With enormous shoes to fill McG knows that a lot is riding on the success of his Terminator film. One thing the man isn't short of is confidence. He's been the main marketing machine behind Terminator Salvation and his passion for the project has been off the charts in the last year.
In this roundtable interview (roundtable meaning more than one journalist is present) McG and writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris discuss Terminator Salvation's place in the terminator universe, making the film, working with Christian and more. There may be minor spoilers.
McG: I have a Technics Turntable. [This is in reference to a writer wearing a t-shirt with records on it -Ed.] This film has a lot to do with progress and there's progress and de-progress. I would consider the death of the record shop not progress. I'm not kidding. I love iTunes like the next guy, but I love sifting through the racks and finding records. Indeed, I wanted the film in fact to feel very tactile and that's why we built everything and ultimately blew it up.
I wanted to ask about the helicopter shot that looked like one long tracking shot.
McG: Yeah. I'm very influenced by the Hitchcock picture 'Rope' where at that time they would run out of film in the mag and they would move into somebody's back full frame and that's where they would hide their cut and do their thing. One of the things that we wanted to do in this picture was honor the audience and the passionate by staging and blocking the picture in a way that wasn't reliant on cuts. I think that cutting is a bit of a cheat. You say, 'Well, we'll have a bunch of cameras on the scene and then we'll cut it and make it work in post.' We chose to go and scout the locations. Christian [Bale] was a good sport and we blocked the action very succinctly. You see him coming out of the hole, registering a dead Terry Crews, the camera swings around to see a transport ship of Skynet flying away, Christian runs over to a helicopter and the pilot has been killed. He gets in the helicopter to take off all without a cut. The camera is now moving with him. The hole down below explodes. The helicopter crashes. He stuffs it, cuts himself out of the seatbelt. Crawls out to see a mushroom cloud which is effectively the ashes of all the people he cares about until he's interrupted by a hand on his shoulder by a T600. No cuts. We do that a great many times in the picture in the spirit of saying we honor you audience. We're trying to show a lot of leg work and that a lot of planning went into this film and it's not just schlocky and cut together in the spirit of faking the action. So that's one example. The escape through the minefield with the Marcus character and the Blair character, it's the same thing. Very, very long shots that are in the body action sequences which one traditionally equates with a great many cuts, but we chose to do them in a single shot.
Christian set me up for that scene, like there was a cut.
McG: Well, hid cuts, like I said, like Hitchcock. We hid a great many cuts. But we made it feel seamless in it's movement. It would be physically impossible to move the camera body from a ground position into that and live through that helicopter crash unless I were really committed.
Can you talk about anything that was shot that didn't make the final cut that'll make the DVD?
McG: Yeah, but I have a very particular position about that. I always maintain that what is released is indeed the director's cut. Shame on any director who doesn't have the wherewithal to…over here is a woman named Sue Kroll. She runs Warner Brothers and she may like something or not like something, but it's my job to articulate why it's critical that it's in the film. There's an example. Moon [Bloodgood] was just in here. There was a topless scene with Moon that was designed to echo the Kelly McGilles/Harrison Ford scene in 'Witness'. It was very innocent. They're thirty meters away from each other. But at the end of the day we all looked at it and felt like, 'Oh, that feels gratuitous and feels like we're placating the genre and it may give people a platform to stand on to take the film less seriously. We don't want that.' So, no one pressured me to make that decision. I made that decision.
But is that going to be on the DVD?
McG: I suspect it will be on the DVD because has a very sophisticated, third wave feminist take on why she made that choice.
Did that decision come about as a result of having a woman as a producer?
McG: No. I mean, I'm a big fan of strong female characters. Jim Cameron, too. I think the strongest female characters in history have to be Ripley in the 'Alien' pictures and certainly Sarah Connor. So I come from a place of an empowered female position and I think the film tries to suggest a secondary gain of the bombs going off is that there's no more ageism. There's no more racism and there's certainly no more sexism. Everything is ability based. You know how to fix a broken leg? Go fix that broken leg. You know how to get the helicopter running? Get it running. Nobody is hung up on the minutia and the ridiculousness of the things that we're hung up on today without ever shinning a lantern on it. You'll notice that's very, very prevalent in our film.
Brancato: Earlier drafts had even more of it. In one I think there was one man with six wives and people were trying to populate the world more aggressively and morality was out the window. So, some of that goes a long way.
How did you go about getting this film made when, speaking about stereotypes, Hollywood might just view you as the 'Charlie's Angels' guy?
