“CAST AWAY celebrates the idea that no matter how many obstacles are thrown in our paths, we will find ways to accept them. The story is not so much about the survival of a human being, but rather the survival of the human spirit and an illustration of the idea that surviving is easy, it’s living that’s difficult.”
- Director ROBERT ZEMECKIS
In CAST AWAY, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Robert Zemeckis and two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks reunite to explore the blessings and heartache of fate and the survival of the human spirit.
Hanks stars as Chuck Noland, a FedEx systems engineer whose personal and professional life are ruled by the clock. His fast-paced career takes him, often at a moment’s notice, to far-flung locales and away from his girlfriend Kelly, played by Helen Hunt.
Chuck’s manic existence abruptly ends when, after a plane crash, he becomes isolated on a remote island cast away into the most desolate environment imaginable. Stripped of the conveniences of everyday life, he first must meet the basic needs of survival, including water, food and shelter. Chuck, the consummate problem solver, eventually figures out how to sustain himself physically. But then what? Chuck begins his true personal journey.
After four years, fate gives Chuck a chance to fight his way back to civilization, only to find an unexpected emotional challenge greater than all the earlier physical ones. His ability to persevere and to hope are a product of his life-changing experience. Though the conclusion of Chuck’s story may not be a conventional Hollywood ending, it is, like life, full of truth, pain and promise.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis, CAST AWAY is an ImageMovers/Playtone Production. Steve Starkey, Tom Hanks, Robert Zemeckis and Jack Rapke are the producers. William Broyles, Jr. wrote the screenplay, and Joan Bradshaw is the executive producer.
Supporting cast members include Nick Searcy (”Tigerland,” TV’s “7 Days”), Jenifer Lewis, Geoffrey Blake, Peter Von Berg, Chris Noth (”Sex and the City”) and country singer Lari White.
Hanks, who came up with the original idea for CAST AWAY, began developing the film with screenwriter William Broyles, Jr. about six years ago, when the two men were working together on “Apollo 13.” In sharp contrast to the common practice of hiring multiple writers, Broyles was the only writer employed on CAST AWAY. Through its many drafts, his script became a model for the often unappreciated art of true screen dramatization, where events and emotion are brought to life with minimal dialogue.
As Hanks and Broyles began to toss around ideas for the film, key themes, story points and character points began to fall into place. They agreed that Hanks’ character should be a FedEx employee. “As a FedEx worker, the character would be dedicated to connecting people all over the world, just as his life would be run by time and his connections,” Broyles explains. “And then we wondered, what would happen to him if you took this man, who’s so connected, and disconnect him from everything.”
This led to other questions: What happens to him on the island? How does he survive? To find the answers, Broyles decided to get some first-hand experience. Two experts in primitive technology took Broyles to an island near the Sea of Cortez, where the writer, like his fictional creation, was cast away from the world he knew. “The first thing that came to mind was Oh, my god, I’ve got to survive,’” Broyles recalls. “I had to figure out where to get water, how to make a knife out of stone, what to eat. Some of these experiences became a kind of rudimentary basis for what happens to Chuck.”
Broyles and Hanks also discussed themes from classic stories of unparalleled adventure. “CAST AWAY is really about finding your way home whether that means physically or emotionally casting away all of the layers that complicate who we are in this world and rediscovering the things in life that really matter,” Broyles comments.
Adventure stories enriched by a character’s personal journey are fertile ground for director Robert Zemeckis, who together with Hanks, took the world on an incredible journey with a character named Forrest Gump. The Oscar-winning director is often praised as a filmmaker whose box-office blockbusters, like the trilogy of “Back to the Future” films, “Contact” and “What Lies Beneath,” both entertain and enlighten audiences. Building on Broyles’ screenplay, Zemeckis gave CAST AWAY its dramatic and visual heart.
Zemeckis and Hanks shared a common vision for the film. “CAST AWAY offers high adventure,” Hanks notes. “But at the same time it presents a simple Zen-like understanding of what things in this world are truly important.”
Chuck’s relationship with girlfriend Kelly is certainly important to them both, despite their all-too-frequent periods spent apart due to his job responsibilities. “These two people are not young or naive at this point in the game, and it’s not a relationship based on flowers and romance,” Hanks comments. “But they’re grateful to have found each other. They’re completely at ease and feel total acceptance with one another. Their relationship is so filled with security that it’s possible for them to live these lives of total distraction caused by his job.”
