Reese Witherspoon - Marlena (Water for Elephants) #1: "... the secret itself becomes irrelevant; the fact that you kept it does not."

keep the starlight · 05-13-2010, 04:17 PM

Welcome to the 1st Marlena Rosenbluth (Water for Elephants) Thread!

Cast:
"Jacob" - Robert Pattinson
"Marlena" - Reese Witherspoon
"August" - Christoph Waltz
"Old Jacob" - Hal Holbrook
"Wade" - Stephen Taylor
"Kinko" - Mark Povinelli
"Cecil" - E.E. Bell
"Lucinda" - Jackie Zane

Summary:
When Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson), recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August (Christoph Waltz), the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her. Water for Elephants is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.

Reese talks Water for Elephants:

Follow the film's director on Twitter for filming updates --> Francis Lawrence.

See a picture of the beautiful elephant, Tai, who is playing "Rosie" here.

"Water For Elephants" Blog

keep the starlight · 05-13-2010, 04:27 PM

Latest tweet from the director:

loppabelle · 05-15-2010, 09:48 AM

This is awesome, Linds. Thanks for starting a thread.

free2live · 05-15-2010, 05:12 PM

Awesome! Thanks for the thread!

Can't wait for this movie. I read the book like a year or two ago and I loved it!

keep the starlight · 05-16-2010, 02:53 PM

No problem, guys! I haven't read the book but plan to super soon. I hear great things about it.

loppabelle · 05-17-2010, 08:44 AM

I haven't read the book either. I'm totally backwards on this, I always watch the film before ever picking up the book. Weird.

keep the starlight · 05-17-2010, 01:36 PM

Hah! I do that sometimes. I really want to read this one, though.

AmandaB · 05-17-2010, 10:28 PM

The book is one of my favorites, so I'm kinda nervous they are making it into a movie. With that said, I'm happy Reese is playing Marlena. I think she will really do the character justice. Still not sure about Robert Pattinson as Jacob. It's gonna take me a while to get used to that casting choice.

ETA: I don't know if you're interested in adding this to the first post, but this beautiful elephant, Tai, is playing Rosie. (My favorite character in the book.

)
HAVE TRUNK WILL TRAVEL

Also, I found this great blog about the movie.
~Water For Elephants – the Film~

keep the starlight · 05-17-2010, 11:09 PM

Aw, Tai is adorable. <3 Thanks for the links! I'll definitely add them to the OP.

GlitterCupcake · 05-18-2010, 07:16 AM

wow cant wait to see this one

keep the starlight · 05-18-2010, 09:08 AM

The more I read about it, the more excited I get! And I fully plan on getting the novel today. I read an earlier draft of the script and it sounds amazing.

Also, Rob talks about his experience with elephants in his interview with Details magazine:

Quote:

He is unsure whether to feel guilty, to bask in it all, or both. Thing is, there aren't any rules for a life as extraordinary as his is right now. He tells me an elephant story. Not the one about Barcelona elephants—one about some he'd met recently in California.

"Did you know elephants purr? It's completely scary if you don't know what it is. They purr like cats, but their heads are so deep they sound like velociraptors. You feel it in the ground under your feet. So this big female started sniffing my foot—big female elephant, that is. She sniffed it so hard it came up off the pavement like her trunk was a vacuum cleaner. Then she took my entire body in her mouth. I was holding on to her head, and as I slowly let go she tightened her grip really carefully until I'm just upside down in her mouth and she's going through my pockets with her trunk, looking for peppermints. It was the best day of my life."

So you gave up control to an elephant, got groped, mugged, had your candy tugged at—and it was glorious?
"Yeah. So beautiful you can't imagine. And the baby elephant was so excited that it sprinted out and did its routine in five seconds and then curtsied to everybody. It was actually laughing. Brilliant. Did you know they can also do imitations of other animals? A horse, a chicken, a monkey—these elephants could, anyway. They were movie elephants. One had written a screenplay, and one really wants to direct."

He laughs. He was in Los Angeles, in discussions to star with Sean Penn in Water for Elephants, an adaptation of Sara Gruen's novel. The elephants are actors like him, and he wonders if he might, on some cosmic level, be a bit like them.

"Do you know how they die? The elephant guy told me their molars get ground down from eating wood but regenerate like six times. And after that they slowly starve to death. Which is poignant, but that must also be what gives them time to get to the elephant graveyard. They're incredibly designed creatures. I mean, people hang on way too ****ing long. If I knew that when my teeth fell out, that was it . . . Wow. The best day of my life. Beautiful, beautiful day."

Also, a quote from his recent shoot with USA Today:

Quote:

"It's set int the Depression era, when circuses traveled by train and this guy runs away and jumps on a train to be a hobo and by accident, he doesnt realize it's a circus train. He becomes part of this world because he has no life to go back to and ends up falling in love with the ringmaster's wife, played by Reese Witherspoon. The ringmaster just happens to be kind of a schizophrenic as well. He's a most charismatic and terrifying person. He's Christoph Waltz from Inglourious Basterds. I did a read through yesterday with him. He was sitting right next to me. It was a little terrifying."

keep the starlight · 05-20-2010, 07:01 PM

Yay, first pictures of Reese and Rob!

ETA: And another.

loppabelle · 05-21-2010, 09:57 AM

Yay, thanks Linds. She looks good.

keep the starlight · 05-21-2010, 03:20 PM

No problem.

The scarf in her hair is super pretty! I think I'm going to adore her wardrobe in this film.

There are good quality pictures of Rob on set, here, if anyone is interested.

loppabelle · 05-21-2010, 07:36 PM

I think I'm going to love it, too. Her outfit is super cute. I wonder if she'll have to wear a dress at some point and time during the film. I always imagine women in that era to be super classic in their style. She would carry it off brilliantly.


Fan Forum > Archived Celebrities > Reese Witherspoon > Marlena (Water for Elephants) #1: "... the secret itself becomes irrelevant; the fact that you kept it does not."