KEVIN GREVIOUX: Exactly, so I understand they have to have a humanoid appearance so we can at least identify with them. Now, micro-evolutionarily speaking, it may not make a whole lot of sense, but what are you going to do? There was this one comic book that tried to talk about stuff like that, and it had these different aliens, and one looked very, very warped, it had a lot of right angles, and you explain it, but this didn’t look cool.

CHRIS NEUMER: It comes down to that.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Exactly. That’s what I think, if it doesn’t look cool, you have to work with it, like in Men in Black, there were a lot of things.

CHRIS NEUMER: One or two?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Two. In one as well, but in two there were a lot of things that Rick Baker created that they just didn’t use, and some people said that they just didn’t understand this, or they didn’t understand that. I remember when we were pitching Underworld I got into an argument with a producer over what I wanted the werewolves to look like. He wanted them to look like — you’re familiar with Sabertooth from the X-Men, right?

CHRIS NEUMER: Sort of.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Basically, he looks like a big hairy guy.

CHRIS NEUMER: Does he have red hair and a big shaggy beard? Is he the one in the first one who chases after -?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah. They wanted the werewolves to look like that. I thought he was joking. He wanted them to have mutton chops. And I was like, no, these have to be creatures. So we just talked about it for a minute, like "Oh we can work on stuff," "Oh, we’ll talk about it later." But I told the director that I’m not walking into another meeting like that.

CHRIS NEUMER: Was this a well-known producer?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: No, but he was working at a pretty big company, and he was the lead on it when we were developing it. I said, "No," and I had this werewolf built —

CHRIS NEUMER: Would I be wrong in guessing Universal?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, I can’t tell you who it is.

CHRIS NEUMER: So even if it was Universal it would still be "No."

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Well, yeah, true it would be, but believe me, it’s not Universal. But I carried around this werewolf to every meeting we went to after that to make sure that they knew that we wanted these werewolves to be creatures; bipedal, snout-nosed creatures. After that, everyone got it, and they looked cool. They understood.

CHRIS NEUMER: Bipedal, good word. What is the word for having opposable thumbs that you can use? I’m drawing a blank now that I’m trying to think about it.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: I don’t know.

CHRIS NEUMER: I can see the picture of it in my Archeology book, but, oh well. Going back to the werewolves, one of the things that you had mentioned was that you really liked the fights, and you liked the stunts and maybe wished you could’ve had more of them, but it would’ve taken away from the story. But you’re given carte blanche, not crazy carte blanche, but you get to create some stunts that you want. What stunts did you create? What stunt or fight sequence would you like to see in a film?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: To be honest, I would like to see an all-out superhero battle.

CHRIS NEUMER: Juggernaut meets the Unstoppable?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Exactly. Mr. Immovable meets the Irresistible Force, and I would like to see an all-out superhero battle where you are basically picking up cars, throwing them across town, lifting up corners of skyscrapers. Throwing them at another superhero.

CHRIS NEUMER: Wasn’t that in the last Matrix?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: You know what, that came the closest, but —

CHRIS NEUMER: I was so tuned out by that last movie.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, but that came the closest. The first one, I guess you’d have to go back to Superman 2, with Christopher Reeve. They did the first one, but then you start doing what they do in the Matrix, that type of stuff. They didn’t throw cars; they punched through walls, and went through buildings, but to actually see that physical super-strength. Maybe eye beams, oh man! That stuff is going to be cool, once they decide they’re going to spend the money to do it. That’s what I would really like to see. Let’s face it, superhero action, that’s a part of Underworld, even though it wasn’t a comic book before, Indiana Jones was a comic book movie. So doing more of those movies like that, where you have a lot of physical conflicts is fun for me, it really is, and that’s what I like to see.

CHRIS NEUMER: I saw that in a movie too, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: You know what? I have not been able to finish that yet.

CHRIS NEUMER: I just thought it looked like a live-action comic book.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, and it looked good. There’s another movie that I’m told is phenomenal, better than that, called Casshern, and it’s by this Japanese director who’s bringing it over here. It’s on animated DVD right now. I would like to get that, I’ve heard it has some good stuff. But seeing superhero battles is really what I’d like to see.

CHRIS NEUMER: Throwing cars, twisting skyscrapers.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Oh yeah, knocking them over, punching someone across the country, having them land and create a mile-high groove because of the power of the impact. All that stuff.

CHRIS NEUMER: Now I’m not sure I got the story on this one quite right, and again, I’m not sure if it’s something you can talk about or something you want to talk about, but what’s going on with the second Underworld, the sequel?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Basically it tells the story.

