‘Ivan’ the parable
Cranston faces the gorilla in the room
Yes, Bryan Cranston really does resemble a middleage ruin in “The One and Only Ivan.” It’s all for a good cause.
Cranston at 64 went public in July about surviving COVID-19 and, on Instagram, gives blood plasma to help other pandemic patients.
During an “Ivan” Zoom press conference he looked and sounded super. Ivan (voiced by Sam Rockwell) is a silverback gorilla who is billed, as the title proclaims, as the star of a small, run-down circus in a fading shopping mall.
It’s owned by its tired, beer-bellied ringmaster, Cranston’s Mack.
He saw Mack in realistically ordinary terms. “It started with my script — which resonated with me — and the plight of not just the animals” but Mack as well.
He met Mike White (“Chuck and Buck”) who adapted K.A. Applegate’s Newbury Medal-winning children’s novel, to discuss “How we would lay this out. I saw Mack as a man with flaws but who’s attempting to make things right.
“Ivan was like a child to him — and he didn’t want to abandon his child. So how (after buying him as an infant from poachers) do I embrace the fact that he is now a full-fledged silverback gorilla (caged)? And how do I live with that?
“It was to discover those nuances and allow for the character to be vulnerable. I pitched the idea that Mack wears a wig. And at one point the wig flies off and he’s bald. It embarrasses him.
“I also had a stomach pad to make him noticeable. And then a girdle. When he’s doing his thing he’d be wearing it. Those kinds of things were personal vulnerabilities he didn’t want people to see.
“So he was presenting himself as someone he wanted to project. But it wasn’t really him. At the end it came full circle.
“Our director Thea (Sharrock) said, ‘At the end he embraces who he truly is.’
“He allows himself to show who he really is. No more wig! He’s allowing himself to be happy. “
Mack is the kind of circus owner who believes that he should try to clown around so he rides a tiny bicycle.
Cranston smiled and said, “You look at that and think, I can ride that. It’s actually much harder than it appears. There was no CGI — I rode the bicycle. It was difficult,” he added, “but it was fun. I fell down several times because it’s slick. And your knees are basically up in your face when riding.”