Brett Ratner

Started by Spike, June 13, 2003, 04:09:31 PM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

JG

Haha, I have no idea why but somehow Ratner somehow found his way into my dream last night, and he stole my girlfriend.   :saywhat:  Completely out of left field. 

Sorry for you Ratner fans who thought this was real Ratner news, just thought I had to share. 

Bethie

who likes movies anyway

Ravi


MacGuffin

When asked recently who his dream cast would be for Rush Hour 3, director Brett Ratner threw out the name of basketball player Yao Ming as someone he's extremely interested in. Why Yao? Well, Ratner wants to re-create the fight scene from the Bruce Lee film in which he fights Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ... but he wants to do it in reverse.

Also on the Rush Hour dream team are Aishwarya Rai, Gong Li and Tony Jaa.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

pete

that sounds like a great american express commercial.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

grand theft sparrow

Ratner: "I'm a Film-Maker First, Party Animal Second"
Brett Ratner is frustrated by his image as a party animal, and fears he won't be taken seriously as a film-maker because of it. The Rush Hour director makes more headlines because of his A-list pals and rumored romances than the movies he makes. But Ratner - who has been linked with Serena Williams and Lindsay Lohan, and counts Sean 'Diddy' Combs and among his pals - insists work comes first and he only parties to wind down afterwards. He says, "I'm a serious film-maker and the people I work with know that so whatever is in the tabloids you can't take that seriously. I think, eat, sleep and dream film so that's what my focus is. That's the real me. I love women and I appreciate women but my focus is my work. You got to celebrate. That's the way to blow off steam. It's a hard grueling process and you want people to know that you really appreciate their hard work so I like to throw a few little soiree."

pete

god, even his defenses are second-rate.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Ravi

Quote from: hacksparrow on May 16, 2006, 03:14:20 PM
Brett Ratner is frustrated by his image as a party animal, and fears he won't be taken seriously as a film-maker because of it.

Yeah, that's why.

modage

Master of the Mutants
A behind-the-scenes look at ''X-Men: The Last Stand'': With a new director, new characters, and all sorts of new pressures, can the comic-book franchise stay in the black?
Source: EW

Three weeks before the release of X-Men: The Last Stand, Brett Ratner bops into the Fox commissary trailed by a reporter and is immediately greeted by well-wishers. First up is Twentieth Century Fox chair Tom Rothman, who sidles up to the 37-year-old director's table and expresses his opening-day high hopes.

''We will be in every country in the world with close to 16,000 prints on the same day,'' says Rothman. ''We don't have any real competition. We'll play all June — but none of it would mean a damn if the movie weren't any good, and he's done a great job.''

Next, Fox marketing guru Tony Sella escorts a commissary staffer named Janet to the table.

''What did you just tell me?'' Sella asks her.

''I saw the trailer last night and it looked amazing,'' repeats Janet, obediently.

''How many X-Men movies have you been to?'' Sella prods.

''I've never seen any of them and it made me want to see this one.''

''Brutally honest,'' says Sella, satisfied. ''And she's not even [serving] this table.''

Ratner beams...until he learns that this article will be as much about Ratner as the movie itself.

''S---,'' he swears. ''I'm screwed.''

Brett Ratner is an affable guy, jovial and ingratiating. It's obvious from the way he works a room — warmly shaking hands and pulling others close to his squat frame — that he wants people to like him. Try as he may, though, he can't seem to get on the good side of the press these days. This week, while he put finishing touches on the biggest film of his career, Us Weekly ran a story about how Lindsay Lohan showed up at his house and found him in bed with his girlfriend, pouty Romanian model Alina Puscau. (''We're only friends,'' says Ratner of Lohan.) Tabloids and Hollywood-gossip websites like Defamer continue to harp on his personal life while dismissing him professionally. Even Harry Knowles, the founder of movie fansite Ain't It Cool News, who once lauded Ratner for the Rush Hour films, has turned against him.

Ratner, in a rumpled dress shirt and jeans, seems genuinely confounded, even betrayed, by the ill will. ''Go back and look at what he wrote about me for Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2,'' he says, his voice pitching up at least an octave at the mention of Knowles. ''He wrote that I was the s---. Now I'm a hack?''

Fortunately for Ratner, neither his playboy persona — he's been romantically linked to tennis star Serena Williams, model Naomi Campbell, and actress Rebecca Gayheart — nor the fanboy perception that he is unskilled seems to prevent him from getting work. (In addition to Rush Hour 3 on the horizon, he's developing a flashy heist movie with Brian Grazer.) And that's what keeps him confident. ''Do you think that this studio would give me several hundred million dollars if I wasn't a serious filmmaker?'' he says, lowering his voice and glancing around at all the Fox execs. ''These guys are not f---ing around.''

