Robert Rodriguez and Rose McGowan answer questions on upcoming Red Sonja with director, Doug Aarniokoski.
Highlights:
- Rodriguez is planning to restart the Conan franchise.
- RR apparently fell for Rose after she called him “Count Fuckula”
- Machete will be made starring Danny Trejo and it will be the first “Mexploitation” flick
- Sin City 2 & 3 have scripts
- Red Sonja will be so bloody, it will introduce the “Double R”
Read the liveblogging transcript after the jump.
3:00 - Wrapping up
Q: Are you gonna have piles of bodies like they had in the B & W comics?
RR: Oh, we got to, right? That’s the set dressing!
Q: Booth babes. last year there was a Cherry Darling booth babe. How did you feel?
Rose: I loved it! I thought she was so awesome. I watched it about 5 times on YouTube and sent it to my mom and dad.
Q: On video game
Rose: Video game for Red Sonja? I hope so.
2:57 - Machete is on and Heavy Metal Magazine
RR: Heavy Metal Magazine, that’s why I leaned towards Barbarella. I thought, finally, I have a justification for all these years and money on Heavy Metal Magazine.
Q: More zombie movies?
Rose: Only if he does Jane Austen.
RR: When we do Machete, I do want to add a trailer at the front that’s a sequel for Cherry Darling, the sequel to Planet Terror, showing some things I wanted to do that I couldn’t do.
RR: Back in 1993 when I first met Danny Trejo, I wrote a script from Machete, and I borrowed scenes from it. It’s one of those really backwards things, where I wrote the script, made the trailer, now people love the trailer and now I have to shoot the movie. There’s going to be two sequels: Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again.
“I have a Machete script, and it’s just a matter of locking down this next couple of months.”
“I’ve just dreamt about Machete too long. We need our own Mexploitation character.”
Q: With so many franchises going PG 13, are you guys going hard R?
RR: My name is “Double R.”
(Huge cheers)
“We’re gonna give you a double R, baby!” (Rose makes a pirate noise.)
2:51 -Meeting Rose and making RS
RR: I met Rose at the Cannes film festival. I started talking to her, and she would just brutally cut me down to size, and she would call me “Count Fuckula.” I was like, “Who are you, and where you been?”
I just found her arresting, and I kind of wrote a lot of [the Cherry Darling] character around her. It was just quite a force.
So having seen her really pull that off, and seeing the parts that were out there, the lack of, we knew we had to find something where she could step up and top that. And there was nothing. It had to be Red Sonja.
Q: Will you shoot RS in 3D so we can have blood thrown in our faces?
A: And other stuff, too. You’re really wanting cleavage, right?
(RR takes credit for “bringing 3D back” with Spy Kids 3.)
RR: I shot [Spy Kids 3] on a stage, to go out in the field is tougher. There is a new system, where you shoot and do the 3D in post. I might go that route instead.
Q: what else is in your private collection that might lead to a movie?
RR: I cant say now, because then you would know.
2:45 - More Q&A
Rose: I think I saw CHUD, was the first movie I saw in America. I saw a lot of movies I shouldn’t have.
If I announced I was doing a movie where I just stared at a teapot there’d be 400,000 people on the Internet saying “blahblahblah.” For some reason, it’s much easier to say things that are negative. So, with that in mind, with every thrust of my sword, I’ll be thinking of people like that.”
Q: About villains in RS
Villains? “We can’t say right now.”
Issues 9-12 are sort of the origin of her…but we’re not really saying until it leaks.
Q: About Conan casting
Conan casting? “Danny Trejo!” (Huge cheers)
RR: I’m surprised nobody’s asked about Machete yet! My phone’s gonna be ringing in a sec (does Danny Trejo’s voice) “Robert! When are we gonna make Machete? Hurry up, holmes!”
Q: Has the sword been designed?
Doug: Being designed as we speak, in a country far, far away.
Q: Rose, chance you might be involved in future Sin City?
Rose prevaricates.
2:41 - On leaving the DGA and collaborating
RR: It was very freeing to leave the DGA. They have a rulebook that says you can only have one director. They want the illusion that there’s only one voice, one vision, and that isn’t always true. People are always like “you do so many jobs yourself, don’t you like to collaborate?” I love to collaborate, and I got penalized for it.
So, I said, “Just to really stick it to them, I’ll add Quentin.” So, I added a special title for Quentin that doesn’t really exist. But that’s why I’m only producing in name on this one, and Doug’s directing. I don’t have any regrets. If I want to do a studio movie I just do Financial Core, which is where you just fall into the rules of the DGA.
Q: Are you directing a scene in Inglorious Bastards?
RR: I don’t know..it would probably be music again, or maybe he wants me to get blown up.
Q (11 year old girl): I like Planet Terror a lot… (Crowd cheers to hear that she’s 11!) “I also enjoyed the Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl.”
2:36 - On Rose’s stunts and scripts for Sin City:
Rose has been working out 3 hours a day for Red Sonja and is about to start sword training with the Wachowskis’ guy on Monday. Rose will do her own stunts in RS. “In Death Proof, the face being slammed against the plexi was mine. I smashed my cheekbone and almost had a concussion, but it wouldn’t look right otherwise. I’m gonna end up like a boxer at 38, but I do as much as I can.”
RR: It was fun seeing her a couple of months ago, she broke a couple of toes and had a black cast, and it was just like in Planet Terror.
