Alright, Harry here... Obviously you read the first part... You're here. So you do realize that we still have no Dirty Joke for you. In his place, I will attempt a dirty joke.... My sister and I.... eh... wait that's not a joke.... ummm, kinda uncomfortable right now... Uh.... Quint and the Fair Spanish Maiden were raising their 2 lovely daughters and a son in a chateau in eastern France.... hahahahahahahaha... oh sorrry.... You folks just don't get it.... I kill me (and they will too) On with the interview...
CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE!!!
Q: NOW ON TO THE MOVIE THAT MOST PEOPLE WILL KNOW YOU FROM, LA
CONFIDENTIAL. THE CASTING IS NOTE PERFECT ON THAT MOVIE. I RECENTLY RENTED
THE DVD AND SAW RUSSELL CROWE'S SCREEN TEST. HE JUST RADIATED TALENT AND
SUPREME BADASSNESS. THAT WAS JUST FROM WATCHING IT ON MY TV. WHAT WAS IT
LIKE TO ACTUALLY BE THERE, TO EXPERIENCE THAT FIRSTHAND.
CH: You know, the payoff for being lucky enough to have the commercial
success with The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and in a different way the
success of The River Wild was that I was then able for the first time to
initiate a picture that was a personal project from the get go. Not only
initiate it, but follow through with the making of it in the way that I
wanted to and that gets right to what you're asking about, which was the
casting.
The immediate reaction to the screenplay, after Brian (Helgeland) and I had
it to where we were happy, was it centered along these three characters,
these men, each of whom was given equal weight in the first 2/3s of the
movie. The immediate reaction was, "Get rid of one or two of them so that a
big star could play the remaining part." I didn't want to do that. Not only
did I not want to do that by eliminating two of them, but my hope was to
not have stars that were immediately known to the international moviegoing
audience. I wanted to have actors who first of all were capable of playing
the part, which was the most important thing, but secondly my dream was to
have actors that the audiences could discover as they discovered the
characters and discovered how they felt about them.
Enter Russell Crowe and Guy Pierce. Russell, when he flew over here to do
that little screentest you're talking about, and it wasn't really... It
wasn't intended to actually be a screentest, but what happened was he flew
over so we could meet and talk and so forth, then we read a couple of
scenes and we talked about it some more. Then I took one of them on tape,
operating the camera myself so I could shoot it so it would have the energy
of a movie, as opposed to a static reading when the actors come in and read
on tape.
All of the energy and emotional truth that ultimately was in Russell's
performance was visible in that test. Now, needless to say, it later became
shaped and refined and subtlety added as Russell really worked on it, but
it was undeniably there. I was then able to take that tape out to my
producing partner's house, Arnon Milchan and Michael Nathanson, and show
them the tape and say, "This is the guy that I like." As I said, it was
unmistakable. I mean, they could say, "Well, what about a big name?" but
that was all they could say. They couldn't say, "So and so would be
better," because it was just so clear that Russell had it. I feel so lucky
to have been able to capture Russell at that moment, a moment in time that
was kind of magical for both of us. For me, it was the moment that I had
the leverage to cast the picture the way I wanted to. For Russell it was
that moment when he was for all intents and purposes unknown
internationally which added excitement to his performance and the sense of
discovery in the movie.
That's a moment that will never come again because Russell now is a true
international star in a way that's almost a throwback... You know, I was
down in South America not long ago, in Brazil, and seeing posters all
around for Gladiator. It was reminiscent of the kind of international
stardom that you remember seeing in those kind of counties with actors like
Burt Lancastor and Kirk Douglas. It's been a long time since we've had an
actor at that age like that, 'cause Russell's still a young guy.
Q: WELL, THE WAY THAT THE THREE LEADS PLAY OFF EACH OTHER IN THE FILM IS
OUTSTANDING. YOU HAD A STRONG SCRIPT, BUT YOU ALSO HAD THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO
DO THE SCRIPT JUSTICE.
CH: Yeah... The first thing was whether Russell and Guy could deliver the
part and to me they both did in spades. Then you have Kevin (Spacey) whose
acting ability is more of a known quantity, but this was the first time
that Kevin was given the opportunity to play what would be considered a
more romantic leading man. He had achieved his greatest commercial success
playing these kind of oddball characters who were often the villains, like
in Se7en or Usual Suspects. Here he was playing a hip, cool, romantic
appearing guy.
