Q: Where do you start, when you’re doing a literary adaptation, like with New Moon or Alice in Wonderland?
Michael: Well, I start at exactly the same place, which is always the story. My first contact with anything I’m going to do is the script, whether it’s a script I’ve been offered, or I’ve been sent it, or whatever. I sit down and I read it. That first pagbaba of the script is very special to me because I know it’s my first point of contact with the story and the world of the piece. I don’t read things in bits, and I don’t read it whilst I’m doing something else. I have to have full concentration. I read it because, if I end up doing this film, that first reading, the impressions I get, the connections I make and how it sparks my imagination, will fuel everything I do for the whole rest of it. It’s always that first contact with it, so that’s a very special moment for me and that doesn’t matter whether it’s based on real events or not, whether it’s New Moon or anything.
That’s the world. That’s the beginning point. And then, it’s just about letting your imagination go. I look for clues. Any script is like a whodunit. The writer has certain intentions, whether they’re conscious or unconscious, and they come out and are expressed in the script.
So, for instance, when I was doing New Moon, it wasn’t just the script, it was the book as well. I used to have the book with me every araw on the set, all the time. I’d re-read it and re-read it and re-read it. It’s not like I had to read the whole book, because Aro’s bits are not as much, but nevertheless, I try and immerse myself in the world of the piece, whatever the piece is.
So, if it’s Brian Clough’s life, then I immerse myself in Brian Clough’s life. If it’s New Moon, then I immerse myself in Stephenie’s world, but also the world of vampires, generally. With the sa ilalim ng daigdig films, I watched everything that ever has been on werewolves, and I read everything. You never know where the one little thing will come from that just sparks your imagination. It doesn’t happen all the time, but you never know where that thing’s going to come from. It can come from the most unlikely of places, and usually does. It’s what The Lord of the Rings is all about. The most important person in the whole The Lord of the Rings story is the one that is over-looked in Tolkien’s world. It’s the little Hobbit. It’s the little unlooked for thing.
I’ve always found that that’s the same with what I do. I might be reading, or there will be a chance remark that someone I’m talking to makes about something, and it sticks with me. When I find my core stuff for research, at the time, I don’t know why that’s important to me, but I just know there’s something about it. Eventually, I’ll be doing a scene and maybe the director will say, “At this point, could you do something here?,” and suddenly something will occur to me from the research. Which means you have to do loads of it, even though you might end up using just a tiny amount of it, but you never know where that stuff will come from.
That was the same for New Moon. Weirdly, I found myself on the set and I suddenly heard the voice of the Blue Meanie in Yellow Submarine. There’s a thing that Stephenie writes in the book that his voice was like feathers, and just suddenly I heard this voice that really disturbed me when I was a kid. It was very gentle and soft, but there was something very scary about it. So, for little things like that, you never know where it’s going to come from.
