Movies Are Evolving
by Eric Moro

Dreamwatch visits the set of new SF comedy movie Evolution, starring 'The X Files' David Duchovny...

Much like the various species they depict, science fiction films themselves are evolving. No longer are audiences forced to sit through straight-laced technobabble, high on effects and short on story. On the contrary, the narrative, which goes so far as to intermix genres in order to create a more pleasing end product is what drives modern day SF. DreamWorks hopes to usher in the dawn of this new film type with summer 2001's sci-fi comedy Evolution. Wrapping it's final two days of shooting in an abandoned Boeing facility, the production invited Dreamwatch onto the set for a sneak peek at what promises to be an alien film like no other.

WORLD DOMINATION

"Helmed by Ivan Reitman (Who directed such comedy classics as Dave, Kindergarten Cop and the Ghostbusters movies), Evolution follows the chaos that ensues when a meteorite crash-lands into the Arizona desert. Two local Community College instructors (David Duchovny and Orlando Jones) are called out to the scene to investigate. After taking a sample from the crash site, the two determine that the interstellar rock carries within it single-celled alien life forms.

In the course of a few days, the cells evolve into multi-celled organisms and if the accelerated rate of evolution continues, the aliens will soon be poised to take over the planet. The only people standing between the aliens and utter world domination are the two second-rate scientists, a rogue Centre for Disease Control doctor (Julianne Moore) and a fireman looking for adventure (Seann William Scott).

Shooting inside a huge hanger which at one time housed an airplane manufacturing plant, Evolution's crew have built one of the largest inflatable domes ever made for a movie. Amazingly enough, inside that arena is a recreation of the Arizona desert crash site. The set is truly otherworldly and, ironically enough, something you would expect to find in an episode of The X Files. At it's centre is a large orange cylinder that contains the meteor. To the rear of that, a large 'vacuum sealed' elevator takes scientists down the cave where the meteor has fallen. All around are temporary glass constructs that house a research facility, a control room, a small emergency hospital and a cafeteria - a large set for a rather large project.

It comes as no surprise that it would take a production of this magnitude to lure Reitman back into the director's chair. Having settled into the role of producer for non-genre projects, the veteran sci-fi comedy director felt a sense of ownership with Evolution. He could not see such a massive undertaking in anyone else's hands.

"I must say I've been having a great time," says Reitman. "There's been an amazing amount that has changed in terms of what you can do. The evolution (there, I said it!) of CGI is all new since I did even the second Ghostbusters. The opportunities are fabulous. We don't only have a creature here. We have a whole ecosystem full of creatures, so there was an enormous amount of design work done. Phil Tippett, who's the effects supervisor on this, was extremely helpful. I think he's one of the best in the world at doing this kind of stuff - creating creatures that really feel like they're there. They have weight, personality and a texture that you can feel on the screen."

Having been away from the genre for so long with so little information about the film, critics and fans alike have been quick to describe this latest project as Reitman's Ghostbusters for the new millennium. "It's a very difficult (comparison) for me." Says Reitman. "I guess they're doing it because I did the two films back then. Evolution is a comedy; it's large; it's got special effects; it's very funny. In that way, I guess they can be compared. They're two different movies all together. The tone of this is somewhat different - certainly the story is very different. I have both the advantage and the burden of comparison."

Evolution wasn't always a comedy. It was originally developed as a serious alien invasion feature, backed by scientific theory. It wasn't until Reitman (and screenwriters David Diamond and David Weissman) got their hands on the script that the project fell prey to their quirky sense of humour. "The original script, written by Don Jakoby, was serious and I thought it had this really original threat to the world," says Reitman. "I've done a couple of science fiction movies. I like it as a genre, although I like to apply my own brand of comedy to it. I'm always on the look out for something that's just a little bit different and this seemed to have that. I thought if I could combine it with comic characters doing things in a very realistic way, that there might be a very interesting movie from it."

"I knew David Duchovny from Beethoven, which I produced about 10 years ago," says Reitman.  "I remember thinking, whoa, this guy is really good looking. He's got this wonderfully wry, ironic sense of humour. He's smart as hell and someone ought to do a comedy with him."

Reitman on Duchovny

"It's the above mentioned scientific basis that sets the project apart from other alien invasion movies like Independence Day and Mars Attacks!. 

"It's about pan spermia," says the films producer Dan Goldberg, "It's a theory that spores float through space and land somewhere. Slowly, over billions of years, the spores populate a planet, turning it into it's own. That's how life starts on various planets. [Ivan] had a sense of where he could go with [the story]. He saw where we could not get too stupid. He really liked the characters of the two guys from the Community College who come across a world-class scientific event and what happens."

