You can make a box-office winner out of a video game. For all those who disagree, here's how British director Simon West turned Angelina Jolie into Lara Croft and created the movie Tomb Raider.
After directing the blockbusters Con Air and The General's Daughter, Simon West had the kind of commercial clout that gives you a lot of leeway in choosing your next project. He turned down Erin Brockovich because two other projects had hold of his imagination. One was Black Hawk Down, the true story of the U.S. raid on Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, a project West had developed with producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The other was even closer to his heart. He'd grown up enamored of the surreal British TV series "The Prisoner," in which Patrick McGoohan played an ex-spy kept captive in a village by forces trying to deprogram him. Adapting the show into a film had long been a pet project of West's. But neither Black Hawk Down nor The Prisoner turned out to be West's follow-up to The General's Daughter. He decided instead to turn the video game Tomb Raider into a movie. Why would West want to be involved with Tomb Raider and its big-breasted lethal heroine, Lara Croft, when Hollywood had such an atrocious track record with similar transformations like Super Mario Bros., Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter? He had his reasons, and now he's talking like he's got one of the biggest hits of the summer on his hands, with a sequel already in the works.
MICHAEL FLEMING: Was Tomb Raider a coveted assignment for a director?
SIMON WEST: I'm not sure. I know there were people desperate to do it who were passionate about the game, but you need someone who's more passionate about filmmaking than game playing. Maybe that's been the mistake in the past. I was never obsessed with Lara Croft. I wasn't even a video-game player. Making a film out of a video game seemed appalling to me. I had turned Tomb Raider down a couple of times, but then I decided it could be turned into something special and different.
Q: What about it brought you around to that conclusion?
A: I'd just come off The General's Daughter, a dark drama where the passions of the characters were what I concentrated on. With Tomb Raider there was drama, character and passion, but I could also run wild with surreal images, humor and action. That got me excited.
Q: But wasn't the project you really wanted to make an adaptation of the '60s TV program "The Prisoner"?
A: In the end, it's actually because of The Prisoner that I did Tomb Raider. The Prisoner got sold a couple of times in a shakeout between Polygram, Universal and USA Films, and that uncertainty pushed back the schedule on which the script could be ready. When Tomb Raider came up again, I suddenly thought I could make it very cool and surreal and unusual, which is what I was going to do with The Prisoner. I try to subvert genres when I make my films. For me, Con Air was an action film that was really a black comedy--I got all those cool, independent actors on Scott Rosenberg's dialogue to subvert the genre a bit.
Q: There was a lot of speculation about who might play Lara Croft. Why did you choose Angelina Jolie?
A: I wanted someone with a dark edge, something Angelina has on every level. She's turned in tour de force performances in very dark stories, and in her personal life people see her as this dangerous, wild person. I wanted that to rub off on the character. Lara Croft is an adrenaline junkie living on the edge of moral correctness. I knew Angelina was going to give that to me. She's also gorgeous and voluptuous, which is a main characteristic, if not the main characteristic, of Lara Croft. If Angelina had said no, I don't think I would have done the film. You can throw all the pyrotechnics and CGI at the screen you want, but if you don't cast right, don't even bother getting out of bed.
Q: Did you have strong convictions about casting John Travolta in The General's Daughter?
A: Yes. I wanted to do this very dark drama about the cover-up of a rape in the military, but I wanted a wider audience to see it than you usually get with this kind of subject matter. I wanted someone they trusted to take them through the story. Audiences, especially American audiences, trust John Travolta. They love to see him in control, with enough room to be warm and charming and a little bit dangerous. I made sure I created a world he fit in that way. Still, I was surprised the movie did so well.
Q: Did Angelina warm to the character of Lara Croft right away?
A: Normally at the end of a film, you never want to see a character again, but both Angelina and I were already talking about scheduling the next one. She said Lara Croft was the role closest to herself. Lara sleeps with knives, she can handle any weapon, doesn't take shit from anybody. That's Angelina.
Q: How good an actress is she?
A: She's one of those actors who come along once every generation. I have 100 percent belief that she will be a major star for the next 40 or 50 years. She's got something that you see very rarely. It's just a natural ability very few have. She knows exactly how to work the camera, how to operate with other actors. I really believe she's a genius.
Q: Audiences traditionally have had trouble buying women as action heroes, from Geena Davis to Demi Moore. Why will Angelina work?
A: You can't act that stuff. You either were genetically born to be believable in that way or not. I've never had any doubt about her. I never had to stop and say, "You know, that looked a bit girly."
Q: Ridley Scott said he thought Sigourney Weaver worked as Ripley in Alien and its sequels because she was statuesque and authoritative. Lara Croft has to be sexy enough to bring guys to theaters, but believable in action. Is that a tough balancing act?
