Horse filmmaker starts with music
Posted on Thursday, December 27, 2007
Jay Russell’s The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep is one of the best surprises of this Christmas season, an intelligent and warm family movie that doesn’t dissolve into sentimental treacle or stoop to bathroom gags. The film, set in Scotland during World War II, follows young Angus (Alex Etel ) through his discovery of a curious egg that develops into a mythical creature — he names it Crusoe — who guides him through lonely and terrible times, hearkens back to classics such as Lassie Come Home and The Black Stallion and has some of the same cross-generational appeal as Russell’s 2000 film My Dog Skip.
Russell, who grew up in North Little Rock, graduated from Columbia University in 1984 with a Master of Fine Arts in screenwriting and directing. He came home to Arkansas and made a few commercials for the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism. With the help of the Sundance Institute and homegirl Mary Steenburgen — who executive produced and took a role in the project — he shot an independent feature called End of the Line in Arkansas in 1986; it was released by Orion Classics in 1988. That led to a three-picture development deal with a studio in which Russell was theoretically charged with writing and directing his own projects.
He spent the next decade in “development hell” before the success of My Dog Skip bought him, he says, “the chance to make two more pictures in Hollywood.” He followed the film with the solid Tuck Everlasting (2002 ) and Ladder 49 (2004 ).
“Ladder 49 probably bought me three more chances,” Russell said a few months after that film opened, and he meant to be careful about what projects he chose. By e-mail, he answered a few questions about The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep.
Q. We were very taken with the score — I remember composer James Newton Howard from his days touring with Elton John. You also use the Chieftains, and Sinead O’Connor contributes an original song. Given your background in music [Russell studied music composition as an undergraduate ], I know you’re deeply involved with this phase and can communicate with musicians in their own language. Can you talk a little bit about the music for this film ?
A. Music, as we know, is an extremely important element of a film. When you think back to your most favorite films, I’d bet that you can hum or whistle the theme. What would The Godfather be without its classic music and theme ? It is as important as the photography, in my opinion.
Before I begin preparing any film, I first have to hear the music in my head. It’s what inspires the images. That music may come from another film score that I feel relates in some way, or just a piece of music from my library, or in some cases it could be a sound or a vibe that I feel. But I need that as a reference point and a basis for any film that I make, and I will even listen to that music between takes to remind myself.
Having said that, it can put the composer in a very awkward place when it is time for that person to create an original score because they are competing with this “fantasy score” I’ve created. In James Newton Howard’s case, he actually embraced the ideas I had and said he understood what I was going for and felt he could take it as a starting place and make it better. He did. Much better.
As an aside, you mentioned James’ experience playing with Elton John. If you listen closely to our soundtrack you will hear some terrific percussion playing going on — that’s Ray Cooper who of course was so wonderful on those tours with Elton and Eric Clapton.
James is not only a talented composer and performer, but he is a great record producer. One of the great joys of my career was watching James put together our music at Abbey Road in London with the London Symphony and The Chieftains. Watching James work the soundboard — if I squinted my eyes, I could almost imagine George Martin or Alan Parsons making those great records we all love in that classic studio.
(For more on the film’s production, especially the music, Russell recommends the movie’s official blog site: www. sonypictures. com / movies / thewaterhorse / blog / index. php )
Q. There are inherent problems working with computer-generated imagery, especially for actors who have to interact with some kind of surrogate puppet instead of the finished creature. The young actors in The Water Horse work so well with Crusoe that I never found myself thinking about how any of this was accomplished. While I’m sure you’ve had plenty of experience with digital effects in your other films, I’d guess this is the first movie where you’ve worked with a digital character. In some respects, I’d imagine CGI is liberating, but I think of you as a very organic filmmaker and wonder how you approach such a CGI-heavy movie.
A. Bringing a 100 percent digitally created character to life and having it feel organic inside the film breaks down into three steps: The creation of the creature itself in terms of its look and biology; having the actors interact with the creature even though it is not there on set, then giving the creature behavior, which is all done in postproduction.
All three steps are difficult, but the most challenging aspect and the most important, in terms of keeping it all “organic,” is working with the actors — having them all seeing, interacting and reacting to the same thing, even though it is not there. In fact, most of the time they were having to perform with a tennis ball on the end of a stick.
My approach to this issue — if we made Crusoe a real animal and if I had Alex and the other actors behaving as though they were dealing with an animal instead of a digital character, the emotions would be real. Like how we get emotional with our dogs or cats or whatever. And if it were a “real animal,” it would affect their physical actions around it.
For instance, I would always remind the actors — if they were reaching out to touch the creature, they would be reaching out to a wild animal. And as we know, you can’t make sudden moves around an undomesticated animal because it’s quite likely to bite your hand off. So given that note, the actors brought a certain behavior to their performance around Crusoe.
Q. You’ve got a good handle on intelligent family films. You don’t condescend to children and everything is in service of the story. There’s a great maturity in this work; transposing a novel from the 1930 s to World War II added emotional resonance and in some ways made it more relatable to a modern audience. Are these the types of movies you always want to make ? Or is there a No Country for Old Men in your future ?
A. It’s more that these stories have somehow found their way to me rather than the other way around. I don’t really set out looking for a “family film” to make, but the resonance and emotion of this story and others in my past work have had an impact on me. I knew because of my personal emotional reaction to the scripts; I had a vision of how to bring them to the screen. A lot of things I read I find to be “one note” and superficial and therefore don’t respond to them. I get excited by pieces which carry a deeper meaning under the surface. Who knows, maybe I’ll read a horror script or a teen comedy with similar qualities. If so, I’d be excited to make that film.
Q. For a Christmas release, there didn’t seem to be a lot of noise and buzz out in front of this release, although so far most of the reviews have been pretty good. And I’m happy to see that Burger King isn’t giving away Crusoe dolls. But we all know how much rests on the first weekend these days.
A. Because this film doesn’t fit the typical “corporate model” of current Hollywood movies, it wasn’t set up to get the full marketing treatment of the other studio Christmas releases. The Water Horse, by definition, is actually an independent film. It took three separate companies to finance the project. Sony only came in as a distributor, so they are not spending the same sort of marketing money they would on a film they made themselves, like Spider-Man. So what this does is put more pressure on the film because it has to sell itself in a way.
Fortunately we’ve screened the film numerous times for audiences all over the country and the reaction has been consistently good. I’m hoping, as has been the case with my past films, that word of mouth becomes our strongest marketing tool.
One of these days, maybe I’ll make a movie that gets the big machine fully behind it, but a lot of those pictures are, unfortunately, not that interesting to me.
Q. So what’s next for you ?
A. Again, I’m my own worst enemy in that regard. I tend to take my time and look for a project that I feel worthy of the two- or three-year life investment that a film requires.
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