Wonder-Con: Jon Favreau On Iron Man

By George 'El Guapo' Roush on February 25, 2008

Here's the Q&A posed by audience members during the Iron Man presentation at Wonder-Con.

Favreau: How is everybody? This is my first time here. It's very nice. Thanks for having me.

Audience: You're money!

Favreau: You're money too. Thank you.

Question: I was wondering if Ozzy Osborne, when you called him, said, 'It's about time you make an "Iron Man" movie.'

Favreau: We did talk to Sharon Osborne because for those of you who saw any of the trailers we use the Black Sabbath 'Iron Man' song in there. We of course had to talk to Sharon because she's very involved in what happens to the music from Ozzy. So they were aware of us and we have their blessing.

Question: How much fun was it to do the action on this?

Favreau: This movie was a lot of fun, primarily because of the cast. I mean, Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic, a great improviser. He's someone that we had to fight really hard for to cast and as soon as we did cast him, thanks to the fans and how vocal you all were online, all of a sudden Marvel and Paramount felt very comfortable with him. You can see in the little bits of his performance that he's doing a hell of a job. So I had a great, great time and I hope to make more of these.

Question: The new trailer shows the thrusters that Iron Man is wearing. How did you do that? Did he actually lift off?

Favreau: Well, it's really hard to explain about the jet boots because I think it was only in the Superbowl commercial that they showed a very short amount of it. Does everyone know what she's talking about? Does anyone not know what she's talking about because I can show more of it.  A lot of the trailers that come out show quick cuts of a lot of things which is really fun, but I think that Robert did a great job and the FX are starting to come together really nicely and so I brought some cut footage that isn't really quick cuts, but more about the character. So here's a couple of scenes from 'Iron Man'.
 
[Clip Runs]
 
Favreau: There you go. They said, 'Don't show too much. Don't show too much. They'll get bored.' So that's the R2 suit. There's a few little pieces left. The movie's not done yet, the music and the sound, but at least it gives you a taste of the personality of the film and of Robert's performance. The way that we went with the suit, I think we stayed pretty true to the designs, but we tried to give it a little bit of something too. ILM is doing a great job on it. The people who worked on 'Transformers', a lot of people who worked on 'Pirates' are working with us. So we've got a really great team. Ben Snow who was up at WETA at the time working on 'Kong', we have a really, really great group of people and I've learned a lot from them. We're very happy with the expression.

Question: For other filmmakers aspiring to become a big Hollywood director like yourself what advice do you have in the current landscape of independent films?

Favreau: Well, I think the landscape of independent film is certainly bleak, but in another way it's very encouraging. It's now cheaper to make a movie than it was when I was starting out. You can get an HD camera and edit on a Macintosh laptop and you can make a great, great movie. You can submit it and even if you don't get distribution through the traditional channels, now thanks to online, anyone can distribute it. If you do something that's good it will be seen and your name will get out there. So I think there are tremendous opportunities out there and my biggest piece of advice is that you don't need to go through the system. You didn't even have to when I was starting out. Make the movies. Keep doing it. Try every time you do it to get better at it and when you're finally getting to the point where you're doing something that people are recognizing and appreciating you will get your break. What's nice now is thanks to people like Peter Jackson, Chris Nolan, all of the people that started off in independent, smaller films and have now been entrusted with these bigger movies and the results have been good. People are now willing to take a big chance with filmmakers that come out of small movies. They know that they can support us with great people who make the big films. But it's learning how to do dialogue and character and telling a story that are things you learn in doing the little movies. I think they've grown to appreciate that aspect in big films and I think that's very encouraging. That's why you're seeing a big crop this summer of wonderful, wonderful films, I think. Big movies don't mean that they're going to be mediocre. I think there are going to be a couple of great ones out there.

Question: Were you inspired by something that made you want to do this movie?

Favreau: I was inspired by the box office returns on 'Zathura' [laughs]. I learned that you could put a lot of care into a movie and it's like if a tree falls in the forest and no one can hear it, did it really fall down. In this day and age there are so many big movies and great movies that are coming out, every weekend there's one true movie coming out and so it's very easy to disappear and that's why it's so important that I think filmmakers maintain a dialogue with audience. It's not just to have the audience help by spreading the word, as with 'Iron Man'. No one knew what 'Iron Man' was until the fans started talking about it and then it slowly bubbled up to the mainstream, but you also have to listen to the fans to see what they want and make sure that you deliver a movie that people want to see. Sometimes people want movies that are smarter than everyone thinks they should be. Sometimes people aren't interested in subjects that people think they are. I sit in these movies with the studios and the executives and sometimes they have their fingers on the pulse of what the people want, but usually the best place to go is directly to the fans. So that's why it's good to check in online and hear what all you guys are talking about. It effects the way that the movies are made. I'm not the only filmmaker who does that. People won't always admit to it, but the internet is one big water cooler that we're all invited to stand by and listen to what everyone is talking about. You'd be surprised at how much you influence the way the creative process works and how things are promoted and marketed. I think it's a wonderful, wonderful time because there's such a great dialogue going on between the audience and the filmmakers.

