Production
Despite its setting in a West Coast American city, the film was shot in its entirety in and near Barcelona, Spain. It was produced by the Fantastic Factory label of Filmax and Castelao Productions.
Christian Bale starved himself for over four months prior to filming, as his character needed to look drastically thin. Allegedly, his eating consisted of one cup of black unsweetened coffee and an apple (or a can of tuna) each day (approximately 55-260 calories). According to the DVD commentary, he lost 28 kilograms (62 lb), reducing his body mass to 54 kilograms (120 lb). Bale wanted to go down to 45 kilograms (99 lb), but the filmmakers would not let him due to health concerns. He later regained the mass, plus an additional 27 kilograms (60 lb) through weightlifting and proper eating, in preparation for his role in Batman Begins.
Brad Anderson hurt his back during filming and directed much of the film while lying on a gurney.
Read more about this topic: The Machinist
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)