Buzz
While Hugo might not have been Martin Scorsese’s highest-grossing film—it struggled to surpass $75 million in the U.S. and barely recouped its production costs internationally—it captured the hearts of critics and the Academy, earning 11 Academy Award nominations (and winning five) in 2012. You’re probably familiar with the fact that it’s adapted from Brian Selznick's bestselling novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, but did you know these 11 intriguing details?
1. MARTIN SCORSESE WASN’T ALWAYS SET TO DIRECT.
Producer Graham King secured the film rights to Brian Selznick’s book even before it was published, and Martin Scorsese quickly came on board as director. However, at one point, Scorsese dropped out of Hugo, and Ice Age director Chris Wedge was brought in to take the reins, potentially making it his live-action directorial debut. Fortunately (though perhaps not for Wedge), Scorsese was able to return to the project.
2. CAMEOS GALORE.
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Martin Scorsese makes a memorable cameo in Hugo: In an unsurprising twist, the director himself appears as the photographer who captures a photo of young Georges Méliès outside his studio. Brian Selznick also gets in on the fun, portraying an unnamed guest and Méliès admirer near the end of the film. A more unexpected cameo comes from Michael Pitt, known for his role in the Scorsese-produced Boardwalk Empire, who briefly appears as a projectionist. Additionally, Ben Kingsley’s son, Edmund, shows up as a camera technician working alongside his father’s Méliès.
3. HISTORICAL FIGURES MADE CAMEOS, TOO.
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Some iconic historical figures make cameos too: Jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt (played by Emil Lager) can be spotted for a brief moment performing at a café, where the audience includes Salvador Dalí (Ben Addis) and James Joyce (Robert Gill).
4. MUCH OF THE MOVIE’S TAKE ON MÉLIÈS IS ACCURATE.
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While Hugo Cabret is a completely fictional character, much of the film’s portrayal of film pioneer Georges Méliès is based on fact: He started as a magician, worked at a toy store after his film career crumbled, was rediscovered later in life and embraced by a new generation, and he did own a collection of automata, which he ultimately donated to a museum when he could no longer afford to care for them.
5. A CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHOR WAS SELZNICK’S INITIAL CHOICE FOR MÉLIÈS.
Ben Kingsley was the second actor to bring Georges Méliès to life visually for Hugo. For the original book, Brian Selznick’s inspiration came from children's book author and illustrator Remy Charlip, a friend of Selznick’s, who reminded him of Méliès and graciously agreed to pose for him.
6. SELZNICK’S ARTWORK SERVED AS STORYBOARDS.
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Although Selznick had no direct role in the production of Hugo aside from his cameo, Scorsese and his team used the author's illustrations—which make up a significant portion of the hefty 500-page The Invention of Hugo Cabret—as storyboards. “The camera is doing what my pictures are doing,” Selznick said. “At the beginning of the movie, when the camera swoops through the train station up to the clock face with Hugo staring at the number—I drew all that!”
7. THE AUTOMATON ACTUALLY FUNCTIONS.
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The automaton in the film, which Hugo is so eager to repair, does indeed recreate the iconic image from Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon… but with a few important details. For starters, the machine goes beyond traditional clockwork and uses, as explained by Hugo’s automaton creator Dick George, "a computer-controlled system that drives the mechanism under the table, but the hand is connected to the mechanism via a series of magnets." Additionally, completing the drawing takes 46 to 47 minutes. “Obviously, it’s impractical to film the entire drawing process, because that would take up two-thirds of the film’s runtime and put the audience to sleep,” says George. “But in reality, it does draw the entire piece from beginning to end.”
8. THE AUTOMATON WAS INSPIRED BY A REAL-LIFE COUNTERPART.
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The design of Hugo’s automaton was influenced by “the writer,” one of three automata crafted by 18th-century Swiss watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz, his son Henri-Louis Droz, and Jean-Frédéric Leschot. “The writer,” along with his siblings “the draftsman” and “the musician,” is currently on display at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
9. HUGO’S AUTHOR HAS HOLLYWOOD ROYALTY IN HIS FAMILY.
The first film Martin Scorsese ever watched was Duel in the Sun, a 1946 western produced by the legendary Hollywood mogul David O. Selznick (King Kong, Gone with the Wind), who, interestingly, is a cousin of Brian Selznick’s grandfather.
10. THE FILM HAS A HARRY POTTER LINK.
Paul Kieve worked as the “magic consultant and instructor” on Hugo, teaching Ben Kingsley and Asa Butterfield the necessary magic tricks for their roles. Kieve also holds the distinction of being “the only real magician to ever work on a Harry Potter set,” according to The Telegraph; the self-folding Marauder’s Map in 2004’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is one of his magical contributions to the franchise.
11. ONE MUSICAL PIECE WAS COMPOSED BY ANOTHER FILM PIONEER.
The soundtrack has a bit of a meta touch: One scene features “Danse Macabre,” a composition by Camille Saint-Saëns, the first composer to gain a significant reputation for creating a film score (for 1908’s The Assassination of the Duke de Guise).
All images courtesy of Getty unless otherwise noted
