An interview conducted by Josh Horowitz
May 15, 2003
Peyton Reed has been having a good week. He’s been in New York, talking about DOWN WITH LOVE, his sophomore feature directing effort that is also opening the Tribeca Film Festival. He’s been in New York awhile. He’s well acquainted with the menu at the chic hotel where he’s digging into a waffle. Last night was another party. “Do you mind if I eat? Feel free to order something, it’s on 20th Century Fox!” That was indeed Oscar-winning screenwriter Steven Gaghan he was just chatting with. Maybe it was David Kelley. No, definitely Gaghan.
When your first film was an actual honest-to-goodness colorful, fun, and yes, smart cheerleading film (BRING IT ON), not to mention a box office success, then you get some privileges. For Reed, it means a chance to direct Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger in an homage to the Rock Hudson/Doris Day “sex comedies.” At least that’s what McGregor calls them.
Reed, whose background ranges from directing sketch comedy shows to Disney TV movies, is the kind of guy who is just as excited to talk about his film as he is about the new MATRIX. “You’ve seen it?!? Tell me…but don’t tell me too much!” He also likes to say things are “a blast” a lot. Sounds like he’s the right sort of guy to be taking on a big-budget comic book film next. He is. It’s THE FANTASTIC FOUR.
Josh Horowitz: So how do you like New York?
Peyton Reed: I love New York. We shot UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE here the first season. The second season Comedy Central started to come down on us because we were a non-union show so we had to go to Nutley, New Jersey.
JH: I didn’t know Nutley existed.
PR: I didn’t either! Now I know ALL about it.
JH: Can you guarantee to me that, as Fox is proclaiming in the ads for DOWN WITH LOVE, that this is THE hippest romantic comedy of the season?
PR: If Fox says so, you can’t argue with it, right? I mean it’s in the paper, it has to be true!
JH: Ewan has been banging the drum loudly about how he made the musical number that appears at the end of the film happen. Are you sick of hearing about this?
PR: What he’s doing now is exactly what he did when we were making the film. I first met Ewan at a party for MOULIN ROUGE. And he came to me and said (in an accent), “I heard you’re doing this Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie. Is there singing in it?” I said, “uh no, there’s not.” And then later when we cast it, he had done MOULIN ROUGE and Renee had done CHICAGO. So they formed this coalition to get a song. So how could you not do it at that point?
JH: You’ve now sort of made two non-musical musicals in BRING IT ON and DOWN WITH LOVE.
PR: Yeah, both movies do bump up against being musicals without actually being musicals. I’m a drummer and I feel like the rhythms in film are similar to musical rhythms. When I read this script, it felt like a well choreographed comedy. Plus you have all the artifice there so it almost looks like the set of a musical.
JH: Ewan is essentially playing the Rock Hudson role in this yet he’s a totally different sort of actor and presence.
PR: Ewan is not Rock Hudson but the thing is he has charisma up the wazoo. I also liked that he is such a contemporary actor so you don’t associate him with that part. I did show him some Rock Hudson films but I also showed him other random stuff like a scene in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE of Sean Connery walking in an airport terminal or Steve McQueen walking in THE GREAT ESCAPE. I mean you don’t really need to nudge Ewan too hard to be cool.
JH: DOWN WITH LOVE is opening up against another little film called THE MATRIX RELOADED. What was your first reaction when you were told what you were going up against?
PR: My first reaction was, “damn, I was going to see THE MATRIX that night.” I’m dying to see THE MATRIX. Everyone on the planet is dying to see THE MATRIX. I think NOTTING HILL opened the same weekend that PHANTOM MENACE did and there are a couple other examples of counter-programming working. But it’s always a crap shoot. Our movie could benefit from the box office of THE MATRIX or THE MATRIX could be this depth charge that kills everything in its wake.
JH: Is there nobility in being an undiscovered classic?
PR: I have to say there is something in my personality that likes being the underdog. The great thing about when BRING IT ON came out is there was no expectation because it was a cheerleader movie.
JH: There’s obviously a very fervent section of humanity that is into cheerleading competitions. Was there a concern that if you messed BRING IT ON up, you might end up with a pom-pom in your bed?
PR: Yeah, I had seen those competitions on TV but I’d never really thought about it. I just got to immerse myself in this world. People get very fanatical about that movie and that world. It’s like sports fanatics mixed with beauty pageant mania. I could go on and on and bore the living crap out of you with cheerleader stories.
JH: Did you ever think you’d be best known for directing the ultimate cheerleader movie?
