Yesterday went amazing! We started off watching the original Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
After the movie was done, Peter Ostrum showed up. He was so good with the kids! He talked about his experience, some of the things that he dealt with and then opened the floor for questions.
The kids had a lot of questions!
We learned that the movie was filmed in Germany. He was only 12 years old. He was offered to sign up for 3 more films after Wonka, but turned it down because he didn't know what the films were. He was just signing a contract to an unknown 3 films and he didn't like that. He still see the other 4 kids at least once a year. This year they are meeting in September in Florida! :) He explained how they did some of the scenes which was really cool because they didn't have the technology that they have today. When Augustus gets stuck in the tube after falling the chocolate river, the kids asked how they got him up the tube. In all actuality, they couldn't suck him up the tube fast enough so they dropped him down the tube and rewound the film! LOL Violet's scene of eating the gum and ballooning up was done by wearing a wet suit and she had air forced in the suit to make it expand. Once it got to a certain size, it would put pressure on her so they had to stop the scene, let the air out and then they had a huge styrofoam ball that was cut in half so that one side fit on either side of her. It was tough to get her in so once she was in there, she had to stay in there for a long time! When Peter, aka Charlie, drank the fizzy lifting drink, there was no safety net under him. He was held up by piano wire...one on either side of him, and the machine producing the bubbles under him was real with metal blades and everything. He said he remembers thinking once he was up there that if the piano wires didn't hold him, there would be no more movie!
He had a chart of all the life lessons you could get from the movie...
He was super good with the kids and really easy to listen to! He is so humble about the movie and I think that only made it better to listen to him! He said his movie kind of took a back seat until Johnny Depp's version came out and he said that boosted his movie a ton. Pete told the kids that making a movie is really tedious. They had to get two good cuts of a scene before they were set with that one and could move on to the next scene. He said the worst scene to make was the one with the Wonka Mobile that ran on the foam. They had to redo that scene quite a few times and each time the car had to be cleaned, the scene area, and all of them before the new scene could start. He also said that his director was a screamer. He said it reminded him of how some basketball coaches are with their team members. He had never experienced anything like that before so that was tough. So many things I never thought about before! I'm so thankful he was willing to take time out of his busy schedule for us!
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