INT: David Twohy

The
Arrow interviews David Twohy

David Twohy has been sparring within
the genre for a while now. I mean he had a hand in writing WARLOCK,
WARLOCK 2 and CRITTERS 2. He also wrote and directed the underrated
THE ARRIVAL, the overlooked BELOW and kicked some butt with PITCH
BLACK. The crowning jewel in his career in my opinion is his most
recent flick;

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. Mr.
Twohy rang me up to talk about the DVD release of the Unrated
Riddick (now available in stores) and here’s how it went down.

ARROW: Mr Twohy how goes it?

DAVID:
Hey John! How’s Berge (JoBlo) doing? Is he still living out of his
parent’s garage?

ARROW: Yes and doing great at it at
that!

DAVID:
And where are you?

ARROW: I live in Montreal Canada, in
my own apartment; my parents couldn’t stand me, so they kicked me
out, as opposed to Mr. JoBlo.

DAVID:
LOL!

ARROW: Well I’d like to begin by
saying thanks a bunch for the fine film that was The Chronicles of
Riddick!

DAVID:
Thank you!

ARROW: I loved it! I wanted to ask
you, when did you figure out that Riddick’s adventures would
continue past Pitch Black?

DAVID:
Ask Vin and he’ll give you a different answer than mine. When we
filmed Pitch Black, it was a self contained unit for me and I wasn’t
thinking of sequels, I was just thinking of surviving the filmmaking
experience cause it was a really tough shoot down in Australia. It
wasn’t until Post Production did I start thinking of the
possibilities. I remember, I wrote a treatment for a bigger sequel
story, bigger than you would expect. The Studio at the time said you
did pretty well, you did well at the box office but this is a very
expensive movie, forget it, and go away.

And four years later as the DVD
sales continued to be better and better, the Studios started to
notice. Vin was also a bigger star then so when they came to me and
asked me “If you would do a sequel what would you do?” I said, I
wrote a treatment along time ago, I should take a look at that again
and here we are. So, sometimes things work in very strange ways.
Based on its theatrical release, Pitch Black didn’t warrant a sequel
but four years of DVD sales made it so and we’ll see  if the same
thing happens with this one or not. We didn’t do all that well at
the Box Office with Riddick, okay but not great, so a lot of eyes
are watching this DVD release.

ARROW: Having seen both cuts I must
say that the unrated cut was a much more fulfilling experience…

DAVID:
It’s the movie that we wrote, it’s the movie that we shot, and it
shouldn’t be a surprise that that is the case.

ARROW: Agreed…so I have to ask,
whose brilliant idea was it to make this one a PG 13 release?

DAVID:
Vin and I pushed for an R Rated film for a long time. As soon as the
budget gets to a certain number it becomes almost impossible for the
Studio to say “yes” to that. The reality of it is: if you want to
make an R Rated film, you can do it, just take 30 million off of
your budget. We read the script and didn’t want to lose set pieces
or anything like that; we scratched our heads and said “we don’t
want to do that.” So Vin and I agreed that we would do the PG 13 cut
for the theatrical release while knowing that we’d be able to do a
tougher and unrated version for the DVD.

ARROW: Do you think the PG 13 was
detrimental, beneficial or didn’t make a difference to Riddick’s box
office returns?

DAVID:
Tough question…I think if its one or
the other, it was probably detrimental. Because, historically we
have the R Rating behind us on Pitch Black and to do a PG 13 sequel,
people can accuse you of selling out. And also as soon as you’re PG
13 then you are attempting to reach a wider audience and anytime you
try to do that, then you sometimes find yourself explaining things
to the common lowest denominator, therefore becoming too
explanatory, a little too lax as opposed to saying, here’s the core
audience, lets make sure we appeal to them first and if we get other
people in along the way that’s great. But when you’re PG13 and a big
summer movie there is a desire to reach a wider audience and lot of
people have different ideas as to how to do that.

ARROW: In terms of Chronicles and
the conversations I’ve had about it I always bring up the Robocop
analogy where the original Robocop which was Rated R, cleaned house
at the box office and the second sequel which was rated PG 13
flopped.

DAVID:
Right.

ARROW: My point is if you’re going
to make a film for adults, if you water it down to cater to a wider
audience, you might lose your core audience in the process. My
humble two cents.

DAVID:
That’s true; there was also a shift in the political sensibilities
of the time about hardcore films and Congress cracking down on them
between Pitch Black and Riddick. There was also this whole thing
about Congress cracking down on the film industry and a Republican
controlled Congress sending the vibe out: “If you don’t oversee
yourself we will oversee for you.”  So a lot of Studios in this Post
Columbine atmosphere decided to do fewer R Rated pictures and more
PG 13 films. So that also factored in. We were kind of up against
the climate of the day and the climate of Congress as well.

ARROW: Segueing to better news, the
DVD I coming out, it’s unrated and it’s amazing. How conscious were
you of the DVD as you were shooting?

DAVID:
I was very conscious of it; part of the reason we agreed to do PG 13
was that we could do unrated on DVD. The only hitch was that the
Studios didn’t want me shooting two different versions of the movie
as we went along. So basically what I restored was stuff we took out
for pacing reasons, sometimes not for the better and all the stuff
that the MPAA demanded that we take out to get our PG 13. So I was
happy to put that back in. There’s a sequence in this Unrated Cut
that we call “one step, one kill”.

ARROW: LOL

DAVID:
That sequence takes place at the end
of the prison escape where the sun is about to break in front of
Bako and his men and every step is a new Necro kill for Riddick.

ARROW: Funny you mention that scene
where I state that in my DVD review. When I saw that fight in the PG
13 cut it felt off for me but seeing it in the Unrated Cut, it felt
complete and flowed so much better, Its actually one of my favorite
scenes in the film now.

DAVID:
That scene was definitely reduced by the MP double A to meet their
requirements. They were really afte5 that sequence. And we didn’t
even tell them that we called it “one step, one kill” to them but
that’s what we called the scene on set. We worked long and hard to
execute that sequence both my first Unit and the second Unit as
well. It was great to put it back in.

ARROW: So where does that leave the
proposed Riddick sequels?

DAVID:
Well, like Pitch Black it will be determined by its market legs. The
Box Office of Riddick didn’t warrant another film but neither did
Pitch Black’s and here we are talking about, possibly a third film
so…

ARROW: Well I’m crossing my fingers
for you where I really want to see how this ends!

DAVID:
You and me both!

ARROW: I’m on the edge of my seat
over here…COME ON!

DAVID:
LOL!

ARROW: Thanks for your time David.

DAVID:
Thanks John!

BUY RIDDICK HERE

I’d
like to thank
David for taking the time to yap it
up with me and for the badass flick that was Chronicles of Riddick. One
question remains…DID YOU CATCH RIDDICK YET?

 READ
THE ARROW’S CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK REVIEW HERE

READ THE ARROW’S INTERVIEW WITH VIN DIESEL
HERE

VISIT THE OFFICIAL RIDDICK SITE HERE

BE RIDDICK! PLAY THE FREE ONLINE GAME

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Source: Arrow in the Head