n 1993, twin brothers Albert and Allen Hughes made a big impression with their feature-film directing debut, Menace II Society. They followed up with the urban crime drama Dead Presidents in 1995 and then took some time off from Hollywood to study their craft. Now, six years later, they return to feature films with a stylish and detailed account of the historical legend of Jack the Ripper.
With From Hell, the Hughes Brothers have transposed their sense of gritty storytelling and social commentary into the world of Victorian London. The film stars Johnny Depp as Fred Abberline—a police inspector who uses his psychic visions to help solve the case—and Heather Graham as Mary Kelly—a prostitute in danger of becoming one of the Ripper's victims.
Science Fiction Weekly recently talked with the Hughes Brothers, Depp and Graham about their experiences recreating the story of one of the most infamous and sinister figures in history.
Allen and Albert Hughes, this project is sort of a departure from your previous films. Was it difficult convincing the studios to let you do it?
Allen: The studios were actually into it. They were like, "Hey, let's get these kids from Menace II Society and get them to do this and they'll be all over the fresh take ... " It was the media like Premiere [magazine], Entertainment Weekly, Hollywood Reporter and Variety, some people said some snide remarks. You know, like, "We know what Johnny [Depp] can do. ...We have yet to see what these two punks can do."
How did you approach the historical aspects of the film, given that all your work up until now has been in a contemporary setting?
Allen: We did want to be classy about it and make it look real and yet maybe bring a style in as far as colors and the dream sequences and stuff like that. Because there a lot of movies that we saw, period pieces, we didn't want to do that whole thing where you have contemporary music and contemporary jokes where you go, you know—
Albert: "We will rock you."
Allen: It just totally takes you out of the movie. So we said, "Let's just keep it more classy."
And yet you did include a lot of social commentary in the film.
Allen: That was mostly in the graphic novel. A lot of that stuff came from the graphic novel. The script we had originally was a real Hollywood sanitized version. ... We just decided to go and take the graphic novel and put more of the flavor and social context in there.
Were you familiar with the graphic novel before this project came along?
Allen: No.
So it's something you picked up after?
Albert: Yeah, somebody gave it to us right after we read the script.
Depp: I was familiar with the graphic novel in parts. I knew that it had been released in parts. Kind of like the old Dickens stuff was back in the days of Dickens. So I'd seen a couple of them, not in continuity. But then when I got ahold of the graphic novel as a whole, I was so impressed. You know, the amount of research that was done, the attention to detail, and it was just like watching someone solve an incredibly elaborate math problem.
What do you think is the fascination with the story of Jack the Ripper?
Depp: What's the fascination? Oh, I don't know. I mean, the Ripper case, from all that I can tell, was the first time that a killer, a murderer, especially a faceless murderer, I mean this question mark, a killer was sort of elevated to the status of icon ... given celebrity, given worldwide fascination at that time. That's why that one line in the film is so resonant. The Ripper says, "One day, men will look back and say that I gave birth to the 20th century." The Ripper case did in fact give birth to the 20th century in a lot of ways.
Is that what drew you to this project in particular?
Depp: There was the graphic novel, which was just such a ... this tome, a very impressive piece of work. And the brothers, who I've admired for a long time. ... I admired them in particular for not ... I admire the fact that Hollywood offered them everything under the sun after Menace II Society and Dead Presidents and they didn't take up that offer. They waited and they refused to be labeled and categorized. ... I was impressed by those guys. And their vision, you know, their particular take on this story, their passion to tell the story and what it meant down on the streets, the class system and conspiracy theories and stuff. They came to my house with books they put together of images that maybe weren't even related to the Ripper case but imagery that inspired them, something that they wanted to feel.
Graham: I just liked the characters and the writing. I just thought it was a really well written, interesting story and a mystery that kind of unravels. [It's] an interesting theory about who he might have been.
For this film, did any of you take any inspiration from previous Jack the Ripper movies?
Graham: I watched certain movies that had Jack the Ripper. Time After Time was a very good movie.
For the film the streets of Whitechapel were rebuilt in Prague. Did it help to completely immerse yourself in the setting?
Depp: It was unbelievable. ... When I arrived in Prague and the brothers had been explaining to me that they had built Whitechapel, I had no idea that I was going to actually step into Whitechapel. I figured there'd be like facades and things like that. Six or seven blocks of
these doubled up ... it was just unbelievable. So, yeah, it helped very much. Because you literally felt like you just stepped back in time. ... It was only London around you.
What other inspirations did you have for your character?
