No matter how hard Hollywood tries to brainwash moviegoers into embracing familiarity, when we gather in the dark we crave something fresh and new. By PATRICK GOLDSTEIN 

In recent years, everyone in the movie business has been scrambling to churn out sequels, remakes and retreads, justifying the unseemly artistic results by trumpeting the killing they've made at the box office. Well, if you've been keeping tabs over the past six weeks, the scorecard reads: Moviegoers: 5. Risk-Averse Studios: 1.

If you'd put your ear to the door at almost any studio in town last week, you could've heard someone saying, "Geez, maybe getting audiences to spend $9.50 for a half-baked update of a (fill in the blank: TV spy show/'30s adventure movie/'60s thriller/'70s art-house classic) isn't such a slam-dunk after all."

The muttering was especially loud at Sony Pictures, where the studio's supposed sure thing "I Spy" staggered into the theaters with a feeble $12-million opening weekend. "The Four Feathers," a lavish remake co-financed by Paramount and Miramax, did even worse, making $18 million in its brief stay in theaters. "Swept Away," the Madonna-starring remake of Lina Wertmüller's 1975 original, disappeared after making a paltry $598,000 in its short run. Jonathan Demme's "The Truth About Charlie," an update of Stanley Donen's "Charade," has stumbled badly, barely doing $4 million in its first two weeks. Even the $90-million "Red Dragon," a third installment in the Hannibal Lecter series that was supposed to be Universal's big moneymaker this year, has been such a lackluster performer that it probably won't hit the $100-million mark, a steep drop-off from last year's $165-million-grossing "Hannibal" sequel.

The only retread to have a solid opening was Disney's "Santa Clause 2," which has made about $60 million in its first two weeks. Even it will be hard-pressed to top the original, which made $144 million in 1994 and was so well-liked that it did better in its third weekend of release than its first.

The common denominator with nearly every failure was a woeful absence of originality, not to mention ambition. No matter how hard Hollywood tries to brainwash moviegoers into embracing familiarity, when we gather in the dark we crave something fresh and new. Maybe that's why films such as "The Ring," "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Barbershop" have found such surprisingly large, loyal audiences.

Making movies is never going to be a risk-free business. In recent years studio chieftains have extolled franchise movies the way 1999-era stock analysts used to puff up dot-com IPOs. Sequels were the showbiz equivalent of easy money, providing a soothing predictability to a notoriously topsy-turvy business. Even the vocabulary changed -- studio tycoons began talking about movies as if they were part of a stock portfolio. Asked last year about Warner Bros.' studio-wide efforts to launch dozens of different franchises, Chairman Barry Meyer enthused, "We're looking to extend these properties over multiple platforms" -- now there's a phrase to get moviegoers' hearts pumping.

But not every property has been a winner like "Austin Powers" or "Rush Hour." Billed as this summer's big kid hit, "Stuart Little 2" was a crushing disappointment. "The Scorpion King," a much-touted spinoff of the "Mummy" series, did less than half the business of the "Mummy" sequel.

Studios are now making sequels out of films that didn't even make $60 million at the box office. "It used to be that a film had to make $100 million to justify a sequel," says industry box-office expert Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Inc.

"Now all a film has to do is have a big opening weekend. Sometimes people don't even look at the end results."

"I Spy" was viewed as a can't-miss hit, but now the industry's Monday morning quarterbacks are searching for answers. It's deeply ingrained in Hollywood culture that there must be an explanation for every flop; no one likes to admit that audiences turned up their noses because the movie -- heaven forbid -- was unwatchable.

Most of the blame for "I Spy's" demise is being placed on the usual suspects: the marketing campaign, which was especially insipid even by major studio standards, and the stars, in particular Eddie Murphy, who has now headlined three consecutive bombs, with "I Spy" following "Pluto Nash" and "Showtime." Murphy's casting offers a classic example of how clueless Hollywood can be. "I Spy" was aimed at a young male audience, which looks at Murphy and sees ... Bill Cosby. The right star for the picture would've been DMX or Ice Cube, hip-hop icons who have credibility with young male moviegoers. (Witness Eminem, whose film, "8 Mile," had a huge opening this week-end.)

Co-star Owen Wilson gets off easier, though many view him as an actor whose quirky charm goes over in Hollywood and New York -- and almost nowhere in between.

