Kids help him stay centered
Brendan Fraser has a theory on why he does so well with kids.
“Cause I’ve got permanent Great Dane puppy-syndrome,” he says. “You know – when you don’t know how big you are.”
That certainly helps, as do the gumball-size eyes and rubber-band jaw muscles.
But we have another theory: reverence for his young audience.
“Look at the questions that were asked tonight,” Fraser continues, after a Q&A session that followed a screening of his new adventure flick, “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”
“The most precise details came from the mouths of babes. … You can’t kid a kid.”
“How do you do 3-D?” was the first question, asked by a boy of 7 or 8.
It wasn’t a question Fraser could have answered 2 1/2 years ago, when he was first sent a pitch for the film (based on the classic 1864 Jules Verne novel).
“Three-D had gotten a bad name. That’s why I was a little bit reticent at first, thinking it might be a bit hokey,” he says.
“But it still stood apart from anything else that had come across my radar.”
Then he met with director Eric Brevig, who showed him how far the technology had come and explained that this film, if done correctly, could lead a wave of new 3-D features being ushered in by the advances in digital projection.
Fraser knew early on that he wanted to act. He graduated from a Seattle performing arts college in 1990 and two years later landed the lead in “Encino Man.”
It has been a prolific, if disjointed, 16 years since. Consider: “George of the Jungle” and “Gods and Monsters,” “The Mummy Returns” and “Crash.”
“I’d worked on tiny independent films that were thoughtful and meaningful and that some people saw and really appreciated and stood the test of time – or, had been swept under the carpet – and that’s the way it goes,” he says.
“And I’ve stumbled into blockbuster hits that no one knew that they were going to be (successful) at the beginning.”
More blockbusters apparently are on the way. After finishing “Journey,” Fraser went to the set of the third “Mummy” installment, “Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” which will be out next month.
But “Journey” was special; something in him cared deeply about it.
And about the pint-size audience members he stands greeting one after another with Great Dane enthusiasm after the screening.
This one had to be right, down to the voice of an animated bird that becomes a sidekick to the adventurers. Fraser wasn’t satisfied with the dubbed recordings, so he grabbed a microphone and did the chirps himself.
“It’s very subtle, but that’s the stuff that kids just loooooove,” he says of a scene when the bird groans with disappointment over the heroes’ umpteenth misstep.
“ ’Cause that’s what they’re thinking. And you gotta give ’em what they want.”
The birthday bunch
Actor Dale Robertson is 85. Actor Harry Dean Stanton is 82. Actress-singer Polly Bergen is 78. Actor Vincent Pastore (“The Sopranos”) is 62. Singer-comedian Kyle Gass (Tenacious D) is 48. Actor Jackie Earle Haley is 47. Actor Matthew Fox is 42. Actress Missy Gold (“Benson”) is 38. Musician taboo (Black Eyed Peas) is 33.