Exclusive: 'Pirates'' Gore Verbinski

If Gore Verbinski isn't the busiest director in Hollywood, then he's certainly the most ambitious. The visionary filmmaker has taken on many challenges, helming movies that most people didn't think would work, the most famous of them being the 2003 summer blockbuster, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which grossed over $300 million in the U.S. alone.

You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't like the swashbuckler, let alone love it, so there's obviously a lot of pressure to make sure its sequel is just as good. Not only was Gore Verbinski up to that challenge, but he decided to make TWO sequels, shooting both Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and its follow-up, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, back-to-back. (He also found the time to make the comedy The Weather Man with Nicholas Cage in the middle of all those swashbuckling epics.)

Somehow, this very busy director found a few minutes to talk to ComingSoon.net, though he sounded pretty exhausted having spent his day off from working on the movies to talk to journalists about them.

ComingSoon.net: Have you been filming the third movie while finishing up editing and post-production on the second?
Gore Verbinski: Well, we've basically had to put the third movie on hold. We've shot about a third of it. Just getting back into it, prepping, and we have 2/3rds left to shoot. So I've really been grinding, just barely making the deadline on the second one.

CS: Wow! Did you literally finish shooting the second one first before starting on the third?
Verbinski: No, we were on certain islands and locations, and we had certain assets, like boats and things, that we had to shoot out that occur in the third movie, so it's sort of randomly spread out. If we're at a particular location while the crew and everybody's there filming 2, if it's the right location for the third film, we'd shoot that scene at that time, so that really justified everything. We scouted the locations and said that this is a good location for this scene in "Pirates 2" and for these two scenes in "Pirates 3," so while we were there, we would shoot the two scenes for 3. Other than that, anything that was for P3 that wasn't location or asset specific, meaning occurring on a particular boat, we would push it, so that's why we've got 2/3rds to do.

CS: Were you trying to edit and do some of the effects as you went along on "Dead Man's Chest"?
Verbinski: No, we stop and then I start editing. My editor cuts the movie while I'm away, but that's sort of an assembly, and they start doing the fine cut when I get back.

CS: How have the actors changed since making the first movie with them? Obviously, Orlando and Keira were not as experienced when you did the first movie.
Verbinski: I think [they have] a little more confidence, which is always useful when you're dealing with… a lot of aspects of the production required us to shoot things very quickly or change the schedule, and it's nice to have actors who are a little more confident. It's nice to also, in that situation, have veterans. When you've got Geoffrey Rush and in this case Bill Nighy, Stellan [Skarsgård], the other actors get on their game a little bit more when they're in a scene with a tried-and-true veteran.

CS: When the first movie came out, pirate movies in general were not in fashion, so were you surprised by how many people embraced this?
Verbinski: Well, I felt confident that it was going to work. I think Johnny Depp's performance is the exponential factor, and certainly, that was the thing that made the film that much more unique and wanting people to come back again and again. We've got some new twists and turns. I think knock on wood, audiences will really enjoy this one.

CS: Generally, people really love Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, which is a very odd character. Johnny Depp obviously had a fanbase and a career beforehand, but it seemed like it raised him to another level in that sense.
Verbinski: I think throughout film history, audiences generally respond to people taking risks, whether it's a race car driver or what, they can see in that performance, that it was a risk and a bold one. I think that they like that, and if Hollywood keeps giving audiences the same old characters, they stop going to the movies.

CS: Is there more pressure on you for this one than when you did the first movie or is it easier because you have a movie like it under your belt?
Verbinski: Well, both. I think the pressure comes from expectations. I think the first movie, everybody thought we would fail, and this is the movie where everybody thinks we're going to succeed. You have the opposite problem.

CS: The first "Pirates" was the first PG-13 movie from Disney. Did you know that it was going to be PG-13 while you were making it?
Verbinski: I knew it was going to be PG-13, I didn't know if they were going to put the Disney brand on it or not. So I just make the movie and they decide whether they're willing to take the soccer moms through that. They've developed a certain trust relationship with the Disney brand throughout the years, so they have to look at the material and say, "Hey, is this something we want to put our name or not." And in this case, they've agreed to. Now I kind of know the target, which is really PG-10, not really PG-13. I've got a 7 and a 9-year-old boy, so I'm making the movie where adults will enjoy it, but also I can take my 9-year-old.

