MOVIE NEWS
QUENTIN TARANTINO
Kelly Carlson (TV's Nip/Tuck, right) was on a radio show in Omaha, Nebraska, and
mentioned she was auditioning for a role in Quentin Tarantino's new movie -
which she wasn't allowed to mention the name of.
28 DAYS LATER 2
'Variety' reports that 'Fox Searchlight' are developing a sequel to British
horror hit 28 Days Later, directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting). The
original became a surprise hit in the States last year, grossing $45
million.
The tentative title is 28 Weeks Later and the studio is in talks with Rowan
Joffe (of BBC's Last Resort) to write the script. Boyle is not expected to
direct the sequel, but he and original screenwriter Alex Garland are likely
to produce alongside his long-time collaborator Andrew Macdonald.
FIGHT CLUB - THE MUSICAL
Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk was at the First Unitarian Church in
Portland, Oregan, recently and during a Q and A session he revealed there
are plans to adapt his novel for the stage!
David Fincher, who directed Palahniuk's cult novel for the 1999 movie
starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, apparently commented: "Can you imagine
people in New Jersey paying $120 to drive to the city and watch a musical
about anarchy?"
KING KONG
Actor Thomas Kretschmann is in talks to join the cast of Peter Jackson's
King Kong remake, says 'The Hollywood Reporter'. Kretschmann (The Pianist)
is being considered for the role of the boat captain who transports Kong to
America.
Kretschmann can be seen soon in Resident Evil Apocalypse and has just been
cast in Dean Koontz's Frankenstein for 'USA Network'.
ELEKTRA
'Superhero Hype!' learned that Jason Isaacs (Peter Pan) has a cameo role in
'20th Century Fox' movie Elektra, starring Jennifer Garner and directed by
Rob Bowman (The X-Files). Isaacs will play McCabe, an agent who works with
Elektra. McCabe was previously believed to be played by Colin Cunningham.
In the movie, assassin-for-hire Elektra Natchios (Garner) is revived by the
Order of the Hand, a group of assassins who helped train her. Assigned by
the Hand's current leader, Kirigi (Will Yun Lee), to kill a man, Mark Miller
(Goran Visnjic), and his 13-year-old daughter, Abby (Kirsten Prout), Elektra
soon befriends them and decides to stand up to her ninja peers.
STAR WARS EPISODE III
'TheForce.net' has revealed the first live-action picture of the new Star
Wars villain General Grievous, who may be voiced by Gary Oldman. (see right)
PLEDGE THIS
Paris Hilton will star in the independent feature National Lampoon's Pledge
This! for producer Juan Carlos Zapata of Street Alien Pictures, says
Variety.
Hilton will play the president of an elitist sorority at South Beach U. who
presides over a group of unlikely freshman girls who are trying to gain
entrance and acceptance into the sorority.
The film will start production in Miami this August. Music video director
William Heins will make his feature directorial debut on the film, written
by Jason Jordan and Matthew Lawton (The Jamie Kennedy Experiment).
Hilton recently wrapped the Joel Silver-produced Warner Bros. horror remake
House of Wax and can currently be seen starring in Fox's The Simple Life 2:
Road Trip.
VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA
Fox 2000 is remaking the Irwin Allen-created Voyage to the Bottom of the
Sea. Justin Haythe (The Clearing) has been set to write the script.
In the story, the world's most advanced submarine is sent on a deep-sea
salvage hunt, inadvertently bringing aboard a predatory organism from the
ocean floor.
Walter Pidgeon starred in the 1961 original. "Voyage" was also a '60s ABC TV
series starring Richard Basehart and David Hedison.
INTERVIEW - SAM RAIMI
Director Sam Raimi returns this summer with the sequel to his massive 2002
success Spider-Man, and was recently interviewed.
Sam Raimi: "I didn't know that I'd be directing it. But it didn't really
change anything for me. As far as knowing that there were three parts to
this story because one, the Spider-Man comic books have always been in
parts."
"But two, the movie itself seemed complete to me. In my mind, I was working
on the story and I knew how I wanted it to end. The story of a life out of
balance, first lopsided in one way as he tries to be this responsible young
man and then lopsided in another way as he decides the hell with it, I'm
living my life, damn anybody else."
"And then that road leads to such moral decay that he finally has to say to
himself I will go back to my lopsided life of being Spider-Man and just down
this road of responsibility. Unfortunately it's like a prison sentence to
him. What he doesn't know is that by the end of the piece, he learns,
through Mary Jane Watson that he cannot go down that road alone."
"And so I found that he found a sense of balance by the end. So it seemed to
me, complete, as a complete story. Also the story of some young man, who is
on the road to responsibility, learns the sacrifices that are necessary to
be responsible. I felt that he had learned a lesson, so it seemed complete
in a few different ways. I didn't really think of it as a franchise movie."
