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Intervju: Wyck Godfrey
What’s the business proposition for this? What makes this a buyable franchise?
Well the main thing is, anytime you have avid readership like this book series has and not only in terms of sales, but in terms of forbear. You feel kind of blessed to be responsible for bringing it to the screen. When you first buy a book like this, and I actually wasn’t involved in the initial stages, but you usually buy it before you even know it’s going to be a hit. You kind of have to make that gamble that there’s something about the book that connects with you and makes you think ‘Wow this is different. It feels like a different variation on the vampire lore and the werewolf lore.’ Once they started working on it, all of a sudden it became this big phenomenon and it became a very buyable movie prospect. To do these movies well, you need a certain amount of money and to get that kind of money, it has to have a big audience. Summit Entertainment kind of recognized that it was a franchise potential that they wanted to be involved with.
With the release of this, it kind of falls in with, I’m assuming this is PG-13?
Mmm-hmm.
BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE was released, and it was another very popular book. And then there was SKINWALKERS, which is another kind of teen based horror film. Did the success and/or failure of those two films kind of help or hinder?
It neither helped nor hindered. Because certainly SKINWALKERS and BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE didn’t work as movies. It didn’t connect really to a broad audience. Certainly the sales of TWILIGHT are much greater than BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE were. And the series is more of a phenomenon than that ever was. That was a pretty obscure book before it became a movie. And then the movie I think grossed some sales at that point. It’s also not for the SKINWALKERS audience, in that it’s not as hard edged. It’s not an R. It’s not a ‘horror’ film per say. It’s a love story with supernatural element to it. The perception is, is that the very relatable character in this movie is something that kind of all teenage girls will connect with or have connected to in the book, so you sort of got that… you have more of a concept driven saleable idea and really a soulful character at the center of it who’s lost and looking for connection and finds the kind of epic love that they find in this book series.
This obviously has a huge fanbase, do you think they’ll be happy with the script and the way the movie is going to turn out?
I know they’re happy with the script because the script leaked out. (laughs) Stephenie Meyer, the author, really was ecstatic with the way the script sort of remained truthful to the book and then expanded on some additional ideas, so she’s been a part of the development of it. From my experience, having done movies where the source material didn’t get the perfect translation, and you sort of bare the bump of that with audiences. This is one where I’ve been thankful that all the online stuff, in terms of the casting and the script and stuff and the author has been on board with. So I think we handled it the right way, as opposed to other times when it was handled the wrong way.
How involved were the online community in the decisions as in, were there people saying that if there’s ever a movie of TWILIGHT this should be the person… And were you sort of aware?
Oh man, we had people scowering online all the time getting all of those ideas. And it’s funny, because a lot of times people would see people, but those people were from movies from 5 or 10 years ago. So they weren’t actually the right age of the characters but it’d give you a visual idea in your mind. We’d have a lot of fun with every time we cast a role. Fan sites would pull up every picture of that actor or actress and put the one that they think best represented Bella or Edward or Charlie and so that was kind of fun to experience. For the most part, we’ve had a lot of good response on it, but ultimately you know, you guys know the online world. It’s a forum for everyone to kind of like… And usually when the movie comes out, the response movies make a good movie, not sort of follow all that advanced criticism. There’s no way to know. They don’t know moviemaking, they don’t know how it’s going to end up. And if the movie turns out great, all of those ideas are like ‘No, they were right.’ And if the movie turns out badly we get your ‘guilty as charged.’
In terms of special effects, what can we expect there?
A lot of the work that we’re doing is as practical as possible. We’re trying to make it very real world. That’s one of the appeals of the book, is that it’s this kind of… it’s not a CG extravaganza. Bella meets this guy, realizes he’s a vampire, and says ‘Cool.’ It’s not one of those. So much of the book is about the realism of it and the kind of reality of the world and their placement in the world. So for the most part, all of our action is stunt based. And then we have a lot of wire removal for kind of the way that they move. The on camera work and even in moving impossibly fast. It’s pretty much the stuff of the book, the way that she describes Edward’s strength and his speed and we’ve tried to do that as much as possible on camera while using the effects to kind of paint out things and lines and wires and stuff.
