This interesting 26 min 6 second "making of " special brings you on the Set with Secondhand Lions. Featuring interviews with director Tim McCanlies, actors Robert Duvall, Michael Caine, Haley Joel Osment, Kyra Sedgwick and others, and production crew, this is a fascinating look at how Secondhand Lions was brought to screen.

We get to go behind the scenes to look at the process of bringing a film like Secondhand Lions to screen.....

.... and we get to learn interesting things about the actors off screen as well , for instance, Haley Joel Osment is quite good at juggling !

We catch a glimpse also of how the Set Designer managed to transform a beautiful white house in Austin, Texas into the ramshackle McCann homestead .... such is truly the magic of filmmaking !

Click on each image to supersize it

Oh and what about the lion ? Well, there WAS a real lion , but look carefully, that's NOT Haley acting with it, but a stuntwoman/lion trainer by the name of Marie Reeves .

Although Haley wanted very much to act with the real lion, the producers decided that it was just too dangerous, so he had to make do with a puppet.

You can see the puppeteer below the lion. Mouseover for closeup of the lion puppet.

 

The last day on the Set was an emotional one for the director, actors and crew of Secondhand Lions . Clearly, a bond had been forged between Haley Joel Osment, Michael Caine and Robert Duvall in their months of filming together . All 3 were highly honoured actors in their own right , but the respect that they had for each other was genuine and sincere .

That's not acting, folks .... that's real friendship !