Mark Romanek: I never was reading the guys in capes, I was reading like CASPER and ARCHIE. (Laughs) But Id like to do a film on a bigger, more ambitious scale. I tried to do something with THE WOLFMAN, but that was just a big mistake for me. (laughs)
Quint: I would have loved to of seen what you did with that. The result
Mark Romanek: It was never going to happen.
Quint: The problem with the movie that we ended up with is that Joe Johnston didnt really have much time to create his own identity and so it was kind of like this hodgepodge of what you had already set up and his own take on it. It makes this movie thats trying to be two or three different things.
Mark Romanek: It was a producer driven project. It was not a director driven project. I tried to make it be a director driven project or have it be a director driven project, but it was never going to be that. I should say an actor-director driven project. Benicio and I wanted to do a certain kind of film and when we ran that up the flagpole nobody saluted. So, it was best to bow out because they knew what they wanted and it was better for them to have a filmmaker that was going to be more collaborative, I guess, toward that end. I saw it in the film. Some of the design remained and some of the locations I picked, but thats about it, though.
Quint: Yeah?
Mark Romanek: Some of the cast. Some of it they recast when I left. Some of them they kept.
Quint: Im thinking specifically in your vision you wanted a lot more practical stuff, thats why you brought on Rick Baker, right?
Mark Romanek: Well, I wanted it to be simpler, more practical and more character-driven, more emotional, more archetypal and mythic and what they really wanted
And by the way, I want to make it really clear actually and this is a good place to do it, because I dont talk about it that much, I dont have any bitterness attached to it.
I was actually supported fairly well, there were just a lot of problems about
There was the strike, for starters, which got it off on a really bad foot and then the film was dramatically under-budgeted.
People say Oh, he couldnt figure how to make a movie for a hundred million dollars, well you know what? If you are 30 or 40 or 45 million dollars shy of what you need thats on the page and theres a strike and you cant change anything (in the script), what the **** do you do? Thats a problem. Its very easy for people that actually dont make films to say Oh, he couldnt figure it out for a hundred million dollars.
You know, when we are three weeks away from shooting, we cant change the script, and its clear that we are 30 or 40 million dollars light, what do you do? On top of that, no one could agree on what the tone of the film should be and no one wanted to unanimously support Benny and mys version of it and Tony Hopkins (version), too.
And so it seemed better to let them find a filmmaker that was more suited to their goals. And they are good guys, they are nice guys. I dont think they are like evil bad guys, they just wanted to make a certain kind of film. Thats what they believed in and thats really true. I would work with any of those guys again, it just didnt work out. Sometimes you just cant get on the same page, which is fine. I have no regrets about it. It was a very traumatic decision to leave that film because I worked on it for almost a year, but I dont regret leaving because it was the right decision, but it was a hard decision.
Quint: At that point you had only had one feature under your belt, right?
Mark Romanek: Yeah.
Quint: So much of the business is a power play, the ability to have leverage and the ability to be bankable. Obviously people are flipping for this movie, NEVER LET ME GO
I guess the question is when do you think you are going to have enough built up to be able to
Mark Romanek: I dont know. Ill know when I do if Im lucky enough to get there, but I dont want to make a big ambitious film again until I have the leverage that a Chris Nolan has or a Fincher has or someone, because theres no pleasant outcome unless its that sort of circumstance.
Quint: Yeah, and you are powerless to do something about it, but it would have been on you if you had kept with WOLFMAN and it just hadnt worked and your vision wasnt on screen, people would have laid the blame on you.
Mark Romanek: Im the one thats going to get blamed or praised and so directors usually feel like Well, then I should be the one making the salient decisions about what its going to be.
The only thing a director wants is to be supported. They want his idea of the movie to be believed in and then they want people there to support and facilitate them to do the job they were hired to do. Its like what an actor probably wants from a director, they just want to be made to feel confident, to do their most daring work, and to be supported where they need it and left alone when they need it. Thats all a director wants from a producer, but when theres that much money involved theres a lot of fear and I didnt feel like my idea of it was believed in at the end of the day.
