Ollie’s epic swansong
QUESTION Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing both appeared in Star Wars films after their deaths. Which other actors have done this?
IN ROGUE One: A Star Wars Story (2016) the film-makers tapped into advances in digital technology to resurrect Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin, 22 years after the actor’s death.
Perhaps the best and most wellknown digital fix was Oliver Reed’s performance as Proximo in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000).
Reed died of a heart attack during a drinking bout in Valetta, Malta, during a break from shooting, leaving several important scenes unfinished.
Reed’s face was mapped onto a double’s head using CGI. The process reportedly cost €2.25million for just two minutes of screen-time.
The death of an actor during a film’s production has become an increasing problem as so much of Hollywood’s output is now movie franchises. This was the case with Carrie Fisher.
She will still appear in Star Wars: Episode IX, due for release in 2019, though instead of using CGI it is thought that archive footage will be employed.
Likewise, the 2013 death of star Paul Walker in a high-speed car crash disrupted the production of Fast & Furious 7, just two months after filming began.
The studio reportedly spent an extra €34million to complete the film, using a combination of CGI and his younger brothers as stand-ins.
In a lesser-known example, 15 years after his death, Sir Laurence Olivier appeared as an evil hologram named Doctor Totenkopf in the art deco adventure film Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow (2004), starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Jude Law.
Director Kerry Conran resurrected Sir Laurence using digitally manipulated footage culled from BBC tapes.
Heath Ledger won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of The Joker in the 2008 sequel The Dark Knight a month after he died. The actor was also in the middle of filming Terry Gilliam’s film The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus when he died.
His character’s remaining scenes were divided among Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. A number of Hollywood actors have become concerned that such posthumous portrayals will tarnish their legacy and have acted accordingly.
For instance, Robin Williams, who killed himself in 2014, has banned any use of his image for commercial means until 2039.
He also blocked anyone from digitally inserting him into a movie or TV scene. Jared Carter, Telford, Shropshire.
QUESTION Are all species of bat able to see?
THE old saying ‘as blind as a bat’ is a misrepresentation. The truth is that all bat species (about 1,200) can see.
Traditionally, bats have been ordered into two categories, the Megachiroptera (megabats or fruit bats) and Microchiroptera (microbats) which are believed to have evolved independently, but from a common ancestor.
The word chiroptera comes from Greek and means ‘hand-wing’, a definition easily understood if you were to see a bat’s skeleton.
The megabats are mostly medium-sized or large mammals who mainly eat fruit and nectar, although will sometimes consume small animals or fish.
These species have pronounced visual centres and big eyes as they use vision to help capture their prey. They also have a well-developed sense of smell for the same purpose.
Flying foxes are able not only to see well during daylight, but can also see in colour. They rely on their daylight vision and cannot fly during moonless nights.
Megabats do not navigate by true echolocation, the biological sonar used by Microchiroptera, so their eyesight is crucial.
Only one megabat species, the Egyptian fruit bat Rousettus egyptiacus, uses a type of echolocation – high-pitched tongue clicks to navigate in caves.
Microbats are mostly insectivores. They account for about 70% of all bats and use echolocation to navigate and identify the food. Microbat vision has recently been shown to be more complex than once believed.
There are two types of photoreceptor cells in the retinas of bats: the cones, for daylight and colour vision, and the rods, for night vision.
It was thought that because microbats are mostly nocturnal, their eyes contained only rods. But this is not the case and these bats can see during the day.
Moreover, vision may be used by microbats to navigate over long distances, beyond the range of echolocation.
D.B. Warren, By email.
QUESTION Who managed Frank Sinatra during his career?
ELIOT Weisman managed Frank – or ‘Mr S’, as he called him – from 1976 to the singer’s death in 1998.
Eliot describes in detail the many stories from that period in a fantastic book entitled The Way It Was: My Life With Frank Sinatra, co-written by Jennifer Valoppi and published last year.
One story recalled Frank telling Donald Trump to ‘go f*** himself’ on meeting him. Weisman and Sinatra had a great relationship over that time. In his earlier days, Frank performed with big bands and had several different managers who looked after the whole band. The most prominent was Hank Sanicola.
In the later years, Sinatra’s big tours were managed by Jerry Weintraub, who was very successful at organising such events. He also managed tours for Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, The Four Seasons, Led Zeppelin and The King himself, Elvis Presley. Gary Litchfield, Portsmouth.
QUESTION When was toilet paper invented?
WHILE there is evidence that the Chinese royal family used some form of toilet paper in the 14th century, American Joseph C. Gayetty created the first commercially packaged, factory-made version in 1857.
His loose sheets of paper were called The Therapeutic Paper.
They were impregnated with aloe, watermarked ‘J. C. Gayetty’ and marketed as ‘the greatest necessity of the age!’
The Scott Paper Company of Philadelphia became the first successful mass manufacturer of toilet paper and, in 1890, the first to sell it in rolls. Alun Cowan, by email.
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