Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the first of two interview I did at Comic-Con for the Warner Bros flick THE REAPING. Joel Silver is perhaps one of the most famous producers working today. He's had his hands in geek culture for decades. He produced flicks like PREDATOR, THE WARRIORS, STREETS OF FIRE, WEIRD SCIENCE, LETHAL WEAPON, DIE HARD and most recently THE MATRIX films and the awesome V FOR VENDETTA, which hits on DVD today, coincidentally. Of course, he also was one of the key figures behind the launching of HBO's TALES FROM THE CRYPT, which I adore. Just been going through Season 4 on DVD, actually.
Dark Castle, his horror production arm, is behind THE REAPING starring Hilary Swank. The flick is about a woman who debunks miracles... until she finds one she can't figure out. Here's my chat with Mr. Silver about the flick. Keep your eyes out for my brief chat with Ms. Swank in the coming day...
QUINT: I really liked the look of the film from the trailer...
JOEL SILVER (pointing to director, Stephen Hopkins, a table over doing an interview with some TV outlet): He's very good. Stephen Hopkins is a good director.
QUINT: Actually, I'm a pretty big fan of his, going back to his PREDATOR 2 and TALES FROM THE CRYPT days...
JOEL SILVER: He did those... 24 was brilliant, too. That first season was fantastic.
QUINT: In terms of the story, what specifically made you want to produce this story?
JOEL SILVER: The script was interesting. When we got the script we felt there was a chance for something fresh. I mean, it was a character, a miracle debunker, who... you know, whenever there were occurrences in the world that seem to be quite miraculous her job is to essentially scientifically explain what occurred. She goes to this city in Louisiana where she can't do that. One by one the plagues begin occurring and it's pretty cool. It's cool.
QUINT: So, before shooting the picture what did you think was going to be the most challenging aspect of filming?
JOEL SILVER: When I read it, I thought, "You know, this could be a cool movie." Dark Castle Pictures... we want to make economically advantageous decisions and make these movies for the right amount of money. They're (usually) one set movies, per se, or one town movies or one ship movies. So, we found a way to do it and we felt we could make it really affordably in Louisiana and Hilary (Swank) wanted to make a picture like this and it was a great idea. You know, we want to make one a year of these Dark Castle movies... maybe more, if we can do it. It was the right way to go.
QUINT: Was there anything specific in the script that you weren't sure you could pull off for the budget?
JOEL SILVER: There's a lot of visual effects in this picture. A lot of visual effects. We had to be careful because that's costly. We always have visual effects scenes, but we really try to do them affordably, the best way we can...
QUINT: Do you find it cheaper to do practical effects work over digital effects work?
JOEL SILVER: Depends on the movie. I mean, swarms of locusts you really can't do practically, you know? So, you have to find a way to do that... Or miles of a river of blood... We can do a lot with digital effects now and we do some things in the camera, some things not in the camera... depends on the picture. The next picture up is THE VISITING, which I'm doing with Nicole Kidman, and there's a lot of effects done in the camera in that one. And the next picture, which is the one I'm doing now, THE BRAVE ONE with Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard is really kind of a gritty urban drama... And the next one, which is Vince Vaughn and David Dobkin, which did WEDDING CRASHERS, is called FRED CLAUS... it's a lot of visual effects. So, they're all across the board.
Another shorty... you don't get much of an idea about the movie, but I really like that sum-up at the end there. FRED CLAUS sounds great and it has a great cast, including the great Paul Giamatti as Santa. More shorty interviews coming up and also one that's a whole 10 minutes long with Sam The Man Jackson. So keep your eyes peeled! I'll be back soon!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
