Behind the Scenes: Born to Be Wild 3D

Behind the Scenes: Born to Be Wild 3D

Posted on April 11, 2011 at 3:53 pm

It was so much fun to talk with some of the people behind “Born to Be Wild 3D” following its Washington DC premiere at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History.  Writer/producer Drew Fellman, cinematographer David Douglas, and Dame Daphne Sheldrick of the baby elephant rescue in Kenya spoke with me about making the movie.

3D and Imax requires some pretty extensive equipment — and yet you were able to get some amazing shots of the animals and the scenery.  What was your biggest challenge?

Douglas: We had two camera systems.  One of them weighs 300 pounds.  It’s basically a massive fridge, and it sounds like a sewing machine and it has three minutes of film.  So, that camera is used for certain scenes.  But to get up in the canopy, to get an orangutan’s view of the world, we basically had to invent a new camera system for IMAX.  And so we worked with IMAX to create their first camera that weighs less than 100 pounds, to get up on a 60-foot crane arm, and we build scaffolding in the middle of the jungle. Piece by piece, we trekked it up the river in small boats.

It sounds like “Fitzcarraldo!”

Fellman: I was actually reading Herzog’s book, Conquest of the Useless, his diary of the making of “Fitzcarraldo,” and it was really interesting because you’d read that book and think, “Okay, we’ve got it pretty good.”

Douglas: The shoot was really not just two animal but two challenges.  The elephants were almost like a dream in a sense, we could be at ground level, we could get around them and we could use the big camera.  But the orangutans, a big camera like that in the jungle is just too unwieldy.  That small camera ended up being massively useful.

Fellman: One of the biggest surprises for us was how the animals ended up accepting our presence and the cameras.  That was our biggest concern going in.  One thing we had in our favor is that if it was between the camera and a bottle of milk, the milk was much more interesting than the camera.

Dame Daphne: They were a little bit suspicious at first, curious about these strange people around them all day who weren’t a part of their human family.  But within a couple of days, it just became the norm and they were  happy to ignore them and concentrate on what they were doing.

In the movie it says that it took you 24 years to develop infant formula for elephants that made it possible for the first time to raise them without a mother.  What did you have to do to get it right?

Dame Daphne: Newborn elephants didn’t come in every day.  But whenever they came in very small we tried different formulas.  We knew elephant milk was very rich so we tried adding butter, cream, and then no fat at all.  We didn’t have access to sophisticated baby formula in those days.  We only had access to cow’s milk.  I tried skim milk and the calves lasted a lot longer but they just wasted away.  So I knew it was a fat problem.  I went scouring the shops in Nairobi and all the zoos and asked, “What can we feed an elephant that has no cow’s milk fat?”  Eventually, we settled on a base of SMA Goldcap.  It’s not ideal.  We still get stomach problems.  But elephants need milk for the first three years of life.  They cannot live without it.  When they first come in we have a lot of problems with dehydration, lots of them are wounded or psychologically disturbed and in a mess.  Stabilizing the stomach is the main challenge when they come in, getting them onto the new formula and calming them down.

Do you have to teach them about their natural predators so they can protect themselves when they return to the wild?

Dame Daphne: Fortunately for us, unlike the primates, elephants are born with a genetic memory, but in order to hone that, you have to expose them to a wild situation.  We’ve learned that the younger we can get them there, the easier the transition is.   We can keep them for as long as ten years.  Generally, the ones that came to us older, that have the memory of being wild elephants, leave us sooner.

Fellman: There are lions all over that place.  It’s part of Nairobi National Park, and the lions were walking around eating the warthogs.  These elephants see lions and react to them.

Dame Daphne: The elephants are very fearful animals.  They know the lions are there before the keepers do and they will run back to the keepers for protection.  They are getting bolder, too.

Fellman: We were on a scouting trip in Tsavo and we were walking with the elephants with their keepers in the bush, and suddenly they stopped.  This was a young group, maybe three or four years old.  There were maybe three buffalo  We didn’t know what to do.  We had been told that the buffalo can be quite dangerous.  We look at the elephants; the elephants look at us.  We look at the buffalo; the buffalo look at us.  And the elephants ran to go behind us!  We got tossed aside like nothing.

Douglas: We were told to get behind the elephants, that they would protect us.  But they had their own idea.

