Director’s Cut: Shane Black and Kevin Feige on Customizing ‘Iron Man 3′

Phase Two of Marvel’s movie universe kicks off on May 3 when “Iron Man 3” rockets into theaters. This time we find Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), who is still traumatized by his near-death experience in “The Avengers,” forced to face a more personal threat when his Malibu mansion is destroyed and he embarks on a quest to find those responsible. As he fights his way back after his world literally crumbles around him, Tony is forced to consider if the man makes the suit or the suit makes the man.

We sat down with Marvel president and “Iron Man 3? producer Kevin Feige and “Iron Man 3? director-writer Shane Black to discuss what sets this “Iron Man” apart from the previous films, which Marvel character Feige feels most protective of, and if moviegoers can glean any information about “The Avengers 2? from the post-credits scenes like the one in “Iron Man 3.”

Read our review of “Iron Man 3? here.

Robert DeSalvo: Kevin, for Iron Man’s third stand-alone movie, what specifically did you want to do differently from the other “Iron Man” films?

KEVIN FEIGE: Well, the most important thing was to make a good part three. The curse of the threequel is something that people write a lot about, and I didn’t want to fall prey to that. One way to try to not fall prey to that was do something different and not rely on making things bigger, bigger, bigger. Although, ironically, this has some of the biggest action set pieces in any of our movies. But, knowing that it would come a year after “The Avengers,” we wanted to focus on Tony again. What we found in “Iron Man” and less so in “Iron Man 2? was that audiences really respond to Tony—as brash and egotistical as he is. When he’s knocked down a peg and he’s backed into a corner, they like watching him get out of it. With one of our first conversations with Shane, we said we want to metaphorically put him back into that cave and convoy from the first one. People see in the trailer the house coming down, and that is the start of a journey that I hope is very unique and unexpected for a superhero.

RD: Shane, your script is the best “Iron Man” yet—there is a lot of action, but there are great comic moments. Did your work on the first two “Lethal Weapon” movies influence any of the interactions in “Iron Man 3?? There is a similar vibe at times.

SHANE BLACK: There is a similar vibe and a similar pace—the notion of checking in with people and seeing as their lives are progressing as things start circling around them and the net gets tighter and tighter until they are in over their heads. There is tossing in of different characters like the ["Lethal Weapon"] Joe Pesci character… in this case we have the little boy. There are escalating set pieces until they are in the most desperate situation and have to pull out all the stops. So, yeah, the shape of it is not that dissimilar, but having this kind of a canvas to paint on with this much spectacle was pretty neat.

RD: Kevin, was Jon Favreau at all interested in directing this installment or did he only want to reprise his role as Happy Hogan?

KF: Early on, it was clear that he was going to go do other things right after “Iron Man 2? came out. That being said, he’s an executive producer on the movie, “Avengers” and the upcoming “Avengers 2.” He wanted to stay in the family and help. It was important to all of us that Happy be the catalyst that sends Tony on this mission. It’s certainly the best Happy performance and storyline.

RD: Shane, abduction is a recurring theme in a lot of your movies. Is there something you want to tell us?

SB: [Laughs] I think I try to stay away from it as much as possible. There was a version of the script where Pepper went along knowingly or unwittingly with these guys and was sort of just traveling with the bad guys at some point. Eventually, it came down to the simplicity that she is going to become subdued, so it became this abduction plot. We saw that coming—the damsel-in-distress potential—so we had to take the curse off. She doesn’t stay captive for very long.

RD: Kevin, out of all the great Marvel characters in all the big Marvel movies that you’ve produced, do you have a character that you love most and feel most protective towards?

KF: Well, I like to think that I’m protective of all of them because the truth is that when we got the financing to become our own studio—I was excited that we had Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow—I said, “I can’t believe this. This is great.” Then the “L.A. Times” said that we had the B-team and that Marvel was scraping the bottom of the barrel. I thought, these are all A-list—they just don’t know it yet. The fact that “Iron Man” is arguably bigger than them makes me pleased and even more protective of all of them, but certainly “Iron Man”  kicked it all off. “Iron Man” was the first movie we had the final say on—from the choice of Favreau to the choice of Downey and playing with real life like convoy attacks in Afghanistan—it was sort of all of our instincts wrapped into one movie. So I would say “Iron Man” is the most representative of the birth of our studio.

