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Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald Interview 3
(Ring Two generics)
by Martyn Palmer
Q: Which horror films do you think have influenced today filmmakers?
LM: See part of the reason we loved this idea as producers is that we love to try and re invent a genre. And we both loved Rosemary's Baby and The Omen and Carrie. Those seventies movies were so amazing I thought. And actually earlier with films like The Haunting.
Q: That was the Robert Wise movie..
LM: Yes, it was. Robert Wise who had just made West Side Story..
WP: But horror was a mainstay of mainstream Hollywood.
LM: I suppose the closest thing that has happened recently was M. Night (Shyamalan's) movies but they aren't traditional horror but kind of a stepped up version of movies that dealt with the supernatural so anyway those are kind of the ones we love. Ring has a more audacious premise in a way because of the tape but when you settle into the movie we very much wanted to give it some basis in psychological truth and deal with those essential human issues and obviously in this one it's about a mother dealing with the most horrific thing you could ever do, the idea that you had to kill your child to save it. So those are the inspiration.
Q: Why do we like to be scared by films?
LM: I think we all carry a certain amount of unspoken dread. We have a lot of small fears that hopefully you are never going to have to face but that you do carry and I think there is a release in the safety of a horror movie that scares you in your seat, getting to live through it, scream, release that. I don't know with teenage girls there has to be some very Freudian explanation for it. (laughs)
WP: We noted on the first movie, many people saw it, but by far the strongest group was teenage girls who would see it over and over again and come in groups of three or four and they would watch the movie hugging each other, peering out from under their coats. And there is almost a way of going to see a movie like this that is like a first incursion into the exciting dangers of the adult world.
LM: It's funny there is a group experience for those girls. Our daughter when we released the first one we would never thought to let her see it because she was around 12. And yet we found after the first two or three weeks she was coming back from school saying `all my friends have seen this movie Mom..' so about three months later we showed it to her.
WP: It's also the genre that can elicit from an audience the same level of pure visceral reaction that you otherwise only see from expensive special effects.
LM: Or action. It's interesting but maybe it's the girls' version of an action movie in a way.
Q: As filmmakers, do they feel different to make from say films in other genres?
LM: Yeah, absolutely.
WP: They do but our fundamental job as producers is to sit in a room with a either each other and writers and figure out how stories work. So that experience is the same but you are dealing with different issues depending on the genre. But you know, I cannot tell you the difference between walking on to the set of The Ring which by its very nature will be a very intense, quiet intimate affair to walking on the streets of Rome on the island of Malta to see what was going on during Gladiator. But obviously the trick on both of them was to make sure no matter how big the action adventure gets, how large the set, that despite all that the real issues that are being attended to are ones of story.
LM: I think maybe to a general audience they would think we were insane to talk for so many hours about he character of Rachel for what is fundamentally a fun, scary movie but you do. It's interesting, with different genres the core work is at the same place - character and figuring out where they are going to go and what the underlying issues are. We just did a movie this Christmas called A Series of Unfortunate Events and we spent a lot of time talking about those children and how to build a story for them because it wasn't in the books. You try to do that even if it's not the biggest element of the movie.
Q: Let's talk about casting. Naomi Watts is enjoying even more success now than when she made the first film. In fact, you could point to Mulholland Drive and The Ring as the point where her career really took off..
LM: Absolutely. And there's a great appreciation for her. And truthfully, she's probably not terribly meaningful to the younger audience. You know while we are very aware of her amazing serious work I don't know that she is a draw to that audience. But she is such a legitimate actress and she is so good, what she does in the movie, what she can bring is so great that it certainly help you.
Q: What's it like for David Dorfman who plays Aiden?
LM: I have to say Naomi is wonderful with him, they have such a sweet relationship, a lot of trust and humour between them and actually there was a lot of attention given to David to get him through.
Q: What about Simon Baker? He's a relatively new face for cinema..
LM: He has done a lot of television work here and some film work and actually it's interesting, he is an old old friend of Naomi's. Now that is not why it happened but it was very good for us and great for her that she had someone she felt very comfortable with. And he is very good.
WP: And given the requirements of the genre and the story you don't have a lot of time to invest in the romantic relationship or the male/ female friendship so the fact that they already had a ready made rapport made us very efficient.
Q: How do you decide what to produce in relation to your work with the studio?
LM: All of the things that we have a producer credit are projects we have developed through the very early stages. Often they will be an idea that comes to us directly through the talent because of a previous relationship or reputation or through our execs. We have a strange hybrid job which is unusual, I don't think anyone else has done this, but the truth is in the last two years - and that is why we have a lot of movies we have made in this last year - it has all been about a gradual changing of our role. It used to be sixty per cent running Dreamworks and forty per cent producing and now it's the opposite or even a little more. We still have a role in the company in terms of green lighting movies we still work with the staff but we're kind of redefining what we do.
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Interviews
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