BRING IT ON MANIA
The New & Article Page
(taken from www.bttf.com)
AN INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR PEYTON REED
How did you first get in to writing and directing? Did you study film while you were deejaying during school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Yeah, I was a deejay at WXYC while I was in college at the University of North Carolina. They had a program at the University of North Carolina called "RTVMP", which was Radio, TV, and Motion Picture. I was an RTVMP major, and at the time, the university had these courses that were less hands-on production and more theory, so I decided to double-major in English so I could get out of school with something of value. [Laughs] I'd always loved English -- that was my favorite subject in terms of storytelling and literature and things like that. I think I found that more valuable. You can come out here and you can get the practical experience. You can work on low budget movies and things like that and see how things are done. But, you know, you can't get experience writing unless you write. I think that for somebody who's trying to break into the film business, if you can break in as a writer, well, then you're set because no matter how big you get to be as an actor or as a director or producer, the one thing that everyone is looking for is a good script. And I know that sounds extremely clichè, but it's true.
Do you have anyone in your family who works in the film industry? What inspired you to go into that line of work?
I had always been a film buff. I grew up in North Carolina, most of my family is still in North Carolina, except for a brother in Pennsylvania, and nobody's in the film business. I was the youngest of three boys. I watched a lot of television, of course, as many of us did. I just always loved movies, especially as a kid; science fiction, horror movies, and especially Planet of the Apes. That was the one movie that made me decide, “Gosh, I would really love to do that!”
Then my mom and my dad gave me a great movie camera for Christmas `77. I just made Super 8 movies all through junior high school, high school and throughout college. I would wrangle my friends and make ridiculous movies like the “Ten Million Dollar Boy” and stuff like that. I was just having a great time making Super 8 films. At the time we started out with silent movies and then I ended up getting a Super 8 sound camera and you'd edit your own movies on a Super 8 editor. This was all sort of pre-video. Those cameras weren't common place like now.
I recently read about a short film that you had directed called “Almost Beat.” Was that a student film?
Almost Beat was a movie I made, actually, after college. I had moved out to Los Angeles in 1987 and I worked my first job out here as a production assistant for ABC television. I worked for most of `87 out here, then, at the end of the year, I met, through someone who'd gone to UNC, this guy named George Zaloom from the company ZM Productions. George offered me a job at the time as an assistant editor. He said, “I won't lie to you, it's gonna be long hours -- six, sometimes seven days a week, 10 - 12 hours a day and I can only pay you $200 a week and that's the job.” At the time I really wanted to get into editing, but I could barely live on, you know, $200 a week. At the same time, a friend of ours said, “Hey, I'm transportation coordinator on this movie that's shooting back in North Carolina” and there was a friend of mine, John Schultz, who said, “Well, why don't you guys come back and you can live at home and drive vans on this movie called Bull Duram? And I can pay you $700 a week!”
So my friend John Schultz and I, who's another director out here, decided to go drive vans and save a bunch of money, because we both wanted to direct these short films. For the fall of `87, we were in North Carolina being van drivers on Bull Duram, driving Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins and Susan Surandon around. We were able to save enough money so that the following summer, the summer of `88, John was able to get a bunch of 16 millimeter film, and I was about to borrow a 16 millimeter camera, and we went to North Carolina and each directed a short film that we shot back to back. We each worked on the other guy's film.
The film I did was called Almost Beat. We shot it and the following year we had edited the movie and everything and it had been in film festivals. We had a big screening in the summer of `89, when the movies were done, in North Carolina. But that movie helped me. I was able to go back to ZM and I started doing some editing work for them and I think the fact that I had, you know, shown some initiative and made this movie and that the movie made sense and held together showed them that maybe I had what it took to direct stuff for them. So that was a fun movie to do. It's really short; it's only about 12 1/2 minutes. It's played at some film festivals over the years and won some prizes and I think, actually, UNC is having some kind of film festival where they're showing old movies of people who are working in Hollywood. So I'm going to let them show Almost Beat, even though it's pretty cringe worthy.
