Why Director Alex Garland HATES Directing - Civil War (2024)

nothing's changed Alex Garland told the guardian in an interview for his upcoming film Civil War I'm in a very similar state I'm not planning to direct again in the foreseeable future after having directed films for the past decade director Alex Garland is hanging up his well director's chair you could say and headed back to his first love writing but with some fascinating films that may have not been big Blockbuster successes he's had an impact on Cinema so what made him want to quit a job that men would sell their souls to [Music] do Garland is British born in London back in the year of 1970 and like a lot of the directors we've covered on this channel Garland's studies and early career were unrelated to film he graduated from the University of Manchester with an art history degree and then took some time off to go exploring visiting southeast Asia I fell into writing novels actually as a result of being being a Backpacker I sort of accumulated stories I guess while I was doing that so the next thing I knew I was a novelist he then became a writer releasing his first novel called the beach in 1996 this was followed by a second novel called the Tesseract in 1998 said in the Philippines where he had lived for about a year these travel themed narratives related to the stories of Backpackers by his own account rather autobiographical for his next work he would decide to break the mold and take inspiration from media rather than his own life putting him in the past of becoming a screenwriter I got into it because the first book I wrote was made into a film and when I walked onto a film set I thought this looks like a lot more fun than writing [Applause] books Garland's journey into film started with inspiration from a different medium a video game Garland had come across the survival horror video game Resident Evil this game was set in a mansion filled with all kinds of different monsters but the particular one Garland was interested in was zombies the horror of the game came not So Much from the zombies themselves who are shown as fairly slow and easy enough to dodge but from scarce resources the player having low amounts of ammo for their weapons and often being defenseless or close to it Garland had the idea to turn this on its head with zombies that were much faster and more intimidating as this concept grew other influences he had previously forgotten rushed back to him the Romero zombie films in particular Dawn of the Dead meet me on the roof at and this all came together in a screenplay Garland ended up in touch with director Danny Bole who was working on the adaptation of the beach and together they brought this horrifying concept to life hello the screenplay became the film known as 28 Days Later and it's a brilliant Story by Alex Garin and Alex the writer was a mad zombie fan he knew everything about the zombie genre and I didn't so I kind of kept a distance from it 28 Days Later released in 2002 and despite being a lowbudget production it exploded in popularity making $84 million off of an $8 million budget and also kind of kickstarting Killian Murphy's career in films but this didn't prompt Garland to LEAP into screenwriting straight away however and instead he wrote one more novel a story called The coma which released in 2004 his next project was another collaboration with Danny Bole on a Sci-Fi project called Sunshine inspired by another concept of apoc alypse a disaster of the more natural kind the heat death of the universe this was less of a hit than 28 days to put it mildly with a reported production cost of $40 million it made 34 million after its 2007 release but as the years have gone on it's become a little bit of a cult classic and it was a bit of a turning point for Garland who had his climactic end for the film rejected the film would turn into a bit of a horror slasher type of movie but the ending was not his original idea for the script it would in fact have a young Killian Murphy as the sole survivor on the ship engrossed in a game of chess because that's essentially what life is right if you were told you had 2 months to live would there be any point in learning how to play chess is it any different at 3 months or four is the right amount of time left in your life to learn chess 6 months to a year when are any of us legitimately allowed to learn how to play chess that's what I was trying to argue for when Garland was faced with having the creative control not be within his power things started to shift for him after sunshine I did think to myself I can't work exactly like this again I can't be in a position again where if something I feel very strongly about it's not exactly control it's not control because you know you're never fully in control I needed to be able to stop it that's really what I'm saying and even though Garland loved working with Danny Bole who he always said was receptive to ideas and change this idea would begin to Fester through his next two films he wrote for 28 weeks later the sequel to 28 Days Later and then never let me go but at the end of this process Garland was headed down a path to be the one who could stop it where Garland started to expand his filmmaking role was in the making of dread an adaptation of the Judge Dread comics from the 200 ad comic series The Story centers around the