Sacha Baron Cohen has a thing for showing off his privates. Well, what appear to be his privates, that is.
We’ve already been subjected to Borat dressed in that barely there fluorescent-green banana-hammock bathing suit. Now comes his hilarious turn as Signor Adolfo Pirelli opposite Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd.
There’s no missing Pirelli’s package. “Oh, that was the real thing,” Sweeney Todd’s two-time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood told me the other day with a giggle, but quickly admitting, “Yeah, we augmented.”
No surprise, it was Cohen’s idea to enlarge his manhood for the flick. Cohen’s body-hugging pants were stuffed with “a little quilted thing.”
Well, not so little. But Atwood said she hopes it comes off somewhat authentic. “We tried different materials and different sizes and positions,” Atwood said with a laugh. “You kind of forget what you’re doing, and you’re just sort of looking at what looks the best. I like if a lot of people think it’s real.”
Meanwhile, Atwood didn’t have to worry about such accessories for Depp and his other costars. Her biggest worry was all the fake blood everyone was splattered with. Atwood ended up making 25 shirts, eight pairs of paints and seven waistcoats for Depp. “The big thing was where was [the blood] going and how are going to get it off,” Atwood said. “It’s sort of sticky, so it’s the kind of stuff you want to get off quickly, but Tim and everybody got it down to such an art that we didn’t have thousands of takes. It went really well considering how challenging it was.”
Atwood has worked on more than 50 films, many with Burton and Jonathan Demme. Next up are the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical Nine and Public Enemies, Depp’s Depression-era gangster flick with director Michael Mann.
Even with such a large body of work, Atwood says she still has at least one dream project. “I’ve always wanted to do a vampire movie,” she said.
Perhaps she should give Mr. Burton a call. Sounds like the perfect job for him, too.