IPOD
RADIO
Richard Donner
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Feb 26, 2006
To all of us people who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s it was impossible not to see and love Richard Donner’s films. Man or woman, one or more of your favorite films was Superman, The Goonies, Lethal Weapon and Ladyhawke. Throughout the 90’s Donner continued with his Lethal Weapon series and even jumpstarted the Asian film craze working with the Wachowski brothers and Jet Li before they hit big.
Now in the 21st century Donner has grabbed the action genre by the throat again and throttled the hell out of it until out came 16 Blocks. This film stars Bruce Willis as an overweight alcoholic cop that seems on the verge of committing suicide until out of the blue he steps up to protect a witness [Mos Def] until he can testify against some dirty cops.
Check out the official site for 16 Blocks
Daniel Robert Epstein: The style that you definitely advanced with the Lethal Weapon films has been co-opted by hundreds of other films. Now you are reinventing the action genre again. Was that conscious in your mind?
Donner: No I’m just trying to make it as exciting as possible and keep it realistic. You don’t think about doing something different unless it’s a different screenplay. If the screenplay really works then a lot of things go with it. Casting and the style you’re going to shoot it in are all inherent to the piece. A lot of times people go out of their way to stylize something just for the sake of stylization. Then it stands out and hits you on the head. 16 Blocks is a very cloistered film. Primarily it was about two people talking to each other. You don’t realize it’s becoming a style. After you do an action film all of a sudden everybody offers you action films. I had never done an action film before Lethal Weapon. But Shane Black had written this brilliant script about two characters which is what made me want to do it. The characters motivated the story and the action came out of that. I hadn’t seen that for a long time until Richard Wenk came to me with this idea and he told me the story about these guys and the situation they were in. After that everything fell into place stylistically.
DRE:
An action film can’t always be autobiographical or biographical but this is a film about an older guy who has had a rough few years. I know you had a tough time on your last picture. Did you relate to the Bruce Willis character in that fashion?
RD:
I did relate in a strange way. This is a strange town and a strange business. I had an incredible track record over the years generating two billion dollars worth of film for Warner Bros and then I did Timeline. Why, I’ll never know. Then only because of the studio people involved, it was terrible. After that picture came out it was like I was the new kid on the block. It was difficult. I said, “Ok I’ve done it. Forget it. If something comes along, I’ll get into it.” Then Richard came along with 16 Blocks and I said “Not only is this a film I want to make but I know what I can do with this film. It’s going to bring a little light back on me again.” He said, “You don’t want to die, you don’t want to quit, you don’t want to walk away.” I have other films now that I want to do. Did I relate to Bruce; no. Did Bruce relate to me; no. But I related to the film as a moment in my life.
DRE:
When Bruce gets out of the car and Mos Def’s character is attacked. How did you know when that scene was working?
RD:
In that particular case, I was inside the car when we were shooting. Obviously it wasn’t a real bullet that broke the window but when we started you almost forget about all the elements. When that window broke and then the head crashed through, it scared the shit out of me. I thought, “Oh my God. We got it.” It was right then that we knew. We didn’t even need to do it a second time.
DRE:
I’ve spoken to a lot of guys who started around the same time you did. You’ve had a lot of violence in your films over the years. But I think even Sam Peckinpah would say that modern films are too violent.
RD:
[laughs] Here's my take on it. Besides the first Lethal Weapon the action pictures I’ve done were somewhat bigger than life. But the action in the Lethal Weapon films was always motivated by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover’s characters. It wasn’t gratuitous violence or action just to scare and shock people. There was a reason to have it and it came out of a motivation of a relationship with people and situations they got themselves into. For 16 Blocks someone asked me if it was it difficult to break from the action sequences to get to dialogue sequences. I said that it was just the opposite. It’s difficult for me to break the character and dialogue sequences to get the action in. Action is the easiest thing in the world to do. You surround yourself with the best stuntmen, the best visual effects people, best coordinators, best this and that and you can talk them through and they’ll come up with it. A lot of these violent movies have computer graphics in it which I’m against. If you can’t do it real then it’s not real. Some things, of course, you’ll use computers for and I understand. But it’s becoming bigger than life and you lose personal contact. In so doing, you lose a lot of the emotion. I’m just an old fart and for gosh sakes if it can be done real, do it real; because then the audience is part of it on a much stronger basis.
DRE:
Besides being such a big star, what does Bruce Willis bring to the table?
