 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
ERIN BROCKOVICH
Woman
power
The
film based on a real-life character, was the first release of the year
2000 to gross more than $100 million at the US b.o. Also critically acclaimed,
it has won rave reviews for Julia Roberts, whose performance of the title
role is said to be the best in her career so far...
The success of Erin Brockovich in the US proves that there is no stopping
a good, thought-provoking subject. As Nikki Rocco, president, distribution
for Universal Pictures said, “Critics and audiences have embraced
this film in a way we never could have imagined. In addition to serving
as departure for the star power of Julia Roberts, the film proves that
there is indeed an audience for human interest dramas.”
The filmmakers are happy that they have been successful in conveying the
message of the film - that one person can overcome
| FACE-OFF
WITH REAL ERIN The only scene she had problems 
with confesses Julia Roberts, was the one in which she appears with
the real Erin Brockovich. Says Roberts, “It’s a scene where
I’m in a diner, after I have lost my car accident case. I have
no money, my neck is in a brace, and the kids are being really rambunctious.
The baby was really tired and screaming at the top of her lungs, and
Erin comes to the table as our waitress. It was really daunting and
bizarre to be playing a person when that person is doing a line with
you. The entire time I kept looking at Erin and thinking, ‘What
in the world is she thinking? She’s going to think I’m playing
a terrible mother’.” |
insurmountable
odds and truly make a difference. The film is said to have inspired people
in all walks of life, and Erin Brockovich has become a new hero for the
millennium.
Producers Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher opine that the
success of the film was all the more significant since it was based on
a true story.
A stirring, funny and unconventional drama directed by Steven Soderbergh
(Out Of Sight, The Limey), the film stars two-time Oscar nominee Julia
Roberts in the title role. Erin Brockovich is based on a real life character,
the twice-divorced mother of three young children, who sees an injustice,
takes on the bad guys and wins.
The film begins with Erin in a tight spot, as she has no money, no job
and no prospects on the horizon. Following a car accident, for which she
can’t be blamed at all, she finds herself even worse off when her
attorney fails to land her any kind of settlement. With nowhere to go,
Erin pleads with her attorney Ed Masry (Albert Finney) to hire her at
his law firm. While working there, she stumbles upon some medical records
in a real estate files. Confused, she decides to investigate matters and
discovers a cover-up involving contaminated water in a local community,
which is causing diseases among the residents.
| COSTUMES
OF ERIN Wondering why Julia Roberts, who  plays
a social crusader, is dressed in sexy clothes in the film? Well, that’s
because the real-life Erin Brockovich dressed quite colourfully herself.
Jeffrey Kurland, an Academy Award nominee, designed the clothes for
the film after studying Erin. Says he, “Erin is a great character
because she’s a total individual. She absolutely kowtows to no
one else’s opinion, and what she wants to do is what she does.
She wears what she wants to wear when she wants to wear it, and it’s
always fun to dress women like that.”He continues, “My conversations with Steven (Soderbergh) were mostly about making Julia true to the real Erin. Erin is an exaggerated personality, but we didn’t want it to be comical or ridiculous - it had to be acceptable exaggeration. On the other hand, neither did we want to water it down so that she was no longer that woman.” For Kurland, he found the real Erin Brockovich to be a tremendous source of inspiration. “When I met Erin, I found her to be amazing and intriguing,” he says, “She showed me photographs taken around the time of the case, so I would have an idea of how she dressed. The truth of the matter is that she did wear eight-inch mini-skirts and three-inch heels, and plunging necklines. That’s what she still wears, and she looked terrific then and she looks terrific now.” To accomplish this look, Kurland selected 52 costumes for Roberts, 90 per cent of which he had made. “She also had to get used to running around in very high, spiked heels. And she really does run in them,” he laughs. |
Erin decides to take up the issue and convinces the locals, who are initially
wary of getting invloved, to join her in the fight for justice. In her
door-to-door campaign, she signs up 634 plaintiffs, and Erin and Ed, with
the help of a major law firm, receive the largest settlement ever paid
in a direct-action lawsuit in US history - $333 million. Her triumph helps
her to re-invent herself.
Executive producer Carla Santos Shamberg happened to stumble on the real-life
story of Erin Brokovich through her doctor, who in turn was a friend of
Erin. Says Carla, “I couldn’t believe that a twice divorced
woman with children, who had no resources, had single-handedly put this
case together. She seemed like the perfect role model for the millennium.”
She told her producer husband Santos Shamberg about this and he, alongwith
his partners Danny Devito and Stacey Sher felt that it would be a perfect
story for screen.
The film marks the re-teaming of the producers with director Soderbergh
after their last film Out Of Sight in 1998. The attraction for Soderbergh
was simply that, “the screenplay was very linear. It was performance-driven,
and had a female protagonist who was in every scene in the film. I had
never done a film like that before and it really appealed to me.”
To make the film interesting, Soderbergh made a conscious decision to
avoid courtroom scenes, opting to instead focus on the step-by-step process
by which Erin and Ed went through the case. “This is not really a
movie about a lawsuit,” Soderbergh explains, “It’s about
a person who cannot seem to reconcile how she views herself with how others
view her.”
The director elaboartes on Erin’s character, “Erin is very bright
and very quick, but she also has a tendency to be very confrontational.
She is confrontational in two ways: the way she dresses, which is very
provocative and eye-catching, almost audible, it’s so loud; and in
her language. She has a tendency to be very colourful in the way that
she expresses herself, very direct.”
To portray such a vivacious character, Soderbergh was keen on Roberts.
“The role plays to all of her strengths. There is a certain irrepressibility
about her that’s rivetting, and this character allows for all of
that. But there’s also something more significant, something darker
at the core, with this character,” he says of his choice.
When Soderbergh first met the real Erin Brockovich and talked to her about
herself and the story, he found that she had a very similar energy to
Roberts. “There’s an inherent charisma and a light in the eye
that is very similar and very compelling. Both in person and on the screen,
Julia has an undeniable energy that is difficult to resist,” says
Soderbergh.
Roberts, on her part, was excited to play Erin. “As a person, Erin
really intrgues me,” the actress confesses, “I have great admiration
for what she stands for. A lot of women in our culture are facing being
a single mother, trying to make ends meet. They are the heroes of our
time. What’s nice about the story is that it’s about a person
in a very specific situation, which early on, is also a dire one. Erin
is incredibly self-assured and that is the key that enables her to prevail
in all situations.”
In addition to the obvious attraction that Roberts felt for the powerful
character of Erin Brockovich, she was also drawn to the queer relationship
between Erin and Ed Masry. “Ed and Erin bring out the best in each
other in an odd-couple kind of way,” says Roberts, “He was at
a point in his life where he was looking forward to retiring and playing
golf. Erin, in stirring up this pot and bringing all of this information
to light, re-ignited his passion for justice, and his sense that you can
work hard for the right reasons and you can prevail to make the world
a better place to live.”
The film does celebrate a single mother, whose own star power lies in
her God-given intelligence and and heaven-sent sexuality, but more than
that it celebrates the power of human spirit.
Salma Khatib