Simon West: Simon Says

Q: Do they have sex?

A: Well, we skate as close to the edge as possible, but it is a PG film. I'm sure there are going to be lots of 12-year-old boys out there freezing frames on their DVDs and printing them out on their computers. That's the fun of it, skating as close to the edge as you can without going over.

Q: Where do you see yourself with respect to the group of successful directors who graduated from commercials--guys like Alan Parker, Ridley Scott, Michael Bay? Is there one of those directors who influenced you?

A: The film business had basically died in England in the late '80s and early '90s, so I did look for role models when I decided I wanted to make movies, and the people who'd made it were Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Alan Parker. They'd all done it through commercials because commercial work in Europe generally involved more storytelling and higher budgets.

Q: You were originally going to direct Black Hawk Down, which Ridley Scott is now making. Why did you let go of it?

A: I got rights to the Mark Bowden book, pitched Con Air producer Jerry Bruckheimer and he loved it straight away. We developed it together for more than a year. When the script was ready to go, I'd started Tomb Raider already, so it was going to have to wait. But because there was the prospect of a strike, Jerry called and said they really wanted to get going. I couldn't walk away from Tomb Raider in the middle of editing, so we had to get someone else. Luckily, we got Ridley.

Q: So you're helping with the ongoing renaissance of the guy who helped show you the way into film directing.

A: It's funny how these things go around. I spent a long time developing the script, but Ridley will do his own particular kind of magic on it. I wouldn't dream of telling him what I thought. I'm really pleased he's doing it. I was so pleased by Gladiator, and I thought, this is exactly what Ridley should be doing--epic storytelling with great bravado.

Q: Why did you shoot Tomb Raider in Cambodia, a country best remembered by film audiences as the setting of all the carnage depicted in The Killing Fields?

A: It was untouched and incredible. The country had been closed down until very recently. The last Western film to shoot there was during the early '60s. We shot in 900-year-old temples that had been lost in the jungle for 400 years and had huge trees growing out of them. In trying to avoid the genre clichés, I didn't want to go to Egypt or Greece. I wanted to shoot in the East. Originally, I was going to shoot at the Great Wall of China, but there wasn't enough time to do it there, so the studio suggested I build a part of the wall in Scotland. I thought that building the Great Wall of China in the winter of Scotland wasn't going to look very good. Then I came across the temples of Cambodia, and found the country was interested in having people come and shoot. When you go to a place like that, you do it with the understanding that you'll give yourself lots of space for improvisation, because that's where the real magic can happen.

Q: That's where the real nightmares can happen, too. Didn't you have an urge to do it under more controlled conditions?

A: Yes, but filmmaking is such hard work and leaves you with so little free time that I actually do think, "Where would I like to go in the world to learn something, instead of just breezing in, blowing up a mountain and then heading out?" The luxury of filmmaking is being able to say, "I'd love to do something in that country." Often there are hard conditions--Iceland, where we also shot, was quite dangerous--but you learn a lot. You haven't wasted two years making a film that takes two hours to watch.

Q: You seem to be aware of the toll filmmaking takes, as opposed to some, who think mostly about building careers and upping those price quotes.

A: Filmmaking started off as a hobby for me. Now it's taken over my whole life, but a part of me still regards it as one of my hobbies. It's time away from the other things, so I have to make sure it's worthwhile. Filmmaking is constant dealmaking, down to sacrificing time with your family. I've got two little children. You say, I'll spend a year and a half doing this, then spend three months off with my kids. I didn't take my family to Cambodia because conditions there were too harsh. You leave your family behind unless you're one of these people I only read about who have these exotic, idyllic shoots where they sit on a Hawaiian beach for six months. Somehow, my films never work out that way. I'm always hanging down some crevice, or being eaten by bugs. When I get one of those cushy jobs on a beach, I'll bring my family. I'm getting more interested in one of those as I get older.

Q: So if they do Baywatch: The Movie, you're the man to call.

A: People might scoff, but I definitely think there's a movie in that.

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Michael Fleming interviewed director Michael Bay for the May issue of Movieline.

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