Joel Silver Interview, Speed Racer

MoviesOnline had the pleasure of sitting down with producer Joel Silver at the Los Angeles press day for his new film Speed Racer! The film is based on the classic series created by anime pioneer Tatsuo Yoshida. Produced under the Silver Pictures banner, “Speed Racer” showcases the kind of revolutionary visual effects and cutting-edge storytelling that have become benchmarks of the Wachowski brothers’ films.

Silver, who is one of the most prolific and successful producers in the history of motion pictures, has produced over 50 films, including the groundbreaking "The Matrix" trilogy, the blockbuster four-part "Lethal Weapon" franchise, and the seminal action films "Die Hard" and "Predator." To date, Silver's catalog of films has earned more than $10 billion in worldwide revenue from all sources. He recently produced the holiday comedy "Fred Claus," starring Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti, and the critically acclaimed psychological thriller "The Brave One," starring Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard under the direction of Neil Jordan.

Silver recently structured a deal for his Dark Castle Entertainment production company, which gives him green-lighting power and creative control of all films produced under the banner. The next Dark Castle film to be released will be "RocknRolla," directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and Jeremy Piven. The film is slated to open in Fall 2008. Upcoming Dark Castle films also include "Whiteout," a thriller directed by Dominic Sena and starring Kate Beckinsale; the horror film "The Factory," starring John Cusack; the horror thriller "Orphan"; and James McTeigue's actioner "Ninja Assassin," which Silver is producing with the Wachowski brothers.

”With ‘The Matrix,’ Larry and Andy created a visual style that altered your consciousness as you watched the movie. You saw things that you could not imagine happening on film,” says producer Joel Silver. “And with ‘Speed Racer,’ they wanted to change the way you see movies again. They had a new concept in mind for telling the story with cars flying along the most spectacular and challenging racetracks – fantastic action sequences like nothing you’ve ever seen. It’s a new approach to combining CGI with live action. The brothers love to break the mold; they love to push the envelope.”

“They wrote a pure family movie, maintaining the essence of the original centered on Speed and his family in a completely new adventure,” adds Silver. “’Speed Racer’ is for everybody. It’s got great characters, great action beats and, of course, great visuals.”

Joel Silver is a fabulous guy and we really appreciated his time. Here’s more of what he had to tell us about “Speed Racer”:

MoviesOnline: Is it nice to be able to talk about the film now that everyone has seen it?

JOEL SILVER: Yeah, sure. I mean, I still have a little fear until it comes out but I’m happy to talk about it, yeah. I love it.

MoviesOnline: We saw you at the theater—you were there last night weren’t you?

JOEL SILVER: Yeah.

MoviesOnline: Did you watch it just to see the reaction of everyone?

JOEL SILVER: Look, we had a recruited screening down here in Long Beach about 2 weeks ago and it was just a dream come true. I mean it was just a huge response and the numbers were just through the roof in the high 90’s. You don’t ever see that but it was a big family audience. There were a lot of kids and a lot of parents—I didn’t have that last night. There were some kids there but it wasn’t the kind of family audience that I think the movie will play the most, but I think it played great. I was very happy to be there.

MoviesOnline: Can you talk about the biggest challenges on the film, both technically and logistically?

JOEL SILVER: It was a technical nightmare to have the realization of what the boys wanted to do. I mean, the brothers had this…when it all came about…I mean they knew I had the project for awhile and after “V” or some point after “V” they called me up one day and said, “What are you doing with that Speed Racer thing?” and I said, “Well, I’m struggling” and they said, “We have an idea” and I said “Well, go for it.” So they had this notion of making what they considered live-action anime and that’s what it is. It’s live-action anime. And they said “We want to show you what we want to do and if the studio likes it, we have a way of making a movie of this, and if they don’t, then we’ll do something else.”

MoviesOnline: You said you had it for a while. How long did you have it?

JOEL SILVER: Almost 20 years.

MoviesOnline: What was the initial idea for it? Were you going to do it strictly as an animated movie?

JOEL SILVER: No, a lot of people had been involved. There were a lot of scripts written, a lot of directors attached. There were rumors of actors attached.  No one was ever really attached. I mean there was a lot of discussion about the movie but really it couldn’t have been made in this fashion until right now.

MoviesOnline: Why?

JOEL SILVER: Because the technology didn’t really exist to do this. I mean, yeah, there was a version that they were scouting locations for race tracks and they were designing cars to be built and I remember one of the of the things—the cost of the car was $1 million to build this car that would all—you know chrome and it couldn’t be photographed from any angle—I don’t know what the hell they were doing, you know? But the way that it was done where the cars could do things that you’ve never seen before could only be done in this fashion with the way these guys want to do it.

