[h1]On Set Interview: Directors Joe and Anthony Russo Talk ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’[/h1]You guys knew you were wired for it, but were you surprised you landed on the radar for a gig like this?
Joe Russo: As a fan of this stuff, I’d known for years … My brother and I, when we first got into the business, tried to get the rights to The Lord of the Rings. There was a period in the 90s when they were available for a second. We just know how difficult it is to take that kind of material and turn it into something of that scale. So, I think he had seen the paintball episode on Community. He thinks outside the box. “You know what, these guys get action, clearly they’re skewing genre on the show, so they understand genre and how to deconstruct it. Maybe they have a secret love for it,” which we did.
What are some of the challenges and advantages of coming into the Marvel Universe, that already exists in its own right, and trying to create something new and take some of the different turns that you guys are taking?
Joe Russo: There hasn’t been any real challenges for us, to be honest; I know that sounds crazy, but it really has been all advantages, you know? It’s a great piece of material, we have great actors who understand their characters, like I said, we got to reboot a little bit on the tone, which is great. Almost everything, all the ideas that came to the table are in the movie. It so rarely happens that way. So, creatively, it’s been a very rewarding film for us. We were just saying, the most fulfilling job of our careers.
Arrested Development was a struggle, that was a very difficult show, where the studio was not supportive of it; it was the red-headed stepchild when we were making it. There were quotes that were thrown our way that were vaguely insulting while we were making it with Mitch coming from the network, so it was made under conflict and controversy.
I think that show became what it became because the three of us – me, Anthony and Mitch – didn’t give a ****, because we had nothing to lose at that time. So we said, “Alright, we’ll make it as radical as we want to because what do we care? They already don’t think the show’s going to work.” That’s one environment to work under; this has been the exact opposite of that. It’s been support and real infrastructure.
What are some of the other pros and cons of being in the Marvel Cinematic Universe tapestry? Planting the right Easter eggs here or there, not getting too distracted by that stuff? For you guys, what’s been the challenge.
Joe Russo: Yeah, the fun part of that, if you are a comic book geek like me, you get off on that stuff. That’s the exciting component of that, “What can we set up for the future?” And they’re constantly pitching out ideas that not only just effects your movie, but might also have a ripple effect in the other films, and Joss [Whedon] is reading the scripts, the Thor script and the Cap script, and going, “Okay, this is where I’m getting the characters and this is where I have to pick them up in the next movie.” So, it’s a a weird sort of, I don’t know, tapestry of writers and directors working together to create this universe. It’s sort of organic, it’s not structured. Of course, there are things you can always go borrow from the storylines of the books, but it stays very fluid, the process.
Anthony Russo: Also, I think it comes very natural to us because the work we did on Arrested Development and Community, we played with a lot of foreshadowing and callbacks and…
Joe Russo: And layering.
Anthony Russo: And tracking that stuff over a season of television, or multiple seasons, it’s just something that’s in our … we’re sort of patterned for it anyway. I think that’s one reason why we may have made a nice fit here at Marvel. It’s like we sort of understand how you take a larger story and wrangle it into a moment, yet keep them connected.
You mentioned earlier about having no challenges, but is there a particular aspect of this film, maybe a sequence that you were getting into that really excited you?
Joe Russo: Absolutely! I mean, look, we are action nuts, really. We do study action movies. My DVD player, or my AppleTV lives at quarter-speed. I watch things and try to dissect them.
