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Moriarty Breaks Bread With David Goyer To Talk About THE INVISIBLE And More!
When the story broke last weekend about SUPERMAX, the Green Arrow project that Goyer is producing, what got lost in most of the reporting (including ours) is that Justin Marks is the writer of the film. Justin’s a guy who has been attaching himself to some truly geek-bait projects recently. He’s writing VOLTRON for Mark Gordon and STREET FIGHTER for Hyde-Park at the moment, and he was the one who came up with this idea. Originally, it wasn’t going to involve any already-existing characters, but when he took it to Goyer and asked him to be involved as a producer, they came up with the idea of putting in DC characters as a way of making it even more fun.
A few years back, I went through a similar process with Goyer. My agent set up a meeting with him for my writing partner and me, and we went in to talk to him about an action film we were interested in pitching. Goyer worked with us for a few weeks to hone the pitch, and then we spent two weeks pitching it to various studios. We ran into the brick wall of “too many historical epics in the marketplace,” but it was a great experience. Goyer’s the kind of guy who believes in giving other writers a hand, and it’s obvious that when he believes in an idea, he’ll do whatever he can to help get that film made. He’s also one of the working writers who makes himself available to fans via the Internet in a direct, hands-on way. You can check out his MySpace page, where he talks about the work he’s doing, the work he’s done, and the process of breaking into the industry.
He’s a busy guy in his own right, of course, as he puts the finishing touches on THE INVISIBLE, his latest film as a director. He made his feature directing debut with ZIG ZAG, a small character drama, and then followed up with the final BLADE film. With THE INVISIBLE, he’s trying to get back to the character-driven drama side of things, well aware that he’s become known as “that comic-book guy” to some people. A few weeks back, he invited me to drop by Disney, where he was in the editing room, so I could see some of the film and then we could go to lunch to talk.
It’s been a while since I’d spoken with David. The last time we talked, he was gearing up on BLADE TRINITY, and he was still incredibly optimistic about the experience. I’m not sure what you’ve read about that troubled production, but suffice it to say Goyer and Wesley Snipes probably aren’t getting together to hang out anytime soon. I think I liked the film more than Goyer did by the time he was finished with it, and he said the experience led him to seriously consider what he wanted to do next as a director. He has spent most of his career working with very strong and interesting directors, so he’s seen some really great guys struggle to get their visions onscreen. Proyas and DARK CITY. Nolan and BATMAN BEGINS. Norrington and Del Toro on the first two BLADE films. It would make sense for Goyer to pick another giant comic book movie to follow up on BLADE TRINITY, something very geek-friendly.
So of course, that’s not what he’s doing. Instead, he saw a Swedish film from 2002 called DEN OSYNLIGE, and he decided to work from someone else’s script in making a film that really isn’t nerd-bait at all. “Do you ever read any of those young-adult novels?” he asked me, laughing even before I told him I don’t. “That’s what this is. It’s not a horror film. If it’s any genre, it’s a young-adult piece. Anyone who reads those books is going to get it right away.” Considering Goyer also took a crack at adapting JUMPER (which Doug Liman ended up directing after a production polish by Simon Kinberg), maybe the young-adult novel market is where his interests lie at the moment. Maybe it was an itch he needed to scratch.
At any rate, it’s obvious that he’s very pleased with THE INVISIBLE. He’s seen it with audiences several times now, and he feels confident in what the final result is going to do to viewers. Justin Chatwin, best known to most audiences as “the kid who should have died in WAR OF THE WORLDS,” stars here as Nick Powell, a brooding young writer who is still wrestling with his feelings about his father’s death. He shares a huge cold house with his mother, played by Marcia Gay Harden, but that’s about all he shares with her. He’s closed himself off, and she doesn’t know how to bridge that new distance between them. Nick’s decided he is leaving for London to join a writer’s program, something she seems dead-set against. Most of the stuff I was shown from the first act is just character building, laying the groundwork for who Nick is.
The other main character in the film is Annie, played by Margarita Levieva. She’s a new face, and I didn’t really know anything about her before talking to Goyer. She’s appeared in a few things, like a LAW & ORDER episode or the series VANISHED, but this is probably going to be her introduction to most viewers. Chatwin’s character may be the person the plot hinges on, but Levieva’s the one who has to carry the movie. Her actions set the movie into motion, and she’s the one who ultimately has to resolve everything.