Dame Daphne: In the nursery, the keepers are very much a mother figure for the elephants.  But once they get to rehab there’s a gradual change.

Do they ever come back after they go to the wild?

Dame Daphne: Some of the bulls come back, even after eight years  One came back with a snare on his leg.  He stood very still while we removed it.

Fellman: One scene we could not squeeze into the movie had two that came back.  A whole group, maybe twelve, big elephants, brought them back.  One had an arrow in his nose and another had an arrow in her rump.  The mobile unit came by and treated them and then they went back.

Dame Daphne: One came back with a broken leg, escorted by another “ex-orphan.”  The “ex-orphans” come and visit him, just like he’s in hospital.  He’s made big friends with the small ones as well; they all have a hero worship on the big guy.  They want to be close to him.

I admire the way you made it clear in the film that these are not pets or domesticated animals but respected fellow creatures.

Douglas: They weren’t patients, they weren’t study animals; they were friends.

Fellman: The thing that struck me when we started looking at his project is this idea that there’s an enterprise happening between people and animals as equals for a common goal.

Dame Daphne: The elephants are teaching the keepers.  There’ve been occasions when one or two of the orphans have been left behind with the wild herds.  The keepers are worried.  They open up the gates and Yetta, the herd matriarch, sends two young bulls off and off they go to bring back the truants.  The scientific community have had this huge block about not attributing human emotion to animals — that is anthropomorphizing.  But I just came in as a lay person who loves animals.  I could see very early on that all animals indeed have the same sort of emotions.  We’re part of the animal kingdom and we’re not nearly as sophisticated as the elephants.

I have one adorable little stuffed orangutan to give to the first person who sends me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Born to Be Wild” in the subject line.  Tell me your favorite animal and don’t forget your address!

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Behind the Scenes
Interview: Duncan Jones of ‘The Source Code’

Interview: Duncan Jones of ‘The Source Code’

Posted on March 31, 2011 at 8:00 am

Duncan Jones, with only two films, has already established himself as an exceptionally able director. He wrote and directed his first film, “Moon” with Sam Rockwell, and it was remarkably assured, impressively creating a fully-realized future world that was believably normal — and on a tiny budget. His first big-budget film is another sci-fi story, “Source Code” with Jake Gyllenhaal as a man sent back in time by a military operation to relive the same eight minutes over and over until he can locate a bomber. I met with Jones in the wonderful circular Chimney Stack Room at the Georgetown Ritz and we had a great talk about my home town of Chicago, where the movie is set, about the movie’s secret tribute to the 1980’s television show, Quantum Leap, and about how his father, rock idol David Bowie, got him hooked on science fiction.

I’m from Chicago and I loved all the Chicago scenes in the movie!

I’m so glad. You’re the first person I’ve talked to other than the people who worked on it who can say we got it right. It was the first time I’ve ever been in a helicopter and it was stunning to be able to fly through the skyscrapers in Chicago. Incredible, amazing.

I loved seeing The Bean in the movie.

It’s a beautiful park. That whole area is lovely. And a great city.

And you used the Chicago commuter train through much of the movie, with its characteristic double-decker seating.

We took the real train a number of times to get a feel for it and take reference photographs and everything. And then we built our own in Montreal. The funny thing was that the real trains, a lot of the carriages date back to the 50’s and 60’s. They’re beautiful, but they look so period in some ways. We had to update the interior a bit or people would think he was really time-traveling!

I had just finished “Moon” and was doing the press tour for that. In Los Angeles, I had the chance to meet with some of the people I wanted to work with, and one of those was Jake Gyllenhaal, an amazing actor, very handsome, very talented. I was pitching ideas to him, and he said, “I have this script you should really read,” an original spec script by a young guy called Ben Ripley. It was a great read, fast, started off with an incredible ten pages and then keeps up that pace the whole way along.

I made my suggestions – I said, “I think the tone is quite serious. I wonder how you might feel about injecting a little bit of humor into it.” He liked that and we agreed that was what we wanted to do.

For you as a director, it is a real challenge as your main character repeats the same eight minutes over and over again to keep it fresh and interesting and different for the audience.

Yes, one of the most terrifying aspects of this script for a film-maker is how do I keep going back to this same event six or seven times and not bore the audience to tears. I had a graph and I literally worked it out on a visual level how each iteration would be different, whether we used a different angle or went to a different part of the train or move to the upstairs, always keeping variety there. And then narratively, we made sure there was no replication, always something new going on, something learned by Jake, a new relationship, new people. You still have the same eight minute event with continuity but no sense of replication.