"I Spy" turned out to be an old TV title, like Will Smith's "Wild Wild West," which had no resonance with anyone under 40. Even its premise felt dated. There have been so many seismic changes in America's youth culture over the past few years that the whole "I Spy" hook -- teaming a black hipster with a repressed white guy -- has a been-there-seen-that vibe with young moviegoers.

Talk about being behind the curve: Hollywood has become relentlessly brand-conscious at precisely the time when Madison Avenue has discovered that young consumers have less brand loyalty than ever before. Exploiting a brand is fine if you're promoting family fare like "Harry Potter" or "Shrek" (parents live for the arrival of a reassuring brand), but it carries increasingly less weight with teens.

Today's most effective advertising sells attitude, not brand. If movie execs want a scary lesson in diminished brand loyalty, just look at the music business, where fans have become totally song-oriented, leaving artists in the lurch. Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" sold 14.1 million copies; her follow-up album sold 2.5 million copies. Lauren Hill's "Miseducation" CD sold 6.2 million copies; her follow-up CD, released earlier this year, has sold only 432,000 copies.

This audience capriciousness has already seeped into the movies: Just ask the makers of "Scary Movie," whose sure-thing sequel did barely 40% the business of the original.

That doesn't mean sequels are inherent evils: I wouldn't miss "The Matrix Reloaded" or "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" or "X-Men 2," and I'm looking forward to seeing what David Fincher can do with the "Mission Impossible" franchise and Alfonso Cuarón does with the third "Harry Potter." But those films are in the hands of filmmakers who thrive on risk and daring. My hopes aren't as high for "Scooby-Doo 2."
* * * 
The second time around

Here's a look at a few upcoming sequels I'm betting have especially questionable commercial prospects.

"Tomb Raider 2"

The original made $131 million last year, but the number that counts is 59%, which is the amount the film dropped in its second weekend of business, a sign of deep dissatisfaction. More worrisome, the film's star, Angelina Jolie, is no longer the industry's It Girl. Her fan base has moved on to other female stars, and her last two vehicles, "Life or Something Like It" and "Original Sin," were bombs. The sequel, due next summer, is being directed by Jan De Bont, who is many things but not a career rejuvenator.

"Final Destination 2"

New Line has lots of valuable franchises, but this isn't one of them. The original was a low-budget surprise, doing $53 million in 2000. But the sequel, due next year, has a no-name cast and a first-time director who is best known as a second-unit director. The sequel is being positioned as a date-night thriller, but it'll need a great trailer and release date to make you believe this will work any better than "Town and Country 2."

"Jeepers Creepers 2"

The original, a low-budget MGM horror flick, made $37.5 million, but it opened on Labor Day, the least-competitive weekend of the year. The sequel, due in April, will be up against stiffer competition. "Scream" was a real franchise. Jeepers, shouldn't this be a direct-to-video sequel?

"Shanghai Knights"

The original, "Shanghai Noon," which teamed Jackie Chan with Owen Wilson, only did $57 million here (and even less overseas), despite the presence of Chan, who supposedly has a big international fan base. The sequel, due next year, will be a true test of whether Wilson can connect with a mainstream audience.

"Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines"

Due out July 4, 2003, this movie cost about $150 million, which is more than the total domestic gross of Arnold Schwarzenegger's last three features together. Without "Terminator" creator James Cameron or a young name-actor on board, this looks like a huge financial risk. Warners paid $50 million for the domestic distribution rights, but the studio still has to persuade me that seeing Arnold battle a bunch of bad guys would be as interesting as watching him run for governor of California.

The Big Picture" runs each Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to [email protected]. 

The actor says, "Putting on the weight was fun for the first two weeks but then you have to wake up at 2am and eat two burgers and then go back to bed, and then, at 7am, eat a stack of pancakes. 

"You haven't even swallowed your last meal and you're having to sit down for another one. So that wasn't fun. 

"Going up and down with weight and taking a physical beating like that is tough. It took a lot longer with me being over 30 you don't lose the eight like you used to, that's for sure." 

Wahlberg admits this isn't the first time he's had to pack on the pounds for a film that didn't go before the cameras. 

