Question: From a writer's point of view, your adaptation of 'About a Boy' was updated to the time that you were making it. How much more faithful were you to Pullman and why would've this have been maybe less flexible in adaptation?

Weitz: Well, let me see. 'About a Boy' is focused so much on the songs of Nirvana and there was no way that we were ever going to get them anyway and I think it's one thing to sort of have a period film which is set, say, in the '50's or what have, but to have a period film that was set seven years earlier just didn't make any sense in terms of 'About a Boy'. I mean, I hope that I've been really faithful to Pullman. I had a similarly good experience, my brother and I did, working with Nick Hornby. He was more occupied at the time actually writing stuff at the time and I had more access to Pullman than we did to Nick, at that time. So I was able to sort of check in with him at various points to sort of check the fidelity of something that I was doing and he was also really gracious about allowing me to collaborate or improvise on things that he hadn't come up with yet. So I think the movie tries to be very faithful to the spirit of Pullman. It's not always faithful to the letter of Pullman, but I think it's important that we tighten down and that the second and third books become more and more faithful to the letter of his books.

Question: Having now worked with Nicole Kidman what do you think is sort of the secret to her strength and power, not just as an actress, but as a person?

Weitz: Well, let me see. I think there's something quite unattainable about her, I suppose. First of all, she's very…[laughs] I'm trying to say this without being pervy. As a physical specimen she's out of the ordinary just in terms of feeling a bit like an art deco statue as much as like a person. So she's got these elegant long and wonderful lines and she's made for clothes to be styled for and she also somewhere along the way picked up the knack, that sort of [Greta] Garbo-like quality, of being enigmatic. I certainly had my moments of really feeling like I was paling around with her, but then there were other moments where she goes into her mode of acting where she's in a different place. So you're not sort of joshing around with her in between takes. She's doing her serious thing and it's best to let her take her approach to things. So I suppose it is that enigmatic quality to her, and of course there's a mini-industry that's grown up around that, of protecting that quality and of burnishing it and all that kind of stuff. But I think without there being that element there in the first place it wouldn't be possible. It's weird too. I think this idea of star quality is an interesting notion. I've always kind of attributed it a bit to celluloid and the strange kind of chemical quality of film and how certain faces react to the light and to the camera when it's turned upon her. Of course now it's going digital as well, but she seems to react to pixels as well [laughs]. So I don't know. It's hard to put your finger on.

Question: What's the timetable for the next two films and are they going to stick with the titles of the books?

Weitz: Yes to sticking with the titles of the books. The timetable for the next two films would be, or well I think it'd be good to start preproduction in the next few months and they should be shot at the same time because then the element of financial gamble which this first movie represented – it's the most expensive movie that New Line has ever made and so it was their biggest risk – now becomes a better bet, lets say, if the film does well enough to merit undertaking films two and three. I don't know what the number is, but I imagine that there's somebody at New Line who knows precisely how it all lays out down to the last farthing. Right now time is working in our favor because there's a love story for Lyra that develops over the second and third books and it's appropriate that she grow a bit older, but obviously you wouldn't want to wait – it's interesting here. 'Narnia', they've had to wait quite a while because I think it was deeply confusing to them that C.S. Lewis changed character in midstream between the first and second books and no one knew quite how to handle that. Fortunately we have a kind of continuity there and a lot of the really difficult things to tackle have been handled like what demons look like and how to make them – whether polar bears can be done digitally and all that kind of stuff. Some of those things then are already in our pockets.

Question: Have you already worked on the script?

Weitz: Hossein Amini who wrote 'Wings of the Dove' and who's actually become a really good friend in this process has already written the first draft of 'The Subtle Knife' because I didn't have time to both finish this movie and get a leap on beginning 'Subtle Knife'. So, yes. In terms of the writing that's already underway and everybody is kind of signed up in theory for a second go around.

Question: So are you hoping for a quick end to the strike?

Weitz: No, actually. As a union man and speaking not as a DGA member, but as a WGA member, it's important that these issues get sorted out and it might be a long and ugly experience unfortunately because you've got this vast unknown distribution stream which will eventually – the internet is the future and it's silly to deny that it's going to be a big deal and some kind of just means of compensation has to be worked out.

