Since Hugh Jackman has a new Wolverine movie to talk about, he’s come out and said they could have done better with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Danny, did you have any second thoughts about that movie?
Danny Huston: Oh, no. It’s a great ride and those are his thoughts I suppose. He’s so involved in the whole franchise. Mine was just a sort of guest appearance really as Stryker and I enjoyed it because I just think Stryker kind of loves these mutants but one of them killed his wife. So there’s a great sort of love/hate sort of Frankenstein-esque quality about it. I was just having fun with that one.
Is it open for you to appear in Days of Future Past?
Danny Huston: I’m not in it. They keep going back in time. He doesn’t age, so he can go wherever he wants. We’re kind of set in our time period so he’d have to return back to that time period.
Bernard, as far as movie monsters go, do you think Candyman has stood the test of time?
Bernard Rose: Oh yeah, I think so.
Danny Huston: I think so. We don’t want to say it too many times in case he appears.
Bernard Rose: He’s real, by the way, Candyman. Tony Todd’s performance was so fantastic as Candyman. He was like an indelible thing.
Danny Huston: That was around the time that Bernard and I met.
When you were making Candyman did you imagine it would become a franchise?
Bernard Rose: Well, it didn’t really become a franchise.
They did three.
Bernard Rose: The other two sequels were so poor. They sort of killed it dead. Yeah, it was. I suppose it does count, doesn’t it.
I noticed you directed some shorts for the playboy Inside Out series. Was that a good filmmaking job?
Bernard Rose: It was actually. The show was run by Alan Poul who produced Candyman and went on to produce a lot of very good television shows like “Six Feet Under” and “My So-Called Life” and then directed a lot of television shows. He was producing that and the brief was you could do any sort of little funny vignette as long as somebody took their kit off at some point. I’d do it again tomorrow. The ones that I did, the really fun ones are not available. They were actually quite fun.
They haven’t put those on DVD?
Bernard Rose: Not the ones I remember doing.
I’m sure I watched them when I was a teenager.
Bernard Rose: They were fun to do. A lot of quite good people did them.
Danny, I noticed as a director you did the behind the scenes on Santa Claus: The Movie.
Danny Huston: Oh my God, yes.
Were you on the set the whole time making the documentary?
Danny Huston: On the set practically all the time. It was financed by ABC and they had me, a sound man and a camera guy. We actually could have made several films in the amount of time that I was on that set and the amount of film that I burnt covering it from the animatronic reindeer to all the elves and everything else. It was actually my second paying job.
Were the Salkinds hands on about what you could show?
Danny Huston: Yes, there was all the “do we show it?” but I shot everything and they decided later what they would show and what they wouldn’t show. They were just a funny pair, really in a way kind of moguls after the Superman movies. Pierre Spengler was there, and the Salkinds. I remember there was a big publicity stunt done in Cannes and they hired 50 planes with banners in the back to advertise. One of them, I think it was the father, Alexander, looked up at the sky and he said, “There are only 49 planes! I hired 50!”
I’m sorry I’m not caught up on “Magic City” since I’ve been at LAFF all week, but with James Caan joining the cast as Sy Berman do you miss being in charge?
Danny Huston: Well, you know, he’s kind of like the Meyer Lansky to my Bugsy Siegel. His scene opens the second episode, so he’s got a kind of paternal, fatherly thing towards him. He’s trying to settle me down, I’m a little bit out of control. He just wants me to cool it and is giving me advice. I want something else and he’s really trying to just control me a little but these two men like each other. There’s a real familiar sense between the two of them, like family I should say but you can’t trust them. They’re deceptive.
Working with Jimmy was just outrageously fun. He’s so present and in a way he’s the real deal. In one scene I was shouting at him as written, and I could see while I was shouting at him that he was getting upset, not the character but Jimmy. He’s like, “Don’t shout at me, don’t shout at me, don’t shout at me in my home!” We were looking around, it was actually his greenhouse. It’s a set but he’s wonderful. He’s dangerous and yet he has all the appetite and desire to do the work.
What else is coming up for Ben “The Butcher” Diamond?
Danny Huston: I’ll tell you, just the second episode is pretty surprising and nasty and it just goes from there.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
