“My producers are really interested in trying to make a sequel on a lower budget.” - Mark Waters, director
When Vampire Academy opened in theaters in February, it seemed to fall victim to the glut of teen lit movies, vampire movies particularly. Based on the novels by Richelle Mead, the movie stars Zoey Deutch as Rose Hathaway, a Damphir assigned to protect her Moroi friend Lissa Dragomir (Lucy Fry) from evil vampires known as the Strigoi. After a failed escape attempt, Rose and Lissa are stuck at St. Vladimir’s Academy, where all the Damphir and Moroi study.
The director of Vampire Academy is Mark Waters, who 10 years ago gave us the Mean Girls. That human high school movie was written by Tina Fey and introduced such things as “The Plastics,” pink Wednesdays and totally fetch. So, this week’s home video release of Vampire Academy gave us an opportunity to talk with Waters about both his new film, and the one we’ve been quoting for the past decade.
The screenplay adaptation for Vampire Academy was also written by his brother, Daniel Waters, who wrote the movies Heathers, Batman Returns and Hudson Hawk. Somehow, in their entire careers, this is the first time Mark has directed a movie written by Daniel.
Mark Waters spoke to my by phone while his daughter was in the car, occasionally distracting him but he remained focused on our conversation. Waters was frank and open about the film’s prospects and merits, and happy to discuss his legacy, which he now passes on to said daughters.
Suicide Girls: Is it apropos that Vampire Academy is coming out on the 10 year anniversary of Mean Girls?
Mark Waters: I think that’s kind of fun. It’s certainly a different tone of movie but I’m proud of both of them.
SG: Which Mean Girls lines were you surprised entered the culture? I’m sure when you were making it there were a number of candidates.
MW: It’s funny, there was this article recently about the ones that are most used on the internet. The one that was number one was “You go Glen Coco!” which was such a throwaway for us. “You go Glen Coco” but it’s been this running gag. Apparently, Daniel Franzese told me that he can’t walk down the street without somebody yelling out to him, “You go Glen Coco!” That’s the oddest one for sure.
SG: My friend keeps telling me to stop trying to make fetch happen.
MW: Yeah, fetch is a good one too. I like the applicability of fetch, just about anything when somebody’s trying to make something cool and you shoot them down. It’s not going to happen, stop trying to make it happen.
SG: It’s a metaphor for life. Anything you’re trying to force too hard.
MW: Yeah, exactly.
SG: So we’re trying to get more people to watch Vampire Academy on DVD and Blu-ray, but did you have a debrief after the theatrical opening in February?
MW: [Laughs] A debrief, that’s a good word. Not really, besides moaning in our coffee cops saying, “What were we thinking?” We didn’t really have any time to chat about it. Amongst the producers, we were just like wow, we got creamed. Whether it was the marketing materials or the approach or just the fact that there wasn’t enough interest, who can explain why something clicks or doesn’t? But we definitely know that it failed to find a wider audience than those who had just read the books.
SG: Are there additional things on the DVD and Blu-ray that will please fans of the books who are looking for more?
MW: Oh, for sure. Because of pacing issues and also because of various demands from our distributors, I had to deliver a movie a certain length. Certain scenes that were really good scenes that we liked a lot, they just didn’t make the cut. I think for fans in particular, scenes like the flashback party with Ms. Karp that kind of goes awry. A few other things that were in the book but didn’t make the movie are going to be in the deleted scenes features.
SG: I have not read the book, but I imagine a lot of the history and rivalries of the vampires are from the book. Could there have been a version of Vampire Academy that was just a wacky vampire high school movie?
MW: I suppose, yeah. The quandary when you’re making this kind of movie is that the pyramid upon which you’re building, hopefully, your marketing base, is that the base of the period is going to be the fans of the book. If you have the fans of the book coming out irate because you took the source material and made hay with it, then you’re losing the one group of people that you know are going to like it and you know are coming out to see it. The challenge is to try to get beyond that fan base and hopefully appeal to a wider group. You always balance wanting to please the fans and also aspire to something greater. I think that’s what the movie does. This movie has much more grand action sequences and even more humor than the books do, but at the same time it does hew faithfully to the basic storyline and the mythology of the book. That’s the biggest challenge when you’re trying to do the first episode of the series is that mythology, because people will be lost watching the movie if you don’t somehow explain to them the rules of the world. But explaining to them the rules of the world takes an amount of narrative time up at the beginning. You have to keep the engine chugging at first gear for a little bit while you’re getting people up to speed and then you can finally relax and let the story rip. That’s a challenge with any first movie in a series but I think people who are the first timers who’ve seen it have liked it.
SG: If there’s not going to be a sequel, were there other Vampire Academy stories you would have told?
MW: I should tell you, not to put false hope in the hearts of fans, my producers are really interested in trying to make a sequel on a lower budget.
