Richard Rubinstein has a long history with genre filmmaking. He first came to attention when produced the George Romero films, Dawn of the Dead and Creepshow. His newest projects have been the adaptations of Frank Herbert's classic books and .
Daniel Robert Epstein: Children of Dune was very good, I watched it over the past couple of days.
Richard Rubinstein: You need a couple of days [laughs]. There are very rare opportunities in the world to make really long movies and actually have it be fit within the commercial system. That is why the mini-series has proven to boon to big long complicated books.
DRE: Was it easier or tougher to put this mini-series together after the first one went so well?
RR: I think it was probably easier by degree. There were a different set of problems, different time period, different economic climate, but on the overall I would say the second one was easier than the first.
DRE: What problems were there for the second one?
RR: I mean more difficult merely meaning the economic climate to get a sufficient budget so we could have a reasonable opportunity of maintaining the level of the program that we did with the first one.
DRE: Let's say you would do this in a movie theater.
RR: They won't let you. Four and a half hour movies don't play, you can't sell enough popcorn. They wouldn't have enough shows in everyday. And that is why I say the mini-series, going back to when I made The Stand really convinced the health of the marriage between long complicated epic books and the television format of a mini-series. Even the chapters in the book are not so dissimilar to the rhythms of commercials in television.
DRE: How do hard core Dune fans react to the first Dune?
RR: Well I think that on the whole they reacted very well. I think the general consensus was that we had stayed closer to the books than the prior attempts. And this was something that was very important to them. I think even before I did the first one I was one of a number of people that were not feeling satisfied with the adaptation that had come before the mini-series. So that is why we went back to ground zero, back to Frank Herbert's books. I think that David Lynch was working under a very strong handicap in terms of the amount of running time he could have to affectively tell the story.
DRE: His movie made no sense.
RR: Well I think it is very hard to have this much material make sense inside a certain amount of running time. So that being able to introduce your characters, let the audience get to know them, affectively a six hour mini-series on the sci-fi channel is net down to about 4 _ hours of movie. I think that's probably a sufficient amount of time all though I have to say the European version of the original first Dune mini-series is about 20 minutes longer because we couldn't fit all the senses that we shot into the domestic version. And it's off course available on DVD in the longer version. It wasn't a question of lose editing it was actual scenes that we were not able to get in that we had scripted and shot and that the finite amount of running time that you have in the American Television System dictated that we lose some of those scenes for that version.
DRE: People like William Hurt and Susan Sarandon don't usually do TV, what do you need to do to attract them?
RR: I think that both of them react to scripts. I think that something they both share is that they basically look at making a movie from a script with a director. And the question of where it is going to be exhibited is really of less concern to them. I think that William was very exclusive with the interviews but I think recently Susan has made the observation that it's very unusual in what she calls filmdom, I think she is referring to the feature film world, for women's roles to have a certain kind of driving character behind them, plot really where the women are the players. Very often in women in feature films are in a position maybe of reacting much more than the Children of Dune or the whole scope of the Dune sagas. I think Herbert was forty years ahead of his time in terms of being politically correct, in terms of drawing female characters that had depth, they were players, they were powered and it came from the right reasons as far as I'm concerned in that they basically got their power from their capacity for motherhood, they weren't femme nikitas, which I think is a women in a man's role. I think that women are smart, they know their politics and they know their way around. Obviously there are some substantial men in the story. But also there are a number of them that basically get manipulated by the women because they are not as smart. I have always maintained that Dune and all of the Dune books are science fiction for people that don't ordinarily watch science fiction. I believe that the situations and the characters are relatable characters, the story happened to be set in the future. Somebody said somewhat facetiously that you could perhaps characterize the Dune sagas as period movies set in the future. We have space ships there are some guns but they are not the driving force behind the show, it's really the characters and the problems that they get into and work themselves out of hopefully and are of interest to the people watching. It's not really what people generally think about science fiction as boytoys. Here, yes spaceships are definitely part of the landscape and whoever could pilot spaceships are in a very good position because spaceships are to transport spice all over the universe. It's not about dueling spaceships, they are transportation it's part of the landscape. I think you will just as often see a knife fight as a ray gun battle. It is science fiction it does have all the things that traditionally attract to the male audience in terms of certain kind of hardware and we've got a sympathetic monster in the worms because they are not out to hurt anybody, but they are being pushed into places where they are not comfortable. King Kong and Godzilla were like that, none of those monsters effectively went out to hurt anybody until they were put into a corner they couldn't get out of.
