DJ CARUSO (Eagle Eye, Disturbia) directs I AM NUMBER 4, a sci-fi thriller about a young man (Alex Pettyfer) who’s on the run from ruthless enemies out to destroy him. Helping him along the way are his guardian (Timothy Olyphant) and his first love (Dianna Agron).
Caruso talks about staging stunts, working from a novel in manuscript form, and why mobile phones are banned at family dinners.
**I AM NUMBER 4 is in cinemas from 23 February
DJ Caruso at work on the set of I Am Number 4
MMM: What were the challenges in tackling a movie which for the first time in your career had so many special effects?
Caruso: Audience sophistication today is so high. They have such high expectations. With pure CGI the audience isn’t involved in the movie so I wanted to make sure I had a lot of practical things like when walls were crashing. And to make it really practical and real for the actors so that when they’re using their imaginations we’re really giving it a physical element.
On top of that I made sure we spent the time dramatising the characters so that by the time you get to the end and you have all this CG and fighting you actually care about the characters.
MMM: Can you explain the decisions that were made about the distinctive look of the bad guys?
Caruso: The Mogadorians in the novel were explained as big guys with black eyes. I always imagined silhouettes that would be chasing these guys and coming down on them. The Western duster was one of the first ideas I had from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid there was a tracker that was always tracking them that had that duster. And we made that duster black and it would be a strong silhouette.
We shaved their heads and they are all over 7 feet 5 inches tall. And we came up with the gills for breathing so they’d take in air a bit differently. There’s also a membrane to their eyes. But we also wanted to make it so they could sort of blend in if they were really here on earth.
Kevin Durand really took a great liking to this character and brought an incredible sense of humour to him, which makes him even scarier. We had a lot of fun and they were quite visual so it always made for a really exciting frame when composing.
MMM: How much did you have the rating in mind when you were working on the film?
Caruso: I always felt in my gut that this was a PG-13 movie all the way. When I first read the screenplay I had that feeling of the Back to the Futures and those old Amblin movies that were just really fun sci-fi movies.
But I knew that this had to have a little scarier element. But I always felt that this movie wasn’t supposed to be about blood but it something that you wanted to be scary and the threat to be real. I wanted the movie to have an appeal in a way that someone who’s 12 can enjoy it at the same time as someone who’s 40 can enjoy it too.
Alex Pettyfer and Teresa Palmer star in the movie
MMM: I understand the screenwriters were involved in thinking through the original idea and I was wondering if you were involved in making the original source more cinematic?
Caruso: Yeah, definitely. What we worked with was the editor’s manuscript with notes. Basically we had a book that hadn’t been released yet. I didn’t think that some of the elements were cinematic, particularly pertaining to the legacies [the characters’ powers]. In the book, one of the characters disappears which sounds fantastic when you read it on the page but isn’t great cinematically. So I went to teleportation because it’s true to the book but it’s also going to make her a fiercer warrior in battles.
Also we realised that the future books were still just outlined, not fleshed out yet, so we had a lot of freedom. There wasn’t a book that existed already and people loved that part and hated other parts, so I felt liberated as a filmmaker to make the changes I felt necessary.
MMM: You’ve talked about effects already – but because we’re at a stage where we can almost do anything on screen. Is that always a benefit?
Caruso: I’d always, if you could, love to do everything in practical. The great thing I learnt on Eagle Eye was that… every car that crashed we crashed a car. There’s a great thing about practical effects. When Alex and Teresa dodge monsters here, there’s glass flying at them or things coming through the walls, so it is practical.
I find that filmmakers can become lazy not because they are inherently lazy but because some producer will tell you, ‘just throw up a green screen and we’ll figure it out later’. I think that is where films fall short. Directors really have to do their homework. We shot in real High School hallways and copied those hallways to a T and figured out exactly how we were going to integrate all that stuff, instead of just throwing up a green screen and figuring out the hallways later.
Putting these guys in real physical spaces, with real physical things happening, combined with CGI is how I think my style is developing. When you look at what Michael Bay does in Transformers… when a car gets crushed, a car is really getting crushed and the Transformer is put in later.
