Trust no one! That special brand of suburban-paranoid chic that worked so well for Shia LaBeouf and director D.J. Caruso in last year's box-office sleeper hit Disturbia is now being repeated, writ large, in Eagle Eye, a $100 million-budget, chase-heavy thriller in which our hero is framed by God knows who as a dangerous domestic terrorist and must go on the run and stay one step ahead of the authorities until he unravels the conspiracy and confronts the bad guys.
Caruso recently took the time to call up SuicideGirls from his berth at this year's Fantastic Fest in Austin to talk about the film -- its elaborately constructed car chases, its origins in the brain of Steven Spielberg and how he, Caruso, stoked sexual chemistry between the two leads -- and why he feels that we have good reason to be concerned about the government's ever-increasing spy powers, as well as to set the record straight about his spate of upcoming projects.
Ryan Stewart: So how's Fantastic Fest going? Seen anything good?
D.J. Caruso: I haven't seen anything good yet, we just got in last night and it was one of those things where we got in and the movies were already shown. I think Kevin Smith was showing his movie last night. I heard that it went really well.
RS: Someone just told me earlier today that I'd get a kick out of Eagle Eye because it's got some good practical car chases, which I love.
DJC: Yeah, we did a lot of real car stuff. This was sort of my chance to have a really, really huge car chase -- one that's actually for the story, too. Our two lead characters meet each other and then they take off and we basically have a seven minute sequence that I'm really quite proud of. We did 99.9 percent of it practical, with cables pulling the cars into each other and ripping them apart and cranes picking up the cars and tossing them. It was a lot of fun to do.
RS: I'm sure it was worth the added shooting time, to keep it as practical as possible.
DJC: Yeah, it took a lot of shooting time and it also took a lot of preparation to make sure we could do it practical. I had a really good second unit director, Brian Smrz, who was working with me, and we were shooting seven days a week. I'd go and join him on the weekends and we'd shoot stuff. Also, the actors did a lot of the driving. It's honestly a dream come true as a filmmaker when you finally have all the tools and the toys you dreamt about having and you have a budget that's sufficient to do it right, you know?
RS: Speaking of car crashes, I loved the opening scene of Taking Lives where the guy gets kicked in front of an oncoming truck. Nice.
DJC: [laughs] Oh, thank you. Pretty horrifying moment.
RS: Why all the secrecy about the plot of Eagle Eye? Is that to protect twists or just a marketing decision?
DJC: No, it's not that there's a huge twist. It's one of those things where about an hour and five minutes into the movie you understand the who and the what, and then for the rest of the movie there's a lot about, well, why is this happening? I think it's more of a marketing standpoint about how they want to sell the movie and also, because it's a Steven Spielberg original idea, he's very precious about the story not getting out, but it's not like there's this unbelievable, major twist that makes you go "Oh, my God!" You watch the movie as it unfolds and you can sort of see it coming and then an hour and five minutes in you understand who is doing this to them and what they're doing and then the rest of the movie is all about the why.
RS: What was Spielberg's best suggestion to you during the making?
DJC: Well, first of all he's very helpful in the editing room. After you have the movie shot and you're going "Hey, I'm kind of looking at this scene and how do you feel about that, and there's a scene cut this way, and here's another one ..." He's very good in the editing room, but I think his best advice was ... it's pretty scary and intimidating to get an idea that originated in Steven Spielberg's brain and then it be passed on and him say "Okay, you can direct this." I wanted to do him proud, but he was very keen about saying "Look, you have to make this idea yours. This is what I had in my head, but you as a filmmaker have to make the movie yours and don't always worry about being so precious with the idea." That was almost a director to director thing as opposed to executive producer to director. If you get too protective of an original idea and you don't deviate from it because you're thinking that one of the most genius filmmakers of all time came up with this idea, then you don't think "Well, what about this ..." Steven didn't apply to the writer's guild for story or anything, but he definitely should have. If he did, it would be "Story by Steven Spielberg" because he really did kind of write out all the beats and the ideas of the movie. So when I say precious, I mean that if you stay too close to what he originally did, then I think we wouldn't have found the movie that we found, which I'm really happy with.
