Eisner on the "Sahara" DVD and Sequel PlansMatthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz, and Steve Zahn ride camels, blow up boats, and fight off all sorts of bad guys in the action comedy "Sahara," directed by Breck Eisner.
"Sahara" follows master explorer Dirk Pitt (McConaughey) and his sidekick Al (Zahn) as they try and track down a missing Civil War battleship. Their search is interrupted when the two adventurers meet up with the beautiful Dr. Eva Rojas (Cruz) who enlists their help to find out what's killing thousands of people in Africa.
With the release of "Sahara" on DVD set for August 30, 2005, director Breck Eisner took a break between meetings to speak to me about what we can expect from the DVD and the status of a possible sequel:
What are the plans for a sequel? Is there one in the works right now?“Well, yes, we sure hope to be doing one and I think a lot of that depends on actually how we do on DVD. You know, we’ve done well box office and we want to continue to do well on DVD. And if all things do go well, because it’s an expensive movie, then we will do another one. There are 18 books so we have a lot of source material to pull from.”
Which book would be next?“I know they have two or three of the books
under contract. But I’m not supposed to tell anyone which ones they are yet, sadly.”
Is the script done?“No, the script is being written as we speak.”
Have all the stars from “Sahara” signed on to a sequel?“Yeah. Matthew [McConaughey], Steve Zahn, Bill Macy, and Rainn Wilson are all under three-picture deals.”
And you’ll definitely be directing the sequel?“Yes, I would love to direct the next one. So if it goes, I’ll be doing it, for sure.”
Will the sequel be the next thing you direct?“It depends on the timing. I’m taking another movie fairly soon while we finish developing this movie. Hopefully the plan will be I do another movie while we continue writing and developing and scouting this, and I go into the next Sahara after that.”
Tackling “Sahara,” you really had to walk a fine line. You had to satisfy fans of the novels plus make an entertaining movie for people who aren’t familiar with the Clive Cussler books.“You’re absolutely right. That was a major issue for us. But the biggest challenge is clearly the fact that the book is 700+ pages and the movie is only two hours so it was a real challenge to get as much as we could from the book into the movie. Obviously with that discrepancy of length, there’s no way we could get everything. So, for me, the main focus was to make sure I was true to the characters and to their relationship and to really put the majority of the focus into that relationship and to that dynamic.”
Was there much you couldn’t include that you hated to lose?“Oh yeah, there were lots of things. One of the openings with Kitty Mannock although it’s on the DVD, it wasn’t on the initial release of the movie. And there were also some elements that were just too expensive that we couldn’t afford, although we spent a lot of money doing it. There were some elements that were just beyond our ability to do in the movie.”
Do you shoot extra content/scenes with bonus content for the DVD in mind?“Well, when I’m making it, it’s not…. You know, you’re hoping that everything you shoot will be in the movie. But it’s inevitable that by the time you get through cutting, some things are going to disappear. The hope is that they are good scenes that you can include in the DVD itself. But what I was thinking about from the beginning is the behind the scenes type footage.
Actually, we had a woman named Georgia Irwin who was on the film from the beginning of production, of prep; just documenting everything we were doing. That really helped make a much more interesting behind-the-scenes, and a much more intensive, behind-the-scenes documentary.”
Do you find you’re more guarded when there’s someone around specifically shooting behind the scenes footage?“No. In the beginning you think about it, and then after about five minutes you’ve forgotten that someone’s there with a camera. You’re so focused on getting the movie right that you’ve completely lost any sense of perception of someone watching you.”
Could you have possible chosen more difficult shooting locations?(Laughing) “It would be difficult to find a more challenging place to shoot. I mean Morocco is an incredible place. I had an amazing time shooting there. The crews and the support were incredible, but it is amazingly remote.
We’re out on the edge of the Sahara Desert, in southern Morocco on the border of Algeria, and it’s a very remote, challenging place and the elements are really intense. And if you need something - if you need a piece of equipment or other support, you’ve got to bring it in. There’s no equipment rental there. There’s no camera servicing there. We had to bring everything with us and all the people and all the equipment, which we trucked in from Europe. So it takes a lot of prep and a lot of planning to make sure you don’t forget something.”
Will the second film be shot in equally challenging locations?“I’m sure they will be. They’ll be a completely different look. I think it will be more of a jungle than the desert, and more water stuff, but it will be wherever it is. It will certainly be as challenging. And hopefully as exciting for the whole production.”
Do you find it’s a special challenge to direct action sequences?“I think the secret to directing an action sequence is proper preparation. And obviously you have to start with the vision and the idea of what you want for the action scene. I think a good story being told in the action scene is helpful and good characters - staying true to their characters in the action scene - is important as well.
