DVD / SCHMOOZE: JOHN LANDIS

d i g i t a l m o v i e t a l k

Director, John Landis: The Dean Speaks
By Eric Olson

When Animal House hit theaters in 1978, no one at Universal expected it to do much. But the movie became a national phenomenon and, by many accounts, a modern classic. The cast of veritable unknowns included John Belushi, Peter Riegert and a (very young) Kevin Bacon. When John Landis, a young, long-haired college dropout, met up with the Ivy League writing team from National Lampoon, no one could have blamed Universal for expecting failure. But little did they know...

Q	Animal House was one of your first major movies. How did you get involved with the project, and how nervous were you coming in on your first studio feature?
A	It was my third feature, but my first studio picture. The other two were independent features. How nervous was I? I was pretty nervous, but I was also 27, so I had the arrogance of youth to see me through there. The movie was very low priority for Universal and they thought - Ned Tannen, who was head of the company, really thought - I was nuts. So I sort of had the advantage there because he thought I was crazy. I would suggest something - he would sort of just shake his head and go, "What?" They hated my cast, they just hated it. I got involved because I was shooting Kentucky Fried Movie in Los Angeles with the Zucker Brothers and Jerry Abrams. We were shooting this $500,000 movie in 21 days. So it was very quick and nonunion. The script and continuity supervisor, Catherine Wooten, was the girlfriend of Sean Daniel who was the assistant to Tom Mount at Universal. So she would come home everyday with outrageous stories of what we were doing. Sean became interested in this bizarre movie we were doing. He saw the movie and recommended me, and I met Tom and (producer) Ivan Reitman and (National Lampoon publisher) Matty Simmons. It was an indication of how little the studio thought of the movie that I got the job.
Q	It's not what you know; it's who you know in this business, right?
A	Unfortunately, yes.
Q	You were working with these guys from National Lampoon, and Lampoon's always had this reputation as a group of tightly bound Ivy League writers. When you came in with this "arrogance of youth," what was the working relationship like?
A	Harold Ramis (Stripes, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day), Doug Kinney (Caddyshack) and Chris Miller (Multiplicity, Club Paradise) had been working on the film. As a matter of fact, Harold and Doug had been working on the movie for two years on the script before I became involved. Their original idea was something like "Laser Girls in Something." I can't remember what it was called, but it was Charles Manson in high school. They had this brilliant joke in it, which is still one of my favorites. The movie begins with this ominous long tracking shot toward the prison and down the rows of cells into where Charles Manson is sitting. He looks in the camera and says, "Is it hot in here, or am I just crazy?" But it was this whole thing. When Matty Simmons read the first draft, he said, "Jesus Christ, guys. You've got people taking drugs and having sex and killing in high school. You can't do that." So they said, "All right, let's make it college." That's where Chris Miller came in, because he had been working on a series of stories based on his college days at Dartmouth. That's when the script became National Lampoon's Animal House. When I was given the script, it was the funniest thing I had ever read up to that time. But it was really offensive. There was a great deal of projectile vomiting and rape and all these things. And I just felt that to make this kind of movie you had to have clear-cut villains and good guys, even though the good guys were different. When I first met the writers, there was real hostility there. Mainly because I was young, I had long hair, I was a high school dropout - these guys all went to college, some to Harvard. I think the big thing though was that I came from Hollywood, they saw me as the guy from The Coast. But it worked out. It was fine. I don't think the script has ever been given the credit it deserved. It really was a literate and sophisticated piece of work. People still quote dialog from it 20 years later. It's a really smart piece of work, and those are very smart and funny guys. Doug Kenney unfortunately passed away before I think his potential was realized. Harold Ramis, obviously, has gone on to great success. He's never forgiven me because he wanted to play Boon (eventually played by Peter Riegart) and had written the part for himself. And I thought that, at the time, he looked too old to fit in with the other members of the cast. So he's never forgiven me, and whenever he talks about it there is sort of an edge in his voice. He did an extraordinary job there, and he's a great director and actor it turns out. He should relax.
Q	Animal House was a launching pad for some young actors, as well, particularly John Belushi. You've done a lot of films with "Saturday Night Live" alums. Do you sometimes feel like an animal wrangler when you've worked with these kind of creative and improvisationally driven actors?
A	No. They're all actors and performers. "Saturday Night Live" has become this clearinghouse for young talent because it is established now. But when "SNL" started out, Harold Ramis, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner and all these people had worked together at Second City (the Canadian improv troupe) and then at National Lampoon. There were a lot of them involved in "National Lampoon Radio Hour." Look at the cast of that thing, it's unbelievable: John Belushi, Christopher Guest, Bill Murray. It's unbelievable. That's long before "SNL." Even for people like Marty Short and Chris Guest who were on "SNL" later, they came from Second City. "SNL" has become establishment, and it is sort of a steppingstone. But you're right. I have worked with a tremendous number of people from "SNL." But that's not by design. I have nothing to do with that show. I ended up making Three Amigos! and that was written by Steve Martin, Randy Newman and Lorne Michaels ("SNL"'s executive producer). So I have a very tenuous connection with this show. Lorne was furious with me, not so much with me individually as with the idea that he was losing cast members to movies. In fact, The Blues Brothers was invented by John (Belushi) and Danny (Aykroyd) when they were in Toronto, years before "SNL." We actually had a development deal to use those characters and make a movie before they even performed it on "SNL." I think "SNL" is an extraordinary accomplishment, but I never watch the show. Belushi would call me up and ask me if I saw the show, and I'd say no. He'd say, "F--- you!" and slam down the phone. Because if it's Saturday night and I'm up that late, I'm out. Or I'm at home asleep.
