credits: Blindness

Leading the blind

Danny Glover narrates; the story takes place absolutely nowhere.

Nobel Prize Winner, José Saramago’s novel, Blindness, hits theaters this August.

Fernando Meirelles, (o2 Films) the man responsible for making City of God look nasty as all hell, is directing a cast that includes Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Danny Glover and Gael García Bernal.

Blindness tells the story of a city afflicted by a sudden and total plague of blindness. Only one woman (Julianne Moore) retains her sight. Characters do not have names and we never know where the story is set; in fact, one of Saramago’s conditions for allowing his story to be optioned was that it not take place in any discernible nation.

We greatly anticipate this film, especially after the coming drought and inevitable summer trashgasm.

The only real news we can find about this film, other than what’s listed above, is in Portuguese on Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness Blog. Luckily, we have sir Jonny Santos with this summary of the the most recent entry:

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“On Music, Quails and Unicorns - Fernando Meirelles

Soundtrack by: Uakti (Marco Antonio) - Uakti is a experimental group - pretty cool.

Second cut of the film went out in October (to the band) - he didn’t hear back from Uakti and thought they weren’t into it - then he found out that they had recorded 60 tracks and were almost done with the soundtrack - the movie only has room for 45 tracks. “I’ve seen artists who are efficient and independent but Mark beats them all” - 100% of the soundtrack was done by him.

When it came time to decide where the music went he knew that Marco had suggestions but was happily surprised when Marco allowed him and Daniel to use the music as they pleased.

They started playing with the music and Marco wanted to start all over but there wasn’t time (and it wasn’t necessary) - they rushed a 6th version to the distributors here in NY and kept going. They then sent over a copy to Belo Horizonte (BH) so Marco could check it out and while returning from NY - he got an email from Mark saying that he was bummed on how his music was used. “We took a hit for doing something that we didn’t have the technology nor the necessary musical know-how to do well”

The solution was to go back to BH and start over and work uninterrupted on every single scene till it was done right. This happened in January.

Alex - in typical “mineiro way” (that’s like Texas/Southern) made amazing food for everyone, for three days, including QUAIL while they were immersed in their work. In 3 days they did everything and everyone was happy. Starting off from their frankenstein style work Marco simplified everything letting the music linger for a longer period of time. He basically cleaned up the whole thing and managed to make it complex at the same time.

Now in the beginning of Feb we’re on our 8th cut. Since all the audio work is being sent from Curitiba by Alessandro Larocca our sound designer we’ll prolly have to do some of the soundtracks again but it’ll be easier since it’s all ready. We’re in the final stretch (I hope).”

Thanks a TON to Jonny for this.