RD: Shane, Sir Ben Kingsley steals scenes in “Iron Man 3.” Did you have more laughs writing his dialogue or the banter between Tony Stark and the young boy?

SB: Those were all fun. Tony Stark and the boy were fun days because Robert and the kid had a chance to bond and you could really see it happen. Sir Ben was probably my favorite actor to have met and work with just because I’ve never met a more competent, effective and yet gracious and absolutely humble man. You hear stories about these actors that come in and have all these demands. From the beginning, this guy was just everything about the elegant, artful British actor.

KF: Sir Ben is an amazing human being. Often times when actors sign up for our movies they don’t read the scripts because either we’re being overly cautious and security-minded or the script hasn’t been written yet. I was in London at a press junket for “Avengers” and Sir Ben had signed up to do the movie. It occurred to me that he didn’t know what he was doing in the movie, so I went out to visit him and pitched him what the storyline was. To his credit, he got it instantly. He said, “Tell Shane that I get it completely and I’m completely on board,” including what to say and not say in interviews. He just overdelivered.

RD: Warner Bros. yanked “Gangster Squad” out of theaters and refilmed a theater scene because of the Colorado theater shootings. “Iron Man 3? involves terrorist bombings. Did you consider changing anything given recent events in Boston?

KF: I was never privy to any of those conversations if they were had. Our first thought was just Boston and is everyone OK. My wife and I were both born in Boston, I have family in Boston, so that’s all we were thinking about. The truth is that what happens in “Iron Man 3? is a very different thing.

SB: There were explosions and the word “terrorist,” but that’s about the sum of it in “Iron Man 3.” As opposed to, say, a shooting in a movie theater.

RD: Is there some connecting thread viewers should look for in the post-credits scenes that you will have with all the Marvel Phase Two films leading up to “Avengers 2??

KF: The tags certainly have less pressure as connective tissue because everyone knows the movies are connected now. We were educating the audience as much as anything else in the Phase One films, so I think we’re liberated to allow the tags to be anything if we do them at all. It all depends on when inspiration strikes. I would say that there is an overall arching theme to the movies, but it won’t become apparent until you see “Avengers 2.” I don’t think there is anything obvious in “Iron Man 3? that you can see, but it connects.

Categories: Interviews

Tags: Ben kingsley, Director's cut, Interview, Iron man 2, Iron Man 3, Kevin Feige, Shane Black, The Mandarin

Director’s Cut: Shane Carruth (‘Upstream Color’)

Much like a Shane Carruth film, there are different ways to approach a Shane Carruth interview.

Do you focus on the technical aspects of this remarkable polymath? For 2004's time-traveling “Primer” he is credited as writer, director, producer, star, composer, production designer, casting director and editor. For “Upstream Color,” his newest emotional tour-de-force about free will, manipulation and the drive to find the source of the unexplainable, he is the writer, director, star, co-producer, composer, cinematographer, co-camera operator, co-editor and sound designer. Oh yeah, he’s the film’s distributor, too.

Or do you focus on Carruth’s stature in the independent film world? After 2004 he seemed like the Sundance equivalent of Harper Lee – a “one and done” filmmaker content to recede into legend.

Perhaps you focus on the nitty gritty of his stories? The quantum mechanics aspect of his films, replete with unanswered questions due to his intentionally elliptical style?

Despite my intentions to break the conversation into these three delineated acts I ended up on an unpredictable path in need of its own Wikipedia flowchart. Carruth’s demeanor is very warm, and open to just the sort of “heavy” conversation you may not have had since your college dorm. Despite a near-pointillist style of filmmaking, he speaks in stammers, half-phrases and questions to himself. (I left a few in where I thought they felt most poetic.) Considering Carruth has made one of the most vibrant and sharp pictures in quite some time (here is my review at ScreenCrush, here is Film.com’s review by Will Goss) I’m of the belief that he is a soaring genius who, for the sake of economics, lowered himself to spend time responding to my questions.

With that, then, here is the bulk of a conversation held unceremoniously in the hallway of a cozy Lower Manhattan publicist’s office. You’ll see that I open with a typically professional and unbiased salvo.

Jordan Hoffman: For selfish reasons, I thank you for making this movie. It’s refreshing to discuss a movie and not necessarily know the answer. I’ve been in two bar fights about it already – not fisticuffs, of course.

Shane Carruth: Sure.

JH: Conversations. I have one friend who can’t stand the film. I’m sure you can handle that.

SC: Understood, yeah.