Helen Hunt appreciated the complexity of the relationship between Chuck and Kelly. She also recalls the humorous set of circumstances that brought her to the project. She and Zemeckis were having breakfast to discuss another possible film project, and as they were wrapping up the meeting, Zemeckis mentioned he was going off to make a film with Tom Hanks on an island.
“I said, ‘I want to be in that movie,’” laughs Hunt. “Not long after, Bob called and said, ‘Okay, we’ve got something for you.’ I was totally surprised and thrilled. I really think this is such a bold and unique film.”
Zemeckis was pleased that Hunt took him up on his offer. “Helen’s presence runs throughout the movie, because the memory of Kelly is the one thing that keeps Chuck alive when he’s on that island,” he points out.
While that memory is essential to Chuck’s survival on the island, a critical part of his transformation there begins with his unusual friendship with “Wilson,” a volleyball that has washed ashore inside a FedEx package from the doomed flight.
“Wilson initially is used as a device to let the audience know what Chuck is thinking,” Zemeckis explains. “But then it becomes something more, as Chuck, in his solitude and depressed mental state, starts to relate to the volleyball.”
Wilson becomes a key part of Chuck’s existence on the island. “Once we show that Chuck is able to figure out the four basic elements for human survival food, water, shelter and fire then we deal with the fifth element, which is companionship,” says Hanks. “Wilson is a totally accidental creation of Chuck’s that comes along at the moment he needs him most. And like all good friendships, they happen naturally.”
Wilson isn’t the only package that plays an important role in Chuck’s survival. Chuck “rescues” several other FedEx boxes, and finds novel uses for their contents. But he decides to not open one particular package that is adorned with angel wings. The angel wings become a symbol of hope for him, one that far outweighs any physical use he could have found for what is inside the box. It is a symbol he holds on to until after he has returned to civilization. Although the box’s contents remain a mystery and indeed in part because they remain a mystery its value to him is immeasurable.
Chuck’s friendship with Wilson, and his perception of the angel wings as a symbol of hope, point to one of the key questions the film poses: After you’ve learned how to survive alone physically, how do you survive emotionally, psychologically and spiritually? Broyles learned some of the answers while reading the logs and journals of several cast aways, shipwreck victims and others who survived, but ultimately succumbed to a disaster. “They reached this cracking point of desperation, where they just couldn’t go on any more,” Broyles says.
After four years on the island, Chuck faces the same circumstances uncovered in Broyles’ research. “Once Chuck has figured out how to stay alive, his battle is no longer against the elements, it’s about desperation,” Hanks points out. “It’s about a different brand of loneliness that is very different from being home on a Saturday night with nothing to do. He’s completely removed from any of the distractions that fill up our lives. That’s where Chuck begins to crack, and begins to lose the battle of his own desperation.”
The scenes of Chuck waging this battle for physical, and then emotional survival feature very little dialogue and no music. “Those scenes are among the most active parts of the movie, because something important is going on every second,” notes Hanks. “I think that we have gotten used to a voice-over that explains everything, or characters that wisecracks their way through their adventures. But Chuck doesn’t say anything unless there’s a reason to. He does everything for a specific purpose. The absence of music and sparse dialogue were essential.”
Chuck makes a daring escape from the island, four years after he had washed ashore its beaches. He returns to civilization a profoundly changed human being. But Zemeckis and Hanks resisted making his transformation a conventional one that would tie everything neatly together for the character and for the audience.
“Chuck thinks that he wasn’t supposed to have survived,” Hanks explains. “So when he returns to society, it’s not a ‘Rip Van Winkle’ type reaction ‘Hey, what did I miss?’ Instead, he understands that the things that were important to him before the plane crash don’t even exist anymore, because he’s gone through this ‘wall’. There’s a lot of self-realization, but no self-pity.
“Chuck realizes that the best thing that ever happened to him was almost getting killed in a plane crash and living by himself for four years on an island,” the actor adds. “If Chuck hadn’t gone through that experience and lost everything he would never have come to understand what’s truly important.”