Can you talk about the design of the suit?

Jon Favreau: The Iron Man suit?  We have some artists that we hired to work on it.  Phil Saunders, Ryan Miterding had worked on various suits that we have.  They’re people that I had met on Zathura and as I was developing John Carter of Mars. They’re great artists and they have a whole department overseen by Mike Reva who’s our production designer.  I really gravitated towards the Adi Granoff stuff and Adi had actually contacted me though My Space because I’d set up a group.  Actually even before the group when I put my thing up he contacted me to be my friend. He said I thought you might want to meet me.  I’m the guy who designed all the drawings you have on your web site.  I was like oh, I’d love to talk to you. Then he was really excited to get involved. We hired him to do some drawings for us.  We flew him out here. He met with Phil and Ryan.  He met with Phil and Ryan and Mike and the Stan Winston crew and we all sort of collaborated together in finding a suit that could be made practically to be worn so it wasn’t always you know, a cartoon.  Also, when you have practical things it tends to keep the CG a little more honest because if you have to make a direct cut from a practical suit that you love how it looks to something virtual you now have a litmus test. 

What was important to retain about the comic book suit in the movie?

Jon Favreau: The suit?  The more that you could.  I didn’t want to re-invent it.  It’s not like the glowing Superman fiber optic suit.  I really am embracing what it is and the best thing I heard was first we got the Mark 1 out which we took a little bit of leeway with because in the books it really doesn’t make sense that he would make that out of spare parts so but yeah we wanted to keep the personality of it and everybody was saying holy shit that’s so cool, but immediately we were like oh my god, what’s going to happen when they see the Mark 3, you know, and what happened when we showed the Mark 3 was this is great. It was just like I saw it in my head and that’s a very hard thing to achieve because everybody sees different shit in their head.  It was just like in the head and then everybody was like oh that’s clearly a CG suit.  Then all of a sudden I think it was on your thing, they saw the suit and a guy moving around with the suit on and wait a second it’s a real suit with a real guy.  Of course it could do different stuff in CG than it can in real but that becomes the difficulty. You don’t want him moving around like Robocop and he flies through the air and he looks like Spider-Man.  So that’s the balancing act that we’re playing, but we’ve got great people.

What’s the most challenging scene to shoot so far?

Jon Favreau: Scene to shoot?  When we were at Edwards Air Force Base, that was great. We got to see C17’s and the Raptors and all the stuff that’s in Roadies, we made him an Air Force Lt. Colonel—took a bit of a leap there.  But the logistics of that were very hard because there’s a lot of things you can’t point a camera at there and there’s a flight line and they’re testing state of the art experimental aircraft there, so you know all the stuff we are thinking we’ve got the best stuff. I mean there are hangars there that you can’t go near that I’m sure have stuff they’re flying around now.

Anything about this filmmaking process so far that’s surprising to you?  Obviously you’ve got a background. You’ve done a lot of stuff.

Jon Favreau: I’m surprised I’m on schedule that’s the biggest surprise.  I brag that I stay on schedule, I always have with every movie I’m been on. I’m always on budget, always on time, and I thought ok this one there’s going to be curve balls and so much out of my control so the fact that we’re on schedule now and the scenes have borne out well. I’m surprised also about the amount of freedom I’ve gotten from Marvel. 

How so are you surprised?

Jon Favreau: Because there’s certain things that Marvel is very meticulous about and there’s a definite formula to the way action is done and then when it comes to the scenes between the people we have very good actors and Marvel has been very involved, but they’re a small crew you know you have Kevin Feige and you have Jeremy Latcham who are sort of our executives on the project and they’re here because Hulk hasn’t started yet.  So we could sit in the trailer with the Marvel guys with the producers and the actors and talk about what the scenes should be based on what we’ve shot and what we’ve learned and there’s a flexibility of material so in a lot of ways there’s a lot of freedom to try things different ways, get what we know we need to get the story to work and then bring a certain humor sometimes or a humanity to it so there’s a real sense of freshness and discovery in this project.

Were you a bit leery going into this because you know it’s a Marvel and it’s their first film on their own essentially?  Was there any concern at all?

