An Interview with Writer/Director Rian Johnson

This interview was conducted via email around March 13th, 2006 with writer/director Rian Johnson about his stylized film noir/high school debut feature Brick. The interview was originally posted on the ComingSoon.net message boards, but I am reposting it here for the sake of preservation.

Tyler Foster: First, the basics. How long ago did you write this film, and how did the project and cast finally all come together?
Rian Johnson: I wrote Brick just out of film school, back in '97. We shot it in December of '03, so it was a six year process from script to screen. Part of that had to do with my lack of both industry contacts and social skills, part of it was due to the sheer weirdness of the script. But most of it is just that it's really hard to get the money together for any indie movie. It came together and fell apart multiple times, and all we could do was keep chugging along and hope that all the pieces would line up eventually. Finally, bit by bit, they did. I found a great casting director who helped us pull the cast together, and an amazing producer who knew how to get movies made for very little money. Then with those pieces in place, I had the confidence to pass the hat to friends and family and scrape together our tiny budget.

Tyler Foster: How's it been taking the film around?
Rian Johnson: It's been totally energizing. After finishing the editing process it's easy to get burned out on your own movie, but now that I'm getting to show it to audiences and see how it bounces off of people, I feel like I'm seeing it through fresh eyes.

Tyler Foster: I could ask you what your influences were in making Brick, but that might be too easy. Has anyone seen an influence in your film that wasn't there?
Rian Johnson: Yes, and those are always much more interesting than the ones I know about! My favorite is the "Dark Shadows" connection - a sharp eyed viewer pointed out that the Pin bears a striking costume resemblance to Barnabas Collins from the vampire soap opera "Dark Shadows." Coincidentally, Joseph played a part in the 1991 remake of the show. Weirdness abounds.

Tyler Foster: Looking at IMDb, I see you not only edited Lucky McKee's debut feature May but he also starred in a short film you directed called Evil Demon Golfball from Hell!!! How did you two meet?
Rian Johnson: Lucky and I met in the dorms at USC. You can track down the Golfball short pretty easily online, and see a quick shot of Lucky in his glory days. There's also a pretty big visual May reference hidden in Brick, which at all our screenings I've only had one person catch.

Tyler Foster: You think he'd work on a project of yours in the future?
Rian Johnson: I hope so - he's actually a pretty fantastic actor. He just finished a movie called Roman which is sort of a companion piece to May. He made it with Angela Bettis, but they flipped roles - Angie directed it, and Lucky starred in it. I did a bit of editing on it too, it's a very cool little movie.

Tyler Foster: Any chance that Evil Demon Golfball From Hell!!! will end up on the Brick DVD? Do you know what other supplements there might be?
Rian Johnson: I thought about it, but because it's a USC student short they technically own the rights, so it would be a headache. But I am going to put a short that my friends and I made in high school called Origami Master which is fun. I've also put together a bunch of deleted and extended scenes, and some commentary and behind the scenes pictures that will hopefully give a good feel for what the shoot was like. We're working on the commentary track too -- I'm not a huge fan of commentary tracks where the director just babbles for two hours, so we're trying to figure out how to do it so it's a little more structured and interesting.

Tyler Foster: Speaking of DVDs, I think pretty much every Focus DVD I've popped in over the past three months has had the trailer for Brick on it. How has Focus been going about marketing this film and how much were you involved?
Rian Johnson: I've had very little involvement, just because I haven't felt the need to get involved. Focus has done a great job so far, they really believe in the movie and are doing a great job of spreading the word about it.

Tyler Foster: Lots of directors these days post blogs. Is the message board (http://www.rcjohnso.com/forum) your version of the blog?
Rian Johnson: Absolutely. I'm a big internet geek, I'm constantly trolling the web, and it would always frustrate me to see people asking questions on various random sites around the web, and getting either no info or misinformation about the movie. So I'm trying the message board out as an experiment really, a place on my own personal site where people can talk about Brick and I can give answers when I have them.

Tyler Foster: What was it like, getting the Originality of Vision prize at Sundance?
Rian Johnson: It was quite a thrill. Going into Sundance, I had spent seven years of my life working on this movie and nobody had seen the finished product, so I was very very nervous. Getting that kind of creative validation was an amazing feeling, for me and for the whole crew (and my family, the investors!)

Tyler Foster: Did you see anything cool at Sundance that hasn't hit theaters yet?
Rian Johnson: The bad thing about having a film at a festival is that you don't have any time to see movies. I only got to see Mysterious Skin, Me and You and Everyone We Know, and The Squid and the Whale. Although after Sundance I saw a great movie called The Puffy Chair, which I think just got distribution a few weeks ago. So that's my hot tip.

Tyler Foster: Clear up the release dates for me, plus throw in your two cents on when maybe the film will open wide?
Rian Johnson: We open in LA and NY on 3/31, then will spread out very quickly in the weeks following. If you live in a major market in the US, chances are Brick will be coming to a theater near you. I'm going to be posting the exact cities and release schedule on the main site and on my message board, that's the best place to get the most current info.

Tyler Foster: Anything you're working on for the future?
Rian Johnson: Absolutely - a con man movie called The Brothers Bloom. It's a globe trotting con man adventure romance fairy tale. I cheated a bit, and wrote every location I've ever wanted to visit into the script, so we end up hitting most of Europe in 120 pages. Grab for the brass ring, right?

