Exclusive 1-1 With Lorenzo Di Bonaventura

By George 'El Guapo' Roush on March 7, 2007

El Guapo here and I had a nice sit down 1-1 with Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the producer behind Mark Wahlberg's Shooter. We also talk about Transformers, G.I. Joe and Beverly Hills Cop IV. Fun and exciting? Yet bet!!

Check out what he had to tell us:

LR: My girl and I both liked the movie quite a bit.
Bonaventura:  There is the assumption that women aren't going to like these movies, but they always do.

LR: I liked it because it reminded me of an '80's action movie where the main guy kills ninety eight percent of the supporting cast.
Bonaventura: [Laughs] It didn't start out that way. It seemed logical.

LR: Yeah. She kept looking at me like, 'What's going on?' I said, 'Don't worry about it. Just watch Mark Wahlberg kill people.'
Bonaventura: Glad you both liked it.

LR: Why do you think Mark is such a likable hero for audiences?
Bonaventura: Mark and I have had a lot of conversations about what has made Clint [Eastwood] so appealing and what made [Steve] McQueen so appealing and Mark is naturally strong and silent. Hollywood's inclination is to put a lot of words in the actor's mouths and we sort of thought that didn't make a lot of sense with Mark, certainly for 'Shooter' and in 'Four Brothers' where he has more words, but he's still always to the point. I think it has something to do with Mark growing up in a rough place and learning a sort of internal code, the way that he carries himself. I think that people appreciate that right now. I know I do. I'm tired of all these guys who are so sensitive and so nice. That's not what I want from a movie star. I want them to be good guys, but they don't have to be sympathetic.

LR: There were parts in the movie too where I felt like, 'Oh, he's not going to kill them. Wow, he just killed them.'
Bonaventura: [Laughs] It was fun because Antoine [Fuqua] and Mark and myself sort of have the same thing where we're frustrated a little bit with how nice all the movies have become.

LR: As far as action films go? There's not a really hard edge to them these days.
Bonaventura: No, there's really not. So, we said, 'You know what, let’s go for it.'

LR: Is that why you wanted Antoine to direct this?
Bonaventura: Yeah. Antoine and I did 'Training Day' together and so I knew what he was capable of in that respect and I knew that he and I would be able to make a good movie together.

LR: A lot of people might not know what a producer's job is. Can you give me a brief breakdown of what you do?
Bonaventura: Every producer probably does different functions, but I think that the best producers either initiate the original idea or they find an idea that is in its infancy. They carry it to a place where it makes sense to be talked into a movie and then they persuade the studio to spend enough money and to go for the right cast and director. Then they persuade the director and the movie star to stay on budget and stay within the script that they all agreed on. Then once you're finished shooting they bug the marketing department obsessively to make sure the movie is marketed properly.

LR: So you're involved in almost all aspects of the film, even in post?
Bonaventura: Oh, definitely, for sure. I like to work with people who are really talented so that my job becomes additional and not the main decision. So, if Antoine goes, 'What do you think of this scene?' He's already done the scene ninety five percent. I might say, 'Why do you need that, or I'm missing the piece that you cut out.' So I have influence on the final product, but it's almost in an editorial sort of capacity. It's trying to keep it within the correct bounds if you would. So the writer and the director and the cast have to deliver the movie. I'm not a director and I'm not a writer. I would be terrible at both of those things, but I can hear a bad line of dialogue and can say, 'Fix it.' Particularly because I've worked on so many movies I'm very good in the editing room and can be a great addition to the process there.

LR: One of the marketing people said that I didn't see the final cut on Thursday.
Bonaventura: On Thursday, no. You haven't seen the final product. I don't think that you heard the score. You heard the score, not the real score and there are some tweaks here and there. You saw ninety eight percent of it outside of the music. In fact, I'm not exactly sure.

LR: I wasn't listening to the score. I was just watching headshot after headshot.
Bonaventura: [Laughs] Okay. Was there a favorite action beat for you?

LR: Ya, the part where they were storming into the house.
Bonaventura: Yeah. That's a big shot of them coming down the woods.

