Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Title: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Gary Oldman, Wynona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits, Keanu Reeves, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell

Dracula has been brought to cinematic life on more occasions than any other character. I mean sure there’s tons of James Bond movies, Frankenstein movies and Godzilla has its fare share of films (going on 28 as I write this)…but even more films have used the character of Dracula in one form or another. So it truly is one of the most iconic characters in cinematic history, period. So naturally, the question inevitably arises: which of these adaptations is the best one? You ask me, my favorite, bar none is Francis Ford Coppola’s take on the character. It’s just so epic, so classy, so operatic, such a well rounded production. But once upon a time, producers and critics thought the film would end up being a major flop. They even went as far as calling it “Vampire of the Vanities” in allusion to that other major box office flop Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), some deemed it too weird and violent for mass audiences. Test screenings led to Coppola editing about 25 minutes of gory bits; of course Coppola must have been shaking in his boots, I mean, another flop? Even worse is the fact that Coppola was hoping that this film would save American Zoetrope, his film studio, which was in bankruptcy. Was Bram Stoker’s Dracula destined to become yet another flop in Francis Ford Coppola’s career?

"I...am...Dracula. I bid you welcome"

All the negative pre-release buzz for Bram Stoker’s Draculawas not without merits. True, Francis Ford Coppola is one of the greatest American directors who ever walked the face of the earth, but Coppola is also no stranger to box office disasters. For example, One from the Heart (1982) lost a lot of money as did Tetro (2009) and these are not the only turkeys in his resume. Thing is that even though some of Coppola’s films don’t exactly ignite the box office, you can’t deny their artistic merits. I mean, I look at films like Tetro and Youth Without Youth (2007) and I am mesmerized by them, I love every second of both of these films, but I also realize they are not for everyone. I recognize how incredibly ‘artsy fartsy’ they are and how they can in no way be considered “commercially viable” films, but damn, aren’t they beautiful films when you really look at them? Same goes for many of Coppola’s films, and that’s probably what producers and critics feared would happen with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, they feared it would be another expensive, beautiful and artful flop. At the end of the day, awesomeness prevailed and so the film went on to make a hefty profit worldwide, saving Coppola and his studio in the process. I guess you can’t really compete with quality. A good film is a good film, and audiences recognized that in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. 

Amongst the ever increasing amount of Dracula films, Coppola’s take on the character still stands at #1 for me for various reasons. The first reason is that it’s such a great production, I mean; here we have the cream of the crop in every single department. It’s not surprising that the resulting film is such an artistic tour de force; Coppola gathered amazing talent to bring his vision to life. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was such an exquisite film that it marked one of the very few occassions in which a horror film actually got some recognition by the Academy, the only other one I can remember was Silence of the Lambs (1991). Bram Stoker’s Dracula ended up winning three academy awards in the areas in which it excels the most: costume design, sound editing and make- up effects; but  If you ask me I would have also given them the Oscar for art direction, because it excels on this as well, the sets are wow, beautiful, epic, like the old Universal Horror Films where everything was huge! One look at this film and you can tell it was done with great care and interest in making something that we’d never been seen before. Coppola managed to evoke a feeling of other worldliness, there’s always something not right, just a little off, as if the natural rules of physics did not apply. Coppola wanted the film to be bathed in a strange, surreal vibe  every time a vampire appears. This is why, when we are in Dracula’s castle, characters walk on walls, shadows seem to have a life of their own and water drops fall upwards instead of down.  

