DVDFILE: So what do I call you?

McG: McG, it's short for McGinty. My family has always called me McG from day one. My real name is Joseph McGinty Nichol but my uncle was Joe and my grandpa was Joe so they just called me McG since the day I came out. A cruel joke played on me by my parents.

DF: Charlie's Angels was your first feature film as a director. How did you start out in the business?

McG: I was born in Michigan but I grew up largely down in Newport Beach, California, which is in Orange County about an hour south of LA. When I was growing up it was sort of a hot bed for music at the time, bands like Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine, No Doubt, The Offspring and then, my buddies from elementary school on through high school, the guys in Sugar Ray. I was buddies with them and I was sort of involved with them in a musical capacity, but I had always been a still photographer, and I said, "C'mon you guys, we've got to make a video" and I made a music video with these guys and it turns out that they got a record deal off that video. I just loved it and I kept putting one foot in front of the other until I was making the videos for bands like Korn, Cypress Hill and Wyclef and I just kept doing that and started making commercials.

When I was a kid I was always involved with theater, so my goal was always to make a movie. I heard Drew (Barrymore) was involved with Charlie's Angels and just thought, "God, if I can get together with her I bet we can figure out a novel, refreshing take on a slippery genre" meaning film from an old television show. And sure enough, she canceled on me like seven or eight times and finally agreed to meet with me and we got to talking about it and we shared a lot of influences and we knew we didn't want to make the type of film that tries to make you contemplate the human condition. We just wanted to make a film that exploded to the pleasure center of the audience's brain. A rip-roarin' good time that helps you forget about your job at Wal-Mart for 2 hours.

DF: So Drew is what, I guess, drew you to Charlie's Angels?

McG: Yeah, I didn't know her but I was a fan of hers professionally and a fan of hers personally and I just thought, "You know what? I'll bet you she has an interesting take on this thing. She knows that a lot of the movies that come from old TV shows are a big let down. She's going to want to do something fresh and exciting and interesting. So I think I'd love to talk to her" and I did. We started talking about John Hughes movies and boy/girl relationships and how girls can be really hot but empowered and all these cool things and we went for it.

DF: One of the things that I noticed about the movie is that it contains one of the largest and best collections of music in any film. It's like Forrest Gump or American Graffiti, where it's just wall to wall. Was that your influence, having been a music video director?

McG: Absolutely, and there was some resistance to that. I look at music as an additional character, as a way to economically illustrate tone and get the point across to the audience that much more efficiently. I'm a big fan of that and I never really listened to music in respect to genres. I just liked what I liked. My brother blasted Led Zepplin while I was growing up and my sister blasted disco, dad was listening to the oldies and I just had this cacophonous musical upbringing and I just liked it all and got involved in music videos because they were my two favorite things: sound and vision. So here I am making a feature film and I just thought, "Wow, I'd love to bring that sort of Forrest Gump/American Graffiti, sort of wall to wall musical element." I just think it's fun. It's that much more a rock and roll type movie.

DF: And I definitely noticed that Charlie's Angels doesn't hold itself to one genre. Usually when you get movies that are music heavy, they stick to one genre, like it all has to be hip-hop or oldies or pop because it seems that they don't want to disrupt their soundtrack sales by including too much diversity.

McG: My thing was just that I'm a fan of all sorts of music. I think kids today, you're seeing a lot more diversity with people in general in their CD collections. Who doesn't like Leo Sayer's "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" and then you have a Prodigy song then you have the big Destiny's Child song. I wanted to do what was right for each respective scene in the film and then, in the end, pick those songs and put them on the soundtrack that would feel like mine or your favorite mix tape. That was the intention, where you pay no mind to genre and you just go for the throat as far as what's really fun to listen to. You hear songs and they immediately press buttons and make you go, "Oh, I love that song!" That's all we were going for.

DF: The music in the film, and I would also attribute this to the production design as well, it sort of gives it a timeless feel. It's doesn't feel like it's necessarily a 2000 movie. It could have been a 1995 movie or a 1989 movie, there a quality to it that doesn't particularly lend itself to one specific time period. I don't feel like it's going to end up dated itself like other films may.

McG: Wow, that's certainly great to hear. All praise due to (production designer) Michael Riva. He's a very smart guy who draws from a lot of different influences. We all just cooked up this angel ideal of what this world should look like, this giant storybook world. Every image just as profound as possible without disintegrating into a cartoon land and he delivered the goods.

DF: A lot of critics and some of the audience really railed on the film as being just dumb and I've always asserted that people who didn't like Charlie's Angels didn't get Charlie's Angels.

McG: I'm so glad to hear you say that.

DF: It seems like they're comparing Charlie's Angels to The Fugitive as TV made into film instead of The Brady Bunch Movie, which I feel Charlie's Angels is much more in the spirit of, where it's almost a spoof and satire of the series. You want to be faithful to the series but tweak it enough to make it go past that.

McG: It's so great talking to someone who completely gets it. You understand exactly what we were going for. This film, it was never out to change the world. I just wanted to create a film that made you and I feel like we did when we saw Rocky for the first time, where we're just shadow boxing each other on our way out of the theater. You walk out of the theater with a little more spring in your step than when you walked in. I'm a huge fan of serious films, I'll sit and watch The Conversation anytime, but at the same time I'm a huge fan of lightweight entertainment. I was raised on Singing in the Rain and Grease and Star Wars and all these popcorns, almost drive-in sorts of movies and the collection of stuff from Russ Meyer and I like that kind of joy. I just figured, in regards to Charlie's Angels, if we went too serious with it we'd really be shooting ourselves in the foot. It's Charlie's Angels after all.

DF: I think that's what I was initially worried about when I first heard that they were making a Charlie's Angels movie: that it would just be way too serious or it was just going to be dumb and the filmmakers didn't know it was dumb.

McG: Right and that would be a disaster.

DF: And that makes all the difference. If you're just making a movie to have fun and that's the whole point, it definitely makes a difference. I think a lot of these TV shows to movie fell apart because they were trying to do 2 separate things: they're doing a really dumb idea, but they're too afraid to go too far.

McG: Well, you nailed that. You should be there in those production meetings because you echo my sentiments exactly. Get out to LA and let's gang up on everybody.

DF: Now the other criticism came in the form of Charlie's Angels being nothing more than a Matrix rip-off.

McG: Well, I'm a huge fan of The Matrix like the next guy and it just sort of felt like, without the benefit of guns, which was one of Drew's major points, I needed to entertain the audience and I felt like the days of the John Wayne right cross, that doesn't get the audience that excited. I just think that there had to be that first guy to say, "We're shooting nighttime exteriors, let's wet the street down. It'll look better." And now, wet-downs are the standard. Everybody uses wet-downs because it just looks better.

That's not to say that every fight scene you see is going to be a Matrix wire-fest. I just thought it would be interesting to see the female form like a leaping, fighting lethal weapon in sexy little costumes, jumping around all the while in a light, positive sort of world. Not the brooding, bummer world of The Matrix. I knew that it was going to be a little bit of a concern and all respect to the Wachowskis, cause they're brilliant, but I thought it was a worthy risk to have that style of fighting cause it would be fun and Charlie's Angels from the original series was known for the kung-fu kicks and karate chops. We just took it to that new millenium place. I understand some of the criticism, but I don't regret it.