Now you mentioned how it’s not really a ‘horror’ story, it’s more of a love story with supernatural stuff. How much supernatural horror stuff can we expect in it?
Well a lot of the vampire action. A lot of the way in which they move when they need to move fast. A lot of the stuff… there are several sequences that are all about the extraordinary abilities of these vampires. There’s a sequence where he [Edward] grabs her [Bella] and literally takes her through the forest and through the trees and he’s kind of going from tree to tree and for her it’s this extraordinary rush and ride but also fear because you feel like at any moment he’s going to smash into a tree. So there’s that kind of adrenaline. And then you’ve got a sequence where… you know the final sequence of the movie which is, Edward, who has repressed his kind of vampire nature through the entire movie out of fear of potentially endangering Bella, has to embrace it and take down James, who’s the nomadic vampire that’s sort of locked his eyes on her. And in doing so we get to see the kind of full fruition of what these two vampires are capable of on this ballet set, if you know the book it’ll be a cool sort of end of it, so that’s where it really kind of comes to life. And then there’s a scene from the book where he takes her to see his family and they’re playing baseball.
Vampire baseball.
Vampire baseball. (laughs) Which is, I can honestly say will be the greatest vampire baseball film ever made. (laughs) There will never be another vampire baseball film, so a lot of that is a blast. And that’s sort of at the end. The stage of the movie where you’re getting to see the fun of being a vampire and the joy, you’re soon going to get to the part of it why it’s dangerous and horrifying and scary, but for that part it’s just kind of a fun visual of sort of seeing their extraordinary abilities.
These action sequences you’re talking about are they going to be very PG-13 oriented or are they going to push it a little bit?
You know, you always find that in the edit frankly. A lot of this stuff that I’ve see in the dailies is kind of pushed and potentially, how much blood can you get away with? How much bone breakage and all that can you do with or before the MPAA says ‘Eh you went too far.’ Usually that’s a process that you find and generally you do what works for the movie and the audience and if you need to make little trims to sort of pull it out of one rating and into the other, you do it.
If this one, which is most likely going to be a hit, are you planning to continue it with the rest of the books?
We will start writing Book 2 by the summer… so yeah. The goal is, particularly with Kristen and stuff, and then these books happen one after the other, and so hopefully [we] can figure it out from a scheduling standpoint, would be to do Book 2 and 3 together, because it just makes sense from production and the age of the actors and stuff to do it. We’ll be well prepared for it come December.
How many books are there and how far can you go with it? Like the HARRY POTTER films, even though they’re growing up, they’re outstripping their persona a little bit.
Well it’s interesting, they did a smart thing, which is really be prepared to shoot a movie a year and they just went for it. And once you have the first one under your belt, and with a franchise like this, we can do the same thing with the second and the third book. Book 4 is being written now and there’s time for Book 5. So it can go on as long as Stephenie Meyer’s imagination takes it.
Do you have any of the crew? Like Catherine [Hardwicke] or Melissa [Rosenberg], signed on for more past this?
Yeah, no. I mean they’re all kind of ready to go. It’s really about kind of locking down the remaining books and all that. Stephenie will be here soon, Stephenie Meyer. So she’ll be with us and she’s been a part of the production, so ultimately, ideally you keep the team together, particularly in success because why break it up?
What’s Stephenie’s role in this?
You know, just adviser. It’s her world, we’re kind of the couriers and we’re trying to bring it to visual life. So she’s been a part of everything in terms of the script and in terms of all the visual stuff that we’ve done. She came in pre-production, she talked with Catherine. They talked through things, changes were made. So she’s been very involved. I think it’s important because… of course a movie becomes something different from a book in the perfect world, but it needs to hold on to what’s important to the readers of the book while expanding the audience beyond the readership and that’s kind of the goal with making a movie with any book. Is sort of expanding the audience beyond, but first do no harm to the core audience.
Is there any idea of what the soundtrack is going to be like for this?