The three of them were given equal weight and they're each up to
shouldering that weight. That was the thing that was so gratifying to me as
the director was the luxury of not having a weak link.
Q: I'VE HEARD THAT RUSSELL'S BEEN TALKING ABOUT WANTING TO REVISIT THE BUD
WHITE CHARACTER IN A PREQUEL. IS THAT A POSSIBILITY?
CH: That was misreported when they said a prequel. When I heard that I
said, "Well call me when he's young enough!" (laughs) Russell and I would
love to work together again. He has talked about Bud White as a possible
avenue towards that end. (LA Confidential author James)Ellroy and I and
Brian would all like to work together again, but whether we'd want to go
down that particular road remains to be seen. But I very much think about
Russell and I think he's thinking about me when we're reading scripts and
so forth.
Q: COOL. WELL, AT LEAST WE GOT THAT STRAIGHT NOW. LA CONFIDENTIAL HAS A
VERY UNIQUE STYLE. YOU'VE MADE SOME POINTS ON DVD ABOUT MAKING SURE THE
SETS AND LOCATIONS AND WARDROBE WERE ACCURATE TO THE PERIOD, BUT NOT
OVERPOWERING TO THE FILM. WHAT STEPS DID YOU TAKE TO MAKE SURE THAT DIDN'T
HAPPEN?
CH: Well... (pause). You know, LA Confidential was the result of my having
wanted to for a long time deal with the Los Angeles of my childhood
memories. If you really deal with memory and deal with the reality of it,
as opposed to the nostalgia of it, it's just a certain style. Like right
now. If you walk down the street and you look around you accept a lot of
things and you're not just seeing the oddity of our day, but you're seeing
the reality of our day.
With period movies, very often what happens is the accent is put on the
oddities of the day and you're constantly reminded of "Oh look how funny
they used to do that in 19-whatever. Look at the eccentric extreme they
went to with the hair, clothes, cars, whatever." The end result of that
very often in a period movie is it distances you from it and keeps you from
getting emotionally involved with the characters. First and foremost what
interests me is getting the audience involved with the characters.
So, as I mentioned on that DVD, I wanted to keep the set dressing and so
forth in the background and the characters in the foreground, but not only
in the background, but have them be things that would be accurate, but not
demand the audience to focus on them. So, even down to the music, most of
the songs I picked... I mean, all of the songs I picked were accurate to
the period and most of them in fact were actually recorded in Los Angeles
right at the time the story was set. Not only picking novelty songs of the
period or whatever, but the music of people like Gary Mulligan and Chet
Baker, Miles Davis! You know, there's a timeless quality to that. It's also
sorta hip and cool today. I tried to do the same with the way the actors
dressed and talked. There are things that were idioms of the period and
accurate to the period, but it's not saying, "Hey look at me! Look at how
much has changed since that period."
The exception of course being the character that Kim Bassinger plays
because she's deliberately putting on artifice because that's what she
sells. Her customers are buying the movie star glamour, the Veronica Lake
thing.
It's funny, since then a lot of people have written about how LA
Confidential had impact on the fashion world, the style world, by
popularizing the mid-century look. The first thing that happened every
morning was every extra who was in the picture was given a haircut to make
them accurate to the look I wanted for the movie. Now, Russell Crowe the
way he looks in that movie most of the time, he could just walk down the
street and nobody would pay any attention to him because that look is
popular.
Q: NEEDLESS TO SAY, LA CONFIDENTIAL BECAME A HUGE HIT WITH THE AUDIENCE AND
THE CRITICS ALIKE. WHY DID YOU WAIT SO LONG BEFORE GOING ONTO YOUR NEXT
PROJECT?
CH: You know, I didn't deliberately wait. I mean, I waited a while between
The River Wild and LA Confidential. It's just I'm that way. It takes me a
while to find the characters that I'm sufficiently emotionally invested in.
What I realized, and it was quite deliberate, like I said earlier, I
realized I had the opportunity to do something different. You have that
leverage, if you're lucky enough to get it, you can either use it to raise
your fee or you can use it to do something that they don't want you to do.
LA Confidential was that project.
