Today we have an in-depth interview with Beautiful Creatures‘ writer/director Richard LaGravenese.
The one thing we took away from this interview more than anything is that Richard LaGravenese is passionate about this project. As he spoke there was a light in his eyes and excitement filled the room. Lagravenese took this project and made it his, from combining the characters of Amma and Marion, to making Ridley a film noir star rather than a harajuku girl.
The biggest question that we have gotten so far, on Twitter and all social media, is who is playing Marion? And now that you have said it in the press conference we are allowed to tell people that Amma and Marion have been combined. Amma is such a personal character to the fan base, are you prepared for the backlash? Do you think that will be an issue once the movie comes out?
Richard: I don’t know. I am prepared for it. I personally didn’t want to see another black actress play a housekeeper. In my first drafts, where I did have Marion – and I did have Marion in the first drafts – even then I elevated her (Amma). I changed the way she dressed and how she spoke because I wanted to see. First of all I wanted a great actress to play her. Then I thought it would be even more interesting… you know the book is very thick. There is a lot of exposition. Reading a book is a different experience than seeing a film. And to cram all that in was just impossible. But to get a great actress to play Amma, I felt making her the head of the Caster Library was a really good idea. We got Viola Davis, so yes, I am prepared for backlash. If they are upset about it, tough.
It’s true though, because when we were on set and talking to Viola about it and playing a housekeeper…
Richard: She would have no interest in it.
That’s exactly what she said.
Richard: And I didn’t want that for her. It’s time to stop using clichés. Look, there is enough danger in this genre of falling into clichés and derivations of other things that you have seen before. So anything I could do to make it fresh was worth the risk. I am still sticking with the spirit of the book. Look, my focus is always emotion, I want to feel something. I don’t care about the little tiny details that may or may not be in there, that are little hooks. To me, I want you to have an emotional experience with this, and the only way to do that was to make the characters real and grounded. You are invested in them.
There is an emotional connection with the characters, and that does come across. I am interested to know, in the library, is there going to be a lot of CGI?
Richard: No, not a lot. I wanted to keep it very sound and a lot of those figures that are in the columns will gently come to life. I wanted you to get a sense of their energy. There are spirits there, kind of Caster spirits there. But not a lot of CGI. The dark and the light will be going in and out of it. I didn’t want to take away too much from character.
What was your favorite scene to film?
Richard: All I have to say is my favorites have always been when it was just me, Alice, and Alden. Me, Lena, and Ethan, because those two actors are so wonderful. That love story is my favorite part of this because that’s where the emotion is. Those two actors are so smart, and so skilled, that getting the three of us together and it not being about the extras, special effects, and it just being about us and working out the scene, and coming up with rewrites and doing a different take with a different line – we were so into it. I remember when we did that scene on the road in the rain. We had tons of rain pouring on them, and after the first take, they were shivering, we had to put them in the car. I felt so bad. And then they got out and were all, “Can we do it again, can we do it again?” They wanted to do it over and over and over. It was just the greatest.
On social media, there has been talk that there has already been test screenings.
Richard: There has been one.
The feedback has been really great. They have all said that the movie is amazing, so I don’t think that you are going to let any of us down. I work for Hypable.com which is different than the fan sites, but even the feedback on our site of people who didn’t know the books, they now want to read them after the featurette.
Richard: Now I am worried that everyone’s going to read them and then it’s going to be so different then the movie…
No, because a lot of people will wait. They want to be surprised by the film.
Richard: Ok, good.
A lot of people are really excited, and a lot of people who aren’t into YA literature alone are really excited because you have Viola Davis, Emma Thompson, and Jeremy Irons. You have this great cast of adults.
Richard: Yes.
Did you, by chance, know that Macon was written in the voice of Jeremy Irons?
Richard: I didn’t know that until after casting. She didn’t tell me. She is so respectful. She is such a doll. She didn’t say. But she told me after. It’s just meant to be I guess.
