Movie Interviews

Gareth Edwards and Thomas Tull Talk About Making ‘Godzilla’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

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I was invited to attend a special press screening of the 2014 “Godzilla” at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (it’s now called TCL Chinese Theatres, but I prefer to call it Grauman’s), and it proved to be a huge improvement over Roland Emmerich’s 1998 debacle. Following the screening, we were treated to a Q&A with the movie’s director Gareth Edwards and the CEO of Legendary Pictures, Thomas Tull. The two of them discussed how they saw this version of the giant monster, the first time they became aware of who or what Godzilla was, and of how their film mirrors the current events of today.

There have been dozens and dozens of “Godzilla” movies made since 1954, most of them made in Japan by Toho Company Limited. There have been a couple of American movies made about this enormous monster as well, but they didn’t fare well to say the least. “Godzilla 1985” was universally panned by film critics and died a quick death at the box office. As for Roland Emmerich’s “Godzilla” which came out in 1998, I still cringe at the thought of its existence as it was amazingly awful. But when it came to making the 2014 version, Edwards made clear he was not about to let fans or critics down.

“We were trying to put more into it than just a simple monster movie because the original was definitely a metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a very serious film. So we were inspired to try and reflect that,” Edwards said. “We police the world and go, ‘You can’t have nuclear power. You can’t have it. But we can have it, and we have nuclear weapons.’ And what if there were a creature that existed, creatures that were attracted to radiation? Suddenly the tables would be turned, and we’d be desperately trying to get rid of that stuff.”

From there, both Edwards and Tull described the first time they saw Godzilla. Hearing Tull talk about his first exposure to the Japanese monster came to illustrate just how big of an effect monster movies had on him when he was growing up. As for Edwards, he ended up describing his first exposure as being embarrassing.

“First time I saw it, it was the ’54 version,” Tull said. “I was probably around 7 years old. Where I grew up in upstate New York, what I looked forward to every year was the Friday after Thanksgiving when the local TV station would play ‘Godzilla’ marathons all day. That was my favorite thing of the year. I had the incredible fortune of making movies out of all the stuff I loved as a kid: ‘Batman,’ ‘Superman,’ Watchmen’ and now ‘Godzilla.’ Somehow the magic genie made it happen. This is really special to me.”

“In the U.K. when we were kids growing up, they had the Hanna Barbara cartoon. Not many people know that in America. I thought it was a worldwide thing,” Edwards said. “But it was basically Godzilla and I guess his son, Godzuki, and it would fly; it was all very cute. When you’re a kid it was great. I got offered this amazing opportunity. People in the U.K, they like to take the piss out of their friends, so just to mock me they would always refer to it as Godzuki. They’d be like, ‘How’s Godzuki going? Have you been to any Godzuki meetings?’ And I used to play along with it to the point where my phone learned how to spell Godzuki more than Godzilla. So when we used to have regular emails about the film, I’d type Godzilla and it would automatically change it to Godzuki. And for a while, I thought I might get fired.”

Edwards said while he and Tull were in the process of putting the movie together, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, also known as the Great East Japan Earthquake, occurred which decimated much of Fukushima and caused serious accidents at nuclear power plants. Now when horrific events like this occur, Hollywood is quick to distance itself from them for fear of appearing like they are profiting from them. But considering the genres “Godzilla” covers, there was enough of a reason not to ignore the serious events happening around the world.

“There was a point where it felt like, well, maybe we shouldn’t set it in Japan. Maybe we shouldn’t deal with radiation or anything like this,” Edwards said. “We had genuine conversations for quite a while and we talked to a lot of people, and knew a lot of people, who were Japanese obviously working with Toho. And after a while the general consensus was that the 1954 version, the whole point of that movie, and science fiction and fantasy in general I think, they have this opportunity to reflect the period that they’re made in, and so it was thought as long as we did it respectively and the city and the events in our film are not about anything that happened in Japan. So, we felt it kind of appropriate to acknowledge some of these issues as we were figuring out the storyline.”

“When I was a kid, my dad used to have an encyclopedia on the twentieth Century, and on the front cover was Hiroshima, JFK’s assassination, Hitler, all the major events of the twentieth century,” Edwards continued. “I used to look at it and think none of that happened in my lifetime. Nothing significant like that has happened in my lifetime. Maybe nothing like that ever will. And then in the last ten years with the obvious things, it’s nearly impossible to genuinely sit down and say, ‘OK, I want to do a monster movie. I want to try and treat this like it really happened. What would it look like? How would people react and not be infected by the imagery over the last ten years, whether it be the natural disasters or even some of the terrorism?’ So that kind of infected the film a little bit. But we tried to do it in a way that, first and foremost, it’s entertainment. You’re here to see a Godzilla. But I personally like a little meat on my bone, so within that there’s obviously this other imagery and meaning that you can pull from as much as you want or as little as you want.”

Before this, Edwards had only one directorial effort to his name, the 2010 film “Monsters.” It had a budget of only $500,000 and, in addition to directing it, he also worked as writer, cinematographer and the visual effects artist which may explain why it didn’t cost much to make. With “Godzilla,” he had the backing of a major studio and an estimated budget of $160 million. Talk about one heck of a promotion! This has got to put the fear of God into any filmmaker making this kind of transition, but Edwards sounded like he has handled big budget moviemaking very well.