setting of Mega City 1 a giant State size city located on the edges of an apocalyptic Wasteland and it's its authoritarian police force the judges who on the roles of judge jury and executioner allinone Garland's narrative focuses on its namesake Judge Dread and his relationship with judge Anderson Anderson judgment with psychic abilities formed from living close to the Wasteland where this project differed for Garland though is that it went beyond a screenwriting project the film's director Pete Travis lost his place at the Helm of the film during post- production with Garland stepping in to replace him at the time there were rumors of Garland seeking a co-director credit on the film but he officially denied them at the time calling the project an unorthodox production he and Travis had mutually agreed on ultimately he was credited as the film's screenwriter and one of the three producers even so there were signs that he was taking on a much bigger role than his credit implied and when Carl Urban the actor who played Judge Dread in the film was interviewed about the project back in its release year 2012 the only words he could find to say about Travis were that he will do what he does he then mentioned Garland and described him with the terms you'd more imagin being used for someone in the director's chair you know to my mind the real Creative Energy behind this film is the writer Alex Garland and he was on set every day years later he would become more blunt saying in a 2018 interview that what a lot of people don't realize is that Alex Garland actually directed that movie I just hope when people think of Alex Garland's filmography that dread is the first film that he made working with Alex Garland who was the writer and pretty much the the the director of the whole project was an invaluable experience Garland's bad luck continued to follow him through despite dread becoming a kind of cult classic the film bombed at the box office and Garland's plan for future film and TV Productions just didn't go anywhere the experience was so jarring that Garland said he doesn't want to go back to dread ever again I have a lot of regret about how things worked out with Dread that there's a transaction you do kind of particularly with the creators of it let us do this thing and try to honor what you did but I think it it sort of has created this thing of this movie that fails the story of dread is is of a failed movie both times for sake and and to have been party of that when that was exactly the intention was to not do that is kind of difficult dread was kind of a forecast for Garland's motives for becoming a director although dread was a jarring experience and one that ended quite complicated it was a project he and casts were very committed to and this love for his projects was what pushed him into the director's chair Garland later explained in an interview that I'm not really a film director I'm a writer who directs out of convenience it wasn't bad that I had any great urge to direct it was more born out of anxiety based on writing I'd find it very agitating if something in the film felt totally wrong to me or something that I felt was important was absent and that brings us to his next film 2014's exmachina this movie is one that was developing in Garland's mind for decades before it made its way onto a script or into a production house the story is themed around Ai and its advancement how close it can become to humanity and while this might seem like a very current theme rooted in today's problems with anxiety and public Consciousness around AI becoming much more commonplace exmachina was actually inspired by something much earlier Garland's childhood I've been interested in that forever uh since I was a kid you know I don't know maybe 13 14 had something like a ZX Spectrum early computer and you'd type in some very very basic well in basic codes and a little sort of Q&A thing where the computer appeared to be alive but then you quickly realize there's nothing like alive this was more an impressionable kid letting his imagination run wild but he tied that imagination to sci-fi themes fit for a more modern era to create his sci-fi concept what prompted this Fusion was when he read a book called embodiment and the inner life cognition and Consciousness in the space of possible Minds bringing home those old memories much like Resident Evil had for the writing of 28 Days Later he called reading the book A non-religious Epiphany with this Narrative of rather personal Origins it makes sense that this need to do things right and be the person to stop it that first grabbed Garland with Dread and sunshine ended up putting him formally in the director's chair for exmachina even though he took up the role he looked at it in a more unorthodox light viewing it as an extension of his writing job I don't really buy too much into the directing stuff I understand the way directing is presented uh it's slightly been at odds with my experience in film I think that film is basically a Collegiate it's a group of people working together and what I feel is that up to this point I've been one of a group of filmmakers involved in any given film that I've worked on and that is still the case now he called directing a label he didn't actually care about and an impediment more than a help reflecting that it's more just something to do