Kurt Wimmer, the writer/director behind last year's stunning science fiction film Equilibrium returns with the incredibly ambition science fiction film Ultraviolet, looking to start principal photography in January 2004. We caught up with Wimmer to talk about the film - being produced by Screen Gems - which focuses on a young woman fighting to keep a young boy alive in a futuristic war between men and a new race of "diseased" people with special abilities, labeled as vampires by the public at large. Our heroine, played by Milla Jovovich, is one o these "vampires".
Movie Insider: What are you doing, like today, on Ultraviolet?
Kurt :Well, today and every day - today is an "every day" - I'm getting ready to go down as we've switched to "evenings" on the fight training. So I'm getting ready to go down there. It's in Van Nuys. Then I think on the 13th I'm leaving for China to do an extensive scout. In the midst of all that, we're doing storyboards for visual effects and a week from today, we try to find the kid for the movie and we're in the process of interviewing for other key positions for above the (line ?).
MI: When you're doing the fight choreography, are you working with Jovovich yet or designing the fights that you'll later put her in?
Kurt: Both. She is about to leave for Resident Evil 2, so she is very busy, but we grab her when we can.
MI: What are the thrusts of the fights? What are you trying to show that's new?
Kurt: Everything we're doing is new and has never been done before. Some of the weapons we're using are traditional like swords, but we're using them in ways that have never been seen before. Also, unlike Reloaded, literal non of the moves should have ever been seen before in any other films.
MI: Would you say more of these are weapons or more hand-to-hand?
Kurt: It's both. I mean, sometimes it's hand-to-weapon and sometimes it's weapon-to-weapon. We're also jumping off of the Gunkata (the gun-based martial art from Equilibrium) and really doing it the way I always wanted to do it as opposed to the way I ended up doing it in Equilibrium.
MI: So is this going to have more hand-to-gun action like Equilibrium?
Kurt: I cautiously say, "yes" but it will be different from Equilibrium. It's a much more sophisticated version. We didn't really have time to work it out in any detail and I didn't get it right the way I wanted to get it right. The guy who I was working on the film came from a karate/(hardstyle ?) background, which just didn't translate the way I wanted it to. So I'm purposely working with people with a strong wushu background now to get it the way I want it.
MI: When you go to china scouting, what are you looking for?
Kurt: Strictly to Shanghai and strictly to look at architecture. It's only then that I can start reverse-engineering the film from the existing architecture.
MI: You mentioned at one point you might have up to a 150-day shot - how daunting is that?
Kurt: Well, that's not daunting at all. What's daunting to me is the 70-day shoot. Time, to me, is the most critical thing, especially because we're shooting all these fights that take time to shoot correctly. It just takes time to cover these fights in the very traditional way that fights are covered, but to do it thoroughly.
MI: Where did you come up with the is story in the first place?
Kurt: I'm more interested in the human feelings I want to describe, that move me - that really move me - and I want to find a way to describe them on film and put them in the audience's gut. This movie is basically (John Cassevets') Gloria told in the future except instead of the boy having his father's accounting crib of the mob's accounting irregularities, he's got a germ in his blood that will wipe out everybody who is like the title character, Violet. I always liked that Gloria model. It's really simple.
MI: When word of this first got out, the word "vampire" was tossed around, but apparently it's not specifically that which Violet is. So, What is she?
Kurt: There are no vampires,but it's a disease called the Hemophiliac virus - HPV virus. It's just a blood-disease that gives certain characteristics that cased the media to sensationally label its victims as vampires, even though they don't in any way, shape or form, suck blood. But the do have an anemia and other things historically associated with vampirism. They have an increased metabolism that makes them just a little bit faster and a little stronger. Eventually, the situation becomes such that the lines in the sand are drawn and the people that have the disease eventually have to start fighting for their survival. The child, in whom antibodies have been cultured that will wipe out everybody that has HPV, becomes caught in the middle.
MI: What are your thoughts on so-called "CG stuntmen"?
Kurt: I hate them.
MI: Would you ever use them?
Kurt: I would never use them except if I had to for two or three frames to connect two pieces of coverage that would not be connected any other way. But I hate them. They're just not there yet. I might as well be watching a cartoon.
MI: When you say there's a feeling you want to get across to the audience. What is that in this one?
Kurt: I'm going for that very primal instinct to protect the helpless. In Gloria, it's a movie about a woman who has every reason and every bit of self-interest to not reach out and protect this strange and somewhat alien child given his ethnic background. Yet she is incapable in spite of herself of doing anything but protecting that child against all odds and at the cost and risk of her own life. To me, that's an incredibly powerful and persuasive instinct that all people can relate to. There are people in this world that need to be protected and those among us with noble instinct, which is hopefully the majority of us, will all immediately recognize that impulse and root for it.
04-06-04, 06:04 AM
