GEOSTORM interview - Dean Devlin (director/co-writer)

[0:34]you've been producing and writing for years. What was it about this that made you feel like it was the right time to take the director's chair? Um, well you know, this whole thing started with a question from my daughter. You know, she was six years old, she'd just started hearing about climate change, and she said, "Daddy, why can't we just build a machine that would fix this?" And I started to try and explain to her the complexities of geoengineering as a science and the unintended consequences should we use it, and the morality of if we should use it. And then I realized the better way to explain it to my daughter was a bedtime story, and that is what Geostorm is. It, it's a fable on what could happen if we wait too long to deal with this. Mhm. I'm sure you're also cautious about not repeating anything that you've done before as well as far as the big set pieces and stuff. What were some of the challenges that you sort of set for yourself? Well, I think we've seen in other movies, you know, natural disasters on an epic scale. So what we really wanted to do is try to focus this on unnatural disasters, things that couldn't happen in nature unless we were to have tinkered with it, unless we were to somehow through technology messed with it. And so that really altered visually how we were going to portray different types of weather disasters. Were there any sort of weather disaster that you couldn't fit in for time or that just wasn't working? I would have liked to have gotten more wind. Uh-huh. I didn't get enough wind, but there you have a problem there with with wind machines and blue screens, it's a little bit tough. But uh then there's other stuff that's that's just an argument of is it really considered part of climate change? for instance earthquakes, earthquakes is horrible weather condition, I mean a natural disaster, but is it really a weather condition? So there's certain things that we thought of in the film, but then didn't use. Diversity is so crucial to this, it's part of the narrative. Uh, you've got Zazi in this, you've got Daniel, you've got Andy, Eugenio, were there things that they brought to the role that you sort of weren't expecting when you wrote it? All of the actors did. I mean, that's the beauty of when you actually get really talented actors instead of just actors who have big Twitter followings, you know, and I think that there there there is a need for really talented actors, because every day I was surprised. Every day I would look at the monitor and go, oh man, I didn't think of it that way. You know, I Tom Hanks once said to make a great movie, you have to do it three times. You have to write one, then you have to shoot one, and then you have to edit one, and any one of the stages, you can blow it. And it was just so joyful to be on set and see what these actors brought to the characters and how it elevated it. Does this now having directed this, having directed, does this change how you now write? Um, not really, you know, I I think the, the thing, making any kind of movie, whether it's a hundred million dollar movie or two million dollar movie, it's hard. It's hard, that that you have different kinds of obstacles, you have obstacles all day long. So what gets you through it is a story that you really want to tell. So when it comes to writing, you, if you're not writing something that you in your heart feel passionate about, it makes it very hard to do this well. And you know, I know there's a lot of people who try to figure it out and say, well, what do people want to see and what are people buying today? And I think the minute you start thinking that way, you're behind. Just tell the movie you want to tell and hopefully, it's a story people want to hear. Will we ever see something like Dean Devlin's My Dinner with Andre, something just simple like point and shoot, you don't have to do a lot of effects. It'd be much easier for you. You know, I'm addicted to three things. Uh, and it may sound shallow, but it's honest. I think that life is hard, so I like my entertainment to be fun. I'm addicted to the cheer moment, and I want to be moved emotionally and the moved emotionally tends to temper one into. So I don't care if it's a dinner with Andre, if it's a documentary like when I did who killed the electric car, an internet show, a TV show, a movie, if I can get all three things, I'll do it. That's what I care about.