Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my final interview from Comic-Con. Yes, I've been super-lazy, yet somehow super-busy at the same time, and have taken my sweet time getting this out, but I think you'll like it. The below interview features Kerry Conran, director, (pictured Left) and Jon Avnet (right), producer. Keep in mind, this interview was done BEFORE it was announced that Kerry Conran was directing A PRINCESS OF MARS. Being a recent Edgar Rice Burroughs addict, I would love to discuss Conran's plans for the John Carter kick-off flick, but since it wasn't known at the time of the interview I'm just gonna have to bug a whole bunch of people until I get a follow-up. hehe
Anyway, I hope you've listened to that great music that Harry linked to earlier. It's a big score and fits perfectly with the movie... So, get it... turn it up, sit back and relax. Here's the interview!
QUINT: How's the process been today?
JON AVNET: You mean the onslaught?
KERRY CONRAN: It's not been terrible. I think the trauma has set in. I'm fine, now.
QUINT: It's already becoming a well known story about how you made the opening of the film on your computer over a few years... I think you're probably going to be getting this forever, like Robert Rodriguez still gets asked about the $7000 feature. But you've been working on this, from the beginning, for what? 8 years? 10 years?
KERRY CONRAN: Ten years total, yeah. It's insane.
QUINT: You started working off designs from your brother, right?
KERRY CONRAN: I sat down trying to figure out how to do something. It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. The main thing for me was realizing that Hollywood is not prone to handing out 100 million dollar budgets to anybody who walks up and requests it. The technology was just emerging 10 years ago that suggested a different way, possibly. So, I kinda set out to test that, to kinda find out what could be possible.
The school I went to, Cal Arts, which is sort of a feeder program for Disney animators, it exposed me to the conventions and techniques of 2-D animation. The computer, at the time, was sort of like a device that was able to adapt those sort of conventions to live action. So, you're actually able to use a computer almost like an animation stand in a conventional sense. You treat the actors almost like cell animation. So, I started experimenting with those techniques and developed a story over the course of those 4 years and actually set out to create the film and only got 6 minutes accomplished in 4 years. It seemed like an impossible goal.
That was at a point in time that Kevin, my brother, he urged me to show the film. So, he invited Marsha Oglesby, who was a friend of his wife's and a producer on this film, to look at it. It was the next day that I went in to see Jon as a result of that. From that period of time, it was 6 years to the completion of the film.
JON AVNET: For me, it was taking this great technological skill, the great ability Kerry had as a stylist, his ability to create graphic images that are so striking and making a film. Not making a series of moving images that were artistic and stunning. Because the technological challenges were so great, it made it a little more difficult to see the film and to do the normal things you do with a film which is... "Is this funny? Can this be funnier?" That was, to me, the biggest challenge, on top of or next to the technological issues.
JON AVNET: What happened was Kerry came and showed me this I was blown away. I said, "What do you want?" He said, "I want make my movie." I said, "I think I can do that." What I didn't know at the time was how and a lot of other questions in between how and a finished product. Over time, as we started working on the script and I came to know Kerry better, I realized that the very thing that made this film potentially so exciting for me, and I think for an audience, which was the personal nature of it and the singularity of the vision, would never succeed and never survive the development process within a studio.
At one point we had an opportunity to go into a studio and I remember looking to Kerry and going, "I'm not going to do this because I thought I would kill it." I just had great, great confidence in Kerry. Not as great confidence, curiously, in myself. I just knew I had to try and figure out how to make this work. I believed left to his own devices and what we had already done together and he would come up with something truly excellent.
We were fortunate to get a number of people who were interested in financing the movie once I got Jude (Law) and Gwyneth (Paltrow) involved in it and I asked them, essentially, "Would you finance the movie without going to a studio first?" And loosely, not contractually, they agreed, so we were able to shoot the movie without the normal studio interference. It was really, Kerry, Jude, Gwyneth, myself, Kevin (Conran), Angelina (Jolie)... you know, it was like a kind of small family film on this huge blue screen set.
Afterwards we cut together a 24 minute presentation and I screened it for every studio. June 16th two years ago, I guess it was, and there was an enormous amount of interest. At that point, I was in a position where I could make a deal where I had all final creative controls. Basically, I handed them to Kerry... (laughs) Which is kinda risky on one hand, but I had worked with him for four and a half years. There weren't going to be any surprises. In retrospect, that was a great decision for making the film be what you saw. If I'd be remembered for anything on this thing I think it'd be keeping them away from Kerry so he and I could just figure out what it is and how to do what it is that needs to be done.
