The Digital Bits - Inside Aliens on Disc

[Editor's Note: The following text was originally published in book format on 9/26/2003 as part of The Digital Bits: Insider's Guide to DVD, written by Bill Hunt and Todd Doogan. We present it here on The Bits - completed and unedited, save for formatting changes - for the first time. Just remember that this text refers to the ORIGINAL 2003 Alien Quadrilogy DVD release. While virtually everything from that set will carry over to Fox's new Blu-ray set, the Blu-ray also has updated features and all-new content as well. We'll be posting an update on that soon. Enjoy!]

Charles de Lauzirika understands the craft of DVD production as well as just about anyone in this business. Among the many titles he's produced are Columbia TriStar's Black Hawk Down: Deluxe Edition, Universal's Legend: Ultimate Edition, MGM's Hannibal: Special Edition, DreamWorks' Gladiator: Signature Selection and Twentieth Century Fox's Speed: Five Star Collection. Lauzirika brings, to each and every one of his projects, the insight and vision of a true fan of film. He's also a DVD purist, who wants the special edition material he produces to serve the film above all else. This sort of dedication to the medium shows, because many of the discs he's produced push the capabilities of the format and rank as great examples of "film school in a box." This isn't just a coincidence, because it was film school that brought Lauzirika to DVD.

Looking at the list of titles he's produced, you've probably noticed that they tend to have an element in common - most of these films were directed by Ridley Scott. While still studying film at USC, Lauzirika found a position at Scott Free, the production company founded by legendary filmmaking brothers Tony and Ridley Scott. Though he started as an intern, he soon found himself working in development and eventually went on to direct a number of commercials and music videos.

In mid-1998, while reading The Digital Bits, Lauzirika learned that Twentieth Century Fox was planning a DVD box set of the Alien series. As the original Alien was one of Ridley Scott's best early films, Lauzirika brought the DVD plan to the director's attention. After a few phone calls and meetings with Fox, the DVD became a full-fledged special edition with the involvement of Scott Free. Ridley was just about to leave the country to shoot Gladiator, however, so he asked Lauzirika to supervise the project in his absence. Thus began Lauzirika's involvement in DVD, and a partnership between director and DVD producer that's lasted to this day.

Twentieth Century Fox's original Alien: 20th Anniversary Edition and The Alien Legacy box set.

As most of you know, Alien is an important film, not just to Twentieth Century Fox as a studio (the Alien series was their second blockbuster franchise, but the first they actually owned and controlled) but also to fans of the Sci-Fi and Horror genres as a whole. Alien is a modern classic of filmmaking, and its technique and visual style have influenced virtually every genre film that's followed it. The Alien series also has a rich history, well chronicled in books, comic books, magazine articles, and previous special edition releases on laserdisc. The films remain so popular, in fact, that there's always talk in the air of another sequel - something fans of the franchise would no doubt love to see.

As the 25th Anniversary of the original Alien approached, Fox was eager to revisit the series with a much more definitive special edition treatment on DVD than the previous release. Out of this desire, the Alien Quadrilogy concept was born. The Alien Quadrilogy would be a nine-disc box set of all the films, complete with all new, never-before-seen special features. And who better to create these features than Lauzirika, the man who supervised the original disc for Ridley Scott, and who has since become a talented and prolific DVD producer in his own right?

When we, at The Digital Bits, learned that Alien Quadrilogy was going into production, we knew it would be a great opportunity to look more closely at the work that goes into creating a DVD special edition for this book. Lauzirika and Twentieth Century Fox were kind enough to allow us along behind the scenes, giving us access to such things as commentary sessions and interview shoots. We observed the film restoration and editing process. We visited the Fox Archives with the producer and even spoke with director Ridley Scott. Trust us when we tell you that the process of creating a great DVD special edition is incredibly challenging.

What you're about to read is an in-depth interview with the man in charge of this massive project. In the pages that follow, Lauzirika talks about the art of DVD production and provides the kind of insights into the craft that only an experienced producer can. Not only will you learn specific details about the Alien Quadrilogy, you'll also get a fascinating glimpse at the tremendous effort involved in creating your favorite discs. And with that, off we go...

The Digital Bits (DB): Your first DVD experience was on the original Alien, but you weren't technically the producer of the disc were you?