What's the basic premise behind your new film, Bring It On?
Well, Bring It On is a competitive high school cheerleading comedy, which has always been my favorite genre. [Laughs] It tells the story of this girl, Torrance Shipman, played by Kirsten Dunst. It's her senior year of high school and she's taking over as captain of the cheerleading squad, and she has to deal with all these things. They're the five time national champions and she finds out the previous captain, as it turns out, had stolen all of there prizewinning routines from this other cheerleading squad, the East Compton Clovers.
The main thing in the movie is all the things this girl Torrance has to deal with her senior year. There's this new girl who moved in from L.A. who's kind of tough and who's joined the squad. There's this new guy who moved to town. He's kind of a punk kid, the kind of guy she normally wouldn't find herself attracted to, but she does. And then there's this rivalry between her squad, the Toros, and this inner city squad, the Clovers. The Clovers only want to prove themselves on the national level because all there routines had been stolen over the years, and Torrance just wants to prove herself capable of leading her squad.
This is something that actually happens in the real cheerleading world. This is not just the cheerleaders who are on the sidelines at high school football games with pompoms. If you watch ESPN, there's this whole field of competitive high school and colligate cheerleading. You have these cheerleading squads who are coed, usually ten or so guys and girls. A squad can be as big as 20 people. It combines cheerleading and gymnastics and dance. It's got this athleticism to it, but it also combines the mania of beauty contests. They're really sort of starting to be taken seriously as athletes, not just as people who cheer for other athletic events. It takes place in this world. I didn't know much about it before I read this script and started researching it. I had flipped around on TV and seen these things, and they had fascinated me, and when you get into that world, it's a really big business. I had no idea how wide ranging the cheerleading was.
It's also, again, really, really fanatical and has these really interesting sort of aspects to it. For example, when we were scouting high schools in San Diego, where we shot, you would meet these guys who, during football season were on the football team, and during the off season would cheer with the cheerleaders. The guys have to be very athletic and agile, and have to be able to lift girls over their heads with one arm. The other guys, who are tumblers, have to be able to do all these amazing gymnastic things. It is a fascinating world, and this is the world this movie takes place in
Since this is your feature film debut, give us the short story breakdown, from script to screen, of your typical film?
Well, in this case, I had been in New York doing some episodes of Upright Citizens Brigade. Right before I left to go to New York, I had read this script called Cheer Fever. It interested me because I love high school movies, and this high school movie really appealed to me because it wasn't just kids walking through hallways and talking about who's going to the dance with who or guys trying to get laid. [Laughs] It really had things that were like musical sequences and there's a lot of visual opportunity for a director. I really liked the story a lot. I read the script, I met with a couple of the producers, Caitlin Scanlon and Max Wong, told them what I thought of the script and what I would do with it, and didn't think much about it, then left to go to do Upright Citizens Brigade.
While I was there, I kept getting phone calls about it. I talked to Marc Abraham, the producer of the movie, and tried to convince him I was the guy for the job. By the time I was on my third episode of Upright Citizens Brigade, I found out that I got the movie. I wasn't able to finish editing my third episode of the show and sort of did it by mail and over the phone. The second I landed here, it was just a whirlwind. I flew back to L.A. and drove straight from the airport to a meeting with the line producer, and the casting agent already had, you know, “Here's some pictures” and blah blah blah. And so you just hit the ground running.
The next few weeks were preproduction, and we had sort of a compressed preproduction because we had to start shooting at the beginning of July and it was May when I came back. First, you have to cast the movie. Then you have to deal with getting the script in shooting shape. There were great things about the script, and I loved the script, but it needed some structural and character work and stuff like that. It was working on the script, at the same time you were trying to cast, at the same time you were trying to hire different crew members that you wanted. And then everything coming together and deciding where you were going to shoot the movie, because we were looking at various places from Florida to North Carolina. We decided on San Diego because it was closer and a real hub of cheerleading activity.
