CraveOnline: What made How to Catch a Monster the movie Ryan Gosling wanted to write and direct?
Garrick Dion: I don’t want to say too, too much about Monster. It’s a story that’s really near and dear to Ryan’s life and his imagination and all the things that fascinate him. Magic, music, sort of the American dream, Detroit where we shot it being sort of the core of the American dream but really it sprang from Ryan’s emotion and Ryan’s imagination and I don’t want to say too much more about it.
You have a TV project in the works also, right?
I do. We’re actually currently shooting a pilot for a show called “Dominion” with Syfy Channel. That’s based on a movie that we did that Scott Stewart co-wrote and directed called Legion. This takes place about 20 years after the events of the film. It has sort of a “Game of Thrones” meets post-apocalyptic vibe in which sort of the war between angels and humans has come to a standstill and humanity has receded into these walled cities.
The majority of the series would take place in one called Vega which is sort of fallen, reconstituted Las Vegas. You’ll see landmarks of Las Vegas, Caesar’s Palace and MGM, what not are now homes and castles and it’s a giant city. The pilot deals with the events of the first film, the prophecy of a child being born who can lead mankind through the darkness. It very much focuses on that and of course the archangel Gabriel is out there in the dark and the fight between Michael and Gabriel comes to a head again.
So you’ll recast the role of Michael for the series?
Correct. At the moment, it will not involve cast members from the original film, although that could come to pass later on but at the moment it’s a whole new cast. We have Anthony Stewart Head, of course Giles from “Buffy.” We have Alan Dale who was on “Lost,” on “The O.C.” and he worked with Scott Stewart on Priest actually. He and Anthony are sort of playing the two figureheads, sort of heart and gut, heart and mind, military and government of Vega in which the series takes place.
Do you have a series order from Syfy?
At the moment, we officially do not but it’s looking good. We literally just wrapped the pilot and we’re working out some other story lines in conjunction with Syfy so I would say it’s looking favorable, knock on wood, that Syfy is excited about what they’re seeing and the idea of having an angel show. I don’t think there’s too many of them on, and we certainly had discussed this series with Showtime and Starz but Syfy was the most excited about it and it made sense to me given the pedigree of what they do and also spawning from a feature film.
Are there any other films we should mention on your slate?
Yes, we are shooting a movie called The Coup which is being written and directed by the Dowdle brothers. They did Devil and they directed a great film that’s sadly never seen the light of day called The Poughkeepsie Tapes which is one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve wanted to work with them since the moment I saw that film. The Coup is basically, I really hate to say this because it sounds preconceived, but it’s a nonstop thrill ride of this family.
Owen Wilson and Lake Bell play a couple with two young girls and they move to an unnamed Asian country. He gets a job with this water company putting in a new piping system and hopefully getting better water to the locals and a coup breaks out less than 24 hours after they move there, and all foreigners and whites become hunted down. They don’t even understand what’s happening and they basically have to get from their hotel to safety and it just becomes this nonstop race and they sort of jump and fight and hide through the city. It’s pretty harrowing, exciting stuff.
And that’s an easily digestible, marketable idea: American family, in Asia when there’s a coup, has to get out.
Yeah, I think it is. It has this sort of Gravity like purity to it. I think it’s not a political movie. In the same idea of Taken, what would happen if you were there and this horrible situation was going on and you didn’t understand that you had to get your family to safety? It’s basically less about killing a bad guy than it is, as I’ve described it, it’s a bit like The Impossible. Instead of a tidal wave you have this violence and calamity around you that you don’t understand and you just have to get your loved ones [out]. There’s a whole part where the family is separated that’s just harrowing. I think the movie will be played where they just don’t understand the language, the customs. Seeing Owen try to reunite with his family I think will be pretty exciting.
And those are two actors we normally see in comedy and I think most of us want to see our favorite actors do different things.
Exactly. That’s the hope. I loved Behind Enemy Lines. I thought Owen was great in that movie. We’ve gotten to a place where I kind of want to see Jason Bateman in an action film. He was in The Kingdom so I like stuff like that. I think yes, we need more Rocks, we need more Vin Diesels but as movies have sort of gotten to this place of less being the ‘90s over the top, ‘80s over the top action movies, you’ve got more grounded action if you will. So I like the idea of taking someone like Lake Bell who I think is tremendously talented as a writer/director and an actress and seeing her react to scenes that you would normally think of as, “Oh, that’s an Angelina Jolie or a Kate Beckinsale sort of a role.”
Did you see her in Black Rock?
Yup, I did and that helped. It was that. We actually talked a little bit about Katie Aselton, about Greta Gerwig. I know they hate the term but I’m a huge mumblecore [fan]. The idea of taking someone from a You’re Next, or from Frances Ha and putting them in what, again, you would normally think of as the Jessica Biel role or that’s the Kate Beckinsale sort of a role. I thought Black Rock, the core of humanity, the core of those girls’ relationship I thought was the best aspect of that film and I thought it worked really well.
And I liked that their action was more primal and less choreographed.
Absolutely, and I think that’s something we’re going to try to capture in The Coup as well. The guys have sort of a docu/”you are there” style in mind and I think that’s something that we’re going to try to capture where it’s not overly stylized. It’s going to be that thing of The Impossible. What if this situation happened? What would it feel like and what would it sound and look like?
The Impossible is a good reference but I hope it’s not too shaky. That’s the other extreme and it’s bad.
No, no and we’ve talked about that. Look, it’s always a conversation of I want it to look and feel like a real movie and not so much like a found footage movie. There’s a conscious decision, this is not a found footage movie.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
