We shouId introduce ourseIves.
There it is. I'm Jon Favreau, the director of the movie.
I'm Peter BiIIingsIey, one of the producers on the mov e.
And Peter and I have worked together on the show Dinner for Flva.
Peter was a co-producer on Made. He did a cameo for me in Elf.
That's right. And Jon just worked with us on The Break-Up, in Chicago.
-As an actor. Which Peter produced. -As an actor.
There it is. So these credits, et me not take credit for these great credits.
These were done by a feIIow named KyIe Cooper.
We had storyboarded these th ngs...
...but essentia Iy, he cut the fiIm together...
...and he d d his own I ttIe shoot.
And a Iot of this stuff he did in-house, in his titIe company, on computers.
There was a Iot of back-and-forth, so there was a Iot of input.
But I have to say that, you know, this s reaIIy a--
KyIe's got a cooI history. He did the credits for Se7en.
-That who e opening titIe sequence. -Like, Spider-Man.
The MarveI Spider-Man stuff.
The MarveI Iogo, which was rea y impressive to me as weII.
Which had a reaI cooI comic-book, nosta gic feeI.
What's the camera that we shot--? Or that he shot this with? It's the--
It's a tiny, tiny camera that goes around the--
-Those macro Ienses. -Yeah.
It's a bunch of macrophotography here on this stuff.
And he aIso shot the cover of the game board.
Now, what's cooI, Iook at the Iitt e iIIustrations that Ph I Saunders did.
He's one of the art sts that worked with us, who designed this.
If you Iook at these iIIustrations, these drawings aII....
If you've seen the movie and then you see the opening...
...aII those iIIustrations are events that actuaIIy take p ace during the movie.
So t's sort of Iike a v suaI overture.
Then we go inside and there are the gears.
And he bu t this out of some gears and stuff he had.
This wasn't actuaIIy in it.
-This was never in the movie. -Joe Bauer. I worked with him before.
John Debney. I worked with both of them before on Elf.
Dan LebentaI I worked with on Elf as weII.
And Mike Riva did a great job. First t me I worked w th him.
GuiI ermo Navarro did a great job. First time I worked with him.
One of the reasons we h red him was we kept watching Devll's Backbone...
...which he did with GuiIIermo deI Toro.
And we thought, ''What a great movie that centers around kids...
...and has a nice spooky, dark feeI...
...but doesn't feeI Iike a kids' movie at aII."
And so we decided to use h m.
He d d a fine job.
Chris Van AIIsburg wrote this book, as weII as Jumanjl and Polar Exprass.
And David Koepp and John Kamps.
It was the r script that I read that drew me to the project.
And I just found out that David came onboard...
...and th s was meant to be one of h s--
One of the things was that this was not gonna be marketed...
...as a sequeI to Jumanji. This was going to be a stand-a one project.
That sIow y evo ved away from that...
...as the date drew cIoser to reIease the fiIm.
When I was originaIIy sent the script...
...I was to d t had noth ng to do with Jumanji.
ObviousIy, there are a Iot of simiIarties...
...because of the board game and everything Iike that.
But as we got cIoser and cIoser to reIease date...
...it was a very compet tive marketpIace.
The studio dec ded to begin to incorporate the titIe of the other fiIm.
-As "the worId of Jumanjl''? -Yeah, something.
At f rst it was gonna be "a Jumanji adventure" ...
...wh ch I feIt sounded Iike a sequeI, which sort of bummed me out.
If you have a sequeI and don't have any of the peopIe in the originaI...
...none of the same characters are cast, it tends to be a ittIe misIeading.
So ''from the word of Jumanjl," at Ieast it made t seem reIated to it...
...but we weren't ripping off Jumanjl. So t was a sort of a f ne Iine to waIk.
That car right there is a Comet, '64 Comet.
Same year as the car from Swlngars.
-The first movie I wrote. -We are in Pasadena, CaIifornia here.
That's Pasadena. You'II see Iater, at the end of the movie, we faked this.
Because we reshot the ending based on what we'd shot.
We shot n order, but one thing we did shoot out of order...
...was the very end ng of the movie because we were at this Iocation.
So we shot the kids at the beg nning and the end.
But we changed it, what the ending was...
...because of what we had shot.
It d dn't make sense, what we had orig naIIy shot.
And so we came back. You'II see there are some shots Iater where we fake it.
Now we're on a stage.
That ine, ''You're such a dick,'' was a pretty big Iine for us in the movie.
Trying to set the tone of what was to come, so to speak.
Just trying to, I think, send a message that it wasn't a pandering movie.
Just a kiddie movie. And we wanted t to seem Iike--
So the compromise was this ne here.
Yeah. He says, "You shouIdn't use that Ianguage."
-Kind of justifies using it. -We got the PG. It wasn't a probIem.
I was Iike-- I wouId aIways say:
''Hey, in E.T. he caIIed his brother 'penis breath."'
To which Amy PascaI said, "Times have changed."
But it wouId get a b g augh in the theaters...
...and t wou d reaIIy perk up the adu ts n the crowd.
But it's amazing how sensitive peopIe are...
...to even that much anguage in a PG movie.
It was a fIashpo nt Iine. But it's good, I'm gIad it's in the movie.
-It was good. -We did it in one take.
And Jonah's mom was I ke, ''W hen did he say that?''. ..
...when she saw the cut of the movie. I was Iike--
It was very c earIy-- It sort of set up the who e dynamic here.
These are great sets that were buiIt.
I'm very proud, as weII, of what it Iooks Iike outside the windows.
I have a reaI pet peeve about how fake transIights Iook...
...and fake backings on stages.
I came up through independent fiIm, wh ch is usuaIIy shot on Iocat on...
...and I hate when it Iooks ke you're shoot ng on a set.
And I'm very proud of what Mike Riva and GuiIIermo were abIe to do...
... n making this Iook reaI and feeI rea .
PIus, the bu ding of the house, the construct on.
It's an oId Greene & Greene in Pasadena...
...and they IiteraI y buiIt it with Iathe and pIaster, as opposed to drywaII.
They took the detaiI--
You'II see as we go around the house in these next shots.
It was reaIIy a gorgeous house that was bu It.
And this was not what the house Iooked Iike n Pasadena, by the way.
The front matched, everything eIse was invented...
...based on tear sheets and books of architecture and stuff.
We reaIIy wanted the house to feeI Iike something.
And fee o d and feeI ike it had some character.
Look at that great stained gIass.
And aI these deta s were picked out of different famous houses...
...even the firep ace and the fixtures there.
But it's not furnished very we I...
...because we wanted it to Iook ike Dad just moved in.
So part of the fun was making a house that, as it came apart, wou d be reaIIy--
-Somewhat tragic... -It wouId be reaIIy tragic.
-...to watch. -It wouId reaIIy break your heart.
There's Tim Robbins, who did a great job.
-He worked two weeks on the movie? -Yep.
Two weeks. He was our f rst cho ce. We chased him down.
-And we had-- -We aImost cIosed the deaI with him...
...and then he switched agencies rght in the middIe, which was tough.
Look how good the transIights Iook back there. See, we bIew t out.
That's a trick, aII you future directors:
Pump a Iot of I ght and put some--
There are some reaI pIants out there, and we had fans b ow ng them around.
I think it does a good job.
We had to shoot the ending of the movie...
...aII of it, earIy with Tim because, obviousIy, after destroying the house...
...you can't go back and rebuiId it for the end.
So we had Tim for the beginning and the end to bookend the movie.
Yeah, when he comes back in.
And that's a Iuxury. Look at Jonah's hair.
-This s a fun game to pIay. -Yeah.
It's supposed to be the same day...
...but his hair Iooks Iike a greased-down rocker...
...who was on an a -night bender in th s scene.
Then it's aII fIuffy ater in the mov e. His hair gets aII f uffy.
The next scene, he Iooks Iike he's up for a paroIe hearing and he's ....
He just took some spit to a comb.
This s the first thing we shot, the first scene we shot on-stage.
I think it's the f rst thing we shot at aII.
Because then we went out after a few days and shot the outside stuff.
OnIy two days outside, then we wound up being 84 days interior on the stage.
But this was our first day of shooting, right here.
WeII, Josh was a-- Josh is the bigger one.
Josh Hutcherson, he pIays Wa ter.
He was a reaI, reaI pro. He had....
I mean, it was just Iike....
You'd think he was working for 30 years.
Knew his Iines.
His parents were astute about the way the set works and a that stuff.
And he brought a tremendous professiona ism to the set.
And Jonah, this was onIy his second movie...
...but he had just a wonderfuI-- I thought, a wonderfuI quaI ty.
And he was a reaI discovery. And he reaIIy carried the fiIm.
Both these kids, together, compIemented each other weII.
It was very heIpfuI to Jonah, I th nk, too, just as a good roIe modeI...
...for someone who's done a Iot.
Yeah. See, he sort of-- He Iearned a Iot from Josh.
And t was fun too, we had Peter BiII ngsIey, who, of course...
...was a chiId star when he was a kid, with...
...Christmas Story and Dlrt Bika Kld and Messy Marv n and aII that stuff.
So t was kind of cooI to have that resource for the parents to go to.
Because Peter was Iike this.... He's Iike, " I turned out aII right."
"If I can do t, your kids wiII be fine. Don't worry."
''l didn't end up an addict.''
"If you have any concerns, you can come to me."
Because you had good parents, and, unfortunate y, a ot of chiId stars--
-I shot that ttIe thing right here. -Oh, did you?
-Shot the inserts? -I did.
We had, by the end of it-- I have a big thing for--
After coming from independent fiIms, where you don't have money...
...when it gets cIose to the end, instead of asking for more days...
...we start puIIing spI nter units together and ask for more cameras...
...and I'II send off the peopIe who we're working with...
...to shoot I ttIe spIinter units to get either coverage or nserts...
...or shots that we haven't gotten so that we don't go over budget.
And it seems Iike a big thing. It actuaIIy saves you a Iot of money.
But when you come to the set and there's three or four un ts going--
-At one po nt, we had f ve units going. -Did we?
Then you hook up a monitor bank for Jon so he can see them...
...and radio back. "Approve this. Look at this."
And then sometimes he can't.
-You just shoot and you go. -You just do it.
If t's wrong, you do it aga n. You're st on the stage.
But it's very hard to crank up aga n. I hate reshooting.
I Iike to aIways do everything in the midst of a--
In the midst of production. That was a good ine.
-Gets a big Iaugh in HoIIywood. -It gets a big Iaugh aIways, yeah.
That was my favorte there. "I Iiked the house." "So did Mom."
--and I know it's a IittIe creaky....
It teIIs a Iot about the audience.
Here comes L sa.
Now, this bit, orig naIIy, wasn't in the mov e.
I think n the book, there was just the two k ds.
There was a concern that it seemed irresponsib e to Ieave kids a one.
And so they put a sister upsta rs who was sIeeping.
-And then we froze her. -You had to rationaIIy justify...
...how she wouIdn't wake up dur ng this.
You d dn't wanna be, "She's sIeeping through her music," which s--
That's what t was. She was sIeeping with the headphones on.
I was Iike, ''With the grav ty and aII that? Doesn't make--''
And so when we were sti I working with Kamps and Koepp...
...before Koepp went off to do...
...what was it, War of the Worlds?
Decided to freeze her.
This gets a big Iaugh. This is even quoted n--
This is quoted. Yeah.
We did-- Th s came out of rehearsaIs. Th s was after everybody moved on.
A ot of the diaIogue stuff, I Iike to work with the actors...
...and find what's working in rehearsaIs.
I'm pretty comfortabIe w th diaIogue stuff, and I aIways Iike to make it fit.
-Okay? -I'm not deaf.
I aIways ke to make t f t the r....
The chem stry of the actors, and so we have a rehearsa perod...
...where we sit around a tabIe...
...and just read through the script a number of times...
...and I adjust the dia ogue to fit the voices of the actors that we hired...
... nstead of making the actors sound Iike the scr pt.
And, in particuIar, Krsten, who's such a great actress herseIf.
She's not, Iike, a TV actress. She was in Panlc Room.
-And she's so good... -Yeah.
...and has so much guts to what she does.
-So you reaIIy wanna ta or it for her. -And they had originaIIy rea y--
She was the ast person hired.
ReaIIy pressured me not to hire her...
...because she didn't have a quote-unquote ''comedy background."
But, to me, the hard th ng is to get the emotionaI reaIity out of a moment.
