Neal Moritz has produced five $100 million movies since 1999 (The Fast and the Furious, SWAT, XXX, 2 Fast 2 Furious and Sweet Home Alabama) and just signed a new five-year, first look deal with Sony. None of this is very surprising given Moritz’s uncanny knack for fleshing out box office gold. But this is why he’s one of Hollywood’s hottest producers. Neal Moritz is fast. He talks fast, he works quickly, his mind races, and he has the strange ability to accurately and presciently answer my questions before I’ve finished asking them. It is an unsettling combination, to be sure. Moritz’s speed and ability to successfully multi-task also translates over to his production choices as well. He has an amazing nine projects that are currently on his desk in various forms of undress; the sequel to XXX is shooting at the time of our interview, Stealth and Devour are in post-production and Moritz is still prepping Spy Hunter and Luke Cage. To put this number in perspective, consider that producers Jerry Bruckheimer, Gale Anne Hurd and James Cameron don’t have nine projects that have been announced collectively.
Moritz grew up in the movie business. His grandfather gave Sam Arcuff and James Nicholson $5,000 to start American International Pictures. His father worked with American International as well, doing marketing and development. Born in 1959, Moritz got a somewhat late start making films; after graduating from UCLA, he and a friend started Malibu Mercantiles, a company that made purses. After selling the business some years later and attending film school at USC, Moritz decided to "try opening my own thing." That thing was Original Film, a company that, to date, has produced five movies that have gone on to gross more than $100 million and is positioned to become one of the most elite production companies in Hollywood.
I spoke to Moritz in his Original Film office in Los Angeles:
Even though you’d produced dozens of films prior to Torque, I’d never put two and two together with you and your own style of films until I saw that movie. It wasn’t necessarily my type of movie, but it did what it did well. It’s okay. It’s not my favorite movie either. I have some regrets about the movie, overall. It’s a tough one. It never was the movie that I wanted it to be. The tone of it was different than the movie I set out to make originally. Even though the director, [Joseph Kahn], is a very talented guy, I don’t think he was the right guy for the movie. I wanted to make a grittier, more real biker flick. This was a calm version of a biker flick and not what I wanted to do.
Was it very far from your initial vision?
It was very far from what I originally wanted to do given that I was going to do a motorcycle movie. Yeah. It’s not that I’m completely unhappy with it. My expectations didn’t meet what the end product was. That’s what happened on that movie. That happens often, though. When you’re making a movie, you just don’t know. If you’re having a great experience on set, it doesn’t mean that the movie’s going to be any good and if you’re having a bad experience it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be bad.
And there are so many places to err between the green light and the final cut.
There are so many decisions you make on a daily basis. There are some every minute and you realize that any of those critical decisions can derail your movie completely. If you’re making Catwoman and you choose a suit like that, then that’s one of the things that can lead that movie astray. If the suit would have been better or more inherent to what that character has always been about, I think that movie would have done better.
Really, are there any decisions that aren’t crucial? It seems everything could backfire on you in a certain way.
Well there are some that are more crucial than others, I’ll put it that way. Every decision is crucial, yes, but... To me everything is very idea-dependent, so it starts with whether to move forward with a certain idea or not. After that, the big decisions are: 1) Are you going to make the movie or not? 2) Who are you going to hire as the director? And, 3) Who are you going to hire to be in the movie?
You mentioned that Torque didn’t turn out the way you wanted it too. On the flip side of that, I’m sure there are projects that have been exactly what you’ve wanted. What makes you happy with a project you’ve completed?
Movies that meet my expectations or meet the vision I had when I originally read the scripts. The end product is what it was supposed to be. I always try to make movies that have a youthful feel to them. It doesn’t mean that they have to be about young people or starring young people or with a lot of action in [them]. Just movies that have life to them. That’s what interests me.
Is that how you judge your films? How close the end result is to what you set out to make?