“It’s a massive, massive deal,” Edwards said. “It’s not just a once in a lifetime opportunity; it’s a once in a million-lifetime opportunity to be able to get to do this. The way I dealt with it was to forget we were doing it and just convince ourselves, which was kind of very easy to do, that we’re just in this bubble; it’s just us, and we’re just making a movie that we want to sit and watch, something that will give us goose bumps. And it’s kind of this selfish passion project in the way you kind of approach every day. Because I’d get paralyzed if I really thought about the number of people who would end up seeing the film and all the publicity and press that would come from it.”

“But it’s such a great opportunity,” Edwards continued. “I grew up since I was a little kid desperate to be a film director, and the second they mentioned it I was just like, I could never live with myself if I ever turned this down. I mean, I love monster movies. My first film was a monster movie. This is the ultimate monster movie. So how could you live with yourself having not made ‘Godzilla’ when you had that opportunity?”

Even before its release, “Godzilla” had already sparked conversations about a sequel or a potential franchise. This is not a surprise as movie studios are always looking for the next big movie trilogy to thrust at movie fans eager to pay their hard-earned money for. Edwards, however, said it was his intention to make a stand-alone movie, something I was very pleased to hear. As for Tull, with Legendary Pictures having been purchased by Universal Pictures, he was asked if a sequel would be released by either Universal Pictures or Warner Brothers, the latter which is distributing this movie. In the end, Tull could only say the following:

“We have a little rule: we can’t talk about anything else until this comes out and works,” Tull said. “It’s a little superstition I have. All I can say is, we’re passionate fans of the universe and we love Godzilla and some of those other folks do too, so if this comes out and works we’ll figure it out.”

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Jeremiah S. Chechik Looks Back at Making ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

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Jeremiah S. Chechik was the special guest at Arclight Studios in Hollywood a few years ago when they hosted a screening of his directorial debut, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” The third and most beloved in the “Vacation” franchise has long since become a holiday classic, and it is the Christmas film many families watch during the holiday season instead of “A Christmas Carol” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” After the movie was over and the end credits were all done, Chechik quickly came up to the front of the audience before anyone could introduce him and said, ”I haven’t seen it since the day it opened!”

The screenplay was written by the late John Hughes and was inspired by an article he wrote for the National Lampoon Magazine called “Christmas ’59.” Chechik tipped his hand to Hughes’ wonderful writing and went on to say it was originally written as a stand-alone movie. Warner Brothers, however, read it and immediately wanted to integrate it into the “Vacation” franchise.

When asked how he got the job to direct, Chechik explained he was directing what he described as “high profile” commercials back in a time when it was unusual to go from doing commercials to directing feature films. His work eventually got him discovered by Steven Spielberg who ended up giving him an office at Amblin Entertainment. This brought a lot of awareness to his visual style, and both Chase and Hughes soon became adamant he would be the one to direct the next “Vacation” movie.

With this being his first film, Chechik said he was determined not to back down on actors who wanted to exert their power over him. While it’s tempting to think he and Chase didn’t get along as Chase’s reputation for being hard to work will never disappear, Chechik said they actually had a great working relationship on set. This came after he admitted to not being a big fan of Chase’s comedy as he described it as being “very broad.” Chechik described Chase as having a very strong point of view, a very clear intention of what the movie is about, and they worked together to find things which worked.

Chechik did say, however, that he and Beverly D’Angelo had many arguments, some of which he described as being “very heated,” on set. Still, he said all the bad blood between them is now water under the bridge.

“Christmas Vacation’s” budget was $27 million, and its shooting schedule lasted for 60 days. Much of the movie was shot in Breckinridge, Colorado while other scenes were shot the following summer at Warner Brothers in Burbank, California. Chechik was happy to say Hughes had his back throughout the whole production. When the movie went through previews, the studio heads pressured him to cut the scene where the cat got electrocuted. Chechik claimed he resisted the pressure and kept it in because he thought it was funny (and it was) and that he was more of a dog person anyway. The test audiences also loved the scene, and the studio heads didn’t bother keeping this moment out of the movie’s trailer.

Chechik said “Christmas Vacation” worked so well because we truly cared about Clark Griswold and what he went through. The mood of certain scenes was very important to him, especially the one with Chase in the attic where he watched home movies of past Christmases with tears filling his eyes. Looking at this made Chechik point out the way comedy should be done in movies:

“Funny beats funny,” he said. “If everyone thought the set pieces were funny but they didn’t care about the main character, then the movie won’t work.”

With the squirrel scene, he said a trained squirrel was brought onto the set and there was also a trainer there for the dog featured in it as well. Chechik said the filmmakers “storyboarded the hell out of it” and were eager to start filming it, but when he arrived on set that day he was confronted with the grim faces of the trainers and line producers. After shuffling around for a bit, they informed him the squirrel had died. The squirrel trainer went on to say they don’t live for very long anyway as if that could have possibly softened the blow.

So, they went out and got another squirrel for the scene which they ended up drawing out onto the set with food. From this, Chechik said he learned how to roll with things and use improvisation. About every scene in “Christmas Vacation” had a certain amount of improvisation in it, he pointed out.

As for the most difficult scene to shoot, Chechik said it was the dinner table scene where the whole family begins their Christmas Eve celebration. He did not hesitate in telling everyone that having 9 to 11 actors in a scene is a really bad idea. The blocking proved to be very complicated, and it became such a nightmare as it took days and days for him to get the scene right.