Charles de Lauzirika (CL): No, my credit was Project Supervisor for Ridley Scott, which meant that - you know Ridley had left to go shoot Gladiator, so he put me in change, on his end, of the disc. I was supervising a lot of stuff. It was the first disc I'd ever worked on and I didn't know a lot of the details. It was kind of a trial by fire. Primarily, I focused on the menus and the new transfer of the film, along with how the supplements would be laid out and navigated. I also worked with Fox on the packaging. I was involved in pretty much everything but the actual supplements.

DB: How did that experience lead you to other DVD projects?

CL: When I started working on the first Alien disc, I was very open to working with everyone, and being very supportive. I said, "Anything you need from Ridley's office, I'll help you with. Use me." And everyone pretty much did use me, except for the guys doing the supplements. As a result, I formed great friendships with everyone else, and so that's how I ended up continuing to work for Fox on other projects. Then, at some point, the work began speaking for itself. More and more studios started coming to me, so now I'm producing DVDs for other filmmakers, in addition to Ridley and Tony Scott.

DB: So the Alien: 20th Anniversary Edition DVD gets finished and Fox releases their Alien Legacy box set. Obviously, a few years go by. We remember you telling us a few times since then that you were interested in going back and doing a special edition of Alien³ - something more elaborate.

CL: For Alien³, yes. I had no serious urge to revisit Alien, although I'd spoken with Fox off and on about it. I remember, maybe about a year after the first release, we were speculating about the 25th Anniversary of Alien, or the high-def DVD version of Alien. That was kind of a joke for a couple of years. Then it became less and less of a joke. I'd get a call, literally once every six months, saying, "Fox wants to revisit the original Alien as a new special edition. Do you think Ridley would be on board? Do you want to do anything for it?" I was busy with other projects at the time, and I thought the first disc was fine. So why go back to it?

But the seed had been planted in my mind after the first DVD release that the movie that really needed the most exploration was Alien³. I remember we were at Complete Sound working on the first Alien disc, and I remember mentioning, "You know, Alien³ has all these great deleted scenes that no one's ever seen before." And the powers that be at Fox back in 1999, who aren't there anymore, basically said, "It's not your movie." So that was really the last time I mentioned it. But over the years, I kept thinking, that's the film that really needs exploration, not only because Fincher went on to become such a prominent director, but because it was a hellish production, you know - sort of on par with The Abyss and Apocalypse Now. It was a really troubled production.

DB: Tell us a little more about that production, for some of our readers who might not be familiar with it. There were a number of different directors that worked on Alien³, weren't there?

CL: Sure. It actually starts with the number of different writers. Off the top of my head, I think there were seven or eight different writers, and a ton of different drafts done. It was always changing. It started with William Gibson's script, which was more militaristic like Aliens. That's probably what the fans wanted. Then, David Twohy, Eric Red, Rex Pickett, John Fasano, and Vincent Ward - all these guys took a stab at it. Eventually, they started to hone in on this sort of monastic society, which finally got turned into prisoners with religious convictions. And it was a mess. It was a cobbled together train wreck of a story. But I found it fascinating.

The film was fascinating too, because there were three different directors on it. Renny Harlan worked on it for a year, then Vincent Ward took over. He took it almost all the way to production. They were actually building sets while he was still on it. Ward had this idea that the whole film would take place on a wooden planet, and he was talking about casting Gary Oldman in one of the parts. He was getting ready to pull the trigger on it. Finally, though, Fox and the producers basically said, "These are terrific ideas, but they're just way too out there for what we need for a franchise movie." So enter David Fincher...

DB: This was Fincher's first movie.

CL: It was his first film. I think he was twenty-seven at the time. He was an amazingly talented commercial and music video director, but he stepped in and inherited this shipwreck. He had to do with it the best he could. And that was just the beginning. [laughs] It got worse.

DB: So your whole motivation was to come back for Alien³.

CL: Yeah. Fox would come to me and ask, "Would you like to do Alien?" and I'd come back with, "No, but I'd love to do Alien³." That went back and forth. Then on about the fifth go-round, they asked, "How would you like to do all four?" And I dropped the phone. It was definitely a case of be careful what you wish for. Honestly, I didn't have a burning desire to do Aliens or Alien Resurrection, because Aliens had been done pretty well in the past, and frankly I thought it was territory that Van Ling might want to revisit at some point.

DB: Because of his previous DVD and laserdisc work for James Cameron?

CL: Right. And frankly, Resurrection... I'm not a big fan of as a movie. So I really wanted to do Alien³, and I would be happy to go back and do the original Alien for Ridley. But in a moment of insanity, I agreed to do all four. I thought, "Well, if we can pull it off, it'll be a hell of an achievement." And it would be great to have a unified vision behind them all. So that's why I agreed to do Alien Quadrilogy, against my better judgment. [laughs] Even as I sit here today, I still wonder whether I should have said yes to this project.

