In January 2017 I sent four questions to 100 movie legends. Composer John Williams responded in June, sending me a print-out of questions he often gets asked. I thought fair enough, at least he was kind enough to respond. Three months later, I was puzzled to receive another envelope marked 'Boston Pops', containing the same printed FAQ. Then I noticed that some of the answers were highlighted in biro - and realised that John Williams had updated his FAQ by adding my four questions! So here's my interview with the man who has received more Oscar nominations than anyone ever (except Walt Disney):
Which technological or social development during your career has changed cinema the most?
"The use of synthesizers and of layered pre-recordings in film scores is now prevalent, but I'm still writing for orchestra. Technology has had very little influence on me. However, thanks to the computerization of post-production work such as editing, it goes much more quickly now."
Which deceased film-maker or actor do you wish you could have worked with?
"Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn."
What is the one question you’re fed up with answering in interviews?
"What was it like to succeed Arthur Fiedler?"
What would you rather be asked instead?
"It depends who's asking!"
Showing posts with label American. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American. Show all posts
Monday, 25 September 2017
Sunday, 23 July 2017
interview: Martin Landau
In the summer of 1999, my pal Omar Kaczmarczyk invited me to Luxembourg to visit the set of The New Adventures of Pinocchio. Unfortunately Martin Landau, who reprised his role of Geppetto from the first film, had wrapped when I was there but Omar kindly arrange a phoner when I got home. In 2000 I finally met Martin Landau when I was in Cannes and spotted him in a restaurant. I approached him, explained who I was and thanked him for this gracious interview. I’m posting it now in tribute to this great actor who passed away last week.
What attracted you to the role of Geppetto in the first Pinocchio film?
“To begin with? Well, it is a classic book and the Collodi book is something that I think everyone has grown up with. And I felt that the technology had finally caught up with the ability to do it as a live-action movie with a wooden actor. I’ve worked with a lot of wooden actors in my time and this was one of the better ones! But I guess I read the script and I found it charming, I found it moving, I found it sweet. I knew the Henson group as well were very gifted, and other laboratories of that kind were extant at the moment. It intrigued me. I felt there was something classical about it. We’d all grown up on the Disney cartoon which is charming but deviated more. Pepe the cricket was Jiminy Cricket and so on. This was truer and closer to the original piece and I felt it was something I wanted to do it.
“It’s a classic part and I also found it moving and sweet. Here’s a man who has avoided marriage and avoided his love. He’s a man who would never actually have a family because he’s past that. He’s run away from life. He’s spent his time talking to inanimate objects and puppets and created a life for himself that makes him comfortable. And suddenly here this strange event happens where he is thrust into fatherhood and isn’t really ready for it emotionally. This is how I looked at it. He has this love of his life who’s crazy about him that he’s ignored his entire life, which is added to the script. There’s a nice arc and a catharsis that occurs where he becomes a much rounder, fuller, better human being through this experience that takes him by surprise.”
Given that the first film was close to the book and had that closure, what did you think when you were approached about a sequel?
“Well, I said ‘Let me see the script.’ Obviously any time something works pretty well, they want to do a second one, and usually it’s the idea of doing it as opposed to doing what. The ‘what’ is very important. When they sent me the script I said this is kind of fun, because what a turn: Geppetto becoming a puppet and Pinocchio basically on the other side of the fence. But Pinocchio still misbehaving and creating the problems that cause this strange occurrence. But again the idea of a puppet coming to life is just as whimsical and fantastic as a character like Geppetto becoming a puppet.
“So I said, ‘Well, this is in keeping with it in a certain sense. And again it is a morality piece. It’s about not paying attention and being penalised forbeing remiss in life. I also found it kind of fun and cute and again it’s a switch, particularly at the end when the two of them are puppets and have to be reconstructed into human beings. But Geppetto is also kind of enjoying the experience. I just sort it was kind of whimsical and sweet.”
What did you find were the biggest differences between the two films?
“I do pictures with different directors all the time, and different cinematographers. Also though the fact that it’s a different period historically. I don’t know whether you know that or not - this is a much later time. This is 19th century and the other one I guess was 18th century. So, jokingly I say this, Genevieve Bujold’s character didn’t manage to last that hundred years! So it’s still a period piece - it’s not a modern piece - but they felt it would be truer to the Collodi piece in a way if they brought it into that century. So there were differences in wardrobe and differences in design, by and large, but not radically.
“Michael Anderson is a wonderfully professional director. He did Around the World in 80 Days among other things. So it’s not like going into a black hole. There’s a solid core to this production. Of course, a first-time director I would have qualms - because it’s complicated. It’s not an easy picture, when you’re dealing with these special effects. In terms of today, you think of car crashes and explosions and fireballs. But this is a very subtle kind of thing; it has to be believable and done well. And you need a director who can handle it because it’s really character driven. Pinocchio 1 was a character-driven movie, albeit that one of the characters is a wooden puppet, but very human. And it’s a human tale. And I think that’s why they wanted to have someone who can recognise the humanity as well as the technical areas at the helm of this. You need a good skipper. So when I heard it was Michael Anderson I was very pleased.”
Had you worked with him before?
“No, I’d worked with his son on The Greatest Story Ever Told, Michael Anderson Jr, as an actor. But I knew Michael. We’d met on a number of times but I hadn’t worked with him. I’d worked with a lot of ‘classmates’: people like Hitchcock and a lot of his contemporaries.”
Did you find that the technology had advanced much since the last film?
“Clearly technology continues to grow and people are working on all kinds of things. The technology was pretty damn good in the first one. It’s probably made some positive steps since then but we’re not talking about George Lucas’ company. It’s close-ups on puppets. In the first film, that puppet had a lot of expression, a lot of subtlety, a lot of sweetness and wickedness, and all the things necessary. So I think maybe things are a little better in that area, but it was pretty good the first time around is what I’m saying.”
Have you advanced the character in the second film from what he was in the first?
“Well, I think he’s essentially the same guy. I don’t want to do anything radical that would disturb people; he is the same guy. It’s a hundred years later but he’s still very much the same guy. The script allows for different areas to emerge in terms of where he’s ‘coming from’. You see different sides of Geppetto but it’s the same guy allowing other colours to come into his behaviour.”
How did you find working in Luxembourg?
“I liked it. I found it very clean and clear and pleasant. It’s not very big and if you’re in a long train I think the front of it is in one country and the back of it’s in another. But I found the people friendly. I found that the crews at the studio were very professional, and the studio itself. I think Gertrude Stein said ‘a sound stage is a sound stage is a sound stage’: you don’t know where you are until you walk outside and see a street with foreign signs.
“I worked at Pinewood for years on Space: 1999 and I felt very much at home there. Having done as many films as I have and shot in as many countries as I have, I’m quite adaptable. Because when you’re inside a sound stage you really don’t know where you are. You’re in that world. It’s only when you go back the hotel that you realise other languages are being spoken.”
Space: 1999 is quite topical because the Moon gets blown out of orbit in about four weeks.
“I know. A year from now it will be a period piece!”
When you made that series, 1999 was way in the future.
“Well, it was 25 years ahead exactly.”
As the date approaches, what are your thoughts on the series now?
“It was a valiant effort. It’s not easy to do that kind of a show on a weekly basis, and I also think that our special effects at the time were really amazing. If you look back they still hold up very well. Star Trek was a wonderful series but their effects were certainly much more primitive than ours. People like Brian Johnston wound up working with Lucas on projects. Our unit at Bray was really doing miraculous stuff and tying it into the main stuff we were doing at Pinewood, and I felt it was quite seamless and quite well done. Some of the stories of course were not as dramatic or little lacking, but some of them were excellent little movies. Again, I don’t know any series that’s consistent and wonderful all the time, but I think it was a valiant effort to do something on a different level than had been done before.
“When I say ‘hadn’t been done before’, the concept of the Moon being blown out of orbit and not being able to affect your trajectory and being at the whims of fate. In other words these 300 people from different countries not actually in control of their destiny, and able to stay alive because of hydroponics but not being able to procreate until they found a planet - this was the concept initially - that was compatible with our needs so we could continue the human race. And that idea is a good idea.
“Everybody’s a critic and people compared us to Star Trek. We didn’t intend to be Star Trek. It was a differently textured show, and there were episodes that I would proudly screen for anybody. I just think it was time well spent and we did some very, very interesting work at that point in time. Again, it’s 25 years ago. If you look at those shows they don’t look as if they were made 25 years ago; they look as if they were made yesterday. We don’t suffer from the styles of the day.
“Last night I hosted a screening of North By Northwest at a theatre here because Warner Brothers is re-releasing the movie with brand new sound and a restored print. It’s impeccable and beautiful. I did a question and answer and I did some anecdotes on the stage for about an hour last night before the screening. Well, that picture holds up. The cars are old and the suits are ‘50s suits and the hairdos too, and the ties are skinny, so you’re reminded continually of the ‘50s when you watch it. Whereas in Space: 1999, you’re not. It’s as new and futuristic today as it was then.”
The fans often cite a big difference between the two seasons of Space: 1999.
“Definitely, because Freddie Freiburger came in and as I say, everyone’s a critic and everyone was second-guessing the show. I liked the first season better. I felt if it could have evolved from that point it would have become a much, much, much richer and better show. I felt there were things in the second season that were inconsistent and sometimes the characters were made inconsistent because they did things unilaterally that they wouldn’t have done - to accommodate the storyline as opposed to the storyline accommodating the characters.”
A lot of old shows have been revived. Do you think there’s room for Space: 2099?
“Well, I’m not in charge of that. I’m sure there’s always room for something that’s well done. There’s a nucleus of followers of that show who would be interested in that show and those people could introduce their kids to the show because of the nostalgic aspect to it. But it takes a certain amount of money. Space certainly didn’t have the success that Star Trek had - though Star Trek was a failure when it was first on the air.
“Because I was doing Mission: Impossible at the same studio at the same time, and we were very successful and they were a struggling show. They only did three seasons and we did many more. And I was offered Spock before Lenny and passed on it to do Mission, so I understand, I’ve been close to that. I knew Gene Roddenberry because Gene Roddenberry’s office was right next to Bruce Gellar’s office at Desilu Studios which ultimately became Paramount. So I sort of grew up there: we were on stages 7 and 8 and they were on 9 and 10. Those numbers have changed because of Paramount’s acquisition of Desilu, but we were side by side. We had the two stages next to the Star Trek stages, and Lenny’s dressing room was in the same building as mine. I knew Bill Shatner and all of them very well; we’d see each other all the time in the commissary and visit each other’s sets and the like.
“So I’m aware of the Star Trek phenomenon but it took a long time to happen, remember. It wasn't overnight. And the show barely stayed on the air from season to season. It was on the basis of a lot of letters and very zealous fanatical fans - that’s a little redundant, but... - that kept that show on the air. It just scraped by, whereas we were riding high. It was a wonderful concept and well done, but when it comes to special effects it couldn't hold a candle to Space.”
When both shows were prepping for their first seasons, what attracted you to Rollin Hand over Spock?
“Well, I’m an actor who likes a wide range of stuff, and to play a lobotomy, which is what Spock was to me, someone without emotion, did not interest me. It’s not why I became an actor. I could see the fact that it could be very successful: pointy ears, and a guy who knows all the answers in the 1960s is like a pothead of a certain kind, and I felt that would be very successful. Whereas on Mission I played everything from Adolf Hitler to Martin Boorman, to myself younger, older, every accent. I was a one-man rep company actually, and that interested me. To this day I would not want to do Spock if you handed it to me and offered to pay me a million dollars. I wouldn’t do it. The character does not interest me. My answering machine has more expression.”
What did you think of the Mission: Impossible movie?
“I thought it had nothing to do with the series. The series is a team of people who get in and get out, having accomplished what they did without anyone ever knowing they were there. In the movie, the team is killed early in the picture, the Phelps character is turned into a double agent, and everyone knows Tom Cruise is there because he’s announcing it all the time. It’s a different idea. Tom basically played the same character I played, but the idea was not to let them know we were infiltrating. When you’re a movie star I guess you have to let people know you’re there.”
One of my favourite films is 12:01. What do you remember of that?
“I remember Jonathan Silverman and Jack Sholder, I remember working on it. Jack Sholder: I had done his first picture ever, a picture called Alone in the Dark, which was one of New Line’s very first pictures. I got to know Bob Shea and all of those people. I just remember that I had a good time. Helen Slater and Jonathan. I also did an HBO movie with the same director called By Dawn’s Early Light, in which I played the President. Kind of a catastrophic event, with Washington blown up by atomic bombs.”
Thanks for this. I’m looking forward to Pinocchio.
“I think it’s going to be quite charming, and I know Michael Anderson is very happy with it. I’m going into a dubbing studio for the next little bit to post-synch a bunch of stuff with the puppet. It’s the first time I’ve done that with a puppet, but as I say I’m not generally thought of as a wooden actor.”
RIP Martin Landau 1928-2017
What attracted you to the role of Geppetto in the first Pinocchio film?
“To begin with? Well, it is a classic book and the Collodi book is something that I think everyone has grown up with. And I felt that the technology had finally caught up with the ability to do it as a live-action movie with a wooden actor. I’ve worked with a lot of wooden actors in my time and this was one of the better ones! But I guess I read the script and I found it charming, I found it moving, I found it sweet. I knew the Henson group as well were very gifted, and other laboratories of that kind were extant at the moment. It intrigued me. I felt there was something classical about it. We’d all grown up on the Disney cartoon which is charming but deviated more. Pepe the cricket was Jiminy Cricket and so on. This was truer and closer to the original piece and I felt it was something I wanted to do it.
“It’s a classic part and I also found it moving and sweet. Here’s a man who has avoided marriage and avoided his love. He’s a man who would never actually have a family because he’s past that. He’s run away from life. He’s spent his time talking to inanimate objects and puppets and created a life for himself that makes him comfortable. And suddenly here this strange event happens where he is thrust into fatherhood and isn’t really ready for it emotionally. This is how I looked at it. He has this love of his life who’s crazy about him that he’s ignored his entire life, which is added to the script. There’s a nice arc and a catharsis that occurs where he becomes a much rounder, fuller, better human being through this experience that takes him by surprise.”
Given that the first film was close to the book and had that closure, what did you think when you were approached about a sequel?
“Well, I said ‘Let me see the script.’ Obviously any time something works pretty well, they want to do a second one, and usually it’s the idea of doing it as opposed to doing what. The ‘what’ is very important. When they sent me the script I said this is kind of fun, because what a turn: Geppetto becoming a puppet and Pinocchio basically on the other side of the fence. But Pinocchio still misbehaving and creating the problems that cause this strange occurrence. But again the idea of a puppet coming to life is just as whimsical and fantastic as a character like Geppetto becoming a puppet.
“So I said, ‘Well, this is in keeping with it in a certain sense. And again it is a morality piece. It’s about not paying attention and being penalised forbeing remiss in life. I also found it kind of fun and cute and again it’s a switch, particularly at the end when the two of them are puppets and have to be reconstructed into human beings. But Geppetto is also kind of enjoying the experience. I just sort it was kind of whimsical and sweet.”
What did you find were the biggest differences between the two films?
“I do pictures with different directors all the time, and different cinematographers. Also though the fact that it’s a different period historically. I don’t know whether you know that or not - this is a much later time. This is 19th century and the other one I guess was 18th century. So, jokingly I say this, Genevieve Bujold’s character didn’t manage to last that hundred years! So it’s still a period piece - it’s not a modern piece - but they felt it would be truer to the Collodi piece in a way if they brought it into that century. So there were differences in wardrobe and differences in design, by and large, but not radically.
“Michael Anderson is a wonderfully professional director. He did Around the World in 80 Days among other things. So it’s not like going into a black hole. There’s a solid core to this production. Of course, a first-time director I would have qualms - because it’s complicated. It’s not an easy picture, when you’re dealing with these special effects. In terms of today, you think of car crashes and explosions and fireballs. But this is a very subtle kind of thing; it has to be believable and done well. And you need a director who can handle it because it’s really character driven. Pinocchio 1 was a character-driven movie, albeit that one of the characters is a wooden puppet, but very human. And it’s a human tale. And I think that’s why they wanted to have someone who can recognise the humanity as well as the technical areas at the helm of this. You need a good skipper. So when I heard it was Michael Anderson I was very pleased.”
Had you worked with him before?
“No, I’d worked with his son on The Greatest Story Ever Told, Michael Anderson Jr, as an actor. But I knew Michael. We’d met on a number of times but I hadn’t worked with him. I’d worked with a lot of ‘classmates’: people like Hitchcock and a lot of his contemporaries.”
Did you find that the technology had advanced much since the last film?“Clearly technology continues to grow and people are working on all kinds of things. The technology was pretty damn good in the first one. It’s probably made some positive steps since then but we’re not talking about George Lucas’ company. It’s close-ups on puppets. In the first film, that puppet had a lot of expression, a lot of subtlety, a lot of sweetness and wickedness, and all the things necessary. So I think maybe things are a little better in that area, but it was pretty good the first time around is what I’m saying.”
Have you advanced the character in the second film from what he was in the first?
“Well, I think he’s essentially the same guy. I don’t want to do anything radical that would disturb people; he is the same guy. It’s a hundred years later but he’s still very much the same guy. The script allows for different areas to emerge in terms of where he’s ‘coming from’. You see different sides of Geppetto but it’s the same guy allowing other colours to come into his behaviour.”
How did you find working in Luxembourg?
“I liked it. I found it very clean and clear and pleasant. It’s not very big and if you’re in a long train I think the front of it is in one country and the back of it’s in another. But I found the people friendly. I found that the crews at the studio were very professional, and the studio itself. I think Gertrude Stein said ‘a sound stage is a sound stage is a sound stage’: you don’t know where you are until you walk outside and see a street with foreign signs.
“I worked at Pinewood for years on Space: 1999 and I felt very much at home there. Having done as many films as I have and shot in as many countries as I have, I’m quite adaptable. Because when you’re inside a sound stage you really don’t know where you are. You’re in that world. It’s only when you go back the hotel that you realise other languages are being spoken.”
Space: 1999 is quite topical because the Moon gets blown out of orbit in about four weeks.
“I know. A year from now it will be a period piece!”
