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Director Louis Leterrier on Unleashed
Source: Edward Douglas
May 17, 2005
comingsoon.net/news.php
French filmmakers tend to be unfairly judged by American movie fans (and Hollywood) as being too arty or non-commercial for U.S. sensibilities, something that may have been exacerbated by the failure of movies like Catwoman last year and Bruce Willis' Hostage earlier this year. Both movies were first time English feature directors by established French filmmakers.
Like Pitof, director Louis Leterrier is a prodigy of Luc Besson, one of the few French directors appreciated by American action lovers, thanks to groundbreaking films like La Femme Nikita and The Professional. Although Leterrier is equally as good at mixing action, drama and humor, he's looking to break out of the stereotypes of being a French filmmaker, something he has already done quite adequately thanks to his 2002 feature film debut The Transporter, starring Jason Statham. (He just finished editing the much-anticipated sequel, which comes out here in September.) But before that, he returns to the States with Unleashed, starring a prestigious cast that includes Jet Li, Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins, which he talked to ComingSoon.net about during a recent visit.
CS!: Where did the idea for Unleashed originate?
Leterrier: I think Jet came to see Luc, because he wanted something different for himself. He wants to move into more conventional cinema. He's 40 something, so his fighting skills are slowly fading away, and he wanted to become a real actor. He had so much fun on 'Hero' and all those previous movies, so he said "I'd love to do a film where I'd play a simple man that was raised in violence and through love will turn into a regular normal human being" much like Luc's 'The Professional'/'Leon'.
CS!: You've been working with Luc Besson for quite a few years now. How did that relationship come about?
Leterrier: I was his Assistant Director (A.D.) for a long time. I started on "Joan of Arc", and we became friends. I was the worst A.D. in the world. I was a really nice guy, and you don't want this as an A.D. He was nice enough to want to keep me on his crew, so he asked if I wanted to be an artistic director on a film called "Transporter." I studied as an artistic director, and I was prepping the film for the other director, Corey Yuen, but he didn't direct the film--he just did the fights--so I ended up directing the rest of the film. That's how the relationship started. You do two kinds of films with Luc Besson. You do films for Luc Besson, like 'The Transporter' is a film that I did for him. That's not my kind of movie, but he knows exactly how to do the typical action with funny jokes and one-liners, stuff like that. He rehearses the actors and I just direct. Then you do film with Luc Besson like 'Unleashed' where he calls you up, and he says "Well, I got this weird little film. Would you like to take a look at it?" He gives you this film, because he believes that you will add a little something extra to the film, and I loved it. That's the interesting part with Luc. Now he's got Europe Accord, which is like a big American style studio but he controls everything. Everything goes through him so he's exhausted, but everything looks like what he's got in mind.
CS!: How much easier was it to work with a martial artist like Jet Li as opposed to working with an actor like Jason Statham, who needs to be trained?
Leterrier: Jason is also a martial artist in a sense, but he's not as good as Jet, so it was much easier and much more interesting for the fight sequences working with Jet, because we could do twelve to fifteen moves or shots. With Jet, you can do different camera moves and you can really tell the story through the fighting. You don't have to rely on just cutting, cutting, cutting, so we could use cranes to shoot the fight choreography, which is very different. Normally, you're never able to use complicated crane movements when you're fighting. Jet is so funny. He sips his tea and watches his stunt double--not a stunt double, but a guy who rehearses prior to shooting so Jet doesn't get hurt--Jet doesn't rehearse. He sees the thing and does 12-15 moves. Jet is always perfect. We only did several takes, because of the other guys or because of the camera, but it's so amazing to watch him do it.
CS!: But you said that you thought his fighting skills are fading away now that he's getting older?
Leterrier: No, no… I mean at 50, I don't see him doing all that kung fu anymore. That's it and he knows it. And he's weird, because he knows that his audience still sees him as a martial artist so he says "I think I will never do a conventional movie. Even when I'm 70, I'll have to throw a punch, because I respect my audience and that's why I am who I am." He's so humble.
CS!: How did you work with Master Wu-Ping before you started the shooting to make sure that your choreography was very distinctive and how much input did Jet have?
