Why Pixar Shut Down Production on Good Dinosaur

Pixar is the world's most successful movie studio, but that doesn't mean they don't have near-misses.

Pixar interview - The Feed

ICYMI: Disney Pixar are the most successful studio in the world. So what happens when you have to scrap everything halfway through and start again? #TheFeedSBS

Posted by SBS 2 on Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Pixar Animation Studios have an incredible strike rate when it comes to hit movies. They've made over $6.2 billion at the box office and have an average review rating of 93 per cent.

So what happens when it all goes wrong?

That's what faced Pixar Animation Studios president Jim Morris on the new film The Good Dinosaur. Originally due out last year, they had to stop production, fired almost the entire cast and completely rework the story.

We started on The Good Dinosaur a long time ago and we had a basic pitch we all liked very much. We worked on it for a long time, and it took us a while to figure out that there were some basic things in the story idea we were trying to tell that we couldn't fix, and weren't going to work out.

We were fairly far down the path; we were three years plus into the making of the film and we just realised that it wasn't going to be good enough. Everything we tried to do to fix it just felt like we were overplotting or bolting something on that didn't feel organic. So we made the hard decision to stop working on that film and do a reboot.

There were still things about the world and the characters we liked a lot, but the story just wasn't working. All that is survived is some of the design of the two key characters. Everything else - about the story, what it's about, even the look of it - has changed.

Thank God Disney trusted us, and said, 'if that's what you guys think you need to do'; because otherwise we'd all have been fired for incompetency.

When you do make that decision to reboot and you've got an army of people working on a film, what does that do to the building? How does that news reverberate?

It can be fairly traumatic when we make a big change to a movie that's been cooking along. We've had we've had great luck, and great misfortune. I've had a lot of my career in different films I’ve worked on. Some have gone through the roof, and others just haven't landed in the same way.  We take solace in the leadership ranks. 

The point is to not put a bad movie out, and get the best possible movie. But it’s a little disturbing to people working on the project. It's a disturbance in the force.

There's lots of talk about the quality control that goes into Pixar movies. When do you know it's working?

We never know for sure that it's working…

Opening week box office is how you know?

That's how we know if it's connecting, and you hope it does. It takes a long time to feel like it’s working. We do a lot of screenings with different people; six or eight times we’ll project  the rough version and watch it. They’re usually pretty ragged the first few times but there’s some core we keep working on, and getting at.

You eventually feel a time when it turns a corner, when it falls in to place. We’re more palaeontologists than anything else. We find a nice dinosaur bone, and then we find another, and another, and we put them together, and we think we’re making a nice brontosaurus, and then it turns out to be a stegosaurus. It turns out to be something completely different, but it’s gotten there in this naturally organic way out of the work of everybody. You discover what you’re making along the path sometimes.

Pixar is an extroadinarily successful company, but John Carter was the biggest bomb of 2012. Jim Morris reveals to Marc Fennell where they think they went wrong. 

You were the producer of John Carter in 2012, a film that I really love, but didn’t necessarily get the sort of respect it might have deserved. When articles and numbers start to come through… what goes through your head when you’ve experienced how much work it takes to get a film like that made?

You question yourself; what could I have done better, what did we miss here, what were the things that went wrong? You try to take everything in your stride; you don’t pat yourself on the back, and when something doesn’t do well, you don’t shoot yourself. You live to fight another day.

There have been a lot of creative risks that have paid off for Pixar over the years. What was the one that made you the most nervous?

WALL-E probably made me the most nervous. I thought for sure we would be the ones to screw up Pixar’s success. It just seemed like, 'oh, this may not work'. The audience might look at this and go, 'what is this?'

WALL-E is such a ground-breaking film in so many ways, specifically that you’ve got the first 40 minutes of the film with no dialogue. Was there internal reticence at Pixar about that?

There was less reticence at Pixar, but some of our Disney executive friends were very curious about how that was supposed to work. 

“Curious” is a good word...

Well, when you do the pitch, you say, 'here it is: we've got broken down trash compactor who is living on a post-apocalyptic earth compacting trash'.  It does not sound like a great idea for a film offhand.

I think it would be safe to say that every producer, every director there has felt that. They’ve felt, 'we’re trying to make something good here, but what if it doesn’t work?'

Now that andy's grown up and left his toys behind, what story is left to tell? Jim Morris tells Marc Fennell what aventures lie in store. 

Even Inside Out, which has turned out to really connect with audiences, but was an unusual idea. We all loved it, but at some point you go, 'I don’t know if this is going to work'. You work on these things, but you just don’t know.

I think a Pixar film is one that uses animation to try to get at basic human truths and emotions. They’re not things that we decide to be themes and then work into the movies; they rise up organically from different filmmakers and storytellers,  but I think there’s a like-mindedness at all films at Pixar. They have that within.

RJ Mitte: Breaking Bad Stereotypes about Disabled Actors

RJ Mitte on acting with a disability - The Feed

"When you first see Walt Jr. you see crutches. You saw this character who was disabled. But as the show progressed, you no longer saw crutches; you no longer saw this character as disabled kid. You saw him as Walt Jr. - you saw him as a person."RJ Mitte to Marc Fennell (That Movie Guy) #TheFeedSBS

Posted by SBS 2 on Monday, October 12, 2015

Brett Lee: From Cricket to Bollywood Star

Brett Lee with Marc Fennell - The Feed

Cricketers sneaking out at night for nefarious reasons isn't all that rare, but Brett Lee was probably the first one who was doing it to record an Indian pop single. #thefeedsbs

Posted by SBS 2 on Thursday, October 8, 2015

People have started to see the trailer for Unindian and they're going, ‘Brett Lee in a Bollywood movie - how in the hell did that come about?’

Well it goes back to 1994 when I first went to India. I was 17, got sick, hated bowling on the wickets, but I got home after two months and thought, I really loved that trip. There was something about India that struck this beautiful chord within me.

Over the years the love grew for India, from the culture to the people. Fast forward a few years, and I got a couple of Bollywood offers, but I wasn't ready. I was still playing cricket. Then this Australian movie came across the desk. I had a look at it and loved the script, loved what it stood for, and I thought, this would be a good chance to do my first movie. So why not?

