Set Visit: TMNT (2/2)

After
round one with
Kevin Munroe and Tom Gray regarding TMNT, I received a couple of
e-mails asking whether it was a remake or a sequel.
Well I’m happy to report that information is coming up
here, in Part 2 of my on-set visit. We
also talked about why it felt like the right time to bring the
Turtles back… a little bit of nostalgia and a whole lotta, we can
do it cheap this time around, was a big reason for it.
Kevin also talked more about GATCHAMAN which may be looking
at a 2008 release.

And
with all this Turtle talk, whether it’s the watered down PG rating
or how closely they will stick to the comics, one thing is for sure.
Those few moments I saw, I’m kinda looking forward to it.
There looks to be a lot of action and a little bit of
darkness going for it (as much as they can with a PG).
And sue me but I love Sarah Michelle…
But as for why now in 2007, Mr. Gray felt the time was right
as did Mr. Munroe and they were nice enough guys so hey, I’ll be
there. Read on and let us know
what you think.

Why do you think is behind this bringing back all these
properties from the ’80s, Transformers, Turtles? Is it nostalgia?

KM:  We
had a couple of designers working with us who are working on Speed
Racer now, and stuff like that is fun to me, I know it sort of comes
out as corny to a few people but I think as long as it’s inspired
and it feels cool, if it taps into that energy of what it felt like
back then. I’m not gonna pimp GATCHAMAN, but it’s like the same
with that. When you sit back and look at it now, it just doesn’t
hold up. But, when you sit back and remember how fun it was to build
those ships with the Legos.

So you building on the memories people had of a fun time?

KM: 
Yeah. I think there’s a lot there. You can’t go ahead and
just update suits and stick a generic story, so to me, it a lot
about how you recreate a vibe. We talk about that with the Turtles
too, there’s a lot of stuff that happens in between panels that you
don’t see, but for some reason as you’re reading the comic book you
get the idea that all that action that happens. And that’s what this
is about, that sort of energy matched with the energy the alumni had
whenever they were watching it the first time through. I think that
is the intention, that makes these movies more inspired than half
the ones in development around town that just sort of get born out
of A + B = C.

TG:  I also think that the
mindset of the studios is so play it safe. You know, Superman was
what… 30, 40 years before they made a picture. Today, I was on
Rocky 1 when I was at United Artists and [now it’s] Rocky 6! You
know, you’re taking DUKES OF HAZZARD and putting new stars in them
and we’ll jack it up and make it for 150 million and people will buy
it and we’ll just blow it out there on a 75-million dollar marketing
campaign and everybody will show up. And we’re going 6,500 prints
and we’ll get our money back and we’ll flip it on the DVD and boom
we’ve got our pay cable in there, they flash it through the formula,
it comes out. Profit. Green light.

I think this is why we are seeing in this cinema business, so many
of these recent, and Turtles included, that are not 40 years old or
something like that. It’s truncating in because the ideas are more,
you’re in a revenue stream, were not in the film business anymore.
We have seven decisions to make decisions, guys that head that
revenue stream has an input into your movie-making process.
Merchandising, pay cable; every one of these things, foreign, are
entering into the decision-making process. I’m not sure if that’s
the way to go.

I think that’s why we have, the company, has gone the other way by
taking, not American projects, but we’re gonna make ASTRO BOY, we’re
gonna make GATCHAMAN, because these are that were overseas and all
culture, it’s coming out of two experiences, out of the
Asian/Japanese. Korean paradigm and out of the black culture and to
a certain degree, the Latino culture, because it’s different, it’s
unusual. So our company being… this was just the beginning of what
we wanted to do and the only connection is, when I joined this
company, I happened to produce the first three, so if I never was
involved in it, we would have never made this movie, but, it was the
way you go.

And then, our owner, who is 29 years old, grew up with GATCHAMAN
and ASTRO BOY. And artists like Kevin who’ve had a great
appreciation for this said, you know what, let’s not do the happy
talking pictures anymore. Cat Tail was a picture about happy cats
and dogs and we said, "Next!" We had 10 million in the
movie, but we put in the shelf because there are too many of them.
So we thought, with the superhero, if we really execute well on the
Superhero, we have a better chance at success. 

So when are we gonna see El Zombo or something?

KM:  It’s
funny, it always pops us every four months, somebody will call up
and say, ‘oh this so and so producer saw it and just loves the idea
of it.’ So you chase it. Its Dark Horse so they’re never gonna let
it die, which is cool. We’re actually talking about trying to do
another series of it, going back to it, which is fun, it was cool. I
did that and I did Olympus Heights after that and it was like a fun
comic book run right before coming here. There’s actually video of
me on my first day and I look so tired. I had just finished the run
on El Zombo and we’d just been up for like, two days in a row,
trying to get everything finished. It’s not a fun job, but it’s
cool. Who knows? El Zombo would be fun to do.

This is not a [remake]?  The
existing movies exist in this storyline right? So does the animated
series?

KM:  I’d say it’s more the
movie; if you had to place it someplace, it’d be with the movies
rather than the animated series. We acknowledge the adventure that
they’ve been on. I think if you just look at the three movies,
knowing they’ve been on those adventures that pretty much encompass
anything that the animated series could do when you go from mutant,
doing the whole TCR stuff to the traveling in time. It’s a pretty
broad spectrum. So yeah, it’s a reworked story, we didn’t have much
interest in doing a reboot story and retelling the origin story,
everybody knows it.