When you made that series, 1999 was way in the future.
“Well, it was 25 years ahead exactly.”
As the date approaches, what are your thoughts on the series now?
“It was a valiant effort. It’s not easy to do that kind of a show on a weekly basis, and I also think that our special effects at the time were really amazing. If you look back they still hold up very well. Star Trek was a wonderful series but their effects were certainly much more primitive than ours. People like Brian Johnston wound up working with Lucas on projects. Our unit at Bray was really doing miraculous stuff and tying it into the main stuff we were doing at Pinewood, and I felt it was quite seamless and quite well done. Some of the stories of course were not as dramatic or little lacking, but some of them were excellent little movies. Again, I don’t know any series that’s consistent and wonderful all the time, but I think it was a valiant effort to do something on a different level than had been done before.
“When I say ‘hadn’t been done before’, the concept of the Moon being blown out of orbit and not being able to affect your trajectory and being at the whims of fate. In other words these 300 people from different countries not actually in control of their destiny, and able to stay alive because of hydroponics but not being able to procreate until they found a planet - this was the concept initially - that was compatible with our needs so we could continue the human race. And that idea is a good idea.
“Everybody’s a critic and people compared us to Star Trek. We didn’t intend to be Star Trek. It was a differently textured show, and there were episodes that I would proudly screen for anybody. I just think it was time well spent and we did some very, very interesting work at that point in time. Again, it’s 25 years ago. If you look at those shows they don’t look as if they were made 25 years ago; they look as if they were made yesterday. We don’t suffer from the styles of the day.
“Last night I hosted a screening of North By Northwest at a theatre here because Warner Brothers is re-releasing the movie with brand new sound and a restored print. It’s impeccable and beautiful. I did a question and answer and I did some anecdotes on the stage for about an hour last night before the screening. Well, that picture holds up. The cars are old and the suits are ‘50s suits and the hairdos too, and the ties are skinny, so you’re reminded continually of the ‘50s when you watch it. Whereas in Space: 1999, you’re not. It’s as new and futuristic today as it was then.”
The fans often cite a big difference between the two seasons of Space: 1999.
“Definitely, because Freddie Freiburger came in and as I say, everyone’s a critic and everyone was second-guessing the show. I liked the first season better. I felt if it could have evolved from that point it would have become a much, much, much richer and better show. I felt there were things in the second season that were inconsistent and sometimes the characters were made inconsistent because they did things unilaterally that they wouldn’t have done - to accommodate the storyline as opposed to the storyline accommodating the characters.”
A lot of old shows have been revived. Do you think there’s room for Space: 2099?
“Well, I’m not in charge of that. I’m sure there’s always room for something that’s well done. There’s a nucleus of followers of that show who would be interested in that show and those people could introduce their kids to the show because of the nostalgic aspect to it. But it takes a certain amount of money. Space certainly didn’t have the success that Star Trek had - though Star Trek was a failure when it was first on the air.
“Because I was doing Mission: Impossible at the same studio at the same time, and we were very successful and they were a struggling show. They only did three seasons and we did many more. And I was offered Spock before Lenny and passed on it to do Mission, so I understand, I’ve been close to that. I knew Gene Roddenberry because Gene Roddenberry’s office was right next to Bruce Gellar’s office at Desilu Studios which ultimately became Paramount. So I sort of grew up there: we were on stages 7 and 8 and they were on 9 and 10. Those numbers have changed because of Paramount’s acquisition of Desilu, but we were side by side. We had the two stages next to the Star Trek stages, and Lenny’s dressing room was in the same building as mine. I knew Bill Shatner and all of them very well; we’d see each other all the time in the commissary and visit each other’s sets and the like.
“So I’m aware of the Star Trek phenomenon but it took a long time to happen, remember. It wasn't overnight. And the show barely stayed on the air from season to season. It was on the basis of a lot of letters and very zealous fanatical fans - that’s a little redundant, but... - that kept that show on the air. It just scraped by, whereas we were riding high. It was a wonderful concept and well done, but when it comes to special effects it couldn't hold a candle to Space.”
When both shows were prepping for their first seasons, what attracted you to Rollin Hand over Spock?
“Well, I’m an actor who likes a wide range of stuff, and to play a lobotomy, which is what Spock was to me, someone without emotion, did not interest me. It’s not why I became an actor. I could see the fact that it could be very successful: pointy ears, and a guy who knows all the answers in the 1960s is like a pothead of a certain kind, and I felt that would be very successful. Whereas on Mission I played everything from Adolf Hitler to Martin Boorman, to myself younger, older, every accent. I was a one-man rep company actually, and that interested me. To this day I would not want to do Spock if you handed it to me and offered to pay me a million dollars. I wouldn’t do it. The character does not interest me. My answering machine has more expression.”
What did you think of the Mission: Impossible movie?
“I thought it had nothing to do with the series. The series is a team of people who get in and get out, having accomplished what they did without anyone ever knowing they were there. In the movie, the team is killed early in the picture, the Phelps character is turned into a double agent, and everyone knows Tom Cruise is there because he’s announcing it all the time. It’s a different idea. Tom basically played the same character I played, but the idea was not to let them know we were infiltrating. When you’re a movie star I guess you have to let people know you’re there.”
One of my favourite films is 12:01. What do you remember of that?
“I remember Jonathan Silverman and Jack Sholder, I remember working on it. Jack Sholder: I had done his first picture ever, a picture called Alone in the Dark, which was one of New Line’s very first pictures. I got to know Bob Shea and all of those people. I just remember that I had a good time. Helen Slater and Jonathan. I also did an HBO movie with the same director called By Dawn’s Early Light, in which I played the President. Kind of a catastrophic event, with Washington blown up by atomic bombs.”
Thanks for this. I’m looking forward to Pinocchio.
“I think it’s going to be quite charming, and I know Michael Anderson is very happy with it. I’m going into a dubbing studio for the next little bit to post-synch a bunch of stuff with the puppet. It’s the first time I’ve done that with a puppet, but as I say I’m not generally thought of as a wooden actor.”
RIP Martin Landau 1928-2017
Thursday, 9 March 2017
interview: Joe Dante
In January I posted four questions to 100 Big Names to celebrate my website's 15th anniversary. A few weeks later, I received these answers by email from the always awesome Joe Dante..
Which technological or social development during your career has changed cinema the most?
"The movie business I got into in 1975 was completely different from the one we have now. We don't shoot on film anymore for the most part, and we don't even project on film apart from a few venues in big cities. Theatrical movies now tend toward expensive spectacles and tentpoles, with the mid-range movies of the previous era moving to cable. And socially, the majority of films are no longer seen in theaters which means the vital connection between film and the communal experience has been lost."
Which deceased film-maker or actor do you wish you could have worked with?
"Orson Welles."
What is the one question you’re fed up with answering in interviews?
"When are you going to make Gremlins 3?"
What would you rather be asked instead?
"Why doesn't Criterion put out The Second Civil War?"
Which technological or social development during your career has changed cinema the most?
"The movie business I got into in 1975 was completely different from the one we have now. We don't shoot on film anymore for the most part, and we don't even project on film apart from a few venues in big cities. Theatrical movies now tend toward expensive spectacles and tentpoles, with the mid-range movies of the previous era moving to cable. And socially, the majority of films are no longer seen in theaters which means the vital connection between film and the communal experience has been lost."
Which deceased film-maker or actor do you wish you could have worked with?
"Orson Welles."
What is the one question you’re fed up with answering in interviews?
"When are you going to make Gremlins 3?"
What would you rather be asked instead?
"Why doesn't Criterion put out The Second Civil War?"
Monday, 6 March 2017
interview: Todd Jensen
I had the pleasure of interviewing the great Todd Jensen on the set of Rampage (aka Breeders aka Deadly Instinct), a British B-movie which was shot on the Isle of Man in January 1997, in which he starred alongside Samantha Janus.
How did you get cast in Rampage?
“I was originally going to be in this movie. When they first came up with it, they offered me the lead. Then they were going to shoot in Wales. I guess the Welsh were going to put in some money. But in order to do that, they had to have a Welsh cast.”
They've got an entirely Welsh crew instead.
“Yeah, exactly. Then all of a sudden they changed it again, and the Welsh money fell out or something happened, so they ended up coming to the Isle of Man. So they phoned me and said, 'Do you still want to do it?' and I said, 'Yeah. I'm free in January.'”
Are you based in Britain or in America?
“I'm based in LA, but I'm hoping to spend some time in London on a regular basis and hopefully do some more work over here. My sister lives over here. She lives in Birmingham. She'll be here on Sunday; she's coming onto the set. She's met Paul and Liz before.”
Is there much difference between a British production and an American production?
“Um, no actually. It's pretty much the same wherever you are. Very knowledgeable people, great technicians. A great crew; this is probably the best crew I've ever worked with, as far as personalities and fun and hardworking. Everybody's been having a really good time.”
This is what is coming across; that everybody's enjoying themselves.
“Yes. That's a real positive thing. Especially something like this where it's cold. It's good that everybody keeps a positive attitude. And that's a rare thing. That everybody gets along and has fun and can laugh. That doesn't normally happen on film sets!”
Are you enjoying doing the action sequences?
“Yes, that's a lot of fun. Action is always fun.”
Have you had any training on that side of things?
“I've done a lot. I've done about twenty films, and about 50% of them - maybe a little more than that - have been action films. Like the three films that are coming out this year. One's called Orion's Key, which they're renaming, I think they're calling it Alien Chaser, which is a sci-fi film. Do you know the Shadowchaser movies? Well, this is Shadowchaser IV, but they're going to call it Alien Chaser. That's a sci-fi kind of thing. So I'm the lead in that. Then there's another film called Operation Delta Force which is an action film, strictly, with Jeff Fahey and Ernie Hudson and myself and Frank, the guy who's in Alien Chaser with me, the man from the Shadowchaser films. So those'll be coming out very, very soon. There's a film called Warhead that'll be coming out soon, an action film.”
Do you like doing the cyborg and monster stuff or the straight stuff?
“It depends. Like, this was great to be on. This was great to do, because I'm not the cyborg. Believe me, when they talk about Star Trek make up and stuff, that is brutal, to go through that every day. Where you're sitting in a chair for two or three or even six hours.”
How long did your cyborg make-up take?
“Cyborg stuff was about an hour and a half to two hours I had to sit there. It just wears on you, you know? Then they're always messing with you on set.”
Does it make it more difficult to act?
“Not more difficult to act. It's just that it's very tiring. You've got to be in a chair every day, and you've got to do this stuff every day. It kind of wears you out. So when you're reading an action script you get, 'Oh man, I get shot, and for half the movie I've got this or that. And I'm in the water half the movie!' I'm hoping to do another film in March, back in LA, called Blue Motel, which is more of a dramatic, erotic thriller. I hope to venture that way a little bit, do more dramatic stuff, maybe even some comedy stuff. I'm dying to do comedy. I mean, I have on stage.”
Have you done much stagework?
“Yes, in the States. I lived in New York for about three years, and did plenty there.”
Do you prefer doing that?
“Yes, I love doing stage. It's just that, everywhere in the world, it doesn't really pay. Unless you're on Broadway or in a big show in the West End and you're The Guy or The Girl in the show. With TV and film, you can earn a nice living. But as far as a high, doing stage is by far the best. But I'm not a big enough name to be able to say, 'Yeah, I'll do Broadway and pay me $50,000 a week.' I'm not there yet.”
Are you aiming for that?
“I would love to, yes. I would love to get back on stage. I almost did something last year, but I had a conflict with this film. A pretty well-known play from the States about Air Force men and the gay issue. Robert Redford's picked up the rights to that, to do a film of it.”
Are you finding that, although you're not an A-list star, you're well-known enough for producers to come to you because they know what sort of films you tend to do?
“That's tending to happen more and more. More people are becoming aware of who I am and what I do, and that's good. That's how it starts, and then hopefully you have one project that breaks away and makes your name more of a household name. So we'll see. I think this year is going to be a very good year for me. I've got a couple of things slated and I'm producing a film.”
What's that?
“It's a film called Implications which is an erotic thriller that a friend of mine wrote. He'll direct it it, and we've just had confirmation that Maria Conchita Alonso will play one of the leads. And Tia Carrere is looking at it. And I'll be in it. It's not a big picture. And Paul and Liz I'm hoping are going to executive produce on it, and be involved in that way, probably handle foreign distribution. When I go back to LA after this I'm hoping to tie that up and maybe get that shot this year.”
Most of the things that you've made, in the UK tend to go straight to video. Would you rather have them go theatrical?
“Oh, yes. Of course. It's really funny because Cyborg Cop did huge business in Japan and Korea. In parts of Asia it's seen a lot of cinema release. (They're just going to pour water on my head.) But yes, it'd be far better. We're hoping that this can do theatrical in parts of Europe and hopefully in the States. Because they're pretty impressed with what they're seeing, thank God. So we'll see what happens. But you never know. Even the big stars do films that never get to the screen. Although I guess Tom Cruise probably doesn't.”
How did you get cast in Rampage?
“I was originally going to be in this movie. When they first came up with it, they offered me the lead. Then they were going to shoot in Wales. I guess the Welsh were going to put in some money. But in order to do that, they had to have a Welsh cast.”
They've got an entirely Welsh crew instead.
“Yeah, exactly. Then all of a sudden they changed it again, and the Welsh money fell out or something happened, so they ended up coming to the Isle of Man. So they phoned me and said, 'Do you still want to do it?' and I said, 'Yeah. I'm free in January.'”
Are you based in Britain or in America?
“I'm based in LA, but I'm hoping to spend some time in London on a regular basis and hopefully do some more work over here. My sister lives over here. She lives in Birmingham. She'll be here on Sunday; she's coming onto the set. She's met Paul and Liz before.”
Is there much difference between a British production and an American production?
“Um, no actually. It's pretty much the same wherever you are. Very knowledgeable people, great technicians. A great crew; this is probably the best crew I've ever worked with, as far as personalities and fun and hardworking. Everybody's been having a really good time.”
This is what is coming across; that everybody's enjoying themselves.
“Yes. That's a real positive thing. Especially something like this where it's cold. It's good that everybody keeps a positive attitude. And that's a rare thing. That everybody gets along and has fun and can laugh. That doesn't normally happen on film sets!”
Are you enjoying doing the action sequences?
“Yes, that's a lot of fun. Action is always fun.”
Have you had any training on that side of things?
“I've done a lot. I've done about twenty films, and about 50% of them - maybe a little more than that - have been action films. Like the three films that are coming out this year. One's called Orion's Key, which they're renaming, I think they're calling it Alien Chaser, which is a sci-fi film. Do you know the Shadowchaser movies? Well, this is Shadowchaser IV, but they're going to call it Alien Chaser. That's a sci-fi kind of thing. So I'm the lead in that. Then there's another film called Operation Delta Force which is an action film, strictly, with Jeff Fahey and Ernie Hudson and myself and Frank, the guy who's in Alien Chaser with me, the man from the Shadowchaser films. So those'll be coming out very, very soon. There's a film called Warhead that'll be coming out soon, an action film.”
Do you like doing the cyborg and monster stuff or the straight stuff?
“It depends. Like, this was great to be on. This was great to do, because I'm not the cyborg. Believe me, when they talk about Star Trek make up and stuff, that is brutal, to go through that every day. Where you're sitting in a chair for two or three or even six hours.”
How long did your cyborg make-up take?
“Cyborg stuff was about an hour and a half to two hours I had to sit there. It just wears on you, you know? Then they're always messing with you on set.”
Does it make it more difficult to act?
“Not more difficult to act. It's just that it's very tiring. You've got to be in a chair every day, and you've got to do this stuff every day. It kind of wears you out. So when you're reading an action script you get, 'Oh man, I get shot, and for half the movie I've got this or that. And I'm in the water half the movie!' I'm hoping to do another film in March, back in LA, called Blue Motel, which is more of a dramatic, erotic thriller. I hope to venture that way a little bit, do more dramatic stuff, maybe even some comedy stuff. I'm dying to do comedy. I mean, I have on stage.”
Have you done much stagework?
“Yes, in the States. I lived in New York for about three years, and did plenty there.”
Do you prefer doing that?
“Yes, I love doing stage. It's just that, everywhere in the world, it doesn't really pay. Unless you're on Broadway or in a big show in the West End and you're The Guy or The Girl in the show. With TV and film, you can earn a nice living. But as far as a high, doing stage is by far the best. But I'm not a big enough name to be able to say, 'Yeah, I'll do Broadway and pay me $50,000 a week.' I'm not there yet.”
Are you aiming for that?
“I would love to, yes. I would love to get back on stage. I almost did something last year, but I had a conflict with this film. A pretty well-known play from the States about Air Force men and the gay issue. Robert Redford's picked up the rights to that, to do a film of it.”
Are you finding that, although you're not an A-list star, you're well-known enough for producers to come to you because they know what sort of films you tend to do?
“That's tending to happen more and more. More people are becoming aware of who I am and what I do, and that's good. That's how it starts, and then hopefully you have one project that breaks away and makes your name more of a household name. So we'll see. I think this year is going to be a very good year for me. I've got a couple of things slated and I'm producing a film.”
What's that?
“It's a film called Implications which is an erotic thriller that a friend of mine wrote. He'll direct it it, and we've just had confirmation that Maria Conchita Alonso will play one of the leads. And Tia Carrere is looking at it. And I'll be in it. It's not a big picture. And Paul and Liz I'm hoping are going to executive produce on it, and be involved in that way, probably handle foreign distribution. When I go back to LA after this I'm hoping to tie that up and maybe get that shot this year.”
Most of the things that you've made, in the UK tend to go straight to video. Would you rather have them go theatrical?
“Oh, yes. Of course. It's really funny because Cyborg Cop did huge business in Japan and Korea. In parts of Asia it's seen a lot of cinema release. (They're just going to pour water on my head.) But yes, it'd be far better. We're hoping that this can do theatrical in parts of Europe and hopefully in the States. Because they're pretty impressed with what they're seeing, thank God. So we'll see what happens. But you never know. Even the big stars do films that never get to the screen. Although I guess Tom Cruise probably doesn't.”
