ENTER THE BLOOD RAVE: An Interview with Stephen Norrington
Stephen Norrington is an extraordinary gentleman. 1998’s Blade, the Marvel comic book adaptation that laid down the rules for ‘the gritty superhero origin story’ trope, is THE greatest action film of the 1990’s. Seanie had the distinct pleasure of chatting with the incredibly generous, humble and visionary director who gave us the neck for this podcast to draw from!
Seanie: Vampirism, as a theme, has been explored countless times since the beginning of cinematic history. What continues to make Blade standout in the crowd is that the film has such a distinct identity. Even 23 years after its release, it still feels so fresh and timeless. The film’s world feels so fully realized from the get-go. Did you have any major frames of reference influencing you as you went into the project?
Mostly from my personal life experiences and interests at the time. New Line Cinema (shuttered subsidiary of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group) were impressed by my first movie, Death Machine (1994), and were presumably looking for a talented neophyte director to hire for cheap. So, they sent me the script with Wesley Snipes attached and it seemed immediately clear to me how I would do it: as real as possible, not gothic, not occult, naturalistic lighting, plausible technologies. I grew up with comics and always took them very seriously — as an adult I had no sense that comics were ‟silly” — it seemed obvious to me that a comic character could be as plausible as a soldier or an astronaut. The original script was less austere, less realistic, less modern — there was no blood club (a biker bar instead with a sexy vampire dancer), there were no political conflicts between purebloods and turned vampires, no martial arts, no obvious opportunities for muscular dance music.
My contributions were Deacon Frost’s angle as a modern “Gucci Insurrectionist” — from that flowed the rave music, the underground clubs, the entourage, the belligerence, the antiauthoritarianism, the casual fascism. I was interested in the club world at the time and saw it as a thrilling-but-cruel place full of judgment, superficiality and threat, all of which were expressed most clearly in the blood club sequenceI also added the political conflict between the vampires — the original script had Frost’s motivation as solely power for power’s sake which didn’t seem very real to me — in England, where I grew up, classism was and is still a thing, people judge other classes harshly or with envy — one’s class in life is often assigned by the accident of birth and no amount of success can “take Essex out of the Essex Girl”
I understood that world from the inside out and worked with writer David S. Goyer (Dark City, Batman Begins, Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice) to give those resentments to Deacon Frost, to give him more of a reason to pursue his goal. As my influence as a neophyte director was limited, Goyer felt strongly. He and I had a fractious relationship, but the end result came out good and we ended up friends. I must say, I am in awe of the career he’s built since. Hollywood is a hard biz, and Goyer navigated it with skill and humour (something I was not able to do). He’s now a bona fide A-list power player.
Wesley added all the martial arts — that was totally his thing and frankly, I lucked the hell out! — he had a stellar fight crew and my taste for hanging back and letting things happen (as opposed to undisciplined shakycam) perfectly suited the fights. Wesley also created the character with little input from me. We both envisioned Blade as an unstoppable Terminator, but Wesley brought dimensions and complexity that would never have crossed my mind. I don’t remember how much was in the script, the lines were there but I don’t recall much specific description of his demeanor — however it came about, Wesley owned the character — hard to imagine Blade being played by anyone else after that in hindsight.
The collection of disparate ideas from Goyer, Wesley and myself came together surprisingly well. The thing hangs together quite effectively, but the truth was that we all argued over “tired traditional vampires” VS. “obnoxious rave music” VS. “boring political dynamics” VS. “chop socky martial arts” VS ‟distracting framing” VS. ‟too many wide shots” VS. “box office death because of the R-rating” — and yet the outcome was successful! An accidental symphony? Go figure!
How much of your vision, from production design to special effects to soundtrack, made it from your head to the screen?
Well, my ‟vision” was really just those elements I mentioned. I didn’t really have some overarching scheme but, yes, I got involved in every creative aspect. Prior to directing I had done twelve years of professional makeup effects and animatronics, and had worked on loads of sets and in loads of workshops. I also drew well, wrote well, composed electronic music and had done a ton of photography, so I had strong ideas about all of those aspects and a lot of nuts and bolts experience.