A: Maybe it's a generational thing, but audiences are more open now to having women in authority. And from a purely gratuitous young-male audience point of view, it seems to me bizarre that it would ever be an issue. You say, "Listen, kids, you are getting a film with fantastic action, but you'll also get to look at gorgeous girls, all the time." What red-blooded adolescent male would say no? I don't understand why there isn't more of it, really. You can have all the fun of action and thrills, and you can also have your first sexual experience. If I were a young teenager, I'd think that was money well spent.
Q: There were a lot of script versions of Tomb Raider when you came onto the project. What did you change when you rewrote it?
A: I tried to get away from the clichés of the genre. I wanted a modern, high-tech version that took itself seriously. After Raiders of the Lost Ark, action-adventure movies of that type were all set in the '20s and '30s and were campy. The characters go off to Egypt, press the magic stone on the wall, and the big Styrofoam bricks move back, and all the little spiders and the rats come running out, and you go, Yeah, that's what always happens. I tried to go after a New Age mysticism vibe as a way of getting back the magic that used to be in these kinds of stories years ago. People loved them because they took them to parts of the world they'd never been to. Well, now everybody goes everywhere in the world, easily, so what you have to do is take people to a mental place they would like to go but have never been.
Q: How did you come to cast Angelina's father, Jon Voight, as Lara Croft's father?
A: Angelina didn't grow up with Jon at home, and, ironically, the story I created about Lara Croft was that her father had disappeared when she was very young. I thought of having Jon Voight play Lara's father but I was a bit apprehensive about suggesting it to her. It's difficult just having Sunday lunch with anybody's family, let alone having a big emotional scene. But she jumped at it and he loved the idea, too. Getting them together was amazing. Watching them, we had chills running up our spines and we were welling up. The scenes were so real, even traumatic for us. What they were saying to each other was heart-rending, really. And then the ruthless director shot it on film and is putting it out there in 3,000 theaters. Jon was so supportive of Angelina, he hung around on the set for a week after, leaning over my shoulder. Every time she did something great and I hadn't congratulated her enough, he'd nudge me to. He was such an overbearing father. If she was walking on something high, doing a stunt, he was worried about her, and didn't want me to do another take. I had to kick him off the set because it was sort of like having the father-in-law there when you're taking his daughter out on a date.
Q: Angelina is coming off an Oscar-winning performance in Girl, Interrupted, and you directed Nicolas Cage in Con Air, not long after he'd won the Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas. After winning Oscars, do actors have any trouble giving themselves to action roles that might seem frivolous by comparison?
A: I found the opposite. When I did Con Air, I had Nic, John Cusack, John Malkovich, Ving Rhames and Steve Buscemi, and they were all happy not to be narrowly pigeonholed in the art-house movie world. They were so glad to have Ml6s in their hands, [to be] shouting at the tops of their voices. They loved it. I also made sure I didn't throw them into a world of total banality, which they'd hate. I've been lucky to get Oscar actors. It makes my work easier to be starting on such a high level. I trained classically at the BBC with people like Mike Leigh and I learned how to create an environment in which actors can be at their most creative.
Q: When Cage did Con Air, he really pumped the weights, and Angelina obviously spent time getting into great shape. Do actors who aren't usually so physical on-screen want to show off their bodies when they do action films?
A: Probably the men have more vanity. The joke on Con Air was that I couldn't keep anyone's shirt on. Everybody wanted to take off their shirts, and some weren't in as good shape as others. With Angelina, it's just a total comfort with her body, and why not? I couldn't find a bad angle on her. I could shoot her from below her chin or behind her ear. I was doing shower scenes with her, and she's walking around the set naked, totally relaxed with who she is.
Q: Did you want Lara Croft to be more Indiana Jones or James Bond--or something darker?
A: To me, it was something like the original James Bond, where it was a little darker, a little more twisted, semisadistic. I wanted it edgy, with real sweat, real blood, real pain. But at the center of it, a wry sense of humor. The other thing I insisted on was a genuine portrayal of England. The film was bought by an American studio and originally developed with American writers, who gave the predictable view of what England is, that '60s version found in Austin Powers. Lots of references to the queen, red buses, bobbies with funny helmets on, everyone drinking tea. The London I know is edgier.
Q: Sean Connery's Bond was sexually adventurous, even ruthless. Can you create a similar sexual context if your hero is a woman?
A: I did have to think about where the sexual tension would come from. That just made me eliminate more clichés. Lara couldn't hook up with a weak male partner she was dragging through the jungle, which you always see with male action heroes. The sexual tension here has to be between the bad guy and her, which fits perfectly with Angelina's persona. She would probably be drawn to a guy almost as dangerous as she is. His evil streak is a turn-on, and the erotic interplay is almost an S and M relationship where they are being aggressive and violent toward each other, but love each other. She might have to kill him, but they'll have a helluva good time beforehand.
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.