Memoirs of an Invisible Man is a 1992 American comedy science fiction film directed by John Carpenter and released by Warner Bros., with many scenes taking place in and around San Francisco. The film is loosely based on Memoirs of an Invisible Man, a 1987 novel by H.F. Saint. According to William Goldman's book Which Lie Did I Tell?, the film was initially developed for director Ivan Reitman; however, this version never came to fruition, due to disagreements between Reitman and Chevy Chase. The director deviated from his usual practice of titling the film as "John Carpenter's" because he knew that Warner Brothers would not allow him full artistic control, saying that the studio "is in the business of making audience-friendly, non-challenging movies."
A mixture of suspense, science fiction, comedy and drama, it stars Chevy Chase, Daryl Hannah, Sam Neill, Michael McKean and Stephen Tobolowsky.
Video Memoirs of an Invisible Man (film)
Plot
Nick Halloway (Chevy Chase) is a stock analyst who spends most of his life avoiding responsibility and connections with other people. At his favorite bar, the Academy Club, his friend George Talbot (Michael McKean) introduces him to Alice Monroe (Daryl Hannah), a TV documentary producer. Sharing an instant attraction, Nick and Alice make out in the ladies' room and set a lunch date for Friday.
The following morning, a hungover Nick attends a shareholders' meeting at Magnascopic Laboratories. Unable to endure the droning presentation by Dr. Bernard Wachs (Jim Norton), Nick leaves the room for a nap. A lab technician (Aaron Lustig) accidentally spills his mug of coffee onto a computer console, causing a meltdown, and the entire building is evacuated. The building seems to explode, but there is no debris. Instead, much of the building is rendered invisible, including Nick.
Shady CIA operative David Jenkins (Sam Neill) arrives on the scene, and discovers Nick's condition. While they are transferring him to an ambulance, the agents joke about how Nick will spend the rest of his life being studied by scientists. In a panic, Nick flees. Jenkins convinces his supervisor Warren Singleton (Stephen Tobolowsky) not to notify CIA headquarters so that they can capture and take credit for Nick, who could become the perfect secret agent.
Nick hides at the Academy Club. He locates Dr. Wachs and asks for his help to reverse his condition. Wachs agrees to help, but Jenkins kills him to keep Nick's invisibility a secret. Jenkins' team gets a hold of Nick's background information but it doesn't prove very useful in finding him. It says that Nick has never been married, his parents are both dead, he has no relatives, a few friends but none that he's real close to and he's not really dedicated to his job as he does it fast and loose. After reviewing Nick's profile, Jenkins says that Nick was an invisible man even before the accident. Nick infiltrates the CIA headquarters to find any information that can be used against them. Jenkins discovers Nick and tries to recruit him, but Nick is disgusted by the idea of him killing people. They have a confrontation, but Nick gets away.
Nick goes to San Francisco and stays in George's remote beach house. George arrives with his wife Ellen (Patricia Heaton), Alice, and another friend, to spend the weekend. Nick phones Alice and tells her to meet him nearby. He reveals his condition to Alice, and she promptly faints. When she revives, Alice decides to stay with Nick and help him. They travel to Mexico, where Nick can start a new life. To make money, he trades stocks using Alice as a proxy. Jenkins tracks them down, and shoots Nick with a tranquillizer gun. Nick falls into a river, revives and escapes. He makes his way to a video store, where he records his memoirs on video tape, including an ultimatum for Jenkins: exchange Alice for the tape, or Nick will give it to the CIA and the press. Jenkins agrees to the exchange.
At the arranged time for the exchange, Jenkins puts Alice into a cab and orders his men to surround the phone booth where he thinks Nick is. The man in the phone booth turns out to be George, who is dressed in Nick's concealing clothing. Nick is disguised as the cab driver; he takes Alice away, pursued by Jenkins. They continue the chase on foot into a building still under construction, in the course of which Nick gets covered with concrete dust, outlining his silhouette. At the top, by taking off his jacket (which has the largest amount of dust on it), Nick tricks Jenkins into thinking that he has become desperate enough to commit suicide, thus making Jenkins lunge at the jacket and plunging off the building to his death.
Believing Nick to be dead, Singleton releases Alice. Nick reunites with Alice and they leave for Switzerland. The film ends with shots of Nick's apparently empty clothing skiing down a mountainside towards their chalet, where a pregnant Alice greets him with a hot drink and a kiss.
Maps Memoirs of an Invisible Man (film)
Cast
- Chevy Chase as Nick Halloway
- Daryl Hannah as Alice Monroe
- Sam Neill as David Jenkins
- Michael McKean as George Talbot
- Stephen Tobolowsky as Warren Singleton
- Jim Norton as Dr. Bernard Wachs
- Pat Skipper as Morrissey
- Paul Perri as Gomez
- Richard Epcar as Tyler
- Steven Barr as Clellan
- Gregory Paul Martin as Richard
- Patricia Heaton as Ellen
- Barry Kivel as a Drunk businessman
- Donald Li as a Cab driver
- Rosalind Chao as Cathy DiTolla
- Jay Gerber as Roger Whitman
- Shay Duffin as Patrick, the bartender
- Edmund L. Shaff as Edward Schneiderman
- Sam Anderson as Chairman of the House Committee
- Elaine Corral as News anchor
- Ellen Albertini Dow as Mrs. Coulson
- Jonathan Wigan as a Delivery boy
- I.M. Hobson as Maitre d'
- Rip Haight* as a Helicopter pilot
- Aaron Lustig as a Technician
* Pseudonym for John Carpenter.