LR: Also what happens at the end which I don't want to mention, but I thought it was great. The part where he runs out and plants the bombs everywhere and he’s killing things left and right, I thought, 'This is just like watching Stallone.' It was a total flashback and I wish there were more movies like that. I don't think that there are many action heroes right now. What do you think?
Bonaventura: There are very few and Mark has the chance to be the biggest one partly because there are so few.

LR: I think that Vin Diesel was going there, but something happened.
Bonaventura: He might come back.

LR: But not like Orlando Bloom, I don't see it.
Bonaventura: No. Those are adventure heroes. There's a real difference to it.

LR: When I saw 'Kingdom of Heaven' it was hard to believe him in that role because it didn't look like he could lift the sword. [I’m sorry guys. I had to get my Orlando dig in. I can’t help myself. —Ed.]
Bonaventura: Yeah, that's a problem. Where's the muscle?

LR: Is 'Transformers' finished?
Bonaventura: No, it's not finished. I mean, we've finished shooting, but it's not finished. We have some of the most sophisticated visual FX that have ever been executed by ILM. I'll give you an example. One frame of the fights between the Transformers is taking between thirty eight hours to execute. That's one frame at twenty four frames a second.

LR: Is it going to make it?
Bonaventura: Oh, it'll make it. It'll be there on time, but it's brutal on the technicians.

LR: What was the budget for that?
Bonaventura: I think that you should ask Paramount that. They don't want to talk about it. They should because we're not a wildly expensive movie like some of these movies that you keep hearing about spending $200 million, $250 million, $350 million and all of that stuff.

LR: Were there any live robot models that you built?
Bonaventura: There was one robot built, The Bumblebee character, both in Camaro form and in robot form.

LR: Is it used in the movie?
Bonaventura: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's really wild too. The Camaro is a really cool car. I mean, I wanted one right away. I'm like, 'GM, hurry up. Get them out there.' They're really cool cars. It was a lot of fun making that movie.

LR: I've seen pictures of Prime and Bumblebee…
Bonaventura: You've never really seen a picture of Optimus Prime. The good news for us is that you really haven't seen it because everyone thinks that what's been on the internet is what is going to be final, but it's not the final versions.

LR: My friend saw footage of it at the Toy Fair.
Bonaventura: Still not final. Not a single shot.

LR: He said the robots, unlike in the cartoon where stuff would get added later to the transformation, that nothing else is added on during transformation. Is that right?
Bonaventura: Yes. We actually tried to figure out the physics of that very carefully. It was interesting because in the cartoon they actually do not do it that way. Our mass equals our mass, and so we tried to be very absolute about it. So, like, 'If you have this much dimension and this much area you can only create this much dimension and this much area.' It was an interesting sort of mathematical thing to engage in.

LR: You have to keep that for live action, right?
Bonaventura: I think so. I mean, the truth is that your mind's eye couldn't tell the difference if we were five or ten percent off.

LR: But I grew up watching Generation One of the cartoon and I remember thinking, 'Where the hell did that thing come from and where does it go?' (Talking about Optimus Prime’s little trailer. —Ed.)
Bonaventura: Yeah, it's really cool. I think that one of them had ten thousand parts. I mean, when you watch the transformation…was there any footage of that at the Toy Fair? There was one at the Toy Fair which is I think almost complete.

LR: That's when they were fighting Skorpinok.
Bonaventura: I think so, but you watch it and go, 'Rewind that right now. I want to watch it again.' It's so fast and there are so many parts moving that it's sort of overwhelming.

LR: What about Megatron which obviously can't be a gun?
Bonaventura: Well, I don't want to spoil those little things, but Megatron; you've seen a permutation of where we're taking Megatron. It's not something that we've taken outside of the series. Everything is inspired by one version of the series; usually it's G1, but not a hundred percent of the time. It's pretty close though. I don't mean to be evasive.

LR: I know you don't want to spoil everything in the movie before it comes out.
Bonaventura: Well, with this one, we've had such scrutiny and the second an image gets out there it's passed out a million times. It's wild.

