Interview: Mike Disa of ‘Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil’

Posted on April 27, 2011 at 12:43 pm

Director Mike Disa has a terrific piece in the Huffington Post about his new film, “Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil,” with not one but two heroines who are strong, smart, brave, and compassionate.

Look at any recent animated movie. Despite sometimes clever plot devices, each of the main female characters’ primary concerns are always love, marriage and family issues. Overused and limiting themes for a modern heroine. And that’s when the female characters are even focused upon at all. How many animated films have you seen where the female lead is little more than a cliché object for the hero to impress in the last reel? Face it, if you want to be a strong female character in animation you are better off as a mouse.

I had a wonderful talk with Disa about making the film.

Why, all these decades later, do animated girls seem stuck back in the days of Snow White singing “Someday my prince will come?”

Isn’t that amazing? It’s been basically the same story model now for 90 years. It’s flabbergasting to me. I used to get in conversations about this when I worked at the big studios. They’d say, “Well, it’s a fairy tale and that’s what fairy tales are about.” I’d say, “Go read the original fairy tales! There’s a lot of other stuff going on. And we’re choosing to change this and that — why aren’t we choosing to change this part of it?” The only honest answer I have for that question is that the people making the films are unwilling to look at women in a different light. You can go on about fairy tales and animation and the patriarchal system that creates princesses and all that but I think it comes down to the people in films want to portray women like that.

Powerful women in films tend to be the bad guys — Ursula, Cruella DeVil, Maleficent.

There are powerful female heroes in animated films; they just aren’t human. Did you ever see “The Rescuers?” If you’re a mouse, you’ve got the potential to be a great character? You’re likely to get pigeonholed into being about family or sexual identity or role — if you’re an attractive human female or anything female in a Pixar movie, with the possible exception of Jessie in the “Toy Story” movies. And even she is played off as Woody’s counterpart. It’s odd because a lot of these studios are so interested in pushing the boundary technically. Why aren’t they so interested in telling more than the same old story over and over?

What is even more revolutionary in your film is that not only is the girl a heroine, but so is the grandmother! And not only is she tough, but compassionate and forgiving as well.

I’m really glad you liked that because that was a part of the film I was pushing hard for as well. Comments I have had about the Huffington Post article are like, “You don’t want to make love stories anymore?” Of course I want to make love stories! This is a love story. It is about the love between dear old friends who have lost each other along the way because of the choices they have made, about the love of a grandmother and granddaughter. It’s very much a classic love story. Love is about more than dating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azVIjdXOsQc

I was so glad Patrick Warburton returned as Wolf. No one can nail dry, understated wit the way he does.

He is amazing. He was an absolute superstar. He would show up after a day of shooting his live-action series, exhausted after a 15-hour day on the set. (I can’t believe I just said “live-action.” It shows I live in he animation world. I’m like — “live action, it’s a little niche thing, don’t know if you’ve heard of it.”)

Not only would Patrick give an incredible performance but he would try alternatives, a different word choice or , he never quit. You don’t need to direct him. He’s got a fantastic ear. You play it back and he’ll hear the same thing I hear, and say, “Let’s do it again.” He’s a marvel to work with. It’s such a joy to have people come in and not treat it differently because it is animation. Every word he wants to be perfect, to work for the character, to fit the lip-synch, to reflect the subtext of the relationships and the rhythms of the other characters.

I’ve seen animation directors who are just: “Go faster. Go slower. Be angry.” That’s such a waste if you have an actor like Patrick who plays subtext and comedy and rhythm. If it’s appropriate, he’ll give you the funny line reading. But then he will give you such true heart and emotion, until you get these great little moments. There are some great moments where Wolf gets very introspective. A lesser actor would have gone for the laugh. You see that in animated films all the time. We got some real emotion — he’s an incredibly talented guy. I’m gushing, but he was just a revelation. And he and Wayne Newton are two of the nicest people I’ve ever met in show business.

I wanted to ask you about the Wayne Newton character! Is his singing harp inspired by “Mickey and the Beanstalk?”

