Interviews with director about "Sex and Death 101"!
Sorce:iFMagazine
Date:Jun 21, 2006
By ANTHONY C. FERRANTE
It's a hot Sunny, Southern California afternoon on the Paramount Pictures back lot as a group of geeky extras line-up outside of a faux Golden Apples comic book shop waiting for an autograph of a sexy pin-up played by Sophie Monk for the new dark comedy SEX AND DEATH 101.
Certainly writer-director Daniel Waters (who wrote the seminal black comedy HEATHERS) could pass for one of these geeky extras – and he even jokes about being kicked off his own set for not fitting the eye candy notion of a "director."
"I keep expecting a new P.A. on the set is going to round me up and lasso me and put me in the geek line," jokes Waters. "And I'm like, 'I'm the director,' and he's 'sure you are, everyone wants to direct, don't they. Your dream will one day come true.,"
In his new film, Waters poses the sci-fi-like question, "what if you received a list of every woman you have slept with and who you will eventually sleep with – what would you do?"
"I just thought 'wouldn't it be great if I fast-forwarded to the end of this story to see if I'm going to sleep with this woman or not,'" explains Waters.
The end result follows Roderick Blank (Simon Baker) who gets this mysterious list a week before his wedding and decides to eschew domesticity in place of searching out every woman on the list to find out if indeed the list is true. He soon finds himself falling for a woman not on the list – Death Nell (Winona Ryder) who turns out to be a psychopath, seducing men before putting them into a coma.
"Here's my thing," says Waters. "There's been more movies and TV shows about serial killers, then there has been serial killing, but, sex, as far as actual times it happens in movies that are about it and take it as seriously as people do in real life, is pretty non-existent. Not that I want to make a great serious movie about sex, but the only way to do it is through intelligent humor. I say this movie is as if Philip K. Dick and Phillip Roth did a movie together."
In a candid interview with iF, Waters discussed working on his new film, his previous life as a screenwriter for huge studio action films and his thoughts on his writing experience on BATMAN RETURNS and his version of CATWOMAN that was never made.
iF MAGAZINE: Did you take SEX AND DEATH 101 to the studios first?
DANIEL WATERS: I had a period in my life where I was doing all this crap at the studios, and I call this reinventing my naivete period. I realized, "fuck these mother fuckers, I'm going to write a bunch of scripts that are going to end up in a drawer, so when I kill myself, they can read these scripts and go 'he was a fucking genius.' " But then before I could commit suicide, Cary Brokow [from Avenue Pictures] read the script. I didn't write this to get made. It's the same thing I did with HEATHERS. If you write it to sell or get made it won't, so I wrote something not to get made.
iF: How was it working with Winona Ryder again after all these years?
WATERS: I thought it was a great idea with her from the beginning. She's definitely the delicate broken down version of the role. Whatever has been going on in her past, ties into with this role very interestingly. You're supposed to be freaked out by her. Winona has been gone for awhile, much like the character too. She’s the same exact person that I remembered working with. She's a little too into HEATHERS though, it's a little crazy. It's like being cornered by a really obsessed fan, but you're the star of the movie. I keep expecting her to ask, "what's it like to work with Winona." "You know you are Winona Ryder. I just want to make sure that it's clear." "Oh God, what a great film." "Really, are you allowed to say that out load?"
iF: Did you always want to be a director?
WATERS: Certainly when I wrote HEATHERS, I didn’t want to be a director. It's amazing how, the directors I've worked with who have all been pretty good ideas, things you think come naturally, they don't get. I realized, that directing is a form of writing and the craft of creating something.
iF: Now that you're directing your own material, are you pretty cruel to the writer as a director?
WATERS: Now I know why people hate me so much. I write these one and half page scenes, that need to be shot like a six-page scene. And the dialogue – "how do they expect actors to say this shit." Definitely, if it's not working when I'm shooting it, it's gone. Before when I was the writer, I would be "how dare you cut that scene, even if it’s not well performed you have to make it work." Now, it’s not meant to be.
iF: BATMAN RETURNS is still one of the better sequels, how do you feel about it in retrospect?
WATERS: When I visited the set, I was wheeled on there like Hannibal Lecter. I was having a bit of a disagreement with Tim at the time. I fulfilled my contract, but they brought in this guy Wesley Strick and I did want to go from theater to theater, telling people – "he put LOVE CONNECTION jokes in the movie." That was a dead reference even when the movie came out. And now you watch the movie again going "ahh, Alfred talking about the LOVE CONNECTION, thanks Wesley. Thanks buddy." The whole reinvention of the Catwoman character, I was given a lot of freedom in the initial conception of that thing. It's like, talk about committee, you have a lot of different [people]. Michael Keaton was still the only actor I’ve worked with he said "you're giving me too many lines, you've got to cut this out."
iF: BATMAN RETURNS took a beating when it came out, but people now look back on it fondly. Do you find that to be true?