Here are some other “Christmas Vacation” trivia Chechik let us know about:

  • In the scene with the two granddads snoring in front of the television, the actors playing those roles really were fast asleep.
  • Mae Questal, who played Aunt Bethany, was the voice of Betty Boop.
  • Chevy’s angry rant on his boss was done exactly as it was written in the screenplay.

It was really nice of Chechik to come out and talk with us about “Christmas Vacation,” a movie he succeeded in making a timeless classic and, as he put it, “very postcardy.” When asked why he hasn’t seen the film since it first came out, he said he just wanted to let it go and let it live. It certainly has had a long life since 1989, and the series continued on with “Vegas Vacation” and “Vacation” which starred Ed Helms and Christina Applegate. In response to one audience member who said his family watches it every year, Chechik replied, “I like your family!”

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Kirk Douglas Looks Back at ‘Lonely Are The Brave’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

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The Ultimate Rabbit would like to wish Kirk Douglas a very happy 100th birthday. It is an age few people ever reach, and this is a man who has survived so much in his lifetime: Hollywood, anti-Semitism, a stroke, a helicopter crash and, tragically, the loss of a son. Still, Douglas persevered in spite of many obstacles thrown in his path, and in his 90’s he continued to work as an actor and a writer. The man who was Spartacus has reached a milestone which needs to be celebrated, but it should be no surprise he has lasted as long as he has. Happy Birthday Kirk!

The following article is of an appearance he made in Hollywood a few years ago in which he talked about one of his most enduring motion pictures.

“The best actors disappear into their roles, but icons always keep part of themselves onscreen. Every one of his characters makes hard choices as a figure of integrity. Not always a good guy, not always a bad guy, but a real guy.”

Those were the words writer Geoff Boucher used to introduce legendary actor Kirk Douglas who made a special appearance at the Egyptian Theatre on September 19, 2012. American Cinematheque was screening “Lonely are the Brave” in honor of the movie’s 50th anniversary, and Douglas was greeted with a thunderous and deserved standing ovation. Douglas thanked the audience for coming to see this movie which he made fifty years ago. He also added, “Don’t ask for your money back!”

Boucher pointed out how Douglas has made so many great movies, but this one in particular really stands out. In the movie, Douglas portrays John W. “Jack” Burns, a cowboy from the Old West who refuses to become a part of modern society. “Lonely are the Brave” is based on the book “The Brave Cowboy” written by Edward Abbey, and Douglas recalled being so intrigued by the character and his horse (Whiskey) and how the book spoke strongly about the difficulty of being an individual today. Douglas did, however, say his major problem was by the end of the movie the audience was “rooting for the horse instead of me!”

There was also talk about Dalton Trumbo who wrote the screenplay for “Lonely are the Brave” and whom Douglas had previously worked with on “Spartacus.” Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to answer questions from the House Committee on Un-American Activities regarding their alleged involvement with the Communist Party, and he ended up spending 11 months in prison for contempt as a result. It was Douglas who helped Trumbo get a screenwriting credit on “Spartacus,” and he said he hated the injustice of what Trumbo was put through. Douglas’ latest book “I am Spartacus! Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist” deals with this extensively.

Douglas made it clear how after reading Abbey’s book, he felt there was no one who could do a better job of adapting it than Trumbo, and it is said he found Trumbo’s screenplay for “Lonely are the Brave” to be perfect to where he didn’t change a single word of it.

Boucher also brought up that Douglas had some problems with “Lonely are the Brave” when it came out, and this was especially the case with the movie’s title:

“The book was called ‘The Brave Cowboy’ and I didn’t want that title,” Douglas said. “I wanted to call it ‘The Last Cowboy,’ but the studio which had the money insisted on ‘Lonely are the Brave.’ And I said, what the hell does that mean?”

Douglas has more than earned his status as an acting legend in Hollywood. Old age has not slowed him down one bit as he just finished a one-man show, released a new book, and took the time to appear at the Egyptian Theatre to talk about “Lonely are the Brave” which really is one of his very best movies. He finished his talk that evening by expressing his respect for actors who help other people, and of how he finds it sad that the media prefers instead to concentrate on the more “racy” things they do.

Boucher remarked at the amazing journey that Douglas has made from being “The Ragman’s Son” to going to all the places he has been and of having worked with all the great people he has worked with, and he commended the actor’s career for being guided not just by talent but integrity. That sentiment was shared by everyone in the audience in attendance as we were all very happy to see Douglas there, and he told them he was “glad and happy” they all came to see him and “Lonely are the Brave” which came out fifty years ago.

Interview with Harry Benson and Matthew Miele on ‘Harry Benson: Shoot First’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

The documentary “Harry Benson: Shoot First,” directed by Matthew Miele and Justin Bare, looks at the life and work of renowned photographer Harry Benson who shot and captured unforgettable images of many famous figures such as The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Donald Trump, and Hillary and Bill Clinton. What is especially striking about his photography is how wonderfully intimate and vivid his photos are. These are not just still images made to promote a new project of some kind, but instead are ones which show celebrities at their most natural and down to earth. Looking at Benson’s photographs today, it feels like you are going back in time and arriving at a place which feels so incredibly real.

I had the opportunity, along with Rama Tampubolon of the website Rama’s Screen, to talk with Benson and Miele about how this documentary came about and how it evolved from start to finish. Benson also told us stories of how he got the photo of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr who were in the midst of a pillow fight, and of the haunting images he captured of Robert Kennedy before and after he was assassinated.

