District 9 - Neill Blomkamp Interview, Comic Con
Neill Blomkamp's animation and visual effects background served him well as the director of Columbia Pictures' 'District 9.' Produced by Peter Jackson, 'District 9' finds aliens stranded on earth and forced to live in a fenced-in slum.
Transcript: District 9 - Neill Blomkamp Interview, Comic Con
Columbia Pictures' District 9 at the 2009 San Diego Comic Con.
District 9 Writer/Director Neill Blomkamp
I'm amazed you were able to do this for $30 million. Did you want more?
Neill Blomkamp: "No, no. I definitely didn't want more. That's a completely active decision we made to keep it down as low as humanly possible, and that's just because... Maybe I suppose if you're James Cameron or you're Peter Jackson, then having a lot of money is pretty cool. You can have a lot of money and do what you want. But if you're not them, you have to kind of start off with films that are smaller and you can do what you want, or bigger and you can't do what you want because there's too much sort of financial strain. So this movie was $30 million and we set out to make it low budget, and it was so that I could kind of make something that felt exactly how I wanted to make it and people weren't going to say that I couldn't."
You can take this story a couple of different ways because the aliens are oppressed. Is it okay if people walk out just thinking it's a fun sci-fi film?
Neill Blomkamp: "Yeah, totally. One of the things I was aware of right from the beginning was making sure that it felt like... Hopefully, because very few people have seen it, but hopefully will take it as though it is a summer Hollywood ride. I mean hopefully that's how they take it. The only difference is that it's set against an unusual backdrop. And the backdrop happens to be very political and very racially charged, because that's what South Africa is. Did you think it was a Hollywood kind of film."
No, I didn't. [Just to explain: It stands out from the pack and that's why it didn't feel Hollywood-ish to me] Neill Blomkamp: "Was it a ride?"
It was a total ride. And what really was really cool is that the trailer gives nothing away. In making this film, how did you decide to cast an unknown who happens to be your friend in the lead role? He's like a one man show out there opposite the aliens.
Neill Blomkamp: "It's for that exact reason. The reason I cast him is because he's so good at improv, he's never been in a film before but he's so good at improv, and I wanted - even though we'd written a script and we had very clear scenes - I wanted him to take those scenes and that dialogue and kind of throw the dialogue out and make the scene his own. And that is a massive level of improv, and the reason I wanted to do that is to make it feel real. And the only person that I knew who could do it, and who also was South African, was Sharlto [Copley]. So I went to South Africa and I filmed some test footage and I showed it to Pete. And then Pete Jackson signed off on him and now he's in Hollywood."