Teresa Palmer in action
MMM: Amongst all the explosions and aliens, there’s a lovely scene around a dinner table where everyone’s told by the mum to put their mobile phones into a bag while they have proper family time. I was wondering if that was a personal reference to anyone connected with the writing?
Caruso: My wife and I have this thing where we don’t allow phones at the table. We were having dinner one time and looked across to another family of six where no one was communicating. So we have this rule when we sit down. And Spielberg really loved this idea of the mum not allowing electronics at the table because we wanted to allow interaction.
It made a really natural transition as I love what Alex does when he sitting out there looking at this Norman Rockwellian house. He’s looking at it like an alien, like he’s never seen it before. He really gets to experience a dinner conversation where people talk to each other and engage. So real life fell into movie life and it was a fun way to use that.
MMM: There are lots of nods to other genre film in your movie. Where they all planned out in advance or were any suggested on the floor? And did permissions have to be sought for any overt references?
Caruso: I don’t think any permissions had to be sought. But in doing our homework, I had Alex watch Starman because I loved what Jeff Bridges did in that.
And the lumen, the light is sort of my reference to Close Encounters. But you love movies, you learn from other movies and you just make the best movie you can and lots of times there are going to be some references and visuals that are inspired by other movies.
MMM: Were you ever tempted to make the film in 3D?
Caruso: No. I love Avatar and I love what’s happening when people shoot a movie that’s supposed to be, intended to be 3D. But I’m not particularly a huge fan of 3D. I think it’s one of those things that I personally hope is a passing gimmick. I feel that films like Avatar and people like Michael Bay are doing it right when the filmmaker really understands the medium and shoots in it.
But all these conversions, after-the-fact conversions are so bothersome to me. I really just want it to go away. I think there are a lot of films being converted because it becomes the spectacle, the event. I’m proud that this movie is an IMAX movie, now IMAX is the old fashioned big way. Until people really learn how to craft a proper movie, I think the rest of it isn’t right.
Timothy Olyphant is Alex Pettyfer's father... or is he?
MMM: It was crucial to cast the right actor as John’s protector. Can you tell us about the choice of Timothy Olyphant and what he brought to the role?
Caruso: One thing I love about Timothy is that he has such unnatural acting instincts. He loves to always try push it, go against the norm, and find what the simple core of what the scene is about.
You knew he couldn’t really be John’s father, because of the age Timothy was. But he has to learn how to become a father because of his relationship with Alex. But he doesn’t really want to so there is that reluctance.
The way that Timothy and Alex worked together was quite brilliant because Timothy had the theory that ‘I understand the past, I understand what happened, he has no connection to that, so how do I communicate with him about what he needs to fight for?’
He and Alex had so much fun together because once we got the scene down to the core, we got to play a lot, and do different things. Timothy brings a really interesting intellectual dynamic to that of always challenging the scene not just to be standard.
MMM: Related to casting: with Dianna Agron working on Glee was it hard to get her involved?
Caruso: Dianna came aboard very late; we were looking at different Sarahs and screen-tested quite a few. They told me Dianna wasn’t available.
But then one Saturday I got a call that they could probably work it out so she could come in to read. We spent 3 or 4 hours working with her on the scenes and felt really good about it. In fact she was the last person I read because we were still trying to figure it out.
I confess I had never seen Glee at the time, so I wasn’t familiar with her. I just knew she was the best person for the job. It turned out to be a blessing and the chemistry between her and Alex worked out wonderfully.
DJ Caruso hadn't seen Dianna Agron in Glee when he cast her as Sarah
MMM: What are your thoughts about doing a franchise?
Caruso: If people enjoy the film and they show up and it’s a success, movie gods willing, I would love to do it again because if you see the movie I think you can see how much fun we had making it. I would love to get back there and do it again.
MMM: Thinking about the ubiquity of conspiracy theories, is this the sort of film that inevitably at every stage of production had lot of fan interest online? Where you answerable to some of those groups?
Caruso: This was such a tight schedule. We started this movie about 9 months ago and it’s finished. So I didn’t really get a chance to go online and get in to all that. But it definitely seemed to generate a lot of interest particularly because people were curious about the fact we were making a movie about a book that they hadn’t read yet! That’s more what I saw online. I didn’t see a lot of conspiracy theory stuff.
By Jan Gilbert