RS: Did you catch that recent 60 Minutes interview with Bob Woodward?
DJC: I did not.
RS: He was plugging his new book and he made a rather cryptic statement about how the government has developed some new, almost fantastical spying capabilities that he wasn't at liberty to talk about.
DJC: When you see the movie you'll see that we definitely did our research. We found out that via homeland security and The Patriot Act -- and it's not like this is really a political movie, but the underlying tone is cautionary -- it's pretty amazing to know what happens via homeland security if you're flagged as a person of interest. How, electronically, all this technology that we love can be used against us. My FBI tech and our technical advisors for technology were saying "Absolutely, we can work with phone companies. We can activate the microphone in someone's cell phone even if their cell phone is off." It's also known that homeland security has this computer that borders on artificial intelligence in a way, because the computer will decide, based on all your electronic information, it will develop a personality profile of you, which is kind of really scary. That's what our movie delves into a certain aspect of. I don't want to give away too much, but someone said "How do you go to Fantastic Fest?" and you realize that we do sort of, I don't want to say that we border science-fiction, but you'll see that the technology is used in a certain way and ultimately it's a lot closer ... Steven had this idea almost ten years ago when it was really science-fiction and now it's become much more of a reality.
RS: Did you see any parallels between Eagle Eye and Disturbia, with the lead character being under the thumb of the government?
DJC: I think there are some parallels in a character way. Jerry Shaw in Eagle Eye is a character going through a major crisis in which he's trying to figure out who he is and what he's gonna do. He's a twenty-two, twenty-three year-old kid who left Stanford early and his brother's a fucking genius who went to MIT and his dad basically won't even look him in the eye. His brother ends up dying and he has no relationship with his father, so he's sort of out there trying to figure out what he's going to do. It's similar to the way Kale was in Disturbia, but more in a teenage angst kind of way and also I think Disturbia dealt with technology in kind of a fun way. Disturbia dealt with being confined in and using the technology to sort of expand your horizons -- this movie sort of deals with how the technology that you love and use to expand your horizons can be turned against you. We always joked when we were making the movie that you want this to be kind of like the "Fear your Blackberry" movie. When you come out of the movie you may want to shut it off instead of turning it on.
RS: Are you naturally a pessimist about technology or do you just enjoy the thriller aspect?
DJC: I enjoy the thriller aspect of it and I'm not a pessimist, but what happens is that you learn as you make a movie and what I learned making this movie -- and I'm not about to give up any of my technology that I love -- but at the same time what I learned was that we were so afraid in the 1950s of Big Brother invading our lives and the control it could potentially have over us that we did anything we could to resist it and now we've invited Big Brother into our lives willingly. We're willing to sacrifice all of that because it's great to walk down the street with your iPhone and have a fucking dictionary and a computer and any piece of information that you need to know...All of that stuff is amazing, but the security camera that's up there to keep us safe -- is it just keeping us safe or are they using it for other means? I stuck my credit card in a parking meter the other day because there was no coin thing and so I started to think, "Okay, here at 11:58 in Pasadena, California, someone knows that I'm in front of Pottery Barn right now," you know what I mean? It's just one of those things -- I'm not pessimistic about it, but I'm very cautious about it.
RS: How did you cast the voice of the faceless female terrorist in the movie who is ordering everybody around?
DJC: I had two people in mind and one wasn't available and the second choice was and she said yes, so it just worked out brilliantly. We actually did it four times -- twice in person and then I had her pick up a couple of lines over the phone for certain things. It was interesting giving instructions and trying to play around with how dramatic each element would be, it was fun. The more the movie got cut and refined and honed down, every once in a while we'd have to change certain elements of that performance, so we basically did it about four times through. It was great to have that luxury.
RS: I'm assuming there's no romance on the run in this movie.