Described as one of the "most difficult shoots" in the director and producers careers, the challenges posed by Evolution are due mainly to the film's rather large number of effects (numbering in the hundreds.) "What we're doing is we have two billion years of evolution that happens over a two or three week period," says Goldberg. "They find some cells and the cells turn into multi-cells and then they turn into flat worms (flat worms took 200 to 300 million years) and that happened over the course of three or four days. David Duchovny's character realizes that this is astounding and the government takes over…. This is going to lead to way worse stuff. They're going to just keep on evolving, so there's lots of creatures at every level of evolution, but we do it very quickly. We have all types of weird creatures in this picture that Phil Tippett has been designing with Ivan.

Creating a new species of life can be very difficult, so the effects supervisor and production designer decided to turn to the everyday world for inspiration - that and the work of some of fantasy's more popular artists. "We basically took our inspiration from underwater elements," says J. Michael Riva, the film's production designer. "A lot of the plants that you'll see in the movie, whether you like them or not, we took a big gamble on making them colorful. I think everybody's done the usual black, gooey mass kind of stuff. Men In Black, it was a good movie, but all the creatures looked the same. So we thought we'd do something different and this is a comedy after all. We bought every book we could on fantasy and were inspired by people like [Zdzislaw] Beksinski, H.R Giger and Wayne Barlowe."

With the script nailed down and the effects planned, Reitman turned his attention to the film's casting. He needed a group of actors that could pull off the rather difficult task of making the extraordinary seem ordinary, yet funny at the same time - a particular strength of the director's as witnessed in Ghostbusters.

"I knew David Duchovny from Beethoven, which I produced about 10 years ago," says Reitman. "I remember thinking "whoa, this guy is really good looking. He's got this wonderfully wry, ironic sense of humour. He's smart as Hell and someone ought to do a comedy with him" then he got this job on TV for seven years where he plays someone smart, but actually not very funny at all. So most people don't realise he has that as part of his personality. I called him as soon as I had the script and just started talking to him about it because I thought that his baggage actually would be useful baggage on one hand, but at the same time he would be a totally different character than the world is used to seeing him."

With Duchovny onboard, the rest of the ensemble cast - a rather impressive list of characters - seemed to just fall into place.

"We saw some clips of Orlando on Mad TV that were very funny." Adds Goldberg. "Seann William Scott we did Road Trip with and Julianne Moore - hey if you can get Julianne Moore - she's one of the great actors of the world."

"A victim of his own genre success, Duchovny has no fear that his work in Evolution will lock him into sci-fi roles for the rest of his life.  "Who's going to do that?" asks Duchovny. "Is the great casting director in the sky going "Hmmm? Did The X Files and now he's done this. That's all he can do?"

David Duchovny talks about type casting

Known as Special Agent Fox Mulder from The X Files, Duchovny's performance in Evolution is a departure from the straight-laced character he portrays on a weekly basis. Even so, this is not the first time the actor has experimented with comedy. He shocked audiences of The Larry Sanders Show back in 1992 with his rather dry sense of humour.

"It's different and that's why I wanted to do it, because it's a totally different performance style for me," says Duchovny. "I was looking for something different to do. The fact that there were aliens in it was kind of a drawback, but it's just a superficial coincidence. Comedy's challenging because there's really only one criteria and that's if people laugh or not. Drama - people like it a little or they like it a lot, but you don't have to cry to like it. In comedy, if people aren't laughing it's not successful, so you're really putting your ass on the line."

BEYOND THE X FILES

A victim of his own genre success, Duchovny has no fear that his work in Evolution will lock him into sci-fi roles for the rest of his life. "Who's going to do that?" asks Duchovny. "Is the great casting director in the sky going "Hmmm? Did The X Files and now he's done this. That's all he can do!""

The actor does admit that working with Reitman has been a great experience. The director's knowledge and ability to essentially play "God" on set is truly impressive.

"Ivan is extremely specific," says Duchovny. "He sees and hears everything. Seeing everything is one thing, which is a talent in itself. But he also hears everything. He can hear in the tone of your voice whether or not he thinks you're relaxed and he'll come to me and talk to me about the voice and things you wouldn't expect." It's also the director that attracted co-star Jones to the project - that and the phenomenal cast. "Ivan Reitman clearly was an attraction," says Jones, "I grew up watching his movies. David Duchovny I saw first on, I think, Larry Sanders and then on Saturday Night Live and I thought; "This guy's really, really funny and I wonder when he's going to do a comedy." That was it. And I get to stare at Julianne Moore all day long…."

A relative newcomer to the world of Hollywood, in a rather short time Jones has managed to work with some of the biggest names in the industry, Reitman and Moore included.

"It's all surreal in a sense," says Jones. "When I was working with Barry Levinson it was weird. Gene Hackman was the same thing. You never really quite get a grip on it. It's sort of surreal, but I'll take it"

Source: Dreamwatch, Typed by Tracy, (you can link to this article)