When did you first hear about HEATHERS?
I
had been a student at the USC Film School, and one of my good friends
there was the screenwriter Larry Karaszewski. After finishing at USC,
Larry brought me the script to HEATHERS, which Dan Waters, his friend
since high school, had written. The idea was to help Dan get an
agent. Larry's agent had said he thought that there was no way the
script could ever get made. I thought it was fantastic, as did my
agent, Bobbi Thompson, who after reading it also became Dan's agent.
How
did you end up directing the film?
Dan
wanted Stanley Kubrick originally, so I told him that once Kubrick
had passed on the project, to give me a call because I wanted to get
involved. I had a deal with New World Pictures, based on a student
film I'd made called Beaver Gets a Boner (1985). The head of production
at New World was a guy named Steve White. He had been a member of The
Groundlings, an improv group in LA, and he had pretty good taste.
Steve was interested in doing movies that were slightly different
from what New World had previously been doing, and he had the ability
to greenlight movies at a certain budget. The company was taking
advantage of the growing home video market and they were able to make
low-budget movies without having to do a lot of development work on
them and having to ask the filmmakers to make a lot of changes. Steve
flipped for the script. He said he would make the movie, but he asked
for some script changes, which we didn't like. We ended up making
them because we couldn't find anybody else to make the movie. We
liked Steve a lot though, and he was very supportive. Denise Di Novi
had a producing deal with New World, and was also my friend, so she
became the producer. It all fell together in a way that was pretty
lucky.
What
were the script changes he asked for?
The
biggest change we had to make was to the ending. Dan's original
ending had JD and Veronica blow up the high school, and they both die
along with everybody else. The final sequence was a prom in Heaven.
It was funny and ironic, and pretty out there. Steve said he couldn't
make that version of the movie because he felt that if we were making
a comedy that dealt with teen suicide and the one sympathetic
protagonist, Veronica, ended up killing herself, we were running the
risk that impressionable kids would watch the movie and decide to
kill themselves too. He said ''I know that sounds ridiculous but if
we made that version of the movie and one teenager killed himself, I
wouldn't want that hanging over my head. '' We did everything we
could do to try and convince him that he was wrong, but he wouldn't
back down.
New
Line Pictures, which was different from the New Line that we have
today, were making a lot of teen-market horror films at the time, and
they said they would make the film but they asked for a whole lot of
changes, not just to the ending. We all decided to go back to New
World and keep arguing to get Steve to allow us to do something at
least close to the original ending. In the end we failed. When the
movie came out, a lot of hardcore fans said they were disappointed in
the ending – they felt it was a cop-out and that we didn't go all
the way. And we agreed with them.
What
was your immediate impression of the script?
The
version I read was 200 pages long and it took forever to read. It was
really complicated but also very funny and perverse. A lot of the
characters who show up in the final film and only appear in a couple
of scenes had full storylines in the version I read. The script was
brilliant and would have made for a great movie, but I thought it was
confusing and too long, and that nobody would sit through a
three-hour high school comedy about teenage suicide. Dan didn't
disagree. The way he writes is that he spends a lot of time making
notes and trying things out. He's not very good at editing his own
work. When I first read it, I was only really thinking about getting
him an agent and I didn't presume I would be directing it. But once I
came onboard as director, if for no other reason than to keep our
budget reasonable, I knew that we would have to come up with a much
leaner version of the script.
What
was your working relationship with Dan like during the making of the
film?
Dan
and I worked very closely together. I felt that he had written a
great script, and even though as director, I was going to interpret
it and put my own stamp on it, I also felt that my goal was to make a
movie that was as good as what he had written. I wanted him there on
the set because we were good friends and it was fun to work that way.
We pretty much shot the shooting script that we had come to at that
point. As a director you find that sometimes there are lines of
dialogue that are superfluous because the story is being told
visually, and writers sometimes get upset when some detail or line
that they wrote isn't there. Dan is amazingly flexible for someone
who has such a strong voice and such a specific point of view. We did
a lot of work, and he was very good about cutting things down. He
also had great notes in post-production.
Kubrick
was my favourite filmmaker and I always felt that DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) and
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) were real masterpieces of dark humour. He was
always able to walk that line between very silly humour, like in some
parts of DR. STRANGELOVE, and dark humour that a lot of people
wouldn't even recognise as being humorous. Stylistically I liked the
way he used wide lenses, the way he set his scenes up, and his
willingness to use all sorts of cinematic devices to tell stories. I
didn't go full hog and imitate him but he was certainly an influence.
I remember when I was prepping the film with Francis Kenny, the
director of photography, I sat him down and we looked at the whole
Marine Training sequence from FULL METAL JACKET (1987). We looked at the way
the Marine Sergeant moved through the barracks. I thought it would be
interesting to have our high school have a look like that.
Apart
from Kubrick, were there any other filmmakers who influenced you when
you were making the movie?
I
was also a big fan of Roman Polanski and there was an influence
certainly in the way I was shooting. I had worked for Francis Coppola
on THE OUTSIDERS (1983) and RUMBLE FISH (1983), so I had been around his way of
filmmaking, and there was some influence there just in the approach
of how to make a movie. When I make a movie it's always about what I
think makes the most sense for the film. I feel more comfortable just
going with my own gut instinct rather than try to create something
that reflects another filmmaker's work. I have never been one to look
at the films of a director frame by frame and try to break them down
shot by shot. ''How did they do that? What are the cuts there? What
kind of angles are they using?'' I prefer to feel as though I am
making my own choices. The movies where I didn't follow those rules
so much are far less interesting to me. I also feel like I can enjoy
other filmmakers' work more if I am not sitting there just figuring
out how they did something.
