“It all starts with the writing, of course,” Barrymore continues. “In this film we learn more about the Angels, delving deeper into their backstory. We’ve also sharpened the comedy and notched up the action.”
Nancy Juvonen, Barrymore’s partner in Flower Films, and producer of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, explains that in the first film time was devoted to setting up the concept and the characters. “Even though it had been a popular TV show, there was an entire generation that wasn’t familiar with it,” says Juvonen, “which left us less time to develop the characters. So this was a great opportunity to have all three Angels come back and pick up where we left off.”
In the new film, the Angels’ histories are revealed through a series of vignettes. Barrymore’s character was “the scrappy little orphan,” says director McG, “all over the place, always falling for the wrong guy. We see her wrestling in a sort of backyard circuit as ‘Lady Insane.’ We also see her as a ‘monster’ trucker on the county fair circuit – not the classiest game in town – though she gives it her all.”
Since Lucy Liu’s character, Alex, has been raised in the finest schools, “we see her as a young gymnast being coached by Bela Karolyi. Later, we see her beating a Bobby Fischer-type chess genius in a world championship match in Switzerland,” says McG. “We allude to her being an astronaut in the first film and now we discover she’s also a neurosurgeon.
As for Diaz’s character, “I always envisioned her coming from a happy, idealized Midwestern family with seven older brothers — which is how she learned to be so wild. She has such a great sense of self and she’s so compassionate and caring and optimistic. She sees the world through the bright eyes of the bushy-tailed newborn fawn that she is. Then she proceeds to beat the living daylights out of everybody.”
In Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, the Angels deal with personal problems while fighting crime. They put themselves together with these incredible costumes, then go undercover and kick butt,” says Juvonen, “but their private lives are not exactly perfect.”
Producer Goldberg feels the trick to rekindling the concept was understanding what worked in the original and building on that. “At the same time, we needed to have a few tricks up our sleeve to surprise the audience. This is a movie that has glamour, that has sex appeal, that has dancing, that has really great action all mixed together in one big confection. The audience knows going in that they’re really going to be entertained.”
Aficionados of Charlie’s Angels will be delighted to know that along with Luke Wilson and Matt LeBlanc, another major character reappears in the film, the ‘Thin Man.’ One of the first film’s more dastardly villains is back to do battle with the Angels. After the original movie was released, the filmmakers discovered that one of the more popular characters in the story was one who never spoke a word.
“But the public spoke,” says McG. “Everybody wanted the Thin Man back. He’s our Jaws. He takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin.’ I just love the balance Crispin Glover brings to the franchise.”
But the Thin Man didn’t start off as the strong silent type. Glover remembers when he read the script for the first film, his character had dialogue. “When they asked me to come in to talk about the role, I told McG I thought it would be better if the Thin Man didn’t say a word and he immediately responded to that idea.”
“I had never done a sequel before, but I really like this character,” Glover admits. “There’s this sense that the Thin Man is trapped in a different time. The fact that he doesn’t speak gives him a ‘silent movie era’ feel. I think audiences responded because they had to use their imagination more, and there’s nothing richer than a person’s imagination.”
With all the action in the film, McG was careful to not lose sight of the human side of the story. “Dylan is drawn to the family element of being an Angel. Natalie’s a truly joyful person and Alex is always trying to please her parents. We take time to breathe life into those areas of their personalities.”
McG also made sure that another prominent facet of the Angels — their love lives — be used to divulge different aspects of their personalities. For instance, “Jason’s not even sure what Alex does for a living,” says Matt LeBlanc who again plays Alex’s boyfriend Jason Gibbons. “And things are further complicated when she insists on a time-out in their relationship. What made it all so appealing was the continuing role-reversal aspect. Here’s this macho action hero who is not at all that way in real life. And he gets beaten down a few times by Alex, who is the real thing.”
Joining the cast for the first time is Justin Theroux, whose character, Seamus O’Grady, played an important part in Dylan’s past. Her first meeting with him after many years is intense, according to McG, who told Barrymore, “Seamus is a part of your dark past that you thought had gone away. When you see him, the oxygen just goes out of the atmosphere.”
Barrymore first met Theroux on Duplex, a film she recently starred in with Ben Stiller, and was eager to work with him again. To prepare for the role, Theroux worked with a trainer to reshape his body and consulted with the film’s makeup artist Kimberly Greene on an elaborate series of tattoos, which were topped off with a Mohawk haircut. “Justin and I connected our teenage memories about the sort of punk-mod guys who wore oxblood Doc Marten boots with steel toes, super peg-tight pants, thin little suspenders and no shirt,” says McG. “They always had the traditional sailor tattoos. They were the kind of guys that I, being the suburban lightweight that I am, would see and think ‘wow, what a scary guy.’”
