Actors - Cast Away

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	Actors - Cast Away

Cast Away is a 2000 film by 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks about a FedEx employee who is stranded on a deserted island after his plane crashes "somewhere in the South Pacific." The plot is very loosely based on the novel Robinson Crusoe.

Tagline: At the edge of the world, his journey begins.

Plot synopsis

Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks), a perpetually hurried FedEx executive, is the sole survivor of a harrowing plane crash. He is stranded alone on a deserted tropical island. After he lands on the island, Chuck's most immediate need is drinking water, which he satisfies by drinking coconut water and later by storing rain water in the discarded husks. His second immediate need is food. He attempts to fish, but is wholly unsuccessful at the start. As time progresses, his fishing skills steadily increase. Shortly after his first fishing attempt, he finds a compelling need to produce fire, which after great effort, many attempts, and some injury he succeeds in doing. Chuck takes shelter in a small cave for the majority of his stay on the island.

Luckily for Chuck, a few FedEx packages from the plane and the body of one of the pilots wash up on the shore shortly after he lands on the island. After some refitting, Chuck dons the pilot's shoes and improvises some tools from items he salvages from the washed-up packages. But his attempts to escape are thwarted by the high surf.

Four years later, a piece of a port-a-john appears on the shore. Chuck, now with a beard, long hair and wearing a loincloth, uses this fragment as a sail for the raft he makes to leave the island. It is revealed that in previous years he has considered suicide as an alternative to escape from the island. After construction of the raft, Chuck sets off into the ocean, desperately hoping for rescue. After sailing for an unknown period of time—when he is on the verge of death—he is rescued by a passing ship.

On returning home, Chuck must then come to terms with the fact that almost everyone he knew has irrevocably changed, including his fiancée who has since married and had a child with another man.

Wilson

One of Cast Away's notable characters is called Wilson, a volleyball from Wilson Sporting Goods (in real life, the dominant manufacturer of volleyballs). This volleyball plays the role of a mute, infinitely patient, non-living listener in the movie, providing Chuck with a companion for the 1,500 days he spends on the island. From a theatrical standpoint, Wilson also serves to realistically stimulate dialogue in a one-person only situation. Tragically, Chuck loses Wilson after the volleyball washes off the raft and drifts too far out to sea for Chuck to be able to retrieve him.

Product placement

Cast Away is well-known for its prominent product placement marketing. In this case the movie benefited two major brands: Wilson and FedEx.

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.

Despite the fact that the plot revolves around the tragic crash of a FedEx plane, the company correctly guessed that the movie would not damage its reputation. FedEx cooperated closely with the filmmakers to ensure that all FedEx materials seen in the movie were authentic. Chuck's "coming-home" scene was filmed on location at FedEx's home facilities in Memphis, Tennessee. According to an interview on the DVD release of the film, FedEx Corporation did not pay for product-placement rights. However, the extensive support that the company provided to the film can be considered a form of payment for the placement.

Some commentators claim that the use of the FedEx brand and logo in its present form is an anachronism, since the first half of the film was set in 1995 while FedEx Corporation was officially titled FDX Corp. at the time. (FedEx Corporation changed to its present name in 2000.) However, the brand "FedEx" began to be used by the overnight-courier division of the company in 1994. The complete absence of references in the film to the old names that had been recently in use could still be considered a flaw.

Trivia

The producers made up a list of seemingly-useless items that would be in the packages that Noland recovered: party dress, ice skates, 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, etc.

A FedEx advertisement in the United States features Noland returning some of the unopened packages to their owners. The ad suggests that there were "simple things" such as a GPS Receiver, satellite phone, seeds, and a water purifier.

After the movie's release, NASCAR stock car driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. drove several races with a volleyball in his passenger seat, whom he called "Wilson".

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Cast Away ]

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