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Growing up, what were
some of the formative films for you?
The James Bond films
were the first films I remember. I also liked musicals like BYE BYE
BIRDIE (1963), and the Clint Eastwood Westerns. When I was in Japan I
liked the chinbara films, films like SEVEN SAMURAI (1954).
Once I saw the first
James Bond film, DR. NO (1962), I kept trying to make spy movies. I
borrowed my Dad's 8mm camera and I would make a film or two a week,
from when I was 10 years old on.
How did your time
growing up in Hawaii influence your filmmaking style?
Hawaii was interesting
in that the movies we got were a mixture of cinema from Japan and
Europe and also American films. Toho, the Japanese movie studio, had
a theater in Honolulu that was designed like an old temple. Kokusai
also had a movie theater. I was very heavily influenced by Asian
movies.
How did you manage to
get an internship with Toshiro Mifune?
He saw one of my short
films and he wrote me a letter saying ''It's a tough business but you
should stick to it. '' After that, he invited me to be an intern on
DERSU UZULA (1975), the Kurosawa film that he was originally going to
be in. He didn't do the film in the end because he decided he didn't
want to be in Siberia for a year. He knew what to expect with
Kurosawa. He was doing his own TV shows and I basically went to work
on those.
That must have been a
mindblowing experience.
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What were the most
important things you learned from working under Kurosawa's
cinematographer, Takao Saito?
He gave me a sense of
the frame. He taught me that you have a canvas and it's like a window
that the audience is looking through. You control what they see.
Until then I had never realised all these planes of existence. He
showed me to how to look through the lens and tell a story on many
different levels. He also taught me the importance of color.
What were the lessons
you learned directing commercials in Honolulu?
I learned how to work
fast, and add as much production value as I could. I never had any
big budgets so I learned how to be resourceful. I used to use all the
equipment from my commercials on my own short films. I would do the
commercials in the day and shoot my own films at night.
It was mainly because
all of the labs and the high-end editing facilities were in L.A. I
knew that if I wanted to make a feature film, which was what I wanted
to do, I would have to go to L.A. I made a couple of visits, and
luckily it worked out, and I got to start making films.
What was the
inspiration for THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER?
It was really
influenced by the films I had seen in Japan when I was in the second
grade. I would go down to Shibuya and watch historical costume dramas
and fairytales. I really enjoyed watching them so I brought those
elements into THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, along with stuff like the
Lone Wolf and Baby Cart series.
The film was extremely
imaginative. How did you respond to the challenge to fulfill your
vision on a lower budget?
I had done a lot of
commercials, so I had some experience in how to make cheap
compromises that looked good. I knew that if I threw as many ideas up
on screen in each shot as I could, some of them would come through.
Where did your love of
mixing genres and elements come from?
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You became known for
post-apocalyptic movies, but you have said that you don't have a
special interest in doing them. What genres and kind of stories do
you feel you are most passionate about and comfortable doing?
It's more about ideas.
If I get an idea, it determines the genre. I don't stay in certain
genres because I have a special interest in them. But I did stay in
certain genres because those genres were more cost-effective and I
could make a film look really good with the money and time that I
had.
When writing your
screenplays what do you usually begin with? The setting? The opening?
A particular scene?
I usually have an idea
of something I'd like to see or try to do, and then I build a story
around that.
Well, a lot of my fans
feel that my films aren't violent enough! I did a film called MEAN
GUNS that was really violent but there was no blood. I try to
only use violence if it's useful in eliciting a feeling from the
audience. I don't think I do gratuituous violence. I try to stay
truthful to the worlds I create.
Why didn't your version
of TOTAL RECALL happen?
I think nobody could
see that it could be a commercial film. Ronald Shusett, the
screenwriter, was very faithful to the Philip K. Dick story, and his
script was more cerebral than the film that was made with Arnold
Schwarzenegger, which was far more of an action film. At the time I
was involved, William Hurt was going to be the star. We had a meeting
with the Head of Universal and he was just nasty the whole time. He
didn't respect the project or the script and certainly not the
producer, Dino De Laurentiis. It just looked like it wasn't going to
fly.
Except for the fact
that they had no money, they were great. They understood that we had
to be very inventive and be given a lot of latitude in how we brought
things to the screen. So long as we stayed on budget and on schedule,
they gave you a lot of freedom. They had a whole lot of movies go
over budget and not make a lot of money, and that is what killed
them. They needed a lot of cash to keep going and so they were
constantly making movies, which was how I got to make so many films
with them.
What could we have
expected from your Masters of the Universe 2 and Spiderman?
Masters of the Universe
2 would not have been as pure fantasy as the first film. It would
have been more like a graphic novel. It was much darker. Spiderman
was going to be in the same vein. It was going to be more emotional
in the sense that it was going to be a film about how to overcome
loss, and like Masters of the Universe 2, it was about the
responsibilties of having to try to live up to your ideals.
I had read the
character as a kid and loved him. I was always intrigued by the idea
that Rogers never saw himself as a hero. All he was trying to do was
participate in the War and help America out. The script that we had
was primarily based around those ideas. We really got hammered on the
budget. We ended up getting only a third of what we needed.
Do you enjoy the
current Marvel and DC movies?
For the amount of money
and resources that they have, I am disappointed with them. WONDER
WOMAN (2017) and LOGAN (2017) were really good though. They have
changed the Marvel characters so much from the versions I grew up
with in the 60s that it is really hard to relate to them. They're
almost like toy figures.
I love the fact that
after Masters of the Universe and Spiderman were cancelled, you
re-used all the set and costume designs for CYBORG.
What had happened was
that we had spent a lot of money on the prep of those two films, but
Cannon reached a point where they couldn't make rights payments to
Mattel and Marvel. I felt it was criminal that we had spent all this
money on two films that couldn't be made so I came up with the idea
of ''Let's take what we've built and go make another movie, so we
can at least get that money back. '' Golan and Globus really liked
that idea!
Albert's website.
Interview by Paul Rowlands. Copyright © Paul Rowlands, 2017. All rights reserved.
Albert's website.
Interview by Paul Rowlands. Copyright © Paul Rowlands, 2017. All rights reserved.
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