{"id":72638,"date":"2015-07-22T23:57:40","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T23:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/0de2709a84.nxcli.net\/0-kjasnb\/2015\/07\/22\/exclusive-director-chris-columbus-talks-pixels\/"},"modified":"2018-12-18T03:42:37","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T03:42:37","slug":"exclusive-director-chris-columbus-talks-pixels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackfilm.com\/read\/exclusive-director-chris-columbus-talks-pixels\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Director Chris Columbus Talks Pixels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exclusive: Director Chris Columbus Talks Pixels<\/strong>Posted by Wilson Morales<\/p>\n

July 22, 2015<\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

Coming out this week is the ‘Pixels,’<\/strong> directed by Chris Columbus<\/strong> and starring Adam Sandler, Brian Cox, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage<\/strong>, and Josh Gad<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

When aliens misinterpret video-feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war against them, they attack the Earth, using the games as models for their various assaults. President Will Cooper (Kevin James) has to call on his childhood best friend, \u201980s video game champion Sam Brenner (Sandler), now a home theater installer, to lead a team of old-school arcaders (Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage) to defeat the aliens and save the planet.<\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

For Columbus, who wrote such classics from the 80s including The Goonies, Gremlins, and Adventures in Babysitting, directed Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter films, as well as produced the first two Fantastic Four films and the Oscar nominated film, The Help, coming in direct a film about a part of history from the 80s was a no-brainer.<\/p>\n

Blackfilm.com recently spoke to Columbus about his experience of this film and his past projects.<\/p>\n

What was the attraction to doing this project?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> It was the script. I wasn’t aware of the short film. I read the script, and the script, to me, was such a unique idea. I responded first to the characters. I love the idea that these three kids thought they were going to be the rock stars of the video game arcades. Back then, if you won the world championship, you won like 40 grand as a kid. You could go buy a house back then for 40 grand.<\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

These guys really saw their future. It was going to continue for years, and then the arcades closed, and they were left with this useless skill. I love the idea that we catch up to them in 2015, and they’re really lost souls in life. They really don’t know what they’re going to do with their lives. One guy’s a conspiracy theorist, and one guy’s in jail. That’s what I love. Then, they have to deal with the fact that their best friend who was not great, he was considered a loser back then, becomes president of the United States. He has to bring them together to save the planet based on their gaming skills. When I heard that premise, and when I read the premise, I was gleeful. I thought, “This is so much fun.” I wanted to go back to the kind of movies I was writing in the ’80’s, “Gremlins & Goonies”. I never really directed something like that. I wanted to get the audience to have that. When they’re in the theater in “Pixels”, that evocative feeling of being in a movie theater in 1985, even though it’s 2015.<\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

I think that’s funny you bring that up, it’s 2015. Who is the audience for? It’s obviously for those in who grew up in the ’80’s, but today’s kids, they’re remembering the new games, the violent games.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n

When they’re seeing this, either the parents are saying, “I want to take you to see this because this is what I played”, but if you’re a young kid whose parent didn’t play those games, will it be a good sell?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus: <\/strong>I’ve only learned this in the last three or four weeks, it seems a big portion of our audience who are dying to see the movie are ages 6 to, like, 13. They know Pac-Man, which is so weird. They know Donkey Kong. I said to myself, “How?” Actually, the gentleman I was just interviewing with said, “Well, in the laundromat in Queens, the old arcade games are there, so as the parent is doing the laundry, they give their kid a couple of quarters, and they’re playing Pac-Man.” That’s one way.<\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

Then, I was on the street in front of the premiere yesterday, and some little girl was on her dad’s shoulders, and she pointed up, because we had a giant Pac-Man, and said, “Pac-Man!” I’m like, “How did you know that?” I think, hopefully, the great thing about this movie is that kids of that age will go with their parents who played the games, and there will be this sort of shared bonding experience.<\/p>\n