Question: Thanks for not forgetting about Northern California.

Favreau: Well, my wife's from up here. Also, I've been spending like two or three weeks up at Skywalker Ranch mixing. I'm very happy to be here.

Question: I understand that you also worked with Stan Winston on the suit. Did ILM pursue him or did you bring him to this project?

Favreau: Well, I'm a big fan of Stan Winston's work, from 'Jurassic Park' and everything that he's done. He's just groundbreaking. I probably came up watching most of the same movies that you did, all the [Steven] Spielberg stuff. Winston's name is huge and he's an icon. A lot of people do good work now, but the opportunity to work with him was something that I enjoyed. I worked with him on 'Zathura' and his studios did a great job. Then he was pitching us, telling me that they could build these suits practically. I was a little skeptical about it, but the marriage between the Stan Winston suit that was built and ILM was really wonderful because Stan's people would build the suit and we'd shoot it. Then ILM would have to use that as reference and the suit had to move enough that you could believe it'd do all the things that ILM was going to do with it. Then ILM's CGI had to look good enough that you could apply it to the practical suit and still believe that it was real. As a result I sometimes can't tell if a shot is practical or digital and that's only because, I think, we had such a strong, good, well crafted reference that was keeping everyone honest as far as the look went. As you know, people who follow my work, I'm a bit of ludite. I don't like CGI when it's not necessary, but I think it's a great tool to use if it's done right. 'King Kong' kind of turned me around a lot, to be honest with you. I think that was a really groundbreaking piece of mo-cap and CGI. I think there's a way to integrate it well and part of the way that you do that is that you work with craftsmen like at The Winston Studios and you have something wonderful that you created in physical space that you can emulate in digital space.

Question: For the 'War Machine' fans can you talk a bit about James Rhode's role in the film?

Favreau: Terrence Howard plays James Rhodes. He's a supporting character in 'Iron Man'. He's a very talented actor. A lot of people, when they heard that we cast him as James Rhodes, they thought he would've been a great Tony Stark too which was before we were talking about Robert. He's fantastic. I certainly think that he could be a superhero in his own right. In this film he plays a sort of buttoned down Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. We took a little bit of liberty with the books there, but his involvement in Tony's escape and rescue is still the same as in the books. He's a bit of a comedic foil and best friends with the guy and we certainly leave the door open to what might happen in the future. What's nice about working with Marvel is that they see their films as a whole universe that's consistent and so they look for opportunities to both branch out from current franchises and find opportunities in the future like 'The Avengers' hopefully where they all sort of work together. If this movie makes a lot of money I might get to direct that.

Question: I've been a comic book fan and an 'Iron Man' fan for forty years.  I wanted to talk about the storyline from 'Iron Man 20/20'.

Favreau: I don't know that much about that storyline.

Question: It's a bad guy from the future and it's just a suggestion for another movie.

Favreau: Okay, thank you. Does he get shitfaced in that one? No, good. Everyone asks about 'Demon in a Bottle'. That'd be a tricky one to do because of these family friendly franchise that we have, but who knows, with success you can take many more chances.

Question: Since Vince Vaughn and you have such a good connection are you going to try and work him into one of these 'Iron Mans'?