We also get a montage taste of other trips back but about six in detail.

Why was the humor important?

I am a big science fiction fan myself. I see it divided up into hard sci-fi and soft sci-fi. Hard sci-fi is where you extrapolate into the future from where we are now and work out incrementally how we get from now to this point in the future. “2001” is a good example of a future you can believe might exist and you can see how we could get there. You understand it could actually happen. Soft sci-fi is a little more fantastical. It can have dragons or magic. And for me, time travel is in a gray area between the two.

I have a hard time believe it is possible but I love it as an idea and I understand the theoretics of it. My approach was, “Let’s use humor to cajole those like me who might not believe that it is possible,” to just say, “Take this leap of faith with me into this world where it is possible, just accept it because the story and the ride is worth it.” Humor does that. It is a very powerful tool in film because if you can get the audience and the protagonist to be laughing about the same thing, to be sharing a joke, in a way, or finding something amusing, the audience bonds with the character automatically.

When I saw the film, I wondered if you had changed the original ending.

We did, but not in the way you’d expect. There was a very sweet, romantic ending that beautifully finished that side of the story, the relationship side. But I am a sci-fi geek and I wanted to deal with this loose thread back at the facility.

It is a challenge to create a character who is interesting enough to play the villain but – without giving too much away here – not so interesting that he throws the movie out of balance, given the direction things end up going in the last third of the film.

I saw this documentary, “The Nuclear Boy Scout,” about this boy in the Midwest, about 15 years ago, trying to qualify for a Boy Scout merit badge in nuclear physics, incredibly smart but no comprehension about right and wrong and built a breeder reactor in his mother’s back yard, just going to antique stores and the library. He was able to create a breeder reactor. The government had to clean it up. Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you have good judgment; that was where we started. As for casting, if you go with a bigger name, it makes it immediately obvious that if you do that you draw attention to that person. The actor we found, I had seem him at a casting session on video and I said, “There’s something about that performance in particular that captures what I saw in that documentary.”

You pay tribute in the film to some other sci-fi movies.

There were lots of references and parallels, including Quantum Leap, the TV show. My homage to that was the voice of the father: it’s Scott Bakula. He actually says, and we slipped it into the dialogue so it’s very organic, “Oh boy.” So the fans of the show will get that!

Throughout the film there are subtle homages to Hitchcock, here and there. The soundtrack has a Hitchcock vibe to it, and the setting on the train and the clock tower.

Who did the soundtrack?

Paul Hirsch, the amazing editor we had on board – he edited “Empire Strikes Back, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Ray” – he’s a legend. He recommended Chris Bacon, this very young composer he had just worked with. We met with him at 11:00 at night, the day his wife had just given birth and he looked like a walking zombie. We hit him with all this information and told him what we wanted, something mischievous and mysterious, and said, “Can you write us something to see if you’re the right guy?” and four days later he came in with the opening theme as is.

It sounds like you worked very fast on this film.

Jake was finishing “Prince of Persia” and was going to disappear to do press for it. So we had about 35 days, about the same as “Moon.” I think that helps give it a sense of urgency; that energy does translate sometimes.

Have you always been a sci-fi fan? Books and movies?

Books first in fact. My dad is an avid reader and ever since I was a kid, I would read an hour a night. He always wanted me to read so if ever I was finding it difficult to get interested in something, he’d pull out Animal Farm or The Day of the Triffids to get me back in. “Blade Runner” is the be-all and end-all for me in science fiction. I strive to make something one day that has the sense of scope. It feels like you could pan the camera away from the actors and you would still be in that world.

My next film is science-fiction, too. My first film, “Moon,” was made for very little money. This is more of a Hollywood film. I’d love to take one of my own projects and make it with a “Source Code” kind of budget.

What do you look for in a project?

Empathy. The idea of identity, who someone is, whether the person they think they are is who everyone sees them as. Mostly that the audience can understand and feel for the main protagonist, that connection between the audience and the person whose story you’re seeing. My next one is science fiction and then I’m going to take a sabbatical and try something different.