And the cast, well, for me it’s beyond amazing save for the one weak link known as Keanu Reeves. On his behalf I will say that Keanu was worn down when he made Bram Stoker’s Dracula, he’d just made three films in a row! Those films were Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), My Own Private Idaho(1991) and Point Break (1991)! Nowadays Keanu recognizes his fault and excuses himself for his poor performance in Bram Stoker’s Dracula; he admitted “I just didn’t have anything left to give”. But getting past that whole Keanu Reeves thing, the rest of the cast does an amazing job in my book. Gary Oldman is fantastic as Count Dracula. Some people don’t seem to enjoy his performance for whatever the reason; probably because the film is a bit on the theatrical side. Some of the performances might feel a bit over the top or overtly melodramatic to some viewers, but to be honest, it’s what I like about this version of Dracula. Characters seem to feel more intensely, love without control, and in my book, this makes all the perfect sense in the world because when we really look at it, this is a passionate love story. This is a movie that speaks of the kind of passion that will blind us and make us go crazy with lust and desire, so lines like “take me away from all this DEATH!” and “The blood is the life!” are spoken with the appropriate amount of intensity in my book. Mina and Dracula really feel for each other, their love is not an ordinary love; this is a love that transcends both time and death! The rest of the cast is astoundingly good, of special note is Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, who plays the character diametrically opposed to Oldman’s Dracula. This Van Helsing loves food, life, singing, dancing! He is full of life, as opposed to Dracula who represents death and decay.

I love how the film serves as an allegory for the sexual politics between male and female. For example, Mina and Lucy are characters that are in the prime of their youth; looking forward to getting married and exploring their sexuality by reading the Kamasutra. Both young girls are curious about sex and its many possibilities, there’s even a hint of bisexuality in them when they share a secret kiss. So when an experienced dog like Dracula comes along and shows them how it’s done, they experience this sexual awakening and suddenly it’s a whole new world for both Mina and Lucy. Dracula has always been a character that’s representative of mans sexual impulses and this film is no exception. On this film Dracula satisfies his purely physical desires with Lucy, but it’s with Mina that he finds true love. So the film points this out to us, the difference between a physical relationship, based solely on sexual pleasure and a relationship that has its foundations on love. 

One of the things I love the most about this film is how Coppola approached the production, the whole mentality behind making it. Coppola wanted to hearken back to the old days of filmmaking, actually, Coppola originally wanted to make this film with impressionistic sets, using a lot of lights and shadows, similar to what had been done in German Expressionistic cinema with films like Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), of course the studio denied it, but he still went about making this film in the same way movies where made back in the old days, when cinema was just getting started. He wanted to use modern special effects techniques as little as possible. 

Coppola was given a special effects team which he ended up firing after they didn’t agree with his approach. He ended up using his son, Roman Coppola for the visual effects of the film which consisted in the usage of miniatures, matte paintings, forced perspective, mirrors…techniques as old as filmmaking itself. To be honest, the film looks way better than any of the CGI we see so often in today’s films. The miniature work is incredibly well done, so much so you probably won’t even realize when they are being used. On the makeup effects department, well, I have to give Kudos to the ones responsible; the makeup effects work is superb here as well! Same as in most Dracula films, the Count takes various forms, but my favorite has always been this giant vampire bat; the way this creature looks in the film always knocks my socks off, it’s one of my favorite cinematic monsters ever, top that amazing makeup effects work with Oldman’s performance and great sound effects and you’ve got yourself one amazing scene. But then again, the film is filled with many show stopping moments that I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that Coppola’s Dracula is an amazing feat of filmmaking. It takes Dracula out of the campiness of the old Hammer movies and puts him right in the middle of a class-a big budget production, and I savored every last bit of this bloody good time. This is a highly regarded film in my book, perfect for a night of old fashion, passionate horror.  

Rating:  5 out of 5

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Title: Johnny Mnemonic (1994)

Director: Robert Longo

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Udo Kier, Takeshi Kitano, Dolph Lungdren, Henry Rollins, Ice –T, Dina Meyer

Universally panned by critics and a bonafide box office bomb, Johnny Mnemonic was a disaster financially, it made roughly 19 million on a budget of 26, this even though it starred Keanu Reeves, an actor whose career was smoking red hot at that particular moment in time. You see, Reeves had just finished making Jan De Bont’s Speed (1994) when he decided to jump on the Johnny Mnemonic bandwagon. Speed was an extremely successful film at the box office and a great career move for Keanu; it raised his status as an actor by turning him into box office gold. So considering how popular Reeves was at the time, why did Johnny Mnemonic end up being such an epic fail? It certainly wasn’t because of lack of star power. The film also starred Dolph Lungdren as a crazy homicidal preacher, Udo Kier as a techno agent, Henry Rollins and Ice-T as rebel leaders and Takeshi Kitano (of Sonatine fame) as the head of a an evil corporation. Maybe the film failed because it wasn’t that good? Could it be that it disappointed audiences or hardcore cyberpunk fans somehow?