Do you have anything, a message you want fans to know before they go in to see the film? Something that you would want them to know as both the writer and the director?
Richard: I just think when you create something, there is always some hesitation when people ask the question, “What do you want people to feel?” It feels beneath them in a way.
Or even what you want them to know, something from your point of view as the person that created this.
Richard: That the movie was done, the movie was created by people who believe it. We made it as real as possible. Personally I believe in the supernatural. I believe that there are people who have heightened powers and sensibilities and that we do only use less then eight percent of our brain power, that the human being has more capabilities than we use. The movie really is about humanity. I didn’t realize this as I started writing it, and got into the production of it, and I wrote this new scene. I realized here are Casters that have these powers to control everything, and here we are as humans who have no powers to control anything. And yet we have powers that they don’t understand. We have faith, we have love, we have sacrifice. Those are attributes that actually conquer in the end. So it really is about being human. And the Beautiful Creatures, like in the book, the creatures they are referring too, are human. They are not the Casters.
That’s perfect. That’s really beautiful.
Richard: I did an interview about ’70s movies. We interviewed William Freedman, who did The Exorcist. The Exorcist is sort of based on a true story. One of the reasons at the time The Exorcist was such a frightening film and William Freedman said this, was because all of us were not making a horror film. We were making a film that everything we were doing was real, and that reality made it terrifying. Not that our movie is terrifying, but we believed in the possibility of all of this. We weren’t looking down on it.
Are you ready for the possibility of this being a franchise?
Richard: I don’t know. Who can be ready for something like that? I wanted to tell this story the best I could, and make the best movie I could. If that happens I will deal with that and creatively there will be wonderful challenges to deal with. We have a great cast. I feel confident we have a great team. If we continue, we have great people involved.
There were a lot of things on Twitter about how Alden was just not right for Ethan…
Richard: Wrong.
There was a scene where he kept eating a banana and we were in video village, and we looked up and we go, “OMG, that’s it, that’s him.” It was something so simple, but something so beautiful that made us think that.
Richard: He smiles at her and she closes the doors on him. It was really sweet. He’s perfect. He’s Ethan to me. After directing a few and writing some, you always end up with the cast you are meant to have.
I know Kami and Margie came on set for about a week, and it’s not often that the director is also the screenwriter. So, I was just wondering how much you collaborated with them with the story development, and then again on set with the character development.
Richard: No, none at all. But we did always give them the script, and all they would do sometimes is email me corrections and logic issues. But that was it. They were so respectful. So supportive.
And then in the press conference Thomas talked about giving him the room to wiggle with his lines. Is that something that all of the actors got a chance to do?
Richard: Yes. Sometimes I would rewrite scenes with Jeremy Irons or with Alden or with Emma Thompson. We had rehearsals for a scene coming up, and sometimes it wasn’t quite right, so I would gather them on a weekend to work it out. That was happening all the time and then things started to change. I don’t know, was it a complicated book for you?
Yes.
Richard: Ok, good, because I thought it was just me. I read it three times, and I still didn’t understand some things. I was moving forward and things would start to clear themselves up as I was going along. And then I would start to reduce the effects. I am still learning about movies and sometimes [extends hands and makes box with fingers] this close-up says more. I had this scene, you know the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene where he’s climbing out her window, and I had a thing there where he fell off the vine, and she had to do Caster action and turn him over. I had this giant machine there, and it just looked so dorky. I did the scene and I saw the close-up of Alice, and I said that’s all I need, because it’s about their love affair and how much she feels. She said so many things in this look that I took the machine down and said I am not going to use it. And that happened throughout the whole thing both in text and special effects.
I now know that thanks to the featurette that was released through MTV a few days ago and the teaser trailer, there are a few surprises that are not in the book. The biggest one so far being Amma and Marion as one character.
Richard: There are bigger ones than that.
I was just going ask that. Are there more surprises?
Richard: Yes, but they are emotional surprises, very romantic, tragic that happen, and yet they get resolved.
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