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Behind the Scenes Directors Interview
Interview: Fraser Heston of ‘Charlton Heston Presents The Bible’

Interview: Fraser Heston of ‘Charlton Heston Presents The Bible’

Posted on March 29, 2011 at 3:17 pm

Fraser Heston was kind enough to take time to talk with me about the re-release of some of his father’s greatest films. Fraser, who played the baby Moses in The Ten Commandments, directed his father in Charlton Heston Presents the Bible. Both have been restored and are being re-released this week.

How did the Bible project come about?

That came out of a conversation between my dad and me many years ago, in the early 90’s. We were sitting around talking about what his next project should be. Dad said, “I’ve always wanted to record the Bible again.” He had done a wonderful recording for Vanguard records back in the 50’s. I said, “If we’re going to record the Bible, it has to be on film. We’re not going to do it behind a curtain. And we have to go to the holy land. We have to film in something like a Roman amphitheater. And we’re going to need some great Biblical art. Let’s illustrate these stories — we can’t just have my dad talking all the time. We found these marvelous paintings throughout the whole history of Biblical art. We decided to make a broader, much more open-ended and he ended up doing the commentaries between chapters. We didn’t do the whole Bible. We did his favorite stories, edited down. And then he comments and talks about it as a story-teller or an actor, not as a priest or a scholar, to share these stories and the beautiful art that goes with them, for people of all faiths.

The King James translation?

He loved the King James translation. It’s beautiful language and still very accessible. I think it’s the most powerful translation and he did as well. We talk about it, how it came to be written, how there are foibles and mistranslations and how it’s all part of the warp and weft of the fabric of the Bible.

How did you find the images?

You have to hire a whole department who researches these things and get the rights and get a filmable image – nowadays we do that all with a computer. The aggregate of all of these images together from Salvador Dali to the classics from the Sistine ceiling and the Michelangelo Moses, all of them together have such an impact.

What else is being restored and re-released?

“Ben Hur” and “The Ten Commandments.” And we’re also re-releasing some of our classic films through Warner Brothers like “Anthony and Cleopatra,” and “Mother Lode,” directed by my father and co-starring Kim Basinger,” and “Treasure Island,” with a young man you may have heard of: Christian Bale.

How long did it take?

It was as long as a feature. We were in the holy land for about three months. And of course in Jerusalem there’s a checkerboard of different faiths and they all have different Sabbaths and holidays. The Moslems have Friday, the Jews have Saturday, and the Christians have Sunday. And different sects have control the access to this monastery or that little place, and so on. One day I was filming in what they call the Hall of the Last Supper and went down to get a cup of coffee and found myself in the tomb of King David. I thought, “Oh, my gosh, this is amazing. I’ve just walked out of one chapter of the Bible and into another, transcended thousands of years of history.” It was pretty darn cool.

Do you have a favorite Bible story?

I love the New Testament but I am very, very partial to the story of Moses. The story of the exodus is the story of freedom. And how poignant today that people on the same ground, walking on the same sand, are fighting for their freedom in Egypt and North Africa. The irony couldn’t be stronger, could it? The words of Moses are inscribed on the Liberty Bell: “Go forward and proclaim liberty throughout the land.” That became a watchword for Dad. Everything he did had to do with freedom.

What stories did you hear about your portrayal of baby Moses in “The Ten Commandments?”

The very first telegram my mother got when I was born was from C.B. DeMille . He said, “Congratulations, he’s got the part!” And then they put me in the basket and the darn thing sank! My dad had to go out there and rescue me. I’ll never forgive them for that.

Did your father have a favorite Bible passage?

He loved the death of Moses, where he passes on his mantle to Joshua. He had it by heart and never forgot it, even when he had Alzheimer’s. It’s just a moving passage. “I shall not cross over.” It’s very moving and there are so many moving scenes in that story and in that film that just kind of ring true. So many small, human moments. Moses was not divine, though that was not always clear in the DeMille version. He questioned his worthiness, and that just makes you care about the guy. He has loves and hates and he has a temper. He becomes a very human character in a giant story. It’s a mistake to hold the Bible up as a remote, sheltered experience. It needs to be vibrant and contemporary. And “Man for All Seasons,” a whole Charlton Heston collection. He was an actor’s director. He was artistic; he looked at the scene from an artist’s point of view, a story-teller, not to call attention to himself as a director but just tell a story the best way he can. He learned that from William Wyler and C.B. DeMille. “Ben Hur” and “Ten Commandments” are not about the effects or the crowds or the action; it’s about the people. Many times the camera doesn’t move at all. Shots like that are what you remember from those films. We are so fortunate that a major part of our cultural heritage is being restore with such care by Warner’s made made available to a new generation.