"As the first movie ended, I thought I really know this character Peter
Parker. I really understand him. Some things I don't know, I'm still
figuring them out, but I really know who he is. And I have this great
curiosity as to what will happen to him in his life. Will he get back with
Mary Jane Watson? What about his friend Harry? How will they resolve this
dark secret of Harry's father's death that Peter hasn't told him."
"And then I realized that I have to direct this movie because I'm so curious
about it. I need to see it. I'd love to tell that story. I wanna discover
it. I wanna discover what happens, and the writing of it, and the directing
of it. And I didn't know if that would happen at the end of this film. But
at this time, I find myself again, incredibly curious."
"I realize that Peter Parker, there's so much more to learn than I thought.
I may never know who he is, no more than you never know who your own husband
or wife is. But the more time you spend with him, the more you love them,
the more complexities are revealed to you. Often times when I'm directing a
picture, I'm trying to figure out who the character is so I can direct the
movie."
"It usually happens - at some moment, I realize who it is and I know what to
do. So I just feel like I'm at a great advantage in that I know who he is. I
know how to direct him then. Now I just have to really work on the story and
everything else. A big problem has been figured out for me."
"I just tried to get even more in touch with the things that I loved about
Stan Lee's great character Spider-Man, and a lot of writers throughout the
40 years at Marvel have contributed to Spider-Man.
"All the things that I loved about all of their stories, I tried to really
get deeper into and connect on a deeper level with the actors, and make it
more about the characters and their interaction with one another. I tried to
get to the core of what I loved even more."
"I was thinking about a great issue of Stan Lee's Spider-Man comic book
where he gets the flu. And he, for a time, is really weak. It was so human
to me, I thought it was great. This superhero's got the bug that affects all
of us, and just like we all have to go to work when we're sick and we really
don't know why we're doing this and how we're gonna do our job, he had to
fight criminals when he had the flu."
"I thought that was incredibly human, a humanizing thing to have happened to
a super hero. It was a combination of that and a desire to put that into the
picture so we could identify with him. I thought that was a unique thing
that happened in Stan Lee's comics, but also there was another issue of Stan
Lee's comics that I loved where he decided to throw the suit away."
"It was issue number 50, perhaps, his life problems had just become too
great, so I think what happened was there was a synthesis of those two
ideas, along with other elements I was interested in telling in this story.
That's where the genesis of the loss of powers came from."
"I thought that Jake Gyllenhaal was gonna be the next Spider-Man because I
asked him to do it. When I had heard that Tobey's back, that Tobey could be
paralyzed from a stunt on the set, I realized that I couldn't possibly have
him in the picture. I couldn't ask him to do anything where that tragedy
could happen on the set, so at the same time, I couldn't compromise the
movie and not have Peter Parker take such an active role in all these
scenes."
"So I had to call Tobey and say, 'Tobey, from what I hear, I can't work with
you in the movie.' And he was speechless. I don't think he knew what I had
heard. But I had heard that he could be paralyzed if there was an injury to
his back. So I called Jake. I said, 'Jake, Tobey's back is such that I can't
be as irresponsible as to ask him to play the part. It breaks my heart
because I really wanted him to be in the movie. I think he's the right
Spider-Man. But if I can't have Tobey, you're the man for me. I've been a
great admirer of his work. I like him personally. We had planned, and still
plan to make a film together. He was gonna think about it. He said he's
honoured that I asked, he'd think about it.
"And before he told me whether he would do it or not, I got a call from
Tobey's manager and agent and Sony saying, 'The representative that said
that is not a doctor. We wanna have doctors examine him and find out.' So
doctors checked him out and said, 'You know what, it turns out that he does
have a back injury and if he does re-injure it, it would cause him a
tremendous amount of pain. But we don't believe there's a high likelihood of
him being paralyzed. No. That was not correct. But he could re-injure it. So
I thought pain for actors is a good thing. As long as he's not gonna be
paralyzed, then it could work out.'
"I didn't go out of my way to beat up Tobey physically. I think Bruce
Campbell's better for that. But I did want to beat him up emotionally and
mentally. I wanted him to suffer and make the audience suffer so that they
could come out of it. Because I wanted them to realize that to be
responsible, you have to pay a price. It's not easy. It's not easy to do the
right thing."
"You always have to give something of yourself. Your time, you have to make
a personal sacrifice, you've got to maybe risk personal injury, you've got
to say something that you may be ashamed to say. So I wanted to show that to
be this hero had a great cost to Tobey. It wasn't gonna be easy. So I wanted
him to suffer to be that hero. So I beat him up as much as I could in the
story."