Tuesday, 5 July 2016
interview: Mark Redfield
After I saw Mark Redfield’s superb version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde at Manchester in 2002 I knew that I had to find out more about this film and the people behind it. Mark kindly obliged with this phone interview in January 2003 and subsequently asked me to write some insert notes for the DVD release of the film, which I was delighted to do, incorporating some of the quotes from this chat.
Can you give me some background on Redfield Arts?
"Basically I decided to stop messing around with the theatre here on the East Coast and get down to the serious business of trying to make some movies. So I found some space in Baltimore where I have an edit suite and a scene shop and a place to store costumes and that kind of thing. I have some stage space; I found a warehouse. And I decided to concentrate on that. I started Redfield Arts about four years ago and got the space about three years ago. It took about a year to a year and a half and that’s when we started to bear down on Jekyll and Hyde.
“Now we’re selling Jekyll and Hyde, we’re in post-production with a drama called Cold Harbor about four brothers coming to grips with the suicide of their father, and a kids’ fantasy film called The Sorcerer of Stonehenge School. That’s in post-production, and hopefully that will be finished in May or June. We’re doing effects and editing, and we’re developing the next couple of projects for 2003 now that we’re in the new year."
Why did you start with Jekyll and Hyde?
"I’m not really sure, in some ways. We did it as a play about ten or eleven years ago. My producer and writing partner, Stuart Voytilla, he’s based in San Diego; when he was here in Baltimore and we were working together, we were doing a number of things. I had a couple of theatre companies, one of which was called New Century Theatre. We did a gamut of things: we did Clifford Onett’s Golden Boy, we did some Ionesco, we did some Shakespeare, we did The Tempest, The Front Page. We did a typical American rep kind of thing where you just do a little bit of everything-in-the-world theatre. It was sort of an actor-manager company, much like Redfield Arts is now: I’m out there raising the money and spending the money and I’m also the actor-director, so some things in some ways haven’t really changed.
“So I said: you know, it would be kind of fun to do something where I could show off, something I could sink my teeth into. We thought about it and said: no-one’s done a Jekyll and Hyde for a while. People would want to come and see it because people are going to ask, ‘How are they going to do that?’ It’s like Ben Hur. If you do Ben Hur, you’d better have a chariot race on stage and people are going to ask, ‘How are they going to do that?’ In some stage productions they’ll cast two actors - which is always kind of a cheat. So I thought: let’s do this because we could have a lot of fun with it.
“We wrote this play, we adapted it, and created a lot of new stuff on our own. I sort of stole some ideas from what I had read about an Orson Welles production, where the set was primarily black velvet - so you didn’t have to have a lot of scenery. You let the audience’s imagination work and that way we can more very cinematically through a number of scenes. We can be in alleys, we can be in the hospital, we can be in Jekyll’s house. So the initial adaptation of the play was in some ways cinematic. Then when we got around to turning it into a movie, we threw the play out in a lot of ways because it wasn’t working. We invented new material but kept the spirit of the thing and kept the thrust of Stevenson and the play - then it became this whole new animal.
“There was all kinds of new invention that we put into it because we could. I felt we could have some fun with Jekyll and Hyde and I wanted to keep doing fantasy pictures; maybe that was the other reason to do the film. I looked around and said, ‘Even though there’s a hundred Jekyll and Hydes, including The Nutty Professor, there really isn’t one right now on video or television.’ This is no scientific polling, but I would turn on the cable stations here and you would always get the ‘32 Fredric March or the ‘41 Spencer Tracy. I would go to the local blockbuster and you would have all the recent Draculas and Frankensteins. There really isn’t a Jekyll and Hyde out there so maybe we could take a cheeky attempt to get one out on the shelves and have people see it.
“Then there was the other thing that we had experienced. People in the beginning, when we were raising the money: ‘Why do you want to do Jekyll and Hyde? It’s been done.’ Then I would ask them: ‘Do you know the story?’ and people would say, ‘Well... he turns into this bad guy, doesn’t he?’ So they really didn’t know it. Of course the fans did, but by and large people really didn’t know it. So I said let’s take the risk, on such a low budget, and let’s try to do something. So that’s how Jekyll and Hyde came about."
What impressed me was that, apart from the last half-hour, your script is the first version to be filmed like the book.
"We really think it’s in the spirit of Stevenson. It may not exactly be the letter of the law. There are no women in Stevenson, there’s a lot of other invention woven through - and of course we made everybody younger which typically you do anyway. But that struck me as true too. There are recent adaptations - that I don’t want to help publicise! - in the last couple of years. There’s one with one of the Baldwin brothers that is a modern retelling where he and his wife go to Hong Kong and she is somehow murdered. This is all based on a synopsis I read somewhere. He goes to this old Chinese gentleman and gets this mystery drug and somehow he starts to take it, I don’t know what happens in this thing. And it’s called Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde! So there are a lot of versions. And as much as I love Cushing and Lee, I, Monster doesn’t quite do it in some ways.
“So we really tried to stay with the spirit of Stevenson, using Utterson as the detective, and that fed into some other things. People say ‘I know the story’; well, they know a lot of stories. They know James Bond’s going to win. It’s always the ‘how’ - how are you going to get there? If the themes that you can withdraw from something still excite you, then it’s worth hearing it again. So hopefully we have done something that is entertaining. And what seems to be sometimes so obvious is to look at the original source material and there are things that people are missing. You hear this about Frankenstein! There are wonderful things in the Kenneth Branagh Frankenstein - and then there’s wonderful things that are still missing. I’m finding that out: we’re researching now a project now - I don’t want to get into too much detail - a project about Captain Nemo. And there are marvellous things in Jules Verne! Great as the Disney 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is, and there are wonderful things in the Harryhausen Mysterious Island - but they’re miles away from who Nemo really is."
Apart from anything else, he’s Indian.
"Absolutely, which is a fascinating thing. I’ve just discovered that there is a French television version from the 1970s with Omar Shariff, very hard to find. But anyway it’s one of many projects that we’re very far from, we’re not anywhere near production. But I am definitely staying in fantasy. Two out of the three projects that we’re talking about tend to be fantasy/horror orientated. Not so much science fiction, I don’t know why, but they tend to be towards horror or fantasy. Maybe I find more leeway there to talk about people and find stories that I like. You tend to do things that you liked as a kid. You tend to come around to that.
“The reality is, I think, and this is kind of self-conscious in some ways too, is that I’m really in love with the Hammer pictures. And that I think was a very, very obvious conscious influence. Hammer, because of their budgets, are very compact. They’re very rich and they’re dense in their design. The Universal pictures had height! I think the screen was squarer. From Frankenstein to even the lesser-budgeted ones, they had height to the sets. Whereas what you get in the Hammers - or the Corman Poe pictures maybe - is you get a bit of density. That art direction - maybe those were heavy influences."
Given that your background was theatre, how did you assemble film-making people?
"For me, the eye has always been on movies, from the beginning of time that I can remember. I fell in love with movies, I wanted to make movies. I’m old enough just to remember having super-8 film, playing with animation and stop-motion as a teenager. like a lot of people I knew that I wanted to do that, even from childhood when I was playing and my first acting classes that I had when I was a kid. But the theatre was accessible. You could walk in the door, in the town that you lived in - here in Baltimore for instance. You could get involved and then, my God, you’ve got everything. You just go crazy.
“So very early I was acting, very early I was into design, very early into directing. But all along it was ‘but I want to be making films.’ And there have been some false starts over the years: projects that I think are still good scripts that I tried to raise money for. It’s difficult, just incredibly difficult to raise private money when you haven’t done anything. You have some good theatre credits behind you but people look at you and they somehow can’t make the imaginative leap. It takes a little bit of time. So in some ways the film-maker in me was always there. It’s just that I also love the theatre. It was easier and cheaper to get into. By the time I got round to producing my own plays it was certainly a lot less expensive than producing anything on any kind of film. So it took me a little while and there were a couple of false starts along the way."
Where did you find the investment for Jekyll and Hyde?
"It’s still what I’m doing in some ways, although I am talking now, pitching some much larger budgeted scripts - as a matter of fact just a couple of days ago - to producers who are attached to larger, familiar Hollywood companies. I had some meetings in New York. So it has slowly cracked the door open, to be able to talk to some people. But basically I just went to rich people, I kept knocking on doors until somebody sat down long enough to say, ‘I think you’ve got something and I’ll take a risk with you. I’ll get involved.’ In some ways, maybe compared to some other film-makers, we were a little luckier there because it really didn’t take so long.
“We had the original Jekyll and Hyde investor pull out a month before shooting began. And this was devastating because when you’re working on such a tight budget, we planned it, like my theatre background, I just planned everything. The company had a little bit of money and the first stuff that was shot was the stuff in the Carew house. I had a little bit of money and I said: ‘If we delay we’re going to lose the momentum. We’re going to lose the actors that we’ve put together here at this stage, and we’ve booked the locations.’ We shot some of it in a museum and I said, ‘We’re going to lose this.’
“So I had a little bit of money and I found the investor that came through within a matter of three weeks. So the first investor took the better part of a year to find, talking to many people - and it was one person, interestingly enough, too. Some movies you have many people putting money in. But I’ve been lucky in the pictures so far that we have found people to come on board. So we found a guy, Terry Woods, who’s the executive producer, who said, ‘I see something great here.’ We had shot for a week actually! Because I had just enough money to begin shooting that August. We were shooting the location stuff because in Baltimore here on the East Coast we have a heat situation where it can get kind of brutal, and I wanted to make sure that we got the location stuff done first before we moved into the sets in the studio. Then we were very lucky, because within three weeks of meeting with Terry he said, ‘I’m in with you’ - and then we were able to do it."
Did you shoot on DV?
"It is a digital picture. Most of everything that we have right now is digital. That helped us a great deal with the budget. Cold Harbor, the drama, was shot on film, so things are kind of a mix right now. What we’re planning for 2003, the horror pictures are primarily digital."
Where has Jekyll and Hyde been shown, apart from Manchester?
"We completed the picture - and this is fascinating - and we sent a rough to Gil. He responded relatively quickly - and I don’t know why that surprised, whether it was politeness or he liked it. From the moment the sound mix and the film was finally completed, it was a matter of weeks before the Manchester festival. So we got that finished just in time because he liked it and accepted it. So Manchester was first.
“Then a few weeks later - it seems that everything has been happening in four-week increments since then - it was shown in Los Angeles at another festival called Shriekfest where it also won. It won two awards there, including something they did for me called the Shriekfest Award for my hyphenate status as an actor/producer/director. They had also - and I didn’t know this until a week before Shriekfest - accepted another film that I played the lead in, a science fiction picture called Despiser which a fellow named Philip Cook made. That’ll be on video sometime in the Spring. There’s no date for that either. He went ahead and signed a contract for American and European distribution. I don’t know what else he’s got at this point but I know sometime in the Spring it’ll be out. There is no date yet for Jekyll.
“Then we did our premiere. We missed a deadline. There’s this new thing, the New York City Horror Festival, that some folks are doing. They started as film-makers. It’s funny, we missed the deadline but they e-mailed us on the day of the deadline to tell us we didn’t make the deadline, so I’m not sure what that was about. Then in November we had our Maryland premiere here in Baltimore. Everybody of course had been hearing about things and wanting to see it. Other than that, we have sneaked it at a couple of horror conventions on the East Coast and we’re continually being asked: would you show it? So we’re probably not going to do any more festivals at this point, we’re just going to wait and see what the release date on television and video will be - which will be sometime this year."
So have you got video distribution sorted out?
"We are now sorting that out. Actually just before Christmas we were presented with three offers so we’re seeing what happens now between now and February. There’s the AFM in February. Now that the holidays are over and people are getting back to business and can look at the film, we’re giving it some more time, seeing which might be the best company to go with. But how this thing works: there might be five different contracts for all the territories in the world as we work on this throughout the year."
I guess that Maryland is not a hotbed of film-making activity.
"It is and it isn’t. The internet and digital are the great levellers. Where, ten years ago, if you took a stick and threw it five miles you could hit another film-maker, well gosh, you could drop it outside your door now and there’s someone who is thinking about picking up a digital camera and doing something. There is so much going on everywhere. So there are more people working in Maryland right now - and I think that’s the same everywhere. There are friends of friends who are talking about things everywhere.
“One of the things that we do to help pay the rent at the studio is design and build props and sets for commercials or for other films or special events. There’s the whole thing of a corporation wanting to do some sort of theme party. But there are a lot of film-makers nowadays; nobody you’ve heard of yet, some of them just like me. Maybe they’re coming up and coming out and we’re just getting to know people. Obviously if you go to New York, two and half hours from me, it’s much fiercer and there’s a lot of people up there. But I’m very close to DC, only thirty minutes from DC. So all of a sudden, exponentially, you’ve got people trying to do independent film there. So it’s interesting how it has sort of exploded, certainly in the last five years.
“And in distribution, in the film world, digital has become accepted. It’s because of Lucas pushing and the fact that Rodriguez on the higher-end Sony 24fps video did Spy Kids 2, technically on video. Distributors are coming round to it. I think the festivals were the ones who tipped that over because there was a time just recently when they didn’t want to project anything on video, you had to have a print. That’s all gone, that’s all changed. So I think once the cue starts to come from the distributors and the festivals, all of a sudden people are empowered and they’re saying: ‘I’m going to make a film.’ I’m just seeing a lot more people. I’m getting calls from film-makers, saying: ‘What advice can you give me? I’ve been reading about you. What’s going on?’
“Hotbed, I don’t know - but there are more than I thought would have been in Maryland. And of course Blair Witch sort of comes out of Maryland. I think that also empowered a lot of people who maybe could put the equivalent of $5,000-$10,000 together. That might make a good demo but believe me, a lot of the films - and I’m sure you see a good number of them, and this is not trying to be cheeky because I do know where Jekyll lives on the scale - but I’m seeing a lot of terrible stuff. Because five or ten thousand dollars doesn’t really do anything. Everybody has such great ideas. Or they’re making a zombie picture which they think is manageable and it really isn’t!"
The crucial thing in any Jekyll and Hyde film is the make-up. Where did you get yours?
"I had tried to get a production off the ground called Conjuring Aurora which is in production. It’s a comedy about a guy, played by me, who’s a magician who dreams of the big time. He dreams of the Vegas thing, the television thing, the Lance Burton thing - but he’s doing children’s parties and he lives in his van. He’s at the lowest end of his tether and through a series of circumstances, helping a friend out, he runs into a woman who dumps an eleven-year-old girl on him, who claims to be his daughter. Well, this shocks him no end. And they spend the film trying to find Lucy, the mother, and are they really father and daughter?
“I had thought of this a few years ago. I had a little girl who played Tiny Tim to my Scrooge, and her mother was my attorney at that point! And this kid was fabulous, just charming. This brewed and I came up with a little story. She has since graduated from college. So I thought about it. I saw another little girl, watching a piece of theatre a few years ago, and that kind of reminded me of the story. Then along came The Sorcerer of Stonehenge School. To make a long story short, there is a sequence at the end of the script when my character is supposed to jump 40 years into the future. So I hunted around and I found Robert Yoho.
“Years ago we didn’t do Conjuring Aurora. We shot the bulk of the stuff with the little girl back in August, then when the leaves turn green again we’ll complete the picture - because I needed to get the stuff with her before she started to physically, bodily change too much. Pre-teenagers tend to suddenly shoot up! That’s when I first met Bob. I looked at his portfolio and I said, ‘I’m going to need to do a really successful age here. We’re going into Dick Smith territory here.’ This is a comedy drama where I want them to believe the characters.
“Well, when I originally set the film up of course we didn’t make it, but I had met Bob, and Bob stayed in the back of my mind. He was the first person I called and he said, ‘Of course I’m going to do it!’ On stage, I didn’t really do anything, I just changed the vocal and the physical and mussed my hair up. I had a dentist make a set of teeth and that also helped impede my speech to a degree. I played with a lot of rolling my Rs and melodramatic things with Hyde. So we got talking about him.
“The first thing that went out the window, the first thing we agreed on, Bob and myself, was to get away from the primitive primate idea. Remember that for a number of years you couldn’t see the Fredric March version. When we were growing up it was the big mystery: why did they take it off the market. But everybody saw the photographs in Famous Monsters of the ape-like make-up. That’s the first thing out the window - we just don’t even go there. Then I think in talking about him, the key for me in some ways - and it doesn’t come up too obviously - is not the idea that he drinks the potion. Like the Tweety and Sylvester, where Tweety drinks the potion and becomes this other Tweety. I think the idea is that Jekyll drinks the potion and drops his mask. That’s what’s underneath. So we said: why don’t we think of a satyr, think of the Devil, and think of the Joker? Think of the medieval image of a grinning devil. And there’s one idea of taking that to its conclusion that didn’t fully get realised. In hindsight, when you’ve lived with a picture, you say, ‘Oh, there are all these little things I would have liked to have done.’ One, for instance: in setting it in 1900 and pulling in some of the modern technology, I really, really wanted, in hindsight, to put a 1900 automobile in Jekyll’s laboratory.”
What was the make-up idea that didn’t get realised?
“Some of the sketches actually have these bony horn things that have broken through the skin. It looks like a big zit on his forehead. But if you look carefully that’s actually starting to happen; there’s this white breakthrough on the other side as the ridge begins to build up. So we pulled back and that’s as far as we got. Stage three. Because some of the sketches have this kind of horn coming out. Perhaps I was a little nervous about that. In such a rapid conclusion, in the dark, people might say: ‘What the hell is that? Is that a piece of banana stuck on his head?’ I was really worried that we wouldn’t know what it was without him suddenly getting cloven hooves or something. We pulled that back but that’s really the idea; it’s his psychological side, it’s dropping that mask and then fantasising that. Well, if it went to its extreme, he’d have horns. It’s very, very subtle. The prosthetics just help pull his face. Even when he’s grimacing I’m trying to do it while physically staying grinning, but the prosthetics help that.”
interview originally posted 4th June 2005
Can you give me some background on Redfield Arts?
"Basically I decided to stop messing around with the theatre here on the East Coast and get down to the serious business of trying to make some movies. So I found some space in Baltimore where I have an edit suite and a scene shop and a place to store costumes and that kind of thing. I have some stage space; I found a warehouse. And I decided to concentrate on that. I started Redfield Arts about four years ago and got the space about three years ago. It took about a year to a year and a half and that’s when we started to bear down on Jekyll and Hyde.
