One scene in "The Golden Compass" might shock fans of the book -- because Mrs. Coulter does something taboo to her monkey. And no, she's not spanking her monkey, just slapping him. "That's entirely different," director Chris Weitz laughed.
So why would this be shocking? Because her monkey is her daemon, the physical manifestation of her own soul, and it's a tad sadomasochistic, to say the least -- it's unheard of to hurt someone else's daemon, let alone to hurt your own. And when she smacks him, she gets a red mark on her own cheek.
"It was Philip Pullman's idea," Weitz said, "and not one that I necessarily would have thought of, because it's not in the book. It's only for moviegoers."
"It was fun," Pullman said. "I enjoyed thinking of that."
"He thought it was necessary to have a cinematic image for how I respond to my own daemon," Nicole Kidman said, "and that's what he came up with. I thought it was clever. It shows that she's struggling with herself, that she's confused, for the first time in her life."
Poor Nicole didn't get a real monkey to slap, though (can you imagine the PETA protests?). Instead, she had a day-glo green puppet, since her co-star was inserted via CGI. "I'm a big believer in monkeys," Weitz said. "There's been a monkey in every single movie I've directed, and now that I've got the biggest monkey star of them all, it's a virtual one." Still, there are advantages: "Some of them smell absolutely terrible!"
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