MoviesOnline: When Larry and Andy say to you they have an idea, do you sort of turn away and just smile from ear to ear?

JOEL SILVER: Yes. I mean he said to me “I’m going to make your day,” you know. He knew it. (Laughs)

MoviesOnline: Was the studio immediately enthusiastic when they found out they wanted to do it? How did that work?

JOEL SILVER: Well of course they were enthusiastic because we’d been struggling with the movie for a long time so a lot of people had been through the process. JJ Abrams wrote a script. A lot of people wrote scripts for this thing, but again they were conventional type stories. So the Wachowski Brothers went off and they made a 5-minutes kind of pre-viz—a pre-visualization of a race in this movie. And there are actually some shots in that pre-viz that actually made it through to the finished movie. I mean, that first pre-viz actually had images that went right through to the end. But it was a race. It had elements of all 3 races -- elements of Thunderhead, elements of the Casa Cristo, and elements of the Grand Prix. It was just a race which was shown to the studio in December I think of ’06, and we sat in a room at the studio and a bunch of people in the room and the lights went down and they showed this.

MoviesOnline: You said before that you’d made a lot of silly action films, but after “The Matrix” you walked away realizing that people wanted more and you knew what that was.  So what was that that you realized post-Matrix that you brought with you into this film?

JOEL SILVER: Well, I’ll just finish this quick and then I’ll go to that.  When the lights went up and everybody stood there quietly in the room and the studio said, “Well, what is it? Is it ‘Roger Rabbit’? I mean, what is it? Is it animation, is it live-action?” They said, “Look this is what it is.” So they said, “Take a shot,” you know. I think that this movie is a family movie. I’ve been involved in a few movies that were family but not with the Wachowski Brothers, and you know this is the first time they really intended to do something for the family—for everybody and they had nieces and nephews and friends and family and they wanted everybody to see their movie.

They hadn’t been able to do that with everything we’ve made up to now. So it was a story about the family. It is a story about, you know, it has really kind of basic family structure, family story, family type values of this movie and it’s also just a movie about a quest and an ambition and dreams and all the things that seem to work in those kinds of movies. It’s brilliant in its execution but it’s simple in its tale, and I think the end of this movie, I mean cheaters never prosper, you know, be true to your family, stay together and you can prevail, you can win. And I think that those elements are effective and I hope that the audience embraces it and enjoys it.

MoviesOnline: What was it about the story that made you hold onto it for so long?

JOEL SILVER: When I first saw “Speed Racer,” I was a kid and I wasn’t as young as my son who is 6 and has seen the original show and loves it. I wasn’t that age. I was older than that. But I always remembered it being fresh and unique and having, you know, a cool quality and again the Brothers have said that it was the first time they ever saw anime, so that was fresh for them. But I remember that I just liked it and when they brought it to me and they said, “Do you want the rights to this thing?” and I said, “Yeah, sure let’s take a shot” which was almost 20 years ago—I think it was ’89-90 I did that and we struggled with it. We tried to make it but I just felt it had something about it that was fresh and I never let it go.

MoviesOnline: As a producer who clearly doesn’t want to see something go over-budget, do you feel more comfortable when you’re making a film under these kinds of circumstances—relatively controlled studio green screen as opposed to out in the real world where anything could possibly go wrong?

JOEL SILVER: Look, this movie, as expensive as it was and it wasn’t a cheap film, is nowhere near the cost of other films I’ve made or other films that are being made now. I mean, it was controllable. There was a 60-day shoot in a big green room. Once you finish that, then the real work begins in post production. But you know it depends. The next movie out is called “RocknRolla.” I did it with Guy Richie and it’s about London. There’s probably not a single visual effect shot in the whole movie, you know.

It’s real, it’s just a way we make movies, you know. But I think that this is a pioneering step on picture making—this movie --not just in how it was shot, but how it was photographed. The editorial process is very different. The way the camera—the lens move is very different. The camera has no form. You see shots where the camera zooms into Speed and then zooms past him into Trixie and past her into Rex and where is the camera? I mean, what is it? It’s not on a…it’s just there. It’s just showing you what you want to see and editorially the way they put this film together I think there’s a lot of ground breaking things in it, but yes, it was controllable and done in a way that was kind of easier to make but not so much easier to conceive.

MoviesOnline: Do you think things could even get crazier from here? Is this just the start…?

