SYNOPSIS:
A couple of years ago, Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Beloved) invited his friend Thandie Newton (Beloved, Mission: Impossible II) to his house and showed her the 1963 Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn classic Charade. "He's like, 'Wouldn't you be great in that role?' " Newton recalls. "Six months later he said, 'I'm gonna write the movie.' " The remake-Demme's first screenwriting credit in 26 years-adheres to the original in that it features a woman who returns to her Paris home to find that her husband, Charlie, has been murdered, and her bank account emptied. A mysterious American (Wahlberg) helps her elude an assortment of villains who believe she still has a big chunk of her husband's fortune. But the differences between the two films are many and varied, adding up to an almost New Wave take on the 40-year-old story. "Paris is [now] a much more overtly diverse city," says Demme, who used a handheld camera and shot some sequences (in which the characters' inner thoughts are revealed)digitally. "We really played to that, in casting and in locations, and very much in music also." (The film features French rock and rap, as well as a reggae number penned and sung by the director's late nephew, Ted Demme.) Still, there was room for one old-fashioned twist-or rather, tango. "I was such a goody-two-shoes on that," says Newton, a trained dancer. "We had all these tango rehearsals, and after the first session, I'm like, 'I can do it! It's fine.' And then Mark was chugging away for weeks trying to get it right. He can kick my ass, but I can kick his ass in tango."
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The Truth About Charlie
Release Date: October 25
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Thandie Newton, and Tim Robbins
Directed by: Jonathan Demme
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Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.