DVDFILE: Well, in preparation for this interview, I finally took a look at the Fight Club DVD, which you produced. There are only four commentaries on the disc. What's up with that? What, you couldn't do any better!?

DP: (laughs) I was actually hoping for five. I also wanted to do an isolated score with the Dust Brothers, but we didn't have the space...

DF: You know, it seems like isolated scores are somewhat sparse these days on DVDs. Are they something that is difficult to get on a disc?

DP: Extraordinarily difficult, for various reasons. Sometimes the record label is concerned that it will cut into their sales, other times it is the extent of paying the musicians again, and other times it is just frankly seems to me to be lack of interest. I really don't think people have any idea how important film music is. It is always a different reason, and I don't know quite how to attack it all the time.

It is one of the most frustrating things for me, because I'm a big film score nut. I've been a collector since I was a kid, and I don't think you can overestimate the value of music in a film. An isolated score is a fantastic way to see firsthand how significant scoring is and illustrate exactly what it adds to a film. I know composers enjoy them, I enjoy them, and it is a very well liked supplement.

DF: I know I for one really value them, especially when I get the chance to hear a composer speak

DP: The composer rarely has that opportunity, and most of them seem happy to do it whenever possible. It's just a really difficult thing to put together. I'm hoping that someday that will change. It was something I really wanted to do for Die Hard; we just couldn't get it together. And the sad thing about that was, the score has never seen a CD soundtrack release, and it really should have one.

DF: It is interesting; you seem to be one of the few producers working in DVD today that didn't get their start in laserdisc. Your first DVD project was Ravenous, which you produced for Fox. How did you come to get involved with DVD?

DP: Well, I did collect laserdiscs. I was working in the film business in maybe too many different capacities (laughs) I was doing visual effects, production design, second unit directing, even development at one point. Anything you can think of, I've probably done it.

DF: Did you go to film school?

DP: No, well, not for very long. I did a couple of years at LACC, and I took some extension courses, but never to "film school." I made a conscious decision not to, actually. I was a child actor so I grew up in the industry, and I was doing professional gigs by the time I was 17 years old, so why would I want to go to film school? Then a friend of mine, Charles De Lazurika, was working on the ALIEN set (for Fox) and asked me to consult on it. I'm a big ALIEN fan and know that film backwards and forwards. So through that, I got to know some of the people at Fox, and at the time Ravenous (Antonia Bird's comedic tale of cannibalism which failed at the box office) had just come out theatrically, and I immediately fell in love with it. I thought it was a really special movie, one of the most daring, idiosyncratic movies to come out of a major studio since the 70's. So I went to Fox and pitched really hard for the DVD. I said, "A lot of people may not know the movie, but it is a great little film and you have to let me do the DVD." And they went for it, and that was the beginning for me...

DF: As a producer, is it difficult when you put so much time and energy into a project that may not have been well-received at the box office and, even on DVD, main remain largely unseen?

DP: Actually, no. That is the fun of it. It's the same thing with Big Trouble In Little China. The great thing about what I'm doing right now is to take movies that I think are really important but were largely overlooked, and make them available in such a way that draws more attention to them. My hope with Ravenous was, when someone walks into the video store and says, "What the hell is this? I've never even heard of this," but looks at the back and sees all these special features on it, that maybe they'd go, "Oh, this must be something interesting for someone to have put all this effort into it."

That's the most rewarding thing about doing all of this; it's supporting and making available obscure and interesting films that people might have missed.

DF: Was it hard to get Fox to commit to a project like Big Trouble? It wasn't really a hit at the box office, though I do believe it has been one of the most requested special edition titles for laserdisc and now DVD...

DP: I think like any business it is going to be easier to get them (the studios) behind the higher-grossing movies. Doing a special edition of, say, Independence Day ... it's a no-brainer. And you're going to get a higher budget than something like Big Trouble In Little China. And I understand that, this is a business.

Big Trouble was really a passion project for me, and I'd been after Fox for a very long time to let me do it. So by the time there was a window in their release schedule for it, they said, "Sure, go for it." Studios make business decisions and that is the nature of the beast, but Fox particularly does a great job of supporting their underdogs.

DF: How do projects come to you? Do you have to go in and pitch them all, or does a studio usually approach you for a particular project?

DP: It's a little of both. With Ravenous, Big Trouble and Fight Club, I went after those. They asked me to do Titus, Rocky Horror and Die Hard, so it is a bit of a combination.

DF: I'd be interested to know how you first approach a project. With Big Trouble, for example, what is the process you go through to prepare?

DP: Generally I start by trying to track down any footage that is available, such as deleted scenes. It really all starts with paperwork. I read the shooting scripts, the cutting logs, the script supervisor's notes. This is the only sane way to track down anything that was shot but not included in the finished film. And a lot of times scenes were deleted before they were edited, so I'll cut them together myself, working from those notes.

Then, the next step is combing through anything the studio has in the vaults or on file. With older films it is often very scarce. With Big Trouble and Die Hard in particular, they were just old enough so that the material had disappeared. The film elements were still in the vault of course, and the paperwork was available, thank god, but the B-roll was gone. That's all the on-the-set footage that's shot to create promotional material from. Someone about five or ten years ago had thrown the tapes away. A lot of the stuff that studios would now keep in their vaults - like storyboards, paintings, all the preproduction and marketing materials - that stuff just doesn't exist anymore for those movies. So I actually went on a search for Big Trouble material, not only on the Internet and in stores but also to private collectors trying to track down anything I could. And for some of the deleted scenes, the only source material I had was John Carpenter's original beta tapes.

Somewhere in there I get in touch with the filmmakers to see how involved they want to be, and try to get a game plan going. Once you know how much material you have to work with - and at the time Big Trouble was a single-disc set - it becomes a question of "How much material can I fit on a single disc?" Which is always a bit of a problem. When you realize you have a sizable amount of material, especially something worthwhile, it's like "Uh, oh, what am I going to have to cut?"

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