The X-Men franchise is one of Fox's most coveted properties. The first film more than tripled its production costs, taking in almost $300 million worldwide in 2000. 2003's X2: X-Men United cost more than $100 million to make but brought in upwards of $400 million. With a budget reported to be at least $165 million, The Last Stand is the riskiest yet. Tying up major story lines from the previous films while introducing dazzling new superhumans, the film follows what happens when the government discovers a cure for mutants that threatens their population with extinction. Each mutant then begins to reexamine his or her allegiances. Since future generations of X-Men films, including a Wolverine spinoff that's already in the works, hinge on the The Last Stand's box office returns, Ratner is shouldering the kind of weight that would make Colossus stumble.

The director came to the project with little time to spare. Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects), who helmed the first two installments, left the franchise in 2004, while The Last Stand was in preproduction, to develop Superman Returns. Initially, Fox brought in Layer Cake's Matthew Vaughn to replace Singer. But in May 2005, Vaughn quit for personal reasons and Rothman tapped Ratner to lead the mutant charge. Ironically, Ratner had once been attached to direct Superman, but had quit over creative differences with Warner Bros. At the time, Esquire magazine reported that he had argued heatedly with producer Jon Peters, who claimed Ratner threatened him with an armed bodyguard. ''I don't own a gun,'' says Ratner, laughing off the allegations. ''I don't have bodyguards with guns. I don't have bodyguards. I have assistants.''

Ratner admits he was never really into X-Men comics, but ''neither was Bryan,'' he says. And Rothman maintains that Ratner was a less controversial choice than Singer (''I got hate mail when Bryan Singer was hired'') and possibly more up to the challenge of making a big studio movie than the less blockbuster-savvy Vaughn. ''The Rush Hour films are extremely effective commercial enterprises,'' says Rothman. ''He's an experienced big-picture maker. He's used to a set with, literally, a cast of thousands and hundreds of technicians. To have somebody who's not daunted by that, we were very lucky.''

''I'm kind of a fearless guy,'' says Ratner, somehow managing to sound both cocky and earnest.

Fox also needed a director who wouldn't try to make too many radical changes, seeing as how Last Stand had already been in prep for a year. ''There really wasn't much to do,'' says Rothman, regarding the script. And as for production: ''It's our third one. We know how to make Wolverine's claws.''

Given the opportunity to broadcast his installment's superiority, Ratner demurs. ''It's a more emotional film,'' he says pensively, his salt-and-pepper beard finally starting to make sense on his boyish face. ''Does that make it better? I don't know. I was less interested in trying to make my mark than [in making] a movie that fit into the trilogy.''

Though he once envied quirky directors like Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson, Ratner seems to have made peace with both his hired-gun status on this film and his populist bent. ''When I did Rush Hour,'' he says, ''I got three calls: Jonathan Demme said, 'This is my favorite film of the year.' Warren Beatty said, 'I gotta meet you.' And Roman Polanski. I realized that directors aren't snobs. What's in me is to make movies for the most amount of people.''

''I was the most hated kid in my high school,'' says Ratner, who was raised in Miami Beach by his single mother. ''Because I was having fun. Every one of my friends hated high school, stressed about grades, college. My mom didn't tell me what time to go to bed. She said, 'You don't even have to go to school. Go travel around Europe.'''

Despite dismal grades, Ratner somehow managed to smooth-talk his way into NYU's film school, where he contacted 40 of Hollywood's biggest players to ask for funding for his student film. (The short, Whatever Happened to Mason Reese?, about an uppity former child star, was already finished. Ratner just wanted to make connections.) Eventually, he received a check from Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, which he used to impress women for months before finally cashing it.

While at NYU, the 17-year-old Ratner met future Def Jam Records impresario Russell Simmons, who was building his label. Six years later, Simmons gave Ratner his first big job, shooting a Public Enemy video, and the two have been close friends now for roughly 20 years. ''He was a talented, hardworking kid that deserved a shot,'' says Simmons. ''And he knew where every model's apartment was. I was an older guy, but not too old to want to know where a model's apartment was.''

Ratner went on to direct videos for everyone from Mariah Carey to Madonna, and in one of those early clips, he cast upstart comedian Chris Tucker from Simmons' Def Comedy Jam. Tucker's career kicked into gear with Friday and Dead Presidents, and when the comic got his first mainstream vehicle — alongside Charlie Sheen in Money Talks (1997) — he recommended his friend Ratner to direct.