An Interview with Director Jason Reitman

This interview was conducted around March 12th, 2006 at a hotel in Seattle, to promote writer/director Jason Reitman's adaptation of Chris Buckley's book, Thank You For Smoking. It was originally written for a college newspaper, and because it is a roundtable interview, the majority of the questions are not by Tyler Foster.

Question: So, do you consider this film to be the biggest challenge of your career so far?
Jason Reitman: Oh, yeah, I mean, I wrote this thing over five years ago, so, I had opportunities to make other films in the interim because of my short films, because I was directing commercials, but this is what I wanted to say as a filmmaker, as my first step into a professional career. This is the kind of filmmaker I wanted to establish myself as, so I could kind of continue down a career line of making smart comedies. It was a big challenge, it took five years, it was a challenge just to get the job originally, it was a challenge to find someone to actually put up the money and make it. What was amazing was once we finally had the rights and the money, how quickly the cast came together and how quickly we got it to its premiere in Toronto.
Question: Is that like your anti-pigeonholing exercise, to get your first film out there and have it be what you want to do, so if people try to lump you into certain categories, then --
Jason Reitman: Yeah! Certainly! Well, you're gonna be lumped into a category no matter what, and I think that's important to understand if you want to be a filmmaker, and I just didn't want to be lumped into the category of high-school teen romantic-comedy director, which was basically what was available to me before I wrote my own script.
Question: How much of a part did the writer of the book play in the production?
Jason Reitman: A lot! You know, it's funny, there were previous writers to me who took stabs at writing this screenplay, and they never spoke to him, so the day I called him, he was really surprised. I left a message on his machine, and I said 'Hi Chris, this is Jason Reitman, the guy they hired to f--- up your book.' He called me back, and we started this fantastic relationship, and we're now good friends, and I would send him drafts of the screenplay, and he would send me notes, and he actually came to set, and he's in the film. It's a small part, I'm not sure if you remember it, but at the point when Heather Holloway releases her article, we go across the city and we see people reading it, and there's one guy in a subway station, an older guy -- well, I shouldn't say older guy, cause now Chris will be pissed -- there's a guy in the subway station, and he's reading the newspaper, and he just frowns and shakes his head, and that's Chris Buckley. He showed up at Toronto and he showed up at Sundance, and I think he's very proud of the film, and proud to have ownership over it, and he and I are constantly talking about what we could do together next.
Question: You mentioned your short films...I noticed they're all sort of hot-button topics, so are you interested in controversy, is that something you sort of look for in making a film?
Jason Reitman: You know, I think if you look at my short films, you look at my feature, what it really says about me is I don't like authority, I don't like being told what to do, so a lot of my films deal with that subject. As far as controversy...[laughs]...my feature has certainly found its own controversies, but my short films have generally been accessible and always been more entertaining actually than normal short films, which usually are the thought-provoking rantins of a college student. And that's not bad, but when I went to film festivals, I noticed that, and it was my desire to come back and make...bring entertaining comedies that could really break from the norm in the film festival world.
Question: You think those short films will be on the DVD or anything?
Jason Reitman: Uh, they probably won't be on the DVD, they are available online at www.atomfilms.com, and I probably...you know, we're entering into a really interesting time as far as short films go, in that...there's all these available ways to watch short films now, on, if you have a Video iPod, if you have Video On-Demand through a cell phone, the short film is actually going to become a necessary part of the marketplace, and you can tell by the amount of email clips we all send our friends. And right now, it's goofier stuff, it's like a bear falling out of a tree, but that will develop, and the bite-size entertainment will be a meaningful thing, and at that point I hope to finally make a fortune off my short films. [laughs] No, I just they become a part of the marketplace.
Question: When did you actually finish writing it, you were saying five years ago?
Jason Reitman: Yeah, the actual writing process was only three or four months, it happened end of 2000, beginning of 2001, we didn't shoot this film until the beginning of 2005.
Question: It's uniquely appropo, especially in Washington with our anti-smoking laws that just went through, that this is what you were thinking of five years ago.
Jason Reitman: Right. Well, it's funny, throughout the process of this, even when I just found the book in the late '90's and the book was seven years old, the question I would always be asked was, 'well, is this still relevant, is this still relevant?' There was a big tobacco settlement in '98, and does the film still mean anything after that, and it does, because people continue to want to tell other people what to do. And I know I'm sitting at a table of Seattleites or Washingtonians, where you have passed this kind of ban on public smoking, so I hope I don't offend any of you, but I think that's ridiculous! I'm not a smoker, I don't like smoking as much as the next guy, but I don't think as long as it's a legal product, I think there's something very wrong about telling people they can't smoke outside, and it's just as ridiculous as telling people they can't drink Coca-Cola outside.
Question: That's next.
Jason Reitman: That'll be next, and then next will be the Whopper.
Question: Burger King's almost gone anyway. Going along this line, what's the message of the film you want people to get, because you're not really promoting or being negative about cigarettes. You're kind of saying people should choose for themselves, that's the message I got.
Jason Reitman: Yeah, I think the message of the film is about personal responsibility, you have the freedom to do very dangerous things in life, and if you're going to do them, that's fine, but you have to take responsibility for those actions. Look, if you want to kill yourself, that's okay, you have the choice to shoot yourself, that'd be faster, you smoke cigarettes, it will take 20-30 years, but don't go blaming the tobacco industry at this point. Or at least don't talk to me about that, because I just don't buy it. I have a hard time believing that you went into this habit unknowing, unless you're 80 years old, and you have to take responsibility for that. And it's a message to parents, you know, there's a big father-son relationship in this film, and there's a parenting message in this film, which says we have to prepare our children so that they can make these types of decisions when they get older, and that's not the responsibility of corporations and not the responsibility of the government.
Question: So you're not worried that Katie Holmes is going to overwhelm your movie?
Jason Reitman: [laughs] No! You know, it's funny, because I made a political comedy, so there's a very specific audience for that, and I presume up until Katie Holmes, we were gonna find people who normally like indie films, political comedies, smart comedies, and she has opened us up to the 14-year-old boy demographic, so I'm thrilled.