“Harry Benson: Shoot First” is another terrific documentary in a year filled with them, and it is a must see for pop culture fans and anyone interested in photography. It opens on December 9 at the Laemmle’s Monica Film Center in Santa Monica, and it is also available to watch on Amazon Video, VOD and iTunes.

Please check out the interview above, and be sure to watch the documentary’s trailer below.

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‘Full Tilt Boogie,’ the ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ Documentary, Screens at New Beverly Cinema

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After a double feature of William Friedkin’s “To Live and Die in L.A.” and “Rampage,” which is not currently available on DVD, the audience members at New Beverly Cinema were in for a special midnight treat as the theater held a screening for the 20-year-old documentary “Full Tilt Boogie.” Directed by Sarah Kelly, it chronicles the making of Robert Rodriguez’s action horror cult classic “From Dusk till Dawn” which starred George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino as outlaw brothers who, along with a vacationing family, end up at a rowdy Mexican bar which turns out to be infested with vampires. The documentary introduces us to those people who worked behind the scenes on the movie, of why they want to be a part of show business, the fun they have when the cameras are not rolling, and of the complicated relationship between movie studios and unions.

Introducing this screening of “Full Tilt Boogie” was Kelly, and she was joined by her producer and friend Rana Joy Glickman. The emcee who welcomed them remarked about how cool it was this documentary was playing at the New Beverly and that it was sharing a marquee with Friedkin’s “Cruising.” To this, the emcee said about Kelly, “Whoa! She scored good!”

Kelly welcomed all the “insomniacs” who came out to see her documentary and explained how it became a reality.

“The reason this movie came about was that Robert Rodriguez and Quentin were about to start shooting ‘From Dusk till Dawn,’ and it was an $18-million-dollar independent movie and the unions were pissed,” Kelly said. “They were like, ‘What do you mean? No, you have to go union.’ And so, there was a big threat of a strike, and Quentin thought it would be cool to document it.”

“I had worked for him on a little movie called ‘Pulp Fiction’ and a couple of other movies he was involved with,” Kelly continued, “and he knew that I was studying to be a director so he gave me a shot. At the time, I was taking a break from production and I was working part-time in a law firm and I was like, ‘So is this for real? Should I quit my job?’ And he said, ‘Uh, quit your job yesterday.’ So, I did. We wrangled our little, tiny, hardcore crew and we started shooting, by the way, on 16mm film. Nobody shoots documentaries on 16mm film anymore, but we did. The union threat kind of turned into a cold war and I asked Quentin if we could keep shooting and just do a love letter to the crew. I pitched it as kind of like ‘Hearts of Darkness’ (Eleanor Coppola’s documentary on ‘Apocalypse Now’), but not that dark. Quentin said, ‘Yeah, that’s really fucking cool!’”

As for Glickman, she claimed to have hundreds of stories to tell about the documentary and “From Dusk till Dawn,” but she chose to tell only this one.

“When we finished ‘Full Tilt Boogie’ we were just so pleased that we finished and we got to make the posters for the film, not the one that Harvey Weinstein had selected,” Glickman said. “Our favorite poster is Sarah’s design, and it was Ken (Bondy), the craft service guy on ‘From Dusk till Dawn,’ standing there with a tray of lattes and it said, ‘From the maker of coffee on Pulp Fiction, we bring you Full Tilt Boogie.’”

Kelly responded, “That’s a great poster, right?”

“Full Tilt Boogie” may not be the masterpiece “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse” is, but it’s still a very entertaining documentary which takes you behind the scenes of a movie’s production in a way few others do. We get to see the challenges crew members constantly face on a movie set, and we also get to take in the fun they have outside of it as well. For these people, this is a job done out of love and far more preferable than working a 9 to 5 job which has them sitting at a desk all day. Kelly certainly did create a love letter to these crew members, and we revel in the festivities they have from one day to the next.

Thanks to Sarah Kelly and Rana Joy Glickman for taking the time to come out, and at such a late hour, to talk about “Full Tilt Boogie” at New Beverly Cinema.

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Billy Bob Thornton and Kathy Bates Team Up for ‘Bad Santa 2’

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Billy Bob Thornton is back in the Santa suit as Willie Soke in “Bad Santa 2” which once again involves Willie teaming up with his partner-turned-nemesis Marcus (Tony Cox) to rob a charity in Chicago on Christmas Eve. But this time they have an additional partner in crime, and one Willie didn’t expect to deal with, his mother Sunny (played by Kathy Bates). It’s no surprise to see Willie and Sunny don’t have the best mother and son relationship, and both seem intent on outdoing each other when it comes to insults and political incorrectness. But can these two get past their differences to pull off a heist and maybe try some love and tenderness in the process? Well, you’ll have to see the movie for yourself to figure this out.

It’s great to see Thornton back in one of his most famous roles. “Bad Santa” has long since become a cult hit, and the fans were eager to see Willie back in action even as we wondered if his liver could take much more damage. Thornton was joined by Bates at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, California for the “Bad Santa 2” press day, and I was eager to find out how they prepared to play their loathsome and yet strangely appealing characters. The two of them are Oscar winners, Thornton for “Sling Blade” and Bates for “Misery,” and they have since been nominated several more times. Their attention to developing a character is impeccable, and I was fascinated to learn how they worked on the ones they played in this sequel.

