or director Chris Columbus, it's kind of magical that he ended up directing the highly anticipated first movie based on J.K. Rowling's best-selling Harry Potter series of books. Columbus started out as a fan of the books, introduced to them by his young daughter. At first, it didn't seem likely that Columbus—best known for directing Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire and Bicentennial Man—would get the nod for such a high-profile film.
But like Harry Potter himself, Columbus found himself singled out for extraordinary things. He was helped by producer David Heyman, who first discovered Harry Potter in England and snapped up the rights before the series became a worldwide publishing phenomenon. And Columbus vowed to work closely with Rowling herself, to protect the integrity of the book for Harry's legion of fans.
Columbus also made a vow to keep the film as British as its characters and subject matter, shooting entirely in the United Kingdom with an all-British cast, led by Daniel Radcliffe and newcomers Emma Watson and Rupert Grint. The shoot was complicated by the United Kingdom's strict child labor laws, which restricted the production to using the three child leads only a few hours every day. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone marks Columbus' biggest film to date, with more than 700 visual effects scenes. He took a moment to speak with Science Fiction Weekly about the movie, which is now playing.
Can you tell us the history of how you came to direct Harry Potter?
Columbus: When I first read the book, and I fell in love with the material, I called my agent, and I said, "I'd love to do this movie." And she said, "Well, Steven Spielberg's attached to it." So I forgot about it for a while. And ... she called me immediately when he decided not to do it. I said, "Tell Warner Brothers that I’d love to do the film." She said, "Well, you and 20 other directors." So I had to get into what they called an auditioning process. But it was really an interviewing process. Which I was more than willing to do. I think for a film like this, you have to be hungry and obsessed. And that was probably the reason I got the job. ...
I ran into Spielberg after I got the job. ... He was sitting with [British director] Sam Mendes [American Beauty]. They were having dinner in this London restaurant. [Spielberg] said, "There's only one person to play this role. That's Haley Joel Osment." I said, "OK." I walked back to my table. I felt an arm grab me. I turned around, and it was Sam Mendes. And he whispered to me [whispers], "The kid’s got to be British" [laughs]. So I said, "OK." All along, that’s another reason I think I got the job. Because I went into Warner Brothers, and I said, "I want to shoot the film entirely in England. All-British cast, no exceptions. And I want to be as faithful as possible to the book."
How does Harry Potter fit into what you'd been doing before?
Columbus: I had been reading [criticism] about myself over the last couple of years getting all soft and sentimental, and I thought, "I’m not this guy. I really am not." And I was starting to get angry about it. And I said, before Harry Potter even came along ... "I want to go back to doing the types of films I was writing, which were pictures like Gremlins and Young Sherlock Holmes." And then when I read Harry Potter, I thought it was a logical extension of my writing career. Had I started to direct immediately after I finished work on the third Indiana Jones film, this is the kind of picture that I should have directed. ... But I fell in love with comedy. ...
I really wanted to get back to a darker, sort of edgier action-adventure kids’ film, and this just fit into what I was getting obsessed with. At the same time, I knew I wanted to work with kids, because it is great to work with kids who are fresh, like Macaulay [Culkin]. ... He hadn't done a lot before Home Alone. He’d done Uncle Buck and some other small parts. And this was the same sort of situation. Emma and Rupert had never ever done a film before. So it was great to work with these kids who were fresh.
Was there any point where it became frustrating to work with kids who’d never done this before?
Columbus: Not really incredibly frustrating. ... They ... had a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm. And it was just a wonderful situation. ... You become an active participant in the performance, which is a very odd thing. I found myself cutting my voice out of the film. ...
When you’re working with people like Susan Sarandon, you walk up, and you say, "Well, can you change this or do this." And you walk back, and you call "action" or "cut." It’s very civilized, very almost lazy way of working. It’s great. But with the kids, I realized if I walked up and told them something ... by the time I got back to my monitor, they’d be talking about football and WWF, and they’d forgotten everything I’d said to them.
So I had to start the cameras rolling and start the sound rolling, hit the clapboard, and before I called "action," talk about exactly what I wanted out of them and essentially say, "OK, you’re in this situation, you’re focused." And at that moment, just at the last moment when I finished direction, I’d say, "action," and they were in the scene. And sometimes they’d lose their way, and I’d call out in the middle of the scene, "do this, change this." And ... sometimes end up making a fool of myself behind the camera, just duplicating what I wanted them to do. ... I saw the crew people laughing at me. So I realized that I was truly getting involved in this performances. But it was good. It really ... kept the kids focused.
You had basically four hours of shooting time with these kids every day. What was that like for you?
