screenwriter bob gale interview

Upload: frank-lovece

Post on 03-Apr-2018

229 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

  • 7/28/2019 Screenwriter Bob Gale interview

    1/4

    Aftr'it$-F,re'"t*V

    lnleruiet't [y[ran[ lilete

    ou watch movies. You play games. Youdon't play movies. Until very recently.\Welcome to the world of interactive film-

    and of Interfilm Technologies, the New YorkCity company pioneering this hybrid mediumin which audiences, making pistol-grip push-button choices, dictate many of the twists andturns of the plot.

    Movie-style interactive fiction has been donebefore, on TV and videodisc, going back at leastas far as 1981's groundbreaking MysteryDisc:Murder, Artyone?,in which you chose whichpeople a 1930s detective would talk to as he triedto crack a case. But with Interfilm's I'm Your Mart(1992) and Mr. Payback (1995), interactivemovies have finally come to movie theaters.

    At roughly 20;minutes, X,Ir, Pqback is indeedan ingenious technical marvel, with four laserdiscplayers and a 486 computer providing absolutelyseamless transitions from one plot "branch" tothe next. Vhat distinguishes it-aside from play-

    l/IIll1lS

    ing in nearly 40 specially equipped theaters, asopposed to the earlier film's mere two-is its hon-est-to- gosh-movie credentials. Its writer-director,Bob Cale, is the Oscar-nominated co-screen-writer of Back to the Future, and the scripter ofthat film's two sequels. The stars include Christo-pher Lloyd as a villain, and Bqtwatdr t Billy Var-lock as the wisecracking, cyborg-vigilante hero.

    Cale concocted the $ 1.7 million Mr. Paybackat the behest of Sony, ro which he'd pitched aseparate, still unproduced interactive project.

    So is Mr. Payltack merely the return of Tlrc Tin-g/er-that classic cinematic hokum where theaterseats were wired to give the titular villain powerto (harmlessly) shock an audience? Or is it theharbinger of a new visual experience, like virtualreality? Ve spoke with Cale to get a better pis-tol-grip on'this whole new phenomenon.

    Auoto Vtoro INtsnIons: Tlrc well-knowndirettor Jcart-Jacrlues Arrnaud just nrade tlrc -first

    Ihe screenlruritolfu "Back

    tn ile luture'discusses hrs

    interafiiue film,"Ml Payhack"

    26 Aur.lro VrDEo Isrenrons

  • 7/28/2019 Screenwriter Bob Gale interview

    2/4

    6#tlrrffi**J.*xVAP"rtl4d

    tlITl/llS

    "l think fiele's

    f'irtiotral rrtttuie drarrta irt Irtrax 3D. I''loru thc11,gll-11111111,11 scrcutrtritcr Bolt Calc has .jrtstrurittt'rr artd dircctt'd ortt' o_l' tltc -first irttt'ractivt'rttttrtics. Whdt girtL,s? Isrr't tlris tht kind o_l'tltirt,qlit r y 1t 1 1 1 1,*, I r t r r t.qry u r t rt p rc r r t' t r rs ?

    Bob Gale: I was pitching a different type ofinteractive project, and my agent sent me toSony, because they have their Interactive NewTechnologies Department. The guy running thestore at the time wasJim Bloom, who used to workfor Ceorge Lr-rcas; he's one of the producers onRctrrnr o-l'tlrc Jcdi, and I'd met him when he wassecond assistant director on C/,r-rc Ertcttruttt't's tlltlu: Third Kirrd. So I was surprised to see him, andhe told me [Sony] was in business with a com-pany called Interfilm and was looking for peoplewho they thought would understand this medir-rmand could come up with some projects. And onthe spot I said okay, what if we had a story where

    the ar-rdience cor-rld choose who to get revenge onand what to do to him? That was the one-linepitch, and he said, "Creat. Vrite something r-rp."I did a three-page outline, he sent it to Interfilm,and Bob Be;an flnterfilm s CEOI read it and calledme up and said, "At lnterfilm, we have two clas-sifications of people' Cet it, and don't get it. Yor-rare definitely at the top of the Cet it list."I like compr-rters, I like video games, I thinkthere's a great untapped entertainment mediumhere that I'd like to see bloom. Certainly, the factthe llnrft ttt thL' Frrtrrre movies have been so slrc-cessfr-rl and have given me a very nice nest eggallows me to do something even thor-rgh there'sprobably no chance of any payoff here. And partof it has to do with my own frustration with whatpasses for interactive entertainment. There areCD-ROM products called "interactive movies"Isr-rch as 1992's Suut'r S/rarI and NL,q/rt lzp] thatare not m6yis5-ghsy're computer software. You

    a uruat tllllappsderlefiaitltll0ilt

    medium here thatl'd like tn see

    hlooln "

  • 7/28/2019 Screenwriter Bob Gale interview

    3/4

    don't play movies on yollr compLltef, yoLl pLltsoftware on your compLlter. Yor-r go to the the-ater, yoLl see movies. If a movie can be interac-tive in the theater, that's an interactive movie.

