By Jenny Neyman
“Big Miracle,” Universal Pictures
Redoubt Reporter
For the first big movie filmed in Alaska under the tax incentive package passed by the Legislature in 2008, the plot ended up being a bit of a metaphor for the circumstances under which it was made.
In “Big Miracle,” released Feb. 3 and based on a real incident from 1988, environmentalists, Natives, big oil, international politicians and the National Guard come together despite their wide gulf of differences to rescue gray whales stuck in the ice outside Barrow. Getting the movie made in state required bridging another wide gulf — that between Alaska and Hollywood.
“It is such an honor to finally have films that are based in Alaska actually filmed in Alaska,” said Jamie Nelson, of Kenai, who was an extra in the film.
Another local extra in the film, Chris Jenness, of Nikiski, said he’s glad to see the movie doing well upon release — ranking fourth at the box office and grossing an estimated $8.5 million on its opening weekend.
“I think it needs to be successful in order to keep this ball rolling. If the first (movie shot in Alaska under the tax incentive) to come out was a big bomb, then I think that people wouldn’t care so much. But I think it’s important they keep doing this because it’s too easy for these Hollywood companies to go film somewhere else,” Jenness said.
Randy Daly, of Kenai, also in the film, said that the coming-together theme of the film, represented in the plot and in the sense of the film being shot in Alaska, is a pleasantly optimistic one.
“Right now we find ourselves in such a divisive environment, politically and economically. To see something that big that was able to come together and happen really makes you hopeful that we have a whole lot more capability of working together than what we’ve shown recently,” Daly said.
At least, that’s the sentiment the three eventually got to after seeing the movie and having time to process it. Their more-immediate reaction when sitting in the theater was initially dominated with the shock of seeing themselves on the big screen.
“It was weird,” Jenness said. “It felt like when you see somebody who has been digitally inserted into a movie. You can tell, like in ‘Forrest Gump.’ That’s what it felt like. Like, ‘That’s me, but I’m not supposed to be there.’”
Daly said that he ended up sitting there at first just wondering if his scenes were even going to be in it. He was originally supposed to be in four scenes, but two were cut in production when they ran out of time to shoot them.
“It is always that risk when you sit down to watch the movie, especially when you’re a supporting character, that you may not actually be in the film. You’re sitting there thinking, ‘OK, am I really going to be in this?’ And luckily I was in the first 15 minutes, and it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there I am,’ and I could relax after that. It was kind of amazing to actually see it happen after all the time it took to get produced,” he said.
In his second scene, he even managed to retain some dialogue. He originally filmed a scene telling John Krasinski, playing TV news reporter Adam Carlson, that he had a phone call.
“Out of the four words that were in the script, ‘Adam, phone, line one,’ two of them made it in: ‘Adam, phone.’ We hung on by the skin of our teeth. I’m a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) actor now. Woohoo,” Daly joked.
The first time Nelson watched the movie, he sat with his wife and an actor friend who was also an extra.
“On our first scene, he leaned over and said, ‘You know, I have no idea what any of the principal actors just said. I was watching myself in the background,’” Nelson said.
Jenness said he was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable the movie ended up being — better than the poster and the trailer he’d seen previously.
“It’s not a small movie so much as it’s not a grand movie. It’s sort of intimate, I guess. It feels a little homier than some of these big, star-driven things. But it was really good and fun, I really liked it,” he said. “It wasn’t by far the best movie I’ve ever seen, it definitely had problems, but for what it was trying to do it was actually more successful than I was expecting.”
One of the things the film does well is weave several subplots into the larger context of the whales rescue effort. There are love stories and other developing relationships between the characters; there’s conflict between the Greenpeace activist, Rachel Kramer (played by Drew Barrymore); the oil magnate J.W. McGraw, played by Ted Danson; government officials and National Guard pilots; news reporters hoping to advance their careers in covering the whales story, and so on.
“There are so many story components going on it could really be kind of helter-skelter edited. A lot of those stories could go off in different directions and not get tied up, but the film somehow manages to balance all of those in an interesting and coherent way,” Nelson said.
And the film stayed fairly true to the real events of the 1988 rescue, including representing the complexity of the people involved.