An Interview with Writer/Director Andrew Niccol

This interview was conducted on or around August 28th, 2005 via telephone to promote Andrew Niccol's film movie Lord of War. There actually aren't a lot of questions about Lord of War itself in the interview, because he did a Q+A after the screening of the film, and answered the majority of the movie-specific questions during the Q+A. For whatever reason, I don't have a transcript of the Q+A, so all that remains is a short interview about more general topics. This interview was originally posted on the ComingSoon.net message boards, but I'm reposting it here for the sake of preservation.

Andrew Niccol: Hi.
Tyler Foster: Thanks for doing this interview.
Andrew Niccol: No problem.
Tyler Foster: I notice that as a writer, you seem to like to take an idea you can expand to all corners of the world you set the movie in. Is there something about that that you enjoy studying and its effects on all sorts of people?
Andrew Niccol: Well, I guess it's a style I have that...I don't consciously think about it like that.
Tyler Foster: Then, how do you approach writing a script? How do you take --
Andrew Niccol: It's a very haphazard process, I'm afraid. [chuckles] You'd be frightened. 'Cause it's...you know, I'm interested in a lot of areas and I just sort of start collecting...reference on it, and then either a story will occur to me from that, or it won't, and...or a character will emerge from that, or it won't, and if it does, I'll write a script, but...as I say, it's rather chaotic process to getting there.
Tyler Foster: Celebrity seems to be at least somewhat interesting to you. What is you find most interesting or most disturbing about celebrity?
Andrew Niccol: Ah, well, just when you know more about Paris Hilton's life than you do about your own uncle. There's something wrong there.
Tyler Foster: [laughs] Someone pointed out to me that The Truman Show is almost the opposite of S1m0ne. What do you think of that evaluation?
Andrew Niccol: Yeah, I never thought about it at the time, but I think it's true, that S1m0ne is The Truman Show inside out. You know, you have one real person in a fake world and a fake person in a real world.
Tyler Foster: Do you find it more or less interesting to direct your own films as opposed to seeing how others interpret them, such as Spielberg's take on The Terminal or Peter Weir's take on The Truman Show?
Andrew Niccol: Well, they're sort of different cases, I always write to direct. In the case of Terminal, though, I felt I'd explored that theme before. I felt I was kind of going over old ground in a way, 'cause I had another another prisoner in paradise, and I wanted -- you know, I was happy that someone else wanted to take it and see what they would do with it. And in the case of The Truman Show, it was the mistake of writing my most expensive script first. Nobody gives you $80 million dollars for your first movie.
Tyler Foster: I heard you shot footage for The Truman Show with Gary Oldman. Does that footage still exist somewhere?
Andrew Niccol: Somewhere. Yeah, but it was more of an exercise in some ways, because ultimately, when you have Jim Carrey and you have Peter Weir and it's your first attempt at a feature, it's unlikely to happen.
Tyler Foster: What's your next feature film about?
Andrew Niccol: I don't know yet. I'm working on a couple things, but it's been a challenge to get it off the ground.
Tyler Foster: I heard you had done a sci-fi script that you were letting someone else direct, involving water?
Andrew Niccol: Oh, no, that -- you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. That's actually, a friend of mine, Shekhar Kapur, mentioned it. He wanted me to write this film for him, and I think he said it at Cannes or somewhere, and it ended up on the internet. It sort of mushrooms from there.
Tyler Foster: Are there are any TV shows or movies that interest you right now?
Andrew Niccol: Yeah, well, I think I'm sort of more drawn to, I guess, non-fiction than fiction, becuase the world is sort of entertaining enough, or absurd enough on its own without having to fictionalize it.
Tyler Foster: Lastly, do you think there's an idea you'd like to write about in a script but you think there's too much information to cover?
Andrew Niccol: Too much what to cover?
Tyler Foster: Information.
Andrew Niccol: No, I don't think of it like that, it's just more just looking at the human condition, but more...I guess I'm looking at the inhuman condition, and what we're doing to each other with technology, and just the way the world's going, and I'm more interested in stories in that area.
Tyler Foster: Alright, well, thank you very much and have a nice flight back to wherever you're headed.
Andrew Niccol: San Fransisco, actually.

