Simon West

The remake aspect is totally incidental to me because I never saw the original so I didn’t even know it was a remake. The original wasn’t big in England when I was young so I read the script completely fresh without any baggage. I was just attracted by the idea and the setting. It was only after reading it that I realized the original concept had been raided already by a few films. But it was too late; I was already doing it by then. I don’t really watch a lot of horror films. I think the last horror film I watched was The Shining and even that was a very particular kind of horror film, one of the best. It was only while I was working on it in preproduction that I watched the original. I only watched the first half hour because that’s what this script was based on. I was surprised about what all the fuss was about. The first 20 minutes of the original is very simple. It is a little tiny house, she never leaves the living room and you never see the bad guy. The challenge was to expand a very basic idea like that out into a whole film. That’s why the house became such a big part of it because if you’re going to spend the whole movie in the house, that house better be damn well interesting.

Right, it better have more to it than your average spooky, Gothic house. Every aspect of it I designed with my production designer to make it feel like a character. Since I didn’t want to make a big old spooky house that we’d seen a million times that’s why I went with a modern look but one that allowed me to have dark corridors. I still wanted it to be scary so that’s why that dark wood was everywhere. We tried to think of other things to make the house interesting like the atrium with all the birds. The automatic lights that come on when you enter a room were logic based as well. If you’re in a dark house and you’re scared, you immediately go around and turn all the lights on. I couldn’t have that because that would be un-scary. So that’s where I came up with the idea of a techy house with the automatic lights. I have that in my office. It’s an economy thing for the studio that when you leave the room all the lights go out.

Exactly, yes [laughs]. No it’s ecological, not cheap.

It is because the main character is 16 and there aren’t really any 16 year old superstars. I probably would have used a star if there were any. Also I needed someone who was 18 so they could be on the set longer. Then if you start looking around at 18 and19 year old actresses in Hollywood they usually look 25 and are so sophisticated that they can only play like 30. You just don’t buy them as a 16 year old, innocent, small town girl who’s babysitting. I’d seen Camilla Belle and I thought she had that star quality. When she is on screen you gravitate to her. She commands the camera and I’ve seen that with a few of the other big stars that I worked with. You can tell that the reason they’re movie stars is because they’re professional on the set but once you watch them on film you realize that you cannot take your eyes off them and Camilla has that.

She also had a very orthodox upbringing. She went to an all-girls school. When I met her she had just graduated from high school and she was applying to universities. She wasn’t a Hollywood young actress. She happened to do acting on the side. I had to persuade her to do it because when I called her agent up and said I was looking at her for the part, they said “She’ll never do it. She’s not interested in commercial genre films. She only wants to do small, independent worthy dramas. She’ll never do this in a million years.” But luckily she was at the same agency as me so they got me a meeting with her. I told her, ”Look this character is a role model for girls. It’s very rare to have a female lead who carries the whole film and also has to fight for her life. The character has to think her way out.” I also told her that the movie is a technical exercise for an actress because you have to make an arc for this character through facial expressions and body language. I think that appealed to her so she jumped on board and was very gung ho. It turned out that some of her favorite scenes to play were the fight scenes. She’d come in everyday with bruises and proudly show them off. That also happened on Con Air. The parts John Malkovich loved the best were when he had a machine gun in his hands and was shooting people. For an actor it is a great relief to do something very physical and very big like that as opposed to being so insular. Camilla told me she’s really proud of the film.

I’ve definitely got my roster of pet projects. I’m very close to doing my art film at the moment. I don’t think it has anything to do with writing. It’s very hard for anyone to get a film made. They don’t hand them out very easily and everybody’s got to fight their way into the job. A lot of the commercial directors find it very easy to take big summer blockbuster type films because most people at the end of the day think it’s better to make any film than no film. Then it’s a question of gradually trying to move your career toward the films you actually want to make. Some people manage it and some people don’t.

I like good, solid dramas. When I did The General’s Daughter that was much more the type of film I was interested in at the time. Then when I did Tomb Raider I was indulging in something fun because I wanted to make something like James Bond. But now I’m moving back to my original plan, which was much more dramatic based films. At the moment my art film could not be more arty because it’s about Salvador Dali.

Yeah, it’s something that I’ve been working on for a while and we’re getting very close. Having said that it’s still going to have a broader appeal. It is not one of those things that I don’t care if nobody goes to see it. I believe in getting as many people to go and see rather than deliberately trying to make it for a small audience. Like Amadeus means Moulin Rouge.

Not sure yet. There are a couple of Spanish actors that are interested in it and that’s going to be the key role because it spans Dali’s whole life. It has got to be someone that can go from 19 years old until he died at 84. It is a great actor’s piece.

Yes, there’s Antonio Banderas and Javier Bardem or a combination of all those people. There are so many great parts in it besides Dali as well. Like Luis Buñuel and all the Expressionist artists.

It’s not really specifically about him. It’s about his lifestyle. It is an incredible and romantic life story. He was with the same woman for his whole life practically. He was the first rock star and he was doing it in the 20’s and 30’s and never stopped until his 80’s. He was driven by genius and he spanned most of the 20th century.

RPM is quite different [laughs]. It is something we’ve been developing for quite a while. It is a character based road race movie. It is two characters in an illegally car race across Italy. They’re both in the car for different reasons. It operates on several levels so you can watch the film from the point of view of the exciting race but also through its two great male characters who are essentially the same character at different stages of life. One is a brand new upcoming race driver who has just blown it and may be getting it back. The other one is an old, worn out race driver who has blown it and will never get it back. It is very funny and heartfelt but with this great, exotic backdrop of an illegal road race.

No, not definitely. Again it is one of those things that is very technically difficult to pull off. We don’t want it to cost $200 million. With a lot of the new CG technology now, the cars are looking very good. We can actually have a big road race feel to it without actually having to crash 50 Ferraris. If we can make it for a third of that then it operates on every level. The studios love it because it looks great and when you watch the film you realize it’s a great character piece.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck