Movies
Barry Levinson’s ‘The Bay’ Gives Homage to ‘Jaws’?
BD regular ‘Avery’ sent us links to a variety of news articles from this past summer where local Georgetown papers reported from the soon-to-film set of Barry Levinson’s The Bay, the latest cinema verite horror film from Paranormal Activity producing house Room 101.
The pic begins on the Fourth of July where an unprecedented biological disaster is unleashed from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. An isopod parasite, carrying untreatable, mutated diseases, jumps from fish to human host and replaces them with itself. Seven years later, the true horror and scope of the event, captured mainly on home videos by the town’s now long-dead victims, is revealed to the public for the first time…
The local papers report on a small-town fair, similar to the Mayor’s excitement in Steven Spielberg’s classic Jaws. Inside you’ll find interesting lines for the articles, along with links to a ton of behind-the-scenes photos.News bites from Georgetown Times, you’ll find over 20 behind-the-scenes images here:
-Extras from Andrews, Georgetown, Pawleys Island and Myrtle Beach showed their Blue Crab eating skills Tuesday as day two of filming for “The Bay” began on Front Street. As Director Barry Levinson called for action, the group of participants ate Maryland Blue Crabs at a fictional festival in the town of Claridge, Maryland.
-As real Georgetown Mayor Jack Scoville stood near one of the vending booths, Frank Deal, portraying Claridge Mayor John Stockman, shook hands and welcomed people to the festival supposedly held on the Fourth of July. “This is a dream come true, working with Barry Levinson,” Deal said. “It doesn’t get any better than this. I’m having a great time. The townspeople are phenomenal.”
-After that, the action really started as residents of Claridge began to become ill from eating Blue Crabs. The aftermath of the ecological disaster will be filmed Wednesday, production employees said.
-A frantic traffic jam was filmed Monday night on the bridges leading out of Georgetown.
-The action on Tuesday featured many local residents, who set up booths during the fictional festival.
-Many people posed with Levinson for pictures, including Miss Teen Charleston, Keyla Childs. Childs portrayed “Miss Crustacean,” a beauty queen, during the pretend festival. SPOILER: Her mother said Miss Crustacean meets a sad end during the movie, which they just learned this week.END SPOILER
FROM A DIFFERENT ARTICLE:
-Glenn Peison, set director for the film, said part of the movie will center around a “4th of July type fair” which will stretch along a large portion of Front Street. He said he is looking for food and game vendors as well as people who can set up arts and craft tents. Anything you would find at a hometown festival, he said. That will include jumping castles and dunking booths. “We are looking for people to set up tents that sell knick-knacks and T-shirts,” Peison said.
-One of the scenes being shot will be people having a good time at the festival before the tragic event hits the town. This scene will include a crab eating contest. Then, scenes will be shot showing Front Street and the festival area after the tragedy. “It will be like a ghost town with litter all over the place,” Peison said.
-Eldridge said the science fiction thriller film is being shot with hand-held cameras and will depict a single day in the town. Much the same as the television show “24” centers around the events that take place in a one-day period.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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