One of the things I've discovered while researching this film is that this is not necessarily your first appearance. If you go through the credits of the movie Babe, there's the name Brett Lee there. How is it that you ended up there?

I was looking after some pigs in the agricultural shed when I was in about Year 7 or Year 8. In the movie Babethey used 52 pigs, because obviously the pig grows up, so they'd go, here's the next pig, and then that one grows up, because pigs grow pretty quickly. Apparently I may have helped with one of the pigs.

So did you not realise at the time?

No, I didn't have a clue. Someone said, 'Your name is in the movie', so whether it is me or not? Still don't know.

Just own it. Nobody's going to question it. It's on your IMDB page now. You do have this massive hit song in India that you wrote - how did that come about?

In 2006 I was over there for a tour with the Aussies, I met two people from a company and they said, ‘We'd love you to do a collaboration with Asha Bhosle'. They asked if I'd heard of her and I said, 'Yeah, of course!' This girl is an absolute legend.

She's the voice of every Bollywood song.

I didn't realise at that time she was 74. Not that there's anything wrong with 74. I wrote this cheesy, pathetic little love song…

No it's not! We've been playing it in the office for two weeks on a loop.

Your ears must be burning. When I went home and I asked if I could have a go at writing the song, they said yes. So I picked up the guitar, got the speakerphone on, played it and sang some lyrics down the phone. He said he loved it.

No one knew I was doing it from the team so I was sneaking out of the hotel. We're in this locked down hotel where security is tight - people can't really get in, you can't really get out. So I sneaked out and did this song, put down the vocal, put down the guitar, put in the bass, did it, went home, and then six weeks later get a phone call to say it's on the charts.

You making a hit song in secret is my favourite part of this.

Yeah, no one knew about it.

What's the most misunderstood thing about Brett Lee?

I get the tag 'injury prone' and that type of stuff. I've had two elbow operations, six ankle ops, broke my back twice...

Do you think sport fans in Australia recognise how much pain you guys go through?

It changes from person to person. Doing the trade that I do as a fast bowler, so your spine... I always say it's a bit like a school ruler. You get the ruler and you bend it and you get this little white line coming up, and you keep bending it and eventually it snaps. Well, that's what happens with your spine. If you keep putting your body under immense pressure and putting power through your body, something needs to give.

The person at the ground doesn't see the hard work that goes in behind the scenes, doesn't see the thousands of hours of rehab. And I thought it was a gentleman's sport! Mum and Dad said, 'Play cricket because you won't get injured, don't play rugby’.

We've had some interesting experiences this year in the interaction between sports fans and players on the field, like with Adam Goodes and Buddy Franklin. Do you think we prepare elite sportspeople enough for that kind of scrutiny?

No, I don't think so. I think it's becoming better these days. I think young guys who are 15, 16 years of age have had no life experience. They throw you into a team, put you in a jersey with a number of your back, and you become the perfect role model.

That doesn't always happen; kids are growing up, they're finding out about life, about guys, or girls, depending on what team they're in. They're trying to work out who they are as a person.

And you're also under an incredible amount of physical pressure with your time being taken up with lots of training.

Then you get thrown in a press conference and you've got 20 journalists, it’s just, 'Okay, you've got to make your test debut - good luck’. I think I remember saying, 'I want to bowl really fast and see some blood on the pitch'. Steve Waugh said, 'You might want to do that mate, but maybe forget the blood thing’. Then you sit back years later and go, ‘What did I say that for?’

Kevin Smith Has Seen Batman's Dick.

A) Kevin Smith cannot resist talking about what he saw on the set of Star Wars
B) Bruce Willis is terrible to work with
C) Ben Affleck's dick. 
D) You don't need D. Clearly A, B and C were all gold.

Kevin Smith with Marc Fennell - The Feed

ICYMI: Kevin Smith on Bruce Willis being the worst, Johnny Depp being the best, and when your pal gets cast as Batman. #TheFeedSBS

Posted by SBS 2 on Monday, September 28, 2015

EXTENDED INTERVIEW

I guess the thing with you and your career is that it's so much caught up in words...

It's all talk. That's what it is. Most people say [screenwriting], 'it's deeds, it's not words!' I'm the other guy, I say, 'words! Not deeds." 

Was there a moment when you realised that you did have that power to write, that you could string together amazingwords?

This was 1981. I was 11 years old. I typed a story, kind of like an essay that I had read. There's an author named Jean Shepherd, who wrote a book called In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. If you ever sawChristmas Story, that whole movie is taken from the words of Jean Shepherd; he's the voiceover artist who narrates the whole movie, that's the actual author. He wrote a lot of personal essays about growing up that I loved.

I believe that anybody can be creative. I don't think it's like that there are talented people and then there are people that don't have talent. I think anybody can tell stories. We can all communicate. Telling a story is just a version of communication; put a plot in it, and some made up details.

And that's what you have to do. That's what every creative person does. Nobody starts off instantly doing 'them'. Do somebody else first, because you saw somebody do something once and it appeals to you, and you say, 'oh, I want to try that'. So you imitate until one day you think, ‘I can do that, but now I want to try my version of it’.

So the moment for me was reading, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, and thinking, I could do this. I love the personal voice - it was very reflective, sentimental, and nostalgic. Also funny, but not gross; not my type of humour. He's very gifted, so I was thinking, I might try this. I started writing a story about going to the relatives; our parents would always make us go to a relative’s house every weekend. So I wrote this ridiculous satire about going there, and turned them into monstrous characters, and I showed it to my brother, cos I figured he would get it, because he too was trapped going to my relatives every weekend. And he laughed.

I'll never forget the feeling of sitting there across from him and watching him laugh. What that felt like. That moment birthed an entire career. I wouldn't know for years what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to write.

