Walls and Bridges:
by Joel Meadows

04-14-06

DAVE MCKEAN ON MIRRORMASK PART TWO

Continued from the first part of the interview with Dave McKean that I did at the London Film Festival last November, which is up at www.worldfamouscomics.com at Bill’s Baker’s Dozen column, here’s the conclusion to my chat with McKean:

JM: Because Mirror Mask is basically a film of two parts (you have the dramatic stuff, which bookends things, and then you have the fantastic events in the middle), did that make your life easier or harder?

DM: I think it was a nice structure to work with because it meant that it was like my own film school. I got to do a bit of everything. It was a small group of actors but they were all very different. They came from different disciplines and had very different experiences so it was nice to get used to working with a cross section of people. It was good to do a couple of weeks on location to ground the film in reality…

JM: So you got the juxtaposition between the fantasy and the reality?

DM: Well we could quite easily have done a very stylised introduction to it with the thought that perhaps the whole film needed to have a continuity like that. But I always thought it should be gritty and realistic. This is a real girl in a real situation and then she falls through the rabbit hole.

JM: Some of it, especially some of the scenes in the circus, almost had a German expressionist feel to it. Was that something you were striving for or is that just pure accident?

DM: It's probably an accident because I just love that period of filmmaking so much that it's bound to come across, especially in the fantasy world. I love Murnau's films, the way the light pulses and fogs off at the edges.

JM: Because you're well known as an illustrator, it seemed with the fantasy elements like you were trying to convey your vision on paper but this time on film, trying to transfer your way of looking at things. Because it was a reasonably small production, do you think you were able to do that more successfully than if it was a bigger studio show?

DM: It's actually liberating in a way to know what the budget is and to know that it's a small budget. It means that you write to that budget. It means that you have to be resourceful. It's nice to know that you can't do everything and you have to find interesting resolutions to problems.

JM: Does it mean you have to think more laterally?

DM: Yes. Throwing more money at the problem is immediately out of the question. You've got to find those interesting ideas to try and get round it. There's a sequence in the film where it's in a dream park and I could have spent all the money just doing that. I could have spent it just filling the park with bizarre things and to be honest, we didn't have the money for it. There were other sequences that were more demanding and so we thought 'let's just fill it with line drawings'. So you're forced into those situations and actually it becomes a pleasure.

JM: Obviously you've done a lot of shorts and you've done a number of pop promos. What was it like working with actors compared with your illustration work, when you had to interact with a wide cross-section of different people with different demands and different experiences?

DM: And that's the biggest difference. I'm used to a solitary life where I don't have to talk to anybody or justify what I do whereas with this one you have to talk to people every day. You have everybody asking you questions and you've got to know what the answer is. And if you don't know the answer you've got to say something anyway because to look like you don't know the answer is worse than giving the wrong one. All of that was very very different. But actually they were such a nice crew: they were right on the money from the first slate. The actors were all happy to be there. It felt very much like a new challenge. So we'll see where it goes.

JM: Obviously you've worked with Neil [Gaiman] on so many other projects but your role was quite different here. How was it working with him in a different capacity because in the past it's been with him as a writer and you as the artist but here it's a very different sort of relationship.

DM: It was very different and I think we both realise now, in hindsight, that it was only about trying to make the thing better. We were bashing heads and actually we're just very different people. We had different feelings about fantasy and about film and so it was combative but eventually in a productive way. I think initially we just got hung up on the shock of arguing with each other because we'd just never really done it before. But I think it was okay in the end. We've always enjoyed working together and wanted to work together because we've always had lives apart.

JM: So do you think the contrast works?

DM: I think so but we've always had very strong creative lives on our own or with other people and I think it would do us good to work on a film apart from each other and then choose to come back to collaborate again. I think that once you go through that, we could come back with a little more understanding of the process.

JM: Was he with you when you were shooting the live action stuff?

DM: Of course, Neil lives in America now. He came down for a day. Obviously, setting up the film we spent time together writing and getting it going. But he came down for the readthrough, he came down for one day on set and then whenever he was in England he'd come and see me.

JM: Presumably, you'd keep in regular contact and keep him apprised of what was going on?

DM: Yes and the strange thing was, during the shoot, I didn't have time to see the rushes. We were on such a crazy schedule so I think I saw two or three lots of rushes the whole time.

JM: So you were winging it?

DM: So, yes we were. But I was watching the monitor all the time so I could see what we were shooting. But I never really saw the rushes. Everything was posted digitally and Neil got to see the rushes so he was the one who was able to say whether something worked or not.

JM: So he saw a lot more than you did and he had a distance to MirrorMask so he was able to say 'this could do with being reshot'…

DM: Yes it actually worked out pretty well.

JM: So now that the product is finished, how do you feel?

DM: I feel pretty ambivalent about it. I've got my own feelings about it, what it is.

JM: I suppose it's hard to take stuff from your head and put it on the screen?

DM: No, the hard thing is coming up with something worthwhile in the first place. Then there are so many opportunities to get elements in the film wrong. Every day there are 100 times or more when you could say 'black' instead of 'white' and get it wrong. And it is just impossible to get it right all the time. If it was possible then all the people with all the talent and resources and experience like Steven Spielberg would get it right every time.

JM: But it would be quite boring though because it would mean that you wouldn't have the challenge of trying to strive to make something as good as possible?

DM: No you would still have the challenge. You're still trying to make something new. When I'm making a drawing or something, I can screw it up and throw it away and I can try and get it right. But with film, you're constantly living with the wrong decisions you make. They're on screen and in the performances of the actors, they're in the set design. You can't get rid of them. So it just becomes a litany of errors so living with that is difficult. Getting it right is the difficult part.

JM: But conversely I assume because you're working in a way that you don't normally, you're able to bring something new to the mix. Film is such a collaborative effort and people come to you and say 'I know you probably haven't thought about doing it this way but why don't we try doing it this way?' and it's greater than the sum of its parts rather than working on a graphic novel, when you're working with yourself or perhaps two or three other people?

DM: Yeah I think that's true. I think it's been a steep learning curve for me because I'm used to just doing everything. I'm used to being in complete control of everything and so you have to abdicate responsibility.

JM: Did you find that hard at the beginning?

DM: Yes, I did and I still find it hard now. To be honest, some of the things in the film that I don't like are because I lost track of them and I wouldn't do that again. Some of the things in the film are bad because I got bolshy about it and I did my thing and I didn't loosen up. It's very hard to judge. You're constantly walking a tightrope and not knowing which way to go one way or another. It's just a very difficult process.