Alrighty, the big question first. It's supposed to be X-Men 1.5...but where's the .5? When I interviewed Bryan Singer early last year, there were apparently new scenes and a new cut of the film planned?

It was going to be called X-Men 1.5 at one time when they were going to do a new cut of the film. Frankly, I don't want to speak for Bryan, but I think he was pretty happy with the way the released film came out, and it made a huge amount of money.

What were the new scenes supposed to be?

The original plan was to shoot two extra scenes during the making of X2, which were going to be the origin of Storm and Cyclops', with them as children discovering their powers. But as I understand it, it was eventually decided that the money would be better spent on the production of X2. And if you look at the way the film is structured, with Wolverine and Rogue introduced at the beginning and both coming full circle within the film, it wouldn't really have made sense to focus on Storm and Cyclops as well. So while personally I thought it was a neat idea, I didn't think it would have added anything to the film.

To be honest, I'm surprised the 1.5 name was kept, because I remember when we posted the announcement for the DVD, and got an angry call from various parties indicating that the disc would not be called X-Men 1.5...

I think the 1.5 name sort of stuck inside of Fox Marketing, and they just left it that way. In a way, it is more apropos to what's on the disc. Because most consumers aren't going to know that there was supposed to be a new cut of the movie. So keeping that name, 1.5 is still kinda cool. But during the making of the DVD I always thought of it as the X-Men Special Edition. And if you notice all the titling we put on our stuff, it says X-Men Special Edition, not X-Men 1.5.

Was there a reason the original deleted scenes from the first and now this DVD were not reinserted back into the film? And not presented anamorphically this time around?

First of all, the original negative of the film was cut, so if you look at certain scenes, such as the montage of the X characters demonstrating their powers while Xavier gives Wolverine a tour of the school, some of the deleted material is recut into the body of the film, so they don't exist as cut negative.

The reason the deleted scenes are not presented anamorphically is because they were taken from an AVID output. So unless you wanted to reconstitute the material by going back to the dailies tapes, which is a lot of work - and frankly, while I could do it as a producer, it is really the purview of the director, editor and studio. And during the entire time 1.5 was in production, X2 was filming, so there was really no opportunity to do such extensive restoration work. I think that unlike, say, the extended cut of The Fellowship of the Ring, which Peter Jackson planned from the beginning, the release version of X-Men was a finished film.

You know, we contacted Bryan Singer's office in regards to an interview, and were told he has turned down all press for X-Men 1.5, and to make of that what we will. I suppose the logical conclusion would be that he is not happy with the lack of a new cut of the film and the lack of the new scenes?

I don't want to speak for him, but I think Bryan wished that there could have been more money put into the DVD, including the added scenes shot for a 1.5 version. I think if Bryan had more time to work the film during it's original post production process, it would be a different film. As it is, X-MEN is clearly one of the most successful comic book adaptations. But I do know he's happy with the amount of material that is on the disc. His main concern with X-Men 1.5 was for the fans to genuinely get something new and that illuminates the filmmaking process. I also love when you pop in the disc, Bryan talks about the pure horror of a filmmaker in having to ask fans to buy multiple copies of the same movie. It's a bit of humor we're repeating from the Suspects DVD.

Another important point to make, however, is many fans didn't have DVD players when the first X-Men disc came out. Millions and millions of players have been sold since then. In fact, I believe more DVD players have been sold since then, then were actually in homes at the time of the first release. So a lot of people are going to be picking up the X-Men 1.5 DVD for the first time, and I think they are going to have a lot of fun with it.

X-Men does seem like a film to me that really expanded its audience on video...

I truly believe that if it wasn't for the success of X-Men, there would be no Spider-Man, no Daredevil, no Incredible Hulk. Or X2. And I really believe that with the sequel, everyone is firing on all cylinders. I think it is going to be a better movie, a darker movie, and a longer movie. It is something like 20 minutes longer than the original. Even Patrick Stewart said that X-Men was really an extended trailer for the other films in the franchise. Almost a like an extended James Bond pretitle sequence.

