411 Movies Interview: Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi of The Spiderwick Chronicles Posted by Tony Farinella on 07.02.2008
411's Tony Farinella sits down with the co-authors of The Spiderwick Chronicles, Holly Black and Tony DeTerlizzi, for an exclusive interview!
Author Holly Black and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi are a great team. Not only have they worked together on The Spiderwick Chronicles in book form, but they were also producers on the film as well. Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing the dynamic duo, and we talked about what it was like bringing their vision to the big screen. The Spiderwick Chronicles is currently out on DVD.
TONY: What were your first impressions of this idea? Whenever you turn a book into a movie, it's always a risky process.
Tony DiTerlizzi: Excited, terrified, thrilled, mortified. It could be awesome. Holly and I both have had many a conversation about a book we loved and then gone to see the film, either together or separately, and kind of critiqued it afterwards. So I think you get the gamete we've all seen of books adapted into the silver screen. Some very successfully, like Lord of the Rings. Some not as successfully, which I think remains in most people's opinions, so I'll leave it open as to what people think were successfully adapted or not. So I think we knew that there was a challenge for the filmmaker. I think the thing we just instilled upon them early on, especially with Mark, was that if you guys could retain the spirit of the book, the thematic elements, both in the story that Holly wrote and the visuals that I created, then we think you guys will have captured what we were trying to capture in words and pictures. And I think they did a great job.
TONY: What was it like working with director Mark Waters? From watching some of the special features last week, I was so impressed with his knowledge of the books.
Holly Black: Mark is amazing. The thing about Mark is that he was involved in this project really, really early on, and he's somebody who has been through all of the ups and downs and all of the different scripts. The books were actually optioned before we finished the fifth book, so we had conversations with him back when we weren't even actually done with the books. I remember very vividly him saying about all the different plot lines of Spiderwick back when they were trying to decide whether it was gonna be one movie or two, and he said, "With the fifth book, you have a lot of bills to pay." (laughs) So he really understands so much about this project.
Tony DiTerlizzi: Very enthusiastic, as Holly said, and genuinely loved the material. It was always funny, because you'd get a random call, even when we weren't on set, and he'd be like, "I got an idea! What is this? What do you think of this? OK, I gotta go. Bye!" I think that was just awesome that he looked at us in that capacity. I think that's the role I liked being in, that we were the go-to people for the world of Spiderwick and also for the folklore. And I think he, like us, wanted to retain some of the spirit of that old, original fairy folklore, which isn't glittery and happy little girls with wings. It's a little more dangerous than that.
TONY: What do you think was the most challenging thing to include in the movie from the books?
Tony DiTerlizzi: Well, I think the biggest thing was the creatures. I worked so hard in the field guide to try to make them look realistic for the skeptical eye of children, and I think there was a lot of talk early on .... we talked about doing 'em with puppets, like Jim Henson did with his movies. The idea behind that being that maybe the actors could have this real thing that they could interact with. When that proved to be a little limiting, they optioned to do all the stuff with computer graphics. But, actually, Mark had them still bring life-sized puppets that the actors could interact with and then they would remove 'em when they would do the final shot in the film. So that I think was the thing that we wanted to make sure that they really were able to embrace the organic, naturalness that the goblins had. And they did a fantastic job.
TONY: When I interviewed Sarah Bolger a few weeks ago, she told me that she would talk to you guys off camera about her character in the film. Did any of the other actors or crew members ever pull you aside and ask you for advice?
Holly Black: Well, Tony actually went out and met with the people that were working on the creatures themselves, which I thought was a big thing.
Tony DiTerlizzi: Well, I went out and met with Phil Tippett, and I'm a huge fan of Phil's stuff from when I saw the behind-the-scenes of the Star Wars films that he worked on. So it was a real treat for me to be able to sit with him and talk creature and creature design and certainly the same with Pablo Helman. They asked us early on, they being the producers, who Holly and I would be interested in for the cast, and I remember David Strathairn was at the top of our list for Arthur Spiderwick ... not just because he kind of looks like Arthur, but he even gave that same kind of aura in his performances. So it was amazing to see that little wish come true in the final film.
TONY: As producers on this film, how did you find that balance of being invovled in the process without becoming too overbearing?
Holly Black: Well, I think that, from the beginning, we knew that films are different from books and that what we wanted to do was help them make the best film that they could, so we tried really hard to critique all the different scripts from the perspective of what would make this a better film, not what will make this closer to the books. And our experience of collaborating with one another really gave us a foundation for learning how to collaborate with other people and learning how to not be too precious about ideas because they're our own, but to try and figure out what's gonna make the best story.
