A FEW GOOD "MEN"
From From the outside, Men In Black (MIB)
Headquarters looks like any other gray, square building in lower Manhattan.
But after you travel past the giant ventilation covers, into a dingy elevator,
and through a bland corridor, another world emerges. Aliens of all shapes,
colors, and sizes mingle with humans in this vast, high-ceiling sea of
chrome. Part airport, space-shuttle control room, and police station, MIB
Headquarters looks like a real-life rendering of a Dr. Seuss fantasy. Yet
as tangible as this room is to its inhabitants, it doesn't exist to the
outside world—literally or figuratively.
In fact, MIB Headquarters is a beautifully designed set
in Amblin Entertainment/Columbia Pictures science-fiction adventure comedy,
"Men In Black." In the movie, it's the heart of a top-secret government
agency in charge of alien immigration, unofficially devised to keep the
streets clean from cosmic riff-raff.
"I thought of the MIB Headquarters not so much as a headquarters,
but as a terminal or Ellis Island for aliens designed in the 1960s," says
production designer Bo Welch ("Batman Forever"), discussing his inspiration
for the set. "At that time, we had a space program and an optimistic view
of space travel and the world in general. Flying saucers were part of the
[1964] World's Fair architecture." Into Welch's wonderland step two black-clad,
sunglass-wearing MIB agents ("Batman Forever's" Tommy Lee Jones and "ID4's"
Will Smith), stripped of their identity, street clothes, and even their
fingerprints. Their mission: to stop a terrorist extraterrestrial from
causing an intergalactic disaster.
Husband and wife producer team Walter Parkes and Laurie
MacDonald ("Twister"), also the co-heads of DreamWorks' motion picture
division, first learned of "Men In Black" from Lowell Cunningham's Malibu
comic book.
"What we liked about the comic book was that it kind of
posited the idea that there were these 1500 or so aliens living among us
that needed to be policed," says Parkes. "Since no one [from an alien world]
chose to live on Earth, it attracts low-life scum from around the universe,
and that's why you need guys like the Men In Black to shake them up. One
of the writers on this, Ed Solomon, described Earth as kind of like Barstow,
which is a place to stop for gas on the way to Yosemite, but otherwise
has no inherent value."
After buying the rights to
"Men In Black" back in 1992, Parkes and MacDonald began the tough process
of developing a script. "The comic book gave us a great title and an alluring
concept," Parkes and MacDonald told BOXOFFICE in a joint written statement.
"But there were no characterizations, nor any hint of a story that could
be expanded to a feature film. This is a problem with most graphic novels
as source material: they are structured to roll out over many issues, and
gradually establish characters and storylines."
Around the same time, Parkes and MacDonald began the search
for a director and immediately sent the script to Barry Sonnenfeld ("The
Addams Family"), who at the time was developing "Get Shorty" with Jersey
Films.
"We chose Barry after assessing his work and the particular
challenges of `Men In Black,'" say Parkes and MacDonald. "Tonally, the
movie tries to hit a very specific target. It is comedic, but the comedy
is played straight. It is stylized, but it takes place in the real world.
It's science fiction, but the story owes much to tough police melodramas
like `French Connection.' There are very few directors who could balance
these disparate elements, and do so with real visual flair."
As an esteemed cinematographer on such movies as "Raising
Arizona," "Three O'Clock High," and "Misery"—to name just a few—Sonnenfeld
indeed has a strong, refreshing style. But he says he was drawn to the
project for its script.
"I felt that it was quirky and I could find a way to make
it a little different," recalls Sonnenfeld. "I don't know if aliens exist
or not, but I do truly believe we don't have a clue about what's really
going on."
Judging from the resurgence
of science fiction, Sonnenfeld is not alone. From "The X Files" and "3rd
Rock From the Sun" to "ID4" and "Mars Attacks!," aliens are the hot trend
in Hollywood. "I think there's a lot of science fiction stories because
the year 2000 is coming up," Sonnenfeld explains. "Suddenly, the future
is now. The other reason is that as the U.S. gets more and more politically
correct, it's hard to pick bad guys that don't disturb some organization
or group. You can pretty much feel fine about getting rid of aliens."
Eliminating aliens may be easier than creating them. In
"MIB," there's an inch-high critter that lives inside a human brain, a
couple of foot-high, pink wormy-looking creatures that work in MIB headquarters
(and who, naturally, steal office supplies), a bug that resides inside
the skin of a rotting human carcass, and Mikey, a humongous purplish beast
who kind of resembles a rabid Barney with scales and flippers. The only
thing these space monsters have in common visually is their combination
of menace and/or humorousness.
"The hardest thing to figure out in the beginning was
what the tone of the film was," says legendary makeup effects guru Rick
Baker. "When you read the script, it can be taken a couple of different
ways. So we did a lot of drawings. But there wasn't any one kind of concept
for the look of the aliens."