CHRIS NEUMER: Now are you associated with it?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: No, I’m not associated with that one.

CHRIS NEUMER: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Mm.

CHRIS NEUMER: Or just a thing?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Just a thing.

CHRIS NEUMER: That might be a little worse than a bad thing.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah.

CHRIS NEUMER: That’s the part you don’t want to get into?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: It’s unfortunate. Let’s just say, it’s part of the dark side of Hollywood, I guess, things that happen. So, you know. I would still get to work on creative design, but —

CHRIS NEUMER: Wow, here’s hoping it fails miserably.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: (Laughs) no, but I wish him the best.

CHRIS NEUMER: One thing I was curious about, and you kind of touched on this earlier, when you were talking about working on the acting, but also working on the screen writing.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah.

CHRIS NEUMER: Are there any little things you’ve learned that have helped you grow and prosper? For example, one of the things I’ve found as I listened to more of the interviews that I did as I worked with more people, is that as a reporter, I have to make a conscientious effort to stop talking at some point in time. I notice that, even with some of the film critics that I deal with in Chicago, they won’t shut up. Like I’ll ask you a question, and then rather than just stop, I feel that I need to fill the void. Ironically, I’m doing it right now while describing what I’ve learned. The point is, once I learned that sort of trick of the trade, not really a trick, but something I learned, I realized I could do that. Is there anything between acting and screen writing that you’ve learned like that?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, with acting, you’re worrying about how you look, what to say, and how to say it. But really, acting is also listening.

CHRIS NEUMER: I think I’ve heard this one, I think you’ve said it somewhere else because it rings a bell, but continue.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, acting is listening, you have to learn to listen to the person you’re acting with, because the reality that you’re trying to create is born from, a lot of times, what you respond to. The best way to respond to something is to listen, and understand it on that visceral level, and that helps you a lot.

CHRIS NEUMER: Could you put that into more tangible terms, like an example of how you’d be listening?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: I guess when you’re acting with another actor they might give you certain physical clues. They might look up in the air or something. It lets you know if the scene calls for it, they may not be buying what you as an actor, as a character, are trying to tell them. So because they had that reaction to what you were saying, you have to then react, or try to explain to them. I hope that’s tangible enough.

CHRIS NEUMER: Acting is one of those things that is so hard to talk about, so much is inside your head and your heart. Actually, there’s an interview in the magazine I gave you, with Tom Jane. I have never spoken with a man, a person period, who was so able to put so much of the unspeakable parts of acting into words. So if you say something and it’s not with the most utter conviction that you could, I’m going to respond by saying, "Well…" and then you say, look, seriously, so it’s slightly improvised.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: I guess you would say that there’s a lot of improvisation on an unconscious level that occurs, and you have to be in tune with that. So all the extemporaneous stuff that you might not get to practice you need to be ready to react to, and that’s part of your listening. You’re being observant of what he’s doing. You’re also giving him as well, because there’s a reciprocity associated with it. So you have to understand the kind of mutualism, or symbiosis which occurs when you’re acting with someone else, and be conscious of that. I don’t know if that makes any sense.

CHRIS NEUMER: It does, and I’m excited about the fact that you used extemporaneous. Now I forgot, but you used three really good words in there.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: (Laughs)

CHRIS NEUMER: Symbiosis, and then something else. I always find it interesting when I talk to actors, who know things about actors, and the more you try to get noticed, the worse your performance gets.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: I guess that may be because you’re too conscious of what you look like, or how you look, or whatever, and it’s hard to separate yourself from that a lot of times. I don’t want to call it narcissistic, but [it is] in a sense. You call a rose by any other name, and it is what it is, and it’s really narcissistic.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: But you don’t want to put a negative spin on it, but there’s a part of it that’s actually necessary.

CHRIS NEUMER: It’s also not true to the character, if you were talking like this and I was sitting here [staring off] the whole time.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, exactly. It’s interesting and it’s fun. With writing, some of the same things go into it when you’re doing dialogue, but I think a lot of that occurs within yourself. Sometimes writing can be like a window into your own personal schizophrenia. I think it’s interesting because you play all the characters, you separate all of them, and you have to be able to convey the real emotions that you want people to understand, and really absorb and I think that’s really important. So I’ve learned to listen to myself a lot of times, with writing. I also think of something a lot more simplistic is the fact that you have to learn to trust yourself with your writing. For a lot of people, that’s not a trick of the trade, but for me it is, because you always try to default to cool.

