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Yesterday, in Part I of our Exclusive Interview with New Moon director Chris Weitz, he discussed setting the second Twilight film apart from its predecessor while simultaneously maintaining the veracity of the central characters. He also discussed the pivotal Volturi sequence that's set in Italy and the different acting styles in play in it. Here, in Part II of our conversation with Weitz, he continues to discuss the Volturi sequence, expresses his satisfaction with the finished film, and offers details about what might be his next project -- and it's not necessarily Breaking Dawn.
You mentioned the various styles of performance in the Volturi scene and touched on Kristen Stewart's turn and Michael Sheen's. But how about Dakota Fanning? She hardly says a word and yet her Jane is a pretty disturbing little character…
Dakota, she has a relatively small part in terms of the number of lines and the time that she's on screen, but she's so good that she is still magnetic and she's playing this evil, sadistic, horrible creature. I am satisfied with the (whole) scene. I think it's a lot of fun. I do. It looks the way I wanted it to look. I think there are certain shots in it which look like a narrative painting, and that's lovely, and yet there's also a whole bunch of other stuff to it. There's some humor, there's action and all kinds of good stuff.
You may still be too close to the film to be very objective, but how satisfied are you with the finished product that will be in theaters on November 20?
I am pleased with it, to be honest. I am very biased. I have seen it enough times to go through the pain barrier in which, after you've seen it for about the 100th time, you come to despise it. But I am very proud of the actors and of the crew and what they managed to put together in relatively short order. No matter how well it does or not it's been a comeback for me from the feeling of helplessness on The Golden Compass (2007), of having something taken away from me and not ending up the way that I wanted it to.
We've heard that there's as much as 10 minutes of cut footage that could wind up on the New Moon DVD. Was there a scene or even a shot that you were particularly fond of that ultimately got trimmed from the finished film, that pained you to remove?
I can't really think of a significant scene that was cut, nor can I think of anything that killed me to cut it. Actually, sometimes I fall in love with specific shots that I hate cutting. There was a shot of Bella when she's just been broken up with and she's lying on her bed. The shot was upside down. She's upside down, and it's just her face upside down, against a sort of a red coverlet. It's a beautiful, beautiful shot, but it wasn't necessary to the telling of the story, and so it went, but I am still in love with that shot.
Everyone's waiting to see if you'll be back to close out the Twilight films with Breaking Dawn, but in the meantime what will you be doing next as a director?
I do have a film lined up as a director and it is called The Gardener. It is about a Mexican gardener in Los Angeles. The intent is to make it with Summit, and it's basically The Bicycle Thieves (a classic Italian film from 1948), but set in modern-day Los Angeles.
Is there anything about New Moon that we didn't ask you, that everyone else is?
(Laughing). Nothing that I want to answer! No. I'm glad you didn't ask me about "Why the appeal of vampire movies?" I don't know the answer.
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