It’s one of the things that was so exciting on Community for us, we’re constantly skewing genre; we’re genre nuts. So there were a couple of action sequences that we knew were going to be really complex. We wanted to bring some style of action that maybe hasn’t been seen in American movies in a little while, just the style of fighting and an intensity so that we really feel it. These stunt guys are really taking hits. It’s a very visceral execution of a lot of the stuff. We had a huge sequence in Cleveland where we had to shut down the freeway for two weeks. We always knew that that would probably be the most difficult part of the shoot, not only because of the length of the action sequence, but just fighting the elements, being outside, the city got upset, clearly, because they were all enduring traffic for a movie. But those sequences are the ones we really get the most excited about, because one of our big pitches to Kevin and one of the things that really attracted us to the movie was the ability to come at it with a fresh point of view really on the action front, you know? It’s very gritty. We’re working with Spiro Razatos, who does all the Fast movies, as a second unit director. The three of us got very engaged in how far can we push things, how aggressive can we make them look. There are some cool car chases in the movie that are very influenced by 70s chases … To Live and Die in L.A., I’m a huge fan of Ronin, I think that movie’s genius. I think [John] Frankenheimer schooled everybody as an 80-year-old, you know, “This is how you do it.” So it’s got a lot of that. I think Ronin might be the biggest influence on the car stuff in the movie, just in terms of the sound work that he did on that film, the aggressiveness of the camera work, how close could we get the cameras to the cars, a few cameras were destroyed in the process, that kind of stuff. But it’s all about pushing it, pushing it, and pushing it.
Anthony Russo: What most excited us, too, is how we come up with these great action set pieces that play to Cap as a character as much as possible. Looking at him and how he’s unique in the Marvel universe and what sets him apart, and the fact that, essentially, he’s a man only more so. It’s not flying across the sky, or transforming into something else. So we sort of came up with an approach of a hard-hitting, hardcore realism version of what a superhero movie can be on an action level.
Do you get creative with the shield?
Joe Russo: We do get creative with the shield! That was a big thing for us. The approach for us with Cap was this: In the 40s, it makes sense. He’s off the streets. He can fight like John Sullivan. It’s that style of big swings, the shield’s very pronounced, because he hasn’t necessarily been trained yet. Now that he’s in the future, he has a fast mind – it’s part of what the serum does to him – it’s a tactical mind, he learns things quickly. So for us, our approach was, he would absorb everything in that year, year and a half, all the training that he could possibly get, you know? And all the tools at his disposal would be affected by that training, so there are some interesting moments with the shield where he even uses just one handle on it.
He uses it more in an Eastern style to fight people. We figured, for us, those are the things that excite me about the character. I like post-modern … when [Frank] Miller released The Dark Knight and I was like 12 or 13, it blew my mind, and it changed my whole approach to comic books. I like post-modern deconstruction of heroes. It just feels to me like there’s more layers there for the character. Included in that would be, how do we make Cap modern? How do we make him feel modern? And that’s what I like about the MCU versus the comic books. Look, I’ve already read it; I don’t need to see the literal interpretation of that. My imagination’s pretty good, I can sit at home and figure that stuff out. I want to go see some fresh … If we didn’t support people like Brubaker, we’d never have the Winter Soldier storyline, which I think is one of the best comic story lines in the last 50 years. So that’s the way we approached this movie was how do we deconstruct it? How do we put him in a new place that would appeal to people of similar tastes?
Can you talk a bit more about S.H.I.E.L.D.? It sounds like they have a major role. And what we might learn, plus your take on Nick Fury and Maria Hill. I know we met her in The Avengers, but we don’t know as much about her as some of the other characters.
Anthony Russo: If you go back to the relationship question, too, the relationship between Cap and Nick Fury in this movie is really rich and complicated. These two guys are very different animals, and there’s this sort of plot that sets them up in a way where they really have to confront their differences and sort it out, and it’s a messy process. But it’s all wrapped up in terms of, “What is S.H.I.E.L.D.?” And what Cap started fighting for in the first place, and what that organization is, and what that mission evolved to in several incarnations.
In prepping for the movie, did you get to do some fanboy indulgence and have good long conversations with Brubaker, or even Stan Lee?
Joe Russo: Absolutely. Yup. We had dinner with Brubaker. It was one of the first things we did when we signed on. We made sure we had his blessing. He’s a brilliant writer. We wanted to pick his brain about where the character came from, what he’s thinking, what the themes are behind the character. We’ve been in contact with Brubaker all along, and there’s even a Brubaker Easter egg somewhere in the movie. Stan Lee, we didn’t get to meet with until we did his cameo, but he’s fantastic.
Initially it had me wondering what the **** is wrong with him
...anyways, the first one's on FX right now and later if anyone ain't seen it.