CHRIS NEUMER: Try to default to what?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Default to cool. Actors say a lot of times that you want to look for the funny in things. Well, because I’m a sci-fi fantasy guy, I like to default to the cool, what would be cool, and then you find a way —

CHRIS NEUMER: Greedo shooting first.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Huh?

CHRIS NEUMER: Greedo shooting first, that would be really cool.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: (Laughs) yeah, but even something like that. But I just have a good time with it.

CHRIS NEUMER: I’m always curious to know this, because I’ve dabbled in some writing of a fictional sense on my own. But I realize that I can’t write female characters at all, I have absolutely no idea how they think. I can’t put myself in that situation where I try to think like a female. This could be like a Paul Reiser stand-up, but it really isn’t. The connections I make, I know females just don’t. How do you put yourself into the shoes of a female to write their character?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: I guess the easy answer is that they’re human first and female second.

CHRIS NEUMER: That’s politically correct right there.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: That might be a little PC, but on another level it’s actually true. If you look at what happened with Ripley, or I should say Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, that part was originally written for a guy, but he said, well why can’t a woman play it? Now did she do anything that was necessarily female in the first Alien movie? But yet, there’s no denying she’s all woman, and reacted the way people really react. So you don’t really look at it that way. Now, if you were doing a relationship movie, like a chick flick, that may be a little different.

CHRIS NEUMER: I’m also thinking back on that line in As Good As It Gets, where the receptionist asks Jack Nicholson how he writes women so well, and Jack Nicholson says, "I take men, and then I remove accountability and reason." But it seems like with something like Underworld, when you’re writing this it would seem imperative that Seline is not just an ass kicker like a man, but —

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Of course, but understand, I mean, your own relationships you’ve had in the past, and how women react. I mean, you’ve had enough girlfriends by this time to know women.

CHRIS NEUMER: Now that is a pull-quote.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: (Laughs) so it’s not like they’re totally alien to us, you know what I’m saying?

CHRIS NEUMER: Was there ever a thought, like throwing a nod to complaining about how tight the outfit it? There was a scene in Spiderman 2 where — you’ve seen it, correct?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yes, yes.

CHRIS NEUMER: Where he’s coming —

KEVIN GREVIOUX: No, no, I haven’t seen it. I’ve seen some of it, but not all of it.

CHRIS NEUMER: What the hell is wrong with you, I mean seriously? The first one was terrible, but the second one was —

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Here’s what it is, I don’t go to the movies.

CHRIS NEUMER: You have a DVD player though, right?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yes, but I’ve been so busy. Every Tuesday I go to the DVD store and I buy the ones I haven’t seen and then I just wait until I have a chance to watch them.

CHRIS NEUMER: So you have Spiderman 2?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: I have it, I have a lot of them, I have Hellboy, but I haven’t seen it yet. I have all the Lord of the Rings, but I haven’t seen them either. I’m busy, I just don’t have time. But when I finally get some time, then I can actually sit down and watch them and say ok, I have some time to really go over them.

CHRIS NEUMER: All right. So there was a scene in Spiderman 2, and I don’t think I’m ruining anything by saying this, Spiderman is actually taking an elevator from the roof top down to the first floor of the building, I’m not going to tell you why, just that he’s in an elevator. So another guy gets in, and there’s this scene, where it’s kind of a master shot of the two of them, and the guy looks over his shoulder, and Spiderman is in full costume. So he says, nice spidey suit, and Tobey Maguire says something like, yeah, it’s a little itchy though, and it’s kind of tight in the crotch at times. Was there ever a thought, like ever including a little knowing nod like that in Underworld, where Seline is like, I’ve been wearing these leather pants for how long now?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: You know I can’t remember, because most of my scenes weren’t with her.

CHRIS NEUMER: But in the script?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: No, no, no.

CHRIS NEUMER: Was there ever just like a little humor, or was that just too much taking the fan-boy out of the moment?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: That would be taking the fan-boy out of the moment. I think —

CHRIS NEUMER: We want Kate Beckinsdale to like wearing those pants.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: You see, but the thing is, the film is really such a collaborative effort that you really don’t know what she’s going to be wearing until you actually see it. You can describe it sometimes.

CHRIS NEUMER: But in theory you know.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah.

CHRIS NEUMER: That’s what I’m talking about.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, but you see, when I wrote my version of Underworld, I didn’t know what she wore. I was thinking all black, but I wasn’t thinking about the suit they would actually put her in.

