The Eye Set Visit - Part 2 of 2

The Standard Hotel in downtown L.A., is, well, kind of standard. Maybe that’s why it was chosen as our generic home base for interviewing the two leads the two directors of The Eye, a remake of a well-regarded Hong Kong thriller which was released only a few years back. There was little distract us from the task at hand – unless you factor in the stunning beauty of the lead, Ms. Jessica Alba (aka, “The Alba”).

Horror.com and a select group of genre sites were invited out by Lionsgate to check out some filming, which turned out to be The Alba exiting a cab – I have seen the finished film, and am pleased to say that that marvelous scene did not wind up on the cutting room floor. Look for it on February 1, in a theater near you.

Between scenes, Alba, her costar Alessandro Nivola (read his solo interview here), and the directing team – David Moreau and Xavier Palud, those who brought us Ils in 2006 – sat down to chat and dissect The Eye.

Q: How do you guys work together, and how do you relate to having essentially just two leads with Jessica and Alessandro together in so many scenes?

David Moreau: Working with Jessica was a nightmare, but hopefully she’s not here. [laughs] Working with Xavier is great. We basically do everything together. And when we are on the set, maybe there is one who speaks more than the other. It is pretty similar to working with one director, actually.

Alba: They’re excellent. They really compliment each other. They’re like a great married couple - the ideal marriage. They really are each other’s ying / yang.

Q: For Jessica; what made you choose to do a thriller-slash-horror movie? It’s something we haven’t really seen you get involved in before.

Alba: I wanted to do it for a long time. I wanted to do something that transcended the genre. Fantastic Four was a big Hollywood comic book movie, but what attracted me to it is that the female superhero was more a maternal character in a family dynamic, and to me that was more interesting than just a girl in leather, cutting people’s heads off. And in this, I think it’s really intelligent and it’s a beautiful story of this girl’s journey in gaining her sight and dealing with it. And it just happens to be wrapped up in a horror movie. I just think that is so much more interesting than just running around in a white t-shirt or something. [laughs]

Q: What was it like learning the violin?

Alba: It’s bullshit! [laughs] It’s absolutely impossible. And they picked really difficult music, so the music I am learning is the music people play in university after they’ve been practicing since they were five. So they play their entire life, go to university, and then they play Beethoven and Mozart. No! That’s what I’m doing now. Three months learning how to even hold the instrument.

Moreau: All the notes are accurate.

Alba: All the notes are accurate. I am playing the actual notes of the music. It just sounds like a cat in heat.

Q: How many hours a day are you rehearsing?

Alba: About an hour and a half, when I can. Three hours yesterday. Fifteen minutes during my lunch because I’ve been working 16 hour days, so I really only have 15 minutes to study this wonderful piece that he [motions to director] chose to be in the movie. It’s very difficult. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work, but that’s why we’re in this crazy-ass business. We get to do silly things and pick up an instrument that I would never in a million years pick up. I have a great appreciation for it. I want to represent musicians and people who are blind in the best way I can.

Q: How challenging was it to play someone who is blind?

Alba: Very. It was weird… losing your sight is very daunting. I would walk around my house, and I walked with a cane and shades on in complete darkness. You get really claustrophobic. Even just drinking water and anything, it just feels very claustrophobic. There have been a few little panic attacks and nightmares about being blind. It’s a different reality. Now I look for Braille everywhere. There are no menus in Braille. So if someone is not sighted and they go to restaurant, they just have to trust whoever is reading the menu to them. There are just things that I never would even think about. You know on soda at McDonald’s they have a little bit of Braille on the lid? That was something I really wasn’t aware of. It’s definitely interesting.

But people who are blind can function in the world just like everyone else. I always thought it was always such a handicap that you couldn’t really do what everyone else does, and they do everything. This woman that we met in New Mexico, who they [the directors] found, she’s 25 years old and she’s a classical musician, she’s a singer, and she’s a vocalist. She travels by herself all the time. She doesn’t need anybody to get around. And, she competes with people who are sighted for concerts. She’s really inspiring, and she’s my inspiration for the movie, for sure.

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Staci Layne Wilson reporting