Favreau: Maybe. He's doing a movie called 'Four Christmases' where I just did a thing. I played a cage wrestler who's his brother and we beat the living crap out of each other. That's his idea of a Christmas movie. Robert Duvall is our dad and it's very fun. It's been my first time working with him since 'Deep Impact'. That was the space movie. Not the boring movie. The other one besides 'Armageddon'. It's a Michael Bay classic. Did you see his new commercial, by the way? It's awesome. It's the Verizon commercial where he's just blowing shit up. Let me tell you also, after working on 'Iron Man' I have a lot of respect on what he did with 'Transformers'. It's no easy feat photographing a lot of nothing and then figuring out what's going to be there. It's pretty amazing and I have a lot of respect now for how he's done action. You would assume action is easy and that the character stuff is hard, but when you look at what Spielberg does and even the more action oriented guys like Bay, it's quite a talent. Luckily I had a lot of people with a lot of experience around me and also brought me through it. It's storytelling in a very pure form and of course the trick is not to lose sight of the characters as you get to the big stuff. But if you don't put the big stuff up there, people are expecting that. People who go to the movies in the summertime and eat their popcorn want to be blown away and that's how you get them into the theaters. So it's quite an experience working on a film like this and hopefully I've done a good job. I've been humbled by it, that's for sure.

Question: Will we see different armors?

Favreau: Armors? Well, the good thing about 'Iron Man' – or here's what I've learned. A lot of the money that studios make from these movies is from merchandising. I'll take you up to Skywalker and take you on a little tour, but merchandising is really the wonderful safeguard of the film business right now, especially for these types of movies. As a result you do 'Spider-Man' one, two and three, my six year old still has his Spider-Man, but they're very encouraging for new villains and new heroes and new sets of armor because that allows them to launch all new toy lines. So it's quite different from the independent world where you're like, 'Can we shoot all those scenes in one location? Can we do all these things in one place and consolidate things?' Marvel is very encouraging in terms of like, 'Open up your mind. Use your imagination. Lets go through the books and see what else we can incorporate.' So I think that what you can come to expect in the future is new armors, armors that are specifically built for specific things. Some of them are kind of hokey in the books. The underwater armor that has little frog feet on it and a bubble over his head and tanks on the back that are blue. Like, 'Now I can go underwater.' But there is a fun way to do it if you can come up with a real plausible justification for this stuff. So I think that you'll see a lot of stuff which is why I think we'll probably explore War Machine and explore a lot of different looks to the armor. We have three different looks to the armor here. I think there's a poster that we made up for this that shows three different looks and there's a lineage in the books that helped to inspire that stuff. So for me it's a real playground and the possibilities are endless. They're very encouraging, my bosses, about expanding and trying whatever new things that they want to. I think that they're finally happy to be making movies on their own and don't feel the restriction of a studio. They've raised their own money and I'm very impressed with how much they're staying with the source material and how much they're encouraging things and trying to do things that they never would've been able to do in the past.

Question: There are rumors on the internet that characters from 'Iron Man' and characters from 'The Incredible Hulk' will be making appearances in each other's films.

Favreau: I've read those, yeah.

Question: Can you comment on that? Is it true?

Favreau: It is true that there are rumors on the internet. I will tell you this, there were a lot of rumors about casting and cross pollination between the franchises. Let me put it this way, when someone is robbing a house and there's a Pit Bull protecting the house, the cat burglar comes in with a bag full of steaks and as he's robbing the house he keeps throwing steaks down. Every fifteen minutes he has to feed the Pit Bull another steak. And the Pit Bull is very happy until you run out of steaks. I don't want to run out of steaks here before May. I don't want to give you too many secrets away. Otherwise I feel like there's going to be nothing left. But I will say this. Many of the rumors are true, but many are not true. So I like to keep the white noise of uncertainty because based on what I've shown you and what you've seen in trailers and the Superbowl spot, people are figuring out what the whole movie is. You guys are a little too much of detectives and so I don't want to really speak too much about it so that there's still mystery in the film, if you could grant me that condolence. So, yes and no.

Question: You've been a writer, actor and director. You've been hands on with this film from the get go. How daunting was this film for you as a director?

Favreau: It's been daunting because you're the one guy who's most into the writing, the casting and launching a franchise you have to figure out who are the players, what the tone is and it's like making a big balloon for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. You sort of design it and sew it together and you have a whole group of people working. You fill it up with helium and then you hope it floats and you hope that everyone claps as it goes down Fifth Avenue there. There are so many things that can go wrong and as a director you have to be involved in the minutia of every step. This has been a two year process. By the way, I might add that there's a lot of people online thought that on 'Lost' this week there was supposed to be a trailer. That was a misprint. Actually, this coming Thursday there's going to be a ninety second trailer for 'Iron Man' premiering. I could not bring the ninety second trailer here with me because we're premiering it on 'Lost'. I did however bring a two and a half minute trailer. It's going to be in front of '10,000 B.C.' We just timed it and mixed it yesterday and I think that we should show it to you now.

E-mail: george@latinoreview.com

Source:Latinoreview

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