An Interview with Director Edgar Wright and Writer/Actor Simon Pegg

This interview was conducted on September 3rd, 2004 by telephone between Atlanta and Washington, prior to the release of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s film Shaun of the Dead. It was previously posted at a fan site I made to earn points on the “Shaun Squad” Street Team website (which is how I got in contact with Edgar in the first place), and the now-defunct entertainment website Funk Diggity Fresh. Sadly, the “Shaun Squad” site was not left up as a fan community, which is a shame because the trio wrote highly entertaining blogs about their trip across the country that don’t seem to have been saved anywhere. In any case, I’m re-posting the interview here.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t interview Nick, I didn’t know he was there. This is also one of my earliest interviews, so I didn't know that "What's your favorite and least favorite horror movie?" is a terrible, insipid question that the interviewee has already endured two and a half billion times.

Tyler Foster: Hello! Having a good time in America?
Edgar Wright: Uh-huh!
Simon Pegg: Yeah.
Edgar Wright: Our last day today. We've been here for a month, and we're going back tonight.
Simon Pegg: Going back to the UK in four hours.
Tyler Foster: Alright, I'll just get started then. What's the scariest thing about relationships?
Edgar Wright: [laughs] Sometimes they end.
Simon Pegg: I guess it's just the notion of longevity and commitment, and all that kind of stuff, but that doesn't neccesarily have to be a scary thing, you know? Also weird sex.
Tyler Foster: It seems nowadays that everything's a horror comedy, you know, with all horror movies having jokes, or sort of needing to poke fun at themselves, I think. Do you think that it's because it's harder to be scary, or because the horror movies don't have any ideas left, they need another form of entertainment to give the audience what they want?
Edgar Wright: We hope for too much.
Simon Pegg: I don't know if that's true. I mean, look at, for whatever it's worth, Cabin Fever, or Gothika, I mean, there's lots of films that try to be scary, The Gift, what was that one...
Edgar Wright: Oh, the Japanese horror films as well.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, like, The Ring...
Edgar Wright: The Ring, Audition.
Simon Pegg: Audition, yeah. I don't really think that that's true, I mean in our film we don't really try and make fun of the horror either, we try and sort of to keep it as real as possible, and try to maintain a serious dimension to the zombies. I just think it's that there was a kind of spoof culture that kicked in, by the first Scream, in a way, which is a very good film, but it spawned some sort of lesser sequels, and then the Scary Movie series, which is a weird kind of spoof of a spoof.
Tyler Foster: Yeah. What are your guys' favorite and least favorite horror movies? Or, horror-comedies.
Edgar Wright: Um...Favorite horror movies...I mean, obviously, Dawn of the Dead is a favorite. American Werewolf in London. Evil Dead II.
Simon Pegg: The Omen.
Edgar Wright: The Omen's good.
Simon Pegg: The Shining.
Edgar Wright: Suspiria.
Simon Pegg: The Exorcist.
Edgar Wright: The Exorcist, yeah.
Tyler Foster: Was Shaun of the Dead always planned as a romantic comedy, or was it ever straight comedy, or something else?
Edgar Wright: Yeah, it was one of the initial sort of ideas, partly because we wanted to write something about our own sort of life, and not London, but also we thought it would be quite funny, that, you know, because most British exports are romantic comedies.
Tyler Foster: Mm-hmm.
Edgar Wright: So, we thought it would be quite funny to do a sort of subversive version of that.
Tyler Foster: Now, since I'm in the US, I haven't been able to see "Spaced" [note: long since rectified], and of course, Shaun isn't based on it, but was there any of that fear of jumping from TV to the cinema, like that the humor wouldn't translate?
Edgar Wright: Well, the show that we did, "Spaced", was sort of a satire sitcom about two roommates, and it had a lot of dream sequences. But one of the things we wanted to do with Shaun of the Dead was to make a film where people didn't have to wake up at the end of a dream, where something fantastical could have happened, but it could be happening for real, and even have fate, or real consequences. Kind of born out of having that kind of TV show and wanting to tell a story that had a beginning, middle and an end.
Tyler Foster: One thing that I noticed that I really liked was the way the jokes sort of come full cycle, each scene during the relationship is sort of referenced during the zombie attack. Was that something you planned, or did it come naturally?
Edgar Wright: Some of that stuff was in the first draft, and I think on subsequent drafts we did more and more of it. We're big fans of kind of films like Raising Arizona that are sort of dense in detail, and have a lot of setup stuff. It's not something we originally set out to do, but it definitely expanded as we went along.
Tyler Foster: Simon, in an interview for CHUD, you mentioned a bunch of my favorite films and directors, such as Garden State, Eternal Sunshine, you know, Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson. Would you and Edgar have an interest in doing something more serious like that?
Simon Pegg: Um, yeah, I think so. I mean, the thing is our background is from comedy, and that's something we really enjoy doing. I think if there was something that moved us enough to want to, you know, if we had an idea and we were really serious about it we'd probably follow it through. I mean, the directors I mentioned, there's a great bit of sweet comedy running through, you know, a lot of those films, Garden State, Eternal Sunshine, you know, Wes Anderson has a wonderful kind of wit to him, and I wouldn't call them comedies as such, but they certainly are...they have a great sense of humor, I think. I don't know we'd actually make something like Requiem for a Dream, as such, it depends what kind of budget there would be. At the moment we're enjoying doing comedy, and it's not just comedy either.
Tyler Foster: Yeah.
Simon Pegg: We're not just going for gags, kind of thing, we're trying to create something a little more rounded. There are moments in Shaun of the Dead that are quite serious, in a way. So I never say never.
Tyler Foster: How do you think the use of the blog on the Shaun Squad website spreads the buzz, because I mean I know Zach Braff did that for Garden State, and it seems to have had an impact with the fans.
