PUSH - Behind The Scenes

"Push"
BEHIND THE SCENES
by Tim Nasson
February 5, 2009

Watch "Push" Trailer

THE ABILITIES

Movers - Nick Gant (Chris Evans), a second-generation mover, can transport objects though space with his mind. From dice to guns to a foe's body, a mover can remotely manipulate the physical world to his advantage.

Watchers - A watcher has the ability to see the future. Some, like Cassie Holmes (Dakota Fanning), produce detailed drawings of their visions. The problem for watchers is that the future can be changed by events both large and small, so they have to keep checking make sure their past visions are still accurate.

Pushers - Far more advanced than mere telepaths who communicate through thought, a Pusher can plant ideas so powerful in a subject's mind that it is impossible to distinguish them from actual thoughts or memories. Both Kira (Camilla Belle) and Carver (Djimon Honsou) are pushers, the most feared and dangerous of the psychically gifted.

Stitches - A psychic healer like Stowe (Maggie Siff) can lay hands on a person and heal their wounds, but beware-cross a Stitch and he or she can return the patient to their injured state.

Sniffs - Like human bloodhounds, sniffs can track their quarry by scent, even if all they have to go on is a decade-old toothbrush. Feared by their fellow paranormals, sniffs are often used by the Division to hunt down its targets.

Shadows - Shadows like Pinky Stein (Nate Mooney) can use their minds to hide anything-from a renegade psychic to an entire skyscraper-from sniffs. But they can only shield people and objects temporarily from watchers.

Bleeders - Bleeders like the Pop boys possess the ability to shatter glass and blood vessels with the sound of their voices.

Shifts-A person with this skill never needs cash. A shift like Hook (Cliff Curtis) can transform the appearance of any object can at will. But there's a hitch: the effect doesn't last long.

Wipers - A wiper can erase any memory merely by laying hands on a subject. Nick and Kira turn to a local Chinese wiper to keep the watchers-who can predict future actions based on intentions-off their trails.

THE PRODUCTION

The premise of Push-a world in which ordinary people capable of astonishing acts are tested and controlled by a secretive government agency-stirred director Paul McGuigan's curiosity and sent him to the Internet for more information. "I typed in 'Psychic Powers Experiments,'" says McGuigan. "Out comes this amazing stuff. It's 1949 and the Cold War is about to begin. People are starting to experiment on what the brain can do."

McGuigan learned that in the years immediately following World War II, the idea of the use of psychics for information gathering began to take hold in government circles in the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

"Think about it," says Glenn Williamson, producer of Push and president of Back Lot Pictures. "You have someone who can truly see the future or manipulate the thoughts of others. It's a great counterintelligence asset.

"The movie is very much rooted in those real experiments," notes Williamson. "The files are still pretty confidential, so I don't know how much of what really happened we will ever know. The darkest part was during Nazi Germany, but more recently, during the Cold War, both Soviet and American intelligence conducted experiments with people who appeared to have these abilities."

In Push, a sinister government agency hunts down people with special abilities in an attempt to harness those powers for its own benefit. "The Division is the organization in charge of monitoring people with paranormal abilities," says Williamson. "But they've taken things to the next level and try to control and manipulate them."

The filmmakers believe the reality behind the movie's story sets it apart from other films revolving around superheroes. "We wanted to tell a fantastical story in a way that makes it feel very real," says McGuigan. "I liked the idea of bringing this whole world of people with extraordinary powers to life.

"But the film is not about supernatural powers," he continues. "It's about natural powers-things that people could actually do. For example, there are documented cases of people who do what they call 'remote viewing.' They would fly people over, say, the American Embassy and these people could get a sense of the building's layout and they could tell you which room is used for what."

With that knowledge, it became essential to McGuigan that the characters seemed to be real people in a real world. "I want people to be able to emotionally connect to it. We have all the big effects, but to me, that's only a little bit of it. It is an action movie, but it's much more based on the characterizations than action films usually are."

Williamson adds: "There's a real story that revolves around Nick and how he turned his back on the world. Cassie is the character that gets him out of it and it becomes a real human relationship. It's a great ride, but it's filled with human connection, which I think the best movies have. It's filled with unexpected situations and real drama."

One of the decisions McGuigan made that helped keep the focus on the film's characters was to use CGI effects sparingly. "I didn't want to do it in green screen or blue screen," he says. "I wanted to do it for real, through the camera. You can learn a lot from the great filmmakers of the past. They didn't have the benefit of CGI. They just used their imagination. In the end, the only thing on green screen is people driving, because the traffic in Hong Kong doesn't move much."