Then you had to figure out all these things about a lot of gymnastic stuff that people could consider stunts, so you had to hire choreographers. It wasn't a big budget movie, but it was a big production. It had a lot of extras and a lot of the extras in the scenes had to be cheerleaders and able to do that stuff. It's not stuff that you can learn quickly.
Once we cast Kirsten Dunst, everything else fell into place. I'm so happy we were able to get Kirsten. She was in Czechoslovakia at the time doing a movie. She had been sent the script and had some issues with certain things in the script, so I was able to talk to her over the phone and figure out what we were going to do and tell her what I was going to do with it. So she signed on, which was great. And then we had to get our actors into cheerleading camp, because our actors who were on the main squads had to train for three or four weeks with cheerleading coaches and choreographers. That was really fun, because it's intense for ten hours a day, stretching and doing gymnastics and learning this choreography at the same time they were supposed to be learning their lines. It was amazing. We had this several week period before we even started shooting this movie where they got to hang out and bond, and I think it shows on screen.
So then I moved to San Diego. I told my wife, just after our one-year anniversary, “Uh, I'm going to be moving to San Diego this summer to be surrounded by cheerleaders. What do you think of that?” My wife is the greatest and is most supportive. She worked here in L.A. so she spent the entire summer driving down on Saturdays and she'd stay from Saturday through Tuesday. She was great.
We did all the preproduction, and started shooting in July 1999. We shot for 44 days. It was really fun. Coming from doing some of the TV stuff that I have done, the Disney movies, you have to shoot in 20 days and it still has to be a 90-minute movie that looks great. And especially Mr. Show and Upright Citizens Brigade, which were really sort of run and gun situations where there wasn't a lot of money but you had to make it look great and be really funny and we were working crazy hours. When we were doing this, it was like, “Oh, we have 44 days!,” and it was like a dream to me. It was never relaxed, obviously, because you had a lot to do, but I think in that way the TV stuff was a great training ground for doing this movie.
You've worked in television for many years, doing documentaries, music videos, television series, and made-for-television movies. What was the biggest difference in moving to feature films?
The biggest difference in television is the turnaround time. You do something for TV and usually there's an air date already set, so you have these deadlines and it has to get done quickly. And there's not as much money, so it has to get done quickly for that reason, too. In features, you have a little more money and you have a little more time. But that's not always the case. As I said, our preproduction time for Bring It On was really accelerated; given the size of what's going on in the movie, it was very much a hustle. Probably one of the other differences is in your head in terms of “Oh, I'm finally doing a movie, a theatrical film!” so you build it up in your head. I get pretty particular about things, anyway, in terms of being a control freak, so there's more pressure because there's more money at stake. So you try, obviously, not to think about that.
When we were looking at cinematographers, I wanted to bring in Shawn Maurer, who shot almost all of my documentary stuff I did for ZM. He, over the years, shot so many -- most of those behind-the-scenes documentaries that you see. I did some music videos, like for the North Carolina band The Connells, and he shot three of my four music videos. He's a good friend of mine, but also a real good cinematographer. He's done some low budget movies but had never before done a really big big movie. This was not a situation where, you know, I got a movie and now I'm gonna use it as a chance to get all my buddies on. He's someone really, really great. I had to fight to get him on, because he's a first timer, but I'm really glad I did. We have a really similar visual sense and he gave me a lot of preproduction time that I think another cinematographer might not have. We had a great time working together. Almost more importantly, he was someone there on the set that I had known for a long time and could always trust their instincts. Not only trusting his visual instincts but just, there's always a lot of political stuff that goes on in movies and there's someone still you can turn to and say, “Does this make sense to you because it just doesn't to me.” [Laughs]
Were you able to stay on budget and on schedule?