Edgar Wright: I think it helps us remember where we were and what we were doing! [laughs] It's been a good thing writing it up, it's just such a whirlwind trip that I think that if we hadn't written some of it down we would have forgotten, it would have all bled into one. It's just such a nice thing to do because I know some of these fans on the stops that we've stopped and took pictures with and we've put them up on the site, and it's just a nice way of doing it. I think that maybe, the fans feel that --
Nick Frost: People would appreciate the effort you put into it as well.
Edgar Wright: Yeah. Update most of the days.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, and there's so little time as well, between cities, so as you're leaving a city, and I think it's nice to be able to sort of record everything, and it's a good idea, and, well, I don't know who's reading it, but there does seem to be people who are responding.
Tyler Foster: I read on the website, of course, and on other sites actually, that you guys went to see Alien vs. Predator, and you weren't very impressed.
Edgar Wright: Well, I fell asleep,
Simon Pegg: The trouble is, I think that, with those words is that, maybe in our tiredness we've been a little bit too outspoken on this. The truth is we went to see Alien vs. Predator directly after Garden State, we only went in really because we heard the Shaun trailer would be playing with it, and we thought we'd just nip in and watch that. And then we stayed, but it was so late at night, that we couldn't really get into it. It...it...it wasn't my favorite film I'd ever seen, but I think we were just a bit tired, you know?
Tyler Foster: Yeah, well, what do you think of these crossovers, the matchups, like Freddy vs. Jason, or they're talking about doing Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash now.
Nick Frost: They're going to make Herbie vs. Christine next. That's another one they're working on.
Tyler Foster: [laughs]
Edgar Wright: [laughs] I'd like to see Herbie vs. Christine. Maybe you can start the rumor, and then someone will offer it to us.
Tyler Foster: I have a copy of the soundtrack, and I enjoyed the choices you made, nice and varied. Are these just musical influences, or what you thought was right for the movie, your favorite songs?
Edgar Wright: Well, a bit of everything. Some of them are favorite tracks, like the Queen track, the whole Electro vibe, it's Simon and I's sort of bag, and yeah, it's a nice mix. I mean, you want to do stuff that's relevant to the film, like the Specials track, and the Smiths, but it's really nice to create something, I really enjoyed that aspect of the process, and mixing the soundtrack was great fun.
Tyler Foster: Actually, just another question I thought of, I know that you guys, or at least I know Simon is a huge Star Wars fan. What do you guys think of the changes Lucas is making on the DVDs?
Simon Pegg: Oh, don't remind me.
Edgar Wright: [laughs] We saw some of that.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, we did. We did get a sneak preview of some of the DVDs at an undisclosed location in the universe, and uh, I won't lie to you. Some of them are good, some of them aren't. I think -- I don't like this kind of revisionist stuff. It underestimates the audience, and it assumes that, I don't know, that it's not ours. When you give something away, it becomes the world's, and and George Lucas forever taking his ball in and pumping it up again, it's like, well, for God's sake.
Nick Frost: I say...well, why not do something else?
Edgar Wright: [laughs]
Nick Frost: Eat at a different restaurant for a change.
Simon Pegg: There's an interesting thing that they've done...I mean, I just think the Special Editions, you know, you kind of start to think, hang on, something's wrong here, some of the kind of changes he made there, and of course that was a foreshadow for the debacle that was The Phantom Menace and the subsequent Attack of the Clones...
Tyler Foster: [laughs]
Simon Pegg: Yeah, I just think he should have left it alone. I never thought when I was seven that it needed more comedy Jawas in the background. It was perfect.
Edgar Wright: It wouldn't be so bad if he was releasing the originals as well, you know, so you could choose between the two.
Tyler Foster: Exactly.
Simon Pegg: I don't like the revisioning, no.
Edgar Wright: It seems it's also like a crime against film history, because then, in twenty years time, if that's the only left, is the DVDs, it's like, well, this was done in 1977, and this crappy Jabba the Hutt bit was done in 1997.
Simon Pegg: Oh, yeah, he's redone Jabba again for these DVDs.
Tyler Foster: Yeah, I mean, and I've heard, it's not just the fans, you know, film professors, for instance, they want to have the original versions available --
Edgar Wright: Yes!
Simon Pegg: Right, definitely.
Edgar Wright: It's genuinely like a crime against the archives, it's really, really sad. At least Spielberg with E.T., when he, you know, made all the changes, at least they had the original version on the DVD as well.
Tyler Foster: Yeah. For your next project, you've mentioned that it's going to be a cop action movie, kind of like a sequel to Shaun in spirit. What was the sort of jumpstart for you guys to get going on that, because, like, it seems like 28 Days Later might have been a jumpstart to do Shaun.
Edgar Wright: No, really, cause I mean, we'd started writing Shaun before we heard about 28 Days Later, if anything, the film was sort of more inspired out by having played too many Resident Evil games, really. It's not that there's a push, really, to do any project, it's just like playing with genres, and we want to do a cop film, on the UK's not-so-exciting streets, we thought it'd be pretty funny. It was inspired by these cop films of the 70's, but it's just another way of doing a different, a sort of British take on it, this American genre.
Tyler Foster: If you do end up doing Shaun 2, sometime in the future, I have my idea for it, just a shot you should do...
Edgar Wright: Yeah?
Tyler Foster: It's like the new version of Shaun waking up as a zombie. Just gotta have the white pane, you know, and the hand comes up and hits it like Dawn of the Dead, and then it's just Shaun, wiping off his mirror after a shower.
Edgar Wright: [laughs]
Tyler Foster: Well, thank you for doing this interview --
Edgar Wright: Oh, well, thank you!
Simon Pegg: Thank you!
Tyler Foster: There's a ton of fans I know who just wanted to say hello, my friends.
Edgar Wright: Well, did you come last night, Tyler?
Tyler Foster: Oh, no, I'm in Washington State.
Edgar Wright: Oh, okay. Well, cool, thank you very much, and we appreciate it. Glad you enjoyed the soundtrack too.
Simon Pegg: And if you see the mirror gag in our next film you can't have any money.
Tyler Foster: [laughs]
Edgar Wright: [cackles]
Simon Pegg: You've given it away.
Tyler Foster: Bye!
Edgar Wright: Thanks, Tyler!
Simon Pegg: Bye!

