Part one of the interview.
What were some of the frustrations you endured making the film?
In
the film they go to a convenience store called Snappy's Snack Shack,
and JD talks about being able to go from town to town in the United
States and there's always a Slurpy. They were meant to be in a
Seven-Eleven, but the Southland Corporation, which owns Seven-Eleven,
would absolutely not let us use their name. Dan had to manufacture a
new convenience store name. That was a disappointment. It's fine. I
think people kind of get the idea. The book that Heather Duke is
reading is Moby Dick, but it was meant to be Catcher in the Rye. J.D.
Salinger would never let anybody refer to the book in a movie. We
fought hard to try and get the rights, but we couldn't. It would have
been more fun to play off another high school story that had its own
undercurrent of dark humor, but Moby Dick is also funny in its own
way.
Some
actors had easier times with it than others. I was very on top of it,
making sure that the lines were delivered with just the right level
of knowingness. I wanted to make sure the performances didn't become
arch. They had to deliver the dialogue as though that was how they
would normally speak, even when Dan had created this new language for
them. Some of the actors got it and had no problem and went with it,
and others had to be walked through it, line by line.
How
did Winona Ryder find the dialogue?
Winona
was great. She got it completely. She understood how to do it, and
she understood the tone of the movie. Winona was incredibly
enthusiastic about everything and a real dream to work with. I don't
know what Shannon Doherty thought the film was. In a weird way, she
just sort of went for it and it worked incredibly well. She played
the truth of her character. Shannon had been an actress on
television, and so she was capable of delivering the lines and taking
direction. Kim Walker was terrific and did a great job but she had a
lot of tough stuff to say and do, which took a little bit of work.
Christian Slater sometimes found it tricky, but he did his best, and
he did very well in the part.
Was
it important for you to cast real teenagers?
One
of the things that I was very conscious of was that the John Hughes
movies didn't have teenagers in them. There were 25-year olds playing
those parts. I wanted to cast real teenagers, which is an issue
because if they are under 18, you can't work a full day with them
because of the big labor law restrictions. There was a lot of
resistance to casting young actors but I did get Winona, who was 16;
Shannon who was 15 when we started filming; and Kim Walker and
Christian Slater, who were both 19. Lizanne Faulk was probably 21.
For the most part, I had teenage actors, and I think it made a
difference. It's funny because if you look in the background at the
extras you can see they are a little older. That was because you
couldn't work with a big number of 16 year olds, as our working hours
would have been too limited.
Was
it challenging working with teenagers?
I
have always had a good time working with them. I was 29 when I made
HEATHERS, so high school was a bit away from me. I think teenagers
have a very pure view of the world. They are just starting to become
aware of how hypocritical adult life is. They are still children in
many ways, so they are still outraged at what they are seeing. We all
get used to everything over time and just accept everything for what
it is. When I work with teenagers, I feel like they are closer to the
truth than the rest of us are. You have to cast teenagers who are
willing to just go with that and are not too self-conscious. If they
have talent, you can get really great performances from them.
Well,
Winona already had it. I worked with her a lot, but she was very
bright. She understood what the script was about and all the nuances.
Sometimes it took a while to figure out how to play it, but she was
capable of playing it a number of different ways, and very game to
try. I had a little more trouble with Shannon. I remember I would
just hang in there and make her do extra takes to try to get her away
from being too precise and mechanical. She would say things as
written, but there was an element of surprise missing. I wanted her
to loosen up and just be a little bit sloppier. She never liked that
and I had to work with her on doing that. Because she had been on a
television show, she thought she should be treated better because she
had more experience. But nobody was a problem. We really lucked out
on a cast that was well-behaved and professional, especially at that
young age.
Which
is the more challenging, working with teenagers or big movie stars
like you later did?
As
every director will tell you, there's nothing more difficult than
working with big Hollywood actors. They're tough. The problem with
movie stars is that they are the most important people on the set,
and they know it. As a director, you have to figure out how to make
them happy but you also have to maintain the fact that you are
directing the movie and that you are going to make choices that they
may or may not agree with. Sometimes you let them in on the choices
and if their ideas are different than yours, it can get complicated.
Sometimes you want to keep them away from those choices because you
need to direct the film and if they don't like that, then that's
another complicated situation. Most of my best experiences have been
with actors who haven't yet become big, and some of them went on to
have big careers later. I could see that they had that talent. With
teenagers, you have to cast carefully. If you do that, you're kind of
okay, but you know going into it with young actors that it's going to
take some extra work. You don't always get exactly what you want
first time out. But I'm pretty patient with teenagers most of the
time and I've had good experiences.
There's
a level of enthusiasm that people don't necesarily maintain
throughout their career. You want it to be great, you're working
harder. If you've never failed, you don't know what happens when you
fail. You're not so much afraid of it. At the end of the day when it
comes to HEATHERS it all came down to the fact that the script was
good, and that people knew that. If someone was in the movie, it
meant they got that. We had plenty of people who read the script and
hated it and didn't want to have anything to do with the film. There
were plenty who didn't get the script and auditioned for parts and
weren't any good. Moon Unit Zappa came into read for one of the
Heather parts and gave a deliberately terrible reading. We all sat
there stunned and we asked her ''What do you think of the script?''
She replied ''I hate it. It's the worst script I have ever read. I
cannot tell you how much I hate it. '' We asked her why she even
bothered coming in to audition, and she said ''I wanted to see what
kind of people would make this movie.''
Jennifer
Connelly was Dan's first choice for Veronica. Did she ever come in
and test for the role?