Columbus: It worked out pretty well, because you could set up your cameras, bring the kids in. ... We shot usually two or three cameras all the time. So, we’d get set up, shoot, and then once I got the performances I needed, send the kids back to school and reset the cameras. Actually, it was a pretty civilized way of working, because it was 130 days of shooting. We ... kept our energy up, because we weren’t shooting 15-, 16-hour days. So, it was pretty civilized.
How did you keep the movie from getting too "Hollywood?"
Columbus: The key was really the intensive work with Jo Rowling. ... When I first met with her, and I explained what I wanted to do, and I invited her to collaborate, she was just so open in terms of information. ... I think for every novel she’s written, she has another novel’s worth of information about the characters and their past, all this great information for me, for the actors, for the production designers. So, keeping her involved was key to me, just to keep the books alive. ... [Screenwriter] Steve Kloves, David Heyman ... and myself are really [such] truly obsessive fans about the book that we wanted to protect it for the fans. We wanted all the people who love the books to feel like they were experiencing [the book] ... as much as you can give [that to] them in a film. Obviously ... I would have preferred to do all seven hours, but I know that that’s [not possible].
Are you worried that in trying to be so faithful to the book, you might compromise things that tend to make a movie work in ways that books don’t?
Columbus: No. We were very hard on ourselves, the four of us in that room. It was the four of us working for three or four months. ... And Jo was aware that there are certain restrictions in film and also certain things that you needed to change. It’s one of the reasons that the potions sequence that was in the book is not in the film, because it was more of a cerebral sort of sequence, and it was about figuring out which potion to drink. And at that point in the film it followed the chess sequence in the book. We just realized that it wasn’t exciting.
And Jo felt very strongly about it, because she felt that it was Hermione’s moment. And we all love Hermione as a character. So we expanded the devil’s snare sequence to give Hermione her moment in the devil’s snare sequence. So there were those things that she understood. The chamber of keys, for instance, was much more sort of lyrical and a little more calm in the book. And here, we just decided that the keys needed to attack and needed to be much more frenzied just to keep it exciting. And Jo was up for all of that. She understood ... the limitations of film. So, you could go through the film, and I would imagine that there are anywhere from 50 to 100 things that are different about it, but, again, we kept it in the spirit of the book.
Are there scenes you shot that you didn't use, but that will end up on the DVD?
Columbus: A few things. When we previewed the film for the first time for an audience ... we previewed it for 50 percent fans of the book and 50 percent people who hadn’t read the book at all. And the people who read the book loved the movie, [and] the people who hadn’t read it loved the movie, but they wanted to read the books. ... And that was the great thing for me, was to ... potentially start people reading the books.
But one of the things we realized was missing from that screening was Peeves, the poltergeist, one of my favorite characters. And I had shot the scene for Peeves, but I was never happy with his design. And so I didn’t include it in the film. But we’re redesigning Peeves, and we’re going to get him to a point where we’ll be able to put that sequence back into the DVD eventually. ... The film wasn’t that much longer than it is now, and when I showed it to all those people, everyone said it was too short, so I thought, "I don’t have much more to put back in." There are a couple of sequences I didn’t put back in just for pacing ... but there really isn’t a lot to put back.
Can you talk about shooting the chess scene?
Columbus: To me, it’s my favorite scene in the film, because it’s all about all the themes in the picture sort of reach a crossroads in that sequence. ... It’s bravery and friendship and sacrifice and facing your fears. And the kids’ performances, I’m just really proud of them in that scene, they’re very strong.
How was it working with all the visual effects?
Columbus: The screening taught us a lot, because I showed the picture to these people in Chicago, 400 people in the audience. And the effects just weren’t finished. And I realized that the strength of the picture was the fact that the people cared about these characters, and they loved the movie without the effects. And the effects, in a sense, even though there are over 700 effects in the film, were part of the magic, part of the icing on the cake. And I didn’t want it to be an effects-driven picture. I wanted it to be a human-driven picture. But, again, [it was] daunting in the sense that these poor kids are reacting to things that aren’t there. So, again, ... trying to imitate a three-headed dog is very difficult for a guy who’s only five-eight [laughs].
Are you going to do all seven films based on Rowling's proposed seven books?
Columbus: If I do them at this pace, I probably won't survive. But I am down for the second one [Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets], and I'd like to stick around for as long as the kids do, because, again, to let these kids go with another director, we’ve formed a tight bond, and it’s a nice repertory company that we have here. ... I would love to do the films as long as the kids are involved.
At what point did your daughter see the movie?
Columbus: Eleanor, the person who gave me the book, she saw the Chicago screening, so that was early. But she saw it a few weeks ago, and loved it, absolutely loved it. ... The studio initially wanted me to cut the troll sequence. And I went home, and I said at dinner ... "They're thinking about cutting the troll sequence." And she said, "You can never cut that sequence. My friends love that sequence. You can't cut that. It's one of our favorite scenes." So, I went back the next day, and I said, "We can’t cut the troll sequence [laughs]."
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