4 Jack Black as Carl Denham
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 KING KONG
PRODUCTION NOTES
4Casting Kong:
Jack Black as Carl Denham
4Filming Kong:
4Other Stuff:
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 If Ann Darrow is best remembered as the beauty of the story, then it is Carl Denham who must be classified as the brains behind the scheme that drives the events of King Kong. Whereas filmmakers chose to flesh out Darrow more than reinvent her, they were committed to finding a different take on the character of the flamboyant showman and auteur.
Jackson explains, “We were thinking, initially, of an older Carl Denham, like the original film-I mean, Robert Armstrong is probably around 50 years old. And so, we were thinking of what actors around in that age group that would be an interesting Denham. Then we started to think, `Well, maybe, he should be a little younger?' That coincided with The School of Rock coming out and our children being obsessed with it-we ended up watching it 10 or 12 times over the Christmas holiday, and we liked Jack a lot in that. Then we started to think of the idea of him being Denham.”
Until the idea of Denham being a younger, showy creative force of nature took root, their initial thought seemed somewhat incongruous; the image of such a real-life filmmaker helped bring it all into focus.
Jackson continues, “We imagined him being an entrepreneurial, young Orson Welles-type filmmaker, who in the 1930s was running the Mercury Theatre in New York.Denham has a sort of energy and vibrancy and an ability to sweep people along with his vision-he'll do whatever he needs to do to get the film that he wants made. He's ambitious and he's a little bit of a scoundrel… in the way that Orson Welles was. I mean, Orson would take money for a film and go and make a completely different film-that sort of devil-may-care kind of approach. We started to realize that if we took that approach, then Jack Black makes perfect sense.
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Though sure of himself on the outside, Denham is driven by a desperation similar to that which compels Ann Darrow to agree to his questionable proposition of accepting a role in an arduous location-shot movie.
Jackson elaborates, “Everybody in the movie, in one way or another, really is driven by a certain desperation-whether it's the desperation of the Depression or the desperation of being a filmmaker and not being completely honest with your investors, trying to be overly ambitious. It's a good pressure situation that pushes our characters together and propels the story forward.”
With the clock ticking, Denham must replace his now absent leading lady and get his crew (and his stolen, incomplete film) onto the Venture and out of the docks before the police (who have been summoned by the angry studio executives) apprehend the filmmaker and seize his film. Carl's one hope of making history lies in reaching the mythic Skull Island-he's recently come into possession of a crude map detailing an approximate location of this fabled, ancient world. There, he hopes to prove his naysayers wrong and complete his film by adding spectacular footage of a never-before-seen locale to his latest action-adventure opus.
Jackson elaborates on Denham: “Jack brings a wonderful sense of humor-obviously, it goes without saying-to the role, which is important for the character because in some respects he's flawed. We didn't want him to be a villain. He's simply somebody whose sense of excitement, his overambition and his enthusiasm sometimes mean that he makes decisions that he shouldn't really have made. And what Jack brings to the character is this wonderful sense of humor and this `rascalness,' if you like, which means that we never judge him as being villainous…we just judge him as being flawed. In the context of the film, we wanted Denham to be somebody who's not a bad person, but somebody who makes bad decisions.”Black met with the filmmakers in Los Angeles and readily agreed to play the role. Jackson remembers, “There's another situation where our first choice for the role agreed to do the film. It's a wonderful thing if you're a filmmaker and the actors that are number one on your wish list jump onboard the movie. It just feels like you've got to such a good start, like sailing away with the movie that you have imagined with the people that you've imagined in the roles.”
Once he had accepted, Black theorized on how he could create the character of Denham and felt like he had a workable concept…at first. Black explains, “Well, when I first got the part, I thought a lot about it. I was wondering if maybe Peter cast me because I kind of look like him-we're both about the same height, the same build. `Hey, he's a director, and he's casting me as the director of this movie within the movie. Maybe he wants me because I remind him of him.' Then I thought, `I know what I'll do. I'm just going to base my whole character on Peter Jackson, and I'm just going to follow him around all the time, and that'll be my secret.' But I realized, `No, it's not right. Peter's not insecure like Carl is. He's not exploding with anger and obsession. And he's not anywhere nearly as desperate as I wanted Carl to be.'”
When Black offered that he felt his character was part P.T. Barnum, the filmmakers responded with their already well-conceived take on Denham (“a much less successful Welles”). “He's very much the struggling artist, or so he thinks,” Black continues. “He has a huge ego and thinks he deserves great recognition. But underneath it all, he's on thin ice. He's afraid he's not going to accomplish anything at all, and that's what drives him.”
4Next Page: Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll
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