She
was our first choice. We did get the script to her agent, but I don't
know if she ever read it. She was 17 and I think her parents had to
approve everything she did. Even Winona's agent didn't want her to do
the film. I recall Heather Graham read for the Heather Chandler part
and was great, but her mother wouldn't let her do it. One of the
great things Winona brought to the movie was that she really got the
humour so she was able to play the part with the proper kind of
attitude. I don't know if someone like Jennifer Connelly would have
fallen in on that because I haven't seen her do much in the way of
humour. Winona was a very mature 16 year old. She was very complex in
a good way and does not have a mean bone in her body. She brought a
kind of innocence to the role that was great because it was combined
with sharp wit and a sharp perspective. She's a good observer of
people.
HEATHERS
was an unbelievably happy shoot. We were a good group of people.
Everybody got along, and we had fun. There were no fights that I can
remember at all. Doing the high school scenes was a lot more
complicated than we expected because some of them had a lot of extras
in them, but the more intimate scenes with Christian and Winona were
really fun and they were great together. I have a memory of showing
up to the first day of filming. We were shooting the croquet scenes
in the garden. Those were not easy scenes to shoot. We had all three
Heathers and Veronica, and we shot the scenes with the parents at the
same time. It was my first day directing a feature film and I
remember walking onto the set up in the Palisades in Los Angeles and
not believing the trucks were there. It was really a first time
filmmaker's experience. I was very happy. At one point in the day
there was a huge windstorm and some of the silks that the lighting
guys had hung up to get even lighting in an outdoor space were blown
away and some of them got ripped. We lost a few hours and even though
I felt like I should have been really upset, I still felt like the
performances I was getting from these girls were great, that the
location looked good and that we were doing a great job. We made up
for the lost hours of shooting over the next day or two and we were
back on track.
Was
it the happiest shoot you've ever been on?
It
was as happy as I have ever had. I like to have a happy set. I've
learned even more in the meantime how important it is to always have
that. I also had a great time making MEET THE APPLEGATES and
AIRHEADS, for example. There were fun days on HUDSON HAWK but for the
most part it wasn't that much fun. Once we were about a week into
shooting HEATHERS we realised that our cast was as good as we thought
it was, and that the tone was coming together. We were pretty
confident that we were making a movie that would work. Once you have
that confidence then you just move forward.
It
was complicated for me because on the one hand I knew that a lot of
people would be angered by it and I kind of relished that, but at the
same time I got angry about the reviews that weren't good. And there
were some. But for the most part the movie was really well received
so I had nothing to complain about. It was very good for me because
that meant I was able to make more movies. You make a movie and you
hope to God that it is successful so that you will be able to make
another one.
How
much do you consider your potential audience when you're making a
film?
I
do it for myself, not anybody else. I really want other people to
like my work and I make things to be enjoyed by everybody but I'm not
sitting there making calculations based on what other people might
think. I'm not capable of doing that so I just make the movies I
like. Sometimes I might make a certain choice because I feel it goes
counter to what everybody might expect and it amuses me. I certainly
don't have any interest in making safe decisions. Every once in a
while I think of the work as a whole because I have directed for a
while now, and if anybody bothered to take a look they would see a
continuous thread throughout the films I have directed. Nowadays,
just from experience, I've learned how to just be a pro and just take
something and run with it. I did an episode of Dexter and I had never
done anything like that before but it was good, dark humour. I felt
it would be a natural for me and fun and challenging. It was someone
else's vision but it was one that I could certainly stand behind and
be happy to do.
It
hasn't cast a shadow in any bad sense. I don't feel like I have to
live up to it. It's been a long time since I made the film. I would
be the first person to say that I have never made a movie that I
liked better, but I have done a lot of other work that I think is
really good. I think I am a much better director now than I was when
I made the film, but I haven't had everything come together in quite
the same way. Some days I get up and I wish I was out making another
independent movie with a strong point of view and getting my vision
out there again. I haven't really done that in a long time and I miss
that, but I've been doing a lot of cable TV for HBO and Showtime and
I'm having a great time. It's hard for me to stop because the world
I'm in right now is the best thing going.
Do
you think HEATHERS changed the high school movie genre after it came
out?
I
know there have been a bunch of films influenced by it, like
JAWBREAKER (1999) and my personal favorite high school movie, Alexander
Payne's ELECTION (1999). I think HEATHERS showed people that you could make
dark humour work in a genre where it would be uunexpected. It wasn't
the first movie to do that by any means but it got caught up in a
good time and it became a model for people in a good way. I am really
happy about that.
I've
watched it with Dan Waters at a couple of screenings. It's amusing
for me to watch it now because I feel like I am watching a document
from a different time in our culture. It's like watching REBEL
WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) when I was a teenager.
How
do you feel about a sequel to HEATHERS?
It's
been talked about a lot, but it doesn't make any sense to me. One
time Winona was so nostalgic for the fun we had making the film that
she started talking to Dan and I about making a sequel. But we could
never figure out how to make it work. I never really thought HEATHERS
lent itself to a sequel.
What
advice would the present Michael Lehmann give to the Michael Lehmann
about to make HEATHERS?
I'd
say ''Don't pay attention to me. Do what it is that you wanna do.'' I
still approach what I do the same way I did back then.
I spoke to Michael by telephone and would like to thank him for his time.
I spoke to Michael by telephone and would like to thank him for his time.
Interview by Paul Rowlands. Copyright © Paul Rowlands, 2016. All rights reserved.
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