Tony DiTerlizzi: When you option that thing, that book, that story, you gotta know that it's gonna change and morph. I think you have to be respectful of the other artists who are now gonna try and bring it to life in another medium. I think trying to completely control them is only gonna create dismal results for both you as the original creator and for them. So I think when they realized that Holly and I were quite respectful of a lot of the various people who were involved, it was a mutual appreciation that went on to try and help see this to a final film that everybody would be really proud of. And it was. It was great. There was stuff that was changed. I never was disappointed in stuff that got dropped out ... I just was like, "Aww." Mark would go, "Dude, the budget's just gonna keep going up and up with the more creatures we put in this thing." So you knew stuff was gonna get omitted, but I think overall Mark retained the spirit of the kids that Holly wrote and retained the spirit of the folklore that we wanted so hard, and he retained the look and the feel of the books. And you can't really ask for much more.
TONY: What was it like the first time you watched your movie on the big screen, and what was going through your head?
Tony DiTerlizzi: I hope we don't have to go to the bathroom. (laughs)
Holly Black: I think the really strange thing about this is that we got to see it at so many stages that we had to really be like, "OK, well, this isn't the final one." We got to see it evolve, but the very first time was so surreal to see these characters that I knew in one context in a totally different context. They looked completely independent of us and walking around doing things.
Tony DiTerlizzi: I think what was awesome: Holly and I love stories so much, and that's one of the things we bonded over early on in our friendship. And I think the great thing here was after we saw the first rough cut, we had lunch with Mark, and it was very much like, "Alright, what do you think? What can we change?" And Holly and I kind of came at it with ... like, "Well, if I walked out of the theater, here are the things I really liked, here are some of the things I was foggy on, and here are some of the things I didn't care for." And he really listened, and actually some of the changes we requested, he actually put 'em in the final edit and stuff. I mean, again, that just shows that mutual respect for the various roles that we all had.
Holly Black: I think, too, the first time we saw it all the way through, we knew, "OK, this is good." Before that, you see a lot of stuff and you read the scripts, but you never know what you really think. And it was like, "Wow, this is a movie. This movie is a movie."
Tony DiTerlizzi: I kept waiting to get that phone call where they're like, "It's not happening, guys. We're sorry." I kept waiting for that phone call every day. Even after they had wrapped, I kept waiting for them to go, "It's just not gonna happen." Or my mom would wake me up, and I was twelve again getting ready to go to middle school to get pummeled. (laughs)
TONY: When your film was released, did you pay attention to critical reaction and box office numbers?
Holly Black: You mean did I reload Rotten Tomatoes twenty-seven million times? Yes. (laughs)
Tony DiTerlizzi: We did. Mark warned us against it. He was like, "Don't follow that stuff too closely. You'll get too caught up in it." He's obviously been in the industry a while, but we were like, "No. I want to know every day. I want to know what's going on, and I want to know what people thought." I think, for me, what I took away from it is the film almost has performed in the same fashion as the books performed. We were kind of a slow build-up, and people were like, "Spiderwick? Not quite sure I've heard of it." And then more and more people heard about it and were like, "Oh, these stories are really cool. I really enjoyed it. The creatures are cool, and the kids are really well-drawn." And I think the film kind of followed that, and critics seem to overall really like it, which is the same thing we received in the book end. So I'm hoping that with the DVD, it becomes that kind of family favorite like Goonies or Gremlins that I grew up with, where you're watching it. It seems like that thing is on every Sunday on some channel. If it's on, we leave it on, and we don't shut it off. If Gremlins is on, it stays on, and we don't shut it off.
TONY: Finally, what is the number one thing that you guys learned throughout this whole process?
Holly Black: That's an interesting question. We went into this with the expectation that things would take a long time. We had very realistic expectations that things would take a long time, that the film might never actually come to pass. So for the longest time, even after it was green lit, it was really hard for us to shift our perceptions to the fact it was actually happening, and I think that that was really good. With Spiderwick, things would speed up and there would be a lot of excitement, and then we weren't sure what was gonna happen again. We're told that this actually came together really, really fast, and I'm not sure I'm still prepared to learn that lesson.
Tony DiTerlizzi: It was almost like a lot of planets have to line up, because you're talking about a really large budget film, there's a lot of people, and it's a studio film. You realized how many things had to fall in place. It's so trite, but I really walked away from it going, "Wow, it's amazing anything gets made and made well." Again, I kept waiting for the phone call to go, "It ain't happening, dude. Sorry."
