The Unusual Suspect

Robert Meyer Burnett earned his first screen credit the way most newcomers do - the hard way. After working as the art department assistant on New Line Cinema's forgettable sequel "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III," he quickly moved on to working in a variety of positions - from story analyst to make-up effects coordinator to editor - for such notable films such as "Nothing But Trouble," "The Rookie," "The Bonfire of the Vanities," "Sleepwalkers," "Army of Darkness," "The New Gods" and the "Swamp Thing" television series. From there, Burnett went on to edit the multimedia film displays for Landmark Entertainment and Paramount Parks' $80 million themed attraction, "Star Trek: The Experience," which opened in January of 1998 at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Burnett marked his feature writing/directing debut with Regent Entertainment's multiple-award winning 1999 theatrical release "Free Enterprise," which took Best Film and Best New Writer honors from the 1998 AFI Film Festival. He then went on to associate-produce Mindfire Entertainment's "The Specials," a Fall 2000 release also from Regent Entertainment, and for the past 18 months, Burnett fills his time producing documentary materials for special edition DVDs. He's worked for MGM, Disney, Columbia TriStar and Fox. His most recent work includes "Snow White," "The Usual Suspects" and the feature-length "Making of TRON" documentary. He's also hard at work on the four-disc "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" DVD for New Line Cinema and Kurtti-Pellerin, to be released in November of 2002. Most recently, Burnett finished the screen adaptation of Mark Lindquist's novel, "Never Mind Nirvana," which he hopes to direct in the fall of 2002.

On the eve of the release of The Usual Suspects DVD, Burnett took time out to chat with us about his work, the format and just what it takes to make a DVD these days. (And no, you're just gonna have to wait until later this year to find out more about that Lord of The Rings mega-set!)

DVDFILE: You previously directed, co-wrote and edited the cult hit Free Enterprise. How did you become involved with the DVD business and The Usual Suspects project in particular?

Robert Meyer Burnett: Well, growing up in Seattle, I started working in home video way back in 1980, just after I turned 13. This was the summer of "The Empire Strikes Back." The store was called Videospace, supposedly the second video store in the nation and these two guys that worked there, Bud Warner and Steve Pitcher, sort of took me under their wing. Bud had this AMAZING collection of unreleased bootleg tapes, including "Fantasia," "Dawn of the Dead" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." You can imagine how exciting this was for me. The owner of the store, Weston Nishamura, actually founded the VSDA. This was back in the days when 20th Century Fox licensed their films to Magnetic Video and video stores themselves were this strange place where only rich people hung out. Hollywood was still screaming about how home video was the death of the motion picture back then.

I was already way into movies. I had three VCRs and taped just about everything released. All the money I made I used to fuel my video collection. Blank tapes could run as much as 20 bucks back then. People paid me big bucks to hook up their VCRs and even more to come back and show them how to use the tracking control on their players. In 1985, for my high school graduation, I got a laserdisc player. Soon, my tapes went to whomever wanted them and I systematically began replacing my entire tape collection with discs. Which was where my love of Criterion special editions came from. To make a long story short, I moved to California, left film school and started working in the industry. While at Full Moon, I began working on their Videozone magazine features included with their tape releases. These were very similar to the special features on DVDs today.

Years pass and I find myself working in various industry capacities as a director, producer, writer and editor. My first DVD experience came when working with Julia Jones on the DVD of my first feature. I became involved with "The Usual Suspects" after a friend, Writer/Director Alan Spencer ("Hexed," "Sledge Hammer!") recommended me to Kathleen Fairweather, who at the time was one of the heads of DVD production at MGM. The "Suspects" disc was already in production with another producer but apparently they weren't able to deliver all the principals. So I called Bryan Singer, whom I'd known off and on since USC and our mutual involvement with the Academy of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy films and asked him if he'd participate. He said if I was producing the disc, he would. So I was off and running. To be fair, I did use a lot of the original producer's interview material, although to anyone watching the disc, it's pretty clear from the quality of the interviews which I conducted and directed myself and which I inherited.

DF: Since Usual Suspects was long since completed when you began the DVD, yet also less than a decade old, was it a particular challenge locating archival material for the release?

RMB: Actually, it was a challenge to find materials for the disc. There simply wasn't any. MGM acquired the film from original distributor Polygram and they had only one tape of materials, a PAL format international EPK and a few CD-ROMs of still photos. Fortunately, this was where I found the Original Featurette and international trailer. This was also where the Chris McQuarrie interview material and some behind-the-scenes footage came from. However, as PAL runs at 25 frames per second, the voices on these materials sound a bit speeded up...because they are. The deleted scenes came from a VHS tape John Ottman had in a closet. Of course, it'd be great to have a lot more behind the scenes stuff and I did approach E! about using their "Suspects" location special, but their licensing department never got back to me...

DF: How involved were director Bryan Singer and Oscar-winning screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie with the DVD?

RMB: Without Bryan, much of the material on the disc simply wouldn't be there. He had me over to his house and showed me various scrapbooks he had, then gave me a box of videotapes and told me I could use anything I could find. Most of the tapes were just VHS copies of various television programs promoting the original release "The Usual Suspects" which I couldn't really use. But I did find the footage from the Cannes Film Festival of the film's premiere, which did make it on the disc. Bryan said Kevin Pollack's wife originally shot the footage.

Unfortunately, Christopher McQuarrie declined to participate in the creation of this new release. I think he felt he said all he needed to say on the original laserdisc commentary, which is also reused on the new edition. I still think it's one of the best commentaries ever recorded, so there wasn't really any reason to re-record it.

DF: The world of film marketing and publicity has changed radically in the last ten years, especially with the growth of the Internet. The Usual Suspects has quickly become one of the most well loved films of the 90's. Did you use the Internet or canvas fans for feedback and input on what they wanted to see on the DVD?

RMB: Not really. What the Internet fanboys clamor for usually has no bearing on what material actually exists to use on a DVD. You can't create material which doesn't exist, unless the studio provides enough of a budget, which they rarely do. If there aren't usable deleted scenes, we can't simply pull them out of thin air. I'm already such a huge movie fan myself, I try to rely on my own judgment. But know I'm looking for the same things everyone else wants to see.

However, I do religiously look at most of the big online DVD sites, such as your own DVDFILE, DVD Review, DVD Talk, Digital Bits, DVD Verdict, and I particularly love reading the public's disc reviews on Amazon.com.