No, I judge [a] film by the first time I show it to an audience and how they feel about it. To me, that’s the price of admission. For me, that’s the bar I’m trying to get. After that first screening when we show the movie, if the audience reacts really favorably, you feel like all that time and effort and all that blood, sweat and tears you put into the movie is worth it.
That seems slightly detached when you say you judge a film based upon the audience’s reaction. Can’t an audience ever be wrong?
I don’t think an audience is ever wrong. The audience is ultimately the box office and the audience has no reason to like or dislike a movie. They either do or they don’t. When you’re sitting in an audience and watching your movie play with an audience and they like it, those are the critics that I’m interested in. Those are the only real critics that I’m interested in.
Funny. After I saw Torque, I looked up some other reviews on line and I wrote down some of the comments. They said it was "for teens," it had "cartoonishly simplified women in leathers" and they said it was like a "feature length soft-drink commercial." I found it funny that the critics mentioned these three things because, to me, those are the film’s main selling points. Most people are watching Torque because of the cartoonishly simplified women.
The problem was that Torque didn’t have soul. The Fast and the Furious had soul. There were all these different characters that came together because of their love of cars. They were a motley group of abandoned dogs who found a family through this sub-culture that they were all involved in.
How do you instill soul into a project?
That’s a combination of luck and hitting the zeitgeist of America at a certain time.
While we’re talking about ‘soul,’ how does an actor tap into that? What qualities give someone soul and make someone a good action hero?
To me, it’s people who pop off the screen. I don’t care if I’m watching MTV and watching a music video, or a commercial on TV, whatever I’m watching, some people just pop off the screen. It’s like a 3-D effect almost. I’m watching something and it’s like–the girl from the Black Eyed Peas, Fergie–I feel the same way about her as I did when I saw Paul Walker or I saw any of these young actors that I work with. They kind of pop off the screen and it’s something… It’s a gut instinct, it’s how I react. A lot of times I won’t even have the sound on. I’ll be watching and something brings me in.
So it’s something on an almost subconscious level.
Yeah. That’s how I really make a lot of my decisions, just based off of what my gut tells me and how I feel when I’m watching something or reading something. You’ve got to be a good actor, but as an action hero, you’ve got to be able to move as well. You’ve got to be able to fight, you’ve got to be able to run, you’ve got to be able to do some things that you don’t necessarily have to do in life or in a lot of other movies. You’ve got to be physical, as well. You have to physically act as well. You have to look real. If I watch a movie and I see a guy playing baseball and he’s supposed to be a pitcher or a catcher or whatever and he can’t throw the ball the right way, it takes me out of the movie. So if I watch a guy in an action movie and he can’t run, or can’t fight, it’s like, "Get out, I’m done."
When you’re casting your films do you actually put your actors through any kind of preparation or mini-camp?
You can–it’s not the rule–but we always like to. I always like to. When I was going to be involved in Superman [Returns], we were having people act but we were also having people run to make sure that they looked right.
Does anyone have a style of running that is the top of the line in your eyes in terms of smoothness and fluidity?
I thought Tom Cruise in Collateral was very good. But look, Paul Walker is a very athletic guy, he surfs, he skis and it comes across that way, where as other actors I’ve worked with, who shall remain nameless, don’t and they look really funny when they run. When you’re cutting the movie you have to always try to hide it.
We’re doing a scene with Ice Cube now in XXX 2 and he’s jumping and running and he can run and jump and fight and it’s so much easier to sell the action, because you’re not having to get a stuntman the whole time. You can stay with the main characters the whole time because they can actually do it.
Are there any qualities that preclude a person from being an action lead in one of your films?
Not enough talent, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t look at it that way. I look at it in the glass is half full way. I’m not looking at people and saying, ‘They’re not going to work.’ I mean, look, I look for people who aren’t boring. If you’re boring, it doesn’t matter how good of an actor you are. Some people come off the screen as boring and I’m not that interested in them. Other people I watch and I’m interested. I want to watch them, to look at whatever journey they’re going through and that’s what’s important to me.
