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Equilibrium Commentary
Kurt Wimmer &
Lucas Foster
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2. An Unfeeling Society
Transcription by Max
Kurt...And I really thought about it... But at the end of
the day, if you look at the other paintings in the film that the rebels
are possessing you'll notice that it is not the greatest hits of art.
They're actually sort of, semi-obscure works. And I went to a lot of
trouble to pick them, we had them all painted. You'd be surprised, you
can not just go into a book and reproduce whatever painting that you
want, in fact you have to get permission from the museum that owns it.
So there's actually a very limited number of works of art that you can
use.
Lucas- Yeah, their clearances for that were a total pain.
Kurt- Right.
 Lucas- The car is obviously on a camera trailer. Err? This
was essentially a back-lot shot for us right?
Kurt- Yes, it was. This was on that East German army base...
A decrepit East German army base. And we just went out and 'grabbed'
this one afternoon, on the process trailer. And I think we had to
basically post-sync the whole thing.
Lucas- And this is obviously a CG shot, but it started at
Templehoff airport, that little facade...
Kurt- That's right. It would be interesting, if we ever do a
'Special Edition' on this film, to actually show the original shot
because it looks, except for the road, it looks nothing like that.
And, it was basically my first introduction to digital
effects, and I was waiting kind of with 'bated breath' to see if it
would actually work! ...And what do ya know? It did!
This particular portion is shot in Rome. We shot about 7
days in Rome, and I chose Rome because I kinda shot Berlin out.
And Rome is the one other place that had similar fascist,
sort of neoclassical, fascist take on neoclassical architecture. That
err? Hitler's production designers sort of invented. And so we had to
go there...
But, it's not identical it still is a bit more
neo-classical, you see the rounded columns etc.
Lucas- One of the things Kurt loves to do is get hundreds
and hundreds of extras and have them walk around in the foreground!
(laughs) Which would irritate me endlessly!
Kurt- I do love that. I gotta tell ya, I wish I had
thousands of extras! I think it would've helped the scene
tremendously...
Lucas- It was a problem for us, because we picked these huge
locations, and they would suck up a hundred extras in the blink of an
eye.
Kurt- That's right, there were three or four hundred. Yeah,
absolutely! They would get lost there...
(EC10 is shown being destroyed, on
large screens in Libria)
Kurt- I actually, interestingly enough, I think it's some of
this sequence here that led some people to say that I was paying
'homage' to Leni Riefenstahl. In fact, I really think it's just the
architecture that echoes her style .
Lucas- There's William Fichtner…
Kurt- Yeah, there's William Fichtner.
Lucas- ...Hiding in the crowd!
Kurt- Yep, he's the err? True believer... Or, pretending to
be.
(close-up shot of a man practicing the
Gun Katas)
Kurt- This guy has a great look... He's just a Martial
Artist that I picked up, or we picked up, me and Jim Vickers (Fight
Choreographer and stunt coordinator). An' the truth be known though, if
I could do it all over again... I wouldn't hire any Martial Artist to
perform this Gun Kata. I would hire all dancers. Because Martial
Artists, while they're generally very talented athletes, they are
programmed to do one thing, which is the katas they know. Where as
dancers have trained themselves to learn different moves every day, or
every week.
I had the great pleasure of having dinner with Michelle Yeoh
once, I was just giddy because I love 'Super Cop'. And she told me that
she, had no martial arts experience prior to that movie. And, in fact
she was a ballet dancer. So that made a great impression on me. I
should have taken that and applied it to this film…
(Christian comes into shot)
I
think however, Christian has a lot of dance experience which would
explain why he was so phenomenal at absorbing choreography in this
film, an' it really saved our asses I have to say. Because, as Lucas
will testify to you...
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