Oh my gosh. I have…. 40 CDs of music that our music supervisor has sent us in terms of new sounds, new bands, new songs. The muse for Stephenie was Muse, you know, the band. So a lot of the sounds that we’re going for are similar to that, if not some songs by them that they’re going to write. I mean there’s things like that, again trying to hope for the sanctity of the material, but ultimately a lot of those decisions will be made editorially when you start to put the scenes together and see what songs play well. We certainly have talked a lot about having a lot of source music and not the kind of old fashion classical but more of a kind of cool, produced sound for a score. Soundtrack hopefuls. TWILIGHT I think, everyone has their own soundtrack already online. So many people are like ‘My TWILIGHT songlist, My TWILIGHT songlist.’ And it’s interesting how that becomes like ‘Oh, okay I get that.’ And there’s actually a lot of similarities when you see the kind of music and I think a lot of that is because Stephenie had that in her mind and put it into the book.
Are you filming everything in Oregon? Or are there locations up in Washington that are going to be utilized.
Yeah, we’ve used Washington, Oregon. We’ll shoot in Arizona, outside of California for all the Arizona portion. We’re going to shoot at La Push Beach, which is where in the book they go, you know where the Indian reservation is. So we’ll be up there. We’re getting a lot of second stuff, a lot of aerials. But primarily our base of operation has been in or around Portland [Oregon].
It’s pretty interesting that the film is actually being filmed where it happened in the book.
Yeah. Pacific Northwest. We’re going up to Forks [Washington], we’re going up to La Push [Washington]. So we’re getting stuff there. Well thank you guys.
Thank you very much.
Intervju: Michael Welch / Justin Chon / Jose Zuniga
While waiting around on the set of TWILIGHT, I got the opportunity to interview a few of the supporting cast members. Michael Welch is fairly unknown but that may change after TWILIGHT. He’s done a lot of TV stuff with his movie credits including DAY OF THE DEAD and ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE among others. Justin Chon is also a fairly unknown actor, having a regular role on the TV show JUST JORDAN along with roles in flicks HACK! and the upcoming CROSSING OVER. Jose Zuniga is undoubtedly the veteran of the bunch, having numerous roles in loads of action flicks and TV shows. The three actors gave us the lowdown on their characters, what the fan base is like, and their opinions on TWILIGHT among other things.
Michael Welch / Justin Chon / Jose Zuniga
So who’s playing who?
Justin Chon: Well I play Eric Yorkie. He’s a human. (laughs).
Go humans. So you’re the first one that really makes friends with Bella?
JC: Yeah, yeah. So I’m kind of am the first person Bella becomes friends with, or tries to be friends with at school. I’m just like a normal, kind of teenager. Kind of like a real social ladder climbing kind of kid. That’s why I feel like I kind of befriend Bella before everyone else. Because I want to kind of see if she can help me with social stature or whatever. I feel like, you know he’s kind of, I guess nerdy. He’s on the debate team and he’s the head editor for the newspaper and I think that’s kind of… he uses his skills to try and get in Bella’s good graces by offering to make her a star in the paper or like.. you know, random things. Like I could try and sneak in her music at the prom. But ultimately I’m no match for Mr. Chisel-face. (laughs) Yeah, that’s my character.
Michael Welch: (leans forward and speaks into the recorder) Hello. This is Michael.. (laughs) Nah I’m kidding. I play Mike Newton. Who, I’m actually growing to like more and more as we shoot. I think he’s athletic, but he’s also incredibly awkward in ways too. I think he’s… I’m really coming from myself a lot in this role, because I’m very familiar with the high school experience of trying to ‘get the girl that you probably won’t get.’ I actually had a very similar experience where there was a girl in particular and the guy, the other guy who was clearly better looking than me, and clearly… you know. It’s funny because I have a scene… I should probably complete sentences since this is a print thing. I have a scene where I ask Bella out to the prom, and it actually started to get kind of painful after a while because I really did sort of go back and relive that time in my life. I never really actually had the courage to have that moment, because it probably would’ve ended up as awkward and strange as it did for Mike Newton.
Well that’s good acting too.