“One thing I really liked about it is they’re able to tell this really intriguing story and they have a nice story arc and they keep it all encapsulated, but they didn’t have to stoop to adding some artificial villain,” Jenness said. “It’s kind of a lighthearted movie, and a lot of times in lighthearted movies they will take a fairly simplistic plot-development tack, where the big oil guy will be the bad guy and the greenie will be the good guy. But for being a fairly simple movie, they didn’t do that. There are no villains.”
That was one of the highlights for Daly, as well.
“I liked the discourse in that the environmentalists made some points, the people who live in the Arctic made some points, the oil company made some points, the military made some points and, ultimately, it was all about cooperation,” he said.
It felt like the characters all got an even treatment, showing their strengths and flaws.
“The oil guy is kind of a jerk, but he also works really hard to save the whales. Drew is incredibly irritating for quite a bit of the movie, but she also does a good job of acting and so you come around to her in the end. She’s the main champion of the whales and is supposed to be the good guy, but they do a good job of keeping everybody on the same level and there aren’t any villains, so it doesn’t feel false in that way,” Jenness said.
Nelson was impressed with the respect shown to the Native culture of Barrow. One of the primary subplots regards the clash of culture between the Native lifestyle in Barrow and the outside world, mainly represented by the traditional elder whaling captain and his young grandson, who is enthralled with the world outside Barrow.
“A lot of films have unfortunately had stereotypes of what Natives should and shouldn’t be. One of my favorite components of this story is how culturally important their way of life is,” Nelson said.
The film did an admirable job of attempting to distill the events of the several-week, real-life Operation Breakthrough to free the whales from pack ice at Point Barrow into a two-hour movie, especially with all the side stories woven around the rescue effort.
“There’s a lot of stuff that they couldn’t put into it because it’s only two hours, but I think big thing is you go see a movie that is based on real events, and it follows the story pretty well,” Daly said.
Jenness was particularly impressed with the approach of using real news footage from the rescue — of which there was plenty, since the event riveted national headlines.
“One of the neatest things is how they interweave actual footage from the news reels into the story. You get lots of scenes of people watching TV, and you’ll see Tom Brokaw up there, and then a few seconds later you’ll be out there and you’ll see (the movie’s version) of what was happening. It was neat the way they did that,” he said.
Special effects were also done well, he said, including the animatronic whales, and development of the scene on the ice.
“Knowing a lot of the scenes out on the ice in Barrow were actually filmed in Anchorage you go, ‘Where’s the city?’ Because they look very good,” Jenness said.
“When you really look at where the film was shot, some of it was shot in Barrow, some was shot down in the port in Anchorage, some was shot in the Canadian Arctic, and then some of it was shot in Sand Lake in Anchorage, and for them to cohesively put those different pieces of Arctic together and make it work right was just absolutely phenomenal,” Daly said.
That’s not to say the film wasn’t above all reproach, however. Jenness said that, while the story was good, the screenplay was less so.
“The actual dialogue is not all that great. There are a lot of lines that are like, ‘Well, really? Eh.’ So you have really good actors having to play some substandard lines, but because the movie itself feels sort of light there isn’t a lot of weight on the dialogue,” he said.
And Alaskans, particularly, will notice some continuity issues — like people occasionally walking around in Barrow sans gloves and with their coats flapping open, when it’s supposed to be minus 30 or colder. The biggest moment of creative license with reality comes when Barrymore’s character dons SCUBA gear and jumps into a hole in the ice to check on the whales.
“Drew swimming with the whales was obviously a little far-fetched, to be in 40- or 50-below weather and to be able to just jump into the water and swim with the whales like that, the audience actually laughed. As people who live in Alaska we realize that is not a realistic possibility,” Nelson said.
And, of course, “They needed to give that Daly character more lines,” Daly laughed. “Overall I liked it. It’s a very good family movie. And there were some small pieces of humor that were in there, like some of the retorts that the witty waitress gives (in the Mexican restaurant in Barrow) that are absolutely awesome.”
All in all, Jenness said that “Big Miracle” was a fun film, both to participate in and even more fun now to watch — especially since his experience filming involved nearly passing out from a long day wearing a heavy winter parka inside a heated building.
“I loved it. I thought it was fun, even though I got heatstroke I will now remember it much more fondly than I did at the time,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing people will continue to go to because you can take your kids to it. It’s one of those family friendly movies that doesn’t descend into a lot of kid jokes. It’s family friendly because there’s really nothing offensive in it.”