He was influenced by it. I grew up with that movie. It’s spectacular. But that comes to a larger point. Everything in this movie is working on two different levels, and that is one of the things I like about it. The movie respects its audience enough that it knows you’ve seen other versions of these fairy tales. What we can do is subtly play with your expectations. What was a huge part of the film was knowing that everyone would immediately think of the most popular version of the story. So our beanstalk was made of cast iron and aluminum because I wanted something reminiscent of that wonderful organic Disney beanstalk but I wanted something completely different. The same with the singing harp. We need to nod to the classics but we need to twist it. The nightclub is based on the classic old Hollywood place where the great singers and performers played in the 1940’s before Las Vegas got big. If you’ve seen any of the movies or places we refer to, it adds another layer. But if you haven’t, it still works.

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Interview: Morgan Spurlock of POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Posted on April 21, 2011 at 8:00 am

Morgan Spurlock took on fast food in “Super Size Me.” He was funny, direct, and at times outraged as he tried to live for a month on McDonald’s “supersize” portions, and I liked his even-handedness in taking on the consumers as well as the providers, calling on us to take responsibility for ourselves. His television series, “30 Days,” had people (including Spurlock himself) immersing themselves for a month in a culture outside their comfort zones. Again, despite tone that seemed highly satiric at times, the show was about the middle, the gray areas, the nuances. His new film is called “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.” Yes, he made a movie about product placement that is entirely financed by product placement.

Spurlock spoke to me about the movie.

You were right! At the screening you said that everyone there would never look at the world the same way again. We walked out of the theater and the first thing I saw was a banner on a building I had never noticed before.

And it’s going to get worse — and better at the same time!

Advertising is everywhere. Amazon has just discounted the Kindle for customers who are willing to look at ads.

And it’s such a small discount! Shouldn’t it be free if they’re going to send you ads?

I think the most disturbing thing in the movie is the school selling advertising to raise money. It’s especially sad that it is such a small amount of money and yet they can’t get it any other way.

It’s incredible. School districts are getting literally five to seven thousand dollars a year and in exchange they are letting all this advertising in.

What kind of impact does that have on kids? Does it desensitize them or do they stay susceptible to being drawn into the brands that are put in front of them?

That’s what the jury’s out on. There’s multiple layers to that one. You start to believe that these products and these brands are the ones that make things happen. They’re the ones you should trust, the ones that have solutions. That’s the question I have all the time, do we really want to live in a world where everything’s brought to you by some sponsor? That’s the way it seems to be going.

That’s right. Even at the Smithsonian, the flag that inspired “The Star Spangled Banner” is now brought to you by Ralph Lauren. Is POM happy with the results from paying to have their name in the title of the film?

Everybody seems to be. It’s gotten a great response. I think it makes all the sponsors who paid to be in the film look incredibly smart. I called 600 brands but only these 20 were brave enough to be a part of the film and want to pull back the curtain and have a real honest conversation about transparency. It’s very telling.

For me what was telling was that they basically say, “We don’t care what you say about us as long as you get our name out there.”

That’s part of what I love about it. Who was it who said, “I don’t care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right?”

Will you have product placement in your future films?

I think it really works for this one because the satire makes the whole thing work. I can’t imagine shooting an interview for another movie about Darfur or something where suddenly someone is drinking Coke in the middle of an interview. But one of the things I love is what J.J. Abrams says in the film: “I’m about story-telling, not story-selling.” We live in a world where people use products. They drive Cameros. They drink Coke. They wear Nikes. So it’s not like I think we should try to eliminate this stuff from entertainment. It would create a very unreal scenario. But what I don’t want is Ford in the writer’s room, “I want to start with a wide shot of the car and when the guy gets out of the car it would be great if he could say how well the car handled.”

You want the product to tell you something about the character.

Yes, if he drives a Mustang, he drives a Mustang. If he drives a Volvo, he drives a Volvo. But don’t make them show an extreme close-up of the logo just because they gave them a car to be in the movie.

You kept Mane and Tail shampoo in the film even though they didn’t pay.