In the film Johnny Mnemonic is a courier, which is just a fancy word for delivery man. The thing is that the guy is a courier of digital data that he carries somewhere in the back of his mind. Problem is the package he’s just uploaded is huge and exceeding storage capacity can kill you! You see, in this future a big percentage of humanity is suffering from a decease called N.A.S., which stands for Nerve Attenuation Syndrome.  Basically, N.A.S. is a condition that affects the human nervous system and is caused by the onslaught of electronic devices to which humanity is exposed to in a daily basis. Technology is making humanity sick and it’s because of information overload, airwaves poisoned by technological civilization. Humanity just can’t live without their gadgets. Good thing is that there’s a cure, bad thing is that the powers that be don’t want humanity to have it because they’d rather have people as patients, paying for their costly treatments for N.A.S. But wait, there’s hope! A group of rebel scientists are hell bent on releasing the cure for N.A.S. to the free world! These rebels fight against the system and humanities dependency on technology. From time to time they send subversive messages to the masses through television saying things like “Snatch back your brain zombie, and hold it!” To make everything right all they have to do is send the cure from Beijing to New Wark; via courier.  That’s where Johnny Mnemonic comes into play. Will Johnny make it in time before the overload of information in his brain kills him?

This project had many good things going for it, number one, the screenplay was written by the ‘father of cyberpunk’ William Gibson. Who’s William Gibson you say, well, he’s the guy responsible for writing the very first cyberpunk novels, novels about technologically suffocated societies in which people are more mechanical than human, worlds in which people spend more time in the virtual world than in the real world. This is a wing of science fiction that focuses on “high tech, low life”. Gibson wrote ‘Neuromancer’ one of the seminal works of the cyberpunk genre; it’s a story about a hacker who’s hired to pull off the mother of all hacks. The novel takes place in this Blade Runnerlike world with problems like over population and again, a society over dependent on technology. Neuromancer is so thick I’ve yet to finish reading it! It’s quite dense, a true challenge to read, and this comes from someone who fancies himself a science fiction fan! This fascinating and at times nightmarish book holds some similarities with Johnny Mnemonic; actually it even shares some characters. Johnny Mnemonic in turn is a film that’s based on another one of Gibson’s works; a short story entitled ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ which was first published in Omni magazine, and later re-printed in Gibson’s collection of short fiction stories called ‘Burning Chrome’, a book I will be acquiring soon! Johnny Mnemonic by the way is one of Gibson’s first works, first published way back in 1981, so it’s fitting in a way that one of his earliest works is the first to get the big screen treatment. 

For the longest time (as far back as 1989) Gibson and his pal Robert Lungo (who ended up sitting on the director’s chair) had been trying to get funding for Johnny Mnemonic. In their minds, Johnny Mnemonic was a film that could be pulled off for a mere 1.5 million dollars; in other words, they wanted to take an art house approach to this story; an artsy version of Johnny Mnemonic. A small yet creative film, and I gotta wonder what that film might have turned out like. But it kept getting harder and harder to get any financial backing for the film because studios didn’t like the fact that they were trying to make such a small film. Studios like multimillion dollar productions with big stars attached to them, something big and bombastic, something they can sell. Things finally pulled through when Keanu Reeves read the script (which myth has it was left at his door step!) and decided to do the movie. It was then that the studios started offering the millions to Gibson and Lungo. After much trepidation, the project finally found its funding! So after so many years of trying to get this movie made, was it finally worth it?

Well, first things first, there’s no denying that this film turned out to be a quite influential piece of cinema. The directors behind The Matrix Trilogy; the Wachowski Bros. obviously saw this film and decided they could do something similar, but better. It’s just so obvious, damn, right down to the fact that they also used Keanu Reeves for The Matrix. At one point Johnny says his name is “Mr. Smith”, he plugs himself into a virtual world and travels through it. Keanu dresses with a white shirt, black suit and tie. Johnny is kind of like a Christ figure, same as Neo. And basically, the whole film has a theme about “waking people up”, so yeah, there’s no doubt this one, along with Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (1995) served as a major influence for The Matrix. Other films that Johnny Mnemonic is similar to? Well, there’s Cyborg(1989) and Babylon A.D. (2008), two films that are also about a courier transporting the cure for a decease that’s threatening the world, and most recentlyElysium (2013) played with the same ideas. 

