Comic Con Interview: Mark Waters On The Spiderwick Chronicles

By George 'El Guapo' Roush on July 28, 2007

The teen comedy director Mark Waters who is Lindsay Lohan’s only responsible adult role model tackles fantasy this time when The Spiderwick Chronicles hits the big screen next year. Mark discusses casting for the movie and his overall experience in bringing it to life for kids of all ages to enjoy. He also brings up Matthew McConaughey in a Christmas role. WTF?

Question: Tell us about your style. The filming style seems to be dark. Talk to us about that.

Waters: For 'Spiderwick Chronicles?' Yeah. We looked at the books that Tony and Holly made and realized that the first book came out in 2001 and the kids who were like 10 years old who read that book are now going to be like 18 when our movie comes out and so I said why don't we kind of super-size this thing and put it on steroids and actually make something that we think is kind of like scary for us and kind of like has some great action set pieces. And so everything kind of took off from the book but sometimes we took it and just made it way more fun and elaborate.

Question: Can you name an example of that?

Waters: Yeah. For instance there's a time where they have to go to down to see Aunt Lucinda. It used to be they drove in a car with mom and there were like some goblins outside the car. And so we said well, what if they have to make it into town but there is no car and they have to run there and go in an underground tunnel, which a troll gets into and tries to eat them. And they barely make it out alive. It's like okay, they're still getting to Aunt Lucinda's, they're just getting to Aunt Lucinda's in a kind of more fun way. And also just kind of on the humor level, like Hog Squeal, which is played by Seth Rogen and Thimbletack, which is played by Martin Short, once you have those guys in an ADR stage and you're kind of riffing with them with the actors, there's the way the characters were originally written in the books, how we kind of modify for the script and then there's just like what are we going to come up with in the room? And we end up coming up with some really, really funny stuff and you end up kind of like incorporating that into the movie because the way those guys ad lib, once you get them in character, they start ad libbing in character and it's incredibly funny stuff. So that's all kind of included in the movie, too.

Question: Where were you born?

Waters: I was actually born near Detroit, Michigan but grew up in South Bend, Indiana.

Question: What part of Detroit, Michigan?

Waters: Wyandotte.

Question: You and your brother have kind of a sardonic attitude in your films, is that a house style from you two?

Waters: You know you grow up in the Midwest, the rest of the world seems pretty interesting, but you also just…it's kind of like growing up in Canada, I guess. All the great comics come from Canada and so as you kind of look at the rest of America and think, wow, that's pretty ridiculous. Same thing growing up in the Midwest. You don't really feel like you're part of the scene. You're kind of curiously looking at it and then you grow up, you move to LA and you get sucked into it.

Question: Was Freddie your first choice?

Waters: We auditioned lots of people and when you're talking about that age range of a kid, there's just nobody who's good enough. He's got that spooky Dakota Fanning, I'm blanking on 'The Sixth Sense' kid's name right now…

Question: Haley Joel Osment.

Waters: There's the weird old soul thing that these people have where you don't feel like you're dealing with 13 year old actor. You feel like you're dealing with this amazing Shakespearean actor who's been doing it for years. He's playing opposite himself, which is…Jeremy Irons did it in 'Dead Ringers', but it's really difficult. And Lindsay Lohan did it in 'Parent Trap.' And there you go. But so we just found, there was just nobody else who could do it. And plus one of the big things about the movie for us was it had to be American. These had to be recognizable American kids. So that was like this other bar of difficulty. It's like okay, Freddie, you're the only actor who can do this, but you need to do it in an American accent, yet create two different distinct characters who have different accents, which are both American. And then he was like 'okay, fine.' When you see the movie it's kind of spooky because I showed it to some friends of mine who are not industry people and they were like 'wow, those brothers were amazing. Where did you find them?' So that was kind of the impetus for him. And then everybody else was really just like who is the best person that we could possibly think of for the part. I mean it was bizarre. Like we just said shouldn't it be great if David Strathairn Dr. Spiderwick and Tony and Holly's like 'I always pictured David Strathairn.' It's like and you call him up and he's like, 'yeah, I'll do it.' And you're like what? Really? And on down the line. We just kind of got the first person we asked for almost every time.

Question: What made you want to tackle a fantasy film?

Waters: You know it's weird my involvement dates back all the way to 'Mean Girls' because they gave me the books when I was editing 'Mean Girls' and I just kind of you know got hooked into it in this weird way where I had a real chip on my shoulder reading it. But then I started to just get really, the way they treated the fantasy world in these books is not a way you see it treated in other books. It actually started to kind of give me a little chill down my spine because I felt like this really feels like this is real. It really feels like there's a little guy in your house that's stealing your socks out of your laundry and it's not something kind of like fairy dust and magical. It just feels very present. And so by the time I got to the fifth book and there's like an ogre trashing your house, it felt like 'oh, yeah, that could happen too.' And it's all grounded in reality. And so then I just had this thing of like, wow what if you could make a movie where you make everyone start to believe that it all is real as well? Because frankly by the time I finished making the movie I did start to truly believe it is real. So if you can get a little bit of that to the audience and they start to kind of buy into it, that's cool. That's a great thing.

