We Grrrrill Anthony Hopkins & Director Joe Johnston on "The Wolfman"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 10 February 2010 23:50

Written by Frank Lovece

Q: In November, Mark Goldblatt and Walter Murch were brought in to do some additional editing. These are just top-of-the-line guys, but two of them? And so late in the process?

JJ: It was a slightly odd situation, I have to say. Dennis Virkler had done a fantastic job getting it from the raw footage to the [draft] cut but it wasn't doing quite what the studio wanted it to do, and I had my issues as well, so they decided to make a change. And when I heard that Walter Murch was available — and I've known Walter for 25 years up at Lucasfilm — I said, "If you can get Walter Murch, do not hesitate to make that happen." He is the best living editor in the world today, probably. And it just so happened that Walter was looking for a job, so I said, "Great, let's get him."

Q: It's funny to think of legends looking for work, but they do.

JJ: Walter just loves film, he loves editing so much. I think he was looking for something interesting to do.

Q: And Mark Goldblatt?

JJ: Mark was actually doing stuff that I didn't want Walter to do, because the studio said, "Can we try this, can we try that?" and I said, "Yeah, we can try it, but Walter's doing the official cut, Walter's doing my cut. I don't have any problems trying stuff; just know that it's not the movie unless the director says it is." And they said, "No, that's okay, that's fine," and since we were sort of short on time I said, "Look, why don't you hire Mark and put him down in this editing suite where he has access to the footage, and he can try what he wants. He might come up with some great stuff and we'll put it in the cut. Let Mark do his thing and I will sit here with Walter and we'll be cutting the official version of the movie.' And everybody was happy with that, and Mark came up with some interesting things that ended up in the [final] cut, and there was a lot of stuff he did that was not in the cut.

Q: You've done so many movies, including some hits, and I'm wondering, especially with editing being done so late in the game, do you still get nervous or have you reached a point where you're so well ensconced in your career that you just take everything in stride?

JJ: I've got my next job and I'm not going to worry about the success or the failure of the picture. I can only use my instincts and say, "I think this is the best version of that scene. This is the best take. This is the best piece of music for this scene." And I can't start second-guessing myself and thinking, "What does the audience want to see? What does the studio think is the best solution for this?" You can't start doing that, because after a while it all becomes a blur and you forget what your original instinct was. You have to say, "This is right, I'm going to stick to it," and if you do that, if you trust your instincts, then they will usually continue to be your instinct. If you don't trust them and you start wavering, you start saying, "I wonder if more people would like this than this," then I think at that point you're sunk. You just have to stick to your guns.

Q. This is your first movie in a long time. What have you been doing between Hidalgo (2004) and this?

JJ: I took four years off because I was so burnt out after Hidalgo and I just said, "To hell with it; I'm going to either do something else or I'm going to wait until I find the greatest script in the world." I took four years and I built the kids a tree house, I read a hundred books, I just stayed at home and basically played. And my kids were young at that point and we just had fun. The last year I'm thinking, "I'D better go back to work. I've got bills to pay, too, and I better start looking for something." And I could not find anything I wanted to spend a year-and-a-half of my life on. I just struggled and read script after script after script and I just tossed them in the recycle bin. When this thing came along I thought, "Well, it's not what I was looking for but there's a great story here; it's a classic retelling of this gothic horror film that I loved as a kid, so why not?" And once you make that commitment you have to just go all the way and it becomes your life. It's almost two years now.

Q: I just want to ask some biographical things real quick. Your name is Joseph Eggleston Johnston II?

JJ: The third.

Q: Ah, that explains it. The "Texas Births" listing at FamilyTreeLegends.com, where I got this, had an asterisk by your name, but no footnotes. The asterisk key is right next to the "I" key, so "II*" must be a typo.

JJ: I guess. I am the third.

Q: And you were born in Fort Worth?

JJ: I was actually born in Boston. I've never bothered to correct that on IMDb because I figure there aren't any film festivals in Fort Worth so no one's going to call me and say, "Hey can you come down and make a speech?"

Q: And you went to California State University, Long Beach?

JJ: I went to Cal State Long Beach, I went to Pasadena City College, I went to [Pasadena's] Art Center [College of Design], I went to USC. I got kicked out of a lot of good schools!

Q: What happened?

JJ: I went to USC when I was in my mid-30s and I had already had a career at Lucasfilm for about 10 years. I spent a year at USC and took the classes I wanted to take and had a great time. I realized I that I already knew a lot of the stuff I was learning but I didn't have a context to put it into. What film school does better than anything is it forces you to get out there and make the movie. As hard as that is by yourself, you've got to wrangle your camera and your friends to be in it and the costumes and all that stuff, and that is the true value of film school. You've got to show your dailies at 9 o'clock Monday morning and if you don't have them you're going to look like a total putz.