DRE: Was there an idea to have [Alejandro] Jodorowsky direct since he was supposed to direct one in the 70's or is he too difficult to work with?
RR: No. I basically was a fan of the books the way they were first published when I had a certain amount of success in television in the mini-series format, particularly The Stand and The Langoliers, and then A Season of Purgatory, the Dominick Dunne book; I began to look around for other material that might be compatible with the format. Looking up at my bookshelf one morning at 4 am Dune jumped off the shelf. It was historically something that I had not been satisfied with prior adaptations and I took the book to a writer/director who I had worked with before, we actually me probably going back to Dawn of the Dead. John Harrison was the zombie with the screwdriver in his ear at JC Penny's.
DRE: Oh really, that is a famous zombie.
RR: We have known each other that long. So John reacting to the concept of adapting and directing Dune as a mini-series, the first book, had a very astute overview in terms of the fact that it was really family drama. Susan Sarandon recently characterized it as Dynasty in Space, which makes me smile but it has a ring of truth to it because it is about interpersonal relationships, politics and backstabbing. It is also multi-generational; Children of Dune is the next two books of Frank Herbert's original series of six. Dune Messiah and Children of Dune which form a natural closer to the cycle, because the next book jumps ahead maybe three or four thousand years. So these first three books represent a certain portion of the overall story.
DRE: Was John Harrison just too exhausted to direct the second one?
RR: No, he basically, when you asked me before what the problems were, it took an extra six months with financial aspects of this one to get ironed out then we thought, and John had another opportunity with another project and so he became occupied. With that in place he wasn't able to direct. The production had the benefit of some consulting during the making of the show, and the fact that he wrote an extraordinary script continuing the story of characters that he knew now very well. I think that the script for Children of Dune really sings. Everybody kind of hits their stride including a number of actors coming back. We had enough repeat involvements from people in front of and behind the camera to give us real continuity with the first one. But we also had enough fresh talent involved to give us a different edge to the whole thing. It looks different; I think it's just as exciting visually as the first one, but this one has a different look to it. We shot it at 24P, to my knowledge there hasn't been another mini-series shot in 24P.
DRE: Where did you find [director] Greg Yaitanes?
RR: Basically Mike Messina [associate producer] and I put word out to every agent that we knew that we were looking for someone who was ready to make his second or third movie who is very talented and ready to make a big step. Greg out of a number of people, we received some work of his that we really liked and we got together with him. I remember one of the first things he said to us and to the execs at the Sci-fi channel, we asked him why should we hire you and he said I come from a very large Greek family and I know all about infighting. And we said bingo; he has his finger of the pulse of this story. He had a lot more to show us than just that; he gave us the flavor that he understood the nature of the material even though he was not a Dune die hard fan to start.
DRE: You have done so many adaptations, why is it easier for you to start with a novel?
RR: Well that is something that keeps everyone running on the same page. When you start off with original material, given the number of people that have to be involved, they understand what we are doing, we are in sync starting out with a book. I think it allows everybody to have an anchor and I think then the process of getting where you want to go is more clearly defined. I have always been a reader and I love plot and character. I love long books so for me this is sort of a natural opportunity.
DRE: Have you been doing more Stephen King work or are you concentrating on other things?
RR: It's not a question of concentrating on other things per say, there is another Stephen King based project that is in development, but it is not something I want to talk about right now. What really interests me is the fact that he has big novels, sometimes particularly ones that haven't gotten their due. It took me fifteen years working with Steve [Spielberg] to get The Stand made as an eight hour mini-series. It took seven years to make Pet Sematary. The best of them seemed to have come, not the easy route or at least not the short route.
DRE: You and George Romero still friendly?
RR: We are still friendly, but we haven't worked together since 1984.
DRE: 1984, really?
RR: It has been that long. Right after the first year of Tales from the Darkside.
DRE: So when are the Tales from the Darkside DVDs coming out?
RR: That is something you really have to ask Viacom and Paramount about. Because when I merge with Aaron Spelling and I merged our companies then we got bought by Blockbuster, then we got bought by Paramount and so that library resides inside of Viacom.
