Gadgetory

you can't talk about prometheus which is a small film that you've done an independent film you've done yes Ridley Scott sure you are the co screenwriter yeah a gentleman by the name of John Speights wrote on the moon wrote the first draft of the screenplay for several first drafts he worked in the movie for about a year and then I came in after him so we didn't ever work simultaneously you kind of took what you added that's right exactly another plays yes I mean that's the that's that's the the process out here right John when I was just I was still working on the last season of Lost while he was writing on prometheus and then he went on to do bigger and better things and then I came in on prometheus and normally there's a whole chain of screenwriter so I'm proud that it's just John and I write it this is a small process yeah Cowboys and Aliens which is the only other movie I have a writing credit on I think there's nine credited writers does that bother you that there's nine credit writers yeah I think it would have been a better movie had to just been your name on it no I know I would have been a better movie I've been nowhere near it really I just think I mean because I would feel if anybody tampered with anything and I did I would always feel like whatever the end result is gonna be somehow bastardized a bastardized version of my version yeah but I'm yeah he's easier said than done because I'm tampering with you know when it but when I came into that movie it was between the fourth and the fifth season that lost so I worked on it for two and a half months and and injected some ideas and did a draft of the script that was built on the foundation of other drafts and then there was considerable writing done after I left which is just it's weird it's sort of the equivalent of like going to the sperm bank and saying like maybe this will be used in a kid in combination with a bunch of others like you can't really do it you know if you don't have fundamental authorship so it's a worse than that in a way cuz at least with the with the kid you know it's at least one of them right the good news was I got to meet and work with Favreau Jon Favreau on that the the draft that I wrote with Alex Kurtzman and Bob warsi got John on board and then I started hanging out with him for maybe a month before I had to go back on the lost and he's a great cool guy and I love I love that collaboration but he seems like he seems like a guy who is incredibly powerful and rich and famous but whenever I've seen him speak anywhere or just he's not the kind of regular dude he's like a very nice guy yeah he's free or is he a huge-ass no he's not a huge-ass at all he's one of us I mean he's when I when I first came out to LA in 94 swingers was like the big thing and essentially he and his friends Vince Vaughn the most prominent amongst them we're sort of living the Hollywood existence that my friends and I were except they were much better looking at having much more success with women but that's what that movie was about right and so I completely and totally idolized Jon Favreau and the idea that he was also a writer and a director and started putting more time and attention into that part of his career than the acting part of his career I thought was commendable and then he's into all the same stuff that we are as fanboys you know he just nerds had already got he's nerdy and that comes across in his movies I mean they don't they seem like they're they have the touch of obsession no definitely which is a huge component for making these things work and also a tone is everything and I think I give massive accolades to Joss Whedon for Avengers and he did an incredible job but I think that Favreau was the guy with Iron Man that did the first like four so when you see the Avengers other than the fact that it's awesome and you want to see it again you go like why did it take so long to figure out to do this I mean these characters didn't get invented like ten years ago right why did it take them so long and the answer is it's such it's so totally difficult to pull off those movies and Iron Man was the first one where it's sort of like I'm gonna take this seriously I'm never gonna have the characters turn and wink at the camera but at the same time it's gonna be super fun to watch right women are gonna want to go and see it and there's legitimately funny movie yeah they're awesome so III i give fabro huge props for basically kick-starting you know that whole progression of movies it's like he kind of took the we're still way off topic of my question but it's like he took which I don't mind all he took him wait to hear it is and there's a lot for what I want gay boy he took that that um he took comics the way comics used to be even up until the 80s were they when they really got dark in the 80s but where they were that you could tell a real story and still have fun with it never there was actually like there was something kind of adventurous and exciting that wasn't it wasn't dark and heavy and brooding you know if it wasn't all Batman yeah and he made a movie that was did all the stuff that like a rift that a great Batman movie should do right where it's like action-packed and has serious moments but is somewhat light in a way that like is way more palatable to a broad audience yeah no definitely which is weird because it's actually really nerdy that kind of tone is kind of a nerdy weird specialist tone yeah it's it's it's completely and totally socially acceptable right now and actually socially expected to think superhero movies are cool yeah and we take for granted that 15 years ago that was not the case well this is a good bridge to talking about your new movie that while you talk about it that's right he did you but a city said no