SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN marks the feature film directorial debut of Rupert Sanders. Most first-time directors wouldn't be handed the keys to such a big-budget tent pole for, but, based on his strong work in commercials - particularly for HALO 3 and CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS - Universal Pictures gave him their live-action retelling of the Snow White fairy tale, starring Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron.
I had the chance to talk with Rupert a few days ago about the challenges of taking a new approach to Snow White, a title so synonymous with SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, some of his creative decisions and the double-edged sword of working with Kristen Stewart. Enjoy...
The Infamous Billy the Kidd - Hello.
Rupert Sanders - Hello, Billy?
The Kidd - Hey, how are you.
Rupert Sanders - It’s Rupert, I’m good, how are you.
The Kidd- Oh, good to talk to you this afternoon.
Rupert Sanders- And to you, man.
The Kidd- Okay, are you ready?
Rupert Sanders - I’m always ready.
The Kidd - At the time you were developing SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN, there were two other live action Snow White movies being put together: MIRROR MIRROR, which was kinda jockeying for position with your film as far as release dates were concerned, and then there was another project over at Disney that’s since been shut down. What is it about the fairy tale of Snow White that would then lend itself to kinda have these different visions of it to be told all at the same time?
Rupert Sanders - I think it’s one of those stories that has grown more relevant. I think it’s the most primal and visceral of all the fairy tales and has some images that have stayed with people for generations. I also think there’s something about in uncertain times we reach back to stories we know very well. I think the original was in 1937, in a bad time financially in America, and I think the same is about today. In uncertain times we reach back to certain properties, and I think Snow White is one of them.
The Kidd - While the Brothers Grimm tale is at the root of all things Snow White, but really you have that animated DIsney film that kind of trumps everything, I think. You know, when you mention "Snow White," I think that’s the first thing people think of. So in trying to make this fresh take on it, how is it that you go about making the story your own, knowing that you have all this iconic imagery out there that you’re kind of competing against, to an effect?
Rupert Sanders - Well I think the iconic imagery is in the Grimm’s fairy tale. You know, I think we’re not rebooting Spider-Man a year after we’ve just rebooted Spider-Man, you know it’s almost one hundred years since that version, so I think it’s ready to be told for a new audience with different tastes. I think it’s an absolute classic and a film that I love and admire but I think there’s definitely room for a version of the story with a girl of today’s generation, and not for a 1930’s woman. Their Snow White is very different from our Snow White, in many ways, but especially in how women are portrayed in that film.
The Kidd - Well there is this very delicate balance to this Snow White of kind of having this quiet strength in persevering through how she’s treated by the Queen in her adolescence, while also remaining vulnerable, so that you have someone to root for. Can you talk a little bit about working with Kristen Stewart to kind of craft this character that in some ways has a feminist spin on it but also still is weak enough within the story to have it be someone that you can root for?
Rupert Sanders - I think what was important was realism, you know, that was my whole mantra through the whole film, and I think, is it realistic that a 17-year-old girl can suddenly don a suit of armor and a sword and suddenly start hacking through dragons and soldiers and physically do things that feel unrealistic. So to me it was very much like her fight scenes have to be instinctive, they have to be defensive. She’s not able to fight in that way, you know, and I think what’s great about Kristen in the role and why she made so much sense to me is that as a modern version of snow white is that she carries so much weight on her shoulders, she’s so young. She’d just come out of the prison of TWILIGHT. The world’s really....there’s a terrible spotlight on her and so many people pour so much unjustified scorn on her for no reason other than that she played a very good version of a character and made believe that she was that character, which makes very little sense to me. But she still, you know, disregards...not looking at that , she’s very rebellious, she does things her own way, she doesn’t play the Hollywood game, she’s an incredible independant spirit and I think that’s what I wanted with Snow White. I mean, Kristen is brave, but she also has fear, and I put her in situations that I knew she’d be scared, and that she knew she’d be scared and that’s really in the performance, a lot of overcoming the fear in the character is also Kristen overcoming fear and that’s a testament to her bravery.
The Kidd - You bring up her link to TWILIGHT, which can be both a positive and a negative, I guess, to an effect. There is kind of this unfair vitriol that’s aimed at her particularly just because of how she’s linked to the film. You know, whether that’s fans who automatically associate her with kind of coming between Edward and Jacob or it’s just kind of this negative perception of the film, is that something you’re aware of...
