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SUNDAY, MAY 14, 2006SUPERMAN RETURNS SET VISIT: SCREENWRITERS DAN HARRIS AND MICHAEL DOUGHERTYSYDNEY, Australia -- The Continuum today continues its series of stories from its visit to the set of Superman Returns last July.
This installment is a question-and-answer with screenwriters Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty.
Below is an edited transcription of the interview.
Question: So this is an original story but it takes elements from the previous two films, and the comics or no...?
Dougherty: We'd kind of describe it as a pseudo-sequel in a way because Dan, myself and Bryan were so in love with what Donner did that it felt like a mistake to go back to go back and remake the origin story. Everyone knows the origin story. Donner did it perfectly, as far as I'm concerned. Then Smallville is doing it again and you don't want two different incarnations as it breeds confusion and also it takes things further versus going back and doing it again.
Harris: Yeah, and for us there was a visual language put onto film that we all believe and trust in, and there's a character basis in that language that we've kind of used as our archetype and then we kind of built on top of that. Plus we're taking elements from the books over the years.
There've been so many incarnations of Superman, Superman's been around for so long, there have been so many different plotlines and so many kind of thing were we might say, "Oh yeah, that's from issue 742 and 1983," but it probably didn't come from that. It's like how many times did Superman rescue a plane, how many times did this happen. It's just an amalgam of all different inspirations from that and moving on from the old movie and the old books.
Question: Are you guys the only screenwriters that are going to be credited?
Dougherty: As far as this incarnation of the film it's been me and Dan and Bryan working on this particular draft.
Harris: There have been other writers. JJ Abrams did a draft of Superman for McG and Brett Ratner years ago. Before that there was Kevin Smith and, I mean, you guys probably know the history of all the different drafts involved. But this story is so different. It's a really different Superman movie. It never took from those drafts and kind of moved on them or changed from them, it's a different... y'know I don't want to use the word "take," but it's a different take on this kind of movie and it's a different kind of film.
Question: Given that it's an original film, what elements are crucial to have in a Superman film to make it a Superman film?
Dougherty: Flying!
Harris: Right!
Dougherty: Well, it's weird. I mean for us, at least. Again, going back to what Donner did there are things that he did, either in the design or the tone of the film that were done so right that they've kind of sunk into the public consciousness. It's funny if you watch Family Guy or Saturday Night Live, if they parody Superman, they'll parody the Fortress of Solitude that Donner did.
Harris: Exactly. If you look at that Fortress of Solitude, it's that exact same one that you saw Christopher Reeve land in.
Dougherty: Yeah. Even the music. In terms of you have to have different characters. You have to have Clark and Superman and Jimmy, Lois, Lex, umm, Perry White. I think if you left one of those out it wouldn't be a whole Superman film.
Harris: At the same time there's an original story behind it, there's an original plot. Which is, pretty successfully so far, been kept under wraps of what is actually going to happen in this movie and kind of big, terrible plan there is from his arch enemy, what's he meant to have to battle. All these different things have all been so far successfully kind of kept under wraps but there is a lot of stuff you haven't seen before, so in that ways it's not a remake at all.
Question: Psychological angle on the character?
Harris: Because this movie's a return story, and for better or worse Superman's been gone for a few years and come back to the world, just the simple fact that the world has changed in ways that he didn't expect. He comes back to a new set of rules in the Superman universe.
Dougherty: What's really cool in the origin story is the man who discovers who he is and kind of goes from the small town to the big city and kind of finds his place in the world, and what's happening in this is a man... when any of us go home, a lot of times you leave home, you go off to college, you start your life and come back to your childhood home as an adult, umm, everything that's different is the same, you feel like you don't quite fit anymore And it's a similar aspect, he's gone for a period of time and comes back and finds that his place in the world and with the people he cares about - some thing's haven't changed, the Daily Planet's still there Perry White's still running it, Jimmy's still a photographer, Lois is still a reporter and the group dynamic has changed.
