Q: I need you to clear up what might be a misconception for me.  As a producer who claimed they didn’t want to see something go over-budget, you feel more comfortable when you’re making a film in these kinds of circumstances—relatively controlled studio green screen as opposed to out in the real world where anything could possibly go wrong?

Joel Silver: I mean look, we…this movie as expensive as it was and it wasn’t a cheap film, is nowhere near the cost of other films I’ve made or other films that are being made now.  I mean, it was controllable.  Once we finished there was a 60 day shoot in a big green room.  Once you finish that, but then the real work begins in the post-production.  But you know it depends.  The next movie out is called “RocknRolla”.  I did it with Guy Richie and it’s about London. There’s probably not a single visual effect shot in the whole movie, you know.  It’s real, it’s just a way we make movies, you know.  But I think that this is a pioneering step on picture making—this movie.  It’s a way to…it’s not just in how it’s shot but how it was photographed, I mean the editorial process is very different.  The way the camera—the lens moves is very different.  The camera has no form.  You see shots where the camera zooms into Speed and zooms past him to Trixie and past her into Rex and where is the camera?  I mean, what is it?  It’s not on a…it’s just there.  It’s just showing you what you want to see and editorially the way they put this film together I think there’s a lot of ground breaking things in it but yes, it was controllable and done in a way that was kind of easier to make but not so much easier to conceive.

Q: Do you think things could even get crazier from here?  I mean this is just the start…

Joel Silver: I was reading last week in USA Today about the Bond film—“The Quantum of Solace”—and they were shooting in Chile in some desert at 120 degrees, they’re running on a metal building, the crew was dying, they can’t function, they don’t know how they’re going it, they Mayor of the city is mad at them because it’s supposed to be Columbia.  Everybody’s going crazy.  I mean they could be shooting in Pinewood. They could be in a big green room. I mean, certain things I can see not wanting to do that, but I mean George Lucas didn’t have go to Tatooeen, I mean you don’t have to…you can make movies in ways that are different but I think with the technology as exists now…I mean this movie was all shot digitally.  I mean, it’s going to be a matter of years when the film is not a factor anymore.  We can still actually shoot on film but you don’t have to do shoot on film.  You’d have to finish on film and it’s all going to make it a lot easier to make movies in a way that I mean, you can sit at your kitchen table and make a movie.

Q: Did it come in on budget?

Joel Silver: Oh yeah.  Oh sure.  There wasn’t a lot of things to get in the way of it.

Q: And what was the production in amount of months?  Like once it actually…

Joel Silver: It was a 60-day shoot.

Q: And all in Berlin?

Joel Silver: Yes.  All in Germany.

Q: Last summer?

Joel Silver: Yes, last summer.  60-day shoot but most movies like that the director will finish directing and they wrap…cut and they go cut the movie.  But on this movie the director keeps directing until last Thursday. Every scene you’re directing because you’re…there’s a room they put in at the studio—a screening room 1 which has been turned into a VFX visual effects review room and it’s a very comfortable room with a big digital screen.  The guy’s sitting back on the couch and all these visual effects from all over the world—there’s crews in Australia, there’s crews for us in France, there’s crews in Northern California, crews in L.A. and all that stuff is e-mailed in all the quicktimes it all comes in and they look at the effects and there are people all around the room there people with laptops that are plugged in.  They’re talking because what we do is we put a person on for each vendor.  So each vendor has a person who is communicating with that vendor and they’ll go to the next vendor and things come up and the boys will see it and that person is giving notes right back to the vendor and the vendor sees the notes and there’s another effects review 3 hours later and then more shots come in and they look at those shots.  That’s a final.  We’ve got a final.  Yea—we’ve got a final! Another shot comes up and there’s 2,000 shots.

Q: That’s a lot.  Is that a record do you think?

Joel Silver: I think so. 

Q: So have Larry and Andy come at you with their next quote-unquote idea to make you smile?

Joel Silver: No.

Q: I have to ask you one more thing before I forget.

Joel Silver: Sure.

Q: Since we can never get Larry and Andy, have they started thinking about 3-D filmmaking?

Joel Silver: Yeah, we talked about this being 3-D.  We actually discussed this being 3-D.  There aren’t enough theatres yet right now to make it really…it would have taxed us to make this 3-D right now.  But maybe if we make a sequel, I mean, they have a story for a sequel and if they make it…

Q: What is it?  Any hints on where it might go?

Joel Silver: Well, there’s things they want to do with him.  There’s as many episodes of this cartoon so there’s a lot of ideas, but if we make the sequel maybe that will be in 3-D, but I mean it would have been possible because it was digital to begin with to do it in 3-D and all those shots were rendered so it would have been possible.

Q: Do you think they want to do a sequel or do you think they want to take on another property?

Joel Silver: Well, I mean, I don’t know if they will direct the sequel.  Maybe somebody else will—maybe they will, I don’t know.  This was pretty tough this one to do, but to create this you know, but I don’t know if they’d want to give that to somebody else, I don’t know.  But they…the only thing I like to say is they don’t….the only part they don’t engage in is this part right here.  They don’t like to engage in this and my friend, Tom Cruise, told me a story he went to work on “Eyes Wide Shut” and he said there was Kubrick just sitting there in the director’s chair.  It was Kubrick!  And not trying to make a connection between Kubrick and the boys but he didn’t want to engage in this part either so that gives him mystique and when everybody’s here—all the guys are here and Matthew’s here and Emile and these are fantastic friends of ours, these filmmakers and they’re great guys.  They just don’t like to talk about their movies and they did the whole thing for me on the first “Matrix”.  They did all the junkets.  All the press tours, they did everything and they hated it.  And they said to me, “If you want us to work with you again, you’ve got to promise we’d never do this again”.  And I said, “Fine.”  What could I say?  I couldn’t say, “No, you’ve got to do it.” So I’m happy to try to impart to you their thoughts and their ideas but you know their thoughts and their ideas are on that screen and that’s what they give you.  That’s their gift to all of you.  I hope you liked it.