Chris Evans, who plays Nick Gant, a telekinetic hiding in Hong Kong, found the premise of the script fascinating. "When I first read it, I believed it all," he says. "Paul and I went back and forth on a daily basis searching for a truth level for the movie. He kept reminding me that there has to be some suspension of belief and that it's okay just to let the audience go for a ride with us."

The filmmakers have created a world that closely resembles the one we all live in, but with a few new rules of its own. "There are a lot of great moments in the movie where you're just not sure what's going on," according to Williamson. "Dakota Fanning's character can see images of the future. Her images are critical to what is happening, but they aren't crystal-clear and they may be unreliable, like memories.

"That idea helped us show the limits of what people can and can't do," the producer says. "One reason we go to movies is that they take us into a world that's different from our own, whether it's a complete fantasy or slightly enhanced reality. We want the world of Push to be our world, but with a heightened visual style. So it's our world, but not our world."

The film's young star Dakota Fanning characterizes Push as an action film, but also says, "It's so much of a personal story. I hope people think it's really fun. It's very action-packed and fast-moving, and the visual part of it is amazing."

Her co-star Evans adds, "We're not sending any deep messages. This is a pure entertainment film, like a lot of my favorite movies. It has a great script, great action and great characters, so it's fun all around."

THE CAST

Push gives its four leading actors an extraordinary opportunity to step out of their comfort zones and into roles unlike any audiences have seen them in before. For example, Dakota Fanning transitions from child star to a full-fledged teenage actress. Djimon Hounsou portrays his first villain and, instead of a damsel in distress, Camilla Belle plays a lethal weapon.

Chris Evans, who plays Nick Gant, found himself on a complex emotional journey. "Nick has had a lot of people whom he loved leave him for reasons he can't answer. And that has led him to build walls.

"There are lot of surprise turns and twists in the story," Evans adds. "It's like a page-turner. Some people are clairvoyant. Some people are can transform the appearance of everyday objects. Nick is a mover, which is a telekinetic."

McGuigan had seen Evans in the award-winning sci-fi film Sunshine. "I was so impressed by his commitment to that part," he says. "And I liked his realness. Even though he's a good-looking guy, he still feels very real to me."

"Chris has exactly what the part needed," says Williamson. "Nick is an appealing, vulnerable character, which is very different from the character in the Fantastic Four movies he's starred in previously. He had to play the layers of this character, as he learns to embrace his destiny.

"Chris also brought a real physicality to the part, which is great, because even though this movie is very much about the characters, there's always violence around the edges. He not only embraced the physical part, he had the time of his life. Our stuntman was actually a little frustrated, because he didn't get to do as much as he rehearsed for."

Dakota Fanning plays Cassie, a watcher, or clairvoyant. At the age of 14, Fanning has delivered more remarkable performances than many actors do in a lifetime. Playing opposite Academy Award-winners including Robert De Niro (Hide and Seek), Denzel Washington (Man on Fire), Sean Penn (I Am Sam) and Reese Witherspoon (Sweet Home Alabama), Fanning has been Hollywood's go-to child star for half her life. In Push, she takes on a more mature role. "There isn't a 14-year-old more perfect to play Cassie," says Williamson. "Dakota is definitely a teenager now. There has been a physical transformation. You've never seen her like this before."

McGuigan sees the film as a chance for Fanning to grow up finally in the eyes of both the audience and the industry. "She's still the sweet little girl from War of the Worlds to a lot of people. It's her time to go through her 14-year-old phase, where she gets to be a bit badly behaved."

The actress particularly enjoyed her character's irreverence and edge. "She's very sarcastic and she has these funny lines in the movie," says Fanning. "It's stuff that I would never really say in real life, so it's fun. She just thinks mostly about herself, but during this movie she learns to let other people in."

Fanning's co-workers were blown away by the maturity of her talent. "Dakota is an incredible actor," says Williamson. "She understands nuance. Paul might want something a little different and say, 'Can you do this?' She'd say, 'Okay,' like it was very simple, and then she would give this very sophisticated, nuanced performance."

Fanning herself says modestly, "I become the character when they say action, and when they say cut, it's over. I think it might come from doing it since I was so young."

Push gave Fanning a chance to work with one of her favorite actresses, Camilla Belle. "She was in my favorite movie when I was little, Annie: A Royal Adventure," Fanning says. "Ever since I saw that movie, I've wanted to work with her. She's definitely been like the older sister to me. We've gone to science museums and done lots of stuff together."

