Alright folks, Harry here... Getting ready to go off to do a panel on the 10 best fantasy films ever (I think I'm gonna argue for a whole bunch of fantasy films.) Sounds like things are progressing well on THE PATRIOT, though the 'softening' bit of Rodat's script scares me a bit. I'm going to try to get my hands on the latest draft... What I loved about Rodat's original draft was the intensity and hardness of the battlescenes... and the punishing deaths that people faced. I hope that scenes of a river flowing red with blood and the lifeless bodies ripped open by 58 caliber mini-ball.... the bullets were so large that you could see the shells fired.. and legend, according to some American Revolution types is that you could sometimes dodge them... though this sounds a bit Keanu-esque to me. Anyway here's the report....
I hope you enjoy your stay in Minnesota. Over here in Germany, it has been a pretty busy week as well, as the Munich Film Festival is approaching its finale. Among the highlights I saw here were David Mamets WINSLOW BOY (a marvellous adaptation of the Terence Rattigan play featuring brilliant dialog) and Pedro Almodóvars ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, one of the most wonderful movies I have ever seen - and I attend about 300 press screenings every year.
I also had the opportunity to interview several directors, like Risa Bramom Garcia (200 CIGARETTES), Don Roos (THE OPPOSITE OF SEX), John Boorman (THE GENERAL) and Werner Herzog (MY BEST FIEND). In addition, I visited the set of the new Leslie Nielsen movie 2001 - A SPACE TRAVESTY (tentative title), directed by Allan A. Goldstein. The $40,000,000 German/American joint venture between Helkon Pictures and CinEvent is currently shooting in Munich and will move to Montreal after 7/9/99, where it is scheduled to wrap on 9/3/99. On the set, I had the opportunity to freely move for about six hours and to interview Nielsen, who is also serving as executive producer and co-wrote the script with Alan Shearman.
I might elaborate on Nielsens new project later in a separate message, as the most interesting aspect of the week was an extensive interview I conducted with German-born director and producer Roland Emmerich on late Thursday afternoon in his Munich hotel. Emmerich was in Germany for about a week to serve as president of the jury of the International Film School Festival here. While American moviegoers know Emmerich as the director of effects-driven genre blockbusters like GODZILLA and ID 4, his new project, the Mel Gibson starrer PATRIOT, hits a quite different note.
My interview was published yesterday (7/2/99) on FOCUS Online, Germany's most frequented general interest website, where I happen to edit the movie pages. You can read the entire interview right now by clicking here. However, since I suspect that there are still a few AICN readers out there who don't understand German, I'd like to present the major facts Emmerich submitted during the interview below:
* Despite SAVING PRIVATE RYAN writer Robert Rodat scripting the film, PATRIOT will not be an anti-war movie. It will rather be a father-son story happening during the American Revolutionary War. Thus, while the Rodats screenplay initially included a lot of gore and graphic violence, Emmerich has since softened those scenes. It will still be a "very tragic movie", though.
* We already knew that Mel Gibson will play "Swamp Fox" Benjamin Martin and that Australian teen-actor Heath Ledger (10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU) will star as his adult son Gabriel (the role requires Ledger, who is 20 now, to play Gabriel aged between 18 and 24). Now, Emmerich disclosed that Tom Wilkinson (SHAKESPEARE In LOVE) will play General Wallace and that Jason Isaacs (ARMAGEDDON) will star as a Green Dragoons' brigadier general. In addition, French actor Tchéky Karyo (LA FEMME NIKITA) will play a French major who is helping to train the militia.
* Emmerich and Devlin are working hard to keep the budget under $100,000,000 (including Gibson's fee). This is supposed to be accomplished by heavily relying on digital technology. There are scenes where 50 extras will be digitally transformed into an army of 12,000. Emmerich described PATRIOT as a "very complex project", as everything has to be built (in reality or digitally) for the movie. Shooting will take place in South Carolina near Charlotte an well as in Charleston and its vicinity. Only a few swamp scenes will be shot in a L.A. studio - if all goes well, principal photography begins on 9/8/99 and is supposed to wrap a week before christmas on 12/15/99.
* The movie should hit American theatres in the late summer of 2000. Emmerich doesn't want to release it too early into the summer because of its tragic nature.
* I remember a story on AICN stating that Elijah Wood was considered to play Gibson's son Gabriel. I asked Emmerich about it and he confirmed talking to Elijah, who he thinks is a great actor. However, Elijah, who turned 18 on 1/28/99, still looks younger than he actually is, making it difficult for him to convincingly play a 24-year-old. That's why Emmerich ultimately turned to Heath Ledger, who he thinks is not only a very good actor but also looks like a young Mel Gibson.
We also talked about the status of the sequels to GODZILLA and ID 4: Both projects are being developed and are currently in the scripting phase. If the GODZILLA 2 script turns out well, Emmerich will probably not only produce but also direct. In addition to that, Emmerich and Devlin think they have a cute idea for an ID 4 sequel, starring Will Smith and the other principal actors who survived the first movie.
I also asked Emmerich why the so-called ID 4 "director's cut" (released on laserdisc exactly 1 year ago) was worse than the film we saw in the theatres. Emmerich replied that this "expanded version" was in no way a "director's cut" but rather a means for the studio (Fox) to generate extra money. The real ID 4 director's cut is the movie we saw in the theatres in 1996 - this is Emmerichs approved version and the studio didn't change a single frame after Emmerich finally submitted it. Emmerich said that it was actually him who made the theatrical cut even shorter and more compact than the studio originally wanted it to be. Emmerich also acknowledged that he enjoys the privilege of Final Cut since GODZILLA.
Talking about George Lucas, Emmerich said that he shared Lucas' views of the digital future of the cinema and that he was glad that Lucas is using his enormous power to push studios and theatres into the right direction. Emmerich said that the reported tensions between him and Lucas were pure fiction and that he had never really met him except for shaking his hand a couple of times. Refering to the "Plot Does Matter" scandal, Emmerich stated that Lucas had not been involved in the affair and that Lucas, after learning what had happened, called Dean Devlin and apologized. However, Emmerich thinks of Centropolis Effects as a very serious competitor to ILM. Currently, Emmerichs company is producing about half of the effects for END OF DAYS and the digital cats for STUART LITTLE.
Concerning Hollywood and the Internet, Emmerich said that the Internet won't change the Hollywood system and that pirate copies of films would rather threaten smaller movies than big ones. Emmerich stated that the losses George Lucas would suffer due to internet copies of TPM are "probably around 0.001 percent" and that Lucas, being "the control freak he probably is", considered Internet pirating a pebble in his shoe he wanted to get rid of. Emmerich depicted the Internet as a great tool for indy filmmakers to directly reach an audience of millions and also painted a bright future of kids being able to produce their own movies in their parent's garages using digital cameras and a graphic computer.
Well Harry, that's it for today, as I have to hurry now and rush to the closing ceremony of the Munich Film Festival. Please excuse my incompetent English, but this is as good as it gets for somebody from a tiny village at the edge of the alps who has never lived outside of Bavaria.
Take care!
Rico
