Philippine Daily Inquirer)
by RUBEN V. NEPALES
June 13, 2001
LOS ANGELES-Ivan Reitman, director of such seminal comedies as "Ghostbusters," "National Lampoon's Animal House" and "Stripes," is adapting to these digital technology times.
From the rubber, matte paintings, photochemical processes and plain old set construction that Reitman and his team applied to achieve the special effects in "Ghostbusters," one of the biggest all-time comedy hits, he has evolved into a filmmaker using the latest CGI technology in his new film, "Evolution."
The Slovakia-born director, who directed and produced films (mostly comedies)that have grossed more than $ 2.5 billion, talks about his own cinematic evolution in this interview in a hotel suite. Wearing a black shirt and pants, the 56-year-old filmmaker says filming a special effects movie like "Ghost-busters" in the early 1980s was tough.
"It's easier these days because of computer technology," he says. "You can achieve a more realistic look. You can do practically anything. It's only a question of money and time."
Instead of ghosts, Reitman is tackling alien life forms that arrive via a meteor that hits Arizona. These aliens evolve fast (200 million years in a matter of hours) and become a threat to mankind.
"I don't think we could have made 'Evolution' 20 years ago because we were not just looking for one dinosaur or one little dog," says the director who made box-office stars out of Bill Murray ('Stripes') and the late John Belushi ('National Lampoon's Animal House'). "This film has 24 to 25 original creatures. And they have to represent a whole world of ecology."
Adaptability being the key to evolution, even in tinseltown, Reitman jumped on the digital bandwagon wholeheartedly and enlisted the help of special effects veteran Phil Tippett, who won two Oscars for his CGI wizardry in "Jurassic Park" and "Return of the Jedi."
Battling Tippett's quick-changing, always-enlarging digital creatures in this Columbia Pictures film are David Duchovny ("The X-Files"), Sean William Scott ("American Pie," "Road Trip," "Dude, Where's My Car"), Julianne Moore ("Hannibal") and Orlando Jones ("Bedazzled," "The Replacements").
Spectacular Moore
All four stars signed up for the hip, special-effects heavy "Evolution" ("Men in Black" comes to mind) because they wanted to work with Reitman. He is asked particularly about Moore, a surprise name in a comedy movie.
"She's a spectacular actress who I've always wanted to work with," Reitman answers. "When I met her, she had just done 'Hannibal' and 'The End of the Affair.' She was going to do another serious movie. So she was just dying to do something lighter and funnier in between. She said she liked my work and wanted to work with me. And I said, how about this part in 'Evolution?' It's not a big part but it's an opportunity to do something different. She read the script and thought it was funny.
"She told me that she would do it as long as she could fall down a lot. There was no falling down in the script. I said, I already did this falling down bit with Emma Thompson in 'Junior.'"
Reitman laughs as he continues: "I'm worried that people are going to say that I'm the director who takes very serious, fine actresses and forces them to do silly things. She said, no, I want to do this and I'll make sure that I won't be stupid in the movie. It works out comedically but it was a little bit dangerous."
Duchovny's joke
He cracks up, too, as he talks about filming a scene in which his other "serious" actor, Duchovny, decides on the spot to moon a villain: "During a take, I always watch on the monitor. I'm very focused. I'm not aware of the world around me at all during the take. On the third or fourth take, I find myself saying, David is taking his pants off! Why is he doing that? I'm not even thinking that it's actually good or bad for the scene. It's just different from what I'm expecting.
"I realize, he must mean this so I go and ask him, is this a joke, or is it for the outtake reel or do you really mean it and want it in the movie? He said, I thought it was an appropriate response to the scene. I said, okay, in that case, let's really go for it because he was a little careful the first time he did it. There were about 200 extras all around him.
"When we edited the movie, I wasn't sure if the mooning scene was going to be right or not or whether David would even be funny or just silly," Reitman continues. "We had a lot of arguments about it in the editing room. So I said, let's show it in the first test screening and let's see what happens and then we can decide.
"There was a huge response from the audience who broke into a big applause. Forty women wrote in their rating cards, 'He's got a great ass. You should have more of his ass in the movie.'"
Uncooperative army
Does he worry that even though he has had great success in comedies, maybe his humor is not in sync with 2001? "It's absolutely possible," Reitman replies. "It's one of the many things that make comedy tough. You can be in a theater with 300 other people who are laughing away and if you don't laugh, then the movie isn't funny. I don't care that everyone's laughing. My response is, it's not funny.
"It's one of the many things that lead to the cliche that comedy is tough. It will remain to be seen if I can maintain directing comedies because I can lose my touch."
He is asked if the US Army, which is portrayed as gung-ho in dealing with the alien menace, cooperated in making the movie. "No," he responds. "It's very ironic. When I made 'Stripes' 20 years ago, the Army totally supported it and it was much more subversive than anything we do in this movie.
"I'm very popular with the US Army because my movies featuring the Army has been good for them. Army recruiting shot up after 'Stripes.' People thought they were going to Europe and meet attractive women and have wonderful sex."
Is it a formula in comedy today to cast a black comedian in order to be successful? "I don't think so. But once I did hire Orlando Jones, the black-white relationship (Jones and Duchovny are buddies) was very important. I want it to be as different from what you normally see between black and white persons in a film.
Success story
"Traditionally, in Hollywood comedies, the black guy is usually uneducated, a streetwise guy who's smart in his world, fast-talking and very hip, and the white guy is kind of square, well-educated but is naive to the ways of the world.
"This is not what I wanted to do. I wanted two equally smart men who took turns in being silly and being very clever and intelligent. I wanted to really believe they could be friends."
For someone who at age four fled with his concentration camp-survivor parents when the Communists took over Czechoslovakia, Reitman is a Hollywood success story. Raised in Canada, Reitman has evolved drastically from his first movie project, a Victorian sex novel adaptation that was deemed soft porn according to Canada's decency laws but was praised by the critics. He almost ended up in jail.
He ended up in Hollywood instead, where he enjoys a career not only as a director but as a producer as well ("Space Jam," "Road Trip," "Beethoven" and Howard Stern's "Private Parts").
Reitman's continuing career evolution could take another turn when a musical film he is nurturing, "Wish," finally goes into production.
"I'm dying to do a musical movie," says the dual Tony Award nominee for best musical director and best director for the hit "Merlin." "I'm working on getting the script of that ('Wish') right. It's one of the things that is potentially in my future."