But the real thing you’ve got to do is you’ve got to be prepared. You have to map out every shot; you have to map out every moment. You really have to know exactly where you want your camera and what you’re going to be shooting because that’s how you’re going to achieve it. And then you break it down bit by bit. If you look at it as a whole and try and tackle it as a whole, it’s completely overwhelming and far too intimidating.”
How do you direct a camel?“Well, you train it for about three months beforehand and make sure the actors are trained on it beforehand. You know, a camel will only run a hundred yards at a time, three times a day, so it’s a real challenge. We had three matching camels per character and we’d get nine runs out of the camels in the day. If you didn’t get it in those, you were screwed and had to wait for the next day. And they’re mean animals, those things.
All you can do is hope that they’ve been trained well and hope that the actors are comfortable enough on them and give it your all. Penelope [Cruz] had no interest in sitting on the camel when she first got there. And she started getting on it and started walking it and trotting it and by the day before we were shooting, she finally got it up to a gallop. And although she was panicked before starting, by the time she’d gotten used to it, she was thrilled about the idea and she was the best on the camel of any of them. Yeah, she was aggressive.”
Did you have your actors do a lot of their own stunts?“Yeah. I mean, there were certain types of stunts that would be truly dynamic stunts that stunt doubles had to do. It would have been irresponsible to have them do things like jumping, the actual jump from the camel to the train, or high falls and stuff like that. But everything else these guys did. Matthew, Steve, Penelope, they did their own fight work. They did their own camel racing. The majority of the stunts were done by the actors themselves. Matthew and Steve both drove that boat and trained on driving that boat for about a month before we shot that.”
Back to the DVD release, what can you say about the DVD commentary track?“Well, we did two commentaries. I did one on my own and then I brought in Matthew [McConaughey] and he and I did one together, which was fun. That was fun to reminiscence with him.”
How does that process work?“For the first one, for the one I did by myself, I actually watch the film before I go in and make notes about points that I want to talk about. And then I brought my notes with me and immediately forgot to even look at the notes (laughing). It was moving so fast and there were so many stories to tell that I just went through it in the context of what I wanted to talk about most dramatically and dynamically.
With Matthew, it was more about ‘remembering when’ kind of moments and talking about his motivations and really getting Matthew – since I’d done my own commentary - I wanted Matthew to talk a lot about how he devised the character and how he created his character and what research he did and what kind of preparation he did to get ready for the role. And how he went about doing specific scenes and specific moments in the movie.”
Does the studio get involved when you do commentary tracks or are you given free reign?“We have free reign. I don’t know if they even listen to it! We go into a sound room and we break the movie into two parts, an hour each part, and it just runs. It’s turned on, we can hear ourselves and we can hear the movie, and we just talk away. And I’m sure it goes to legal. I’m sure they have to check that there’s no legal problems, but I’m sure that they never change anything.”
Will there be a blooper reel on the DVD?“Not a lot of bloopers, per se. The majority of things on the DVD are a few scenes that we didn’t use, one of which was a big airplane crash at the beginning of the movie that got cut out that was pretty dynamic that we completely finished. And a few other scenes with Dirk and Al, a couple comedic scenes. But I didn’t do a blooper reel for the DVD.
You know, it’s so intense, everyone’s so focused because of the danger of everything, there’s a real intensity on the set and there wasn’t a lot of room for too many bloopers. There were some. Believe me, we had blooper moments, but I couldn’t fit it onto the DVD.
It’s funny because by the time you put the movie on - and I wanted to master the movie in the highest quality - and then put the documentary features on which were really great, and then the commentaries and the multiple language tracks and the storyboard comparisons – I had no room left on the DVD.
It is packed full. Every minute, every second they would give me on that is full. I even got Paramount to cut down the amount of trailer time they put in the beginning so they could fit more material on to the DVD.”
A lot of films are released later on with a director’s cut. Will that ever happen with “Sahara?”“The cut that came out is the director’s cut. I don’t want to or need to change the cut of the movie from the theater to the DVD. The only difference is there are scenes that I took out for length, that are, because I think the movie runs at the right length – I wouldn’t want it to be any longer but the additional scenes – and there are some additional scenes that would have made the movie too long but on their own stand up.”
What’s your opinion, in general, of director’s cuts?“My hope is that these original cuts don’t get lost and the director’s cuts are supplements to the other cuts. And I think when that’s the case, it’s a great way to see what was in the director’s mind, independent of the studios and the producers and the time constraints of the theaters. I think it has really interesting potential for exploitation on DVD.”
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