Johnny Mnemonic is a film that science fiction fans will no doubt enjoy because it presents us with this dark, technological world in chaos, kind of like what we saw in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), but with the added element of seeing technology as mankind’s villain, as a detriment to society, a hindrance that disconnects us from our humanity. Which isn’t so farfetched when we consider how connected we all are to our smart phones, I-Pads, I-Pods and laptops;  so in many ways it’s a reflection of our society and how addicted we are to technology, could we live without it nowadays? How lost would we be on this planet without our technological advances? Has humanity separated itself so much from the natural world, that we now don’t even know how to survive in it? I mean we actually live in a time when going out to dinner means telling everybody on the table to turn their phones off so we won’t be distracted by a call, a text message or candy crush. Aside from the films themes, I also enjoy a lot of the visuals that a movie like this one has to offer. I mean, how cool does Johnny Mnemonic look hooked up to that Virtual Reality helmet? Very cool that’s how cool. Like Hackers (1995), The Matrix (1999), this is a movie that hackers no doubt love, because the hacker is the hero. Some of the best moments in the film are those of Johnny, hooking up to the information super highway and just hacking the hell out of it.

But then the movie is hampered by often time’s cheesy dialog and nonsensical shenanigans. Sometimes the film kind of contradicts itself, for example, there’s this dolphin in the movie that is supposed to be the savior of humanity because it’s the dolphin who handles all the data through its brain, but then the rebels, those who would fight for humanity and freedom, have this dolphin confined to this little tank that gives it no space to swim at all. To me, the dolphin looks like its being tortured, trapped in this cage filled with dirty water, then they also have the dolphin strapped to a helmet that forbids it from seeing. So we have a blind dolphin who can’t swim because the good guys need to use him? Peta would have a field day with these guys! Which brings me to another point about the film, at times it feels like the good guys aren’t really all that good, take Johnny for example, sure he’s carrying the cure on his noggin, but does he really have to stop and rant about wanting “room service and 10,000 dollars a night whores”? I guess the point is that Johnny has to learn that it’s not just about him anymore, that he has to learn to do things for others, but damn does he come off as self centered. Then we got the leader of the rebels played by Ice-T, and well, his performance isn’t much of a stretch considering how he played basically the same character in Tank Girl (1995). The most over the top performance has to be Dolph Lundgren as the crazy preacher. He is really crazy, managing to fuse Jesus with the psychotic. He carries a crucifix around that could double as Rambo’s knife! He also spews hilarious one liners like “It’s Jesus Time!” A funny performance and certainly not what you’d expect from Dolph Lundgren.  

And now a word about the computer graphics on this show. There’s this moment in which Johnny enters cyberspace and we see him controlling his journey from the real world (sounds like The Matrix don’t it?), well, the graphics in those scenes are interesting, but unfortunately by today’s standards look outdated, they do their job of telling a story, but feel truly ancient, kind of like the computer generated imagery in Lawnmower Man (1992). They might have been “dazzling!” in their day, but now these graphics seem like child play, still, this didn’t stop my enjoyment of the film. One has to expect fx to outdate, I mean, time passes after all. Final words on Johnny Mnemonic is that it’s a cool little movie, not a masterpiece but at least it has its cool visuals and that delicious cyberpunk feel that I wish Hollywood would exploit just a bit more. In my opinion, there aren’t enough cyberpunk films out there. I can’t comment on how faithful the film is to the short story, but at least we know the film was written by William Gibson himself; if it fails it’s by Johnny Mnemonics creator’s own fault! Then again, this was one of those films that the studio took from the filmmakers and re-edited to their liking, so this might have something to do with certain inconsistencies. But whatever, faithful to the story or not, I think Johnny Mnemonic has a couple of cool things going for it that makes it worth a re-watch. Also, if you ask me, the film remains a seminal work of cyberpunk cinema, that’s gotta count for something.

