That Ray photo without his 12 inch long ass
JANUARY 23, 2000 | While I was in Toronto, I spent a few hours sitting with Ray Park, Clare and his best friend James. James is Ray's personal trainer and X-Men fitness consultant - he also looks after Bryan Singer, the producer (Ralph Winter?) and also worked with a number of the cast, including Famke Janssen (Jean Grey), James Marsden (Cyclops), Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) and Tyler Mane (Sabretooth).
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Ray is obviously guarded about X-Men filming, but was willing to share some general details that proved very interesting. He has been in Toronto for four months and is almost ready to film the major part of his role as Toad. "I actually got into X-Men at the Denver Star Wars Celebration," says Ray. He was speaking with somebody who said they had contacts with X-Men, and then he suddenly received a telephone call at his hotel from somebody in production asking if he was interested. He's still not sure if the person was responsible or not.
Originally, he wanted the role of Wolverine. Then X-Men producers asked him to co-ordinate the fight scenes and play Pyro which would make sense, since Pyro was originally English rather than Australian (in his first comic appearances he was referred to as "Englishman" and "limey"). Eventually though, the number of mutants in the Brotherhood were cut down and Ray was given the part of uber-agile Toad instead, and the part has been progressively beefed up ever since, including his speaking parts - starting with one line; now six and growing. Ray originally felt Toad should jump into prey then quickly jumping out of the way, smiling and laughing -- but decided to add much more evil to the character's expression, while making sure to keep a different look from Darth Maul.
His number of lines is not the only thing that has evolved: so has his costume. In The Green Mile the crew discovered that as soon as the jail bars hindered the view of the actor's eyes, it was apparently extremely disconcerting to watch when production staff reviewed the dailies. X-Men had a similar situation with Toad's eyes: "a scene that should have taken fifteen minutes ended up taking five hours", says Ray, due to the requirement of lighting his eyes correctly so they appear through the goggles he was wearing. Ray is not giving any costume details away but hints at "plenty of hair grease" and the interesting fact that Toad only uses his legs to fight. In initial screen tests, Ray various green food dyes were tested on him - and he apparently had a small allergic reaction to them and he developed large rashes.
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Not only has his role been beefed up, but also has he: "I've gained a stone (fourteen pounds) since I've been here", says Ray. With fourteen pounds of extra muscle, he is huge: much bigger than for Episode I. His daily training schedule is a rigorous combination of gymnastics, kickboxing and weights. With his character being so agile, he's prepared for his upcoming fight scenes with great fervor. Personal trainer James says that with the number of different exercises Ray is doing, it's actually not as taxing on his body. Says Ray: "If fans come to [a movie] to see me, I don't want to let them down".
Talking about the other stars, fans should be happy about Hugh Jackman - both Ray and James were raving about him. "He has a really great voice," says James. Due to his Australian theatrical background, he's apparently got great projection and an accent (though neither have been on the set while he's been filmed yet) should be easy. His normal accent would probably remind you of Terence Stamp. Another impressive cast member is apparently Tyler Mane, who is seven feet tall in costume. Also seven feet tall is his stunt double. "It's really hard going out with them", says James. "When we went out with both of them one night your neck would get tired, staring up at the ceiling all night when talking to them."
So did the other stars need much training? Apparently not. "Most of the stars were in pretty good shape already", says James. X-Men fan Jim Corbin emailed me before I left for Toronto and asked if I could find out what the movie would be rated, and how violent it would be: Superman violent or Blade violent. "Oh, it's extremely violent", smiled Ray, "there are blood and bodies everywhere!" Actually, they're trying to achieve a PG rating, but apparently all the characters get significant action.
"Toronto is great", says Ray. "I know more people here now than in London. People are really friendly and easy to talk to." Ray and James have a midtown apartment in the Bay/Bloor area. There are a number of gyms nearby which is very helpful given the freezing weather that Toronto receives. While I was there, the temperature was around -9: apparently quite warm for January.
It's not just the Toronto people who are nice - both Ray and James can't get over how nice everyone is on the set. Apparently it's very relaxed and both get on really well with director Bryan Singer. Ray had a similar relationship interacting with Sleepy Hollow director Tim Burton. "Tim was really great", says Ray enthusiastically. "We got on really well. He would always be open to ideas when we were filming." Meeting Tim was one of the reasons he wanted to be a part of Sleepy Hollow - he almost took a London Pantomime instead, something he had wanted to do for a while. One thing disappoints Ray when he talks of Sleepy Hollow -- namely, that the horse stunts keep being attributed to himself, rather than the real horseman stunt double, Rob Inch. “Rob was fantastic,” says Ray. Ray had previously worked with him on Star Wars: Episode 1 – he was Liam Neeson’s stunt double.
His favorite Sleepy Hollow scene was in the forest, where he fights five or six people at once. He prefers doing fight sequences like that largely because it keeps the action interesting. However his other Sleepy Hollow sequences were also eventful. For the cabin scene where the Headless Horseman kills the family of three, Ray explains how he was forced to improvise: "After I've kicked down the front door, fought and killed the parents, I was meant to turn around at the doorway and bash through the floorboards with my axe. The heads were really heavy and they were extremely realistic. You could even feel the stubble on their faces. So I was holding the axe in one hand, smashing it into the floorboards, and then the axe went straight through the board and out of my hand." Ray still hadn't broken the floorboards open yet like he was supposed to in the script, and so as not to wreck the take, he started to use his bare fist and crack them open. After pounding through the boards and ripping them out, Ray says Tim Burton loved it: "Tim was like, 'Whoa!' 'That's intense!'"