doubt go at that segue just say that and we'll move so prometheus is is an arm movie it's not really a broad audience well it's obviously a broad audience but it's an adult audience yes and I'm curious to know what your thoughts are me we've got movies like The Avengers that are very much like they're for kids and they're for the kids parents as well and this seems like you specifically really and you are obviously trying to make something that is for adults yeah I think you know the first thing that I have to say and I and I mean this completely genuinely without an ounce of Hollywood you know false modesty is its Ridley's movie John and I John John certainly contributed at a tremendous amount of ideas most of which I built on and then I came up with some stuff organically to the process but at the end of the day my job was sitting across a table from Ridley Scott asking him a series of questions like he was on 60 minutes and then based on his answers to those questions I then went and generated at a screenplay but that process that I just described to you went over the course of three or four weeks so I really felt like I just I just kind of bullied Ridley into dictating the movie to tell you what then I got to put my name on it so the movie a lot of the ideas are actually the seeds are from Ridley directly absolutely because a aside from its relationship to the original alien which is a question iterations of that question are the things that I've been asked about the most I'm looking forward to it at the end of the day when you're working with Ridley Scott who is and people throw the word visionary around a lot but that's literally what he is by definition and so he's gonna make the movie he needs to get the movie and it's not about me coming in and saying hey Ridley I've got this great idea do you want to direct it it's about him saying I want to direct a movie in this universe here's what I want it to be about here are the ideas that excite me here are the thematics that I'm interested in and here are the character traits that I want to demonstrate and it's it's not to reduce the process of screenwriting but I feel like in film which is much different than what I did in TV it is a little bit like Mad Libs where my job is essentially you know really saying adjectives now you know euphemism and you know that's how the movie was made yeah that's and that exactly I'm sure he'll be excited when to hear that you describe the moviemaking process as Mad Libs i but i but I do feel like I I have great pride in my own lack of authorship in the movie and I feel like if the movie is a huge success it's all because of Ridley Scott and if the movie is not a success it's because I wasn't able to execute his vision successfully and that's that's the that's the feeling that I have so let's talk about the connection between aliens or alien or that universe because there's been there seems to be some and correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like people who are talking about the movie who are involved with the movie have gone not out of their way but have made a point to say look this isn't a sequel to alien or aliens or alien 3 or alien Reservoir sure or alien versus Predator right or alien versus Predator - yes you're saying this is a different movie but it is in I mean it's it's not a sequel - it's a prequel if anything right you're not even calling it that well I mean I take exception to the fact that it that it's called a prequel because and and and I know a lot of this sounds a lot like that you have to get on slightly defensive terrain but for me just as a fan boy when I hear the word prequel that doesn't get me excited like and the reason that it doesn't get me excited isn't because I have a negative association with prequels we have to think like what's contextualized that word the first time that I heard that word in any sort of public or social setting was in reference to the fact that George was going to do the first three Star Wars movies and I was enormous ly excited about that yeah that aside once you actually see what a prequel is a prequel is by definition a march towards the inevitable so while we know that the guy is going to get the girl or there's going to be a happy ending there's certain story beats that you hit the idea of saying I'm now just gonna watch this young boy turn into Darth Vader you're leading me into the story that I already know there's certain things that I know can't happen like nothing's gonna happen to obi-wan right because it's a prequel and so I and and then I went and saw the thing prequel and I loved the I love John Carpenter's The Thing and I was really excited about it but then when it ended it spoiler alert the the thing ends with a dog that has the thing inside it running across the frozen tundra as it's being chased by a helicopter that's shooting at it and when I saw that there was a small degree of satisfaction in terms of like oh this is where the other movie began and on the heels of that a tremendous amount of disappointment and going like then why did I just watch this movie it was just sort of you just wrote the prologue for me and I felt it was really important that prometheus was not positioned as a prologue to alien right that in fact if Prometheus were successful and there was a sequel to it the sequel to Prometheus would not be alien I also felt like alien is as close to a perfect movie as it gets and I was very reluctant to engage in a conversation that would somehow diminish alien right like that if you saw if for some reason Prometheus didn't succeed creatively that when you went and watched alien again you'd be like this movie is now you should taste it would be soured in some way why yeah why why oh I bet that so all that by way of saying