And for a few years I thought, well, what does one do as a writer, like, where I grew up? Nobody said,’ you can go into the movie business, or go into TV.' From Highlands, New Jersey, what could I do? And I figured I could write obituaries one day, or maybe work for the newspaper? Something like that. I thought that was the only writing. I didn't know what else. Nobody in our world... nowadays, pre-schoolers have a film school class, and kids are told they can do anything. But where we came from that wasn't the case. It was much more of an overprotective generation. Like, 'don't do that! You might get hurt.' Or 'don't do that, you're going to be embarrassed'. So I was never pushed to try something.

So it was the imitation of Jean Shepherd that kind of led to that feeling; watching my brother laugh at something that I wrote, knowing that I engineered that laugh. Knowing that, he wasn't saying, 'this is stupid’. He said, 'this is funny, you should do it again'. So right then and there, I knew was a writer.

It wouldn't be until my 21st birthday ten years later that I figured out I wanted to be a filmmaker. And that was when I saw Richard Linklater's movie Slacker, up in New York City, at the Angelica Film Center. I was thinking, 'man, if this counts, I want to make a movie!' And Richard Linklater's a gifted filmmaker, don't get me wrong, we all say Boyhood, but Slacker was a call to arms for anybody remotely artistic, or anyone remotely on the fringe.

Watching this dude tell his story, not in New York not in LA, but in his world, and with no ongoing characters, no three-act structure, no car chases, no movie stars, or anything like that. That made me go, 'okay, I would like to try this. If this counts as a film, I would like to try.' And for years after that - when I made Clerks and thankfully Miramax picked it up and distributed it to the world -  I would have people come up to me saying the same thing. 'I saw Clerks and that made me want to be a filmmaker.' And I know what that means. It means, ‘your movie looks so bad and doable that I figure, I should give this a shot'. And that's true.

Awe, because you're like, 'I've never seen anything like this before'. But arrogance because you're like, 'I think I could do this'. 'If this counts, if the bar is here, I think I might be able to cross that bar'. So I'm happy about that flick because it is the movie that launched a thousand ships. Now, not all of them are good ships, some of them are creaky and sank, but it made people take a step they wouldn't normally have taken.

The fact that a person who was never going to do that in this life, did that? That to me is better than an Oscar. And I say that because I'll never win an Oscar.

Hey, you're young.

I'm not that young. And we've seen the best I can offer, trust me, I'm not winning an Oscar. I think my best days are behind me.

Of your work, what do you think is the best thing you've done?

I love Clerks II. I think Clerks II is wonderful, but there are people that say it's not nearly as good as Clerks. But that's because Clerks is a punk rock song. It’s a call to arms. It makes you want to make some art. You look at clerks and you go, oh, I can do that. It's about something we all do, which is hang out and talk to our friends. It was the internet before the internet happened, and stuff. So you look at that movie and it makes you go, 'I could totally do that', and that's why I love that movie. But Clerks II is a better film. Clerks II, at that point in my career, was the absolute best I could be.

I'm way off from everybody else on this but it's that movie we made? Tusk. That walrus movie. That, to me, is like, sublime. And I don't mean that it's genius; I get it, I know some people hate that movie, some people think that movie is religion... it's the one movie I've made that I can stand up in the face of criticism for. When people would attack Clerks or Chasing Amy, that was being attacked personally, because that was my life through different characters. Tusk has nothing to do with me other than 'this was some weird shit I just thought up'. So people could come up to be and be 'oh my god, I love Tusk, it's brilliant', and I go, 'oh, isn't it?’ And people can come up to me and say, 'I hate Tusk, it's the worst piece of shit I've ever seen' and I go, 'yeah, isn't it?' It totally works on both levels. So I like that. So it's a movie that nobody else could have made.

It came from a podcast...

We were doing an episode of Smodcast 259:The Walrus and The Carpenter and we talked about this story we read online where a guy in Brighton, England was offering a room for rent in this mansion. You could have any room you ranted, the run of the mansion, except for two rooms; his bedroom and his 'workshop'. In exchange all you had to do was for two hours a day dress up in a very realistic walrus suit that he had put together. He would then throw you fish and crabs and you would try to catch them with your mouth, and you couldn't speak as a human you could only speak in walrus.

It sounds true.

So very true, so much so that 2000 people applied for the room. So many people were like, I'll do that, and I’ll dress up like a walrus for a free room. It turned out to be a hoax, thank the lord. But we talked about it on our podcast and first we couldn't believe it, then we started making fun of it. I was saying, 'man, you show up, this guy is going to knock you over the head, he's going to sew you into that walrus suit, and it's going to be the human centipede, but the human walrus’.

And from that moment we start building this dopey movie that I start falling in love with, you can hear me on the podcast literally falling in love with it. And it was one of the only times in my life, the only time maybe, in my life, that we had a microphone on a moment of inspiration. That's what thrilled me about it. It's like oftentimes you show the audience the movie when it's done. They weren't there for when it began, for how it germinates, what it came from. That audience heard a movie come together that I desperately wanted to see. The stupidest movie ever came up with, but was like I need to see this movie. And in the middle of the podcast I go, I'm going to do this.

What was important about that for me was the audience was there to hear the moment when it was born. The audience had given me everything that I have, in life. I'm allowed to be this idiot that I am for a living where I'm wearing whatever I want, my face on my own shirts, because of the audience. So I try to give back as much as possible. The podcast stuff is free. When you make a movie there's millions involved so you've got to charge people for that. When you're doing a show, we gotta charge people for tickets but we tend to give the recordings away to people online. But that's not giving back enough. This audience afforded me the dream life. Anything I want to do, I wake up and I go, ‘what do I want to pursue today?’ because of them. The best way I could give back is to show them anything's possible.

I burned my career to the ground three years ago. I stopped making movies for three years. Then I talked about this dopey walrus thing and turned it into a flick. And if I could take it through, beat or beat, open source it; they saw the moment it was born. No audience really gets to see that. They see the finished product. So they were there for the birth of it, the idea.

You were saying that you quit movies - is that Cop Out? Is working with Bruce Willis that bad?