JH: We got in a nice tussle and it’s exciting.

SC: It’s great to hear.

JH: There are some people who get hung up on the “what the hell is this” and need some handholding with the very plot. We saw this at the Sundance Q&A. Your movie is, for lack of a better term, a little weird, but, my gosh, you show the worm go out of the lady and into the pig … what more can you show?!?

SC: Exactly.

JH: Is it frustrating? Were you expecting that?

SC: I was expecting that. Whatever frustration I would have with that is a known quantity, going back to the writing. That’s just part of it. It necessarily has to be divisive because it is trying something new. Whether it is “good” or “bad” at doing what it is trying to do – at fulfilling its intentions – that’s almost not part of this because the intention is new. Or, hopefully new. Whatever. The ambition is not typical, let’s say. Because of that there will be people who come to it immediately, and they’ll judge it that way, or there will be people whose expectations haven’t been lined up properly, if I haven’t prepared them.

From the get go, it won’t give those people what they’re expecting. I’m somewhat amazed – well, not amazed – happy that the response has been as positive.

JH: You expected more people to say “Worm-pigs? I’m not buying it!”

SC: More or less.

JH: Or more people put off by the structure? The third act being almost entirely dialogue-free.

SC: Yeah, the number one thing I was worried about was, in the same way that “Primer” – and this is not a complaint at all, because I’m lucky anyone wants to watch that movie – but in the same way that “Primer” is sometimes reduced to being only a puzzle. It’s a puzzle to solve without anything underneath it, to some. And I was worried that this would become that – that people would only see the mechanical, or the weird genre elements.

JH: There is the fear of the gimmick aspect. Not that gimmick is always a bad thing, but, you know, you go to this guy’s movies to go “huh?”

SC: Yep.

JH: The most subversive thing David Lynch ever did was making “The Straight Story.” Great title, because it’s about a guy named Alvin Straight traveling in a straight line – but it is also a straightforward film from a man you never expected to make one. Do you see yourself ever wanting to “go straight” as it were?

SC: If I did, it wouldn’t be to subvert other things I’ve done. I do my best to never, ever think about a body of work or a career. This film is not a reaction to the last one. It’s the story in front of me now and I need to serve that.

JH: Well, despite the fact that we’ve never met and I don’t know much about you personally, that hasn’t stopped me from trying to psychoanalyze you.

I know you did work on a lengthy screenplay called “A Topiary,” you worked on it for years, did a lot of the design work, and you’ve commented that the movie is done in your head but you are the only one who can see it. “Upstream Color” is, at least in my opinion, all about breaking out of a cycle that is perpetuated by outside forces. So, is this your way of fighting the forces that prevented that film from happening?

SC: Huh. I never thought of that. Well. [long pause. and then quickly] I mean, who knows? It probably was informed by that. Maybe. It didn’t feel like that, I thought it was just a universal thing of. . .the way we build up our own narratives and identity and ways of thinking about everything. Whether religious or cosmic or whatever – that was the narrative that she [Amy Seimetz' character] was meant to be stuck in, then letting her grow a new one and letting her live that out, that was always the core of the idea. But. . .yeah. . . being affected by offscreen forces, the two ideas seem intertwined to me. That’s what I think personal identity is.

JH: Are you familiar with the author and neuroscientist Sam Harris?

SC: No.

JH: He recently wrote a book called “Free Will,” which, if my understanding is correct, argues that man does not have free will, but not because of any theological reasons. He looks at chemical reactions in the brain, the synapses either fire or don’t fire, and the result of all this is a chemical reaction, therefore humans may not be responsible for their actions, it is all chemical, all a result of environment, etc.

SC: Yes. Okay, I was just talking about this. This is, see, this is – not that, not that, not that – wow – what’s interesting about that, with non-linear dynamics and a swath of math you can start from order to chaos. You can get to unpredictably. So if that is true – even if we are the sum of physical neurons, something that can be reduced to math, even that math may not necessarily be predictable. You can make a case that there is a way for the math to work so that nobody but a God or a quantum computer could ever predict.

JH: A ghost in the machine, even in the numbers themselves.

SC: Yes, there we go.

