Get your own free pages!
On the Set: Men in Black
Men in Black follows the exploits of agents Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) and Jay (Will Smith), members of a top-secret organization established to monitor and police alien activity on Earth. The two Men in Black find themselves in the middle of the deadly plot by an intergalactic terrorist (Vincent D'Onofrio) who has arrived on Earth to assassinate two ambassadors from opposing galaxies. In order to prevent worlds from colliding, the MiB must track down the terrorist and prevent the destruction of Earth.
The film also stars Linda Fiorentino as the glib Dr. Laurel Weaver, New York City's Deputy Medical Examiner, who thinks she's seen it all until she meets the Men in Black. Based on the Lowell Cunningham comic book series with a screenplay by Ed Solomon, the film is produced by Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, and executive produced by Steven Spielberg. Oscar-winning special makeup effects artist Rick Baker (Ed Wood, Batman Forever) is designer and creator of Men in Black's menagerie of alien creatures.
On a recent set visit, director Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family, Get Shorty) talked to a press group that included a mole for Ed Flixman's Hollywood.
Hollywood: We understand this is an action comedy?
B. Sonnenfeld : Yeah, sort of an action-adventure comedy. I think it's mainly a comedy, but the comedy plays out because of the reality of the situation. It takes place in New York with aliens, but the way I'd like the comedy to play is that you have people talking to aliens yet never acknowledging that they're alien.
For instance, Tommy's interrogating this alien and the alien has all these excuses. He's talking in an alien tongue, and Tommy just says, 'yeah, that's enough, put up your hands and all your flippers right now,' -- the more you play it straight, the funnier it is; it's not broad comedy. It's sort of a sophisticated alien/adventure/comedy/action thing.
H: What attracted you to this material?
B. Sonnenfeld : I feel that we don't really have a clue about what's going on. I don't know if there are aliens or that there aren't aliens, but I do believe that everything any expert has ever told us in our life has been proven wrong.
Five hundred years ago everyone on the planet believed the earth was flat, and before Copernicus the earth was the center of the universe. When I was growing up there were no black holes. To think that we actually have a clue about what's actually out there is amusing to me, so that's why I did this.
H: Had you heard any of the MIB urban myths before doing this?
B. Sonnenfeld : No, I was not a follower of Men in Black, and not a follower of the comic book. You just read material you're attracted to, and I found the script amusing. I thought I could be a good director for it.
The tone of the movie is not unlike Addams Family or even Get Shorty in that the more you play it for the reality, the more you don't play it for laughs, the funnier it is. And I thought this would be an amusing thing to work on. It often is.
H: Is it rough going back into something this huge after something small like Get Shorty?
B. Sonnenfeld : It's funny. It really is huge, but this has been the most relaxed shoot I've been on. Rick Baker is incredibly professional, as is ILM, and Will Smith and Tommy have been great to work with. So, it's actually been the easiest shoot.
There is a lot of pressure, because there's a lot of money and there's a lot of effects, and you've really got to think ahead of time about what you're gonna want in the cutting room nine months from now. That's sort of annoying, but it's been fun actually.
H: So, is Tommy Lee Jones actually the straight man?
B. Sonnenfeld : Yeah. This will shock you, but yes he is. The thing that's really shocking is he's unbelievably funny because he plays it so straight. Whenever I sense that Tommy thinks he's being funny I say, 'let's do one flatter, Tommy, even straighter.' And that's where he's funny.
Will's funny because he's not the straight man. He's full of energy. He says he's the Dion Sanders of the movie, always getting into trouble. So, it's a perfect pair.
H : At what point did you decide to give it a lighter tone?
B. Sonnenfeld : Although the comic book is very dark, and very good, and totally different, the film was always a comedy. The script I read well over two years ago was very funny.
H: Did you work with the writer?
B. Sonnenfeld : No, though we changed it a lot. It was a very different script. It took place in Nevada and Philly and Washington and all over the country, and it was broader in nature. I felt that, if aliens existed, they would live in New York where they could actually blend in without actually having to hide the fact that they're aliens. In fact, I'm sure that I've been driven by a few alien cabdrivers. I had it rewritten for New York and I made it less broad.
H: Did the other films coming out influence your film?
B. Sonnenfeld : No. You have to pretend there are no other films coming out. When I was a cinematographer, I worked on Big, and while we were shooting that, they were doing 18 Again, Vice Versa, Like Father Like Son, -- there were three other body switching, adult/kid things.
You just gotta forget about it. If the movie's good, it's good -- no matter how many other alien movies there are. We didn't change the tone because of anything.
H: Did Will Smith ever compare flying saucers?
B. Sonnenfeld : Actually, Steven Spielberg and I tried to convince Will to do this movie. We both live on the East Coast -- Steven was on the east coast [in the Hamptons] that summer, and Will flew out and said, 'you know, I just finished a science fiction movie.' 'Oh, no one thinks about that; come on, do ours' -- and he was willing to. And he's been great about not saying, 'you know, on the other one...' or 'what you really should do...'
H: Spielberg?
B. Sonnenfeld : He's the executive producer. He's been great -- unbelievably smart and funny and supportive, and sometimes he makes suggestions and we do them, and sometimes he makes suggestions and I say, you know what, I don't see it that way and he goes, fine. He's been really supportive.
Return