DB: Once you've said yes, and you've recovered from the shock, do you go home and start putting together ideas? What's your next step?

CL: That was absolutely the first thing I did. I started working on a proposal for the kind of content I thought would be great to go on the discs. I was pretty well aware of what already existed. What I thought would be the challenge was to find things that hadn't been previously released. With Alien³ and Alien Resurrection, that would be pretty easy, because they hadn't been fully explored. But with Alien and Aliens, it was significantly more difficult. Almost immediately, though, when I started going through the Fox Archives, and when I started calling people and checking out materials - even going through Ridley's private collection of Alien memorabilia - I started finding more and more material that no one had ever seen before. Frankly, I was shocked that this stuff hadn't been put together for the laserdisc or the previous DVD. So there was a kind of cache of treasures that I knew we could go into and show people.

With that wealth of original material, I never even had to look back at the previous laserdiscs or DVDs. I could start with a clean slate. So all of the extras on Discs One through Eight of the Quadrilogy are either all-new, never-before-seen material, or completely re-mastered archival material. All of the photos and artwork have been re-scanned from either the original Fox transparencies, or from the original artwork itself, so they look better than ever. All of the deleted scenes have been re-mastered from the original negative. All of the research for the supplemental materials was done from scratch, and since we interviewed over eighty people for this set, we got all of our information straight from the horse's mouth. The only exception to that rule was that we found Cinefex magazine to be an invaluable resource. It really is the gold standard of visual effects journalism, and Don Shay was kind enough to help me out with advice and additional support materials.

DVD producer Charles de Lauzirika searches through boxes of original production
artwork from the Alien films in the Fox Archives.

DB: Was the plan for Quadrilogy originally to have two discs for each film, plus a ninth disc of bonus material?

CL: No, I think originally the plan was for an eight disc set - two discs per film. But the problem came out of my anal retentive desire for symmetry in the way that supplements are presented. Maybe to my detriment, I'm very anal about having a consistent style in terms of how things are presented navigationally. So in looking at the available material... you know, there are a few different documentaries on Alien, there are some bits on Aliens that exist, there are different featurettes and different levels of already produced materials for the other films, but they didn't line up in a way that I thought was symmetrical across all four supplement discs for each film. So I thought, rather than trying to shoehorn all of the old material onto the supplement discs, why not have a bonus disc that's kind of a catch-all repository for everything that had already been done? That would include Alien Evolution, previous laserdisc content - most everything that had come before. We can put all that onto the final disc for the hardcore fans to enjoy. That would give me the freedom to start from scratch in creating all new content for the supplement discs. So right from the start, we decided to interview everyone we possibly could, to dig up everything we could find, and basically to really put this together not only in a new way, but with all new content that people had never seen before.

Even with the extra breathing room on Disc Nine, there were still some sacrifices that had to be made. For instance, due to space limitations, Fox unfortunately chose to once again omit the Alien Legacy documentary. I told Fox that this was a bad idea, but given that we were physically out of space on Disc Nine, there's not much you can do. When faced with that kind of limitation, you have to focus on unique material that's not redundant with the rest of the set. The same material - and much, much more - is covered elsewhere and in far greater detail, so its omission is probably not the end of the world. But I was still hoping there would be some way to include Legacy for completists. Ultimately it was Fox's decision, not mine.

DB: So you have your proposal, and you submit it to Fox. How much freedom do they give you? Do they say, "This is great, how much money do you need?"

CL: No. I wish. Generally Fox is very supportive of putting together the biggest, best, most cutting edge disc you can do. But when it comes to scheduling and budgets, well... [laughs]

DB: That kind of support from the studio is pretty rare these days, isn't it?

CL: Very rare. There are a couple studios that give me everything I need, but it always varies. It depends on the DVD regime at the studio, what mood they're in that week... what their latest marketing analysis tells them. When it comes to Fox, they give me a lot of creative freedom. The downside is, we had a very limited budget in terms of what we had to stick to and how far we could push the envelope. That was tough considering how much work that we really felt needed to be done to make this a worthy re-release. You know, this is a set of films that fans have already purchased on DVD, and now we're asking them to buy them again. We're doubling the content, sure, but it needs to be content that's worthy of their time and money.