Their answers to my question led to a hilarious story involving Thornton and his mother, and Bates reflected on one of the first movies she ever appeared in.

Ben Kenber: First, I just want to say Willie has one hell of a liver. Also, Billy and Kathy, I read the two of you worked on your characters’ backstories a lot for this movie. What specifically did you come up with that you really agreed on and which really helped to inform your performances?

Kathy Bates: I remember one day we were talking that maybe they were carnies together and con artists and had lived in that atmosphere. Nothing against carnies, but we figured that that’s probably where they were from. What else Billy?

Billy Bob Thornton: Yeah and the idea that I was sort of like the artful dodger and she was faking. That sort of idea that I grew up, and it even says in there, where she used to sell me out to do stuff for her all the time, and so we’re sort of grifters in a way. So, it’s not like Willie doesn’t have an understanding of what she does and why she’s that way and why I’m the way I am. We grew up rough in a weird business, so that was mainly it. And also, you can see the mother-son relationship because you know how if you’re watching a movie with your parents… My mom’s 83, and if I’m watching a movie and somebody starts making out, I get so embarrassed. I’ll never forget when my mom called me once and she said she had been to see my movie, and I was like, what movie? I never even thought she would know this existed, and she just gone to see “Monster’s Ball” with her best friend and I was like, why did you do that? How could you do that to me? But I’m still that way. I have never said the F-word around my mother to this day, and she’s 83. So, there is the scene where Kathy has the dildo, and you can see the kid and the mother in that scene and it’s kind of like, golly! Don’t do that! So, I think we had that part too. You can see a mother and son in there. I think we felt it. We did talk about it to a degree, but a lot of it just came naturally.

Kathy Bates: Can I just say one last thing? I remember doing a movie years and years ago with Dustin Hoffman, and it was my first talking part in a movie. Gary Busey was in it and his son, Jake Busey, was in it too, and he was five. Jake got the part, but Gary said, “Do you want to take the night to think about it?” So, Jake came back the next day and he said, “Well, yeah, I’ll do the movie because I think acting is pretending and making believe like you’re not pretending.” And I thought, okay, that’s it. Lee Strasberg, you can go home, and that says it all.

I want to thank Billy Bob Thornton and Kathy Bates for taking the time to answer my question. “Bad Santa 2” opens in theaters on November 23, 2016.

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Ben Younger Returns to the Director’s Chair with ‘Bleed for This’

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Director Ben Younger on the set of BLEED FOR THIS.

Ben Younger made his directorial debut with “Boiler Room” in 2000, but “Bleed for This” marks his first directorial effort since “Prime,” and that film was released over a decade ago. After failing to get his Isle of Man racing movie off the ground, he withdrew for a time to Costa Rica where he became a pilot, cooked in a restaurant, and even raced professionally on motorcycles for a year. When it came to making “Bleed for This,” he originally approached it as a writing assignment and had no intention of directing it.

“Bleed for This” tells the true-life story of champion boxer Vinny Paz (played by Miles Teller) who, after winning a fight, is involved in a nasty car crash which leaves him with a broken neck. Many tell him his boxing career is over as a result, but Vinny is determined to repair the damage and get back in the ring. That he succeeded in doing so makes his comeback one of the greatest ever in sports history.

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While at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, California, Younger explained what finally made him want to tell this story.

Ben Younger: Simply because of the comeback. Vinny won 50 fights, I don’t know if you guys knew that. I’m sure to real boxing aficionados that would be an exciting thing. I’m not one of them. For me, it was all about the crash and the comeback. I started this as a writing assignment. I wasn’t supposed to direct this. I didn’t think I wanted to direct it. But once I realized there was a parallel between his story and mine… You guys know I took a long time off. I didn’t make a movie for 12 years which is kind of like having a broken neck.

So yes, “Bleed for This,” like every other movie released these days, is “based on a true story.” This term has long since lost its meaning as filmmakers tend to embellish the real-life events they are portraying to where they resemble something which feels canned and artificial. Younger, however, sought to pull back from this, and his explanation led to my question regarding certain things I figured filmmakers do their best to avoid.

BY: In every other way, we had to reverse embellishment. For example, that scene with Vinny lifting the bar? That happened five days after the Halo went on in real life. I couldn’t present that because no one would believe it. Same for Ciarán Hinds’ performance of Angelo (Vinny’s father). Angelo was such a colorful character that he bordered on a caricature of an Italian-American in New England. If I showed him as he was, you would say I was racist or we would’ve made a comedy.

Ben Kenber: It’s interesting because when it comes to East Coast people, I think a lot of us have a sort of a specific view which might seem clichéd in the way they are portrayed on-screen. How did you manage to keep it to where it felt like the actors and the accents felt natural and not clichéd?

BY: That was a fear. Boxing wise, there are so many clichés. Those I was like, we are going to avoid those, those are easier to avoid. But this is tougher because the actual accents can in themselves sound caricature like. So, we had a great dialect coach, Tom Jones (not the singer), a really talented guy, and we prayed and we were just careful and we really listened. I wasn’t looking at the monitors. I just stood next to the camera and just stared. You know when someone’s full of shit and when they’re someone they’re not, and you just can tell when they are getting it. Even if you don’t know the world, there’s just something if you really pay attention.