RD:
What he brought is that he is an adventurous actor. He has John McClane [the character in Die Hard] to fall back on and he does those well. But here’s a guy who will take chances with films like Twelve Monkeys and The Fifth Element. A lot of actors would have been afraid to play those characters. Bruce takes the chance and he does great work. We thought we needed to find a guy that could play this cop and break the macho stereotype. To play that depressed, suicidal, alcoholic character with age. Bruce read it and he wanted to do it right away. If you really look at his face in the film you can see how his eyes aged him. He can go back tomorrow and play Bruce Willis and you can see clear, painless eyes. In this movie you see someone very pained and very troubled.
DRE:
My favorite film last year was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Did you have a chance to see it?
RD:
I saw it and I think Shane Black got robbed. Why wasn’t that one of the biggest pictures of the year? Shane Black will go on now and make a lot of great films. You and a lot of guys will be saying, “You know what Shane, I just saw your new picture but Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is still one of the greatest ever made” and it’s all Shane. He would have loved to play that character because you hear his voice and you see his face in it. I loved it with a passion and I felt so sorry for him that he didn’t get the proper acknowledgement but he will eventually.
DRE:
You produced The Lost Boys for Joel Schumacher. A few years ago he made a film that he wasn’t happy with. So he made Phone Booth and Tigerland relatively cheaply and they were very stripped down. Would you ever consider something like that?
RD:
Sure, if I find the right material, without a second thought. I admire Joel tremendously because he can go from one to the other. He loves doing that. After The Omen and Superman I went and did Inside Moves which basically cost nothing. I just took a shot and now it’s one of my favorite films. A big thing I learned on it was that it got distributed by a company that was not very strong so one even heard of it. It got released around Christmas in a couple of theaters in the United States. It got the best reviews I’ve ever had, the little girl [Diana Scarwid] got nominated for an Academy Award but nobody saw the picture.
DRE:
In the past ten years, the most astonishing remake to me was when Sidney Lumet remade John Cassavetes’ Gloria. It was so bizarre to see a guy that had been working longer than John Cassavetes remake one of his films. Two remakes of your films are being released this year. What do you think of remakes?
RD:
For some reason the studios are afraid of new things. They’re afraid of an older director and I don’t understand why. There’s a wealth of material out there. I have three pictures that I’m on right now. Two I’m going to produce with our company and one I’m going to direct. That’s without even working hard to find them. So I don’t understand all the remakes. Is it insecurity? Maybe. It is too bad because there’s a lot of writers and directors out there that have new and original material ready to go.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
To all of us people who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s it was impossible not to see and love Richard Donner’s films. Man or woman, one or more of your favorite films was Superman, The Goonies, Lethal Weapon and Ladyhawke. Throughout the 90’s Donner continued with his Lethal Weapon series and even jumpstarted the Asian film craze working with the Wachowski brothers and Jet Li before they hit big.
Now in the 21st century Donner has grabbed the action genre by the throat again and throttled the hell out of it until out came 16 Blocks. This film stars Bruce Willis as an overweight alcoholic cop that seems on the verge of committing suicide until out of the blue he steps up to protect a witness [Mos Def] until he can testify against some dirty cops.
Check out the official site for 16 Blocks
Daniel Robert Epstein: The style that you definitely advanced with the Lethal Weapon films has been co-opted by hundreds of other films. Now you are reinventing the action genre again. Was that conscious in your mind?
Donner: No I’m just trying to make it as exciting as possible and keep it realistic. You don’t think about doing something different unless it’s a different screenplay. If the screenplay really works then a lot of things go with it. Casting and the style you’re going to shoot it in are all inherent to the piece. A lot of times people go out of their way to stylize something just for the sake of stylization. Then it stands out and hits you on the head. 16 Blocks is a very cloistered film. Primarily it was about two people talking to each other. You don’t realize it’s becoming a style. After you do an action film all of a sudden everybody offers you action films. I had never done an action film before Lethal Weapon. But Shane Black had written this brilliant script about two characters which is what made me want to do it. The characters motivated the story and the action came out of that. I hadn’t seen that for a long time until Richard Wenk came to me with this idea and he told me the story about these guys and the situation they were in. After that everything fell into place stylistically.
DRE:
An action film can’t always be autobiographical or biographical but this is a film about an older guy who has had a rough few years. I know you had a tough time on your last picture. Did you relate to the Bruce Willis character in that fashion?
RD:
I did relate in a strange way. This is a strange town and a strange business. I had an incredible track record over the years generating two billion dollars worth of film for Warner Bros and then I did Timeline. Why, I’ll never know. Then only because of the studio people involved, it was terrible. After that picture came out it was like I was the new kid on the block. It was difficult. I said, “Ok I’ve done it. Forget it. If something comes along, I’ll get into it.” Then Richard came along with 16 Blocks and I said “Not only is this a film I want to make but I know what I can do with this film. It’s going to bring a little light back on me again.” He said, “You don’t want to die, you don’t want to quit, you don’t want to walk away.” I have other films now that I want to do. Did I relate to Bruce; no. Did Bruce relate to me; no. But I related to the film as a moment in my life.
