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| PETER JACKSON: We're not sure. We haven't really thought about that yet, to be quite honest. We've just been working on the animatics and finding a writer. When we do find a writer, that's obviously going to be one of the topics of conversation. Christian and I haven't really given it much thought.
It's a situation where you're damed if you do and damned if you don't. If you go one way, people are going to say we've sold out to political correctness. If you go the other way then you're obviously going to be inadvertently offending people. So, it's a no-win scenario.
QUINT: I mean, I had always heard about the film and the use of the dog being called "Nigger." What was surprising to me was how integral the dog's name was to the actual raid.
PETER JACKSON: Right, right. It's not even just the name of his dog. It was used as a code word for when they breached the bomb.
QUINT: So, it's not just something you can right away dismiss. You can either be safe and ignore it or you can be historically accurate, you know?
PETER JACKSON: I know. That is the question. I guess it's a decision we don't have to make today. At some point we'll have to make the decision and whenever that happens we'll just see how we feel at the time.
You know, not just the name of the dog, but there is controversy in the whole bombing campaign. There's a lot of antagonism now, especially in the UK and Canada, as well, towards what (the British) did in the war. You know, the fire-bombings of the German's houses, which is absolutely horrific, but I just think it's important... I think there's a job documentary filmmakers should do and anybody is welcome to do a documentary about the Dambusters or the bombing campaign from the perspective of 2006, but we don't really feel it's our job, and I know that Christian feels pretty strongly about this, that we're not wanting to make a movie that tells the story of the Dambusters from the 2006 political perspective.
We want to ground the film in 1943. We want to ground the film in what was happening in England at that time. What were the pressures, what was happening, what the Nazis were doing in 1943, why they had to be stopped, why the war had to end somehow. The world of 1943 is very much where this film is going to be set, not the political world of 2006. That is the job of documentary filmmakers, not feature filmmakers.
QUINT: You said Weta's already build the bomb. I take it you're going to go for the Weta special, miniatures and model work combined with CGI?
PETER JACKSON: Yeah. Richard Taylor's been quietly building a Lancaster bomber, which has actually been a little difficult to hide in the Workshop! (laughs) The Lancaster bomber is a huge plane, so we've been building a Lancaster bomber over the last 2 to 4 months, which is our prototype to make molds from, then we're going to make about 10 more of them.
QUINT: Life-sized?
PETER JACKSON: Yeah, life-sized, yeah. We've got it at Weta Workship at the moment a fullsized Lancaster sitting in pieces and we're taking molds from it and from those molds we'll make fiberglass copies for the fullsized ones for the movie. We finished making a miniature of one of the dams and we've started on the next.
We've known we wanted to do DAMBUSTERS for quite a few months even though we didn't get the rights completely tied up until a few weeks ago, but I knew that HALO was coming up and we needed to devote a lot of the miniature resources... Richard's only got a certain amount of manpower and a certain amount of space and I know that when HALO finally kicked in big time it was going to dominate what they could do at the workshop. So, what I've been doing is getting some of the (work) for DAMBUSTERS to be done over the last few 2 or 3 months while its been quiet.
We've got the Lancaster made now, we've got a bomb made, we've got the first of the miniature dams made and we're just working on the 2nd dam. In terms of what Richard's doing, he's sort of got the bulk of the DAMBUSTERS work finished now, which obviously means he's got everybody free for HALO now.
I've had to just juggle the schedules around a little bit and get things made. I didn't have the luxury of being able to wait until DAMBUSTERS was greenlit to start work because I could see there would be a clash for the resources we've down here.
Anyway, it all worked out well and we're probably going to actually start shooting some of the miniatures for DAMBUSTERS in the next few weeks. One of the reasons we've been doing the animatics for the raid is to start to plan the shots so Christian knows what shots he wants to do. We've got the miniature damn built and we'll start shooting some of the shots. (laughs) This is shooting bits of the movie before we've even written a script for it or even thought about a cast for it. It's an interesting way of making a film.
QUINT: Well, there's no way you're making DAMBUSTERS and not busting a dam.
PETER JACKSON: Not busting a dam, no! And obviously we're not having to lock off what the characters are saying to each other in the plane. We're really just dealing with the wide shots of the planes attacking the dam, so however it's dealt with in the script we know we're going to be doing shots that will be needed for the movie. Alex Funke and the miniature guys are about to start work on the dam attack and Digi (Weta Digital) have been working on it as well. We've got a Lancaster bomber built in the computer, doing quite a bit of research...
It's still very difficult to find the accurate specifications of the bomb and the bomb release mechanism because they modified the bombers to be able to carry this big bomb under the belly, to be able to spin it and then release it. There is 2 or 3 photos that exist of the original, but the British never really kept accurate records of it because it was so secret. I guess if there were records they still haven't really been released.
What's ironic is that one of the planes that took off that night crashed in Germany, was shot down, and the bomb survived. Everybody expected that if a plane did get shot down that the bomb would explode. It was a top secret bomb and the English were actually terrified that if the Germans found the bomb that they would use it against English dams. The English were really terrified that it would give the Germans a way to strike back.
So, they always had the feeling that if a plane was lost, the bomb would explode, but there was actually a plane that did crash and the bomb survived intact. The Germans dismantled it, they drew it, they measured it, they did blueprints of it, which are accessible today. So, the best information about the bomb and how it was used is actually the German's drawings, which is kind of ironic.
QUINT: Has Christian always wanted to direct?
PETER JACKSON: Oh yeah. For sure. Yeah, yeah. He wrote to me when he was a school kid about 15 years ago. He sent me drawings and pictures that he'd done. He'd done sort of science fiction and comic book stuff. He was about 15 years old. I didn't really get any fan mail back then. This was about the time of MEET THE FEEBLES, I guess. I thought this kid was really, really clever and as soon as he left school I got him to come and do storyboards for BRAINDEAD for me.
He's done storyboards for every film. In recent times the storyboards have become computer animatics, they've sort of developed that way. He did some computer animation around the time of THE FRIGHTENERS. He actually spent some time being one of the animators doing the movie after he finished the storyboards and then he's done some second unit directing for us on LORD OF THE RINGS and KONG, some effects stuff. He did some directing of Andy Serkis on KONG, when I couldn't be on the mo-cap stage because I was in the cutting room. Christian was supervising the animation of KONG as a character and he directed Andy.
So, he's just been working his way up, wanting to direct films. You can feel it that it's time now. I was always keen to try to find something for him or something he wanted to do.
Independently of that, I've been tracking DAMBUSTERS for quite a few years. I'd asked my agent what was happening with it about 10 years ago and he said that Mel Gibson was doing it. For a while it disappeared and then a year or two ago I heard that it had resurfaced again and people were talking about a remake. I found out that neither Mel nor Icon was attached to it and Studio Canal inherited the rights. I talked to Christian about it because I just thought that that might be something that might be good for him to do and I was certainly keen to do it. He'd seen the original film and was a fan of the original film.
QUINT: Have you talked about casting at all?
PETER JACKSON: No, we haven't talked about names, but what we have talked about... Our casting conversations have really been about the pilots and flying crew and casting people that were the right age. A couple of the key pilots that night were 20 years old. One of them, an Australian, Les Knight, he couldn't drive a car and he couldn't ride a bike. He didn't know how to ride a bike yet and he didn't have a driver's permit, but he had learned how to fly a Lancaster bomber. He was 20 years old and there were a couple more of them that were 20.
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