that if you my hope is that if you see Prometheus and you watch alien again there will be certain things that where mysteries before about alien that you have more clarity on but not but but the mysteries that made a lien great are still mysteries right and I've had a certain degree of success and failure in mystery resolution I feel some mysteries are just much more engaging than their resolution and I don't want to answer those it's like ooh where is Amelia Earhart she's rotting somewhere and the bottom of like the ocean are you like you're saying that's probably unless she was abducted by aliens or you know or she's living you know somewhere in you know in France like 15 high-end and has discovered the Fountain of Youth like but the reality is is the answer to these mysteries are usually less compelling than whatever our imagination transposes onto them and so if they're I do think that we succeeded in if there's a sequel to Prometheus it's not about the things that alien is about which is eggs and facehuggers and chess bursters and xenomorphs right like that that not only alien but then aliens they need to go and live off on that tangent prometheus is launching its servicing that tangent it's saying here's an explanation you'll understand the context of maybe where some of those things came from but it's much more interested in going off in its own direction and where there a sequel to Prometheus it probably wouldn't need to trade in any of those ideas so let me let's just get nerdy for a second I'm gonna get real specific as opposed to what I did for the last 20 minutes you're speaking very broadly about that you know you're kind of setting the stage for this but yes but here's my impression based on the trailers and it's funny because I actually could not I haven't seen alien for years probably since not since I was a teenager or like I really young like 13 mm-hmm and it was on television we had this debate in the podcast and we were talking like how does it start because I couldn't remember mm-hmm and it was on television I watched it and I remembered I saw a bunch of stuff I was like oh yes now it all makes sense so Prometheus clearly is not about Sigourney Weaver's character correct it's clearly not about I mean I think from just what I see in the trailer it's not about people fighting the alien creatures that doesn't seem to be at least said that's not what a hint of what I've seen you know yes but it does seem to be taking place in or on or around the the beginning of alien which is or or alien full-stop which is this large there's this large alien craft they stumble upon I mean that is that seems to be in your in Prometheus so there is a connection some connective tissue there right I mean there is there are places that are shared there else is what I'm asking yes but not I I I think that again I'm not trying to be Crypt overly cryptic but if I answer all these questions I think that we cross that line from let me just say like there there was a two minute trailer out there that people were like I can't wait to see this movie and then there was a three minute international child yeah and that one extra minute of material is the line that you cross where people start to say you told me to my right and I agree I think the trailer was gave away so my desire to not tell you what is the relationship between my hope is and again this is frustrating to some but it's the space in which I live which is the reason to me that I loved inception was after inception was over there was stuff for me to fight about and discuss with my friends as to what it meant what happened what was a dream what wasn't a dream like all those things that the movie left in some sort of ambiguous space and I know ambiguity is a very scary word especially when you apply it to the context of of the television that I've done however I will continue to embrace ambiguity because I find it really interesting and I have a tremendous amount of faith in the intelligence of the audience most of them are much smarter than I am and I will have an intention but the idea of not spelling it out entirely I will tell you right now that this movie even when you go and see it there is space to debate what the relationship between this movie and alien is we are not connecting the dots for you we are giving you the requisite information to make an impassioned an impassioned discussion about it you will know a hell of a lot more than you did before but it's not like this movie ends with a derelict spacecraft full of eggs crash landing on lv-426 which is the derelict spacecraft of the Nostromo happens upon at the beginning of alien that's inevitability and it's not interesting right so but with ambiguity the the danger there is it by the way I'm not just I think I'm not trying to get you to tell me like what happens in the movie no I guess I was there in the same universe because there's been a debate with people that this isn't it's completely separate right a universe they are they share the universe absolutely and I don't want to segue into the viral of the movie but I will say like when Ridley and I and I'm sure he and John and a couple of guys worth mentioning Michael elenberg who was sort of Ridley's right-hand guy at scot-free when I came on there and an executive producer in the movie and then the guy Steve as bell who was an executive at 20th Century Fox who was like the hugest like alien compendium of information incredibly impatient creative guy those guys are worth mentioning very early on we started saying this is the question that is not going to go away is it a prequel what is it so is there a way that we can start generating content other than just the trailer to start as opposed to Ridley Scott in interviews or me and interview saying