DJC: There's no romance on the run. If this was 1985 and it was a Joel Silver movie they would stop at a hotel and fuck their brains out and there would be a montage and music. I feel like we've gone beyond that in cinema, basically, but if you ask Shia, we did play from his perspective a growing infatuation with Michelle's character, knowing that there wasn't really a romantic possibility when you're twenty-two or twenty-three years old and someone like that comes into your life and she's dynamic and she's fighting for what she believes is right and you're going through this crucial situation. Shia and I felt -- we didn't tell Michelle this -- that it was sort of essential that there be an infatuation growing there, but nothing ever happens and it's very subtle. I think Shia did a great job with the performance -- it's just sort of an undertone.
RS: I spoke to Michelle Monaghan at Tribeca earlier this year and I asked her if she was playing Shia's love interest and she gave me a shocked look and said "What do you think I am, a cougar?"
DJC: [laughs] Isn't she great? Yeah, we didn't tell her but I think that for Shia, from a character perspective, that was really important. You'll ask yourself in the movie a couple of times -- we ultimately pay this off -- why is he continuing on? Why doesn't he just fucking bail out of this and let whatever is gonna happen just happen? Michelle has a very strong reason to carry on but Shia's is a little more hidden and textured than Michelle's.
RS: We haven't talked about Rosario Dawson. She's a good candidate for Agent 355, don't you think?
DJC: Ahhh, she's an excellent candidate for 355. [laughs] She's an excellent candidate and we'll just leave it. I love Rosario, I've always thought she was this great, energetic, sexy and dynamic girl. She's a person with great energy and it was fun to have her on Eagle Eye. It's cool because she plays an investigator, an Air Force investigator and she's awesome. This character is on fire. She's by the book and does things right and does not fuck around. It was a nice change of pace for Rosario not to be this super sex symbol even though she's incredibly sexy. She's actually a very, very viable and great, great potential candidate for Agent 355 and she does love her comic books.
RS: Are you kind of waiting to see how the wind blows, in terms of whether you'll tackle Thor or Y: The Last Man or is there another Spielberg collaboration on the horizon?
DJC: Steven and I have talked about it, but Dreamworks is in sort of a transitional period. I'm definitely not doing anything with Thor. I just mentioned once that I was kind of interested in the idea, but if we don't get Y to a certain place I know I'd like to stay and work with Steven and the people at Dreamworks again. It's the only company now that's run by filmmakers and directors. With Stacey Snider and Steven, who run it, you honestly don't even get set visits because they trust you so much. As a filmmaker that's really refreshing, that they let you have their trust. It'd be a good place to stay if I could.
RS: You seem to be climbing upward in terms of budgets and scale -- is full-fledged adventure in your future, maybe without the thriller aspect?
DJC: You're thinking right. I'd love to do that and maybe even more of a children's film. I have five kids so it would be cool to just kind of do something that's a straight adventure and maybe a little bit of fantasy and get out of the thriller element. And what I really liked about Eagle Eye was the chance to show off some action chops while at the same time it has the political thriller undertone, like stuff from the 70s like Three Days of the Condor or The Parallax View. It's sort of like Wargames on steroids. Those are all movies that I love.
RS: Hey, how about a Wargames remake -- it's gotta happen sometime, right?
DJC: Didn't they try something and it ended up direct to video or something? I remember either reading something about it or hearing something about it. Maybe they did a Wargames 2 that was direct to video. I don't know what the story would be, but that movie was so amazing.
RS: Did I hear you say you have five kids? How do you even have time to work?
DJC: Fuck, dude, it's amazing. The good news is that all I do is work, come home and spend time with the kids so I'm not in the Hollywood world at all. I feel like I'm a plumber or a contractor -- I work my ass off all day to make good movies and then come home and work my ass off to be a good father. There is no time to go to the Chateau Marmont and have a drink with anybody and in a way I find that kind of refreshing. It keeps me a little bit more in touch with what's real and not any of that Hollywood fluff stuff.
RS: Sounds good. I'm gonna let you go back to enjoying the festival, but it was good to hear from you. I appreciate the call.