Harris: And the world at large has changed, so it's kind of a rediscovery story. He has to rediscover the world that he left and how it changed, rediscover about himself and what his place in the world is.
Question: Do you find with comic-book movies that the most interesting aspect is the human aspect to the character?
Harris: For me, it's when the human element interacts with the superhuman element. The little things, like in X-Men 1, Cyclops looking down at the little boy in the train station and the boy just looking up at him with the goggles.
And in Superman 1, Dick Donner's movie, when Clark Kent stops the bullet. It's the human world that you've established in reality, y'know this is not a crazy universe, this is like cars drive down the street, it's normal and yet you've got your superheroes in that world and they can interact in ways you've never imagined before, and when you get that outsider's perspective, I mean, y'know the audience is an outsider, they have lived in a real world - they get to see something magical happen inside this world that they live in.
Dougherty: It's pretty essential. Bryan said it best at Comic-Con, it's essentially a love story. You know, it's like even superheroes fall in love and what happens when that does occur? He's completely invulnerable except for his heart.
Question: That's the most interesting aspect. Those human vulnerabilities.
Harris: He's physically invulnerable but emotionally...
Dougherty: He's a wreck!
Harris: He's an alien. He grew up on a farm, he's an American kind of kid and when things change, they affect him in real ways.
Question: How do the main characters change?
Dougherty: In every other incarnation of Lois Lane, she has been very much the career woman, has been too busy for a love life, too busy for Clark Kent, for anybody else. In this version she's still that character to a certain extent, but she has fallen for somebody.
And so in a way I think the audience has to get used to that idea. It's like Clark all of a sudden finds out that this person he's been in love with and partially hoped to be reunited with when he came back is with somebody else. And I think when you have come back and you see your high-school sweetheart has fallen for somebody else.
Question: Superman hasn't really changed in the comics very much over he years but it seems you're really starting to progress the character?
Dougherty: They got married, and I think that's really interesting.
Question: It took a long time!
Dougherty: It did take a long time, but we don't have the luxury of printing comic books every week, so again that was another reason to push the story forward. Because if you're going to make a Superman film for the first time in 20 odd years, let's not tell the origin again, let's push it forward, let's give the audience something new and take the characters and push them forward.
Harris: I think it's successfully a retro film in the way you feel about things and yet it's so contemporary in the themes of the movie and what's happened to people. It's so contemporary, it really is the real world today and yet it fits in the feel of the universe. It's got a really great style.
Question: You guys are rewriting as you go, how does that work with you and Bryan?
Harris: This is a very special film. It was a very easy film to get going, when Bryan and Mike and I came up with the idea for the film and how we're going to attack it. The initial idea of how he's going to do a Superman film, the basic plot of the film and the story came through in days. It was really ink to paper and a long treatment, as Bryan said before, in a matter of a few days.
It hasn't changed dramatically since then. It's been real tight, but it is such an important movie for us. We think it's going to mean a lot in the cultural world when it comes out. We want to be a part of it for everything, we want to be part of what Bryan calls his "creative core."
On a practical level we're good for him to be around because a movie this big has tons of concerns and tons of issues, whether it be budget or schedule, who can work when, or the set. It's always going to have somebody around that cares about the impact of the story, of the movie.
Dougherty: It's like managing time travel because even the bit we're shooting today, it's like small bits and pieces but if you change one little line of dialogue, all of a sudden that creates a million different effects throughout the rest of the script. So somebody has to be keeping an eye on it.
Harris: We were in the editing room last night and Bryan was taking about cutting a scene down and moving it a little bit, and we'll remind him, "No, you can't because that has to happen at this exact time because the way the montage plays out."
Dougherty: You step on a butterfly, it'll destroy a butterfly!
Harris: And everything falls apart. It's good to have people whispering behind his shoulder, just to make sure that things are heading along properly. I think that re-shoots are not fun for anybody. To help fix problems, we're there to fix so we just bill them for what re-shoots normally cost.
