Crank
Neveldine and Taylor on Crank
“We're trying to go back to the Mad Max style of filmmaking,” said Neveldine. “You know, put the camera in peril and put the actors in peril and do a lot of real stuff and stay away from CG if you can.”
In Crank, they followed Jason Statham around on roller blades as he ran through Los Angeles. As Chev Chelios, he must keep his adrenaline up to stave off a poison coursing through his veins.
“Our approach to the script was basically the sort of ADD writing where we just said we just want to keep ourselves and entertained and interested from scene to scene,” said Taylor. “If we get bored, probably the people watching will get bored, so we just continually tried to surprise ourselves through the movie.”
Don’t expect a scientific dissertation on the affects of poison and adrenaline on a human body. Crank is a pure ride. “We did a little consulting with some doctors about the drug and then we just said what would we do?” said Neveldine. “Would the movie audience be entertained if they saw this happen? We just wanted to entertain them, we just wrote what we liked and had fun with it.”
Now the film has gotten raves from the medical community. “We were talking to a doctor the other day who read the script, and he said that if Million Dollar Baby had been as accurate medically as our script, he would've been a lot happier,” said Taylor. “All of it is actually based in some sort of medical fact, even the perpetual hard-on that you would get, and all of that stuff. That's all real.”
Those sort of politically incorrect touches are what set Crank apart from the usual slew of studio blockbusters. “You read the script, you have fun reading the script,” said Neveldine. “When you see the movie, the tone of it, it's kind of tongue in cheek. We're winking at a lot of movies. We're winking at a lot of things in LA, so I think the tone is what enabled them to wrap their heads around it and want to do this.”
Neveldine had not seen DOA, either the original or the remake. Taylor had and he feels no threat from the comparison. “It's not that good of a movie,” said Taylor. “I mean, look, there was a guy on the line the other day [writing], ‘This movie is so unoriginal, it's basically just DOA crossed with Speed. And I'm going like, ‘I think that's pretty damn original, man!’”
Statham stepped up to the plate whenever the boys asked him to do something outrageous. Of course, they were behind him every step of the way. “We operated all the cameras for the movie ourselves, so we would never ask him to do something that we wouldn't do,” said Taylor. “So we were there with him the whole time, and his attitude about it was in for a penny, in for a pound, with these guys. If we're going to hang him out of the helicopter, then what's he going to do? Say I can't do it?”
Crank is out in theatres now.
For movie posters, trailer, review, synopsis and more movie info, go to the Crank
Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
|
Add to Heffee!