I have one copy each of “Charlton Heston Presents the Bible” on DVD and “The Ten Comandments” on DVD and Blu-Ray to give away. To enter, send an email to moviemom@moviemom.com with the DVD or Blu-Ray you want in the subject line. Be sure to include your address. I will select a winner at random on April 2. Good luck! (My policy on accepting prizes to give away is posted on the site.)

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Behind the Scenes Contests and Giveaways Interview Spiritual films

Movies by the Numbers — A Formula for Editing Film

Posted on March 17, 2011 at 8:00 am

New Scientist Magazine reports on a study by a psychologist of 150 movies and found that “the more recent they were, the more closely their shot lengths tended to follow a mathematical pattern that also describes human attention spans.” Based on a 1990’s study that turned the attention span data of hundreds of volunteers into “a series of waves using a mathematical trick called a Fourier transform,” this paper applied that formula to the edits of popular movies. The scientist, too-perfectly named Professor James Cutting, found that having shots of similar length recur in a regular pattern throughout the film correlates with box office success. However, it does not necessarily correlate to quality.
I wonder if, as many theorists suggest, the attention spans of high consumers of media are decreasing, and we will see those formulas speed up over time.

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Behind the Scenes
Interview: Michael Connelly of ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’

Interview: Michael Connelly of ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’

Posted on March 16, 2011 at 8:00 am

Michael Connelly is a journalist-turned novelist whose enormously successful crime stories have filled 18 novels, translated into 13 languages. This week’s release, “The Lincoln Lawyer,” starring Matthew McConaughey as defense lawyer Mick Haller, Marisa Tomei as his prosecuting attorney ex-wife, and Ryan Phillippe as his wealthy client accused of murder, is based on his book. That’s “Lincoln” as in town car, not President, by the way.

Copyright Lionsgate 2012

How did what you learned as a journalist help you as a novelist?

A lot of what I did has a journalist has carried over into the books. The key has been the observation skills, to watch things and look for details to flesh out the picture. And when you’re a journalist you never have enough room. So you look for the telling details, instead of fifty, you have to find one to open up a window in people’s imagination and understanding. You listen for the dialogue that is more than fluff that actually carries information. Those are all day in, day out practices of journalism. Even though I’ve shifted to the kind of canvas where I can write unlimited pages and words I still follow the journalistic style. It doesn’t matter if it’s 400 pages. What matters is that there is momentum on every page. Shorter sentences that carry import in every sentence is the way to go.

Your main character is called the Lincoln lawyer because his office is in a Lincoln town car that he rides in from court to court and client to client. Is there really a Lincoln lawyer?

He’s retired now, but this whole project, book and movie, began about ten years ago next month, when I went to the first game of the year for the LA Dodgers, the home opener. I was invited by a friend and sat next to another one of his friends, whom I’d never met. During the course of the game there, it was “Who are you, what you do?” I had covered the courts in LA and I knew that if he told me where his office was, I could tell what kind of work he did. The courts in LA are all over, Century City, the Valley. That’s when he said, “It’s actually my car.”

He was very quick to say, “That’s not because I’m a bad attorney or not successful; I live in Malibu. It’s because it’s the best way of taking this city, with 40 courthouses, and I have a guy driving my car who is working off his legal fees.” By the 9th inning I had what I was sure was an idea that could go the distance. I get lots of ideas, but I really need one where I can spend a year with this character, where I can find 400 pages of a story about him. It happened to be when I was looking for a new character to write about. I had a lot of books about a detective and wanted to go to the other side and write about an attorney. And I knew this was what I was looking for.

He was a stranger to me. He gave me the idea with his lifestyle, but then it happened I was moving away, back to where I’m from in Florida. I reconnected with a guy I had known since college there, who was a criminal defense attorney. I told him I needed to know the nuts and bolts of what his job was like. On and off for three years I shadowed him and his partner, drank with them after work, had lunch with them, went to jail, went to court. And there was a judge who let me sit in her courtroom, follow her into chambers, see how she ran her courtroom.