LR: How hard has it been to convince the die hard fans that this is the live action adaptation that they've been waiting for?
Bonaventura: Hard. It's really, really hard. I've been involved in a lot of big properties and trying to transfer them into movies, and the die hard fan whether it was with 'Harry Potter' and 'Batman' or 'Scooby-Doo' or this has a particular point of view and it's very hard to convince them of anything.

LR: I don't think that this anything like a 'Harry Potter' or anything like that. You're transforming robots from a cartoon and actually making it work. It's a lot to ask.
Bonaventura: I don't know. I think the passion of the fans are very similar having been through the two experiences. People felt that we were messing with the Bible when we were messing with 'Harry Potter' and people feel like we're messing with real characters when we play with the Transformers. They get very upset. We've had so much scrutiny about the fender being in the wrong place and the colors, and you think it's a fantastic thing that people are that passionate about it.

LR: Was there any negative feedback when Michael Bay got attached to it?
Bonaventura: There were some people who criticized that choice, but I don't think they will when they see the movie though.

LR: What does he bring to it?
Bonaventura: Michael understands scale in a way that very few people do and the trick of the movie in many ways was keeping human characters alive onscreen on an equal footing to these thirty foot characters.

LR: Is this a movie where you're going to have some empathy with humans in peril? Will there be some focus on that or is just going to be robots kicking each other's asses?
Bonaventura: No. I think that we would've failed if we didn't have really strong human relationships going through it and the prime dynamic is between the Shia Lebeouf character, Megan Fox and then Shia and Bumblebee. They're not a love triangle, but there is a sort of similarity in that there are a lot of emotions going on between each pairing.

LR: Does the Bumblebee character actually talk?
Bonaventura: Do you really want to know that? Don't you want to be surprised?

LR: Well, I have heard…
Bonaventura: Well, at the Toy Fair they showed that Bumblebee speaks through the radio.

LR: He plays songs to show his emotions.
Bonaventura: Yeah, it's fun.

LR: Do you have the original voices signed onto the movie?
Bonaventura: No. Right now the only person that we've hired from the original cartoon is Peter Cullen to play Optimus Prime.

LR: And Megatron?
Bonaventura: We haven't hired anyone yet. We haven't made a decision yet.

LR: So, opening weekends, the box office for that, are you look at that to see if there's going to be a sequel? I'm assuming that the movie is going to have a sequel.
Bonaventura: I hope so. I hope so. It's really up to how many people show up, but yeah, we're counting on it.

LR: Do you think that it's going to be the biggest movie of the year?
Bonaventura: It'll be a big one. I don't want to say that it's the biggest movie when I think you're going against 'Shrek III' and 'Pirates' and 'Die Hard.'

LR: But with those films, we've all kind of been there before.
Bonaventura: I hope you're right. I hope that it's the biggest one, but it's really hard to make that assumption going into it and the truth is that you don't have to be the biggest one to be a great success. If we're in the top three or four we'll be thrilled. We didn't spend the kind of money that those guys spent on those movies. I'm just telling you that we didn't and so we become profitable a lot earlier than they do.

LR: What about a 'GI Joe' movie?
Bonaventura: I'm working on one. It's being written right now.

LR: Who's writing it?
Bonaventura: A guy named Skip Woods.

LR: What has he written?
Bonaventura: He just finished working on 'Die Hard 4.' I don't know if he's fully credited or not, but Skip worked on 'Swordfish' with me at Warner Brothers. Do you know Action Man? Action Man is the equivalent of G.I. Joe internationally pretty much. It's a different character, but pretty much the same idea and his name is Alex Mann. So we're creating a buddy movie between Duke and Alex. That's what we're doing. All the characters will be there and it'll be really fun, but unfortunately our president has put us in a position internationally where it would be very difficult to release a movie called 'G.I. Joe' internationally in a lot of places. I'm a big G.I. Joe fan and to add one character to the mix is sort of a fun thing to do.

