Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
Still playing catch-up on my Comic-Con interview, but I've only got a couple more for your ass. The final segment in Universal's fully loaded panel this year was what can only be described as a teaser presentation for one of next summer's big comedies, director Brad Silberling's take on the Sid and Marty Krofft TV adventure series LAND OF THE LOST. Silberling has been directing for TV and movies for roughly 20 years, and I'll give the guy credit: he's not afraid to take a risk here and there, even if the final product isn't a successful. He began his film career with his live-action version of CASPER with Christina Ricci, and followed that up with CITY OF ANGELS, a risky remake of Wim Wenders' beloved (especially by me) WINGS OF DEISRE, considered by many to be one of the most beautiful and literate love stories of all time. And you know what? CITY OF ANGELS isn't too bad.
Silberling followed that up with his deeply personal MOONLIGHT MILE, which he also wrote, inspired by the murder of his girlfriend, actress Rebecca Schaeffer, who was killed by a stalker in 1989. He returned to the world on fantasy with the overblown LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, but followed that up with what I think is his best work (which he also wrote), the small indie work 10 ITEMS OR LESS, starring Morgan Freeman and Paz Vega, which I'm going to have to insist you take a peek at. Jonah Hill is in it too, if that helps.
I got about 10 minutes with Brad shortly after he finished up his LAND OF THE LOST presentation, during which Ferrell (who plays Ranger Rick Marshall) was presented doing various silly things via pre-recorded DVD, while Silberling was joined on stage by Ferrell's co-stars Danny McBride (Will), Anna Friel (Holly), and Jorma Taccone (who plays Cha-Ka), as well as Sid and Marty Krofft. He revealed (as you can probably guess from the ages of the main characters) that Will and Holly are not related to Rick, who is a fallen TV nature show host. I was a little surprised no clips were shown from the film, but what I'm guessing is going to be the teaser trailer involving Ferrell and a dinosaur was shown. So here's Mr. Silberling, who was a terrific guy to talk to and who, more than anything, left me feeling a little more confident about his plundering of one of my favorite childhood shows. Enjoy…
Capone: I don't know how much of a comedy this film is--I'm guessing from the cast it's a comedy--but you haven't really done too many flat-out laugh-fests before
Brad Silberling: Oh, it's a flat-out comedy. It's funny, I was talking to somebody about TROPIC THUNDER, and certainly the movies couldn't be more different in many ways, but the cinematic intent--this you are going to commit to this thing--so we have genuine peril and comedy just mashed together mercilessly. And that was the intent.
Capone: Which is not something you've really tackled before.
BS: No, and that's probably because true boffo, broad comedies are never really of interest to me. And even here, the thing I love is that the movie is definitely a comic vehicle but it comes out of a set of stakes that is like a big bong hit. The movie is such a trip, and that's what I loved about it. And I grew up watching the show, so I thought if you can harness those elements, play it for keeps, play it straight, and then take Will's sensibility of humor, then go for it. He and I have known each other for a long time, but we've never worked together. So it was sort of effortless in that sense. That's sort of the funny thing, the best thing of things working is when someone says, "Wait a minute, you were just doing this and now you're over here?" That's what I love, to be able to run where you want to run.
Capone: The fact that David Gordon Green just directed PINEAPPLE EXPRESS I think speaks to that philosophy.
BS: Exactly. The funny thing with Green is that PINEAPPLE is sort of the fruition for him. He has really wanted to do a studio comedy. An ex-assistant of mine is an old friend of his, and he would come by when I was doing LEMONY SNICKET and he was already starting to angle for something bigger; it was just something he really wanted to do. And again, you just look at someone's prior work, and you just never know what's possible or what they're going to do. And I love that Judd [Apatow] was smart enough to say do it. And obviously Danny [McBride, whose first film was Green's ALL THE REAL GIRLS] knew David and knew all the places he could go. I think nothing is more fun for directors than to confuse the hell of people.
Capone: And step out of their expected roles.
BS: Yeah, that's what it is exactly.
Capone: So the host of your panel had a few very specific things he wanted to know about, crystals and such. Was the leaked image of the Sleestak intentional? I'm guessing it was.
BS: No, no. I'll tell you it was intention. It's awful, but basically it was like our Baby Suri time. We're going to take the first photo of it, because my fear is--and it's not to impugn the trust of a lot of extras--but you're not dealing with three Sleestak, you're dealing with 30, and their handlers. It was like which is the first camera phone shot that goes out, that's poorly lit, not really showing the design. And it was so likely to happen. When we were making LEMONY SNICKET, we would step onto a new set, and boom the pictures would go out. And I didn't want to do that again. So I took our still photographer the first morning they worked, and we did that set up. The set up we released is actually a set up from the film, so I went ahead and rolled and got what I needed, and then immediately grabbed him and we lined it up. So that was intentional, as was the leak of Enik. The L.A. Times ran a cover story on Comic-Con actually, and that was Will and Enik, from the original series for all the hardcore fans was the one intelligent, gold-colored Sleestak. So we put that out. We have yet to do that with Cha-Ka.
