'This Freaking Tower!': Tech Saves Potty-mouthed Stars in Vertigo Thriller 'Fall'

"Fall" follows two young women who decide to scale an impossibly tall metal telecommunications tower FABRICE COFFRINI AFP/File
"Fall" follows two young women who decide to scale an impossibly tall metal telecommunications tower FABRICE COFFRINI AFP/File
TT
20

'This Freaking Tower!': Tech Saves Potty-mouthed Stars in Vertigo Thriller 'Fall'

"Fall" follows two young women who decide to scale an impossibly tall metal telecommunications tower FABRICE COFFRINI AFP/File
"Fall" follows two young women who decide to scale an impossibly tall metal telecommunications tower FABRICE COFFRINI AFP/File

When you're dangling from a tower 2,000 feet above the desert floor by your fingertips, it may be difficult not to drop a couple of F-bombs -- even if you're a Hollywood actor shooting a PG-13 rated movie.

Fortunately, a new editing technology came to the rescue of the "potty-mouthed" stars of "Fall," out in US theaters Friday, which follows two young women who decide to scale an impossibly tall metal tower in the remote California desert.

This being a movie, the adventure doesn't go to plan, leaving Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner) stranded on a tiny platform where vertigo is just one of the terrifying challenges they must overcome.

"I'm talking about the most intense winds I've ever experienced," Currey told AFP, of the grueling shoot.

"Gini (Gardner) and I are just holding on to that pole, sitting there, swaying, looking at each other, and it's making sounds.

"We had a moment going, 'what did we get ourselves into? Also, are these our final hours? Are we gonna make it down?'"

"There was definitely some swearing in the environment and in the air."

Though the movie was not shot at the real B67 TV Tower, which is twice the height of the Eiffel Tower, the actors still had to perform on a terrifying set: a 60-foot tower perched atop a sheer cliff in the Mojave desert.

Using judicious angles to avoid showing the mountain, British director Scott Mann was able to retain a realistic feel for the Indy thriller at the tiny budget of $3 million.

But when major Hollywood studio Lionsgate agreed to distribute the film, there was one problem.

The actors were cursing throughout, using language likely to trigger a restricted "R" rating that could dampen box office receipts.

"Potty mouths Virginia and Grace, is what I'd say!" joked Mann, in an interview with AFP via Zoom.

"I do not blame Gini and Grace -- because let's be honest, off the top of this ridiculous structure, thousands of feet up, asking to improvise out scenes, it is entirely justified they would be saying that."

"Definitely my fault!" he admitted.

- 'Potty-mouth language' -
While a giant summer superhero movie might typically reshoot certain scenes, the budget on "Fall" did not allow for that, and filmmakers were reluctant to edit out dialog.

Instead they found a creative solution: a nascent technology, primarily invented for foreign-language dubbing, enabling them to seamlessly swap in more family-friendly audio.

It maps the actors' faces, learning their specific mouth movements, before manipulating these motions with 3D computer effects to sync with new dialog.

"What the technology allowed was, rather than having to rebuild the tower and go up the mountain again, just to go to a sound studio," said Mann, who co-founded a start-up working on the technology.

"We rewrote those little moments, just to work around some of that potty-mouth language, and then basically inject it back into the movie."

While the tool has been referred to as "deepfake," Mann said that label suggests more nefarious uses such as pornography, while in reality it is more "hands-off."

"It's an interesting use, and I think it was a good solution," he said.

- 'Wild' -
Despite being released in mid-August -- typically a period with low audiences, where many weaker films are unceremoniously dumped by studios -- "Fall" has received very positive reviews.

The Guardian said the micro-budget movie should embarrass other giant studios who throw "a hundred times more at blockbusters with a hundred times less of a thrill factor," while Vanity Fair dubbed it "an engrossing dog-days surprise."

For Currey, who did many of her own stunts including clinging onto a plummeting ladder, making the movie was "pretty wild, not like anything I've ever done before."

"And we didn't know if we were going to be R or PG-13," she added.

"As far as Gini and I knew, we could say whatever we wanted!"



Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1’ Is Formula One Spectacle 

Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
TT
20

Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1’ Is Formula One Spectacle 

Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski’s “F1,” a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor.

Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in “Top Gun: Maverick,” has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on “Maverick,” takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping score.

And, again, our central figure is an older, high-flying cowboy plucked down in an ultramodern, gas-guzzling conveyance to teach a younger generation about old-school ingenuity and, maybe, the enduring appeal of denim.

But whereas Tom Cruise is a particularly forward-moving action star, Brad Pitt, who stars as the driving-addicted Sonny Hayes in “F1,” has always been a more arrestingly poised presence. Think of the way he so calmly and half-interestedly faces off with Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.” In the opening scene of “F1,” he’s sleeping in a van with headphones on when someone rouses him. He splashes some water on his face and walks a few steps over to the Daytona oval, where he quickly enters his team’s car, in the midst of a 24-hour race. Pitt goes from zero to 180 mph in a minute.

Sonny, a long-ago phenom who crashed out of Formula One decades earlier and has since been racing any vehicle, even a taxi, he can get behind the wheel of, is approached by an old friend, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) about joining his flagging F1 team, APX. Sonny turns him down at first but, of course, he joins and “F1” is off to the races.

The title sequence, exquisitely timed to the syncopated rhythms of Zimmer’s score, is a blistering introduction. The hotshot rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) is just running a practice lap, but Kosinski, his camera adeptly moving in and out of the cockpit, uses the moment to plunge us into the high-tech world of Formula One, where every inch of the car is connected to digital sensors monitored by a watchful team. Here, that includes technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), the team’s chief.

Verisimilitude is of obvious importance to the filmmakers, who bathe this very Formula One-authorized film in all the sleek operations and globe-trotting spectacle of the sport. That Apple, which produced the film, would even go for such a high-priced summer movie about Formula One is a testament to the upswing in popularity of a sport once quite niche in America, and of the halo effects of both the Netflix series “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” and the seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, an executive producer on “F1.”

Whether “F1” pleases diehards, I’ll leave to more ardent followers of the circuit. But what I can say definitively is that Claudio Miranda knows how to shoot it. The cinematographer, who has shot all of Kosinski’s films as well as wonders like Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” brings Formula One to vivid, visceral life. When “F1” heads to the big races, Miranda is always simultaneously capturing the zooming cars from the asphalt while backgrounding it with the sweeping spectacle of a course like the UK’s fabled Silverstone Circuit.

OK, you might be thinking, so the racing is good; is there a story? There’s what I’d call enough of one, though you might have to go to the photo finish to verify that. When Sonny shows up, and rapidly turns one practice vehicle into toast, it’s clear that he’s going to be an agent of chaos at APX, a low-ranking team that’s in heavy debt and struggling to find a car that performs.

This gives Pitt a fine opportunity to flash his charisma, playing Sonny as an obsessive who refuses any trophy and has no real interest in money, either. The flashier, media-ready Noah watches Sonny's arrival with skepticism, and the two begin more as rivals than teammates. Idris is up to the mano-a-mano challenge, but he’s limited by a role ultimately revolving around and reducing to a young Black man learning a lesson in work ethic.

A relationship does develop, but “F1” struggles to get its characters out of the starting blocks, keeping them closer to the cliches they start out as. The actor who, more than anyone, keeps the momentum going is Condon, playing an aerodynamics specialist whose connection with Pitt’s Sonny is immediate. Just as she did in between another pair of headstrong men in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Condon is a rush of naturalism.

If there’s something preventing “F1” from hitting full speed, it’s its insistence on having its characters constantly voice Sonny’s motivations. The same holds true on the race course, where broadcast commentary narrates virtually every moment of the drama. That may be a necessity for a sport where the crucial strategies of hot tires and pit-stop timing aren't quite household concepts. But the best car race movies — from “Grand Prix” to “Senna” to “Ferrari” — know when to rely on nothing but the roar of an engine.

“F1” steers predictably to the finish line, cribbing here and there from sports dramas before it. (Tobias Menzies plays a board member with uncertain corporate goals.) When “F1” does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It's not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it's enough to glimpse another road “F1” might have taken.