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Dave McKean Since graduating from Berkshire College of Art and Design in 1986 Dave McKean has carved a niche as an illustrator and artist, creating stunning and dark imagery for CD covers, books jackets and comics. In 1986 he met writer Neil Gaiman and the pair collaborated on a series of graphic novels, including Violent Cases (1987), Black Orchid (1988) and celebrated work on The Sandman and Batman adventure Arkham Asylum. After experimenting with a couple of short films, Dave McKean has transferred his fantastical vision to his first full length movie, MirrorMask. Pixelsurgeon chatted with him to find out how it all came together.
PIXELSURGEON: Many people will know you from your comics and illustrations, perhaps you could tell us how made the movie into directing?
DAVE MCKEAN: I always really loved film, and I just wanted to try, but I didn't want to try and take on some huge project in case I was rubbish at it, so I thought I'd just make some short films on my own. I really loved making them, and they did well: they played various festivals and won some prizes; and I found the transition to making moving images that looked like my still images, collages and illustrations actually fairly painless.
And then this opportunity came up out of the blue: Lisa Henson had seen those short films—she was working with Neil [Gaiman] on a different project—but she thought I could help her out on this fantasy project.
How did the story of MirrorMask evolve because both you and Neil have a script credit? How did it move back and forth between the two of you to take the shape it did?
It was a conversation: just a series of emails, a conversation followed by a concentrated period of a couple of weeks at Lisa's home in London, just batting ideas to and fro because it was completely open. We both had preferences, things we fancied trying, we had images in mind, we had lines dialogue and sounds, and music and all kinds of stuff. We had a big table with all of this stuff and books to look through—all sorts of things—and slowly lots of things were discarded and ruled out. Soon the kind of story that we wanted to do, that would take all of these images, started to evolve.
The things that were discarded, did you think, we're not going to have the budget for that kind of thing or was it more story-related?
Some of it was budget related, but not much. It was more a of a broad brush, basic storytelling kind of things. For example, I didn't want to do a story that was more like Dark Crystal—completely fantastical with goblins and fairies and all that kind of stuff—I can't relate to those stories, they don't mean anything to me. I need the story, even if it's a broad fantasy, to be based in real life in some way, otherwise I just can't see the point. I personally voted for a story that would be centred around a person, or group of people that were just regular people, preferably in the present day, preferably in a situation that you can relate to. It evolved more, down to be being about this girl, at this particular age—a crossroads age—going through this particular kind of test of her mettle.
How did you go about casting Stephanie Leonidas for the role?
We planned to do a big casting call, and in the end didn't need it. My producer Simon Moorhead saw her in a television film called Danny's Girl and taped it and we all thought she was brilliant and looked great. Our casting director brought in eight girls during one day; two of them were great, I mean very good, I thought we were in very good shape, and Stephanie came in right at the end and was in a league of her own. She was absolutely wonderful and a really lovely person...
Was she able to juggle, or was that a stand-in or computer graphics...?
She and Jason [Barry, who plays Valentine] had to go off and get juggling lessons, which they just about managed to do, just enough to look convincing. Obviously, most of the juggling on screen was done by professional circus people, but they had to do little bits...
There seem to an awful lot of comedians in the film—we've got Rob Brydon, Stephen Fry, Andy Hamilton, Lenny Henry—was that coincidence or by design?
Really it was by accident: we just happened to like those people. Yes, they're kind of well known for comedy on the radio or on TV more than being in films or straight actors, but it just turned out that way, The main one was Rob Brydon, obviously, and he came about because we were kicking ideas around, and there seem to be a few comedy actors around who are really good actors and can improvise and stay in character and do all those sorts of things—I'm thinking of Paul Whitehouse and Steve Coogan—and Rob Brydon's name came up, and a few others. That was a great casting day, actually, we got some surprising people in.
And what about directing people, was that a struggle or does that come easily to you?
Well, that was the one big thing that I'd not done before, and almost every other aspect of this film—although it's much bigger in terms of the number of people and amount of money involved—is basically like a super blown-up version of one of my short films, but I'd not really worked with actors. I'd had actors, but there was no dialogue in those films, and I kind of puppeteered them, I didn't give them proper roles to get their teeth into; but this time I had to work with the actors and that was great! I really didn't have a problem with them at all. I'd been involved in writing the script with Neil so I felt I understood it completely, and that's all an actor wants really, to make sure that whoever he or she is performing for knows what the hell they're doing! Yes, it was good.
I thought I saw a nod to Quay Brothers' Street of Crocodiles in the music box doll sequence. Was that a homage to them?