Absolutely. I take performance very seriously. That's my favourite thing in this world. It's the only reason I'm involved in film is because I love acting. Not acting myself, because I'm not an actor, but I love being around actors and actresses. If there's any way I want to spend my life, it's watching people tell the lie that tells the truth. That's what acting is. I didn't learn that much about me sitting in a classroom, and I never learned that much about me sitting in a church, but I damn skippy learned a lot about who I am watching art, reading books, listening to music, even devouring some TV and stuff like that, live performances. That's where found myself. It's sacred to me, it's a church. Every one of those movies that I made, dopey as they may be... every one of those people in the cast were there because they wanted to be there. You don't do a Kevin Smith movie to help your career, because it's not going to help your career. You don't do it for money because they're all low-budget, you do it because you're in it for the joy of performance. Willis was the person I worked with in my entire career who was a paycheck player. A straight up paycheck player. Nothing wrong with that, it's not against the law, but if you're going to get paid to do the job, do the job. He didn't want to do that.

So you're sitting in a directors' chair, you're watching this performance; what's going through your head?

On day one, I said, oh my lord. He wasn't giving a bad robotic performance. But I could tell a, he couldn't care less, but also b, Tracey scared him a little bit. Tracey Morgan is a comedic genius who will do your scene as scripted, and then do ten variations on that scene all equally as funny. You just have to find a way to make it germane to the script. But he watched Tracey adlib for like half a day and I saw it in his face, it was on the monitor. You could just see the colour draining out of his face. 'What am I doing here?' And that remained in that guy for the rest of the shoot. Which is fine. Again, it's idealistic and stupid and youthful and naive and childish to think he should want to be here because he loves it, not for the money. He's a movie star. They all do it for the money.

An adult would look at me… actually, most adults would look and me and say, 'grow up, you've got a dream job', and I understand that. But it was like there was a thief in the temple so to speak, and that destroyed me.

Movie stars like are like the NHL of performers, supposedly. They're the highest paid, so they must be the best at what they do. At least that's the logic we work under. We all know it's not true but they're high profile. This is the first one I got to work with. I've worked with people who have been in movies, but they're not a movie star. Ben and Matt became movie stars, but I worked with them before that. So he was the first bona fide movie star that I worked with, where I sat there and was like, here we go. This was me going, I'm going to get to work with one of my childhood heroes, one of my favourite actors in the world. Came from New Jersey man. I lovedMoonlighting. Never mind all the Die Hards, I loved those as well, I was in one of them. But then I got there and he's not interested anymore. He's really not. And I'm not the only one who feels that. When I first said it, people were like, sour grapes'. Woody Allen just fired him from a movie. Go watch any interview with him online.

I've done one. I know.

Which is fine. If you're over it, get out. Don't do it anymore. But he talks about not wanting to do action movies yet he still continues to do them because that's where the money is.

Let's talk about a good on set experience.

The flip of that is Johnny Depp. Bruce Willis was the biggest movie star I had worked with at that point, and after the Cop Out experience I went, if this is what it's like working with the best, I'm going to go make dirty cartoons with Jason Mews.

When I came back and did Tusk, Johnny Depp came and did two days on the movie. There's the biggest movie star on the planet. Sweetest dude in the world. And was there to absolutely play. Didn't get paid. Was in one of the world's stupidest movies.

You've got to stop calling your movies stupid!

That one is! That's indefensibly a stupid movie. And yet it somehow holds together. But that stupid movie attracted Johnny, and he was just like, I would love to do this. And working with him, even though we one had two days, it made up for all of Cop Out. He's just happy to play. walked into the makeup room on day one, and we said, is there anything we can get for you?' And he said, 'if you want to bring up my makeup artist, that would be amazing'. And I went to his trailer and knocked on the door, and he said come in, and he turns around and he's got this long prosthetic rubber nose on. He's like, buried in makeup. And I was like, oh my lord! Look at you! You're treating this so seriously! That’s crazy; you're actually putting on facial appliances! You could have phoned this in! Literally, you could have called a phone, and we would have shot it with a camera. If we heard your voice, the audience would have been, 'that's impressive!' But you're here in makeup! And he's going, 'what do you think? Doesn't it look like a dick?' And I said, 'now that I look at it, it does kind of have that appearance. And he said, 'me and Joel were talking about painting a blue vein down the side'. And I said, 'are you telling me you want to wear a dick on your face in my movie?' If you're ever going to wear a dick on your face in a movie then Tusk is the movie to do it!' That dude comes to work, ain't even getting paid, and is like, 'let's put dicks on our faces'. We had fun. The other guy's just not interested anymore.

I did want to ask you about another positive on set experience. I assume you can't tell us anything about what it's like to walk on to the set of Star Wars, but I want you to tell me what's going on inside your head.

I'm so ready to see the flick, as is everybody. We've now seen a couple of trailers and some more footage. We've had Force Friday where they released all the toys... you can't step anywhere in this world without stepping on a rolling BB8. So we're all loaded for bear. We were all loaded for bear back when they did Episode One. The difference I think between Episode One and Episode Seven is Episode One happened: JJ is going, all I have to do is not do that. So he goes, 'what's missing from Episode One?' Everything we loved about the first three movies. Haan, Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, Darth Vader; all that stuff. Not Anakin Skywalker. Darth Vader. So right away the ingredients change up the game, where everybody's like, 'I'll eat that; I don't care what kind of broth it's in... every one of those meaty ingredients is what was missing from the last stew, so pour it out all over my face now.' So you start there, with the dude already taking a step up by doing the logical thing and bringing back everybody that everybody loves, all the characters.

Is that you saying Darth Vader is in the new Star Wars movie?

Smells like it to me, doesn't it? They show it in the trailer! Picture the burnt mask!

How hard is it for you not to give away stuff?

Dude, I wish I knew. I'm terrible like that. That's why I don't get invited places. I went to the set and they had me sign a non-disclosure agreement to say that I wasn't going to talk about anything I saw.

And JJ takes that stuff very seriously.

Very seriously. So much so that his assistant Morgan was pointing to a sign; they made a poster, based on WW2 propaganda poster, and it's Imperial Starship commander going like this (fingers on lips). And it says 'Loose lips sink starships'. So I signed my NDA and said, 'this is awesome! Can I take a picture of this?' And they said, 'You just signed! Did you not read it?!'