WATERS: [BATMAN FOREVER and BATMAN & ROBIN director] Joel Schumacher gave me the best reviews of my career. I love the critics, after the other ones came out, "BATMAN RETURNS, that was a truly good [film]." Where were you guys, when it first came out. It did get good reviews, but the opinion of the movie really elevated after the other two movies came out.
iF: Weren't you the first person to attempt a CATWOMAN script?
WATERS: Yes, I did the first script. It was pretty outlandish. I liked Catwoman more than Batman as a character. So I basically wanted to remake BATMAN, only with no Batman, who was the most problematic character, which some people said I did with BATMAN RETURNS anyway. "If we can just get rid of this Batman guy, I think we got an idea boys." But Tim wanted to do an intimate, $12 million movie of CATWOMAN, like the original CAT PEOPLE. Between the two of us, the studio was like, "we don't want to make either of these." Mine took place in the Arizona version of Gotham City. It was a town run by three obnoxious super heroes, but they end up being villains. The first scene was her at a support group, but it did end with a lot of women in CATWOMAN outfits. It's a lot like the Winona character [in SEX AND DEATH] who ends up being a serial killer we can all relate to.
iF: So it was very different from the Halle Berry version of CATWOMAN?
WATERS: Oh my god, there was a truck going "beep beep," backing up [at my house] and 900 scripts fell on my front lawn and [the studio was] like, "do you want to arbitrate," and I went to the last one and I went "noooo, please don't give me credit. Whatever you do, anything."
iF: What is the key to a successful black comedy?
WATERS: You can't please everyone. A real dark comedy, has to make the audience go "that wasn't funny," at least four times. You have to know the movie has the ability to go too far, so it keeps you unsettled the rest of the way. It's funny, with HEATHERS, I've been made to feel very old, when people act like I wrote HIS GIRL FRIDAY. "Hey, it's the old guy, you wrote the good old comedies back in the day. HEATHERS that was a great one. They don't make them like that." I still don't get tired of taking a complement. SEX AND DEATH 101 has nothing to do with teenagers, nothing to do with high school, but I think it’s a good time for a movie about sexuality and hopefully the time will be right.
SEX AND DEATH 101 is due out in 2007.
from FMagazine.
Date:Jun 21, 2006
By ANTHONY C. FERRANTE
It's a hot Sunny, Southern California afternoon on the Paramount Pictures back lot as a group of geeky extras line-up outside of a faux Golden Apples comic book shop waiting for an autograph of a sexy pin-up played by Sophie Monk for the new dark comedy SEX AND DEATH 101.
Certainly writer-director Daniel Waters (who wrote the seminal black comedy HEATHERS) could pass for one of these geeky extras – and he even jokes about being kicked off his own set for not fitting the eye candy notion of a "director."
"I keep expecting a new P.A. on the set is going to round me up and lasso me and put me in the geek line," jokes Waters. "And I'm like, 'I'm the director,' and he's 'sure you are, everyone wants to direct, don't they. Your dream will one day come true.,"
In his new film, Waters poses the sci-fi-like question, "what if you received a list of every woman you have slept with and who you will eventually sleep with – what would you do?"
"I just thought 'wouldn't it be great if I fast-forwarded to the end of this story to see if I'm going to sleep with this woman or not,'" explains Waters.
The end result follows Roderick Blank (Simon Baker) who gets this mysterious list a week before his wedding and decides to eschew domesticity in place of searching out every woman on the list to find out if indeed the list is true. He soon finds himself falling for a woman not on the list – Death Nell (Winona Ryder) who turns out to be a psychopath, seducing men before putting them into a coma.
"Here's my thing," says Waters. "There's been more movies and TV shows about serial killers, then there has been serial killing, but, sex, as far as actual times it happens in movies that are about it and take it as seriously as people do in real life, is pretty non-existent. Not that I want to make a great serious movie about sex, but the only way to do it is through intelligent humor. I say this movie is as if Philip K. Dick and Phillip Roth did a movie together."
In a candid interview with iF, Waters discussed working on his new film, his previous life as a screenwriter for huge studio action films and his thoughts on his writing experience on BATMAN RETURNS and his version of CATWOMAN that was never made.
iF MAGAZINE: Did you take SEX AND DEATH 101 to the studios first?
DANIEL WATERS: I had a period in my life where I was doing all this crap at the studios, and I call this reinventing my naivete period. I realized, "fuck these mother fuckers, I'm going to write a bunch of scripts that are going to end up in a drawer, so when I kill myself, they can read these scripts and go 'he was a fucking genius.' " But then before I could commit suicide, Cary Brokow [from Avenue Pictures] read the script. I didn't write this to get made. It's the same thing I did with HEATHERS. If you write it to sell or get made it won't, so I wrote something not to get made.
iF: How was it working with Winona Ryder again after all these years?
