"Society
of the Cusslermen, the Number One Clive Cussler Fan website in
the world!" A
select group of individuals around the world who collect Clive
Cussler books and memorabilia
Thursday,
March 17th, Matthew McConaughey was staying at the Dakota Ridge
RV Park, Golden Colorado. I stopped by for a visit. Waiting
to interview him was all 4 of the local network affiliates for
television, along with radio show personalities. He immediately
took the time to greet me, and spend time visiting.
We
discussed our mutual desires for the film to be successful because
we want more of Clive Cussler's books to be presented on the
big screen.
He said that he truly hopes that Clive gets a chance to see
the film, and hopes that he enjoys it. He said everyone poured
their heart and soul into making the film the best possible.
We discussed the difficulty taking a 568-page novel (Current
paperback movie edition) and converting it to 120 pages of double
spaced movie script.
He hopes that everyone shows up to attend the premier on April
8th, to make the movie a huge success. I told him I would hope
Night Probe would be next... he said he'd love to have the chance
to play Dirk Pitt again.
Matthew said that Steve Zahn was a great guy to work with on
the film, and that he carried the comedy portions out perfectly.
He said that he also thought that Penelope Cruz plays her role
perfectly. He confirmed that he has dated Penelope, but denies
any of the tabloid rumors of engagement.
He was kind enough to sign my new Sahara movie edition paperback...
to "Dave, jklivin..Matthew McConaughey, aka Dirk Pitt"
He presented me with an orange Sahara baseball cap, and a mounted
Sahara Movie poster.
I had brought along my digital camera, and can you believe it...
such an important event, and the batteries were dead! I got
a chance to meet his buddy Mark Gustawes, a great guy. Mark
took some pictures of us together, with a promise to email them
to me. They were all so friendly and accommodating, in spite
of the growing media crowd awaiting their crack at him. Later
lunch was being delivered, and Matthew was trying to keep track
of the NCAA College basketball tournament, while still being
everyone's host.
His next stop on the promotional tour is LA. Then the promotions
will really swing into high gear.
Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Clive Cussler novel
Thomas Dean Donnelly
Matthew Faulk
Josh Friedman
James V. Hart
Joshua Oppenheimer
John C. Richards
John Richards
Mark Skeet
David S. Ward
Cast
(in credits order)
Matthew McConaughey .... Dirk Pitt
rest of cast listed alphabetically
Penélope Cruz .... Eva Rojas
Dayna Cussler .... Kitty Mannock
Nathan Osgood .... Gun Lt.
Billy Seymour .... Powder Monkey
Mark Wells .... Sailor Who Drops Gold
Rainn Wilson
Steve Zahn .... Al Giordino
Produced
by
Mark Abela .... co-producer
Stephanie Austin .... producer
Howard Baldwin .... producer
Karen Elise Baldwin .... producer
David Barron .... co-producer
Clive Cussler .... executive producer
Vicki Dee .... co-producer
Victoria Dee .... co-producer (as Vicki Dee)
Gus Gustawes .... executive producer
William J. Immerman .... executive producer
Matthew McConaughey .... executive producer
Henning Molfenter .... co-producer
Mace Neufeld .... producer
Denise O'Dell .... co-producer
Thierry Potok .... co-producer
Chris Thompson .... line producer
Original Music by
Brian Tyler
Cinematography by
Seamus McGarvey
Film Editing by
Andrew MacRitchie
Casting by
Nina Gold
Anne McCarthy
Production Design by
Allan Cameron
Art Direction by
Giles Masters
Tony Reading
Set Decoration by
Anna Pinnock
Costume Design by
Anna B. Sheppard (as Anna Sheppard)
Makeup Department
Whitney James .... makeup artist: Penelope Cruz
Production Management
Scott Thaler .... production manager
Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Yann Marie Faget .... second assistant director
E.J. Foerster .... second unit director
Christopher Newman .... assistant director
Sam Smith .... second second assistant director
Samantha Smith .... second second assistant director
Art Department
Jack Dyer .... construction buyer
Dan Frye .... propmaker: Dick George and Associates
Christopher Glass .... storyboard artist
Saskia Green .... art department assistant
Patsy Johnson .... assistant art director
Philip Keller .... storyboard artist
Anna Skrein .... art department coordinator
Sound Department
Chris Munro .... sound recordist
Paul Munro .... boom operator
Special Effects by
Matthew G. Armstrong .... special effects engineer/technician
Dean Ford .... special effects trainee
Dominic Tuohy .... special effects director
Visual Effects by
James Lamb .... visual effects producer
Stunts
Richard Bradshaw .... stunts
Ray De-Haan .... stunts
Jim Dowdall .... stunts
Jamie Edgell .... stunt double
Paul Heasman .... assistant stunt coordinator
Morgan Johnson .... stunts
Adam Kirley .... stunt double: Steve Zahn
Maurice Lee .... stunts
Mark Norby .... stunt double
Seon Rogers .... assistant stunt coordinator
Lee Sheward .... stunt coordinator
Other crew
Michael Betz .... liaison: Los Angeles
Rosalie Clayton .... casting assistant
Carlos De Carvalho .... first assistant camera: "a" camera
Kelly DeTample .... assistant production coordinator: pre-production
Robbie Gleeson .... production assistant
Zoila Gomez .... production coordinator: pre-production
Harvey Harrison .... director of photography: second unit
Andy Hennigan .... financial controller
James Herbert .... first assistant editor