One thing which astonished me about “Bleed for This” was how several of the actors were unrecognizable in their roles. This is especially the case with Aaron Eckhart who plays Vinny’s coach Kevin Rooney, Ted Levine who plays boxing promoter Lou Duva, and Katey Sagal who portrays Vinny’s mother, Louise. One person even told me he didn’t realize it was Sagal in the role until her name came up during the end credits. I brought this up to Younger, and he responded with the following.

BY: That’s the nicest compliment you can pay an actor. They really want to disappear (into their roles). That’s more them than me, but thank you.

Another highlight of this interview was when Younger was asked which movie inspired him to become a filmmaker. His answer was not at all what anyone could have expected.

BY: No one’s ever asked me this question strangely, and I’ve been avoiding it for 16 years because I have to tell the truth. It is Steven Seagal’s “Above the Law.” It was his first movie, I was 16 years old, I cut school. I was going to a Yeshiva, like a Jewish seminary school, and I cut and I went and saw it. It was the first time I realized that someone made movies and that there were people behind it and some thought had gone into it. It was mostly that opening. There’s archival footage in the first 30 seconds. It’s footage of Seagal as a 19 or 20-year-old studying martial arts in the Far East cut together with the narrative they were doing which was about him being a CIA operative. The movie holds up. I see it probably once a year and it’s completely watchable.

Truth be told, Younger is correct. “Above the Law” featured Seagal in his prime, and it does still hold up. Some might see the movie as a guilty pleasure, but it really is not. It was also directed by Andrew Davis who would later direct Seagal in his biggest hit, “Under Siege,” and gave us the excellent cinematic adaptation of “The Fugitive” with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. Everything Seagal did following “Under Siege” has proven to be pretty much abysmal.

It’s great to see Younger directing again, and he ended his time by saying he finally got the financing for his Isle of Man movie which is now heading into pre-production. Odds are we will not have to wait 15 years for it to reach the silver screen.

“Bleed for This” is now playing in theaters. Whether you are a boxing fan or not, it is definitely worth checking out.

Alan Howarth Discusses Working on Film Scores with John Carpenter

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

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A screening of John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13” at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood brought out a number of guests such as Austin Stoker who played Lieutenant Ethan Bishop and Douglas Knapp who was the film’s director of photography. But the one guest I was really interested to hear from was Alan Howarth, the composer and sound designer who collaborated with Carpenter on a number of his film scores from “Escape From New York” to “They Live.” Howarth even took the time to do a live performance of his and Carpenter’s music, something I never thought I would ever see in my lifetime.

During the Q&A, Howarth talked about how he came to work with Carpenter, their process for scoring his films and his favorite film scores of the ones they worked on together. Howarth wasn’t actually on board for the original “Assault on Precinct 13” though he did work on a remastered version of the soundtrack for it and “Dark Star” for BuySoundtrax.com. It wasn’t until he worked on his first big film when he became inadvertently acquainted with Carpenter.

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“I came on board at ‘Escape from New York,’ and that was kind of happenstance because my very first movie, less than a year earlier, was ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture,’” Howarth said. “I had come on as the sound designer and created the sounds of the Enterprise like the warp drive and the transporters and stuff like that. The picture editor from that movie, Todd Ramsay, his next assignment was ‘Escape from New York,’ so I had slipped him some cassettes and he knew I was a musician. John had worked with another fellow on ‘Halloween,’ Dan Wyman, and there was some change up there, and so literally the guy comes over to my little, rented house in Glendale and set up in my dining room. It was nothing formal. I sat down and I played him a few things and he goes, ‘okay, let’s do it.’ That was it.”

“John always wanted somebody who knew about the technology,” Howarth continued. “In fact, a couple of times I tried to explain to him how it worked and he was all, ‘I don’t want to know that. It’s your job to make it work, make it in tune, and when I push down the note the red light is on.’ So that’s where I started, but he’s a collaborative person. I love working with people. I’m from the bands and rock & roll. I was one of those people. So, it was really great and my first film score was ‘Escape from New York.’”

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From there, the two of them worked on several projects all the way to “They Live.” As he continued discussing the work he did with Carpenter, we came to discover he played a larger part in Carpenter’s film scores than we ever realized.

“Next, he went off to do ‘The Thing’ and they wanted to make ‘Halloween II,’ so again John said, ‘I’m going to be busy. You’re going to have to do Halloween.’ Same thing, so I did ‘Halloween II’ and I used his original ‘Halloween’ music, overdubbed it and created new stuff.”

After “They Live,” they seemed to part ways for reasons Howarth never explained, but it gave him the confidence to start scoring films on his own. Of course, he was still eager to get Carpenter’s blessing when it came to a franchise the director never planned to start.

“I found out they were going to do ‘Halloween 4’ and I said to John, ‘they asked me to do this and you’re my buddy and I want to do something with this.’ He said sure, so I wound up doing ‘Halloween 4, 5 and 6’ and that really launched me as a composer which is what I love to do the most, and as we are in a world of economic stasis, I had to do it all by myself. As you see, this is my studio right here. It’s all down to a laptop and a guitar and some recorders when it used to be a million dollars’ worth of stuff. Not that that stuff isn’t valuable, but you can do without it now,” Howarth said.

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One audience member asked which of the scores he did with Carpenter is his favorite, and the answer was a little bit of a surprise.