here's the movies relationship to alien where we can begin to message to the people who care about that stuff and the people who care are the people who are fans of the original the Nerds the fanboys if we're gonna typecast so that was the birth of the the Weiland idea now Weiland was a character in John Speights draft he's a key he is a character that appears in Prometheus in a different way than he did originally but I said Weyland becomes the universal bridge because we all know the name of the the company in an alien is weyland-yutani they are the company that basically that the Nostromo works for and there are multi a conglomerate that's into terraforming amongst other things and so if we say Weyland is in our movie and we give the audience some context for who he is and we are then they'll know that they're happening in the same universe right and can we can we shoot a cool piece of material that's not gonna be in our movie it's not a trailer it's not a scene that you see three months before the movie comes out it just exists completely and totally on its own that will begin to sort of message that to the people that care and we think it's important to do that and really completely and totally agreed and that was the birth of what evolved into this Peter Weyland TED talk right that we unveiled at ed and then and then went viral that guy Pierce who plays Weyland in the movie agreed to do and I think that it's hard to watch that in any context and then make the argument that these don't occupy the same timeline yeah what's interesting about the original alien is you can watch that movie and be like I'm curious as to what who what's the story with that space jockey in this derelict ship but that isn't important the movie isn't telling you that that's important the movie is telling you that the thing that just jumped out of the egg on that ship and is now stuck to John Hurt space that's important that's what you're supposed to worry about now and then and then the sequel and so on and so forth but the idea that Prometheus now enters into a more and maybe this is why Ridley and those guys sought me out in the first place into the movie is asking very specific questions the characters are saying we want answers to these questions some of the answers they get some of the answers they extrapolate and but then something happens that leads the resolution of the questions is secondary to their own survival I think all of this stuff is already endemic people don't want to see Prometheus like a bunch of people sitting around a table pondering the meaning of life they want to see like what happens when you open Pandora's box like that's fundamental sci-fi storytelling the scientist wants to make giant tomatoes to feed the world and the next thing you know there's enormous ants and spiders like crawling through Albuquerque eating people and it's it's that idea of like we want to there's a line we shouldn't cross the line we all know we shouldn't cross it we shouldn't fly too close to the Sun we shouldn't steal fire from the gods we do it anyway we can't help ourselves we're humans and then we pay the consequences that's sci-fi 101 that's a story that really wanted to tell that's why I loved Blade Runner it's it's why I loved alien and it's like almost every alien movie is essentially about an iteration of the same theme which is no matter what these things do to us the company keeps feeling there's a way to monetize all right you know right it's like all right well you you think we would have learned our lesson that we got it right it is odd you would think for such a smart group of people they would just go you know what but that's us I mean we can't help ourselves and we want to everyone says like oh my god like when people are in a scary you know in a house and they hear noise in the Attic and then they're like we should go check that out you just moan to yourself like ah but if they just left the house like what's that movie right you know or but in but it's your life you would I mean you would you go investigate the sound I guess maybe you would I'll tell you what I would do I would call the police that's what I do just immediately depends on the sound maybe just like a little like a squeak or something you're not gonna call the police no I will go and check it out what's say what how what kind of sound would it have to be to get you to call the police let me ask you a question like is the house like a people been murdered in the house before yeah you bought a house you got a summer home for your family yes and you found out when you guys were moving in and that family had been murdered there right and then I hear a noise in the end you hear a noise it sounds like a person moaning yeah uh I do not go and check that you call the police right well I send my wife or that's nice you know he's just I'm sure your wife would be so happy see with the screaming right on it is yeah that's really wonderful um I probably don't do anything you know I probably just like that's a really scary noise like we should just stay down and flip the house right for profit sure absolutely best try not to do try not like no bet the murder think we're grandfathered in we weren't murdered yeah you were there for a whole couple of days right exactly Prometheus viral stuff yes you first off what is your level of involvement in the in the viral things like the the David video and and you've got a new one a new viral video that's yeah it just could've just came out the the viral stuff that stuff that we did on lost all the time I'm really into viral stuff for other movies I did not invent viral by any stretch of the imagination but it's always been something that I've really been interested in one of the one of the failings I think sometimes a viral