“Now we’re selling Jekyll and Hyde, we’re in post-production with a drama called Cold Harbor about four brothers coming to grips with the suicide of their father, and a kids’ fantasy film called The Sorcerer of Stonehenge School. That’s in post-production, and hopefully that will be finished in May or June. We’re doing effects and editing, and we’re developing the next couple of projects for 2003 now that we’re in the new year."
Why did you start with Jekyll and Hyde?
"I’m not really sure, in some ways. We did it as a play about ten or eleven years ago. My producer and writing partner, Stuart Voytilla, he’s based in San Diego; when he was here in Baltimore and we were working together, we were doing a number of things. I had a couple of theatre companies, one of which was called New Century Theatre. We did a gamut of things: we did Clifford Onett’s Golden Boy, we did some Ionesco, we did some Shakespeare, we did The Tempest, The Front Page. We did a typical American rep kind of thing where you just do a little bit of everything-in-the-world theatre. It was sort of an actor-manager company, much like Redfield Arts is now: I’m out there raising the money and spending the money and I’m also the actor-director, so some things in some ways haven’t really changed.
“So I said: you know, it would be kind of fun to do something where I could show off, something I could sink my teeth into. We thought about it and said: no-one’s done a Jekyll and Hyde for a while. People would want to come and see it because people are going to ask, ‘How are they going to do that?’ It’s like Ben Hur. If you do Ben Hur, you’d better have a chariot race on stage and people are going to ask, ‘How are they going to do that?’ In some stage productions they’ll cast two actors - which is always kind of a cheat. So I thought: let’s do this because we could have a lot of fun with it.
“We wrote this play, we adapted it, and created a lot of new stuff on our own. I sort of stole some ideas from what I had read about an Orson Welles production, where the set was primarily black velvet - so you didn’t have to have a lot of scenery. You let the audience’s imagination work and that way we can more very cinematically through a number of scenes. We can be in alleys, we can be in the hospital, we can be in Jekyll’s house. So the initial adaptation of the play was in some ways cinematic. Then when we got around to turning it into a movie, we threw the play out in a lot of ways because it wasn’t working. We invented new material but kept the spirit of the thing and kept the thrust of Stevenson and the play - then it became this whole new animal.
“There was all kinds of new invention that we put into it because we could. I felt we could have some fun with Jekyll and Hyde and I wanted to keep doing fantasy pictures; maybe that was the other reason to do the film. I looked around and said, ‘Even though there’s a hundred Jekyll and Hydes, including The Nutty Professor, there really isn’t one right now on video or television.’ This is no scientific polling, but I would turn on the cable stations here and you would always get the ‘32 Fredric March or the ‘41 Spencer Tracy. I would go to the local blockbuster and you would have all the recent Draculas and Frankensteins. There really isn’t a Jekyll and Hyde out there so maybe we could take a cheeky attempt to get one out on the shelves and have people see it.
“Then there was the other thing that we had experienced. People in the beginning, when we were raising the money: ‘Why do you want to do Jekyll and Hyde? It’s been done.’ Then I would ask them: ‘Do you know the story?’ and people would say, ‘Well... he turns into this bad guy, doesn’t he?’ So they really didn’t know it. Of course the fans did, but by and large people really didn’t know it. So I said let’s take the risk, on such a low budget, and let’s try to do something. So that’s how Jekyll and Hyde came about."
What impressed me was that, apart from the last half-hour, your script is the first version to be filmed like the book.
"We really think it’s in the spirit of Stevenson. It may not exactly be the letter of the law. There are no women in Stevenson, there’s a lot of other invention woven through - and of course we made everybody younger which typically you do anyway. But that struck me as true too. There are recent adaptations - that I don’t want to help publicise! - in the last couple of years. There’s one with one of the Baldwin brothers that is a modern retelling where he and his wife go to Hong Kong and she is somehow murdered. This is all based on a synopsis I read somewhere. He goes to this old Chinese gentleman and gets this mystery drug and somehow he starts to take it, I don’t know what happens in this thing. And it’s called Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde! So there are a lot of versions. And as much as I love Cushing and Lee, I, Monster doesn’t quite do it in some ways.
“So we really tried to stay with the spirit of Stevenson, using Utterson as the detective, and that fed into some other things. People say ‘I know the story’; well, they know a lot of stories. They know James Bond’s going to win. It’s always the ‘how’ - how are you going to get there? If the themes that you can withdraw from something still excite you, then it’s worth hearing it again. So hopefully we have done something that is entertaining. And what seems to be sometimes so obvious is to look at the original source material and there are things that people are missing. You hear this about Frankenstein! There are wonderful things in the Kenneth Branagh Frankenstein - and then there’s wonderful things that are still missing. I’m finding that out: we’re researching now a project now - I don’t want to get into too much detail - a project about Captain Nemo. And there are marvellous things in Jules Verne! Great as the Disney 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is, and there are wonderful things in the Harryhausen Mysterious Island - but they’re miles away from who Nemo really is."Apart from anything else, he’s Indian.
"Absolutely, which is a fascinating thing. I’ve just discovered that there is a French television version from the 1970s with Omar Shariff, very hard to find. But anyway it’s one of many projects that we’re very far from, we’re not anywhere near production. But I am definitely staying in fantasy. Two out of the three projects that we’re talking about tend to be fantasy/horror orientated. Not so much science fiction, I don’t know why, but they tend to be towards horror or fantasy. Maybe I find more leeway there to talk about people and find stories that I like. You tend to do things that you liked as a kid. You tend to come around to that.
“The reality is, I think, and this is kind of self-conscious in some ways too, is that I’m really in love with the Hammer pictures. And that I think was a very, very obvious conscious influence. Hammer, because of their budgets, are very compact. They’re very rich and they’re dense in their design. The Universal pictures had height! I think the screen was squarer. From Frankenstein to even the lesser-budgeted ones, they had height to the sets. Whereas what you get in the Hammers - or the Corman Poe pictures maybe - is you get a bit of density. That art direction - maybe those were heavy influences."
Given that your background was theatre, how did you assemble film-making people?
"For me, the eye has always been on movies, from the beginning of time that I can remember. I fell in love with movies, I wanted to make movies. I’m old enough just to remember having super-8 film, playing with animation and stop-motion as a teenager. like a lot of people I knew that I wanted to do that, even from childhood when I was playing and my first acting classes that I had when I was a kid. But the theatre was accessible. You could walk in the door, in the town that you lived in - here in Baltimore for instance. You could get involved and then, my God, you’ve got everything. You just go crazy.
“So very early I was acting, very early I was into design, very early into directing. But all along it was ‘but I want to be making films.’ And there have been some false starts over the years: projects that I think are still good scripts that I tried to raise money for. It’s difficult, just incredibly difficult to raise private money when you haven’t done anything. You have some good theatre credits behind you but people look at you and they somehow can’t make the imaginative leap. It takes a little bit of time. So in some ways the film-maker in me was always there. It’s just that I also love the theatre. It was easier and cheaper to get into. By the time I got round to producing my own plays it was certainly a lot less expensive than producing anything on any kind of film. So it took me a little while and there were a couple of false starts along the way."
Where did you find the investment for Jekyll and Hyde?
"It’s still what I’m doing in some ways, although I am talking now, pitching some much larger budgeted scripts - as a matter of fact just a couple of days ago - to producers who are attached to larger, familiar Hollywood companies. I had some meetings in New York. So it has slowly cracked the door open, to be able to talk to some people. But basically I just went to rich people, I kept knocking on doors until somebody sat down long enough to say, ‘I think you’ve got something and I’ll take a risk with you. I’ll get involved.’ In some ways, maybe compared to some other film-makers, we were a little luckier there because it really didn’t take so long.
“We had the original Jekyll and Hyde investor pull out a month before shooting began. And this was devastating because when you’re working on such a tight budget, we planned it, like my theatre background, I just planned everything. The company had a little bit of money and the first stuff that was shot was the stuff in the Carew house. I had a little bit of money and I said: ‘If we delay we’re going to lose the momentum. We’re going to lose the actors that we’ve put together here at this stage, and we’ve booked the locations.’ We shot some of it in a museum and I said, ‘We’re going to lose this.’“So I had a little bit of money and I found the investor that came through within a matter of three weeks. So the first investor took the better part of a year to find, talking to many people - and it was one person, interestingly enough, too. Some movies you have many people putting money in. But I’ve been lucky in the pictures so far that we have found people to come on board. So we found a guy, Terry Woods, who’s the executive producer, who said, ‘I see something great here.’ We had shot for a week actually! Because I had just enough money to begin shooting that August. We were shooting the location stuff because in Baltimore here on the East Coast we have a heat situation where it can get kind of brutal, and I wanted to make sure that we got the location stuff done first before we moved into the sets in the studio. Then we were very lucky, because within three weeks of meeting with Terry he said, ‘I’m in with you’ - and then we were able to do it."
Did you shoot on DV?
"It is a digital picture. Most of everything that we have right now is digital. That helped us a great deal with the budget. Cold Harbor, the drama, was shot on film, so things are kind of a mix right now. What we’re planning for 2003, the horror pictures are primarily digital."
Where has Jekyll and Hyde been shown, apart from Manchester?
"We completed the picture - and this is fascinating - and we sent a rough to Gil. He responded relatively quickly - and I don’t know why that surprised, whether it was politeness or he liked it. From the moment the sound mix and the film was finally completed, it was a matter of weeks before the Manchester festival. So we got that finished just in time because he liked it and accepted it. So Manchester was first.
“Then a few weeks later - it seems that everything has been happening in four-week increments since then - it was shown in Los Angeles at another festival called Shriekfest where it also won. It won two awards there, including something they did for me called the Shriekfest Award for my hyphenate status as an actor/producer/director. They had also - and I didn’t know this until a week before Shriekfest - accepted another film that I played the lead in, a science fiction picture called Despiser which a fellow named Philip Cook made. That’ll be on video sometime in the Spring. There’s no date for that either. He went ahead and signed a contract for American and European distribution. I don’t know what else he’s got at this point but I know sometime in the Spring it’ll be out. There is no date yet for Jekyll.
“Then we did our premiere. We missed a deadline. There’s this new thing, the New York City Horror Festival, that some folks are doing. They started as film-makers. It’s funny, we missed the deadline but they e-mailed us on the day of the deadline to tell us we didn’t make the deadline, so I’m not sure what that was about. Then in November we had our Maryland premiere here in Baltimore. Everybody of course had been hearing about things and wanting to see it. Other than that, we have sneaked it at a couple of horror conventions on the East Coast and we’re continually being asked: would you show it? So we’re probably not going to do any more festivals at this point, we’re just going to wait and see what the release date on television and video will be - which will be sometime this year."
So have you got video distribution sorted out?
"We are now sorting that out. Actually just before Christmas we were presented with three offers so we’re seeing what happens now between now and February. There’s the AFM in February. Now that the holidays are over and people are getting back to business and can look at the film, we’re giving it some more time, seeing which might be the best company to go with. But how this thing works: there might be five different contracts for all the territories in the world as we work on this throughout the year."
I guess that Maryland is not a hotbed of film-making activity.
"It is and it isn’t. The internet and digital are the great levellers. Where, ten years ago, if you took a stick and threw it five miles you could hit another film-maker, well gosh, you could drop it outside your door now and there’s someone who is thinking about picking up a digital camera and doing something. There is so much going on everywhere. So there are more people working in Maryland right now - and I think that’s the same everywhere. There are friends of friends who are talking about things everywhere.
“One of the things that we do to help pay the rent at the studio is design and build props and sets for commercials or for other films or special events. There’s the whole thing of a corporation wanting to do some sort of theme party. But there are a lot of film-makers nowadays; nobody you’ve heard of yet, some of them just like me. Maybe they’re coming up and coming out and we’re just getting to know people. Obviously if you go to New York, two and half hours from me, it’s much fiercer and there’s a lot of people up there. But I’m very close to DC, only thirty minutes from DC. So all of a sudden, exponentially, you’ve got people trying to do independent film there. So it’s interesting how it has sort of exploded, certainly in the last five years.
“And in distribution, in the film world, digital has become accepted. It’s because of Lucas pushing and the fact that Rodriguez on the higher-end Sony 24fps video did Spy Kids 2, technically on video. Distributors are coming round to it. I think the festivals were the ones who tipped that over because there was a time just recently when they didn’t want to project anything on video, you had to have a print. That’s all gone, that’s all changed. So I think once the cue starts to come from the distributors and the festivals, all of a sudden people are empowered and they’re saying: ‘I’m going to make a film.’ I’m just seeing a lot more people. I’m getting calls from film-makers, saying: ‘What advice can you give me? I’ve been reading about you. What’s going on?’
“Hotbed, I don’t know - but there are more than I thought would have been in Maryland. And of course Blair Witch sort of comes out of Maryland. I think that also empowered a lot of people who maybe could put the equivalent of $5,000-$10,000 together. That might make a good demo but believe me, a lot of the films - and I’m sure you see a good number of them, and this is not trying to be cheeky because I do know where Jekyll lives on the scale - but I’m seeing a lot of terrible stuff. Because five or ten thousand dollars doesn’t really do anything. Everybody has such great ideas. Or they’re making a zombie picture which they think is manageable and it really isn’t!"
The crucial thing in any Jekyll and Hyde film is the make-up. Where did you get yours?
"I had tried to get a production off the ground called Conjuring Aurora which is in production. It’s a comedy about a guy, played by me, who’s a magician who dreams of the big time. He dreams of the Vegas thing, the television thing, the Lance Burton thing - but he’s doing children’s parties and he lives in his van. He’s at the lowest end of his tether and through a series of circumstances, helping a friend out, he runs into a woman who dumps an eleven-year-old girl on him, who claims to be his daughter. Well, this shocks him no end. And they spend the film trying to find Lucy, the mother, and are they really father and daughter?
“I had thought of this a few years ago. I had a little girl who played Tiny Tim to my Scrooge, and her mother was my attorney at that point! And this kid was fabulous, just charming. This brewed and I came up with a little story. She has since graduated from college. So I thought about it. I saw another little girl, watching a piece of theatre a few years ago, and that kind of reminded me of the story. Then along came The Sorcerer of Stonehenge School. To make a long story short, there is a sequence at the end of the script when my character is supposed to jump 40 years into the future. So I hunted around and I found Robert Yoho.
“Years ago we didn’t do Conjuring Aurora. We shot the bulk of the stuff with the little girl back in August, then when the leaves turn green again we’ll complete the picture - because I needed to get the stuff with her before she started to physically, bodily change too much. Pre-teenagers tend to suddenly shoot up! That’s when I first met Bob. I looked at his portfolio and I said, ‘I’m going to need to do a really successful age here. We’re going into Dick Smith territory here.’ This is a comedy drama where I want them to believe the characters.
“Well, when I originally set the film up of course we didn’t make it, but I had met Bob, and Bob stayed in the back of my mind. He was the first person I called and he said, ‘Of course I’m going to do it!’ On stage, I didn’t really do anything, I just changed the vocal and the physical and mussed my hair up. I had a dentist make a set of teeth and that also helped impede my speech to a degree. I played with a lot of rolling my Rs and melodramatic things with Hyde. So we got talking about him.
“The first thing that went out the window, the first thing we agreed on, Bob and myself, was to get away from the primitive primate idea. Remember that for a number of years you couldn’t see the Fredric March version. When we were growing up it was the big mystery: why did they take it off the market. But everybody saw the photographs in Famous Monsters of the ape-like make-up. That’s the first thing out the window - we just don’t even go there. Then I think in talking about him, the key for me in some ways - and it doesn’t come up too obviously - is not the idea that he drinks the potion. Like the Tweety and Sylvester, where Tweety drinks the potion and becomes this other Tweety. I think the idea is that Jekyll drinks the potion and drops his mask. That’s what’s underneath. So we said: why don’t we think of a satyr, think of the Devil, and think of the Joker? Think of the medieval image of a grinning devil. And there’s one idea of taking that to its conclusion that didn’t fully get realised. In hindsight, when you’ve lived with a picture, you say, ‘Oh, there are all these little things I would have liked to have done.’ One, for instance: in setting it in 1900 and pulling in some of the modern technology, I really, really wanted, in hindsight, to put a 1900 automobile in Jekyll’s laboratory.”
What was the make-up idea that didn’t get realised?
“Some of the sketches actually have these bony horn things that have broken through the skin. It looks like a big zit on his forehead. But if you look carefully that’s actually starting to happen; there’s this white breakthrough on the other side as the ridge begins to build up. So we pulled back and that’s as far as we got. Stage three. Because some of the sketches have this kind of horn coming out. Perhaps I was a little nervous about that. In such a rapid conclusion, in the dark, people might say: ‘What the hell is that? Is that a piece of banana stuck on his head?’ I was really worried that we wouldn’t know what it was without him suddenly getting cloven hooves or something. We pulled that back but that’s really the idea; it’s his psychological side, it’s dropping that mask and then fantasising that. Well, if it went to its extreme, he’d have horns. It’s very, very subtle. The prosthetics just help pull his face. Even when he’s grimacing I’m trying to do it while physically staying grinning, but the prosthetics help that.”
interview originally posted 4th June 2005
Sunday, 26 June 2016
interview: Edward R Pressman
I interviewed legendary producer Ed Pressman on a double decker bus at Shepperton Studios in June 2006 when I was visiting the set of Mutant Chronicles.
When did you first become attached to Mutant Chronicles?
"I think it was 1990. I was introduced to the property back in 1990 and started developing it. I don’t know the exact years but I think in 1992 or so we were supposed to start doing it with Fox. Steve Norrington was supposed to direct it. We had it set up right after The Crow came out, but that came out in 1994 so my years may be a little mixed up. But we had it set up at Fox and Steve wanted a young actor named Russell Crowe. Fox said no way. He’d just come out of a film that Brett Leonard directed at Paramount that didn’t do very well so they didn’t want Russell Crowe.