LR: What about Cobra?
Bonaventura: I don't know. I'm going to get in trouble here now. I always found that Cobra was…

LR: They were probably the stupidest evil organization out there.
Bonaventura: They really were. I'd actually say it this way. If you saw Cobra executed the way that it's executed in the animation and in the comic book onscreen you would laugh, I believe.

LR: But people think of Cobra when they think of G.I. Joe.
Bonaventura: Yeah, and so it goes back to our conversation about 'Transformers.' You've got to take the spirit of it and then in my opinion come up with something slightly different than what you've experienced before. It's the same thing that you do with a book. The easiest way to describe is that when you take a book, an authors book like 'Shooter', okay? We'll actually talk about this movie. [He seemed irked I stayed off of Shooter for so long…—Ed.] 'Shooter' is not literally the book, but Stephen Hunter the author saw the movie he was like that's Bob Lee Swagger.

LR: Was there a lot more violence in the book too?
Bonaventura: Well, Stephen Hunter is never afraid of killing a lot of people in the book. First of all he was a Vietnam vet in the book and so it was different baggage in the book then there is now. I think that when you're really true to what it is, if you're true to the 'Transformers' you'll forgive us and in fact embrace the changes that we make because you'll see that it's being true to it. You might not agree a hundred percent with them, but you will praise them as opposed to going, 'What the fuck did you do?' I mean, I remember when 'Batman' came out how everyone was so outraged that Michael Keaton was Bruce Wayne and all of that stuff and it worked out fine.

LR: I thought he was the best one.
Bonaventura: Fair enough. So it's the same thing with G.I. Joe. I think you'd make a mistake if you don't work on it. Snake Eyes is a really difficult character. What are we going to do? Show a guy who can't see? How do you manage that in a movie?

LR: Do you just hire Ray Park and stick him in a suit?
Bonaventura: [Laughs] I'm not sure what the answer is at this point. I just want to get a script first.

LR: Do you have any casting ideas for some of these characters?
Bonaventura: I really don't think ahead that far. You get in trouble when you start doing that because it influences your creative process. You just let the character evolve naturally and then when the character comes out it's pretty immediately obvious who can and can't play it. Mark can play Duke.

LR: Michael Clarke Duncan for Road Block.
Bonaventura: I think we'll use Heavy Duty instead of Road Block, but yeah.

LR: 'Beverly Hills Cop 4,' is that going to be a reality?
Bonaventura: Well, we're developing a couple of takes right now. We're hoping to make that thing pretty quickly. Eddie [Murphy] would like to make it his third movie from now. He's already lined up two and so the one after that.

LR: Was he approached to play the character one more time or was it his idea to do it again?
Bonaventura: I think that he brought it up this time. I think that he may have started it. He's always been interested in doing it again. It's funny because you don't realize how much passion people have for Axle Foley until it was announced. I get people coming up to me all the time going, 'You're doing Axle Foley?! I love him. He's the greatest character.' It's sort of daunting. That might be too strong a word, but it's a pretty high hurdle to try and figure out how to put Axle back into a movie that makes sense.

LR: It's not like it was in the '80's when he could run wild.
Bonaventura: Well, that actually was Axle as a young character. That's one of the things that we've been trying to figure out. A guy who is really cocky at age twenty five or whatever, I can't remember, but it's different playing that when you're forty something and try to play cocky. You have to figure out how Axle would evolve over twenty years. So it's an interesting challenge.

LR: Would you bring back actors like Judge Reinhold?
Bonaventura: Not for me, but I don't have all the votes. If it was just my vote I think that you would take Axle and move him.

LR: You've got two other movies coming out this year with '1408' and 'Stardust.'
Bonaventura: Three other movies. And 'Transformers.'