McG: It's the privilege of the public to put people in boxes. You take the body of material that anyone has been a part of and you draw conclusions. Who would ever guess that a guy that was on '21 Jump Street' with a ridiculous name like Johnny Depp would go on to be one of the great entertainers of our time. You have to earn your stripes and pay your dues. I'm certainly willing to earn mine. Fortunately I'm most comfortable in this genre. These are the films that I grew up on. This was my film school. This was my passion. So I'm very comfortable working in this world. You just sort of take the good with the bad and you take your lumps along the way. On this picture I tried to get away from being a cheerleader and really just let the film do the talking. We started at ComiCon some year and a half ago, over a year ago and we just said, 'This is what the film is.' We let it speak for itself and you try to honor the fan base by making elegant choices. Stan Winston. Certainly Christian Bale. People will take a closer look. They weren't excited about the prospect of the 'Charlie's Angels' guy making a 'Terminator' movie. Respectfully, why would they be? What have I done that would suggest that I'm the right guy. So you take a step back and you work that much more diligently and you let the film do the talking.
And what have you learned about yourself after this?
McG: Well, I definitely hate myself. I can promise you that, but when you hate yourself I think it gives rise to a higher level of artistry.
Why do you hate yourself?
McG: I have a mirror, don't I? I don't know. It's part of my own inner turmoil and I don't think that we have time to get into it.
You speak positively of the Hollywood meritocracy. Is there a link though you see between what you're capable of doing and what you're allowed to do?
McG: Yeah, but I mean, listen, I think for everything that Hollywood does wrong Hollywood is pretty great. I'm the child of a woman named Amy Pascal. She's one of the most powerful people in Hollywood. You look at a dopey list of the highest paid entertainers, this Black woman is at the top. That's pretty cool.
There is a meritocracy in that if you do something well you get to keep doing it until you don't.
McG: Indeed, but I don't think that is the case globally or the case through the body of the United States. It's true in Hollywood to some degree and there's a lot of room for improvement there as well.
Ferris: And it still helps to have good parents in Hollywood.
How many drafts did you guys go through before getting to this one?
Brancato: I have no idea what the total number was. We wrote several drafts shortly after 'T3' and then we left the project and so God knows how many.
McG: I read a draft that John and Michael wrote and that's the reason why I'm here. I remember talking to Jim Cameron about it. 'Why is this worth telling?' I said, 'Because it's the future war. People are interested. I'm interested. It's not a contemporary movie with a machine coming back in time and chasing someone. This is that world that you've only ever given us a tiny glimpse at. Therefore that's the point of entry.' He kind of nodded and said, 'Oh, that's cool. I'll credit you guys with creating that world.' By the time that I came onto the picture these guys were busy doing their thing. We went through a couple of writers. Christian and I were working very intimately. Christian had an excellent shorthand with Jonah Nolan. He did some production work while we were in New Mexico and at the end of the day I think it's the responsibility of me actually to be the arbiter of what goes in the film and what goes out. So it's always a team effort. There are a great many moving parts and that was the case in the writing of the script, to say the least.
Where do you want to see this story go in a sequel?
McG: Well, I wouldn't be so bold as to say that there was going to be another one.
But a wish list?
McG: I've arched out the second film, the third film. I've spoken at length to [Jeff] Rubinoff about it. I've talked to Amy Pascal down at Sony about it. We'll see what the appetite is. If the people jump up and say, 'We want more –' we're certainly going to be ready. There are a great many places to go in a world where what was once science fiction is now upon us.
Can you talk about casting Christian who's on the back of one of the largest franchises in history and you're asking him to do another one? I wouldn't have thought people would go to him.
McG: That's exactly why it was appealing. He'll say it himself, too. He's bloody minded and he always likes a challenge and this was no gimme. Who calls himself McG? Who's this guy talking to him? What are we out to do and why is this worthwhile, but he likes a challenge like the next guy. So I went over to England and I saw him and I wanted him to play Marcus. He was more interested in playing Connor and we went about the business of working on the script. Again, you have to understand that Christian Bale is so passionate about acting and about his craft. He has no entourage. He's got no assistant standing out there in the hall. He drove here in a beat up pickup truck. He is about the work. That's who he is. To work with an actor who is that focused and that intense I think is to all of our benefit.
Do you think your use of practical FX in this film will move the industry towards more organic production for action films?
McG: Well, I'm always using this example. The public has an interesting understanding of physics. I think filmmakers underestimate that. I just think that we all know what's going to happen right there, and if I said, 'Well, do the CG pen.' All of us would go, 'Something was off about that dopey CG pen and it didn't respond correctly when it made impact to the table.' I also don't like trying to get a performance out of characters when I'm saying, 'Hey, Christian, see that tennis ball. That's a seven foot robot trying to kill you and that green screen is ultimately going to be post apocalyptic downtown Los Angeles.' That's bullshit. I think that's a cop out. You can't reach your highest level performance in the absence of a tactile environment. I think from a place of performance, from a place of feeling the heat it's interest of building everything and creating as much as you can in camera and honoring the audience in that respect.