Capone: That was my next question, because that's obviously the next money shot.
BS: Exactly.
Capone: So does Cha-Ka look like Cha-Ka?
BS: What I'm really thrilled about is that Cha-Ka looks like Cha-Ka, but Phil Paley [who played Cha-Ka in the original TV series] was only about 11 when he did that, and that's one of the things that I found incredibly disturbing about Cha-Ka, that he has the huge forehead and all of that appliance work on this little guy. I was creeped out by Cha-Ka. I was one of those people who were creeped out by him. And I was honest with Sid and Marty about that that I didn't really go for Cha-Ka, and we're kind of going to have to go put some of that in the movie. So in the movie, he's untrustworthy and a bit sketchy, but he has a look…what I wanted to do was take Jorma and find the inner Cha-Ka in Jorma. And Jorma would have friends drop by and they'd go, "Oh my God, you look like Cha-Ka." So he will definitely…it's not like we wanted to go and reinvent Cha-Ka, but he's not just a clone.
Capone: There's a lot of time between now and when that opens. Are you going to release that image fairly soon or hold off?
BS: We will for the same reason we released the Sleestak image. Put your best foot forward, and let people see him the way it's intended. So, yeah, we will. It's a chunk of time between now and then, and I sort of figured we would, and we might even do something before the fall is out because inevitably for real trailer material, you're going to get into Cha-Ka.
Capone: I talked to Will a couple weeks before he came to shoot LAND OF THE LOST when he was out promoting SEMI-PRO. He was so excited about all these huge sets that had been built. Part of the reason I think people love the show, as much as it was an action-adventure show, were the simple charms and low production values. Are you able to maintain a part of that for such a big movie?
BS: It's funny, even though we're able to play with scale in a sense that Sid & Marty could or couldn't. They could by doing some composite work of the time. But for me, rather having a film filled with CG environments, the charm is going to come from having some tacky sets that will hopefully be beautifully rendered, but they're still sets. For me, what I love about LAND OF THE LOST was that it was fantasy but I always felt like I was in the cradle of some creation there. I wasn't thinking, "Wow, I'm not on a set." You could sense that you were. Some of the jungle sets had been tread and retread so much, and we wanted to switch up our environments and grow that out. But in the end, when you think of the show, it would be the three of them sitting in a cave trying to figure out how to get a bucket of water or how to get Holly and Will to stop fighting or put a splint on Cha-Ka. And that stuff is really well preserved in the movie.
Capone: I didn't realize that Will and Holly aren't supposed to be related in this story.
BS: Well when you meet Marshall, he's fallen far from the tree of celebrity. He's actually when you meet him, he's doing field trip tours of the La Brea Tar Pits. He's not in good shape. He had been a celebrity paleontologist who got knocked off his block. You see that happen at the top of the movie. And as a result, I wanted there to be a character in Anna whose faith in him is going to help the audience's faith, because this guy has totally given up on himself. The fact that he actually has got a stroke of genius about him is something even he has forgotten. I wanted somebody who was credible. I laughed when I said to Will that we had to have the character be British. We have such inferiority complexes about British accents. And she wanted to hide it, but I said, "No, we're going to use your accent." Because she's from the Midlands. And that was the intention, that there's this character who has come over two oceans to sit at this man's feet. He has no faith in himself, but she does, and she plays it straight.
Capone: I liked that you've been showing Sid and Marty the dailies.
BS: And they were on set, if not every day, as much as they could be. And I gave them open viewing of all the dailies. I wouldn't have to consult them much, because if we were at a spot where there was a bump, you're going to hear about it. But we never had it. What was great was that I would literally park Sid in the dailies trailer and he'd be in there for hours. I think for them, we were taking what they loved and cared about, and they could watch so many people pour so much love and care and affection and resources into this thing. So it was part vibe, some pixie dust from them. And, you know, they did what they did well for a reason; they were smart. So why push them away? Have the around.
Capone: Any trippy elements in your version? Speaking of PINEAPPLE EXPRESS.
BS: Oh yeah and I can't tell you about many. There are and then some. I mean the stuff that I love most is that the movie goes some really crazy places, because the whole premise when you're a kid of nine watching, you really don't fully grasp the fact that it's a time and space warp. I sort of thought they'd gone into some prehistoric world. No, it's actually an alternate version of earth. We go some really cool places that we love, and some of the humor comes out of that and these characters being completely out of their element.
Capone: Well cool. I think we're being shut down. I'm interested to see what you guys come up with.
BS: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. We'll be back here next summer, right after release I believe.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
