Last week I attended a Ghost Rider event at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. We got to watch some footage from the upcoming film and then sit down with the two stars and writer/director Mark Steven Johnson. In case you missed the interview that I already posted with Nicolas Cage click here. I’ve also posted an interview with Eva Mendes which you can read here.

As I have already written, the footage of Ghost Rider on the bike with the flaming head looked great. And since that's all we really got to see, that’s all I can really write about. Yeah we saw some footage of Eva and Nic talking in his apartment, but it was a small scene that didn’t show much...

Now even though we didn’t see much of the film, that didn’t stop all of us who attended from asking a ton of questions. The interviews were done in roundtable form and you can either read the interview below or listen to the interview here.

Mark Steven Johnson came across as someone who learned a lot from his experiences making Daredevil. I especially liked how he talked about the behind the scenes experiences of trying to make a comic-book adaptation at 20^th Century Fox.

They didn't want a costume. They didn't want horns. They didn't want anything. So everything in that movie was a fight which is very difficult. There are things in the movie that I'm very proud of and then things that didn't work. It was a very, very difficult shoot. This movie is even bigger. It's a much bigger movie. A bigger star, a bigger everything, but they got it at the studio which made it much easier for me. So, as far as what I learned, it was so much. I went from directing only one small movie to suddenly directing a $75 million movie and now I'm doing a $100 million plus movie, but I knew about visual FX. I knew about action. I knew about so much more than I did back then. So, the answer is that even though it was a bigger movie it was much easier this time.

He also goes into a lot of details about how he plans on bringing the comic Preacher to life. He envisions every issue as one episode, so his goal would be a show that ran for around six years. Mark also said he wants to have a guest director on every episode, so one episode would be done by Kevin Smith, and one by another comic-book fan/director. While it is still a long ways off, it sounded very interesting.

Here is the rest of the interview. And remember Ghost Rider opens in February.

Question: You obviously had enough time to do everything that you wanted to do on this film production wise, right?

Johnson: To do everything that I wanted? Well, close. I mean, there's never everything that you want. You always want more. That's just the nature of the beast. It's tough because you can't shoot it like a normal movie and every time there is a close-up of Ghost Rider it's going to cost $50k and if it's a wide shot its $100k. So you can't cover it the way you normally would and you always want more coverage than you have. So it's not like a normal movie. Your hero is a special effect and that's the tough part for me. You always want to have more than you can have, but it's at what cost because it's a very expensive character. That's why it has been so tough to pull off.

Can you talk about the genesis of you coming onboard because I know that at one point Steve Norrington and David Goyer were involved? Did you ever take a look at what Norrington had done with it?

Of course, sure.

Did anything carry over?

Yeah, there are a couple of scenes there. There is the scene in the prison cell where everyone jumps on him and beating on him and he turns into Ghost Rider and explodes and burns his way through the bars. You saw a little bit of that in the trailer and that's from Steve Norrington, or I should say David because David wrote that. I really liked that a lot and I loved David's script. I thought it was great. It was a different script. That's also the nature of the beast that when you come onto a movie you want to make your own version of the movie. Goyer's was a very dark, very hard R which is cool, but it's one of those things where it's my deal with the devil, if you will – when you want to make a 'Ghost Rider' movie it's expensive. It's not like you make like 'The Crow' or 'Blade' or something. It's like what I was just saying to you. It's so expensive that it's like, 'If you're going to give me all the money to make this movie right I have to be responsible and try to get everyone I can to come and see the film.' You can't make it a cult film. You have to make it a big film which it should be.

Are you trying to go PG-13?

We are PG-13, yeah, which I was actually really happy and surprised about because I was expecting to have to cut stuff out so it wouldn't be an R. 'Daredevil' was an R and I had to cut things out to make it a PG-13 and this is just like, there is so much stuff in it that I thought, 'Oh my God, we're dead.' But we made it which is amazing. You know what's funny is that what made 'Daredevil' an R is there was this scene where Bullseye kills Elektra, he gutted her – that was okay. He kissed her afterwards and then he threw her down. The kiss gave us an R. Isn't that weird? Its okay to kill a girl, but you just can't kiss her afterwards because somehow that's repulsive. I don't know.