You rea Iy want somebody who you enjoy watching...
...and somebody who keeps everything be evabIe and reaI.
If you're more emotionaIIy invested, you get more Iaughs.
I've aIways found that to be the case.
There's my SpongeBob moment. My son, Max, Ioves it.
He Ioved it and we put it n.
He was very proud of that moment being in there. He's 4.
I was watching that.
And there's our SportsCenter. That was a tricky thing to get too, wasn't it?
Yeah. There's a Iot of separate Iicensing for that.
-Yeah. -Music, MLB....
It was something David Koepp and John Kamps had in there.
It reaIIy....
But it shows the juxtaposition of the two guys pretty effectiveIy.
I don't know how.
I'm hungry. What do you know how to make?
Water.
So we ended up hiring Kristen, remember? We had a tabIe read.
The first t me we had the cast together before-- And she wasn't hired yet.
And everybody was, Iike--
They were sending me tapes of sitcom actresses from Nicke odeon shows.
I was ike, "Guys, we don't want...."
You don't want somebody who couId ham up a joke and roII their eyes.
You want somebody who's gonna be reaI.
A Iot of what we deveIoped out of the script diaIogue-wise...
...you remember, Pete, was, you know, the jokey stuff.
I I ke Iaughs, but I don't Iike Iaughs at the expense of the reaIity of a moment.
And t's so easy to have the kids commenting on things...
... n an action-hero kind of way, you know.
But it bIows the reaI ty and the wonder and the magic of the movie.
If they don't be ieve they're in periI, the aud ence won't beIieve it.
Yeah, if they're comment ng, "Man, Dad just sanded the fIoors."
That was after the meteor shower. That was a big ne.
There were a ot of jokes Iike that, where they comment on it...
...in a way that you know isn't reaI, that sort of takes you out of it a bit.
And there is a certain safety net that you have from it being a game...
...but I don't think the kids shou d be aware of that safety net.
As an audience, you know they're not gonna get kiIIed in this movie.
But you wanna make them feeI Iike they're in periI, draw the audience n.
You wanna have them beIieve Iike they might d e.
And if they don't , then I don't th nk you have an effective drama.
I'm becoming a visuaI f Immaker. See that shot, Pete?
That was IoveIy, that reaIIy toId it.
Nice cut, with a IittIe ight n the eyes.
Remember how hard we worked to get the eyes?
That's right.
-The thing opens up. -And surprse.
-There you are. -I said I was sorry.
This dumbwa ter was-- This was a Iaundry chute, originaIIy...
...and we deveIoped t into a dumbwaiter.
-We buiIt-- -They were gonna hang ropes...
...down the Iaundry chute.
It was more of a suburban Northeastern house...
...when t was written orig naIIy. It was set, originaIIy, in a more...
...suburban setting. This, we made t--
But this one's operabIe, and went-- Then we buiIt a big Iong one...
...for the end, for when he saiIs down for a stunt one.
Look at that cooI-- It Iooks pretty cooI.
-Looks very reaI. -Navarro's reaIIy good at this kind of....
This kind of stuff. And, Iook, we buiIt th s IittIe thing.
How do you commun cate aI this stuff visuaIIy?
Th s was a very big step for me, this movie, to te a story v suaIIy.
And I was very ucky to have GuiI ermo Navarro and Mike Riva...
...who, in partnership, heIped me teII the story, visua y, that I wanted to teII.
Here's the basement we buiIt.
Very rare to have a basement in CaIifornia...
...but it was a big pIot point in the script, so we--
That's one of the reasons we arrived at a Pasadena home...
...because many of them do have basements.
And gave guidance to Mike R va, notes.
What happens is they present you with some pIans...
...and then they start dressing the set...
...and you start caIIing out materiaIs and things you wanna see...
...I ke those asbestos...
...you know, pIenums up there, and duct work.
Just to have it feeI a certain age. And the spiderwebs and the cobwebs.
As I went back and forth with Riva, taIking about...
...exact y what I wanted in here, and as it came together...
...my Dad came to the set.
And he was Iike, "My God, th s is my oId basement."
It was the house-- It was very s miIar to the basement that I moved to...
...after my mother passed away. My foIks were sp t up...
...and I moved in to my Dad's house.
He had an oId house in CoIIege Point, Queens.
And this basement ooks a Iot Iike a bigger version of that basement.
-With a big furnace. -So much so that he recognized it.
And when you subconsciousIy make choices as a fiImmaker...
...you don't reaI ze that you're drawing from your oId experiences.
You fee Iike you're just being creative...
...but reaIIy it's coming out of-- UsuaIIy from oId memores.
There's the Iighting cue that Peter didn't ike, but I Iike so much.
The Iight comes up as we push in.
This was a script d fference too, in how the game was found.
Right, it started off with the astronaut st cking it in a game cIoset.
A game cIoset. That was the opening tease of the movie.
The astronaut was shoving it n.
We had d scussed that it shouId come...
...as the resuIt of their strife, basicaIIy...
...as that it was sort of a symboI to try to repair...
...what needed to be fixed between them.
So coming on the heeIs of him putting him down the dumbwaiter...
...he finds this game, which presents itseIf...
...which has either been there or not, or he hasn't noticed t.
But it's at a time when they obvious y need it.
We feIt it worked better for the story.
To be d scovered out of their conf ict.
Right. As opposed to the motivation being the astronaut trying...
...to fix what he had undone, it was more about--
-Which we impIy Iater anyway. -Right.
We had more-- I'm a student of the whoIe...
...Joseph CampbeII, mythic-journey way of ooking at things...
...and there's definiteIy something primaI...
...about discovering this device...
... n sort of the darkest depths of that pIace of confI ct...
... n the cave under the house.
And what that basement wiII represent Iater...
...and being sort of the fIame in the basement and the whoIe....
What's Zathura?
That whoIe eviI setting that he's--
What's reaIIy powerfuI about it is that it's where he's scared of...
...even before anything bad happens. There's that cooI IittIe--
So he has to waIk through that to conquer h s uItimate fears.
Right. Right.
Not that anybody gets it. I mean, it is a kiddie movie, but....
-But it is good to Iay the-- -Are you saying it's a kidd e movie?
It's a kiddie movie, but it is good to sort of--
-It's a famiIy adventure. -FamiIy action-adventure, excuse me.
-There you go. -But it is good to-- You gotta....
The more you pay attention to that stuff...
...the Iess you have to pay attention to detaiIs. It Iets peopIe get caught up.
I mean, Iook at Wizard of Oz. It makes no sense.
But there's something that mythicaIIy makes sense about it...
...and you accept aII of these Ieaps you have to make.
And because we paid so much attention to the characters' emotionaI journey...
...peopIe didn't reaIIy dweII on the incons stencies...
...that came up over things Iike the--
-That's Pete's knuckIes. -I was cracking my knuck es. Sorry.
The nconsistencies w th the couch fIying through space.
-Or burning. -I mean, burning in space.
-Or air. Or hear ng sound in space. -Gravity.
Geeks on the chat boards Iove to pick me apart for....
Read this for me.
''Meteor shower.''
-Here it s. -Here we go.
-Start the effects. -We went back and forth on this.
-Sony Imageworks... -What noise it wouId make.
-... n three, two, one. -There it is.
Remember the sound? How much discussion there was...
...about how much sound it wouId make?
-Just a I ttIe: -And trying to get the sound...
-...of hitting a piece of paper correct. -Like a popp ng.
Here it is. Now, this is our first use of the shaker set, com ng up.
This who e house shook. See? Look at the books going in the background.
NormaIIy you wouId just shake it in post or just shake the camera, but....
Yeah. ''Grandma." Like that one.
Nice offensive humor.
-This s aII pract caI. Stuff b ow ng up. -The kids are there, fIinch ng.
-And we were expIoding things. -Jon BeIyeu, remember?
He was Iike, "Yeah, you're safe. Everybody's safe there." And--
-St's fIying aII over the p ace and-- -Keep it PG, man.
Yeah. Sorry. You're right.
There was a Iot of prob ems with Sony. That was gonna be an iPod. They sa d:
''Under no circumstances couId this be an iPod.
It has to be a Sony MP3 pIayer."
Sony is very serous about putting non-Sony products in movies.
But they don't make noise-reducing headphones...
...wh ch we needed to justify how she wouIdn't hear, so Bose won out there.
That was the story po nt, at Ieast.
We went around the horn on this stuff a Iot...
...with how much fIames wouId be on the fIoor, and smoke traiIs.
-A Iot were added Iater. -A Iot of mpacts were pract caI h ts.
Come on. Get n, get in.
This was done fairy earIy. There's our Ug ydoII.
Th s was done earIy because it was n ourfirst traiIer.
So they aIways rush to get the stuff done for the traiIer.
But this is a good mixture of rea stuff and fake stuff added in.
The smoke is fake, the smoke traiIs, and the gIowing embers were fake...
...but the debrs popp ng up was reaI and the shak ng was reaI.
-And the SportsCenter was reaI. -Had a nice spark to it there.
Jon BeIyeu dropped a b g huge cement--
-We did that twice, remember? -From the roof of the stage.
-And then we did it aga n. -We did it tw ce to get it.
The first time we d d it, everybody wouId be dead in the room.
Remember, they were supposed to stand in front of it?
It was green screen, it was in front of them. We actuaI y changed that.
That ittIe pop. That was a ittIe CG pop on a reaI meteor.
You saw the shot of the gerbiI n the firep ace.
We reaIIy thought the gerbiI was gonna be something more...
...with a great payoff, than it was, but it never reaIIy--
-It was. PeopIe got the gerbiI. -OnIy one or two peopIe get the payoff.
So Iet's see, there's the smoking embers.
Then we added that smoke.
And we had to address why the s ster wasn't kiIIed in her bedroom...
...so we said it just h t the Iiving room.
And this stuff is-- The tone of this IittIe moment was very much ike...
-...how it was in the originaI script. -Yes.
Sort of a ittIe stiIted, a IittIe cooI, I kind of dug it.
But it seems a ittIe out of pIace because it's aImost I ke...
...a Pinter pIay, them go ng back and forth.
But I think it was rea Iy simpIe and nice, I Iiked it a Iot.
This revea was one of the first shots we turned over to Sony Imageworks...
...as you have to, even in production, turn over a ot of your shots...
...so they can start working on them because of the movie's reIease date.
-They have to be fin shed. -Here's the Close Encounters homage.
We went aII the way to the end on this. Th s was the ast shot finished.
First shot turned over, Iast shot f nished.
It took that Iong to get there with it, ti Jon was happy with it.
There, a IittIe Closa Encounters moment...
...of the door open ng and the I ght coming through.
Now, this-- Yeah, th s shot that Pete was just taIking about.
It took a wh e to get there. Because I'm not a fan of CG-- Stra ght-up CG stuff.
-Which th s is, obviousIy, entireIy. -That part was.
And Ken RaIston actuaIIy heIped out.
Now, what's interest ng with th s shot is they're standing in the modeI.
OnIy a I ttIe bit around them is reaI.
Those steps are from the min ature, and then there are CG rocks in front.
So we knew f we couId seII this miniature...
...we couId seII the miniature for the rest of the movie.
And so it was very mportant to start incorporat ng...
...the miniature version of the house. I was not confident.
And there's the reaI house.
I was not confident that the miniature wouId seII as weII as it did.
Because when you see it not in the great ighting-- There's our CG Saturn.
I think it works, because you onIy show the CG Saturn a I ttIe bit.
But this is by far the most CG that's in the fiIm.
Even the bIack hoIe, you have so many more modeIs.
-Yeah. -Pract caI pieces bIowing around.
But it's hard to open the door, revea something, say, '' t's CG" ...
...and show something nobody's seen before.
Now, there's the modeI house. And this was on a motion-controI rig.
We put a IittIe card of them...
...and aII that in the windows, that's miniature.
Then that's CG background and CG Saturn.
It has much more of that Wizard of Oz feeI in the way the house is fIying.
Like a practica house that fee s tactiIe...
...as opposed to a digitaI house, which we couId have done.
Right.
-Jonah got a haircut. Space 'do. -There's Jonah's hair Iook number two.
We justified it, saying that ack of gravity has an effect on his ha r.
Yeah, but, reaIIy, don't hop around from the chapters too much.
It's not gonna stand up.
Here's a Iitt e mistake that we Iove to keep.
She reaIIy decked him in the nose and he's aImost Iaughing there.