JH: Some look at the first third of the “Upstream Color,” the most tactile part, and you can reduce it to a science fiction or horror story if you want. “The worms go in, they go in the pig, etc.” But it’s not that far out! Do you know about toxo –

SC: Toxoplasmosis, yes. I know about it, but from interviews. Though I definitely read a little about it. There’s a lot of things I realize that I accumulated in my head. I wasn’t trying to use them as plot devices, but I know they informed me – just knowing that there can be a process in the natural world, just outside our experience, that is counterintuitive in some way. Like the parasites who burrow in wasps and ants.

JH: There are many examples. The best one is the cat and mouse one because it conjures “Tom and Jerry” cartoons. The parasite that breeds and wants to return to the intestines of a cat, but is excreted and picked up and inside a mouse, which is able to tell mice not to be afraid of cat urine, the thing mice are most afraid of, so the mouse is now hanging out in the kitchen and is just “hey, what’s up, cat?” and now the cat eats him.

SC: Yes. And to the mouse, he’s, I don’t imagine he’s. . .hmnnn. . .

JH: There’s probably a pleasure center being stroked. He’s probably the happiest mouse in town. He’s fulfilling his goal, right?

SC: Right. Well – heh, I can’t believe we’re talking about this, this is fun stuff – but I would think that that mouse, in the same way we would, he would feel that he is being affected from a distance. I think, anyway. 95% of him is telling him “danger, danger!” yet 5% of him is compelling him to do this thing. He would have to be conflicted. That’s why I go to this outside force.

JH: I have a friend who reads “Upstream Color” as a story about drug addiction. How do you react when people come to you with interpretations that seem viable but you may be thinking “well, hell, I was somewhere else.”

SC: That’s part of it. Viewing work, now, is a communal experience. Any film that exists that is thorough, you can’t give it to an audience of one and have that be effective communication. Communication involves an audience of many that have a conversation, put it through the ringer, filter it and then a sense of it coalesces. So if I am an author, my success is that end result.

JH: But you are the author with a capital A on this one. You are director, writer, cinematographer, star, composer, co-editor, etc. Film is a collaborative process, but on your films a little less so.

SC: Film is a collaborative process, absolutely, but I am a control freak. I need to make sure that all the ways that we can inform are pointed in the same direction.

JH: I read you don’t play any instruments, but music is so important in this film. If I may ask a basic question, how the heck to do you compose the score?

SC: Some of it is hunting and pecking. I have a MIDI keyboard, which I couldn’t, like, play you a song on, but. . .

JH: Could you find Middle C?

SC: I can. I know my chords, I know where I live, I know my neighborhoods. But I couldn’t perform for you.

JH: I hand you sheet music for J.S. Bach and it’s no way.

SC: When I was a kid I took piano lessons for a month or two and she would have me do my scales. When I went home I learned Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.” And I taught it to myself, and I was so proud that it was something I could play. I remember coming into class and I played it for her, and I was expecting praise – but she was unhappy. My technique was wrong. I wasn’t raising my wrists the right way. She said that I shouldn’t go learn a piece of music “wrong” because I would have bad habits. She was right, but it felt like, “hey, I was really liking that.”

JH: You reached the ends but you did it by your own means and The Man came and cracked down on you. It’s like self-distributing your own film, you aren’t allowed to do that.

SC: This is perfect. Patterns everywhere.

JH: Let me ask you a bold question, Shane, and this is the question that everyone asks behind your back but no one has the guts to ask. But I do.

SC: All right.

JH: You make “Primer” in Two-thousand and blah-blah-blah. You work hard on “A Topiary,” I don’t know if you are doing it with some sort of studio deal in place.

SC: Hey, this is the question people ask. “How were you living?”

JH: Well, people are nosy. Were you approached to do studio work? Or commercials? Or music videos? Have you done any of that?

SC: I haven’t done any of that.

JH: Approached to act in any films?

SC: No.

JH: But you act in both your films and you’re a handsome boy. You could probably get acting work.

SC: Oh, well. . .thank . . .well, I don’t even know if that’s true. No. No one’s ever – well, actually, that’s not true. . .

JH: Approached by other indie filmmakers looking to include you for some cred, maybe?

SC: Uh. Sometimes. . .yeah. . .and then there’s. . .look. . .here’s the thing. I don’t live in a world where things get offered to me. But you know, I don’t know anybody who does. And I know famous and well-to-do filmmakers and they don’t just get an email saying “hey, here’s an offer.” You have to put yourself out there to get the offer and that is a conversation that I didn’t really want to have.

JH: I would imagine Chrysler would want you to do an ad if you told them you were game.

SC: Sure. Why not? Well, they’d be worried that it would come back and there wouldn’t be a car in it.