Leterrier: Wu-Ping did 'Matrix' and 'Crouching Tiger', and we all know what his choreography style looks like and I love it. I just didn't think it was right for this movie. Prior to the shoot, we all met, but it was it's hard for me to communicate with these guys because they speak Chinese and nothing else. So I used little action figures and go "this is Jet Li" (pretends to play with action figures). For a couple of days, I was playing with Star Wars action figures and they were really funny, since they are typically Chinese. One guy is like bald and he's got a long white beard (does an impression of the guy from 'Kill Bill Vol. 2'). At the beginning, they were a little bit thrown off with what I was asking them to do. I wanted street fight violence. I wanted Jet Li to take the guy and punch him until the guy faints or dies, but they normally would just do one punch and then cable him out. I wanted him to really fight, and they were a little thrown off. After I choreographed with them the first action sequence, I let them do what they wanted to do, and they then knew what they wanted. Jet's input is always good.
CS!: Can you talk about choreographing Danny's non-fight movements because they were very specific to his character it seemed.
Leterrier: We sent a coach to L.A. to rehearse with him for a couple months prior to shooting and they went to zoos and orphanages. They studied dogs, they studied kids and everything. He created his own character based on this and I think that's the way to do it.
CS!: Was it interesting to find out that he could actually act, too? Did you always know he could pull off the dramatic scene and the comedy?
Leterrier: Well, I didn't know him before we started shooting this movie, so I met maybe a couple weeks prior to shooting the movie. When you see him, he's got so much soul in his eyes that you know that he's a genuine person. He's not a movie star, so you know you can bring something out of him. The only problem with Jet is that thick shield he has in front of himself to protect him from the rest of the world. Once you break this shield or make him lower his shield, then you get great stuff, but the problem is to get him to stop being so protective.
CS!: What do you mean?
Leterrier: It's just that he's very introspective. He's Buddhist, almost monkish, with his beads. In the French cut, he cries at the end, but in the American cut you don't have it. The last shot in the American cut is the shot within the piano, but we don't have this in the French cut. We just have a close-up on his face and we finish on a tear, which was extremely hard for me to get out of him. He said that no director has ever gotten him to cry, but I did!
CS!: Were there a lot of differences between the French and American versions of the film?
Leterrier: It could have ended the same way, but the studio wanted the piano shot. In my version, it was like tear and then piano but I couldn't do both. On the DVD, we'll do either. I actually prefer the American version, because in the French version, the middle part where he's normal is a little too long. There's like one montage too many so it's too sappy.
CS!: And the title is also different.
Leterrier: I don't like the American title. I prefer 'Danny the Dog' because everything is "Unleashed". I saw the Star Wars poster, and it was "unleashed".
CS!: What was the hardest challenge in directing this film?
Leterrier: Well, I was 28 or 29 when I started directing this film, so when you have Jet Li, Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins in front of your eyepiece, you're like "Phew! My God! I have to pretend to be a real director!" It was really tough to direct these guys, but I quickly understood that it's not to direct them. You don't make them act. You make them react off of each other's reactions. We started shooting with Morgan, so it was very good that he set the tone. In the beginning, none of them trusted me, because they were like "Who's this guy? He never did anything." I had to prove to them that I could direct first of all, and I could do my technical things. I love actors. I really love them. I'm not the kind of director that runs away and hides behind his monitor and yells "Action!" I'm really with them. Every morning, I'd clear the set of all the crew, and I'd really rehearse with the actors. We directed the film together, and that's really the only way to do it. I mean, you don't direct Morgan Freeman; you just let him do what he does. The weekend before we started shooting, Morgan decided to become blind on film, which threw off all my shot lists. That was his decision. In France, there's a school of blind piano tuners. He learned about this and said it would be very interesting so I said why not?
CS!: How is it different working with Bob Hoskins?
Leterrier: Bob you can direct much more because Bob gives you small, he gives you big, and he gives you in the middle. You don't want him to overact, but he could have been Roger Rabbit's Bob Hoskins or "Long Good Friday" Bob Hoskins. I wanted a cross between the two of them. My biggest accomplishment is to have gotten these three guys to work together and to get them to be happy with this film, because they've done so many. I was very happy, because the French press said that this was the first film where Jet Li really acts and he's really good. For me, that is an accomplishment because that's direction.