Q	There was a relationship, though, between you and some of these guys. Like Belushi and Aykroyd from the Blues Brothers movie. There must be really tight bonds.
A	With John and Danny especially. Dan Aykroyd is a great man. I am a friend and a huge fan. I've worked with Danny a lot. In fact, a lot more than people think. Danny was in Twilight Zone, Trading Places, Spies Like Us, Into The Night. I just finished my first independent film since Kentucky Fried Movie, called Susan's Place. It stars Nastassja Kinski, Lara Flynn Boyle, Billy Zane and Dan Aykroyd. So I work with Danny a lot. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Danny. And I've worked with Eddie Murphy three times. I've worked with a lot of these guys.
Q	And you've done a lot of movies. This is the sixth movie that you've done that's been released on DVD.
A	Really, I had no idea. Which ones?
Q	Amazon Women on the Moon, Blues Brothers, Blues Brothers 2000, An American Werewolf In London...
A	I hope the video transfer on American Werewolf is the good transfer. Two years ago, I supervised a transfer for laserdisc. Up to that point, all of the home video sucked, it was really poor quality. So I hope they used the right transfer for the DVD.
Q	Now when there's a remaster or a new transfer there must be opportunities for you to make the changes that didn't make the release print or the home video transfer. How do you go about deciding how much involvement you're going to have and what you want added?
A	Usually it's not up to the director as far as involvement. In the DGA contract, the director has to be given the opportunity to see a transfer. The word is "consult," which means that they send you a copy. But you're supposed to have the opportunity to see a transfer of the film from the print to VHS. What has happened over the years has not been good. The transfer of Trading Places sucked. I was horrified when I received a tape of Trading Places. I looked at it and thought that there was something wrong, and I realized that they had left an entire audio track out of the transfer. Usually there are four tracks of audio, and there were only three. The reason for that, I learned, was that they didn't get the video rights to some of the songs they used. So they, without my knowledge, replaced the songs poorly, remixed it poorly and left off an entire track. There were key plot elements like bells and alarms. When they are on the train, you couldn't hear the chug-chug of the engine. There's nothing you can do about it. I made a lot of noise, and, hopefully, they did something about it. But that was a well-photographed film, and the transfer was really shoddy. Animal House is ironic. Back when they first started home video, they would just take one of the prints from the theater and use it for the transfer, scratches and all. Now, with advanced technology and digital mastering, they asked me to supervise a transfer for the 20th anniversary, so you have much more control over the image. Ironically, this new version looks better on tape, laser and DVD than it did in the theaters. That's remarkable. It's really in pristine shape. But I've had a lot of movies end up in bad shape.
Q	But hopefully, they'll all get that kind of attention during the remastering.
A	Well it depends. Ultimately, unfortunately, it is up to some technician. For years, there were problems where, for instance, you'd shoot something for television, and a technician is told that this particular needle needs to be between two numbers for broadcast standards. You might want something to look darker, but television was about being bright. So the technician would get your film, think that it's wrong and turn the brightness up and blow out your picture. Now they're a little more lenient with shows like "The X-Files." But you can always get screwed.
Q	And you can have your hands tied if you shoot something in widescreen and it gets mastered in pan & scan.
A	I've shot tons of films in regular widescreen, but I've never shot in Panavision or CinemaScope. I almost shot Three Amigos! in Panavision, but something made a big impression on me: Gone With The Wind, when it was on NBC years ago. That is still the top film in terms of attendance figures, you know, people in seats. That first time on NBC, more people saw it than had ever seen it in the theater. And that depressed the shit out of me. It became clear that I had to protect my picture. Now that the letterbox editions are showing up more and more, I think I might try to do something in Panavision. There's an interesting thing that many people don't understand. You know how they released this "digitally remastered" version of Gone With The Wind earlier this year? They said it was restored beautifully, and if you saw it in the theaters you saw that it wasn't. It was that they restored the home video beautifully, and to get to press they re-released it theatrically. It was a bummer because, if you see it in the theater, it's some funky old print. But if you see the home video it's gorgeous. It's beautifully restored if you watch it electronically. The thing I will say about DVD, and I'm sure many people realize this, is that when a new technology comes in, the real reason is to resell the software so that it doesn't cost you money. It's great for movie buffs because the distributors have to come up with these reasons to buy the new titles. So they were doing director's cuts and stuff like that. Like The Blues Brothers DVD that came out has 12 minutes of film no one has ever seen before. But, for me, the real boon is these documentaries. Some of them are real good. I just watched The Wild Bunch on DVD. There's a documentary on The Blues Brothers that is particularly terrific.
Q	Is there some kind of commentary track on this release of Animal House?
A	No. There's the remastering, which is beautiful, and a behind-the-scenes documentary. It's an hour long and is very entertaining, because they interviewed all the survivors from the cast and people like Elmer Bernstein (who wrote the movie's score) and the editors and studio executives. It's really fun because it's sort of like (Kurosawa's) Rashomon; you hear everybody's story but from a different point of view. MORE