Belle, who plays Kira, the mystery woman at the heart of the puzzle, has been acting professionally since she was nine months old. "I see a lot of myself in Dakota," she admits. "Neither of us studied acting. We learned by doing it. On the other hand, she has this magical way of goofing around and then being there full of emotion once the camera starts rolling."

Williamson says they were looking for a very specific quality in the actress who would play Kira. "She had to have a combination of guardedness and vulnerability. She's been through a lot, but then there's a twist at the end where you're not sure she is who she says she is."

That air of mystery was one of the things that attracted Belle to the part. "I really love that Kira always keeps the audience guessing. You don't know whose side she's on. You really don't get her completely until the end."

As a performer, Belle has the ability to keep the camera interested in whatever she is doing, says the director. "She knows the camera. She understands it and she's got a strong sense of who she is. I like an actor who knows what she's good at."

Belle calls McGuigan "the calmest director I'd ever worked with in my entire life. He just always keeps his cool. He's really eccentric, and fun, and so open to anything you want to talk about, anything. And he's the most fashionable director I've ever worked with as well. Djimon and I were just making fun of him today because everything is so coordinated. He always has his little hat and his iPod in his pocket and his Starbucks."

Djimon Hounsou, a two-time Academy Award nominee for his work in Blood Diamond and In America, has built an internationally acclaimed career with portrayals of stoic, valiant characters. "Most of Djimon's films tap into his warmth and intelligence," says Williamson. "Here he's not just the bad guy; he's the puppet-master. He has everyone else do his bidding. And Djimon is so cool and composed, which made him the perfect choice for this character that controls everything through most of the film."

At six-foot-three, Hounsou cuts an imposing figure, a fact not lost on his fellow actors. "It's great seeing him in that character and he really fills those shoes," says Evans. "Just his presence alone is huge. He's got this big frame and this booming voice and that gaze-he'll yell in a scene and I'll instantly break out in a sweat. He just sucks the air out of a room. I'm surprised he hasn't played more bad guys."

"I've never really thought about him as either bad or good," says McGuigan. "We don't use him as a moustache-twisting bad guy; we use him as a kind of more intellectual bad guy. Frankly, when you have Djimon Hounsou there, he can be bad or good, but he's there. You can't help but look at him and wonder what he's going to say."

Hounsou relished the opportunity to unleash his inner scoundrel. "I like playing a bad guy, especially one whose bad attitude is justified," he says. "You can be a little malicious."

HONG KONG: THE DRAGON'S LAIR

According to the ancient Chinese art of feng shui, Hong Kong's unique convergence of ocean, mountain and plain form a dragon's lair-a place where extraordinary things are possible. Perhaps that is the reason that, for centuries, Hong King has been a commercial powerhouse, first for trade, then manufacturing, and now finance and filmmaking.

A fascinating fusion of Imperial China, Colonial Britain and futuristic metropolis, Hong Kong was chosen as the setting for Push after the filmmakers scouted multiple locations. "Push was always scripted to take place in a large Asian city, but not necessarily Hong Kong," says Stan Wlodkowski, the film's unit production manager and one of its executive producers. "We looked at Bangkok, some cities in mainland China and Hong Kong. Hong Kong had the locations that worked for Paul's vision of the movie."

"What we had in mind was something like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca," explains McGuigan. "In the 1930s and '40s, Casablanca was full of rogues of all kinds. It was a great place to hide out because anyone could go there. They could hide away and nobody could ever touch them. We had to find our Casablanca.

"We decided that the best place to make somebody invisible would be Hong Kong, because Hong Kong is full of millions of people all living on top of each other. If someone was trying to hide from a government division, there would be no easier place to be anonymous."

There is also a wealth of production talent available in the city, thanks to Hong Kong's thriving movie industry. "There is such a strong film community here, both in terms of the available equipment and skilled film technicians that we could integrate with our Western crew," says Wlodkowski. "A lot of them have worked on Hong Kong action movies, but there have been fewer Hollywood features. I think it was a lot of fun for our local crew to see how it's done in Los Angeles or in London. And, much to our benefit, they have a lot of expertise in being very cost-effective."