But, Iook, she's a pro, she kept it together. She whacked him good.
And what's the emergency?
She's so good here. And they're good here too.
-We can't get back to Earth. -Shut up!
Here it is.
Oh, no.
It kind of works.
You kind of buy it, right, that she wouIdn't know? Maybe, maybe not.
It's a hard moment we worked on for a whi e, of what they wouId reaI y do.
Lisa, open up.
A Iot of discussion was about what wouId reaIIy happen.
I mean, how reaI couId you make t under the circumstances?
And her commitment reaIIy heIps here.
--and stay out of my face.
But it's an emergency.
-Is the house on fire? -No.
-Is anyone hurt? -No, but--
Then Ieave.
About this point, every 13-year-oId boy shouId be faIIing in ove with her...
...because she's just giving them such a hard time...
...and she's so pretty, and she's Iike the powerfuI woman running the house.
-The oIder s ster. -The oIder s ster.
Now, th s was-- Jon just sort of Iet Jonah go here with this.
-They were going at it. -This isn't scripted.
It was Iike, ''Wind up and go and describe what's happening."
-And I kept doing takes of this. -So aII th s stuff he does--
And then just sort of pieced a I the best stuff together, but it feeIs very rea .
And, see, we aIways have her to cut away to, wh ch is--
When you have a cutaway Iike that, it's very easy to Iet peopIe improvise.
And Dan Lebenta , the director, is very good at th s type of stuff.
-Editor. -What did I say?
-''Director.'' That's you. -Oh, yeah. That's a Freud an sI p.
We' taIk about that one Iater.
-Yeah, our editor. -I know where your head is.
He was-- He's very good at that.
And we had met on Very Bad Things...
...which he was editor of and I was an actor in.
And I was very impressed with how he puIIed together improvised stuff.
Dlnner for Flve, he puIIed stuff together.
He cut the first two seasons of Dinnerfor Flve.
-That's rght. And then Elf, he did. -That's rght.
Which was his first, ike, mainstream, frendIy comedy.
But he's very taIented at th s stuff.
So I aIways Iike to encourage improvisation...
...to heIp make moments seem more rea when possibIe...
...especia y w th kids.
Here's a cool effect .
So we actuaI y frosted the door and went between a shot of the frosted--
The wax-frosted door and the c ean door...
...and just moved a CG card, as they say.
We just did a wipe. That's reaI smoke.
Dry ice smoke we bIew under the door.
HeIp.
So everything's sort of practicaI so far here. Not a ot of CG.
And we froze-- We tented the whoIe set here, the who e bathroom.
-That's right. -And we pumped it--
That's aII wax, sprayed on.
Same guys who d d Day After Tomorrow.
I thought the frost Iooked cooI there. Like a frosted-over oId refrigerator.
And....
And we frosted the room so they cou d see the r breath and reaIIy feeI co d.
If you see the r breath, that's actuaIIy-- And the mist is actuaIIy from the frost.
She's frozen in cryonic sIeep.
From humidifiers and air condit oners.
And I was n there, we were a in our coats.
It was a nice break, it was fun.
After being on-stage for 84 days of the same thing, it's nice to...
-Yeah, to change things up. -...mix it up, so we changed seasons.
Now, Stan Winston, his guys...
...designed this thing. That's actuaIIy a statue made from a casting.
Th s, f you Iook in London, you wiII not be abIe to find this shot.
We had to cut that because it's dupI catabIe action.
-They're worried k ds are gonna start-- -RepIicating that.
Which is very difficuIt to do, by the way. As we found.
-Ha rspray doesn't do that anymore. -That ingredient's not in aerosoI cans.
Because a Iot of peopIe did dupIicate the action.
-Is that why they did it? -I aIways did it as a k d.
-So t's probabIy a good th ng. -Don't say that. Don't do it, kids.
I'm say ng to you right now, it's dangerous.
And, by the way, that k d wasn't rea y doing that on the set.
That was a CG f ame that was added.
-He just... -That was not done.
...pantomimed it and the fIame was added.
There's a Iight that went on for interactive ight.
Kids, he did not do it, you shouIdn't do t.
No, absoIuteIy not.
So there's our IittIe CG window, ittIe star CG.
And behind Jonah, that's a reaI window...
...with a ve vet and pinpricks and Iight behind it.
We shouId taIk about Avy Kaufman too.
-Yeah. She heIped us f nd these kids. -She was rea y great.
It came up on a Dinnerfor Five with Kevin Smith...
...when Jon was asking him who he cast--
No, first Kevin asked me how I found the girI Mak Vega for Made.
Because he was Iooking for the Jersey Girl girI.
Then Iater I asked h m how t went.
He used Avy and he said, " If you ever have to find a kid, she's the best.''
And she's found-- I don't wanna say HaIey JoeI Osment. I think she d d.
-I can't remember the names. -From Bobby Flscher, the kid.
-Just an amazing track record. -She knows aII the kids.
And she's a great casting director in her own right.
-She did four mov es this year. -Has a great eye...
-...for what you want. -Not just kids.
-AbsoIuteIy. -She was wonderfuI.
Was reaIIy instrumentaI in finding Josh and Jonah.
Now, that's a CG shadow, because we cou dn't get the reaI shadow.
-After trying practica Iy. -We tried practicaI.
-Then Jon y eIded to the CG shadow. -Which was the way to go anyway.
Some things, it's perfect for.
And here comes the baby-bot.
This was designed by Stan Winston. Shane was under the stairs.
There's actua Iy-- CG was used to remove rods...
...and the s its that were used to operate the puppet.
But otherwise, this is just a puppet operated through remote controI...
-Pract caI Iitt e modeI. -...and rods under the f oor.
At Ieast I got one.
-And that's Frank Oz's vo ce. -This was a big one too.
There was a Iot of discussion about the voice of the robot.
-A Iot of probIems. -Discussion about the "beyotch."
A Iot of anxiety as weII. Was there?
-Yeah. It was-- -No, it was never--
It was on the ist of the things that you have to watch for the PG rating.
Right. But they never said anything about it. We were just worried.
The onIy two bad words in it is "dick" and he says ''beyotch."
And it's amazing that peopIe have, Iike, reacted:
''T he Ianguage was harsh at t mes.''
Some parents. Others are Iike, "What are they taIking about?"
Th s is on the DVD extras, which s a cooI thing to watch...
-...the pan-up of the actor in the suit. -Right.
The top suit p ece and the Iegs and the arms are added.
But, again, it was integrat ng the practicaI--
It was using the practicaI and integrating the CG to augment...
...as opposed to take the center stage of a shot.
Those were reaI fIames shooting out...
-...of the feet and back. -I shot that.
-Which one? The feet? -The feet.
That was a spIinter un t, we had to get shots. So I just ran over and got shots.
This was yours. This was your shot, rght?
-Yeah. -This reveaI?
Pete did that. That was a good shot.
Was that--? The POV was yours or the other one? The POV was yours.
The moving POV that came around from the couch.
-From beh nd the couch. -We needed it.
-In the cutting room. -That's the great thing about Dan...
...and Jon's h story. Dan wiII just catch stuff earIy.
And when you're edit ng during the process, which aII fiIms do...
...he's abIe to caII and say, ''W e need a POV of this robot.''
And since we were on a Iot, we couId run over there, ook at it and....
So you just can make a decis on quickIy.
So Iook at this shot. See, now, the Iegs are CG, the feet are rea ...
...and the body and the arms are reaI.
So they were a man's Iegs-- Now, that's aII reaI.
See, each shot it's different. That's everything rea ...
...is reaI in that shot, with a remote-contro head.
But the stuff with h m running around was just a chest p ece.
So we kept the chest the same, and then I wanted the feet rea ...
...so that it wouId interact with the ground properIy.
I aIways don't Iike how fake--
They a ways Iook Iike weight ess marionettes.
So if forced the robot to have rea Iaws of phys cs associated w th it.
And they wou d paint in the Iegs. It was a Iot of troubIe.
Stan Winston Studios did a CG test for us orginaIIy. It worked very weII.
It took a wh e for Sony Imageworks to get up to speed with that...
-...and find a way to do t. -PracticaI on that side of WaIter...
...but CG on the other side.
-Of what? The arm? -Of the c aw.
And once they got up to speed, some of their best work in this movie...
-...was the robot running. -This is reaI, except for sparks.
-That was reaI, yeah. -Even the sparks on it?
Jon BeIyeu buiIt a big, oId, very dangerous thing. That's CG.
-Yeah, him fIying out. -So that's a reaI torso.
ReaI torso rght here and fake Iegs.
Jon Be yeu bIew up everything.
This was an afterthought, remember? We added that bit.
It was a fun movie to be on the set of...
...because nearIy every day you're expIoding something...
...or demo sh ng something, it was--
-Here's the robot s ipping. -It's pretty fun.
-Remember, we Iiked it? -Kept that.
And it's the bam-bot smashing through the window.
We fIipped the couch.
It was pretty-- It was pretty....
Yeah, t was scary. Every day, something--
There was a ways a speech saying, "Let's get our heads in this.''
-There was a ot of safety speeches. -Because that was rea stuff smashing.
That's a CG robot, by the way, going through. It integrated very weII.
I Iike the fIames. The f ames are reaI, on the fIoor.
It gives it a reaI T2 Iook orwhatever. A IittIe Termlnator.
So as you can see, the set's been gnarIed up qu te a bit here.
So you can't reaIIy go back and--
We reaIIy had to shoot in order because of that.
And you degrade the set as it's needed.
It's aIso a chaIIenge. You do have to cover yourseIf weII...
...because to go backwards and get shots is a diff cuIt thing.
-Very hard. -You have to rebuiId portions of sets.
AIthough we had two sets now, because the next scene...
... s the Tsouris-3 gravity thing on the g mba .
And we wouId use that gimbaI set.
We'd aIways match it, but somet mes we were abIe to grab shots...
...before we smashed t up.
Because if something smashed up on one set...
...we wouId have to go to the other set and do it.
-Jon's homage to Westerns. -To what? Is it?
-Sergio Leone? -Yeah, a Iitt e bit. Just for a moment.
We taIked about doing more, but it never was rea y done.
Like, shots of the eyes. But, again, t sort of betrayed....
-The reaI ty of the moment. -The drama of what was happening.
And you don't wanna get too styIized and fun with stuff.
Now, so this is our first shot in the tiIting set.
Jonah was actuaIIy standing in a set that was tiIt ng as we were going.
And that thing was scary, man. It made a Iot of weird noises.
It was terrifying to ook at.
It was scarier from the outside than the inside.
-Yeah, I agree. -It was so huge.
But see a I the books fa Iing and everything--?
This whoIe set was tiIt ng. The kids, we painted out their safety harnesses.
There were, Iike, wires underneath them...
...preventing them, in case they feII, from fa ing out.
If you anchor the camera to something that moves...
...the horizon doesn't change, and it doesn't Iook Iike the house is tiIting...
...but the environment is affected, so that's why everything is fIying.
So the camera is just boIted down on the set. You tiIt the set...
... t doesn't Iook ike it's t Iting, but everything moves.
-It was-- -It was an dea Jon had earIy.
From an oId Ernie Kovacs bit.
It was done for comedy. Here we're doing it for the excitement.
There's our miniature house with a CG pIanet beh nd it.
Here comes our robot, in the tiIted set aIso.
This was a ittIe unwieIdy.
Yeah, this was reaI y difficuIt to do.
And this begins Jonah's wirework too.
We had two different guys. We had John AIexander...
...who was very eIegant with h s movement and had good baIance...
...and then we had a stuntman who was just a tank...
...who cou d aIso wear the su t and just run through things.
It was a good combination.
Was just happy to go anywhere you pointed h m.
So aII of this stuff with him stumbIing and everything...
...you wou dn't have gotten that w th a CG robot.
The fact that t was a dude in a suit...
... t sort of forced him to be awkward in a reaI way, an unpredictabIe way.
That's what we ca it on a set, ''a dude n a suit.''
-Here's Jonah hanging. -You wou d caI for that...
...as opposed to the moIds. How many robots were there, five?
-There's a Iot. Yeah. -Of aII d fferent types.
And that IittIe-- There was this ittIe handsaw that did work.
The faIIing.
That was a reaI-- Him faIIing-- Jonah. --was him on a rotisserie.
That we had to cut together.
One thing that was cut that was a gag we aIways Ioved...
