Whenever you bring up the idea of remaking something, there's going to be a healthy level of skepticism -- especially when that something is a kids TV show from the 1970s: Land of the Lost. Knowing full well that he'd have to find a balance between campy and contemporary, director Brad Silberling set about a remake that would honor the old series while trying to recereate the awe and excitement audiences first felt when watching the show as children. But don't take our word for it. Our own Kellvin Chavez recently spoke with Silberling one-on-one to learn more about his direction for Land of the Lost.
How did you actually get involved with this project?
Silberling: It's all Will Ferrell's unfortunate mistake. Will and have known each other for a bunch of years now and we had never worked together. This was going on two years ago, just a little over two years ago, but I was writing a new movie that I had kind of a key role in mind for Will. I started working on the first draft and he and I grabbed lunch and I was going to chat with him a little bit and he kind of just said, 'I hate to do this, but I'm going to kind of hijack the lunch.' At this point everyone was trying to figure out their movies before the strike that never happened last year. He said to me, 'I really want to go and try to make "Land of the Lost". Would you do this with me?' I'm old enough so that I was truly one of the original viewers back on Saturday mornings. So my mind reeled and I said, 'Are we talking about obviously being able to take all the elements that we remember, but on a comic sensibility level be able to do stuff?' He said, 'That's the only reason I'm doing it.' I kind of got incredibly excited and it kind of went from there. We talked further about it and started kicking around some story specifics and then by June, exactly two years ago in June '97 we agreed to go forward and make the movie.
Was it difficult keeping the campy look of the show with today's technology?
Silberling: Well, here's what's interesting because, again, I really felt like a good ambassador for the original series because I was one of the original fans, but I was also at the age – see, where's it's interesting is that we as adults now, especially thirty, thirty five years after the fact, looking back at the material it look incredibly campy. As a kid though, ten years old, forget it. Nothing about it was campy. It was totally intriguing. The dinosaurs I thought were amazing. I thought the sets, I thought the situation, the science fiction, to a younger mind it was not kitschy. So what's interesting is that rather than sort of creating a parody which Will and I talked about early on, we said, 'If all you did was recreate the actual look of the show now it would be parody and it would last about eight minutes and it'd look like an "SNL" sketch.' If you tried to sustain that for ninety minutes you'd be dead. So then why not try to create, in a way, backwards from our imaginations because, like I say, that show was just loaded with detail. Of course looking at it much later that's the power of a kid's imagination. But what I did want to do was bring forward some of the sensibility, the fact that the Sleestak in the original show, they were suit performers as opposed to all special FX. I felt that as a kid. You really felt that they were there and that the family was sort of in harm's way and even the fact that most of the environments were on sets, I loved that idea. I thought that it earned the right to have more scope and more detail than they could've afforded to do back then. But that's why we really shot most of the film on stages.
What was the biggest contribution from Sid and Marty Krofft during the production?
Silberling: You know what, their spirit. What's great is that, and I've been asked by a lot of people, 'Oh, were they obsessive gatekeepers about the material from the original show?' It's just the opposite because you realize the kind of minds that could've ever created the first show, the show was and now obviously the movie, the show was incredibly psychedelic. It combined things that should've never been together. There are dinosaurs and then alien lizard creatures and deep science fiction. It was like a mash up well ahead of it's time. It then follows that the very kind of creative minds that came up with that were really excited and supportive that we were going forward with that, too, and turning this thing into this big, psychedelic comedy that went to unexpected places in return. So they're biggest contribution was really great moral support. Sid has a lovely eye because he's really a craftsman, too. I would say that it was in encouraging us to really keep pushing forward rather than just looking back. They knew when they met me that they had somebody who remembered and cared so much about the details of the original film. They didn't have to worry about someone who was uninitiated, kind of just perverting their property. I brought back specifics which they didn't even really remember. So that was the best thing about having them there.
With today's technology, CGI and stuff like that, was it difficult to bring comedy to the movie being that is so FX heavy and driven?