For Theroux, it was the first time he’d so fully committed to a complete physical makeover for a film role. “When I was told I would have my shirt off for many of my scenes, I decided to buff up and trim down,” he laughs. “I get to play the classic unstoppable, unkillable villain, and that’s a blast,” he adds. “It’s great to have those super-human moments where you should be dead, but you just keep on coming. It’s totally in keeping with the tongue-in-cheek comic opera tone of the movie.”
Though Theroux didn’t always relish fighting the “sweet and wonderful Drew,” he quickly discovered that she gave as good as she got. “The truth is, in the acting of these fights, Drew can really throw down,” Theroux recalls. “I had some injuries and so did she. The poor makeup people had to cover up some of the nastiest, most gorgeous purple-and-yellow heinous bruises.”
Another new arrival is Brazilian superstar Rodrigo Santoro, who plays the strikingly handsome – but deadly — assassin Randy Emmers. “We wanted somebody for this role who was really sexy and fun,” says Juvonen. “We saw Rodrigo’s tape and met with him. He was so gorgeous, and there was something unique and original about him. The Brazilian accent added to his appeal. Also, he really knows how to surf and ride a motocross bike, which make him perfect for the role.”
Another reason for casting Santoro, according to McG, is that “heroes are only as good as the villains. When you have great villains, the film becomes even more engaging. Rodrigo has the toughest, most incredible screen presence. He’s like the male composite of all three Angels.”
Infusing the Angels family with another comedic layer is John Cleese, who plays Alex’s father. “We needed someone spectacular for that role,” says McG. “Since we never discuss Alex’s mother, we had to see this incredibly intelligent, sophisticated gentleman as her father. It makes perfect sense that Alex would be the fruit of his loins.”
According to Cleese, the role presented an interesting challenge. “It was explained to me that I was playing the part of a woman called ‘Mrs. Munday,’ who was a very high-powered Jewish socialite from New York. But they said the part was going to be rewritten — which I thought was a frightfully good idea. I thought it was wonderfully eccentric casting to have me be Alex’s father,” Cleese adds. “And there is so much humor in the fact that he doesn’t really have any idea of what she does for a living. And every time she tries to explain it to him, he becomes more befuddled.”
It is a tribute to the director that the key production staff from Charlie’s Angels returned for the second installment, including production designer J. Michael Riva, director of photography Russell Carpenter, costume designer Joseph G. Aulisi and editor Wayne Wahrman, among others. “These people are an intimate part of the fabric of Charlie’s Angels,” says McG. “Each had a part in creating the voice of the first film and the new one as well.”
That’s not idle talk either, says Academy Award-winning director of photography Carpenter, “McG makes every person feel they have a contribution to make. He knows he can look in any direction and toss out a challenge – ‘how can we make this better?’ It’s that attitude that made me want to work with him again.”
According to Riva “we had all developed a shorthand that was even shorter than on the first film. In the chaos of pre-production, the creative enthusiasm managed to prevail on all levels. It’s an unusual group of people and McG is responsible for letting everybody expand quite a bit. His enthusiasm is palpable and it’s infectious. His sensibility is very much reflected in the people he hires. We’re all supreme optimists.”
As production designer, Riva’s job is basically to translate the written word into a fabricated set or a practical location. In Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, one of Riva’s main objectives was to animate the personal drama in the Angels’ lives. “In this story Natalie is about to commit herself to a serious relationship. Dylan is leaving because she doesn’t want to jeopardize her fellow Angels. And Alex is constantly lying to her parents and her boyfriend about what she does for a living. Then there is the appearance of Madison Lee, a past Angel.”
Riva’s job, he says, was to bring texture to the story beats. He envisioned Natalie’s home as a small, simple beach house – a modest first step at cohabitation. Alex’s residence is shown to be extremely neat and perhaps just a bit lonely – except that it sometimes gets messy despite Alex’s passion for order. Dylan lives in a hotel room and Riva attempts to give the sense that she has lived in this transient environment for years, which highlights her problems with commitment.
“You try to suggest character traits by where you put the actors, what props they use, the clothes they wear,” says Riva. “It’s something we all talk about and collaborate on.”
Getting the right take on Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle was a bit more challenging than the first film, Riva admits. “This film is a little bit more dangerous,” he says. “More than anything else, it’s about identity and individual personality. What is an Angel? Who are they really? What is going to happen to them in time?”
