Cast Away

For other uses, see Castaway (disambiguation).

Cast Away
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Robert Zemeckis
Written by	William Broyles Jr.
Produced by	Jack Rapke Robert Zemeckis Steve Starkey Tom Hanks
Starring	Tom Hanks Helen Hunt
Cinematography	Don Burgess
Edited by	Arthur Schmidt
Music by	Alan Silvestri
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox DreamWorks
Release dates	December 7, 2000 (premiere) December 22, 2000
Running time	143 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$90,000,000
Box office	$429,632,142

Cast Away is a 2000 film by 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks about a FedEx employee who is stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane goes down over the South Pacific. Tom Hanks was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards for his performance.

Plot

Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) is a highly efficient FedEx executive. He is in a relationship with Kelly Frears (Helen Hunt). Both of them seem to want to get married but Chuck's busy schedule is an obstacle.

Chuck is home in Memphis, Tennessee for Christmas after returning from a trip to Moscow, Russia. As he and Kelly enjoy a holiday gathering with relatives, Chuck is called away on a business trip. As he's leaving for the trip, he gives Kelly a box containing an engagement ring and tells her not to open it until New Year's Eve. Kelly gives Chuck a pocket watch containing a picture of herself.

While flying through a thunderstorm somewhere over the southern Pacific Ocean, the FedEx jet runs into trouble during the night, and crashes into the ocean in flames. Saved by an inflatable life-raft, Chuck floats helplessly on the ocean until he is washed up on a deserted island.

Within a few days, Chuck ascertains that the island is uninhabited and sets out to do what he can to survive: he drinks coconut water and later stores rain water in the discarded husks, attempts to catch fish and crab, creates shelter by draping his raft over palmtree trunks and, later, by discovering caves in the island rock. When the body of one of the flight crew washes up on the island, along with several FedEx packages, Chuck buries the pilot and neatly piles away all of the washed up packages. Chuck attempts to leave the island in the inflatable raft, but is unsuccessful because the surf outside the coral reef is too strong. Chuck realizes that his stay on the island may be prolonged, and so he opens all the packages, except for one with an angels' wings logo which he leaves unopened. He tries to find a practical use for whatever is inside the various packages. One contains a Wilson volleyball, on which Chuck leaves a bloody hand print that inadvertently resembles a face. He names the ball "Wilson" and starts speaking to it. He develops a deep, friendship-like dependency with this volleyball and his conversations with it are almost exclusively the only times he talks while on the island. Chuck endures various trials in isolation, and has to find creative solutions to problems. When a toothache becomes unbearable, he decides to knock out the tooth with an ice skate from one of the packages.

Four years later, a dramatically thinner Chuck is seen expertly tossing a spear into the water, killing a fish. The cave in which Chuck now sleeps contains myriad pictures of Kelly on the cave walls and a box holding his possessions. One morning, Chuck finds a large piece of a plastic from a portable toilet that washed up on the island. Upon seeing how the wind blew the plastic down after standing it up in the sand, he decides to build a raft, using the plastic as a sail, so that he can escape from the island. With construction of the raft complete, Chuck sets out to sea, bringing with him Wilson, coconuts filled with rain water and the FedEx box with the angels' wings logo. After breaking through the island surf, Chuck takes one last look at the island and becomes visibly emotional for leaving. Chuck spends days drifting out in the open sea, fishing and collecting rain water until he can be rescued. After two weeks of drifting, Wilson falls into the water as Chuck is sleeping, and the current carries him away from the raft. Chuck desperately tries to get Wilson back, but is unsuccessful, afraid of swimming too far away from the raft. Now alone on the raft, Chuck throws away his oars and sobs over the loss of his friend. After drifting for an unknown period of time, he is rescued by a passing New Zealand cargo ship.

On returning home, Chuck must come to terms with the fact that everyone he was close to has given him up for dead long ago and moved on with their lives. Kelly has married and had a child with another man, Dr. Jerry Lovett (Chris Noth). Chuck reunites with Kelly and they profess their love for each other, but they both know that Kelly has responsibilities to Jerry and her daughter and say goodbye to each other. Although he accepts that she has a new life now, Chuck feels like he lost Kelly all over again. He makes a conscious decision to let go and move on with his life.

He sets out to deliver the one package he never opened on the island, the package with the angels' wings, and his search leads him to a ranch in Texas with the angels' wings sculpture over the main entrance. No one seems to be home, so he leaves the package at the front door of the residence with an attached note that says "This package saved my life." Chuck then drives away, stopping at a remote crossroads located in the Texas panhandle where he gets out of his car to read a map. (In his car, he keeps a new Wilson volleyball.) As he is studying the map at the intersection, a woman drives up and tries to help him by describing where all the roads from the intersection lead. As she drives away Chuck notices the angels' wings painted on the back of her truck. A long close up of Chuck smiling in the direction the truck had left closes the film.