Rupert Sanders - Yeah, of course I was aware of it. I knew that would be something that a lot of people thought, I didn’t let it...you know, I went after the best actress for the job with the best spirit and the best kind of wildness to her, and that is Kristen, and I didn’t really pay it much heed, to be honest. A lot of people love Kristen Stewart and the Twilight movies and a lot of people think she’s Yoko Ono for running off with one of the actors. You know, ultimately you just have to go with your instincts, and my instinct on meeting her was that she is incredibly beautiful and incredibly strong, and she is...you know, what i’ve learned more and more about her is that she pays...she is so respectful to those people who admire her and she’ll always get out of the car and sign autographs and take photos with people. You know, everything she did in TWILIGHT was for the fans of the book. She limited her acting ability by wearing brown contact lenses which take away a lot of your arsenal as an actor because that’s how Bella Swan was written, and I think that she played it so well that people think that that’s her but, you know, people are surprised when they see her without her contact lenses and playing a strong, driven woman, and that’s exciting to play with the expectations of her as much as they expectations of the story.
The Kidd - Charlize Theron does really become evil personified in thsi film, but even in doing so there are some soft edges that are given to her to kind of justfy her mindset and her behavior. So where do you draw that line in the character between her staying villainous and kind of having a bad guy to root against, and also having someone that the audience can identify and then in some ways root for because of her motivations?
Rupert Sanders - Yeah, I think, you know, there’s... ultimately to me there’s two sides of the coin. You’ve got Snow White, who has suffered the same fate at the beginning of the film, the same loss that Ravenna has, and it’s how the two deal with them in very different ways. One of them deals with it with death and the other deals with it with life, and I think that’s an important message, when things go bad around you you have to blossom in life rather than hide away and take it out on others. So I think it’s very important going into this that we create a three-dimensional character for Ravenna, a character that came from a place we understood. We can understand why she’s evil - the fact that she goes down that path, we can see the source for it. We don’t agree with it but we understand it at least, and I think, to me, she played this great, kind of wounded, animal, and to me a wounded animal is so much more ferocious and dangerous and you don’t know where you stand with it, and I think that’s what she did so well.
The Kidd - Chris Hemsworth wasn’t the first choice for the role of the Huntsman. I believe Viggo Mortensen was attached to the part for some time and Hugh Jackman was reportedly offered the part at one time. How did the role kind of change during the process and along the way to ultimately come to fit Chris Hemsworth in the end?
Rupert Sanders - You know I think ultimately the best version of the Huntsman is Chris, and Chris - you know, we didn’t really know, I mean I didn’t, I certainly didn’t know going into this, and THOR came out quite late in the day so I saw an early screening of that and just went "Wow, this guy’s really got something." Really, when I met him I realized how great he would be for that part. And I think the script did adapt to him for the better. I think that it was a much more...much younger and more exciting version of the Huntsman, and there were obviously implications, obviously, that ran all the way through the story of how that character interacted with others around him, especially Snow White.
The Kidd - There seems to be a lot of parallels to some very male-driven films and stories in terms of this version of Snow White and the Huntsman. You can kind of see some infliuences of the Lord of the Rings stories, even The Matrix in terms of this “Journey of the One.” Were there other kinds of stories that were influencing you as you were putting this tale together as far as your vision of Snow White?
Rupert Sanders - Yeah, I mean I think there’s definitely the Matrix, there’s definitely Luke Skywalker. I mean they are fairy tales to me. You know, STAR WARS is an unabashed medieval fairy tale with a princess and a prince and all of those things that...you know, George Lucas worked very closely with Joseph Campbell who wrote Hero of a Thousand Faces which describes across the board in literary incarnations this rise of a reluctant hero and that hero is in millions of stories and is in...in this case, is in SNOW WHITE, so it seems to me like it was the right literary footing for this newer take on what is essential a very thin seven-page story of the Grimm’s fairy tale.
The Kidd - It’s much more fantastical, I think, take on Snow White, so one of my questions at least, as far as some of the decisions for your film, why the decision to kind of make the mirror into a less of a mirror and more of kind of this being, which I think just kind of goes to the overall vision of the film?
Rupert Sanders - You know, I think again you’re playing with those key iconic images and I wanted to try and find a way of attacking those all from a very different side and I think that the mirror that we see is something that she sees that no one else sees, that’s totally in her head. It just kind of happened by chance, I was looking, trawling the internet for artists to come and work on the project, to create the world with me, and I found this Irish artist called Kevin Francis Gray. He’d done these beautiful bronzes of young estate kids in England with veils over them, and I just knew there and then that that was the Mirror Man. I called Kevin and he came and worked with us at Pinewood on developing the character. I love the idea of this advisor, this...other side of Ravenna’s character that is within her head that’s talking to her, and it just seems that it wanted to be something fantastical and not just her reflection.