JOEL SILVER: I was reading last week in USA Today about the Bond film—“The Quantum of Solace”—and they were shooting in Chile in some desert at 120 degrees, they’re running on a metal building, the crew was dying, they can’t function, they don’t know how they’re doing it, the Mayor of the city is mad at them because it’s supposed to be Columbia. Everybody’s going crazy. I mean they could be shooting in Pinewood.

They could be in a big green room. Certain things I can see not wanting to do that, but George Lucas didn’t have go to Tatooeen, I mean you don’t have to…you can make movies in ways that are different but I think with the technology as exists now…I mean this movie was all shot digitally. It’s going to be a matter of years when the film is not a factor anymore. We can still actually shoot on film but you don’t have to shoot on film.  You don’t have to finish on film and it’s all going to make it a lot easier to make movies in a way that I mean, you can sit at your kitchen table and make a movie.

MoviesOnline: Did it come in on budget?

JOEL SILVER: Oh yeah. Oh sure. There wasn’t a lot of things to get in the way of that.

MoviesOnline: How long was the production?

JOEL SILVER: It was a 60-day shoot.

MoviesOnline: All in Berlin?

JOEL SILVER: Yes. All in Germany.

MoviesOnline: Last summer?

JOEL SILVER: Yes, last summer. It was a 60-day shoot but most movies like that the director will finish directing and they wrap and go cut the movie. But on this movie the director keeps directing until last Thursday. Every scene you’re directing because you’re…there’s a room they put in at the studio—a screening room 1 which has been turned into a VFX visual effects review room and it’s a very comfortable room with a big digital screen.

The guy’s sitting back on the couch and all these digital effects from all over the world—there’s crews in Australia, there’s crews for us in France, there’s crews in Northern California, crews in L.A. -- and all that stuff is e-mailed in, all the quicktimes, it all comes in and they look at the effects and all around the room there are people with laptops that are plugged in and they’re talking, because what we do is we put a person on for each vendor. So each vendor has a person who is communicating with that vendor and they’ll go to the next vendor and things come up and the boys will see it and that person is giving notes right back to the vendor and the vendor sees the notes and there’s another VFX review 3 hours later and then more shots come in and they look at those shots. “That’s a final. We’ve got a final. Yea—we’ve got a final!” Another shot comes up and there’s 2,000 shots and that’s how the movie is made.

MoviesOnline: That’s a lot. Is that a record do you think?

JOEL SILVER: I think so. 

MoviesOnline: Have Larry and Andy come at you with their next quote-unquote idea to make you smile?

JOEL SILVER: No.

MoviesOnline: I have to ask you one more thing before I forget.

JOEL SILVER: Sure.

MoviesOnline: Have the Wachowski Brothers started thinking about 3-D filmmaking?

JOEL SILVER: Yeah, we talked about this being 3-D. We actually discussed this being 3-D. There aren’t enough theatres yet right now to make it really. It would have taxed us to make this 3-D right now. But maybe if we make a sequel, I mean, they have a story for a sequel and if they make it…

MoviesOnline: What is it? Any hints on where it might go?

JOEL SILVER: Well, there’s things they want to do with him. There’s as many episodes of this cartoon so there’s a lot of ideas, but if we make the sequel maybe that will be in 3-D, but I mean it would have been possible because it was digital to begin with to do it in 3-D and all those shots were rendered so it would have been possible.

MoviesOnline: Do you think they want to do a sequel or do you think they want to take on another property?

JOEL SILVER: Well, I mean, I don’t know if they will direct the sequel. Maybe somebody else will—maybe they will, I don’t know. This one was pretty tough to do, to create this, you know, but I don’t know if they’d want to give that to somebody else, I don’t know. Look, the only thing I like to say is they don’t….the only part they don’t engage in is this part right here. They don’t like to engage in this and my friend, Tom Cruise, told me a story when he went to work on “Eyes Wide Shut,” he said “There was Kubrick just sitting there in the director’s chair. It was Kubrick!” I’m not trying to make a connection between Kubrick and the boys, but he didn’t want to engage in this part either so that gives him mystique and when everybody’s here—all the guys are here and Matthew’s here and Emile and these are fantastic friends of ours, these filmmakers.

They’re great guys. They just don’t like to talk about their movies and they did the whole thing for me on the first “Matrix”. They did all the junkets, all the press tours, they did everything and they hated it. And they said to me, “If you want us to work with you again, you’ve got to promise we’d never do this again.” And I said, “Fine.” What could I say? I couldn’t say, “No, you’ve got to do it.” So I’m happy to try to impart to you their thoughts and their ideas, but you know their thoughts and their ideas are on that screen and that’s what they give you. That’s their gift to all of you. I hope you liked it. 

“Speed Racer” opens in theaters on May 9th.