MW: (laughs) Sure sure. So it’s been a lot of fun. It’s been a fun process. I think, you know Mike, he’s a small town kid and I think he’s smart but, you know, still probably pretty naïve and just trying to find himself. I think again, it does sort of make it easy to come from myself because how I’ve sort of been playing… You know, Kristen Stewart has a very naturally interesting thing going on that you can’t really put your finger on. She has something very interesting behind her eyes that you almost want to… it’s like she has a secret or a mystery and you want to just figure it out. So I’m sort of coming at it from that angle, just I’m fascinated by this girl and I just want to get to know her better. So yeah, that’s.. did I leave anything out?
Your character takes a big liking to her. Whenever there’s another guy talking to her… he really hates that guy.
MW: Absolutely. Yeah, it was…
A little bit stalkery?
MW: It’s a little creepy. (laughs) No yeah. Right off the bat, as soon as she hits him off the head with a volleyball, as soon as he sees her. I think he sort of knew about her and knew that she was going to be coming and was maybe excited about the prospect of the new hot girl coming to school. But when he actually sees her, I think those connections really do happen in life, particularly when you are in high school and you really don’t have perspective yet, really. So you can kind of trick yourself into thinking ‘Wow, I couldn’t imagine anyone that I could like more than this person.’ And I think that sort of happens to Mike. And Edward, who we sort of have a similar haircut and look the same, he’s basically just the much more chiseled, better looking version of me. And a vampire… (laughs) you know he’s got it all. He’s got it going on that guy. So it’s very easy to tap into that sort of insecurity for me.
Jose Zuniga: Well I’m also a human. I’m Mr. Molina. In the book I was Mr. Banner, so I’m now Mr. Molina. Which is interesting to me because it implies that, for reasons unknown to me, the movie is moving in a more open direction, still keeping the soul of the book, but adapting it in a way too… the fire and creativity of this director, Catherine [Hardwicke] and using people maybe in the sense they need to show that kind of marriage, which is cool, of like when books and movies can work. So anyway… as a character I love this guy because he’s real earthy and he wants to save the world and he’s got this true message to give… you know, like ‘green is good.’ And it’s very innocent in a way, because he’s an adult and he really loves these kids and he’s really opening up. But there’s this vampire thing happening around me that I don’t even know of. So there’s almost this energy of good and bad and bad and good. It’s very, very interesting. As an actor coming to this role, I love it! I almost have all the freedom to be as silly and goofy as I want and I never get this opportunity so I feel like someone’s giving me jet propeller things and I can just soar. It’s just these little moments, but they feel so free. I’ve had to kill and I’ve gotten killed MANY times in movies (laughs) So to just not do that alone, to even just to connect to people and to have this kind of energy… I go crazy even thinking about it before I get to work. And then, the reality of it is that it’s all part of this really interesting picture, which is The Cullens and these guys [Mike and Eric] and your little world with her. It’s quite, quite fun.. more complicated than I realized… and also as innocent as I could ever imagine. You know what I mean? I don’t think I said anything about Molina though. He’s just a biology teacher who… Yeah this is an interesting thing and I’ll stop. As being older than these guys, it’s interesting to be able to act out scenes where I can say or act like I’m this older being but in reality I can still feel the connection and I can also feel the time difference. It’s this cool life thing to just kind of be old and young enough to connect. You know what I mean?
MW: I think a really, really good point too. Which is, the fans are obviously going to want it to be very close to the book, and it is very close to the book, but it does feel like the book is just kind of being used as a blueprint and there’s a lot of room for us to sort of bring life to it. So it’s not just like… people aren’t going to be watching going ‘oh yeah, that little quirk, that was in Chapter 4.’ It’s not like that. We have the blueprint of these characters, and with Catherine’s vision and Elliot’s vision. And by the way, I don’t even know what they’re doing visually, so it could just look incredible. These, what I consider to be, great group of actors, you know basically bringing life to this piece. You know, in a way that I think is important in reaching the audience outside of just the people who read the book, but also pleasing the hardcore fans as well. I think it has, I think you said it much better than I did, sort of a nice blending that’s happening there.
JZ: It feels natural you know. It feels natural from everyone. Kristen, she’s very kind of unique and fragile and Robert, has that darkness… but it’s all very organic to everybody. These guys, look everything’s so organic. You never know. Films are very outside of the actor’s world. We’re in a very small world, but I can feel all that energy and it’s coming together in a very nice way. So I don’t know.. we’re feeling good. (laughs)
How familiar were any of you with the books before you got this job?
