Gameplayer
September 19, 2007
Interview: (Rogue)
by Clint Morris
One likes it, the other doesn’t. Thankfully, writer/director Greg McLean and actor Michael Vartan aren’t talking about their new film Rogue, they’re discussing Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.
The director and star of the new giant crocodile flick got on marvellously while filming the Aussie fright fest – but they have just discovered something disagree on.
Vartan, a die-hard Star Wars fan since seeing the original trilogy at a theatre when he was six years old, loathes George Lucas’s prequel series – especially the first in the newer trilogy – but McLean’s not ashamed to admit it’s a film he really enjoys.
“I understand that [the prequels] have obvious flaws,” he says, turning to Vartan, “but at the same time, imagine as a writer over the same 30 year period telling the same story and remaining consistent to that vision – I think that’s an incredible thing. Yes, [Phantom Menace] is flawed, but I so love the fantasy universe that it created. I love the design – and even if I’m zoning out to the bad actor and dialogue, I’m still intrigued by the artistry and the effects.”
Vartan smirks and bites back, “I think that’s actually the one reason why I don’t like the prequels – and not its not the filmmaker’s fault – it’s just because CGI and special effects are so readily available now that it takes you out of the world.” Then he adds, “The first one, to me, is one of the great movies ever made. Subconsciously I’ll always be married to that film”.
One film they’ll both be married too forever is McLean’s $10 million dollar follow-up to the brilliant small-budget shock-fest, Wolf Creek (2004).
In Rogue, Vartan plays an American journalist on an outback cruise which is attacked by an enormous crocodile.
Like the Star Wars prequel, McLean knows he’ll be attacked for his latest film too – if only because some may see it as a step back. The film is something he wrote many years ago and has attempted to get off the ground a couple of times before. In a page right out of Damon/Affleck’s Good Will Hunting history, McLean says he wrote the film while he was living on a friend’s couch – not because he couldn’t afford his own place, but because he had nothing to type on at his place.
“He had a computer, and I didn’t – so it went there to use it,” explains McLean. “The script was refined a bit obviously, but it hasn’t changed much since that initial draft – it was always going to be an Australian horror film with a hero taking on this giant thing.”
Which begs the question, just how much influence did Russell Mulcahy’s classic Aussie horror film Razorback, about a giant killer pig, have on McLean’s script? “I like it. I like Russell Mulcahy. But it’s not the kind of film you look at and say, ‘I wish I’d made this,’ like say, Alien or Jaws.”
After Wolf Creek hit it big, McLean decided to start pitching Rogue to studios again. “I had some conditions though: Nobody could tell me who to cast, I wanted to shoot it in Australia and I got final cut,” he says, adding that The Weinstein Company was the only studio “silly enough to agree to that”.
Looking back on it, McLean says he’s glad the film inevitably ended up with Bob and Harvey, because if it had gone ahead earlier it “would have been a total disaster. I would’ve had no power, no control over anything and my main goal back then was to basically make a quick buck and get it out on DVD shelves.”
You just have to look at the cast – Michael Vartan, and Radha Mitchell of Pitch Black and Finding Neverland, playing the leads – to see he’s gunning for a little more than a straight-to-DVD release now.
Vartan, best known for his role as the charismatic and dependable Agent Michael Vaughn on TV’s Alias, wasn’t exactly McLean’s first choice for the lead role – the Melbourne based filmmaker jokes that Jim Caviezel was his first choice, and he quite possibly was – but the filmmaker’s agent also managed Vartan so insisted McLean at least meet with the guy.
Vartan’s well aware of that, and takes it all in his stride. “I’m never the first choice for big movies like this, but all the other choices fell by the wayside. I don’t want to know who they are, all I know is things happen for a reason.”
Granted, Vartan wasn’t champing at the bit to play the role anyway – for starters, it sounded like four months of absolute torture.
