Quote of the Day

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The second half of Slash's interview with director Mark Romanek is up - I linked to the first half yesterday - and well worth checking out. We love him. In it he talks about the casting process for Never Let Me Go - how Andrew Garfield was always the one, and how they rode a tidal wave of enthusiasm out of the theater from watching An Education to immediately giving Carey Mulligan her role, and how Keira Knightley swung in once Carey, who she's friends with, was in place. And in a discussion about the state of the music business right now - Romanek's best known for his amazing roster of music videos from back in the day - he mentions loving Sufjan's new EP, and my heart swoons anew.

But the choice bit's right at the end. Romanek spent a long while trying to make The Wolf Man for Universal, which is something I'd kept tabs on while it was going through hellish pre-production nonsense. He stepped away from the project pretty much right before it was set to start filming because he knew the studio was gonna butcher what he wanted to do, and Joe Johnston, hack-for-hire (I say that with deep like for Jumanji and for Alessandro Nivola's t-shirt in Jurassic Park III) stepped in and finished the film. Which stunk to high heaven. God what a muddy snooze. Anyway Slash asks Romanek if he did see the finished film and what he thought, and his answer is one of the sliest bits of politicking I've read in awhile.

"I had to see “The Wolfman” because I felt like if I didn’t see “The Wolfman” it would plague me and I’d always be curious about it. So I did go to see it in L.A., in Westwood I think. I can’t remember where I was. The theater was pretty empty. And I saw a nice digital projection of it. A lot of the sets and locations were what I had selected. Some of the cast were the guys that I had selected. The rhythms of it, and the way that it was shot and lit, and the way that it moved along, and what was emphasized and what was de-emphasized was exactly, I think, what the producers wanted it to be."

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