TROUT   [5]

Sam Gaoa and Aidan: [1, 2, 3, 4]
 
ORPHEUS WINS… AT LAST 
 
S: So is there anything after this, have you got anything planned? Are you just going to take a break?

V: Yeah, I’ll probably take a break.

S: …and recharge the batteries and see what’s out there. Will you be basing yourself there [Los Angeles] full-time?

V:I’ve always liked the idea of being a little bit of an itinerant and I’m fairly happy wherever I am and as long as I can do my work and have a few friends.

S: You’ve got a place in Sydney as well?

V:Yeah.

A: Peter Jackson is coming back here to do his big thing–

V:Well, he never left; and I think Peter’s situation is unique and I really take my hat off to him. I don’t think it applies to the rest of the film industry.

A: Do you have any intent to return to New Zealand to do, say, a single film rather than returning here for good?

V: I’d certainly like to be able to do that, I think it’s good to do that. I don’t have a specific idea, but I like the idea of it. I also like the idea that it’s possible to come back here and try and find some finance to try and make films. It’s one thing to make an American-style film here, or to make Lord of the Rings, which is essentially international, it’s not a film about New Zealand or about New Zealand characters; it’s another thing to try and find finance here and make films that relate to who we are and where we come from. There is a real problem doing that in this country, unlike places like Ireland. It’s very hard for experienced film-makers to come back here and make films that are to do with anything that’s New Zealand-related, come back and use the locations, and I think that’s a real shame. I think it was fantastic the way Jane actually managed to do that, but she primarily had to do it with international financing. But that’s difficult, the way it’s structured with the amount of money available to the Film Commission getting smaller, and it means they can only practically support first-time film-makers. Either they can do 4 low-budget films, which means first-time film-makers, or they can do 1 or 2 larger-budget films; well, there’d be a riot if that happened. So, the only way to change that is to make sure there is sufficient finance for more experienced film-makers, to make it attractive to make films here; not of a scale of What Dreams May Come, obviously that’s ridiculous, but on a scale which is more comparable with other countries. You can do that in Australia, you can do that in England, you can do that in Ireland. Otherwise you end up a country without a voice, a country that can’t look at itself in the mirror.

S: Are you in contact with any other Kiwi film-makers out there in Hollywood? I know Lee Tamahori after Once Were Warriors has been out there and made a couple of films, but then you’ve got the base of Donaldson–

V: I see Lee every now and again, I see Gregor Nicholas, I see occasionally Roger, I’ve been to a few parties. Probably my closest friend there is Phillip Noyce, the Australian film-maker–

S:Dead Calm.

V: He’s a great guy. We all fairly much stick to ourselves; it’s not like we all stick together. I haven’t seen Geoff Murphy in years: I think he lives in Hawaii...

V:Obviously the main point for me is that I only want to make a film that I really believe in, and there’s a cost to that and there’s also a risk trying to do that in the studio system.

S: Do you find that you have to tow the line?

V:You have to go out and negotiate.

S: But you can do that to a point where it becomes successful and you’re able to–

V: Unless you do a 75-million-dollar grossing film, if you’re making a very large-budget film, you do not have that complete ability. If you make a film that’s under a certain budget, then you can negotiate that you can do what you like, with normal budgetary constraints. So, the best you can do working in that industry, which is an industry, with those big-budget films is saying there are certain points: the script is worth making, so let’s go ahead; okay, the next point is the casting, which everything lives or dies on; okay, I agree with that casting, I like that casting, those are the people I wanted or the people I feel would do a good job; okay, let’s keep going. Once you’ve passed that point youre committed. Normally you’ll get left alone when you shoot a film, and then the next big hurdle is the postproduction, is the editing, where the studio normally has some sort of say; and test the movie and then you hope you get through that – in this we were lucky. I think that the screenwriter and myself were a formidable team and I was helped by his negotiating skills. Did I say that he was a former top entertainment lawyer? He was Francis Ford Coppola’s lawyer on Apocalypse Now. He used to get up at 4 a.m. in the morning and start screenwriting. Between us we were able to keep what we felt was the heart of the movie, consistently. And if ever there was a phrase that sums up Ron Bass it would be the phrase he put in the movie, ‘never give up.’

S: I was reading this book on Star Wars, because George Lucas collaborated with Francis and there’s a section in there about Heart of Darkness and Ron’s name was in there too… I was under the impression that you’d somehow become disillusioned with the whole Hollywood system after Map of the Human Heart - correct me if I’m wrong.