“I’d never been to Australia, and I didn’t know much about it and the way my agent presented it to me was, ‘How would you like to go to Australia for four months and work in the outback on a giant croc movie?’. I replied ‘Well, I’d rather have cancer, frankly.’ It didn’t sound great to me.”
Again, it was the agent’s insistence that made the deal come to pass. Vartan’s rep insisted the actor check out McLean’s Wolf Creek – about a rural killer that preys on backpackers – before he flat-out rejected the offer.
“I did, and I was absolutely blown away by it – it was one of the most intense movies I have ever seen,” says Vartan, whose other film credits include Monster-In-Law, Never Been Kissed and Dead Man’s Curve. “I then had a two-hour conversation with Greg on the phone, and that was it, I was in. I realised that an actor in my position has few opportunities to work with truly talented people – so I shouldn’t pass it up. And, well, basically, after speaking to him, I would’ve played anything in anything for him. He was very persuasive.”
“We ended up with the right guy,” McLean confirms. “The thing took a long time to cast, and we waited a long time to find the right person. But it should, you know? Because it’s an important thing, the lead in a movie. But he was great – as he said, things work out for a reason.”
Though he’s no doubt got some better stories about working opposite JLo in Monster-In-Law, Vartan says his co-star in this one was also an interesting chap. The rogue crocodile was part animatronic, part puppet and part ... tennis ball?
“I swear,” Vartan laughs. “Sometimes I had something to play off, like when they used the giant animatronic croc head, but other times it was a damn ball. The camera assistant put a little piece of gaffer tape on the end of it, and drew a smiling crocodile face on it, just to help me.”
The actor also recalls a day early on in the shoot when he was “sitting in a boat, in a polyester suit, on a 50 degree day and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ I couldn’t even fathom the thought of doing that for four months. I even sort of started having a little bit of a panic attack. It was then, that I turned around and saw my co-stars sitting comfortably and genuinely enjoying the experience and I said to myself, ‘Sit down, shut the f**k up and just enjoy the experience for what’s its going to be.’”
And what an experience it was.
“Alias and Rogue were the two greatest experiences of my career,” says Vartan, who at the time of our interview was back to the States to tackle a pilot for the TV show Big Shots. “J.J Abrams (who did Alias) was just great. He is a big kid. I remember when I first stepped on the set and went looking for the director. He walked out, and I was like, ‘You’re the guy?’. But man, that guy can do no wrong. Keri Russell won a Golden Globe for Felicity, Jennifer Garner won the Golden Globe for Alias and now of course, he’s having all this success with Lost. He’s got the Midas touch."
Though Vartan says he’d love to work with Abrams again in the future, he’s not putting his hand up to play the young Captain Kirk in the Alias creator’s next film, the much discussed Star Trek prequel. “There’s just some roles you stay away from,” Vartan says of the part William Shatner made famous. “James Dean, Hitler, Captain Kirk. I’m not gonna touch [them].”
You also probably won’t see Vartan doing many more romantic comedies – not if he has his way. Though he enjoyed doing films like Monster-in-Law and Never Been Kissed, he’d much rather do serious drama or dark thrillers. “I wouldn’t be talking to you if it wasn’t for Never Been Kissed, and I do believe every step along the way is either a step down or a step up, and that was definitely worth doing. I mean, it was a really sweet movie and a great chick flick, but it’s just not the type of film I like to do. It’s not personally my favourite genre – I prefer things a little darker. But you have to pay the rent, and look, working with Drew Barrymore isn’t a bad way to pay the rent.”
Rogue pushed him outside his comfort zone, though, and he is glad it did.
“I’m telling you, it was the greatest single experience I’ve ever had in my life – not just as an actor, but as a person,” says Vartan. “Filming in that harsh environment absolutely annihilated this comfortable little box I’d been living in. It just blew it up!”
Rogue opens across Australia in November.
© 2007 Derwent Howard Pty Ltd
 Back To Rogue Expositions
|