“I was feeling pretty bullish about the project and when Fox said they wanted to cut the project by five million dollars I said we didn’t really want to do it. We’d set it up elsewhere which I thought we’d do easily. Maybe a bit over confident. We didn’t set it up elsewhere very quickly and while we were trying to do that, New Line offered Steve Blade.
“So we lost our director and it remained dormant for many years. Then I met Simon Hunter five years ago and we talked about it but it didn’t go anywhere. Then a year and a half ago Simon said he had a way of doing Mutant Chronicles that was very different from what we’d talked about in the past and very different from what we’d talked about with Steve Norrington. He would like to show us a sample of what the film might look and feel like if we would sponsor a seven-minute presentation using the new technology which he’d become familiar with over the intervening years.
“He used a lot of the technology that Rodriguez had used in Sin City but Simon hadn’t seen Sin City. This was his own version of that but applied to a very different genre than Sin City was. So he did this seven-minute trailer which was very impressive. Based on that we were able to attract Thomas Jane and John Malkovich and even before we had the full cast, Nigel Green came in and other distributors around the world which enabled us to make the film purely based on Simon’s vision as presented in that seven-minute trailer."
Do you think it’s to the film’s advantage that it’s being made now, rather than the 1990s, given how effects technology has advanced?
"Absolutely. From what I’ve seen so far, the film has a very original look. It’s not derivative of so many films that came after Blade Runner and looked at the future in a certain way. Even after The Crow, there was a kind of cinematic vision that was often imitated. Simon’s vision is quite original and to make a science fiction film which is like the opening of Saving Private Ryan with mutants is a very striking, new way of doing such a movie, which wouldn’t have been possible to do back then."
Shooting an advance promo is something that micro-budget films have done but hasn’t really been tried in a film of this size before. Do you think that’s a sales model that will become more popular?
"I think it certainly should be. I guess it depends on the kind of film being made. This had a very distinct, immediate effect. Just by seeing one minute of it you got the point. Certain other films may not have such a visual sensation that a few minutes would clearly indicate. For a certain kind of movie where you’re trying to show a certain style and visual approach that’s something different, I think it is a good idea."
How has the script changed?
"Oh, the script changed radically. After the Mutant Chronicles script was first done, there were things from that script which got used in other movies like Pitch Black and its sequel. They almost seemed derivative of what the original Mutant Chronicles script was. So we had to really reconceive it and Simon wanted to reconceive the story and the script so that it wasn’t derivative of itself or the films that followed it. A lot of work was done, ironically with the original writer because Simon went back to Phil Eisner after going through four other writers. In the intervening years there were five writers that took a hand in doing versions of the script and in the end it came back to Philip who was not attached to his original words and made some major changes under Simon’s guidance."
When you met Simon, had you seen Lighthouse and what did you think of it?
"I thought Lighthouse was a very impressive first film with a very modest budget, a successful job. With Simon himself and getting to know him, the biggest impression was seeing his command of the technology which was very impressive. Again, that was through the process of working with him on this little seven-minute trailer. It wasn’t simply talking about what he could do but actually executing it and coming in under budget, and getting to know him. When we first met, I remember that the director he most admired was David Lean so he was actually bringing a storytelling element to a different kind of genre and I think that’s a great combination, to not just be about the effect and the appearance but also to know about good storytelling. As a film-maker, I think he’s going to have a very bright future."
There’s a very long post-production schedule and it’s not out until 2008. How can you maintain the interest of distributors and audiences in something that takes that long?
"That’s an interesting challenge and that’s something that we’re wrestling with right now. My initial impulse is to announce with a teaser ad in the trades that production has begun on the Mutant Chronicles but it doesn’t make sense to say ‘coming spring 2008’. Do you want to start laying the groundwork on something that’s so far away or does it make sense to lay low until further down the line?"
Do you see Mutant Chronicles as a potential franchise?
"Yes, I certainly do. The world of Mutant Chronicles is very rich and there are many stories that could be told. It’s something we’ve always felt and I think Simon agrees. The first film is going to be very bold and R-rated and tough, something that’s not trying to compromise in any way on what a film should be. Down the line we could soften it up and appeal to a broader fanbase but right now we’re going for the hardcore audience."
You seem to have a lot of interesting projects in development. What’s coming up next?
"From an effects point of view we have an interesting movie coming out in November which is called Fur which is a film Steve Shainberg directed, the fellow who directed Secretary, with Nicole Kidman playing Diane Arbus and Robert Downey Jr paying this very hairy man. Kind of a compilation of all the freaks that Diane Arbus photographed are in the person of this almost wolfman character that Downey plays and the relationship between the two. We just finished shooting a film called Sisters which is a remake of the Brian DePalma movie."
That’s Douglas Buck’s film, isn’t it?
"Doug Buck is the director and he’s done a splendid job. We’re seeing the first cut, the director’s cut in two weeks. It stars Chloe Sevigny and Stephen Rae and a young French actress named Lou Doillon. We hope to have that ready to show the world at the end of the year."
A lot of people have been waiting a long time for Doug to do a proper movie because his shorts are so extraordinary.
"We were introduced to him through another film-maker named Larry Fessenden who was executive producer on the film. He told us how Doug was such a fan of Sisters and introduced us to his shorts, so that’s how that got going."
I notice that you’re also lining up a remake of Phantom of the Paradise.
"That’s right. That’s something which we’re looking for the right director because the original Phantom has a real cult following. There’s a convention every year in Vancouver now for Phantom of the Paradise fans and they invite Gerrit Graham and Bill Finley and treat them like kings. I think doing a film about the music business today could be a very exciting movie but until we find a film-maker it’s just an idea right now.”
website: www.pressman.com
"I think it was 1990. I was introduced to the property back in 1990 and started developing it. I don’t know the exact years but I think in 1992 or so we were supposed to start doing it with Fox. Steve Norrington was supposed to direct it. We had it set up right after The Crow came out, but that came out in 1994 so my years may be a little mixed up. But we had it set up at Fox and Steve wanted a young actor named Russell Crowe. Fox said no way. He’d just come out of a film that Brett Leonard directed at Paramount that didn’t do very well so they didn’t want Russell Crowe.
“I was feeling pretty bullish about the project and when Fox said they wanted to cut the project by five million dollars I said we didn’t really want to do it. We’d set it up elsewhere which I thought we’d do easily. Maybe a bit over confident. We didn’t set it up elsewhere very quickly and while we were trying to do that, New Line offered Steve Blade.
“So we lost our director and it remained dormant for many years. Then I met Simon Hunter five years ago and we talked about it but it didn’t go anywhere. Then a year and a half ago Simon said he had a way of doing Mutant Chronicles that was very different from what we’d talked about in the past and very different from what we’d talked about with Steve Norrington. He would like to show us a sample of what the film might look and feel like if we would sponsor a seven-minute presentation using the new technology which he’d become familiar with over the intervening years.
Do you think it’s to the film’s advantage that it’s being made now, rather than the 1990s, given how effects technology has advanced?
"Absolutely. From what I’ve seen so far, the film has a very original look. It’s not derivative of so many films that came after Blade Runner and looked at the future in a certain way. Even after The Crow, there was a kind of cinematic vision that was often imitated. Simon’s vision is quite original and to make a science fiction film which is like the opening of Saving Private Ryan with mutants is a very striking, new way of doing such a movie, which wouldn’t have been possible to do back then."
"I think it certainly should be. I guess it depends on the kind of film being made. This had a very distinct, immediate effect. Just by seeing one minute of it you got the point. Certain other films may not have such a visual sensation that a few minutes would clearly indicate. For a certain kind of movie where you’re trying to show a certain style and visual approach that’s something different, I think it is a good idea."
How has the script changed?
"Oh, the script changed radically. After the Mutant Chronicles script was first done, there were things from that script which got used in other movies like Pitch Black and its sequel. They almost seemed derivative of what the original Mutant Chronicles script was. So we had to really reconceive it and Simon wanted to reconceive the story and the script so that it wasn’t derivative of itself or the films that followed it. A lot of work was done, ironically with the original writer because Simon went back to Phil Eisner after going through four other writers. In the intervening years there were five writers that took a hand in doing versions of the script and in the end it came back to Philip who was not attached to his original words and made some major changes under Simon’s guidance."
"I thought Lighthouse was a very impressive first film with a very modest budget, a successful job. With Simon himself and getting to know him, the biggest impression was seeing his command of the technology which was very impressive. Again, that was through the process of working with him on this little seven-minute trailer. It wasn’t simply talking about what he could do but actually executing it and coming in under budget, and getting to know him. When we first met, I remember that the director he most admired was David Lean so he was actually bringing a storytelling element to a different kind of genre and I think that’s a great combination, to not just be about the effect and the appearance but also to know about good storytelling. As a film-maker, I think he’s going to have a very bright future."
There’s a very long post-production schedule and it’s not out until 2008. How can you maintain the interest of distributors and audiences in something that takes that long?
"That’s an interesting challenge and that’s something that we’re wrestling with right now. My initial impulse is to announce with a teaser ad in the trades that production has begun on the Mutant Chronicles but it doesn’t make sense to say ‘coming spring 2008’. Do you want to start laying the groundwork on something that’s so far away or does it make sense to lay low until further down the line?"
"Yes, I certainly do. The world of Mutant Chronicles is very rich and there are many stories that could be told. It’s something we’ve always felt and I think Simon agrees. The first film is going to be very bold and R-rated and tough, something that’s not trying to compromise in any way on what a film should be. Down the line we could soften it up and appeal to a broader fanbase but right now we’re going for the hardcore audience."
You seem to have a lot of interesting projects in development. What’s coming up next?
"From an effects point of view we have an interesting movie coming out in November which is called Fur which is a film Steve Shainberg directed, the fellow who directed Secretary, with Nicole Kidman playing Diane Arbus and Robert Downey Jr paying this very hairy man. Kind of a compilation of all the freaks that Diane Arbus photographed are in the person of this almost wolfman character that Downey plays and the relationship between the two. We just finished shooting a film called Sisters which is a remake of the Brian DePalma movie."
That’s Douglas Buck’s film, isn’t it?
"Doug Buck is the director and he’s done a splendid job. We’re seeing the first cut, the director’s cut in two weeks. It stars Chloe Sevigny and Stephen Rae and a young French actress named Lou Doillon. We hope to have that ready to show the world at the end of the year."
A lot of people have been waiting a long time for Doug to do a proper movie because his shorts are so extraordinary.
"We were introduced to him through another film-maker named Larry Fessenden who was executive producer on the film. He told us how Doug was such a fan of Sisters and introduced us to his shorts, so that’s how that got going."
I notice that you’re also lining up a remake of Phantom of the Paradise."That’s right. That’s something which we’re looking for the right director because the original Phantom has a real cult following. There’s a convention every year in Vancouver now for Phantom of the Paradise fans and they invite Gerrit Graham and Bill Finley and treat them like kings. I think doing a film about the music business today could be a very exciting movie but until we find a film-maker it’s just an idea right now.”
website: www.pressman.com
interview: Catherine C Pirotta
After reviewing Catherine Pirotta’s feature Dreamkiller in July 2010, I e-mailed her some questions which she kindly answered for me.
How did you hook up with veteran writer Clyde Ware, and were there any problems in working with someone who has been writing for the screen since before you were born?
“I believe that stories and dialogues read more real when the team behind is mixed. Usually you can tell when a script was written by a woman alone as its male characters don’t quite act/react 100 per cent like a man would, and the same happens when a man tries to write the character of a woman. But when a man and a woman write it together, most of the time both sides are covered in a realistic way. The same applies when young and older work together, and it is only for the best of the story and script. In Dreamkiller we had a younger character (Nick) and an older character (Dr Stalberg) working together on a team.
“Collaborating with someone as experienced as Clyde was definitely a great learning experience and I was fortunate to have Clyde to guide me through various traps that lie in the path of first time directors. I was introduced to Clyde Ware through Dario Deak who was at the time under contract with Delaware Pictures. I had met Dario a year before though a common friend Nick Rish, the lead actor of my very first short film Adopting Change. Nick also plays Detective Barret in Dreamkiller.”
What was your original conception of Dreamkiller and how closely does the finished film match what you set out to make?
“The title Dreamkiller was conceived to carry a double meaning, the obvious being the person or an entity that kills within a dream or a dream-like state. But the second and more concealed meaning derives from the question of ‘What kills our dreams?’
“How many of us wanted to do and dreamed of doing something only to be discouraged by others, even those closest to us? And they are only acting out on their own ‘fears’, the ultimate Dreamkiller. Regardless of people, what actually kills our dreams is ‘fear’ because it paralyses the initiative or creates discouragement, which leads to quitting. And that gradually leads to regret and ultimately death of human spirit. Fear is the core of Dreamkiller the movie and it ultimately carries the title. That is the story that we were set out to make and in that aspect, I feel very accomplished.
"But the original screenplay was much more elaborate and convoluted and it was difficult to ultimately make sense of it in the movie. Our original cut was over three hours long and we contemplated on making a mini-series of it (I’m kidding, though actually we are currently in active development of Dreamkiller - The Series). There are elements that had to be cut out, partially or entirely to make sense of the complex story and still fit it in an under-two-hours cut. Originally each patient had his/her own back story about their fear, there was a fifth patient whose story had to be cut out completely, also Nick’s sister Natalia had a whole subplot story, and the mother issue and relation of it with Stalberg was more developed. But in the process, I had to decide what was more important, and in this case it was to resolve the mystery/case at the expense of other, less important ones.”
How did you assemble your cast and crew?
“Dario was under contract with Delaware Pictures at the time, and was an element from the very beginning. For rest of the cast, some parts I gave to actors I had worked in the past in my short films, others we held auditions, the conventional way.
“As for the crew, I had worked with the DP John O’Shaughnessy before on one of my shorts (5 Minutes) and we got along well so that was taken care of. Then I had a few friends, former classmates that came on board because they believed in the project and in me. Our crew was small, less than ten. I can say that our cast by far outnumbered our crew.”
What aspect of the film are you most proud of and which bit would you change if you had the chance?
“I am most proud of the movie’s originality, unpredictability and the fact that no-one I have ever encountered that has seen it, was bored with it. Many have liked, disliked, loved, outright hated or liked and disliked certain aspects of it, but no one that has given it a chance had been bored or walked out on it to my knowledge, and I have seen many. Anyone that had seen it through the first 15 minutes or so had to see it through the end.
“At this day and age of remake after remake, sequel after sequel, rarely do we get to see something original. And I think I understand why, original is the hardest and the riskiest thing to do. But where are we going to wind up if we just keep doing what’s been done? Some of the most appealing and attractive words when it comes to movie projects to me are: ‘It’s never been done before.’ Most business people shy away from it. How will they know that it will work if it was never done before? Would we ever have aeroplanes if the Wright Brothers felt the same? The fact is, they did feel the same, but they did it anyway. They were scared and did it anyway.
“What would I change if I had the chance? Aside from bringing up production value in various locations such as Ninex laboratories etc., I would have liked to have been able to explore the detective Annette’s fear further. Her fear is ‘trust’, particularly in a relationship. A common fear of so many people who have been betrayed or burned one way or another. Without giving away the ending I’ll try to explain: I wanted her in the final scene (when she finds Nick with a gun) to be confronted face to face with overcoming her fear and hates to trust Nick, despite all elements that were pointing at him she needed to decide to trust him or not. And see the consequences of her not trusting and letting her fear have control over her. But the scene didn’t quite work basically due to rewrite in post (by editing) and so it is more simple, the way that you saw it.”
How has the film been received by audiences and critics?
“The film was very well received by audiences. We held over 16 weeks in release, and people kept coming even though we had no marketing budget. I believe that majority of people were able to relate on some level primarily due to their own fears and the ones that responded most passionately were persons that actually identified and directly related to their fears.
“We held Q&A sessions some weekends and people just would keeping talking about their fears. Sometimes the time was up and we had to move to the lobby because the next show was starting. Many people even wrote to us about it later.
“The film offers no fancy answers other than what most of us already know, that the only true way to defeat fear (worst of all enemies) is to be brave. To face it squarely and act in spite of it. Yet so few of us are aware of this fact and rarely act out on it. I belong to this group myself but I’m trying hard to ‘do it anyway’ and I hope by bringing it up to others I will become more accountable and strong to practice it.
“With critics we had mixed reviews. The very first reviews were great, stating that ‘this was the great beginning of several film careers’ etc., but then we got some bad ones, primarily focusing on our budgetary constraints and subjective feelings toward specific aspects of the movie. Sometimes there were personal issues, I guess we hit some nerve; and sometimes perhaps due to our perceived commercial genre or even title, they wouldn’t let themselves see more past that. A movie like Jurassic Park could be seen as a simple kid movie about dinosaurs destroying a place, or as an exploration (in an entertaining way) of how man likes to play God, and the potential effects of that. It depends on how much you want to see in it, you can let yourself go there or not. For me Dreamkiller was an attempt to do both, say something but also be entertaining. Not just pure commercial or pure artistic.”
What are your future plans?
“I’m working with Delaware Pictures on a whole slate of projects, some five completed screenplays and three more in active development. I’ll mention my two favourites, for the sake of time.
“Ry is a fantasy/action/adventure adapted from the ancient Balkan folk tales where the hero goes on a quest to get a special sword, the only one that can defeat the tyrant who enslaved his village. Every trial on the quest is a lesson and a metaphor. I was attracted to it for its (once again) two sided quality. The movie promotes the basic character ethic and moral values while at the same time being entertaining and fun. Like the original Star Wars. And there are issues and aspects of this story that have never been done before on film.
“The other one is an adaptation of a book we acquired in turnaround from Disney (Buena Vista) titled Old Man in a Baseball Cap. A true story of an American bombardier who was shot down over enemy occupied territory during WWII and rescued by Yugoslavian partisans. He was assigned to a tough woman (freedom fighter) to guide him to safety for 31 days on foot. During this journey they experience many adventures and of course inevitably fall in love. They learn both about love and about war, hence the title of the screenplay, In Love and War. Aside from conventional aspects of this story that are appealing I was particularly drawn to some more controversial aspects of it as it sheds a light on some not so well known or publicised facts regarding the only ‘Good War’ as we often refer to WWII.