So as a DVD producer, you can sit all day and dream up this amazing proposal for the ultimate disc, which is what I always do on any title I produce. I take a day and think up what I would do if there were no limitations - if there were no political, legal, or financial restrictions. But then reality sets in, and you have to start asking, "Okay, what can we really get away with?" That was very difficult on this set.

DB: Do the studios generally arrive at the budget for the project based on your proposal, or do they have a number in mind before that?

CL: A lot of times, they'll give me the number first and say, "Here's what we have to spend. What can you do?" And I come back with my best proposal based on that. In this case, there was a number that I felt was too low for the work that needed to be done. So I submitted my proposal, and a proposed budget to Fox.

DB: When was this?

CL: Probably August or September of 2002. Maybe a little earlier. My proposed budget was more than Fox wanted to spend, so we went back and forth a little bit and agreed on a number that wasn't unworkable in terms of how low it was, but wasn't very comfortable in terms of how high it was either. That was the challenge.

DB: When did you get the green light to start working?

CL: I would say it was late summer of last year. I basically knew I going to do it, it was really just a matter of the details of what and how it was going to be done. What was the budget? What was the timeframe? Those were the question marks. And I was willing to do anything just to make it for Alien³.

DB: Obviously, this is bigger than anything you've attempted before as a DVD producer - four films all at once from the ground up. How did you organize a project of that size?

CL: The first thing we did was to put together a list of the people we wanted to interview. Actually, the original list I put together wasn't as comprehensive as it turned out being. I started out with the usuals - Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, Jean-Pierre Jeunet - we went right down the list. Then at some point during early production, AMC ran that Alien Saga documentary, in which they really interviewed a lot of people. I saw that and thought, "Okay, now we have to go even bigger with this." So we started trying to go beyond the usual suspects, trying to dig up people that you wouldn't normally hear from - the visual effects people, the sound design people. We even interviewed Veronica Cartwright's stand-in for Alien, because we heard she had some really great stories to tell. But it's like, who would think to talk with a person like that for a DVD? Our grand total is over eighty all new interviews for this project.

Lauzirika and his crew prepare to shoot on-camera interviews with Alien cast members
Harry Dean Stanton and Veronica Cartwright. These will be used as part of new
documentaries for the Quadrilogy DVDs.

DB: This is on-camera interviews?

CL: Yeah. And a lot of them are for commentaries too. So that was really the starting place - figuring out who were going to be the voices that would tell the stories behind the making of these films.

DB: How do you approach actors and filmmakers when it comes to doing on-camera interviews and audio commentary? What are you looking for as a DVD producer?

CL: There are two different approaches. For on-camera interviews, I just like to have a conversation with people. I don't like having a list of questions that I have to keep looking down at. I know all this material pretty well, so I feel like I can have an intelligent conversation about it. I like the eye contact with people. You tend to get better material when you're having a direct one-on-one conversation. In terms of audio commentary, it's the opposite. I like to have as much paperwork around as I can, so that if the participant blanks on something, I can check my notes or we can look up something to refresh their memory.

You have to remember, though, that Alien was made twenty-five years ago. I was interviewing Michael Seymour, the production designer on Alien, and I was asking about the details of the sets - really film geek stuff. And he looked at me and said, "Do you remember what you were doing twenty-five years ago?" I couldn't tell you what I had for dinner three days ago, and here I am asking this guy what he was doing twenty-five years ago, and what the doorknob on the Nostromo looked like. I realized just how ridiculous this can be sometimes. When I was interviewing Tom Skerritt, he suggested that some of the questions were of the "get a life" variety, you know? And he's right, of course, but that's what fans want to hear.

DB: Do actors tend to be a little different, in terms of how much they remember about a film, compared to production people?

CL: No, you really can't divvy it up that way. You might have one actor who went on to do a million films after the one you're talking about, and so they don't remember anything. It was just a job. Then you might have another actor who remembers everything. I was stunned when we interviewed Veronica Cartwright, because she had an encyclopedic memory. She remembered every little detail, whereas Skerritt was very nice to talk with but didn't recall as much.

Cast members Harry Dean Stanton (left), Veronica Cartwright, and Tom Skerritt
react to a memorable scene from Alien while recording audio commentary for the DVD.

DB: Does it help to trigger their memories if you show them the film during a commentary, or if you bring a group of people into the commentary booth together?