I kept quiet on a lot of stuff until it got out. But now people know what Simon Pegg is in the movie, because he was in a little short that they showed at Comic Con. He was there the day that I went to visit the set and I never said anything, because I thought, obviously that's a huge spoiler. But when I was there, he didn't tell me about being in the movie either. I was like, you're here? And he was like,you're here? And he said, of course I'm here, JJ's here. And I was just like, man; this must be amazing for you. And he was like, dude, I live down the street. So I come here every day for a free lunch and to watch Star Wars.

So it was pretty sweet to visit. But I don't know anything more than what those cats know. I know little things, but not nearly enough. I'm like everybody else, chomping at the bit, waiting for day one, which hopefully for me a little before everybody else. JJ showed me a cut of Star Trek early, and of Mission Impossible III, way early. But I think he's probably going to be like, 'Kevin, if I show you anything - I let you come to the set and you told people. If I show you anything of the movie you're going to tell everyone!'

You're obviously a really huge Batman fan, and one of your friends is playing Batman. Of course the weird thing that happens when Ben Affleck got announced as Batman, there’s this quote that 80% of people hated it, 12% of were indifferent, and the rest were Kevin Smith.

How is it to watch a friend of yours to go through that amount of internet hate?

At this point for him it's probably no big deal at this point, because he lived through the Bennifer thing, which got really hostile and vicious at one point.

For weirdly nondescript reasons.

It seemed like people just got sick of seeing people in love, or something like that. That was the nearest beat I could figure. 'These people, they seem so in love'. And then they started turning on them. Gigli didn't help. But I feel like he lived through that, and that was really really bad, the Batman thing, when they announced it and people were like 'boo'... you know, I'm sure it bugged him on some level but that's just an internet gut reaction. But you noticed how it un-booed the moment they put up a trailer.

Now everybody is like, 'I believe in Batffleck’, and it feels good to be an early adopter, but I just think, all you had to do was see him in the suit. All you had to do was see that one shot in the trailer and everybody goes, 'that's Batman'. At that point it don't matter whether or not people go, 'I wouldn't choose Ben Affleck'. They're going to buy it. He's suddenly become the Batman for a generation. Which is so weird because ten minutes ago Christian Bale was the definitive Batman, and nobody would ever touch Nolan's most serious treatment of Batman. But now we've got Zack Snyder going, I think I can treat this even more seriously. That's what I love about that trailer. I was very heavily involved in the architecture of Ben Affleck Version 1. Version 2 I don't have nearly as much to do with, but it's nice to see him ascend. Honestly, the directorial thing was fantastic. He always had a good eye. He's a storyteller. So that was awesome to see, him as a filmmaker and standing on an Oscar stage. But the Batman thing is just... that's personally amazing for me. It's in my heart. This is a guy who is going to play my childhood hero. And now my connectivity to Batman is much deeper. I've seen Batman's dick! I can't say that about Adam West, George Clooney, Christian Bale... but Batffleck? I've seen it. Plus, I live in his house! I bought his house! So technically I live in Wayne Manor now. And I did direct him as a young man so that kind of makes me like Liam Neeson in those movies. I trained the Batman! Him being Batman has benefits. It's all about me, naturally, when he got cast, I was just like, 'well, this is great for me'.

Where in the world, be it on set, it could be a place, it could be a country, where do you feel most at home?

Hands down, my office, in my house, back in Los Angeles. That's where we do all the podcasting. Even though it was Affleck's house for half a year, and I've been there 13 since, we still call it Ben's house. He looms large.

That room; so many good things have happened in that room. I've watched my kid grow up. I've watched my kid grow up in that room in that room. I've written some of my favourite things in that room. I've recorded some amazing things in that room. I've smoked incredible amounts of weed in that room. Sat down and spoke to my heroes in that room. Grant Morrison came over, and we spoke there. All the people I've ever had on the podcast have been through there. So that's the womb for me. That's definitely the inner sanctum. 

INTERVIEW BY MARC FENNELL

TRANSCRIBING BY MADELEINE PALMER @ THE FEED. 

 

 

 

M Night Shyamalan: I'm not the 'twist' guy.

M Night Shyamalan with Marc Fennell - The Feed

Marc Fennell (That Movie Guy) asks M. Night Shyamalan - is he back in the game? #TheFeedSBS

Posted by SBS 2 on Wednesday, September 23, 2015

He was supposed to be the new Spielberg. But after iconic successes like The Sixth Sense,Unbreakable,Signs, and The Village, it all started to fall apart. M Night Shyamalan has been a critical punching bag, with some of the worst reviewed movies of the last decade. But the twist is that his brand new film The Visit, which he shot entirely in secret and paid for himself, might just be the first step towards the redemption of M Night Shamylan.

How comfortable are you being known as The Twist Guy?

It's not how I think of myself at all, it's like, he does the moonwalk, he does the moonwalk, he does the moonwalk; do the moonwalk, do the moonwalk. You're like, oh jeez. But I don't think of it that way. It doesn't burden me when I write. So I don't really think of it as that. I get that that's what people say, but breaking that expectation is just as exciting as fulfilling it.

Whether there is something dramatic or not dramatic that happens, a paradigm shift that happens; it’s unimportant to me. It's really about the characters and their journey, and if I'm listening to them. Have I fully listened to them, or have I put my agenda on it? That’s always the struggle that goes on. That’s my job.

Before you made this film you were saying you were trapped inside your head; what does that mean?

I'm a super self-reflective guy about dealing with the repercussions of fame and expectations; all of those things are really suffocating but I always strive to try to understand them, not beat them, you know what I mean? Your survival gut tells you to try to win, win, win; but really when you're at peace. You're just understand it, you know, and then you're fine. Cut, and scene. Reset.

I’d like to believe that I'm the guy that can go, I just now came up with an idea that I know is going to be subversive and polarising, and I have to make it. But the cowardly side of me would say, no, you probably would tack away from that and try to be a little more accepting. Making smaller movies has allowed me to break free of that kind of thinking.

