from LATimes 20040118
Teen angst at Hogwarts
The stars are older, the issues darker as "Harry Potter" reappears under the director of the sexy "Y Tu Mamá También." This time, the
monsters are within.
By John Horn, Times Staff Writer
Time works its magic
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Rotating directors
Hollywood has a successful tradition of giving different directors a chance to reinterpret established movie
titles. Fox selected Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet to make its "Alien" movies, and Paramount has enlisted Brian De Palma, John Woo and Joe Carnahan to direct its "Mission: Impossible" films.
Selecting Cuarón to take over "Harry Potter" seems both entirely reasonable and provocatively daring, especially for a studio that has played conservatively with
the young wizard at every step. The stakes are arguably even higher with the third film, as it will be released amid the highly competitive summer (it opens June 4) rather than the shelter of November, when the first two movies debuted.
Out of caution, Warners nixed Rowling's personal petition to hire "Brazil's" Terry Gilliam to direct the first movie, 2001's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." The studio instead picked "Home Alone's" Chris Columbus, who also directed the first sequel, 2002's "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."
Both films were runaway global blockbusters, grossing more than $1.8 billion worldwide, yet critics said they lacked the creative audacity and spark that empower movies like Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" series and that make Rowling's books so memorable for kids and adults alike. The movies were hits, but they weren't hip: They needed some PG-13, "Pirates of the Caribbean" pizazz.
Warners wasn't trying to replace Columbus, but the director — who first fantasized about making all seven movies (the number of books Rowling plans for the series) — was ready for a change. He had lived in London for more than three years preparing, filming and editing his "Harry Potter" films, long enough that his American children were starting to speak with British accents. Columbus wanted to move back to Northern California and pursue other movie ideas.
The studio contemplated several options to fill his spot in the director's chair: actor-director Kenneth Branagh, who played the self-important professor Gilderoy Lockhart in "The Chamber of Secrets"; Callie Khouri, who had just co-written and directed Warners' "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood"; comedy director Ivan Reitman; and a 42-year-old from Mexico
City whose last movie was so explicit that half the "Harry Potter" cast was too young to attend.
Warners knew Cuarón's work quite well. Even though it admits to bungling the release, the studio had distributed Cuarón's 1995 film, "A Little Princess," an adaptation of Frances Burnett's novel about a young girl who, not unlike Harry Potter, ends up in an unusual boarding school.
"That movie confirmed to me that he could live in the world of fantasy and children and not be treacly and also be a little bit dark," says Alan Horn, president of Warner Bros. "And in 'Y Tu Mamá,' he got such performances out of those two young boys. Now our protagonists in 'Harry Potter' are 13, entering puberty, and he understands that. The question was: Could he handle something of this size? It can be daunting."
Horn wasn't the only "Little Princess" fan. Rowling too had loved the film and even had ranked Cuarón just behind Gilliam among her preferences to direct the first film. Warners decided to take a chance and offered Cuarón the gig.
He didn't immediately say yes. Thanks to "Y Tu Mamá," which was an art house hit nominated for an original screenplay Oscar, Cuarón was by his own admission Hollywood's "flavor of the month" and was swimming in potential deals, including a shot to make a James Bond movie.
"I have to confess, I was a bit ignorant about the Harry Potter thing," Cuarón says as a murder of trained crows swoops through the air, rehearsing for the director's next shot. "Then they started to talk about it, and I was like, 'Yeah, well ... I don't know.' Then someone said, 'Please, look at the material, because I really want you to give an answer.' So I read [screenwriter] Steve Kloves' script. And it was great. And then I immediately read the book. And I was, frankly, amazed by the book and the script."
Cuarón also saw there were significant advantages to directing a film in a series already underway. First, you inherit recognized characters and settings as well as actors familiar both with the roles and to the audience.
"Everything is established, so I don't need to do exposition," Cuarón says. "Chris crafted with [production designer] Stuart Craig a really eloquent universe. And Chris already established all the rules, so pretty much I don't have to get into the matter of 'OK, Hogwarts is this. And you're a Muggle. And you're a wizard.'
"By not having to do all this exposition, I can concentrate on character and the psychology of the characters."
At the same time, Cuarón knew he was not at liberty to reimagine the film from the ground up. While he wasn't exactly constrained to paint by the numbers, much of his filmmaking canvas already had been sketched in.
Even if he wanted to, for example, Cuarón couldn't hire a new composer — he was obligated to use John Williams, who provided the score for the first two "Harry Potter" films. Similarly, Cuarón couldn't redesign Hogwarts, overhaul Diagon Alley, or recast any lead roles (outside of replacing Richard Harris, who played Hogwarts' head of school, Albus Dumbledore, in the first two films but died in October 2002). And finally, Columbus would be looking over Cuarón's shoulder, as he remained in London as one of the film's executive producers.
"I wanted to make sure that the film didn't stray too far from the world that the audience and the fans have sort of fallen in love with over the course of the first two movies," Columbus says at the Leavesden studios on the outskirts of London, where many of the film's sets were built and still reside. "It's like putting nipples on the 'Batman' suit: It can get a little strange and a little weird to the audience…. If [the fans] have to adjust to too much change, they could have been turned off by the film."
Before Cuarón made his decision on "The Prisoner of Azkaban," he turned to his longtime filmmaking friend Guillermo del Toro for guidance.
"Guillermo had just finished directing 'Blade 2,' " Cuarón says. "And he said, 'Man, if you do it, I have only one piece of advice to give you: Don't try to do an Alfonso Cuarón movie. Try to serve the franchise. And by serving the franchise, you may end up doing an Alfonso Cuarón movie.' "
Cuarón told Warners he would take the job.
The principals' favorite
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A 'distinct piece of work'
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Long shoot, mammoth budget
Even though he's just taken several days off for a Christmas break, fatigue creeps into Cuarón's voice on a telephone call from London.
On "Y Tu Mamá," Cuarón had just a few weeks and a mere $5 million to make the movie. For "The Prisoner of Azkaban," his shooting schedule stretched over eight months and his budget swelled to $200 million.
"No matter how much money you have, you are always 20 percent short," says Cuarón, who worked without his favorite cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki ("The Prisoner of Azkaban's" director of photography is Michael Seresin, longtime collaborator of director Alan Parker). "You can be on a low-budget movie or a big-budget movie, but you always wish you had 20 percent more. There was a point where you just dream, do whatever you want to do. And working with Steve Kloves was about dreaming. And then there was the window of frustration, where you are told, 'This is the budget, and you can't do that.' But it was always about figuring out which movie we wanted to do with these resources and trying to fit everything into what I must say is a very healthy budget."
The production was without any major mishaps, if you don't count the raging Scottish brush fire sparked by a stray piece of burning coal from the Hogwarts Express train.
"It has been insane, but it has been good," Cuarón says. "These kinds of films are not so much about filmmaking. They are about endurance. They just go on forever. And you have to keep up the pace all the time. If you fall behind in editing, it affects all the other departments. It's like a marathon. Sometimes you're in a zone. But sometimes, all of your tendons ache." The next installment, "Goblet of Fire," will be directed by "Mona Lisa Smile" filmmaker Mike Newell.
"The whole goal of taking a franchise in a new direction is what keeps them alive," Cuarón says. "
Jo Rowling said to me, 'Don't be literal. Just be faithful to the spirit.' You might have hits and misses. But it's always going to be fresh."