Back to your reflections.
Yeah. I Know What You Did Last Summer was really big. It was a big hit on a very little budget. Then I picked up a nice little streak of hits. It was all building. The Fast and the Furious was really good for me, and to come right after that the next summer and have XXX, that was big. Sweet Home Alabama kept it going and SWAT saving the summer for Sony last year was big. It’s all an evolution. I just signed a new five-year deal with Sony. It’s always moving in the right direction.
What are the specifics of that deal?
It’s a five-year deal; they get the first shot with everything I’m involved in. If they don’t want it, I’m free to do it wherever I want. Right now it looks like I’ll be making twelve films with them. Stealth is through Sony. XXX 2 is through Sony. And there are a lot of other movies that are going to be through Sony: Sinbad, RPM, there are quite a few.
Which explains how you did Out of Time at MGM.
Yes. Sweet Home Alabama is a pitch I pitched to Sony. They didn’t want it, so I took it to [Buena Vista].
Does that work to your advantage to have a hit movie somewhere else when they turned it down?
You try not to mention it. Try not to rub it in. It honestly makes you more valuable in the eyes of your home studio when you make movies elsewhere.
Is there a particular type of movie Sony is looking for from you?
Commercial. They’re looking for commercial movies.
They want the cash, the big hits?
Those are the movies that I want to make. Those are the movies I like to see and those are the movies I like to make.
There was a time when I didn’t know that studios sent out DVDs to magazines to review. I look back on that and think, "My God, how didn’t I know that?" Are there any things you look back upon and think, "How could I have not known that?
The idea that after film school, I was just going to open up an office and say, "I’m going to be a producer and try to make films." It wouldn’t sing because it doesn’t happen today. I don’t know how that happens.
Lots of luck?
Lots of luck and naiveté. And the fact that I’ve got a great son and a great wife; but I’m lucky I didn’t have them then, because I couldn’t have done it.
One of my favorite quotes about anybody is what someone said about Orson Welles: "He didn’t know what couldn’t be done." It seems like it applies to you as well.
You’re right. I just didn’t know and it was fucking hard. It was hard. It was hard. I worked an incredible amount of hours, I read so many scripts, I would go to see movies every night. I went to see so many movies, I still see almost every movie, but now I’ve got this nice office. It’s great, I’m doing what I like.
You are your own boss. It’s what every one wants. Now, you said that you go to see every movie. Does that mean even things like Vanity Fair?
I don’t have that much desire to see it, but I’ll see it. It’s not my thing. I need pace. But then again, I say that and then I’ll go see something not like that and be surprised. I love
documentaries, I love seeing documentaries. I like real world stuff. I just love watching documentaries. If I thought I could make documentaries well and I could make a living at it, I’d make documentaries.
Are you ever curious to try? I mean you can say, "I’ve produced five or six hundred million dollar hits, and now I’m going to grab a camera and go out and try a documentary."
No. No. I just can’t do it right now. I just can’t. I’d – I like to watch them and maybe one day I’ll try to make one, but I’m best when I’m working on a lot of different things at once. I’m not best all day on anything. I’m best all day working on twenty different things.
I talked to Mace Neufeld several years back. I asked him what kind of a producer he was and he said that he looked at himself as a classic movie producer. He gets one thing going, works on it for a year, whatever and sees it from start to finish. Now you don’t do that. You’re working, as you just said, on five things at once.
Sometimes I wish I was doing something like that. Sometimes I wish it was working on one thing at a time where I could just concentrate on that one thing, but with the economics of the movie business right now, that’s very hard. If I knew each year I was going to make one movie for the next twenty years, I’d do that. I don’t know if I’m going to make one movie unless I’m working on twenty different things. I have my hand in a lot of different things. It’s hard.
I’m sure there are some compromises that come from not being able to work as producer on just one project at a time. Where do those compromises come?
It’s hard to step in and make some immediate decisions on some movie that you haven’t been there all day every day and you’re a little out of the loop on certain things. Major, major decisions, I’m not out of the loop. But others… I was in Australia for five and a half months making the movie Stealth. It was the first time in quite a while that I’ve just been on one movie. It was really great and I loved it, but I also realized that, for the way I am, I don’t need to sit there all day long, every day on the set. I can be just as effective, or almost as effective, without being there all day long. I look at the macro picture of movies; I look at the big picture. I’m really involved with casting and I’m really involved with the script, I’m really involved with the marketing. Am I involved in the day-to-day of the production and when the trucks are going to be there? No.
Do you have somebody who is your eyes and ears on set?
On every movie I have one of my executives on set. They’re there all day long and they’re reporting to me, and if there are issues they tell me about them.
Have there been any instances on a film where you show up one day and it’s like, "Wait, what the hell is going on? Why are you wearing that?"