So you made a film kind of in secret, and you paid for it yourself.

I would like to believe if I was a professional basketball player I would have in my contract that I'm allowed to go and stop at any playground and tie on my sneakers and go play basketball. In fact the opposite is true in the NBA contracts, you're not allowed to go play, anywhere, because they're scared you're going to get hurt. But to keep in the game, is what I'm talking about. To keep the love of what you do,

I always said to myself, like, I would love it to be like, let's take everyone in Hollywood, and say, you have only X amount of money, and your imagination. Go do whatever you can. And for me that's all you ever need. Here is minimum amount of money and your imagination and go tell this incredible story.

So it's kind of an exercise in, ‘can I make this from my raw skill’?

Yeah. For me, the other stuff, you know, the trailers, the cranes, all those things that come... that's all fun and wonderful, but it isn't storytelling. And it doesn't end up on screen, most of the time. A lot of the money doesn't end up onscreen. And in The Visit, obviously, every single dollar ended up onscreen and that's so satisfying.

 For whatever reason, you're sitting there and you're going, huh. I wonder if I did this shot, and I wonder if did that shot, or you come up with the exact thing you want to work on, or something that was nagging you from the morning: that's the version of the filmmaker that you want to be. All in.

 know every film you do is a quite personal, it's a piece of you that you put onscreen at a certain time of your life - what is this film saying about you right now in 2015?

That's a good question. The first thing that came to mind is what happens as a writer, I do, that is I write a scene, or I write an outline, or I write a character moment, and I ask, why is that working so well for me? And then I analyse it. Why does that feel like a sweet spot? Why does that feel so comfortable? Why does that feel so right?

I have a board in my library and I'll write down gut things, not from your analytics, but your intuitive mind; you don't even know why you're writing it. And I'll write down forgiveness. And then I'll say, wow, you know that scene's also about forgiveness. This whole thing is about forgiveness. You know what, this whole thing that's going on is about forgiveness. And then I realise, that's the movie I'm making.

Where in the world do you feel most creative?

When I'm not thinking of it as a business. When I'm thinking about how I felt when I saw Raiders Of The Lost Ark in the theatre; that kind of awe. Coming back and pretending, oh, the pillow is falling on me, it's a boulder, ah! When you're a kid; the need to say the pillow is the boulder, I have to run for the boulder.

That need to tell the excitement of the story, becoming another character, wanting to be that character... it's the greatest feeling in the world. When you come up with a great idea, or a great moment, a great scene - that high you get? You can't beat it. 

Hugh Jackman speaks out on Race Relations

Hugh Jackman with Marc Fennell - The Feed

ICYMI: Hugh Jackman on his support of indigenous communities; "I spoke out for that cause and I always will." #TheFeedSBS

Posted by SBS 2 on Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Building BB8 from Star Wars

Behind Star Wars BB8 bot - I met the team from Sphero, the makers of the new R2D2.

Ice Cube: Make Your Own NWA Movie

Ice Cube interview with Marc Fennell - The Feed

Ice Cube on 80s hair, racial relations in America, and why #StraightOuttaCompton omits Dre's history of violence against women. #TheFeedSBS

Posted by SBS 2 on Monday, September 7, 2015

Straight Outta Compton shows the rise of seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A.

Ice Cube - a.k.a O'Shea Jackson - and his son who plays him in the film, O'Shea Jackson Jr., sat down with The Feed to talk the controversy surrounding the new film.

In particular, why the film which has Ice Cube and Dr Dre as producers, doesn't reference Dr Dre's history of violent attacks on women. 

"People are welcome to do their own version of the N.W.A story. There's been a thousand movies about Elvis, we can tolerate a few more N.W.A movies," Cube told SBS.

"That being said, and that put to the side, this is a situation where you could pick and choose what you want to put in the movie. There are things that are bigger that aren't in the movie."

Graham Burke: Australia's Biggest Anti-piracy Campaigner

Graham Burke is the co-founder of Village Roadshow. According to the Business Review Weekly he's estimated to be worth $153 million dollars.

Burke started working in cinemas in country Victoria at the age of 14. He has gone on to be instrumental in backing some of the most iconic movies; Mad Max, The Matrix and The LEGO Movie among them. He runs Movie World, and launched 2DAYFM.

He, as Village Roadshow, is also one of Australia’s biggest political donors. Since 1998, they’ve given close to AU$4 million to both the ALP and the LNP as they campaign for new piracy legislation, and personally lobbied politicians.

It appears to have worked. On September 1st a new code of practice will come into effect around Australia, meaning that if you get caught multiple times torrenting, your contact details will be handed over to copyright holders like this guy. 

Are you prepared to sue people for piracy?

Yes, it’s wrong. [They have] been warned, notices issued, that they have been doing the wrong thing. Yes we will sue people.

Are you concerned about the blowback? Because back In the 90s when the record industry started sending out invoices and lawsuits to single parents and grandmothers there was a storm of terrible publicity. Are you prepared for that?

It was really just a couple of instances of a bad news day, where they picked up a couple of instances of a single pregnant mother…

But all it’s going to take it a couple of those and it’s a really bad company story.

Not if its seen in the context that it is theft, and they have been doing the wrong thing, and they’ve been sent appropriate notices, and they’ve been dealt with accordingly. We’re certainly not going to be seeking out single pregnant mothers.

Do you have a list of people who are considered appropriate?

Well the criteria will be a person who is pirating movies.  We won’t necessarily know who they are, but if they’re pirating movies on a fairly large scale they’re clearly doing the wrong thing. It’s no different to the highways of Australia where we are pretty damn safe because drunken driving and high speed driving is kept somewhat under control. If there were no laws, if there were no regulations, we wouldn’t be safe out there. And if piracy isn’t addressed, there won’t be a Casablanca, there won’t be a Red Dog, and there won’t be a Gallipoli. There won’t be the business model that allows them to be made.

In the past year there’s been a large take up of Australians getting systems like VPNs (virtual private networks), and it largely took off because people wanted to access Netflix in the United States. I have a concern that with the rise of site blocking and this new code that it’s only going to shift more and more people to that environment. If more Australians are going in to the dark web, how do you go about dealing with that?