The trailer makes this look like GHOST, where Chatwin is working with her to solve his own murder. There are actually a few more kinks in the narrative than that, and although there is a relationship of sorts between them, for most of the running time they don’t actually have any direct contact with one another. There’s no Whoopi Goldberg to show up and solve that problem, either. In essence, Chatwin serves as her conscience, that little voice nagging at her to clean up a horrible mess she’s made of things. Levieva starts the movie playing tough, but gradually reveals more and more vulnerability. It’s the sort of role most young actresses would kill to play, and sees to have attacked it with everything she’s got.
David showed me footage from throughout the film, then asked me if I wanted to see the resolution. I told him I’d rather wait and see it in finished form, so we decided to head around the corner from Disney to a rib joint where we could talk and get our grub on. The restaurant was perfect... as non-Hollywood as you can get within LA county limits... and as we relaxed and chatted, it’s obvious that Goyer is still as down-to-earth about his craft as he’s ever been.
We talked at length about the way the comic book cycle’s been playing out, and if there’s anyone working who comic geeks should want to have that conversation with, it’s Goyer. This guy wrote the script that pretty much kickstarted the entire modern superhero movie trend with BLADE. Hell, I’d argue that the trend started with the opening scene of that movie, even if that’s all there had been. He’s as frustrated by some of the choices Hollywood has made as even the hardest of hardcore comic book guys, but he's actually in there slugging away, trying to make them better. And he's one of the few guys who has written for not only different characters, but in both of the major superhero worlds. He’s worked closely with both Marvel (and has nothing but praise for Kevin Feige, a common refrain from anyone who’s worked for them) and DC/Warner.
I’m willing to bet one of the reasons he jumped at the pitch by Justin Marks is because it isn’t the standard way into a superhero movie. At this point, it isn’t just the origin stories that are hobbled by a thudding sameness... even the sequels seem to be settling into a formula that’s getting hard to sit through, no matter how much I like these characters. I wish we could have seen his version of THE FLASH, and I wish someone would let him make his version of DOCTOR STRANGE. We talked about THOR, as well, something I’ve seen his name linked to repeatedly but which he says he was never actually attached to. He wants to see these films done right, even if he isn’t the person who ends up doing them, and his love for the characters is pretty obvious as he talks about them.
One of the characters he has the most evident affection for is Batman, and he sounded very positive about THE DARK KNIGHT. He said that one of the things he most enjoyed about the process he went through in contributing to the sequel was the way it was never a foregone conclusion. They didn’t just slap something together after the first film’s opening weekend. Instead, months went by before Goyer and Nolan first got together to start talking about what they wanted to do. For Nolan, there was no point in making a BATMAN sequel unless there was a story worth telling, something genuinely different that got Nolan excited about the film. Goyer was a big part of breaking the story with Nolan, and then had to leave to start work on THE INVISIBLE. In his ongoing conversations with Nolan, though, he’s giddy about what he’s been hearing. He talked around what we can expect to see, careful not to give too much away, but he sounds excited as a fan. I’m always impressed when I see a filmmaker who is still genuinely excited by other people’s work, who still loves the same things that made him want to make films in the first place.
We also talked about SCANNERS, the David Cronenberg film that Goyer’s attached to remake. Cronenberg’s one of my favorite filmmakers, and his early genre work is all pretty fantastic. It’s hard to deny the iconic power of the exploding heads from that film, but I don’t think it’s one of his stronger films. Goyer was approached about working on the remake, and right away, he was intrigued by the idea of taking the abilities of the Scanners and moving them into the post-9/11 world.
“Look at the way governments work today... not just ours, but all of them. And imagine what they would be willing and able to do if they had Scanners under their control.” Using that as a very potent jumping-off point, he’s creating something that sounds like it could be a really cool extension of the ideas that never quite gelled in the original.