CS!: Can you talk about casting Kerry Condon as Morgan's daughter?
Leterrier: We were looking at your typical little American girls. We wanted a cute girl, but not a beautiful girl, but all the little American actresses are so pretty and beautiful. I was not so happy with the choices we were offered, so I said let's try to see unknowns in England, and she came in and she was amazing. She is the character. She's very unaware of her beauty and I needed someone like this. I couldn't get a super model actress in front of Jet Li, because in order for Danny to fit into this family, she had to be a little freakish. Morgan Freeman was a little off and it's like the little girl and the blind man in Frankenstein. That's what I needed. These people are the only people that see Frankenstein this way.
CS!: What were some of the technical complications that were involved with all of the swinging camera shots?
Leterrier: It was very simple. I wanted to make a super-David Fincherish kind of movie with lots of effects and stuff and then we lost 30% of the money halfway through the film. The problem with American studios were that they couldn't put it in a box. You have to either be an action film, or a drama or something, but this one had everything, so the original studio ran away after they saw the dailies. We really loved the movie, so we all gave back part of our salary so that we could finish the movie. We couldn't get that extra cherry on top of the cake, you know, the visual effects, but that didn't matter actually, since I started working with the actors. I therefore simplified my camera direction in the beginning to let them act. I think it's for the better, because it makes it a little different.
CS!: Did you have any concerns about the amount of violence that was shown in the film?
Leterrier: I'm not so concerned about the violence. Especially in America, people are used to seeing violence, not on the movie screen, but on TV. I'm horrified when I watch the news here, so I was not so scared. But violence is a good way to put young people in the theatre seats. That's why we started the film extremely violent so we could get their attention, and then you can take them on the ride. You can tell them a story and that's why the movie becomes nicer. And I think it's always weird to watch this movie with like urban audiences because in the beginning they're like (makes cheering sounds) and after they're watching and some cry at the end. It's very funny to watch this movie with like your urban audience.
CS!: Can you talk about how you ended up getting Massive Attack to do the soundtrack?
Leterrier: Well, they're my favorite band. I didn't know them personally before but their last album, "The Hundredth Window", came out when I was shooting in Scotland, so it was the soundtrack of my shooting experience. I came back to Paris and edited the film. I thought that they would never accept, because their music is so cinematic that I thought the entire world has asked them to do soundtracks for their film, so I asked everyone else--Aphex Twin, Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers--but I was asking all these guys to do Massive Attack style music. Not like this, though. I told them I wanted something organic, something deep moody and trip-hoppish, and then none of them wanted to do it. I came back a little depressed, so I said let's shoot for Massive Attack. Maybe they have like unreleased tracks they want to give us. We sent them a 9-minute edit we did for Cannes a couple years back, and they watched it and they liked it I guess and they said to come over. They live in Bristol, in England, a small little town, and I went there. We were supposed to meet for 20 minutes and this meeting lasted 2 days. We were talking about anything but the movie. We talked about movies in general, comic books, books, arts, music, stuff like that and I became friends with them, but at the end of the weekend, I didn't know if they were going to do the soundtrack and they said "well, come back whenever and let's do the movie." Normally, in a heavily scored movie you have 15 minutes worth of soundtracks. In this one, you have 85 minutes of pure, new Massive Attack material, so I was extremely happy with this. I didn't want to do a rap-fu movie, and I wanted something different.
CS!: In the notes, you described this film as a big risk. What did you mean by that?
Leterrier: It's a big risk because it's neither an action film nor a drama. When the action audience comes and sits down in the theatre, they might get extremely bored in the middle section, and for the people that come to see Morgan Freeman being nice, the first six section with all the violent fights, they might get really freaked out. So that's the risk. I wanted extreme violence, not cartoon violence, but like real violence, street fight violence, to shake the audience up, and then to get them to react to realize that you know, having dinner at a table with a nice man and a nice little girl, eating soup, that's normal and that's nice. People that have that should appreciate it.