That’s why we’re going to put a big emphasis on getting people to do the right thing. I think if people are appealed to in the right way, they’ll react appropriately.

Korea was the country that got the worst epidemic of piracy first. Why? Because they were the first country with high speed internet. It got so bad in Korea that the entire home entertainment industry shut down. Everybody lost their jobs, it closed. It got so bad that the communications industry and the government worked together to address it, and a large part of what they did was a big campaign of be a good downloader, do the right thing. And the Korean results in combating piracy have been very impressive.

As part of that there are things that the content industry are going to have to do as well, and one of the other complaints is the amount of time it takes for Australians to get particular kinds of content. You’re in the movie business so we’ll focus on that: you released The Lego Movie, which was made here, but Australians had to wait months and months so you could align the release date around school holidays. And on the back of that you said Village Roadshow wasn’t going to do that again, but we are still waiting for certain kinds of content.

It’s a film that would have no audience if it wasn’t released in school holidays; if you released it in February nobody would go. So you wait until Easter.

In that gap when it was opened in the States and you knew you had to hold off until school holidays to release it, you must have known it was being downloaded in that gap. What was going through your head at that point?

I think The Lego Movie, as it turned out, it was much more than a kids movie. It was just a damn good movie. In retrospect, if we did it again, we would have gone day and date [release]. We didn’t realise how big a movie it was.

You also put on a screening of that film in parliament and it formed quite a key part of how you were lobbying the government. I want to talk about how politics works for you. Because famously Village Roadshow has given somewhere in the vicinity of $4 million.

Over the last ten or fifteen years, but yes, we are contributors. I think companies have a responsibility to their shareholders, they have a responsibility to their staff to provide them with security. And we also have a responsibility to be good citizens Part of that is contributing to charities and political parties to ensure vigorous and good government.

What does it get you? From an outside standpoint I have no idea how the conversation goes between, ‘we’ll give X amount to a political party’… does that give you buy-in when you want to call George Brandis?

I don’t believe it does.

You don’t think giving money to political parties means that they pay attention when they say; Graham Burke from Village Roadshow says he wants to have coffee?

I’d hope I’d get a coffee as a fairly significant employer of people in Australia. But not much beyond that, if the case is not good and strong and proper.

At the very least a choc-top.  You’ve been the most influential public person in the campaign against piracy. When you’re going to talk to Steven Conroy or George Brandis or Malcolm Turnbull, how do you pitch?

Piracy is theft and if it’s not addressed there’ll be a whole lot of Australian people out of work, both in terms of the production sector, the distribution sector and the cinema sector. It’s wrong and there are laws in 34 European companies to site-block [sites that enable piracy such as The Pirate Bay] and it’s been very effective. That’s how I pitched it.

If someone was sitting in front of you who had uploaded a torrent, what would you like to say to them?

I’d say; are you aware that what you’re doing is theft? Are you aware that ultimately the final extension of it is that there’ll be a lot of people who lose their jobs, and the richness of the community will be impacted? Because films and TV series won’t get made; there won’t be a business model to get them made.

Increasingly one of the other film companies, E1 Entertainment, has been releasing films directly on to digital platforms. They did it with The Mule, and Infini. Is that something that you would like to replicate in time?

No. For significant feature films there’s got to be some window so that the revenue can be earned in the theatres before it goes to the home entertainment window, at which point you’re tapping a lower cost audience.

If you weren’t also in the theatre business do you think you’d still feel that way?

Totally. The cinema experience, firstly, is a significant part of the revenue chain, but secondly it sets up the respect, the image of the film, for people to want to rent, buy and own it. Cinema puts the film on the stage.

Can you imagine a time where this beautiful palace to cinema doesn’t exist anymore? When films are just going straight to people’s houses and that people have elaborate home cinemas?

People will always want to go out. I have DVDs at home of movies, and I leave them lying there go and see them in the cinema.

When you own a cinema it’s a lot easier.

For me it was a pretty exciting experience when video first came out. My daughters would be looking at videos at home – because we had them when other people didn’t – and then on Sunday they’d say, Dad we’re going down to Doncaster to go to the movies. And the movie they were going to see was one that they’d looked at on Friday night on video. People will want to go out, full stop.

Just lastly before I leave you: are you more of a popcorn person or a choc top person?

Neither. I’m a water person.

Jamie Bell: What Went Wrong on Fantastic Four

He has grown up on our screens. Jamie Bell beat out hundreds of other teenage boys to win a coveted role in Billy Elliot. He went on to win a BAFTA and the hearts of millions. After Tin Tin, Snowpiercer, and Defiance, that kid from the north-east of England raised by a single mum is now also a dad himself. And the Thing. He’s in the rebooted version of Fantastic Four, a film that has been mired in reports of onset tension controversy and reshoots from day one.

When the film was launched and the casting was announced there was a lot of criticism – a lot of it racist. If you were talking to these people who complained, what would you say to convince them that they should go see this film?

I think everyone is entitled to their opinion. I have very strong opinions on a lot of things. If it’s something that people love and they’re read since they were a kid they’re going to have very passionate feelings. The truth of the matter is, I don’t think this film strays too wildly away from what the comic book was and is. This is very much a Fantastic Four movie, and people deserve a good movie.

There’s been lots of reporting around Josh Trank’s role in this film. Famously he’s been let go, or fired, or quit, depending on who you ask, from Star Wars, which shares a producer with Fantastic Four. Even 20th Century themselves have said that there were bumps in the road, so - could you set the record straight? What were the bumps in the road?

I think that’s probably something you have to ask 20th Century about; my job as an actor is to turn up and play the character I’ve been asked to play and in that regard I had no issues with Josh Trank.  Josh was someone who was very committed. He steered this massive ship it, and was very available to all of us actors I consider him a close friend of mine, so my experience was fantastic.

Traditionally with these sorts of computer generated characters, you act in your body suit and then it’s completely animated. I read they kept your actual eyes. Is that right?

