Mania Exclusive Interview with Paul W.S. Anderson

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Death Race Interview IV: Paul W.S. Anderson: Blood on the Tracks 2

Part II of our Interview with Death Race writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson

By Josh Gordon August 21, 2008

Paul W.S. Anderson, director of DEATH RACE(2008).
© Mania.com/Josh Gordon

Welcome back! In part II of our Comic-Con interview with director Paul W.S. Anderson we discuss the pitfalls of futuristic movies, the nature of modern action film editing and the Castlevania movie!

Q: Why do we never see the audience that’s watching Death Race.

PA: I wanted to keep the movie focused on the race. I’m not a big fan of movies set ten years in the future. I think it’s very, very difficult to make a movie like that. People wear “odd” colors, weird holo-watches and then three years later your movie looks like bullshit because the future wasn’t like that or everyone’s walking around with Apple phones and it’s so much better than the future you imagined. So I deliberately set the movie in a nameless American city and slightly timeless and I shot it in a series of locations that haven’t changed. The reason Jason works in a steel works is, if you went to a steel works in the 1970’s and you went to a steel works now, they look exactly the same and if you go to a steel works in the year 2030 it will look exactly the same. So the kind of tenement area where he lives, these were houses built in the 1940’s, fairly timeless. The prison, it was a turn of the century prison, lots of like that still functioning. The science of locking men up was kind of perfected 200 years ago and they haven’t really changed it. So I kind of kept it in the industrial waste lands. I kept it set in the environments that I felt would have existed 30 years ago and that could exist 30 years into the future deliberately to give the movie a kind of timeless feel instead of a bogus futuristic look. So the only kind of modern elements within the movie are Joan Allen’s high tech control room, like a high tech cocoon that broadcasts to the outside world but I deliberately stayed away from showing the outside world for that reason. I thought it made the movie more powerful to let the audience imagine what the outside world was like and also make it more relatable to a modern day audience. As soon as you show people in a futuristic environment, in a futuristic sports bar watching a plasma screen, it becomes Running Man and as much as I like Running Man those were kind of the weak aspects of films like that.

Q: Have you done the Blu-Ray version yet?

PA: Yes. I mean, it’s crazy; you do the Blue-Ray version before you’ve even finished the movie. For the Blue-Ray version it’s even more bloody and more violent. There are some action scenes we cut out that have gone back into the Blu-Ray version. There’s a scene where Jason gets put in a cell with some Neo-Nazis so there’s an extra bit of action – hand to hand stuff. And there’s a whole scene where the guns jam on the Mustang and Case, Natalie Martinez, and it’s towards the start of the first time Jason’s racing and he’s kind of overwhelmed by everything that’s happening and Case just blows out the window, climbs out of the window and, with a wrench, starts bashing away at the mini-guns trying to free up the shell that’s jammed. Meanwhile there are all these other cars shooting at them. It’s a very good sequence but in the movie now, the first race sequence that Jason is involved in is twelve minutes long and that’s a long time to sustain a piece of action and with this other piece it was fourteen minutes and it just felt like too much. It was good but something had to give and that was it but it’s back in the Blu-Ray version.

Q: First of all, I really enjoyed the movie

PA: Thank you.

Q: You talk about Road Warrior and I was watching Mad Max the other night and one of the differences between that sequence, in the beginning of Mad Max where there’s the big chase scene and action sequences of today is that in today’s films the cutting is so much quicker, not even 30 frame edits and I noticed there’s a much more modern cutting style in the race sequences in Death Race. I think I’m a little bit older than the average teenager going to these action movies, I grew up watching those late 70’s, early 80’s action movies like you did and there’s a part of me that longs for some of those longer shots. How do you feel about that; the different styles of cutting?

PA: I think if George Miller were making Road Warrior now, it would be cut like Death Race. I don’t think he’d be having those long held shots because I think an audience’s attention now – I mean MTV was revolutionary in the way that people assimilate information. I think it showed that people pick up on things very quickly and you don’t need to hold something on screen for that long. You know, I was watching – I can’t remember which William Friedkin movie it was – and it had flash frames in it. Back in the day, it was flash frames – subliminal imagery and you look at it now and it’s on screen for a long time! It’s on screen for like twelve frames.

Q: The Exorcist

PA: Yeah, the Exorcist. You look at it, you look at it, you look at it…wow, it’s a man wearing a silly hood and it doesn’t freak you out in the same way that it did back then. I LOVE those movies made then, I wanted to capture the feeling of those movies but you can’t physically make movies like that anymore because the way people have watched films have just changed.

Q: There are lot of video game elements in the movie. Why isn’t there a game being released with the film?

PA: To develop a really good video game takes two years. When you get a green light for a movie you release a year later. One year is not enough time to make a good video game. One year is enough time to make a piece of shit. I’m so proud of this movie and I’m so proud of the work that went into making it that the last thing I want is some cheesy – I don’t want anything cheesy associated with this film. If that means the video game comes out in two years time – I’d rather have a good Death Race video game than a bad cash-in right now. It doesn’t help anybody. No one wants to play a bad video game – people feel ripped off and it doesn’t help the promotion of the movie, people by the video game and then say “this sucks balls!” You know? It makes people think bad things about my movie.

Q: So is there going to be a Death Race video game at some point in time?

PA: I would think so, I mean we’re starting to get into the discussions about that but it’s really going to come out of the film and I think that’s a better way to make it.

Q: Is there going to be a Resident Evil 4?

PA: I’m talking with Sony Pictures about it. We’re in discussions to MAYBE do another one but it’s far from certain.

Q: Are there other video game properties that you’re interested in?

PA: I’m developing Castlevania which I’ve been involved with for a while so hopefully that’ll be the next thing that’s kind of video game related that we’ll shoot but otherwise I’m not really kind of developing that’s video game related but if I play a great game and I think it’s right – you know, I think video games are a valid form of entertainment just as much as books and theatre arts are kind of adapted to films.

Q: Is Castlevania a dream project for you?

PA: I love Castlevania. I’m just finishing a new draft of it; Sylvain White is attached to direct now so I’m really excited about the project. Hopefully it’ll shoot later this year.