DRE:
When Bruce gets out of the car and Mos Def’s character is attacked. How did you know when that scene was working?
RD:
In that particular case, I was inside the car when we were shooting. Obviously it wasn’t a real bullet that broke the window but when we started you almost forget about all the elements. When that window broke and then the head crashed through, it scared the shit out of me. I thought, “Oh my God. We got it.” It was right then that we knew. We didn’t even need to do it a second time.
DRE:
I’ve spoken to a lot of guys who started around the same time you did. You’ve had a lot of violence in your films over the years. But I think even Sam Peckinpah would say that modern films are too violent.
RD:
[laughs] Here's my take on it. Besides the first Lethal Weapon the action pictures I’ve done were somewhat bigger than life. But the action in the Lethal Weapon films was always motivated by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover’s characters. It wasn’t gratuitous violence or action just to scare and shock people. There was a reason to have it and it came out of a motivation of a relationship with people and situations they got themselves into. For 16 Blocks someone asked me if it was it difficult to break from the action sequences to get to dialogue sequences. I said that it was just the opposite. It’s difficult for me to break the character and dialogue sequences to get the action in. Action is the easiest thing in the world to do. You surround yourself with the best stuntmen, the best visual effects people, best coordinators, best this and that and you can talk them through and they’ll come up with it. A lot of these violent movies have computer graphics in it which I’m against. If you can’t do it real then it’s not real. Some things, of course, you’ll use computers for and I understand. But it’s becoming bigger than life and you lose personal contact. In so doing, you lose a lot of the emotion. I’m just an old fart and for gosh sakes if it can be done real, do it real; because then the audience is part of it on a much stronger basis.
DRE:
Besides being such a big star, what does Bruce Willis bring to the table?
RD:
What he brought is that he is an adventurous actor. He has John McClane [the character in Die Hard] to fall back on and he does those well. But here’s a guy who will take chances with films like Twelve Monkeys and The Fifth Element. A lot of actors would have been afraid to play those characters. Bruce takes the chance and he does great work. We thought we needed to find a guy that could play this cop and break the macho stereotype. To play that depressed, suicidal, alcoholic character with age. Bruce read it and he wanted to do it right away. If you really look at his face in the film you can see how his eyes aged him. He can go back tomorrow and play Bruce Willis and you can see clear, painless eyes. In this movie you see someone very pained and very troubled.
DRE:
My favorite film last year was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Did you have a chance to see it?
RD:
I saw it and I think Shane Black got robbed. Why wasn’t that one of the biggest pictures of the year? Shane Black will go on now and make a lot of great films. You and a lot of guys will be saying, “You know what Shane, I just saw your new picture but Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is still one of the greatest ever made” and it’s all Shane. He would have loved to play that character because you hear his voice and you see his face in it. I loved it with a passion and I felt so sorry for him that he didn’t get the proper acknowledgement but he will eventually.
DRE:
You produced The Lost Boys for Joel Schumacher. A few years ago he made a film that he wasn’t happy with. So he made Phone Booth and Tigerland relatively cheaply and they were very stripped down. Would you ever consider something like that?
RD:
Sure, if I find the right material, without a second thought. I admire Joel tremendously because he can go from one to the other. He loves doing that. After The Omen and Superman I went and did Inside Moves which basically cost nothing. I just took a shot and now it’s one of my favorite films. A big thing I learned on it was that it got distributed by a company that was not very strong so one even heard of it. It got released around Christmas in a couple of theaters in the United States. It got the best reviews I’ve ever had, the little girl [Diana Scarwid] got nominated for an Academy Award but nobody saw the picture.
DRE:
In the past ten years, the most astonishing remake to me was when Sidney Lumet remade John Cassavetes’ Gloria. It was so bizarre to see a guy that had been working longer than John Cassavetes remake one of his films. Two remakes of your films are being released this year. What do you think of remakes?
RD:
For some reason the studios are afraid of new things. They’re afraid of an older director and I don’t understand why. There’s a wealth of material out there. I have three pictures that I’m on right now. Two I’m going to produce with our company and one I’m going to direct. That’s without even working hard to find them. So I don’t understand all the remakes. Is it insecurity? Maybe. It is too bad because there’s a lot of writers and directors out there that have new and original material ready to go.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