Now, because it was well received and so forth, people forget that it was a
real struggle to get it made. There's a long history of movies both period
and multi-character and also crime of that period that had failed at the
box office. There was a real struggle to get that picture made. When it
happily was received the way it was, I recognized that again I had a
similar opportunity, much to my surprise. Again, I wanted to make sure I
found a project that was worth using the leverage on. That took a little
while. Happily I came upon Wonder Boys.
Q: DID YOU READ THE BOOK FIRST OR WERE THEY ACTUALLY DEVELOPING...
CH: Steve Kloves had already done a draft of his adaptation. He finished it
for some little while, I'm not quite sure how long, and then it was sent to
me. I had not read the book, I read Steve's script first and what knocked
me out about it was the way in which this group of characters which were
first of all presented in such an open hearted and accepting way. In most
scripts that one reads, most movies, characters are drawn as being either
good or bad and their actions are either good or bad. There's a judgmental
attitude. Whereas in Wonder Boys, and it's true in Michael's novel as well,
the characters are just approached as human beings with all their frailties
and eccentricities intact. That appealed to me very much.
And then what I found was I loved the way in which all these characters are
struggling to figure out what they're doing with their lives. As serious as
their troubles were and as serious as their crisis' were to them, they kept
making me laugh. I read the script and then I reread it again and I thought
if I could capture that combination of serious issues and yet humor, you'd
have the kind of movie that I would love to go see.
Q: DID YOU GO TO MICHAEL DOUGLAS OR DID HE COME TO YOU?
CH: I was told at the time I was sent the script that Michael was
interested in it and was interested to know if I would be interested in it,
so I read it with that knowledge. The big question in my mind was not could
Michael play the part, but would he embrace the part in the way that I
thought could result in an extraordinary opportunity and performance from
him.
Very often actors, especially movie stars, when they play characters that
are considered unappealing or unattractive for one reason or another, at
the same time they play the characters, they distance themselves from it by
exaggerating certain things. In effect they wink at the audience and say,
"Look at me, I'm not really... homosexual, but I'm playing a gay
character," or "I'm not really alcoholic, but I'm playing one," or "I'm
not really this old, but I'm playing this old" or "I'm not really this
simpleminded, but I'm playing it that way." Many times they do that very
successfully, they win awards doing it, but to me it's false and it would
have been completely false to the spirit of the screenplay, which as I say,
there was a truthfulness about it and an acceptance of the characters,
rather than a judgmental attitude towards them.
When I sat down with Michael, that was the big question in my mind. What I
love so much about his performance in the movie is I feel there is a
complete absence of movie star vanity there. So much so, it feels like a
naked performance. What really excites me for Michael is not only the
critical acclaim he got for the part, but also, ironically, the fact that
gained weight and we dressed him like shit, photographed him in the most
unflattering way imaginable, many people time and again say they think it's
the most appealing he's ever been. I'm so happy for Michael that it worked
that way because I think he really deserves it. By the way, I think they feel
that way because I think there's this bonding with the emotional truth of
the performance.
Q: YEAH, HE'S BEEN HAVING A HELLUVA YEAR WITH WONDER BOYS AND TRAFFIC. DID
HE GET TWO SEPARATE GOLDEN GLOBE NODS? (HARRY NOTE: Notice the fine research skills of a seasoned AICN reporter with out the use of his computer! We pride ourselves)
CH: No. No. All these awards and nominations have all been Wonder Boys.
What Traffic got, of course it's gotten it's own acclaim, but in terms of
Michael, Catherine (Zeta Jones) was nominated for a Golden Globe for
Traffic. That's where you're coming from.
Q: PARAMOUNT RERELEASED WONDER BOYS. DID YOU HAVE TO PUSH THEM OR DID THEY
DO IT ON THEIR OWN?
CH: It was a little of both. There was a lot of discussion and disagreement
and speculation about when to release the picture in the first place and
how to sell it. A decision was made to release it in February and many
thought it should have been released in the fall or the winter. Almost
immediately when the movie came out to the great reviews it got, but the
disappointing opening weekend numbers, everybody knew that a mistake had
been made. Happily not only the reviews were great, but Paramount also
liked the movie enough that they felt like they let us down, Scott Rudin,
my producing partner and myself and everybody who made the movie.
