Q: When do we see THE FOUNTAIN?
A: We locked picture about a week-and-a-half ago. It’s been a real mind-fuck. It’s just a very, very hard film to cut. I shot a lot of footage and just finding the best picture in there is always really hard. You have to be responsible to the actors and all the people who worked on it to make sure that you get their absolute best work out there. That’s very, very hard.
Q: So when do you start working with Clint Mansell on the score?
A: Clint started. Clint’s been on for a while now, and he’s actually coming out here. He lives in LA normally now, and he’s coming out to the city next week. He's going to London first to meet with some potential really cool collaborators that may actually perform some of the music on the film, which I can’t talk about yet, until we figure out who it’s going to be. And then he’s coming to New York, and we’ll just jump in. But he’s already done a pass on most of the movie. It’s very, very different than anything I think he’s done before and anything I’ve been involved with.
Q: That’s cool.
A: Yeah, it’s really going to be a beautiful score, I think. So that’s starting to come together. And then we have a lot of visual effects shots to finish. We’ve got about 200 more VFX shots to finish. That’s been the main reason why we haven’t been able to get out this year, so... I don’t think we’re going to finish our last VFX shot until the end of February or so.
Q: Well, I’m just glad you weren’t so married to a release date that you rushed things.
A: Yeah, Warners and New Regency have been really supportive in letting me take the time to find the best version of the film. They gave me a lot of time, which is very, very generous of them. It’s a shame, because, you know, I’ve been working on it so long that... [laughs]... I want to get it out there. But there’s a few things that will get out, and I guess that’s why they wanted us to talk today, was ‘cause I convinced them to do this teaser.
Q: I think that’s Wednesday that it goes live.
A: Is that what they said? That’s awesome. Awesome. I’ve sort of been in touch, but I’ve sort of been underground here. But, yeah, it’s gonna come out and it’s really cool. I actually cut it with the guys at Warners and Regency. This guy Jim Frederick at Warner Bros, who cuts, I think, all their trailers. He cuts a lot of their trailers. I mean, I’m sure it’s a huge department. But he was really collaborative and it’s a very very different little teaser. It’s only like thirty seconds long, but it’s pretty cool, and it gives you a good taste of the film.
Q: Have you shown your cut to any of the actors yet?
A: Yeah. Both Hugh and Rachel have seen it...
Q: And are they happy with it?
A: Oh, yeah. We showed it to Hugh a couple of weeks ago. He got a break from X-MEN, and he came... he was in New York and we showed it to him, and he was pretty psyched.
Q: That’s so great.
A: Well, it’s a big relief. That’s always the big thing, is when you show it to the actors, and you’re like... you hope they’re crying at the end.
Q: It’s such a different thing for him. I think it’s a really important thing for him.
A: I hope so. I mean, you know... he’s really into it. We have a bunch of looping to do now, so I’m going to go out and see him in Vancouver in a couple of weeks to loop the film. And he’s so talented. What I’m going to do is, and I’ve never tried to do this before, but because he’s, like, in every scene in the movie, is I’m just going to play the movie for him and let him, like, go along with it, and loop the whole thing that way. The reason I want to do that is because we looped a few little things, and he could just basically... the first time he goes through it, even though he doesn’t know the cut, he stays in synch with his character. [laughs] That’s how talented he is. He can just see it and instantly react to it. So we’re going to try that.
Q: Nice.
A: That should be a lot of fun. Just run it for 90 minutes and see what he does.
Q: Is that the running time? It’s coming in at 90 minutes?
A: It’s, uh... no. I don’t know the running time, actually. I’m not sure... you know, I think it’s longer, but I’m not sure exactly. The credits aren’t on it yet.
Q: It’s funny, because even though it’s such an epic journey, it really is a compact script. I would believe you if you told me it was only 90 minutes.
A: It is. That was part of trying to make it for the right price, cause anything that’s out of the strict genre box, they just seem like they’re really hard films to make. Every film I’ve made so far doesn’t quite fit in a genre. PI was not quite SF, not quite drama, and also was black-and-white, and I was nobody, so nobody gave me money for that. And then REQUIEM... that was maybe a drug movie, maybe... it can be a lot of things. Maybe an art film. It didn’t quite fit in a genre. And definitely THE FOUNTAIN is... it’s got a lot of different elements in it. It’s a sci-fi, and there’s the period piece, and there’s, you know, the magical. I’ve been calling it a psychedelic fairy tale. What do you think of that?