PR: We actually toyed around with the idea when we were doing the DVD of making fake old super 8 movies about cheerleading that I had supposedly made when I was a kid.
JH: …to reveal your lifelong obsession…
PR: Exactly. But we never did it.
JH: Where did all of this all begin for you? Were you a film buff when you were a kid?
PR: When I was 13, I got a super 8 camera. I grew up in North Carolina and my dad always took me to these film programs at the museum. But when I got a movie camera, I just started shooting everything.
JH: What kind of movies were you making?
PR: Ridiculous things like THE TEN MILLION DOLLAR BOY, which was a SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN rip-off. Then in college I would do Hitchcock rip-offs. Then there was this Bergman festival and I made this black and white silent cringe worthy film. I was like, I’m going to really investigate my Episcopalian upbringing and I showed it at this festival and it was just soooo earnest and serious. When I moved out to LA, editing was the first thing I really got hooked up with.
JH: Growing up, what films were you watching?
PR: Well, growing up it was PLANET OF THE APES.
JH: All PLANET OF THE APES movies?
PR: All of them including the TV series! Now I can see which ones weren’t as great. The first one is obviously untouchable.
JH: But when they go into the earth…
PR: Yeah, the second one. That’s the worst one in my opinion. Even that last one, BATTLE, it was such a low budget! There’s something fun about that one that they were so under the gun.
JH: You’ve directed Kirk Cameron. Tell me what it’s like to work with a master?
PR: Sir Kirk? I had written a remake of THE COMPUTER WORE TENNIS SHOES for Hollywood Pictures. And right about this time ENCINO MAN came out and it did well so everyone at Disney was looking for another Pauly Shore vehicle. So for my second draft, they wanted me to Pauly-ize it.
JH: What does that entail exactly?
PR: That entails going through your script and changing the main character you’ve worked hard to create and making the character Pauly Shore. So you’re changing the dialogue to include “buddy” and “weasel”. So I did that draft and they never made a movie of it. And then a year later there was a brief window where they hired first time directors to do these Disney TV movies. I remember at the time thinking, this is a divergent path in my life. I was going to be this indie guy. But then I realized they were giving me two and a half million days so it was Roger Corman time. And I loved it. My biggest memory of Kirk Cameron was on the set in 1994 and we were talking about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain and Kirk came over and said “who’s Kurt Cobain?” He was just not in that world and it was so odd to me.
JH: And then of course directing Bruce Campbell in THE LOVE BUG…
PR: Bruce has his own cottage industry. I loved working with Bruce because I am a giant EVIL DEAD fan. What’s great about him is he’s a very specific sort of actor and he just revels in it. It was such a great and odd thing to have Bruce Campbell in a LOVE BUG movie.
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JH: So what’s the story with FANTASTIC FOUR? I know you just hired a new writer in Mark Frost of TWIN PEAKS fame. What’s the plan?
PR: We literally just hired him before I came here [to New York]. So we’re going to start formulating the film. I have some very specific ideas of things I want to see and don’t want to see in that movie. It’s such a crowded playing field and there is that point where it’s like “goddamnit, not another superhero movie!” Mark’s the kind of writer who’s going to have respect for the source material but who is also not going to be afraid to change it. We’ve talked a lot about the fact that when that comic first came out it revolutionized the comic industry. But now all the things that made it fresh and different are the biggest cliches in comics and movies. It’s going to be a tall order.
JH: There have been rumors out there that you guys have been talking to George Clooney about being in the film?
PR: There has been no talk of casting at all. I mean, who doesn’t love George Clooney? He’d be great. But he’s already played Batman so is he going to want to play another superhero? The talk of casting is very premature.
JH: What have been your favorite comic book movies?
PR: I love Richard Donner’s SUPERMAN. I saw it the day it came out and I loved it. It really manages to treat the comic with reverence but I also like that it plops Superman down in real life Manhattan. I think that’s one of the things Mark and I want to do with FANTASTIC FOUR. With Tim Burton’s BATMAN films, that world is so wild and imaginative that Batman is the least weird thing in the universe. The thing about the FANTASTIC FOUR is that they should be the weirdest thing. I like the idea of a real Manhattan where you are going to work and the traffic is stopped because the Human Torch is melting something and it's part of your world.
JH: Any summer movies you’re looking forward to?
PR: I’m dying to see THE HULK. I’m a huge Hulk fan. MATRIX and THE HULK. What else is coming out…hmm there’s one, DOWN WITH LOVE. That sounds really interesting!
DOWN WITH LOVE opens in wide release today. Visit the official Web site here.
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