...was when Jonah's pressed aga nst the gIass here...
...the scene was to continue and a Iamp was supposed to f y and burst out.
-We even shot, I think, some-- -A p ate for it.
-Yeah, and then it just never worked. -The timing didn't work.
This was an afterthought, sending Lisa down the stairs.
It was an opportunity for a Iaugh.
We were Iike, ''How wouId we get L sa downstairs?'
Stan Winston's Iike, "Just drop her down there."
''You probabIy get one take. Just go."
I Iove Jonah's reaction here. Watch this, how he gets aII scared.
I Iove that, man. I ive for that.
It's those IittIe moments that heIp seII it.
Is she okay?
This is their first time seeing the L sa statue for rea .
-Somehow, we shot the upstairs Iater. -That's right.
We were jumping back and forth a bit on this...
...because there was a different set for upstairs.
And it was eerie Iooking at her, man, because it Iooked Iike her.
It just Iooked remarkabIy I ke her.
She did not Iike that. Kristen d d not Iike--
She was a IittIe wigged out by it.
Because they painted it to match her exact y.
And here we go down the stairs. This was yet another set.
Right? This was the staircase set.
There had to be a practicaI eIement you couId see at the top of the sta rs...
...as opposed to the basement. When we're in it, it was its own set.
Here it's just a IittIe piece of the ceiIing and the waII.
This was the stage that, when the waII fIies off at the end of the movie...
...for the bIack hoIe...
...we cIeared this set out.
This set was behind the green screen and that waII fIew out and...
-...ripped through the green screen. -Crushed a set about 40 feet away.
Thank God we cIeared out the peopIe as a resuIt of the safety meeting...
...because sometimes it s no joke.
We were doing a Iot of aggressive stuff, and it does get dangerous.
It was-- It was pretty--
There were wires that were on there, but you aIways don't take chances.
There were wires that were supposed to Iet it onIy fIy a few inches.
-And they popped immediateIy. -And it just f ew across the room.
Here's a Iitt e added character after you saw some stuff.
-He got more screen time. -Yeah.
That was a IittIe rod puppet that was shot at, I think, 12 frames.
Aga n, we tried to keep it practicaI.
This is the scene where they weren't acting Iike she was coId enough...
...so I put ice down their pants.
-Remember that? -Yes, I do.
But I put ce down my own pants too, just to make t a I right.
-Just to make it okay. -I don't know if it heIped.
It gave them a story.
It made them struggIe a Iitt e.
Nothing Iike some ice down the trousers.
Iwo Jima shot.
She Iooks Iike a saint in a CathoIic....
There's a certain-- There's some reIigious overtones here, I'm sure.
I don't wanna be here when she wakes up.
Look at how Jonah's Iooking at her. I Iove that. He had some face, huh?
He was pretty fascinated with it.
Are you crazy? That th ng's messed up.
He's a character, that kid.
The whoIe thing w th Jonah was he did a movie caIIed Around tha Band.
He had to work, ike, a month on it.
It was an ndependent fiIm. He worked ha f of the shoot, a month.
And the parents heard, "Oh, th s movie's--''
He Iived in New York. "This thing is gonna work."
I'm not pIaying.
It started shooting in the summer. D dn't we start in the summer?
They said, ''It'd be good, before he goes back to schooI."
He got the part, they didn't reaIize he had to work six months on this.
And he was Iiving on the set.
His parents aren't showbiz parents, they didn't know the whoIe acting driII.
But the kid wanted to do it, man, and he was good.
-He's reaIIy g fted. -He was good.
It's because of their hours. You can onIy work so many hours a day...
-...so it stretches over a Iot of days. -Stretches out a Iong time.
And he spent-- What wou d Dax say?
-He spent, Iike, a third of his Iife, or-- -Thirty percent of his Iife.
Something crazy.
-Not onIy that-- -Because he's 6 years oId.
-He grew an inch and he Iost teeth. -That's rght.
That was another thing that was very-- I think was very smart...
...was we cast their teeth, their mouths...
...before we started shooting in case they Iost teeth.
And, at one point, I think Jonah was missing four teeth.
-Two on top, two on bottom. -So they had muItipIe fIippers...
...top and bottom fI ppers in.
So overnight we wouId get a fIipper pIate made.
We had a dent st on caII constantIy.
Andrea Corson. My dent st, actuaIIy.
-Joya's friend. -Yep.
She came through. And we never missed a day of shoot ng.
Because you hustIe and you spend a few grand to get a I that stuff done...
...but a day of shooting is Iike $150,000.
So by not missing a day of shooting, you're saving a Iot of money.
Here comes another Sp eIberg-insp red...
...reveaI of the I ght.
I Iooked at Close Encounters a coupIe times before this.
And so much was done through Iight because they didn't have CGI then.
So much was done through sound and Iight and shaking...
...and movement of cameras. We reaIIy tried to borrow from that.
And, again, this is practicaI Iight and we just sort of buiId a track...
...and put a Iight on t and move it. So it's just, ogic appIies here.
How you think you shouId do the scene. As opposed to us ng...
...a sorts of new tricks, you just put a ight on a track and move it.
A Iitt e ght, a Iitt e smoke. And it works, man.
It works.
And now we started shaking the set and the g asses started fa ing out.
The ti es start faIIing off the waII.
And there's our first reveaI through the window.
You get a gIimpse of the miniature sh p.
The miniature Zorgon sh p. It was about, what, 8 feet Iong?
-The actuaI ship? Yeah. -The actuaI ship.
-About 8 feet Iong. -It was 10th scaIe.
And the first reveaI is coming up...
...here.
From the outs de we do this big boom up and....
Or boom down. I forget.
Now, this shot was the shot I was most worried about.
Because if you bought the ship in this shot here, this boom up....
If you bought the shot here, you wouId buy t when you saw it outside.
-It was a I mode s there. -A miniature house and miniature ship.
And we used darkness a ot to heIp disguise t.
And I don't know if any of you out there Iistening...
...have been to the Museum of NaturaI History in New York...
...but there was a dispIay...
...of a squid fighting a sperm whaIe in one of the cases.
It was the scariest thing to me growing up...
...because, through the gIass, it was so dark and murky...
...that you couId bareIy make out the eye of the squid and the....
You know, the tentacIes of the squ d and the eye of the whaIe.
ProbabIy, w th the ights on, the thing wouId Iook Iike nothing.
But I was so scared of that thing...
...because it was so dark, and I taIked to Joe Bauer...
...and the peopIe who were invo ved, and I was ike, "As we Iight it...
...Iet's aIways keep t right on the edge of not being abIe to see it."
And then-- You know, iIIuminate it with expIosions and th ngs...
...but the Iess you see it, the more it's in your mag nation.
That was a ruIe of thumb for the Zorgons as weII ater...
...for the Zorgons themseIves.
And just think it's--
To me, it's the thing I'm most excited about in the movie...
... s this miniature work...
...and the way it's ntegrated with the CG debrs and the CG expIosions.
I think this was done by DigitaI Dimension, a smaIIer house.
They did a great job with the CG augmentation.
And they were the ones who designed the starfieId n the back.
-What the actuaI Iook of space was. -What the Iook of space was.
What the heck does that mean?
It's funny, because you work with a big house Iike Sony...
...and you work with a sma house Iike D gitaI Dimension...
...and a ot of t mes the smaI er houses hustIe more...
...and, you know, they get a Iitt e more nspired...
...and they reaIIy set the pace.
And Sony was keeping up with them at times.
So t was an interest ng mix.
The CGI speciaI effects...
...that whoIe worId is changing now.
It used to be that you had ILM and Imageworks...
...and a coup e of-- Rhythm & Hues, some of the bigger houses doing it aII.
Now there are a Iot of IittIe houses popp ng up.
-Very compet tive, have great artists. -ReaIIy ta ented.
A Iot of guys who eft Iarger houses and wiII fight for work. They're great.
You don't have that big overhead and stuff. I found that on Elf as weII.
We worked with Rhythm & Hues, they d d a great job...
...but the smaIIer houses, sometimes they fight a I ttIe harder...
...and work a IittIe harder to prove themseIves.
And they don't have that big overhead to dea with.
So it's interest ng to watch how the business is chang ng so much.
''Rest on--''
"Rest on standing AstroTurf."
The kids fighting. Here comes the big reveaI of Dax.
-This was done with, actuaIIy-- -This was a tough shot to do.
Yeah. This was actuaIIy Dax's stunt doubIe...
...on a rot sserie in his back.
We hit h m up against the gIass.
-That was a CG... -In the refIection.
...refIection that was done by putting a camera, actuaIIy, next to it.
-You cou dn't have a reaI refIection. -Getting the eIement and comping it in.
I Iove this moment.
Just a IittIe bit of humor.
A ttIe tension, then a IittIe reIease of Iaughter.
It kind of doesn't bIow the rea ity, but it's , Iike, unexpected.
This was aII-- I was just feeding them ines here, remember?
We were just trying different Iines, then we'd try cutting t different ways.
That smoke s so great. And there he is.
Again, it's a stuntman on the rotissere, then there's a handoff, basicaIIy.
-A reaI. None of this s CG. -Yeah. This is the stuntman...
...gets pushed a I the way in here off the rotisserie...
-...to where he steps. -We remove the rig.
There's a rod that comes out of his back.
So that was aII....
With the reaI star fieId too. That was the star-fieId backing.
The smoke, and the kids' reactions are so great.
And the music, Debney's music.
Here he is, wa king. There's a costume buiIt by Laura Jean Shannon...
...who we met on Made.
-That's rght. -She worked w th us on Made and Elf.
She des gned W 's costume n Elf and the whoIe thing.
AII the eIves' costumes.
-And your eIf costume. -That's rght.
And we reaIIy wanted it to Iook Iike a combination of an oId d ving suit...
...and a New York City Fire Department firefighter's uniform.
Were the two paradigms that we were go ng off of.
EspeciaIIy when he took the top off. And we wanted it...
...so he had, ke, cargo pants and a T-shirt.
And it wouId Iook ike a fireman who took his stuff off.
And she got it. Because the f rst designs were rea y high-tech.
You go to outside contractors, and the actuaI guys who bu It this...
...are the same guys who buiIt my spacesuit from Deep Impact.
I was an actor.
And they tend to go h gh-tech. They tend to go with what's reaI.
We wanted to go w th something a I ttIe more--
Those bIues are from ChesIey Boneste ...
...the paintings we were ooking at. Has a rea vintage Iook to it.
It doesn't Iook rea . It Iooks Iike something from oId sci-fi.
But it feeIs Iike it fits n the worId that's been created...
...of the ships with fins, and the sort of 1850s version...
...of what we thought space was.
And what the aerodynamics might be in space...
...and aII the mechanicaI eIements on the suit.
If you Iook at oId sci-fi, before we were in space...
...they had a much different take on things.
And we sort of wanted to preserve that.
There's the shaker set, the house. You can see, everything's moving.
-It affected their performances. -It was just basicaIIy on a joyst ck.
And at a moment's cue, it wouId be fired up.
You had issues with d aIogue because it was Ioud...
...but you couId just crank the joystick and just rock the set.
Th s is interesting. We had troubIe c earing things.
They wouIdn't Iet us use a macaron -and-cheese brand...
...because kids were cook ng it. AII the different brands were worried.
But the charcoaI-- The Iighter-fIuid company was Iike:
-"Oh, yeah, show it." -"AbsoIuteIy."
We're I ke, "We Iight the couch up with it."
-"Oh, yeah. It's okay." -" No worries.''
They said that we're using it specificaIIy for what it's designed for:
As a starter for a fire.
So it's up to you what you wanna burn with it.
-That was cooI. -As Iong as you're not dr nk ng it.
Yeah, that's right. There's a I the ghts.
We had to communicate that the I ghts were going off in the house...
...and the ights turning off...
...wouId then make the house somehow nv sibIe to the Zorgons.
Who just basicaIIy see heat.
-Wh ch I guess sort of makes sense. -Heat seeker.
I guess that se Is right there.
A Iot of discussion-- There's the b cyc e fIoat ng around.
We kept adding the bicycIe in to set up the IittIe dropping bicycIe...
...at the end, a IittIe payoff.
I aIways Iiked t f oating around Iike an eIectron in orbit.
It's very interest ng watching--
Oh, here's another sequence that's trimmed out for the UK version.
This is dup icatabIe act on here.
Even though Kingsford was--
-They didn't mind. American company. -Excited.
