Continuing Comics2Film'scoverage of Twentieth Century Fox's Daredevil press junket wepresent the latest transcript of the round-table interviews. In thisinstallment, Daredevil producers Avi Arad and Gary Foster talkabout the movie.
This interviewdoes contain potential spoilers, so read it at your own risk.
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Q: Avi, In light of the Space Shuttle Tragedy, have you spoken to people back inIsrael?
AVI ARAD(AA): Well, it's the last thing we needed now. The whole putting a man onthe moon is really sort of a way to have a sense of unity and optimism.
That wasrough, because in a small country a guy like that becomes a national hero, asymbol for this great unity. Every nation sent someone up there. It was roughbecause he became quite famous and elections and wars...I just got back.
It'srough. It's rough here. It's rough there. We actually met him. He was kind of ashy guy. In a way I'm surprised how successful the program was. That's the firstaccident in a long time. This is really wild going up there and coming back.
Q: With allthe tensions in the Middle East, that space flight was really the first positive thing in a while.What's the effect been?
AA: It's rough for everybody. It's rough here. It's funny. We're so used tothe shuttle coming in and out. It's like going through La Guardia or something.All of a sudden it brought into focus again that this is quite daring. I justfeel bad for the guys up there [in the space station] because they have to come back.
Q: Director MarkSteven Johnson said there is a hard and fast rule that films based on Marvelcharacters don't get tested. Is that true?
AA: Well they get tested on family and friends. They get tested for clarity.
Today, the way media is, especially Internet...Internet is sort of a mixedblessing. It's a curse and a blessing at the same time. It's out of passion.It's out of the best intentions. But it became sort of the national sport tounveil and reveal what's happening in a movie, many times before it's time. It'slike the old Gallo thing: 'Don't serve your wine before its time.'
So we know that if, unless you are in the business, seeing the rough-cut,seeing the movie without score, without special effects, without what it takesto finish a movie. It's really not meant to be served. It's like, you sit in a restaurantand I drop a piece of uncooked steak, say, 'You want to taste it? If you like itI'll cook it.'
So we have to be careful with these things because it is a national sport,literally. Who can get the word out first? Ready. Not ready. We've been throughthat for years now. On one hand, we love this attention and we read it every daybecause some pretty smart ideas come out of it, but it's risky business.
Q: How objective is a family and friends test screening? Who do you find tobe the most objective in the circle of family and friends?
AA: I think they're quite objective because what we want to know, is not didyou like the movie, didn't like the movie. What didn't you understand? It'sbased on source material so when you're dealing with source materials at times,we are so close to it. We've been in it six years now, whatever. You get soclose you want someone just to look at it.
I'll tell you they're blatantly honest. Some of these kids kind of grew up inthe business, so you'll be amazed at their comments like, 'Wow.' I wish theywere just kids. And you get very good information. And you get the fun factor.They let you know if they're going to have fun here.
That's the best we can do because to go through a major testing is just toobig a risk.
GARY FOSTER(GF): It's a shame too, because test screenings can be very valuable. Unfortunatelyit's become fair game. With the kind of money you spend on the movie you can'ttake that risk. It's a loss for the filmmaker because he doesn't have that toolto hone his film. So a lot of it is on that small group and a lot of it is onjust instinct. You'd better have a very confident filmmaker to navigate thatbecause a lot of it's going to fall on his or her shoulders.
Q: The shareduniverse is such a strong part of the Marvel comics. Is there any possibility ofgetting Daredevil and Spider-Man together in a movie?
AA: There's no need. They're two distinct characters. We have so many moviesto make. To me it's like making glow-in-the-dark toys. When you're on your lastleg you make it glow-in-the-dark.
We have Elektra, we have Daredevil 2, we have Spider-Man 2. Too many goodcharacters. They don't need to clash at this point.
Q: But I love them, as a fan.Some of those comics were my favorite. How can you say there's no reason to do that?
AA: Well, that was your favorite, but there's no reason to do it at thispoint.
Q: Thatbrings up an interesting balancing act: pleasing the fans vs. introducingthe character.
AA: We start by pleasing the fans because the story is source material."Man Without Fear" is a great story and if it wasn't a comic book andsomeone just published a book, "Man Without Fear", about this kid wholost his father, became blind, became a lawyer, fighting for justice.
It's agreat story. You don't need a body suit to tell this story. Fall in love with this girl, she's the daughter of the mafia. This isShakespeare.
When you look at it, now it comes with a community, a hugecommunity that love our movies. It started with Blade, BladeII, X-Men and then Spider-Man. I think today people look at Marvel as great storytellers, good qualitycontrol. We're passionate about our movies. We pick up the right partners, rightdirectors, right casting. The movies are fun and we are hitting the masses.
GF: I think you have to make sure that combination of the people in the coregroup making the film aren't all narrowly focused in the one area which are, thegeek factor. I, for one, never read comic books before we started this journeysix years ago. I was fresh to it.
As we're making the film there were a few of us out there who would say,'OK. I understand that that's what in the comic book, but what if we wentthis direction because I don't really know if that's gonna fly.'
And some reallynice interaction amongst both sides of the line, which I think helps broaden theappeal of the movie.
Q: What were the thoughts onDaredevil letting the guy die in the movie?
GF: Letting the guy die was a big, big discussion, but in telling a dramaticstory, there has to be an arc and we chose to tell the story of a guy, who is avigilante, who has to come to terms with the fact that maybe that's not theright thing.