They were the only ones where we were contractually obligated to say that they did not pay. But there were others in the film who did not pay. But what they brought to the table was not hard cash but soft money in terms of promotions. Big brands do that all the time with studios so they can have Iron Man in the store or Tony Stark wearing sunglasses in their ads. Characters appear on cereal and candy bars and potato chips and then there are lunchboxes, t-shirts, hats, and all that other stuff. I tried to get McDonald’s to be a partner on this film. I really wanted those documentary action figures. Those would have sold like hotcakes!

Many of the companies that were willing to work with you were family-owned, like POM, Sheetz, and Hyatt. They were very big, but they didn’t have the kind of bureaucracy of publicly-traded companies and were more inclined to do something off-beat.

Some of them make more than Fortune 500 companies. And MiniCooper is part of a giant corporation. Old Navy is owned by a gigantic conglomerate. But they didn’t come on until they saw the film at Sundance. Eight partners came on after Sundance. That happens all the time with big Hollywood movies, too. They wait to see how the film comes out and how audiences react and then say, “I want to be a part of this.”

What do you advocate? Better disclosure?

It’s already at the end of a movie, where it says, “promotional consideration by…” but by then you’ve stopped watching. The BBC has just started to allow product placement. Like we have TV-MA, they have P for product placement before the show.

Do you advocate different rules for children’s programming and programming intended for adults?

You have to look at them different. They’re two entirely different audiences. They consume media in very different ways. Kids recognize brands at a very young age, as young as four years old. I don’t think you should have placement in kids’ shows but it goes beyond that. The character becomes the toy, the lunchbox. The argument for that is, “I can’t have free enterprise?” The problem I have is the targeted advertising around programming. My own son said, “I want to get that wrestler set! But the pieces are sold separately.” I said, “Time to turn off the TV. We’re done.”

Interview: Mark Goffman of ‘Dumbstruck’

Posted on April 20, 2011 at 8:00 am

I love Mark and Lindsay Goffman’s new documentary, “Dumbstruck,” which follows five ventriloquists over the course of a year between the two annual conventions that give them their one chance to be with others who share their passion. It is funny, smart, inspiring, and heartwarming, and I had a lot of fun talking to Mark about how it got made and what he learned.

You must have been shocked when one of your subjects became an international superstar in the course of making the film. Terry Fator won “America’s Got Talent” and now has a hundred million dollar contract with the Mirage in Las Vegas.

We set out to look at working ventriloquists in small-town America. That’s where we thought we would find ventriloquism. It harkens back to a simpler time and we liked the smaller venues’ feel. We knew Terry was phenomenally talented from the moment we saw him. We expected to see him in his home city of Corsicana and state fairs and things like that and then he got on “America’s Got Talent” and it just exploded from there.

The other ventriloquists are very happy for him but it also makes them dream bigger for themselves.

It gave a lot of people hope. They’re a really tight-knit community and think of themselves as a family and that was something I really wanted to capture in the film. There are very few ventriloquists in most towns so they feel a bit isolated. They feel like they’re on their own and as you can see in the film their families don’t always support this vocation they have chosen so they have this very strong sense of community. Really, when we stared we thought cruise ships was the pinnacle — that was a great living. Dan Horn was seen as achieving about as much success as you can get with this art form. And Terry comes out of nowhere and explodes onto the screen and it was really quite astonishing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVtNcrhLClU

How did this project get started?

At our wedding my mother-in-law got up to give a toast. Her lips didn’t move and she held up her hand with a white glove on it like a sock puppet and words started coming out and her hand started delivering a toast. It was incredibly endearing and charming and really funny and certainly unexpected to the 150 guests. It turned out she does ventriloquism primarily in schools — she’s a second grade teacher and she does it in her classroom. But she has learned that she can express herself very differently and it makes her feel a lot more comfortable in front of a crowd. She told us about the ventriloquist conference in Kentucky and Lindsay and I knew that this was a community we wanted to see. We found 500 people with their dummies talking back and forth and really bonding. We fell in love with these five people that we wanted to follow.

Some of the family members you spoke to were embarrassed or even hostile about their relatives’ interest in ventriloquism.