Among the unanticipated challenges was a far less formal, or "official," approach to the filmmaking process. As opposed to the more strictly secured shooting locations of the United States, the movie took a back seat to the daily hustle of Hong Kong life. "There are some great directors working here, but their approach is more on-the-fly," says Williamson. "Trying to capture the flavor of Hong Kong while you have a crew of perhaps 200 was difficult. We're not a huge movie, but it was hard for us to be in Hong Kong and be discreet."

In the end, McGuigan decided to throw the rules as he knew them out the window and go for what he calls "guerilla"-type filmmaking. The only plan we could come up with that seemed workable was to conceal the cameras on the camera trucks and film through little holes. We would send the actors down the street and have them do their stuff. And it had to be a one-take thing. You can't edit it because the background keeps changing."

That "seat-of-the-pants" work ethic allowed them to create an unusual immediacy in the film. Williamson cites the example of a scene in which Kira, Camilla Belle's character, is picked up by Division agents. "We did it in a very clandestine fashion," says the producer. "It was in Wan Chai, a section of Hong Kong with this really colorful market. We had a concealed camera, so we could play the scene with real people as background. The agents just grab her on a busy street and pull her into their vehicle. It's real-world."

The city's booming population and economic growth also posed a unique challenge. "Despite the fact that Hong Kong, in theory, is receptive to filming here, on a practical basis, the challenge is that it's such a thriving city right now," says Wlodkowski. "It's the city of the future. There is an incredible amount going on, so there is no such thing as an empty restaurant. When one becomes available, it rents the next day. We were looking for those opportunities-an empty office space, an empty parking lot. It just didn't happen. All the resources of the city were being used and expanded on."

François Séguin, production designer for Push, says that for him all of Asia and especially China is a visual treasure. "It's just so beautiful, so intense and so rich," he says. "They're not afraid of using color anywhere, so we had a totally free hand with that. In a Western or Occidental movie, the palette has to be a little bit more restrained because that's what it is in life. But here, it's totally open.

"I'd worked with Paul on Lucky Number Slevin and I knew his vision and his style," continues Séguin. "Paul likes color, so we took it from there and made the city like a mosaic exploding with color."

Before becoming a film director, McGuigan was a photographer, which still influences his visual choices. "On early location scouts, he took a ton of pictures of Hong Kong," says Williamson. "The palette started with one of those photographs. It was in his office during the whole preproduction period.

"It's a typical urban Hong Kong landscape with the back of all the taxicabs, which are red, a traditional symbol of good fortune in Chinese culture," continues the producer. "And they all have these green stickers on them. Out of the reality of the environment, Paul was drawn to those two specific colors, which came to permeate the film."

McGuigan says it was the first time he had taken a photo and used it as the basis for the look of an entire film. "As a photographer, I was always about the one frame. I think that with this movie, I've learned to get to that one frame. There's always one shot I have in my head, and I go."

McGuigan was also fascinated with the way the unique cityscape included traditional materials used in high-tech ways. "In Hong Kong, the construction scaffolding is made of bamboo," says Séguin. "Bamboo seems a primitive material, so there is this weird juxtaposition of it being used to build a skyscraper. The graphic is so dense and so organic. You can do anything with bamboo and it's amazingly solid. It's beautiful."

"All the construction here is surrounded by the bamboo scaffolding and green mesh." says Williamson. "Paul loved the visual of this building going up."

The film's explosive finale takes place atop one of those iconic skyscrapers, still under construction. Two locations were used to create the battleground.

"One was the working construction site," according to the producer. "The other is in this huge atrium that feels like it could be at the top of a building. We digitally put in the background of Hong Kong, which gives it a sense of real verticality. It's the best of both worlds, because it's a controlled environment, but it also has a texture of a real construction site."

In what might be the film's most compelling action scene, Nick and Cassie are pursued through a real-life Hong Kong fish market. The production used a specially constructed addition to the market to allow for multiple takes. "We're running through aisles of fish tanks and they're exploding," says Fanning. "Water's going everywhere. It's really hair-raising when you see it, because it's action all the time. People are moving everywhere. There's all this noise and glass exploding."

Fanning was enthralled by what she calls "the contrast between the future and a thousand years ago. When you step off the plane and you feel the hot air, you know you're in a different part of the world. The skyscrapers are huge and really modern and look like the future. And then the tiny fishing villages and fish markets were kind of very primitive and not like anything I've seen before. I stayed and took some photos for my photography class of fish, and all this dried seafood. And women that had been at this booth for probably 90 years."

None of the cast had been to Hong Kong before. "It was a shocker," says Hounsou. "I mean, all I did all day was look up. It's one of the centers of business in the world. It's exciting to see how one can come here and completely be lost."