David Holliday .... grip
Andy Hopkins .... grip
Tom Hornsby .... costume set supervisor
Sammy Horton .... assistant accountant
Gary Hutchings .... key grip
Carlton Jarvis .... medical advisor
Ryan Kavner .... production secretary
Barrett J. Leigh .... assistant production coordinator
Iain Mackay .... second assistant camera: "c" camera
Sylvia Mackintosh .... production accountant
David Maund .... grip
David Melito .... assistant accountant: pre-production, USA
Stephen Moore .... casting assistant
Grégoire Mouveau .... facilities manager
Jennie Paddon .... second assistant camera: "a" camera
Katryna Samut-Tagliaferro .... production coordinator
Nancy Sandberg .... senior consultant: film production
Malcolm Sheehan .... best boy grip
Gemma Smithers .... assistant accountant
Nick Spetsiotis .... marine logistics manager
Alan Swain .... location scout: New Mexico
Ryan Taggart .... second assistant camera: "b" camera
Kelly Taylor-Dias .... assistant production coordinator: UK
Margaret A. Thompson .... production coordinator
Gavin Walters .... best boy
Lee Walters .... gaffer
Marc Wolff .... aerial coordinator
Susan d'Arcy .... publicist
Biography
for Clive Cussler
Height 6' 3"
Probably one of the greatest adventure novelist of our time.
Bought for $840,000 by Viking Publishing in 1976, Raise The
Titanic put him on the map after 11 years of hard work. Before
his success with RTT, he previously had written Pacific Vortex,
which wasn't published until after the his success, The Mediterranean
Caper and Iceberg.
Originally in advertising, first as an award-winning copy writer,
and then as creative director for two of the nation's largest
agencies. He started his writing career when his wife, Barbara,
got a night job for the local police station as a clerk. At
night after putting his kids to bed, he had hardly anything
to do and no one to talk to. So out of solitude he decided to
write a book. After a few nights of thinking of an idea on what
to write about he thought it would be fun to produce a little
paperback series.
The thought of a best-seller never crossed his mind. Thanks
to his marketing experience, he began researching and analyzing
all the series heroes, beginning with Edgar Allan Poe's Inspector
Dumas. Next came Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes and all the
other fiction detectives and spies. Like the likes of Bulldog
Drummond, Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Matt Helm,
James Bond. What ever he could find and he studied them all.
With his experience in creative advertising under his belt,
he started to wonder what he could conceive that was totally
different. He didn't want to compete with already-famous authors.
He was determined not to write about a detective, secret agent
or undercover investigator or deal in murder mysteries. He then
decided his hero's adventure would be based on and under water.
And thus, the basic concept for Dirk Pitt the marine engineer
with the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) was born.
He found it interesting that almost no authors were writing
pure, old-fashioned adventure. It seemed to him, a lost genre.
After taking a refresher course in English, he launched his
first book that introduced Pitt and most all of his characters
who appeared in the upcoming novels to follow afterwards. The
first book was named Pacific Vortex. Dr. Cussler, leaned heavily
on Alistair McLean on his first two books and was quite flattered
when critics told him they were quite similar. But by his third
book, he began to drift into his own style with a myriad of
sub-plots. And because of that, Iceberg, to this day, has and
always will be a sentimental favorite of his because it never
ended where it began.
After completing Pacific Vortex, he was about to launch a second
book when he was offered a position at a large advertising agency.
It would have been a wonderful opportunity with a well-paid
salary, but his wife challenged him. She knew that if he wanted
to write sea stories, why didn't he take a job as a clerk at
the local dive shop who at the time was hiring. He wasted little
time and in 1968 he started working for the Aquatic Center Dive
ship in Newport Beach as a behind-the-counter-salesman. Never
being a certified diver, it took him just a few weeks. Once
he was certified, Dr. Cussler started bringing in his typewriter
in the morning and wrote at a card table behind the counter
when business was slow which was usually in the afternoons.
A little over a year later, Dr. Cussler finished his second
novel, Mediterranean Caper. That's when he decided to leave
the shop and return to advertising.
With constant rejection letters on his first novel, Pacific
Vortex, Dr. Cussler had decided that it would be a smart decision
to find himself a literary agent. With a little cunning and
ingenuity, he soon met Peter Lampack, who was with the William
Morris Agency in Manhattan. With Peter liking his second novel,
Mediterranean Caper, Dr. Cussler now had a contract. With the
contract promptly signed and mailed, he started working on his
third novel, Iceberg. Now that he had an agent and with renewed
inspiration, Dr. Cussler left the advertising agency, and decided
to write full time. Fed up with Southern California and wanting
to change his family's lifestyle, he sold his boat, house and
car. Bought a new family sedan and a tent trailer. After a wonderful
summer, he and his family relocated to Estes Park, Colorado.