CS: When I talked to Bill Nighy, he said that his character and his crew were very disturbing and menacing. Do you think younger kids might be scared by that?
Verbinski: I think they'll be fascinated by it. Bill Nighy really has a fantastic way of sort of celebrating villainy. I think we have the kind of villains and kind of characters that kids just go, "Whoa, that was so cool!" So I didn't think that it's particularly nightmarish, as much as it's really pretty wicked and fun and holds down the whole movie in terms of creating an obstacle for Captain Jack Sparrow.

CS: I remember that you'd think the skeletons in the movie would be scary, but they really were very cool like the skeletons in the Sinbad movies.
Verbinski: Yeah, I liked those a lot.

CS: As far as the creatures and Davy Jones, how involved were you in creating the look of them? Do you have a team of people to do that?
Verbinski: Yeah, I work with a guy named Crash, who is an illustrator, and I work with a good friend of mine and storyboard artist named Jim Burkett, and that's really the idea factory. We design the characters with pencil and paper, a lot of sketches, and that's where it starts, and then from there, it moves to ILM. By the time it gets to ILM, that's really more, "How do we achieve it?" All of those characters have really been designed in my office, Davy Jones, the crew, and all the action set pieces. It's the funnest part of the job.

CS: What has been the most challenging part of creating these new creatures, in terms of effects? Are you using the same effects team as the first movie?
Verbinski: Yeah, John Knoll and Hal Hickle at ILM. You know, really, getting Davy Jones right was probably the biggest challenge, visual effects wise, and fatigue is a challenge, just because you're shooting two movies and it's exhausting. Technically, we shot Bill Nighy on location acting, but he was covered in dots and tracking points in a spandex outfit. Reanimating his character in the computer and trying to retain all the nuance of Bill's original performance was really the challenge, and those guys did an extraordinary job. You see Bill through the animation, which is nice.

CS: Bill also mentioned that he was appearing in 3, so are these next two parts linked together with a continuation? How will that work?
Verbinski: Well, I think you can look at it as a trilogy. I think there are elements of 1 that are going to be in 3, and everything from Will's father, Bootstrap Bill, and the East India Trading Company, and things that were sort of mentioned in the first movie, you get to see come to life, and they're also in the third movie. We have our cast of characters, and you can sort of look at it as one big story, but it's certainly also three concise and fun and entertaining films.

CS: How long did the movie end up running, and was there anything you had to cut that you ended up spending a lot of time working on?
Verbinski: Yeah, you always do that. I think the movie is six minutes longer than the first one. You always end up cutting stuff out when you first put it together. It's just the nature of making a movie, but it's a fun ride, it really is. They'll be a few little surprises on the DVD.

CS: Would you ever do something like this, where you shoot two movies at once, again?
Verbinski: No. No, I don't recommend it. It's just too exhausting. You don't have a day off for years and weekends are an important thing in human existence. So I certainly haven't had any. Actors can come and go, and they're not required to work as many days as the director. The director, you're there every day.

CS: Your other movie "The Weather Man" came out last year, so were you able to finish that before starting back up on the "Pirates" movies?
Verbinski: They sort of overlapped a little bit, the prep on "Pirates 2" overlapped the post on "Weather Man."

CS: When the "Pirates" movies are done, do you hope to get back to doing more of those character-type movies?
Verbinski: I actually want to get to a place where I'm not sure what I'm doing next. This has been such a 3-year commitment, I'm wide open, honestly. I'm not sure whether I want to do a small movie, or another big movie. I just want to get to a place where I don't owe anybody anything, and then I'll go from there.

CS: Do you think you'd want to do another movie with Johnny or Orlando or Keira again, something non-Pirates related maybe?
Verbinski: Sure, they're my friends and my kind of partners in this, and they're all actors of caliber that I would take anywhere. It's really the material that drives those choices, though. Whatever I decide to do next, I'm going to look at the story and then say, "Hey, who do I want to cast in this?" I wouldn't press an actor into a role that I didn't feel like they could knock out of the park.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest opens everywhere on Friday, July 7. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is scheduled for May 25, so Gore better hurry up and get that done!

source: Edward Douglas
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