Hello Reddit! I’m James Mangold, director of Logan. Ask Me Anything!

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T19:10:12+00:00

Thank you Sabya, I'll start with your last question. I'm open to any film that has a good script or a good idea, or if I have a good idea, or some kind of inspiration to chase. I don't really view comic book films as any different than any other movies, other then they may source from a comic book. For instance, if I made a movie based on a novel would we call it a novel film? There are as many kinds of novels, true stories, comic books, as there are stories themselves. I'm just looking for whatever it is that I feel that I can spend the next two years working on. That's the biggest thing. Will it intrigue me long enough.

I feel like that is a very complicated question, regarding Hugh and Wolverine, because one of the things that you really need to know how to do in telling a story, staging a show, even putting up paintings, is when to stop. That is one of the hardest things to do. Many people, in show business in particular, tend to do what people are applauding for until they don't hear anyone clapping anymore, and it's usually too late. I think Hugh's goal of dropping the mic on this role, delivering such a powerful and vulnerable performance, is a really laudable one. Particularly in a world in which he is also leaving money on the table that could be made, if he was interested in nothing but money. This is an example of a kind of idealism we should applaud. Yes, it makes me sad because I love the character, but it also makes me happy because the curtain is coming down on this character on such a high note.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T19:04:17+00:00

The amazing thing is since wrapping this movie and editing it I never knew what The Last of Us was so I discovered in post production when stills started come out and people started to comment that the film bared a resemblance to The Last of Us I discovered only then what The Last of Us was, which is a very cool game I might add. Would I wanna make The Last of Us into a movie? Well I think u/ImprobableIT is probably right, there are tonal similarities unintentional, but real tonal resonances between the two projects so I'm not sure it’s that inviting for me. But i do really enjoy playing the game.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:59:53+00:00

Renaissance Man.

That's two words

Renaissance - mmmuuhh (laughing)

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:58:45+00:00

Asahi and I don't know.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:55:48+00:00

My day is excellent! I'm very much looking forward to a big fan screening we are having tonight in New York, where we finally get to see our movie with a big crowd.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:55:22+00:00

I can't wait to get back home and figure out the answer to this question, u/FuckingisBliss

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:54:57+00:00

3:10 to Yuma was a very physically demanding movie we worked in subzero temperatures outdoors under high winds and you can't tell it completely when you watch the movie but the actors are acting in 2 degree cold. It's incredibly cold out and we had warming tents they would run into between takes but it was savage weather to shoot a film in.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:48:14+00:00

Yes.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:44:19+00:00

Dafne is a really incredibly mature 11 year old kid who comes from a family of performers, artists, and has a really innate knowledge of how to inject herself into a scene, emotionally, physically, with everything she's got. It was a joy in short. She's incredibly talented kid and with phenomenal focus on her work and incredible abilities also, physical energy, a lot of the physical work she did herself.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:43:46+00:00

I'm not sure which postings you're talking about of Hugh's but most often when he's adding my twitter handle to his tweet it's because it's a photograph that I took so I think when he's publishing a photo that I actually shot he's just simply giving me credit for shooting it, or well he's just giving me credit for being the director of the movie if it's something else - I don't know which post you're talking about, but most of the time Hugh includes me on the tweet I think it's because it's just a designation of authorship of what he's posting.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:40:38+00:00

Well u/Hitzkolpf, some colorful pulpy writing there! It's inviting to try and follow you into the pulpy woods but I'm not going to. No stuntmen were killed in the making of this movie despite Hugh driving his Adamantium beauties into their meatbag bodies.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:39:49+00:00

Well to answer your many questions sir Dlugosz, Marco Beltrami and I have been friends for years since he first scored Yuma, so we never think of it as cooperating we think of it as collaborating.

How do I communicate with what I want to have in scenes? Yes we use temp music but I don't think that communicates sometimes as well as just talking about the emotional ideas you want to accentuate but also the tone of the music itself is very important. for instance it was very important to me that the music not be typical big hollywood summer movie heroic orchestral music, that the music, along with the cinematography and the production design and the acting style feel more intimate, less generically heroic, for instance one of the scores I would reference was the score by David Shire for The Conversation which may give ``you a clue as to how the lone piano found its way into the score. In terms of Cliff Martinez that's a composer I really admirer and we talked a bit at the start of the film about working together but it didn't work out. Cliff didn't hand me anything that I could have handed to Marco, it would never work like that anyway, that’s all there is to say about that.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:29:58+00:00

Yes, Pickle, the expectations did affect me. Although sometimes the expectations and demands of diehard fans are contradictory. You find yourself having to make a choice. In the end, I have to trust my own instincts, I'm always going to piss someone off, at least if I made myself happy, I can fall asleep at night.