He adds, "I was doing this boxing thing with ROBERT DE NIRO years back and it fell apart two days before we were supposed to start shooting. It's a bit frustrating." (KL&RXM/WN/ES)  

Jonathan Demme’s The Truth About Charlie, from a screenplay by Mr. Demme, Steve Schmidt and Jessica Bendinger, has been widely panned for presuming to remake Stanley Donen’s Charade (1963), from a screenplay by Peter Stone, with Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton in the roles originally played by Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Indeed, I was recently interviewed by a movie reporter, who asked me bluntly why "Hollywood" kept remaking old classics with results as dismal as The Truth About Charlie. I hadn’t seen Mr. Demme’s alleged sacrilege when I was asked this question, but it started me thinking about the subject of remakes, about which I know two or three things.

First of all, there is no such thing as a "remake." Plots and dialogue can be recycled ad infinitum, ad nauseam, but the time machine is inexorable. New actors or older versions of the same actors will create an entirely new work. To complain about remakes in the movies is almost the equivalent of calling every new stage production of Hamlet a needless remake of the original performance of the play at the Globe Theatre. Almost, but not quite. In the theater, recycled plays are called revivals, never remakes. "Revival" suggests a rebirth with new life. But one cannot say that Mr. Demme and his collaborators have revived Charade, not unless they can resurrect Grant and Hepburn as they appeared in 1964. In movies, unlike plays, the actors stick to the work like glue and can never be dislodged. Each film is an existential fact and can never be duplicated.

Why, then, did Mr. Demme choose to recycle a nearly 40-year-old comic melodrama, even with Mr. Stone’s covert collaboration on the script? From all indications in the film, as well as some production stories, Mr. Demme saw an opportunity for a lark in Paris that, a city that had changed enormously in the past 40 years, especially from the touristy Paris of Hollywood movies. Also, the director had worked with Ms. Newton in Beloved and saw in her some of Hepburn’s gamine charm. Rumor has it that Mr. Demme originally wanted to cast her opposite Will Smith, thus transforming an all-white love team in the original to an all-black love team in the remake. Curiously, he would have been on safer ground with the latter casting in the bad old days of the Production Code than he would have been with the interracial coupling he finally chose for The Truth About Charlie.

Still, why should people be so outraged by an alleged desecration of a 38-year-old movie? Are people’s memories really that good, or is it because they can refresh them any night of the week with a convenient VHS videocassette or a DVD? It wasn’t that way in the 30’s and 40’s, before television and so many other technological advances in the facilitation of universal voyeurism. In those comparatively deprived days, A-movies opened, ran a few weeks, and then disappeared from public view. B-movies had an even shorter life span. Back then, plots were recycled every five or six years, with no one being the wiser. When John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon surfaced in 1941 to great acclaim, hardly anyone noticed that the Dashiell Hammett novel had been made into a movie twice before, once a decade earlier in a racier pre-Code version.

But how much of a classic is the original Charade, after all? Some critics at the time dismissed it as Hitchcock lite, but it’s more fondly remembered by many people than perhaps it should be.

Grant was used much better in Notorious (1946) and North by Northwest (1959), as was Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953) and Love in the Afternoon (1957). Together in Charade they were a bit of an odd couple, she making him appear a bit fey in his weird shower scene with the suit on, and he making her seem a bit shrill. Mr. Donen and Mr. Stone did score a stylistic coup with the final confrontation, which involved a hysterically suspicious Hepburn, a desperately reassuring Grant, and a marvelously avuncular Walter Matthau as the surprise villain.

But once the mousetrap of surprise has been snapped shut in the Charade plot, it can’t be pried loose again for The Truth About Charlie, even with the secret complicity of then-and-now screenwriter Peter Stone (billed in the remake as Peter Joshua). Mr. Demme and his associate meander to their climax with a sub-Tarantino flourishing of guns from all directions, with none of them being fired. Yet what the nasty premises of the Charade plot demand is a brutal efficiency in disposing of the prime evildoer, and on this occasion, as on so many others in his career, Mr. Demme is neither brutal nor efficient. What he gives us instead is an affectionate hommage to Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and the rest of the French New Wave, complete with an edifice named the Hotel Langlois in honor of Henri Langlois, the legendary mentor of the French Cinematheque—which gave birth to Truffaut’s "La Politique des Auteurs," and the disquisitions of the late, great Andre Bazin on Greg Toland’s deep-focus cinematography in the works of Orson Welles and William Wyler. I worked briefly for Langlois in 1961 during the year in Paris that changed my life forever, and like Mr. Demme, I knew and admired Truffaut and still consider Shoot the Piano Player (1960) with Charles Aznavour to be Truffaut’s finest film. Hence, I appreciated the prominent place the aged Mr. Aznavour occupies in Mr. Demme’s film, and the caressing gesture of Mr. Demme’s camera over Truffaut’s gravestone—not to mention the dedication of the film to the late Ted Demme and Marshall Lewis, one of the two guys in the back of the Bleecker Street Cinema (the other was Rudi Franchi) with whom I spent many convivial hours of Francophilia and cinephilia. After all that, how can I pretend to be objective about Mr. Demme’s labor of love? But I shall try, though I do feel that he hasn’t gotten enough credit for walking away from the Silence of the Lambs franchise without milking it dry for years and years of steady paydays. In my opinion, sequelitis is a more pernicious virus of the motion-picture industry than the illusory virus of remakes.