I would agree with that, as everything I've seen of X2 does look much better than the original.

I think X2 is really going to surprise people. It is more adult in tone, and Bryan will really show people what he can do. While X-Men was a hit, it didn't put Bryan in the same league as say a James Cameron or Sam Raimi. Now, he's going to be a full-on, A-list director. Not that he wasn't before after Usual Suspects, but now in terms of being able to command a budget and box office success. I'm positive it will take him to a new level.

So how did you get to be involved with X-Men 1.5 DVD?

I first worked with Bryan on The Usual Suspects DVD for MGM, which turned out to be very successful. Then I simply got a call from Fox, and they said, "Bryan Singer says 'You're doing the X-Men Special Edition.'" Which is different than the way you normally approach a studio. Usually, I have to beg and plead. Most of the time, I first come up with a content proposal. I look at the assets, what was shot, and what I would like to get, then write a proposal for the disc and submit to the studio's marketing department. They look at it, go over it, throw in their own two cents and decide whether it is something they want to do. Then we hopefully agree on a budget and schedule. Not unlike making a feature film itself.

In the case of X-Men 1.5, I was just hired. I'd had a few meeting with Fox Home Video on other projects, but I'd never worked with them before. I also had no clue as to what materials existed or were available to use. And I knew we wouldn't really be able to do new interviews with people because they were in the middle of shooting a new movie.

When did you actually start work on the DVD?

My Editor and Co-Producer Dave Parker, who also worked with me on the Suspects DVD, officially began production on the disc July 1st, which was smack dab in the middle of X2's production schedule. The original due date was October 20th, although I must say we were late. I don't normally like to be late, but part of the reason was, as with Indiana Jones before us, we were making the disc up as we went along.

We knew that Fox didn't want to use the "Mutant Watch" featurette, which was more of a promotional piece anyway. What was great about the disc is that I was able to use producer Richard Ingber's EPK material that he shot for the first film, which was terrific. Much of the material also had never been seen before, like his interviews with Mike Fink, the visual effects supervisor. Of course, we had to go through all these tapes, which was something like 150 hours of material. And when you get that amount of material, there are only so many hours in the day to start going through it and digitizing it into the AVID. And when you combine that with trying to figure out what you're even trying to do, it becomes problematic.

Were you eventually able to look at all of it given the time crunch?

Yeah, we pretty much looked at all of it and were able to use most of the best stuff. Much of the time with onset footage, the majority of it is just people wandering on and off the set. Richard's footage, however, had most of the great stunts and effects sequences.

Now, does this include the legendary "Tom DeSanto footage?"

No, this was the original material shot during the first film's production by the official behind the scenes crew. The legendary footage that executive producer Tom DeSanto and his assistant Matt Granger shot was material that we did not have full access to. It was a lot more personal and intimate moments than the kind of material you normally get.

When I interviewed Bryan Singer last year, he described it as very "Hearts of Darkness-esque."

Yes, I suppose it was very "Hearts of Darkness." I didn't get to see all of the material. You know, when you're doing a DVD, you have to toe a fine line. What can you show? A movie set can be a very volatile atmosphere. It is often about people's egos and attitudes, and what their moods are on any given day. Those things change constantly. And when you have a hundred people with a hundred different moods on the set, and let's say a stunt goes wrong or doesn't work properly, and you only have four more hours in the day to shoot it, and you're beholden to a studio for a $75 million dollar movie, and a movie that no one at the time knew was going to be a hit... I think there is footage that to the person not in the film business and has never spent any time on a movie set, might not be understood.