content is that it doesn't feature the actors from the movie so it's just like it's kind of like just for the Nerds so it's like put together the trailer for the movie or whatever and I love doing that stuff but I'm essentially like for something to really like be interesting and compelling like it should have the same production value or the movie and for that you need the resources so it's like who's gonna have the balls to say to Michael Fassbender can we take you for a day and do this cool idea that we had but Ridley the great there are so many great things about him but he and Tony run this company RSA which is essentially their commercial production house so they have all these brilliant like young commercial directors who are enormous ly innovative individuals used to basically just kind of conceptualizing and figuring out on their own laptops how to make content and so we had that resource at our disposal and so Michael elenberg and I essentially started saying like the the first idea I had was I was just really into TED Talks and I was like we should do a TED talk with Weyland and it'll be we'll get if we can talk guy into it we don't have to do a full 18 minute TED talk but we could talk about some of the themes of the movie but it'll be like in the future like we'll set it in like 2023 tree tab and like we just have to ask Ted they let us use their branding otherwise it'll be like a Fred talk and it'll feel like cheap and disingenuous right and I know this guy Tom Riley who is who's sort of them you know this very plugged in super tech-savvy very cool geek at Ted who when I went to the conference was sort of like my conduit in there I called him up and was like would you guys be open to letting us use the Ted branding and he said I'll do you one better what if you showed it at Ted you know what if you unveiled it at Ted and we and you could use even the Ted website to show this thing and so everybody got super excited about that when we pitched it to Ridley and then he essentially I wrote the TED talk and and then his son Luke Ridley's son Luke directed guy through the TED talk and then produced that entire thing through our essay and then the I said the other idea that we had was we should do a commercial for David the Android I was like there's there's commercials for iPhones this is before Siri came along it's like there's a commercial for an iPad or an iPhone wouldn't a robot have a commercial like and what would that look like and so this guy Johnny hard staff that's his real name come on you know what his porn name is Glenn Frankfurt like it's completely innocuous no his name's Johnny hard right of course I'm we have to be he be he basically took that idea the David idea and ran with it and I wrote some some some dialogue for that but a lot of the visual ideas were totally Johnny's and and were produced by those guys and then the first piece of viral was new we were really wanted numiri pass to basically be the star of the movie and she had done Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and was already doing the Sherlock Holmes sequel but I think Fox just wanted to see to see her on film to do a screen test with her and so I wrote this this transmission that she makes to Wayland in an effort to try to convince him to fund her crazy mission and so that it would just be a monologue for her because there wasn't really any there weren't really any monologues in the movie and so we gave that to new me and then she did it and it was super Ridley didn't shoot like it wasn't just new Mira Paz on video he filmed it like she was in costume she you know it was there was incredibly high production value it was like well this should go on the DVD and I was like screw the DVD this should be a piece of viral like if I saw this on my laptop like on YouTube I would find it enormously compelling I'd wanna I want to go see that movie right and so that was that was sort of the genesis for for that idea so in Fox marketing I have to say like it's easy to blow smoke because essentially they're my bosses but all the people over there from bumble Ward and and and Katherine covert and Nathan Marcy of all like so embraced the viral idea they completely understood what it was and so the idea of using that to kind of bolster the more traditional trailers because there was this period where nobody was talking about Prometheus is it a prequel what is it and then very quickly we just flooded everybody with all this material so then the conversation became about like well what is this what does this mean how does this how does this fit into the overall puzzle of the movie and they just the way that they doled it out and however they doled it out created a zeitgeist where there there was no as I guys there was only sort of curiosity bordering on frustration yeah because it's that thing of like you've got to give me something right and I think the viral became an answer to all right well this is the something that we're giving you what's really interesting about it too is that it creates this growl it somehow makes the it makes the film so much larger it broadens that universe of the movie right it's like suddenly it feels like it's got gravity that didn't have before because there are artifacts from that universe that have you know it's kind of clear the David commercials not gonna appear in the movie yes right you wouldn't have that in the middle of the film but it gives the idea of this universe so much more wait to have these little artifacts that live outside of the film itself which i think is really fascinating it's something that we now have a medium where we can we can you can you can do the film for theaters yes and but we've got this amazing fluid flexible medium of the web that allows you to show the