Production

Cast Away was filmed on Monuriki, a member of the Mamanuca Islands. It is in a subgroup of the Mamanuca archipelago, which is sited off the coast of Viti Levu, Fiji's largest island. The island has become a tourist attraction following the film's release. Upon Chuck's return, Kelly explains to Chuck that when he was found, he had "drifted 500 miles", and the island was "about 600 miles south of the Cook Islands." There is no land between Antarctica and the southern-most Cook Islands of Mangaia.

The film makers actually burned down several trees on the island for the movie. In return they were required to plant three new trees for each one they burned down.

The producers made up a list of seemingly useless items that would be in the packages that Noland recovered: party dress, ice skates, divorce papers, video tapes, etc. They turned this over to a group of survival experts who decided what the protagonist might be able to do with them: fish net, axe, rope. In a panel discussing the movie, director Robert Zemeckis joked that the final unopened package contained a waterproof, solar-powered satellite phone. This led to a Super Bowl commercial that spoofed the movie, which shows Hanks' character (not played by Hanks in the commercial) making the final delivery of an unopened package to a suburban residence. As he delivers the FedEx box, he says to the recipient "by the way, what was in the box?" to which the female recipient says "nothing much, just a satellite phone, GPS locater, fishing rod, water purifier, and some seeds."

Product placement

Cast Away is well-known for its prominent product placement marketing. Wilson and FedEx were the two major brands advertised in this film.

At the time of the movie's release, Wilson Sporting Goods launched its own joint promotion centered around the fact that one of its products was "co-starring" with Tom Hanks. Wilson manufactured a volleyball with a parody of the hand print face on one side. It was sold for a limited time during the movie's initial release.

Another product placed in the film is the soft drink Dr Pepper, which Chuck is shown drinking on the plane before the crash, and again after his return to civilization. This could also be a reference to the previous Hanks and Zemeckis collaboration Forrest Gump where the title character drinks several Dr Peppers at the White House.

FedEx reportedly paid nothing for product placement in the movie; though Fred Smith, the CEO of FedEx at the time, made an appearance as himself as the one to welcome Chuck home. Chuck's "coming-home" scene was also filmed on location at FedEx's home facilities in Memphis, Tennessee. Initially, FedEx Corporation did not like the plane crash scene. The movie increased FedEx's brand awareness in Asia and Europe.

Cast

• Tom Hanks - Chuck Noland
• Helen Hunt - Kelly Frears
• Wilson the Volleyball - Himself
• Semion Sudarikov - Nicolai
• Geoffrey Blake - Maynard Graham
• Jenifer Lewis - Becca Twig
• Chris Noth - Jerry Lovett
• Nick Searcy - Stan
• Lari White - Bettina Peterson
• Vince Martin - Albert "Al" Miller

Reception

The film received several award nominations.

• 73rd Academy Awards: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Tom Hanks), Best Sound
• BAFTA Awards: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Tom Hanks)
• 58th Golden Globe Awards: Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama: For which he won (Tom Hanks)
• Screen Actors Guild: Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (Tom Hanks)
• 2001 MTV Movie Awards: Best On-screen Team (Tom Hanks and Wilson)

Lost

Media executive Lloyd Braun of ABC Studios first suggest the idea of a "Cast Away" type series at a dinner party in 2003. Thom Shermann later pitched the idea for Cast Away-The Series but never developed the idea. The basic concept was later developed and pitched with the title Nowhere; which later evolved into the hit ABC show Lost. The pilot episode of the show was the most expensive pilot ever produced and fearful ABC executives subsequently fired Braun, ignorant of the success to come for Lost. It cost between $10 and $14 million.

Soundtrack

The film's minimal score was composed by Alan Silvestri for which he won a Grammy in 2002. The film's soundtrack is most notable for its lack of score while Chuck is on the island. There is no music at all until he escapes, which is used to resemble the lack of civilization on the island. A pseudo exception to this could be said to be the scene where Tom Hanks' character creates fire, in which he sings "Light My Fire" by The Doors, among others. The tracks for the score are as follows:

1. "Cast Away" - 3.44
2. "Wilson, I'm Sorry" - 1.39
3. "Drive to Kelly's" - 3.54
4. "Love of My Life" - 1.47
5. "What the Tide Could Bring" - 3.39
6. "Crossroads" - 2.08
7. "End Credits" - 7.29

External links

• Cast Away at IMDb
• Cast Away at Rotten Tomatoes
• Cast Away at Metacritic
• Cast Away at Box Office Mojo