Directors Larry and Andy Wachowski reteam with cinematographer Bill Pope on the futuristic, eye-popping action thriller The Matrix.
by Christopher Probst
Computerized gadgetry has assumed such an increasingly pervasive role in our everyday lives — from microprocessor-controlled automobiles to hyperspeed Internet e-mail and cell phones — that one might wonder if the tail is wagging the dog. With the impending end of the millennium inducing waves of paranoia and Y2K computer-crash hysteria, it's not surprising that technophobic films such as Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and James Cameron's The Terminator (1984) seem ever-more accurate in their depictions of microchips run amok.
The Matrix, a new film from sibling filmmakers Larry and Andy Wachowski, offers an even grimmer vision of the future. Born in Chicago in the mid-1960s, the Wachowskis grew up on a healthy diet of comic books, Japanese animation and films of all kinds. While working at construction jobs, the brothers began to write comics and screenplays that combined the seemingly dissimilar aesthetics of their favorite mediums. Before making their directorial debut in 1997 with the dark and stylish heist thriller Bound (which they also co-wrote), the duo had already penned the script for The Matrix.
"Our main goal with The Matrix was to make an intellectual action movie," Larry explains. "We like action movies, guns and kung fu, but we're tired of assembly-line action movies that are devoid of any intellectual content. We were determined to put as many ideas into the movie as we could, and purposefully set out to try to put images up on the screen that people haven't ever seen before."
Out of the Void
For years, however, the script for The Matrix languished in limbo, because many in Hollywood couldn't grasp the tale's highly complex narrative and extravagant visual elements. "Hardly anybody in town even understood it," says Larry. "It became almost a running joke. People thought it was too complicated and too dense. "The premise for The Matrix began with the idea that everything in our world, every single fiber of reality, is actually a simulation created in a digital universe," he explains. "Once you start dealing [narratively] with an electronic reality, you can really push the boundaries of what may be humanly and visually possible."
To help distill this concept into a more readily understandable form, the Wachowskis hired several comic-book craftsmen, including popular Hard Boiled artist Geof Darrow, to hand-draw the entire film as a highly graphic storyboard bible. "We don't really like the way conventional storyboards are done," Larry reveals. "Instead, we brought in some friends of ours to draw out every single action beat, visual moment and stylistic shot in the film. Then, for months, we pored over every frame, exploring how to attack each shot. This also allowed us to be very specific, in terms of the budgeting and visual-effects requirements."
This graphic representation of the film also became an invaluable tool for director of photography Bill Pope, whose common interest in comic books had previously landed him the director of photography assignment on the Wachowskis' Bound. Pope recalls, "They had seen and loved [the 1993 horror-fantasy film] Army of Darkness, which I shot for director Sam Raimi. They called me in, and we had a terrific meeting. I think they hired me because I read comics and knew what they were talking about whenever they mentioned a particular title. In fact, during our meeting, there was a copy of Frank Miller's Sin City on their desk, so I asked, 'Is that what you want the film to look like?' We were all impressed by Miller's use of high-contrast, jet-black areas in the frame to focus the eye, and his extreme stylization of reality. I had long wanted to do something that stylized on film."
Not incidentally, "stylization" formed the basis of Pope's early career. A 1977 graduate of New York University's film program, the cameraman recalls, "Film school was pretty intense back then, because there were only a few of us who concentrated on cinematography. Everyone else wanted to direct. In my class, it was just Ken Kelsch [ASC] and myself, and in the class behind us there was only [director and former cameraman] Barry Sonnenfeld. The three of us shot everybody else's films. After graduating, I shot a few of those early videos that were shown only on closed-circuit TVs in clubs. When MTV came along in the early 1980s, and everybody began making videos, people said, 'Get Bill Pope, he's shot these things!' Suddenly, I was a director of photography."
Pope would spend the rest of the decade photographing several hundred videos. Along the way, he earned an MTV Award for Best Cinematography for his black-and-white camerawork on the Sting clip "We'll Be Together Tonight." He then segued into commercials and features. "In 1989, Sam Raimi gave me the chance to shoot [the sci-fi fantasy] Darkman," Pope remembers. "I only got the job because Barry Sonnenfeld told Sam to hire me. Fortunately, Sam just said, 'You're hired, let's go!' Otherwise, I never would have gotten a feature. For a long time, music videos were considered the illegitimate children of the filmmaking industry. It wasn't until the late Eighties and early Nineties that music-video cinematographers were even considered legitimate enough to shoot commercials. After I shot Darkman, though, I was able to concentrate on shooting movies and commercials." Pope's other feature credits include The Zero Effect, Gridlock'd, Clueless and Fire in the Sky. Additionally, he shot the pilot for the television series Maximum Bob, which was directed by Sonnenfeld.
Technology Takes Over
The story concept that propels The Matrix is intricate: the year is 2197, and human reality is merely a computer-simulated environment. "At some point in the past, artificial intelligence took over the world," Pope relates. "In an effort to regain control, humans blacked out the sun, because the computers were running off of solar power. But the machines outsmarted us and took over our bodies, placing them in pods and using them as batteries — drawing off the BTUs we produce. While we float in a liquid, they project into our brains the world we think we live in, which is called the Matrix. Everything we do in our lives, every day, is only a computer simulation of reality.
"Certain individuals have figured this out, however, and are waging a battle against the computers. These rebels fight within the Matrix against Agents who are themselves computer programs. The Agents can do anything, become anybody and change any natural law, but the humans can't. One of the main protagonists, Morpheus [Laurence Fishburne], is looking for an individual who reportedly can do what the computers can: walk through the Matrix and change reality. Morpheus believes that this individual is Neo [Keanu Reeves].
"It's a pretty complicated Christ-story," Pope admits, "but for the Wachowskis and myself, one of the best kinds of comic books is the 'origin' story, which outlines the beginnings of a superhero like Daredevil or Spiderman. The Matrix is the origin story of Neo."
Adds Larry Wachowski, "We wanted the film to be a journey of consciousness. The main character that takes the audience on this journey is Neo, who initially knows only as much about the movie's world as the audience. We soon discover, however, that the characters in the film can instantaneously have information downloaded into their heads; Neo can, for example, suddenly become a kung fu master like Jackie Chan!
"Andy and I love Hong Kong action films, and we both feel that they're miles ahead of American action films in terms of the kind of excitement that the action brings to the story. American filmmakers have gotten to the point where they create their fights in the editing room. Those types of sequences are just designed for a visceral, flash-cut impact, and the audience's brains are never really engaged. There's a bunch of quick cuts — bam! bam! bam! — and then it's over; the fighting never involves the audience on a story level. Hong Kong action directors actually bring narrative arcs into the fights, and tell a little story within the fighting."
| [ continued on page 2 ] | © 1999 ASC |