Interviews with Broken Lizard Co-Writer/Director/Actor Jay Chandrasekhar and Co-Writer/Actor Erik Stolhanske

This interview was conducted on March 4th, 2004, via telephone with the two West Coast members of Broken Lizard, director/co-writer/star Jay Chandrasekhar and co-writer/star Erik Stolhanske, to promote the movie Broken Lizard's Club Dread. It was originally printed in my high school paper, and I'm posting it here for the sake of preservation.

Obviously, Club Dread is five years old at this point, and will only get older, but just in case you haven't seen it and you're really worried about it, the Erik Stolhanske interview contains a major spoiler at the end.

Jay Chandrasekhar: Hey, so, I guess we’re doing an interview?
Tyler Foster: Yeah.
Jay Chandrasekhar: And you’re in Seattle?
Tyler Foster: Yep.
Jay Chandrasekhar: I like Seattle, a friend of mine lives up there...I enjoyed it when we were up there for Super Troopers, with the tour bus. We went to the University of Washington...cool place.
Tyler Foster: Awesome. So, let’s just begin...do you do anything in the writing process that will make it easier for you to direct the movie later?
Jay Chandrasekhar: Yeah, in terms of scenes, when I just have a line or two in them, personally, as an actor, I’ll just give them off to someone else, and get out of the scene, particularly if it’s a big scene. Because, you know, there are certain scenes where it’s just a lot easier for me if I’m not in it, to direct it…when I’m not the central part of it, just an element. You know, there’s things where you end up writing jokes sometimes, and I’m an editor, on three films now, and you start to know what you’re gonna use and what you’re not gonna use, and really where scenes should end, and even when you have great, great jokes, you know they’re just going to be hanging out there when you shoot the movie. There’s a natural place to end scenes. You get better at seeing it, and when you see it, you know it, and you have to do as much editing in the script stage, because you run out of time on set, and ideally, you want to shoot as much of what you’re gonna use as possible, and maybe 20% extra.
Tyler Foster: So, in the editing process, are the other members there, or do you just do it alone?
Jay Chandrasekhar: Kevin Heffernan and I have worked together, and we hired another editor, Ryan Folsey, whose father actually worked on Blues Brothers, Animal House, Trading Places, and he’s sort of working his way up the ranks. But he did a cut, and then I did my own cut with Kevin, and then we had Ryan do another cut, and I tweaked it, and yeah, we worked together.
Tyler Foster: Then, when you write it, do you already have the balance of behind-the-camera, in-front-of-the-camera worked out?
Jay Chandrasekhar: Yeah, I mean, you try not to, because it’s sort of unnatural to do that, but inevitably, it happens…sometimes, there’s certain things, when you’re writing it…you’re looking at something, say if you didn’t write something in particular, you say, ‘What do you see here?’ because sometimes, number one, I don’t get it, or number two, I’m not sure if it’s funny, or if it’s a good way to open a scene, or end a scene, or whatever, and you’re really sort of able to push, and push, until...the bottom line is if you’re reading the script, and you’re a director, and you don’t get it…it’s not going to be good. It’s not going to come together magically. If you don’t get the joke, or don’t think the joke’s funny, you’re in trouble.
Tyler Foster: Who writes the actual screenplay?
Jay Chandrasekhar: We all do, actually, the five of us, and, there’s a point man, sure, but we all get together, and we’ll meet for days and days on it, and then give the point person a bunch of notes, we’ll write them all down, typed notes, and then he’ll go away, and make a new draft. We’ll do 20 or 30 drafts.
Tyler Foster: That’s cool. I felt that when I saw Club Dread, that it was a tighter film than Super Troopers, in that Super Troopers was great, no offense, but it felt like a bunch of little skits tied together. Did you work on that while you were writing it?