“I think ‘Halloween III’ because it was really an artistic departure for both of us, and ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ is the most produced and has the widest range,” said Howarth. “We had rock and roll and scary things and chases and this whole Asian influence, so it was really a broad scope of things. That’s one of my favorites.”

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Like many in the audience, I was eager to hear how Howarth and Carpenter would go about working on a score. Did they start working on it before shooting began? Did they work on it after shooting was finished? Did they think about the music while making the film? We hear how composers spend so much time preparing the perfect score for a movie, but Howarth made his process with Carpenter sound quite simple.

“It’s all one big jam. It’s improvised,” Howarth said. “Sometimes he would come in with a theme in mind. I’d set up the piano before he came over and started something. A lot of it we just made up on the spot. In fact, I introduced him, because I’m a technical person, to the synchronization between a videotape and a tape recorder. It almost seems like we were the first to do it. Before that, everything was done with a stopwatch. So, you would make a cue that was three minutes long and kind of set a tempo, and then you would go back and literally copy it on a Moviola and fool around with the scene.”

“This was the first time you could watch the movie and play at the same time, so he referred to that as the electronic coloring book which made it even easier to improvise,” Howarth continued. “Through that whole period we also benefited from the evolution of electronic music instruments, so from analog synthesizers and a 24-track machine to midi and digital sequencers, these scores had a new installation in the progress of musical instruments, so it’s almost a chronology or a music lesson in the gear.”

Another audience member asked Howarth how long he and Carpenter would jam until they found something they really liked. His answer illustrates how fast these two worked on their music.

“We did a cue a day,” Howarth said. “One quote I always get from John, and it’s just really true, he said, ‘Alan if you want to be a director you only need two important words, yes and no. Just be very decisive. Even if you say no today or yes today and tomorrow, you change your mind. You got twenty or thirty people that are taking direction, and you don’t want to leave them in a lurch, so it’s better to just be decisive.’ So, it was a couple of times we did something and came back and said that wasn’t working, but it wasn’t very often.”

Having worked in movies and music all these years, Howarth clearly has a wide knowledge of musical instruments and electronics. When asked what he would consider as the go to synthesizer, Howarth’s answer shed some light on how far musical technology has come over the years.

“I chose all the gear and I arrived at being a fan of the Prophet 5,” Howarth said. “It sounded good, but the other reason was that it was the first programmable synthesizer. Prior to that, you had to literally make little diagrams of where all the knobs and switches were to get back to the same sound, so this was the first time you could do something and save it. That really moved things forward a lot, and I brought in the programmables and the sequencers.”

One big question many had about the music Carpenter and Howarth worked on was the score to Carpenter’s remake of “The Thing.” This was Carpenter’s first big studio movie, and it allowed him to work with his all-time favorite composer Ennio Morricone. However, when you listen to the score, some it sounds like it was done by Carpenter and Howarth, and this is especially the case with the movie’s main theme. Howarth went into detail about who really composed the score to “The Thing.”

“They (Carpenter and Morricone) took a meeting, and he (Morricone) saw a little bit of the footage and he scored his score,” Howarth said. “He comes back and, of course, how does John talk to his hero about what just went down and where he wants to go? And there’s a translation issue between English and Italian and all this other stuff. So John played the stuff we did for ‘Escape from New York’ and he says, ‘Can you do something like this?’ Ennio goes back for a second pass now with keyboards, and that’s where ‘The Thing’s’ theme came from. So it’s Ennio Morricone doing John Carpenter really. At the very end after all that, there was one more pass on about four or five cues where John came over for just an afternoon and we did some cues that kind of sound like ‘Christine’ that you can tell is basically our synth stuff. So basically, it took three scoring passes on the show to get it.”

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It was a real treat to have Alan Howarth talk about his musical collaboration with John Carpenter. The film scores they worked on are among my favorites of all time, and I never get sick of listening to them. Howarth continues to work as a film composer, and his more recent credits include scores for “Backstabbed,” “The Dentist” and “House at the End of the Drive.” Here’s hoping we get to hear more scores from him in the near future.

Miles Teller talks about Boxer Training and Wearing the Halo in ‘Bleed for This’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

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Jake Gyllenhaal played one in “Southpaw,” Michael B. Jordan portrayed another in “Creed,” and now Miles Teller gets to put on his own set of gloves to play a boxer in “Bleed for This.” The biographical drama, directed by Ben Younger, focuses on Vinny Paz, a champion boxer from Rhode Island who became Super Middleweight champion of the world after defeating Gilbert Dele in the ring. Paz’s victory, however, is short-lived when he gets seriously injured in a nasty car accident. With his neck broken, his boxing career is assumed to be over by everyone, but he became determined to regain his title through a brutal rehabilitation regimen, and this led to one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.

Teller recently sat down for an interview and talked at length about how he trained and prepared to play Paz in “Bleed for This.” He also discussed what it was like to wear the halo Paz opted to wear in an effort to repair his neck. The boxer’s doctors initially encouraged him to undergo spinal fusion which would have ensured his ability to walk again but also would have erased any chance of him getting back into the ring. Paz chose the halo instead, and it involved having a number of screws drilled into his head in order to ensure this apparatus would keep it in one place for months.

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Question: Did growing up in South Jersey help you with your accent?