I found it interesting to hear him talk about Alex Proyas and Stephen Norrington, both of whom have sort of stepped back from the feature business following some fairly bitter experiences in the studio system. Proyas, of course, was Goyer’s collaborator on DARK CITY, and Goyer sounds confident that we’re going to see more from Proyas as soon as he finds something he really loves. With Norrington, the prognosis is a little less clear, and Goyer sounded sad about the prospect of a film landscape where Norrington isn’t contributing.
There are numerous other projects I’ve seen his name connected to, like HERE THERE BE DRAGONS (a fantasy adventure film in which CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien find themselves on a mythic quest before they write their classic novels) and THE UNFORGETTABLE (based on the video game SPECIES X) and ALONE (a horror film about an agoraphobic girl who discovers that the house she lives in is haunted), so it’s no surprise that as soon as we finished lunch, David had someplace to be. We just barely touched skimmed the surface of all the things he’s working on, but what was apparent is the thing I’ve always thought about Goyer. This is a guy who knows how lucky he is, a guy who seems determined to make the most of the opportunities he has and who genuinely loves the work he’s doing. THE INVISIBLE may not be what anyone expected from him, but it’s definitely something he felt passionately about, and I look forward to the next thing he feels compelled to put in front of the camera.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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totally should have died in War of the Worlds. He just shows up in the end after being firebombed by aliens? Lame.
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Jesus, that sounds awesome. Simple, direct, and thrilling. How come I didn't think of that?
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perfect. Great choice ....
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Moriarty, why did WB have a problem w/Goyer's Flash script? He was still attached to it even after going around at the beginning and describing in interviews what he was trying to do with the film, so WB must have decided at some later point that they didn't like the direction it was going in. Why'd they take so long to remove him if they didn't like what he was doing with it? Also, please tell us more about his ideas for Dr. Strange!
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...Michael Ironside. Right?
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i'm gonna suck your brain dry!
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If the headline had read Moriarty Breaks Wind With David Goyer, I might have read the article. As it is, I just paged down to post this.
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The fanboy hate against goyer... what's up?
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The fanboy hate against goyer... what's up?
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Also, "Scanners" absolutely does not have to be remade.
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Terrible writer, even worse director.
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with Raimi and a $50million budget. Too much money would ruin the movie, keep the budget low and studio as far away as possible and get a director who could go a little crazy and geek out with the material.Could be sweet!
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http://tinyurl.com/oh7ef
Then by all means both Marvel and DC should just be forking over all their unadapted properties to him, no questions asked.
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his best script is fucking Death Warrant. he's a terrible writer, and apparently an even worse director.
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Was its too heavy for the kids.I agree everything Goyer said on it sounded fantastic ,but they want to go in a different direction-Less serious/more jokey/comedic Flash.Youl see what im sayin,..watch them cast Dane Cook as Wally
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To unleash that vomitus disguised as a movie called Blade 3. Seriously, what a heap of trash. I enjoyed Blade 2 (probably due to GDT) and I know he contributed a lot to BB, but his skills as a director are, imo, still questionable.
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is th einterview coming in part two, or doesn't the headline suggest there was an interview here? I got to the end of the lead in, and there was no story. Unless the story is that you got to have lunch with David S. Goyer. Was everything Goyer actually said off the record? If so, what good is it as a story for AICN? It sounds like an opportunity for you to do some mutual (ego) stroking with Goyer, which could trade off for you but doesn't give us anything if you can't even report on what he said about any of the projects you talked about.
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and hate on two directors in one day. But I gotta disagree about Goyer helping writers. Had a personal connection and he didn't help at all. Cool, he helped you though.Goyer does get attached to cool projects. Always has cool ideas but his execution seems to lack. He really should stick to writing for visionary directors. And I'm not sure aspiring to make a young adult novel (which this does reek of) is exactly a very interesting idea. Like what? S.E. Hinton? The Pigman? I remember all those. And its not 1980 anymore. I tell you though, we are worse off for no Norrington. Imagine his Ghost Rider. Come back Steve! All is forgiven!
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Moriarty, can you elaborate on any of the goodness you discussed re: the Batman sequel and the other projects? Or were you sworn to secrecy?
I ask because the article seems incomplete... you mention all the cool things you talked about, but very little about what was actually said.
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