Silberling: No, it was the opposite. The reason that I was excited to do it when Will asked me is that I've done a couple of other films in particular that were very, very heavy with computer graphics and special FX work. So I'm very savvy in terms of experience with it, in terms of using it. I'm not usually very interested in using it anymore. So when I thought about being able to turn into a tool for comedy then I got excited because it actually doesn't have to work in spite of comedy. It can amplify it. The fact that you're able to create a performance in Grumpy that suddenly turns the movie into 'Moby Dick' between, like, Dr. Rick Marshall and this T-Rex that he keeps offending; that's actually amplifying the comedy as well as making the dinosaur incredibly more photo real and gleeful because to us, what we thought was so great was that you take these characters that keep making really kind of stupid choices and the world around them isn't cute, it's actually really dangerous. So the FX help you keep up the stakes of that world and that really just amplifies the comedy.
The original show was a family with kids. Where did the decision come into this to not have kids, but to have Danny McBride and Anna Friel?
Silberling: Twofold. One was sort of a little bit of a reality check. Listen, Will is forty, but in our minds putting him, not so much the eleven year old, but putting him with like a seventeen year old son who kind of looks like David Cassidy just didn't seem to track in terms of audience credibility, combined with the fact that the Rick Marshall that we…Rick Marshall in the original series, twofold; one was that we never quite really knew what he did. I never knew. I knew he wore this sort of khaki uniform and he was in raft with his kids, but I never fully understood what he did. But he did seem like an incredibly responsible parent. The show was really based around the idea of them being like a Swiss Family Robinson, like he's a good, protective dad and very responsible. Well, the guy that we were envisioning which for us was going to help the comedy of this group going to the Land of the Lost was sort of the opposite. This was going to be a very self-centered Quantum Paleontologist, this celebrity paleontologist who's actually not that mature, certainly and would've never had been responsible enough to have kids, let alone sustain a relationship in which he could've had kids. So to us it felt more like a case of three characters who were all adult and who are all sort of lost in their own way and need to get to the Land of the Lost to kind of find themselves. So we obviously enjoyed keeping Marshall, Will and Holly as the sort of names, but we knew on the story that we wanted to tell that Marshall was going to be very different.
Are there a lot of nods to the TV show, Easter eggs that fans of the show can look forward to?
Silberling: Yeah. They are throughout and the real fans will see them and know them. The one that I can point that's right in plain sight, and the original fans will enjoy it and laugh, is actually at the point in the picture where Will Ferrell is coming to apologize to his friends for having abandoned them. He comes back with a banjo and by way of apology is singing a song that he'd come up with. It's not even just the song which is obviously the original land of the lost theme song that he's acting like he just made up, but doesn't know all the lyrics yet; it's actually though the instrument. The banjo is the biggest Easter egg. The banjo is this instrument that was in the main theme of the show and not only that it was used as the key instrument in the musical transitions in the series and it's the strangest choice ever because the show was an adventure show and it was sci-fi. Sid Kroft had seen a screening of 'Deliverance' and just thought the banjo was nifty and would make a great accompaniment for his new show. So I was determined to have it throughout our movie. So it's there with Will. It's in the score at key times and so the real hardcore fans will recognize that as the biggest nod and compliment to the show.
The ending credits of this film were similar to your other indie film 'Lemony Snicket'. It reminded me of that.
Silberling: Exactly.
I wanted to know if you would ever consider doing a sequel to that film?
Silberling: Well, yeah. It's been a point of conversation actually. I was in Australia last week with Will and somebody asked me that. It's become a bit of a conversation and I say absolutely. It's not been a lack of desire on my part and certainly not on Daniel Handler's part, the novelist's. We would love to. The stars are probably coming more into alignment. There were two studios involved and they've had a bit of a…one purchased the other and then there was a separation. So the kid's movies get caught in the divorces and the 'Lemony' franchise got stuck in the shadows a bit, but it looks like there's an opportunity coming up where that may change. I would very much loved to do it, though, what I talked about with Daniel is that if we do it we do it in a new form because I don't think going off to just recast the kids and recast the babies and all the things that we'd have to do now is of interest to me. I'd rather find a whole new format in which to tell it, be it stop motion like with 'Coraline' or something fun where it feels like the texture of the original series of books, but something new.
LAND OF THE LOST Opens in theatres on June 5th 2009.