"He took some of those hits [in the movie]. Not the real tough ones. They
have a special back-protector, kind of a shell that he wears on his back
when we do that. And the wall is pre-scored, pre-cut from the back and it's
made out of drywall material. So it's not terribly impactful, that
particular piece. There's other things, when we yank him out of frame, that
his back does endure quite a jolt. But I think he's healthier than even he
thought."
"My brother wrote this joke, and he just thought it would be funny. We were
working on the bit where Tobey's trying to regain his powers, Peter Parker
is trying to regain his powers. He's running over the roof tops trying to
make a big leap. And he says, 'I'm back! I'm back!' And then obviously he
doesn't have as much power as he thought, slams down and says, 'My back! My
back!' He just thought that would be a great joke. And then we thought, 'Oh
no, we can't do that. Tobey's had back problems.' Then we thought, 'Well
let's do it anyways.' It'll work outside of that if it works, and it'll be
fun for the people who do know about those problems. And Tobey was aware of
that and he has a very good sense of humour about himself. So he said,
'Sure, let's do that gag.'"
"When Stan Lee created Peter Parker was that he was one of us. Unlike
Superman, who came from Krypton and was looked up to by kids with his cape,
and only pretended to be a human being, Peter Parker was a human being. He
was us, and trying this best to be a superhero. But really, he was just a
kid who couldn't get the girls, was broke, not particularly attractive, so
as a kid, you really think, "Yes, that's me." But in addition, Tobey has the
ability to be a very real person on screen. He's a very nice person. He's a
good person."
"I think the audience can see right through someone if they're not, on
screen. They have a collective intelligence that is very accurate and
piercing. And I think because he's a good person, and he's simple and
doesn't put on a lot of airs and doesn't pretend on screen, he just is
somehow, I think he becomes Peter Parker."
"I like a lot of the comic book stories where there's a lot of villains, but
I had so much of a personal story to tell this time with Peter and Mary Jane
Watson, and his friend Harry, that I couldn't. When I had two villains in
the earlier drafts, it seemed to diminish my ability to get deeper into what
most interested me."
"I love so many [comic-books]. I really do. I love a lot of them, I grew up
reading them. Spidey's always been my favourite. Superman, not a 'Marvel'
comic book, is another favourite. Batman is another favourite. Love Captain
America. I also love the Fantastic Four - really cool. Those would be my
favourites, I guess."
"Anytime a writer or director writes a story, they have to become that
character. They have to say to themselves, 'What would I do in this
situation?' Or in my situation I would say, 'If I was a nobler, kinder, more
heroic person that I wanted to be, what would I do?' And that's a great
experience to take, to write up the story and write up a picture like that.
Because you understand what your own failings are."
"And you really start to know who the character is. You know, therefore,
when you direct it, what he would and wouldn't say and how he might say it,
and if the emotion is right or wrong. Having an understanding of these
characters from the inside out enables you to direct the picture. You can't
really direct the picture unless you know the character, so I have to become
the character. I don't seem to think that I'm like that noble character
Peter Parker. I admire him a great deal, though."
"I didn't like the idea [of deleted scenes on DVD's] at all at first,
because I really like to be private making the movies. I don't like shows. I
don't wanna put on a show, I just really want to work intimately with the
actors. Most of what was shot in the movie made it into the movie. There's a
scene in a shoe store, it's about a two minute scene. It's a scene with J.
Jonah Jameson, about a one minute scene. And I think those are the only
scenes. And then there's like 10 seconds here where something was too slow,
or there's a 15-second clip there where some piece of information was made
clear by a visual, which I didn't realize when we were working on the
script. So I realized the audience didn't need that, or some entrance was
too slow, I'd start the scene in mid-dialogue. But really, pretty much what
we planned was in the picture. I don't really have a lot of stuff to put
in."
"I admire those men and women in the service and I know that they risk a lot
for our country and for our freedom. They have my thanks and my admiration.
These are simple comic book fantasy stories, but they have their importance,
too. They're much lower level. I'm very lucky to be an American and to be
able to tell these stories and live in Los Angeles protected."
"But that having been said, I think the value of any story of a hero is that
it reminds us of the good we can do in the world. And it reminds of what
we're capable of. Like myths, or stories of old. They have us identify with
characters, they show them coming upon terrible conflicts and problems, and
they show these characters, if they're heroic stories, rising above those
conflicts - exhibiting qualities that they probably didn't even think that
they had."
"Maybe it's a growth of responsibility, like in this film. Or maybe it's the
ability to withstand more than they thought they could for the ones they
love, or to risk something for an ideal they believe in, that's greater than
themselves. And when we see these stories, and when we see these characters
overcome these conflicts and grow as human beings, we're uplifted because
we're reminded - yes, we're capable of that."
"I'm capable of that goodness too. And we feel touched and stirred when it
works right. And that's the value of these heroic stories. They show us the
way and remind us what we should be."
** IN THE PIPELINE **