[Actors are a necessity, but] writers are also a key to the business. Someone who can start with nothing on the page and write something and make it interesting, that’s incredible. A great director can take a great script and make it better, but it’s very hard to take a bad script and make it very good. People being able to write great characters, great dialogue, to me that’s the hardest part. Plots are tough, but great characters and dialogue are the hardest part. Good writers create something that pulls at your heart and your emotions or somebody who is in such a dark place that you want to figure out why and go with them. Three-dimensional, eccentric, interesting characters are really hard to do. I couldn’t [write] it. I can’t [write] it, but I’d like to think if I read it on the page, I know what it is.
Have you ever felt like you’ve taken a script and made it significantly better than it was?
I think The Fast and the Furious is probably a better movie than a script. I think I Know What You Did Last Summer, for the type of movie it is, is a better movie than it was a script. Well, maybe I wouldn’t say that. It was a good script for what it was. But you know, we always try to take the script and make it better. It doesn’t always work, but we try.
Is there a process, once you get a script, that it goes through?
Every movie is different. I’m not the greatest developer in the world. I’m not the guy who can take a script and work on it for five years and make it better, better, better constantly. I think I’m good at isolating what I think are good ideas. I read a script and I think, "That’s a good, commercial idea." Maybe this script’s not the best, but I think it’s a really good idea. To me, the idea is the most important part.
September 11 and patriotism is big right now. Is there a pull to make something that will resonate big now, but won’t be timeless?
I’m kind of sick of the whole patriotic thing, to be honest. You always want to make something that will be timeless, but that’s hard to do. That’s very hard to do. Styles change. Wardrobes change. Hairstyles change. You watch a movie and its kind of dated because of those things. It has to be made during some time period, and styles change. Cycles come around. Those things that are out are back in. You look at the break dancing movie, You Got Served. Okay, break dancing was in fifteen years ago, but it just came out. It’s back it again. It happens with movies all the time. I think the movies that work the best are about lifestyles, sub-cultures. Something like Flashdance. You go into a world people don’t know much about and that makes for an interesting movie.
Do you feel a temptation to tap into trends?
You obviously would love to tap into a trend, but if you’re trying to, you’re probably not going to. It has to happen organically.
If a trend happens, then, it’s usually accidental?
I just don’t think that’s something you can plan out. It either happens or it doesn’t. I think it’s impossible to predict trends. Flashdance set a trend with the way [Jennifer Beals] dressed, but it’s really not something you can plan out. Making movies about lifestyles is the easiest way to latch onto a trend, because most trends are based on lifestyles that people aren’t aware of.
The Fast and the Furious employed a number of really insane live action stunts. In Torque, however, you utilized a host of CG effects. I know at one point there was this obviously CG’d car on the side of the frame that really stood out as being fake. Do you have a preference between live action and CG stunts?
I’d always rather do live action. But you want to keep people safe. And it’s a matter of crossing that line. Look, we could do it all live action–it’s cheaper, it looks better–but you don’t want to kill anyone. I just came from XXX 2 where we were shooting and these stuntmen just got blown across a room and they all came out to watch the monitor to watch the take and they all had blood on them; real blood, not stage blood. They had all gotten pumped and they loved it, it was crazy.
You’ve been making more action films lately. Do you have a style of editing that you prefer? Your stuff isn’t hacked to pieces like John Woo’s films, so I ask.
Really, that’s the director. The directors probably have more of a style in editing than I do. I’m definitely involved with the editing, I give my opinions and.… When it’s needed I go in and do what I have to do. There have been a number of movies where I felt the movie just needed a little more editing, so I’ll come in to work with the director and the editor to get a little more style into the movie.
So it’s not a Kevin Costner/Kevin Reynolds kind of thing.
No, no, no, no.
What goes into getting more style into a movie?
