Ten Secrets Behind the Filming of Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer

[NEW! Trivia bonus question: What was the name of the character that Ewan MacGregor played in the movie? Answer at end of article.]

1. The big inside secret about Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer” is how he could direct a movie in America, when he hasn’t been in the country since notoriously fleeing prosecution on sex charges in 1978? The simple answer is the fugitive director didn’t, although he made every effort to make the film look like he did.

2. What do “The Ghost Writer” and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, the classic 1920 silent film, have in common? They were the first and latest films made at the historic, 90-year-old Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam – Germany’s Hollywood. Do the sets at Babelsberg seem familiar? They should be; films made there include 2009’s “Inglourious Basterds”, “The Blue Angel” (1930), “Metropolis” (1927), two of the Jason Bourne trilogy, and Polanksi’s own 2001 Oscar-winner “The Pianist.”

3. While principal photography was done at Babelsberg, what about the island scenes that Polanski painstakingly strived to make look like Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod? All shot on either the beaches of Sylt in the North Frisian Island chain, in the North Sea on the Germany/Denmark border, or Usedom (Peenemunde) along the Baltic Sea, near the Germany/Poland border. Peenemunde was infamous during World War II as a secret rocket base. Usedom is a celebrated nude beach.

 

Usedom Beach, popular Polanski location?

 

4. Where is the fortress-like beach house and lighthouse? On Sylt, which isn’t completely an island; the hammerhead-shaped sandbar, surrounded by aquamarine waters, is connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway. It is said to be the northernmost point in Germany – actually north of the country’s mainland border with Denmark. Geographically, the house used in the filming is on the northeastern tip of Sylt – just east of the iconic old Lister Ellenbogen (“elbow”) red-and-white lighthouse located there. (Watch as the lighthouse in the movie is sometimes has a red top, white middle, and red-over-white base; other times it is all white.) Location filming was done there in February and March 2009. But for exterior shots of the house itself, a shooting set (facade) was built at Usedom; for interior shots, sets were built at Babelsberg.

 

Sylt's Ellenbogen Lighthouse is at top left of lagoon; the house in the movie is at right, along south-facing expanse of sandy beach.

 

Even though Martha’s Vineyard is supposed to be the movie’s main location (or the fictional town of “Old Haven”), Polanski used images from the Nantucket Historical Society to help build sets. Sharp-eyed movie-goers will notice dozens of props that were intended to convey a sense of “America”; these included American flags on the poles at the Old Haven airport (actually Strausberg Airport, outside of Berlin), flag patches on uniforms, Massachusetts license plates, Cape Cod logos on the ferry operators, U.S. road signs, business signs in English, CNN on the television, and U.S. 6 and other Massachusetts locales on the BMW X5’s navigation screen. Interior shots of the X5 were filmed on sets at Babelsberg, with exteriors projected on the windows, using “green screen” techniques.

 

Ferry to "Edgartown" looks a lot like the Sylt Island ferry.

 

 

Pierce Brosnan & Ewan MacGregor share a scene on location at Strausberg Airport

 

5. What about the Edgartown port, and the car ferry? It is the Sylt island ferry that travels between List, Germany, and Havneby, Denmark. The retractable nose is something of a trademark feature, meant to help it to operate in shallow waters.

6. BMW ConnectedDrive doesn’t really work as it is depicted in the movie. ConnectedDrive (available only in Europe, as the movie was released) is a concept that ties in an OnStar-type cellular connection, internet services, GPS tracking and TeleServices.

 

Still-experimental BMW ConnectedDrive doesn't work as depicted in film

 

The navigation system, a separate component, will indeed save previous destinations. But a driver would have to go several layers deep into on-screen menus to retrieve it. It wouldn’t just pop up, like the car had a mind of its own. And when a destination is reached, as they say, “the route guidance is over”.

7. The film has been much-delayed in its journey to theaters. Shooting was to have begun in September 2008, with Nicolas Cage in the title role and Tilda Swinton as Ruth Lang. (Somehow can’t see those two doing a believable bedroom scene.) But when production was pushed back nearly a year, busy Ms. Swinton, who has made 13 films in the last four years, had to bow out. She was replaced by Olivia Williams, perhaps best remembered as the hot teacher in “Rushmore”; Ms. Williams is now 42 – she is playing, in Ruth Lang, a woman that would have been at least 55. (I’m not complaining!) Ewan MacGregor replaced Cage, who went off to do “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans”. (What was he thinking?) More cast trivia: Did you know Kim Cattrall speaks fluent German? Helped on location for this one.

8. A second delay in the release date of the film resulted when Mr. Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in September 2009 on his outstanding 1978 U.S. warrant. He was in post-production on the film at the time, and was only able to put the finishing touches on it while he was under house arrest. Does that explain the odd February 2010 release date? Either way, if production had stayed on track, this is a film that coulda, woulda, shoulda been in this year’s Oscar race, not next year’s. Traditionally, films released in February are long-forgotten by Oscar time.

9. Roman Polanski, like director Alfred Hitchcock, used to make cameos in his early films.

 

Taking care of a "nosey guy" in Chinatown

 

He’s not seen in “The Ghost Writer” but his daughter Morgane appears as the hotel clerk at the Fisherman’s Cove Inn.

10. The film’s denouement is actually based on an old writer’s trick. Sometimes the first word of a paragraph is used, sometimes the first letter of a sentence. A famous – or infamous – example I can remember involved a magazine editor who used the first letter of each word in a memorably constructed lead sentence to tell his publisher to, um, go pleasure himself.

[ANSWER to Bonus Trivia Question: The name of Ewan MacGregor’s character is never mentioned. He is merely “the Ghost”.]

 

The BMW X5 used in the filming of "The Ghost Writer", on display in Munich airport

 

[UPDATE: To those who thought the BMW SUV in the movie was an X3, not an X5…I happened to discover a display in the Munich airport in early March with the X5 from the movie “The Ghost Writer”. Or so it says on the side of the vehicle and on the billboard behind it.]

Jerry Garrett

February 18, 2010