"Aside from our film projects we are also in active development and talks about production of Dreamkiller - The Series (as per the suggestion of many studio and audience members). This was not set from the beginning but was brought up over and over so we decided it’s worth pursuing.”
website: WhatDoUFear.com
How did you hook up with veteran writer Clyde Ware, and were there any problems in working with someone who has been writing for the screen since before you were born?
“I believe that stories and dialogues read more real when the team behind is mixed. Usually you can tell when a script was written by a woman alone as its male characters don’t quite act/react 100 per cent like a man would, and the same happens when a man tries to write the character of a woman. But when a man and a woman write it together, most of the time both sides are covered in a realistic way. The same applies when young and older work together, and it is only for the best of the story and script. In Dreamkiller we had a younger character (Nick) and an older character (Dr Stalberg) working together on a team.
“Collaborating with someone as experienced as Clyde was definitely a great learning experience and I was fortunate to have Clyde to guide me through various traps that lie in the path of first time directors. I was introduced to Clyde Ware through Dario Deak who was at the time under contract with Delaware Pictures. I had met Dario a year before though a common friend Nick Rish, the lead actor of my very first short film Adopting Change. Nick also plays Detective Barret in Dreamkiller.”
What was your original conception of Dreamkiller and how closely does the finished film match what you set out to make?
“The title Dreamkiller was conceived to carry a double meaning, the obvious being the person or an entity that kills within a dream or a dream-like state. But the second and more concealed meaning derives from the question of ‘What kills our dreams?’
“How many of us wanted to do and dreamed of doing something only to be discouraged by others, even those closest to us? And they are only acting out on their own ‘fears’, the ultimate Dreamkiller. Regardless of people, what actually kills our dreams is ‘fear’ because it paralyses the initiative or creates discouragement, which leads to quitting. And that gradually leads to regret and ultimately death of human spirit. Fear is the core of Dreamkiller the movie and it ultimately carries the title. That is the story that we were set out to make and in that aspect, I feel very accomplished.
"But the original screenplay was much more elaborate and convoluted and it was difficult to ultimately make sense of it in the movie. Our original cut was over three hours long and we contemplated on making a mini-series of it (I’m kidding, though actually we are currently in active development of Dreamkiller - The Series). There are elements that had to be cut out, partially or entirely to make sense of the complex story and still fit it in an under-two-hours cut. Originally each patient had his/her own back story about their fear, there was a fifth patient whose story had to be cut out completely, also Nick’s sister Natalia had a whole subplot story, and the mother issue and relation of it with Stalberg was more developed. But in the process, I had to decide what was more important, and in this case it was to resolve the mystery/case at the expense of other, less important ones.”
How did you assemble your cast and crew?
“Dario was under contract with Delaware Pictures at the time, and was an element from the very beginning. For rest of the cast, some parts I gave to actors I had worked in the past in my short films, others we held auditions, the conventional way.
“As for the crew, I had worked with the DP John O’Shaughnessy before on one of my shorts (5 Minutes) and we got along well so that was taken care of. Then I had a few friends, former classmates that came on board because they believed in the project and in me. Our crew was small, less than ten. I can say that our cast by far outnumbered our crew.”
What aspect of the film are you most proud of and which bit would you change if you had the chance?
“I am most proud of the movie’s originality, unpredictability and the fact that no-one I have ever encountered that has seen it, was bored with it. Many have liked, disliked, loved, outright hated or liked and disliked certain aspects of it, but no one that has given it a chance had been bored or walked out on it to my knowledge, and I have seen many. Anyone that had seen it through the first 15 minutes or so had to see it through the end.
“At this day and age of remake after remake, sequel after sequel, rarely do we get to see something original. And I think I understand why, original is the hardest and the riskiest thing to do. But where are we going to wind up if we just keep doing what’s been done? Some of the most appealing and attractive words when it comes to movie projects to me are: ‘It’s never been done before.’ Most business people shy away from it. How will they know that it will work if it was never done before? Would we ever have aeroplanes if the Wright Brothers felt the same? The fact is, they did feel the same, but they did it anyway. They were scared and did it anyway.
“What would I change if I had the chance? Aside from bringing up production value in various locations such as Ninex laboratories etc., I would have liked to have been able to explore the detective Annette’s fear further. Her fear is ‘trust’, particularly in a relationship. A common fear of so many people who have been betrayed or burned one way or another. Without giving away the ending I’ll try to explain: I wanted her in the final scene (when she finds Nick with a gun) to be confronted face to face with overcoming her fear and hates to trust Nick, despite all elements that were pointing at him she needed to decide to trust him or not. And see the consequences of her not trusting and letting her fear have control over her. But the scene didn’t quite work basically due to rewrite in post (by editing) and so it is more simple, the way that you saw it.”
How has the film been received by audiences and critics?
“The film was very well received by audiences. We held over 16 weeks in release, and people kept coming even though we had no marketing budget. I believe that majority of people were able to relate on some level primarily due to their own fears and the ones that responded most passionately were persons that actually identified and directly related to their fears.
“We held Q&A sessions some weekends and people just would keeping talking about their fears. Sometimes the time was up and we had to move to the lobby because the next show was starting. Many people even wrote to us about it later.
“The film offers no fancy answers other than what most of us already know, that the only true way to defeat fear (worst of all enemies) is to be brave. To face it squarely and act in spite of it. Yet so few of us are aware of this fact and rarely act out on it. I belong to this group myself but I’m trying hard to ‘do it anyway’ and I hope by bringing it up to others I will become more accountable and strong to practice it.
“With critics we had mixed reviews. The very first reviews were great, stating that ‘this was the great beginning of several film careers’ etc., but then we got some bad ones, primarily focusing on our budgetary constraints and subjective feelings toward specific aspects of the movie. Sometimes there were personal issues, I guess we hit some nerve; and sometimes perhaps due to our perceived commercial genre or even title, they wouldn’t let themselves see more past that. A movie like Jurassic Park could be seen as a simple kid movie about dinosaurs destroying a place, or as an exploration (in an entertaining way) of how man likes to play God, and the potential effects of that. It depends on how much you want to see in it, you can let yourself go there or not. For me Dreamkiller was an attempt to do both, say something but also be entertaining. Not just pure commercial or pure artistic.”
What are your future plans?
“I’m working with Delaware Pictures on a whole slate of projects, some five completed screenplays and three more in active development. I’ll mention my two favourites, for the sake of time.
“Ry is a fantasy/action/adventure adapted from the ancient Balkan folk tales where the hero goes on a quest to get a special sword, the only one that can defeat the tyrant who enslaved his village. Every trial on the quest is a lesson and a metaphor. I was attracted to it for its (once again) two sided quality. The movie promotes the basic character ethic and moral values while at the same time being entertaining and fun. Like the original Star Wars. And there are issues and aspects of this story that have never been done before on film.
“The other one is an adaptation of a book we acquired in turnaround from Disney (Buena Vista) titled Old Man in a Baseball Cap. A true story of an American bombardier who was shot down over enemy occupied territory during WWII and rescued by Yugoslavian partisans. He was assigned to a tough woman (freedom fighter) to guide him to safety for 31 days on foot. During this journey they experience many adventures and of course inevitably fall in love. They learn both about love and about war, hence the title of the screenplay, In Love and War. Aside from conventional aspects of this story that are appealing I was particularly drawn to some more controversial aspects of it as it sheds a light on some not so well known or publicised facts regarding the only ‘Good War’ as we often refer to WWII.
"Aside from our film projects we are also in active development and talks about production of Dreamkiller - The Series (as per the suggestion of many studio and audience members). This was not set from the beginning but was brought up over and over so we decided it’s worth pursuing.”
website: WhatDoUFear.com
Tuesday, 14 June 2016
interview: Mike Regan
In April 2006 I had a great time hanging out with Mike Regan, Mitch Coughlin and Blake Bolger on the set of Pumpkinhead III. I remember Mike saying, “Come and hang out in the make-up effects trailer - it’s the coolest place to be.” And it was. A couple of months later I did a phone interview with Mike.
Did you, Mitch and Blake volunteer for this or did you get assigned to go out to Romania?
"A little bit of both. All three of us were on the build at Gary Tunnicliffe’s shop. We’ve all worked for Gary before and we’ve all been out to Romania before. I was in mainly because I did the mechanics. Having worked for Gary before, he chose me because I could repair and I’d been out here before so he trusts me. I’ve worked for him for ten years. Mitch, same thing: he’s been working for Gary a long time and done a couple of projects in Romania. And Blake, just being an extra hand and being someone he could rely on who had been out here before. So those were kind of the criteria: people he was comfortable sending out here to take care of this."
Howe long were you out there for?
"I think Mitch was there a week longer than us but it’s been about two months. We flew out on 11th March, this is the end of May and we’re flying back tomorrow. Mitch was out the week before us so about ten weeks."
Let’s talk a bit about the suit. How heavy is it?
"That’s always kind of a tricky one because it’s different pieces. If you’re talking about the suit, the stilt variety, the stilts themselves are pretty heavy but it was made that way. You can’t really walk in them, they were bolted down long legs. Then the normal, walking around version, you have a foam suit and the head. I think the head is maybe six to eight pounds and the suit itself is about the same, maybe ten. It’s kind of hard to tell, the way it’s spread out over your body. The mechanical head is the heavy part. The stunt head’s not too heavy because there’s really nothing in it."
Are there several complete suits or do you just mix and match pieces?
"It’s kind of two complete suits. Basically we knew, this time around, that Romania wasn’t really going to give us the option of wire work for walking. The suit was built as one suit that’s a head-to-toe thing with the leg extensions and everything. There’s the option to have one leg free. You can take one step at the start of a walk. Then there’s a second suit that is right down to the performer’s feet and then basically you walk on a two-foot high platform that simulates the height of the legs. That allows you to frame the performer from his ankles to the top of the head. Of those two configurations, the hands could be swapped from one to the other, the head obviously could be swapped back and forth. It’s basically all overlapping pieces. There’s legs, a torso that fits from crotch to shoulders, hands that cover the arms - and a head. So two suits that are different configurations."
Is Pumpkinhead actually in the films much? How much use did the suits get?
"It was pretty active. I think the shoots were 25 days each or something. I know on Jake West’s film we pretty much shot every day with maybe just a day here or there off. And I think on Mike Hurst’s film Mike had a different shooting style and he tended to backload a lot of Pumpkinhead shots. There would be days when all we did was Pumpkinhead stuff and I think we had about a week off towards the end. That was to allow them time to shoot a lot of the dialogue stuff before doing the finale which was out in the rain so they wanted that to be the very last day, in case the suit was damaged."
Has the suit been knocked about a lot?
"It’s taken some damage but it’s survived enough. We have to take it back to LA and scan it. I think the CG guy Stephen is slated for about ten shots in each film of the CG Pumpkinhead, which will take care of things like emerging from a burning church, some walking shots or climbing up onto the roof. Things like that, we just couldn’t do in a suit. To the CG guy’s credit, I talked with him a lot about physical stuff and he’s in favour of using physical as much as possible or augmenting physical with digital. I asked him about how they do the digital and he said the model is basically going to be built the way we would do a suit. It’s going to be scanned from the suit so his hope is that, being based on the suit it should pretty much look like the suit. Hopefully you won’t be able to tell the difference." [You can. You really can. - MJS[
How do you actually go about shipping something like that from the USA to Romania and back? Any problems with customs?
"No, not really. A lot of the suit pieces were shipped out in crates, along with the other artefacts and supplies we needed. We took a couple of pieces with us but usually when they run them through X-ray machines it doesn’t show up because it’s foam. Occasionally they’ll ask us to open stuff, like the head could look weird because of all the wires in it. But you’d be surprised, usually when you open up stuff in an airport, people are kind of interested: ‘That’s cool. What’s that?’ It’s always fun."
Apart from Pumpkinhead himself, what other effects have you had to do?
"In both films we’ve done the new version of Haggis, the witch who resurrects Pumpkinhead. Obviously lots of blood and guts and killing. We did some transformation stuff for Lance Henriksen because in one of the films the idea is that, because he was the last one to summon Pumpkinhead then his remains are obviously used to bring it back to life. There’s an intermediate stage where it appears as Lance and then goes from there into Pumpkinhead. So we did transformation pieces for that. There’s a beheading, lots of things getting squashed."
How long did Haggis’ make-up take to apply?
"The very first application was three and a half to four hours and towards the end it was down to about three. It’s a three-piece make-up and then a hairpiece."
When I was out there you were burying skeletons in mud, which looked like the least glamorous thing you could do on a film set.
"Pretty much, yes. They always say that it never rains in June here and it seems that whenever we’re here in June it just won’t stop raining. We’ve had lots of wallowing around in mud that we really didn’t plan on doing. This morning, to celebrate the end of filming, I actually threw away the pair of shoes that I wore: they are just beyond repair. But burying skeletons in mud is part of the plotline in III. The doctor of the town, in order to subsidise his free medical care to the community, he’s harvesting organs and stuff from people in the town that die rather than giving them proper burials. Obviously, when a family member discovers this they decide to call up Pumpkinhead because they don’t realise it’s the doctor, they think it’s this family which owns the mortuary. They decide to get revenge for the improper treatment of their kin.
"The skeletons in the bog are the remains of the people; the furnace hasn’t worked so they bury them in the bog. So yes, my glamorous task was to hunker down and make it look like they’ve been buried there for a while. The problem was actually pulling them back out and cleaning them off. The worst part of it wasn’t even that. We had an actor on it who basically is submerged in it, to represent them disposing of bodies. They submerge him in it - and I can tell you, that actor was coughing up real bog water that got up his nose and into other places where you wouldn’t want water."
Did Jake and Mike both work well with you guys?
"They both have very different shooting styles. Mike tends to be very fast and have a very clear train of thought and vision. Jake tends to be a bit more artistic and sometimes it was tough to know exactly what he wanted until he was there and had seen something. I think maybe the short schedule hampered his style. He would have a grand vision of something and have to cut back to get it done in the time he had. But I saw a cut trailer for it and it looks fun so it will be interesting to see how they both turn out. I’m hoping they’ll be a lot of fun.”
Did you, Mitch and Blake volunteer for this or did you get assigned to go out to Romania?
"A little bit of both. All three of us were on the build at Gary Tunnicliffe’s shop. We’ve all worked for Gary before and we’ve all been out to Romania before. I was in mainly because I did the mechanics. Having worked for Gary before, he chose me because I could repair and I’d been out here before so he trusts me. I’ve worked for him for ten years. Mitch, same thing: he’s been working for Gary a long time and done a couple of projects in Romania. And Blake, just being an extra hand and being someone he could rely on who had been out here before. So those were kind of the criteria: people he was comfortable sending out here to take care of this."
Howe long were you out there for?
"I think Mitch was there a week longer than us but it’s been about two months. We flew out on 11th March, this is the end of May and we’re flying back tomorrow. Mitch was out the week before us so about ten weeks."
Let’s talk a bit about the suit. How heavy is it?
"That’s always kind of a tricky one because it’s different pieces. If you’re talking about the suit, the stilt variety, the stilts themselves are pretty heavy but it was made that way. You can’t really walk in them, they were bolted down long legs. Then the normal, walking around version, you have a foam suit and the head. I think the head is maybe six to eight pounds and the suit itself is about the same, maybe ten. It’s kind of hard to tell, the way it’s spread out over your body. The mechanical head is the heavy part. The stunt head’s not too heavy because there’s really nothing in it."
Are there several complete suits or do you just mix and match pieces?
"It’s kind of two complete suits. Basically we knew, this time around, that Romania wasn’t really going to give us the option of wire work for walking. The suit was built as one suit that’s a head-to-toe thing with the leg extensions and everything. There’s the option to have one leg free. You can take one step at the start of a walk. Then there’s a second suit that is right down to the performer’s feet and then basically you walk on a two-foot high platform that simulates the height of the legs. That allows you to frame the performer from his ankles to the top of the head. Of those two configurations, the hands could be swapped from one to the other, the head obviously could be swapped back and forth. It’s basically all overlapping pieces. There’s legs, a torso that fits from crotch to shoulders, hands that cover the arms - and a head. So two suits that are different configurations."
Is Pumpkinhead actually in the films much? How much use did the suits get?
"It was pretty active. I think the shoots were 25 days each or something. I know on Jake West’s film we pretty much shot every day with maybe just a day here or there off. And I think on Mike Hurst’s film Mike had a different shooting style and he tended to backload a lot of Pumpkinhead shots. There would be days when all we did was Pumpkinhead stuff and I think we had about a week off towards the end. That was to allow them time to shoot a lot of the dialogue stuff before doing the finale which was out in the rain so they wanted that to be the very last day, in case the suit was damaged."
Has the suit been knocked about a lot?
"It’s taken some damage but it’s survived enough. We have to take it back to LA and scan it. I think the CG guy Stephen is slated for about ten shots in each film of the CG Pumpkinhead, which will take care of things like emerging from a burning church, some walking shots or climbing up onto the roof. Things like that, we just couldn’t do in a suit. To the CG guy’s credit, I talked with him a lot about physical stuff and he’s in favour of using physical as much as possible or augmenting physical with digital. I asked him about how they do the digital and he said the model is basically going to be built the way we would do a suit. It’s going to be scanned from the suit so his hope is that, being based on the suit it should pretty much look like the suit. Hopefully you won’t be able to tell the difference." [You can. You really can. - MJS[
How do you actually go about shipping something like that from the USA to Romania and back? Any problems with customs?
"No, not really. A lot of the suit pieces were shipped out in crates, along with the other artefacts and supplies we needed. We took a couple of pieces with us but usually when they run them through X-ray machines it doesn’t show up because it’s foam. Occasionally they’ll ask us to open stuff, like the head could look weird because of all the wires in it. But you’d be surprised, usually when you open up stuff in an airport, people are kind of interested: ‘That’s cool. What’s that?’ It’s always fun."
Apart from Pumpkinhead himself, what other effects have you had to do?
"In both films we’ve done the new version of Haggis, the witch who resurrects Pumpkinhead. Obviously lots of blood and guts and killing. We did some transformation stuff for Lance Henriksen because in one of the films the idea is that, because he was the last one to summon Pumpkinhead then his remains are obviously used to bring it back to life. There’s an intermediate stage where it appears as Lance and then goes from there into Pumpkinhead. So we did transformation pieces for that. There’s a beheading, lots of things getting squashed."