V:I do think it’s very difficult for most Australasian film-makers to work there, if they have any voice – unless you just want to make, as I say, ‘gun for hire’ films, which I don’t want to make, and most of us don’t want to make, you have to constantly be wary – it’s a constant mine-field. I was lucky here, it was a drama, it was a good material, with a company that was more European, a background that was a little more open. You can’t assume anything, you just have to be very wary...

V: The curious thing is that you go through this testing process, which is arduous for any film-maker. But it’s good. It’s like playwrights test theirs out in other smaller centres first, then they adjust it and get the timing right. We did that endlessly with timing and made sure it played well, so there wouldn’t be any places where it dipped or slowed, while still keeping what’s essential for the drama, what you love about the film. But, one thing we did find, which was kind of curious, with this particular film, we found as a generality, obviously women responded to the relationship and the love-story and the emotional, more to the emotional story; men responded to the quest and the strong visual visceral elements of it. Generally women liked Paradise more and men like Hell more, which is very telling; and the scene which was the favourite among men was the least favourite amongst women, that’s the Sea of Faces; and the other thing which was again interesting is that slightly in America they tended toward Paradise, in Europe they like Hell more, it’s kind of telling.

S: What if you had a different ending, where they weren’t able to reunite, Robin wasn’t able to bring her back, did you consider that, an opposite ending?
V: No, and it was never part of the book. No, I’ve certainly had my share of dark endings; I made it a love story, also. But we felt that we put the audience through a wringer and wanted them to come out the other side; we wanted it finally to be an uplifting story, a story with some hope in it.

S: This film marks every other film that you’ve done to date. There are elements with emotion and conflict, the journey, from all your previous films, all in one, but a more colourful addition to this particular one, obviously.

V: Yeah, I feel that, too. John Maynard was commenting on that whom I normally work with – I’ve worked with him on a couple of films.

S: Also with the drama effect; the sequences with Annabella and Robin, like in that field where, after the tragic circumstances of the kids, she can’t handle it… she’s sick, there was a shot there that went down to the wrist, you see the cut, the stitches, very powerful scenes I thought.

V: We tried to use certain contrasts in the movie, which were strong, dramatic and psychological scenes sometimes contrasting it with more romantic scenes, depending on the nature of what point in the relationship you’re looking at.

A: Are you comparing it with that Greek tragedy–

V: Orpheus and Eurydice [Persephone?].

A: …where he goes down into the underworld to bring her back?
 

‘The film is indeed based on a Richard Matheson book published circa 1980. The book is described by the scooper as a modern reworking of the myth of Orpheus in the Underworld. Matheson is best known as the screenwriter of films like The Incredible Shrinking Man, Duel and many of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films.’ [Internet info’ sent by ‘Roogulator’.]

V: That does have an unhappy ending.

A: Or in the Christian religion with Jesus going to Hell in order to bring us back?

V: The story you can relate it to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, there’s a lot of stuff you can relate it to. For me, I like that; I’ve lived in a lot of different communities, whether it’s in the Ureweras or it’s in the Arctic, whether it’s investigating a film-set in 19th century Japan.

S: Back to the title, What Dreams May Come, are your own dream experiences relevant to the script?

V: I kind of share the belief of Francis Ford Coppola, which is that I’d like to make films that to some degree have a predictive element. I know Coppola’s been put on record as saying the way he predicted a lot of technological development and started using them in his films, his way of investigating what may be. It’s not necessarily a dream, but it’s further than that. I don’t remember my dreams, the dreams at night, unless I’m going through a really hard time in my work and then it’s more about a nightmare with what I’m doing, but I do imagine things and I take different roads in my mind during the day, as I’m imagining different scenarios.

S&A: On that note, Vincent, thank you, it’s been a pleasure and we look forward to your next offering.
 

“Epic romantic drama starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Annabella Sciorra is now in its final stages of editing - adding amazing sound design and a beautiful score by Michael Kamen that will blow away the doubters who were hung up on the Academy Award™-winning composer Ennio Morricone, whose score was tossed out a month and a half before release.
Visual effects by the top names/houses in the biz are beyond your wildest fantasies and push the envelope on visual effects.
Put on your seat belts, this one will take you further than any film before, exploring metaphysical ideas that’ll keep you thinking/ feeling long after the last credits have faded.” ’ [Anonymous Internet writer.]

Sam Gaoa and Aidan
Ph. 373-7599, extn 2527
s.gaoa@auckland.ac.nz
aidan.howard@directories.co.nz

  © 1998

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