Miles Teller: The Jersey accent is different. It’s just impossible to sound intelligent honestly, especially in South Jersey. The Northwest is just a specific kind of energy and people, and even though Rhode Island is totally different from New Jersey… I’ve just been around those guys, so I think it probably added something to the kind of relation that I found to Vinny.

Q: What was the most difficult thing that Vinny had as a person for you to get for the movie?

MT: The physicality was very tough. To get that look for me to just be able to have the conditioning to be able to shoot a boxing fight for a 16-hour day. The last two fights were back-to-back days. Each fight took one day which is unheard of. We shot the movie in 24 days. To even just look like a boxer… I had to shoot two movies in between, but that was eight months of just a very strict diet and working out. I lost 20 pounds and got down to 6% body fat for the first fight, but Vinny also moved up in weight and won the title of Lightweight and Super Middleweight, and we showed that. That’s also something very unique and special to Vinny’s legacy. He and Roberto Durán were the only two guys to win titles in those two weight classes specifically. So, I started at 160 and then I had to gain 15 pounds to get to 183 in like 2 ½ weeks. But once I had to gain weight, that was fun. It was just like Dunkin Donuts in Federal Hill. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Providence, but Federal Hill has amazing Italian food.

Q: But while you were eating a lot, you still had to be boxing.

MT: I got cast two and a half years ago. We filmed it two years ago. This was pre- “Whiplash.” I had never done anything like this where I just got to play like a man or a world champion boxer. Even when I was on set, if I had any time in between I was always doing something like push-ups or sit-ups because I knew I didn’t walk into this movie with this God-given talent of being in shape. They tell you just get a workout and diet, but I think I went anti that early in my career because I was just like, I don’t want to be that guy with the six pack and a tan who’s worried about his makeup and stuff.

Q: Did doing this movie help you to appreciate the nuances of boxing, or is that something you already had as a sports fan?

MT: I was a big MMA fan and I still am, but I started watching it when it was the WCE when I was in high school; I was 16 years old. And then with boxing, I always played the video games and I always watch certain guys like Tyson and Holyfield and Lennox Lewis; the heavyweights back then were the big draws. But once you start training in it, you realize it is very highly nuanced. I don’t see it as two guys in a blood sport. I see it as technique.

Q: The mind is very important to being a champion boxer? Strategy?

MT: Yeah, for sure, but that’s what they say: you have a game plan until you get hit in the face, and then it all goes away. We didn’t have a ton of time. I only had about five weeks in Los Angeles with my boxing trainer, and he was Sugar Ray Leonard’s trainer for 18 years. He was just a very high-level guy. The first fight in the movie against Roger Mayweather, I had five days to work with that boxer. The second boxer, we had a day and a half. And the third boxer, this dude Edmund Rodriguez, got in a fight, professionally, that he wasn’t supposed to. He told Ben (Younger, the director) he wasn’t going to fight, got in a fight, luckily knocked the dude out, didn’t get messed up, flew down, and I honestly only had maybe like a day with him.

Q: You also had to wear the halo in this movie. What was it like reading about that in the script and then wearing it for however long?

MT: For the beginning physical transformation, it was eight months of all that stuff that you hear. You can’t eat any bread or drink for that time. You’re just eating like a rabbit and hoping it all pays off. This guy dedicated like everything in his life to this, so it would’ve been very immature of me to slack off and mess with that. As far as the halo goes, that was highly uncomfortable. Again, you don’t like to complain because, for Vinny, it was screwed in his head. But for me, it wasn’t actually screwed in my head so we really had to make it as tight as possible because if the thing moves at all, then it doesn’t matter what you just did in that take. You only get so many takes, but it’s not usable because when it moves, people understand it’s not real. If this was like a big-budget studio film, I would have had a ton of fittings with it. I just did a firefighter movie and I had more fittings with my boots than I did for this thing. The girl just went to a hospital in Providence and got one from them, and then we put little rubber pieces on the end and just put it so far up my head that I could tell when it was in the right spot because I just had indentations on my head.

“Bleed for This” opens in theaters on Friday, November 18th.

Exclusive Interview with Erin Benach on ‘Loving’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

I got to speak with Costume Designer Erin Benach about her work on Jeff Nichols’ historical drama “Loving.” The movie takes us back to the late 1950’s and early 1960’s where we are introduced to Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple whose marriage quickly had them banished from Virginia as it violated the state’s anti-miscegenation laws. They later sued Virginia, and their civil rights case, “Loving vs. Virginia,” eventually made it all the way to the Supreme Court which affirmed the very foundation of marriage ways and ended state laws that prohibited interracial marriage.

Benach also worked with Nichols on his other 2016 movie, “Midnight Special.” She earned a 2012 Costume Designers Guild Award nomination for her work on Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” and she reteamed with him on “The Neon Demon.” She has also worked with filmmaker Derek Cianfrance on his movies “Blue Valentine,” “The Place Beyond the Pines,” and “The Light Between Oceans.” Her other credits include Brad Furman’s “The Lincoln Lawyer,” Andrew Niccol’s “The Host,” Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Sugar,” and Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut “Lost River.” You can visit her website at www.erinbenach.com.

In my conversation with Benach, she talked about having the costumes fit into the story without overwhelming it, why the costumes could not stand out too much, and of the challenges she faced in capturing the look and feel of the years “Loving” takes place in. She also talked about the differences of working with Nichols and Refn whose films are so very different from one another.

Please check out the interview above. “Loving” is now playing in Los Angeles and New York.

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