Dougherty: Bryan hates the idea of 100 writers on a project, 100 monkeys. Anything you get, the story becomes even more diluted. It's not a creative-driven project it becomes a studio-driven project. The closer you are with your writers the better. Peter Jackson has the same relationship obviously with Fran (Walsh) and Phillipa (Boyens), and he likes that director/writer collaboration. If it's not going to be the same person it should be the closest people on the production.
Harris: There's a rule that they really limit the number of writers that are credited in the end, but sometimes I just wish that some writers would just let everybody be credited so you guys or the public at large could see some of these movies that don't work so well but how many writers have been added! We've seen cover pages of movies that we won't mention that had 20/25 writers listed on for the same storyline the same director.
Question: How do you share the writing process?
Harris: Usually we come up with a treatment for the movie between us or between us and Bryan, and then we pick our favourite scenes, separate and write them, e-mail them to each other - rewrite each other, rewrite each other, rewrite each other, present to Bryan. Sometimes two choices to Bryan, sometimes 4, 10 choices to Bryan for a scene idea and then it just gets whittled down.
Dougherty: A lot of e-mailing, a lot of rewriting each other, but we never take it personally.
Question: That's very important as a writer to have a director you trust, trusts you, is really trusting?
Harris: Yeah, I think so. It's helped him, it's helped us, nobody's doing anything behind anyone's back; we all just care about the movie, about the story.
Dougherty: You never take it personally, you have no ego about it.
Harris: We always said that X2 was boot camp for us, and maybe this is the first battle.
Question: How is this film relevant for 2006?
Dougherty: In terms of?
Question: In terms of the technology they use, in terms of how they relate to one another, the characters?
Harris: Yeah, I think that all of us believe the film is going to be anchored in a timeless kind of time. I was trying to say before there are contemporary themes, but this is not a movie that is directly relatable to 9/11 or other things. We're not taking any major political stances in the movie.
Dougherty: We're trying to avoid things that will date the film, so you're not going to see like, "Clark, have the story ready for the web site in 10 minutes!"
Harris: "Put it on your Blackberry, I'll Blackberry it to you!" There'll be none of that. It'll feel, along with Guy's (Dyas) art design, it's kind of timeless, a place where you can't put your finger on when it occurred. At the same time we've moved our relationships forward, so certain things that may have been taboo or not really explored in the '78 film, it's a freer, more liberal society, we think.
Question: Will there be plastic sheets (the cellophane "S" from Superman 2)?
Dougherty: There are certain things you don't change, you don't try and introduce invisibility, the ray beam from the finger that can levitate.
Harris: The good thing is it is 2005, and the effects have risen to the challenge. They did an incredible job in '78. Now we're even further beyond that. He's gonna do stuff that people are going to be blown away by. We haven't seen a great deal of flying in movies lately even though the technology is getting there and the visual effects are getting there. This movie is a bout a man who can fly and using it to his absolute fullest potential.
Dougherty: With all the superheroes we've had, it still seems to be a special treat.
Harris: Well, it is a special thing to see him flying and I think it's being done in a way that's really...
Question: Could you talk to us about Lois/the child and how the characters have advanced?
Dougherty: It's a family, when Clark comes back. He doesn't just come back to find that Lois has a fiance, it's a family unit. So in a lot of ways when he is watching Lois and Richard interact, he's seeing what he could have had had he not left. It's not just the fact that he could've stayed and maybe fallen in love with Lois and started a family. I think that's what, inside, he wants most. He wants to start a life he wants to be normal, he wants a wife he wants a kid.
Question:Will he come across as a home-wrecker?
Harris: We're being very careful about that. He's not a home-wrecker. At the same time, we're talking about characters that have become more contemporary, so Lois has moved on and made a family of her own but has not married yet. James Marsden's playing Richard White and he's like the "almost-Superman." She came back and got the guy who's almost Superman, he's almost her ideal guy but hasn't fully...
Dougherty: He doesn't have the powers!