The two collaborated again on 1998's Rush Hour for New Line, a buddy flick with Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan that made about $250 million worldwide. In 2001, Rush Hour 2 did even better. Chan became a name in the West, Tucker became a $20 million man, and Brett Ratner became a bankable director. He's still considered one to this day, despite the tepid box office performance of his other studio pictures — the Nicolas Cage tearjerker The Family Man (2000), the Silence of the Lambs prequel Red Dragon (2002), and the Pierce Brosnan heist movie After the Sunset (2004).

Ratner's reputation seemed to sour — at least among the geek set — during his prep work for Superman Returns, a movie he never actually made. ''He didn't know anything about the comic,'' says Ain't It Cool's Knowles, whom Ratner had called on to consult when he accepted the Superman gig back in 2002. ''He's the type of guy who would commit to making a Superman movie without really knowing the character.''

''Why wouldn't I call him?'' responds Ratner, flustered. ''We spoke a thousand times on the phone. We were friends.'' Really? ''I mean, we didn't hang out. We were friends over the computer.''

Certainly, for a man who has starlets coming to his Beverly Hills mansion at all hours of the night, establishing solidarity with the comic-book-reading crowd could be tough. ''He throws great parties, he drives expensive cars, and he dates supermodels,'' says Simon Kinberg, who co-wrote the screenplay for Last Stand. ''Believe me, I understand resenting that.''

Brett Ratner spins the steering wheel furiously, spiraling his Bentley down to the exit level of an L.A. parking structure. Minutes later, he busts a heart-stopping U-turn searching for an alternate route to Wilshire Boulevard.

Traffic is backed up and Ratner's got a lot on his mind. (A) After spending hours on color correction, he's still fretting over the levels of magenta in the fourth reel. ''It's like letting go of your child,'' he says. (B) Chris Tucker's getting cold feet about starting Rush Hour 3 later this summer. ''I never wait around for Chris,'' he says. ''If you wait around for him, you'll be like him: You won't be working.'' And (C), most pressing at the moment: He's late for a red-carpet date at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. ''I'm going to the Mission: Impossible III premiere with Maggie Q,'' Ratner boasts. ''The hottest girl in the movie.''

He's minutes away from the theater when his girlfriend, Alina, calls. Still smarting from all the Lohan gossip, Ratner opts to dodge the bullet and emphasize his other date.

''Baby, I'm going to the premiere of Mission: Impossible right now,'' he says over the phone. ''I'm going with my new friend Neil. Maggie Q asked me to go with her and I said no because I didn't want you to get mad at me.... Neil from Entertainment Weekly, the magazine.... I just told you: NEIL. He's a man.''
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

©brad


polkablues

Quote from: modage on May 20, 2006, 10:43:19 AM
''When I did Rush Hour,'' he says, ''I got three calls: Jonathan Demme said, 'This is my favorite film of the year.' Warren Beatty said, 'I gotta meet you.' And Roman Polanski.''

I'm inclined to believe that none of this is true.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Pubrick

Quote from: modage on May 20, 2006, 10:43:19 AM
Eventually, he received a check from Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, which he used to impress women for months before finally cashing it.

this i believe.
under the paving stones.

©brad

Quote from: polkablues on May 20, 2006, 05:56:46 PM
Quote from: modage on May 20, 2006, 10:43:19 AM
''When I did Rush Hour,'' he says, ''I got three calls: Jonathan Demme said, 'This is my favorite film of the year.' Warren Beatty said, 'I gotta meet you.' And Roman Polanski.''

I'm inclined to believe that none of this is true.

i never believed that either. roman polanski is calling this douche b/c of rush hour? riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

it's almost sad, really, how much he wants to be loved.

polkablues

Quote from: ©brad on May 22, 2006, 06:35:28 PM
Quote from: polkablues on May 20, 2006, 05:56:46 PM
Quote from: modage on May 20, 2006, 10:43:19 AM
''When I did Rush Hour,'' he says, ''I got three calls: Jonathan Demme said, 'This is my favorite film of the year.' Warren Beatty said, 'I gotta meet you.' And Roman Polanski.''

I'm inclined to believe that none of this is true.

i never believed that either. roman polanski is calling this douche b/c of rush hour? riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

it's almost sad, really, how much he wants to be loved.

Plus, Rush Hour came out in '98, the same year as Thin Red Line, Saving Private Ryan, Pleasantville, Elizabeth, Truman Show, A Simple Plan, American History X, Gods and Monsters, Affliction, Shakespeare in Love, Central Station, Velvet Goldmine, and Out of Sight... and Jonathan Demme calls him up to tell him that fuckin' Rush Hour is his favorite movie of the year? 

Sorry, Bret (from now on, I'll only refer to him as "Bret", with one "t", because it's subtly demeaning), but your story doesn't hold water.  Nice try, though.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Ghostboy

He's been telling that story for years.