Jon Favreau: I was ready for the challenge. I had done Zathura last.  My last 2 experiences were developing John Carter of Mars which we did a bang up job.  Beautiful artwork, these guys Ferguson Auspy did a great script for us and everybody loved it and they were just scared of that genre, or that material or the fact that they had Star Trek coming out next year or what it was and they said we don’t…but not only did they not green light it they let the rights lapse thinking that this was not a project that anybody would care to do then of course you know you have Brad Bird and Pixar and Lassiter thankfully picking it up and that thing is going to be huge and if they’re as true to the source material as we were when we were developing it they’re going to have a phenomenal movie between Star Wars and 300 and all that.  This is like, this is the type of story you need to find to use the technology you have available today. Right across the road they’re doing Avatar over there.  They’re doing a huge, huge movie in a room this size.  That’s the new way of doing it. So I think they missed a tremendous opportunity with that but I’m glad it’s going to be made.  Now, and the last experience before that was Zathura where we really worked hard.  We got a movie that was well received but was not really supported in a way where…it was the best reviewed movie that Sony had that year and there wasn’t even one billboard up.  They didn’t even print up posters, so it was very disappointing that we came in at the end of a long string of flops over there at Sony between Stealth and Zorro and everything they had and by the time we had come out they just were…there wasn’t a game plan I don’t think to release the film.  Fortunately now it’s out on video and people are seeing it and liking it but I didn’t want that to happen again.  I didn’t want it to fall through the cracks, so when you work with Marvel you know there is a fan base of core fans that are going to pay attention to what you’re doing. If you’re doing a good job, those fans will be very vocal and word will spread.  Right now so many people try to virally create this sense of grassroots something on the Internet and they try to force it and you can’t force it.  It has to come organically.  When you do a movie like this you get to play with all the big toys and you have a fan base that is going to be very vocal positive or negative.  If you have Catwoman they will put the pillow over the head of the movie and make sure it never sees the light of day; but if you have a Dark Knight or if you have any of the myriad of the quality movies that come out the word will get out there and people will start to pay attention. I think reviewers are not really paid that much attention to.  I care about reviews.  I like reviews but if you look at the correlation between reviews and box office, it doesn’t really correspond and I think people are looking at the Internet and to peers to hear what the buzz is and how the buzz is growing.  Transformers is building a tremendous buzz now.  I think regardless of the reviews it gets I think my kid wants to see the Transformers and I’m going to see it with my kid. 

Jon, can you talk about the commercial pressure coming off Zathura?  Do you feel like while you’re on the set that this one better be a hit?

Jon Favreau: What’s good is Elf sort of carved a path for me and Zathura…if Zathura had been a bad movie and not made money then I would have something to worry about.  I think you always have to make a good movie.  Even if the movie doesn’t perform there are people who are lining up to work with you saying they fucked up the marketing but you made a good movie.  If you can make me a good movie, I’ll take care of my end of things.  I don’t know if that’s ever been a director’s job to create a marketing campaign.  I mean they do, you have a voice in it, but ultimately I think they just include you enough to make you feel like a part of the process so that you’ll hit up the actors to do what they…they can’t get an actor to go to Comic-Con.  I could turn to Robert and say Comic-Con is fucking fun.  It’s going to blow your mind.  Wait until you see how many people give a shit about this movie.  Wait until you walk into that room and see.  And he’ll say really?  And I’ll say it will be fun, let’s have a blast.  We’ll go out to dinner, we’ll have a good time.  We’ll walk the floor, bring your kids.  I’ve done it 2 years in a row and my kids love it and San Diego is great.  And they’ll go.  Or to say hey let’s do this 1 extra interview.  Let’s add another day to the press junket.  Let’s fly to the premier here together.  If the director says that and is excited about it and buys into what’s going on, I think the actors are more likely do what…I’m more likely to do press for the movie and that’s the type of thing you can’t buy with marketing money.  I don’t think they really look to directors to lead the charge in ways other than participating.  So the success of something…certainly success has a lot of benefits. It could keep a career going, it could make somebody very rich even if the quality isn’t very good if they’re successful.  Success is always good but if it doesn’t end up being commercially successful it better be creatively successful.  If you can’t do either of those you’re not going to work for a long time.

Jon, can you talk about the casting of Terrance Howard.  He’s such a serious actor.

He’s is great. Terrance is somebody they were talking to him…Avi was talking to him even before I had been hired on.  So by the time I had come in, he brought in Terrance and was…it’s hard to argue with casting.  I mean Terrance…you know he could have been Tony Stark in a different…if we had gone a different way from the books.  I think he’s got those type of chops.  The idea with success of where do you go with these movies I think that’s where they fall short. People don’t think far enough into the future. They have a great movie and they say how do we do it again? That’s the difference between a sequel and a chapter.  So looking at chapters, where do we go?  You could go war machine with Terrance Howard and we want to.  We could go a lot of different ways with this cast that we have.

Are you on-board for 3?

If the experience is as good as this for another one I would keep going.  It’s hard to say because I’m sure Gore and Sam…I don’t know how excited they would be to do 4 after what they’ve been through.  That journey in 10 years, but I would see working on this thing…I think it’s fun and great and hopefully it gets easier as it goes on as you get it down.

You talked about the quality of actors that you have and these people are very much in demand.  How hard is it for you to get people back to do a 2 and a 3 or are they already locked into that?

