CraveOnline: Being an R-rated sci-fi is one thing and there’s precedent for it, but what about bringing nudity back to sci-fi?
David Twohy: Oh yeah, where’s it been? Where’s it been? It was great when I was growing up as a kid, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, seeing that shit. I don’t know, it’s just part of being a fanboy and a new way to appreciate the movie. I don’t know why we should shy away from it. By the way, I show the females, the Necromonger consorts, and Vin has a little nude scene. He’s up on the rocks there with “backal” nudity.
Well, you really can’t show frontal males in an R. They won’t allow that.
I guess not. Vin wasn’t keen to do that anyway but I could barely talk him into the back shot.
How did your actress feel about it?
She was a trooper. She realized that it’s a genre product and a genre film, that it was all part of that and part of the success of the movie. She wanted to help out on that a little. She was okay with it.
Is Dahl supposed to sound like “doll?”
Not really. That’s not what I was thinking. I was just thinking it was a nice Nordic name.
Everyone wants to fuck her, even Riddick.
Yeah, sure everyone wants to fuck her.
And she clearly doesn’t consent, so what exactly are you exploring?
Well, just because a character says something is so doesn’t mean that it is so. So her character announces “I don’t fuck guys. I may fuck ‘em up once in a while but I don’t fuck ‘em.” Now that may be true and it may be just her way of saying “I don’t want the grief from all these guys that think of me like that. My own crew knows me, respects me as one of them but this other crew, Santana’s crew, here’s why. Because of assholes like this and the grief that a single woman amongst other men is going to take. I don’t want it.” So that may be her just protecting herself.
One of my favorite films of yours is Disaster in Time, or The Grand Tour, whichever title was first.
Grand Tour was first. Can I tell you it’s got three titles?
What’s the third?
I scripted it as Grand Tour. Then it was going to be released as Timescape thinking if it’s a time travel movie, you’d better get time in the title. Okay, I’m kind of down with that and then fucking Showtime got a hold of it and they turned it into Disaster in Time. Awful, awful.
But Showtime is the reason I even saw it.
All right, I guess that’s good.
I didn’t know about any of that trouble. Does the film not represent your original intention anymore?
Well, the title change was so shocking, I’ve got to think beyond that. Pretty much so. It’s kind of a gentle piece of science fiction, gentle, thoughtful and there should be room for that in the marketplace. Had I done it today and got a better release for it, it would’ve been nice to have a real release for it. I shot it as a theatrical movie. I think it may have gotten released in some international markets as a theatrical but by the time domestic came around it was just shoveled off to Showtime and do what you want with it.
Today it would be VOD and in HD.
Yeah.
Would your next movie be another Riddick?
No, I don’t want to do back to back Riddicks. Neither does Vin. Clearly not Vin.
He’s got something.
He’s got something. I think I have something too, though it’s probably just premature to talk about it.
Are you still drawn to science fiction?
I am, always will be. Just on a career level I probably shouldn’t do it every time out. I probably should do it every other time out. It’s nice to have that.
Has there been any science fiction lately that’s really excited you?
I did see Pacific Rim. I actually enjoyed it more than I expected to, but still kind of a big fighting robot movie, you know, and I think we’re all a little burned out on that. I don’t go to Transformers anymore. I lost that habit. Haven’t caught up to Elysium but I think I’ll like it when I see it. I did see Oblivion, liked it. Liked it enough.
I guess it has been a good year for sci-fi. I didn’t even put together how many there’d been.
Well yeah, there’s a lot of product anyway.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
