Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Cloverfield News

Here is some Cloverfield news from the last week.

IGN: Cloverfield Actor Readies for Destruction
"I think he's somebody that people expected would be further along in his life than he is. This is not another in a long string of accomplishments. This is like the first time he's getting his s--t together. And he's also in a relationship with this girl, which has always been a friendship but has recently changed, and that's kind of when catastrophe strikes. And things get put into perspective for him."
"What we were doing wasn't exactly free-form, complete improvisation. It was more like, 'Put this in your own words. This is what happens in the scene. If the line that's here doesn't feel real to you, doesn't feel organic, then make it your own.' And that flexibility really allowed us to get something that felt real."
ShockTillYouDrop: Michael Stahl-David Talks Cloverfield Experience
[Reeves] wasn't going to make me do something I didn't feel was real. If there was something on the script I didn't feel quite like it would happen in that moment, we wouldn't do it. I would say something else, do something else. It wasn't about trying to be clever and come up with your own stuff. It's not a very talky movie, it was more about questioning what would you do in this situation? What would I do?"

"I think in some ways it's as much a survival movie as it is about the monster," he continues. "The monster is definitely the problem, but you're seeing it the way we would, we don't pan back and watch it perfectly. It is going to be exciting. It is contemporary film vocabulary - this kind of first-hand account, something that could've been on YouTube or something. Someone just holds up the camera and starts filming, there are probably other accounts, [our footage is] just the one the government happens to find."
NY Daily News: 'Cloverfield' has one huge secret
It's been a Godzilla-size task to keep that kind of secrecy in an era of spoiler Web sites, saturation advertising and product tie-ins.

"The actual creature, he's hiding somewhere," jokes the film's director, Matt Reeves. "Everybody knew about how part of the fun of the whole thing was sneaking up on people."

NY Daily News: Odette Yustman, in the company of monsters in 'Cloverfield'
“My mum is Cuban and my father is of Italian and French descent and was born in Bogota, Colombia, and raised in Nicaragua. But they moved to California a long time ago,” she says.
NY Post: Beauty And The Beast (Odette Yustman Interview)

I couldn't tell you [about the movie's ending] even if I wanted to - I haven't seen it yet. ... Honestly, no one has. I have seen a rough cut of the film, but as for the climax it will be a complete surprise for me as well as everyone else when it premieres. The producers won't let anyone see it.

Hollywood Reporter: 'Cloverfield' monster movie hoping for monster business
"You know, it's funny because when we were making the trailer we weren't sure if it was a smart thing to be doing or a disastrous thing because we were spending a lot of time using up what was our limited prep for the movie and not really sure whether or not it was going to take away from the prep that was needed for the movie," Reeves told me. "But the truth of the matter is it was also the situation we found ourselves in because the script at that point was not ready. Drew was still writing it on the weekends. He was working on 'Lost' at the time so (doing the trailer) was really what we could do. It only turned out (well) in retrospect.

Another movie Reeves said he had in mind while working on "Cloverfield" was "'Alien,' which I thought was a terrifically suspenseful movie. When you did see the alien it was absolutely terrifying, but there were long periods where you were just waiting for when it was going to come out and reveal itself. It was so brilliantly designed and shot, the way that film was put together. So obviously those films were in the back of my head in terms of thinking, 'OK, how can we try and create some suspense?' So I watched those movies. I love John Carpenter's 'The Thing,' which is, I think, a kind of underrated movie. I think it's a very, very frightening movie. But, again, you're not seeing the creature continually. You're getting these kind of long build-ups.

5 comments:

  1. took long enough for the news papers to get involved.

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  2. ok, i stopped reading at "the creature's hiding somewhere"

    that's what i am talking about!

    there is a hidden corner of the 'net
    where the creature is sittin, laughing
    at us, playing hide and seek!

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  3. No kidding. Funny thing is one of the first movies I thought of (back in the day before we were sure it wasnt a sequel or remake) was that it was sequel or retelling of John Carpenters The Thing. Alien life form that gets into hosts, needs thawed out(hence the warm temps), infects any smaller host that come together to make a big host monster, Kurt Russel was in that and the Statue of Liberty scene was influenced by Escape from New York. Even later seeing the woman inflate in behind the curtain reminded me of what happened to some of the characters in that movie and well, the roar is similar. ANYHOW...yes, we are past that...not plugging that idea again...just revisiting the speculation that was limited to these blogs. My point is (collective sigh) that I guess the mainstream media didnt have much interest in our theories or this type of marketing because it wasnt done before nor was it a mainstream thing with the audience it appealed too. The possible huge success of this movie and this campaign will change that in the future.

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  4. tom said... ok, i stopped reading at "the creature's hiding somewhere" that's what i am talking about! there is a hidden corner of the 'net where the creature is sittin, laughing at us, playing hide and seek!

    I think he's speaking metaphorically about the movie, not about spoiler photos showing up on the internet.

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  5. I was thinking that it was kind of too coincidental the plot point that this group of friends has two people intimately involved with Tagruato who are involved with the monster, but I guess the reason might be that if there is a sequel, then there would be the possibility of Rob going to work for these guys and looking for Teddy or starting to discover the link between Tagruato and the monster. Who knows.

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