with my sensibility which just doesn't work on a big stage while actually making the films is the most important thing that sense of Showmanship and reputation is something that can make a big difference take Christopher Nolan as an example when you think about it a film like Oppenheimer isn't just something that would jump to you when you think of what captivates the audience a biopic presented as a three-hour tathan but Nolan's clout was enough for all of his stars and cast to sign up almost immediately and That Was Then enough to get people who might not have otherwise been interested in the topic into the theaters he's a film name that brings in film fans and though Nolan might not admit it himself he's a bit of a showman with how much he talks and utilizes and advocates for film and IMAX film Garland on the other hand isn't a natural in that role at all he started out with writing and if you look at some of the influences for his stories Cinema takes a secondary stage even when working on a film he takes the script as primary over the screen which may be why his films seem more Niche Garland himself remarked on this kind of Garland curse saying I can see now that there's a repeating pattern and the repeating pattern is that films I work on just don't break out they just miss mainstream sensibility but despite this anxiety around directorship garland does embody a key element for which you would expect from a director a creative Monopoly forming a central vision Garland step into directing came from a need to ensure his stories were not just told but told his way and this is something he mentioned with exmachina purposefully choosing to keep the budget low to have total creative freedom as he believed a larger budget would have led to pushes for more action Blockbuster type scenes that were against his tone the key was uh you make it cheaply that if you you want creative freedom make it for less money in any terms you can think of the less money you make it for the more freedom you got and this was know Michael Bay movie despite the Garland curse His official directorial debut actually did okay it had a modest income but taking into account its modest budget it made back its costs which is more than can be said for some of his earlier films during the making of XM one of its producers Scott Ruden passed along a novel to Garland known as Annihilation written by author Jeff vandermeir Garland decided to submit a screenplay adaptation an uphill battle as he projected that called for double Xmas budget when his films had a track record of losing rather than making money but a battle he decided he would fight anyways next thing I'm trying is a site uh story uh it's based on a novel by a guy called Jeff fandir called Annihilation it's into early days uh I I don't know if it's going to happen but um it's side do you want to direct again I I I want to be part of the film making [Laughter] [Music] team Garlic's adaptation was a loose one which he described as a memory of the book written without going back over the novel for notes and was created without taking into account subsequent sequels released by Jeff vandermeir during production there's something really great you can get out of an adaptation which is getting inside the head of the writer that did it and also trying to figure out how to be true to it what it is you got to be true to it was really about the atmosphere like the the what it felt like to read the book it tells a story of a team investigating the Shimmer an expanding mysterious alien-like realm filled with mutated creatures created in the sight of a meteor impact Annihilation was another example for Garland fighting for his creative Monopoly embracing a kind of urial spirit according to the Hollywood Reporter David Ellison the boss of Sky Dan Productions one of the major production companies involved in the film pushed for a number of changes to it post production after a poor test screening apparently to give the film a broader appeal these changes included making the main character the biologist more sympathetic and changing the ending to something more upbeat Garland rejected these ideas and was able to fend off the complaints with the help of Scott Ruden but that Victory didn't come without a cost as these commitments to what were perceived to be unpopular creative choices caused the distributor Paramount to drop International distribution of the film handing off that role to Netflix [Music] instead Garland's next film men was another realization of ideas that had been long bubbling in his mind inspired by ancient folkloric imagery and contemporary gender politics with symbolism of pain and rage the film is about a woman named Harper exploring a haunted Community where almost everyone she meets seems to be a man with the same face who belittle her harass her and try to make her feel guilty for the death of her husband although a work very much informed by his own personal influences men is an example of Garland loosening that creative Monopoly handing away the message of the film to the audience's interpretation embracing a mindset he summed up as there's the film take it or leave it a specific example is that Garland changed the ending of the film to make it more vague by removing a conversation between Harper and another character Riley that would have explained what she really felt