Jon Favreau: I think if their experience is good which it has been so far based on what everybody’s told me, maybe they’ll say something different to you guys but I know I’ve made it fun. I’ve made it something where hopefully the work is as good a quality as they would on any movie so it doesn’t feel like they’re working on a movie that’s one for them.  You know, one for the man.  They do one for themselves and one for their career. I asked Robert, I said what do you want to do in your career now?   He said I want to make movies that are good and that people are going to see.  It seems very simple and it might not seem…but it’s a pretty profound statement. Actors want to be in movies that are good, that they’re proud of, but there’s nothing more frustrating than making a great movie that you know is a feature title on Netflix that oh, I really wanted to see that one.  Or, you want to do a movie that going to be part of your culture.  Pirates of the Caribbean—you reference that it’s like The Sopranos.  Everybody knows what you’re talking about.  You’ve seen it.  You’ve impacted lives.  You’ve created a cultural ripple and that something that you can’t get always with an indy.  Sometimes it happens like with Swingers, but usually it doesn’t. 

You talk about the buzz these films generate.  This one is only going to get higher and higher as we get closer to the release date.  How do you respond to this almost disproportionate obsessive reaction to a film and comic book type films.

Jon Favreau: I welcome it.  I’m right in there.  It’s not a scary, weird looming presence.  I go online and look at stuff and I see what people are saying.  Hell yeah, and what people are saying with what are you doing with this?  People are confused about this and there are certain things they’re confused about that they want to be confused about and there are certain they’re confused about that they don’t want to be confused about.  I don’t want to be confused about whether or not we hired somebody to score the film because they’re reading on IMDB that something happened. Or they think the rating is something else, or whether the suit was designed by this guy or that guy.  I like to clarify and it’s a game you can play with the audience, but I think if they know that you care and you’re paying attention and there are choices that you’re making because you’re making them as a choice and not because you don’t know what you’re doing.  They like it, so to me buzz is great. I would have killed for people to care this much about the last movie I was on.  What you don’t want is to just disappear because you work so hard.  We’ve worked 2 years on this movie.  I’ve gone from a pregnant wife to a walking baby in the time it takes to make this movie and it’s a mind blower and if it …one bad weekend…you have everything on one dice roll.  I love to have the interaction.  I love to know they’re out there.  I love to know after working a 14 hour day and things feel bleak and did I get everything I need, then you go online and you see people saying right on.  Even if it’s a little thing, it’s a big deal man.  It’s not easy doing this shit.  I love it but it’s hard.  It’s hard.

Have you gotten any advise from any other action directors or giving you some kind of…?

More like from Kevin Feige who’s been around for all the X-Men movies and now he’s president of production here.  He’s really good at like this is what happens now.  I’ve been on the set at Spider-Man 3 visiting Sam Ramey and just seeing certain things go so slow because they have to and certain things go really fast but you know not getting freaked out by when you have 400 people sitting around waiting for 1 guy to hang a light.  Coming from independent films knowing how to pace it and do it because being on budget, being on time, I figured out how to do it but this movie…I don’t think I’ve ever been on sets like this.  I mean I was in a small part in Batman Forever and I saw the Batcave and all that stuff.  It was really cool, but Daredevil wasn’t like at this scale.  Nothing I’ve been on has been of this scale, so just to walk around it is …and turn to Peter Billingsly and what are we shooting there?  What set is that?  And like oh, that’s the airplane.  You know like oh that’s right.  I don’t even know what’s going on and I take people and walk around and I show them around but it feels like the 1st time I’m seeing it sometimes.

Are you going to be doing dinner for 5?

Jon Favreau: We’re done right now.  I’d like to.  Who knows?  Maybe after this I’ll want to do something really small like that.

Is Iron Man money?

Jon Favreau: Yes, he is.  I hope.  The jury is still out. We’ll find out. 

Have you thought already a running time on this?

Jon Favreau: Yeah we’ve got…I don’t like long, long movies so it’s got to be realistic.

Over 2 hours?

Jon Favreau: I don’t mean over 2.  I don’t know yet. The assembly will be but they always are.  So we’ll knock it down.  I want it to be a movie where you’re left wanting more as opposed to you know, you feel like you’re checking your watch and waiting to pee.

And I guess the last thing is what are you showing at Comic-Con?

Jon Favreau: We’re figuring it out now.  We want to do something impressive.  We’ll figure out what we’ve got.  We’re definitely holding back a lot until then.

 

 

And if this interview wasn’t enough for you…here’s some links to interviews I did at last year’s Comic-Con for “Iron Man.”

 

Jon Favreau Comic Con interview, Robert Downey Jr. Comic-Con interview, Kevin Feige - the President of Production at Marvel interview, Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrance Howard. Finally, if you want to see some images of the Mach 1 from Comic Con, click here.