We wanted to know what their lives were like outside of the convention where they feel welcome and very supported. And we found that most of the time their families didn’t understand. We hope that’s something people can relate to, whether it’s any hobby or career path, some people have families that are very supportive and others have to find the courage and determination to pursue their dreams and their loves despite what others around them think.

That’s why they are so happy to be together — they feel understood and accepted.

The people who run the convention say it’s like a family reunion. They keep that kind of atmosphere and it’s a very welcoming environment. You see that when Wilma needs help, the people are there for her.

Is it true that you had to remind the sound guys not to mic the puppets?

It was true of the boom mics — when the dummy starts talking, we had to remind them to keep them over the person, not the puppet.

Have you tried ventriloquism?

I have tried it; it’s incredibly hard. I have enormous respect for anyone who can do it. It’s an instrument. You have eyes, ears, mouth, you have to synch with the voice. That’s one of the reasons we showed Tim Selberg; he is like the Stradavarius of figure-makers; they can cost up to $20,000. These things are finely-tuned instruments. Not only do you have to manipulate this and make it behave like a human being but you have to create a character, a persona. And then, on top of that, you have to come up with a routine that’s essentially a stand-up routine, and that’s a talent in itself. It’s a combination of a lot of different skills. It’s very hard.

Yes, one of the most interesting scenes is where one of your ventriloquists gets some advice from a consultant about how to improve her act because you see how much has to go into it.

She was looking for some guidance and the man who came in and helped her is very well known and respected and he advised her to give her puppet a huge makeover. He was mining the comedy out of who she was and trying to give her puppet a counterpart to play off that. The successful ones create a character who can say the things they wouldn’t normally say or aren’t comfortable saying.

The puppets are a contrast to the ventriloquists, especially then-12-year-old Dylan, a white boy with an African-American dummy.

Dylan told us there are very few minorities in his school and he’s a showman and he thought he could get a lot of shock value and mileage out of it. At the same time, he told me on many occasions that Reggie is his best friend and he hopes they are together for the rest of his life. It’s an amazing attachment that they have.

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Interview: David Schwimmer of Trust

Posted on April 10, 2011 at 3:54 pm

David Schwimmer is the director of a new film called “Trust,” the heartbreaking story of a 14-year-old girl who is molested by an internet predator and the devastating effect it has not just on her but on her family. It is a sensitive, thoughtful, compassionate drama that avoids the overheatedness of television movies. Schwimmer is best known for appearing as Ross on “Friends,” but his accomplishments also include co-founding the distinguished Lookingglass Theatre and directing “Run Fat Boy, Run.” I spoke to him about how is work with a program for survivors of sexual abuse inspired this story and working with actors as experienced as Tony-award winner Viola Davis and as inexperienced as newcomer Liana Liberato.

Tell me how this movie came about.

I’ve been a part of this organization, The Rape Foundation, for fourteen years and a member of the board for the last ten. This movie is inspired by the child victims and their families that I met and it was developed in conjunction with the counselors there and one friend who is an agent with the FBI who worked on these cased for many years until he burned out. The people who work on the “Innocent Images” program have a psych test every six months and the burnout rate is very high. When he had his own daughter, he had to quit. These people are real heroes to me.

A few years ago, we had a fund-raising event for The Rape Foundation and for the first time, we invited a father to speak about what he went through when his 14-year-old was brutally raped. What he described was so devastating to me, so moving, it make me realize that this traumatizes the whole family. He was a big, lumbering guy, a professional, not at all a public speaker, shaking the whole time in front of this crowd of 1000. But he articulated so beautifully his combination of grief, and what a lot of these fathers describe as an incapacitating rage, and impotence because they can’t do anything and men want to fix the problem. He described all these feelings — guilt, shame, responsibility, and it almost destroyed his marriage, his work, his relationship with all of his kids. And I thought, “That’s a lens I haven’t seen before, the father/daughter relationship.” So I started the process of developing it and writing it.

The therapist is played by one of the finest actresses in the world, Viola Davis.