KERRY CONRAN: (Smiles) A little bit. Kevin and I, obviously, grew up fanatical... spastic... comic book geeks to this day. At the time, particularly when we were growing up in the '70s when the SUPERMAN film first came out... The things that they're able to do today to realize some of the things you saw in those comics weren't possible. It's actually a great period of time for that, for that genre, films that you really can almost achieve anything.
[At this point we're already asked to wrap things up]
JON AVNET: That might be worth getting on the phone and talking to Kerry about it. That's why we're here. You guys appreciate that. When Kerry handed me this little comic book that Kevin had done, I went "Cool." I had always wanted to my own comic book and I thought, "This is it!" I came at this from the old Fleischer school. I mean, it's not like I didn't look at or enjoy some of the other ones, but that is sort of where I started. And nobody else is really going to care about that and it's so much what the movie is, so if we can't do it all now in the depth you want....
KERRY CONRAN: Oh, I think so, too.
KERRY CONRAN: I think you're probably right.
KERRY CONRAN: They give you the hook.
JON AVNET: Well, basically it was my job to suggest and then to get. What we didn't want to do was cast the typical names. Frankly, I would turn to Kerry and say, "You're my barometer. You're my litmus" because I didn't want people that would be rejected by our core audience. When I suggested Jude, Kerry had that kind of funny look on his face like I'm out of my mind and "Is this possible?" I said, "I might be able to do it." He said... I think he said, "It's a brilliant idea" if I remember correctly.
KERRY CONRAN: "Inspired."
JON AVNET: "Inspired." So, we chased after him. Then when we got Jude, who worked both period, who worked both having theatrical experience, who worked on blue screen, who hadn't hit yet as a major action star, so it'd be a freshness of that coming together. Then I suggest Gwyneth, again because I thought period-wise she would look good. And it's not an easy role to pull off. You can say, "Well, she's too whiney" or this that and the other, but the fact is she pulls the role off because Jude couldn't be Jude without her and Frankie couldn't be Frankie without her. A lot of the way it works is Frankie comes in and steals the show there in the second part of it and she steals it from Gwyneth, who gives it to her. She's so good. She's such a good actress.
So, it was looking for people who fit the look, looking for people who had the right theatrical pedigree, if possible, looking for people who weren't over-exposed... even someone like Angelina, when she comes in there she's sooooo good and you see why everybody loved her and now you're going to love her again. And it's all to serve what Kerry had put together. It was a little bit, maybe, higher in terms of its ambition than Kerry might have been initially, but I don't think he was aware of how good what he had done already was.
And I was, because I didn't do it. I didn't shoot this stuff, so I'm looking at Kerry's stuff and I'm saying "I can get these actors. I can get this and as long as you tell me that you're OK with this... as long as this is not skewing..." And he's not the least bit shy. If he doesn't think someone's right, he will let you know, so that was a good communication and that's why we ended up with a pretty remarkable group.
KERRY CONRAN: They were a great cast. I think they're also almost contrary in that you haven't really seen any of them, except perhaps Angelina, in this type of a movie, in these kinds of roles and I think that's what skewed this film a little different and, I think, elevated it in terms of just giving it some credibility. It's amazing in how it all worked out that way, which I, to this day, don't know how it happened!
QUINT: What's the most challenging aspect of getting the film to the final product we saw a couple days ago?
QUINT: Did you guys have any trouble getting a studio to look at this?
QUINT: After the movie, I talked to you a bit about how much Fleischer I saw in the film, especially the Superman cartoons. I take it that you had those images burned into your head at a young age.
QUINT: Well, I think there's one more question that I have to ask... I mean, I could sit here all day and listen to the pulp and comic influences of SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW...
QUINT: Cool. I'd love to pick your brain for an hour! But before we get done... I'd like to touch on the cast real quick. Not only is the cast great in the roles... I think it's going to mark a return to form for a couple of them. For instance, on the tram to and from my hotel there were people who saw those giant robots out front and were like, "What's that?" "Oh, I think that's for that SKY CAPTAIN movie... I don't know, it's got Angelina Jolie in it..." But, I think she's going to win back lots of favor that she may have lost due to TOMB RAIDER and some of her recent films...
QUINT: Her and Giovanni Ribisi steal the movie for me.
QUINT: That's the thing I love about the casting. Each person seems note-perfect for their roles and that's what I'd like to touch on real quick before...
QUINT: ...I'm ushered out of here.
There you have it, squirts! Ran out of time for the dirty joke question, but hopefully I'll get some more words with Kerry about the influences of SKY CAPTAIN and some tidbits on Barsoom and hot, half-naked red Martian princesses! Hope you liked it and sorry for being a lazy seaman and taking so long to get it out to you folks! But I got some really badass stuff lined up, as well as a couple more interviews to transcribe! Keep your eye on the site, squirts! You'll be glad you did.
-Quint