I like the story’s contrast between the theory of justice and the reality. Your main character is not easily categorized. He’s very moral within his own construct.

One of the things that impressed me in the people that I worked with was the stuggle between the idealism of our justice system, the idea that that no matter how bad the crime, you’re entitled to the most vigorous defense. But you try practicing that, sitting all day next to a child molester or worse, it’s very hard to do. There’s lot of alcohol in the movie, but that’s the reality that I saw. The best research for this book occurred at 4:30 in the afternoon, when the courts are done for the day and everyone stops for a martini on the way home.
I could spend my day writing and then go to these two bars, and that’s where the real gems of this book came from. That’s where the line that’s in the book and the movie comes from: “There’s no client as scary as an innocent man.”

It’s that struggle between the idealism and the reality that has affected Mickey, and we get to see what that has done to him. I love in the movie how his investigator played by William H. Macy is telling him what he has to do in legal terms and he just cuts him off, saying, “I’ve just got to make it right.” That’s the crux of the story, that he feels he has to make it right.

Tell me how you go about creating a believable villain.

The villains are always the easiest because you don’t have bounds. They can be, as displayed in this movie, so convincingly sane and innocent and then be just the opposite. One of the things I love about this movie is the way it respects the viewer. It doesn’t try to hide who the villain is. The intrigue, the real story, is how Micky is going to get out of the trick bag he’s got into as he calls it.

The villains are the easiest people to write about — you get a certain amount of freedom to make villains smarter in fiction than they are in real life. You start with the idea that they have broken free of any societal restrictions and then you can layer on all kinds of stuff, camouflage and all that stuff. They’re fun!

I’d like to know something about adapting a book for a movie. To begin with, a screenplay is much shorter than a book.

I haven’t had a great history in Hollywood. I’ve sold ten or eleven books to be made into movies but this is only the second one to be filmed. They break down because of the scripts. The books live inside characters’ heads and scripts can’t. I’ve learned my lesson; that’s not my skill. I like to tell readers what the characters are thinking. I was very careful about who I gave this book to. It was almost like an interview process. I was at a stage of my life where I wasn’t worried about how much they were going to pay me. I just wanted to know how they were going to keep the integrity of the story. I talked to big studios, little independents, one actor who wanted to do it. But Tom Rosenberg of Lakeshore had been a trial attorney in Chicago. So he said, “This is a world I once inhabited. I know it and you got it right. I promise if you let me make it, the gritty realism will be preserved. It will be in the movie, I can guarantee you that.”

They went through about 14 drafts. It went from one where I thought it was missing stuff to one where I thought, “This is the book, this is the character.” Matthew McConaughey is not like the character in the book who is half-Mexican and described as very dark but with a name that did not indicate his background. He had lots of contradictions to add up to his feeling more like an outsider. I heard McConaughey had signed on. When I saw him as the sleazy agent in “Tropic Thunder” I leaned over to my wife and said, “He’d make a good Mickey Haller. And months later, maybe a year later, I heard he wanted to do it and wanted to meet me and talk about it. He spent a year studying and preparing. It was very impressive. So it doesn’t matter how he’s described in the book. He’s that guy. He totally owns it.

I liked the way you make Mickey defy our expectations in both his personal and professional lives.

There are now three more books with him as a character. Defense attorneys are generally misunderstood and blamed. People despise them because they think they’re trying to get the scum of the earth out of jail. Most of the time I write about a detective and it’s very easy because everyone is already on his side — you want the murderer to be caught. Maybe this is why I waited to my 15th book — I felt confident to take on a character most people would not like if not despise, and somehow make people want to like him and ride in that car with him. I was going to make him really good at gaming the system, even if it was going to be toward a goal people might think was negative, you couldn’t help but respect that. And the other aspect was I wanted him to have that higher moral code that would come out in the story. I’d want to hit them with the skills right away and then slowly bring out the moral code. In the book I enjoyed tricking the reader with Mickey talking about his office without revealing that his office is his car. In a visual medium like a movie, that’s not a trick you can pull.

Why do people like mysteries so much?

They’re stories where there are high stakes. Many of these people if they’re not stopped, they’ll do it again. We like to read these stories because it’s about people making a difficult choice to do the right thing, even though it could endanger them or their families, and we all want to know what we would do. Reading stories like that give us our ideas about how we could be.

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