Director John Landis comments on the current state of modern Hollywood.
John Landis is quite rightly regarded as a seminal director of classics such as The Blues Brothers, Animal House and An American Werewolf in London to name but a few. Recently he has been open in his criticism of modern day films and sat down with Collider to speak about the potential remake of An American Werewolf in London which has his son Max Landis attached as writer and it would appear that daddy isn’t best pleased;
“Truthfully, I’ve not seen his script. I advised him not to do it. I think he’s putting himself in a bad position. My son is brilliant, he really is, and he wants to do it. So what am I going to say? No? I know it won’t be as bad as An American Werewolf In Paris, which was shit. So, I don’t know. He’s a great writer. He’s been writing since he was 7. He wrote a whole series of scripts about these characters called Yelp and Dopey, two dumb dogs, when he was under ten. They were so funny.”
Landis also spoke about his involvement with the upcoming re-release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 3D which was recently shown at the Venice Film Festival and the director revealed that he had initially considered shooting it originally in 3D;
“Yeah, I explored it. It was 1983. I didn’t choose to mainly because of the added expense at the time. So it wasn’t composed for 3D.”
The director went on to speak about the state of current movie making and explained why he doesn’t feel that he’s a popular choice for studios anymore;
“I have many things that I’m working on, whether or not they’ll ever become real, I don’t know. You know, Joe Dante and myself and a few other guys I know are in the same position. They’re not hiring people who have opinions. They think, “He knows what he’s doing, I’m not hiring him!” Look at Star Wars. They keep firing guys. Phil Lord and Chris Miller, those guys are really talented. They’re really funny and original guys. They shot 75% of the movie and I gotta tell you, it doesn’t speak well for the new Lucasfilm. How many directors have they fired? Four. How many writers? Twelve. It’s very worrying. Remember when George Lucas said that he felt like he sold his kids into white slavery? Well…”
One modern day director did get his seal of approval however when he was asked about Edgar Wright’s recent Baby Driver and in particular the film’s incredible car chases;
“I loved them. Well first of all, I’m a big fan of Edgar Wright. I’m a big fan of Shaun Of The Dead and I even loved Hot Fuzz as well. His influences are obvious, but Edgar’s a great talent and I’m very proud of him. He’s a good person and he’ll make many more great movies.”