he project was a dream for SF fan Mike Mitchell. He was given a chance to direct Sky High with a cast that includes Kurt Russell, Lynda Carter, Bruce Campbell and Cloris Leachman. "I was going to work with Snake Plissken [Russell in Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.], Wonder Woman [Carter from the 1970s TV series], Ash from Evil Dead [Campbell] and Frau Blucher from Young Frankenstein [Academy Award winner Leachman]," said Mitchell. "It was a dream come true, I was so lucky." Particularly since he was roundly lambasted for Surviving Christmas last year, and he quips that he may have ended Ben Affleck's career (he blames it on residual Gigli backlash).
But Sky High attracted big names because of the wildly original concept. Where do the kids of superheroes go to school? Where do they hone and develop their crime-fighting skills? How do you become a sidekick? Disney jumped on the idea, even though it was a retreaded pitch that screenwriter Paul Hernandez had made to all the studios a decade before with no luck. They brought in Aladdin TV series writers Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley for a script polish, then hired some very funny people, like The Kids in the Hall guys Kevin McDonald (who's an alien-like science teacher) and Dave Foley (who's a former sidekick turned teacher) and Broken Lizard's Kevin Heffernan as the school bus driver.
Russell and Kelly Preston portray The Commander and Jetstream, the world's greatest superheroes, who have a son who doesn't have any super powers.
The kids in the cast star Michael Angarano, most recently in Lords of Dogtown, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ring Two, Final Destination 3), as well as relatively unknown actors like Danielle Panabaker and former model Steven Strait, who landed this role at his first audition ever.
Some of the cast and crew talked to Science Fiction Weekly at a small group of roundtable interviews a week before the movie's opening on July 29.
Kurt Russell, you have had a lot of experience with Disney since being a kid on the lot with Follow Me, Boy, The Barefoot Executive, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and all. What was it like coming back?
Russell: There's no question that 40 years is a long time. I did my first movie there in '64, and the last one that I've done now was last year, in '04. That's hard for me to put a perspective on it, with all of the movies in between at other studios, other parts, other characters, and entirely different lives.
I'll walk around the corner and see two people that I've known for 40 years. So we'll talk. "How is so and so?" "Oh. He died two years ago." Walt Disney was my friend. He spent a tremendous amount of time talking to me about movies, how to make them, and so on. Whenever I worked there, and that was quite often, we'd play ping-pong together at lunch, and then when I had an afternoon off he'd say, "Do you want to go to the animation department and learn some of that?" And he'd take me down there and show me the process. We had great times.
I'd watch Mary Poppins with him before that film was even finished or had any of the animation in it. Half of it wasn't even scripted yet. At the end of the movie he said, "What do you think?" I said, "That's good. It's really fun." He said, "But you wouldn't tell your friends to see it?" I looked at him, and I kind of looked at my mom and she said, "Tell the truth. He's asking a question." I said, "No." He said, "Yeah. Neither would I." Then I watched him invent some things right then and there. He talked to me about story arc, character arc, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Snow White, creating them and inventing them and always seeing it from the point of view of the audience.
Do you have a favorite superhero?
Russell: When I was about 6 it was Mighty Mouse. It wasn't Mighty Mouse that I wanted to be. I wanted to be Mighty Mouse because he had that great girlfriend. He had that girl who just looked up to him and adored him and was always like that.
You've done Elvis Presley, Snake Plissken and others. Did you draw from any of your past characters?
Russell: Even when you're going to play Elvis Presley you don't take Elvis Presley and do Elvis Presley. What do you do is try and understand why Elvis Presley appears to you that way. What's the illusion that you have to create to make other people see what you see? If you do that and succeed at it, then at least you know when you're doing it and why and what the audience is getting.
I thought that there were all kinds of people that have a nice—in a comical sense—overblown personality. I think that Adam West [in TV's Batman] does that. I think that [Star Trek's William] Shatner does that with Capt. Kirk. I know that when I was doing him I could feel like that sometimes, and I can say that that's not a bad rhythm. That fit my guy.
Both of the parents are cast well because Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are superstar parents and Kelly Preston and John Travolta are superstar parents. You must have kids wonder how they can live up to you, like your son in the movie does?
Russell: We're not perfect, and my kids will have their failings in the future, as everyone does, and they'll have things that will make them sad. Goldie and I are very much in cahoots in one aspect: That our kids were more important to us than acting. They were more important to us than friends. They were more important to us than anything.
Preston: We have pretty level-headed kids. They know that what we do, and it's kind of interesting, but we do so much as a family that's so normal.
The premieres are kind of exciting, especially to [5-year-old] Ella. She loves limousines, she likes just riding around in limousines, and one time she was like, "Can I have my own limousine?" She and her little girlfriend went in our limo, and we took our car, to John's last premiere [Be Cool]. It was hilarious.