I can’t remember specific incidents, but it has definitely happened. I always insist on seeing the wardrobe before we start shooting and sometimes things change. I’m very particular about the wardrobe. Bad wardrobe will drive me crazy. Bad wardrobe and bad hair will drive me crazy.
It surprised me to learn how involved you are in the marketing of your films.
I’m very, very, very involved in the marketing of our movies.
I know other producers get involved with the marketing, but it seems like you are so much more heavily into it than others.
Look, right there, there’s a poster for Prom Night, which we’re making. We made the poster before we made the movie. I do that all the time because I like to make sure that I know how to sell the movies. I love that part of it. I love that part. I like the selling. I’m selling to–you make these movies for an audience. If you spend all this time and all this effort, you want people to see your movie. If people can’t come up with reasons to see your movie, they’re not going to see it. So you better start that before you spend all this energy. It’s a waste of money. I love making the trailers and commercials and all that.
Is there a part of marketing that you feel is more important than others?
You have to be able to convey, somehow, the idea of your movie in 30 seconds. And that’s a very hard thing to do. Out of Time we had a harder time doing that than Sweet Home Alabama. Sweet Home Alabama is easy marketing. It’s a very easy concept to get across to an audience.
I think I enjoy seeing some trailers more than I do the movie.
I love seeing the trailers. Some people don’t, I do.
Are there any trailers that you make, look at and think, "That’s a damn fine trailer?"
I thought XXX was a great trailer. I thought Sweet Home Alabama, for the type of movie it was, was a great trailer. I thought SWAT was a great trailer. I thought Torque was an okay trailer. Cruel Intentions was a really good trailer. I went back and watched that again recently.
Again, what facets of these trailers make them good? You singled out Cruel Intentions because you went back and looked at it again?
Great shots. Great music. Hopefully a really good concept.
Like a condensed version of the movie.
Yeah.
Are there any techniques in trailers that work better than others? Are there any things that galvanize the audience more so than others?
When you have a movie that’s a comedy, those are the easiest ones to do. When you’re sitting in an audience and you have a comedy, watching a trailer for a comedy, and you have a big joke at the end of the trailer and everyone laughs, you can say, "Oh, that trailer played really well." If you have a drama or an action film or whatnot, it’s hard to understand whether the audience is going to relate or not or whether they are going to want to see the film or not. There’s not that visceral thing. If you have a big stunt, maybe you’ll get a "wow," and then you get it. We knew we needed a galvanizing line in the SWAT trailer. So we went to Colin Farrell and did this thing, "Okay boys, now it’s time for what we trained for." We shot that just for the trailer, we didn’t shoot that for the movie. We did that because we were working on that campaign and the trailer as we were shooting the movie and we realized that we needed something.
Does a lot of footage get shot for things not actually in your movies?
Well... We’re doing a thing on XXX 2 where we show how Ice Cube becomes the next agent for the DVD. We did that on The Fast and the Furious DVD release too.
Since you mention it, how much have DVDs influenced your work?
They’ve been huge. Movies make financial sense now because there is so much business that comes from DVDs. It’s been the bread and butter for studios for the last five years. The things reenergized the movie business. Movies now have an afterlife. Maybe it didn’t do so well in the theater, but it did great on DVD. Like The Bourne Identity. It was the biggest movie of the year on DVD. That’s why the second one did so much better than the first.
Almost like marketing through DVD.
Exactly. It's so much fun when you’re getting to make movies. It’s really all about the audience. For me, the most fun is going to the theater the Friday night my movie opens and watching it with an audience. If they like it, it’s the best. It makes all that hard work so worthwhile.
I’m sure some of your movies have played better than others.
Yeah. The Fast and the Furious played great, XXX played great, SWAT played great. Juice was an amazing one to see on Friday night. All the cool people were going to see that movie.
And I’m assuming if a movie doesn’t play as well you’re working harder than ever on Monday?
No, you’re depressed Monday morning. You’re depressed Saturday and Sunday and you’re depressed Monday. You know by 11:30 on Friday night how you’re doing. I’ve only had a few experiences like that, but I don’t want to have any more. Torque hurt. Saving Silverman hurt. Soul Survivors hurt... well, not really. Those are the ones that hurt. But luckily, I’ve had more that didn’t hurt.
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE OF STUMPED?
Actress Charlize Theron
Writer/Director Richard Kelly
Actor Thomas Jane
Producer Neal Moritz
Writer/Director Jeff Nathanson
Actor Thomas F. Wilson
Military Advisor Dale Dye
Writer/Actor Thomas Lennon
Documentarian Michael Wilson
Director Phil Alden Robinson
The Cast & Crew of Monster talk shop
Don't miss Shrek 2, writer Charlie Kaufman's other worldly Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or the rerelease of director Richard Linklater's stellar Dazed and Confused.
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