Interview: David Gordon Green On YOUR HIGHNESS

To celebrate the Blu-ray release of Your Highness in the U.K. on Monday, WhatCulture!€™s Ian Hylands sat down with director David Gordon Green to chat about the making of the film, his acceptance of it being forever seen as a cult film, the blu ray release, his future projects and his thoughts on film-making! Our review of the Blu-ray will come on Monday... WC: Hi, great to talk to you, David. Can I start by asking how you got involved with €œYour Highness€?

DGG: Hi, Well, Danny and I talked about making it for like ten years now. It was a drunken idea one afternoon and it€™s kinda been a long gestating dream to make a film no one would make. After Pineapple , we in a certain position, commercially, and they said €˜Well, what do you want to make next?€ We said €œYour Highness€

WC: What was it about the material that attracted you to this sort of story?

DGG: Danny and I being big movie nerds we weren€™t looking for the next satire or anything we just wanted to make a real fantasy movie, not a parody. To take the architecture and make something like Ralph Bakshi€™s €œFire & Ice€ or €œHawk the Slayer€ but our way. You know, the early ones.

WC: I think you did it fantastically. Did you find producing the film outside the U.S. helped with making a Fantasy movie?

DGG: Absolutely. It€™s a different land, a different culture even a different way of speaking in Northern Ireland. It was a great place and it worked with me. I have two ways of making films; To immerse myself in authenticity and realism and live in a community or to run around nakedly and take a little of this and a little of that. Taking ideas from the culture of the place and the actors. You just couldn€™t do it in the States.

WC: Given the increasing scale of your films, from George Washington to this high budget, high concept movie, how have the challenges changed?

DGG: They haven€™t really, your still dealing with stress on set, maximising every dollar and this movie, it€™s a big fantasy story on a comedy budget. Whenever you make a movie, you have a lot of obstacles to defeat and the scale of the challenges matches the scale of the movie.

WC: Do you think, given the hard time Your Highness had at the box office, it€™s destined to become a cult film, along with the likes of Withnail & I or those movies that take on a new life on video or DVD?

DGG: Absolutely. It€™s totally a cult film, I have no doubt about that. It€™s a hard film to market and I wouldn€™t criticise anyone in the distribution company or the marketing company. It€™s a tough sell. It was a film that had two lead actors, in James Franco and Natalie Portman, getting enormous acclaim for very different films than Your Highness and I think it all had an impact.

WC: What would you say is your favourite part of the film? Is there a scene that was the killer idea ten years ago that you got to bring to life?

DGG: I€™m very comfortable, when filming, just having me, two actors and a cameraman, I€™m fine with that but on this it was so much bigger and there were some great days. James Franco and Danny in the training arena with the Minotaur, days that like I€™m just in love with my job. And with all the effects, The Minotaur, the Wise Wizard puppet, I mean I got paid to be an 8 year old kid all day on this movie and it was a fantastic experience.

WC: How involved were you with putting together the Blu Ray?

DGG: Oh, not as involved as I€™d liked to have been. There€™s a lot of cool things on the Blu Ray, lot of things that went from the film and with the enthusiasm we all had and as I am so adamant about documenting everything, I always like to have a guy with a camera in the background. Whatever we€™re doing, wherever we are I want someone recording it and consequently we have around 600 of hours of footage from the beginning right thru to the end. The chaos and insanity that went into the film. I€™m really proud of it. I€™m especially proud of the un-rated version that we have on there. People that liked the theatrical, shorter version will get a treat. I mean the theatrical was tight but we have an un-rated version on the Blu Ray that I am super pumped about. I love that with this medium, for the people who loved the movie, we can give them more, a little more of the juicy steak.

WC: Does that mean we€™ll see some more of the Wise Wizard?

DGG: Definitely more of the puppet!

WC: Does this mean we can expect a Heart of Darkness style documentary in the future?

DGG: That would be great, wouldn€™t it? Down the line, why not. We have a great view of the film, every blemish, every peach. A total document of a band of filmmakers in the trenches. I think it would be a great watch.

WC: So with Pineapple Express as a Stoner-Action movie and Your Highness as a stoner-fantasy movie, is there room for a third Stoner-Genre film to complete the trilogy?

DGG: That€™d be something, wouldn€™t it? Well, I just finished this cocaine drama (The Sitter) and I€™m about to do a black tar heroin film, so I€™m kinda feeling like 15 year old, experimenting with drugs for the first time. Maybe after these, I can cap the first trilogy.

WC: Any news on your remake of Ice Station Zebra?

DGG: Unfortunately not, the script is just too expensive. I€™d love to do a big espionage picture but it doesn€™t look like this is the time. I had a lot of fun writing the script and developing the movie. I got to go to the North Pole, hang out with the American Navy and Royal Navy while they did torpedo drills and stuff like that. It was great fun and a wonderful experience. That€™s my main goal with this job, to use it as a passport to the world.

WC: Thanks so much for time, David. It was great to speak to you.

DGG: Great, thanks, hope we can speak again in the future.

Your Highness is available on Blu-ray from Monday!