You get to the end of the movie and you see that he makes a choicewith Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. That's a more dramatic choice in the movie nowthan if he had already made that choice an hour and thirty minutes prior.
But that was my point of view. Avi had a different point of view because asthe head of Marvel, obviously has a different agenda in some of thecomics.
Q: What aboutDaredevil taking prescription medicine?
AA: I think that that part came to demonstrate that, unlike many of ourmovies, where the hero is actually a superhero with special powers and specialphysical attributes, Daredevil is just a human being, as a matter of fact, justa human being with a handicap.
The fact that he has enhanced hearing. Weactually had a blind consultant on the set. This is kind of easy to explain. Itmakes sense. By taking painkillers after the night he had at Josie's bar youdemonstrate that he's just human and it takes a bigger heart.
If I cut you and you heal, well, you're now healed. But if you know thatevery night you got out there you can get killed. There's nothing to keep youalive aside from yourself, taking the pills are a really good way to show whatit is to be.
If you listen to the answering machine it shows you theloneliness of the commitment of a real hero. It's like a fireman or a policeman or asoldier going to war who says, 'I cannot marry you now because I don'tknow when I'll come back.'
All these human touches have to be dramatized. He cannot say, 'Wow. I hurt.'That moment showed you that this is really [a] human being. If you are a prizefighter believe me you go in the back, you take a shower you try and kill thepain. This man had inside and outside...
GF: ...and I think also, with the genre, every movie has to be distinct.Every movie has to have it's own place. We went to great pains to make sure wedidn't repeat what they did so successfully with Spider-Man or X-Men.
Talkingabout it you decide this movie is the real world of what it is to be asuperhero, the good and the bad. Right or wrong we made a movie that does notfeel like any other movie. I think that's part of the formula for success for thegenre. If you're cookie-cutter, making the same movie time and time again, at acertain point people are going to say, 'enough.'
If you like a dramaticstory and you want something that's more on the edgierside, Daredevil's a choice for you.
Q: Stan Lee'sbeen a big supporter of these movies. He's credited an Executive Producer onthis one. Yet, he's also suing Marvel. What's the relationship of Stan Lee to the project?
AA: Listen. Ican start it by saying, 'Kill the lawyers,' and you make your ownconclusions.
Stan is chairmanemeritus of Marvel. He created or co-created many of our characters. He lovesthe movies we make. He is now doing some of his own things. He's entitled to doit.
We have no beefwith him. I hope he's still a big friend of Marvel. I still adore him as myuncle and he knows it.
If you readarticles, I've always been very protective of him. He's eighty years old. He'snot going to be on the set with us at midnight, in downtown L.A. when it'stwenty degrees.
What we want todo is show homage to his legacy and therefore you saw it in the movie. We tookthe best Stan put together, which is the literature and the story and made amovie out of it. It's quite joyous for him. It's like an out-of-body experiencewhen he sees these movies.
Q: How muchinput did you have on Ben Affleck being cast in the lead?
GF:Myself, Avi, Mark and the studio, we are the core group making the castingdecisions.
Ben was somebodythat we had always known was a fan of Daredevil. He wrote theforward to Kevin Smith's Visionaries piece. So it was easy to welcome someonewho is part of the family.
Because he hadscheduling issues we originally didn't offer him Daredevil because we didn'tthink he was available. We offered him Bullseye because it was a shorterrole.
He read thescript and said he wanted to meet, and within the first ten minutes of hismeeting with Mark he said, 'I don't want to talk about Bullseye. Let's talkabout Daredevil.'
Very quickly hejust said, 'I will do what I have to do to move things around to play thispart,' because it was such a big part of his soul. Avi and I were thrilled.
He's 6' 3".He's a good looking guy. He's a terrific actor. He knows the character. He's notstarting from scratch. He's passionate about it. You couldn't ask for any more.
Q: How farcan you take Marvel's characters? You've got so many you could take overHollywood.
AA:That's the idea. To take over Hollywood.
You know what?The whole thing is, when we finally bought the company...you know there was abig war and when we finally got our hands on it the goal was: Marvel is culture.It's literature. It's art and these are the kinds of things that make formovies, television, animation. It's multi-media.
The idea was tosystematically to go in and find people that will want nothing else to do butthat particular character because they grew up on this character.
Like Markwho...that was the character. He was a stalker. That's the character he wantedto do. Or Sam Raimi for Spider-Man. People don't know Ang Lee has two boys whoare like Hulk fanatics. One of them actually draws Hulk, a very giftedartist.
So it's findingpeople who want to tell a certain story within our universe. People who grew upon it, who finally have the clout...the way you start a movie is you start witha writer who has clout. If you say, 'Well, I have Mark Steven Johnson writingDaredevil,' studio has to listen. That means it's a good investment, a goodrisk.
And we go fromthere. As long as the stories are right, the casts are right, God knows thebox-office is right, because we have a community that guarantees you openingweekend, that will buy the DVD, will buy two, one to watch, one to collect, youwouldn't even open the package.
There's atremendous amount of people who are coming into this community, who at one timeor another read the character. They were eight, nine years old and all of asudden there's a resurgence.
There's also aresurgence in the comics, all these Ultimates that are coming out. It's a goodfeeling. They give you a great combination of emotion and a roller coaster ride.
Q: Avi, thisresurgence is largely due to you and your efforts. Who are you most anxious tosee in a movie?
AA: Ithink my favorite will be on the screen soon I hope within The X-Men, is Beast,but that's a long conversation. We need a shrink for that.
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