Q: I think that’s as close as you’re going to get to summing up the right mood.
A: Well, because psychedelic, and... it is a fairy tale. It is. There’s the love story about living forever, once upon a time... and the psychedelic is in the way it’s told. That’s sort of been my pitch.
Q: So you’ve shown it to the actors, and they like it. How are you feeling about it?
A: I’m so happy and thrilled with it. It really is... when the studio said, “Okay, lock the picture and finish it up” about a week-and-a-half ago, it felt... it was just a great feeling. I really feel like when you do a film, no matter how much homework you do on a movie, when you shoot it, it just becomes something completely different. No matter how much 2-D homework you do, when you get there in a 3-dimensional, and there are actors in that 3-dimensional space, it just becomes so different. And then when you get to the editing stage, you’ve just got so much footage, and for me and Jay, the editor, it just became like this overwhelming mound of footage to try and figure out. And also with a film like this, with a structure that can change so easily, how that structure changes can have such an impact on what that film is. It really was a jigsaw puzzle of trying to find the best solution within all the material we had. So for me and Jay, it was a really beautiful feeling to finally get to a place where we were really thrilled with every minute of the film, and it’s something to me which has done the thing which is necessary, which is... I think it’s going to keep people interested, and it’s going to be a very, very different experience for anyone who sees it.
Q: So do you guys have any plan about when THE FOUNTAIN might actually be...
A: I don’t know yet. I think they’re just going to let me finish it. I don’t think it’s going to be this winter. It’s definitely ’06. They haven’t given me a date yet. I’m just happy to get it done. And you know what? They are really good at what they do, at selling movies, and hopefully they will figure out the best place and way of bringing it out. I can’t wait to get it out. I’m psyched to show it to everyone who’s been supportive for s long. Including yourself. I’d love to show it as soon as we can. At this point, I’m going to wait until it’s completely polished and scored and mixed and on film, as opposed to showing it on HD, or without the proper mix. They’ve been really great, and they don’t want to test it. They’re just going to finish it, which is very cool. There are still the 200 FX shots...
Q: That’s more than you originally had planned.
A: Yeah, I sort of added a few.
Q: I’ll bet.
A: There are just these amazing things you can do with VFX now that are very, very subtle things, which I learned. You can split the screen now. Say you have two actors sharing the screen, and the timing between their lines is not quite right. You can actually split the screen and speed up one side. You can off-set the timing on one side, so that you can change how their interaction works. You can do these little subtle effects that no one will ever notice, but they actually help the drama of the film. If you like a certain part of a performance, but something else is happening onscreen that you don’t like, you can take it out or you can manipulate it. The tools you have in Photoshop are there and available now for motion pictures, which is just fantastic.
Q: It seems like the freedom that affords you in the editing room has got to be liberating.
A: It’s a lot less pressurized. Instead of spending $200,000 a day, you’re spending a fraction of that. And also, you know, the graphic novel’s about to come out.
Q: When does that hit?
A: That’s going to hit any day now, I think. I just got my first bound copy like two days ago. They’ve actually agreed to let it come out first. So that’s actually going to be in comic book stores in mid-November. Literally a week or two. And then it’ll be in Barnes & Nobles and other bookstores December 1st. It’s great. Have you ever seen any of the art? Did I show you any of it?
Q: We saw a little bit of it in Montreal.
A: It’s completely different than the film, so it won’t ruin the film. It just kind of adds to the mythology of the story, because it’s Kent Williams’s take on the script. He brought his own vision to it. The characters are... it’s not one of those cheesy comics where it’s a bad likeness of Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. It’s his interpretation of what the characters look like. And then, of course, it’s based on a script was from before it went through the shooting process, and then the shooting process changes it, and the editing process changes it more, so it’s a very different experience. I think Kent did a really beautiful job. So that’s coming out, which is... there are definitely some peeks coming now at what we’ve been up to for the last few years.
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