Jay Chandrasekhar: Well, you know, we originally were a sketch comedy group, so that’s something that people are automatically going to assume, that your movie is going to be very sketchy, you know, and we kind of reacted to that, tried to have reasonable substance to the plot, and we tried to do that in Super Troopers, we just weren’t as good at it. It’s an interesting phenomenon, we’ve only had two films out there, and we have a third, Puddle Cruiser, which we made earlier, but people come up and they sort of join one film, going, ‘You know, well, I like that film better.’ And I’m hearing both, really, ‘Oh, well, I thought Super Troopers was funnier,’ and I’m kinda, ‘Well, okay,’ but then people will come up and say, ‘No, no, Club Dread was way better,’ and there’s not much you can do but say, ‘Well, thanks for buying a ticket.’ [laughs]
Tyler Foster: Well, I’ve read about Puddle Cruiser, and I heard it was coming out in June of this year, and I was wondering what kind of things would be on the DVD, because I’m sure a lot of your fans haven’t been able to see it.
Jay Chandrasekhar: Well, not a lot, because we didn’t have the machines up, but there will be the film, and an audio commentary.
Tyler Foster: And what about the short film you did, Tinfoil Monkey Agenda?
Jay Chandrasekhar: Tinfoil Monkey Agenda...we’ll have that out someday...maybe we’ll put it on the DVD with all our old stage stuff.
Tyler Foster: Stage stuff?
Jay Chandrasekhar: Yeah, we have a bunch of short film, short videos, from back when we were on stage, in New York. We have a lot of stuff. [laughs] A lot of stuff we could put on DVDs.
Tyler Foster: Was it fun to direct a real thriller, aside from the comedy?
Jay Chandrasekhar: Yeah, yeah, I thought it was, you get into it, and you get into it, and you kind of start thinking of the movie in that way, and I had a great time.
Tyler Foster: And what kind of experience do you get from doing other shows, like, you’ve done some episodes of "Arrested Development".
Jay Chandrasekhar: You know, it’s a great show, and the writing’s so good, so you can concentrate on being innovative as a filmmaker, and not trying to make the script better. You know sometimes, you work, and you think, ‘Ah, this is no good,’ but this show is so funny and great, and they want you to try interesting things.
Tyler Foster: Finally, I read on the Club Dread website that you posted the question about...
Jay Chandrasekhar: [laughing] Super Troopers 2!
Tyler Foster: Yeah, the fans seemed to go crazy for it.
Jay Chandrasekhar: What do you think?
Tyler Foster: I think it could be cool. What’s your opinion on it?
Jay Chandrasekhar: You know...it’s interesting. I really, really enjoyed playing that character. I enjoyed having a mustache. And a crew cut. And having a gun belt. [laughs] I think it would be fun to do, now that we’re a little better at filmmaking. Of course, that film has a little bit of a loyal cult, and because of that, you wonder if people will go, ‘Ahh, it’s not as good.’ You know, how do we ultimately surprise people?
Tyler Foster: Yeah, I think that was something that threw some Club Dread viewers, was that you’re not playing the same characters all over again.
Jay Chandrasekhar: I think that’s a natural thing in this kind of group. People don’t know what we’re trying to do until they see one, or two, or three movies, and then they’ll go, ‘Oh, I get it.’ But I mean, a lot of people went, it was going to be Super Troopers 2, and it wasn’t. I have mixed feelings about it though. I think we could make a good movie, and you think of those movies, like Austin Powers, or Wayne’s World. I mean, I think the second Austin Powers is probably the best one.
Tyler Foster: Well, thanks for agreeing to this, thanks for talking to me, it was cool, I’m awaiting your next project, and good luck.
Jay Chandrasekhar: Alright. Your friends go to see Club Dread?
Tyler Foster: Yeah, a bunch of them went to see it.
Jay Chandrasekhar: We made the mistake of opening against The Passion...
Tyler Foster: Yeah, well, hopefully everyone’s seen it by now.
Jay Chandrasekhar: Hopefully. Alright, later.