about her husband this new attitude can be seen in how he started to talk about his past works too where he previously described being horrified by the thought of the beach which he wrote as a criticism of Backpacker culture actually encouraging the practice in a later interview about his change to men's ending he summed up the idea of people misunderstanding his work or having the opposite takeaway to what he was thinking about as that's fine after completing men Garland rapidly jumped into his latest film Civil War recalling that the last day of post- production on men was 48 hours before the first day of principal photography on Civil War literally it was a Saturday and a Monday it was another film that touched on contemporary themes in this case intense political polarization a global problem but especially a problem in the US where Garland said America has an internal Concept in its exceptionalism that means it feels it's immune to some kinds of problems there's an extra danger given its power and importance to the world singling out a loss of conversation between sides of the divide and a loss of trust in politicians and the media allowing people to be opened to extremism more easily the film true to its name depicts a second American Civil War with a story centered around a group of War journalists trying to navigate the conflict between its factions and through the communities ravaged by them for this film at this moment with this subject matter it really had to be anti-war otherwise in a sense you'd be uh saying hey Civil War that's a good idea which uh um it isn't although it avoids direct commentary on Blue State Red State divides Garland said that the politics is in there it's just less blunt than you might expect noting that the president in the film is a fascist who threw the constitution in the trash but I'm sure you could imagine what that's referencing to in our current times Garland's idea was to remove explicit polarization from the narrative in the hopes that the messaging about the risk would stick and go beyond party lines optimistic to say the least but a less explicit message is also another example of Garland loosening their strengths a little allowing the narrative to focus on its gritty war movie Road Trip that loosening has led to criticism of his latest works as lacking substance or a meaningful audience takeaway but you could also look at it as a sense of honesty Garland admitting he really doesn't have all the answers and that's something he has directly spoken about denying the idea that art can be an authority on our issues and admitting that he becomes less and less his understandings over time as the premiere for civil war draws near it seems he's looking for a return to a purely screenwriting role back in 2022 he noted in an interview that he wanted Civil War to be his last directorial work for some time and even in the leadup to this film and in recent days Garland has continue to confirm that this will be his last film in the director's chair I always think that the thing I'm doing is likely to be the last thing I do I'll never be able to get back like this to make a project like this again so I just kind of uh I just kind of go for it as hard as I can well Garland has a strong awe tour Spirit his anxieties over the other parts of the role like the Showmanship the need to fight tooth and nail for his vision and perhaps the responsibility for the success of his works at the box office have turned him off to being a director it's the consequences of an artist who gains complete control one that a younger Garland who Desir to be the one who could say stop it hadn't experienced you have the final say sure but that final say comes with an added responsibility that goes beyond sticking to one's Creative Vision there are external responsibilities Beyond art when you are the one who is in charge there is a cost of expression and director Alfred Hitchcock explains this reality in this old interview you see you can't indulge yourself for 5 million n a lot of people's jobs attached to this I used to look at the uh men lining up at War Brothers carrying their dinner Pals clocking on in a long line I said to myself is this an art form and that is there lies the whole problem between the artistic and the commercial is the cost of expression the cost of expression could be a tough and bitter pill to swallow for an artist being a collaborator rather than a leader suits some people better and you can still make amazing films without micromanaging the detail opening the themes of his last two films more to audience interpretation seems to have been a precursor to this realization for Garland and this is not a knock on Garland for stepping away from being a director as all of us creatives know and understand too well there is a draining cost to our expression and sometimes you just need to get away from it for a while Garland has made incredible films as a director and he will continue to contribute to as a writer but one director who seems to be on a hot streak right now after he came back to his first love sci-fi and you can watch that video on Dune director den vov and his journey home to sci-fi right here

Channel: Frame Voyager

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Id: psz1667TTgI

Length: 20min 54sec (1254 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024