Yeah. We were budgeted, really, for 45 days, and what I wanted to do was something I'd kind of learned on The Love Bug; I saved a day, so that you can shoot and spend time in the editing room. Once you've got a cut of the picture, you have this one day where it's like, “Hey, it'd be great to get this one actor back to shoot this!” And they weren't reshoots; they were just things I wanted to add or jokes I wanted to have in the movie. It was in January that we shot what's called a 'pick-up day', where we got everybody that we needed together for a day in L.A. and shot one additional scene and a handful of little scenes and things that I wanted. And that was great.
What does a budget of $11 million entail? Does that cover everything up to the point where you finish filming and the movie is ready? Does it cover the cost for film print and advertising?
Printing and advertising are separate costs. This budget covers all the filming and paying the crew and everything, and all the post production, which, on a movie like this, is pretty involved. The music is a very big part, too; you have a music budget. Not only for your score, but for your songs. For example, on our movie, Epic records is putting out a soundtrack of pop songs from the movie and you have to stay within your music budget to afford all these songs. This is a very music-heavy movie for all those final cheerleading sequences and everything.
I've seen the trailer off the official site. It looks really great, and one of the first things I noticed was that it is a very music-oriented and uses the cheerleader-themed song “Mickey” by Tony Basil, plus the recent hit by the group Blaque, who are in the film.
I think only one song in the trailer is in the movie. The girls from Blaque recorded a new song for our film that'll be on the soundtrack, and this group B*witched did a remake of the “Mickey” song. At the end of the movie, there's this end title sequence with it that was pretty fun.
Bring It On was filmed under the name Cheer Fever, but changed a couple of months ago to its present title. I read somewhere that it had also been changed ever-so-briefly to Jump, but was quickly changed back to Bring It On. What was the initial reason for it being changed from Cheer Fever to begin with?
Cheer Fever had always been the working title of the movie. I don't think anyone was ever completely happy with the title. Even during the time we were shooting, we would have contests on the set: “Rename Cheer Fever”! Everyone in the cast and crew would submit lists; I have pages and pages of potential titles for this movie, just millions of them. All the time, through post and even when we were doing the first test screenings, it was still Cheer Fever. Once Universal marketing got involved and you really have to nail down a title, they went through lists and lists and had these sessions where we would show early cuts of the trailer to these teenage focus groups and get their feedback on titles and things.
In the movie, it's very much about competition between Kirsten Dunst's character, Torrance, and Gabrielle Union's character, Isis. I like to think of it almost like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird at their peak, where these were two great basketball players who loved competing against each other. One of them was white and one of them was black, but that's not really what it was about; it was about these two great athletes. And this whole notion of, “Come on, bring it on! Show me your best; don't hold back!” And it just seemed to sort of fit. I resisted it at the beginning because there's so many high school movies that have three word titles: She's All That; Down to You; Drive Me Crazy. I didn't want it to fall into Genericland. When they were testing titles, we were looking at the title Jump, but I think Sony owned that title or something like that.
In Bring It On, you worked with some very talented people, particularly Kirsten Dunst, and the pop trio Blaque. Was that intimidating as a first-time director in this arena, or were you able to put the "star-factor" in the back of your mind as you gave them direction?
I think the joy of getting someone like Kirsten Dunst, who you know is a good actor and will deliver what you need, far outweighed any sort of intimidation. One of the great things for me, too, is that the bulk of the actors in this movie range from 17 on up through the mid-20's, so I was older then all of them and I could yell at them a lot and they'd do what I'd tell them to [Laughs]. There was something really fun about that.
We really got a great cast. Kirsten's great, and Eliza Dushku, who's in True Lies and Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- she's terrific in the movie. I think this is a real breakout role for her. Gabrielle Union is amazing, and Jesse Bradford, who plays the character of Cliff -- he's just a really, really good actor.