Depp: We could take Abberline and, oh, I don't know, add a few things, multiply his demons in a way, ... There have been a great number of documented cases where police officers admit to battling alcoholism and even prescription drugs and non-prescription drugs, just because of the nature of their work, having to be out there in the world of the streets doing what they have to do, dealing with that they have to deal with. So I thought it might be interesting to sort of give Abberline that within the context of Victorian London. What would have been available back then would have been laudanum, absinthe, certainly, opium.
One guy sticks out, not that I ... I didn't model Abberline on this guy, but ... there's a great writer and a great filmmaker who I kept, sort of, somewhere back in the back of my head. A guy named Bruce Robinson, who wrote and directed a film called Withnail and I. And [also] How to Get Ahead in Advertising. ... There was something very dark and mysterious about Bruce that I was interested in. So I kind of threw a bit of that into Abberline. I felt like Abberline was moving slower than everyone else. I felt that Abberline was probably inebriated most of the time.
Graham: The script was really good, it was very descriptive just about how starving we all are and just about how, you know, you get just this small amount of money per day and how, OK, we need to buy a place to eat and then we have these pimps just kind of like taking all our money. And then everyone wants to get drunk because we don't want to think about, you know, our lives.
What was it like working with two directors who are identical twins?
Depp: What's it like? First, it's hilarious. I mean, they're hilarious. Those guys are so funny. And it's really funny to watch them fight, to disagree on stuff. You know, it's like "Yo, man! What you doin', man? Hey!" And it was kind of like watching a family fight on the porch.
Graham: They would occasionally get mad, but their personalities are really funny and fun. They would get mad at each other, they wouldn't get mad at [us]. ...They're just really close. It's cute.
What about their directing style? How different is it from working with just one director?
Graham: It's actually not that different. I mean, they kind of work together, you know. Albert does a lot of the visuals. Albert and the DP would be just, like, inseparable. And Allen would just hang out with all the actors and talk to us, and he would direct us.
Depp: They both have their own very, very specific worlds that they're dealing with. Albert's sort of more technical ... like setting up the shot and things like that. And Allen would be dealing with the actors and, you know, going through the script. ... Actually, we had it down pretty much right away.
Allen and Albert, did you ever feel like you had to play good cop/bad cop on the set?
Albert: There's good cop/bad cop with, like, he deals with the actors and I deal with the camera on set. I'm probably the one that's usually instigating things.
Allen: You just the bad cop.
Albert: Yeah, and then he's the one that usually drops the hammer on me [laughs].
Allen: It's interesting because he's usually ... you can see it coming with him. He's angry and more hot-headed and people know he is the bad cop. And then I'm usually trying to be political and be nice, you know, whatever, but when it's time for somebody to get popped it's like ... usually I have to end up going and, you know, figuring out a way of getting a person fired without us doing it.
Albert: It's a delicate balance.
Have you ever considered working separately?
Allen: Yeah, we definitely, definitely would, you know, consider it for something that we disagree with. ... Like I want to make this movie about the color red and he goes "I hate red. I'm not going to make the movie about the color red."
Albert: I want to do the color purple.
What parts of the movie came out better than you anticipated?
Allen: I think what went above and beyond our original vision was the concentrated effort of everybody. The little things that come out that you didn't bank on.
Albert: Yeah, happy mistakes.
Allen: There's little things where [Depp's character] appears like he's in a coffin and it's weird and the way Johnny played it, the way he looked when he was getting ... when he was high. There's little things that if it would have been another actor, if it had been another day, it just, you never know. It's subtle things.
Albert: There was one thing I know that I kind of like. I like now, but it wasn't purposely meant to be in the movie at first. It's when the Annie Chapman character goes to the back alley. He sends her down the alleyway and she sees the murderer in flashes like this [demonstrates]. Originally that scene was fully shot. She went back there and in one shot you saw her get strangled, get her throat cut. And the camera goes up and over the fence you see a guy pissing on the other side thinking that, you know, it's a prostitute going to work. And it just didn't work, so we cut it out and then we faded out on Netley's face. ... So we made that up in editing. And to me that's, that's the most exciting moment for me in the movie.
Did everything you shot make it up onto the screen?
Allen: Oh, hell no. 34 scenes got cut.
Albert: There was a lot.
Will they be on the DVD?
Allen: Yeah, a lot of them will be on the DVD. ... The great things about some of those missing scenes too, [they're not] like other DVD's where you go, "Oh yeah, it could have done without that."
Is this a movie you would be interested in going to see if you weren't involved with it?
Graham: Yeah. Just 'cause I think it's good. I mean I don't ... love going to see movies that are scary and gory unless they're good. But I think it's an interesting story and has, like, interesting characters. I think visually they did a lot of cool stuff with it.
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