CL: Sometimes. Unfortunately, though, if they haven't seen the movie in a long time, they often end up watching it. And that's when I really have to earn my money and pop in with questions. "Hey, do you want to talk about this person, or what do you think of that scene?" That's why, personally, I hate commentary sessions. Nine times out of ten, you're trying to draw blood from a stone. Occasionally, you get someone who just has so much to say that you can sit back and enjoy. In the case of Ridley, for example, he remembers a lot of stuff. He'll just keep talking. I have to pop in with questions occasionally, but that's fine, because he knows how to pick up the ball and run with it. But that's rare.

DB: We would imagine commentary is a little different for newer films.

CL: People definitely have more to say, because it's fresh in their minds. But there's no historical perspective, so it's a double-edged sword. Die Another Day is a perfect example. I did the commentary with Pierce Brosnan and Rosamund Pike, and they remembered everything. But the film hadn't even been released in theaters when we recorded it. So there's no sense of what the film's place in the world is yet. What is there to talk about other than the production itself? What's interesting about this film? We don't know yet. It's very strange.

DB: Aside from the unusually large number of new interviews and commentaries, what's the other major challenge you've had on Alien Quadrilogy?

CL: Well... you have to remember that simultaneous with all this, we had worked out the idea with Fox that not only were we going to do all new supplements, we were also going to restore the films, and do special edition versions of Alien, Alien³ and Alien Resurrection. We were going to fully restore all the deleted scenes. In the case of Alien³, which had such a sordid history in terms of how badly it had been butchered before its original release, we felt we absolutely had to go back and find the long lost cut of the film. So in addition to coordinating all the supplements, we also had to do restoration and finish visual effects for the movies.

DB: The idea is that the final DVDs for each film will give you a choice between watching either the original theatrical cut or a new special edition/alternate version, via seamless branching.

CL: Correct.

DB: Whose idea was it to go back and create longer versions for this release?

CL: Well, it was my idea to do Alien³. It was always part of the plan to include deleted scenes on the discs, and to give people the opportunity to see all of that. But what we quickly realized was that, with Alien³ and Alien Resurrection, in order to fully restore some key sequences, the visual effects had to be completed. There were a number of shots that had never originally been finished. This was much like the DVDs of Star Wars: Episode I and II, where Lucasfilm went back in and finished some of the special effects for the deleted scenes, because otherwise they would have been just actors standing in front of a green screen. We had the same problem here. So we spoke with Fox about the idea of completing the effects, and they were excited about it. I was actually shocked they were willing to spend the money!

DB: So once you knew you had to restore Alien³ and Resurrection, it then made sense to do all four?

CL: Yes... well, three of them, anyway. The great thing is we didn't have to do anything for Aliens, because that had been done previously. There was already a new special edition version, with all of the special effects completed, done for the previous DVD and laserdisc. So initially we really only had to focus on Alien³ and Alien Resurrection, because Alien didn't originally need much. Eventually, towards the end, several shots in Alien were tweaked or enhanced more to Ridley's liking. Mostly just starfields and tiny little details most people wouldn't notice. I always cringe when faced with digital revisionism, but the changes made to Alien are very slight. Nothing even close to the controversial changes made to the Star Wars films or E.T.. So that was all happening simultaneously while we were producing the supplements for the discs.

DB: Given the vast amount of work, how do you assemble a production team to get it all done?

CL: Well... the biggest expenditure in DVD supplement production is usually editorial. So it was a matter of figuring how many editors I needed. There are a couple I've been using pretty consistently over the years. One is David Crowther, the other is Will Hooke. David has been my "A" editor for a long time, but he was getting burned out on doing documentaries and behind-the-scenes material. So I thought, since he has a film background - he was assistant editor on Titanic and True Lies - maybe he should focus on the restoration of the films and the special effects. So David really dove into going through all the boxes of negative, looking through all the code books and lined scripts to try and figure out what footage was missing and what needed to be restored. So right from the start, one of my editors was lost to that for almost the whole length of the project.

LEFT: Assistant editor Curtis Bisel assembles new documentary featurettes for Aliens. RIGHT: Editor David Crowther at work on the new special edition cut of Alien3.

LEFT: Assistant editor Curtis Bisel assembles new documentary featurettes for Aliens. In case you hadn't already guessed, long hours spent in dark rooms in front of glowing video monitors is an occupational hazard when you work in the film industry. RIGHT: Editor David Crowther at work on the new special edition cut of Alien³.

DB: That's an archeological process, isn't it?