Unleashed is in theatres now.
source:
comingsoon.net/news.php
Source: Edward Douglas
May 17, 2005
comingsoon.net/news.php
French filmmakers tend to be unfairly judged by American movie fans (and Hollywood) as being too arty or non-commercial for U.S. sensibilities, something that may have been exacerbated by the failure of movies like Catwoman last year and Bruce Willis' Hostage earlier this year. Both movies were first time English feature directors by established French filmmakers.
Like Pitof, director Louis Leterrier is a prodigy of Luc Besson, one of the few French directors appreciated by American action lovers, thanks to groundbreaking films like La Femme Nikita and The Professional. Although Leterrier is equally as good at mixing action, drama and humor, he's looking to break out of the stereotypes of being a French filmmaker, something he has already done quite adequately thanks to his 2002 feature film debut The Transporter, starring Jason Statham. (He just finished editing the much-anticipated sequel, which comes out here in September.) But before that, he returns to the States with Unleashed, starring a prestigious cast that includes Jet Li, Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins, which he talked to ComingSoon.net about during a recent visit.
CS!: Where did the idea for Unleashed originate?
Leterrier: I think Jet came to see Luc, because he wanted something different for himself. He wants to move into more conventional cinema. He's 40 something, so his fighting skills are slowly fading away, and he wanted to become a real actor. He had so much fun on 'Hero' and all those previous movies, so he said "I'd love to do a film where I'd play a simple man that was raised in violence and through love will turn into a regular normal human being" much like Luc's 'The Professional'/'Leon'.
CS!: You've been working with Luc Besson for quite a few years now. How did that relationship come about?
Leterrier: I was his Assistant Director (A.D.) for a long time. I started on "Joan of Arc", and we became friends. I was the worst A.D. in the world. I was a really nice guy, and you don't want this as an A.D. He was nice enough to want to keep me on his crew, so he asked if I wanted to be an artistic director on a film called "Transporter." I studied as an artistic director, and I was prepping the film for the other director, Corey Yuen, but he didn't direct the film--he just did the fights--so I ended up directing the rest of the film. That's how the relationship started. You do two kinds of films with Luc Besson. You do films for Luc Besson, like 'The Transporter' is a film that I did for him. That's not my kind of movie, but he knows exactly how to do the typical action with funny jokes and one-liners, stuff like that. He rehearses the actors and I just direct. Then you do film with Luc Besson like 'Unleashed' where he calls you up, and he says "Well, I got this weird little film. Would you like to take a look at it?" He gives you this film, because he believes that you will add a little something extra to the film, and I loved it. That's the interesting part with Luc. Now he's got Europe Accord, which is like a big American style studio but he controls everything. Everything goes through him so he's exhausted, but everything looks like what he's got in mind.
CS!: How much easier was it to work with a martial artist like Jet Li as opposed to working with an actor like Jason Statham, who needs to be trained?
Leterrier: Jason is also a martial artist in a sense, but he's not as good as Jet, so it was much easier and much more interesting for the fight sequences working with Jet, because we could do twelve to fifteen moves or shots. With Jet, you can do different camera moves and you can really tell the story through the fighting. You don't have to rely on just cutting, cutting, cutting, so we could use cranes to shoot the fight choreography, which is very different. Normally, you're never able to use complicated crane movements when you're fighting. Jet is so funny. He sips his tea and watches his stunt double--not a stunt double, but a guy who rehearses prior to shooting so Jet doesn't get hurt--Jet doesn't rehearse. He sees the thing and does 12-15 moves. Jet is always perfect. We only did several takes, because of the other guys or because of the camera, but it's so amazing to watch him do it.
CS!: But you said that you thought his fighting skills are fading away now that he's getting older?
Leterrier: No, no… I mean at 50, I don't see him doing all that kung fu anymore. That's it and he knows it. And he's weird, because he knows that his audience still sees him as a martial artist so he says "I think I will never do a conventional movie. Even when I'm 70, I'll have to throw a punch, because I respect my audience and that's why I am who I am." He's so humble.
CS!: How did you work with Master Wu-Ping before you started the shooting to make sure that your choreography was very distinctive and how much input did Jet have?
