Interview - Mark Neveldine - Part 2

We’re back chatting to Mark Neveldine, the co-director of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Want the scoop on Crank 3 and the presence of THE Christopher Lambert? Read on!
Check out Part 1 here.

CLICK: If we can talk about the rest of the cast, you’ve got Ciaran Hinds as the Devil!
MN: Ciaran of course yes, he plays The Devil of course in the movie and he’s just phenomenal! I’ve loved him in every movie and he just got on board with this ridiculous film of ours and took on the gravity and the weight of the character. He’s just great at being spontaneous because we don’t storyboard our shots. He’s really game for that and just a super great guy.

CLICK: We also couldn’t help noticing Christopher ‘Highlander’ Lambert in there – he’s even swinging a sword! Did you always want him for the role?
MN: Yea it’s great. We were looking for people who were available and he was our first choice. The only issue was we begged him to shave his head and he didn’t want to do it, not because he wasn’t up for it but because he was up for these other roles and was going into another movie. But we really wanted him to do it because we thought it would be great for his character and we wanted to put tattoos all over his head. And we got on the phone with him and he’d just seen Crank 2 within the hour or whatever and he just said ‘Guys, I’m yours’. And we were so pumped for that, that we got Christopher Lambert – there is only one!

CLICK: After your experience on Jonah Hex, were you wary about getting involved with another superhero movie?
MN: No. I mean the thing about Jonah Hex was that we were long gone before they ever started any kind of preproduction. We had written a script that we’re super proud of that’s a really great script and it’s out there somewhere on the internet and if you read that script versus what was made its literally 100 percent different. So we kind of left on good terms. There’s this sense that there’s all this hate but there’s not. We love Josh [Brolin], Josh loves us – we love everybody involved in the project it just didn’t work out. And for our evolution as filmmaker we have to eventually do a superhero movie, we have to do bigger movies and this was the right movie to do it. We were definitely bummed at the time on Jonah Hex but once were gone from the project – it’s kind of a funny thing in Hollywood, there are so many irons in the fire once something’s gone you don’t make a big deal about it. We were just ready to move on and we assume everyone else did as well. It’s still unfortunate about the outcome of that movie though!



CLICK: You’ve become synonymous with a kind of low budget, handheld shooting style – how does that translate to a bigger budget movie?
MN: It does but we did curb it a bit. I mean we actually set up on a tripod and pulled out a dolly for some sit down, talky scenes. Yea they’re not that long but we did and we were able to get a Russian Arm [a car mounted camera rig] out in Transylvania and that’s something we haven’t been able to do before. So we have these really stable solid grounded parts of our movie, shooting these amazing, award winning actors and then part of the movie is frenetic cam!

CLICK: You like that balance?
MN: I think if it works. I see it all as an EKG – it’s going to bounce up and down and going to be a straight line at times. You have to find the right moments for your movie and I think this is a really good balance. People have said things in the past about movies like Gamer, that people got sick watching it. Well they won’t get sick watching Ghost Rider. It’s not shaky cam at all this time.

CLICK: You’re also known for shooting with the latest tech, including consumer HD cameras – did you ever consider shooting Ghost Rider in 3D?
MN: We did, we went and we tested it and I still think that we’re getting really close but the cameras for a lot of the stuff we want to do with guerrilla style filmmaking just doesn’t work. As I say that things are changing right now, the systems are getting smaller and even with the RED Epic, you’re cutting the weight in half of the RED One with the MX chip and you’re really getting to a place where we could do a 3D movie, it’s a possibility. It would have been nice for this but we did a lot of conversion tests and we found a company that does it really well and really cares about every frame and we actually went through the whole film to make sure this was going to be an immersive kind of 3D, not a gag 3D movie. We do that a couple of times during the movie for fun but we just didn’t want to be a nauseating experience.

CLICK: So you guys are happy with the post conversion?
MN: We’re happy with the conversion. On a digital projector, seen the way this movie should be, I think it blows away even other 3D conversion’s I’ve seen. So if people can watch this movie the way they’re supposed to watch it, I think we’ve really nailed it.

CLICK: There were rumours of a third Crank and in 3D, is that still something you want to do?
MN: 100 percent. We talk about it all the time; Jason and I were on the phone just a month ago, trying to figure out when our schedules can work. Lakeshore really wants to do it, Brian and I want to do it, Jason wants to do it, Amy wants to do it, Dwight wants to do it. We’re just going to figure out what the story is. We’ve had 50 ideas, I think we’ve got it down to about 10 now and yea, we’re totally going to do it.

CLICK: There was a rumour it might be animated?
MN: Well… there were ideas about a Crank TV show. Crank is its own world but maybe we’ll do a Ghost Rider animation, who knows!

CLICK: Yourself and Brian Taylor have been working together for many years, often sharing credit – how does the workload break down between the two of you
MN: It’s kind of a 50/50 split. It’s like a football huddle, we bring the actors in and we talk them through what we want to do. There are things that Brian and I each excel in a little more. But when it comes to dealing with the actors we’re definitely on the same page. And for the script we come up with the idea together, we write the outline together and email versions of the script back and forth and battle over things. It’s a fun process.

CLICK: I’m a big fan of Gamer and it seems like quite a personal project for you guys – how did you feel about the reception of the film?
MN: You know we did a lot of great things in that movie; we were definitely trying to make a statement. I would have liked to have $30 million more to make that movie. It’s kind of funny at the time I was bummed out because I wish people would have liked it better but now because of the internet and because of fans there’s so much love about it. It’s now in Stephen Shaviro’s Post Cinematic Affect book. It’s actually in a book that people buy to read! He wrote a whole chapter on Gamer. So it’s kind of amazing to see a response. And that’s awesome dude to hear that you like it. I wish that we could have given it a little bit more in there but it was a lot of fun.



CLICK: This is your first big franchise movie but if you could tackle any other property, what would it be?
MN: I think we should go do James Bond. We should just drop everything else and get right to James Bond and have Idris Elba be Bond!

CLICK: Would you like to direct movies on your own?
MN: Brian and I do work on our own, we do write on our own, we write our own scripts, we do script doctoring jobs on our own. We’re kind of working on making Neveldine/Taylor a brand but Brian will do his own movies at some point and I will too and we’ll come back and do the Ghost Riders and the Cranks, we want to do that. That’s something we’re looking forward to and looking forward to producing each other’s movies and trying to make a company out of it.

CLICK: So what’s next, apart from Crank 3?
MN: Well we’re both writing a bunch of stuff, both developing this Crank 3 idea. We decided we’re going to wait until Ghost Rider comes out and we’ll let out a little more information. We’re all about Ghost Rider right now, we’re super pumped about that!

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is in cinemas from the 17th of February. Check back soon for our review.