And what people forget is that for Bryan especially, X-Men was a huge leap over what he had done previously. Apt Pupil had a larger budget than The Usual Suspects, but it was a drop in the bucket compared to a major studio movie. But X-Men was a major studio movie that had a relatively small budget. So the pressure to deliver such a film must have been enormous for him. And you had the fan press eviscerating everything from the costume designs to the casting on a daily basis, so Bryan had perhaps the weight of a small planet on his shoulders. So the fact that he was able to do what he did with what he had was pretty amazing. I think the results of the movie speak for themselves.

Now, there actually is some of the DeSanto-shot material on the disc, correct?

Actually, I think some of the best material on the disc makes use of DeSanto's footage. That's the Production Scrapbook. One of the reasons we were so late delivering the disc is because we got that DeSanto footage very late in the game. And Tom and Matt pre-edited that footage to remove some of the "Hearts of Darkness" moments. Even though Tom was producing X2, he found the time to go through this footage at night. I was able to use their footage exactly as I wanted, a look at the entire process, from the first production meeting to the very last day when shooting wraps. A fly-on-the-wall kind of piece.

I must admit that after all the buildup, many perceive the DeSanto footage as some sort of lost artifact. I personally feel like we may be missing out?

DeSanto's footage was golden. It's seldom a film even has such material. Most of the time, it's the last thing anyone thinks of. We tried to assemble it in some sort of chronological order. There's been two interesting things I've seen so far in the reviews about the production footage. Some people love it, while others find it boring. But if you don't love the process or have an interest in it, then you won't find that particular documentary exciting. And let me tell you, movie sets are the most boring places in the world. Not that we wanted to make a boring piece. But if you are interested in filmmaking and particularly the X-Men, there's a lot of stuff to chew on.

Given that you had so much footage, did you find it difficult not have to leave anything absolutely essential out?

One of the things I most proud about with X-Men 1.5 is that if you watch it as a whole, from the branching footage to the commentary to the featurettes, we tried to tell a cohesive story in pieces. For example, if Bryan tells a story on the commentary, you'll later see it illuminated in the Production Scrapbook. In the first documentary, The Uncanny Suspects, you'll notice that with the behind the scenes footage, we only used material that was cut out of the movie. For example, there is the scene with Jean Grey where she was supposed to have lost it with Senator Kelly in the opening of the movie. And she refers to it in one of the interview segments. Or Magneto talking to Senator Kelly, there's a lot more about "The Road to Hell" being paved with good intentions, and all of that. So this way we were able to put in a lot of material you hadn't seen before in an interesting way that doesn't disrupt the narrative of the overall disc.

Did Bryan have to approve the footage that was used?

Yes, he did have to approve the footage. Although interestingly enough, after he saw it he felt it was too whitewashed. He wished we were able to get more of those Hearts of Darkness moments, as you say, in the finished film. But I also think that when you're making a sci-fi superhero movie that is basically fun, why deal the dirt? If someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed on day 62 of a 89 day shoot and decides to scream for five minutes...it that really fair to isolate such a moment? Happens to the best of us. I wouldn't want to in Abbey Road studios and sit and watch John, Paul, George and Ringo sit and bicker and call each other names on the one day the all forgot their morning cups of coffee.

Was there anything that, once you completed the disc, you had to remove?

The only thing we had to remove from the footage they gave us was a shot of Hugh Jackman in the "Weapon X" tank facility, because his publicist was afraid his bum might be showing. Having met Hugh, I think he probably would have loved to have a great butt shot on the disc, but I understand where his publicist was coming from. Actually, I was sad to see it go because Bryan actually made a comment underneath the footage that he wanted to combine a 50's mad scientist, sci-fi sensibility with a modern action comic book movie. I'd never thought about that before and the scene perfectly illustrated what Bryan was talking about.