Our reaction was, "Well... that's nice, but what are you going to do about
it?" The thing that they did that has not gotten much attention because it
probably doesn't mean that much to the laymen, but in fact the real story,
the thing that's extraordinary, it's unusual for a studio to rerelease a
movie. It's very unusual for any company or corporation to admit they made
a mistake unless they have some sort of court order demanding that they do.
(laughs) If there's a tire recall or whatever.
What Paramount did, they not only did that, but they took what to my
knowledge is the unprecedented step of cancelling the video contract. You
know, the video contract normally produces many millions of dollars six
months to the day after the movie opens. Not only is it an extraordinary
amount of money, but it's free money because the studio doesn't have to
spend anything to get it in terms of marketing. Paramount broke that
contract in order to bring the movie back on the big screen and I don't
think that's ever happened before.
Q: YEAH, I KNOW THE MOVIE WAS SUPPOSED TO COME OUT RECENTLY ON VIDEO, DID
THEY PUSH IT BACK AGAIN?
CH: Yeah, they did it a second time. Originally, the video was supposed to
come out sixth months after February 10th, which would be what? February,
March, April...
Q: AUGUST.
CH: August! Originally it was supposed to come out in August. They broke
that contract and pushed it all the way back to January. Now they pushed it
another month.
Q: I GUESS TO WAIT AND SEE THE OUTCOME OF THE GOLDEN GLOBES.
CH: Probably to wait and see what happens, yeah. But the move from January
to February is not that significant. The big move was from August where
they would have made all that money from the video, the DVD, the airlines,
the hotels. It's a tremendous amount of money.
Q: SO, THEY'RE ON THE GOOD GUY LIST AGAIN.
CH: Yeah, for me because you work so hard on a movie... I mean, for two
reasons. One, naturally, you want people to see it. That's tied up in box
office numbers, but to me it's about people seeing it. Secondly, I'm a big
screen person. I like to see movies in the theater with the audience.
Especially when a movie's as beautifully shot to have Dante Spinotti as
your production designer, it should be seen on the big screen. Scott and I
were both very pleased at what they did.
Q: WHEN THE GOLDEN GLOBES WERE ANNOUNCED WHERE YOU SURPRISED OR DID YOU
EXPECT THE ATTENTION.
CH: Yeah... I mean, we were hopeful. Let's say we were hopeful. The week
before Michael had received Best Actor by the LA Film Critics and won
numerous other critical prizes. We were hopeful. The reason one gets
hopeful about this stuff is it's really gratifying to have ones work
acknowledged and I was really excited for Michael in particular that he got
that Best Actor win at the Film Critics and also the nomination for the
Golden Globes. But in addition to that kind of satisfaction, those kinds of
awards serve as tremendous word of mouth for me. When a picture is a bit
unusual as Wonder Boys and some of the other nominated pictures are, that
kind of word of mouth is really helpful because it goes out there to the
general public and in a sense says to them, "Hey! This is a picture you
should pay attention to." That's great when it happens.
With LA Confidential from the time it got it's Golden Globe nomination to
the end the box office literally doubled. People forget about it now
because the movie is fondly remembered, but it was a very tough sell on the
market place because it didn't have an easy hook, it was different. The
same is true not only of Wonder Boys, but also of most movies we really
like. We like them because they're really different.
Q: WELL, IF IT MEANS ANYTHING I SAW LA CONFIDENTIAL THE FIRST WEEKEND.
CH: Well, it does! And hopefully you told a lot of your friends.
Q: OF COURSE. SO, WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?
CH: I'm working on a couple of scripts, one with a writing partner and one
by myself, reading things, but I don't know what's next. I'm not good at
planning ahead. I get so involved with the one that I'm doing that what I
then do is I look around and try and find characters that I love as much as
I do the ones in Wonder Boys. To me it's the characters and my emotional
involvement with them and one hopes the emotional involvement the audience
will have with them that's the most exciting thing.
Q: WELL, I DON'T KNOW IF YOU READ THE SITE OR HAVE READ ANY OF MY
INTERVIEWS, BUT I HAVE...
CH: The answer's yes to both.
Q: YES TO BOTH? COOL. THEN DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE NEXT QUESTION'S GONNA BE
THEN? MY TRADEMARK QUESTION?
CH: Uh-oh. What is it?
Q: WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE DIRTY JOKE?