Certain sequences. I like quick cutty sequences and certain sequences I like to let play. If you have a shot that works well in one [scene], why cut it? Sometimes the ability to quick cut can take a mundane sequence and turn it into a better sequence. It’s kind of one of those rules that you use if you have to use. We used a lot of it in Torque because we had to. We didn’t have as much material. Sometimes its something we use to hide mistakes. SWAT is a very–it’s not that cut. It was designed that way and the movie had a much more natural feel to it. In that movie, we were really going for a more naturalistic feel. We tried to do a grittier movie with that movie.
You had said earlier that you do movies with a youthful feel, as your filmography suggests. Do you ever see yourself going outside that mold and trying something different? Adapting something by Jane Austen?
No. I have no interest. I’ll go see it with my wife, but I just don’t want to make it. It’s not what I do best. And it’s not the type of material that I’d want to do. It’d be hard for me. My closest thing to that would be Cruel Intentions where we took Dangerous Liaisons and contemporized it. But that’s as far as I could go with something like that.
You’d find a movie like that hard to do?
It’s not a lifestyle I really understand. I get the sub-cultures and modern lifestyles, but I don’t really get the nature of period pieces.
With this in mind, do you have any desires to produce a movie that will get Oscar buzz?
Obviously, if you’re making movies, you want to make movies that are considered great. It’s something that I’d obviously want, but it’s not the thing that drives me. [I’m driven by] audience reaction and audience satisfaction.
When you read scripts, do you have images in your head that you try to work into the film? This is my opening shot, this is my closing shot, etc?
I wouldn’t go that far, but in SWAT there were a lot of things I thought about. I always loved the idea of that movie. I didn’t just want to make a movie based upon a television series. I wanted to make a movie that could be a great movie regardless of whether it was based on a television show or not and I loved the idea. I just loved the idea of a guy offering $100 million to anybody who can get him out of prison. In my mind, I always envisioned people in different neighborhoods and homes watching live television, and this guy being handed over and screaming out, "$100 million to whoever gets me out!" The quiet of the city at that moment where everybody’s like, "Oh my God." That was the key moment of that movie for me.
Do you ensure that you’re on set for the days when you’re shooting the key moments?
I was most definitely on set that day because I knew I wanted that in every trailer and every commercial and I wanted it done a specific way. I wanted it shot a number of different ways so we’d have it for all different types of mediums. Slow motion, tight, wide, I just wanted that scene covered well.
You had mentioned when you were talking about working at Paramount that you had taken the first step, but at the time, you thought you were hot shit. Are there other things, when you look back, that strike you in the same way?
I remember when I made I Know What You Did Last Summer and the movie at opened like $17 million that weekend. I thought, "Okay, I’ve made it. Now I’m finally getting into that boy’s club. I made a movie!" What you realized was that as a producer, you climbed the hill, the movie’s done, it did well, now you have to climb the next hill. Every time, it’s climbing the next hill. To me, my job is pushing the ball up the hill, all the time. Everyone else is trying to push the ball down the hill all the time. It’s really hard to get things made. Very hard to get things made. Fewer movies are getting made.
More specific than just that, I understand that ‘next’ is always the most important movie, but when you reflect back–
I reflect back and I say, "Okay there’s been a lot of milestones." Getting my first movie made was a big milestone for me. Getting my first studio movie was a big deal. Making Juice was a big milestone for me. I was able to raise the money, make a movie independently and sell it to a major studio, Paramount. That was a big milestone. Made a little money and it was great. Getting to make the movie Volcano -- which was a $100 million movie -- for a young guy, who was somehow able to convince the studio to bet on me, that was a big milestone.
How did you get Fox to bet on you for Volcano?
I owned a script they liked and the only way they were going to get to buy that script was with me attached as the producer. It was a combination of the relationship I’d been developing with them and the other part of it being that it was a project they wanted.
There’s no more to it than that? I know scores of people holding onto scripts who are demanding that they produce and --
There’s no more to it that that. If the studio wants something that you have, then you control the terms of what the deal is. If you have something that more than one person wants you have more leverage and if you control something that only one person wants, then you have less leverage.
