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BEHIND THE SCENES OF DETROIT ROCK CITY by Cliff Stephenson - February, 2000 Every film, deep down inside, are all about the same thing: a quest. This might be the quest for love. Or it may be the quest for adventure. Now, for the first time in cinematic history, we have a quest that may just be the noblest of all. Break out the face make-up and the platform boots, because here it comes, the quest for KISS!
Though unfortunately overlooked when it played theatrically last summer, New Line Home Video is hoping to bring more attention to the film with the Platinum Edition release of Detroit Rock City on December 21, 1999. Included with the film itself is a host of special edition features designed to greatly enhance the viewing experience. Featuring audio commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes and much more, the production of the disc was a challenging and time-consuming process, as well as including the active participation of the filmmaking team throughout its development. About The Interview: Director Adam Rifkin is an accomplished actor, screenwriter and filmmaker, who in addition to helming Detroit Rock City has directed numerous films, including last year's Denial and the acclaimed The Dark Backward. Mr. Rifkin has also acted in many of his own films, and has co-written such box office hits as MouseHunt and Small Soldiers. Associate Producer Tim Sullivan makes his feature film producing bow on Detroit Rock City, and we expect we'll be seeing his name on many more credits to come... DVDFILE's intrepid reporter Cliff Stephenson got the chance to talk with Mr. Rifkin and Mr. Sullivan at length about the film and their work, as well as their excitement for the DVD format and the development of the disc throughout the production of the film. DVDFILE: Good morning guys. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Adam Rifkin: Hey Tim Sullivan: Hello DF: I'm assuming that you guys are big DVD fans already?AR: Definitely! TS: Huge. Big fans in general. We're fanboys, you know? DF: Excellent. What was the catalyst for the Detroit Rock City disc? AR: Well from moment one, as soon as the movie was green lit, Tim sort of was the first one to mention it but I, of course, got very excited and onboard right away, in that we both realized that this movie needs to be a cool DVD. I mean we knew it from moment one. And we also knew that most people, they make their movies and they worry about the DVD way after the fact. But we wanted to make sure that we kept an eye to the DVD right from the beginning an so we made sure that we always shot all sorts of cool behind-the-scenes stuff always for the DVD. We knew that every time, in the editing room, that we were editing a scene that wasn't going to make it into the film and we cut it out, we'd put it in a separate bin in our AVID, strictly for the DVD. And we were in touch with New Line's DVD department and Mark Rance, from the very beginning really creating and molding the DVD all the way through the process because we always, always knew...you know even if a movie's a giant hit, most people see a movie in their homes than they do at the theaters and you can be a purist and say "Oh I only make my movies for the big screen and whatever happens after that happens after that." Well, I don't believe that. I believe that a movie is fun to see on a big screen and it's fun to see on a small screen and it's going to be seen on a small screen for a lot longer of a time, as history, than it will on the big screen. And so we wanted to just make sure that DVD, which we believe is the true form of lasting home entertainment, we wanted to make sure that our DVD was something that really withstood the test of time and was something we could be proud of
TS: Adam cracks me up and that's why Adam and I bonded so well, because we met in the process of making Detroit Rock City, but no stone is ever unturned. So when we started making this movie I'd get these calls, "I got and idea. Let's do a documentary. Let's do a making of book. Let's see if we can get a parody in Mad Magazine. Let's get the best behind-the-scenes DVD ever. Let's do a video." And we've done every single thing we set out to do. We had two Making of Detroit Rock City magazines and from day one we just knew that, as fans, what would we want out of a movie we loved and we just tried to make this Detroit Rock City DVD just that. DF: Well, I'll tell you, it's pretty impressive. With as many discs as I see, it's really hard to impress me after a while because you've sort of seen it all before. With this disc, I would go through and under every layer there was something new. And I was really impressed with it. TS: Oh, thanks a million. DF: And I give you guys a lot of credit for making it really great. TS: It was a labor of love: the love of the film, the love of KISS, the love of DVDs. It was great that New Line allowed us to work with them in making this what we wanted it to be. DF: There's three full commentary tracks on Detroit Rock City and I wanted to talk a little bit about the two that you're both involved in. Both tracks, and this is putting it mildly, are probably the most unique commentaries I've ever heard. (Laughter) This is for Adam. On your track, right near the beginning, the editing of the track really mirrors the rhythm of the opening credits where you don't necessarily hear what you're saying but