DRE: Any special reason that you and Romero stopped working together at that point?
RR: I think that George was more focused on his career and I was more focused on doing for more filmmakers what I had been doing for George. And so our interests sort of separated there. I was interested in building a company and he was interested in writing and directing his movies.
DRE: What is your favorite film that you and George did together?
RR: That's like asking to pick from one of your kids. I don't know if I could answer that.
DRE: So it's not Dawn of the Dead? [laughs]
RR: Let me answer you this way, Dawn of the Dead has a special place.
DRE: We keep hearing about a fourth Dead movie, are you involved with that?
RR: No, I am involved in producing a remake of Dawn of the Dead.
DRE: What makes you want to remake Dawn of the Dead?
RR: Well first of all a good story is susceptible to adaptation more than one way and I think that George wrote a great story. I don't think that it is so unusual to see a story adapted by different artists, that doesn't change the original. No one is talking about changing the original movie I'm talking about having another artist interpret the story line again in a different way. I think that story line could benefit from the kind of production values and technology that has shown up in the past twenty-five years. We are out looking for a director to attach to it.
DRE: Do you have an option on the Isaac Asimov books, Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun?
RR: We did at one point but not anymore. We found that those were tougher particularly for the female characters. Part of what drives television is the female viewership. The difference between the Frank Herbert books and the Asimov books for me is that the Herbert books gave a really great female character, and it was really a struggle to find them inside the Asimov books.
DRE: Tales from the Darkside really frightened me.
RR: I'm sorry about that and happy about that.
DRE: [laughs] You worked with so many great writers on those shows and so many of them, the directors too, have gone on to do amazing things, what is it about that kind of show?
RR: Well I think that it was probably, we didn't re-invent the wheel we sort of ran it a certain way to say maybe if Roger Corman ran his shop in the early years then you can point to a lot of brand name writers and directors today they came up through Roger's initial organization. I think that what we had was the freedom to try new people and that came from some people trusting me with the budget and me turning around to a lot of other creative people and saying ok show me what you can do even if you don't have much money. I think that a lot of my producing history if it's anything to point at it's that I have been able to find and associate myself with a lot of talented people. It made me look good.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
Daniel Robert Epstein: Children of Dune was very good, I watched it over the past couple of days.
Richard Rubinstein: You need a couple of days [laughs]. There are very rare opportunities in the world to make really long movies and actually have it be fit within the commercial system. That is why the mini-series has proven to boon to big long complicated books.
DRE: Was it easier or tougher to put this mini-series together after the first one went so well?
RR: I think it was probably easier by degree. There were a different set of problems, different time period, different economic climate, but on the overall I would say the second one was easier than the first.
DRE: What problems were there for the second one?
RR: I mean more difficult merely meaning the economic climate to get a sufficient budget so we could have a reasonable opportunity of maintaining the level of the program that we did with the first one.
DRE: Let's say you would do this in a movie theater.
RR: They won't let you. Four and a half hour movies don't play, you can't sell enough popcorn. They wouldn't have enough shows in everyday. And that is why I say the mini-series, going back to when I made The Stand really convinced the health of the marriage between long complicated epic books and the television format of a mini-series. Even the chapters in the book are not so dissimilar to the rhythms of commercials in television.
DRE: How do hard core Dune fans react to the first Dune?
RR: Well I think that on the whole they reacted very well. I think the general consensus was that we had stayed closer to the books than the prior attempts. And this was something that was very important to them. I think even before I did the first one I was one of a number of people that were not feeling satisfied with the adaptation that had come before the mini-series. So that is why we went back to ground zero, back to Frank Herbert's books. I think that David Lynch was working under a very strong handicap in terms of the amount of running time he could have to affectively tell the story.
DRE: His movie made no sense.
RR: Well I think it is very hard to have this much material make sense inside a certain amount of running time. So that being able to introduce your characters, let the audience get to know them, affectively a six hour mini-series on the sci-fi channel is net down to about 4 _ hours of movie. I think that's probably a sufficient amount of time all though I have to say the European version of the original first Dune mini-series is about 20 minutes longer because we couldn't fit all the senses that we shot into the domestic version. And it's off course available on DVD in the longer version. It wasn't a question of lose editing it was actual scenes that we were not able to get in that we had scripted and shot and that the finite amount of running time that you have in the American Television System dictated that we lose some of those scenes for that version.