I was also a bit of a manbaby with a big ego and horrible people skills, which lead to conflicts with other creative people. In hindsight, the conflicts probably kicked things up a notch, but the experience was grueling. You probably know I quit the biz after League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I had many reasons for leaving. Not least was my desire to grow up and not have to fight for my creative ideas every day. I guess overall what I tried to bring to Blade was a certain tone: a realistic dusty, grimy, plausible ‟crime city” vibe, to ground the comic book elements as much as possible so they came off totally convincing. In that regard, I’d say I succeeded about 70%. The city, the car, the blood club, Whistler, the locations, the music, the atmospheres, all seem pretty effective — the prophecy, the fat vampire (Pearl), the hidden temple, the Moscow ending, not so much. I did try to get the whole prophecy thing removed. It seemed too woo-woo and occult to me and I would have preferred that the “Blood God’’ was some kind of technological Cronenbergesque transformation of Frost into a “Master Vampire” whatever that means… a vampire Aryan? In my opinion, the reshot ending works great and is full of cool stuff. I always felt bummed that the CG “Blood God” god never made it across the finish line. These days those fluid effects can be done on a laptop but back in 1996 with a meager CG budget, it was a bridge too far.
Aesthetically, I came in with immovable views on composition, formats, sound, music and lighting, all of which I lifted from John Carpenter. The Thing is my favorite movie of all time and I was hugely influenced by the realistic lighting, the costumes, the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the look of true anamorphic lenses, the atmospheric environmental sounds, the low-key music and the use of silence and wide shots — I’ve made four movies (number five is in production as we speak…) and for all of them I’ve done exactly the same things aesthetically. My tombstone will be carved in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio!
Was there anything in particular that was deemed too extreme to make it to the screen?
Not that I recall. There were some things that were too dumb to make it to the screen. The Chairman Of the Studio thought that the vampires should explode into different materials depending on their status in the vampire world. An important vampire would explode into a shower of diamonds and minion vampires would explode into a shower of shit. This was pitched at a meeting after the first screening to the studio. Everyone loved the movie except The Chairman. He thought the blood club was “too much” and the vampires turning to ash “too repetitive.” His solution was to have the vampire deaths be more varied ie: diamonds, shit, silk, smoke. This was after most of the effects had been done and after his initial command, which was to remove the blood club scene entirely because it was ‟too intense.”
I flew into a rage at the meeting and started calling him ‟dude… dude… dude!” Other execs called my agent and told him to tell me to calm down. The Chairman was talking about cutting out the BEST PART OF THE MOVIE!… I.E: the first ten minutes upon which I could see my future career would be based!
Ultimately, of course, reason prevailed. The movie came out in the form you see it and the opening ten minutes did get me loads of offers. Five years later I quit the biz to get away from people like The Chairman.
Blade proved to be quite influential in the visual and stylistic choices of many action and horror movies released after it. Did you feel like you were creating a gem at the time? Were you shocked at the impact that followed?
Thanks for the kudos but I’m not sure Blade was as influential as all that. I think it has stood the test of time and would fit in nicely as a small Marvel movie from this decade (with better CGI) — but I think there was a zeitgeist going on at the time. Mortal Kombat, Dark City, Blade, The Matrix — and Matrix was the truly influential picture — perhaps all us filmmakers were growing up at that time and taking that kind of material more seriously than previous generations to be honest, once I was done with Blade I was keen to forget the experience.
I thought the movie was OK… but making it had not been fun for me, so I turned down the sequel and moved on. I didn’t think much about it for decades until Black Panther came out. Suddenly I was getting loads of requests for comments on how Blade had been both the first black superhero movie and the first Marvel movie. It was cool that people rediscovered the movie, and I was one of those people! That was the biggest surprise, that decades later during the release of Black Panther, Blade was suddenly remembered as prescient, notable and ahead of its time….. So sure: I’ll take that!
A large part of Blade’s charm is its music choices. How much involvement did you have with the soundtrack? Do you remember who suggested New Order’s “Confusion (Pump Panel Reconstruction Remix)” for the Blood Rave?