Don't try this at home aIso, kids.
No, you don't-- Because this wiII happen, t's not good.
Don't do it. UnIess your house is in space.
But this wiII set your house on fire and you wiII be in grave danger...
...so do not try this at home.
This was under contro ed circumstances...
...w th peopIe with fire extinguishers around.
-And basica y we had buiIt-- -And a fireproof couch.
It's a fireproof couch, so that you can do mu tipIe takes w th it.
And there that couch wouId drop, remember?
-We did a handoff. -It dropped and went to a handoff.
That's a miniature house, by the way.
And those are aII m niatures. And there's a couch on a--
You'II see in the bonus materia s-- Yeah. It shows how we did this shot.
I was impressed with that p ece they put together.
Yeah, it reaIIy heIps teII the story...
...of a ot of different teams working together--
To make this work.
And, again, this is what Jon had taIked about, where maybe...
...okay, things shouIdn't theoret caIIy burn n space...
...but with the emotion of what's going on...
...there were decisions made of:
"If they're breath ng, there's a r, so things can burn.''
-So you sort of set the ruIes. -We made our own ruIes.
Then they go fIying out the roof Iater and don't exp ode too...
-...when they rescue WaIter. -Or impIode, I guess.
Like in Outland.
No, there's no pressure, so you pop.
You ever see Outland? It's a pretty good movie.
-Dax was a great choice for this too. -Yeah.
As we had gone through....
You sort of have your traditionaI Iists. This roIe was a pretty pivotaI roIe...
...because he comes n at a time when you want him in the fiIm.
You've spent a ot of time with the kids.
And there's an energy that the movie takes on when Dax winds up coming n.
We had a great meeting with him, and he made a Iot of sense.
The way it was written orginaIIy was a Iitt e drier.
-Not drier, but a Iitt e.... -More heroic, kind of.
Yeah, and the humor was a IittIe-- Just not our sty e.
We brought his voice. I aIways ike to Iet somebody bring their voice...
...to something, especiaIIy when they're do ng comedy.
And so we kept within the parameters of the pIot.
But we knew we wanted somebody that you kind of didn't know...
... f he was a safe guy or not, with k nd of I ke a....
You know, not--
The kids didn't know whether they Iiked him, but he was being heIpfuI.
But t was aImost ke you're inviting a so dier into....
The Amercan GIs into the French chaIet in the countrys de...
...during WorId War II.
It's Iike, you're happy that they're there...
...the samura , but you wanna hide your daughter too.
So t's sort of that sad situation, that strange ba ance of:
"He's heIpfuI, but is he a probIem?" And keep it a IittIe ambiguous.
And, of course, WaIter is reacting to him...
...where he knows there's something he don't Iike about him.
WeII, it's because it's him.
You're aIways most criticaI of yourseIf.
So he's sensing something he doesn't Iike.
The IittIe brother is drawn to him, feeIs ike he I kes him for some reason.
-Because of that energy. -Nicer version of WaIter.
We're starting to-- A more advanced, evoIved version of his brother.
So we're trying to set up here, without fIagging t too much...
...the twist that comes at the end, that they're the same person.
So the Iogic is that, just so that-- To set it sort of straight.
The short version is...
...they pIayed the game. They found the game in the basement, pIayed it...
...WaIter wished his brother away, then he couIdn't take any more turns...
...and was trapped in space for 15 years, wh ch he ment ons before...
...and figures out a way to go through, he says here, "a time sphincter.''
He goes through bIack hoIes.
We've estabIished the rea ity of wormhoIes and bIack hoIes.
Of course, it's done here, you know....
I tried to make a joke out of it, so that peopIe wou dn't see t coming--
That's the biggest piece of information in terms of justifying the ogic.
Is that, ''I traveIed through a time sphincter."
So he traveIed through time to get there.
The idea was that he was kicking around space...
...surviv ng Zorgons and things...
...and he eventuaIIy Iearned the secret of trave ing through time.
And in traveIing through time, he was abIe to come back--
-Before the w sh had happened. -Before the w sh happened, to he p--
-Change the course of events. -To change the course of the game.
So he doesn't wish himse f away, which he succeeds in doing.
At the p votaI moment of the shooting star.
-Here's another ittIe moment. -The first moment was--
They have the same card. So there's one cIue.
The f rst was when he puIIs off the thing, says, "BIow out the piIot Iight."
He says, ''Go downsta rs and bIow out the furnace." WeII, how does he know?
-Because he Iived in the house. -That's kind of--
But the fun th ng about it s...
... t seems Iike t's IogicaI, but, again, it's something that he knew.
-Here's one-- -So there's deIicate ones.
We a so have him finding the matches, which we trimmed out.
Not much was cut out of this movie, by the way.
''Whose brother are you, his or mine?'
That was a IittIe pIay on words.
And he reaIIy has to think about it for a m nute.
I'm just gonna go. I fee Iike a third wheeI anyways.
I mean, you guys are such a tight, unified team here.
Dax do ng h s thing.
I gotta teII you, the house Iooks fantastic.
This is the first somewhat serious roIe Dax has done too, which was nice.
He was very funny in Wlthout a Paddle and, of course, in Punk'd.
But here was an-- He was a guy from the GroundIings too.
WiII FerreII was from there. I was from Second City.
I trained there and Improv OIympic. Vince trained at Improv OIympic.
I tend to Iike to work with peopIe who have an improv background...
...because they br ng a Iot of ideas and they don't Iook at it...
...prec ous ke an actor wou d.
And, in particuIar, working with the kids, he was great...
...because he cou d have a Iot of fun with them...
-...and throw them some curvebaIIs. -Yeah.
And be ab e to work on his feet. And they were great too...
-They went with it. -...as you've seen.
And so a Iot of good things came from it.
So I just iked that.
But when you work with somebody with a background in improvisat on...
...a Iot of times they don't have the comfort zone in being s ncere.
If they're not being irreverent or getting Iaughs, they're--
Yeah, I know how to pIay the game.
They don't know for sure that they're gonna be compeIIing.
So there was a Iot of trust it took.
But I think that, certainIy, what peopIe have observed about it...
...and a ot of the critics wrote that he did a rea Iy good job in that.
And I th nk he was happy about that because there were times...
...when it's easier to be funny but he pIayed it sincereIy...
...and took t seriousIy.
And you don't wanna come off Iooking stupid.
Sometimes you Iook stupid when you're s ncere.
-That's rght. -If the movie is cIoying.
But I th nk that, tonaI y. the movie kind of works weII.
Here's them fighting. Th s cou d be me and Vince in Made.
-Or Swlngers. -It's an homage to Swingers and Made.
Two inmates screaming at each other.
I Iiked that k nd of humor. The aud ences hated it.
-PeopIe wouId hate-- -We worked a Iot on this scene...
-...through previews-- -There was a Iot more screaming.
I miss it. I do miss it.
There's a version where there's a Iot more yeIIing.
-Audiences wouId get a ittIe fed up. -They're ike, " Enough."
PeopIe wouId write on the cards, "The kids are yeII ng at each other."
''Why are they screaming at each other so much?''
"I'm sick of them yeIIing at each other."
Jeez, t won't stop! PIease.
Okay, Iet's p ay the game.
F ne.
Won't stop spinning.
So I guess what we're imp ying here...
...is that the game, because he moved the piece...
...it's Iike you're tiIting a pinbaII machine. There's the yeIIow card.
Sort of a soccer homage.
Does it mean me?
-It's an homage? -I guess so.
To the oveIy sport of soccer that we Iove so much.
That Jon and I are such fans of.
-He's yanked out. -So here's our big o d--
That was the Riddlck rig, used on The Chronicles of Riddlck...
...another financiaIIy successfuI fi m.
Maybe it was the rg.
It was the rig we used.
Okay. Now, wasn't this orginaIIy a different scene? And it was--
What was that? There was someth ng eIse. Was it the gravity baII was here?
-There was a-- He throws the-- -He's gonna--
He throws the Iamp up. The Iamp goes and hits him in the head.
It was much more eIaborate.
It was outside, there was a whoIe zero-G thing, but we had no money.
So th s was an area where we--
So th s is something where it was Iike:
''I got an idea, Iet's have t aII happen off camera."
Like Luke SkywaIker underwater in the trash compactor.
Right.
As Iong as when they come out of t, they're reaIIy seI ng it.
Remember how Luke SkywaIker came out from underwater.
Yeah. When that thing was-- That ittIe one-eyed--
And just to pIay off of Jonah poss bIy Iosing his brother.
So he heIped seII t here...
...and the mus c seIIs it and the shots seII t, the angIes.
And then when they smash through...
...and and on the ground, it ooks Iike they've been through a Iot.
And this was the pract caI tank that bIew smoke.
And it was just throwing them up through a hoIe...
...and bringing them back down off w re rgs.
-Yeah. There was a wire-- -So t was reaIIy done with--
Sped it up a I ttIe bit. But it was Mike Justus, who was Dax's doubIe.
And Reid, who is our stunt coordinator Tommy Harper's son...
...who doubIed for WaIter, who is a young stuntman. A stunt kid.
-And then here we cut to the actors. -Cut back to them.
You okay?
We're approach ng the Iow point.
Now, here, Dax, in keeping with the whoIe brother trajectory--
The astronaut as WaIter.
--in this scene, aII he's trying to do is try ng to get them not to argue.
Because he knows this is the moment...
...when the wishing star is coming back.
The shooting star is gonna come.
If he's angry enough, he wiII w sh for someth ng he shouIdn't wish for.
So he's just trying to say, "Hey, get out of your....
Don't get emotionaI. It's not so bad. It was fun, going up there.
Let's puII it together.''
And then he gets the goId card.
And what's kind of interesting is...
...he thinks he didn't do the job...
...and that's why he goes running up the stairs.
He thinks he wished his brother away.
But in the heat of the moment he ended up w sh ng for a footbaII.
ProbabIy as a resuIt of the nfIuence of Dax...
...coming back through the time sphincter...
...was abIe to, n that moment, infIuence him just enough.
I Iove how seriousIy we're taking this. But we had to take it seriousIy.
-There was hours of discussion. -The time sphincter. I Iike that.
-That is your biggest-- -I'm very proud to have coined that.
I wiII take credit for it. So if "time sphincter'' is ever used aga n....
Here comes our s ster back, with just a IittIe bit of frost n her eyebrows.
We shou d cIarify that f ve turns--
A Iot of peopIe have asked about it. -- s f ve compIete turns.
Which stiII, I think, bareIy adds up, or maybe it does.
I think our math is right on, but....
CaII Dan LebentaI and he w I expIain it to you.
FeeI free to send him etters.
If he's wrong, you can teII him how many turns it actuaIIy is.
Tenacious D out there.
K.G.
Here we go. He's happy, very competitive.
-Good roII. -Good roII?
Oh, he's a runaway train now, huh?
I meant great.
-And there we go. -He knows. It's goId.
Best card in the whoIe game.
The goId card. We wanted it to Iook Iike the oId WiIIy Wonka magic ticket.
That was the thing I toId the....
You can see the refIection on his face when the card turns there.
RusseII Bobbitt, our prop guy, who buiIt the game.
The game was designed, by the way-- The actua game was....
It was a board game in the script.
L ke in Jumanjl, where it's just dice.
Not even ike Jumanji, because just cards popped out of the side.
And it wasn't magicaI at aII. There it is. The game ends up in the Iiving room.
Danny.
And then we wanted to switch it to a tin toy.
So Mike and I had meetings. Mike Riva and I had meetings.
Then when we hired PhiI Saunders, he started coming up with drawings...
...of how to make it a w ndup tin toy...
...that aIso couId function as a board game...
...where two ships cou d compete.
And so we did research, what the oId toys Iooked I ke.
It Iooked I ke one of those oId horse games--
-The horseracing games. -The horses were on the track.
-I Iike the Iook of-- -Like a Iot of Japanese books.
Do you remember the game in Seabiscult?
There's a IittIe game with IittIe stee baIIs that he's pIaying with...
...that used to beIong to his son, that Jeff Bridges was pIay ng with.
That had kind of a coo Iook that I ment oned, and we Iooked at that.
EventuaIIy we arrved at the design of that sort of stamped-out steeI...
...I ke, Japanese postwar tin toy.
And then he designed the box.
So PhiI Saunders actuaIIy did the artwork.
But after many meetings and discussions about how many spaces...