LR: What are '1408' and 'Stardust' about?
Bonaventura: '1408' is based on a Stephen King short story that is in the vein of 'The Shining' or 'Misery,' a psychological horror, I guess. It's about a man who checks into a hotel room and can't get out. It's told in real time. You spend eighty minutes in a hotel room in real time. It's really wild and John Cusack is the man who checks in and Sam Jackson is the hotel manager who tries to convince him not to go in. It's really fun and very creepy and unsettling. It's psychologically unsettling. I really haven't done a lot of that. I would like to do some psychological horror movies, but they're really hard to find, first of all. They tend to be really bloody and sort of slasher movies, those kinds of things which people make a lot of money on and do really well. I don't have an idea how to do that, but this idea really grabbed me when I read the short story. It's a great short story. It's worth reading. It's like thirty pages, but just don't read it at night. It's unsettling. It's not like you'll have nightmares, but you might stay awake for a while. It gets under your skin. It's one of those stories.

LR: 'Misery' got under my skin.
Bonaventura: Same thing.

LR: What is 'Stardust?'
Bonaventura: Are you a Neil Gaiman fan? Neil is a novelist who's done a lot of graphic novels and is probably the most famous for doing 'The Sandman.' He wrote a book called 'Stardust.' It's an unusual Neil Gaiman book and Matthew Vaughn who directed 'Layer Cake' directed this movie. It's a hard one to pitch. It's an adventure movie and it has a bit of the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and a bit of 'Harry Potter,' but more like 'Time Bandits' actually. Neil's mind doesn't work like the rest of ours and so it's a little off center as an adventure. A lot of people compare it to 'Princess Bride.' It's a story about a young man played by Charlie Cocks who is trying to win the hand of a young woman played by Sienna Miller. She's sort of the really hot girl in town and he's never going to win her heart, but he sees a falling star go down and he turns to her and says, 'If I find that falling star will you marry me?' She says yes and there is a legend in this town on the stone wall that no one crosses the wall and it fell on the other side of the wall. So he crosses the wall to find the fallen star and when he gets to the crater there is a young girl in the middle of this giant crater. He asks her, 'Have you seen the fallen star?' She says, 'That's really funny. What's wrong with you?' He says, 'No, really. Have you seen a falling star?' 'What are you? An idiot?' That's sort of her attitude, and she goes, 'I'm the star.' He goes, 'You're the star?' That is Claire Danes, and so when a star falls in this kingdom where it falls it becomes a young girl. Now he has to bring Claire Danes back to Sienna Miller and his attempt to bring her back he runs into witches led by Michelle Pfieffer who want to cut out her heart because the heart of a falling star gives you eternal life.

LR: Wow. That sounds really cool.
Bonaventura: Prince's are given a task by their father the king, Peter O'Toole, near the star and then they find out about the star and they of course want her heart. Then there is [Robert] De Niro in the movie and Ricky Gervais. De Niro plays a pirate of the skies. He steals lightening from the skies and sells it illegally. Ricky Gervais plays a fence who deals in lightning.
LR: That guy could play anything. When is that coming out?
Bonaventura: August 10th. It's really an unusual summer movie. I'll say it has a smarter thing to it. It's cool.

LR: When will an official final trailer for 'Transformer' coming out?
Bonaventura: There will probably be one coming in mid-April to early May. Somewhere in there will be the third trailer. There have been two, the teaser and then at Christmas we came out with another trailer. Did you see that one?

LR: That's the one that shows the Skorpinok fight.
Bonaventura: It's wild.

LR: Is this next one going to show more?
Bonaventura: You're going to have to see the movie to give everything away, but you'll see more. My hope is that you see more about the humans. One of the hard things about 'Transformers' is that, like, you're a fan and so you want to see more and more of the robots. The third one should be really oriented towards the human story so you see that there's going to be a real human story to follow. My analogy is like 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and Shia is like Richard Dreyfuss. Because he has Bumblebee he gets ahead of everyone else. So that's sort of the way to look at it. It doesn't line up exactly like that, but it gives you a sense of that. You could have easily said that 'Close Encounters' was an alien movie. If you hadn't seen the movie you wonder what the humans do. Same thing here. A human has the information and becomes very integral in the plot.

Have questions I can’t answer? Email me: george@latinoreview.com

Source:Latino Review