/Film Interview: ‘Gravity’ Producer David Heyman Talks Last Minute Changes, Expectations And Genius
A genius filmmakers has a brilliant idea. But there are problems: it’s going to cost untold millions of dollars to realize, and he has no clue how to make it happen. Enter a great producer.
This is what happened withAlfonso Cuaron’s latest film,Gravity. From the outset, the small space-set movie was incredibly ambitious. No one knew exactly how to make it feel and look like the action was happening in space. So even with two A-list stars attached, the movie was a gamble. It took the watchful eye of a man Warner Bros. truly trusted. That man wasDavid Heyman, the producer primarily responsible for bringing a little franchise calledHarry Potterto the studio and making them billions. He’d previously worked with Cuaron onHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and was Cuaron’s first phone call when looking for someone to help make his near impossible vision a reality.
/Film had the opportunity to speak to Heyman about this gargantuan task. We asked how Cuaron approached him, how he approached the studio, how you budget a film that isliterally inventing technologyand what one tiny change took two and half months right under the wire. Check it out below.
/Film: What was the first pitch for the movie like?
So that was the first thing, then he gave me the script, and the script was superb. It was very lean. He and Jonas, his son, had written it, but it was very lean. There was nothing extraneous, but what I love about Alfonso’s work; it works on multiple planes. Yes, it’s an action adventure film, but it’s also a very human story. It’s a woman’s journey. So that’s the second love, and then the third love is the thematic richness of adversity with birth and rebirth, which is obviously very connected to the character. With Alfonso, those ideas are conveyed and the humanity is conveyed not through dialog, but through images. He’s a visionary and so that was clear in the script that it was going to be something special. Then we began to talk about how we were going to do it and that’s when you go “Holy…”
Is it difficult to approach the studio with this script, the idea that it takes place in space, and a female lead?
It wasn’t without it’s dance. The film, when you are working on this budget, there are certain things like you have to have a star, but they were incredibly supportive all the way through. So yeah, it is an extraordinary, as you said, action movie in space, ninety minutes with a woman lead and one character for an hour plus of the film, but they bought into it, because they believe in Alfonso. I don’t know if it’s fromHarry Potter, but it may be. (Laughs) It didn’t hurt.
With this movie you had to invent new technology — we knowall about the boxes and stuff– so how do you budget for that?
And also, because of the fact that you’re so locked into these elaborate visual effects, there wasn’t a lot of room for improvisation, right?
It was amazing. Even down to the fact we finished the film for all but sound, which we ended up doing in July the Dolby Atmos, we finished in March. We were done. Then Alfonso looked at the film and he said, “Damn it!” What happened was the craft in the first two minutes of the film, the craft was the right way up. But in space there is no up and down So he thought “That’s ridiculous. Let’s, in the first image, show what world we’re in.” So he wanted to flip it and I mean he’s been working on this film for four years. He wanted to flip it, because he had an idea how to make it better and we did it. That took two and a half months to do, that one shot. But it’s reflective of him, which is he’s never settling, he’s always pushing. He’s always exploring and he’s improvising and making things better.
Reviews out of Venice and Toronto were great, and Jim Cameron calls Gravity “the best movie space movie he’s ever seen.” Does that all set expectations that are impossible to match?
In the press conference you said you didn’t want to comment on specifics of the newHarry Potterfilms.[NOTE - It was later revealedwill be producingFantastic Beasts and Where To FindThem]But as the person who brought the rights to Warner Bros., did you ever think once you closed that seventh book that we would see more movies in this world?
Gravityopens everywhere October 4. See it on the biggest screen possible.