Though the original Charles Townsend Agency was blown up in the first film, Riva redesigned it for the sequel. He describes the location as “essentially a womb, the one place where the Angels share the same space. It’s where they receive their directives from Charlie, a man who’s never physically there but who is this benevolent father figure. I wanted it to be kind of Old World and clubby, with wood paneling, less contemporary and cozy than the first one, more august in a kind of ‘rumpled royalty’ way. McG and I both made a conscious decision that it should feel appropriate for Charlie, but the girls should look and feel slightly out of place there.”
The Charles Townsend Agency set was constructed to appear “disproportionately large so that you could get lost in it,” Riva continues, “because in the film there are constant questions of identity and it elaborates on that thematic thread.”
The film opens in a bar in Mongolia to which the Angels have been dispatched to rescue a kidnapped U.S. Marshal being held hostage. “The Mongolian Bar was a way to start out with a big surprise, to give the audience a caper that threatens to go bad,” says Riva. “When McG and I discussed this scene, I suggested it should take place somewhere very far away, a hostile environment filled with jeopardy, yet wild and eccentric. We created a fictitious place where these crazed brigands get together and have a good time – like land pirates. There were many extras and a great deal of noise and texture. And in the middle of it all are the Angels, working outrageously together. You immediately sense they’re going to come up with a cool solution.”
The set required extensive research for Riva and his crew. Mongolian textiles, giant gas lighting fixtures and heavy furniture were created for the bar as well as the addition of a mechanical bull that Natalie rides, which is covered in faux yak fur, giant horns and bells, to give it an exotic touch.
With his longtime passion for still photography, McG says he took great pride in composing each shot, working alongside Carpenter. “If every frame isn’t special, then why do it?” he asked Carpenter rhetorically. “So we’d reconfigure it and find a way to make it more special, more fun.”
Carpenter particularly enjoyed lighting the Mongolian bar “because it was so far from where we had gone in the first film and it set the tone for the new movie from the get go. We introduce Cameron in a snow-bunny costume atop the yak, Drew in a drinking contest in the background and Lucy downstairs in the basement rescuing Robert Patrick. Suddenly we realize we’re in this weird, comedic place. It’s now officially a Charlie’s Angels movie.”
One of the more lavish sets designed by Riva was for Madison Lee’s hideout, known affectionately as ‘Madison’s Lair.’ In order to find a space large enough for what he and McG envisioned, Riva and his art department went to downtown Los Angeles where they transformed Union Station’s former ticket area into the place from which Madison directs her evil empire. “Because it was Madison’s Lair, I thought it should be really big and grand,” recalls Riva. “The room has 50-foot ceilings. We put in a fireplace that was so big you could stand two people one on top of the other and walk them into it. It was very extreme. Lauri Gaffin, our set decorator, filled the place with telescopes and black forest oversized furniture, and naked statues everywhere…with Demi walking around half-dressed. It was very sexy. We had a giant bed built that was practically as big as the Titanic. It had a huge canopy and a headboard with a golden sunray radiating out of it. Very stylized. It was crazy! We all loved it.”
One of the largest sets to be completely constructed on a stage was of a Hollywood rooftop, for one of the film’s major fight sequences. The rooftop is supposed to overlook Mann’s Chinese Theatre where the premiere of a new film by Alex’s boyfriend, Jason, is taking place and Madison Lee is trying to wreak havoc on the Angels’ loved ones. Rather than take the chance of being exposed to the elements and noise, Riva decided to build the set on a soundstage. “It was a major undertaking,” he recalls. “It’s extremely difficult to make a huge set like that look real but Russell made it come alive. Without his interpretation, it would have been nothing.”
Carpenter is amused by Riva’s compliment. “One of the great things about being part of the Charlie’s Angels team is that everybody gets credit for what someone else did. Half the time, good cinematography is actually good production design and vice versa. The Hollywood rooftop set was one that required total collaboration. We had a 360-degree site that literally represented the entire Hollywood area at night. Our job was to light it in a way that made sense for the Angels’ world. Things have to be real, but also fantastic, somewhere between fun and reality. And it all had to be tied in with a sequence shot on the real Hollywood Blvd. You always hope that it’s a seamless transition from the real world to the world we create on stage.”
The Treasure Chest interior where the Angels have another adventure was also constructed on a soundstage at Sony Studios. “McG and I love old musicals,” acknowledges Riva. “I don’t think you can go wrong by putting at least one or two dance numbers in any movie. And he’s determined to do that any chance he gets. He wanted the appearance of a ‘knock-down, dirty, seaside bar’ for the Treasure Chest. But he wanted the interior to be a total surprise, so we came up with a sexy red strip joint kind-of-place with circular fish tanks mounted in the walls, and a sexy floorshow all enveloped in this red plastic patent leather.” (Diaz’s performance in a giant martini glass in this scene pays homage to and is inspired by Playboy beauty Dita Von Teese’s risqué and renowned burlesque act).