CHRIS NEUMER: How does that work?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah…

CHRIS NEUMER: We’ll hit that one when the tape recorder is off then. I did an interview with the producer Neil Moritz; he did 2 Fast 2 Furious, XXX, basically Mountain Dew commercials for 15-year-old boys. I don’t necessarily like his movies but I have a tremendous amount of respect for what he does. I remember reading a number of reviews of the movie Torque, and they were complaining that the movie simplified women, so they were just cartoonish women with big breasts in leather. And I thought to myself, that’s the point! It seems like that’s sort of what you’re saying here, that maybe in Selene you want to create a character where someone’s like, well, maybe she would go for me, look, she’s going for him.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: I think that’s why you hire an attractive woman.

CHRIS NEUMER: Unattainability.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Well, that’s why you hire an attractive woman, marketability, what sells, blah, blah, blah. Let’s put her in something sexy, and you hope that she can carry it off, which she did very well.

CHRIS NEUMER: She did.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, she did. So you try to do things like that. So as a writer, you don’t necessarily think about things like that all the time, but there are actors who will come to you. Like I heard this one story about one actor who called the writer and asked them, well, what am I going to be wearing? It’s like, wow, I don’t know. I mean, you have an idea, but it’s not something that you can really put into words all the time. I mean I guess, what will you be wearing? Heavy soled boots?

CHRIS NEUMER: And lots of petticoats.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: I wrote this one script and I am having a hard time trying to figure out what kind of military outfits they’re going to wear, because this is in the future.

CHRIS NEUMER: Don’t make them all silver.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: No, no, no, believe me. We were just talking about that, trying to come to an agreement.

CHRIS NEUMER: When you work with it, I can see that. If you’re not able to compromise, I can see how this would be the worst industry in the world.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, because it’s rough. Someone told me that Brad Pitt appeared in a comic adventure of some sort, and someone had said something to the effect of, what can a person do to get into this industry? And Brad Pitt said, don’t.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, I love it when people ask questions like that. It’s like, hey, Kevin, man, I saw you in Underworld, how do I go about doing this? You’re like, well, let’s see, it only took me eight years, so, start working. I mean, I have people come up to me all the time and say, hey, how do I go about publishing a magazine? I’m like, you just do it, that’s it. You work at it.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: But you know what, no one wants to hear that answer, and that’s actually the answer.

CHRIS NEUMER: Go to the Starbucks at Wilshire and Labret, or something like that, and sit there until some agents from William-Morris come into the Starbucks, and then do this —

KEVIN GREVIOUX: But you know what, everyone thinks there’s this secret formula that insiders have.

CHRIS NEUMER: There is - lots of work and talent.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, but I will say this much, you mentioned tricks of the trade. There are those, and I think that’s what people are actually looking for, because everything else is in books. But it’s like, ok, don’t give me the coffee table answer. What is the real way you get into the business?

CHRIS NEUMER: I gave it 100 percent, showed up everyday. It was really a team effort.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, because I remember trying to get into comic books, way before Underworld. Talking to some industry people, people I admired, and they gave me the cookie-cut answers. And it’s like, no, there is another way. And you know what? I’m doing it now.

CHRIS NEUMER: Do you tell people not to answer that way? I’ve actually started to do that, when people start talking, not you particularly, but when someone says, it was great working with them, I say no, that’s a bunch of crap, I don’t want to hear that, try again. Let’s hear it again, let’s try the answer that you didn’t give Entertainment Weekly.

KEVIN GREVIOUX: No, I have not tried that. But there are some people you know you can approach like that, and others you can’t. There are some, like with the comic book industry, there are some people who are cool, and some people who aren’t cool, and the thing is —

CHRIS NEUMER: That can just be generalized everywhere, though, can’t it?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, believe it or not, man, it is. Until you get with an industry professional who says, look, here’s what it is, the best thing you can do is don’t give me the answer, oh, a writer writes, write everyday, read everything. No. What you need is to find yourself an artist, you need to find your best idea, and you two need to collaborate and put something out.

CHRIS NEUMER: This is comic books?

KEVIN GREVIOUX: Yeah, this is comic books. Just supposing this though, with the standard cookie-cut answer, this is what they really need to have. This is what you need to do, once you get that done, and then you show it to this person. Now that’s a lot more informative than, oh, you have to work hard, write and read everything, blah, blah, blah. You need to know this. I need something a little bit more specific. It’s kind of like you have to be a guidance counselor. When they really come to ask you that question, be a guidance counselor.

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