CL: Absolutely. But it's great, because as David's looking through all the boxes, he has an eye towards, "Oh, this outtake or this lost scene might be cool for the supplements." So Dave focused on that. Will took on the task of editing the special features for Alien. Then I had to find three other editors for the other films, which I did through this company I used to have office space at, called Sparkhill. They have in-house editors, and because I was bringing a pretty sizable project through, the editors came as part of that package. The problem is, Sparkhill had their own projects going on in addition to mine and those of another DVD producer, David Prior, who also had an office there. So it becomes a scheduling challenge. Thankfully, Jon Mefford, who is an in-house producer and coordinator at Sparkhill, became sort of the first coordinator involved on the Alien Quadrilogy. He tracked people down, set-up interviews, made sure all the camera crews were going where they needed to be... stuff like that. Then, along the way, it became necessary to bring in a couple of additional coordinators to pick up the slack. Alex Close set up several of the interviews, and even conducted a couple of them, while Cory Watson tracked additional people down and then focused on organizing the huge image galleries.

DB: Since you're the DVD producer, we would imagine that logistics isn't what you want to be spending your time on.

CL: I really need to be focusing on the creative side. For example, once the interviews are scheduled, I usually conduct them if I can be there. Out of the eighty or so interviews for this project, I probably conducted about seventy-five percent of them myself. If I can't be there, I'll have one of my coordinators conduct them. If they're in another country I'm not in at the time, we'll have the remote crew conduct them. I'll write up the questions and e-mail them over.

DB: So you've got people looking through film, you've got interviews being done and you've got footage being collected. Basically, it's a big gathering process.

CL: Yes, and it's really daunting when you think about it, all the material that has to be found and gone through and cataloged so we know, basically, what we have to work with. Frankly, I'm in awe of this whole project - that we've even gotten this far in the time we have. I think, back in the laserdisc days, this is a project that would have taken three or four years to do. We're going to do it in just under a year. It shows you how much the demand for DVD has accelerated the whole process.

DB: Do you have some kind of list that helps you know what you're looking for?

CL: For the most part yes, but it's a curse and a blessing. As you continue on with the project, doing more interviews and digging through more boxes, new things always come to light. For example, late in the game, you'll learn that they shot something you didn't know about, because it wasn't documented during the production. There's just too much film to go through every single frame on all four movies. But someone you interview might say, "Hey, did you ever find that scene?" And we didn't know about it. So we'll look for it and find it, but it's frustrating. You'll wish you'd known about it earlier, so you could have asked the people you've already interviewed about it. It's really tough to ask people back once you've already interviewed them. I think there are only two instances where we've been able to do a second round of interviews with people - one with Jean-Pierre Jeunet and the other with Gale Anne Hurd. So it's a continuously evolving process. It's always fluid. That makes for an interesting project, but it's also scary as hell, because you're afraid you're going to miss something.

LEFT: Aliens producer Gale Anne Hurd records new audio commentary for the Quadrilogy DVDs. RIGHT: Hurd (center) and Aliens creature designer Stan Winston during a break in the commentary.

LEFT: Aliens producer Gale Anne Hurd records new audio commentary for the Quadrilogy DVDs. RIGHT: Hurd (center) and Aliens creature designer Stan Winston during a break in the commentary.

DB: It must be a challenge. You have an idea what you want to do, but until you've collected all the material available, you really have no idea what's actually going to be on the discs.

CL: You know, pretty much every studio now, when you start doing a special edition DVD - they want to see a really detailed proposal of everything you're going to create for them. In addition to the timeframe and the budget, they want to know what the running time of each piece is going to be. And you do it, just to go through the motions, but it's a joke. I like writing proposals for myself, because they help me focus on the structure, but I never want them to be in a contract. When that happens, the studio comes back and says, "Okay, you have to deliver this and this and this now." That's ridiculous. What if you don't find that material, or the talent involved doesn't want to participate... or what if something better comes along? Producing good supplemental materials is an organic process, and you never want to lock yourself into something from the start, because that's limiting yourself creatively. Even on this project, Fox will occasionally say, "We need a spec list. What are the titles of each piece? What are the running times?" They want that because they're trying to create the packaging and the menus, which is understandable. But I literally don't know yet. I won't know until I deliver it all, because until the very last moment, we're going to be tweaking and working to make it all the best we can.

DB: It also seems like, on a project of this size, there's just so much to deal with.

CL: That's another big challenge, because I need to go through everything multiple times at different stages to approve things and make tweaks and adjustments. And now, I have to do it for four films - it's four times as much as you usually have to deal with. There's just not enough time in the day to get through it all, but I have to do it. I know I'll get done. It always gets done. But man... of all the projects I've worked on... if one project was ever going to break me, this was the one. It's just so huge.