In another on-set Sleepy Hollow improvisation, the following scene on the bridge was changed slightly. In the final cut, the Headless Horseman suddenly appears from above the bridge in front of Ichabod. "In the storyboards, there was meant to be a scene where you see the Headless Horseman's feet run along the roof of the bridge then somersault down in front of Johnny Depp." But the roof was actually extremely high (over 12 feet) and when Ray practiced it, he flipped twice and landed awkwardly, briefly knocking himself out. He jumped up immediately and was OK, but Tim Burton realized that viewers wouldn't see the acrobatics in the shot anyway, so Ray ended up simply jumping down from above instead.
Ray says the blue hood he had to wear while filming Sleepy Hollow (in order to digitally remove his head later) made him feel very detached from the environment. “I felt very shut in and distant,” says Ray. But the weirdest experience was when he had a cold on the set of Star Wars. “I had to have an assistant wipe my nose because I couldn’t touch it due to all the makeup. It was terrible.” He says it would have made a funny photograph with Darth Maul walking around with two wads of tissues sticking out of his nose. Makeup took two and a half hours at the beginning of filming, and eventually with practice was cut down to an hour and a half. “One time they managed to get it done in an hour,” says Ray. A funny Maul moment was actually captured by a friend, who videotaped a topless Ray on the Tozeur, Tunisia set dancing to Prodigy’s “Firestarter” wearing only a pair of shorts but in full Darth Maul head makeup. Apparently it spawned a running joke between him and pierced Prodigy member Keith Flynt.
The whole Episode One Tunisian set experience was very intense for him, explains Ray, as he was completely involved in his fight scenes, and was not allowed to go out in the sun due to all the potential of melting makeup. “By the time we were shooting my scenes, I was very confident with them – I felt like an artist at the top of their game”. For this reason, he didn’t mix much with the rest of the cast – so much so that after Episode One’s release, he went up to Samuel L. Jackson to introduce himself. “Sam says, ‘Oh, I know who you are!’ – I was so surprised!” One thing he took with him from the Episode One set was his liking for a completely shaved head. “When X-Men makeup suggested I have blond roots, my first thought was ‘high maintenance’! I ended up convincing them not to do it. As soon as I’ve finished filming I’m shaving my head.”
Ray’s very judgmental of his own performances. For example, when Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibowitz came out to do the shots for January 1999’s edition, he was unhappy with his expression for the classic Obi-Wan and Darth Maul duel shot. “But that’s just me,” acknowledges Ray. “Everyone loves it. I’ve got a copy myself. For the shot, Ewan jumped from a trampoline and I jumped into the shot from the right. It was a pre-dawn shot, so we had to be in Makeup at 2am to get ready. I wanted to do a more visual move, but Annie knew what she wanted, which was to have my robes in a flowing movement, which worked out really well.”
So what DID Ray Park really think of Episode One? “I really enjoyed it – it was really fun.” He’s only got two gripes: the Nimoudians (“When I first heard them, I was like, ‘This isn’t Star Wars!’”) and the way his scenes were edited. “I felt there were better camera angles that they shot which perhaps could have been used. When they cut between the fighting and the other action, you lost some of the suspense that would have been there,” he explains. And how many times? “I’ve seen it six times, paid for three.”
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So does Ray check his Internet sites? He prefers chat rooms which he has fun in regularly with James, and for some unexplained reason, their goal is to be kicked out. “It’s much harder than it sounds”, says James. James and Ray want to eventually start a training club together, probably in London. Ray will perhaps offer sword-fighting lessons, but the overall goal seems to have a lot of fun. One very memorable time he had earlier last year was his holiday to The Ranch after filming. “The accommodation there is amazing”, enthuses Ray. “Television and stereo in every room, extremely luxurious.”
If Ray weren’t doing films, where would he be? “I’d probably go to China for a year,” says Ray, where he’d continue his Wushu training, a very dramatic, acrobatic, performance-oriented Chinese martial art. And is he doing Episode Two? Not as far as he knows (or able to say). “I suggested they should have a female as the antagonist for Episode Two,” laughs Ray. A film he’d love to do is Matrix 2; Ray fell in love with the original ever since he first saw it at Mann’s Chinese Theater in May. Another role he wanted was Strider, AKA Aragorn, the wandering ranger of the upcoming Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Of everything that came out of his films however, the one thing he treasures most are the fans. “Lucasfilm started getting thousands of letters and called me up, asking if I wanted them,” says Ray. “I replied, ‘Of course!’” He regrets his inability to reply to them all, but explains that if people could see just how much mail he gets, they would understand. You could measure it in square feet -- he gets so much he has to store it in more than one location. “They’re a real inspiration to me.” Fans cause him work harder in future projects.
His fan experiences have been much better than he expected – with the craziest autographs being body signings, which he only recently discovered are almost always later permanently tattooed in to accompany the original image. He mentioned two body signings at the Chinese Theater that he signed during the Star Wars line in May, including a particularly good Maul chest tattoo and Sarah’s leg tattoo of the Lego Darth Maul. But the one that got him in trouble, he says, goes to a breast request at a UK convention. Though it most likely definitely pleased the fan, it didn’t at all please his girlfriend, who was sitting behind him at the time. “It had been a long day. My manager said as I leaned over to sign, ‘Watch where you put your hand, and I thought he meant to be careful not to smudge the signature. I didn’t realize he was trying to tell me of my girlfriend expression at the time. I just didn’t think. I should have declined”, regrets Ray. And by his expression, I don’t think he’ll be signing the particular body part in the future.
A million thanks to Clare who organized this interview with Ray! Thanks also to Ray and James for doing the interview! You can check Ray Park’s Official Site soon! (What did you think? Contact Lincoln)
