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Director Renny Harlin and Producer Gene Simmons talk to The Inside Reel about tone, pacing and character developmentt in regards to their new action thriller “Deep Water” from Magenta Light Studios.

#RennyHarlin #GeneSimmons #DeepWater
Transcript
00:12The way I see it, we have one job to do, and that is to get home to see our
00:19families.
00:27You just got to hold on.
00:44The way I see it, we have one job to do.
01:05We talk many times for a casino player, so it's good to talk to you guys.
01:11But why this movie?
01:14Because, Rennie, I'd like to ask you about the tone, because it has that tone that goes all the way
01:21back to Ford Fairlane, where the drama and the action and the humor all floats together, to use a pun.
01:27Could you talk about that?
01:29And, Gene, your interest in sort of helping shepherd this and get it made?
01:35I think that movies are at their best when they have all these different elements that blend together, because that's
01:43how life is.
01:44And I think you can have the deepest tragedy, but if you don't have elements of humor, it doesn't give
01:50you the depth that you really need for the human experience.
01:55And I really was interested, besides the spectacle of the plane crash and the sharks and all that, I really
02:04wanted to concentrate on the characters.
02:05And obviously, it doesn't mean that we sit with somebody for 20 minutes and listen to their story about their
02:10childhood, but that we, in quick strokes, we draw everybody so that we understand who they are.
02:19We can relate to them, we can care about them, and then through tragedy, through emotion, through laughter, through tears,
02:27through all these elements of real life, we get to really see what they all are, when everything is stripped
02:34away and they are put into this extreme situation.
02:38Looked like you wanted to take a swing at me over that flam check.
02:41Isn't that how you got bounced out of the Air Force?
02:43That senior officer had it coming.
02:45You, you're just, you're annoying.
02:50You're now free to move about the cabin.
02:54Where's mom and dad?
02:55You're back there.
03:01Way out of your league.
03:02Oh, wait, what if I've got a great personality?
03:04You don't.
03:14Mayday, mayday, mayday.
03:18Tail down, 100 feet.
03:26Sir, you can't do that!
03:28You worried about this?
03:30Brace, call you back.
03:37What do we do?
03:39We find survivors.
03:43And for you, Gene, because, I mean, the film is balls to balls.
03:46I mean, when you guys do the plane crash, it doesn't mess, it goes for the jugular.
03:50Could you talk about, you know, looking at the film that way and your approach to it?
03:58Look, technically, a producer's out of his league.
04:03My job, and some producers, because they're not all the same.
04:08A producer is just a title.
04:10And there's a line producers, associate producers, executive, all kinds of stuff.
04:15And they all sort of wander in terms of their responsibilities.
04:19My responsibility on the film had to do with making, you know, suggestion here and there
04:24in terms of casting, let's say, moving the chess piece this way.
04:28But also in terms of, you know, making nice with the money people, making sure they don't
04:33really, because they can, you know, they can scooch away.
04:35It's like a girl that you're talking with all night.
04:37You hope she's going to go to the final step.
04:40But you've got to sweet talk it all the way so that it doesn't mess up the dinner, if
04:45you see what I mean.
04:47Yeah, totally.
04:47My responsibilities rose towards the end of the film to make sure that the completion
04:55bond company and the insurance and, you know, all that stuff kicked in.
04:58Because towards the end, all kinds of other costs kind of come up out of nowhere.
05:04The director has a vision.
05:05I want more special effects.
05:06I want this.
05:07And so you've got to do all that kind of stuff.
05:09So here I am next to Ron, next to our director, Renny.
05:14I don't deserve any of the credit.
05:17You know, everybody else, no matter how talented they are, that includes Sir Ben Kingsley, has
05:22to step back and give, you know, the tip of the hat to the guy that's responsible for
05:28all of it.
05:29The music, the special effects, the script, the nuances and the subtleties of how to add
05:34lines, take lines.
05:35And our little girl was dressed, I just found out for a minute, a completely different way.
05:41Her personality was a different thing.
05:43He said, no, no, I don't like that.
05:45Let's just change the way she's dressed and say this line or that line.
05:49You got to give a script life.
05:52And only a director can do that.
05:54And you're looking at him.