masses these other little pieces that kind of flesh out some way that the universe that you're trying to create for the big screen and I think that as native people are so hungry for any additional content because it creates this sort of this this feeling of being in the know being a super fan of something you have sort of a stock-in-trade so you're able to say like hey did you see the David video and other people are like no and you're like oh I'll send you the link and then that suddenly makes you a purveyor of content you're you're on the inside and I think it's like again to go back to like kind of what Marvel did buy it at the end of Iron Man by just dropping in that reference to the Avengers and having you know Nick Fury pitched that Avengers initiative and that became the first piece of viral for that I have a better word you know that led us down the road to Avengers but suddenly what started happening is for any Marvel movie the entire audience would just sit there through all of the credits just to have the experience of watching 90 seconds more of content and it and and it's like did you did you need to do this Joss Whedon you did not you're giving this to me this gift like you've already got my 14 bucks and you're not only gonna give me like one post-credit scenes but now like if I sit through the entire movie there's yet another one and thank you like any kind of sort it's a premium is what it is because you know as opposed to looking at at viral as marketing to get you to see the next one which by the way that's what the Tony Stark Nick Fury scene at the end of Iron Man is it's viral marketing they're essentially saying go buy a ticket for the Avengers right like if you didn't know what homing like you and I knew what the Avengers were before we saw Iron Man but my wife didn't she was like what's Avengers yeah and I was like oh boy just wait yeah do you have like two hours you start with the Infinity Gauntlet yeah that's that's I mean that is interesting I mean to think that well it's actually I think a viral is purely for the internet but it's interesting to think about it as something that now is we're like putting Easter eggs and movies because they're essentially Easter eggs in some way right fanboy culture has bled so much into the mainstream that people are looking for it like you said like people are like looking for these little clues viral is Sasha Baron Cohen showing up at the Academy Awards and spelling ashes on Ryan Seacrest and that's you know it becomes web content because you heard that it happened but when it first happened it was live theater it was you know it was that it was that idea of a shell being in the audience so viral by definition is any form of content that gets you more excited for the product that it's steering you towards right it's Prometheus an action movie and and before you answer I want to set this up a little bit it seems like modern-day science fiction cannot exist without it having an action component mhm and if you look at you know a movie like 2001 I would not classify it's it's not an action movie correct something else yes so did you is Prometheus an action movie or is it something else I couldn't describe it as an action movie any more than I would describe inception as an action movie but there's a lot of explosions and people shooting guns and the entire you know that entire final set piece an inception that takes place at the snow fortress is actually an action set piece you know it just doesn't feel like an action movie so I wouldn't describe it that way I think not that I'm putting Prometheus and Inception on the same in terms of they're the same movie I'm just answering your question in that way was saying like first and foremost I think it's a sci-fi movie and I think I think that it's safe to say prometheus is as much an action movie as alien is a horror movie which is it trades on those genre elements obviously just from the trailer you've seen there's there's much more of an action fuse on Prometheus than I think then I then I then I think alien but I would say aliens is an action movie yeah and prometheus is much more if it feels a lot more like alien than aliens to me in terms of its storytelling I think it takes its time and and it's not just about getting to the next set piece that being said once that fuse gets lit it's a there there is a fair amount of sort of scope and sizzle to it all and and really really wanted to do that stuff I think one of the things that I've been hearing both again and in in the reoccurring theme of this interview you take the good with the bad is and the good side it's like this feels a lot like the original alien like because there's motifs in the original alien there's an Android you're not entirely sure you trust there's people in cryosleep there's a there's a female lead there's clearly some thing happening to these people that is reminiscent of those ideas there's creeping around through dark corridors with flashlights like so people go this feels a lot like alien and then there's other people who are saying like this feels a lot like alien so like it's just that it's just more of the same sex and look and you that that's what you're up against when you are courting that fan base and I'll take it every day of the week like that's the price of doing business because I I'm just as critical of of other content and I rather have people say to me for the rest of my career you screwed up a Ridley Scott movie then not say that to me because I'm like hey like I got to be involved in a Ridley Scott and I got a screw over rivers goddess I fight not only did I screw up a really Scott movie I screwed up the first Ridley Scott's sci-fi movie in 30 years like that if that's not gonna go on your headstone then what should