WATERS: I thought it was a great idea with her from the beginning. She's definitely the delicate broken down version of the role. Whatever has been going on in her past, ties into with this role very interestingly. You're supposed to be freaked out by her. Winona has been gone for awhile, much like the character too. She’s the same exact person that I remembered working with. She's a little too into HEATHERS though, it's a little crazy. It's like being cornered by a really obsessed fan, but you're the star of the movie. I keep expecting her to ask, "what's it like to work with Winona." "You know you are Winona Ryder. I just want to make sure that it's clear." "Oh God, what a great film." "Really, are you allowed to say that out load?"
iF: Did you always want to be a director?
WATERS: Certainly when I wrote HEATHERS, I didn’t want to be a director. It's amazing how, the directors I've worked with who have all been pretty good ideas, things you think come naturally, they don't get. I realized, that directing is a form of writing and the craft of creating something.
iF: Now that you're directing your own material, are you pretty cruel to the writer as a director?
WATERS: Now I know why people hate me so much. I write these one and half page scenes, that need to be shot like a six-page scene. And the dialogue – "how do they expect actors to say this shit." Definitely, if it's not working when I'm shooting it, it's gone. Before when I was the writer, I would be "how dare you cut that scene, even if it’s not well performed you have to make it work." Now, it’s not meant to be.
iF: BATMAN RETURNS is still one of the better sequels, how do you feel about it in retrospect?
WATERS: When I visited the set, I was wheeled on there like Hannibal Lecter. I was having a bit of a disagreement with Tim at the time. I fulfilled my contract, but they brought in this guy Wesley Strick and I did want to go from theater to theater, telling people – "he put LOVE CONNECTION jokes in the movie." That was a dead reference even when the movie came out. And now you watch the movie again going "ahh, Alfred talking about the LOVE CONNECTION, thanks Wesley. Thanks buddy." The whole reinvention of the Catwoman character, I was given a lot of freedom in the initial conception of that thing. It's like, talk about committee, you have a lot of different [people]. Michael Keaton was still the only actor I’ve worked with he said "you're giving me too many lines, you've got to cut this out."
iF: BATMAN RETURNS took a beating when it came out, but people now look back on it fondly. Do you find that to be true?
WATERS: [BATMAN FOREVER and BATMAN & ROBIN director] Joel Schumacher gave me the best reviews of my career. I love the critics, after the other ones came out, "BATMAN RETURNS, that was a truly good [film]." Where were you guys, when it first came out. It did get good reviews, but the opinion of the movie really elevated after the other two movies came out.
iF: Weren't you the first person to attempt a CATWOMAN script?
WATERS: Yes, I did the first script. It was pretty outlandish. I liked Catwoman more than Batman as a character. So I basically wanted to remake BATMAN, only with no Batman, who was the most problematic character, which some people said I did with BATMAN RETURNS anyway. "If we can just get rid of this Batman guy, I think we got an idea boys." But Tim wanted to do an intimate, $12 million movie of CATWOMAN, like the original CAT PEOPLE. Between the two of us, the studio was like, "we don't want to make either of these." Mine took place in the Arizona version of Gotham City. It was a town run by three obnoxious super heroes, but they end up being villains. The first scene was her at a support group, but it did end with a lot of women in CATWOMAN outfits. It's a lot like the Winona character [in SEX AND DEATH] who ends up being a serial killer we can all relate to.
iF: So it was very different from the Halle Berry version of CATWOMAN?
WATERS: Oh my god, there was a truck going "beep beep," backing up [at my house] and 900 scripts fell on my front lawn and [the studio was] like, "do you want to arbitrate," and I went to the last one and I went "noooo, please don't give me credit. Whatever you do, anything."
iF: What is the key to a successful black comedy?
WATERS: You can't please everyone. A real dark comedy, has to make the audience go "that wasn't funny," at least four times. You have to know the movie has the ability to go too far, so it keeps you unsettled the rest of the way. It's funny, with HEATHERS, I've been made to feel very old, when people act like I wrote HIS GIRL FRIDAY. "Hey, it's the old guy, you wrote the good old comedies back in the day. HEATHERS that was a great one. They don't make them like that." I still don't get tired of taking a complement. SEX AND DEATH 101 has nothing to do with teenagers, nothing to do with high school, but I think it’s a good time for a movie about sexuality and hopefully the time will be right.
SEX AND DEATH 101 is due out in 2007.
from FMagazine.
posted by nikita | 1:08 AM
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