AN AMERICAN WERWOLF IN
PARIS
The American Werewolf That Wasn't
(pg. 24 FANGORIA #134, July 1994)
Considering what advancements in computer FX have done
for cinematic dinosaurs, it was only a matter of time before
digital technology came into into play for werewolves. The
project that might have spearheaded this advance was An American
Werewolf in Paris, the long-mooted sequel that's finally a go at
Propaganda Films (without original creator John Landis; see Fango
#129). Yet writer Tom Stern's plans for a CGl-created monster
have fallen by the wayside-just one of the casualties in a story
that points up Hollywood's increasing obsession with commerce
over art.
Stern was initially hired by Propaganda to direct as
well as write (with his Freaked partner Tim Burns) the American
Werewolf script, and took the opportunity to put his own spin on
lycanthropic tradition. "It was a great challenge to do a
sequel that didn't just repeat the original," he says.
"I wanted to find a way to get around the basic werewolf
storyline-it's always about a guy who's bitten hy a werewolf and
starts turning into one, and he kills people and becomes upset by
it, and he's usually killed at the end. In our script, that's the
first act."
Stern and Burns' screenplay follows young American
Andy McDermott, who's vacationing in Spain when he's called to
Paris after his uncle is savaged by a mysterious beast there.
Once he arrives, as Stern describes, "He's pulled into this
nightmare by several characters who knew his uncle, and before
you know it, he's deep into the Parisian werewolf
experience."
As a result, of course, the innocent Andy winds up
taking on the ancient curse, but the monster Stern came up with
was decidedly new and improved. "I've always felt that the
Achilles' heel of the werewolf genre is the fact that the
monsters are sort of awkward-looking," he says.
"They're always half-man and half-beast, and they don't look
organic: they don't look like well-engineered predators. For that
reason, the movies have fallen short of reaching into that primal
fear that reminds us that we're prey, the sensation that Jaws or
Alien gave us."
The writer sought to correct that mistake by
developing what he describes as "a 100 percent killing
machine, an awesome, huge, 600-pound werewolf. We decided to use
the biggest, meanest predator on land as our model, so we
designed our creature around lions and tigers, keeping the facial
characteristics of a wolf." As part of the pre-production
process, Stern had makeup FX artists Steve Johnson and Tony
Gardner work on preliminary designs, but ultimately realized that
computer enhancement would be required as well.
"The concept of a huge, quadruped werewolf could
never be done before," he says. "There was no
technology fhat would allow a creature like that to move in a
realistic way. Obviously, since Jurassic Park everything's
changed; I saw it when we were writing the script and said,
'Jesus, this is incredible.' This was going to allow us to have
full shots of this awesome creature running at 30 miles an hour
through the tunnels under Paris, tackling humans like gazelles.
When we finished the script I went to Phil Tippett, who worked on
Jurassic, and he said that he always wanted to do a werewolf
movie. We were going to use CGI to bring the beast to life for
full body shots while the closer stuff would be the makeup FX
crew using animatronic heads."
Alas: the best-laid plans of wolves and men were not
to see fruilion. Once Stern turned in his and Burns' script, he
got good news and bad news from Propaganda. The good news was
that their work was strong enough to finally get the
long-in-development project off the ground. The bad news was that
it would no longer be doing so under Stern's guidance. "They
were planning to do it on, a medium-low budget, around $10-12
million, and they felt comfortable with me directing it at that
level," he reports. "Then when I handed it in, they
liked it so much that they wanted to do it on a higher budget,
and they needed a big-name director they could use the foreign
presales, since Polygram, which owns Propaganda, is a foreign
company." As a result, Marco Brambilla whose Demolition Man
was a major international hit, was brought on to direct.
According to Stern, Brambilla's approach will involve the
traditional half-man, half-wolf look, with FX to reportedly be
created by Amalgamated Dynamics.
"lt's very upsetting to me," Stern laments.
"When I write a script, I conceive every scene as a
director, but now that power has been taken away from me, and I
can't say how it's going to end up. lt's ironic, because the only
reason this movie's going is because we wrote a screenplay
everybody loved, and the first thing they did to thank us was to
kick me off the picture. They don't think about the creative
aspects of the film they don't think, 'Is this the right guy to
do this kind of movie?' They just think, well, we need somebody
who's had a big hit." -Michael Gingold
(Photo: Courtesy XFX)Too bad this is the only place
you'll ever see Steve Johnson and Bill Corso's ferociously
impressive design for the American Werewolf in Paris.
(Our thanks at FREEKLAND
to Griff
for typing up this bad-boy for us.
|