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)

Title: Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

Director: Peter Hewitt

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winters, William Sadler, George Carlin, Pamela Grier, Joss Ackland

Review:

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure was the sleeper hit of 1989, nobody expected it to become a hit, yet, there it was, making millions at the box office. For a movie that only cost 10 million, making more than 40 million at the box office is a big deal, so of course, a bigger and more expensive sequel went into production; this time with twice the budget and better special effects. The result was Bill and Ted go to Hell, or as it was later re-titled: Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. The reason for changing the title was that in the United States, you cannot advertise anything on television with the word ‘Hell’ on it before 9 P.M., so in order to promote the film more effectively, they just changed the title. A stupid rule if there ever was any, how’s using the word hell going to affect a kid? So, whatever, they changed the title to Bogus Journey, which is a cool substitute title anyways. This film underwent many changes on its way to the silver screen, many of them had to do with the film being “too scary” for kids. I guess they figured this film was aimed at 12 year olds even though the main characters are young adults? This was one of those movies where studios get all nervous about marketing. If it’s too scary for kids, or too silly for adults, then there’s a possibility that the film will tank at the box office.

R.I.P. Bill and Ted! 

Thankfully, this didn’t happen to Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. It went on to recuperate its budget at the box office simply because there was no denying this movie was fun times, it was cool, it had that rock and roll attitude, it had two likable lead characters, cool effects and heavy doses of comedy. It feels like the overall vibe while making this movie was “the crazier the better!” I remember seeing the movie in theaters when I was about 15 years old and leaving the theater excited and satisfied. And I remember it was after I heard KISS’s ‘God Gave Rock and Roll to You II’ on this movie that I started to listen to KISS and I started to like them. I mean, according to the film, this was the song that was going to bring unity to the entire universe! It was thanks to this movie that I am a hardcore KISS fan! So I thank this movie for introducing me to the hottest band in the world. The soundtrack was pretty rocking too, I mean, here’s a soundtrack that had all manner of cool bands at the moment. Even cooler, the rest of the films rock and roll score was done by guitar legend Steve Vai;  how cool is that? The soundtrack included tunes from KISS, Megadeth, Primus, Faith No More and Winger. It also had a really catchy tune that was used to promote the film called “Shout it Out” by a hair band called Slaughter. I remember really liking that one too. It was these type of hair bands that dominated the popular music scene back in the early 90’s, this was just prior to the arrival of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the death of hair bands. We could say that Bogus Journey captures the last vestiges of that party rock that was so popular in the 80’s. Hair bands had an expiration date, they just didn’t know it yet.

On Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey we find Bill and Ted a little older, but not a little wiser, in fact, they are just as dumb as ever. Here we find them contemplating marriage! They even get engaged to ‘the babes’ and as engagement rings they give them plastic rings that seem to have come out of a Cracker Jack box! They innocently wonder if the babes will stay over after they marry? Ha! They are also trying to get into the battle of the bands. You see, according to the first film, Bill and Ted are supposed to be the saviors of the universe, bringing peace and unity to the galaxy through their rock and roll, unfortunately, they are having trouble living up to the prophecy because according to Mrs. Wardrobe the organizer of the Battle of the Bands competition, they stink! Meanwhile, in the future, a dictator known as De Nomolos is sending two evil robot versions of Bill and Ted (known throughout the movie as Evil Bill and Ted) to the past to kill Bill and Ted so that he can rule the future with an iron fist. Worst part of the whole thing is that the robots are successful, Bill and Ted are killed and that’s where their Bogus Journey through the afterlife begins. They meet God, Satan and everything in between, they even give The Grim Reaper a visit, hell they even play Battle Ship with him! Will they ever get a chance to live again? And just when and how will they become the saviors of the universe?