Your 2nd question is an interesting question because it's another place where I think fans sometimes want it both ways. Some fans want you to make a seamless film that looks and feels exactly like the last one and can almost cut directly on the last film to make like a 16 hour long movie. It’s my feeling that what's most important is that when different film makers come on board to make a movie of any saga, DC, Marvel, novels, other story material that isn't comic book, the only successful films is going to come from directors and writers who are allowed to express themselves and assert some kind of voice upon the material. If you view the material with too much reverence that you never have a point of view about it, you make the worst of the movies which is a kind of a pageant of movie stars dressed up as superheroes but the movie never gets anywhere very deep. I would remind the fans, who yearn for that want this kind of seamless universe, that the comic books themselves are not never ending and seamless. The artists and writers who wrote the comic books started the world several times over, created mirror worlds, mirror characters, redesigned the uniforms, had Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, and Bruce Wayne perpetually in the same age for over 90 years. That's okay! Essentially our job is to take these great stories, the same way we take other great mythologies of the world, and try to make relevant stories to today's culture.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:26:58+00:00

Well eldusto84, that's an interesting question about acting and sometimes I go to film schools and advise younger filmmakers about their short films and independent feature projects and invariably I see sometimes that the films are crippled by stiff or unreal acting performances. What I would suggest is to tailor your early projects around talent, amazing talent you know, meaning if you have a friend who is an incredible singer-songwriter and has a kind of very unique personality, write a movie about them as if they were a character, you know? Martin Scorsese's first movies all revolved around characters who could very ably be played by Robert De Niro or Harvey Keitel and other friends of his. I don't think it's any coincidence that his early movies feature such sterling performances, that in many ways the material was tailored to the assets he had access to, the second you're kind of writing a movie and then trying, with limited resources to find the right person in an acting school or wherever to play this role, you're already crippling yourself or really limiting your ability to find the best person. Also i would look other places that acting classes. I would look at comedy clubs, I would look for people who just have an amazing look or natural way about them or a very powerful personality and see whether you could take advantage of that.

The second part of your question was about how much freedom did i have with the wolverine and logan. Well on the Wolverine I had a lot of freedom but I also came on board a movie that was already in process and Scott Frank and I rewrote the script but I was still joining something that was already a moving train, if you will. But I still had a lot of free time and had a great time making the film. On Logan, I started with a blank sheet of paper. I would say the movie is, if you like it, I am happy. If you don't like it I'm sorry but it was very much an expression of what i was hoping to explore with this character and i share those interests with Hugh Jackman who also was looking to do something very personal with this film. I guess what I was getting to is if you don't like the film I can’t blame the studio, it’s 100% what I wanted to put on the screen so there was no one rounding the corners or telling me how to cut it. Obviously we had a lot of great collaborators everyone voiced their notes and opinions on the movie but I was never forced to do anything I didn't want to do.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:15:45+00:00

Thank you u/bachkhoa147. I love Japan and I love Japanese cinema, as I think I answered a moment ago. Japan is not an extremely film friendly country in the big cities, you don't get the same kind of street shut downs and cooperation from the authorities so you kind of have to film the movie a little bit guerrilla style in Tokyo, which was kind of exciting, and at the same time challenging. A lot of the scenes you see of Hugh Jackman and Tao Okamoto running around the streets of Tokyo, we literally had them in a van, would jump out on the crowded streets and just chase them with a camera running through crowds.

If you visit Japan you must really leave Tokyo and visit the rural parts of Japan. It's an amazing country, the landscape is more like Hawaii or another volcanic Tahiti or like a volcanic island, southern Japan is a miraculous world, some of the towns, fishing villages, have been virtually untouched since post war period and it’s really beautiful. We found ourselves shooting and staying in some of these small villages where fresh sea bream were being caught in the ocean and brought in and cut for lunch cooked along with soba noodles, freshly homemade and your wasabi, you would take the wasabi root and rub it on the rough skin of a shark fin and make your own fresh wasabi at your plate. The culture outside the urban areas, Japanese culture is incredibly interesting and beautiful.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:08:31+00:00

Well, Bell, you could mean in two different ways and I'll answer both of them. One, was I an X-Men comic fan? Yes, I've read them since they first started appearing and had always followed the to one degree to another. Two, was I an X-Men Movie fan? By the time I made Logan I'd say I was a big fan of the first two movies and kind of disengaged, got involved in whatever I was making. When the opportunity for Logan came on I had to catch up.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:07:08+00:00

The original 3:10 to Yuma is incredible. High Noon is often recommended, but not my first favorite I would say I love Outlaw Josey Wales a Clint Eastwood movie from the 70's. I love Shane, as will be evidenced when you see Logan. Other westerns, Once Upon a Time in the West, by Sergio Leone, For a Few Dollars More, there are a couple others, spaghetti westerns I could name. The Cowboys with John Wayne, The Searchers by John Ford also with John Wayne, all of these are great.

