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Interview: Brian Helgeland
The screenwriter-director discusses his new version of Payback, and talks about the likelihood of an L.A. Confidential DVD this year.
Brian Helgeland's career outwardly looks like a study in artistic opposites - both The Postman and L.A. Confidential in 1997, and Mystic River and The Order in 2003, to name but four of his amazingly eclectic efforts. But this disparity between art and commerce, the high-minded and the lowbrow, is what makes him such an interesting talent; to have come from the likes of Nightmare on Elm Street 4 to write modern classics like Mystic River or Man on Fire is testament to his virtuosity as much as his versatility.Helgeland's latest project is something of a redux - of his first directorial effort, more specifically. The newly-released Payback: Straight Up - The Director's Cut DVD is the fulfillment of one of those whispered "troubled back story" tales that frequents the rumor pages of Hollywood rags but seldom gets legitimate press; in 1998, Helgeland was fired from the project for turning in a film too dark for Paramount's tastes, and the new disc restores his vision in all its unrelenting glory. Helgeland recently spoke to IGN via telephone about the new release; in addition to discussing the past and present of Payback, he talks about the often-troubling moviemaking process and offers a few hints about the DVD future of one of IGN's favorites, L.A. Confidential.
IGN: When I spoke to you for the Extended Cut release of A Knight's Tale you mentioned that this was in the works, but I was surprised that this version turned out to be shorter than the theatrical cut. Was that according to your original design or was that a product of going back and making different storytelling or editing decisions?
Brian Helgeland: I think that the version that I had right up until the end was probably 92 minutes or something like that. I knew my version was shorter, and then trimming things - actually I added new scenes - but trimming a lot of things, I tried to take scenes and really get to the heart of them and make it as lean and mean as we could, we being my editor Kevin Stitt and [me]. But "90-minute" movie kind of has a connotation in my head that Payback always seemed to fit; if we're taking more than 90 minutes to tell this story, something's gone wrong.
IGN: What was the initial reaction that you got to the film? Was it just too dark?
Helgeland: It does have a dark undercurrent of humor and it always got laughs, but I think from Paramount's point of view - I mean, I know - it was that it was in the middle of Mel [making], I think he was up to Lethal Weapon 3 at the time, and all of those were Warner Brothers films. Here he is and Paramount's finally got a film with Mel in it and they want their Lethal Weapon. So that's the set of glasses that they looked at the whole thing through, and they [took] sort of any chance to broaden the audience. We made a genre-based movie, and a genre audience is going to like it more - and that's fine with me - but they will like it more than just say the general movie going public.
Paramount was always trying to broaden that, and there's a scene where [Mel] kills a guy in a meat truck for Maria Bello; they howled in protest over that scene because to their way of thinking he had shot an unarmed, semi-innocent man. I would maintain that it was the most romantic thing that he does in the entire movie (laughs). There's definitely two ways of thinking about things. There was a scene where Maria Bello throws something at him and says, "I hope you get killed, you pr*ck. I ought to tell them you're coming." Sherry Lansing said "what woman on earth would say that to Mel Gibson?" to which I would say that's Porter; she's not saying it to Mel Gibson. Things like that all the way through very early when I was sort of in my happy days there, they had cut a teaser that took everything funny in the movie and crammed it all together so it almost looked like a complete comedy, and I was annoyed at the trailer but I didn't think of it any further, [but] what they really did was ultimately be like "why couldn't your movie be more like our trailer?"
IGN: In your version, even the color tone of the film is different. Was that according to your original design or was that another thing you implemented to make sure that you differentiated this version from the theatrical cut?
Helgeland: The [director of photography] Ericson Core and I had always talked about this blue, bleach bypass look that could take us sort of towards black and white almost, and I think successfully achieved in the original movie, but in trying to rethink this and redo it, I thought everyone's seen it blue so I had a chance to digitally time it and do a lot of things that way. I just thought it would be interesting since I changed so much else about the movie to go ahead and try to give it a new look also, but I would maintain that the original look was then what I was trying to achieve also. Also, the blue kind of takes away the color separation and the palette of it, and I thought looking at it with the blue stripped away, I really appreciated the work the production designer had done with the industrial look and the backgrounds and colors on the walls, which is lost in the blue.