Adam Sandler’s the star. He is no stranger to doing anything that’s referring to the ’80’s. How did you guys work together? Obviously, he’s a comedian. He’s a producer. You’re a producer. How was working on getting that chemistry so that everyone’s on the same page?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus: Right. Well, I was a big fan before I met Adam. I was a big fan of him as an actor in movies like “Punch Drunk Love”, and “Funny People”, and “The Wedding Singer”. I said, “Because there’s this specific, this specificity of a character, in this movie, let’s look at it like a real acting performance.” I said, “Let’s surround you with the best actors imaginable.” We have two people who a lot of people think of as dramatic actors, Michelle Monaghan and Peter Dinklage, but I’ve seen them both do comedy. Peter in “Elf”. Michelle’s in a couple of romantic comedies. I thought, “Okay. They’re great actors who can do comedy, as well.” Then, Josh Gad … I saw “The Book of Mormon”, and I was convinced this guy was a comedic genius.<\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

I surrounded Adam with those people, who were really trained as actors, and, then, Kevin James who was attached to the movie when I got involved. I said, “Let’s not make him …” Maybe he could have played Ludlow or something, but I said, “Let’s make him the president. Let’s do a Chris Christie kind of thing where he’s like a …” because Kevin … In an odd way, Kevin and Adam are kind of the straight men in the movie, and the really wild comedic performances are from Josh Gad and Peter.<\/p>\n

Half your films are acting, and then a lot it is visual effects. How much was involved? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> This was more intense than any visual effects moving I’ve done because, as a director, you have a CGI toolbox where you can actually do everything in CGI, as you see in a lot of superhero movies and stuff, entire sequences in CGI. For me, I was more interested in going back to the tangible, building the entire set, and then adding certain CGI elements later. That’s much more difficult than just giving it off to my effects team because we actually needed to plan the sequences out to such an extent that I knew which lens I was going to use before I got to the set.<\/p>\n

\"Donkey<\/a>
Donkey Kong in Columbia Pictures’ PIXELS.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When you walked onto that Donkey Kong set, it was mind-blowing because we built all those platforms, put the actors 100 feet in the air on harnesses. They were jumping over imaginary barrels. It was grueling. The same with the Pac-Man sequence, all shot on the streets, four weeks, as a real stunt sequence. Then it becomes exciting because you figure out, “Okay. If Pac-Man is chasing Josh Gad down the street, we need to have an interactive yellow light. Okay. How do we do that?” Well, we get a souped up golf cart surrounded by bright yellow lights chasing Josh down the street. It looks absurd before you add Pac-Man, but that was the exciting part of this, creating the reality. Then, you add the CGI later. When you add the CGI later, we worked … Creating these characters was extraordinarily difficult because we really wanted to do something, Matthew Butler, the visual effects supervisor, and myself, the audience hadn’t seen before. These aren’t based on realistic effects. Even if you’re doing a dragon or a something else, there’s something real about the skin. These were based on 8-bit video game characters, so how do you create this 40-foot Pac-Man?<\/p>\n

\"pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, you go with the concept that he’s lit from within. The voxels around him are constantly moving so that makes him sort of menacing and terrifying, yet he had to be a little mischievous, as well. It was about the destruction. The destruction of the city I wanted to be unlike anything you’ve ever seen. As you’ve seen, and when something’s attacked, it’s pixelized, whether it’s a bus, whether it’s a person, and that kind of destruction was like some kind of fever dream. I thought, “This is something I’ve seen in an hallucinatory state.” That’s what we did. We just pushed until we got that look on film.<\/p>\n

Why do we no longer have Pac-Man and Donkey Kong now still relevant?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> I think it’s really because the arcades failed. I think they’re still doing really well in terms of home games, but I don’t really know why it failed except there’s probably the advent of home video. Once you can play these games at home, it’s almost like once you can see Star Wars opening weekend at home, it’s a little more inviting than having to go to a movie theater for some people.<\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

Or play it on your phone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> Yes, play it on your phone. I think that’s why the arcades closed. There’s no question about it. Then, as years go by, we have a sense of nostalgia about all that, and we’re like “Oh, wouldn’t it be great if we could go back to an arcade?” Well, it’s really on Dave & Busters.<\/p>\n