I think they’ve tried to maintain something about my face. Josh always felt the windows into any character was the eyes, so maintaining my eyes, or at least a resemblance of my own eyes, would be moving and something the audience would be able to connect with and remember that there was something  under all that rock.

Because this is the second time you’ve acted underneath digital makeup, for lack of a better term. If you could go back and talk to yourself before you had done Tin Tin what would you say to yourself about that process of getting a great performance in that environment?

It’s a very immersive thing; there’s something about the technology that have to break through so they can actually pick up what it is you’re doing, what kind of articulations you’re using; what feelings you’re really feeling. On Tin Tin I was just getting used to the technology. And there was the Spielberg effect as well; you’re just so in awe every day you turn up on set that you’re nervous. But on this I took all those lessons and threw myself in 100 per cent.

When you were a kid after making Billy Elliot you had a father son relationship with the director, and went and lived with him. As time has passed, as you’ve become a parent, do you still have that dynamic? Are you still very close with him?

We’re still very close, and I definitely consider him a very good friend of mine. Now growing up and being a father on my own you eventually move on, you separate. But he’s definitely a big influence in my life, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity he gave me at such an early age.

On the topic of family, I did enjoy your tweet the other day about trying to put sunscreen on a child. It’s ridiculous.

It basically goes everywhere else but the kid.

You’re a single dad raising a kid on your own; what’s the best lesson you’ve learned?

Man, that’s an hour long conversation! It’s a thrill, it’s challenging, it’s work… but it’s just love isn’t it? It’s what you’re supposed to do. They’re so fragile and so small. I’m having a great time with it. It’s such a unique relationship, and such a great chance to get to know another human being. So I’m really enjoying it. I love it.

Bill Hader: Porn Stars & SNL Anxiety

Bill Hader is one of Saturday Night Live's best breakout stars. After eight years of sketches he's making his mark on movies with breakout roles is Superbad, Skeleton Twins, Inside Out, and now as a romantic lead in Trainwreck.

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I think something people don’t know about you is that when you first went out to Hollywood it wasn’t to do comedy; you ended up doing assistant editing. What was the original plan?

The original plan was to move to LA and become a filmmaker. From a young age that’s what I was interested in - being a filmmaker and not so much performing. I performed in little plays here and there. What happened was – and this happens a lot – you spend six years in Los Angeles just trying to pay the bills doing jobs like being a production assistant or assistant editor or a post-production PA or a runner and you don’t have time to be creative. You don’t have time to do your own thing because you have no money, you’re broke.

You mean your time working on the Playboy Channel wasn’t creative?

It wasn’t creative at all! Are you familiar with the show?

Familiar in the sense that we’ll definitely put clips in…

Night Calls was a phone-sex talk show and people would call in live – it was my first live TV experience - people called in live with fantasies. It was hosted by two porn stars. And my job was to sit with a dozen porn stars off to the right, and they’d say, ‘all right Bill, get Cynthia and Candy ready’. And I’d go, ‘Cynthia! You’re a cowboy’. They had all these costumes there, and they’d go and do their thing. All my roomates were like ‘that must be really awesome’, and I’d say, ‘no, it’s actually the saddest thing on earth. I felt so embarrassed all the time’.

So that being your first live TV experience was there any useable lesson from that you could port over to Saturday Night Live?

None at all.

When do you did land on SNL, I’ve heard you were really nervous, that it was five seasons before you felt comfortable. Why so long?

It was really rough! You’re always on shaky ground there. Each week you just want to get airtime, you want to get on air and prove yourself. I’m not by nature a very competitive person. I shy away when I feel like people are being competitive. It’s like they’re throwing a ball at me and I never catch it and throw it back. I let it bounce off my chest and roll over there and walk off.

Competition is like the DNA of SNL…

Seth Myers and Amy Poehler taught me that you’re right, competitiveness is the DNA of SNL but we don’t have to be competitive with each other.  We are an ensemble. So yeah, my thing didn’t get picked, but I’m a fan of Kristen Wiig and I’m a fan of Kenan Thompson, and their thing is getting picked and I’m in that sketch, so do your best job. And that’s what I always tell new people when they’re new - that your whole job on that show is to bring two funny things to the table every Wednesday and committing to every sketch on that show. That’s all you can do.

Good lesson for life really.

That’s all you can do. Everything else is out of your control. So just do that. And do the best job you can. So once I felt comfortable in that and you go over the whole thing of ‘this person hit, and I didn’t’ - it was a great lesson in how showbiz works. There’s no reason for why things work and don’t work. What I was happy with is that everybody was [up and down] but we all stayed friends. Everybody was cool with each other. And that took four years to understand that. We’re all good with each other.

The first time I did Vinni Veducci, the Italian talk show host, everyone applauded because they knew I needed that.  I’d been going for seven or eight shows with nothing. Everything original thing I brought up to the table died, nothing was working. So when Julia Louis Dreyfus was hosting and I did Vinni Veducci everyone applauded and I felt like I belonged here.

But not everyone on SNL had such an august comedic streak in their family. I understand your dad did stand up at one point?

He did stand up while I was growing up. I never saw his act, but he would tell me later about it. But he stopped because it was me and my two sisters and we were really young, so my mom was like, ‘go back to being a truck driver’. So he went back to being a truck driver.

Does that give you an indication of how good he actually was?

I don’t know. He’s hilarious. And I think the thing that my dad helped me with is that he introduced me to great comedy at a young age.  I don’t think I would be doing what I’m doing if he hadn’t done that. My friends liked certain things, butwhat he showed me was never the popular stuff – it was Monty Python, Spinal Tap, and early Woody Allen movies.

The stuff that you take into your heart as a young comedy fan.

Yeah, I was seeing that as age six. That was comedy. If asked to define comedy I’d think Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It wasn’t a sitcom.

And it’s not like now when everything exists on Youtube and everything’s searchable. When you find stuff like that you think, this is mine. There’s a sense of ownership.

The reason I gravitate towards that is it reminds me of the stuff my dad used to like.

Bill Hader, you’ve been a pleasure to talk to.

Thanks buddy. You too.