DJC: Man, I appreciate everything you do. Any time you need anything, you just let me know.
RS: You got it.
Caruso recently took the time to call up SuicideGirls from his berth at this year's Fantastic Fest in Austin to talk about the film -- its elaborately constructed car chases, its origins in the brain of Steven Spielberg and how he, Caruso, stoked sexual chemistry between the two leads -- and why he feels that we have good reason to be concerned about the government's ever-increasing spy powers, as well as to set the record straight about his spate of upcoming projects.
Ryan Stewart: So how's Fantastic Fest going? Seen anything good?
D.J. Caruso: I haven't seen anything good yet, we just got in last night and it was one of those things where we got in and the movies were already shown. I think Kevin Smith was showing his movie last night. I heard that it went really well.
RS: Someone just told me earlier today that I'd get a kick out of Eagle Eye because it's got some good practical car chases, which I love.
DJC: Yeah, we did a lot of real car stuff. This was sort of my chance to have a really, really huge car chase -- one that's actually for the story, too. Our two lead characters meet each other and then they take off and we basically have a seven minute sequence that I'm really quite proud of. We did 99.9 percent of it practical, with cables pulling the cars into each other and ripping them apart and cranes picking up the cars and tossing them. It was a lot of fun to do.
RS: I'm sure it was worth the added shooting time, to keep it as practical as possible.
DJC: Yeah, it took a lot of shooting time and it also took a lot of preparation to make sure we could do it practical. I had a really good second unit director, Brian Smrz, who was working with me, and we were shooting seven days a week. I'd go and join him on the weekends and we'd shoot stuff. Also, the actors did a lot of the driving. It's honestly a dream come true as a filmmaker when you finally have all the tools and the toys you dreamt about having and you have a budget that's sufficient to do it right, you know?
RS: Speaking of car crashes, I loved the opening scene of Taking Lives where the guy gets kicked in front of an oncoming truck. Nice.
DJC: [laughs] Oh, thank you. Pretty horrifying moment.
RS: Why all the secrecy about the plot of Eagle Eye? Is that to protect twists or just a marketing decision?
DJC: No, it's not that there's a huge twist. It's one of those things where about an hour and five minutes into the movie you understand the who and the what, and then for the rest of the movie there's a lot about, well, why is this happening? I think it's more of a marketing standpoint about how they want to sell the movie and also, because it's a Steven Spielberg original idea, he's very precious about the story not getting out, but it's not like there's this unbelievable, major twist that makes you go "Oh, my God!" You watch the movie as it unfolds and you can sort of see it coming and then an hour and five minutes in you understand who is doing this to them and what they're doing and then the rest of the movie is all about the why.
RS: What was Spielberg's best suggestion to you during the making?
DJC: Well, first of all he's very helpful in the editing room. After you have the movie shot and you're going "Hey, I'm kind of looking at this scene and how do you feel about that, and there's a scene cut this way, and here's another one ..." He's very good in the editing room, but I think his best advice was ... it's pretty scary and intimidating to get an idea that originated in Steven Spielberg's brain and then it be passed on and him say "Okay, you can direct this." I wanted to do him proud, but he was very keen about saying "Look, you have to make this idea yours. This is what I had in my head, but you as a filmmaker have to make the movie yours and don't always worry about being so precious with the idea." That was almost a director to director thing as opposed to executive producer to director. If you get too protective of an original idea and you don't deviate from it because you're thinking that one of the most genius filmmakers of all time came up with this idea, then you don't think "Well, what about this ..." Steven didn't apply to the writer's guild for story or anything, but he definitely should have. If he did, it would be "Story by Steven Spielberg" because he really did kind of write out all the beats and the ideas of the movie. So when I say precious, I mean that if you stay too close to what he originally did, then I think we wouldn't have found the movie that we found, which I'm really happy with.
RS: Did you catch that recent 60 Minutes interview with Bob Woodward?
DJC: I did not.
RS: He was plugging his new book and he made a rather cryptic statement about how the government has developed some new, almost fantastical spying capabilities that he wasn't at liberty to talk about.
