Thursday, August 17, 2006 02:45:33 AM
INTERVIEWS
Q & A With Director Pierre Morel
Director Pierre Morel's film District B13, written by Luc Besson,
is set to be released on DVD on September 5th. The film takes place in
the Paris of 2010 where a wall surrounds the ghettos of the city and gangs
reign supreme. Morel recently answered a few questions:
How does one prepare a film like DISTRICT B13?
There were several challenges. The technical challenge was to be able to create spectacular and relatively dangerous things, and come up with the right places to do them and film them. The two leading characters must always be highlighted while in the very heart of the action. Outside the action scenes, there were the comic ones as well. So we worked a lot! It was a script studded with action sequences, a real plot and genuine scenes, not just guys banging each other over the head for an hour and a half. We took a long time to cast the actors, stuntmen and fighters surrounding them. As soon as everything was fully defined, they started to train. For several weeks, I had them all rehearse, one after the other, so that things would take place as well as possible.
In all the action scenes, was there one which was the most impressive or delicate?
The casino scene was a truly great moment: a non-stop series of fights for a full three or four minutes. Result: thirty-give corpses on the ground! It was a highly complicated sequence for it to hold up and not look like some MTV video. It was especially long as, to shoot that scene, we took six full days.
The rapper, MC Jean Gab'1, has a small part, his first screen appearance. What was the mood like working with him?
He's an adorable fellow, bursting with kindness. We wanted him to play the part of a bad guy. Even he didn't have a stand-in, and the two or three blows he took, he really took!
Do you think it's really a new trend for action films when the stuntman turns actor?
It's more than just a trend. The audience needs true heroes, not just actors who pretend. Action films are less and less based on special effects. Sportsmen and stuntmen are gradually becoming real stars. The realistic side pleases more and more audiences out for extreme sensations. Young Europeans are rather fascinated by what can be seen in the Chinese, Thai and Korean schools, where guys play their real roles.
Does the expression "suburban film" suit you?
I don't know what it means. DISTRICT B13 is first and foremost a pure action film which takes place in a suburb, set a few years into the future. The initial screenplay pitch was a "political fiction" about what the suburbs might be in a few years if we don't change things and make the wrong decisions.
Matieral provide to us by Magnolia Pictures
Send this page to a friend
|
