‘Wonder’ interviews: Jacob Tremblay, Stephen Chbosky, Don Burgess, Arjen Tuiten, Marcelo Zarvos exclusive chats [WATCH]
Zach Laws
One of the year's biggest surprises with critics and audiences was "Wonder." Stephen Chbosky's coming-of-age drama centers on Auggie (Jacob Tremblay), a young boy with facial deformities getting through his first year at public school. Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson co-star as his loving parents. Gold Derby recently spoke with Tremblay, Chbosky, cinematographer Don Burgess, makeup designer Arjen Tuiten, and composer Marcelo Zarvos about their work on the film.
Tremblay describes Auggie as "a boy who is very smart, very kind, and very funny. He has a facial difference, Treacher Collins syndrome, which affects the way your face develops." He adds, "Auggie hasn't been to public school because he's been home schooled his whole life... Auggie has a big adventure in middle school, and it's a fun movie to watch." Tremblay competed at the SAG Awards for his supporting performance in "Room" (2015) and contends at the Critics Choice as Best Young Actor/Actress, a prize he won previously for "Room."
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In adapting R.J. Palacio's book, Chbosky wondered, "How do I distill this character to the absolute essence? How do I give them something that could be relatable to the audience or universal to their own experiences to create a shorthand? And finally, how do I find the actor that really embodies the spirit of this character?" He adds, "Sometimes when you're making something literal like a movie versus something more subjective like a book, you have to find that picture that's worth a thousand words." Chbosky and his co-writers Jack Thorne and Steve Conrad received a Critics' Choice nomination for their script. He previously contended at Critics Choice and the WGA for adapting his book "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (2012).
Burgess, an Oscar nominee for "Forrest Gump" (1994), hoped to convey Auggie's sense of loneliness through his work. He explains, "I'll tend to start with longer focal length lenses, and a shallower depth of field, and perhaps cooler light color temperatures, to put this character into the environment, but not totally connect him to the environment. So they feel more isolated from the people and things around them." To chart Auggie's progression from outsider to insider, "you can let the lenses get progressively wider, increase your depth of field, warm up the color temperatures, and give more of a connectivity to the subject and the environment."
When he first read "Wonder," Tutien knew he had his work cut out for him. "There's only so much physically you can do with makeup," he states. "We did several tests trying to copy Treacher Collins syndrome," which meant attempting to create "underdeveloped ears, cleft pallet, teeth, underdeveloped cheek bones which makes their eyes droop. Just trying to find the right balance on that was the main first thing to tackle really." Additionally, he had to ask himself, "Was Jacob going to feel comfortable still in it acting?" Luckily, after the first test, "there was a big moment of relief of, OK, this is going to work. We can do this as a makeup on an actor."
"The first time I watched it, I cried a lot," reveals Zarvos. After drying his eyes, the tunesmith divulges, "I knew that the thing I really wanted to capture was the spirit of this wonderful boy" in "the most profound yet childlike way." The composer and director worked extensively to find out what "the framework of the sound should be." He adds, "There was a lot of experimentation, and everything ultimately needed to feel like a song to [Chbosky], like it was a perfect little melody."
Click on any name below to be taken to their full interview:
Jacob Tremblay, who plays Auggie
Stephen Chbosky, director and co-writer
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