"Where Movie Critics Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine"
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AN INTERVIEW WITH:
JESSICA ALBA
by Peter Sobczynski

December 5, 2003

In the old days, movies that featured dancing used to star people who were, shockingly enough, actual dancers and the camera was able to fully capture all of their moves. In recent years, however, it has become a more popular idea to cast actors with little-to-no formal dance training and to try to fake it with doubles and covering up the deception with a mixture of close-ups, wide shots and fancy editing tricks.

The result is kind of a rip-off and lovely actress Jessica Alba feels your pain. For her new film "Honey", in which she plays a talented young dancer who becomes a famous music-video choreographer, she didn’t want to be another Jennifer Beals and leave the dancing to others. "For me," she says, "when I am an audience member, when I see that, I know that it isn’t him or her. I wanted people to feel that it was me and that it was real and authentic so that they could get into it."

To achieve that, Alba, who hadn’t really danced before signing on for the film, underwent a grueling physical ordeal. "I did 3 1/2 months training with a choreographer-she danced with Alvin Ailey and has been dancing for 20 years. She taught me basic jazz and basic ballet and showed me what I line was and what a count was. I had to lead the classes of real dancers so she basically showed me how to do it so I wouldn’t look like a fool.

"I did a lot of tae-bo for the cardio-you get out of breath dancing because it is so hard. You never realize how strenuous it is. You need to be in really good shape. I did tae-bo in the morning and then did six hours of dance training so that I could be as good as the other dancers." As a result, a double was only used, according to Alba, "for about three seconds, during the triple pirouette. I can’t do a triple pirouette. That takes someone who has been dancing since they were three."

Although she was new to the dancing, there were other aspects to "Honey"-both the film and the character-that stuck a chord with Alba. "When you don’t grow up with money, that is a universal thing. Whether you grow up in an apartment in the city or out in the suburbs, you still face the same kinds of struggles. I did live in what would be considered a ghetto area when I was a kid, so I was familiar with the territory and things like drive-bys.

"I just wanted {the movie} to feel real and not have that seem like a bad thing. Originally in the script, the character gets famous and fabulous and becomes a choreographer and she loves the life and starts doing videos. I went "What if she had her cake and could eat it too? What about the kids?", because midway through the script, they were never mentioned again. I hate that-I hate that people come from these urban roots and become rap artists and then they leave. I feel that they shouldn’t be ashamed-they should be proud that they lived there and give back to the community. That was a important message that I wanted "Honey" to have. I didn’t want her to just leave-I wanted her to give the other kids hope and have that be the dream."

Of course, wanting to get that message across and actually being able to are two different things and, as Alba reveals, it wasn’t always easy getting such notions past the people at Universal Studios, the makers of "Honey". "Studios see dailies and they get only a small piece of what you do and then they want to change everything based on that small piece even though it will be undoing the big picture. I can’t be up in every scene but they try to edit it so that everything is cheerful and happy and lovely as possible. I wanted her to have an conflict with her mother and a conflict with her friend and a conflict with the director. I really had to fight for that because they would say "It’s a little too harsh." or "It’s a little too real". They wanted everything to be fluffy and sweet but then people wouldn’t be able to relate to it."

And then the movie just becomes another "Glitter".

"To say the least", Alba laughs. "And then you tell them something like that and they say "What?" They are lawyers, they aren’t creative people-although they think they are. They would say things like "Jessica, we’ll try it your way but on this next take, could you act a little more pleasant?" "I’m like "She just lost her job! How is that going to be pleasant? Have you ever lost your job? It sucks!" They thought I was too dark!"

Such determination shouldn’t be too much of a surprise because while Alba didn’t become famous until a couple of years ago, the 22-year-old has been acting for more than 10 years-a fact often lost on co-workers. "It is really funny because I will be working with directors or other actors and they will totally dismiss me because I sometimes look a lot younger than I am. They will be trying to tell me what to do and manipulate me and I know what they are doing. They try to be so weird about it even though I know how to do it and I have been doing it for a long time."

Of course, the thing that brought Alba to the spotlight was her starring role on the now-defunct James Cameron-produced TV show "Dark Angel", in which she played an ass-kicking genetically-enhanced girl fighting her way through a dark, not-too-distant future. Although canceled last year, the show, which was released on DVD earlier this year, still retains a loyal cult. "It’s strange" she says. "I always think if some Fox executives went with me to a shopping mall, they would be so pissed that they canceled the show. People still really like the show and were bummed out that it was canceled. Fox thought that it was so complicated of a concept that they couldn’t really wrap their heads around it and wanted to change it. That was basically why they canceled it-for political reasons.

"I’m not that mad that they canceled it because now I don’t have to work 10 months of the year and live in Vancouver. Now I get to live a relatively normal life."

Although that "relatively normal life" probably won’t include a rumored "Dark Angel" feature film ("Jim talked to me about that a while ago but he has this "Fathom" thing that he is doing. I think it is done, at least for me. I think it would be weird to do that because I have already done that."), she has plenty of other things to occupy her time. She is about to start shooting "Into the Sea", a loose remake of "The Deep" in which she will co-star with Paul Walker. She is currently working on a couple of film projects that she hopes to produce. She even hopes to one day design clothes-though the details of exactly what she wants to do might come as a surprise.

"I want to do a clothing line-not something like P Diddy or J. Lo. I actually want to design a women’s golf clothing line." According to the active golfer, "All of the clothes now are so ugly. I wish that there were comfortable golfing clothes for women that weren’t so ugly, so I have been doing something like that."

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2003 Peter Sobczynski
All rights reserved.
Used with permission
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