DRE: People like William Hurt and Susan Sarandon don't usually do TV, what do you need to do to attract them?
RR: I think that both of them react to scripts. I think that something they both share is that they basically look at making a movie from a script with a director. And the question of where it is going to be exhibited is really of less concern to them. I think that William was very exclusive with the interviews but I think recently Susan has made the observation that it's very unusual in what she calls filmdom, I think she is referring to the feature film world, for women's roles to have a certain kind of driving character behind them, plot really where the women are the players. Very often in women in feature films are in a position maybe of reacting much more than the Children of Dune or the whole scope of the Dune sagas. I think Herbert was forty years ahead of his time in terms of being politically correct, in terms of drawing female characters that had depth, they were players, they were powered and it came from the right reasons as far as I'm concerned in that they basically got their power from their capacity for motherhood, they weren't femme nikitas, which I think is a women in a man's role. I think that women are smart, they know their politics and they know their way around. Obviously there are some substantial men in the story. But also there are a number of them that basically get manipulated by the women because they are not as smart. I have always maintained that Dune and all of the Dune books are science fiction for people that don't ordinarily watch science fiction. I believe that the situations and the characters are relatable characters, the story happened to be set in the future. Somebody said somewhat facetiously that you could perhaps characterize the Dune sagas as period movies set in the future. We have space ships there are some guns but they are not the driving force behind the show, it's really the characters and the problems that they get into and work themselves out of hopefully and are of interest to the people watching. It's not really what people generally think about science fiction as boytoys. Here, yes spaceships are definitely part of the landscape and whoever could pilot spaceships are in a very good position because spaceships are to transport spice all over the universe. It's not about dueling spaceships, they are transportation it's part of the landscape. I think you will just as often see a knife fight as a ray gun battle. It is science fiction it does have all the things that traditionally attract to the male audience in terms of certain kind of hardware and we've got a sympathetic monster in the worms because they are not out to hurt anybody, but they are being pushed into places where they are not comfortable. King Kong and Godzilla were like that, none of those monsters effectively went out to hurt anybody until they were put into a corner they couldn't get out of.
DRE: Was there an idea to have [Alejandro] Jodorowsky direct since he was supposed to direct one in the 70's or is he too difficult to work with?
RR: No. I basically was a fan of the books the way they were first published when I had a certain amount of success in television in the mini-series format, particularly The Stand and The Langoliers, and then A Season of Purgatory, the Dominick Dunne book; I began to look around for other material that might be compatible with the format. Looking up at my bookshelf one morning at 4 am Dune jumped off the shelf. It was historically something that I had not been satisfied with prior adaptations and I took the book to a writer/director who I had worked with before, we actually me probably going back to Dawn of the Dead. John Harrison was the zombie with the screwdriver in his ear at JC Penny's.
DRE: Oh really, that is a famous zombie.
RR: We have known each other that long. So John reacting to the concept of adapting and directing Dune as a mini-series, the first book, had a very astute overview in terms of the fact that it was really family drama. Susan Sarandon recently characterized it as Dynasty in Space, which makes me smile but it has a ring of truth to it because it is about interpersonal relationships, politics and backstabbing. It is also multi-generational; Children of Dune is the next two books of Frank Herbert's original series of six. Dune Messiah and Children of Dune which form a natural closer to the cycle, because the next book jumps ahead maybe three or four thousand years. So these first three books represent a certain portion of the overall story.
DRE: Was John Harrison just too exhausted to direct the second one?
RR: No, he basically, when you asked me before what the problems were, it took an extra six months with financial aspects of this one to get ironed out then we thought, and John had another opportunity with another project and so he became occupied. With that in place he wasn't able to direct. The production had the benefit of some consulting during the making of the show, and the fact that he wrote an extraordinary script continuing the story of characters that he knew now very well. I think that the script for Children of Dune really sings. Everybody kind of hits their stride including a number of actors coming back. We had enough repeat involvements from people in front of and behind the camera to give us real continuity with the first one. But we also had enough fresh talent involved to give us a different edge to the whole thing. It looks different; I think it's just as exciting visually as the first one, but this one has a different look to it. We shot it at 24P, to my knowledge there hasn't been another mini-series shot in 24P.
