CONSTANTINE
Q&A with director Francis Lawrence		 Search all of phase9.tv






Movie Review by Neils Hesse

So do all music video directors want to be movie directors?

Umm, you know what I don’t know. I don’t know if they all want to be. I think a bunch do, I know that I wanted to be beforehand, I sort of lucked into doing music videos. I thought I’d graduate film school; make a movie and win an Academy Award but I didn’t realise how ill prepared I was at the time. I had a friend who had a music distribution company and he just asked me to help on a music video and I did used that job to get the next job and it sort of went from there. I saw it as a really good training ground.

How did you jump from being a video director to a big film like this as your first film?

As my career progressed I was working with bigger artists and bigger budgets and things like that. And then you get an agent, you get a manager, you start reading scripts and then you go through that battle of you know, all the stuff I knew I could get which was stupid teenage skateboarding movies and music driven, musician movies and all the things I didn’t want. All the things I liked were getting nabbed by all the A list guys and then I found this script which I thought was really cool and really unique and it was in no way perfect shape when I found it which was sort of a blessing because sort of people stay away if it’s not perfect. But I thought the character was really unique and the possibility for the world was really unique so I went after it. I had to sell quite a lot to try and get the job ‘cos it’s quite an expensive movie. Music video directors have a reputation of being irresponsible and not thinking at all about the story and the character, just thinking about the visuals and trying to make a flashy movie so it took about six or seven months to get the job and I finally got it.

Was the first day on set daunting?

No, no that wasn’t daunting. I have to say the scariest stuff, as a music video director you get music, you write a treatment, you hand it to your rep, then send it and then you hear whether or not you’ve got the job. But I had to go in and meet with the studio and stand up in front of them and pitch them my ideas for the movie and how I would do. That was the scariest stuff, the public speaking and making the rounds of the studios and producers and then finally Keanu, who was already on board.

Was it hard to get the film going because Constantine is such a dark character?

No, the studio was always behind it. The fight that we had was that the studio always thought it was a little bit lighter fare, they never understood the tone that I was going for. Luckily the producers were really supportive and the studio for whatever reason, even though I was new, didn’t think I was trying to be sneaky in any way ‘cos I kept trying to communicate – I just don’t think they really understood it. So they let us do but it was a bit of a battle, especially in prepping the movie but when they saw the footage they really got behind the movie and supported it.

In the comics Constantine comes from Liverpool – what prompted you to relocate him to LA?

This project existed for like six of seven years before I came on board. At some point before me, because it actually existed in another incarnation for a minute – it was almost going to be made with Tarsem [Singh], the guy who made THE CELL, and Nicolas Cage – I don’t know if he was English then either so he was changed into an American either during that process or before that process. I don’t know why it was changed.

The location thing is always interesting to because the Hellblazer comics are all over the world. There’s a big series of him travelling the mid-west of the United States, he’s in New York, Africa, modern England so I always thought Constantine’s stories could be told anywhere so that was never an issue for me. I can understand the fans being unset he’s not English and not being blonde but the location question has always sort of surprise me.

Is this globetrotting something you could possibly explore in potential sequels?

Oh definitely. I think if people like this and we get the opportunity to make a sequel, it wouldn’t be in Los Angeles it would be somewhere else. It could be England… it could be anywhere.

What do you think of the finished product and does it represent what you visualised?

I’m really proud of the film actually. Obviously having had a hand in creating it I have my own issues. I could keep working on it forever and you constantly want to change things but I’m really proud of the film and I’m proud that a film like this got through the system ‘cos I don’t think it’s your standard studio film in any way.

Are there any particular scenes that really stand out for you?

Yeah there’s a few. I really like Constantine talking to Satan a lot. I think that really sums up who Constantine is and what his world is and what is relationship to the way the world works. I really like the scene when Angela comes to his apartment for the first time. I think you really get a sense of who he is, who she is and the story really starts from that point.

What about the casting of Keanu Reeves? He seems to have cornered the market in these sort of Messiah-type roles, why is that?

It’s interesting. I think this role is so different for Keanu and we keep getting this comparison to THE MATRIX and I know that even if we’d cast someone else and didn’t make him blonde and dressed him in black we would never get THE MATRIX comparisons. I don’t see him as a Messiah because he’s so into just saving his own ass and he does things for his own selfish reasons and that’s it. He’s so different to Neo because Constantine’s a prick. Neo is discovering who he is and learns that he’s The One but he’ a real hero. Constantine’s not, he’s an anti-hero and the only reason any of this is happening is because he wants to try and get out of going to hell.

What about mixing the film’s religious tones with a comic book sensibility? Are you worried about how the religious right in the US might receive the film?

I wasn’t worried. I sort of thought it was going to be more offensive than it would be. I didn’t mean for it to be offensive, I didn’t mean it not to be offensive, we just wanted to make the movie that we thought would be cool and interesting. What is weird that once the movie was finished, we started showing it to religious press and they’ve actually kind of embraced it which was a surprise because they see a guy struggling with his faith, the battle between good and evil and ideas of redemption but what whet they’re not seeing as some of the jabs we’ve made at the Christian right with characters like Gabriel in the movie. They’re picking up what they want to pick up and other people are picking up hat they want to pick up, it’s been fascinating. I thought that they’d be a lot more offended than they are.

Do you believe in God and the Devil yourself?

No, I’m not religious.

So why did this subject matter appeal to you?

The character really appealed to me. I like the idea that the world word in ways we don’t really know or understand. And I liked the idea that there’s a character who does have it figured out, does know it. I said I’m not religious but also I don’t know, there’s always that possibility and I liked the idea of taking some of those ideas and making then a little more universal – you don’t have to be a Christian or a Catholic to understand it.

Continued on page 2


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