instead just sort of soak it in. AR: Yeah. DF: How many passes did that take to audibly identify all the visuals? AR: That took about three passes because the cuts were so fast that the ones that I missed the first time we'd go back and do again and we did about three times. DF: Well, when I saw Sigmund & the Sea Monster I knew I was home. (Laughter) So whose idea was that to... AR: That sort of rapid-fire commentary thing? DF: Yeah. AR: That was Mark Rance actually. He's great and he really put everything together so beautifully and he thought, exactly what you just said, to have the commentary reflect the rapid-fire cutting would be kind of a cool thing and I was way on board when he suggested it to me. DF: Yeah, it's definitely unique and it gives the commentary more of a feel like the film has versus just a straightforward commentary. Tim, in your track you've got most of the principal cast and several of the crew members on it and stylistically it's very different than Adam's. In fact I think it's probably the first commentary partially recorded by someone on a phone while they're having lunch at a sidewalk cafe. TS: (Laughs) DF: How many people were actually in the room and how long did it take to get that whole track recorded? TS: That's why I was so excited when I said to Adam that they put the entire poster on the cover, because the poster which was Adam's idea was to have the four kids running away from all the characters in the movie. That was Adam's idea and we thought that the commentary should echo that. It should just be a bombardment of everybody you could possibly get. Mark Rance came to me and said, "Look, I don't want to deal with agents" This was a family, we bonded on this film with everybody and it was just like "Let's get as many of these people as possible in a room." And the first time we did it, we did have Giuseppe was there, Richard, Miles, you know everybody was there, Shannon, Lyn, Carl Dupre- the writer, Pete Schink- the editor, and I felt like it was We Are The World, we're all sitting there with microphones. We did that on one Saturday from nine in the morning ‘til about two and then the following Saturday I came in and the people who couldn't make it the first time showed up. And that included Melanie Lynskey and Jimmy DeBello, and at the time, that's when we phoned Sam and then I phoned the three KISS guys, Ace, Paul and Peter and the idea was to just try and capture the spontaneity of the making of the film. Adam created such a loose atmosphere and to just try to capture that feeling rather than have the straight-forward scholarly approach, which you do have with Adam's track but then let's also have something different. DF: Well, your track was definitely the party track where every one sat around and joked about how bad the wigs might have been or how uncomfortable they might have been. TS: Well just for the record, Jimmy DeBello who plays Trip, he came in and did an entire track from beginning to end and Jimmy tends to be a stand up comedian and he did his track and it went to the New Line lawyers and after about ten-minutes their hair went white. So there exists some secret track that Jimmy DeBello did that, you never know, might sneak up on the KISS website one of these days. Hint, hint. Stuff that New Line was just too nervous about putting out there, but that was the real no-holds-barred track. DF: Speaking of James DeBello, when I was watching the movie I kept thinking that he was a really great comedian and he's really funny. Then when I watched the featurette, "Look into the Sun," I thought "Oh he's just crazy!" Is he just really crazy? AR: He's insane! DF: I was watching it thinking "This guy's nuts! He'll do anything." AR: Which is good when you've got a camera around and you're making a movie. TS: Which is not good when you're trying to have a serious conversation AR: But it's always good when you're making a movie to have somebody on the set whose willing to do anything. DF: The use of Multi-Angle on DVD is something that rarely gets used and it's never really been used like you guys did on Detroit Rock City by a major studio. Who was the brainchild for that? AR: Tim, would you say that would be Mark Rance? TS: Well, I would say it's a combination. Yeah, Mark Rance definitely came up with that idea but it really was after conversations with Adam because it echoed the way Adam shot the movie. The way Adam shot a lot of those scenes was with multi-cameras at the same time and because Mark knew that I think it spurned on "Hey, let's see if we can recreate what Adam did on the set to the home viewer. So it was definitely a combination of Adam and Mark
