When Ryan Gosling interacts with his alien sidekick on screen (which he does for more than half of Project Hail Mary), he’s not staring at a green screen with cameras rolling. Instead, he was playing an elaborate puppet operated by James Ortiz, a New York theater staple best known for bringing cows, mammoths and dinosaurs to life in the Broadway shows “The Skin of Their Teeth” and “Into the Woods.” In fact, Ortiz was on set for almost the entire six-month shoot in London, as directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller wanted to use as many practical effects as possible rather than digital ones.
“From actor to actor, I didn’t want Ryan to feel like he was alone,” Ortiz says. “That’s too difficult. I mean, we don’t need to determine the personality of a strange, faceless creature.”
The two rehearsed each scene before bringing the dolls out to ensure they could block.
“It’s the only chance we have to check in on each other, look into each other’s eyes and get the beat,” Ortiz says. “Then we stack the dolls on top of each other.”
Ortiz, a lanky man with his hair up in a pompadour and glasses that makes him look like a SoHo gallery owner, tells me this as I look for a quiet place to chat at Film at Lincoln Center, an arthouse movie theater just down the road from where Ortiz made The Skin of Their Tee. It’s more difficult than you think. The first cafe we visited was packed with lunch customers, blaring music and a cacophonous atmosphere. We then crowded into the auditorium but were kicked out when the tour group came. Finally, we sat on the floor just outside the theater and played Silato, a Spanish thriller film with an electronic score that punctuated discussions with synth sounds. Ortiz is wearing a “Batman Forever” crew sweatshirt, a wrapped gift from Gosling.
“We were having lunch on set, and we were both old boys, so we talked about Batman,” Ortiz says. “There aren’t enough words in print to describe how much I love ‘Batman Forever,’ but it was talked about often. On my last day, I got a call to go to the director’s tent and Ryan picked me up with this package. I couldn’t believe it. This gift speaks to Ryan’s generosity and the fact that he really listens.”
Rocky, a spider-like creature who speaks in a whale song and has a rock-like build, arrives after the first third of “Project Hail Mary” and helps Gosling’s schoolteacher find a way to save the planet from an environmental disaster. Despite his unconventional appearance, Rocky was sure to become the breakout star of “Project Hail Mary,” and Ortiz was in large part responsible for making Rocky so appealing. He, along with designer Neil Scanlan, had to find a way to make creatures without faces or normal means of expression somehow relatable.
“Rocky is very intelligent and has a brain like a computer. You don’t have to say anything twice to him,” Ortiz explains. “He’s a brilliant engineer, but his soul has always been like a little brother to me. This anxious 14-year-old wants to be invited to parties.”
Scanlan, who worked in Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and also worked on “Star Wars,” told him that even though he created Rocky, Ortiz was free to make the character his own: “I’m going to treat this as if you were Frank Oz. My job is to create Yoda for you.”
Ortiz spent months in pre-production to make sure he was comfortable with the puppet and gave feedback on how to construct the creature so he and his team of puppeteers could operate it more smoothly. The “Project Hail Mary” staff also designed the set to accommodate Ortiz and his colleagues, making sure everything was built 4 to 5 feet off the soundstage floor so they could cut holes in the floor when needed. For certain sequences, the production relied on a fully animatronic Rocky, and for more complex shots, VFX company Framestore relied on CGI.
“As you can imagine, it’s pretty impossible to pull off a puppet show where you roll around in a ball in a ship,” Ortiz says. “That’s where digital effects come into play.”
Rocky doesn’t speak our language, but in the movie Gosling’s character creates a machine translation system so the two can communicate. On set, Ortiz read Rocky’s lines from a sound booth, allowing Gosling to be his scene partner.
“Rocky’s voice is coming from a series of computers connected with duct tape, so I thought it probably wouldn’t sound good,” Ortiz says. “I thought it shouldn’t sound like the best AI you’ve ever heard. It’s supposed to have a little bit of Mr. Moviefone and a little bit of Siri, but it’s not that clean.”
In the end, Ortiz thought Lord and Miller would choose better-known actors to re-record the dialogue in post-production. However, the directors used Ortiz’s track when screening the film and felt that it could not be improved upon.
“It was incredible to get the call,” Ortiz said. “I kept telling myself it wasn’t me.”
Although the production was fraught with technical challenges, Ortiz says Lord and Miller focused on making him feel like part of the ensemble.
“What I liked about this process was that neither Phil nor Chris nor anyone on the team treated me like a technician or like a plumber brought in to fix certain things,” Ortiz says. “At every point they asked, ‘What do you think, would Rocky do this?'” And I’m going to think about it and tell them exactly how Rocky would feel. ”