...and turns, the bridge and that-- I think it's in the extras too...
...they taIk about the design of the game.
And then we Ianded on this toy that just, Iike, was so compeIIing...
...that we couId actuaI y shoot the opening sequence of t.
TeII me what you w shed for.
And think t's just reaIIy, reaIIy cooI.
I have one of those dummy props at my house...
...that my 4-year-o d oves to stare at.
Here we are. We go in. He thinks he's wished away.
He thinks he didn't do his job.
This gets a b g augh because it's reIieving a ot of the tension, I think.
It just shows you that it's not aIways the funniest joke.
Laughter comes when you reIieve...
...the stress or anx ety n an aud ence.
We had a Iot of stress and anxiety.
We were hoping-- Say ng, " I hope Brett Favre has a good year."
Because he says it's s gned by Brett Favre.
Origina y we were trying to get him--
WaIter was gonna be wearing a U.S.A. basketbaII jersey.
But we couIdn't get it cIeared or it didn't Iook good or something.
It was good thing, because that was the year they impIoded.
Brett was kind enough to s gn a bunch of baIIs for us.
And it's actuaIIy his signature. That's the reaI thing.
-Brett Favre footbaII. -But it isn't good that we didn't ...?
We sa d, ''How many do you need?" We were Iike, "Send us 12."
-He was Iike, "Come on, guys." -"These wiII wind up on eBay."
-He said, '' ' g ve you three.'' -Here, Dax did a good scene here.
We needed additionaI coverage of the c ose-ups of the kids...
...and we came and shot this whiIe we were shoot ng another scene...
...to heIp rea Iy emotionaIIy seII the scene.
We don't have shots that are as tight as the ones coming up.
But, again, our editor Dan was--
And hadn't shot them originaIIy. As the scene was evoIving, he said:
''You rea y wanna be on them and you reaIIy wanna be in on them."
This is the one time where we wanna get tight.
I don't Iike overuse of c ose-ups, but if you hoId back a Iot...
...when you get reaIIy tight, it means a Iot.
So th s is what we shot orig na Iy.
This size coverage and I think an additionaI s ze in.
-And then we added this. -And then we got into this stuff.
And this and the shot of Danny coming up.
And that was shot by UeIi Steiger.
-And this here. -Did a great job.
He had a great team too.
That was when we had two units.
We shouId Iist aII our DPs, because onIy GuiIIermo was cred ted.
We had Enrique, UeIi and GuiIIermo, aII work ng at the same time.
Which is amazing, the caIiber of peopIe that we had.
Yeah, they were aII reaIIy, rea Iy good.
So gracious to come and do secondary units...
...and compIementary units with us.
But any one of them in the r own rght.
And they aII have done features.
But sometimes DPs wiII pick up some extra work Iike that...
...and you're very ucky when you get DPs of that caIiber.
Now, this scene was a reaIIy interest ng scene...
...because t was Iater c ted by a ot of peopIe...
...from the studio as a scene that tota y gave away...
...that he was the brother.
-Right. -But what we wouId aIways say is:
"The first time you read the script, did you see it coming?''
If you didn't , you gotta go on that. Once you know the information...
...you then get overIy criticaI as you're working on it.
Now that you know it, you can say:
''We , this g ves too much, this gives too much."
And it was reaIIy difficuIt.
You gotta have enough that it doesn't seem out of the bIue...
...but you aIso want it to be not so much that you see it tota y coming.
And it was a rea y tough scene to do.
We wound up shooting a bunch of different ways and times...
...so we figured, " Let's just have the stuff n case t's too much.
-We have to have Iess or more.'' -This is a great modeI shot here...
...with them gIued in.
Th s wasn't a shot orginaIIy that-- They weren't supposed to be in this.
It was something we added them--
You added that shot because there was no--
UnfortunateIy, we didn't shoot properIy a point of v ew of the Iiving room.
-It was, it's just didn't Iook that good. -Right, so the reverse of--
-The puIIback was the big reveaI. -That became the reveaI...
-...expIa ning what happened. -I reaIIy ike that shot.
It Iooks good, and we have the bike in the foreground.
And then here's the fun part. Kids getting to wreck their house.
Th s is sort of Iike a 10-year-o d fantasy movie.
It's everything you wanna do when you're 10.
This just happened on the set. Th s wasn't in the script.
He couIdn't break that damn broom. It's hard to break a broom.
And it was aII cut up.
RusseII cut this stuff. "Why are we do ng this?" I Iike that.
-He just Ioves to participate. -Here comes the sister.
To me, th s stuff's funny. And it's because--
It's funny because she's pIaying it totaIIy straight...
...and just totaIIy buying into the whoIe thing.
Boy, t's nice when she comes back in the mov e.
When you're stuck in one house w th a few characters...
...you reaIIy appreciate the energies of the characters.
Five characters, which is pretty rare for a movie of this size...
...and budget, to onIy have five characters in the movie.
Look at that thing going. Perfect. I Iove that fire.
Just Iooks big enough to be dangerous.
She's Iike, "What are you do ng?!"
L sa's back.
And they hug her.
You're okay. You're okay, Lisa.
Get off me! Get off me! Try and f nd the fire extinguisher!
-No, Lisa, wait. No, Lisa, wait. -No, Lisa, no.
-Stop! Lisa, don't . -The Zorgons are attracted to fire.
Lisa, stop.
Here it is. Very heroic moment.
That's them again. This isn't scripted stuff. This s them just go ng at it.
Here comes Dax. I think this is improvised too, what Dax did here.
He did eight takes and just threw different tags at each one.
It's I ke an improv game. You just keep coming in.
Don't give him t me to think. Just keep the camera roIIing:
''Keep com ng in, keep say ng a Iine and eaving."
He'd run out and we'd say, "Run back n and say something eIse."
With improv, what's funny is that...
...once you stop reaIIy thinking about what you're saying...
...you just start saying things off the top of your head...
...and it's coming from some weird subconscious pIace.
The funniest stuff tends to come from there.
You know how hard t is to do what she's doing there?
-To seII that? -That's the worst.
To seII that you're rea zing everything, you don't know what's going on.
-The Zorgons. -What's a Zorgon?
It was a very tough scene for her. She did a great job.
Here comes our shaker set.
There's a good piece on the harpoons n the extras. They're reaI.
Yeah. Those are reaI harpoons. Those were dangerous things.
There was a Iot of ways to get hurt on this mov e.
And thank heavens nothing went wrong. Nobody got hurt.
Nobody got hurt. It kept me up at night.
That gimbaI set kept me up at n ght.
Because any time anything wouId go a ittIe bit wrong or...
...something unpredictab e happened, I wouIdn't s eep the next night.
This is the on y t me we break reaIity in the movie for this styIized--
I don't think it's breaking rea ty. It's how she sees it.
-I think it's her moment. -Yeah.
It's very subjective to her.
-It's a fun, styIized thing. -Yeah. It's a ttIe bit of a joke, but....
Move, move, move.
We're not comment ng on it as fiImmakers...
...as much as she's experiencing it through that.
-I think it ma ntains its subjectiv ty. -I think it works very weI .
I Iike this shot a Iot, the modeIs.
-This was an added shot... -Yes.
...Joe came up w th that were very cIever--
That was a great idea, just to reaIIy heIp expIain what was going on.
-The geography. -Docking.
-Because you can get a IittIe Iost. -That the hoIe--
That the basement has the hoIe and there's one on the roof.
And Iook at them Iike Ieeches on the house.
-HeIps seII it. -These are aII modeIs.
And the debrs is CGI and the space is CGI behind them.
I think it was a very good marriage of the two techno ogies.
OId schoo , new schooI.
And here we are in the Iaundry room.
I need you guys to h de in here.
And the wa kie-taIkies.
It's broken, but it's not rea Iy broken.
-What does that say thematica Iy? -I don't know.
I think you had some subconscious journey--
Communication is broken, now it's fixed.
Or the thing that he thought was--
-The thing that started-- -He thought was broken.
What started the confI ct s he broke his--
Has been fixed by the astronaut.
He broke the antenna. It was Iike this unf xabIe thing.
It shows that aII these b g confIicts come, usuaIIy, from something...
-Very simpIe. -...very smaII and very fixabIe.
Here she is. "He has gorgeous eyes."
This was-- We were waIking a fine Iine here.
-Because she is his brother. -GirI faIIing in Iove with her brother.
And if you watch Dax, he's the best here...
...because he's so uncomfortabIe with her affect on. And if you know--
He knows that she's his sister.
-You see why he's reaIIy not into it. -He's freaked out.
First you think because she's younger than him.
That was aIso tricky, to find the age of who to pIay the astronaut.
What the age was where you'd accept a crush, where t wouIdn't be we rd.
Did he get the game?
And Dax was sort of the oIdest-- Because Dax was in h s Iate 20s.
Yeah, he's pushing it as far as you can go before t gets creepy.
We were Iooking at 18-year-oIds too, but they didn't have that sort of--
-I don't know, t was tough. -Experience, or the swagger.
Yeah, he was sort of in between.
With the I fe-years that just come through with Dax.
But you wou d beIieve that he was away for 15 years.
Here isfun. his is afun little bit.
AII this. Me doing my Iow-rent...
...M. Night ShyamaIan-type directing...
...between a this stuff.
It's hard to do what he does, man.
I tried a IittIe bit here. I never d d this before.
Push in, and t's scary, and the music and the....
They're reIieved. don't know if it works. I th nk it does.
It works for what it is.
I think you d d a great job, Jon.
But maybe you stick to the funnies next time.
ShouId I? It's good to do this. See, that's the thing as a director.
When you do the funnies, aII you're doing s you have peop e taIking.
-I Iove mak ng peopIe Iaugh. -This was a Ieap.
-This was a big eap for you. -It was hard. A Iot of it was--
Look at this. I Iove the funn es anyway. My favorite's aIways the funnies.
Look at how uncomfortab e he is.
He doesn't ike her touching him. It's his sister.
What?
The dumbwa ter is across from the furnace.
I Iike the funnies, but for directing, you can on y do so much with them.
You make peopIe Iaugh and teII a good story...
...and maybe you can make peopIe feeI someth ng, and that is fun.
But if you wanna get to use the toys and stuff, it's hard to do it.
-That's rght. -With--
You can't do the miniature work and this stuff.
I guess you couId in, Iike-- What was that movie?
Evolution? Galaxy Quest was actuaIIy good.
-Was reaIIy good. -ReaIIy effectiveIy done with both.
But it's hard-- L ke, Ghostbusters, I think, s at ts best. You get both.
Or BIues Brothers or something ke that, where you have a big movie...
-...and it aII supports the comedy. -It's there to serve the story.
But usuaIIy it's not. Usua y there's not a ot of effects...
...or fun toys to use as a director.
There he is, aII sad. What a face.
Now, this scene here, I made them do, l ke, 20 takes of this.
Lo and behoId, the first take, where he came in before I d rected him...
-...was the best. -Just his instincts a one.
-Just his nstincts. -Goes to show you, Jon.
It does.
-He does have terrfic nstincts. -He was great.
He was aIways best in the earI er takes.
Jonah was just spot-on, and a photograph c memory Jonah had too.
That's right.
I was Iike-- I toId h s parents, I was like, ''You know, he wasn't....
He didn't know which scene we were doing today.
Did you go overthe wrong scene w th him?'' And she was Iike:
''We never go over the scenes w th h m.''
It turns out, he onIy read the script once before the reading.
And he knew every scene.
We're Iike, ''That thing we g ve you, caI ed the caII sheet?''
-He's ke, ''That's what that is.'' -The parents didn't know.
-Which was sweet. -They were hanging out by the pooI.
They didn't know, and he aIready had it comm tted to memory.
What's the point in studying it?
And Josh's parents were the opposite. They were there every day, invoIved.
And Jonah's parents wouId-- The van wouId pick him up.
It'd pick him up, he'd show up with the drver.
He was Iike a IittIe pro.
Different approaches.
WeII, that's the other dumbwaiter...
...we had bu t, which was a Iife-sized one.
LittIe push-in on this.
This was the reaI trick. How do you I ght these guys...
...so they Iook scary, so you can see, but not too much that it Iooks Iike...?
-A puppet. -Yeah. Like a foam head...
...which is essentiaI y what it is.
-It's a foam head. -She heIps seI it.
-What a face on her too, huh? -And he heIps seII it here.
Yeah.
She is-- This one....