I love Viola. She was my first choice. She is such a presence in the film and she was only on the set for two days. Some of her scenes were among the toughest in the movie and they were the first two days of filming. The person she plays is inspired by Gail Abarbanel, director of The Rape Foundation, so we named the character Gail. She had that combination of strength and compassion, a grounded presence, never talking down to a kid, incredible generosity of spirit. This issue was important to her and she wanted to do it. Everyone came to the table because the story meant a lot to them for personal reasons. We didn’t want it to be a series of scenes in a therapist’s office. What she does in four scenes is just remarkable.

The most heartbreaking part of the movie is realizing that what the rapist did to the girl’s body is nothing compared to what he did to her spirit. It is very painful for her to let go of her insistence that she is special to him.

Her eventual realization that she wasn’t ever loved — that’s the most brutal part.

How did you talk to Liana Liberato about the role?

She is a remarkable, gifted actor for any age, and fearless. To be able to take direction as well as seamlessly, effortlessly is astonishing. And when you meet her in person you will be doubly amazed because in person she’s just a kid, so shy and gawky and inexperienced. She got it, she understood this person from the get-go. I met her and worked with her a few times and had her read with Clive and Catherine. They said, “That’s our daughter.” We were equally jealous of her talent. I made it clear to her she had to take this on as her own research project. She immersed herself in the world, met with girls from The Rape Foundation. We did a lot of table reads and listened to their input and their instincts. I intentionally put the hotel scene toward the end of the schedule so she would feel as comfortable as possible with me. It was her choice and instinct not to spend any time with the actor who played the predator. By the time we did the scene, she was really nervous and anxious about it and that worked for the scene. I let her know that every step of the way, she was in control. The lingerie she was wearing was built for her with special lining for modesty. A wardrobe assistant who befriended her was with her off camera. The actor who plays the predator was equally uncomfortable — I had to take care of him, too. I explained every thing he was going to do so every step of the way both of them knew what was happening. She could lose herself in her imagination and be unsafe in her interior but know that her physical world was safe. There as a line we had written where she said, “You don’t think I’m fat?” I know really thin girls say that, but she wanted to say, “You don’t think my body’s weird?” I wanted her to own this person and that is the line we used.

Tell me about casting and directing the actor who plays the rapist.

The first step was casting someone who is in my research and experience more like the guys that are commonly like this. They are our neighbors, our teachers, our coaches, our pastors, our doctors. You can’t see evil coming. Traditionally the guy is portrayed as a weird creepy guy living with his mom and I wanted to shatter that. The other thing that was important to me was the ending. I didn’t want the audience to leave the theater on an exhale. “Everything’s good, that story’s resolved, where do you want to eat?” I wanted people to leave more active and engaged.

What have you learned as an actor from the directors you’ve worked with?

I tried to study every director and take the best stuff and remember things I didn’t like, how I was treated, how a set was run. As an actor, I can sense it if the crew’s not happy, if they’re not supported or if they’re overworked. If you have a director who is screaming at some prop assistant because they’ve got the wrong prop or everyone is in fear of losing their job or being yelled at — that was something I resolved never to do. If there is a problem, I never raise my voice on set. My job is to create the right kind of atmosphere on set to tell the story I am telling. In “Run, Fat Boy Run,” there was a lot of humor on the set. On this set, sometime we needed a breather and some levity but for the most part I had to remind the crew that Catherine or whoever is raw right now, preparing for a scene, so if you have to adjust the light, try to do it sensitively.

The father in the film, played by Clive Owen, works in advertising on a campaign that shows teenagers in sexy poses.

He doesn’t understand that he is being complicit. I wanted it to add to his feeling of culpability. My hope is that in that scene where he finally imagines his daughter in the campaign at the launch party, it was his unconscious surfacing. I’m taking an obvious swipe at the sexualization of young people in advertising. I wish there was more public uproar about it. It’s the way I was raised, i guess, because my mom is such an activist.

How have people responded to this story?

After we shot the film I adapted it for the stage in Chicago. What was really interesting is that every night after the play we would have Q&A’s and talk backs and people would stay for an hour and then come back with their daughters. There are very few movies to help families talk about parenting. I want this to start some important conversations.

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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