DJC: When you see the movie you'll see that we definitely did our research. We found out that via homeland security and The Patriot Act -- and it's not like this is really a political movie, but the underlying tone is cautionary -- it's pretty amazing to know what happens via homeland security if you're flagged as a person of interest. How, electronically, all this technology that we love can be used against us. My FBI tech and our technical advisors for technology were saying "Absolutely, we can work with phone companies. We can activate the microphone in someone's cell phone even if their cell phone is off." It's also known that homeland security has this computer that borders on artificial intelligence in a way, because the computer will decide, based on all your electronic information, it will develop a personality profile of you, which is kind of really scary. That's what our movie delves into a certain aspect of. I don't want to give away too much, but someone said "How do you go to Fantastic Fest?" and you realize that we do sort of, I don't want to say that we border science-fiction, but you'll see that the technology is used in a certain way and ultimately it's a lot closer ... Steven had this idea almost ten years ago when it was really science-fiction and now it's become much more of a reality.
RS: Did you see any parallels between Eagle Eye and Disturbia, with the lead character being under the thumb of the government?
DJC: I think there are some parallels in a character way. Jerry Shaw in Eagle Eye is a character going through a major crisis in which he's trying to figure out who he is and what he's gonna do. He's a twenty-two, twenty-three year-old kid who left Stanford early and his brother's a fucking genius who went to MIT and his dad basically won't even look him in the eye. His brother ends up dying and he has no relationship with his father, so he's sort of out there trying to figure out what he's going to do. It's similar to the way Kale was in Disturbia, but more in a teenage angst kind of way and also I think Disturbia dealt with technology in kind of a fun way. Disturbia dealt with being confined in and using the technology to sort of expand your horizons -- this movie sort of deals with how the technology that you love and use to expand your horizons can be turned against you. We always joked when we were making the movie that you want this to be kind of like the "Fear your Blackberry" movie. When you come out of the movie you may want to shut it off instead of turning it on.
RS: Are you naturally a pessimist about technology or do you just enjoy the thriller aspect?
DJC: I enjoy the thriller aspect of it and I'm not a pessimist, but what happens is that you learn as you make a movie and what I learned making this movie -- and I'm not about to give up any of my technology that I love -- but at the same time what I learned was that we were so afraid in the 1950s of Big Brother invading our lives and the control it could potentially have over us that we did anything we could to resist it and now we've invited Big Brother into our lives willingly. We're willing to sacrifice all of that because it's great to walk down the street with your iPhone and have a fucking dictionary and a computer and any piece of information that you need to know...All of that stuff is amazing, but the security camera that's up there to keep us safe -- is it just keeping us safe or are they using it for other means? I stuck my credit card in a parking meter the other day because there was no coin thing and so I started to think, "Okay, here at 11:58 in Pasadena, California, someone knows that I'm in front of Pottery Barn right now," you know what I mean? It's just one of those things -- I'm not pessimistic about it, but I'm very cautious about it.
RS: How did you cast the voice of the faceless female terrorist in the movie who is ordering everybody around?
DJC: I had two people in mind and one wasn't available and the second choice was and she said yes, so it just worked out brilliantly. We actually did it four times -- twice in person and then I had her pick up a couple of lines over the phone for certain things. It was interesting giving instructions and trying to play around with how dramatic each element would be, it was fun. The more the movie got cut and refined and honed down, every once in a while we'd have to change certain elements of that performance, so we basically did it about four times through. It was great to have that luxury.
RS: I'm assuming there's no romance on the run in this movie.
DJC: There's no romance on the run. If this was 1985 and it was a Joel Silver movie they would stop at a hotel and fuck their brains out and there would be a montage and music. I feel like we've gone beyond that in cinema, basically, but if you ask Shia, we did play from his perspective a growing infatuation with Michelle's character, knowing that there wasn't really a romantic possibility when you're twenty-two or twenty-three years old and someone like that comes into your life and she's dynamic and she's fighting for what she believes is right and you're going through this crucial situation. Shia and I felt -- we didn't tell Michelle this -- that it was sort of essential that there be an infatuation growing there, but nothing ever happens and it's very subtle. I think Shia did a great job with the performance -- it's just sort of an undertone.