Question: There's been talk of a December 8^th resolution, but I'm wondering if that's the studios or the union saying that?

Weitz: For the strike? I don't know. I hadn't heard that. I know that they went back to the table.

Question: They went back to the table two days ago and it seems that they haven't made any headway.

Weitz: That's too bad because new media, that's where it is. That's it.

Question: If they contend that they don't know how profitable it's going to be, aren't you just asking to have a percentage of zero?

Weitz: Yeah, like, what does it matter? It's a percentage of something one way or the other. It will be really profitable because the delivery process will be nil. I mean, even now with digital project you're going to be able to download films by satellite link without having to produce a print. It's going to be very profitable.

Question: When will new media just be called media?

Weitz: [laughs] When it's old media.

Question: It's not that new anymore, right?

Weitz: I know. I guess it's now really. I don't know. I've yet to see someone really able to download a movie at home and be able to view it in a way that you might just be able to throw in a DVD. So I guess it's new until that, but soon enough, right?

Question: Have you gone on 'The Golden Compass' website and taken the quiz that assigns you a demon?

Weitz: Yes. I got a wildcat which is like seventy percent of what everybody gets [laughs]. I was disappointed not to be something exciting.

Question: When you see this through do you want to change gears and go back to something smaller in scale or do you want to keep pursuing this kind of movie?

Weitz: No. I don't want to keep on pursuing big stuff just for the sake of it. The idea here was that literally I said to myself that I'm probably going to go insane directing my next film and so it might as well be really big because it's really hard to direct even a small film. In some ways, to sort of direct a low budget independent has tremendous pressures on it which I didn't have on this one and we had tremendous resources that I've never had before on any other film. I think it'd be nice to not worry about what a character's demon is doing because every time I was shooting a scene I'd have to worry about what the goddamn demon was going to be up to. I knew that the next time I filmed just two human beings sitting in a room I'm going to start thinking about what that person's Ferret is going to be up to. It's going to be really annoying.

Question: Do you seem them in here as you're talking to us?

Weitz: [laughs] In my mind's eye I do. I dream them.

Question: How liberating for you though, as a director, that if you dreamed of doing something or wanted something done on this that you had the resources, time and money to make it happen?

Weitz: It's extraordinarily liberating and at the same time you can see what a threat it can pose. I mean, limitations are what make for a lot of the best bouts of creativity. So the fact that you can do anything now with digital FX doesn't really mean that you should. On the other hand it was nice to have a foundry. I mean, we had our own foundry and we could make brass items and anything that we wanted to. Dennis Gassner found this turn of the 20^th century maker of lamps called Bentley and he made the most beautiful things, but they were in museums so we couldn't have them. So we made them instead and that's pretty extraordinary. Then the alethiometer was cut by a laser in a German factory and was precision made. That kind of stuff is pretty extraordinary.

Question: Is your house now filled with brass items?

Weitz: [laughs] Very good question, but no. There was a point, I remember, where my assistant said to me, 'If you're going to steal anything now is the time to do it because they're going to start cataloguing stuff. So you should put in your order.' I didn't. I just had other things on my mind so I got nothing. I got bupkis. I think that I'm signed up for one of the existing meters. God knows where they are now though and whether I'll get mine.

Question: So how was that premiere party?

Weitz: It was pretty ridiculously overblown. I mean that in a great way. They had taken over this whole area and each room had an individual theme, a Majestarian room and an Egyptian room. The theme didn't always necessarily match up with what you thought it would. Like the Egyptian room was really swanky kind of like a nice hotel or something, but it was big. It was loud. There were some things that were deeply puzzling about it like now there's this new thing where they'll play classical music and like really sort of model looking girls will come out playing on electrified violins and stuff. So there was a bit of that which really didn't make much sense in terms of the world. There were some kind of Cirque Du Soleil stuff going on where people were hanging from floating balloons [laughs]. So it was fairly eclectic, but the alcohol was great and is the key to the success of any party.