So the cut that you have right now is everything that you want from the studio?

Sony gets it. Sony has had so much success with 'Spider-Man' that they understand Marvel and they appreciate it and get it. So, again, it's not 'Spider-Man' or it's not 'X-Men' or it's not 'Fantastic Four.' It's a very unknown character to most people, Ghost Rider, and so for them to give you the money to do it right says a lot for Sony. So it was great that they believe in it and they were willing to take that gamble and have supported it. They've been great.

Because it's an unknown character does that give you more leeway and freedom?

It does because, and again, I'm the biggest fan of this comic book in the world, but it's not a perfect comic either. I can't lie to anyone and the fans of the comic know this too. It's not like 'Spider-Man' where you look at it and you go, 'God, this is perfect.' There are so many great stories and it has so many great villains. 'Ghost Rider' has some great stories and an amazing look which is what attracted me to it, but it's also very flawed in some ways. The origin of it has been very mixed up and they keep trying to change it and update it and it got more and more confusing until no one knew what to make of it. So my goal coming into it was like, 'Okay, I have to pay tribute to the character and the origin, but I also have to streamline things. I have to make things simple so that people can understand what the hell is going on.'

So you said that you merged the Johnny Blaze thing and did you bring in the whole back story?

No way. See, that's what I'm talking about. That stuff is too much and you can't do that. That's what turned so many people off to the comic. You start reading it and then go sign onto Wikipedia or whatever and start reading the back story and you go, 'I can't follow this.' It's too much. The bottom line is that all you need to is that Mephistopheles comes from Faust, right? He's a specific kind of devil. He's not the devil. He's a devil who makes you sign a contract in blood and if you want something you go to him and he makes the deal and then he owns your soul. So my idea was like, 'Wait a minute. Okay.' Why did the Mephisto give the Ghost Rider all this power and then the Ghost Rider uses it against him and makes the devil look like a fool? He makes the devil look like a dupe. So my idea was always just like let’s make it real clear. He goes to the best rider in the world. In the old days it was on horseback and today it's on motorcycles or a car or whatever, and he goes to them and looks for the best rider and says, 'You will be my bounty hunter. If something gets out of hell and doesn't belong here I'm going to send you after it to bring it back.' Very simple. There is heaven. There is hell. There is our world. If something gets out of hell the devils job is, 'He doesn't belong here. Come back. We have to keep the balance.' That's the deal to the end of time and that's biblical, right? So, the deal is that he goes to Johnny and makes this deal as a kid to save his dad from cancer and screws him over like the devil always does, and so Johnny grows up to become the Ghost Rider and becomes the devil's bounty hunter, and that to me made sense. So for the first time for me it was really clear. It's funny because when Steve Norrington was attached to the older version, it was very sweet since I'd never met him, but he sent me an email one day and said, 'I really dug "Daredevil." I really liked it.' And he said, 'I'm really happy doing "Ghost Rider." I just want you to know that I tried to make it for years and I couldn't. Good luck.' So I called him up and said, 'Do you want to go have a beer and talk and just trade war stories, "Daredevil" vs. "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?"' which turned into several beers and many hours later. He was wonderful. He was like, 'What is it?' I told him and he goes, 'Fuck, you solved it. That's it.' Ghost Rider is the devil's bounty hunter. It makes so much sense because it's so clear. 'I'm going to give you all this power to work for me, to do this job.' Johnny's heroic thing is that the devil says to him in our movie – every once in a while something gets out of hell, but in our movie it's the son of the devil which has never happened – 'Find my son. Bring him back to me. Destroy him and I'll give you your soul back.'

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