Science and mankind often collide on the big screen with typically devastating results, be it our haphazard nuclear testing that brings rise to giant city smashing lizards or the mad doctor mending up pieces of corpses to build the first zombie in his lab, movie goers thrill to the spectacle that our own indifference to both science and our environment can cause. In the new feature film SPLICE (Warner Bros Pictures) writer/director Vincenzo Natali (director of 1997's THE CUBE) carries on this legacy beginning with a morally questionable act by two notable genetic pioneers Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) who are eager to add the human genome to their DNA zoo on which they have built their fame splicing together new species to be harvested for life saving cells. But, as all good horror films go, the experiment quickly spirals out of control as the two find themselves raising in secrecy a new genetic human-hybrid that they can neither understand or control. This morning I had the opportunity to speak to the proud director about his newest creation.
Thanks Vincenzo for taking the time to speak with me. I saw the film a couple of days ago and really enjoyed it. We look forward to helping you get the word out about it.
"Well, you know its my baby, so I'll take help wherever I can get it!"
Indeed, and we're happy to help. You wrote and directed SPLICE, where did the concept for the script originate?
"The very beginnings of it, the kernel of it, came from a mouse of all things. But it was a very special mouse because it appeared to have a human ear growing out of its back."
I recall that story.
"It was a 1996 M.I.T. experiment called the "Vacanti mouse" [a laboratory mouse that had what looked like a human ear grown on its back. The "ear" was actually an ear-shaped cartilage structure grown by seeding cow cartilage cells] and it was just such a shocking image I immediately felt there was a movie in that mouse, and that's where it started."
I've read that it took you some time to write this script, anything in particular cause it to take so long?
"Aside from being a very slow writer, it had a lot to do with the fact that the movie has this sexual component to it that's quite frightening to a major Hollywood studio, it was a bit intimidating and weird, and yet the movie was never going to be a very low budgeted film because I had, at its core, very expensive effects in the creature DREN, so that was one issue. I think the other issue was that when I started on this it just wasn't part of the popular consciousness, people weren't really thinking about this sort of thing. In the interim years the science kind of caught up to my fiction and it suddenly became very topical. The movie technology evolved as well to the point where I could do something like this more inexpensively, and ultimately I made the film as an independent movie in the best possible way because I had total creative freedom. But the price to be paid for that is that it took a very long time."
That is impressive to have made it independently with the high quality of the visual effects and star names like Adrien Brody attached. Did you fund this out of pocket or find backing?
"Well, I have a brilliant producer from Canada named Steven Hoban and he is the one who really put all of the pieces together. The film is a Canada-France co-production, in fact the world's oldest film studio out of Paris financed the movie, a company called Gaumont. Of course sex wasn't an issue for the French at all, they thought it made the film more commercial [laughs], so I really had the best of all possible worlds because I made the film essentially with FinalCut, you know, complete control, and then when the movie was finished and screened at Sundance we had the very good fortune of Joel Silver picking it up and distributing it through Warner Bros. And so we have a major studio release!"
As you were writing this did you consult with geneticists on the probabilities of what DREN would look like if you put species A, B, C, and D together, or was her design more from the imagination?
"Well, there's definitely a degree of imagination involved."
Certainly!
"I did co-write it in consultation with a geneticist and what I discovered was there wasn't really any need for me to exaggerate all that much, that in reality truth-is-stranger-than-fiction and that many of the concepts that I was dealing with were entirely feasible. So I made it my goal to make the science in the film as close to reality as possible and to make my creature as biologically plausible as possible. I wanted DREN to be a creature that we believe could really exist, and everything we did in terms of her design was aimed at that goal. So in terms of what DREN is composed of, actually the thought is that its many different things, she's mammal, amphibian, reptile, plant, bird; you name it, but all these things combine to make something greater than the sum of its parts, so that even though she has these components, its not really obvious when you see her, they combine to make up something new and different. So I felt we had a lot of flexibility in terms of exactly what her various attributes would be."
I recall in the film, as your scientists were splicing and dicing you revealed different icons symbolizing the creatures that made up the experiments, but not for DREN. What is the combination of DNA that spawned her?
"At the end of the day, the idea is, that with their genetic voodoo Clyde and Elsa have accidentally triggered what's commonly refereed to as Junk Genes, which are dormant genes that all of us have which are left overs of evolution, so in fact even Clyde and Elsa don't know exactly what's in DREN because there are parts of her that are truly a mystery to them. And that's probably why they don't know exactly what she's going to become, which forms the dramatic spine of the film, its how DREN evolves through the course of the story."
What is your personal opinion on human cloning? For or against?
"Let me put it this way, I think that humans from the very beginning have changed their environment, and so now that the technology exists I have no doubt that we're going to start to change ourselves, maybe even partly out of necessity as our environment changes. I think its all going to happen, I just hope that it happens in a responsible way. And that's really what the movie is about, its taking responsibility for the things that you make. I will say also from the time that I spent in real labs and meeting real geneticists that these are extraordinary people, they are really heroic, courageous, dedicated individuals. You know they're not rich, they're not making a lot of money doing this kind of research, they're doing it because of their love of the science and because they want to help people."
How long did you spend in real labs, and was there anything you saw or learned that had a major effect on the script or storyline?
"We were very careful in the making of the film to really replicate what those labs looked like, even though they are not very attractive spaces, they are very industrial and functional ..."
Hey now, some us find industrial places very attractive!
"In some ways it is, yeah, depends on what you like. But there is a tendency in Hollywood films to sexy them up, to make them look very high tech and slick ..."
C.S.I.?
"Yeah, exactly. But that's not really the truth of it, and I intuitively felt that the audience would know that as well and what was really going to be shocking and exciting about this film was the sense that this kind of thing could really happen. I have one experience to that I have to say, it didn't inform any of the specifics of the story, but informed my general feeling about this work which was I remember being in a fertility clinic and seeing a pig fetus that was only a few days old, it was composed of less than one hundred cells, it did not have any blood yet, but it had a heart, or at least the beginnings of a heart, and that heart was beating. I was really struck by seeing that life-force in such a raw form, there was almost something mystical about it to me, almost something spiritual. I was really moved by it and I think that said something about the nature of DREN, because she is a magnificent creation, and things go wrong, but that has very little to do with the way she was designed, she's actually quite likely a step up on the evolutionary ladder, something really extraordinary and beautiful, and its really just the way she is treated or the situation in which she finds herself that causes things to go badly. My point, is that life is an extraordinary thing and if there were any single thing that were to make me believe that there is a higher power, it was seeing that little fetus."
OK, last question and it is a two-parter. 1. what is your favorite mythological human-animal hybrid, and 2. if you could go to a cosmetic geneticist and have something changed or added to you, what would you have spliced?
"OK, one ... off the top of my head I would have to say Medusa, for so many reasons, but mainly because I think its the idea that she is repellent and yet attractive at the same time is very intriguing to me, much like DREN our hybrid. And in terms of what genetic augmentation I would like ... if there is a gene that makes money? I think I need that one! I could sure use it."
You and me both sir! Well, hopefully this little experiment you've spliced together will take care of those woes for you! We wish you the best of luck with it.
"Thank you, it was really a pleasure speaking with you."
Thank you Vincenzo for your time and for such an entertaining film. SPLICE opens in theaters on Friday, June 4th nationwide. For more information visit the official web site
http://www.splicethefilm.com/