I got lucky in terms of my cast. Not only did they have to be able to act and do some comedic acting, but these are very physical roles and we didn't audition anybody who didn't have some sort of dance or gymnastics background. Obviously, I erred on the side of good acting. But I really didn't want to use stunt doubles or things like that. For the most part, what you see on screen is the actors doing their thing. The teams in the movie are made up of our actors and of our real cheerleaders and I think in the final movie you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference.
It seems these days, directors have an additional task at hand when making a movie -- leaving some extra material on the cutting room floor so that it will find its way to the DVD release later. How early in the process do you even begin considering the home video & DVD release for a film?
Being a video geek, it's a dream come true to have a DVD and video commentary. And, actually, we haven't even started... I haven't even had discussions with Universal Home Video. I guess a lot of it has to do with how the movie does at the box office with how much they're going to put into it. We certainly never cut anything from the movie thinking, “Oh, that'll be great on the DVD.” We did the movie and got the movie where I wanted it. But there are things, obviously, that did get cut from the movie. And before we closed up the editing room, the assistant editor and I went through and made up a master tape of all these scenes that we thought might be possibilities for a supplemental DVD. So yeah, I think I very much had that in mind.
Before DVDs hit, I was a big laserdisc fan, which is a now dead format [laughs] and I have two shelves full. I still watch them. Laserdiscs started that thing, and it was sort of a niche market for film geeks like myself. I'm really happy now to see that the DVDs are catching on with mainstream America, and you can rent them at Blockbuster, because I do find it fascinating and I do think it's going to breed this entirely new sort of film literate generation. If I was coming up now and trying to decide whether to go to film school or not... I mean, film school is great, but it's also very expensive. To sit there and listen to these laserdiscs, to hear John Sturges audio track talking about Bad Day at Black Rock, or listening to Scorsese talking about any of his movies.... You have audio commentaries on almost every movie now. It's such an interesting format. If I was a kid, I'd say “Forget film school, I'm just going to rent a bunch of DVDs to learn all that stuff and start making movies.” They're a great combination of practical stuff and I just find it fascinating.
I'm also torn, too, coming from the world of behind-the-scenes documentaries and having done a bunch of those. It's always really, really fun. When ZM started doing them, there weren't that many going on. And now we live in a world where the E! Channel is on 24 hours a day and you've got Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood and you've got all these DVDs. There's a point where, oddly, when we were doing this movie, it was like, “Do I want to do a behind-the-scenes documentary?” In a way, I really want to re-mystify the process.
So you don't have a documentary on this film?
No, we actually do! [Laughs] I think there was talk of the E! Channel doing a half hour thing, but Mark Cowen's guys actually shot a behind-the-scenes thing. They only shot for three or four days. This is not an effect-heavy movie or a big sci-fi event, so there's not a lot of explaining to do in terms of how we did stuff. A behind-the-scenes on this would be more sort of looking at that world of cheerleading and seeing how much darn fun we had!
In terms of the DVD, yeah, it's premature, because we haven't had that conversation yet, but I want to do a great DVD for this, put on supplemental stuff. There's a whole ending sequence we cut from the movie, and various little scenes that you cut for time or for pace or for clarifying a character arc. Editing is a really interesting process because you really find these great moments that were strictly created in the editing room and I love that.
You shot this film on location in San Diego at locations such as Kearny High School and San Diego State University, with principle photography beginning on July 12, 1999, and wrapping on September 10, 1999. With the film slated for an August 25, 2000 release date, that seems like a lengthy post-production process.
We finished mixing the movie, the movie's done, the final cut print's done, so now, I've been an extreme control freak for a year, getting the movie the way I want it, and I have to let go and let it do what it does. [Laughs] Which is a weird feeling. We had preview screenings in January and February, then the rest of that time we've tweaked the movie and locked the picture, which is the final edit. We could've either really rushed and gotten it out in the spring, but then once you get past spring you get into the crowded summer. A film like this probably wouldn't stand a chance going up against those giant summer movies.
