MirrorMask (2005)
Interview with Dave McKean (Director)
Dave McKean
For the past twenty years Dave McKean has been doing comics as a painter and writer. He started to work with Neil Gaiman in 1986. Both of them have kids which led to some critically accaimed children's books like The Day I swapped My Dad for two Goldfish. But McKean also designed all the covers of Gaiman's very sucessfull graphic novel series "Sandman". Contrary to his friend Gaiman McKean never really wanted to go to Hollywood. So when Gaiman took off for the US, he started to do little films in his barn and learned quite a bit about the art of filmmaking doing the shortfilms The Week before and N[eon].
McKean and Gaiman had a plan though. They wanted to meet again when Gaiman's got a bit of a reputation in Hollywood and McKean developed a point of view and a visual idea. It all coincided with Lisa Henson, the daughter of Jim Henson, catching attention of the two. So here we are with McKeans first feature film MirrorMask which entered the international competition of the Locarno Film Festival in 2005.
OutNow.CH (ON): Where did you get the inspiration for MirrorMask from?
Dave McKean (DM): It didn't exist as anything before the film but its descendants are obvious. The story shape is from Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz. It has been used so many times because it is a classic. Somebody has a worry, an anxiety or a problem and moves through into a world that sort of allows them to examine that dillema and then hopefully learns something after coming out.
ON: That's the story. What about the creatures and the masks?
DM: That stuff came from all over the place. Some of them are particularly Neil's. The Misses Bagwall character, the prime minister, that side of the dark queen, light queen. Neil is steeped in fairy tales and myths. Since he's been writing the Sandman comics he's always been dealing with those sorts of things. I like visual ideas that have a psychological component with it. So the giants are mine. I just love that idea of a married couple who have to stay clamped together to exist. If they start to lose touch with each other they fall apart. The idea of books that if your really reject them and throw them down go like: "Oh I give up, I'm going back to the library now" and then migrate back to the library. That was just a funny idea. We had lots and lots and lots of them and the ones that seemed to fit in the story got kept and some of the others were taken out.
ON: It sounds like a real team effort. You can't distinguish between somebody working on the words and somebody else on the visuals?
Working with Neil Gaiman
DM: On this one it really was a team effort. Previous to this we've always been strictly demarcated: Neil writes, I draw. When I'm writing my own books obviously that's separate. And Neils has done his' with other people on his own.
ON: How was the film made? Would it have been possible to make the film without CGI?
DM: I personally think it would have been much more difficult. Some of the ideas really are peculiarly computer. There is no gravity in computers and that's a lovely thing to play with.
ON: It doesn't look like a CGI-movie though. There still must be hand-made stuff in there?
DM: There is a feeling generally that when you do a lot of bluescreen acting and then do computer animation on top its cold because computers made it. I just don't think that is the case at all. I look at the computer's ability to collage elements together. It's just a tool really. It's as foolish as saying a pencil has to be cold. You get out what you put in. If you put in very clean, rounded shapes that's what you get out on the other end. But all of my works look kind of hand-done, a bit torned-out and collagy and rough and unready. I just like the humaness in it. Those were the elements that came into the box, and coming out the other end that's what I composited.
ON: How did Stephanie Leonidas as Helena get on board?
The next Keira Knightley
DM: We thought that to find the girl was going to be our nightmare task - somebody that goes through the Dark Lands and believes all this is happening and has a real fear and anxiety about what is going on in her real world. We were gearing up to patrol the schools and colleges and seek thousands of people and all that kind of rubbish. My producer Simon Moorhead litterally turned on the TV on one night, and there was the television film called Daddy's Girl and he thought this girl was fantastic. He threw a video cassette in so I got the second half of it. An I agreed that she was wonderful. I had no idea how old she was. She is very tiny. I went to the casting director I had and told her: "I know you're ready to go search for the girl, but why don't you bring her in on the first day because I think she's a good starting place." On the first day we saw eight girls. Some of them were very good, some of them not so good. We thought this is not bad but then Stephanie came in and she was in a different league. She was amazing. She did a read through with Simon who is a terrible actor trying to figure his lines. And that was it. There was absolutely no point in seeing anybody else. She was perfect.
ON: Since your film is in the competition here in Locarno do you think about the golden leopard?
DM: It's my first feature film. We didn't come to win the competition. It's lovely to get an idea of how people respond to the film and to come to such a lovely place. But we are not really in competition.
ON: What about your next projects?
Eye-Catching
DM: I've written the script of what I'd like the next film to be. It's completely different to this one really. It's called "Signal to Noise" and it's a much more serious adult film. It will have some pretty bizarre animated sequences and strange mixes of media. What I really want to do is get down to the language of film. MirrorMask is really a traditional story told in quite a traditional way. With "Signal to Noise" I really want to get down to a new kind of digital filmmaking. I would love to make another fantasy. The process of sitting down with a blank sheet of paper and thinking that you can go anywhere is a lovely, liberating process. And I am talking to Lisa Henson definitively about doing something like this again.
ON: Since you call "Signal to Noise" an adult film, do you think MirrorMask is a kids' film?
DM: No. It's not a kids' film I do think of it as a family film. And even then it's got quite a small audience really. The people that will like it for whatever reason will only be a few. We are not doing a big, massive Pixar/Disney film. It's just not that kind of film. Hopefully it will find its small audience and they will like it.
