INT: Renny Harlin

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

Intro
/ Hemingway-Kitsh-Crawford
/ 

Renny’s
table was the warmest. At first I thought it was his personality, but
he quickly directed my attention to the giant heating fan to my
right (parumpumpum!). What can I say, this guy was a lot fun to talk
to and looks genuinely pumped at all times. He makes big movies with
big ideas and small budgets (or at least he does since CUTTHROAT
ISLAND bombed — but time and distancing himself from Stallone will
change all that). As for Mr. Gill (cinematographer), he’s keen on
delivering something dark and brooding. He’s worked on many
Montreal-
based productions, notably quite a few were for action director
Christian Duguay (SCREAMERS, ART OF WAR). Without further ado… the
interview.

RENNY
HARLIN / PIERRE GILL

Is
this based on a comic-book?

Renny:
No, this is something that the president of Screen Gems developed
based on his own idea. Then to give it a grounding history to the
story he also developed a comic-book, but the comic-book kind of
takes place before this movie, so it’s like a prequel to the
movie. So, yes, there’s a comic book, but the story of this movie
is not the same as the comic-book. But the characters are the same
as the comic-book… if that makes any sense.

Tell
me about casting. You went with a bunch of new-comers… Why that
route?

Renny:
To make a movie like this is to do it with young, hungry actors,
because its so demanding physically and our schedule, and
everything, is very tight, so to have movie stars here just
wouldn’t work because we’d be waiting on them to come back from
their meetings, etc… And also, in this type of movie, the concept
is the star. So it would be weird if there was a star in the movie
because you would immediately know that that person must be the
hero…

So
from the beginning we knew we were gonna get good actors, good
looking actors, who will represent these New England rich kids who
have this ultimate wish fulfillment of getting these powers. And I
think we got really lucky, we really went through every young
person… East coast, West coast…

Canada

! I think we found great young actors, and its so much fun to work
with them, they’re just ready to do anything. No egos, no
bullshit… As long as we could keep them from going out at night,
we’re good. (laughs)

We
were talking about “Lost Boys” as an influence…

Renny:
Yeah, I think it’s a relevant comparison… It was 20 years ago,
but it was young people who are vampires and hung out in a seaside
town and a sort of hip movie with a lot contemporary music and sort
of flare to it. For us, we are a
New England
private-school, and its about young people, and the movie has a
stylized, hip feel to it, and these guys just happen to be warlocks.
So yeah, there are similarities. A lot of times we try and find ways
to describe this movie and we say stuff like its “the Lost Boys”
meets “Underworld” meets “Dead Poets Society”. Or we would
say its “Harry Potter” grown up. Our movie is definitely not as
comedic as “Lost Boys”. That movie had kind of light side to
it… our movie is very dark and brooding. It’s a PG-13 movie, its
not bloody, but I guess its an action-thriller. Its very scary.

In
your opinion, is this the first movie you’ve done to appeal to
such a young audience?

Renny:
I think “Nightmare on Elm Street 4” was the youngest. This movie
is a little more mature then that, but in some ways it reminds me of
those times when I was doing that movie because it was a young cast
and we were doing crazy, fun stuff, so it has a little bit that kind
of feel.

In
regards to the music is, will you be using that techno-ish song you
played during the scene you filmed today?

Renny:
No, that was just something we used for inspiration for shooting
the scene, because that’s part of this big rave scene that we shot
on the beach with 200 people going nuts the other night. That would
have been worth seeing because we shot for 2 nights, and it was like
minus 30 and everyone was in bikinis, but it looked fantastic, and
that was the music playing for them. We’ll have a big soundtrack
though, like 16 songs, and some original music as well. So some cool
stuff.

(to

Pierre
) I was talking to the visual-effects supervisor this morning, and
he said you really made this movie look textured…?

Pierre: Well, everything
we shot so far looks really good, we’re really happy.

Renny:
No, it looks super kick ass. Looks amazing! It looks genius!

Pierre
: The only thing I’m trying to do is create a mood that isn’t
just black, dark images were you don’t see anything, and that the
location, for me, becomes one of the characters. So the school looks
like something original, you walk through the corridors you could
feel the place. This is what I’m trying to work around… Often in
the script it’s written “this is so dark you can’t see”. So
I am always telling Renny that this isn’t where I want to go, I
want to do something more refined, less clichéd. This is more
elegant. Like when you say “Dead Poets Society”, it has this
nice feeling… For me it’s a Kubrick thing, I’m always talking
about “2001”… the feeling of the framing is really important
and I think this is something I’m good at… so I’m modeling the
light and trying to create a mood that is realistic, but at the same
time stylized. Its not completely ordinary or real… It has a color
palette like blue and cyan…

Renny:
But not that “Underworld” blue look… or like “Matrix”,
which is fine, but we’ve seen it so much that we wanted to make
sure that it looked different.

Pierre: I try working the
shots like paintings all the time. So faces, dynamics of frames, and
depth… and framing is a big part of mood. We often do a shot, and
the actress comes into frame and it works really nicely. So we’re
happy.

Is
this movie technically
challenging? Like you were saying that the opening shot was more
complicated then anything you’ve done in the past.

Pierre: We move the
camera a lot, which is fine, because I’ve done this before many
times, and I love doing this. But what’s challenging is that
it’s a very big film and the schedule is very tight, and working
with multiple cameras, which compromises the lighting a lot. Up to
now it’s worked out.

What
is the shooting-schedule right now?

Pierre: 45 days. That’s
very tight… it should be 65.

Renny:
Should be 85!

Pierre: We’re working
here in this big set, but we have 3 lighting crews that are working
all over town right now preparing other locations. So that’s
really fast.

Renny:
Today you will see I’m shooting this thing, taking hours for one
shot, because technically it’s a special shot, but yesterday we
were in this big mansion shooting dialogue scenes with 5 actors and
we did 45 set-ups in one day, and really beautiful shots, but it was
5 pags of dialogue. And we’re not doing dialogue like on TV, like
close-up, close-up… We do complex moves and beautiful shots. Today
you see us waiting around, but usually we’re moving around, next
next next… Really fast-paced normally… It’s the only way we
can do this movie.

What’s
your favorite Renny Harlin movie?

Pierre: Cliffhanger. I
really liked that film.

Renny:
“The Long Kiss Goodnight”. Best script I’ve ever worked with.

Were
you disappointed at all with the reception for that film?

Renny:
I was really disappointed. I felt that it was a good movie, got
great reviews, really happy with it. I’m not going to blame
marketing, but for some reason it didn’t find its audience until
dvd. And nowadays I run into people all the time who tell me they
can’t believe they didn’t see it when it came out, especially
women, really like it. And I’m good friends with Sam Jackson and
he always says that he gets more comments about that movie then any
other movie he’s made. So were really proud of that movie. So for
whatever reason your movie is not a big hit… I rather feel good
about a movie that I made and know that it’s what I tried to make
and I like it and I can be proud of it, rather then just have a
movie that made a lot of money and it’s a piece of crap.

Do
you ever watch your movies again?

Renny:
I almost never watch my movies again. Once its done it’s a baby,
its out in the world and I’m moving on.