I don't know if you've read the making of book—the art book that accompanies MirrorMask—there's a chapter in there about each of the scenes, how they came about, how we made them and all that kind of stuff, and the one on the music box scene explains it. I don't expect anybody to believe me, but it's absolutely true, the scene came about from listening to a recording of Close to You on a collection of songs by Burt Bacharach, recorded by John Zorn. A very strange bunch of recordings... really brilliant. For the scene we thought Stephanie could be playing with a little doll, then maybe the doll is huge and she's small, well maybe we have a whole chorus of dolls... it just evolved, it seemed natural and we always liked the idea for that scene, that they would sing this silly song to her, a very creepy song, I think. Then I designed the characters and had them made, and the room turned into this octagonal clock room with reflections everywhere, and we did it and finished it.
To be honest, it was finished fairly early on in our post-production period, and it was always the scene that I would show to people who visited the studio and I really liked it and thought it had come together really well. I went home one weekend—I always get home completely shattered from the week in the studio—and I put on a bunch of DVDs in the background to work to, including the collection of Quay Brothers films, which I love although I can't say that I'd looked at them for a couple of years, and Street of Crocodiles came up and I thought, oh yes, my favourite one, but I couldn't believe it, it was absolutely in my blood! I'd completely not drawn the connection, but it was so obvious! It was a real shock! I've met them a few times, but I'm friends with their producer Keith Griffiths, so I pre-empted anyone going back to them saying, hey, this guy's ripping you off, by taking every opportunity to say this is where it came from: subconsciously and completely in my bloodstream, it's absolutely inspired by that extraordinary film.
Is the darkness that spreads through the land a reference to the cancer, or rather, the unnamed illness which is spreading through Heléna's mother's head?
Yes it is. At every point we tried to put in—or I certainly try to put in the production design—little things that might give the impression that this is sort of happening in her body. If she is in hospital, under the knife—she's actually going in for the operation that night—then there is a sort of fight going on on the operating table. All of this is subtext and I don't really mind if nobody gets it, and kids in the audience probably wouldn't get it. But I always try to put these things in, so some of the interior rooms look like body organs and there is sort of a huge heart and things going on behind the queen at one stage. All these things are sort of woven through. That was very clear, we never say in the script that it was cancer. We never say exactly what was wrong with the mother, but we always assumed that the parents would gather what it was and if the kids wanted to know, they could talk about it. But yes, the black was definitely cancer. Actually the building in Brighton was also cancerous: the way it was falling apart, the rust running down the walls, an amazing building.
It seems to me watching the film that you really couldn't wait to get into the visual side of things. Were you worried at all that the story would be overwhelmed by the visual spectacle?
Yes definitely. To be honest, it's absolutely a matter of opinion for different people as to whether it was or it wasn't. It's a fine line, you just have to make those judgements as you go. But the one thing I felt might save us was Stephanie. I think you feel for her, and you believe that she thinks that everything going on around her is real. I think it's one of the things that I would defend in the film. I think she did a fantastic job and I think you really do connect with her. In the end, some people think that it's a slog to get through all the visuals and some people seem to enjoy that side of it.
What's your final take on the end result when you look back and see it fresh?
It's really hard to have any kind of opinion about it, or, I would even say, any kind of positive opinion about it, because I've seen it just too many times. I don't think I could even watch Street of Crocodiles 700 times and still enjoy it. I'm so done with this film! A friend of mine is a journalist, he saw it and liked it and he said that the thing you've got to remember is that all the good ideas you had, all the the things that worked, and the fun bits over two years of making it, are all now crammed together in this hour and a half film. But I don't get to see these any more, because the good ideas that work fade away: after quarter of an hour it's old news already. Whereas all things that don't work, all the awkward bits and all the things we didn't get right, they just get bigger and bigger, blacker and uglier. They don't just occupy that little space they do in the film. I know they are coming about half an hour before they are on the film. They haunt me for half an hour afterwards. All I can see are these horrible, horrible moments of mistakes and compromises and bits that we can't quite get to work. You know all that sort of stuff and I can't see the good bits any more.
What projects have you got planned next? Is it more film work or illustration work? What's next for you?
I'm still doing books. I still love doing books. I've got a new book of photographs out, a book of drawings, two children's books, one with Ray Bradbury and one with Neil. I've been designing for a broadway musical. But I really want to make another film and so I've written a script, what I hope will be the next film, called Signal to Noise. At the moment I'm also writing a couple of other things, one of them is a broad fantasy—again!—one is quite a dark human drama. My plan—because these things take so long to set up—is to get a few boats sailing, get a few projects out and hopefully they will land and we can get going for a few years.
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