Len Wiseman: When I started doing television, I thought that I would c...

Science fiction is an extension of science.

Len Wiseman

science-fiction extensions fiction

As society evolves, people are interested in a new take on an old beloved story.

Len Wiseman

beloved stories people

Some people will always be disappointed.

Len Wiseman

disappointed people

A lot of these movies are informed by the movies that come before them.

Len Wiseman

It was Die Hard in my father's workshop. And so when that opportunity came up, the possibility of doing it, it's more the teenager in me who says that, 'I have to, of course I'm going to.' So that's the fun of reinventing, or just getting involved in things that really, actually loved as a kid growing up wanting to grow up to be a director.

Len Wiseman

teenager growing-up fun

With Die Hard it was just something that I, you know, I grew up with those movies. I made a Die Hard movie with my friends in my backyard during high school. It was terrible.

Len Wiseman

backyards grew-up school

I think that it drives from an emotional connection with everybody that pulls you through all of those events, whether it's the events or what would be more the action, or I guess the visual effects side of it. So it always starts with me from - emotionally - 'Why do you care about the people who are going through what they're going through?' Because it takes a hell of a lot to put them through that. So you better care for them when they're doing it.

Len Wiseman

emotional people thinking

It was practically with people with strings. There was no CG involved, it was just painfully taking Collin [Farrell] and Jessica Biel and putting them upside-down, we built the set upside-down and just try to twist perspective to make it all seem like zero gravity. And it was one of the most difficult things I've ever shot.

Len Wiseman

perspective zero people

I would love to travel to the future to plot out some things so there's no more guess work.

Len Wiseman

plot

I had no intention of replacing Arnold [Schwarzenegger]. There were a few things that made me want to do the movie. They were the script which had a different direction to it, and it was a chance to do a very different Quaid. I didn't read the short story until I went to college.Reading the story had a different effect on me of how I pictured him to be and the tone of the story was different. In the story, he's a bit more of an everyman.

Len Wiseman

different reading college

The three-breasted woman was very much at the top of my list in [original 'Total recall']. Like I said, I was fourteen! I remember Arnold [Schwarzenegger] pulling that big tracker out of his nose and freaking out about that. I remember going through the immigration booth where their face splits open with that heavyset redheaded lady. So there were a lot of these little moments that I remember.

Len Wiseman

immigration three noses

I had made a list of about ten things that I remembered from the original 'Total Recall' before I went back and watched. It had been about twenty years. I wanted to write it out before I watched it again. And I felt if those things stayed with me long enough, those are the things that I wanted to highlight.

Len Wiseman

writing long years

I had done 'Die Hard' and it was somebody's franchise. I actually just got done with the 'Hawaii Five-O' pilot and I was developing some things of my own. So 'Total Recall' one of those projects that I read wanting more not to like it.

Len Wiseman

hawaii pilots done

One thing that is very different technically is that you don't get a lot of coverage in television. Not like you do on a film. I know we don't have time for separate set-ups, so I will design a scene where I'm hiding multiple cameras within that set-up. That way, if I don't have time to do five set-ups, I can do four cameras in one set-up. It's a different kind of approach for that. For the most part, a lot of television, in a visual sense, lacks time for the atmosphere and putting you in a place.

Len Wiseman

atmosphere cameras design

Being a fan of science fiction, I collect a lot of science fiction art work and so if you go to my house there's like a library and you just geek out on science fiction material. A lot of the colony worlds specifically are built as a melting pot of different societies, because the world is at a point where there are only two zones that are left inhabitable.

Len Wiseman

house two art

So I was drawing in a lot of the habit district in Brazil, put that together with an Asian influence, so there are a lot of different things in terms of architecture which assisted in the construction. Then every sci-fi movie I've grown up with from 'Blade Runner' to 'Aliens' and 'Star Wars.'"

Len Wiseman

drawing stars war

There are plenty of directors who work with the same actors over and over, many more times than I have. Like I have worked with Bill Nighy more times than I have worked with Kate, but I'm not married to Bill Nighy.

Len Wiseman

bills actors directors

So the question never comes up. I love to work with actors who I feel really confident in knowing what I'm going to get from them. And making a movie is such a risk that it's comforting to build up a good support team in production as well as cast.

Len Wiseman

support team knowing

Just movies in general. It's such a wonderful business as much as you feel, you are fine tuning your craft, every movie is a completely different challenge. Every fight sequence is different. Every action set piece. I enjoy that.

Len Wiseman

movies-in-general fighting challenges

The class warfare was in the script as well. It establishes what the world is like and what would happen if we really had two zones that were left and everybody had to survive using these two areas. What would our society to do with that set up? I wanted the state of world, in my mind, how it would actually realistically unfold. I drew that from what was in the script.

Len Wiseman

mind class two

When I started doing television, I thought that I would change the way that I shot, the way that I blocked, and the technical side of it. You're not going to change your relationship with the actors or how you approach the characters. That wasn't any different.