Vanilla Sky – Empire Magazine

Say Anything – Interview With Cameron Crowe

Cameron Crowe is one of those people who is just so talented you really want to hate him. Only you can’t because, annoyingly, he’s also one of the most polite, pleasant and generally likeable directors ever to pick up a camera. From 80s hit Say Anything, through Singles, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous, Crowes writing and direction has consistently dazzled audiences and critics alike. His latest film, a remake of Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar’s Open Your Eyes, is a move into slightly more surreal territory for Crowe and we popped in to get his take on Vanilla Sky

We spoke to Alejandro Amenabar quite recently and he seemed thrilled with what you were doing with his film, describing it as a cover version rather than a remake. Was your intention always to make a companion piece and not a replacement?

Exactly that. It really warms my heart to hear that he understood that. We didn’t talk a lot when we were making the movie but we showed it to him, he watched it twice the day that we finished. I was really honoured because he really saw that, rather than simplify open your eyes, we actually made it more complex. He said the movies were like two brothers, one likes opera and one likes rock ‘n’ roll.

Tom brought the film to you originally, but were you already looking to direct something that you hadn’t written yourself?

Yeah, I’d been looking to pick up the pace a little bit and be more prolific, kind of keep our band together. Then this movie came along and I couldn’t get it out of my mind: Open Your Eyes. It felt like a poem or a folk song or something. It was built to be played. Everything grew from that.

While you did change the original you did re-cast Penelope Cruz in the same role. How did you come to that decision?

She’d famously said that ‘if anybody remakes this movie and doesn’t cast me I’m gonna kill them,’ with a machine gun I think she said. But I’d loved her from Belle Epoch and loved what she did in the original. I just thought it was cool, it was kind of like bringing in the person who played the role on Broadway and letting them continue playing the part. She’s a wonderful person and made it all seem fresh, I never got the impression that she’s made another movie besides ours, much less the original.

One of the most talked about sequences in the film is the opening scene where Tom runs through a deserted Times Square. You must know you’re somebody when you can get them to shut down 40 blocks in the heart of New York City?

You know, it never felt like it was being bestowed upon us. It was almost like they said ‘we’re gonna give you a crack at it and you’d better move quickly. You’re gonna have three hours early on a November Sunday morning and you’d better know what you’re doing because when the clock’s up, the clock is up.’ So we always felt we had a challenge and if we could steal the feeling of an empty Times Square in this window of time then we’d be lucky. But we actually got it in the first 20 minutes so Tom ran around for like two and a half hours. We got this great James Dean shot of Tom, you know the James Dean shot where he’s alone in Times Square? It never quite made it into the movie, that image, but the photo is out there. It was amazing though….

When we finished, the cab driver who took us back to the hotel said ‘yeah they closed Times Square for Tom Cruise. Nobody else they’d do that for… well, maybe Billy Joel.’ And I just couldn’t stop thinking about this empty Times Square with Billy Joel running around. I still have this image in my head.

Presumably you took a few pictures?

You know we did! Everyone got their Christmas card photos done that day.

As with all your films, Vanilla Sky is jam-packed full of pop-culture references. Will you be pointing out all of those for fans on the DVD release?

Yes, definitely. We just finished the colour correction on the DVD. It’s funny, you know? Guys that have seen the movie like 30 times are still seeing new things in it and I’m honoured that the movie is that dense. It’s an inviting movie that involves you and there’s always something new to check out every time you see it. That was the original intention. There’ll be a few deleted scenes on the DVD, there’s a little bit more with Kurt Russell and there’s a shoot-out. Like Open Your Eyes there’s a shoot-out that happens towards the end that we had to take out because it was just too long. This is a movie built for DVD for sure.

Actually, people come up to me – because we’ve done a lot of TV interviews and suddenly a writer is known once you’ve been on TV, it’s the weirdest feeling – I’ll be walking through the airport and someone’ll yell ‘hey, you’re the Vanilla Sky guy! I don’t see why people have to see that movie more than once. I saw it and got it all the first time.’ And the next guy will go ‘I’ve seen it four times and I’m starting to get it.’ Everybody has their own experience with it, which is cool. Some people don’t care for it, but they talk about it even more than the people who normally love a movie and talk about it and I love that even they often got to see it more than once.

You’re currently working on your next script, will it be a return to the style of Jerry Maguire or something different?

I was working on it this morning. I’ve had some really major breakthroughs in London on various things that I’ve written. The problems with Jerry Maguire got solved when I came here to do an interview around the time of Singles and so it’s kind of a lucky place to be. I’ve been working on it this morning… it’s about half finished. It’s a little bit like the style of Jerry Maguire but It’s an ensemble character comedy-drama. it’s actually more like Say Anything.

Courtesy of Empire Magazine – January, 2002