Like I said, I
had worked for Francis on THE OUTSIDERS and RUMBLE FISH and
although I mainly worked on the post-production and I wasn't on the
set so much, I was around when some of those so-called 'Brat Pack'
actors were coming up. I had mixed feelings about the John Hughes
movies. I thought they were well-made and funny, especially SIXTEEN
CANDLES (1984), and he did a brilliant job of creating a kind of happy,
mythical, experience. But at the time I felt that he basically
whitewashed the whole high school experience. I actually feel
different now, and I think his movies are pretty great, but at the
time, Dan and I wanted to make the anti-Hughes movie.
Do
you feel HEATHERS is a more accurate depiction of the high school
experience?
The
humour of the film is heightened, the way people speak is stylised,
and the way everything is presented is outrageous, but nevertheless
it has some fundamental truth to it. I realised that you have to be
true to what is being satirised. You can't stray from reality so much
that it no longer reflects a fundamental reality. I wanted to see if
we could do that in a high school setting because I don't think I had
ever seen it done before. I also wanted to avoid making everything
sentimental with nice, neat resolutions to the kinds of things people
go through as students. I felt that was a false vision.
Were
you at all apprehensive about making a comedy with teen suicide as
one of its themes?
Well,
I was young and I didn't give a shit! I knew a lot of people were
going to be angry, which did not bother me at all. It would be harder
to make HEATHERS today because there have been all these instances of
violence in high school and all these crazy shootings. Those hadn't
happened back then. In a way it was more of an innocent time so it
was easier to make the less innocent movie. There has always been
violence in high schools. There was violence in my high school. But
it's all escalated now. Now they screen for guns in urban high
schools in the US. Another reason the film wouldn't get made today is
that nobody would finance something that has that attitude and that
sense of humour and that runs the risk of offending so many people.
It's amazing that something made over 25 years ago is braver than
most films released today. Movies can be made so cheaply and easily
nowadays that nobody has an excuse not to make the movies they want
to make.
There
weren't that many at all. I remember Dan got upset because he had
Heather Chandler, the girl who goes through the coffee table, call
Veronica a ''stupid cunt'' and I changed it to ''stupid fuck''. I
actually think he was right. I wish we had kept it now. We all saw
eye-to-eye. It was a good collaboration between the three of us. I
think we all wanted to make the same movie.
Between
the three of you, were there ever any discussions regarding the
morality of the script?
Denise
provided the female perspective, which was good because a lot of the
characters were girls. She was very good at helping us to manouever
that. Dan is a practicing Catholic and he takes his moral point of
view pretty seriously. I had studied Ethical and Moral Philosophy. We
didn't think we were making something that was immoral or that
crossed some line. We felt that we were making art or entertainment,
and that we weren't encouraging people to kill themselves or murder
anybody.
Now
you are older and married with kids, has your attitude towards the
content in the film changed at all?
No,
not at all. I'm still fine with it. After the Columbine massacre, a
reporter rom the New York Times called me and asked if I wanted to
comment. I didn't call him back. My movie had nothing to do with what
happened, so why call me?
I
remember from my experience in junior high school how cruel the kids
could be to each other, particularly the girls. A good friend of mine
was bullied and subjected to some pretty harsh, humiliating stuff. I
have an older sister and a younger sister. The girls at junior high
were very, very mean to each other. There are a lot of ways in which
I felt the HEATHERS script did reflect my experience in high school
and in junior high.
How
did you see the film, genre-wise?
I
saw the film as a comedy with a very dark, serious undertone to it. I
wouldn't have wanted it to be anything but funny. It needed to have
that humor so that you were almost embarassed about what you were
laughing about. Also because it was hitting on truths that normally
weren't spoken about or dealt with in a humorous way. I've always
felt that there is no subject that is immune to humor. A lot of
people said ''You can't make a movie about suicide and have it be
funny. That's wrong. '' But actually they were wrong. The more
disturbing and dark a subject is, the more it lends itself to being
material for comedy.
I
didn't want the visuals to distract from the storytelling. There was
really no reason to draw too much attention to the camera, to camera
angles, to lighting. You needed to have a look that allowed the
viewer to form solid and real emotional connections with the
characters. I like filmmaking that's hyperstilised and uses a lot of
tricks and different styles but I am always wary. It's best when all
that enhances what the movie is. In the case of HEATHERS I didn't
want anything to take away from the movie so I didn't want to draw
too much attention to what I was doing directorially. However, I did
want the film to look great. The color schemes are very specific.
John Huttman, the production designer, was very young and had never
designed a movie before. He's gone on to do a lot of good work. He
was smart and we worked hard on all the visual details. I have always
been a bit of a camera fanatic so I cared about all that. But I was
trying to make sure that the movie never became about the visual
style and was always about the satire.
Part two of the interview.
I spoke to Michael by telephone and would like to thank him for his time.
Part two of the interview.
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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