I mean, aII these actors are gonna be....
I predict T m Robb ns someday wiII w n the Oscar.
-Wow, that's boId. -Oh, he did aIready.
Guys, why dld you stop?
This was his foIIow-up to his Academy Award performance.
We got him f rst out of the gate.
-This was h s-- -Hot off the Oscar.
Remember, after Mystic River, the next thing he dec ded to do was...
-...Zathura. -His very next project.
He said, ''This is what-- I f na y hit that eveI."
Guys, come on.
Here, now we drop the kid here in the shaft.
Look at that, boy.
-We drop him. -He Ioved it.
We bIew a fan on him.
He Ioved t. He was I ke, "Let's do it again."
But aIways the first take whenever we d d someth ng Iike that.
You couId taIk a kid or a person through it a miII on t mes.
It's I ke saying, "You'II go on a ro Ier coaster...
...it's gonna drop, gonna be a IittIe scary."
-They're ike, "Okay." -First time they go.
The f rst time, untiI you get used to it--
Prob em was, you aIways get used to it.
And you'd ose that f rst honest reaction.
So Jon wouId oftent mes revert to th ngs...
-... ke bIowing air horns at the k ds. -That got oId fast.
-They even got used to that. -Yeah.
-But you do things-- -It just annoyed the crew.
The crew wasn't thriIIed with that one.
-We got rid of the air horn pretty fast. -He'd sneak up beh nd them and bIow.
I wou dn't sneak up beh nd them. I wouId be behind the camera.
I wou dn't get up in their eardrum.
I'm not impIying you b ew their ears out, but you'd certainIy surprse them.
It was to be a surprise. It was a Ioud noise.
An air horn's a Ioud noise. But t usuaIIy...
-...scared the boom operator. -They freaked out.
Poor Mark. We had to warn him, "Take off your headphones.''
-Never worked. -Mark UIano, sound mixer.
It did for Jonah a coup e times. He a most started crying one time.
-No, he didn't. -Okay. I was making that up.
Don't make a joke Iike that. PeopIe wiII th nk you're serious.
They're k ds. PeopIe wiII hate me.
Jonah didn't cry. Jonah made me cry.
Jonah made Josh cry. Jonah made everybody cry.
In 94 days, we watched him grow up before our eyes.
-Tongues are added here. -Yeah, the tongues are CG tongues.
And these are suits that were buiIt by Winston.
And out the back of the neck, over the shou der bIades...
...there was a head sticking out from the guy wearing the suit.
You can see th s detaiI in the extras. There's a piece on th s.
To heIp d sguise the anatomy.
Here's an exampIe of just muItipIe un ts that had to work...
...to get a ot of this stuff where we had--
This was towards the end. Again, shooting in order.
-This is Lou. Lou shot this. -Yes.
Lou D'Esposito, our execut ve producer, shot this stuff.
Our ine and exec producer shot some of that stuff.
He was good. He did a ot of stuff Iike that.
That was the oversized keyhoIe.
The oversized keyhoIe that we buiIt for the shot.
-It's the size of a-- -Times-20 keyhoIe...
...you put up aga nst a Iens and shoot it.
But that shot that we had there with him wa king up to the rope...
...when we d d not have that shot in the movie, the movie was too scary.
The Iess of the Zorgons you showed, the scarier they seemed...
...which was an oId Iesson you Iearned from Alian and from Jaws.
The Iess you show, the scarer it is. The more you show...
...the more comfortabIe the aud ence is with them.
Because they're not as scary if they're not...
...hidden by darkness and co ored by your imagination.
Now. this piece here, in the script, do you remember what was there?
What he saw?
-Them eating. -They were eating bones.
-They were eating. Eating bones. -Carcasses.
-Sheep bones. -Or these space-goat things.
But they weren't space goats in the script, n the ship.
But they were eating something there.
They were tearing something apart and eating meat there.
And we actuaIIy rgged some of the puppets-- And we shot it.
And we've got stuff that-- You'lI see them eating fur and bones.
Like, swaIIowing meat, which-- It didn't Iook-- It just Iooked awfu ...
...because it Iooked ike something we just bought at the butcher shop.
But it seemed out of p ace n this. Peop e were Iike, "What's going on?"
-Yeah, it got a I ttIe dark. -And we had to cut it.
That was what was in the script, and that's why I added the goats n here.
Because they were eating something outside, so I sa d they--
-Oh, that's right. -So we added the space goats--
-As a food suppIy. -This whoIe sequence wasn't in.
This was sort of aII ambiguous.
He was running through, ike...
...air-cond tioning vents or something, remember?
And we sort of arrived at this, storyboarded it and taIked about it.
BasicaIIy they just set up this conveyor system to burn stuff...
...as fueI for their ship.
So they just are raiding the house and burn ng stuff.
He's shoveIing t in to keep the f ame going.
That was in the script, that they wouId burn things.
As a fueI source.
Then we had the thing w th the game. Look at that furnace, it's so great.
That's very Wizard of Oz too.
That was aII reaI. Riva bui t this whoIe thing.
You can see the doIIy track, these curved bars, it's so weIl done.
It's very hidden on the ground...
...but it Iooks reaIIy cooI, so you can actuaIIy do that.
His head pops up and sees the game, timing that.
And there's the gIow-in-the-dark poo that was reaIIy gIowing.
Now, that is the space-goat poop, not Zorgon poop.
A Iot of peopIe are confused by that.
Nothing Iike a....
Why? Because Zorgons don't go on the f oor?
-No, but that-- -They use faciIities?
PeopIe think the Zorgons, it's from them. Look at that.
The eyes pop out.
It's not a goat. It's not a goat.
''Not a goat. Not a goat.''
It's not a goat.
Those goats, aII we did is add the eyes. They Iook Iike space goats anyway.
Remember, they were on the set? That set smeI ed that day.
-Emus, were they? No, not emus. -No, they're goats.
No, they're some speciaI k nd of goat.
-It was a sme Iy day. -There's a dude in a suit.
We actuaIIy shot the fIame separate. It wouId have meIted the suit.
-So that's composited in. -It's green screen over his shouIder.
Looking down.
Jonah d d a good job in this scene.
There-- Here's the no se, the goats.
See, that's why the goats sort of justif es why he didn't --
That's right, because he Iet them out when he popped the chain.
It's pretty cooI, the Zorgon shot. Look at the armor.
AII the Zorgon stuff, we had armor. We had the paintings--
The Frank Frazetta John Carter of Mars paintings up...
...Iong before it was ever announced that that was gonna be a movie.
Rodriguez was attached. I remember, midway through, they announced it.
And I'm attached to direct it, so we'lI see by the time this comes out.
Either t's a movie gonna be happening or another sad story...
... n the 75-year deveIopment of that project.
Here's them f ghting. What was happening there?
-It was someth ng e se? -They're fighting over scraps again.
-Yeah, they were eating. -There was aggressive eating go ng on.
That was very disconcerting.
And here he s. I'm part cuIarIy proud of this ittIe....
Us ng the gIow-in-the-dark poop...
-As the tra I. -...as the traiI, the way he's discovered.
Look, a ittIe tip right here. Look at that.
That was added. That was augmented with the CG.
Guys, puI me up.
A Iitt e mprov sed Iine of his.
They got goats--
Dramatic performance there from the Zorgon.
Had a reaI knife. Remember, that was a reaI sword that couId cut through?
-Yeah. -This s a very good Iitt e bit.
These types of movies, they take so much work...
...to make aII the ttIe pieces fit. It's Iike a big puzz e. You gotta...
...shape aII the IittIe puzzIe pieces, make them aII fit together.
It takes so Iong to even see them because you just shoot on the set...
...then aII the work has to go into it, t a I fina y crysta Iizes.
And if t doesn't work, you reaIIy don't have a Iot of Ieeway and Iatitude.
We were very Iucky that it came together so weII.
But I couId see why they end up reshooting a Iot of movies I ke these.
Where you use CG. The thing is, you're comm tting.
-These are aI puppets. These are aII-- -You can't go to CG.
Sometimes we wou d shoot pIates as backup, but t wasn't as though...
-No. -...we had green screen everywhere.
Th s was a $65 miIIion movie too. lt wasn't like we had a Iot of dough to--
Which sounds Iike a Iot, but in HoIIywood terms...
-...that's not an insane amount. -It's beIow average.
It's a beIow-average movie, espec aIIy considering what we were out against.
We came out a week before Harry Potter 4...
...which, the budget was in the high 200s.
They've announced it was over 200. I've heard it was Iike 270, 280.
Just to make the movie.
And we were a week after Chicken Little, which was...
...a Iot more than ours too. We were right between these big hits.
-Before Narnia and Kong. -Right.
So we were n the ho iday marketpIace with a movie that cost...
...a third to a quarter of what the fiIms we were compet ng against were.
And not to mention, you know....
Use the card.
Not to mention the promotion that was done for those fiIms.
So t was a very tricky situation to be in for us.
But we were very gratefuI, we got very good reviews.
And the exit poIIs were good. Everybody rea Iy Iiked the movie.
So f you're seeing th s movie forthe first t me on DVD....
I think most peopIe probabIy, hopefu y--
It reminds me of another Sony mov e I did.
My f rst movie was Rudy, and it wasn't seen a ot out there.
A Chrlstmas Story was totaIIy that same type of movie.
Was that your f rst movie?
-Not my first, but my first b g one. -F rst b g one?
But everybody's seen Chrlstmas Story.
Then it had a Iife on video. A Iot of these movies do now.
And Swingers made, think, 4 miII on in theaters.
And everybody's seen it.
So, what's nice about these DVDs...
...and why we put so much time and effort nto it...
...is th s is where most peopIe see it.
Even with a successful film .
Even with Elf, it made over $1 70 mi ion in theaters.
Most peopIe hadn't reaIIy seen it untiI it came out on video.
Look at that. See that expIosion?
You know who did our pyrotechn cs? The same guy who did...
...the pyrotechnics for the originaI Star Wars movies.
-That's rght. -So that's the same stuff...
...that bIew up the Death Star...
...before they changed it to the CG Death Star.
-Look at that. That was pretty cooI. -That worked out weII.
That was a motion-contro rg. We shot t w th the kids, and then with the--
With the Iizard, without and with a dummy Iizard.
-A dummy we hit with a reaI-- -You cou d whack it.
That Jon BeIyeu hooked up the tracks and sent a reaI piano down the sta rs.
I wanted that piano, but it didn't work out weII.
-We had a Iitt e-- -There was a big cut scene there.
Where they were faIIing through the fIoorboards.
-It wasn't necessary. -We were running out of time.
Runn ng out of time shoot ng, and at the end, you wanna get done.
It was, Iike, three shots. It wasn't much of a scene.
Here's one of the few surviving jokes from the orig naI script coming up.
-It aIways gets a Iaugh. Here it is. -That sort of--
-What is it? -" I'm not even gonna comment on that."
That's it. Th s Danny joke.
This was very much the tone of the humor in the movie...
...as we orig naIIy read it, and then it got a ttIe--
As we said, when there's too much...
... t breaks the reaIity of the tension of what's happening.
But there, t is kind of justified. You've earned the right to say it.
He reaIIy has performed awfuIIy in the game.
-Every card has not worked out. -You get away with one.
But it's true. I buy that he wouId say that.
That's the whoIe thing. You gotta taIk yourseIf into the fact that you buy it.
This Iitt e bit....
-Boy, this was tricky. -This was John Kamps' contribut on...
...I've been toId by the wrters.
This ttIe twist of Wa ter be ng the brother.
I mean, the astronaut being Wa ter.
But when we saw the script, do you remember what happened?
What showed up when he wished?
It was an 18-year-oId Danny.
So the quest on was, what shouId Danny be wear ng...
... f he's been gone for 18 years?
And so shouId it be his cIothes?
-A bigger version of h s UgIydoII shirt? -Right.
Or shouId it be a spacesuit? That d dn't make sense.
What they came up with, he was naked.
-So we were gonna have h m naked. -Reach for a curta n to cover himseIf.
Remember, the bIack ho e at the end, they didn't morph together.
-They were aII in the space. -Right.
So they wouId aII be fIies. You'd have a naked 18-year-oId guy...
-It just feIt a ittIe weird. -...you never met before.
We were gonna ask Vince to p ay h m.
I was gonna ask Vince do a cameo in the movie as the naked brother.
That wouId have worked out. He wouId've taken that.
-In a heartbeat. -He wouId have.
