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Stephen Sommers Interview 2 - Q & A
by John Millar
Q: What about Dracula's fangs, how did you create them?
A: They are computer generated. You see them grow, so that's pretty cool. And I don't think that has been in other movies. Also a vampire has to open its mouth more than is humanly possible before they bite and what little blood they have in them drains from their face - so you get to see all that. And of course Dracula turns into a bat and he has a 15 foot wing span and that's fun.
Q: What about Dracula's sexy three brides?
A: I almost gave up on them. Even in Coppola's film when they wrote the script the Brides had lots of lines. But it's very hard to find drop-dead gorgeous girls who are really good actresses. We looked all over and I was about to give up. Then when I was in London I got an audition tape of Elena Anaya and thought she was so creepy, like a real vampire. But I had to meet her because maybe she wasn't acting; maybe she was that nuts! So I flew to meet her and she was the sweetest, nicest girl and it was great acting.
Q: Why did you decide to cast Kate Beckinsale?
A: I didn't think the role could be played by an American actress. We were looking for someone new and interesting and as we kept meeting with Hugh Jackman I realised that I couldn't get some 19 year old girl playing opposite him. I needed a beautiful, really talented woman and that narrowed it. So we went for Kate.
Q: What is Kate Beckinsale's character like?
A: She is Anna Valerious, her family for 400 years has been trying to kill Dracula. At the beginning of the movie her brother, in trying to save her life, is killed. She is the last of a family that has made a pact that if they kill Dracula their souls will be saved. So she is now the only one who can do this and now she gets some help from Van Helsing.
Q: What is the central theme of Van Helsing?
A: Van Helsing has been around for a very long time, he doesn't know how long and he has a lot of demons in his past, but he doesn't know what they are. He has a lot of baggage but doesn't know what that is. He works for a secret religious society as a means of redemption, even though he doesn't know what needs redeeming.
Q: Is there comedy in the movie?
A: Yeah that's me! If you want really dark then David Fincher does that brilliantly. This is much more dramatic than the Mummy movies and it's a sexier, darker romance, the story is more Gothic but at the same time people will come out thinking it was so much fun.
Q: Does Van Helsing have a sense of spirituality or religious undertone?
A: Oh yeah! Even in The Mummy movies I have been interested in spirituality and religion. Here I have good men and women of all religions getting together and working towards vanquishing evil. I thought that was a great idea. I'm always interested in people's spirituality. My father died four days before we finished shooting and we were very close so that was a big thing for me. It made me think a lot about what happens when you die.
Q: Might you dedicate the film to your father?
A: I thought about that...I'll see.
Q: What about the use of technology in this film? Are you always waiting for CGI to catch up with your imagination?
A: With the flying Brides they tried to do a similar thing in the last two Matrix movies and couldn't pull it off. A lot of the stuff we do was not technically possible until we did this movie. In the Matrix which was great stuff, they are on wires. They are zipping along but you know they are not really flying. We took the cable-cam system that is used in American football, where a camera whips across the field on a grid. It was complicated. At 7.30 pm each night I'd meet with the cable-cam guys the shot I needed. They would stay up all night; it would take them 12 hours to set up one shot. I'd come in the next morning, shoot the shot and move on with my day. They would go to bed and then the next night they'd start again. With this we had the girls doing loop the loops and spinning around and managed to combine real humans with computer generated stuff. A lot of it is me working hand in glove with the ILM guys. Once I've written it they come to me and say they don't know how to do something because they don't have the technical ability to do certain things. So they sit down and say they have no idea how a person could rip off his own skin and turn into a werewolf. They spent a year and a half on effects. I made sure they had enough time because I had a problem on The Mummy Returns with The Scorpion King, it wasn't up to most of our standards, it looked fake. I learned from that and so we made sure that there all these great special effects that everybody was kicking ass on. But the hard stuff - like when Dracula turns into the Dracula beast - I had to see before Christmas because I had to be comfortable with it and know it was going top be spectacular. The same with the Werewolf. But the technology is never there, you are always trying to go forward. It's a really hard thing. I like big and ILM have five boxes on a scale...1) Just right 2) Too much 3) Way too much 4) Oh my God the computer's crashing 5) What Stephen wants! That's the scale. Working with special effects is tough. When we finish production for the first four months all you see is this grey guy in the shape of whatever creature you are dealing with. It drives you crazy. I special effects it's called a J-Curve. You slowly, slowly make incremental steps and then suddenly one day the curve goes up and it goes from looking like crap to oh my God it's going to be fantastic!
Q: Obviously there would be no problem with rights to the monsters because Universal owned everything?
A: I didn't even think about it. I have a great relationship with Universal and I assumed I would do Van Helsing with them. Because I have done Huck Finn and Jungle Book I know about public domain. The iconography is probably copyright. You can't have the flat-topped head, the Doc Marten boots and two bolts otherwise. Maybe that's why the Kenneth Branagh Frankenstein's monster didn't look like the classic version.
Q: How did you decide what you would shoot on the Universal sound stages?
A: I hadn't shot a frame of film in the USA for nine years and I have a wife and two kids. I had shot in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Czech Republic, India, Canada and the UK. So my wife had said why didn't I write for Paris or Maui. It's hard to go with little kids to the Sahara desert for three months. So I wanted to do some work here at home.
Q: Did the floods that decimated Prague affect your schedule?
A: I loved shooting in Prague. We got there just after the floods. Our hotel that we were going to stay in was wiped out, but none of our locations were affected. One location was this fantastic 400-year-old church where I set the vampire ball. Since it was a vampire ball it couldn't just be people dancing, so I got the girl who choreographed the Circe Du Soleil shows. We have jugglers, contortionists, and trapeze artistes, flame blowers - all that going on at the ball.
Q: Are all the myths in the film?
A: With the characters I tried to go the extra mile. I kept all the myths but with Dracula I decided that since he was the king of the vampires - which we know can be killed with a stake - I decided that nobody knows how to kill Dracula. And we know that you can't see Dracula's reflection in the mirror but nobody knows why. So I answered that question.
Q: How do you feel about opening in a very competitive summer?
A: The Mummy opened eight days ahead the first Star Wars prequel - remember the hype behind that - and we opened with $44 million. At the end of the day the movie stands on its own.
Q: You are writer and director - which job do you like most?
A: I love and hate both. It depends on the day. Doing a movie I spend a year and a half with between 50 to 400 people every day. Then I'm tired of it and don't want to see people for a while. Then I get to sit by myself or with my dog and write. I enjoy both and get to be miserable with both.
Q: Could Van Helsing become a franchise?
A: I have not thought about that. I guess it is that kind of movie. All I know is that I have promised my wife that I wouldn't read another script or think about another script until after next Christmas. This movie takes 15 hours a day; six or seven days a week and I want to spend time with my family.
Q: Will you make a third Mummy movie?
A: I haven't thought about it. I am really proud of my two Mummy movies; I had so much fun. I can never say never.
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Interviews
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