RS: I spoke to Michelle Monaghan at Tribeca earlier this year and I asked her if she was playing Shia's love interest and she gave me a shocked look and said "What do you think I am, a cougar?"
DJC: [laughs] Isn't she great? Yeah, we didn't tell her but I think that for Shia, from a character perspective, that was really important. You'll ask yourself in the movie a couple of times -- we ultimately pay this off -- why is he continuing on? Why doesn't he just fucking bail out of this and let whatever is gonna happen just happen? Michelle has a very strong reason to carry on but Shia's is a little more hidden and textured than Michelle's.
RS: We haven't talked about Rosario Dawson. She's a good candidate for Agent 355, don't you think?
DJC: Ahhh, she's an excellent candidate for 355. [laughs] She's an excellent candidate and we'll just leave it. I love Rosario, I've always thought she was this great, energetic, sexy and dynamic girl. She's a person with great energy and it was fun to have her on Eagle Eye. It's cool because she plays an investigator, an Air Force investigator and she's awesome. This character is on fire. She's by the book and does things right and does not fuck around. It was a nice change of pace for Rosario not to be this super sex symbol even though she's incredibly sexy. She's actually a very, very viable and great, great potential candidate for Agent 355 and she does love her comic books.
RS: Are you kind of waiting to see how the wind blows, in terms of whether you'll tackle Thor or Y: The Last Man or is there another Spielberg collaboration on the horizon?
DJC: Steven and I have talked about it, but Dreamworks is in sort of a transitional period. I'm definitely not doing anything with Thor. I just mentioned once that I was kind of interested in the idea, but if we don't get Y to a certain place I know I'd like to stay and work with Steven and the people at Dreamworks again. It's the only company now that's run by filmmakers and directors. With Stacey Snider and Steven, who run it, you honestly don't even get set visits because they trust you so much. As a filmmaker that's really refreshing, that they let you have their trust. It'd be a good place to stay if I could.
RS: You seem to be climbing upward in terms of budgets and scale -- is full-fledged adventure in your future, maybe without the thriller aspect?
DJC: You're thinking right. I'd love to do that and maybe even more of a children's film. I have five kids so it would be cool to just kind of do something that's a straight adventure and maybe a little bit of fantasy and get out of the thriller element. And what I really liked about Eagle Eye was the chance to show off some action chops while at the same time it has the political thriller undertone, like stuff from the 70s like Three Days of the Condor or The Parallax View. It's sort of like Wargames on steroids. Those are all movies that I love.
RS: Hey, how about a Wargames remake -- it's gotta happen sometime, right?
DJC: Didn't they try something and it ended up direct to video or something? I remember either reading something about it or hearing something about it. Maybe they did a Wargames 2 that was direct to video. I don't know what the story would be, but that movie was so amazing.
RS: Did I hear you say you have five kids? How do you even have time to work?
DJC: Fuck, dude, it's amazing. The good news is that all I do is work, come home and spend time with the kids so I'm not in the Hollywood world at all. I feel like I'm a plumber or a contractor -- I work my ass off all day to make good movies and then come home and work my ass off to be a good father. There is no time to go to the Chateau Marmont and have a drink with anybody and in a way I find that kind of refreshing. It keeps me a little bit more in touch with what's real and not any of that Hollywood fluff stuff.
RS: Sounds good. I'm gonna let you go back to enjoying the festival, but it was good to hear from you. I appreciate the call.
DJC: Man, I appreciate everything you do. Any time you need anything, you just let me know.
RS: You got it.
nicole_powers:
Trust no one! That special brand of suburban-paranoid chic that worked so well for Shia LaBeouf and director D.J. Caruso in last year's box-office sleeper hit Disturbia is now being repeated, writ large, in Eagle Eye,...