06:11Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, you lost me to your watch.
06:14Andrew, you can't do that.
06:16You worried about this?
06:17Give me my chair a seat right now.
06:42Renny, yeah, you've done this previous, but the way you cover stuff, the way you make
06:47it sort of integrate has, you know, it's always been, it was great from the beginning,
06:51but it's, you can use the ball, where it'd be the pushing in the cargo hold, the cutting,
06:56the way that the tone sort of plays, but, you know, the way visually it tells the story
07:02without losing any of the characters along the way.
07:05Could you talk about that balance and finding that, looking at the script, but then extrapolating
07:10I could talk about that forever, and I'm flattered by your attention to detail and pay attention
07:17to actually what I try to do.
07:20And I do try to shoot things in a certain way, which really goes back to my very beginning
07:27of my career.
07:28I always thought, how do I shoot this scene so that it feels like the audience is there,
07:32like I'm experiencing it through their eyes.
07:35And the editing is very much planned before we even start shooting anything.
07:42And if you look at it in this movie, we cut from, you know, the door of the bathroom locks,
07:48and from that we cut to the other door opening into the cargo hold.
07:52And from that fire we go to something else.
07:54And so I try to, that way, keep the progression of the story all the time.
08:01So there's always, the scene ends before it gets boring, and the next scene starts when
08:08it's getting interesting.
08:09And that way keep the tempo without making it so fast that you don't have time to relate
08:15to the characters and be with them.
08:17So it's, let's hope that I'm getting better at it, because I've done it so many times now.
08:28Oh, shit.
08:32Oh, shit.
08:37Oh, shit.
08:43Oh, shit.
08:48Oh, shit.
08:50Oh, shit.
08:52Oh, shit.
08:55Oh, shit.
08:56Oh, shit.
08:56Oh, shit.
08:57Oh, shit.
08:58Oh, shit.
08:58Oh, shit.
08:59Oh, shit.
09:00Oh, shit.
09:00Oh, shit.
09:01Oh, shit.
09:01Oh, shit.
09:17yeah going from that like gene what makes for you interesting movies i already made some of the
09:22you know best action films ever made i mean how do you have to what what do you look for
09:28in a film
09:28what make engages you in a film and same with you ready i mean what excites you you did you
09:33know you
09:33could do something like strangers and do a three-parter and then do this you have that sort
09:38of variety and like uh that ability to do these kinds of different things are you asking me yeah
09:45you what first eugene what's important there is no substitute for the phrase a great movie
09:53and by the way i i go on record as saying deep water is a more third dimensional movie than
10:01jaws is
10:02jaws is one of my favorite films and i said this before but it's a simple story there's a big
10:07fish
10:08it's killing people and three guys get in a boat and try to kill it that's it you know there
10:14are no
10:14beast stories no other thing the whole thing's about how do we kill this big fish this movie
10:19there's so many layers so many characters they all have to work you laugh you cry i don't remember
10:26crying at at jaws or having that thing that doesn't mean that i miss that it's a different kind of
10:33film
10:33so on the surface it looks like this deep water is a disaster film well not so much maybe it's
10:41about
10:41hope maybe it's about the human spirit maybe it's about survival maybe it's about family maybe it's about
10:47love and yes you're getting the most off off the track uh kind of plane crash you've never seen
10:55in a movie the biggest longest and all that kind of that scares the bejesus out of you you've got
11:01sharks not one not two lots of them tearing people apart now who's going to survive who's not
11:07and on top of that if that's all you had you'd say that's okay but you care you gripping your
11:13seat
11:14because the characters you love you don't want them to die and i'll give you to ask me to just
11:19a
11:20very short answer which is for me it always starts with the characters and uh sometimes you get a
11:27great script and it's still not easy to make a great movie out of it and sometimes you have a
11:32script that is not so great and what i've learned is to just try to run away from those scripts
11:37and i've
11:38made the mistake of my in my life where sometimes i didn't run fast enough but with this one with
11:43deep water i felt like it was a it was a combination of a good script good characters uh good
11:50group of
11:51people good producer and and as a result now we have a movie that people seem to really enjoy
12:07where's my little brother okay it's gonna be all right
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