Brendan Fraser Apologizes For Making 'George of the Jungle' Too Real
Brendan Fraser has made his blessed return to the spotlight as the star of Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming psychological drama The Whale, and he brings with him the gift of stories from our favorite Fraser films - like a long-lost uncle who shows up to our house with a new bike on our birthday.
The star told an interviewer from Bay Area publication SFGATE this past weekend that he owed the people of NorCal an apology – while filming George of the Jungle 25 years ago, the crew of the beloved family comedy made the movie a little too real for commuters on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge (erroneously called the Golden Gate Bridge by Fraser). They hung a lifelike mannequin from a parachute atop one of the supports and accidentally created a real-life crisis.
“Disney put a mannequin hanging by a parachute from the uprights,” said Fraser, "It brought traffic to a standstill on either side of the bridge. My trailer was on the other side in a parking lot. I just remember watching the Golden Gate Bridge. There's this dummy parachutist hanging from it.”
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If the props master on George of the Jungle had any doubts about the efficacy of his work, they were quickly assuaged once national news was duped by the dummy in danger. Brendan continued to recount his experience from inside the trailer as the counterfeit crisis stalled traffic on the bridge, saying, “I had the TV on, and Oprah got interrupted because there was a special news report with helicopters saying a parachute is dangling on the bridge. And I'm going — wait a minute, I'm looking at the helicopters and TV — somebody didn't pull a permit, somebody's going to get in trouble with the mayor's office. So I can only apologize for that."
We at Cracked have been hoping for a Brenaissance for a while now, and we’re happy to see how well the star’s stunning return to the spotlight has been received. His performance in The Whale has already drawn buzz as a frontrunner for an Oscar nod. In the film set to release this December 9th, Brendan plays a 600 pound man who struggles to reconnect with his 17 year old daughter after abandoning his family many years prior.
After the screening, Brendan elaborated on the process of building the character and connecting with the difficult themes tackled by the film. Fraser explained that he worked with the non-profit group Obesity Action Coalition and talked to various individuals whose stories of their struggles with obesity helped to shape Brendan’s approach to the subject matter.
Said Brendan about the people he spoke to, "They had this in common ... I noticed that early in their stories, early on, there was a figure, sometimes a parent, sometimes a father, who spoke vindictively to them as children about their body weight. It set in motion a pattern that stayed with them for the rest of their lives… What we say to one another, what we say to our children, how we speak with one another, it can do harm. A movie's never going to solve anyone's problems, but it can possibly help influence the culture, how we think, how we feel, how we speak to one another ... So I felt a moral obligation to give everything that I had."
Welcome back Brendan - though we wish you would have concluded by apologizing to the people of Egypt for causing a massive scare and downtown Cairo traffic jam around flesh-eating scarabs.