IGN: In the scene where Porter threatens David Paymer's character, Gibson and Paymer really pop against the background and it looks amazing.
Helgeland: It was a chance to give it a different look and a look I hope still suited the movie. We added a lot of contrast to give everyone's face a more haggard look, [and] Mel a lot of times just to accent those lines in his face and to give everyone a real noirish look.
IGN: How much of the theatrical cut did you shoot or reshoot?
Helgeland: The version that came out, I didn't shoot. I was fired actually for refusing to shoot it, so I was off the movie.
IGN: Did you think any of the material they shot without you for the theatrical cut was worth including in this version?
Helgeland: I wanted to just use what I had shot. The only thing is we had a scene where Gregg Henry calls Lucy Liu on the phone and I had only shot his side of the conversation because we were going to shoot her side of the conversation in post - set up a little corner somewhere on a stage and shoot her side - and I was off the movie before I had a chance to shoot her side of the conversation. So the only footage I used was about seven seconds of her side of the conversation, because otherwise I didn't have it. The negative had been cut on his end of the conversation, so I couldn't just use his end listening to her because the frames were missing from the negative. But I always thought the whole kidnapping plot violated his character because he's always very direct, Porter - he just goes to the people who have his money and says, "I want my money back." This kid, even though he's a creepy kid and the son of the mob boss, he doesn't have anything to do with what happened to him and what happened to his money, so kidnapping and holding him for the money just seemed like a thing Porter wouldn't do.
IGN: It's a level of strategy that seems inconsistent with the rest of his behavior.
Helgeland: It's not straightforward. He goes in and puts his hand out and goes "give me your money or I'll kill you" - it's that simple. That's part of what I liked about him as a character - the simplicity of him.
IGN: In the featurette on the DVD, your editor says that there were a number of things that the studio balked at including, such as a more pessimistic ending. This ending is ambiguous but is definitely hopeful; was your original ending more unrelenting and bleak than this?
Helgeland: The idea was simply how much do you think he's going to live through that car ride at the end of the movie. Do you stay on his face longer and make [audiences] feel like he's dead at the end? Do you end it when he smiles and you feel okay, he's going to be okay? I don't think it's a cop-out, but I think the idea is to stay with him to the point where you can decide for yourself what you think is going to happen.
IGN: How much do you feel like DVD has become an opportunity for your films to find new life or find their audience?
Helgeland: In this case it couldn't exist without DVD, so I don't know what the word is but it's given new life to [the film] because I was never going to be able to do it and have a new theatrical release for the movie, so if it wasn't for the DVD it would kind of be a lost film.
IGN: Of the rest of your films including as a screenwriter, are there others you would like to see restored or rediscovered?
Helgeland: I think they all had the life that was meant for them. I don't know; some movies, you just wish were a little shorter, but it's hard to say "see the shorter, more to the point [version]." Probably my Fox movie, The Order, because I had a lot of difficulty with the studio on that - with them refusing to release it unless I… and it was never really a horror movie, but that's how they wanted to sell it, wanting the effects pumped up and cutting some scenes out and shooting some scenes which tried to be a little more pedantic. That's a movie of mine [where] there's a better version than what came out.
IGN: One of the movies you wrote that's a perennial favorite amongst IGN's readers is L.A. Confidential, which has a pretty bare-bones DVD. Have you been contacted or participated in anything for a new version?
Helgeland: I think they've talked to Curtis [Hanson] about it and there's going to be some sort of a special edition of it, but I don't think this year. Maybe next year? But yeah, they've talked about it, because that's one of those movies that came out sort of at the beginning of DVD, the beginning of extra features, and they could certainly do a lot more with it than what they did. But I don't know if there's any footage that he would want to put in.
IGN: I meant more in terms of commentaries or documentaries…
Helgeland: Yeah. I think they're planning on doing something like that but it's still on the drawing board as far as who's going to do it.
IGN: What else do you have coming up, either on DVD or in terms of new theatrical projects?
Helgeland: I've written a script that I'm trying to direct, but I just wrote it. But I haven't got it up and running yet. It's called Get Up Sonny Liston, and it's a thriller, romance, but it's not a boxing movie.