DF: The other behind-the-scenes feature is called "Miscellaneous Shit." Who came up with that name? I've got to know. AR: That sort of came out of just how we colloquially were describing the tapes as we were passing them off to Mark Rance. We just gave him a bag of all the tapes that we had shot on the set with the digicam. TS: And it was literally labeled that. AR: Yeah, it was labeled just "Miscellaneous Shit." TS: He took it literally and it's so funny because all that stuff was stuff that me and Adam did for ourselves, always hoping that one day it'll see the light of day. And with all the great stuff that's in there, I have to honestly say, that there was even a lot more that could have got in there and I guess somebody had to draw the line at some point, but there was actually a couple more deleted scenes that didn't make it in there. You know, in a perfect world, we would have liked to have seen them in there. There's a couple that Adam was particularly fond of involving a friend of his, Miles Dougal- who plays Elvis the security guard at the high school. AR: But you know the thing is that our original cut of the movie was three-hours long. The final cut is eighty-eight minutes so if we were to put all the stuff that got cut out on the DVD, we just wouldn't have had room for anything else. TS: But I guess you have to leave stuff for the tenth-anniversary edition. DF: Now luckily for DVD and film fans, Detroit Rock City was released by New Line, who happen to be one of the DVD friendliest studios around. One of the things that we here at DVDFILE.COM love to see is the filmmaker take control of their film for video and not just leave it up to the studio, some of which are not as DVD savvy or as creative as New Line. Is this type of deluxe treatment something you plan to continue? AR: Well absolutely and I'm not going to say that other studios will be as accommodating but I sure am going to try to mimic as closely as possible the experience we had on this one because I think it just makes all the difference in terms of what your final product is. You're right, like I have a friend who directed a film, pretty big film. He just found out it was released on DVD. They never called him, never asked him to do a commentary, they just slapped it out on a DVD and he was so disappointed because he said there were all sorts of great scenes that got cut out that he would have liked to put on. At New Line, you're right, they're very DVD friendly but at other studios I think I'm going to have to take a more active interest in pursuing it and sort of forcing the hand to get the ball rolling.
TS: I think that DVD, it's obviously a new medium and the idea of this Detroit Rock City DVD was a first in many ways in that it was one of the first times where from day one the DVD people were working with the filmmakers during the course of the making of the film, it is THE FIRST TIME that a film has come out on DVD before video. But I think filmmakers, it's going to affect the way they make films and I think, and Adam I recommend that from now on when you're making a movie and you sign on the contract it really should be a deal point that the filmmaker gets a say in the DVD release. AR: I agree. TS: Like Adam said, Detroit Rock City or other films, they may last a couple weeks, a couple months at the theater but a DVD is there forever. In fact the DVD of Detroit Rock City has a different box art/cover art than the VHS because the VHS is kind of a generic photograph of the four kids jumping up in the air and we just felt well... AR: For posterity, the DVD is going to be the one that lasts so we wanted to really preserve everything that we believed artistically had the most merit TS: Right now we're in the process of getting some of Adam's earlier films out on DVD. One of the first films Adam directed called "Never on Tuesday" and I just got an offer today from Anchor Bay for that Adam. AR: Oh great. TS: Wanting to get all the original cast members back together. AR: Great. DF: Anchor Bay's a good studio too so that'll make a nice disc. AR: I'm very excited about that. That's excellent. DF: What are your favorite things about DVDs and its potential for film? AR: Well the great thing about DVDs is that it's expected that you get more than just a movie, which I really like. You don't always get it but you just kind of expect that you will. For example the Universal horror series: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman and all that stuff, just the featurettes that go along with it. It's just so fun and educational. And I just love that with DVD, you get more than a movie. And then when you do get your movie, you get a movie, like Detroit Rock City is letterboxed. It really is for the film lover, DVD, as opposed to just, to just... DF: For the masses. AR: Yeah exactly, not that the masses aren't becoming more and more cinephiles. It just seems like as DVD gets more popular people are become more interested in film as film lovers. I just love the fact that DVD is definitely the medium that takes movies seriously as opposed to just slaps out a shitload of tapes and tries to make a ton of quick cash. It really does have an eye to posterity which I really appreciate. TS: And I agree with Adam and I'll also say that as more companies, like New Line, are putting out DVDs like Detroit Rock City and setting the standard, the average consumer is not going to sit still for paying $30 for a movie-only DVD. The stakes are raised now, the expectations are raised and I think the average consumer is becoming a cinephile thanks to this new medium. AR: Yeah that's kind of what I was trying to say, but not as articulately. TS: I'm reading off a cue. DF: But I think that the masses are starting to make their voices heard with regards to DVD and what their expectations are. AR: I agree. TS: Here's an interesting thing, a friend of mine last week spoke with Steven Spielberg and said "Well I'm glad your films are finally coming out. Why have you waited so long?" and he said he was waiting for three million DVD players to be sold before he'd put his movies out on DVD. And now that that mark has been achieved, all of Spielberg's movies will be coming out. But that was the reason.