Question: When you grew up did you have a fantasy world? Something like that?

Waters: Oh yeah. I didn't believe that there were creatures but I did believe in kind of magical forces all around. I definitely believed that there are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in our philosophy. I was like there's definitely other stuff out there that we just don't see. And I always believed that growing up. And I was raised Catholic and they beat it out of me a little bit. And then I grew up out of that and now I believe it again.

Question: What attracted you to teenage girl projects? And was this an attempt to break free of that?

Waters: I'm glad you said the word projects. Thank you. You'd like to say there's some great plan to everything you're doing, but there never is. It really is just like every project comes down the pike and I remember with 'Freaky Friday' it was just kind of tossed out there, "Oh, they're remaking 'Freaky Friday.'" And I was like I love that movie. I was like I know exactly how to remake that. I remember when I went into Disney I said 'I read your script. I hate it.' But if you were going to do 'Freaky Friday' now it'd have to be this and you should get a rock band and by the time it was over they were like 'That sounds good. Why don't we do that?' And so it was really just because I had an inspiration to do that. And then after I made the movie I read Tina Fey's 'Mean Girls' script and thought it was like the most hilarious script I've ever read and was like 'Okay, I got to make this movie.' And then it just so happened it was like, 'Wow, who's perfect to play the lead in this? God, I guess Lindsay again.' And so pretty soon I'm like the guy who does…but after that I made a vow to like when they say 'background action', if you hear locker doors slamming, you know you need to leave the set. It's like I can't hear locker doors anymore. That's why I did 'Just Like Heaven' with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo after that.

Question: That ending, it was a great movie but that ending where she's alive felt…was she a ghost all through the original script because it felt like they forced that on you?

Waters: No. No. She actually comes back to life in every version of it. Even in the novel that it's based on. Maybe it was cheesy but at least it was cheesy based on an adaptation.

Question: Bringing back Marc McClure in 'Freaky Friday', how cool was that?

Waters: Oh, I know. It was great. He was really good. Anyway, I was trying to get Jodie to play the mom part at first and she just shot us right now. But then she saw the movie and actually called and let us know that she loved it so that was cool.

Question: How thrilled was Jamie Lee Curtis with the role she had?

Waters: Oh. She nailed that. Jamie Lee came in…an actress who will remain nameless dropped out of that movie ten days before shooting and so Jamie kind of came in and saved us, really had no idea what she was getting into and then ended up…I think she got nominated for a Golden Globe for it, too. But she was phenomenal.

Question: She was sort of not doing anything at the time?

Waters: It was one of these weird inspirations where she was on the cover of More Magazine and she was out there doing this thing where she did the unglamorous cover with the glamorous picture within and she was just on our brain. We were like wow, I know she hasn't done anything recently but she'd be perfect. And we called her and said yes. And she said yes overnight, which we needed someone to do because we were shooting in ten days and had no actress. It ended up being the best thing that could have happened to us.

Question: How intimidating was it doing a fantasy film in the twin shadows of 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings?'

Waters: You know I think because of the fact and I touched on this in the panel that this kind of felt like something that was happening to recognizable American kids in a recognizable setting that just kind of gets suddenly tweaked out of control. And it's like oh my gosh, by the end of it you can't believe that you got sucked up into this journey. It just felt like such a different setting than Hogwarts or Middle Earth where you're clearly going off into like, from the beginning of the movie, you're in this fantastical realm. So if fantastical things happen it's kind of like, 'yeah, well of course. You're in Middle Earth. Of course things are going to be crazy there.' In a way it kind of freed us up. Like okay we're going to make our own American fantasy film here and don't have to really compare ourselves.

Question: Have you spoken with Holly because you said you pipped it up for an older audience.

Waters: I didn't say 'pip it up.' I didn't use the word pip. Mark Waters never said pip. She was inspired because of the fact that she, like I said before, she was excited that the kids who read the book when they were young are now teenagers and she herself, the kind of movies that she and Tony like to go see, like I showed them the rough cut just yesterday and their response was "I don't even know how to comment on this as the author of 'Spiderwick Chronicles', but as a movie, it's awesome. It's really awesome. And now we can talk about it as the authors of 'Spiderwick Chronicles.'" But they're thrilled with the movie and they feel like everything's so inspired by them and the spirit of the books that they aren't freaked out by that. And for what it's worth I don't know if I'm going to be seeking out any fantasy films but I'm not scared of them anymore because I feel like I know how to do it.

Question: Your work has been tinged with it. 'Mean Girls' has fantasy sequences, 'Freaky Friday'…

Waters: And my next movie, too, which is called 'The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.' It's basically a takeoff on 'Christmas Carol' with Matthew McConaughey playing a shameless lothario who breaks women's hearts who basically needs a magical comeuppance to learn the error of his ways. So it's also fantasy in a way.

Source:Latino Review

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