So then it becomes Universal Marketing and the producers figuring out the smartest time to release it. They talked about October or September, and then they moved it to August, which I think is great. It's very much a back to school movie, so I'm really happy.
It's been a relatively painless process for me, I have to say. It was kind of surprising. I think young filmmakers today come out and assume “I'm either going to get the financing or I'm going to do my movie as an independent. That's where I'll have creative control, on an independent movie.” And they're right. If you start going to a studio sometimes, you get involved in lengthy development processes and stuff, but it's interesting because Beacon has a relationship with Universal where they finance and make the movies and Universal distributes them. So Universal didn't even see the movie until we had our first preview screening. They had a few notes on that, and that was it. So I was really lucky to be working for Beacon and was really sort of shielded. They were very protective and very supportive of the filmmaker. It was a great situation.
Beacon does big movies like The Hurricane and End of Days, The Family Man with Nicolas Cage coming up, 13 Days with Kevin Costner, Spy Game with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford.... They make these giant, star-driven movies, and at the same time they make these smaller movies, and I hope they keep doing that because I definitely benefited from the experience.
Let's back up a minute, and talk about some of your most recent projects. Probably the most recognizable project you've worked on in the last few years was The Weird Al Show. I've been a fan of Weird Al since he first debuted on the Dr. Demento Show in 1981. Tell me about working with such a zany guy, and what it was like with that series.
Al is great. How I got hooked up with The Weird Al Show.... actually, my wife Beth has a music video production company called Daisy Force, and she represents a handful of music video directors. She also reps “Weird Al”. He directs his own videos and he's also directed videos for John Spencer Blues Explosion and Hanson and various other people. And he's a really good director.
I'd heard from Beth that he'd gotten this really good deal to do a Saturday morning show, and they were looking for a director, so I met with Al and it seemed fun. I'd always been a Weird Al fan, so I decided yeah, that would be great. We did thirteen episodes and, again, that was an extremely hectic thing. We did a bunch of single camera stuff that we would go out on location, but the bulk of the show was set on the old Tonight Show set, actually. We built Weird Al's underground cave for a three camera shoot. I have never done a three camera TV shoot before; it was just something that didn't interest me. This show was originally going to be a single camera, but then when we got into it and looked at the budget, we were like, “We're going to have to do this with three cameras.” So I had to learn it really quickly, and that the difference being instead of one camera you have three or four cameras swinging around, and instead of being on the set, I'm in a booth somewhere saying, “Take camera one! Take two! Take three!” It's a whole different thing.
“Weird Al” has managed to be around for a long time now and has this rabid following. We went to some of his concerts when we were doing his show and they were packed! I also didn't know: what's “Weird Al” really like? And I'll tell you what he's really like: he's the nicest guy on the planet. He's the most hardworking guy, but he's just really nice. I'd love to give you dirt on “Weird Al”, but there is none! I got along with him great and it was a fun experience.
You've had a couple of short-lived experiences working with CBS on Saturday morning shows. Are ratings really that important to networks like CBS for shows such as Weird Al and Back to the Future, as they would be for a prime time series?
In those two cases, the good news is the bad news. One of the reasons I think they were short lived is that these were pretty high profile shows and in the world of Saturday morning, they cost a lot to do. In that way, I was really fortunate to be able to shoot the Back to the Future stuff in 35 mm film and have Christopher Lloyd; I mean, it's almost unheard of! I was really fortunate to be involved.
And the same thing with the Al show. He really wanted to get into doing a Saturday morning thing. As with any TV show, it's ratings driven, and it's also cost driven. I think it would be tough for almost any Saturday morning show in those price ranges to generate those kind of ratings because television is really different now than it was 10 or 15 years ago. You used to have three networks; now you have five or six networks and cable. So the audience is so fragmented that it's really hard to get a giant group of people on Saturday mornings to watch one thing.
