instrument that I would never in a million years pick up. I have a great appreciation for it. I want to represent musicians and people who are blind in the best way I can.

BD: How challenging was it to play someone who was blind?

Alba: Very. It was weird; losing your sight is very daunting. I would walk around my house, and I walked with a cane and shades on in complete darkness. You get really claustrophobic. Even just drinking water and anything, it just feels very claustrophobic. There have been a few little panic attacks and nightmares about being blind. It’s a really different reality. Now I look for Braille everywhere. There are no menus in Braille. So if someone is not sighted and they go to restaurant, they just have to trust whoever is reading the menu to them. There are just things that I never would even think about. You know on soda at McDonald’s they have a little bit of Braille on the lid? That was something I really wasn’t aware of. It’s definitely interesting. But people who are blind can function in the world just like everyone else. I always thought it was always such a handicap that you couldn’t really do what everyone else does, and they do everything. This woman that we met in New Mexico, who they found, she’s 25 years old. She’s a classical musician, she’s a singer and she’s a vocalist. She travels by herself all the time. She doesn’t need anybody to get around. And, she competes with people who are sighted for concerts. She’s really inspiring, and she’s kind of my inspiration for the movie, for sure.

The Eye is set to be released this October from Lionsgate. Keep your eyes peeled (ugh, that was awful) for more updates!