Once settled in, he started to work on his third novel, Iceberg.
After a year he finished Iceberg and with his agent having no
success finding an editor to take Mediterranean Caper and now,
Iceberg and with his savings about depleted, Dr. Cussler went
back to advertising.
Once he got himself a job with a very small agency and started
to prove to them his value, Dr. Cussler moved his family to
the suburb of Arvada just outside of Denver. It wouldn't be
long before he was given the pink slip again. Taking a once
broken down and small firm and making it into multi-million
company, Dr. Cussler vowed to never work in the advertising
agency again. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Because
that's when he started to work on Raise The Titanic! in one
corner of his unfinished basement. By then his agent, Peter
Lampack, had found a small publisher to take Mediterranean Caper.
Printing fifty-thousand copies and selling thirty-two thousand,
Pyramid Publishing paid him five thousand dollars and sold the
novel for seventy-five cents a piece. Less then a year later,
Dr. Cussler sold his novel, Iceberg to Dodd Mead Publishing
for five-thousand dollars. The novel sold thirty-two thousand
copies with an initial intent of only printing five thousand.
Once he finished Raise The Titanic, Dr. Cussler sent it off
to his agent. Once approved, it was relayed to Dodd Mead. It
was rejected within ten days. His agent decided to sent the
renounced manuscript to Putnam but they wanted a massive rewrite
which Dr. Cussler refused to do. And what Dr. Cussler would
later say, "Out of the blue, Viking Press bought it, asked for
very few changes and paid me seventy-five hundred dollars."
And that's when "strange forces" went to work. A London editor
from Macmillan Publishing was visiting a friend at Viking and
heard about Dr. Cussler manuscript. Since the Titanic was a
British ship, he asked for a copy of the manuscript to read
on his plane back to England. He ended up wanting to buy it.
But his agent had already sold Iceberg to Sphere Publishing,
a small publishing house in London, for four hundred dollars.
Since Sphere had the first option, they put in a bid for the
manuscript that was promptly topped by Macmillan. Once the dust
settled from the bidding war, Sphere owned the book, paying
twenty-two thousand dollars, a high price for England in those
days.
Getting the feeling that things were suddenly falling into place,
Dr. Cussler called his agent and got his rights back for Mediterranean
Caper. At the same time, Dodd Mead Publishing notified his agent
that Playboy Publications had offered four thousand dollars
for the paperback right to Iceberg. Still with that "gut" feeling,
Dr. Cussler told his agent that he would buy back Mediterranean
Caper from Dodd Mead Publishing for five thousand dollars. The
deal was done two weeks later. With the buzz and interest about
Raise The Titanic over in Britain, it didn't take long for American
paperback publishers to take notice. It soon went to auction
with Viking Press winning the rights for $840,000. Once the
auction was over and finding out that "Raise The Titanic was
the third Dirk Pitt novel, Viking Press bought them both for
forty thousand dollar a piece.
Raise The Titanic! was the first novel to have several plots
going on at the same time and to have them all converge at the
end. Since then, Dr. Cussler has sold over 100 million copies
of his Dirk Pitt Adventures. He continues to write Dirk Pitt
adventures while living a life that nearly parallels that of
his action hero. Like Pitt, Dr. Cussler enjoys discovering and
collecting things of historical significance. With NUMA (National
Underwater & Marine Agency, a non profit group begun by
Cussler) he has had an amazing record of finding over 60 shipwrecks,
one of which was the long-lost Confederate submarine Hunley.
And recently discovered the rescue ship Carpathia who picked
up the Titanic survivors.
Dr. Cussler also has a renowned and extensive classic car collection,
which features over 80 examples of custom coachwork. Along with
being Chairman of NUMA, he is also a fellow of the Explorers
Club (which honored him with the Lowell Thomas Award for outstanding
underwater exploration), the Royal Geographical Society and
the American Society of Oceanographers.
Matthew
McConaughey as Dirk Pitt the intrepid adventurer and explorer,
with Penelope Cruz as Dr. Eva Rojas a United Nations scientist
and Steve Zahn as Al Giordino the wisecracking sidekick to Dirk
Pitt
In
the high stakes, adventurous Sahara movie starring Mathew McConaughey,
master explorer Dirk Pitt (McConaughey) takes on the adventure
of his life when he embarks on a treasure hunt through some
of the most dangerous regions of West Africa. Searching for
what locals call "The Ship of Death", a long lost Civil War
battleship which protects a secret cargo, Pitt and his wisecracking
sidekick, Al Giordino (Steve Zahn) use their wits and clever
heroics to help Doctor Eva Rojas (Penelope Cruz) when they realize
the ship may be linked to mysterious deaths in the very same
area.
Madrid-born
Penelope and her leading man swapped Morocco for the northeastern
coast of Spain to continue filming Sahara. The scenic seaside was the perfect
spot for the shoot, while after hours the stars relaxed at a
luxury beachfront
hotel. Penelope gets down and dirty in the line of
duty on the Catalonia
set
Order
the DVD for the movie now! 