And then, creatively, it's interesting to because not only do you have certain restrictions on TV, but it's also Saturday morning and there's an educational concept that has to be met. It was always a challenge on the Al show. There were things that we wanted to do that were really really funny, but we had to be careful not to be irresponsible and because Al is a role model. The show changed so much from Al's original concept to what you ended up seeing and, frankly, Al's original concept was much better and I wish we could've done it. Most of the stuff I didn't think was irresponsible at all. But when you're working with a large network who people send letters to every week, taking changes is not what they're best at.
I had a great experience on those two shows, but at the same time it made me sort of like, “I don't ever want to do a kids' thing where I have to be always watching.” It would boil down to where Al would write a simple gag, a simple throwaway gag, where Al would have a plate and he'd smash it over his head. You'd go to a meeting, and they'd be like, “Al can't do that, that's IB.” “What's IB?” “Immitatible behavior”. You don't want kids to be at home, taking their parents' plates, and smashing them on their head.” I think most kids are smart enough to not smash plates over their heads! When they see “Weird Al”, who's a funny guy, smashing a plate, I think they understand that and the context of what it is. But no.
There's five or six of those types of gags every minute for someone like “Weird Al”, who's humor is really gag driven and parody driven. You can imagine what these meetings were like. Every line, every movement he made was scrutinized. It was crazy. So that got pretty grueling; I think it was the single most grueling job I've ever had. They also assigned an educational guide, an educational advisor, to us. He had worked on the Fat Albert show in the '70s and he was not up for anything that was slightly controversial, like smashing a plate on Al's head. His big thing was, “I think we need to teach the kids to be courteous.” It was crazy.
When you watch the final show, I think it was amazing we were able to do what we were able to do. That's an interesting thing about working in the business. When you're a kid, or an adult, or anybody, watching TV and going to the movies, any of us all of us have seen stuff and gone, “Come on, I could do better than that! I could make that so much better!” And maybe you could. What you learn in the business is that so much of it is predicated on what you are allowed to do and you picking your battles. But I digress.
You also tried your hand at directing episodes of some really bizzare cable comedy series, such as Mr. Show With Bob and David, Upright Citizens Brigade, and The High Life. What was that like?
Mr. Show was a dream to do. I don't know if you've ever seen the show, but those are just two of the funniest guys in the world! I love to work with them and the caliber of writing on that show was really, really great. I think a lot of people have an attitude of, “Oh, I'm doing features now, I don't want to do television anymore.” But some of the caliber of writing, especially the comedic writing on television, is so much better than a lot of the feature comedic writing now, which I find baffling.
If they decided to get Mr. Show up and running again, I'd do it in a heartbeat. It was really fun to do and it was kind of a niche show. It was on HBO, it was never huge, but it was hilarious. Same with Upright Citizens Brigade. It was kind of refreshing to be like, “Well, can we say that?” “Yeah, it's HBO, of course you can!” That was kind of fun. And this movie, Bring It On, is kind of the middle ground. It's PG-13 and only a couple things got cut from the MPAA after a couple of discussions. I think the movie is really, really fun, and we'll see how it does.
It may not be widely known, but you actually have had a hand in the research & development portion of the upcoming Back to the Future DVDs, having worked with Laurent Bouzereau, I'm assuming, on the new documentary. What exactly has been your role in this highly anticipated digital release and what can you tell us?
My participation on the DVDs is actually zero. When Laurent was starting it, we had discussions on where he could find some stuff in the Amblin vaults and some stuff is in the ZM vaults, and it was really Laurent calling so I could help him locate some of these materials. To this day, I still don't know what the current release plan is for these DVDs. When the time comes for me to sit down with Home Video and talk about this DVD, I'm sure I'll be able to find out more. But, obviously, it is something everyone is awaiting, and they just released Jaws. We got to mix Bring It On at the Universal Dub Stage. I am just thrilled -- the movie sounds so good. The guys who were the mixers had done the remix on Jaws and were getting ready to do the remix on E.T., because I guess they're gonna re-release E.T. theatrically, and then on DVD.