Harris: He's almost the guy but he's not quite it. She's fully committed and has this great relationship with him and had a child with him and yet hasn't tied the knot, hasn't gone that extra bit.
Dougherty: It's a real situation that any of us can probably relate to. Again I talk up the high-school sweetheart and you meet with someone after 10 years of not seeing them and not only have they fallen in love, they have this family, so it's something that you can't touch, you can't mess with that even though it's the thing you want more than anything else.
Harris: Maybe there's a little bit of him holding out for you, but you still can't mess with that because you're not a home wrecker. These are big, difficult things for the characters to deal with. We're being very careful to be sensitive with that and not make people look ugly and say ugly things. It's a dramatic dilemma. It adds real weight to it.
Question: Where does Superman fit in with the other superhero movies, with Spider-Man happy and Batman cynical?
Dougherty: In the middle.
Harris: It's in the middle. I think it's in the middle or closer to the happier side. We've seen this after watching a lot of the movie cut now, it's evolving, it's really coming along great. Things are a little weird with him but very sunny.
Dougherty: We worked on X-Men and that is a very cynical, dark film about oppressed minorities. It's Bryan who in a way restarted the superhero franchises by creating X-Men 1, which was sort of a concentration camp. Now he's hooked everything around and it's not that the tone, is going to be exactly the same as the first film which was a bit brighter but it is less cynical. It is like Dan said, when you have Lex he is a good mix of that darker villain who enjoys what he's doing.
Question: Is Luthor's portrayal campy or serious?
Dougherty: He won't be as campy as the Gene Hackman version, but he's not the dark, brooding, "I must destroy Superman" Lex Luthor either.
Harris: He's not Dr Doom, y'know? He is more fun than that. What we've found with Kevin Spacey is he's become one man, then he turns and there's something a lot scarier.
Dougherty: Remember the first film, it's a classic moment, when Superman says, "How do you get your kicks? By planning the death of innocent people?"
Harris: "No."
Dougherty: "No, by causing the death". That's what Kevin Spacey is doing through this entire movie. So it's stuff like that.
Harris: It's the combination of him and Parker Posey. This sophisticated, very comic but very scary kind of grouping. So I think he'll be the best of both worlds.
Question: Can you talk about the responsibility of taking on this franchise? There's dark superhero movies, then there's Superman, and you guys are picking it up with all these expectations and responsibilities. Not to screw it up, basically.
Harris: Fingers crossed, thank God we can go into the cutting room and see stuff cut and see the film moving along and we can really say for real what's coming out. Otherwise we'd be very, very nervous and may have run back home.
Dougherty: When you do a Superman project you have to respect everything that came before because he is the ultimate superhero. As I like to keep saying, even though we're pushing things ahead, we're respecting everything that came before. From the comics, to the Donner films to Smallville, you can not just step all over that, you can't pretend that it doesn't exist. You are a part of that legacy and so we had to acknowledge, even Lois & Clark, we had to acknowledge those things, even The Adventures of Superboy, I guess! We're just the chapter after that.
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Question: Will we have to see the first two films to understand this movie?
Harris: No.
Dougherty: It helps.
Harris: It helps, yeah. I'd recommend seeing the first film absolutely to anybody to see this film.
Dougherty: We've summarized things pretty quickly and easily.
Harris: There's a very interesting way that the film unfolds in the first 20 minutes. We'd love to tell you but we can't. It's told in a way people wouldn't really expect.
Question: Did the extended version of Superman II -- where Superman destroys the Fortress of Solitude -- come into any of your writing?
Dougherty: Bryan likes to say "vague history" and, I know it sounds repetitive and it keeps coming up but it's true. I like to talk about James Bond in way. People know that James Bond is a spy, his codename's 007, he meets up with M and Q every now and then and gets the details of the next mission and that's kind of all you need to know when you go to a new James Bond film. It doesn't have a lot of direct references to the films that came before it but sometimes they do, and this is very similar to that. Pushing things forward, but as long as you have the basic knowledge of who Superman is and who the characters are you're fine.
