The Extreme Sport of Being John McTiernan

Q; You'd had huge hits before The Last Action Hero. Did you carry that sting for a long time?

A: I went home and didn't want to talk to anybody for a year and a half. Stayed in Wyoming and did the hay. I had to lick my wounds.

Q: When you were ready to come back, did your recent failure really affect you?

A: Oh, of course it did. But see, I never perceived myself as being on top. What it did was accelerate the process of weaning myself from a kind of pious mentality, from the buzz. When I was younger and at the American Film Institute, there was a lot of gossip, and I had no difficulty understanding that 97 percent of it was bullshit and that I should ignore it. It's far more difficult to feel that way about large portions of the grown-up industry. I had to realize there are some things you can't control.

Q: One other movie that fared badly, The 13th Warrior, was based on Michael Crichton's book Eaters of the Dead. That film came out at the same time as The Thomas Crown Affair and you didn't promote it. Is it a sore subject?

A: Of course. What is this, a tour of my hard knocks and learning experiences? I feel like I'm having dinner with a fight reporter, with you talking about that bout with so-and-so. "You were doing pretty good until you caught one in the chin and got knocked out in the eighth. How'd you feel getting carried out of the ring?"

Q: It's OK to say "no comment."

A: Well, look. In an effort to get out of the "five fat fish" business--the hundreds of people lining up for the five people whose names alone will get a movie made--I made a deal with a star author, Michael Crichton. I probably shouldn't go much further here because I won't be saying nice things, and I don't feel like sobbing in my beer about this. It's a tough business. So what? Did anyone ever say it wasn't? All kinds of shit goes on. If anything, I've probably taken the hard knocks too seriously. It didn't do me any good. It's better if you just pay attention to your work. I'm beginning to get back some confidence that I lost.

Q: The original Rollerball was a polemic about the individual in a futuristic totalitarian society. Your film is set in 2005 and seems to be more about personal greed.

A: The studio originally had the remake set way in the future, but I thought, "Do you need to go 400 years in the future to make it plausible that some people get hurt so that others can get rich?" Nonsense. All you have to do is get it out of North America or Western Europe. Our economic system of entrepreneurial capitalism is spreading all over the world, and there's often an absence of a moral system that would put limits on what's done. In the movie we've got something like the WWF, with promoters who discover that their ratings and profits go up if they get a little blood on the track every week. A couple of American kids get caught in the middle of this.

Q: How happy are you with Rollerball?

A: I might be so far out there on Rollerball that this could be another time that I get my head handed to me. But lack of failure is clear evidence of either being an absolute genius or being a coward. I know Rollerball is exciting for me. I hope it's exciting for the audience. And it is enormously political. Someone said, recently, "This movie is about your Hollywood bosses." Wait till you see Jean Reno. The best villain I've ever done. I'm so fucking thrilled with him. He is hysterically funny and charming and terrifying.

Q: Better than Alan Rickman in Die Hard?. He set the standard for modern cinematic villainy.

A: For people in our industry? This man is more terrifying.

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Michael Fleming interviewed Joe Johnston for the July issue of Movieline.

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