DF: I've got to tell you Adam, one of the site favorites is Mousehunt. AR: Oh thanks, great. DF: We just love it. AR: Oh thank you, that's awesome! DF: I hope they put it out in ten different versions so we get to review it ten different times. AR: You and me both! TS: We've been told that in the first quarter of next year, Sony is going to be putting out The Dark Backward on DVD. AR: Which is one of my early films that I'm really proud of. DF: From Sony? AR: Columbia/TriStar Home Video is going to put out one of my early films The Dark Backward on DVD finally and we're going to take an active interest in making sure that it's more than just a movie on a disc DF: That's great and Columbia/TriStar, like New Line, is another great studio that will go out of their way to make sure that a disc is better then it needs to be. AR: Definitely. DF: Anytime we see announcements from New Line or Columbia/TriStar, actually or DreamWorks, so you got three good ins right there, we're always really excited because we don't really have to worry about them very much. AR: Yeah. DF: What are some DVD features that you think get too easily overlooked or ignored? AR: Well, I'll tell you, like you said before, the alternative angles ability is just never exploited on discs and I'm glad that we had the chance to. That's definitely something that is overlooked. TS: I think one of the things that would nice, and you could do it, is to include the soundtrack of a film on the DVD as well because there is audio space. AR: That would be cool TS: Why not have a movie, not just to where you just can listen to the soundtrack and then there's tons of spaces in between, but the actual soundtrack of the movie is just there on another audio track. Charge a couple more bucks and then you don't have to buy a DVD and a CD, you have it all. AR: That's a good idea. DF: Do you guys have any upcoming projects that you'd like to talk about? AR: Yeah, Tim is one of the producers of and I am currently writing a movie for New Line that I am going to direct called Real Monsters, which is a horror/comedy. I have a project at Warner Bros, that I'm writing also and a project at Touchstone that I'm writing, both of which I'm attached to directed as well. So, you know, I like to keep busy. And Tim's doing a shitload of stuff as well. TS: Yeah. Adam and I and another partner, Brad Wyman, have formed a production company called Rebellion and we're just planning on taking over the world next year. The world of film. DF: Once again New Line has pulled off an amazing disc and they did it for under $25. The wonderful thing to consider is that New Line doesn't release a whole lot of discs, but what they do release they sell a great deal of because they're always so loaded. When out editor, Peter, first looked at the specs for the disc, he's immediate reaction was that any disc with a commentary track by KISS he had to have. TS: I'm the crazy KISS fan here, but it means so much to me to be able to have done four individual interviews with all four KISS members and we kind of asked them the same questions, like Roshomon, and because I have a camaraderie with them, they were very laid back and not giving the usual sound bites. I can't tell you what it means to me to know that these conversations that I had with those guys are going to be on this disc for all eternity. It just blows my mind. DF: Well it definitely ups the collector value. TS: But at the same time, I think Adam and I, we also want to stress that it's not just for KISS fans. I mean of course for KISS fans this is like the best KISSmas present. Of course I'll use Gene's sound bite. I just think of general movie lovers. And you know these days, you can if you're a young person and you're interested in film, you kind of can bypass the film school thing by just getting a bunch of these discs and absorbing them, listening to the commentaries, watching the behind-the-scenes stuff and then just getting your own digital video camera and going out there and making your own movie. You really can do it these days. DF: Well, we appreciate talking to you today. AR: Thanks. TS: Thanks, Cliff. For more on Detroit Rock City, check out our in-depth review of the disc, as well as the official Detroit Rock City web site. |
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Detroit
Rock City is the type of film that only gets made
well if the people responsible have a passion for it.
Comic, energetic and obviously made with a great affection
for the era of the late 1970's in which it takes place,
the film also has important things to say about youth,
censorship and the importance of just going after what
you want.
