Why did the 1997 movie take on The Avengers go so wrong?
Whats it like to direct Sharon Stone?
And how do you recover when your movie is slammed by the critics?
I interviewed Kevin Smith last year, and talked about working with Bruce Wills onCop Out.
Number one, it moved completely away from comedy.
It couldnt have been further away.
What was the attraction of the project?
How was it making a film like that?
How did it differ?
Well, again I wanted to stretch my wings and do different things.
I never just saw myself as a director of just pure comedy.
I guess at the time also I was do you know the movieSullivans Travels?
Thats where that title comes from.
I felt that I went, or had been through that journey myself.
ButDiaboliquewas a chance to do something very, very challenging.
I wondered if that was possible.
So, that was my artistic challenge to it.
The studio went, We want noir.
Now, Id never met her up to this moment.
Some of the material wasnt for me, I didnt like it, blah blah blah.. We really have to work together.
Well, flash forward.
I called Sharons home from the boardroom and I said, Sharon, Its Jeremiah.
And she said, Im in.
And that was it.
It couldnt be weighted unless it was somebody iconic.
And I was an enormous fan of Isabelle Adjani, and shes a legend.
And so I flew to Paris and I took her out for dinner.
[laughs]
JJs in the film, which is really fun.
He had read with Donal.
It was really fun.
Another whole long, story.
But, the movie itself was extraordinarily turbulent.
It was a very difficult everyday experience.
The film turned out the way I wanted it to, love it or hate it.
But I had to battle it constantly and battle a lot of personalities.
In Europe, the movie was very well received, oddly.
In France, in particular, all the press there.
People had printed thousands of fake tickets.
In Spain there were near riots.
Not that that would ever stop me.
But that was an experience unlike any other, but doing the drama was something that I loved.
Can I just rewind slightly, because I wanted to ask you aboutTall Tale, actually.
Id never seen that.
Oh, that movie is awesome.
Its one of the movies Im most proud of.
The movie never hit an audience for a lot of reasons.
In the test screenings it scored in the high nineties.
They just couldnt figure out how to sell it.
It is especially widescreen.
We shot it in anamorphic.
Joe Roth was the producer, Roger Birnbaum.
Artistically it was great.
Bob Rodat, another Academy Award winner, wrote the screenplay.
It was about American iconography, a movie for kids.
Its a movie worth seeing, or worth trying to see, I guess today.
[laughs]
But its a movie Imextremelyproud of and a very epic western.
Its just a great form.
Its a wonderful form to work with.
They just give us a western now as a treat about every five years, dont they?
Because they say they dont travel!
You know, both yes and no.
Again, the development of the script was quite fun, and it certainly engaged Diana Rigg.
But she was onEyes Wide Shut.
And what happened was that Kubrick would not give Nicole a start date.
We really want this movie.
Warners, at the time, was in great turbulence.
Remember, this would be my third picture for them, and had a deal there.
Id been there a long time.
But there was turbulence in the executive suites.
And Terry and Bob, who were running the company, they really loved the script.
I wanted to do it, obviously.
Artistically, it was a great opportunity.
I really wanted to respect the iconic, ironic weird sensitivity which is so much of whatThe Avengersis.
I felt the script really achieved it, but the process moving forward was complicated.
Because I had to find an actress.
Warners wanted me to go with Uma [Thurman].
I met Uma, she was perfectly nice and charming and talented.
I felt there was something amiss.
But you cant focus on it, because you cant let it inform your directing.
But that really didnt affect the shoot.
I cast Sean Connery, and that was a lot of fun to do.
The studio said, Were never going to make a deal with him.
Anyway, I did send it to Sean.
And I just got that call one day at home.
[does really very good Sean Connery accent] Sean here!
I read your script and I find it rather engaging.
And he had a wicked reputation, too, for chewing out directors, so I was casting him.
I wasnt coming on to him to see if I could do the movie.
I wanted to know could I deal with this.
He loved the shoot.
We had so much fun.
He was so fun, engaged.
We would go out, drink at night.
We would just have a lot of fun.
The problem began as we got towards the end of the movie, with what happened at Warners.
And over the course of shooting the movie, he had been promoted to co-head of production.
And the person who was against the movie to begin with became the head of production.
And so, I cut it, and I made a cut that I really did love.
Michael Kamen did a stunning score.