Over 500 yards of shiny red vinyl was used to quilt the walls and more than 3000 silver and gold coins were strung up to make curtains. Aquariums filled with dozens of exotic fish were set into the walls behind the bar. Carpenter admires McG’s showmanship and his ability to “know just how far he can go before he hangs himself. He has a great and joyful appreciation of the old-style Hollywood filmmaking. When I first met him, I was amazed by how easily he referenced films from the Golden Age of MGM. He could talk about Ben Hur and Show Boat and ‘60’s films like Viva Las Vegas as effortlessly as last week’s best-selling music video.”
Joseph G. Aulisi’s costumes for the original Charlie’s Angels sparked a great deal of interest and praise and McG was eager to have him return for the sequel. “Joe makes the girls look so elegant and so lovely,” he says. “Then when it’s time to make them look tough, he does it in spades. As a person he’s very low-key. There’s nothing flamboyant about his personality, but when you witness what his imagination gives rise to, it’s really quite extraordinary.”
McG had some definite clothing ideas for some scenes, says Aulisi. For others, he placed his trust in his costume designer’s hands. “McG has this incredible vocabulary of every kind of possible pop-culture reference from the middle of the 20th century on. He draws on that, which inspires me to keep finding new places to go with it.”
The Technicolor musicals of the 1950s are an inspiration for the film, filtered and updated through McG’s sensibilities. Although the Angels’ costumes vary wildly, depending on the particular undercover assignment, Aulisi gave each of them a distinctive look. “The look has evolved since the first film,” he says. “Cameron’s character is still the ‘California, outdoorsy girl’ and, in general, totally into sportswear. Drew’s Dylan has lost some of her ‘flower child’ demeanor and has moved into a ‘rock star’ mode, while Lucy’s character remains the most international and cosmopolitan of the three girls. The challenge was to give the clothes a fresh look and still be faithful to what we call the ‘essence of Angels.’ To do this I switched the color palette using a lot of red, white and black.”
One of Aulisi’s favorite segments is the Mongolian Bar scene because “it was so different from the rest of the film. We probably fit about a hundred-and-fifty Mongolian extras along with the three Angels.” Barrymore’s costume is probably the most correct Mongolian outfit. Liu’s costume evolved from research he did on Mongolian armor — leather-coated plates of copper – that were transferred to a more practical all-leather outfit. In counterpoint, Diaz’s snow-bunny costume injected some humor into the Angels’ wardrobe.
As in Charlie’s Angels, the costumes in the new film are witty, playful and in some instances, ultra-sexy. “I tried to maintain an elegance,” Aulisi says, “using more texture in this film, with pleating and lacing and other things to give the wardrobe more dimension. Since fashion changes from moment to moment, I find it’s better to go with classic shapes. I look at the first film now and it still looks fresh, not dated.”
Motocross enthusiasts may notice that many of the racers are wearing Troy Lee Designs. Lee is the racing world’s premier designer and painter of custom helmets and riding gear. Lee designed and built the basic gear for the three Angels — jerseys, pants and chest protectors. The boots were provided by Alpinestar, and Shoei provided the helmets onto which Lee painted the designs.
“Basically, we tried to heighten the reality of the sequence,” Aulisi explains. “For a road-luge sequence, I designed a jumpsuit in a camouflage pattern so that it looked like it was part of the road. Then I put a tire track down one side of it – to give it an edge.”
In addition to the three Angels, Aulisi designed the costumes for retired Angel, Madison Lee. In the beginning, her scenes are in shadows so the audience is not sure whether it’s a man or a woman. Later it is revealed that she is a ‘fallen’ Angel. “What I attempted with Madison was to give the impression that she’s enmeshed and slightly trapped, so I used layers of net on her costume. At a certain point, she jumps off a roof and her costume turns into a flight suit, which is something that actually exists, although it’s used for much higher altitudes. It gave a spidery tone to her character, which was a lot of fun.”
What viewers may not realize when they see the Angels in their form-fitting costumes is how many versions of the costumes have to be created. “Very often,” explains Aulisi, “we’re up to eight or twelve copies of each costume, not only for the actors but for their photo doubles and stunt doubles, which means the costumes have to be sized differently as well.”
With the exception of the Charles Townsend Agency, the film rarely ventures to the same location twice. The Angels are in constant motion. Location manager Kenneth D. Lavet drove hundreds of miles throughout the Los Angeles area to find the 30 or so diverse locations McG envisioned for the film. “McG likes the idea of celebrating Los Angeles, so there are a lot of iconic landmark locations in the film,” explains Lavet. “He has an encyclopedic memory and knew of the best pop locations in the city.”