DRE: Where did you find [director] Greg Yaitanes?
RR: Basically Mike Messina [associate producer] and I put word out to every agent that we knew that we were looking for someone who was ready to make his second or third movie who is very talented and ready to make a big step. Greg out of a number of people, we received some work of his that we really liked and we got together with him. I remember one of the first things he said to us and to the execs at the Sci-fi channel, we asked him why should we hire you and he said I come from a very large Greek family and I know all about infighting. And we said bingo; he has his finger of the pulse of this story. He had a lot more to show us than just that; he gave us the flavor that he understood the nature of the material even though he was not a Dune die hard fan to start.
DRE: You have done so many adaptations, why is it easier for you to start with a novel?
RR: Well that is something that keeps everyone running on the same page. When you start off with original material, given the number of people that have to be involved, they understand what we are doing, we are in sync starting out with a book. I think it allows everybody to have an anchor and I think then the process of getting where you want to go is more clearly defined. I have always been a reader and I love plot and character. I love long books so for me this is sort of a natural opportunity.
DRE: Have you been doing more Stephen King work or are you concentrating on other things?
RR: It's not a question of concentrating on other things per say, there is another Stephen King based project that is in development, but it is not something I want to talk about right now. What really interests me is the fact that he has big novels, sometimes particularly ones that haven't gotten their due. It took me fifteen years working with Steve [Spielberg] to get The Stand made as an eight hour mini-series. It took seven years to make Pet Sematary. The best of them seemed to have come, not the easy route or at least not the short route.
DRE: You and George Romero still friendly?
RR: We are still friendly, but we haven't worked together since 1984.
DRE: 1984, really?
RR: It has been that long. Right after the first year of Tales from the Darkside.
DRE: So when are the Tales from the Darkside DVDs coming out?
RR: That is something you really have to ask Viacom and Paramount about. Because when I merge with Aaron Spelling and I merged our companies then we got bought by Blockbuster, then we got bought by Paramount and so that library resides inside of Viacom.
DRE: Any special reason that you and Romero stopped working together at that point?
RR: I think that George was more focused on his career and I was more focused on doing for more filmmakers what I had been doing for George. And so our interests sort of separated there. I was interested in building a company and he was interested in writing and directing his movies.
DRE: What is your favorite film that you and George did together?
RR: That's like asking to pick from one of your kids. I don't know if I could answer that.
DRE: So it's not Dawn of the Dead? [laughs]
RR: Let me answer you this way, Dawn of the Dead has a special place.
DRE: We keep hearing about a fourth Dead movie, are you involved with that?
RR: No, I am involved in producing a remake of Dawn of the Dead.
DRE: What makes you want to remake Dawn of the Dead?
RR: Well first of all a good story is susceptible to adaptation more than one way and I think that George wrote a great story. I don't think that it is so unusual to see a story adapted by different artists, that doesn't change the original. No one is talking about changing the original movie I'm talking about having another artist interpret the story line again in a different way. I think that story line could benefit from the kind of production values and technology that has shown up in the past twenty-five years. We are out looking for a director to attach to it.
DRE: Do you have an option on the Isaac Asimov books, Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun?
RR: We did at one point but not anymore. We found that those were tougher particularly for the female characters. Part of what drives television is the female viewership. The difference between the Frank Herbert books and the Asimov books for me is that the Herbert books gave a really great female character, and it was really a struggle to find them inside the Asimov books.
DRE: Tales from the Darkside really frightened me.
RR: I'm sorry about that and happy about that.
DRE: [laughs] You worked with so many great writers on those shows and so many of them, the directors too, have gone on to do amazing things, what is it about that kind of show?
RR: Well I think that it was probably, we didn't re-invent the wheel we sort of ran it a certain way to say maybe if Roger Corman ran his shop in the early years then you can point to a lot of brand name writers and directors today they came up through Roger's initial organization. I think that what we had was the freedom to try new people and that came from some people trusting me with the budget and me turning around to a lot of other creative people and saying ok show me what you can do even if you don't have much money. I think that a lot of my producing history if it's anything to point at it's that I have been able to find and associate myself with a lot of talented people. It made me look good.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
cezar:
Excellent interview. The mini-series (both) were awesome, the best yet .They really make me want to take time to read all the books.