JH: Hey, at the end of the day, you didn’t sell out. Good for you. Whether you stayed fed by living on a commune. . .

SC: More or less, I actually have. I don’t have a family to support. If I did, some other choice would have to’ve been made.

JH: If digital video existed when “Primer” was made, how different would it be? The story, not so much the aesthetics.

SC: The story would not be different. The rough edges would be less rough.

JH: I’m wondering if you would have scenes in there that you didn’t have because of budget or time – scenes like the girlfriend’s father offscreen, would you want to include them?

SC: No, those choices were made. It wasn’t “let’s not shoot that because film is expensive” or “we don’t have enough film.”

JH: Your writing process: you have the themes and then they become manifested in concrete ideas. What sort of self-censorship do you have? When you are playing with the idea and “well, it’s a pig” there’s got to be something of an internal dialogue. What’s that like?

SC: It’s tough. It’s one that continues to hit you. There were a few times when I had the camera and we were doing the pig surgery and I’m thinking “what are they letting me do? This is nuts!” And this is meant to be an emotional story but right now this is the weirdest thing imaginable. The only thing I can ever do is make a film that I can respond to. I could not make a romantic comedy for college girls. I wouldn’t know how that works. This is an aesthetic that I’m comfortable with.

JH: Are you the type of guy who gorges on films? On Blu-rays? Going to festivals?

SC: No. I used to be.

JH: Did that change when you started making films?

SC: No. A couple of years ago. It’s just decreased. I’m far less likely to hunt around. For me personally, it hasn’t been satisfying. I’ll watch every movie P.T. Anderson ever makes religiously, but I’m not in the game of hunting anymore. Of course, I say that and now I’ll probably get back into hunting some more.

JH: Is there something you would want people to see to “prepare,” in a way, for “Upstream Color?”

SC: I have never thought of this. [whispering to himself] What is this? [long pause] What is this? To prepare, or to find a similar ambition…? There’s gotta’ be something.

JH: Perhaps a non-narrative or experimental film?

SC: No, not at all. That’s the thing.

JH: Some B-movie sci-fi? For thought-control worms? I don’t really see you as a B-movie or “Mystery Science Theater” guy.

SC: No. Well, I enjoy those things. [on the question] I can’t get to this. I’m sorry.

JH: Some movies they say “you gotta see it more than once.” I saw “Upstream Color” twice and there was nothing in it plot-wise that I “got” more the second time. A few very minor things I caught.

SC: What was it?

JH: Somehow I spaced out on how they got the CDs of the sound effects. I think I just didn’t see the name on the mailbox.

SC: Oh, okay. Right.

JH: Hey, that one was on me, I just didn’t look, then when I saw it the second time it was right in my face. Do you want people to see it more than once?

SC: Yes. But I want them to want it.

JH: Not a chore.

SC: The experience you had is the experience I’m hoping for. I want the meaning to be veiled in some way, but I want there to be an emotional experience that happens in one viewing that is satisfying, and for the narrative to be satisfying. As far as the meaning, I’m hoping that it is thrifty enough and compelling enough and lyrical and musical enough that it isn’t a horrifying concept to revisit. My hope is that it’s another captive audience to engage with the exploration.

If I watch a story and I’m challenged by it – like “The Master” – if I’m challenged by the way it works I spend more time thinking about it. Why does it work? What’s happening? Why is that phone being delivered in the middle of the theater? There are naked dancers?

JH: Hey, listen man, we’re out of time, but those are the questions I have for you. I “get” this movie, but I can’t quite figure out the rocks in the pool. I have a vague sense, but I don’t know that I’ll ever really know them unless I hold a gun to your head.

SC: I’ll tell you.

JH: Do you want me to turn this recorder off?

SC: Yeah, turn it off and I’ll tell you. First you tell me what you think.

What followed was me giving Shane a halfway-there interpretation, then his definitive, concrete answer. After my, “oh, no shit!” response I commenced to pummel him with other little questions (was the early shot of her in the pool a flashforward? did the Thief and the Sampler and the Gardeners know one another?) until I was pulled out of the room.

“Upstream Color” starts its theatrical run on April 5th, followed by VOD and Blu-ray, then a life on the shelf of every true cineaste in the world.

Categories: Interviews

Tags: Director's cut, Interview, Jordan hoffman, Primer, Shane Carruth, The master, Upstream Color, Worms