I had monolithic input on the soundtrack. For me, music is the invisible star of a movie. It’s a massively powerful secret weapon that has to be woven seamlessly with sound effects dialogue and the picture edit. Usually, sound effects guys do their thing, the editor does his thing, the composer does her thing and then it’s all cobbled together at the end by the audio engineer. That’s not my thing at all. All the elements have to work together from the ground up. In my opinion, that’s what a filmmaker’s job is: to make a film, not have a load of other people do a bunch of disparate stuff and bang it all together in the last weeks before release.
The source tracks were picked by me, the score was composed by Mark Isham, tweaked by me with him at his studio, and recut quite substantially by music editor Paul Rabjohns who essentially re-composed much of the score through edits and overdub to more accurately reflect what I wanted. New Line had an excellent music supervisor called Dana Sano who fed me a constant stream of source tracks in the rave/dance/ambient/drone genres. At first Dana’s remit was to try and get a bunch of name pop acts in the movie so New Line could sell a soundtrack album but she quickly realized that wasn’t going to fly with me so she pivoted to sending me the kinds of things I was looking for. By the time I was editing with editor Paul Rubell, I had a huge library of appropriate (and licensable) music from Dana plus my own collection to test out on particular scenes.
Nothing we had for the blood club worked, every track was too tuneful and distracting. Almost as a joke I tried some monstrously repetitive industrial tracks and discovered that was exactly the oppressive vibe that was needed. I scoured the library for candidates and the Pump Panel remix stood out as the gold cut. I did a complex music edit to give the track the progressive structure you hear in the movie (builds and builds to a climax) and from that point on the whole scene was built to the track and the tracks surrounding it, which is why everything works seamlessly in that sequence: everything was timed, animated and edited in relation to the music.
Was your deleted scene cameo as Michael Morbius a fun wink for the audience or was it going to form a larger part of your nixed sequel ideas for Blade 2?
Ha! That cameo was not supposed to be Morbius! It wasn’t supposed to be a cameo as I previously appeared in the movie as a vampire biting a girl on a street corner. What that coda was, was my preferred, succinct and ambiguous ending — the ‟Morbius” character was just some ambiguous dark figure that Blade recognized and we didn’t! If a sequel was made the character could have been revealed to be whoever was the bad guy in the sequel. Even if they never made a sequel my ending efficiently gave people the feeling that the action continued, the war against the vampires was always going on. The studio didn’t like the ambiguity of the moment, they wanted things to be more cut and dried, not blatantly open-ended and my pointing to The Thing as having a fantastically ambiguous ending didn’t help, because The Thing was a box office dud! For some reason they also wanted to see Blade in Moscow which was way out of tone in my opinion, but the studio won that fight and Blade ended up in Moscow.
Somewhere through the intervening years, the character on the roof became Morbius on the roof, perhaps because David Goyer suggested that it might have been Morbius in an interview but I don’t recall it ever being specifically Morbius at the time of shooting. It was me playing the character for purely logistical reasons. I was game, present, skinny and it didn’t cost any more to put me in the costume. My long hair looked good blowing in the wind!
Years later, I did explore a prequel to Blade with Stephen Dorff about the origins of Frost. It was very different from Blade. Blade wasn’t in it! It was set in the Amazon rainforest and involved Frost discovering the source of the primal vampires, the first source of all vampirism. However, it turned out the rights to the world of Blade were trapped in all kinds of bad blood between big corporations so that was the end of that!
Finally, we’ve spent so much time looking back at something. Is there anything we can look forward to?
A new movie called The Migrant! It’s a compact sci-fi feature with big ideas! A few years ago I realized prosumer cameras, software and computers had gotten to the point where one could make a pro movie basically single handed! So… that’s what I’m doing! I’m using my VFX/practical FX/writer/director skills, a couple of actors, a few sets, some location shooting and no crew except my girlfriend! I’ve been making it for a couple of years and will probably finish it by next year! Most fun I ever had making movies! Almost as much fun as ten years of Burning Man (but that’s a whole other story…)! Keep an eye out!
Stephen, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Please come back to talk to us about The Migrant upon its release!
Cheers! Thanks Sean! Great questions! I enjoyed answering them!