The Kidd - What’s also an interesting decision, I think, in terms of how the dark forest is brought to life; was there any particular reason you opted to kind of, to not bring these dark creatures to life and kind of go this toxic route? Because as the film is fantastical, you would be able to get away with, kind of, trees coming to life, but instead you opted for a different path, so could you just speak a little bit about why that decision was made.
Rupert Sanders - I think on life experience, I’ve had many fun days hallucinating in forests. Really just harking back to that, I wanted a way to unlock the otherwise kind of anthropomorphic images of Arthur Rackham and stuff that was really an inspiration to me. I just had this idea that the forest was kind of primarily its defense was of the mind, you know, it manipulated the mind. I loved the idea of puffball mushrooms and I loved the idea of hallucinogenic mushrooms so the kind of combination of that became, the forest defends itself by a kind of poisonous circles of these mushrooms and if you tread on them and ingest them, your fears are projected in the forest around you. I didn’t want to have a forest that kept being like that, kept being dark and stuff, so I tried to change it in that way, that it was a literal cause and effect so things that were there on a slightly more hidden level when this potion was ingested they became very vivid.
The Kidd - My last question for you is kind of finding the right mix of the dwarves - going back to the Disney version, they’re very iconic in terms of how the dwarves are portrayed, but in this, because they’re done so differently, a lot of it relies on their chemistry amongst each other. Was it something where you had to make sure that you found the right fit in terms of the actors for the parts, or was it kind of - like how was it exactly you mixed and matched them together to get the right eight?
Rupert Sanders - It was a lot of actors I’d admired and I wanted to have this kind of...I wanted to have them as tough guys with big hearts who would be able to sing sea shanties together and would be able to mourn the loss of the fallen together, but also to be able to fight as one, and...and...just, these big hearts. Tough guys with big hearts. I loved the idea of really...you know, a lot of those guys had worked with each other before, and they had this amazing off-set chemistry as well as on-screen chemistry, this kind of...they’re such a bunch of wild schoolkids, you know, they’re real naughty, piss-taking, you know, Ray Winstone, kind of the master of ceremonies of taking the piss out of the other dwarves who called Ian McShane “Loveboy,” from his roles in the Lovejoy series that made him famous. You know, they were just hysterical. They were telling Bob Hoskins that he’s going to have to go to the premiere in full makeup and that they’d hired a small Hummer that was going to drop them at the premiere and he’s like, “I’m not fucking doing that,” then he goes, “It’s in your contract, Bob, we’ve all got to do it,” and he’s like “I don’t care, I’m not fucking doing it.” So they were just so funny together that that chemistry kind of just...when it’s there off-screen, you know it’s gonna be there on-screen. They’re all so good at what they do, and they all really pushed their characters a long way to creating memorable characters, because it’s hard to write for eight people, and that was the shortcut Disney did, because he called them what they are, and we couldn’t rely on that, we had to create individual relationships and characters in very small amounts of scenes ultimately.
The Kidd - I actually have one more question - I know there’s been talk of expanding beyond just one film, is there kind of a grand plan to do more with SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN as to whether it’s a sequel or a follow-up or just telling more stories with these characters?
Rupert Sanders - I think we’ll probably know a lot more in a couple of weeks if people really respond to the film and there’s a desire to see more of them and to see what happens to them, then that would be great. I think all of the actors have expressed interest in getting back into the world, we all had a wonderful time making it, we’ve just taken on a great screenwriter, David Koepp, who will start crafting the story with me. If we all look at each other in three or four months and go, “Wow, this is amazing, we have to do that, we will do it.” If it’s just a question of rush, rush, rush, cash in, then we’re not that interested. You know, none of us really... we have too much to lose by watering down and doing something. If we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it bigger and better and keep pushing the envelope. If it’s for any other reason, then none of us are contractually obliged to and therefore wouldn’t do it.
The Kidd - Okay. Thank you very much for your time today, Rupert, I really appreciate it.
Rupert Sanders - No problem, thank you.
Stay tuned for my review of SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN later today. SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN is now open in theatres.
-Billy Donnelly
"The Infamous Billy The Kidd"
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