Q: You went to work with Lucasfilm right out of high school?

JJ: No, I went to work for Lucasfilm right after Cal State Long Beach. I was 25 when I started at [filmmaker George Lucas' company] ILM; I think I was the 12th employee hired. It was a six-week job doing storyboards. I bluffed my way into the job saying I knew what storyboards were; I had no idea what storyboards were! The six weeks turned into two years and that turned into the next two "Star Wars" films and the next three "Indiana Jones" films and a bunch of stuff in between. After 10 years I decided I'd had enough and I wanted to go do some traveling and spend some money that I had been saving, and George said, "You know, you should go to film school." I said, "That doesn't sound very much like a vacation." And he said, "No, but I think it would be good for you." He kept me on half-salary and he paid my tuition and he allowed me to take any classes I wanted to take. He is just the most generous person I've ever known. He's not only generous with his time and money but with his knowledge; I learned more from sitting in the editing room with George than you could ever learn in film school.

Q: Were you one of the people who famously got points he gave to the early Star Wars people?

JJ: What he did was, he took one point and split it eight ways on [The] Empire [Strikes Back], and he took a point and split it 10 ways on Return of the Jedi. After Star Wars we got bonuses but it wasn't splitting a point. The real payday came after Empire Strikes Back, when eight of us split one point. That was great; it was really wonderful.

Q: You wrote a "Star Wars" book, The Adventures of Teebo?

JJ: I did write a book, a children's book. I read it about a year ago and I thought, "What the hell was I thinking?" It's not really much of a children's book; it's sort of a teen book. I really wrote it because I wanted to illustrate it, and I illustrated everything but the cover. I was not happy with the cover, but they had to get it to press and I ran out of time. It was one of those things I sort of did for fun.

Q: Is your wife in the business?

JJ: She is not. She is a landscape painter. I'm hoping that she'll get famous enough so that I can retire and live off of her for a while!

Q: Are either of your two kids planning on following dad into the business?

JJ: Henry is 15 and I bought him a digital Handicam last Christmas and the student version of Final Cut Pro, and he has been making these little movies. I saw one the other day and I thought, "This kid's got something." When I was 15 I wasn't doing anything like this. I didn't even really pick up a camera until I was in film school, so hopefully he's got a jumpstart on me. But it's just fun to see what their instincts are at that age because it's all about what they've seen. He's learning from the films that he sees and we sort of force him to watch classic films, even when he doesn't want to. So he's getting a film education. Lottie is 13 and in the seventh grade, and I think she's going to be a writer or an artist or something. She does her own comic strips and illustrates them.

Q: Finally, let's talk a little bit about the next movie, "The First Avenger: Captain America" [based on the Marvel Comics superhero created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1940 for Marvel's forerunner, Timely Comics].

JJ: We are working on it; we're in prep. Rick Heinrichs is production designing and we're set up down in Manhattan Beach [California].  It's the part of the process that I love the most; we have eight or ten really talented artists, and we all just sit around all day and draw pictures and say, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this?" It's that phase of the production where money doesn't matter: "Let's put all the greatest stuff up on the wall and [then later] see what we can afford'"  

FL: Were you a Marvel or a DC Comics guy growing up?

JJ: I read a little bit of everything but I was a Jack Vance fan when I was growing up. I read everything [science-fiction  novelist] Jack Vance wrote and I still love his work. I told [one of the producers], "I'm not really what you'd call a comic book fan," and he said, "Yeah, I know, that's why we want you."

Q: Have you been looking at any of the old Jack Kirby pictures? Sam Raimi in Spider-Man had a couple of shots that were taken right from the old comic books.

JJ: Yeah, I've been looking at a lot of the Captain America stuff. We're setting this in the period, in 1942, 1943 [during World War II]. The stuff in the '60s and '70s [comic books] we're sort of avoiding. We're going back to the '40s, and then forward to what they're doing with Captain America now. But, yeah, there's plenty to draw on there — there's so much stuff that's been done over the years with Captain America. Any idea you can come up with, somebody's already drawn a comic book based on it.

AH: Actually, he's doing Captain America next door to where I'm going to be filming Thor.

Q: Well, y'know, comic books always had crossovers.

AH: Maybe I'll get a small part. Captain America's grandfather!

Q: Love to see that. What do you have after Thor?

AH: Well, I don't know. There's a film that's been around for a little time called Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, for which I'm being asked to play Alfred Hitchcock. But you know, I just say, "Oh, yeah, yeah" to my agent and wait around until they make it or don't make it.

Interview transcriptions by Allie Finkel.

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