It was a dark score, it was a much more complicated movie.
It was 20 minutes longer.
All of the absurdity of it was connected in its own logic.
You could understand it.
And it went on and on and on.
So, whether or not the movie would have been good or not, Ill leave to whoever.
So, wear it I did.
So, post-production was very, very difficult, but the production itself was a joy.
The failure of that movie changed my life.
This movie was not a job for me.
This movie was something that I was very, very passionate about.
I gave it all.
And if you look at the credits, youll see who Im working with.
Some of the UKs finest, finest editors, cameramen, art directors, everything.
And so, it really broke my heart.
I thought, I dont know if I want to direct any more.
I really questioned my own worth, or if my instincts were so wrong.
I couldnt manage the politics, because, ultimately, thats me.
And I had no place in the movie industry.
So, I decided I would only direct when my physical body needed me to direct badly.
When it was a compulsion again.
So, for a couple of years, I just took off, travelled all corners of the earth.
Just living, yknow?
And I had an extreme kind of experiences all over the world, warzones and the like.
Out of that I started to write some screenplays.
Some for myself, and some just for Hollywood.
And all of them were either commissioned or optioned by studios.
Unless youre wealthy or patient, or all the things Im not, I like to work.
Ive never really done TV.
In that process, it was a very dramatic piece and very dark.
They gave me 21 days to shoot it.
I started to look at the TV work of Paul Greengrass, of whom Im a big fan.
His early work in television is phenomenal.
Im such a formalist, I thought, Im just going to let it go.
Im going to work totally on instinct.
It turned out to be one of the best experiences of my film making life.
I had total freedom.
I brought the writers in and edited the way I wanted.
And then, within six months, it was on the air.
It was successful, critically, too, and I thought, This is a whole other world.
I dont know this world.
And I started to get very serious about television.
And here it is in television.
That makes me very, very happy.
Ive just fallen in love with TV.
Whereas, I work every day.
Ive got three or four smaller movies [in the works], and thats good.
All the moneys there!
And you go, Great, great, great.
Then you hear, Oh, no.
I think its the fall.
And I just keep working.
Those movies will happen on their own clock.
You dont live or die on one Friday night.
Television has become more cinematic.
And sadly, a lot of cinema has become like television.
I saw this wonderful movie,An Education.
Its a gorgeous movie.
Is it a large screen experience any more?
Its always better to see this on the big screen.
But would it have worked on a nice sized TV?
Im not going to launchAvataron my iPod!
The Iannucci show,The Thick Of It, which hasnt really played here.
It makes it so much, for me, a more powerful medium.
And all power to him, a brilliant director.
You mentionedIn The Loop, one of my favourite films of recent years.
But as you say, its weakness was that it had to have an ending.
Films are about endings, and television shows are about beginnings and setups.
I have to ask you aboutChuck, which youve directed many episodes of.
For me, at its best, its the epitome of everything thats going right with television.
The cinematics, the approach ofChuck we do always say, How do we make this movie every week?
Chuckmay be in many ways somewhat emblematic of getting wider when you have to, and getting more tableau.
Youll see that over the next few years more and more.
Character is the most important thing, but it’s possible for you to contextualise it with wider stuff.
We attempt to do that withChuckquite a lot.
Does that hold true?
Yeah, its true.
Presumably, that ties back to how instinctive television is.
Yet, youre still bringing a movie-level of preparation to it?
I do, yes.
The overall rhythm and coverage is the same, but there are some adjustments.
But then happy accidents happen.
Ryan, the actor who plays Awesome inChuck, is an extraordinarily funny actor.
Hes just really funny.
Im glad you notice all these.
I presume theres a chunk of it in the script?
OnChuck, there were days, especially when were in the Buy More, because its lunacy.
Any opportunity, we jump on.
Its a very safe and fun place to be.
Are the intersect sequences as intricate and complicated as they appear to us?
A lot of them are done we shoot some stuff, we do it in post.
Just the amount of still images you put in them.
I saw your Flickr pages, where you demonstrate some of the background photography that you do.
But it strikes me as an insane amount of time to put together from here.
Working onChuckis really fun.
Putting in the time is like, Lets just play!
Its such a good team there.
Everyone is so committed and talented.
Its such a fun show to be on!
Jeremiah Chechnik, thank you very much!