How long did Haggis’ make-up take to apply?
"The very first application was three and a half to four hours and towards the end it was down to about three. It’s a three-piece make-up and then a hairpiece."
When I was out there you were burying skeletons in mud, which looked like the least glamorous thing you could do on a film set.
"Pretty much, yes. They always say that it never rains in June here and it seems that whenever we’re here in June it just won’t stop raining. We’ve had lots of wallowing around in mud that we really didn’t plan on doing. This morning, to celebrate the end of filming, I actually threw away the pair of shoes that I wore: they are just beyond repair. But burying skeletons in mud is part of the plotline in III. The doctor of the town, in order to subsidise his free medical care to the community, he’s harvesting organs and stuff from people in the town that die rather than giving them proper burials. Obviously, when a family member discovers this they decide to call up Pumpkinhead because they don’t realise it’s the doctor, they think it’s this family which owns the mortuary. They decide to get revenge for the improper treatment of their kin.
"The skeletons in the bog are the remains of the people; the furnace hasn’t worked so they bury them in the bog. So yes, my glamorous task was to hunker down and make it look like they’ve been buried there for a while. The problem was actually pulling them back out and cleaning them off. The worst part of it wasn’t even that. We had an actor on it who basically is submerged in it, to represent them disposing of bodies. They submerge him in it - and I can tell you, that actor was coughing up real bog water that got up his nose and into other places where you wouldn’t want water."
Did Jake and Mike both work well with you guys?
"They both have very different shooting styles. Mike tends to be very fast and have a very clear train of thought and vision. Jake tends to be a bit more artistic and sometimes it was tough to know exactly what he wanted until he was there and had seen something. I think maybe the short schedule hampered his style. He would have a grand vision of something and have to cut back to get it done in the time he had. But I saw a cut trailer for it and it looks fun so it will be interesting to see how they both turn out. I’m hoping they’ll be a lot of fun.”
Tuesday, 17 May 2016
interview: Bill Paxton
I interviewed Bill Paxton in the penthouse suite of the Dorchester Hotel, London in September 1995. He was over here with the cast and crew of Apollo 13 and most journalists wanted to interview Tom Hanks but he had no SF credits to speak of (apart from Big maybe) so SFX had no problem securing a chat with Paxton. Because of the lengthy post-production time required on Apollo 13, he had shot Twister since wrapping the space film, although that had not yet been released. A short version of this ran in SFX at the time.
Apollo 13 looks like it was very hard work. Was it harder than an ordinary movie?
"It was, but like the astronauts we portrayed, we had a tremendous sense of camaraderie. We all tried to make this film as good as it could be. We all felt an incredible sense of integrity and responsibility towards the material because it was a historical re-enactment of this famous voyage. And so we were unified and compelled to make this movie great. Yeah, it was a lot of work. There were a lot of cold days, when they refrigerated the sets so that they could see our breath.
“The flights on the aeroplane were very demanding, but at the same time, here we were as actors and film-makers doing something that had never been done in a theatrical motion picture. They took actors up in a set that had been put on a plane and it would fall out of the sky, and the camera crews would float and shoot it. So it was a unique filming experience. The filming of it was almost like a mission in itself. We all felt unified on our mission.”
Do you remember the Apollo 13 incident?
"I was 15 years old at the time. I didn't know all the myriad of problems that they'd had. I knew something had happened that had damaged the spacecraft, and the big question that I remember was: had there been a compromise in the integrity of the heat shield? Would the command module withstand the intense heat of re-entry? That seemed to be the big question on everyone's mind. When I read the script and started doing research I found out all the different things. One thing that is amazing is the whole idea that their survival literally came down to a plastic bag, the cardboard cover off a flight manual, space age bailing wire, duct tape... Unbelievable! All those things: the manual burn, the course correction, the idea that they almost skipped off the atmosphere before re-entry. So many things there."
Did you meet the real Fred Haise?
"I only had the opportunity to spend the best part of a day with him, down at Cape Kennedy. He was nice enough to take time out of his busy schedule. He still is an aerospace engineer, working for Grumman, the same people who built the Lunar Module. He was chosen to be Lunar Module pilot because he was in the astronauts corps but he was assigned to Grumman, and he was one of the men who did all the tests for the Lunar Module. Remember that they were the back-up crew on Apollo 11. If something had happened to those guys before that flight, well it could have been Jim Lovell and Fred Haise, instead of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the names that we know today."
The Apollo 13 story really is truth being stranger than fiction. Were there any occasions when people started saying, 'No, surely the scriptwriters must have made this bit up...'?
"The whole thing builds to this incredible climax that everyone knows the ending of. You almost feel like it's a Cinderella story. The movie's not a cop-out. It was this incredible triumph after all of this work and resourcefulness, this concerted effort. And the whole world waited. Everyone stopped what they were doing during moments of the flight, but especially at that moment of re-entry. It's so dramatic; they go into radio blackout because of the ionisation on the hull. They're coming in so hard, at 25,000 miles per hour, and there's no way that anyone can communicate with them. So there is that incredible suspense of waiting to see whether they lived or died in re-entry. So it's a natural for the movies. It is really one of the greatest human interest stories of modern times, that's been almost forgotten."
Do you think or hope that this film and the surrounding interest in the Apollo missions might get the space programme going again?
"It's a tall order, but I can only hope that it will pique the imagination of a whole new generation of young scientists. I've just finished a picture called Twister. It's a fictional story of this incredible atmospheric phenomenon we know as tornadoes that actually defy the laws of physics sometimes. I was working with a man who was a technical advisor on the film. He works for the NSSL, the National Severe Storm Lab, and he wrote me a letter. The reason he liked the movie so much was because he felt that it appealed to this generation that's coming along, who weren't born when this happened and have no personal recollection of it. It appealed to the sciences and it's a sad fact that academically the sciences are in a big decline, a decline in people going into mathematical fields and the physics fields. As a meteorologist, a big part of his work is mathematics and science. And this will appeal to young people to go into the sciences, so in that regard, yes I hope it does inspire young people."
You've done quite a few science fiction movies, including several with James Cameron. How did you first meet him?
"I met Jim Cameron when I was 25. It was 1980, he was art director on a Roger Corman picture called Galaxy of Terror and I was hired to be on his night crew as a set dresser. I had been a set dresser originally in the mid-'70s when I first went out to Hollywood when I was 18. In the interim I had gone to New York to study acting. I had come back and I was looking for acting work, but I was moonlighting as a set dresser. A buddy of mine introduced me to Jim and he gave me a job on the spot, and we got to know each other in the course of this production. I was making a small film at the time called Fish Heads that was based on a song by Billy Mumy who was in Lost in Space."
That was when he was half of the musical duo Barnes and Barnes.
"Barnes and Barnes, who were wonderful. I showed Jim this film I'd made to promote this song, and he realised that I had more of an interest than just painting a flat. So we became friends and colleagues. he was telling me at the time about a script that he was writing, that he wanted to direct, called The Terminator. We would be working late into the night and I'd say, 'What does the Terminator do then, Jim?' 'Well, he comes back from the future.' 'Let me get this straight...' It was actually not unlike that. He brought me into his circle - he's a very private man in many ways - but he accepted me as a peer very early on. We've been good friends. We're actually the same age, although I've always thought of him as kind of an older brother. He ended up tossing me a bone, as it were, to do a cameo in The Terminator. A few years after that I got the tremendous role of Hudson in Aliens."
I think that's what our readers know you best for.
"I think before Apollo 13, I've been best known for two films: Aliens, the role of Hudson; and another picture that had science fiction elements to it, that was a teenage comedy, Weird Science."
Aliens was a tremendous follow-up to a tremendous movie. Was there a problem in trying to follow on from such a huge hit?
"The script was incredible. I read the Aliens script and thought, 'My God, he's going to knock this one out of the park!' I remember reading the script for Terminator before it was made and thinking, 'This is one of the best screenplays I've ever read, if not the best.' I read Aliens and weirdly enough I was over here seeing my girlfriend - who's now my wife and the mother of my 18-month-old son, James - and I got the call for the audition. They were all over here starting to do the casting at Pinewood. I went in to meet Jim and read for him, and it's always very difficult reading for your friends because you really have no mystique with them. They know your bag of tricks. I much prefer to read for someone who doesn't know me. That way I can throw a persona at them, and they can't really know: 'Is he acting, or is he really like this? What's his story there?' The magician doesn't like to show how the trick is done, as it were.
“So I had a good reading, but I didn't feel like I'd really set the world on fire. I went back and I didn't hear for - oh God, it must have been six weeks. So then I got a call in the morning - it was night-time here - it was Jim calling to say, 'I want you to play the role of Hudson'. You could probably hear me howl all the way back to California. That was a great experience for me; a great role in a great production. I think Jim was very smart on a fundamental level. Alien was like this ride in a spook house, where you never knew when the monster was going to jump out at you. I'm boiling it way down. So Jim, instead of going down that road that had been so well travelled, he decided to make Aliens this ride on a wild roller-coaster. Alien was a whole departure for science fiction films in terms of the incredible design of HR Giger and the whole evolution of that monster from the pod to the face-hugger to its birth out of the human host to ... God almighty!
“It preyed on a lot of primordial fears: the idea of parasitic oscillation, that feeds off its host. It took a lot of fears: the classic vampire myth; the idea of cancers, of tumours that grow inside you. It really got you on a very gut level, a very primordial level, and it was so cleverly done. To have this heroic part played by a woman - Sigourney Weaver is the heroine of this movie as opposed to the classic hero - it really was an amazing piece of work. Ridley Scott did such a fantastic job on that film: just the sound of that movie and the way that story unfolds visually. I remember seeing Alien in a movie house in Times Square. If you had told me I was going to be in the sequel I would have just laughed at you, thought you were mad."
We have a thing in London called Alien War, which is Aliens as a sort of walk-through interactive experience.
"I've only heard about it. I don't really know anything about it."
If you get a chance while you're in London, you should check it out.
"Maybe I should do that. They'd better not mess with Hudson! That would be incredible. I was offered the chance to do one of these ride things and re-enact Hudson, but it wasn't going to be directed by Jim and I just felt that it was exploitation of the character. There's something sacred about that picture. It's a great piece of film-making, just like Apollo 13 is a great piece of film-making. It's so rare that you get a great story married to a great piece of film-work, with a great cast, under the guidance of a Ron Howard or a James Cameron. They're sacred things. You hold them and you're loyal to them and you guard them from any kind of explanation."
You were in Predator 2 as well.
"God, I've done a lot of science fiction films. Predator 2: for a while there I thought I was going to just do all the great sequels. Another great Hollywood monster. Predator and Alien are probably the greatest monsters to emerge from Hollywood since Frankenstein and Dracula. Predator was a fabulous idea, and I think that the first Predator is hands down a much better film than the sequel, although in the case of Aliens, I think Aliens is an equally good piece of film-making to Alien. I can't say that about Predator 2. I like the director a lot, I think he's very talented. I just don't think that they developed those characters enough in the story. It was shot a little too much in a sort of 'zow! pow!' cartoon character style. I don't think there was enough for the eyes to bit into on those characters.
“I thought the set-up to the first one was brilliant. I think it's one of Arnold's best movies, besides his work with James Cameron. I just love the idea of that monster: man has been a hunter, he's killed everything on this planet, including himself. And now comes this being from another planet who seems very primordial, but God, he's hunting man. I love the idea of that and I love the resourcefulness of the Predator."
And of course, at the end of Predator 2 there's that little shot of an Alien skull.
"Isn't that great? Jim and I both got a tremendous kick out of that. in the trophy case they show that Predator had beaten the Alien. I've seen this comic book - I've never read it - Aliens vs Predator, and I've heard they're trying to make that into a movie. I don't really know what that movie would be. And I heard that somebody's trying to do Starship Troopers, which has been around for a long time. Jim had us read that as a primer as colonial marines. I said, 'What would you read to get into this?' He said, 'I'd read Heinlein, and I'd read that.'"
Was it helpful?
"Oh absolutely. It's almost a throwback to the old times of imperialism, when you'd go out and you colonise different countries, if you were a British soldier. It's the same thing, just set in futuristic times."
You mentioned Weird Science, which is a lot lighter movie.
"I don't usually mention that so much. I'm not trying to distance myself from it but sometimes as these credits get older and you get further away, you like to think that people will know you for your contemporary efforts as well as your past glories. But I've always been proud of that movie. It was the first really great role I had in a studio film. I love John Hughes and I've always wanted to work with him again. Unfortunately we've lost track of each other. I had a tremendous rapport and collaboration with him. He gave me a lot of freedom to explore that character and I had a lot of fun with it. It's become a great archetype. I always liked Animal House and I always liked the actor that portrayed Neidermeyer in Animal House. So for me, that was my Animal House."
Do you worry about typecasting? A lot of your roles have been militaristic, crew-cut guys.
"I like short hair. I think a man with short hair, it's a strong look. It's a very positive strong look. And for that character and The Lords of Discipline, when I played a cadet at the citadel, and obviously, playing an astronaut I wanted to go for a buzz-cut there too. It just depends on the part. I've had hair down past my shoulders on films, like Indian Summer. I've also done science fiction movies that aren't so much science fiction, they're more like 'circus fiction'. The Dark Backward is a very peculiar movie that I starred in with Wayne Newton and Judd Nelson that I'm proud of. It's a really balls-to-the-wall performance. A lot of people said it was over the top but I like to go the wall sometimes in that regard. Obviously in movies like One False Move and Apollo 13 and Twister, Jan de Bont's new movie that I'm making with Helen Hunt, these require a more low-key, let-the-audience-study-you kind of work, as opposed to a full-blown performance."
What can you tell us about Twister?
"The movie follows these storm-chasers who are basically meteorologists who work from grants at local universities in the mid-West, who actually go out and try to put themselves as close to the tornadoes as they can, almost like a bullfighter, in the hope of gleaning certain knowledge about tornadoes. There's still a lot of things that are not known for certain. Obviously they understand the atmospheric conditions that cause these things. It's the most extraordinary atmospheric event there is, in a way; a tornado. This whirlpool, this vortex of air. Tornadoes can have winds of over 230 miles an hour blowing in them. It's not the wind that kills you, it's the debris. It can take a match and stick it right through your head. It can take a piece of straw and stick it into a tree. These things almost defy physics.
“The movie was written originally by Michael Crichton and his wife, Anne-Marie Crichton. It's produced by Steven Spielberg and Kathy Kennedy. It's Jan de Bont’s follow-up to Speed, which was a tremendous international hit and a very exciting piece of film-making. So he's hoping to top himself and I think he's going to with this. I play one of these storm-chasers, I play kind of the gunfighter who walked away from the gunfight. My ex-wife is Helen Hunt who is still an obsessive storm-chaser. In the course of the movie we're trying to place this weather package, which is like a flight recorder, that's how we explain it to the audience. It looks like an industrial washing machine, with aeronometers and cameras and all these devices for measuring different atmospheric pressures. They're hoping to get it into the tornado's path and then it will be sucked up into the tornado and they can learn what really takes place inside of a tornado. There's always been a lot of conjecture about that. There's been a few eye witness accounts, but not too many people have seen the inside of a tornado and lived to tell about it.
“There's a rival team that's headed by Cary Elwes who is the corporate rat and really the big believer in modern technology, such as doppler radar and thermal imaging and all this stuff. Whereas my character is more of the Earth; he studies the signs of nature and almost has a sixth sense about the weather. He's totally corporately funded, he's after it for mercenistic reasons, whereas Helen and myself and the group that we chase with, we're more vocationalist. We're hoping that by unlocking the secrets of this thing that we can devise a better warning system that will save lives. So we're very idealistic, whereas Cary's character, he's more of a nemesis or an antagonist than a villain. The monster is truly the tornado. That's really what it chronicles; this fifty-year storm that's come in and it's just dropping tornadoes and every one of them's getting bigger.
“I've said this in a couple of interviews: I think this is going to be to tornadoes what Jaws was to sharks. Interestingly enough, people's perception of tornadoes is this sort of anthropomorphic entity/beast/rogue/murderer. That it's capricious, it'll kill everybody in one row of houses and across the street it won't even touch them , just break the windows or something. It'll pick up a baby, suck a baby right out of a house and drop it three hundred yards away totally unharmed. By the same token, it'll pick up a cow, suck it into the stratosphere and it'll rain hamburger. These things are amazing what they'll do. I saw pictures of just crazy things that didn't make any sense. I read many accounts.
“Some of the facts about tornadoes: the biggest tornado that was ever recorded in the United States was a tornado called the Tri-State Tornado of, I think, March 6th 1925. It stayed on the ground three hours which is a very long time. It started in a town in Missouri and before it was done it had gone through Illinois and Indiana. It had hit eleven towns, four of which were smeared off the face of the earth. It was very low to the ground and you couldn't even see the vortex. It was described as this 'boiling turbulent mass of blackness' moving across the southern part of the city. It was two miles wide, it cut a damage path 639 miles long, it killed 689 people, and it lasted between one-fifteen and four o'clock one afternoon in March in 1925."
You obviously do a lot of research.
"Well, you've got to. Any time when you're playing any kind of technical role like a scientist or an astronaut, you'd better know what the hell you're talking about because there's a lot of jargon in these professions. You talk about straight-line winds or convection or elicity or some of the terms that these guys use. You'd better know what the hell you're talking about, because if you deliver those lines and you don't know what they are, you're going to get caught. You're going to catch a bullet for your trouble."
Does production style differ between low budget stuff like Roger Corman movies and big budget stuff like Apollo 13?
"It's essentially the same job as an actor. I work just as hard on a low budget film as I do on an $80 million film. I approach the roles in pretty much the same way. If there's a profession involved I try to learn as much as I can about that profession. I find it a challenge as an actor to have a profession, it's a wonderful active thing to play. In any role you define the social background and the occupational background of the character. But there are different styles of acting, different kinds of movies. You do a movie like True Lies; I played the sleazy car salesman who pretends to be a secret agent to seduce these lonely women, and that's more like doing a restoration comedy piece. It's a bit heightened, you can goose it a little more. You can just wink a little more, you can just do a different kind of thing with it.