I think if you give your kids enough love and attention and freedoms and boundaries, they can make their own decisions as people. We bake. I love cooking, so we all get in the kitchen, and I don't care if it makes a huge mess, I let my kids cook with us. We go bike riding, we go to water parks now—we get the bonus where they'll close the water park for us. There're a lot of wonderful perks. Yeah, daddy flies a jet, and that's amazing; you don't have to go through the airport experience all the time.
Kelly, you looked great in the suit, but it looked rather tight to get on.
Preston: Yes, well, it was definitely a lot of fun to step into the boots and the costume and put on the cape, and then also get to fly. It's a rubber suit, basically, and it took two women in the morning to yank it on. I lost eight pounds before the shoot.
Lynda Carter, we heard you were glad you didn't have a costume to wear as principal of the school?
Carter: Oh, I was grateful! I gave both Kelly [Preston] and Kurt [Russell] a lot of grief. "Is it hot in there? Is that uncomfortable? Aw, I am so comfortable in this little suit of mine!" [She laughs.]
Do you still have your Wonder Woman suit?
Carter: I do have the suit. Last time I took it out was for my daughter's show-and-tell parent day at kindergarten. No, no, I didn't wear it, I don't think the waist ever really goes back after you have two kids. [The tiara and bracelets] I have in the curio cabinet in my house under a little glass with my wedding glasses, champagne glasses and various other things.
I just found out from my son about weird names teenage boys give each other, and he said his is "Wonder Boy, mom." And I said, "No!" He said, "Mom, I've gotten that all my life!" He said it's fine. He didn't think anything of it.
What do you think of the Wonder Woman movie that's in development by Joss Whedon?
Carter: Well, I think that they've had a movie in development for 15 years probably, one project or another, and it never has gotten the green light, because the script has never been right, or somebody new heads up the studio, and all their projects go on the back burner, et cetera, et cetera. So I think this Joss Whedon sounds like he is determined to make it, so I hope it is better than the original.
Who do you think should play the part?
Carter: I think it should be an unknown, and about 20 years old. People talk about Sandra Bullock, and she's got the right qualities, but she's too old, and so is Catherine Zeta-Jones. You want someone who is really fresh, but more importantly someone who gets it, someone who doesn't play Wonder Woman. I never played Wonder Woman. I only played this woman from the island, who all of her sisters could do the same thing that she could do. She didn't think she was all that. I think Wonder Woman lives in all of us. There's that secret person that is not just one of those things, but all of them.
Would you be in it, or do a cameo, or would that be too strange?
Carter: It would depend on the role. I don't think I would be interested in doing something gratuitous, just to do it. Just to say, oh, there's Lynda Carter. But if there was a role in which I could kind of tie up loose ends, that would be cool. Her mother, or a sister ...
What was it like being a trendsetter for women when you did your show?
Carter: You have to remember the time period, and in the '70s the only women on television were comedians doing half-hour shows or variety shows, Carol Burnett, Mary Tyler Moore, Laverne & Shirley and Angie Dickinson. Wonder Woman and Bionic Woman came along at exactly the same time. And there were no women on the sets except for the script supervisor, and things have changed a lot. It was great to be kind of pioneering women in television, and having the people that make these projects realize that there's a huge market for it and it doesn't have to be about guns and guys.
Special effects changed quite a bit since the Wonder Woman days, and one of the kids in school, Warren Peace, shoots fire out of his hands. Steven Strait, you landed the role after your first-ever audition.
Strait: I was going to L.A. anyway, and my agent wanted me to go out for an audition, so I read the script and really liked it and did the audition, and by the time I came back to move my things I found out I got it.
I was always aware that I was throwing flames out of my arms, and there was nothing there, obviously. It was something I had to get used to, flailing your arms and nothing is there. It was odd.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, you have a lot of transformation in your character as the prom committee coordinator, whose power is to manipulate mechanical things.
Winstead: Yes, I was out here for pilot season, and I was a bit depressed over the kind of scripts that I was reading, and then I read this and was so excited because it was so fresh and exciting.
I love my character's transformation. She's the good girl/bad girl. I was neither a sidekick or hero in school. I bounced around. I was the hero of the sidekicks or the sidekick to the heroes.
Danielle Panabaker, you play a girl with the ability to control nature. Were you a sidekick or hero in school?
Panabaker: I was definitely a sidekick in school. I had the nerdy friends.
What super power would you choose if you could?
Panabaker: If I had to choose, though, I'd love the power to multiply. I'd love being in one place doing homework, and somewhere else reading or relaxing.
How about the writers? Paul Hernandez, Mark McCorkle, Bob Schooley? What super powers would you want?
Hernandez: Being invisible would be cool.
McCorkle: I'd go with flying, if I could avoid the airport line. Or super strength.
Schooley: I'd like to be glowing. I like the sidekick who glowed.
And Michael Angarano, you play the son to The Commander and Jetstream, who hasn't yet found his powers. What super power would you want, if you could pick?
Angarano: My super power would be to fly. I'd love to fly. Who doesn't want to be a superhero? Who doesn't run around the house in their underwear and a towel around his neck every once in awhile?
Uh, do you still do that?
Angarano: I still do.
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