Mean Girls director Mark Waters might not seem like the most logical choice for bringing the popular The Spiderwick Chronicles books to the big screen, but the filmmaker says he loves working on fantasy films. At the 2007 San Diego Comic Con, Waters provided a glimpse into what fans of the Spiderwick series can expect from the big screen adaptation.
What was your approach to this film?
"I think when we started to develop this movie, it was always kind of based on this weird thing of like, ‘Okay, let’s just ground this in reality and make it feel like it’s really happening.’ We kind of like adopted this really simple approach. ‘It’s just about a family and we’re going to have a goblin. Okay, I think we’ll also have a Bogart and let’s have some Sprites here.’ By the time we got back home from the grocery store, we had like a hundred bags of groceries.
Going in I didn’t quite think it was going to be 500 computer-generated animation creature shots with another 100 or 200 doubling shots of Freddie Highmore playing opposite himself as an identical twin. Because if I had, I would have run for cover and would have hidden under my mattress. But because we kind of got into it slowly, you know, it seemed manageable the whole way. It was sort of to the point where I was on the set in Montreal and we were like, ‘Okay, we’re going to blow out that wall right here because the Ogre’s coming through and we need to do it with the motion control camera because Freddie’s going to play Simon in this shot and Jared in this shot.’ I’m going like, ‘Wow, what have I gotten myself into?’”
How are you dealing with all the special effects?
“I’m loving it. It’s kind of fun because being kind of a control freak like I am, you never let go of the movie because now you’re working with animators. You’re directing them and so we have like an I-chat hookup everyday with people from ILM and Phil Tippett. We get there and they’re like, ‘Okay, well here’s what the Goblin’s doing.’ I’m like, ‘No, no, the Goblin has to go like this!’ And, ‘He has to yell at this point.’ I kind of get up and act it out. The animators are like, ‘Okay, okay, we get it!’
They are taking my direction and we’re kind of like having the creatures behave. Plus, we already have at this point we’ve recorded, you know, Seth Rogen plays Hogsqueal, Martin Short plays Thimbletack - the more comedic characters - so you already have all of their audio. Now we’re adding physicality and kind of making them into these photo-realistic creatures."
Wouldn’t it have been easier on you if you didn’t have Freddie Highmore playing two roles?
“Well for one thing, there’s just part of me that just felt like I wanted to be slavish to that aspect of the books. Because it was one of the interesting things about the books in that these identical twins who are like Oscar Madison/Felix Unger-Odd Couple. They’re such different characters and it just seemed like to have two different actors playing it just didn’t seem as interesting. But Freddie Highmore doing it opposite himself, that’s immediately interesting and funny. Also when his brother Simon gets in danger and Jared has to save him, it’s that much more poignant because it’s actually his twin. He got in trouble because he looks like him anyway, they thought it was the other kid. So all those things just kind of made it more interesting.
But believe me, trust me, there were discussions. There were discussions, like, ‘Let’s just do it. Let’s just get fraternal twins. That counts!’ It would have made our life easier during the production of the movie. But when I look at the final film and I look at these doubling shots and his performance, I’m so happy we did it because it’s pretty amazing what this kid did. It really just adds another level to the movie.”
How was working with Freddie Highmore?
“He’s so good. I mean, how crazy is that? He’s got to play two characters, both with American accents. It was in our minds to make the great American fantasy movie, yet like the only kid we saw who could actually act the part was British. His sister is played by an Irish girl, by Sarah Bolger from In America. Yet they both, we had this guy, Brooks Baldwin, this dialect coach who was there every single day on the set. He was living in their trailer with them and when they came out of it, I dare anyone to kind of call them out as anything but American. You’ve got to have a whole lot, a hyper level of skill to be able to pull that off.”
How did he handle playing twins?
“When you think about Jeremy Irons doing Dead Ringers, that’s Jeremy Irons. But to be able to kind of like actually say, ‘I’m going to play this part of the scene as my rough and tumble, mean-spirited Jared Grace brother, and play this part as the kind of nerdy animal-loving Simon,’ and to interact with myself in the scene... Like even doing one side of that scene is tough enough. But doing both? You know, there’s talent and there’s talent, and this kid’s like a Dakota Fanning-kind of like level of scary young talent.”
The books were originally aimed at very young kids. What were the challenges of changing the material to make it cater to a slightly older demographic?
“You know, more than a challenge, it just felt like an opportunity because Tony [DiTerlizzi] and Holly [Black] were really embracing that idea. They knew that their first book came out in 2001, the 10-year-old who read that book is going to be 17 or 18 by the time our movie comes out. The 17- or 18-year-old who liked the books when they read them wants something more now. So if anything, we said, ‘Okay, we’re going to follow the same path of the books but instead of driving to Lucinda’s house in the car with mom, what if they don’t have a car and they have to run through a tunnel system being chased by a troll that’s trying to eat them?’ You know, it’s like that’s more exciting. It leads to a much more fun chase sequence. And yet at the same time, you’re still kind of telling the same story.
You’re just kind of like amping up the intensity, amping up the fun. Because we’re only dealing with creatures that they conceived, characters they conceived in the structure they conceived, they were all for it. They loved everything we were going for as far as these big changes.”