One of the things that I enjoy about this one is how inventive it is with its special effects and its visual gags. From start to finish we get a nonstop assortment of special effects. First we get to see ‘Bill and Ted University’ where Rufus, Bill and Ted’s mentor, is a professor. Cool part about this university is that if the students need to know who Benjamin Franklin is, Rufus just gets on the time machine and brings him right into the classroom! So anyhow, then Bill and Ted die and we go to hell, where meet Satan, who looks exactly how you’d expect him to look, like a giant red demon overseeing hell. Bill and Ted manage to greet him, “How’s it going Beelzebub?” Then Bill and Ted head on over to limbo and play a couple of board games with The Grim Reaper, who then takes Bill and Ted up to heaven, to meet God himself. So it’s a film that is constantly taking us to visually interesting places, it’s never boring that’s for sure. We even get to meet two little Martians called ‘Station’ who join their bodies and become this giant Martian scientist! And then we have both good and evil robot versions of Bill and Ted; if this all sounds like a huge mess of a movie, then you know what? You’re kind of right, this movie is all over the place! But that’s exactly what I like about it, how offbeat it is.

The film was actually even crazier then what I’ve described. I sometimes wish they would've released a director’s cut of this film because it would be an even cooler film, the stuff they left out was the edgier stuff, the stuff deemed too scary for kids, or stuff that the producers thought would be too confusing for audiences. For example, there’s a scene in which Evil Bill and Ted open up their robotic chests and take out three canisters, each canister containing one of Bill and Ted’s fears. They actually filmed a scene in which Bill and Ted are headed towards the Battle of the Bands on their van and they suddenly confront nightmarish versions of Bill’s Granny, The Easter Bunny and Coronel Oats! It becomes a showdown between Bill and Ted and hellish versions of their worst fears! The evil bunny rabbit looked positively evil! A pity it was left out of the film! 

This nightmarish Bunny Rabbit was cut out of the film if you can believe it! 

Another deleted scene had Evil Bill and Ted revealing that Evil Bill was actually Evil Ted and vice versa, now this part I know would have been confusing for audiences, because what the hell right? Evil Bill was actually Evil Ted? And Vice Versa?  Totally nuts right? But what the hell, the whole movie was crazy from the beginning anyway! There was also a deleted scene in which Bill and Ted are in Hell, hammering rocks with sledge hammers with a demon overseeing their work, and they say something like “I kind of like this!” and then the demon that’s watching over them eats a rat and one of them says “I heard a guy found one of those in a bucket of chicken!” I guess that was deemed to gross? Whatever, these deleted scenes simply show that Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey was a film filled with so many ideas that they had to leave some of them out in order to make the movie flow, or to shorten running time. Cool to know that director Peter Hewitt shot an epic Bill and Ted film! This movie was going to be even more epic than it already is!

This deleted scene actually made it on to the comic book adaptation of the film done by Marvel Comics! 

Which is cool when we take in consideration that this was Peter Hewitt’s first film ever. Back then, this  28 year old British lad was chosen out of 50 other possible directors. He was chosen because of the strength of a short he had made called ‘The Candy Show’. After directing Bogus Journey Hewitt stuck to directing family films like The Borrowers (1997) and Garfield (2004). The rest of the cast has also gone on to do great things, Keanu Reeves of course went on to become the mega star he is today, and Alex Winter went on to become a director of children’s films and television shows like Ben 10. He is currently trying to get a remake of The Gate (1987) in 3-D, but that’s been in development hell like forever. I hope he does manage to get it made though! He also went on to direct the make-up effects heavy film called Freaked (1993), gonna be reviewing it soon. But what of Bill and Ted’s further adventures through time? Well, there’s been talk of a Bill and Ted 3, actually, I hear there’s even a screenplay written for it, written by the very same guys who created and wrote the first two films, Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson. According to Alex Winters himself, nothing is holding Bill and Ted 3 from getting made; it’s just that these things take time. I wonder if Keanu would go back to playing Ted again? I know I wouldn’t mind seeing another one! Maybe a new danger is threatening the peace of the universe? Bring it on! I wouldn’t mind seeing another one! Party on dudes!

Rating: 4 out of 5  

For an interesting and informative take on Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), the film that started it all, check out J.D. Lafrance's review on Radiator Heaven! 

Director Peter Hewitt talks over a scene with Martian Scientist 'Station'