Is there ever the pressure of how you build a bigger explosion then the last one? Do you sit up at night wondering that?
McG: I really don't. This film was always to work at a table read like this. We'd just read it. What I wanted to do was tell the becoming story of Connor. Here's the guy who's been in the mountains. There's been radiation all around. He finally comes out and says, 'Hey, everybody. I've got an idea of how to win this thing.' Well, what does the guy who spent twenty years in the Marines who also survived say to this kid who's saying I know what to do. 'Shut the fuck up. You do what I tell you to do. I've been surviving my whole life and I'm still here.' So we see the becoming of the Connor character. That's what the movie is about. In regard to Marcus I think it's an allegory for what we're experiencing today where if you have a bad heart they'll give you a new one. If you're depressed no one says, 'Tell me about your mom and dad.' They just say, 'I'm going to manipulate your serotonin and your uptake inhibitors and you're just going to feel better.' We can clone a sheep and deconstruct the human genetic code. Therefore what is it that makes us human? Where does humanity lie? The Marcus character is indeed a study of humanity. 'You may be able to put a few metal rods running through my body, but at the end of the day I am a human being and I'm willing to go all the way to prove that.' So it's not about those explosions. But I'm not apologizing for summer fare. I like that level of activity and at the end of the day it's a 'Terminator' movie. If we're successful it'll work on both levels.
Can you talk about casting your ladies, Bryce [Dallas Howard] and what she brought to the film and also Moon?
McG: Bryce brought an elegance. She brings a first lady elegance that I believe all the way. If you look at Carla [Bruni] running France or you look at Hilary Clinton or Michelle Obama, these are very elegant people that I would personally believe in. I took one look at Bryce and I know a thing or two about her upbringing and who she is as a young lady and I thought that she's effectively a wonderful first lady choice of this world. Then you take a look at Moon. Moon to me is the third leg of that triangle, of Ripley, Sarah Connor and Blair because Moon can damn well do one handed pull-ups on a psychiatric bed turned upside down. That's following in the footsteps of Sarah Connor. So she is a survivor and she doesn't have a rich uncle in Hollywood. She's got herself to pickup by her own bootstraps and make it happen. I responded to that and I said, 'I believe you would be the last woman standing. So come and be a part of this.'
Has Jim Cameron seen the movie?
McG: I don’t believe he has seen the movie. I look forward to showing it to him. He was the first guy that I talked to when I was considering making the movie. I went down there out of a position of respect to kiss the ring and tell him what my intention was. He said he reserves the right to like or not like the movie. I said that I reserved the right to like or not like 'Avatar'. We both sort of giggled and went on our way, but he told me that story, and I've told it many times, about his following the great Ridley Scott in the 'Alien' pictures. People said, 'Who's this guy that made "Piranha II" think he's doing following Ridley Scott?' He thought, 'I can honor the mythology and tell the story.' I think we're all glad that 'Aliens' got made. Hopefully we've done our job and created a new idea in a world that he most certainly created.
Connor goes through the movie at such an emotional intensity. Do you think it'll be difficult to craft an arch for him in a sequel?
McG: I preserved that for the sequel. This film is all about the burden of a destiny that you don't want. It's not fun when someone gets on the radio and says, 'How many survivors are there? I say one. Yet again, one. Everybody died but me. I hate this curse of being the one who's got to always crawl out of there and carry the torch.' That's the burden of being the hero in this respect. In the next picture we're talking about exploring those more emotional arch's. So we'll see.
Speaking of the summer movies you'd thrown down the gauntlet to Michael Bay with, lets say, an explosion measuring contest. Has he responded to that?
McG: It's interesting because it's the sort of thing that makes me never want to speak again because it was meant to be ironic. Someone said, 'Who's robots are bigger?' I was thinking in my mind, 'Who's robots are bigger? That's effectively like asking who's cock is bigger.' So I responded, 'Well, we can meet at the Spartacus steps at midnight.' I thought it was painfully clear that I'm kidding. By the way, I have a tiny Irish cock. I've got no business. Bay is packing a Duraflame. I know a guy who went to college with him. I can't win that battle. So it was meant to be ironic but the irony was lost in print. So I'm done talking about such vulgar things.
How are things going with '20,000 Leagues'?
McG: I think things are going well there. I'm also looking at 'Spring Awakening' and then arguably an additional 'Terminator' movie. It depends.
Terminator Salvation opens in theaters this Friday.