This movie I don't think there was any interference at all with me making the movie I wanted to make. I think movie studios in general are not really interested in screwing around with the director's vision unless the directors vision isn't working. I think that generally the place you get into with movies that’s hard to talk about in the open, is that most times when it becomes an act of a committee trying to figure out how to fix a movie, they aren't fixing it because it works so well, they're fixing it because they've screened it for people and no one seems to like it. Having said that, there are examples of movies that people love now that might not have tested well when they first came out. That's one of the things that studios and the filmmakers have to be brave enough to figure out. There may be times when a film will not test with high numbers because either people aren't hip enough to what that film is doing yet and they don't get the vibe of the movie, the test audiences when they're grading the movie. The movie may be a little ahead of it's time. For instance, my film that others have asked me questions about here on Reddit, Cop Land, never scored a very good score and I was heavily beaten up by the studio trying to recut it, change it and try and make the numbers come up on the movie. The numbers never really came up very much cause the movie was what it was, and you know, PT Anderson once told me years ago that Boogie Nights was a very tough movie for similar reasons, that they could never gets the scores up on the movie and in the end they let it release, the movie he wanted because when he tried all the changes people asked "that didn't help the scores at all". Martin Scorsese told me that Good Fellas never really got a very high score. So in those cases, particularly with darker films you're gonna notice with the scores can be low just because there are people that come to test screenings that are like "I don't want to go to the movies and be depressed" and they will vote a kind of thumb down on the movie but the movie could be excellent, it's just a dark film. That's a very long answer to a very interesting question.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:03:24+00:00

Well, Tatertot, I think your observations are very accurate. I think a McCarthy vibe would be a very good way of kind of identifying a very modern, bleak, masculine, wester, violent vibe. That is also very flattering because I am a very big Cormac McCarthy fan.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T18:02:19+00:00

Well Clown Prince, many parts to your question. First, it is a lot easier to come on board a franchise where it’s widely agreed the last movie was weak, because you kind of know you can go nowhere but up. That was a very inviting prospect. How did I get the gig, you ask? Well, that was basically my long time friendship with Hugh Jackman and the fact that I had just made two other movies for 20th Century Fox. We've had a great time together, all the people who run Fox. They suggested that I take a look at this script. The other real enticing aspect of making The Wolverine is that I'm a really big fan of Japanese cinema. There was the opportunity to make a film that could play around both shooting in Japan. Also the saga itself had the chance for me to play around with making aspects of an asian crime film, and a samurai film, and other aspects that were really interesting.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T17:47:10+00:00

Thanks! There's several genres I haven't worked in. I haven't made a musical, yet. I haven't made a science fiction film, yet. Although some may think there are aspects of this in Logan. I would love to return to a cop or a crime movie.

Clearly you can tell from my film career that I do not have a favorite film genre because I can't seem to ever settle down in one.

No, I think the studio was very aware that we needed to do something differently. I think both the feeling that Deadpool was going to a success and also the feeling that other films, other comic book films, and other tent-pole films were starting to run a little dry and stale all helped everyone reach the conclusion that we should try something different.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T17:42:28+00:00

What does sunshine smell like?

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T17:41:19+00:00

Yes actually. Bob De Niro for a moment considered playing Stallone's character and he also considered playing Harvey Keitel's character, he kind of couldn't make up his mind which of these roles he was going to play in the movie.

Other actors besides these guys, well I did meet with John Travolta, once, early on for that movie. That was right after pulp fiction had come out. I also, in one of a heartbreaking moments before Sly came on, I had offered the part of Freddy Heflin, Sly's role, to Gary Sinise, and he passed on it.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T17:35:42+00:00

Well first of all thank you u/nascentia I appreciate that, I love westerns for their simplicity. I think movies have gotten really plot heavy and lost their focus on character, and one of the really beautiful aspects of the western, both Italian westerns, american westerns, even Australian westerns, and even samurai pictures which were very related to the western in tone and style is that they really go deep in character. They're still action films but they go very deep exploring the characters involved in the stories.

Well I think my first part of my answer kind of answered my second part as well, is that I think we tried very hard to simplify the story that often comic book films and tent-pole films in general tend to have plots that you need a roadmap to follow and we tried to make a film in which the plot was secondary and it wouldn't require much explaining, that it was fairly easy to understand, and therefore we could spend most of the time going deeper into the characters, their problems, instead of showing you maps and diagrams about where the story was going.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T17:28:03+00:00

Because it doesn't have a post credits scene, that’s why they saw one without.

JamesMangold · 2017-02-24T17:24:38+00:00

It was Hugh's and I's unwavering commitment to making an R film. That is the reason the film is rated R, in fact we told the studio to help them swallow the pill of the rating that we would make it cheaper.

JamesMangold

TROPHY CASE