    AYI; Arcrt't rt,( t:onfitsin.q.fbrrrr ruitlr ctvttt'nf? Irrrcart, il )tot pldy o t()nrput('t' "rrtttuit"' ,gdtrr( ()n a27-irrclt TIl strtL'rt artd rtot on a c(trtrlttt(r tr&'n,isrt't if ,trt irtttrartiur' nt()r,i(, ot' dt lcast d Tl/-trtouic?

    Gale: So far there's nothing yoLl can play athonre that has full-motion video or the kind ofIfilm] resolution we give you with ,{.1i'. Pqtln,k.And ICD ROM games] are real slow, the accesstime to get from one chapter to the next takes along time, and most of it is l6 frames a secondlas opposed to the standard 24 frames a secondof movie filml, so the images are kind oi lerky.And if they make the motion less jerky, they havea trade-off with resolution.

    AVI: ,A4olilq ()n t() st()t')t stntdtrrt-ri.qlrt -fittrtrt I t c lt c.qi t r r r i r t.q, -{o,,rc .\ror)//(' I I i r r,q rc t ut' r r t i o t t s r tt( t'(cstaltlislrcd. Alrrtost trrtiut'rsall),, .lor iust(utt:c, tltcItcro tuitts. Artd tlrnt cur'rr rcrttairrs tnrt tltrott.qltall tltc brarrthct ttrtrl r,(rsittn-s rrf'Mr. Payback. Do)/otr tltirrk attdit'rrct's rt,ottl(l rutolt 1f, spcakirt,qnt(fdpltorirall)r, tlrtir tltoircs lcd to thc Shcriff-ttl'Nirrrir{\'/rarrr bcati rr.q Robi n Hood?

    Gale: I don't know. It'd be interesting to findout. I'd thor-rght abor-rt it, actually-in some ofthe sitr-rations in At[r. Paybarfr, there are placeswhere if yor-r don't find the really hard evidenceon the [various] bad guys, Mr. Payback resortsto a blLrff. ln the script, I had written some sceneswhere the villain worlld call Mr. Payback on theblLrff Ithereby coming close to beating him], andPayback then resorted to crude intintidation tomake the bad gLry see it his way. I actually shotone of those endings, br-rt it wasn't very good. It

  • 7/28/2019 Screenwriter Bob Gale interview

    4/4

    Ah:i,isrc(*#,4\Pf i'lrul*V

    We're nrl dmling

    r0ll]Iloilalitt

    wift petple whthaue a gtod,

    mlid ru* h'

    IlIttlll$wasn't clever. It was like making a movie buildto something and then not paying it off. Idecided not to use it, because I didn't think theaudience would be satisfied with it.Now, had I set out to tell a story where thebad guys could win, and to deal with somemorally ambiguous stuff, I think that'd be avery interesting interactive movie to do. Or,let's say, we were to do an interactive soapopera, where there's not necessarily good guysand bad guys per se, but you kind of get to seehow the scenarios would play out if you letthe good girl go out with the bad guy or thenice guy go out with the Ifloozy].

    AVI: So when can we see an interactiueflm in our neighborhood multiplex? How isyour distribution?Gale: It's very frustrating, because the Sony

    guys are real, real corporate-we're not deal-ing with people who have a good, solid rock'n' roll mentality who wanna go out there andkick some ass. They're all just looking at waysof making sure their own corporate asses arecovered. So when we get film critics-who arecertainly not the target audience for thism6yis-ds61ying the fact we encourage audi-ences to make noise in the theater, and pooh-poohing the whole idea that there should evenbe such a thing as an interactive movie, lSony]startfs] to worry about, "Vhoa, gee, I don'tknow if we wanna be associated with this, itlooks bad in the press."I'm beating up Sony as hard as I can, tryingto get them to come out of their suits, and tosay to them, "C'mon guys, this is the start of abusiness here, you can't expect overnight suc-cess!" Ve're only on 37 screens right now, wecan't make money on only 37 screens. But inorder to get onto 1 50, 200 screens so that wecan, you gotta be out there telling the theaterowners, "Hey, we're here and we're committedto this, and.we think there's a business here, andwe're behind it. And if we're behind it, you cansafely jump into this new business and knowwe're all gonna be in it together." $

    3 0 Auoro VrDEo lNTERroRs