"Hong Kong, it's a character in itself," says Evans. "There really is a life to the city, and it lends itself to the style we're going for in this movie."

"We wanted to make sure to take advantage of everything Hong Kong has to offer," says Williamson. "There are certain streets where the neon's incredible. When we shot in those areas, Peter Sova, the director of photography, would sometimes decide to shoot without any added light, to capture that real-life feeling. Because Hong Kong is an island, there's the constant backdrop of waterfront.

"Other filmmakers have captured Hong Kong in their own ways," says the producer. "But Paul has given it his own stylistic imprint. The palette of the movie, what the characters are wearing, it's all a heightened version of reality."

THE TRUTH BEHIND PUSH: REAL PSYCHIC EXPERIMENTS

The deadly world of psychic espionage depicted in Push is not just the work of the filmmakers' vivid imaginations; it is rooted in real-world efforts by the U.S. government to use specially trained psychics for military purposes. Perhaps the best-known example of such efforts is Project Stargate, sponsored by the U.S. Army to investigate the potential military application of psychic phenomena. Psychics trained under this program have reported remarkable, documented feats of paranormal prowess-from identifying landmarks or military installations with only a set of coordinates to guide them, to locating precise crash sites of lost aircraft and predicting the launch dates of enemy submarines and cargo vessels, to name a few.

Based at Stanford University and encompassing a number of sub-projects from the 1970s to 1995, Project Stargate developed a set of protocols to make researching clairvoyance and out-of-body projection more scientific. This approach to psychic arts became known as "remote viewing"-the purported ability to psychically "see" events, sites or information regardless of location. Project Stargate grew at least in part out of national security concerns stemming from reports that the Soviet Union was itself engaged in psychic research, mostly in telekinesis. Ironically, however, these reports may have been a Soviet disinformation campaign, started in response to rumors that the United States was experimenting in psychic warfare.

Remote viewing is only one of a number of psychic avenues that various governments have researched. Others include telekinesis, hypnotism and remote hypnotism, sometimes accompanied by the use of drugs, shock therapy, radiation and other techniques.

During World War I, both British and German doctors experimented with psychic techniques, successfully using hypnotism to treat shell-shocked soldiers. In World War II, hypnotism was reportedly used to program intelligence couriers-an approach favored by George Hoban Estabrooks. A Harvard-educated psychology professor, Estabrooks not only claimed to have programmed many spies for the allied forces using hypnosis, but also asserted he was able to split an agent into two distinct personalities, each unaware of the other. Estabrooks also claimed to be able to hypnotize people remotely.

Another major plot element in Push that has parallels in real-world government research into the psychic arena is the effort to control the minds of non-consenting subjects-even to the point of leading the subject to their own willing self-destruction-with the aid of psychotropic drugs.

As the postwar years stretched into the Cold War, a series of clandestine U.S.-sponsored programs unfolded. One such program, code-named MK-ULTRA, was a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. The program's holy grail was a perfect "truth drug" for use in interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War. Its scope was outlined in an intelligence memo dated January 1952 that posed a disturbing question: "Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?"

Starting in the late 1950s and continuing at least into the late 1960s, MK-ULTRA operated out of a secret laboratory established and funded by the CIA at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. There, psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron conducted experiments in "psychic driving" using memory implantation and memory erasure in conjunction with electroconvulsive therapy, LSD, prolonged drug-induced coma, sleep deprivation, noise and repetition tape loops, among other cruel practices. The program routinely recruited unwitting and non-consenting patients, some of whom suffered permanent damage as a result of the experiments, and one of whom died.

Because most MK-ULTRA records were deliberately destroyed in 1973 by order of then-CIA Director Richard Helms, it has been difficult, if not impossible, for investigators to gain a complete understanding of the more than 150 individually funded research sub-projects sponsored by MK-ULTRA and related CIA programs.

Project Stargate remains perhaps the best documented of such programs. Today, several of its former recruits are still alive and have written extensively on the subject of remote viewing, with titles such as "Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate America's Psychic Espionage Program" (by Paul H. Smith), "The Ultimate Time Machine" (by Joseph McMoneagle) and "The Seventh Sense" (by Lyn Buchanan). And although the government and military have denied any continuation of these secret programs since 1995, various sources-including ex-CIA agents themselves-assert that the CIA routinely conducts disinformation campaigns and that CIA mind control research continues to this day.