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Conversations like the one I had with One Night at McCool's director Harald Zwart don't come about anywhere near often enough. Candid, funny and without much regard for saying 'safe' and 'sterile' responses, Zwart proceeded through the interview relishing in the fact that studio executive encouraged him to spend MORE money and second guessing his decision to cut some of Matt Dillon's over-the-top scenes. CHRIS NEUMER: Hi. Is this Harald?  HARALD ZWART: Yes, this is Harald. CHRIS NEUMER: This is Chris. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. HARALD ZWART: My pleasure. CHRIS NEUMER: How've things been going for you today? HARALD ZWART: Very well. I'm in Norway at the moment. CHRIS NEUMER: North or South Norway. HARALD ZWART: The South of Norway. Are you familiar with Norway? CHRIS NEUMER: I am familiar with what I saw in Insomnia, to be honest. HARALD ZWART: That's more north. It's still broad daylight though. Even now that it's very, very late here at the moment. You have a really hard time sleeping. CHRIS NEUMER: That's what the shades are for, I guess. HARALD ZWART: Exactly. CHRIS NEUMER: In a twist of irony, I wanted to start our interview talking about the very last scene in your film. I thought this scene, where the Dumpster drops on Paul Reiser's head, was the film's most memorable scene. And such a strikingly powerful note to end on. How did you go about shooting this? HARALD ZWART: That was actually an identical joke to something I had done before on a commercial. So I knew exactly how that would work. And in that commercial we actually dropped a car on somebody. That's why I was able to do it in a heartbeat. CHRIS NEUMER: Did you use any CG to create that illusion? HARALD ZWART: There was actually no CG at all. It was very easy. If you look on the DVD, there'll be a element by element breakdown of how we killed Paul Reiser. That's one of the bonus features. CHRIS NEUMER: I'd know what you were talking about if someone had sent us a DVD. HARALD ZWART: (laughs) Paul Reiser just runs through the scene and at an approximate point, we put a dummy in there and dropped the Dumpster on the dummy and make a cross cut. It goes so quick that all you need is a 3-4 frame crumpling of knees and legs to be convinced. CHRIS NEUMER: Its abrupt nature reminded me of that scene in Erin Brockovich where Julia Roberts got in that car accident. HARALD ZWART: Yeah, it did. CHRIS NEUMER: I liked your scene at the end of the film though. HARALD ZWART: It was actually supposed to be in the cut earlier. Also on the DVD you can see the old depressing ending where Paul Reiser gets killed a lot earlier. However, on the screen tests we realized that people couldn't hear the first half of the dialogue between Liv and Michael because they were laughing so hard from the Dumpster gag. CHRIS NEUMER: Was the Dumpster drop in the script? HARALD ZWART: No. That was something I added. CHRIS NEUMER: It was a shame that the rest of the characters couldn't have met the same fate. HARALD ZWART: (laughs) I wish we'd killed John Goodman in a more comedic way, that was something that, in hindsight, could be less depressing. CHRIS NEUMER: Was it that bad? I liked all the flying feathers. Made me think the events all happened in a snow globe. HARALD ZWART: That was the intention of all that. CHRIS NEUMER: How did you come to be attached to this project? HARALD ZWART: Michael Douglas had bought the project and he was shopping around for a director and spoke to my agent and my agent showed him my commercial short reel. One of the gags on the short reel was the commercial where the car falls on somebody's head. I guess Mr. Douglas liked it–I made him laugh. Then I met him and that's how it started. CHRIS NEUMER: You hadn't done any features prior to this film, correct? HARALD ZWART: I'd done several short films and I'd done a mini series that was later cut into a feature, so I had done several drama things before. CHRIS NEUMER: Did you find it to be a completely different beast shooting a feature over here in Hollywood? HARALD ZWART: No, I actually found it easier to work in Hollywood. People had told me about how they steamroll over your creativity, and take away your project and everything, but they were such nice people (laughs). It was such a pleasure. It was so very easy. Whenever they asked me ‘how many times do you want to break the glass' I'd say ‘I think I'll have to do it two times' and they'd say, ‘how about five?' It was kind of an opposite direction for me. CHRIS NEUMER: So they were actually interested in having you spend more money. HARALD ZWART: Yeah. They just wanted me to do what they had hired me for, I guess. CHRIS NEUMER: Let's hope your next feature provides you with as pleasant as an experience as this. Most of the actors who were involved in One Night at McCool's had rather wholesome and reputable reputations on and off screen. Paul Reiser was in Mad About You and Liv Tyler was the picture of innocence in Armageddon and Stealing Beauty and all those reputations went out the door in this film. Was that part of the allure of the project? HARALD ZWART: Yeah. I think that was what attracted the actors to the project. They were all things that they could do that they hadn't done before. CHRIS NEUMER: Did you have the least bit of juvenile fun directing Paul Reiser in his bondage gear or Michael Douglas in that weird pompadour he had going? HARALD ZWART: Well it was funny. When we started discussing what kind of outfit he [Reiser] should wear, we met in Hollywood in different hotel lobbies and he just seemed to forget every now and then how famous he really is and he would be sitting there, we had all kind of S+M gear spread out–  CHRIS NEUMER: In the hotel lobby. HARALD ZWART: Yeah, you meet in the hotel lobbies and you discuss things. You know. And he then he went "Jesus Christ, people are going to think that I'm actually shopping for this stuff. Very funny. CHRIS NEUMER: I don't know, I thought he looked a lot better in the S+M gear than he did in that all Madras short suit he was wearing at the bar-b-que. This was just a nightmare for his character. It must have been a whole hell of a lot of fun to do. HARALD