A  Cineman Syndicate feature

ZORRO: DIRECTOR MARTIN CAMPBELL INTERVIEW
* By Prairie Miller *

Martin Campbell brings the mythic escapades of Zorro back to life with a brew of special effects and swordplay in Mask Of Zorro. The New Zealand born director of No Escape and GoldenEye met to talk about his new movie, and how he made the grand leap from James Bond to 'Bond'eras, as in Antonio, for his fresh new look at an old legend.

PRAIRIE MILLER: You did a superb job making a period piece with period swordplay exciting for today's audiences. What's your secret recipe?

MARTIN CAMPBELL: Well, I think action is an interesting thing. I think audiences over the past five years have been treated to a diet of visceral kinds of action films like the Lethal Weapon movies, where the action to me seems to all be basically versions of the same thing. You know, that the action tends to be random, and it disinvolves the characters. It is not character driven, the action. I think that's one of the problems.

And so you get these sort of event action pictures that audiences have seen time and time again. The explosions, bullets, the machine guns, the car chases down highways the wrong way, and variations of that...You name it. And I think one of the things about Zorro, is at least it gave us an opportunity where you can't fire aimless bullets. There were only muskets then, and one shot was the end of it. It sort of forced me into becoming very inventive with the sword fighting and the action.

Though one of the problems with swordfighting is, that it can become as reasonably boring as well. So you have to reinvent that every time, change it around and give it the usual imagination and vary it between each of the sequences. And also make the stuff character driven, rather than just action for action's sake, that's the really important part of it. You make it choreographed, and in total sympathy with the characters.

PM: I won't mention names, but someone in Zorro said this is not an action movie, this is an adventure movie. I think he meant that it's more an Errol Flynn kind of movie. Which is it?

MC: I would agree that Zorro is an adventure movie. I think the way in which the story is conceived, you know where you have a story that's not just Zorro saving the peasants. It's more a story about the older Zorro, played by Anthony Hopkins, training Antonio Banderas as the younger firebrand, to actually wear the mask to become Zorro. And it's a Merlin and Arthur kind of relationship.

And also, the fact that the older Zorro has had his daughter stolen in infancy by his worst enemy, who then comes back to California. By which time, of course the daughter has grown up into a beautiful twenty year old woman, and now the older Zorro has to take his revenge and get his daughter back. I mean, I think that dynamic allows for a much greater sense of adventure in the story and the characters than perhaps in the previous Zorros.

PM:You're a guy who cut his teeth on TV with Criminal Law. Then you went on to make two spectacular movies, No Escape and Goldeneye. Talk about the creative evolution of Martin Campbell.

MC: I left New Zealand to work in Britain, and my first big TV production was the series The Professional, which is a slightly tougher Starsky And Hutch. And from then, I started to do all those film series rather like the American film series of the time, various action series. After that, I did a series called Reilly Ace Of Spades, which was a period set in the turn of the century. It was a true story about the first great British spy. I finally ended up with Edge Of Darkness, which was a nuclear thriller I did for BBC. And that was successful enough to allow me to come to Hollywood.

Criminal Law was a very low budget film, and it marked Gary Oldman's first appearance as an American character. And from there I tried to claw my way up, as it were, doing low budget films like Defenseless, which wasn't a very good film. Then I did an HBO movie which I was very proud of called Cast A Deadly Spell. Subsequently, I went on to No Escape.

PM: What's your take on the style of directing that's uniquely you?

MC: Well, I guess every movie you make, you look at differently, photographically speaking. You may put a lot of movement into the camera. Or often you're at the mercy of the location, which we were to a certain extent with No Escape, out in the middle of the jungle. And I guess after No Escape, I never did an effects picture.

I went on to GoldenEye, which was very complex. I had four units going at the same time, and I had a crew of something like five hundred and thirty people shooting all over the place. And I guess what I did learn from No Escape, is the planning process of story boarding, working everything out before planning it all very carefully. Also, the look of the picture and the movement of the picture. And then I guess the experience of that finally led me on to the way Zorro looks. And Zorro, being a period movie, we had to give it a certain look, and make sure that the framing and the scope of the thing was very classic. And that's what we tried to achieve.

PM: For someone who came from the small screen, it was probably easy for you to get completely seduced by the Hollywood system.

MC: The thing was, that I didn't rate myself very much as a director. I always think of directing as a job, like any other job, and I'm just part of the team really. I was always a fan of those late sixties directors. Frankenheimer, Mike Nichols, and of course Spielberg in the seventies.

So I didn't even dream that I'd ever get to Hollywood and make it. I thought I'd just do television, and what happened would happen. But I always thought it would be the impossible that I'd ever get to Hollywood.

PM: With the enormous success of GoldenEye, and maybe now also Zorro, do you think you'll get locked into only doing blockbusters, when your heart may be in a small drama?

MC: Well, you know what? The Hollywood insiders who have seen Zorro are now offering me an awful lot of character stuff, far more so than action pieces. So I can only hope that's an indication that they might be thinking of me a little bit beyond that. I'v even been offered a few comedies, believe it or not! [He laughs] That's something I've never had in the past. So maybe they're thinking a little beyond slotting me just as an action director.

PM: It's well known that you came into the Zorro project after two other directors, including Richard Rodriguez, had differences with the people involved. What was his problem?

MC: Well, I think as far as Robert was concerned, it was a budget problem. I think he was given a certain amount of money, and he felt he couldn't achieve what he wanted with that budget. The figure was about forty five million, and he was quite right. The truth is that what was written in the script could certainly not be made for that budget. And I think that was his reason for leaving, as far as I know, though I never went into it that very deeply.

Then the reason for me doing it...Well, who knows? I got a call, and I read the script. I thought there was quite a lot of work to do on the script, as they did. But I've always thought about doing a swashbuckler in one form or another. So Zorro sort of played into that wish. What I liked about Zorro, was that it was a great operatic story, with great character bits in it. That in itself was unusual.

So I wasn't going to do just an action film. I saw that I could incorporate comedy and drama, and actually a certain amount of heart and soul into the movie as well.

PM: There are a number of powerful people involved behind the scenes with Zorro, including Steven Spielberg. How much freedom were you given to do it your way?

MC: Total freedom. Steven is a collaborator. He is not an iron fist. He discusses, he talks, he give you notes. He's a very busy man, of course. But Steven always sent me his script notes while I was shooting, certainly in the early stages, because at that time he was very tied up with Amistad. He would ring me and comment on the dailies, generally favorably, which I was very grateful for, because one is rather terrified. You know, you hope that Steven likes what you're doing.

But then for the rest of the movie, I just got on with it, and I never had any interruptions at all. I just finished it. And I think he trusted me to get on with it, which I did.

PM: What's the biggest challenge for you now of Zorro, the movie?

MC: I'm hoping that people will say it's a great ride.

Copyright 2006 by  Cineman Syndicate, LLC all rights reserved