Salma Hayek has a personal connection to Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’

posted on: Aug 15, 2015

Actress Salma Hayek has produced a number of films (“Frida”) and TV shows (“Ugly Betty) but overseeing “Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet” was the biggest challenge of her career.

Over the course of nearly five years, the animated movie became such a passion project for Hayek that she likens the experience to motherhood.

“It’s funny because I keep saying that I’ve been pregnant for four-and-a-half years,” she notes. “This baby is about to come out. I just hope it’s a good boy or girl.”

At one point Hayek was spending so much time trying to pull together financing for “The Prophet” that her daughter Valentina, 7, became envious of her cinematic sibling.

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“My daughter was resentful of the film a little bit,” says the actress, 48, who’s married to Valentina’s father, French mogul François-Henri Pinault.

“She was jealous of the film. For most of her life, Mommy was not paying enough attention because she was working.

“You have to remember that I was doing this from Europe and everybody was on American time. So there were many, many nights of not sleeping, not taking her to school in the morning because I had been working until five. It was really difficult to make this film. The hardest thing I’ve ever done.

“So, one day, she saw a little piece of it and she said, ‘Nobody’s going to go watch the film [because] it looks old. We’re not used to this.’”

Hayek reports that Valentina eventually changed her thumbs down review to a thumbs up.

“When she went to see the [finished] film, I remember on our way there, she said, “Are you going to be angry if I don’t like it? Am I supposed to say I like it even if I don’t like it?” I said, “No, I want you to tell me the absolute truth.’ ”

“Then she went to see it and she came out quiet … I said, “Did you like it? Tell me the truth.” She said, “Mommy, I’m so proud of you.”

“Valentina isn’t the only one who’s enjoyed the movie. After its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, the movie netted mostly positive reviews. Variety’s Peter Debruge called the film “a gift: a work of essential spiritual enlightenment, elegantly interpreted by nine of the world’s leading independent animators, all tied up and wrapped in a family-friendly bow.”

“The Prophet,” which opens in Philadelphia later this month, is an animated adaptation of Lebanese writer Kahlil Gibran’s book of poetry, which has never been out of print since its 1923 release. In the last 92 years, it has sold more than 100 million copies.

The story revolves around imprisoned activist Mustafa (voiced by Liam Neeson) who shares his philosophy of life with a handful of people, including the youngster Almitra (“Annie’s” Quvenzhané Wallis). The rest of the voice cast includes Hayek, John Krasinski and Alfred Molino. (Valentina dubbed the voice of Almitra in the film’s French language edition.)

Each chapter of “The Prophet” is animated by a different artist, including “The Secret of Kells” helmer Tomm Moore, veteran animator Bill Plympton, claypainting maven Joan Gratz, French animation whiz Joann Sfar, Dubai’s Mohammed Saeed Harib and Nina Paley (“Sita Sings The Blues”). “The Lion King” director Roger Allers helped write the screenplay and directed the wrap-around story involving Almitra.

“Every single animator had complete freedom to create whatever they wanted and interpret a poem how they wanted, and we did not interfere,” says Hayek. “We chose the animators from all over the world, from all different religions and ages. We have men and women, and they all bring their own perspective.

“[The result] is you’re surprised [with every segment] and you don’t know what to expect.”

One of the reasons that Hayek was so passionate about bringing “The Prophet” to the screen is that she had a personal connection to the book. She first encountered it through her paternal grandfather, who, like Gibran, was Lebanese.

“I discovered the book on my grandfather’s bedside table,” she recalls. “He died when I was six and I was haunted by the image of the cover.”

A decade or so later, Hayek once again came across the volume of poetry. “I was 18 or 19 and I read it and, to me, it was like my grandfather was talking to me. It was like he was teaching me about who he was and about life. It was so personal.

“Then I realized more than 120 million people around the world also felt that somebody was talking to them [through the book] and they used it when they got married and for different things.”

Asked what touched her about the book, Hayek cites the theme of human interconnectedness.

“I think it became a phenomenon … because [Gibran] talks about the simple things that bring us all together,” she muses. “This is why I think it’s embraced by all religions … the simple things like being grateful and excited about food, love, death.

“Why not be excited about death ? Not about death exactly but about [the belief] that there’s something beyond, that we are more than just our bodies.”

It took Hayek and her producing partners years to secure the rights to the book, which Gibran had donated to his hometown in Lebanon. When the rights were finally negotiated and the screenplay written, Hayek tried landing financing deals with a number of Hollywood studios. Everyone turned her down.

Rather than give up, the actress raised the $12 million budget from a number of different sources including Participant Media, Code Red Productions, sources in Lebanon and her husband’s Financiere Pinault.

There were plenty of near-disasters along the way. At one point, a team of filmmakers (who were subsequently dismissed from the project) ran up the budget to $8 million with more than half of the film still to complete.

“At some point this movie was a disaster and we were not going to make it anymore,” recalls the actress. “We discovered that there were some lies, and some people covering their tracks by lying more and more.”

As a means of coping, Hayek worked with new animators to find a way to add more visual dazzle to the 2-D wraparound section of the film.

“We had to invent a new form of animation and we had to do a lot of miracles,” she says.

As she was working to salvage the project, Hayek also had to face the film’s irate financiers.

“At this point they were putting a lot of pressure on me and they were angry at me,” she recalls. “I was suffering.”

The actress considered quitting but opted to stand by the movie out of obligation to all of those investors who’d believed in her in the first place.

“Honestly, at some point [I felt] just a sense of honor to try to give the money back to the investors,” she says. “The pressure of that was immense because these people trusted me with something. It really mortified me [that I might let them down].”

In the end, Hayek pulled the project together and eventually sold the distribution rights to GKIDS, which has had considerable success in the animation market. Through the years, the company has landed Oscar nods for a number of its films, including “Song of the Sea” and “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.”

Despite all the struggles getting the movie made, Hayek is happy to be finally bringing her baby into the world.

“I wanted to make a film that inspired people,” she says. “There is this beautiful thing we are inside, all of us … and we [need to] remember that there is this place inside of us that exists.

“We operate like [we’re always] in survival mode and that we need to be distracted from life. I wanted some kind of distraction that actually connected you to life, and made you feel excited about [what] was hopeful and uplifting. I wanted to make a film that was about connection.”

Source: www.delcotimes.com