Erik Stolhanske: Hey. So, you’re in Seattle? High school?
Tyler Foster: Yep.
Erik Stolhanske: All right.
Tyler Foster: So, when you guys write a movie, how do you guys sit down and choose what kind of theme you’re going to have, what kind of plot you’re gonna chose for that particular film?
Erik Stolhanske: Well, it usually hinges on the fact that there’s five of us, and...I guess, I wish I could say there was some sort of exact science to it, but, it’s just sort of a concept or an idea pops up into our mind. Kind of like, with Super Troopers, we thought it would just be kind of cool if we had this stretch of highway, out in the middle of nowhere, kind of like American Graffiti, this stretch of highway, and what do people do when they just have nothing to do with their time?
Tyler Foster: And so you just work it out until you come upon an idea that everyone agrees on, that everyone thinks could be the most funny?
Erik Stolhanske: Yeah, we just sort of grind out plot ideas, and where we could work in something like this, you know. Club Dread evolved from the same idea as Ten Little Indians, like, you get stuck on an island, you can’t get off, there’s a killer running around, and to that, we had the idea how all the people would be constantly trying to have fun all the time, and these other people, that’s their job, to help them have fun, even in this situation, with someone trying to kill you.
Tyler Foster: As performers, I noticed you tried to switch things up, and play different roles than what you did in Super Troopers. Is it hard to do that while playing to a performer’s individual strengths?
Erik Stolhanske: No, I think that’s kind the fun of it. I think that’s why we’re excited about making a whole library of films for the future, is that we’ll get a crack at trying different things, going along, doing what things interest us. And to not do the same thing at one time helps keep it from becoming as stale.
Tyler Foster: How does improv work with you guys? Do you just do it whenever, hold it until the end of shots, wait for specific scenes that are sort of geared toward that?
Erik Stolhanske: You know, unfortunately, we’ve always sort of had a situation where we never have any money to make movies, so we’ve never had the freedom to really improvise on the set. So what we do is we get together maybe two weeks before the shoot, and we just take what we have scripted, and try to get it on its feet, and during that time we have time to improvise, and if jokes come out of that, we’ll write them down, but most of it’s scripted, because we don’t have the ability to do so many takes when we’re on the set.
Tyler Foster: What’s it like working with people like Brian Cox, and Bill Paxton? They seemed to blend right in with your guys’s brand of comedy.
Erik Stolhanske: Yeah, it’s great, you know, a lot of actors don’t get a chance to do comedy so much, like you were saying about being a certain role, so for instance, Brian is perceived as being very, very serious, but he said that when he was growing up, he loved Jerry Lewis, so he kind of came across our script, which was this really broad comedy, and he was really excited to kind of jump on it. Both Bill and Brian kind of came to us, approached us, because they were excited about the idea of doing comedy. And when you’re with those guys, it kind of grounds you, it raises you up to another level, hopefully. It was great, lots of fun.
Tyler Foster: You’re one of the people in the group that has other stuff going on. What’s coming up with you?
Erik Stolhanske: I just finished The Onion Movie, for the newspaper, The Onion, it was a sketch comedy movie.
Tyler Foster: I heard about that awhile ago, and I love The Onion. What’s the plot about?
Erik Stolhanske: Yeah, it’s going to be great, it’s a really funny movie. The plot, it’s kind of all over the place, it’s really random sketch comedy we just squeezed in, but there’s one sort of central plot, about this anchor guy, a sort of Walter Cronkite character, who’s sort of trying to present serious news every night, but there’s this huge corporation, which keeps trying to promote this movie called Cockpuncher that’s coming out, and this little animated penguin keeps coming across the screen, and he has to deal with reporting the war, but then reporting this movie that’s sweeping the nation called Cockpuncher. It’s pretty funny.
Tyler Foster: As a group, how do you guys feel about comparisons to Monty Python?
Erik Stolhanske: Well, you know, the only similarities there are that there are five guys, five of us, in both groups. Five guys that make movies. I mean, you know, they’re five intellectual British guys who make intellectual comedy, and we’re more broad. I think that you’ll see, over the years, a whole range of films from us. Club Dread won’t be the style of our next movie, just as Club Dread wasn’t the same style as Super Troopers. But I think really, the only comparison is that there are five guys.
Tyler Foster: I was just talking to Jay, and I was asking him about his post on the Club Dread website about Super Troopers 2 and I was wondering how you felt about that?
Erik Stolhanske: You know, it would be so fun to do Super Troopers 2, people have been asking, and I have some great ideas for it, some great sketches. The thing is, it just feels like we’re going back, saying like this is the only thing we can do. Creatively, what would be great, is if we created a completely different movie, and then maybe come back to Super Troopers 2 after that. There’s such an appetite for it, but you know, it takes years to make a film, and get it out there, and find the right weekend to put it out, and then, a few years goes by, and it would be like after six years, all we’ve done is Super Troopers, Club Dread and Super Troopers 2.
Tyler Foster: What are you guys working on now?
Erik Stolhanske: We have about six projects that we’re working on, we always have a bunch of scripts that we’re writing, and it’s just sort of a matter of finding the right budget.
Tyler Foster: Yeah, like, which one gets the most ideas right off the bat?
Erik Stolhanske: Yeah, we’ll go to a studio and pitch five ideas to them, and we’ll see which one they’re most excited about, and which one we can get off the ground the quickest. Like, we may have one that’s budgeted at $25 million dollars, and a studio will take forever to get that going, as they try to get co-financing, and try to cast it, but if there’s a project that’s in the $5 million dollar range, they’ll just give us the money to go make it with the five of us. It kind of depends on something that all works out at the time.
Tyler Foster: And, just a question of personal interest...
Erik Stolhanske: Sure...
Tyler Foster: What was it like playing the bad guy?
Erik Stolhanske: [laughs] I loved it. It’s kind of cool, because I’m kind of like the wholesome, nice guy in the group, and I don’t often get the chance to play the bad guy, so it was kind of a cool thing in our situation, where we get to play the opposites of roles, maybe I’d get to play the romantic lead, which also could be good, which could be real sappy if you don’t play it right, so, yeah, I just loved playing the bad guy, to get to do that. You know, over the years, the classics, I love Nicholson, the guys you really remember from Halloween, Freddy, and Jason from Friday the 13^th, it might be a hard act to follow, but it’s fun. You have to go to a really dark place, you know, I try to draw from my acting background, I studied acting for two years, and just try to be as real as possible. You’re playing a serial killer, and you have to go a sort of weird place in your mind and sometimes, it doesn’t wear off for a bit.
Tyler Foster: Just walk around on set, attacking people?
Erik Stolhanske: [laughs] Yeah.
Tyler Foster: Well, thanks for your time, and good luck on your next project.
Erik Stolhanske: Thanks, man.