Unfortunately, The Truth About Charlie fails to work in terms of genre expectations for the paying customers who walk in from the street, as opposed to us privileged cineastes who can ooh and aah at the cameo glimpses of such icons as Anna Karina, Magali Noel and Agnes Varda. Truth to tell, the mass of moviegoers much prefer plot to atmosphere, and Mr. Demme has overwhelmed his plot with excessive eccentricities that emerge from a polyglot Paris which too often intrudes on the suspension of disbelief required for the principals, caught as they are in the swirl of teeming mob scenes. 

Yet Mr. Demme has remained true to his own eccentricity in liking the most outlandish people unconditionally in such charmingly quirky pieces as Citizen’s Band (1977), Last Embrace (1979), Melvin and Howard (1980), Something Wild (1986), Philadelphia (1993) and, of course, The Silence of the Lambs (1991). In between narrative-film assignments, he has kept his hand in with such nonfiction projects as the celebrated music documentary Stop Making Sense (1984) with the Talking Heads, Swimming to Cambodia (1987) with Spalding Gray, Haiti: Dreams of Democracy (1987), Cousin Bobby (1992), Storefront Hitchcock (1998) and, as a TV producer, Mandela (1996)—attesting to his wide interests and engagements in the real world.

Consequently, it is not so much a question of Mr. Demme not being worthy of Charade, but of Charade, with its Donen-and-Stone gleeful ghoulishness, not being right for the ultra-civilized, if not ultra-squeamish, Mr. Demme. One can see that Mr. Demme’s heart skips a beat whenever Ms. Newton glides into view, almost stumbles and quickly rights herself with a quasi-balletic grace. Mr. Wahlberg, sadly, lacks even the minimal charisma of a Matt Damon, much less the comparative smoothness of a George Clooney. The latter is as close as we are going to get these days to the Cary Grant mystique, which is another reason why movies like Charade should never be recycled; they should be left in the library, to be appreciated for their very marginal virtues and graces.

So there we have it: The Truth About Charlie, intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously, was finally executed (if not originally conceived) as a comic parody of Charade in the midst of Mr. Demme’s long-overdue love letter to the city of Paris, and to the French civilization that gives it its enduring sparkle. The Truth About Charlie may not be and should not be everyone’s cup of tea, but at the end of it, I felt a guilty affection for all its participants. So sue me for dereliction of the critic’s duty to serve as a completely reliable taste consultant, but that is one of the lingering curses of auterism.

Don't call it a remake. Just kidding. Director Jonathan Demme is fine if people want to apply that
label to The Truth About Charlie, his reworking of the 1963 romantic caper Charade. But while that classic had Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn to fire off witty repartee, Demme cast Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton as his leads. Why? Because he wanted to do something different. Something like … Something Wild, an infectiously loopy thriller which, along with Married to the Mob, established Demme as an up-and-coming oddball auteur during the '80s.  That all changed in 1991, when Demme directed a slightly more serious effort, the Oscar-bedecked, seminal serial-killer thriller Silence of the Lambs. Two years and a Best Director Academy Award later, he 
helped Tom Hanks win his first Oscar by directing the AIDS melodrama Philadelphia. However, despite some vociferous praise by critics, Demme's next picture, a 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison's Beloved, garnered precious little gold at the box office or at award ceremonies. 