ZWART: (laughs) Yeah, he had a blast doing it. It was also funny with someone like Michael Douglas who doesn't take himself seriously at all. But his public persona is that of such a good looking guy that he steps out and wants to look like that that it's really admirable. CHRIS NEUMER: Was it his choice to look like that? HARALD ZWART: Well, I had described to him what a low rent, has been of a Vegas hitman he was–the cheapest hitman you can find in America–and I talked about a track suit, but him and his wardrobe lady came back with that pompadour on his head. CHRIS NEUMER: Given that info, it's surprising you didn't have him listening to Tom Jones music. HARALD ZWART: (laughs) We were actually thinking of that, but Johnny Cash was slightly more hip at the moment. CHRIS NEUMER: I can appreciate that, but must admit that I have a weird fascination with Tom Jones that I can't readily explain. HARALD ZWART: Oh, I do like him! He gives off a really good energy. CHRIS NEUMER: He does! I don't admit this next thing to many people, especially in a first conversation, but I've actually seen Mr. Jones live. Moving onward though… How closely did you follow Stan Seidel's original script? HARALD ZWART: Pretty close. Any changes I made, I made with the writer. I was very fortunate to have him with me at all times. Any time we wanted to change something we let him write it so that the whole movie would have the same tone of voice. The first thing we took out from the script was that the Jewel character used to have her own point of view. That's the first thing I took out because I didn't want to know what she thought and what her memories of everything were. I just wanted the whole movie to be about how the guys remembered her. CHRIS NEUMER: I enjoyed the film the most when the tone of it was off the wall and kind of risky. Like the first parking lot sequence where Matt Dillon meets Liv Tyler for the first time. The viewpoints were all very different and that was nice to see. I also enjoyed the sequence where Paul Reiser is describing what Liv Tyler is wearing to Reba McEntyre. HARALD ZWART: I put that scene in there so that you, as a viewer, are reminded that you are listening to somebody's memory, not the truth. That was one thing that wasn't in the script that I put in so that you could see that people don't really remember anything. My God, they project their own wishes onto the memory. I'm glad you said that. That was a fun scene to do. CHRIS NEUMER: Talking to you now, it seems like a lot of stylistic techniques you brought with you from your past projects were the things that I appreciated the most in the film. HARALD ZWART: Thank you. CHRIS NEUMER: I thought that the film could have been better had there been more differentiation between the three versions of the story. There were times when you could tell who was telling the story based upon the actions of one of the characters, but I would have liked to see more of that. Was that something that you were interested in playing up more? HARALD ZWART: We had a lot more of it in there, but actually seeing the whole movie together, it killed the tempo of the film. So I left it being more hints. I had at one point fantasized about them being completely different wardrobe and everything, but, also that would have been more confusing I think. CHRIS NEUMER: That may have taken it to The Usual Suspects territory, yes.  HARALD ZWART: Exactly, it's a tough call and I don't know if I made the right call, hearing you speak, I wish I'd left that in, because Matt Dillon did some great stuff in that doorway scene, he was really obnoxious. I guess it was just–I was more interested in keeping the pace going. I am really afraid that movies are getting boring. CHRIS NEUMER: That brings another good point up. One thing that really stuck with me was your take on the sex scene. Most of the American public is used to seeing Vaseline filters and slow pans across the room to a fireplace during sex scenes, but you're throwing in jump cuts, rap music and quick camera movements. The sex scene actually had a faster pace than the rest of the movie, why did you go about shooting it in that fashion? HARALD ZWART: I don't know. It's not a very tender loving moment, she's actually just fucking his brains out… and that can be kind of quick. I just wanted to have this sense of it being a fast, rough number. This was not soft gentle sex. This was kind of tough. CHRIS NEUMER: No argument there. And that was your choice to shoot it that way? HARALD ZWART: It was just the way I shot it. You're flattering me way too much. CHRIS NEUMER: Scandinavian cinema and directors have been increasingly more prominent in Hollywood of the last several years, starting with Insomnia and Nightwatch. Is this simply due to the globalization of film or is there more to it? HARALD ZWART: I'm not sure if there's anything specifically Scandinavian about it, but the film world pumps up every year. Hollywood is out finding out where talent is, all over the planet, all the time. Whether they find them in Nigeria or Tibet or Norway, if they like something they bring it to Hollywood. The European sensibility in general–I have most of my learning from England, I shot a lot of commercials in England, I think it's a raw, naked sense of story telling–they don't polish everything may be what we bring with us. CHRIS NEUMER: Interesting you mention England. I watched Snatch again recently and there are distinct similarities on the directing standpoint between you and Guy Ritchie. HARALD ZWART: He's a very talented guy. CHRIS NEUMER: And he seems like he's having a whole hell of a lot of fun on the set too. HARALD ZWART: Exactly. CHRIS NEUMER: Would you ever consider writing a script that would suit your directorial style? HARALD ZWART: I don't know. I think that scripts that automatically appeal to me, appeal to me because I feel subconsciously that I can contribute something through my own style. I don't think I could tailor something for my own style because I'm quite flexible actually. CHRIS NEUMER: Thanks again for your time. HARALD ZWART: Plug away all the extra material on the DVD. CHRIS NEUMER: As soon as I see it I will do so.
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