Leterrier: Wu-Ping did 'Matrix' and 'Crouching Tiger', and we all know what his choreography style looks like and I love it. I just didn't think it was right for this movie. Prior to the shoot, we all met, but it was it's hard for me to communicate with these guys because they speak Chinese and nothing else. So I used little action figures and go "this is Jet Li" (pretends to play with action figures). For a couple of days, I was playing with Star Wars action figures and they were really funny, since they are typically Chinese. One guy is like bald and he's got a long white beard (does an impression of the guy from 'Kill Bill Vol. 2'). At the beginning, they were a little bit thrown off with what I was asking them to do. I wanted street fight violence. I wanted Jet Li to take the guy and punch him until the guy faints or dies, but they normally would just do one punch and then cable him out. I wanted him to really fight, and they were a little thrown off. After I choreographed with them the first action sequence, I let them do what they wanted to do, and they then knew what they wanted. Jet's input is always good.
CS!: Can you talk about choreographing Danny's non-fight movements because they were very specific to his character it seemed.
Leterrier: We sent a coach to L.A. to rehearse with him for a couple months prior to shooting and they went to zoos and orphanages. They studied dogs, they studied kids and everything. He created his own character based on this and I think that's the way to do it.
CS!: Was it interesting to find out that he could actually act, too? Did you always know he could pull off the dramatic scene and the comedy?
Leterrier: Well, I didn't know him before we started shooting this movie, so I met maybe a couple weeks prior to shooting the movie. When you see him, he's got so much soul in his eyes that you know that he's a genuine person. He's not a movie star, so you know you can bring something out of him. The only problem with Jet is that thick shield he has in front of himself to protect him from the rest of the world. Once you break this shield or make him lower his shield, then you get great stuff, but the problem is to get him to stop being so protective.
CS!: What do you mean?
Leterrier: It's just that he's very introspective. He's Buddhist, almost monkish, with his beads. In the French cut, he cries at the end, but in the American cut you don't have it. The last shot in the American cut is the shot within the piano, but we don't have this in the French cut. We just have a close-up on his face and we finish on a tear, which was extremely hard for me to get out of him. He said that no director has ever gotten him to cry, but I did!
CS!: Were there a lot of differences between the French and American versions of the film?
Leterrier: It could have ended the same way, but the studio wanted the piano shot. In my version, it was like tear and then piano but I couldn't do both. On the DVD, we'll do either. I actually prefer the American version, because in the French version, the middle part where he's normal is a little too long. There's like one montage too many so it's too sappy.
CS!: And the title is also different.
Leterrier: I don't like the American title. I prefer 'Danny the Dog' because everything is "Unleashed". I saw the Star Wars poster, and it was "unleashed".
CS!: What was the hardest challenge in directing this film?
Leterrier: Well, I was 28 or 29 when I started directing this film, so when you have Jet Li, Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins in front of your eyepiece, you're like "Phew! My God! I have to pretend to be a real director!" It was really tough to direct these guys, but I quickly understood that it's not to direct them. You don't make them act. You make them react off of each other's reactions. We started shooting with Morgan, so it was very good that he set the tone. In the beginning, none of them trusted me, because they were like "Who's this guy? He never did anything." I had to prove to them that I could direct first of all, and I could do my technical things. I love actors. I really love them. I'm not the kind of director that runs away and hides behind his monitor and yells "Action!" I'm really with them. Every morning, I'd clear the set of all the crew, and I'd really rehearse with the actors. We directed the film together, and that's really the only way to do it. I mean, you don't direct Morgan Freeman; you just let him do what he does. The weekend before we started shooting, Morgan decided to become blind on film, which threw off all my shot lists. That was his decision. In France, there's a school of blind piano tuners. He learned about this and said it would be very interesting so I said why not?
CS!: How is it different working with Bob Hoskins?
Leterrier: Bob you can direct much more because Bob gives you small, he gives you big, and he gives you in the middle. You don't want him to overact, but he could have been Roger Rabbit's Bob Hoskins or "Long Good Friday" Bob Hoskins. I wanted a cross between the two of them. My biggest accomplishment is to have gotten these three guys to work together and to get them to be happy with this film, because they've done so many. I was very happy, because the French press said that this was the first film where Jet Li really acts and he's really good. For me, that is an accomplishment because that's direction.