SG: Was there any struggle with the studio’s wants, marketing, and the movie you wanted to make?
MW: It’s impossible to really do a Monday morning quarterbacking of what you would have done. I do believe, like I said, that there’s the possibility a sequel might still get made, but in the meantime I think the movie by itself does stand alone as an entertaining movie and does have a satisfaction and resolution at the end of the movie. Even without a sequel, I think the movie holds up as a piece of entertainment.
SG: Working with your brother, Daniel Waters, how is this the first time you’ve ended up directing his script?
MW: You know what, we tried where we’ve had things we developed and didn’t get off the ground. Studios wanted to make them but we just couldn’t get them cast at the right time and then the regime changed at the studio and they ended up not making it. I definitely enjoyed the process because I’m one of the few people I think who actually gets my brother’s weird work. He writes in a very distinctive kind of stylized fashion. It has a certain humor to it that I think is not obvious or easy to latch onto. Certainly this script was not like Heathers in that it wasn’t as overtly comedic, be it a black comedy. It’s still essentially a thriller at its core that has comedic elements. The process of actually developing the script with him and having him on set with me was kind of great because it’s another person I trust who has good instincts, so if I wanted to bounce something off of him, I’d much prefer to do it with a writer who was my brother than with a studio executive or a producer, for instance.
SG: Haven’t any kids who grew up on Heathers now become studio executives who want to make Daniel Waters movies?
MW: Not that I’ve met. I’ve yet to meet the person who’s clamoring for another Heathers. I’m sure there’s fans out there but I haven’t met anybody in a position of power.
SG: Obviously my first question was about Mean Girls. Has Mean Girls become your legacy?
MW: I think the 10 year portion away from it, it’s part of my legacy. I’m hoping to keep making movies for the next 30, 40 years so we’ll see what else I add to it.
SG: I quite like Just Like Heaven also.
MW: Oh, thank you. Just Like Heaven, frankly, is my personal favorite of movies that I’ve made. I think partly because it’s not as widely known, but also that one works I think on a deep emotional level more than anything else I’ve made. I got to work with my wife on that one, which was a pleasure.
SG: A Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy isn’t widely known?
MW: It’s not as widely known as movies like Freaky Friday, Mean Girls, or even Popper’s Penguins. Let’s spread the good word about it so more people can see it.
SG: As far as dealing with what teenagers and maybe teenage girls specifically deal with, has a lot changed in 10 years?
MW: I don’t think so. I think there’s at least an awareness of it now. Before it was something that people just shrugged their shoulders and said, “Ah, kids will be kids.” Now there is at least an awareness that hey, bullying is something that kind of goes beyond the bounds of what a kid can handle by themselves sometimes. Particularly with the advent of the internet and texting, there is at least a consciousness that hey, that’s not cool. Hence, it gives people a little bit more pause to behave in ways that are bad. These dynamics though are still going to be what they are. The difference for me is that when I made Mean Girls, my oldest daughter was one year old. Now I have two daughters who are age seven and 11 so I’m actually living it. Vicariously, transitively, I hear about these things and they tell me about what goes on at their school, and I’m hopefully able to provide some counsel because of my experience. At the same time, it is something you’re going to have to deal with and suffer through these difficult dynamics whether you like it or not.
SG: Have they seen Mean Girls?
MW: They have as a matter of fact. I probably showed it to my youngest daughter too early but she didn’t want to be left out when my oldest got to see it. The funny thing is, when they finished watching it, my 11-year-old said to my wife, “Who’s Danny DeVito?” My youngest daughter asked my wife, “What’s a wide-set vagina?” We had some conversations to clear that up.
SG: Do they understand that you made it and do you get any cool points for that?
MW: Yeah, I think so. I think on the actual anniversary, my oldest daughter was treated like royalty at school that day. The Wednesday where everybody was waring pink, she got cool points, hence I got cool points.
SG: What are you hoping to make next?
MW: I have a project with Adam Scott and Isla Fischer called S.O.S. that we’re hoping to make this year. We’re just trying to work out their schedules but it’s an adaptation of a Korean film called Castaway on the Moon. Castaway on the Moon was this really cool, interesting romantic comedy they made in South Korea about a guy who’s this disgraced Wall Street trader who tries to kill himself by jumping off a bridge, and he wakes up on an island in the middle of the East River in New York City. Instead of trying to get back to society, he just stays on the East River and lives like Tom Hanks in Cast Away. It’s really interesting and he develops a relationship with a woman who lives in the high rise across the way who can see him.
SG: So it’ll still be a New York movie?
MW: Yeah, it was set in Seoul, South Korea and we transplanted it to New York.
SG: I didn’t see the original, but the island is close enough that he can communicate with someone in the city?
MW: I can’t really give more away than I have. There’s a very odd and interesting way they communicate with each other.
Vampire Academy is out on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download May 20.