Was any improv in here when you have a host of comedians in the film like Adam, Kevin, Affion and Josh?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> Oh, yeah. I think the biggest improviser was probably Josh Gad. The scene with the military guys in DARPA, there was a heavy R-rated version of that scene I cut together. It was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen, but the movie had to be PG-13. He improvised. The most difficult part was none of us could keep a straight face, particularly the Navy Seals he was berating could not keep a straight face. I cut those guys to the last frame before they started laughing.<\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

You have a lot of ’80’s music in here. What did you want to throw in that was left out?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> There was a Beastie Boys song. I think it’s called “Straight On To Brooklyn, No Stop …” You can find the title right. Sorry. That was sending us into the New York sequence. I put that music up against the movie, and it was fantastic, but I think it cost $600,000 or something to put in the movie. We couldn’t …<\/p>\n

This film couldn’t have been made without including Donkey Kong or Pac-Man. Along with the other games, they’re all from different companies that put these together. Was that a longer process to take in terms of getting all of them on board?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus: I think it was. I think the first script I read had Centipede, our set piece is Centipede and Pac-Man. Final sequence was nothing like the final sequence in our movie. There was no Donkey Kong. We were told throughout the entire process, the beginning, we wouldn’t be able to get Donkey Kong. To me it was like the Holy Grail. I said, “We have to get Donkey Kong in this movie. We got to. It’s going feel disappointing to our audience of they don’t see Donkey Kong.” I designed the sequence. We created an animatic, an entirely animated version of the whole sequence, and what Donkey Kong would look like, and conceptual art. Then we had countless conferences with Nintendo. Finally, after a few months, they agreed to let us use Donkey Kong. That was a great moment for us.<\/p>\n

You’ve been doing a lot of producing throughout the last few years. Why did you stop writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus: <\/strong>I haven’t stopped writing. The funny thing is I did a lot of writing as a director, particularly, not as a producer as much, but I do a lot of writing on the movies I direct. I did a lot of writing on this. It’s interesting. From dealing with the video game companies, trying to get the rights, I realized that all of these guys are so precious with their characters. They love them. I thought, “What if one of them is really a little crazy, and thought, ‘I love my son.'” That was the moment I wrote the Iwatani scene where he said, “My son. You’re such a beautiful boy.” It was the Pinocchio moment. I wrote that and sent it to Adam. I said, “Let’s put this in the movie and see how it works out.”<\/p>\n

I still write, and I’m still working. I’m working on a book series, a middle grade book series for kids called “House of Secrets.” I’m on my third book. Yeah. I just stopped trying to take writing credit on certain movies because it’s my instinct to write scenes or re-write movies, but unless I’m going to start from scratch, I’m not going take a writing credit. I do have three unmade scripts in my drawer. Hopefully, we’ll see the light of day.<\/p>\n

Lately, you’re getting more acclaim as producer of some well known films like “The Help,’ and ‘Night at the Museum’ franchise.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> That was one of the reasons I didn’t direct that whole year for “The Help.” Tate Taylor, the director, was a first time director on a big studio movie. Steven Spielberg said to me, “You have to actually produce.” By producing, be there on the set every day, hang out, and actually oversee the movie. It was the first time I really produced a movie in terms of being there the whole time. On a movie like “Night At The Museum” you go for a couple of days, you’re fine, the director’s done a lot of movies, and you leave. I didn’t need to be there for “The Help”, but once I was there for two weeks, I wanted to stay because Tate was doing such a phenomenal job. To watch these performances in person, again, you’re always learning in this business. To see these women create these beautiful performances, it was one of the best experiences of my life.<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/a><\/p>\n

