Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away) Cast Away (2000)

Robert Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952, Chicago, Illinois) directed Cast Away (2000). The film was his fourth collaboration with Tom Hanks following Forrest Gump (1994), and his second consecutive picture with no major action setpiece after the philosophical SF drama Contact (1997). Cast Away was the last live-action narrative film Zemeckis would make for over a decade.

Cast Away was Zemeckis returning to character drama after the Contact pivot

By 2000, Zemeckis was the most commercially successful director of his generation — Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump — but the films he wanted to make were getting quieter. Contact (1997) was a religious-philosophical SF drama with Jodie Foster. Cast Away pushed further: a $90 million studio film with one actor, no score for sixty-five minutes, and a volleyball for a scene partner. Tom Hanks, who originated the project, sent the Broyles draft to Zemeckis a year after they finished Forrest Gump. (Den of Geek, AV Club)

"We did 125 rewrites, so there were like millions of changes, hundreds of thousands of them. Which is the process that you go through when you make a movie." — Robert Zemeckis, CinemaBlend (2020)

He solved the year-long hiatus by shooting another movie with the same crew

The production's defining structural problem was Hanks's body. To play pre-crash and post-crash Chuck convincingly, Hanks needed to gain weight, then lose more than fifty pounds and grow out his hair. The film could not be shot continuously; the production had to stop for a year. Rather than disband the crew, Zemeckis rolled them onto What Lies Beneath, a Harrison Ford / Michelle Pfeiffer thriller for DreamWorks, then rolled them back when Hanks was ready. The same cinematographer (Don Burgess), the same editor (Arthur Schmidt), and the same composer (Alan Silvestri) worked on both films.

"The only way I could then really make it become fiscally sound was to do another movie in between, so that I could just roll the production company onto another movie." — Robert Zemeckis, Cast Away DVD commentary (CinemaBlend, 2020)

What Lies Beneath came out in July 2000. Cast Away came out five months later, in December. Two Zemeckis films opened in the same year, both directed and produced consecutively, both with the same key crew. (wikipedia)

He decided the island sequences would have no score

Zemeckis tested temp music against the island footage with longtime composer Alan Silvestri (Alan Silvestri (Cast Away)) and concluded it would not work. Music told audiences what to feel; the island sequences needed audiences to feel nothing for them — to sit in Chuck's silence.

"I always knew, once I started shooting the movie, that there was gonna be no music. I did my due diligence, and tried temp music, and I had long conversations with Silvestri, my composer, and it just didn't work, because music is tricky, in that it leads the audience to what they're supposed to be feeling." — Robert Zemeckis, CinemaBlend (2020)

The decision was unprecedented for a $90 million studio release. Cast Away contains no score from roughly minute 30 to minute 95 of its runtime — over an hour of screen time carried by sound design alone.

Cast Away was his last live-action film for over a decade

After Cast Away, Zemeckis spent the 2000s on motion-capture animation: The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), and A Christmas Carol (2009). He did not return to live-action narrative until Flight (2012) with Denzel Washington. The decade-long detour was the longest stretch of Zemeckis's career outside the live-action mainstream that had defined his earlier work. (Deadline)

Selected filmography

Year	Film	Notes
1985	Back to the Future	Breakthrough
1988	Who Framed Roger Rabbit	Live-action / animation hybrid
1989 / 1990	Back to the Future Part II / III
1992	Death Becomes Her
1994	Forrest Gump	Best Picture / Best Director Oscars; first Hanks collaboration
1997	Contact	Jodie Foster
2000	What Lies Beneath	Shot during Cast Away hiatus
2000	Cast Away	Fourth Hanks collaboration
2004	The Polar Express	First mocap film
2007	Beowulf
2009	A Christmas Carol
2012	Flight	Return to live action
2015	The Walk
2018	Welcome to Marwen
2024	Here	Reunion with Hanks