Since then, Demme has kept such a low profile that it's sparked whispers of retirement. Now, however, the filmmaker is back, energized by and excited to be a part of what he called a "new" New Wave cinema that includes directors like Wes Anderson and Tom Tykwer. And even though he's an old dog in film years — he cut his cinematic teeth writing scripts for B-movie czar Roger Corman in the '70s — Demme is hoping that his latest film will show audiences he's learned some  new tricks. 

Q: So this is a remake, or "re-imagining," if you will, of Charade — 

Jonathan Demme: Oh, it's a remake. 

Q: Hey, at least you admit it! So, anyway, that movie's considered a classic by a lot of people. What made you want to remake this particular film? 

JD: Well, er, back to the remake thing. There is a movie called Charade, and we have re-made it, so we have to call it a remake. We also [puts fingers in the air to make quotes] "re-imagined" it, but that sounds like someone trying to escape the stigma of re-making something. So I don't want to get into that. I did for months, but I kept coming back to it and thinking…[Adopts skeptical look] Finally, my 12-year-old son said, "Dad, it's a remake." Ah, from the mouth of babes! [Laughs] 
I'm not against remakes, though. I think remakes are perfectly fair game. I think what matters is that the remake is a picture that can stand on its own two feet. That was our goal with The Truth About Charlie, and I think we took off from the very solid foundation of the premise of Charade, the situation of Charade, and then very enthusiastically tried to create our own separate identity. The thing about Charade is that from the very beginning, there's [Hepburn's character] Reggie with a gun in her face. There's suspenseful music, it feels heavy, and — whoops! — it's a squirt gun. It's an invitation to play. In Truth About Charlie, you meet Reggie; she's terrified, she's backing up, she falls — possibly to her death, although it's too early — whoops! She was pushed into a pool by a kid. So I liked that about Charade and wanted that in The Truth About Charlie.… One of the
things that I found really intriguing about Charade, and that motivated me to make a movie that tried to capture the same spirit, was the fact that it never aspires to make you forget you're watching a movie. It aspires to say, "Come on in, participate in this film." 

Q: One thing that I noticed was different in Truth About Charlie than in Charade was Reggie's
relationship with Commandant Dominique (played by Christine Boisson), the police inspector. It was almost flirtatious. 

JD: Almost?! [Laughs] 

Q: Well, I wouldn't presume to tell you what your own movie's about. 

JD: One of the things that I thought would be fun about the character of Reggie was that in this
duplicitous, toxic, dangerous world that she's plunged into, that her sort of light as a person makes
everybody in this dark world fall for her a bit — even the police inspector. Even the bad guys, who aren't as bad as we thought they were by the time the story ends.… [So] this is a remake where you'll see it, you'll watch it and say, "Wow, this is just like the original — wait! No, it's not!" It goes back and forth a lot. There's just enough in common with the original to make you think you know where this one's going. [It] has a story real similar to Charade, but also to Married to the Mob, another movie I made, and lots of other pictures. It is a woman in jeopardy; it is a murder mystery. But I think we're quite original in a lot of ways. 

I [also] wanted to make a contemporary movie with Thandie Newton, whom I worked with in Beloved. Her performance in Beloved, as far as I'm concerned, is an extraordinary performance, absolutely inspired. She showed up with that. She read the book, she read the script, she had this sense of who Beloved was. She showed and she did what we see there, and I got to be on the set and film it, what have you. I was so excited by how talented this young woman was — er, is.
And yet, I was astonished that she never starred in a movie which gave a remote hint of what she was really like, which is a lot like Regina Lambert. She's got a big heart, she's courageous, she's smart, she's funny, she's charming — and that I felt very strongly. You know that Svengali wannabe that lives inside filmmakers? I was thinking that if I directed Thandie's first [starring] movie, that maybe I'd have something like [what happened to Cameron Diaz in] There's Something About Mary on my hands. I'd have that thing when the right actor is in the right piece and it explodes all over the movie screen. So when I saw Charade, I saw not only a lot of potential for me to make a lighthearted movie after making so many downer movies, heavyhearted movies, but mainly as a
Thandie Newton vehicle. 

Q: Since this is your first lighthearted movie in a long time, does it make you a little nervous when
Universal puts "from the director of The Silence of the Lambs" on The Truth About Charlie poster? 