That’s the same reason why Shredder not in it, in this first one,
at least. Just the idea of having them reborn as a family and then
sort of, how do you tell an origin story without telling an origin
story, now is that they’ve been through all these adventures and
Splinter as a worried father is concerned that having a common foe
is the only thing that binds them together as a family. That’s not
the right thing to bind you together as family. So, the family is
sort of falling apart at the beginning of the movie and its about
coming together as a team and as a family, so at the end you sort of
end with this world that you want to go back to and you want to
revisit and it doesn’t feel like we’re treading in the same water
all over again.

You just said, Shredder’s not in the first movie, do you have
stories set up for the second and third?

KM:  We’re
just talking about it. Ask us March 26.

TG:  Sure,
I think that if March 26 comes and it’s not a turkey then sure, I
think we have to look at it.

You’re talking about bringing it back to PG from a PG-13.
Will there be a longer or more aggressive cut on the DVD?

TG:  I think that would be
up to the studios, you know, their DVD department, if they wanted to
push it a little bit. I’m not sure that that would be constructive.
It might offset some people saying, "Wow, wait a minute, these
guys really cut this back." And we didn’t really cut it back,
to be honest. If that cut that we really wanted to make was it, we’d
be PG-13. So we pulled back some of the things that were pointed out
to us, the sharpness, or some of the monsters were too over the top,
we pulled back in the effects and the music, so, it’s not gonna
really…it’s not that dramatic. Again, if thing does work, I don’t
know if the studio would allow us to do a 13 again. I certainly
would like to do it, grow the franchise in that direction. But I’m
not sure they would look at it economically and say, well, you’re
gonna cut out a huge sector of our audience so you know, don’t do
it. 

Are we also gonna see a new comic book or new series to go
along with the film?

KM:  I
think Mirage is doing, they’re doing like five prequels. It’s funny
because when we developed the story we had a lot of, sort of, origin
stories of where everybody had been leading up to the events in the
film, and so they actually took some of those ideas that we talked
about, like, April was at when the film starts, where Raf was. They
are actually doing prequel comics. I forget when they are releasing,
it’s pretty soon. I think there’s one per character plus April. And
then I think they also have a comic book version of the movie. It’s
more Mirages’ call than ours, but there’s definitely stuff there
to play with.

Kevin, besides getting this made, what has been your biggest
challenge?

Coming
into work this morning. [Laughing] 
I think setting up the studio in Hong Kong that was a really
big challenge. Other than getting it made, that’s the first thing
that comes to mind. The fact that we have, like, 400 people in Hong
Kong and half of them this is like there first job so it was half
art-school half movie production and so it was a lot of
communication and a lot of back and forth. It’s amazing, I an
constantly surprised by stuff, like there are 80 animators over
there and only a handful speak English and the idea that there is so
much subtext to a lot of the animation and a lot of the acting and
it’s just being interpreted by our Hong Kong-born animation
director, who just goes there and acts it out.

Same
thing with the action, they just push their desks aside and it looks
like FIGHT CLUB. There’s 20 Chinese guys just beating on each other.
We mentioned before it’s like here in the West how animators grow
up with a healthy dose of Chuck Jones and Disney. They grew up with
a pedigree of Hong Kong cinema and that kind of background, so
there’s so much that comes naturally. And over half of them have
trained in martial arts too so it was really neat, we set up the
camera here and just go nuts. We talked about getting a
choreographer for the beginning, and while it looks cool for the DVD
to show us doing this, it’s really just a side step.

Can you talk more about the work flow?

It’s
a very high-end TV model. All the front end and back end is here in
the sense that we have a director, art director, storyboards, all
the designs are being done out, [all] the lighting keys are done out
here. We even do the pre-vis is here. We basically shoot the movie
in 3D before we send it over. And then in Hong Kong, they handle the
modeling, the actual lightning and the physical production of the
thing. We just go back and forth every night we sit down and BTC
with Hong Kong, a lot of communication back and forth. It’s not
nearly as cool as having 400 hundred people just down the hall from
you, but its pretty close.  And
lots of trips to Hong Kong and getting pulled around for eighteen
hour days and then everything comes back here and then we color
correct here and we do all the editing, sound effects and everything
is done here for the film so that’s it in a nutshell.

How much prep is there and have you started on GATCHAMAN?

KM: 
We’re working on a script right now. 
And we’re doing pre-production on it right now and some
early board stuff too.

When do you start on that?

TG: 
We’ve started.  It’s
gonna be PG-13.

CG?

TG: 
CGI, yeah.

What have you learned on TURTLES that’s going to pay off on
GATCHAMAN?

KM: 
On a broader scope, I think the learning curve for the
company has done a lot.  Especially
the team over in Hong Kong; there’s a shorthand. 
I mean, most of the same crew that worked on TURTLES is
working on GATCHAMAN.  Which
is cool because we’re trying to do it in a quick production
schedule from the idea that now we’ve got this shorthand, it’s
like that thing we did there, let’s do that. 
And for GATCHAMAN, I think story stuff we’ve learned in the
sense of what we have to lock down and what we don’t have to lock
down.  There was a lot of
stuff with TURTLES where we designed a lot of stuff which wound up
getting cut.

Which
is great cuz those other designs could be for future sequels. 
But there was a lot of sort of time that we kind of fritted
around with, design stuff with Turtles that just got cut because it
looked right on the board but when we got there is was 120 minute
long running time, we we’re like, ‘we need to pull back a little
bit.’  That and also
it’s pushing the aesthetics even more beyond TURTLES and that’s
not really a slight against TURTLES because in the Turtles it works
great for that.  [GATCHAMAN]
can’t just be the sci-fi version of the TURTLES it’s got to be
something a little bit more original.

Let
me know what you think. Send
questions and comments to [email protected].