IT’S HARRY PARPER!
New film’s a gas for Dan
HARRY Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has swapped spells for smells in his new role as a flatulent corpse. Radcliffe, 26, plays a dead body with supernatural powers – and a tendency to break wind – in comedy drama Swiss Army Man. Co-directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan even asked the cast to provide homemade sound effects for the character. And they were so keen to oblige that filming was halted every time they were about to let rip so a sound recordist could capture the result. Radcliffe explained: “The directors said, ‘If anybody at any point wants to donate a fart to the movie, go over to Steve, our sound expert, and he will record it.’” The big-screen wizard claimed co-star Paul Dano, 31, was first to oblige, even before the opening scene was shot. He said: “We were about to go for a take. But Paul just suddenly reached up and grabbed the boom and was like ‘Hold on!’ and donated the first one.” A crew member on the set in Los Angeles confirmed: “From then on, things really devolved into a non-stop farting contest between the guys on the movie, who were constantly trying to trump each other on loudness and duration.” He added that “some days it stank so much” that the female lead, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, 31, complained the foul odours were drifting into her trailer during breaks. But she eventually got her own back by demanding the microphone before one scene and blasting out her own super-loud “showstopper” that “lasted a good four or five seconds” and left a “really toxic smell that hung around for ages”.
The results will be heard by audiences during several scenes in which Daniel’s corpse character Manny unexpectedly and noisily passes gas.
The Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix star said he became excited the moment he read the script for the independent film.
He went on: “Some people will be thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’ but for every person thinking that, I think there will be two who are like, ‘Man, I’ve been waiting years for a movie like this’.
“I was sold when I read a line in the script that said, ‘A suicidal man befriends a corpse, who then convinces him that life is worth living’. That, to me, is incredibly exciting.”
Mine have the odour of the phoenix