CS!: Can you talk about casting Kerry Condon as Morgan's daughter?
Leterrier: We were looking at your typical little American girls. We wanted a cute girl, but not a beautiful girl, but all the little American actresses are so pretty and beautiful. I was not so happy with the choices we were offered, so I said let's try to see unknowns in England, and she came in and she was amazing. She is the character. She's very unaware of her beauty and I needed someone like this. I couldn't get a super model actress in front of Jet Li, because in order for Danny to fit into this family, she had to be a little freakish. Morgan Freeman was a little off and it's like the little girl and the blind man in Frankenstein. That's what I needed. These people are the only people that see Frankenstein this way.
CS!: What were some of the technical complications that were involved with all of the swinging camera shots?
Leterrier: It was very simple. I wanted to make a super-David Fincherish kind of movie with lots of effects and stuff and then we lost 30% of the money halfway through the film. The problem with American studios were that they couldn't put it in a box. You have to either be an action film, or a drama or something, but this one had everything, so the original studio ran away after they saw the dailies. We really loved the movie, so we all gave back part of our salary so that we could finish the movie. We couldn't get that extra cherry on top of the cake, you know, the visual effects, but that didn't matter actually, since I started working with the actors. I therefore simplified my camera direction in the beginning to let them act. I think it's for the better, because it makes it a little different.
CS!: Did you have any concerns about the amount of violence that was shown in the film?
Leterrier: I'm not so concerned about the violence. Especially in America, people are used to seeing violence, not on the movie screen, but on TV. I'm horrified when I watch the news here, so I was not so scared. But violence is a good way to put young people in the theatre seats. That's why we started the film extremely violent so we could get their attention, and then you can take them on the ride. You can tell them a story and that's why the movie becomes nicer. And I think it's always weird to watch this movie with like urban audiences because in the beginning they're like (makes cheering sounds) and after they're watching and some cry at the end. It's very funny to watch this movie with like your urban audience.
CS!: Can you talk about how you ended up getting Massive Attack to do the soundtrack?
Leterrier: Well, they're my favorite band. I didn't know them personally before but their last album, "The Hundredth Window", came out when I was shooting in Scotland, so it was the soundtrack of my shooting experience. I came back to Paris and edited the film. I thought that they would never accept, because their music is so cinematic that I thought the entire world has asked them to do soundtracks for their film, so I asked everyone else--Aphex Twin, Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers--but I was asking all these guys to do Massive Attack style music. Not like this, though. I told them I wanted something organic, something deep moody and trip-hoppish, and then none of them wanted to do it. I came back a little depressed, so I said let's shoot for Massive Attack. Maybe they have like unreleased tracks they want to give us. We sent them a 9-minute edit we did for Cannes a couple years back, and they watched it and they liked it I guess and they said to come over. They live in Bristol, in England, a small little town, and I went there. We were supposed to meet for 20 minutes and this meeting lasted 2 days. We were talking about anything but the movie. We talked about movies in general, comic books, books, arts, music, stuff like that and I became friends with them, but at the end of the weekend, I didn't know if they were going to do the soundtrack and they said "well, come back whenever and let's do the movie." Normally, in a heavily scored movie you have 15 minutes worth of soundtracks. In this one, you have 85 minutes of pure, new Massive Attack material, so I was extremely happy with this. I didn't want to do a rap-fu movie, and I wanted something different.
CS!: In the notes, you described this film as a big risk. What did you mean by that?
Leterrier: It's a big risk because it's neither an action film nor a drama. When the action audience comes and sits down in the theatre, they might get extremely bored in the middle section, and for the people that come to see Morgan Freeman being nice, the first six section with all the violent fights, they might get really freaked out. So that's the risk. I wanted extreme violence, not cartoon violence, but like real violence, street fight violence, to shake the audience up, and then to get them to react to realize that you know, having dinner at a table with a nice man and a nice little girl, eating soup, that's normal and that's nice. People that have that should appreciate it.
Unleashed is in theatres now.
source:
comingsoon.net/news.php
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