“Roles like One False Move and Twister and Apollo 13 are more challenging and I'm digging them because they require me to exert myself on a certain level and not always be trying to perform for the audience. I like the idea of the enigmatic portrayal, where you just be a vessel and the audience maybe project their own thoughts on you as they watch you in the dark. It's an evolution, this process we call film acting, or just acting in general. I love science fiction films. I was a nut on Jules Verne and HG Wells growing up, especially Verne who was just a brilliant writer. Those books are really worth going back and re-reading. A few years ago I re-read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."
You've been an astronaut, you've been a colonial marine, you've been a cowboy. Have you got any ambitions left?
"I don't know. It really depends on the story and the characters. I don't really have many preconceived things. I'd like to produce films and develop my own stories. Different things will appeal to me for different reasons. I read a story in an old detective magazine of a man who was a journalist for a turn of the century newspaper. He got involved in this case where they found this dismembered body. It's almost like The Magnificent Ambersons meets Silence of the Lambs. It's a magnificent, gothic story, very creepy, and I would maybe like to develop that into a feature-length screenplay. I'm starting to move into that area. If, with Twister and Apollo, I get a little more muscle and I get the chance to produce something I might try it."
interview originally posted 3rd December 2006
Apollo 13 looks like it was very hard work. Was it harder than an ordinary movie?
"It was, but like the astronauts we portrayed, we had a tremendous sense of camaraderie. We all tried to make this film as good as it could be. We all felt an incredible sense of integrity and responsibility towards the material because it was a historical re-enactment of this famous voyage. And so we were unified and compelled to make this movie great. Yeah, it was a lot of work. There were a lot of cold days, when they refrigerated the sets so that they could see our breath.
“The flights on the aeroplane were very demanding, but at the same time, here we were as actors and film-makers doing something that had never been done in a theatrical motion picture. They took actors up in a set that had been put on a plane and it would fall out of the sky, and the camera crews would float and shoot it. So it was a unique filming experience. The filming of it was almost like a mission in itself. We all felt unified on our mission.”
Do you remember the Apollo 13 incident?
"I was 15 years old at the time. I didn't know all the myriad of problems that they'd had. I knew something had happened that had damaged the spacecraft, and the big question that I remember was: had there been a compromise in the integrity of the heat shield? Would the command module withstand the intense heat of re-entry? That seemed to be the big question on everyone's mind. When I read the script and started doing research I found out all the different things. One thing that is amazing is the whole idea that their survival literally came down to a plastic bag, the cardboard cover off a flight manual, space age bailing wire, duct tape... Unbelievable! All those things: the manual burn, the course correction, the idea that they almost skipped off the atmosphere before re-entry. So many things there."
Did you meet the real Fred Haise?
"I only had the opportunity to spend the best part of a day with him, down at Cape Kennedy. He was nice enough to take time out of his busy schedule. He still is an aerospace engineer, working for Grumman, the same people who built the Lunar Module. He was chosen to be Lunar Module pilot because he was in the astronauts corps but he was assigned to Grumman, and he was one of the men who did all the tests for the Lunar Module. Remember that they were the back-up crew on Apollo 11. If something had happened to those guys before that flight, well it could have been Jim Lovell and Fred Haise, instead of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the names that we know today."
The Apollo 13 story really is truth being stranger than fiction. Were there any occasions when people started saying, 'No, surely the scriptwriters must have made this bit up...'?
"The whole thing builds to this incredible climax that everyone knows the ending of. You almost feel like it's a Cinderella story. The movie's not a cop-out. It was this incredible triumph after all of this work and resourcefulness, this concerted effort. And the whole world waited. Everyone stopped what they were doing during moments of the flight, but especially at that moment of re-entry. It's so dramatic; they go into radio blackout because of the ionisation on the hull. They're coming in so hard, at 25,000 miles per hour, and there's no way that anyone can communicate with them. So there is that incredible suspense of waiting to see whether they lived or died in re-entry. So it's a natural for the movies. It is really one of the greatest human interest stories of modern times, that's been almost forgotten."
Do you think or hope that this film and the surrounding interest in the Apollo missions might get the space programme going again?
"It's a tall order, but I can only hope that it will pique the imagination of a whole new generation of young scientists. I've just finished a picture called Twister. It's a fictional story of this incredible atmospheric phenomenon we know as tornadoes that actually defy the laws of physics sometimes. I was working with a man who was a technical advisor on the film. He works for the NSSL, the National Severe Storm Lab, and he wrote me a letter. The reason he liked the movie so much was because he felt that it appealed to this generation that's coming along, who weren't born when this happened and have no personal recollection of it. It appealed to the sciences and it's a sad fact that academically the sciences are in a big decline, a decline in people going into mathematical fields and the physics fields. As a meteorologist, a big part of his work is mathematics and science. And this will appeal to young people to go into the sciences, so in that regard, yes I hope it does inspire young people."
You've done quite a few science fiction movies, including several with James Cameron. How did you first meet him?
"I met Jim Cameron when I was 25. It was 1980, he was art director on a Roger Corman picture called Galaxy of Terror and I was hired to be on his night crew as a set dresser. I had been a set dresser originally in the mid-'70s when I first went out to Hollywood when I was 18. In the interim I had gone to New York to study acting. I had come back and I was looking for acting work, but I was moonlighting as a set dresser. A buddy of mine introduced me to Jim and he gave me a job on the spot, and we got to know each other in the course of this production. I was making a small film at the time called Fish Heads that was based on a song by Billy Mumy who was in Lost in Space."
That was when he was half of the musical duo Barnes and Barnes.
"Barnes and Barnes, who were wonderful. I showed Jim this film I'd made to promote this song, and he realised that I had more of an interest than just painting a flat. So we became friends and colleagues. he was telling me at the time about a script that he was writing, that he wanted to direct, called The Terminator. We would be working late into the night and I'd say, 'What does the Terminator do then, Jim?' 'Well, he comes back from the future.' 'Let me get this straight...' It was actually not unlike that. He brought me into his circle - he's a very private man in many ways - but he accepted me as a peer very early on. We've been good friends. We're actually the same age, although I've always thought of him as kind of an older brother. He ended up tossing me a bone, as it were, to do a cameo in The Terminator. A few years after that I got the tremendous role of Hudson in Aliens."
I think that's what our readers know you best for.
"I think before Apollo 13, I've been best known for two films: Aliens, the role of Hudson; and another picture that had science fiction elements to it, that was a teenage comedy, Weird Science."
Aliens was a tremendous follow-up to a tremendous movie. Was there a problem in trying to follow on from such a huge hit?
"The script was incredible. I read the Aliens script and thought, 'My God, he's going to knock this one out of the park!' I remember reading the script for Terminator before it was made and thinking, 'This is one of the best screenplays I've ever read, if not the best.' I read Aliens and weirdly enough I was over here seeing my girlfriend - who's now my wife and the mother of my 18-month-old son, James - and I got the call for the audition. They were all over here starting to do the casting at Pinewood. I went in to meet Jim and read for him, and it's always very difficult reading for your friends because you really have no mystique with them. They know your bag of tricks. I much prefer to read for someone who doesn't know me. That way I can throw a persona at them, and they can't really know: 'Is he acting, or is he really like this? What's his story there?' The magician doesn't like to show how the trick is done, as it were.
“So I had a good reading, but I didn't feel like I'd really set the world on fire. I went back and I didn't hear for - oh God, it must have been six weeks. So then I got a call in the morning - it was night-time here - it was Jim calling to say, 'I want you to play the role of Hudson'. You could probably hear me howl all the way back to California. That was a great experience for me; a great role in a great production. I think Jim was very smart on a fundamental level. Alien was like this ride in a spook house, where you never knew when the monster was going to jump out at you. I'm boiling it way down. So Jim, instead of going down that road that had been so well travelled, he decided to make Aliens this ride on a wild roller-coaster. Alien was a whole departure for science fiction films in terms of the incredible design of HR Giger and the whole evolution of that monster from the pod to the face-hugger to its birth out of the human host to ... God almighty!
“It preyed on a lot of primordial fears: the idea of parasitic oscillation, that feeds off its host. It took a lot of fears: the classic vampire myth; the idea of cancers, of tumours that grow inside you. It really got you on a very gut level, a very primordial level, and it was so cleverly done. To have this heroic part played by a woman - Sigourney Weaver is the heroine of this movie as opposed to the classic hero - it really was an amazing piece of work. Ridley Scott did such a fantastic job on that film: just the sound of that movie and the way that story unfolds visually. I remember seeing Alien in a movie house in Times Square. If you had told me I was going to be in the sequel I would have just laughed at you, thought you were mad."
We have a thing in London called Alien War, which is Aliens as a sort of walk-through interactive experience.
"I've only heard about it. I don't really know anything about it."
If you get a chance while you're in London, you should check it out.
"Maybe I should do that. They'd better not mess with Hudson! That would be incredible. I was offered the chance to do one of these ride things and re-enact Hudson, but it wasn't going to be directed by Jim and I just felt that it was exploitation of the character. There's something sacred about that picture. It's a great piece of film-making, just like Apollo 13 is a great piece of film-making. It's so rare that you get a great story married to a great piece of film-work, with a great cast, under the guidance of a Ron Howard or a James Cameron. They're sacred things. You hold them and you're loyal to them and you guard them from any kind of explanation."
You were in Predator 2 as well.
"God, I've done a lot of science fiction films. Predator 2: for a while there I thought I was going to just do all the great sequels. Another great Hollywood monster. Predator and Alien are probably the greatest monsters to emerge from Hollywood since Frankenstein and Dracula. Predator was a fabulous idea, and I think that the first Predator is hands down a much better film than the sequel, although in the case of Aliens, I think Aliens is an equally good piece of film-making to Alien. I can't say that about Predator 2. I like the director a lot, I think he's very talented. I just don't think that they developed those characters enough in the story. It was shot a little too much in a sort of 'zow! pow!' cartoon character style. I don't think there was enough for the eyes to bit into on those characters.
“I thought the set-up to the first one was brilliant. I think it's one of Arnold's best movies, besides his work with James Cameron. I just love the idea of that monster: man has been a hunter, he's killed everything on this planet, including himself. And now comes this being from another planet who seems very primordial, but God, he's hunting man. I love the idea of that and I love the resourcefulness of the Predator."
And of course, at the end of Predator 2 there's that little shot of an Alien skull.
"Isn't that great? Jim and I both got a tremendous kick out of that. in the trophy case they show that Predator had beaten the Alien. I've seen this comic book - I've never read it - Aliens vs Predator, and I've heard they're trying to make that into a movie. I don't really know what that movie would be. And I heard that somebody's trying to do Starship Troopers, which has been around for a long time. Jim had us read that as a primer as colonial marines. I said, 'What would you read to get into this?' He said, 'I'd read Heinlein, and I'd read that.'"
Was it helpful?
"Oh absolutely. It's almost a throwback to the old times of imperialism, when you'd go out and you colonise different countries, if you were a British soldier. It's the same thing, just set in futuristic times."
You mentioned Weird Science, which is a lot lighter movie.
"I don't usually mention that so much. I'm not trying to distance myself from it but sometimes as these credits get older and you get further away, you like to think that people will know you for your contemporary efforts as well as your past glories. But I've always been proud of that movie. It was the first really great role I had in a studio film. I love John Hughes and I've always wanted to work with him again. Unfortunately we've lost track of each other. I had a tremendous rapport and collaboration with him. He gave me a lot of freedom to explore that character and I had a lot of fun with it. It's become a great archetype. I always liked Animal House and I always liked the actor that portrayed Neidermeyer in Animal House. So for me, that was my Animal House."
Do you worry about typecasting? A lot of your roles have been militaristic, crew-cut guys.
"I like short hair. I think a man with short hair, it's a strong look. It's a very positive strong look. And for that character and The Lords of Discipline, when I played a cadet at the citadel, and obviously, playing an astronaut I wanted to go for a buzz-cut there too. It just depends on the part. I've had hair down past my shoulders on films, like Indian Summer. I've also done science fiction movies that aren't so much science fiction, they're more like 'circus fiction'. The Dark Backward is a very peculiar movie that I starred in with Wayne Newton and Judd Nelson that I'm proud of. It's a really balls-to-the-wall performance. A lot of people said it was over the top but I like to go the wall sometimes in that regard. Obviously in movies like One False Move and Apollo 13 and Twister, Jan de Bont's new movie that I'm making with Helen Hunt, these require a more low-key, let-the-audience-study-you kind of work, as opposed to a full-blown performance."
What can you tell us about Twister?
"The movie follows these storm-chasers who are basically meteorologists who work from grants at local universities in the mid-West, who actually go out and try to put themselves as close to the tornadoes as they can, almost like a bullfighter, in the hope of gleaning certain knowledge about tornadoes. There's still a lot of things that are not known for certain. Obviously they understand the atmospheric conditions that cause these things. It's the most extraordinary atmospheric event there is, in a way; a tornado. This whirlpool, this vortex of air. Tornadoes can have winds of over 230 miles an hour blowing in them. It's not the wind that kills you, it's the debris. It can take a match and stick it right through your head. It can take a piece of straw and stick it into a tree. These things almost defy physics.
“The movie was written originally by Michael Crichton and his wife, Anne-Marie Crichton. It's produced by Steven Spielberg and Kathy Kennedy. It's Jan de Bont’s follow-up to Speed, which was a tremendous international hit and a very exciting piece of film-making. So he's hoping to top himself and I think he's going to with this. I play one of these storm-chasers, I play kind of the gunfighter who walked away from the gunfight. My ex-wife is Helen Hunt who is still an obsessive storm-chaser. In the course of the movie we're trying to place this weather package, which is like a flight recorder, that's how we explain it to the audience. It looks like an industrial washing machine, with aeronometers and cameras and all these devices for measuring different atmospheric pressures. They're hoping to get it into the tornado's path and then it will be sucked up into the tornado and they can learn what really takes place inside of a tornado. There's always been a lot of conjecture about that. There's been a few eye witness accounts, but not too many people have seen the inside of a tornado and lived to tell about it.
“There's a rival team that's headed by Cary Elwes who is the corporate rat and really the big believer in modern technology, such as doppler radar and thermal imaging and all this stuff. Whereas my character is more of the Earth; he studies the signs of nature and almost has a sixth sense about the weather. He's totally corporately funded, he's after it for mercenistic reasons, whereas Helen and myself and the group that we chase with, we're more vocationalist. We're hoping that by unlocking the secrets of this thing that we can devise a better warning system that will save lives. So we're very idealistic, whereas Cary's character, he's more of a nemesis or an antagonist than a villain. The monster is truly the tornado. That's really what it chronicles; this fifty-year storm that's come in and it's just dropping tornadoes and every one of them's getting bigger.
“I've said this in a couple of interviews: I think this is going to be to tornadoes what Jaws was to sharks. Interestingly enough, people's perception of tornadoes is this sort of anthropomorphic entity/beast/rogue/murderer. That it's capricious, it'll kill everybody in one row of houses and across the street it won't even touch them , just break the windows or something. It'll pick up a baby, suck a baby right out of a house and drop it three hundred yards away totally unharmed. By the same token, it'll pick up a cow, suck it into the stratosphere and it'll rain hamburger. These things are amazing what they'll do. I saw pictures of just crazy things that didn't make any sense. I read many accounts.
“Some of the facts about tornadoes: the biggest tornado that was ever recorded in the United States was a tornado called the Tri-State Tornado of, I think, March 6th 1925. It stayed on the ground three hours which is a very long time. It started in a town in Missouri and before it was done it had gone through Illinois and Indiana. It had hit eleven towns, four of which were smeared off the face of the earth. It was very low to the ground and you couldn't even see the vortex. It was described as this 'boiling turbulent mass of blackness' moving across the southern part of the city. It was two miles wide, it cut a damage path 639 miles long, it killed 689 people, and it lasted between one-fifteen and four o'clock one afternoon in March in 1925."
You obviously do a lot of research.
"Well, you've got to. Any time when you're playing any kind of technical role like a scientist or an astronaut, you'd better know what the hell you're talking about because there's a lot of jargon in these professions. You talk about straight-line winds or convection or elicity or some of the terms that these guys use. You'd better know what the hell you're talking about, because if you deliver those lines and you don't know what they are, you're going to get caught. You're going to catch a bullet for your trouble."
Does production style differ between low budget stuff like Roger Corman movies and big budget stuff like Apollo 13?
"It's essentially the same job as an actor. I work just as hard on a low budget film as I do on an $80 million film. I approach the roles in pretty much the same way. If there's a profession involved I try to learn as much as I can about that profession. I find it a challenge as an actor to have a profession, it's a wonderful active thing to play. In any role you define the social background and the occupational background of the character. But there are different styles of acting, different kinds of movies. You do a movie like True Lies; I played the sleazy car salesman who pretends to be a secret agent to seduce these lonely women, and that's more like doing a restoration comedy piece. It's a bit heightened, you can goose it a little more. You can just wink a little more, you can just do a different kind of thing with it.
“Roles like One False Move and Twister and Apollo 13 are more challenging and I'm digging them because they require me to exert myself on a certain level and not always be trying to perform for the audience. I like the idea of the enigmatic portrayal, where you just be a vessel and the audience maybe project their own thoughts on you as they watch you in the dark. It's an evolution, this process we call film acting, or just acting in general. I love science fiction films. I was a nut on Jules Verne and HG Wells growing up, especially Verne who was just a brilliant writer. Those books are really worth going back and re-reading. A few years ago I re-read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."
You've been an astronaut, you've been a colonial marine, you've been a cowboy. Have you got any ambitions left?
"I don't know. It really depends on the story and the characters. I don't really have many preconceived things. I'd like to produce films and develop my own stories. Different things will appeal to me for different reasons. I read a story in an old detective magazine of a man who was a journalist for a turn of the century newspaper. He got involved in this case where they found this dismembered body. It's almost like The Magnificent Ambersons meets Silence of the Lambs. It's a magnificent, gothic story, very creepy, and I would maybe like to develop that into a feature-length screenplay. I'm starting to move into that area. If, with Twister and Apollo, I get a little more muscle and I get the chance to produce something I might try it."
interview originally posted 3rd December 2006
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