He wou d've done t in a second. But we decided to have t be--
You know, how I came up with this was watching Close Encounters.
And when the guys...
...from the o d WorId War II pIanes that were captured...
...that disappeared, they came back...
...wearing their oId cIothes, the age they were abducted.
That's sort of part of the mytho ogy of space abductions, or space trave ...
...or things Iike that, is that you.... When you're drawn out...
...you're returned back in the state that you were in.
This is the c ean Danny and dirty Danny.
So you have him as though it was before he went on the Zorgon ship.
And this is-- What was his name? Connor? Conrad? Who's the kid?
Conrad, who was just reaIIy a stand- n and sort of a body doubIe.
Someone that we used for the extra hours in a day to shoot.
After Jonah was wrapped, we'd use him for hand inserts.
-But that's his back. -ReaIIy Iooked remarkab y Iike him.
This is a sp it done on green screen.
That's a spIit, but if you ook at the overs...
...these, that's not a spIit. That's the doubIe. That's Conrad.
The doubIe on one side, then we put him on the other side.
Look at how good Jonah is here, pIay ng it as two different characters.
He Iooks, ike, much more innocent on the other s de.
If you Iook at his performance there, he reaIIy soId it.
And so the idea was when they touch, then they just zip into each other.
And so a Iot of work was done...
...first by Imageworks and Iater by DigitaI Dimension...
...to make that IittIe morph thing happen.
That was one of the things that took-- We turned this over....
Oh, God, it took months and months and months, and we never got t right.
-Here, he's supposed to be an oIder-- -In the background, by the way--
You'lI see what we had to do-- Sorry. But just what we did to Dax's eyes.
-We had to change his eye coIor. -Change h s eye coIor.
Because it's reaIIy a time when you're gonna not ce and you'lI be comparing...
...obv ousIy, as it's now reveaIed that he's an oIder version of him.
The rest of the movie, he's got d fferent eye coIor.
-We knocked t down-- -At times when it mattered.
Here's this. And he's-- That was a nice IittIe moment there.
And here's our morph.
Which Iooks good and doesn't Iook Iike the Snoop Dogg video...
...which we didn't want t to Iook ike.
There's a dog on the sheIf. That's Frtz, from a Chris Van AIIsburg books.
And there's the one IittIe star that goes in at the end.
A IittIe bit ike Close Encounters.
Remember the IittIe Iight that chases the other Iights in Close Encounters?
-Jon I kes to keep stuff in the movies. -I try to do t.
Here's anotherthing, another reference to a fiIm...
...coming up right now.
The Chrlstmas Story Ieg amp...
-Oh, that's right. That's right. -... s coming up shortIy.
Which you may have seen in the other shot.
-They're on saIe. -There it s, right there.
There's the Chrlstmas Story Ieg Iamp.
So the dad had bought one and he just has it there.
I was very specific about having that in there.
I Iove these shots, by the way. This is one of my favorite shots.
I rea y Iike how the-- Those exterors with the modeI.
I just ove it...
...and wiII Iook for opportunit es to do it again in the future.
And that's CGI debris that Imageworks did, had the house coming apart.
We went past it quick, but that bathtub, we actuaIIy dropped in from the ceiIing.
It just, again, was the reaI stuff to get the performances out of them.
Didn't we f ip that out? We didn't f p t out when we--
-That one? No. That's com ng up. -When the wa I comes off.
Yeah, it gets sucked out. And that thing propeIIed pretty far too.
That was good. He b ew the stove across the room.
That was a nice stove too.
That's what happens in movies, man. It's a ittIe freaky.
Now, aII of this, I must say that Kent and everybody from PLF...
...came up with the des gn of the choreography of these CG shots.
Even the shots that weren't CG, they came up with.
It was handed over to both....
What was t caIIed? C nema Production-- CPS?
C nema Productions Services, the m niatures.
So aII the motion-controI min ature stuff...
...and the CGI stuff that was done by Imageworks...
...was a previs'd by PLF, PixeI Liberation Front...
...who I worked with on EIf as weI .
A Iot of that design work was done Iong before we ever shot.
Which we had to do because we had to commit to shooting miniatures.
And you don't have a Iot of room to move things around ike with CGI.
So you Iook at t on a computer screen, you approve the shot...
...and then execute it in the miniature environment.
There's not a Iot of going back.
Instead of rendering, Iike you wouId with CG...
...you actua y shoot it on the stage.
Here's another harpoon. Very carefuI to bIock the window.
You added something on that Zathura shot too, right? On the baII?
Yeah, a Iitt e smoke.
So t sort of mimicked this bIack hoIe notion here.
So that's CG debris, modeIs going nto it...
...and that fire was actuaIIy a fIame eIement that Joe shot, right?
And wirework w th her. She went pretty far away.
-She did. -Then she was shrunk beyond that.
And that was up on the eIevated set. So she was up about 30 feet.
That thing rea y went too. That th ng fIew across the set.
That's right, I remember that. It was fun, you gotta admit.
-It was great. -Great to take the kids and say:
"Okay, now watch this. This is what you're about to see."
And the added shot coming up is cooI, how the roof comes off...
-...wh ch was, again, just another-- -That was m niatures too.
-On a roIIing-pin rotisserie thing. -In post, just coming up with...
-...cooI shots. -We added this. We d d a pu back.
They aIways were gonna do that shot, but we added the puIIback...
-...from the actuaI pIate of the kids. -Which reaIIy heIped seII t.
This was the not on. The house gets reduced to...
...basicaIIy, a postage stamp was the description of what it was...
...as it's drawn to the bIack hoIe.
And then you had to pretty much...
...coming up here, after WaIter goes, you gotta qu ckIy get into Danny...
...because you don't wanna spend time with Danny w thout his brother.
And this was shot.... There's the IittIe Iighting change.
-It turns orange for a second. -We get away with it.
Jonah Iooks a t ny bit younger here than he just did, but w th the dirt--
-And thinner. -Yeah, he's about 15 pounds I ghter.
After he's gotten into the craft serv ce.
As I did on my first movie...
-...if you watch Rudy. -We've aII made that mistake.
-Free food! -Once.
SubconsciousIy, you think it's gonna be taken away, so you keep eating.
Like you're in prison.
Look how pristine the house Iooks. Of course, we d dn't repair it.
-It's from the earIy days of shooting. -EarIy shooting.
Now, if you watch them pIaying catch outs de...
...you'II see that, certain shots, Jonah very cIeary...
...Iooks much heavier.
There's the Bullitt poster that I've been asked about.
I thought it wouId be coo if he had a car-- CooI car.
As a car guy, he's into car mov es too.
I didn't know it wouId be featured in so many shots.
It becomes the subtext of the fiIm.
There's the gerbiI joke.
And they're shaking h m, shaking him.
-We're home! -We did it. We're home.
And they're ceIebrating. Dad's home.
Dad, it was so awesome. There was this game...
-...it sent us to outer space. -There was a bIack hoIe.
This is one of the first days.
Look how young he Iooks there, and there's the haircut aga n.
-Haircut number four. -EarIy ha rcut.
Sounds I ke a Iot of fun.
It wasn't as earIy as the other one, where he's aII greased down.
Like he just got out of soIitary.
He was trying to comb it back for the paroIe board.
Th s is a green screen. We added them pIaying catch.
They're in the Sony parking Iot, comped in front of the house.
-And right here. -Chubby Jonah. That's aIso n the Iot.
That's the guest parking Iot of Sony. We aid sod and put some oIeanders...
...and some, I ke, white tissue in there to make t Iook Iike a yard.
-They did a good job. -There too. We puIIed the house.
That was in the parking Iot.
That was a fake piIIar, and now we're back to the orginaI shoot.
-No, this is stiII the oId one. -Not yet.
This is aII oId. And then, any of the--
This is the Iater one. This is the reshoot.
Then, as soon as the sister comes in--
-Now we're back n the oId one. -Which was shot months earIier.
-Months. -Here's new...
...and then her side s originaI.
-And then this shot's-- -That one's new, then we connect to--
-Now, this s o d. -That's oId.
-And it Iooks pretty good. -It reaIIy matched.
OriginaIIy it was just them sort of diatrib ng about what had happened...
...and try ng to sum it up verbaIIy.
And it was cooIer to bookend it with them hav ng catch...
...because that was sort of what they were unabIe to do.
And I think that's how the book actuaIIy ends as weII.
There's Frank Oz too.
Let me mention, Frank Oz came in as a favor to me...
...and recorded the voice of the robot. And did a great job.
I was the robot for a whiIe there.
So he-- I was recast by Frank Oz.
And this song that's pIaying is a great song. It's a....
-It's a.... -Famous song.
It's a PauI Simon song.
And PauI S mon-- We took the movie for Pau Simon to see...
...because he was Iooking to wrte an orginaI song for a mov e...
...as he did for Thornberrys, Wlld Thornberrys.
Did a great song for that, and I'm a huge fan.
And we're both from the same ne ghborhood in Queens.
And we were gonna show him the movie...
...and we brought it out and showed he and his brother. They Ioved the movie.
And then it got to the end, he says, "WeI , that works rea y weII.
-I can't do better than that.'' -Not motivated to write.
He says, ''That works great.'' I said, " I know, but you gotta--"
I was aII excited. He said, ''I'I try. I'II try to write something."
And we waited and waited and waited. And finaI y he was Iike:
''I-- You know. That's--''
They gave us a good deaI on the song.
But he couIdn't do a better job than this one to fit into the movie.
I have to say, it works rea y weII. I'm k nd of happy in a weird way.
Because it was a favorite of mine.
You had had that song in your head for a ong time too.
We had that song on the set, do you remember?
We had that burned onto a disc to get the timing of when the bike feII.
So that wasn't something that came up in post.
That was something I originaIIy had in my mind.
We couldn't afford it at the time .
We didn't have it in the budget, but I had it on the set.
But sometimes the money comes up Iater if you save money shooting.
EndIess, endIess credit sequence.
That's the onIy thing I don't Iike about movies nowadays, is there's so many--
But you have to reward those that worked hard.
So many peop e. know.
-This isn't as Iong as some sequences. -No, this isn't.
But see how they d vide t up and make it aII Iong?
-And everybody get-- You know. -A Iot of negative space in there.
-Everybody gets a credit now. -And the one thing-- I'lI say it now.
--is a Iot of movies have a ot of writers working on them.
And because you have everybody who d d anything...
...on the visuaI effects, craft service--
Everybody gets a credit who's worked on a movie. I think that's fair.
There are a Iot of movies where the writers are not credited...
...because they're-- The WGA, the guiId does not ass gn them credit.
-I think that it's kind of a bummer. -It's pretty rid cuIous.
Even if t wasn't a main t tIe...
-...there shou d be additionaI cred ts. -Someth ng that acknowIedges--
That they did some work.
Frank Darabont's Iike, "I've worked on so many movies.
Everybody gets cred t on the movie.''
Like the second-assistant craft-service person gets--
Or peop e who work on-- PAs and stuff. And I think t's fun.
But there's nothing that even acknowIedges peopIe's contributions.
That's one.... That's one thing I hope changes eventuaIIy.
And here's the Min ature crew.
But t was-- I gotta teII you, it was a fun movie to work on.
Very smooth, and I reaIIy grew a great deaI on this one...
...and hope to do movies that use the techniques earned.
You know, this was my f m schooI in a Iot of ways.
You know, I came up working on, you know, first, Swlngers...
...and then Iater. on Made, and then Iater, on--
-Elf was the first tease of this stuff. -Elf, as a director, doing this.
And then to be actuaIIy doing an effects-driven f m...
...which I think this constitutes--
And so many peopIe pointed out how much they Iiked it...
...so it wasn't just that we were trying to do something that we Iiked.
But it's someth ng that actuaIIy made the movie p ay better.
And hope that...
...the trend continues to not just use CGI, but to actuaIIy use these oId--
FortunateIy, a Iot of peop e commented on it, peopIe noticed it.
It drew them back to the eary AmbIin mov es of the '80s.
They have that feeI of movies they Iiked.
A Iot is attrbuted to the technoIogies used, the way things were done...
...the approach made n the photography, Iight ng...
...shots and miniatures. HopefuIIy peopIe w draw back against it.
-There were a Iot of oIder guys that-- -I think we're out of movie.
-We're out of movie. -And now we're done.
-WeI , thank you. -Bye-bye.
Bye. Thanks for I stening.