Another thing I really regret about the disc is, as a lifelong comic book fan, losing a featurette we produced called "The Secret Origin of the X-Men." It had Marvel's Stan Lee and Chris Claremont, and producer Lauren Shuler Donner, talking about the origins of the characters and film and how the comic book and the Wolverine miniseries came to pass. But due to Fox's ongoing legal dispute with Marvel Comics - and I'm not really privy to the details - we had to drop every bit of the disc that relates to comic books themselves. Where the characters came from, how they were treated and how Claremont's revitalization of the X-Men changed the team and allowed for the basis of the characters you see in the film. That's why you'll also see in the Wolverine's hair piece segment that we just put a big "X" over one of the Havoc Vs. Wolverine comic book images. I think it's rather silly myself. It's not as if the world doesn't know where the X-Men came from.

That is rather funny, as it must be hard to produce a DVD of a comic book movie without talking about the comic book!

For me, it was particularly annoying since I'm a big comic book fan. But I think a version of that piece will end up on the X2 DVD.

Since you were also going to be producing the X2 DVD, did you approach X-Men 1.5 as the first of a two-part, connected piece?

We did, actually. I think I've learned everything I know about DVD producing from Michael Pellerin at Kurtti-Pellerin. He sort of got me into the business. And yes, I did want to make the 1.5 and X2 DVDs to be two sides of the same coin. One of my dreams for the X2 DVD is to do an interactive history of the X-Men piece, where you could take that Ultimate X-Men book put out by DK publishing and bring it to life. You could click on various comic books and see the evolution of the characters and the timeline from the convoluted history of the X-Men comic.

I'm sure we'll see the inevitable X-Men 1 & 2 box set.

Yes, I'm sure there will be a box set. (Laughs) One of the interesting things is that like the first X-Men movie, with the X-Men 1.5 DVD we didn't have a large budget to work with. As a matter of fact, it had the smallest budget of any DVD project I've ever worked on for a large-scale Hollywood film. For a comparison, for a movie like TRON the budget almost three times as large as the X-Men 1.5 DVD. Which makes me doubly proud of the work Dave Parker and I were able to accomplish.

And that's a 20 year-old movie that wasn't even a hit. What's interesting is that the budget for a DVD is monumentally smaller than the budget for the film. And the theaters are also on a sliding scale of profit that increases the longer the film plays in the theater. So conceivably the studio's profit margin is far greater even if the grosses are equal. I wonder if this is why the studios still guard the budget numbers for their DVDs so tightly?

There is one aspect of DVD budgets that I think can be misunderstood. I am a DVD content producer, so I don't pay out of my budget for the replication of discs or those type of costs. I don't do the Menus, either. Some producers, like Van Ling, do create their own menus, but my budgets are solely to create the content that you watch and is exclusive for the DVD. I don't have to pay for the "webisodes" that were created for the Internet, or the original EPKs, or TV specials. So my budgets are not the entire budget for the disc Far from it. We are making programming, and have the same production pipeline as any TV show or movie. We go out on set to shoot, we shoot material, we edit it, we have a full post process. You have to get your locations, you have to get your crew together, you have to secure talent. What's most frustrating about the DVD business is that some folks at the studios we deal with have not come out of production, so they don't realize how much actual production is involved.

Does the studio help provide equipment or facilities for any of this?

Not for the most part, although Fox used their facilities to do the final mix for the commentary, which is always nice

To give you an idea of our process... For X-Men 1.5, we were going over 150 hours of material, and just to put that into the AVID would take two months. Then you have to figure what to do with it, then actually do it. Then late into the game with 1.5, we were given the Tom DeSanto footage. Which set us back about a month and a half in terms of editorial time. I will say that the studio (Fox) was really pissed with me, and rightfully so. There wasn't an understanding that when you get 40 more hours of footage, there is an exponential amount of time that goes along with that to craft it into something great to watch. We were told not to take the footage, but I took it anyway. Because in the end, no one is going to care how long it took to make the DVD - even though we almost missed our deadline to make it out by the announced street date - but the disc is better in the end. I think word of mouth will result in more sales. I accepted the responsibility financially for going over my schedule, but it made the disc better. Unfortunately, I'm a fan first, which I guess makes me a better producer than a businessman. (Laughs).