Production
In 1986, Harry F. Saint's Memoirs of an Invisible Man was still unfinished when Hollywood agent William Morris gave it to Chevy Chase to read. The actor instantly got interested, and led to a bidding war among studios. Warner Bros paid $1.35 million for the film rights. William Goldman was assigned to write the screenplay in the mid 1980s, by which time Ivan Reitman was attached to direct.
The project was largely a vanity project shepherded by Chase through the studio (the film is billed as "A Cornelius Production" - Cornelius is Chevy Chase's real first name). He wanted to make a film about the loneliness of invisibility, intending the film to be a bridge into less comedic roles. After two years of pre-production, when Reitman discovered that he would not be directing Chase in a broad comedy, he backed out of the film. Goldman left the project saying "I'm too old and too rich for this shit." He later said that Mark Canton, head of the studio, did not pay the writer for all his work causing Goldman to initiate a lawsuit against them. Chase found Goldman's script too comedic, "Clark Griswold becoming invisible", and sought screenwriters to rework it, reportedly to do something "more serious, with more adventure", eventually approaching Dana Olsen and Robert Collector. Richard Donner was attached to direct for eight months given his experience with visual effects, something that made various potential directors turn down the project. Eventually someone suggested John Carpenter, and Chase approved the idea.
Carpenter, who was then in a legal dispute with They Live production company Alive Films regarding his contract, felt reluctant in taking in a big studio project, but accepted partially because he thought he could get a good performance out of Chase. The actor in turn had to convince Warner Bros. that Carpenter, who they still saw as a horror director, could work well for the picture. Carpenter spent eighteen months working along with Olsen and Collector to make the script akin to "North by Northwest meets Starman", developing the love story to give the protagonist Nick a stronger motivation in escaping the villains. During the period, Chase lost 20 pounds knowing production and effects work would be physically straining.
Filming rolled for 84 days between April and June 1991. Parts of the film were shot in Snowbird, Utah. Carpenter said due to the effects work by Industrial Light & Magic "we essentially had to shoot the same movie twice", as after normal takes the effects team would set up their bulky VistaVision motion control cameras to film the same elements again while gathering digital data for the computer-generated imagery. According to visual effects supervisor Bruce Nicholson, "Success in this movie was showing invisibility in detail". During nine months of preparation, Nicholson studied four previous films on the subject, The Invisible Man - which receives a tribute in the scene where Nick is shown to have his head wrapped in bandages and is wearing large dark goggles - and its sequel The Invisible Man Returns, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Ghost. Chase would wear a blue bodysuit below his clothing, so that computer artists would erase his body through chroma key and match the clothes with computer-generated replicas so that even the inside of the clothing could be seen, along with other touches such as erasing the shadow made by Chase's body. A particularly elaborate effect had Nick's invisible face being covered in flesh-colored make-up. The make-up was applied to Chase as his head was covered in viscous blue cosmetic, tongue and teeth coated with blue food coloring, and the cornea of each eye covered with blue contact lenses, an uncomfortable makeover made worse by the June heat and heavy studio lighting.
Near the end of the film, Nick wonders aloud what his children with Alice will look like. John Carpenter did shoot an alternate ending showing this birth, but the film only shows Alice in the later stages of pregnancy.
This is one of the few John Carpenter films not scored by the director, with Shirley Walker composing the music instead. Unlike prior collaborators Ennio Morricone on The Thing and Jack Nitzsche on Starman, Walker would re-team with Carpenter - the two co-scored the subsequent Escape From L.A..
Reception
Box office
The film debuted at No. 2. It went on to gross $14,358,033 USD.
Critical reception
The film received mostly negative responses from critics. It has a 21% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with only 6 positive reviews out of 28 with the summary: "It boasts an intriguing cast and the special effects were groundbreaking, but they can't compensate for Memoirs of an Invisible Man's sadly pedestrian script".
Roger Ebert wrote of the film, "The plot is lazy and conventional. What is good about the movie involves Chase and Hannah, who have to work out between them the logistical problems of their strange relationship." Reviewing the movie for The Washington Post, Desson Howe mused, "Memoirs of an Invisible Man isn't a movie. It's an identity crisis. The previews would have you believe it's a zany comedy. But the jokes are too far and few between. And if it's a comedy, why is John Carpenter directing it? This is the man who did Halloween...if Memoirs wants to get serious, why is Chevy Chase in the lead? This is the man who starred in National Lampoon's European Vacation."
While reviewing the DVD release of the film for Film Freak Central, Bill Chambers wrote that Carpenter's use of effects makes the film worth seeing. He feels that the scene where Nick's body is outlined by raindrops is more effectively imagined than an identical scene in Daredevil.
References
External links
- Memoirs of an Invisible Man on IMDb
- Memoirs of an Invisible Man at Box Office Mojo
- Memoirs of an Invisible Man at AllMovie
- Memoirs of an Invisible Man at Rotten Tomatoes
Source of article : Wikipedia
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