“One of our mantras,” says McG “is that Charlie’s Angels has been designed as a love letter to the city of Los Angeles. Every location had to matter. Everything had to be a landmark, to have historical significance. While there have been several films that were paeans to the legacy of New York City, Los Angeles is often seen as a more disposable city. But in our film you won’t see any mini-malls. You’ll see a more hidden L.A., amazing locales like the ornate Los Angeles Theatre, brilliant John Lautner-designed homes, extraordinary beaches that exist only on the west coast of North America, the docks of San Pedro and the Griffith Park Observatory, to name but a few.”
Timing played a big part in what locations were available. Sometimes, Lavet says, the production got lucky. “Normally you can only shoot at the Griffith Park Observatory one day a week when the facility is closed to the public. Because it was about to undergo a massive renovation, we were able to slip in there and shoot for over a week.”
McG had always wanted to use the landmark, but never before had it been available at the right time. “I’m very influenced by Rebel Without a Cause, which was shot up there. Plus, it has an architectural quality that allows you to look at it in a big, wide shot and it’s very bold. It also has an ‘angelic’ quality in that it looks over the City of Angels.”
The Observatory is also a dramatically significant icon and the location in which the character of Madison Lee is finally revealed. “When I learned that the top piece of the observatory telescope rotunda would rotate, I knew that I wanted to place her up there,” says McG. “We had to build a special rig to keep Demi from falling because as it goes around it jerks and could have bucked her out. I love the reveal when Natalie and Alex get a look at Madison and realize she’s betraying the Angels ethos. It’s a powerful scene.”
Another difficult location was the house in which Liu’s character resides, which is perched on a promontory overlooking Beverly Hills with views of the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island. The Sheets-Goldstein residence is a true architectural landmark and one of McG’s favorite L.A. houses. “It’s a perfect synthesis of the city’s indoor-outdoor living experience, sort of the crowning achievement of architect John Lautner’s career,” McG smiles.
For the motocross sequence, explains Lavet, “McG wanted the event to be more of an illicit motorcycle race than one held in a stadium. He wanted a covert event where riders pay a fee and winner takes all.”
“I wanted to create a stark, dangerous backdrop,” says McG. “We found an old coalfield in San Pedro and cleared out all the coal, creating a 360-degree stadium made of coal. All you get is the composition of blue sky, black coal and then these almost animatronic athletes a hundred feet in the air doing flips and pop wheelies. It was just the sort of emotion I wanted – to feel the speed, the danger, the sexiness and excitement that are embodied in the sport.”
Another San Pedro location was the nearby Southwest Marine dockside. “The largest harbor in the Los Angeles area is in San Pedro and we took advantage of the giant tanker ships and the idea that the O’Grady clan’s secret hideout was aboard one of these hollowed-out super-tankers,” says McG “It also gave me the opportunity to get the girls into some welding outfits and take advantage of that Flashdance imagery of beautiful girls ripping off welding masks.”
Another landmark used in the film was the Hansen Dam in the San Fernando Valley. The 62-year old structure, which operates under the auspices of the Army Corps of Engineers, is usually used for flood control. Through the digital magic of computer simulation and the sawdust hammer-and-nails work of scores of propmakers, the 10,475-foot long dam was transformed into an eerie Mongolian border crossing. Faux lookout towers and a disposable plaster-and-wood wall with a huge door added to the exotic aura. Set atop the dam was a 49-ton M60 A-1 (Patton) tank that was rented from the American Society of Military History and Museums.
“That scene was a real achievement for the art department,” recalls Riva, “because McG kept talking about the opening of the picture and how it had to be huge and overpowering. We designed and animated a sequence based on his pitch, and it was that sequence that got everyone at the studio excited. We eventually shot it on film. At first we thought we might have to build this giant dam that’s supposed to be in Mongolia. But working in conjunction with our visual effects supervisor Mark Stetson, we created something out of a Los Angeles location that, with a little effects magic, felt like Mongolia. We even had snow and sand on the ground and extras dressed up in giant yak parkas in the 95-degree heat. But it worked.”
Directed by: McG
Starring: Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Robert Patrick, Bernie Mac, Justin Theroux, Demi Moore, Jaclyn Smith
Screenplay by: John August
Cinematography by: Russell Carpenter
Production Design by: J. Michael Riva
Costume Design by: Joseph G. Aulisi
Set Decoration by: Lauri Gaffin
Music by: Ed Shearmur
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for action violence, sensuality, language.
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: June 27, 2003