JD: As if that matters! [Laughs] Unless your spiel-y, it doesn't matter. But, yeah, I agree. I think if
they're going to put anything like that on there, it should say, "From the makers of Married to the Mob," if anything. But it's even lighter than Married to the Mob! [Laughs] But [Universal] explained to me that, by mentioning a well-known movie on there, they're re-assuring audiences that this is a quality product. And I said, "I don't know, to me, it sounds like you're offering another Silence of the Lambs." But they've moved away from that of late. 

Q: Okay, we know why you cast Thandie Newton. What about Mark Wahlberg? 

JD: What I saw in him that made me want to make this movie with him was that I saw him in real life. I met him at the urging of Paul Thomas Anderson, who is a pal of mine, and who, of course, directed Mark in Boogie Nights. I like Mark a lot in Boogie Nights and even more so in Three Kings, and I thought he was quite strong and touching in The Perfect Storm. So I had this sense of "Gee, what do you know? The underpants model has turned into a good actor!" [Laughs] 

But seriously, good for him. The only hurdle I had to overcome in gearing up and getting ready to do a new version of Charade, was to try not to fall in that hideous trap of trying to duplicate Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. That means that the new version is going to have to work in other ways, and I thought putting the energy in more youthful characters was a step in the right direction. I also thought that in Charade, you have the movie magic that occurs when the world's two most sophisticated movie stars meet up in Paris and you watch that all happen. I was intrigued, in my sort of obstreperous way, and I said, "What if we had half of that? What if we had an exceptionally sophisticated young woman who's absolutely at home in Paris, a filet mignon of a woman, who meets this cheeseburger, this very fish-out-of-water guy. A guy like me. A guy that goes to Paris and puts on a beret, and learns all the French pleasantries to try and fit in, and so wants to be a Parisian — but it'll never happen. I like the fish-out-of-water gig, and when I saw Mark and Thandie together, I thought they made for a really attractive-looking couple. And I felt that personality-wise, I hadn't seen a match-up like this that I can think of. It stimulated me to go make this wacky, wacky Marky-meets-Thandie-in-Paris movie and see what happens. 

Q: Besides the setting, much of The Truth About Charlie feels very French, from the verité camera to the quirky whimsicality. Is this your attempt at making a French New Wave movie? 

JD: Well, I went into this with a lifelong love of French movies, particularly New Wave movies, which I grew up with. I was a budding young cineaste, and I just dove in as a moviegoer and loved these. So then, one day, I'm in Paris, France … and I'm like, "Aaaaah! They shot Breathless on this street!!!" Then I pursued [legendary Armenian-French actor-singer] Charles Aznavour in the hope his magic that has worked so powerfully on me over the years could, in a small way, help define the somewhat fantasy dimension and movie-crazy atmosphere that we had going. So, to try and get some of that Aznavour magic in there, we cut to my favorite French movie, Shoot the Piano Player,
since, in that movie, they did completely inappropriate crazy cuts to gangsters' mothers dying of heart attacks in the middle of serious interrogation scenes. We also knew that if it didn't work, it wasn't fun for the uninitiated, that it had to have a life of its own. That's not going to fly at the cineplex. So I just cast him as this old French crooner who materializes in the room, who just happens to be in some black-and-white movies. 

Q: When you introduced the movie before the press screening, you said that you "didn't know it was going to be this crazy until we finished the editing process." How much more frantic did it become in post-production? It seemed pretty frantic to begin with. How much more could you amp it up? 

JD: I think what was on paper, originally, was striving or being sucked into more of a psychological
bedrock for these characters to move through. On the other hand, I wanted to have a completely unhinged, anything-goes visual approach to the movie. I was inspired by things like Run Lola Run, the films of Wong Kar-Wai, and, indeed, all the original Godard films. I didn't necessarily realize that these movies would be on such a collision course, but I'm glad. We shot things that delved much deeper into the horror of the situation that Reggie finds herself in. We had an earlier version of the film which was quite disturbing a lot of the time! We had to remind ourselves that that wasn't the kind of movie we set out to make in the first place, and we had to back off on that. So there's a little unconventionality to the camerawork and the visual approach, and a certain sense of spontaneity that might be associated with [adopts pompous, William F. Buckley-like accent] some of my earlier films. [Laughs] The secret agenda of this movie is the idea — again, born of my experience with something like Run Lola Run — to show the joy of filmmaking, the exuberance that can also translate to the audience, that there can also be something infectious there.