What do you make of the upcoming “Fantastic Four” having produced the first two films for Fox?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> Well, let me tell you something about “Fantastic Four.” We were fired off of “Fantastic Four.” We had a meeting with the director and the producer. I’m a pretty gentle guy. I don’t go in as an 800 pound elephant and say, “You got to this, and this, and this.” We wanted to see the conceptual art. We walked in, my partner and I, Michael Barnathan, and we said, “Oh, this looks good”, nothing but compliments really. I may have asked a question about whether we were going to do a Ben Grimm CGI. I said, “You really never get the size of Ben Grimm if he’s not CGI or something.” We left. About an hour later we got a call from the studio, and they said, “We don’t think you guys should be creatively involved anymore. We’d like to take you off the movie.” I said, “You don’t want us to produce?”, and they said, “No. We’ve got a producer. You guys will just be executive producers.” That was the end of that. That was the end of “Fantastic Four” for us.<\/p>\n

On both of them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> Both of them. We had nothing.<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/a><\/p>\n

From the get-go?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> Actually, from pre-production of the first movie. It was shocking.<\/p>\n

I’m not up on the politics, like how did you still get credit?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> Your credits are dealt with before you even start the film, so we were credited as producers. I don’t remember the exact title. I think most of us got “Executive Producers.” Maybe somebody ended up with a producing credit, but, no, we weren’t involve at all. That happened on the second Percy Jackson, as well. Same studio. Same thing. I got the call from the studio saying, “You know, we’d like you guys to take a back seat on this one.” That was, basically, because they wanted to hire a director that they didn’t have to pay a lot of money to. Yeah. I’ve been fired so many times.<\/p>\n

\"Pixels<\/a><\/p>\n

You know what, you know how bounce back.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> That’s a good thing. Failure is a good thing. So, what I make of the new “Fantastic Four” is it looks pretty cool. I think it looks really great. I think it’s going to beat the hell out of those first two movies.<\/p>\n

What do have next or what do you want to do next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Columbus:<\/strong> I don’t know. I’ve been obsessed for 2 1\/2 years. Once of the big things I’ve been doing, I haven’t been directing as much, although I just finished “Pixels”, is my independent film company, Maiden Voyage, which is an opportunity to give first-time film makers. To help them find financing, produce their films, and get them made. And it’s all movies under 2 million dollars. It’s become kind of extraordinarily successful because we’ve been to Sundance twice, and we were just at Cannes this year. We just finished our fourth movie in Manhattan with Ellen Page and Allison Jenney called “Tallulah.” It’s amazing. It gives me a tremendous amount of inspiration because these young filmmakers … Sometimes not so young, some people are in their ’30’s too, but it’s their first film. It so unlike anything else in Hollywood because all they care about is making this film. They’re making it on a small scaled-down budget, but the movies are character-based. Some of them will probably never see the light of day. “The Witch” that we did won Best Director at Sundance this year. “Mediterranean”, which just premiered at Cannes got glowing reviews, so we’re looking for someone to release “Mediterranean.” Anyway, that’s what I’m doing. That’s a big, big part of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exclusive: Director Chris Columbus Talks PixelsPosted by Wilson Morales July 22, 2015 Coming out this week is the ‘Pixels,’ directed by Chris Columbus and starring Adam Sandler, Brian Cox, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, and Josh Gad. When aliens misinterpret video-feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war against them, they attack […] More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":72678,"comment_status":"1","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,143],"tags":[4953,416,22005,9621,5168,801,3152,22006],"reaction":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-72638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-interviews","8":"category-read","9":"tag-adam-sandler","10":"tag-brian-cox","11":"tag-chris-columbus","12":"tag-josh-gad","13":"tag-kevin-james","14":"tag-michelle-monaghan","15":"tag-peter-dinklage","16":"tag-pixels"},"yoast_head":"\nExclusive: Director Chris Columbus Talks Pixels - blackfilm.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.blackfilm.com\/read\/exclusive-director-chris-columbus-talks-pixels\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Exclusive: Director Chris Columbus Talks Pixels\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Exclusive: Director Chris Columbus Talks PixelsPosted by Wilson Morales July 22, 2015 Coming out this week is the ‘Pixels,’ directed by Chris Columbus and starring Adam Sandler, Brian Cox, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, and Josh Gad. 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