Sin City 2 and 3 — They have a script, waiting for Frank Miller to be done with The Spirit.
2:33 - Taking questions:
RR: “Anyone who asks a really great question gets a tshirt.”
Q: I know your going for something different visually, but tonally are you trying to match the DeLaurentis films?
RR: No, totally different. Darker, more like the book, and the actual comics. Not anything to do with the other movie that was made in the 80’s.
Rose: I will not have a mullet.
RR: We’re still discussing that…
Q: Real locations or greenscreen?
Doug: A complement of both.
Q: I’ve been eating your breakfast tacos from Sin City for a long time. When are you gonna do another 10 minute cooking school?
RR: it’s gonna be Texas BBQ. It’s gonna be on the Grindhouse double disc DVD.
2:26 - On Doug Aarniokoski as director (2nd unit director, Resident Evil 3)
Doug was RR’s first Assistant Director since Four Rooms. RR talks for awhile about how great, tenacious, brave Doug is as a director.
RR: I have a director’s comitment with the Weinsteins. (He says Miramax first then corrects himself.) Where I owe them another picture, so I can’t direct this, but if I produce, I can do it as my next picture. So, it will be more like a co-director thing, I’m definitely going to get my hands dirty, but not officially, because Doug’s DGA (union) and I’m not.
RR says he’s in talks unofficially to direct a Conan film. It’s something to integrate the world and keep the vision of Senor Howard going.
Doug: People ask what my film background is, and I say I went to the school of Robert Rodriguez filmmaking. I remember one day we were at your house, and we went behind the secret bookcase into the room, and there were all these mockettes up there and you had Red Sonja. And we were like, “This is such an amazing character.”
And then one day I got the call, and he was like “Red Sonja” and I was like “Oh, absolutely!” We’re gonna shake it up here folks, I hope your ready for it.
They’re location scouting right now…
Doug: We’re gonna kick some backside– I have this thing that says I have to be careful because members of your audience may be 18 or under…
RR: I like finding different looks for a movie. This time I’ll patent it.
2:20 - Rose McGowan: It was very difficult [after Planet Terror] to do anything. I would read these scripts and be like, “Well, I guess I could make this kind of funny, if the guy didn’t talk too much.”
From a really early age, being into empowerment, being a feminist, and loving the underdog, and really, in my life, being one. So, I brought it home and said, “I’m really interested in female vengeance!” And then I’m like, “Oh god, therapist…”
This movie is going to be hard, its gonna be cold, its gonna be dirty, bloody. But I’m up for it. (Crowd cheers.)
I keep thinking Ill do a Jane Austen movie, and I said, “Would you ever do a Jane Austen movie?” and Robert said, “Could there be a dead body in it?”
When I was really little, I saw La Femme Nikita, and that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up. I think Nikita would be proud.
[On Robert Rodriguez:]
He’s always saying, make your own destiny. I had been in the mode for so long of I’ll just wait and see what they send me. But for 2 years now, I’ve really been firing on all engines and it’s all because of him. He’s so good at telling people to just do it. (Man, this whole panel is like a tribute to their relationship.)
So, what I’ve been able to “just do” is take a giant sword and kill a lot of people. And I think that explains my attraction. (To both Robert and Red Sonja, apparently.)
2:15 - Robert Rodriguez comes out. “We don’t have anything to show — we haven’t shot anything yet.”
They’re giving away T-shirts of the main poster, of Rose licking a blade.
Rose McGowan, ladies and gentleman. (Are they still dating? She’s wearing a ridiculous strapless green metallic dress. He doesn’t seem terribly excited to see her.)
RR: I’ve been a Robert E Howards fan since a long time ago.
He bought a Concan comic at the grocery store, at the magazine stand.
RR: With 10 kids, there wasn’t a lot of money for comics, but this was with all the other magazines, and it was black and white, and bloody and there were women in it.”
Savage Sword of Conan. I would read that same magazine over and over again @ 11 or 12 years old. There would be an ad for a subscription that would show Red Sonja holding up a severed head to Conan, and saying “Get ahead in life!”
I would think, “Wow, this is my fantasy of the perfect woman… even Conan’s looking up at her!”
Where Robert E Howard was born was the same place my father was born, in the same border town near Mexico city. I felt a real kinship to this freak. So, in my little writing room, I have a collecton of Sin City stuff, and I finally made that movie. I have a collection of Conan stuff, a collection of Heavy Metal Magazines, and Robert E Howards stuff.
I tried to write Conan stuff, but the wrong studio owns it. So Rose and I, we’re trying to figure out something to do together after doing Planet Terror. In that film she was so strong, and you know you’ll see a woman be in a film like that and the next film, they’ll play a girlfriend. You want her to do something that lets her take advantage of her strengths and talents.
We tried to do Barbarella, and that didnt work. She came into the kitchen with a script for Red Sonja and said, “I really like this script, don’t know if you’ve heard of it…” (Crowd likes this.) She was like, “They want to meet me, Do you think its a good property?”
And I was like –does spit take?
It’s geek’s dream to immerse her in this world that I’ve been collecting secretly since adolescence.
(I guess they are still dating, or want us to think they are.)
We decided to do this instead of Barbarella, which we did have funding for, we were gonna do it for $70 million in Germany, but there were other projects…
Rose: “if anybody would like to bottle Robert’s DNA, I think you can just swab the side of the podium there.”
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