JC: Well one of my best friends… he actually read all three of them. He told me about the first one, TWILIGHT, so I read like a little tiny bit before getting the part, and then once I got the part, obviously I read it. It’s definitely an awesome book and it’s definitely a very interesting take on the whole vampire story. It’s like a cool new hip way to tell it. It’s very inventive … and I think it’s a good book.
JZ: The one thing I noticed about the books, knowing nothing about them before I knew about them, once I knew about them, how much there is to know about them and how much it’s around me. So that’s a very fascinating thing. In different generations too, not just… it’s several types of people relate to the book and it works on several levels. Adults could read it and can be… it’s quite… is tension. And young people can definitely use it as a guidepost. It’s … again a complicated sort of book.
MW: Yeah, I was not familiar with the book or the series at all before auditioning… which seems to happen to me for the most important projects. I was like young Jack O’Neal on STARGATE SG1, which ended up being the most, pretty much the most important role of my life as far as getting any sort of following. That’s another one where I just had no idea what I was getting myself into. I like that approach, I like not knowing before stepping into a project because it just kind of… it takes the pressure off. I feel like I can come from a more genuine place and a more natural place if I just don’t know. If I had known how popular these books were before going into the audition, I don’t know how it would have went, how it would have gone.
JZ: I think we all share it…. Of all the people we’ve talked too, it’s kind of the same thing.
There’s this really intense and devoted fan community. Now that you are sort of dropped into that, how is that different than other roles you might have had? There’s a huge STARGATE community as well… but I imagine you were just playing Young Jack, you weren’t quite in the center of it there. Here you’ve got… Have you been paying attention to the websites?
JZ: That’s a good question. I’ll just say really quickly that I’m really excited that I’m one of the characters that can kind of be there but not be picked on. That’s all I have to say. (laughs) They’re going to focus on other people and I’m like ‘Go ahead.’
MW: I actually have a pretty funny story. I have been sort of blogging on different websites and I’ve been having a lot of fun with the fans. They’re fun people… you know because I could’ve sort of taken the more serious route of just ‘Yeah guys I’m excited to be doing this.’ Which I was, and which I said, but I was really…. I decided to have a little more fun, be a little more dry a little more sarcastic, just to have fun with them. And they responded and seemed to appreciate it. In one of the blogs, I made some kind of reference to the fact that I’m… well ‘I’m about to take a road trip and I need to pack and I’m low on socks. I don’t have any socks. So I need to pick up socks on the way.’ So the Twilight Lexicon picked this up, and on one of their daily posts, the title was something with Stephenie Meyer and ‘Socks for Mike.’ And people literally started sending me socks to my PO Box. They’re starting to arrive now. So… I really appreciate these fans, I like them a lot already, and I have been sort of involved in the internet world.
Your going to be set with socks for a while.
MW: I am going to be set with socks. I mean I’m getting sent joke socks, I mean I got little baby pink socks here.
JC: Man I’m going to say I’m low on gold coins. (laughs)
MW: (laughs) .. It goes to show, for me that they’re very serious, but they also have a sense of humor and they don’t seem to be taking it so seriously to the point of being crazy. They strike me as a group of people who just really enjoy these characters and really enjoy this story.
It seems like they’re very happy with the way this is turning out. Like everything is going the way they had planned for it to be.
JC: That makes us feel really good, you know.
MW: Yeah, they’ve been happy with the cast for the most part. As far as I can tell. .. You know I worked on the remake of DAY OF THE DEAD and they were not pleased. (laughs)
How was that experience for you? As one of the first kind of horror things you’ve done?
MW: It was a great experience. We shot in Bulgaria. It was my first time ever being outside of North America. Steve Miner was the director, he directed LAKE PLACID. It was a fantastic experience and a lot of fun. I think part of the reason why people were disappointed… (at this point someone drops into the room to pull the three actors back to set.. so Mike finishes up his statement for us real quick.) When they had a lot of the test screenings they got really hardcore horror fans and I think the kind of movie that Steve Miner wanted to make was more of an action movie with zombies as opposed to a horror movie.
