Post by Gun4ALeg on Mar 7, 2005 16:57:09 GMT -5
Excerpts from a recent interview
Question: Do you still have to fight in your producer role to get things made?
Sam Raimi: Spiderman brought me as a director in the industry financial success. Evil Dead has made 28 times back the original investment, it's still not considered a successful film or a hit movie. Same with Darkman. That movie made some money for Universal, but it wasn't considered a hit movie. So for the first time in my life, after Spiderman, after working in the business for 25 years, and I had basically given up, I had a hit movie! It gave me opportunity to start this company with Rob Talpert and our partners Nathan Drain and Joe Drake where we could get financing to make really fun, really cool, new director-type horror films. So it gave me opportunity, and I can't say it's allowed me to make the kind of movies I have always wanted to make, because Spiderman is the kind of movie I have always wanted to make, or Evil Dead also, years ago, was the kind of movie I always wanted to make. At the time, Darkman was the kind of film I always wanted to make. . But Spiderman has probably bought me a few more years in the business. You know how directors, people like them for a little while and finance their pictures, and then all of a sudden it's not "cool" to work with them anymore. Its unfair, for a lot of really fine directors. My number was coming up, and it bought me two or three more years before they go "he really sucks and we're not giving him anymore money.
Question: Test Screenings?
Sam Raimi: My favorite scene in Darkman got cut out by a tests screening audience. Anything odd and out of the ordinary, the test audience is automatically going to reject it...There were scenes in Darkman that made me howl every time I saw it. It was too off-the-wall for a test audience. It stayed in the movie. The test audience is kind of the average. Anything different or out of the ordinary gets rejected. Hen you get right down to a focus group they say, "I didn't understand why he split apart and the lava poured out him" anything you can't easily explain they reject...if you have time to digest it, not five minutes after you see it, you may get it. So the testing often hurts whatever is out of the ordinary in a film.
They simply did not understand what you're trying to get by them. You have to go back and try to address, through editing or re-shooting, some of the questions the audience has. It is a hand that gives and takes at the same time. It rejects that which it doesn't understand, but also points out where they might actually be a problem. What they say isn't as important as what you feel when you talk to them about it.
The best way to listen is to be in the audience with them. You can feel what's dragging or what has to be tightened up, or the joke that you were gonna take out, they're really laughing at, I guess I'd better leave that in. Or you think.. You know what, they already got this; I thought we needed to establish it, but they have come in with some knowledge and they already have it. I don't need this line in here. You can feel things like any audience member can. That's the best way to listen.
When you make the audience a critic, these weird moments that are weird and out of the ordinary, they don't hold up to critical analysis from a non-trained professional critic very well. I have been very fortunate working with Amy pasqual. She trusts her hear. You need to listen to them, but trust your heart. Some people, with a test audience. ...In Darkman, one moment, you're not sure if someone is exactly the person he seems to be, and we didn't know if this character is an evil person, but one inkling you get is when he takes this bucket and dumps out on his bed all of these gold coins, and drops his robe and stands nude above the bed, and swan-dives and rolls through them. You realize he's not exactly who you thought he was... What are they gonna say? "I thought it was original and interesting." No. They say,"It was stupid!" So the studio made us loose all the naked swimming in gold coins, of course. Things that are original and striking you don't want them put to a non-professional critic opinion. People have social situations, their friends are there..."
Question: Do you still have to fight in your producer role to get things made?
Sam Raimi: Spiderman brought me as a director in the industry financial success. Evil Dead has made 28 times back the original investment, it's still not considered a successful film or a hit movie. Same with Darkman. That movie made some money for Universal, but it wasn't considered a hit movie. So for the first time in my life, after Spiderman, after working in the business for 25 years, and I had basically given up, I had a hit movie! It gave me opportunity to start this company with Rob Talpert and our partners Nathan Drain and Joe Drake where we could get financing to make really fun, really cool, new director-type horror films. So it gave me opportunity, and I can't say it's allowed me to make the kind of movies I have always wanted to make, because Spiderman is the kind of movie I have always wanted to make, or Evil Dead also, years ago, was the kind of movie I always wanted to make. At the time, Darkman was the kind of film I always wanted to make. . But Spiderman has probably bought me a few more years in the business. You know how directors, people like them for a little while and finance their pictures, and then all of a sudden it's not "cool" to work with them anymore. Its unfair, for a lot of really fine directors. My number was coming up, and it bought me two or three more years before they go "he really sucks and we're not giving him anymore money.
Question: Test Screenings?
Sam Raimi: My favorite scene in Darkman got cut out by a tests screening audience. Anything odd and out of the ordinary, the test audience is automatically going to reject it...There were scenes in Darkman that made me howl every time I saw it. It was too off-the-wall for a test audience. It stayed in the movie. The test audience is kind of the average. Anything different or out of the ordinary gets rejected. Hen you get right down to a focus group they say, "I didn't understand why he split apart and the lava poured out him" anything you can't easily explain they reject...if you have time to digest it, not five minutes after you see it, you may get it. So the testing often hurts whatever is out of the ordinary in a film.
They simply did not understand what you're trying to get by them. You have to go back and try to address, through editing or re-shooting, some of the questions the audience has. It is a hand that gives and takes at the same time. It rejects that which it doesn't understand, but also points out where they might actually be a problem. What they say isn't as important as what you feel when you talk to them about it.
The best way to listen is to be in the audience with them. You can feel what's dragging or what has to be tightened up, or the joke that you were gonna take out, they're really laughing at, I guess I'd better leave that in. Or you think.. You know what, they already got this; I thought we needed to establish it, but they have come in with some knowledge and they already have it. I don't need this line in here. You can feel things like any audience member can. That's the best way to listen.
When you make the audience a critic, these weird moments that are weird and out of the ordinary, they don't hold up to critical analysis from a non-trained professional critic very well. I have been very fortunate working with Amy pasqual. She trusts her hear. You need to listen to them, but trust your heart. Some people, with a test audience. ...In Darkman, one moment, you're not sure if someone is exactly the person he seems to be, and we didn't know if this character is an evil person, but one inkling you get is when he takes this bucket and dumps out on his bed all of these gold coins, and drops his robe and stands nude above the bed, and swan-dives and rolls through them. You realize he's not exactly who you thought he was... What are they gonna say? "I thought it was original and interesting." No. They say,"It was stupid!" So the studio made us loose all the naked swimming in gold coins, of course. Things that are original and striking you don't want them put to a non-professional critic opinion. People have social situations, their friends are there..."