Question: What lessons have you learned from other superhero movies?
Dougherty: The whole thing about superhero projects, superhero movies and the comic books, is there's an audience for every type of superhero film. I mean, growing up, I honestly was more X-Men comics than Superman. I'll tell you that, because I loved the plotlines of oppressed minorities and the idea of growing up feeling like an outcast. What kid doesn't love that?
At the same time I still loved Superman, so, when you watch Spider-Man, or when you watch Fantastic Four, you can compare yourself to each other .but at the same time they're completely different films, sometimes for different people.
Harris: For this movie you look at what's special and you exploit it in the best possible way. Superman is invulnerable to everything but Kryptonite, he can fly, the great thing is there's years and years of history, of foundation with him and Lois, with him and Perry, with him and Jimmy. That's what you own as a movie and when you own those concepts nobody else has done them so you can just push every idea to its furthest -- how far can you go before it breaks and it turns into a movie you don't want to tell? -- and then we take those ideas and try and work them together.
Dougherty: And there's things that Superman can get away with that Spider-Man and other superhero movies can't get away with, we can show a guy getting hit with billions of bullets whereas Spider-Man'd be dead on the ground so, or even X-Men, so we own that.
Question: Is there a difference between writing Marvel characters and DC characters?
Harris: I don't think so, I've never felt...
Dougherty: Well, people like to say that Marvel exists in the real world, and because DC has Gotham and Metropolis doesn't exist in our world, that they're more in some alternate universe that is a real world and Metropolis does exist.
Harris: That's ironic for us because in our last movie we dealt with probably 14 people with superpowers and now we're dealing with one and the series of humans that surround him.
Dougherty: The cool thing with Marvel, growing up reading the books was the Marvel characters were more tangible, they would be portrayed more realistically, you would always have superheroes with very real human vulnerabilities. I think at the same time DC has adopted that mindset as well with Batman and with Superman. So there's not really a big difference between DC and Marvel. It's not really, "This is a DC project so we have to make it bigger than a Marvel character."
Question: Have DC been involved?
Dougherty: They've just been very supportive.
Harris: There was a dialogue between us and them and we've gotten along. They've been very good about it all.
Question: Do you see Superman as a God almost?
Dougherty: I think you can't help but draw that comparison; I think it's okay to do that. Even with the story that we're telling it's like messiahs always leave you and everyone's always waiting for one to come back, and we're telling the story of a Messiah who has come back.
Harris: We're asking the question, is reliance on messiahs a good thing and what happens when they leave you and they come back? Is it better that you've lost the ability to do things for yourself? Is it better not having messiahs in the first place? So if you're using it as a religious allegory those are some of the contemporary themes we're asking.
Question: In the original you have Jor-El, the father sending his son down to Earth?
Harris: That's part of the emotional core of the film.
Dougherty: That's one of my favorite parts of the film Unbreakable was Sam Jackson talking about how all our comic book super-heroes are essentially just the new gods. The story of Zeus and Hercules, they are just, it is the retelling of the Greek and Roman Gods for our culture.
Question: The first Superman set up Superman II. Are you guys planting the seeds for sequels?
Harris: Ah, hell yeah! I can confidently say there are many seeds set up through the movie for what will hopefully be a long-lasting new franchise.
Question: Villains for sequels we haven't seen?
Harris: There's some interesting villains, yet some of them are very hard to conceptualize on film.
Dougherty: At the same time you want to pick super-villains, I mean the thing with Lex is everyone knows Superman and Lex Luthor are the guys that go head-to-head like Batman and The Joker...
Harris: Lex is a gateway villain. Superman is returning to the screen, he hasn't been here in 25 years, Lex is our gateway villain.
Dougherty: After that, who knows?
Question: You can rely on him?
Harris: It's already been established, people know who he is, people know what his powers or lack thereof are, what his agenda is.
Dougherty: He's the ultimate clash between man and Superman.
Question: What elements of the comics would you like to see in a film? The Bizarro universe, Krypton the Superdog?
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