But my feeling is if they're doing all these, Back to the Future can't be that far away. I know we've heard this off and on now for a few years. But I've really been impressed by how Universal is doing these special edition DVDs. All the studios were sort of waiting around to see how DVD was going to get along, and I think only now Fox is really starting to do great stuff. They've got this Planet of the Apes boxed-set coming in August.... New Line has been terrific with their DVDs. Some studios, like Paramount, are still way behind on their DVD activity. I think that Universal seems really enthusiastic about it.
All the studios are rather reluctant to spend too much money on these things, because it does cost money to do them, but I think they're seeing now that there is a market for it. And one of the key things in the market is that the more “bullet points” you have on the back of the DVD, the more supplemental stuff you have, the more marketable it is and the more people want it. People feel gypped now if they buy a DVD and it's just a movie and a trailer.
My favorite thing, obviously, about DVD is the fact that you get to see a movie in its proper aspect ratio. I can't even rent VHS anymore because I cannot watch a movie full frame, especially now having done a movie and knowing how carefully you've done the framing. I'm thrilled that I'll be able to release this movie at 1:85 on the DVD.
It's been nearly ten years since you wrote the script for Back to the Future..The Ride. Do you know anything about the rumors that Universal & Amblin are replacing the ridefilm at all parks next year and replacing it with a new Back to the Future ride-film?
Oh, wow, I have not heard anything, but I've really been sort of out of that loop. That would be great! I'd love that if they changed it up.You figure with the amount of people they shuffle through there every year.... I would love that. I think that'd be really great. When we were mixing at Universal, I kept wanting to... I thought, “I need to get away and ride this thing, it's been so long!” I never got a chance to, but I'm hoping that it's not in some state of disrepair!
There were different versions of the script originally. The first one, we had a two column format because the whole idea was that the preshow was on two different video monitors. And then we revised it.
Do you think if they did that that they would release the first one on DVD or anything like that?
I don't know, but I've been to science fiction and comic book conventions out here and I've seen the preshow and the ride film on tape for sale. And I wonder if you could go on ebay you could find it.... But I know that at the L.A. Comic Convention that happens every month at the Shrine Auditorium they're dealers who have bootleg films and everything, and I've seen that. Mark Cowen and I were at the convention a couple years ago, and I was like, “Hey Mark, come over here”; they had a tape of the thing! And I was asking the guy, “So what's this? The preshow and the Ride material?” And he said, “Oh yeah, I got it from the Ride and blah blah blah.” Then I was like, “Well we wrote this thing!” [Laughs] I was actually kind of happy, you know. I should've grabbed one of those. But I have no problem with that because the amount of people who want that are so few, that's not going to deter them from spending their money and going on the Ride. I think it's great because the ridefilm that Douglas Trumbull did is amazing to me -- I'm still amazed by it! -- but it would be great if they did a new one. I'd like to see what they come up with now.
What have you got on board in the near future? Any immediate plans for following-up this film by directing or writing another?
Well, I just finished this thing so I'm sort of chilling out for a couple weeks, getting ready for the premiere and stuff, But, you know, I'm reading scripts right now and trying to figure out what to do next, which is always hard.
It's looking like I'm going to do a couple episodes for this new show on the WB called Grosse Pointe, which is not confirmed yet. It's by Darren Star, the same guy who created Sex and the City and he was one of the creators of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. This is a half hour comedy and it's a behind-the-scenes look at a Beverly Hills 90210-type show. I saw the pilot episode, and it's hilarious! It's pretty scathing humor. One of the girls who's in Bring it On, Lindsay Sloane, is one of the lead characters in it. She plays a Tori Spelling-like character who's on the show because her dad owns the network. It's a really, really funny show. So I'm hopefully going to do a couple episodes of that.
And then I had written a feature script and finished it right before I got Bring It On. I'm hoping to go out with that sometime in the next few months and see what happens with that.