CH: Jeez. I should have prepped for this... You know, Ain't it Cool News,
just to side step for a second, it's great because they've been a big
supporter of the movie and aside from that, I think it's a very healthy
thing. It's another avenue for opinion. To reach out to people all over the
country. For example, they were not only very early supporters of the
movie, but they called a lot of attention to Bob Dylan's extraordinary song
before most of the mainstream press did. The mainstream press happily
caught up with him later and now he's got another Grammy nomination. Ain't
It Cool News and other sites like that got it right away.
Q: YOU KNOW, IF YOU WANT AN EXTRA BIT OF TIME TO THINK ABOUT THAT DIRTY
JOKE YOU COULD ALWAYS TALK ABOUT HOW YOU GOT BOB DYLAN ON THE SOUNDTRACK.
CH: They way it worked out was early on my music supervisor Carol Fenclon
and I... um... if you put this in, I'd like you to use her name because so
often these kind of people don't get the credit.
Q: DEFINITELY.
CH: But we hit on the idea of having a singer/songwriter provide the
musical foundation of the movie because we felt that artist like Van
Morrison, Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, etc. would have been the kind of
artists that Grady Trip would have liked both because they came of age the
same time he did creatively and also because they're poets and he's a
serious writer. They deal with the same themes in their work that we were
dealing with in the movie. The longing for human connection, sense of
purpose and so forth.
As we put together our wishlist of artists, first and foremost was Bob
Dylan, you know, quintessential wonder boy. We then put together our
wishlists of songs from these artists and low and behold we were able to
get them all. A great many of them before we started shooting. Some of
them, like Neil Young's "Old Man", was the first time he's ever let it be
in a movie. By getting them before shooting I was able to play them on the
set and also shoot the scene to accompany the song. During the time we
were shooting, Carol made overtures to Dylan's people that we would like to
talk to him about writing an original song for the main title sequence.
As luck would have it, word came back that Bob was kind of a fan of LA
Confidential. (laughs) So, when I came back from Pittsburgh he came by the
editing room in Santa Monica one day and we showed him a couple of hours of
rough cut footage. We talked about the themes of the movie and where Grady
Trip is in his life creatively, emotionally and in his personal life as
well and talked about how Pittsburgh in Wonder Boys is like a human
character in the movie. Bob then went off on tour. He called me a couple
times and talked a little more.
The fantasy was he would write a song that would not only speak to these
feelings, but almost speak to them as though he was Grady Trip. A few weeks
later a little package was delivered to the cutting room. Carol and I
opened it up to find a CD inside and put it in the player and there was Bob
Dylan singing about being afraid to make a mistake, a lot of water under
the bridge, being in love with a woman who doesn't appeal to me and with
his unique poetry bringing to life the themes of Grady and the movie.
After we played it a few times we realized that not only did it capture the
movie, but it's also on its own a really cool Dylan song. The interesting
thing is that CD that he sent us, which he recorded with the musicians he
toured with and just layed down producing it himself, is unchanged. It's
that exact version that's in the movie and on the CD. It's not overproduced
the way that so many songs are. It's also not perfect. It's rough in a very
appealing and truthful way.
Q: IT'S AWESOME THAT YOU GOT DYLAN! (LAUGHS)
CH: Yeah, what's also awesome about it on a personal note is I went to go
see him in concert and he's now singing that song as his first encore.
Q: THAT'S GOTTA BE SUCH A TRIP.
CH: Yeah. You know, he's an artist that I've so admired for so long. As I
said, he's the quintessential wonder boy. He's done what we all inspire to
do. He's kept himself creatively vital over the decades by consistently
challenging himself and his fans. That's what's so exciting about the song.
It's not only good for the movie, but it stands right in there with some of
his best work. That very much is the theme of the movie. You can't turn
back the clock and be what you used to be, but you can move on and be
something different, but equally good.
Q: AWESOME. SO... THOUGHT OF THAT JOKE, YET?
CH: Ahhh. I've not. I've been talking. Let me call you back with it.
There you have it, squirts! Once again, I'll let ya' know when I receive
Curtis's joke. Keep yer' eye on the horizon. I got a lot more interviews
comin' acha, including a long chat I've done with one of the filmmakers who
is helping to bring everybody's favorite non-muggle to life this year.
Until then, maties, farewell and adieu.
-Quint
Click on me to give me those pillowtalk words you pansy fanboys! I crave your letters when I'm out at sea and the nights are long. I mean that.