For Sonnenfeld, designing believable creatures posed several
problems. "I'm always amused when people say `There can't be life on Mars,
there's no oxygen,'" he says. "Well, that's just like a totally tunnelvisioned
concept that, for life, you need water and oxygen. But how do you create
aliens that don't look like our idea of aliens, meaning creatures with
two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two arms and two legs?
"On the other hand, Rick would design aliens that didn't
have human characteristics, and I'd say, `Without eyes, how do we know
where this thing is looking? Without a mouth, how do we know it's talking?'
You're in this strange situation where you're trying to create totally
unique and unusual aliens, who still look familiar enough that the audience
knows anger or sadness."
Once the creature designs were approved, Baker teamed
with the effects wizards at Industrial Light ? Magic to bring the aliens
to life using a complex combination of animatronics, computer imaging,
and makeup. "We started with a drawing," Baker says. "Then we'd do a small
scale model. That scale model was then scanned at a laser scanning place
that would record the information in a way that could be used as a computer
model. When we finished the life-size version of the rubber suit, ILM would
come out and photograph the paints we had put on it, so they could map
that onto the computer model."
Sonnenfeld then had to make sure the computer animated
creatures gave acceptable performances. "It's a creature, but it's still
a character in the movie," says Sonnenfeld. "So you have to teach animators
comedy. They're great, but they're computer guys. What they think funny
is, `Hey, did you hear that, we got 12 megabytes of RAM, ha ha ha.'"
While his aliens could be troublesome at times, Sonnenfeld
thoroughly enjoyed working with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. "Will is
incredibly funny, nice, and charming," he says, "and Tommy is incredibly
intimidating but incredibly bright and not arbitrary. We would start a
shooting day with a rehearsal without the crew. Tommy would say, without
fail, `The words suck, the writer didn't know what he was doing, what he
meant, why this scene exists at all. It's overwritten and it doesn't make
sense and it's not funny, but hey, I'm getting too much money to complain.
So tell me where to stand, what to say, and I'm there for you.'"
Steven Spielberg, who serves
as executive producer on "Men In Black," also helped influence the story.
"Steven had great ideas not only in preproduction," Sonnenfeld remarks,
"but I would show him stuff in post, and he would say, `You know, would
it be funny if you got an additional shot of Will looking through the window?'
I'd say, 'You know what? I don't know, but I'll shoot it because...' Well
shit, it's Steven Spielberg. I don't think it's funny, but what the hell.
I did it, cut it in, and it was hilarious."
"Men In Black" is scheduled for a July release, but the
fun doesn't stop there. Parkes and MacDonald are developing an animated
children's series based on the film that will incorporate more alien characters.
There's also the Galoob toy line, featuring Men In Black and alien dolls.
For now, though, Sonnenfeld is content with putting visions
of aliens in his viewers' heads. "My hope is that when you leave the movie
theater, you'll see who's waiting in line for the next show—if there is
anyone waiting in line for the next show—and you'll sort of elbow your
friend and say, `Look at that guy. Tell me he's not a Regick.'"
"Men in Black." Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith and Linda
Fiorentino. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Screenplay by Ed Solomon, based
on the comic book series by Lowell Cunningham. Produced by Walter F. Parkes
and Laurie MacDonald. Executive producer: Steven Spielberg. A Columbia
Pictures release. Opens July 2.
Suffering constant irritants like last summer's alien invasion, planet Earth seemed to be having a shortage of luck in 1996. No doubt because Will Smith, 28, hogged it all. Put aside that he seems to have been born knowing how to rap, act, and make people laugh. This year he proved he also has an innate sense of what it takes to be a movie star. With a casual puff of a cigar, a commitment to "whup E.T.'s ass," and a swift right hook, Smith distinguished himself among the ensemble cast of Independence Day, the year's highest-grossing movie, and went from being famous to being famous. "I was recognized from TV, but this is way beyond that," says the actor. ? What really sets Smith apart, though, is that he has arrived bearing a uniquely varied r?sum?. First, he was the rapper Fresh Prince, who, along with his partner, DJ Jazzy Jeff (Townes), enjoyed three platinum albums and two Grammys. Then, in 1990, he slid his way onto television as a street-smart kid on the right side of the tracks in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. When the show ended its run this year after six seasons, Smith might have gone the way of that red-haired guy from NYPD Blue. But he'd already drawn good reviews as a gay con man in the 1993 drama Six Degrees of Separation and lured large audiences as a cop alongside Martin Lawrence in 1995's action comedy Bad Boys.
With Independence Day, Smith showed those films weren't flukes. Now, "there's a whole difference in the way people greet me," he says. "With TV, I guess people feel like they invite you into their homes. The day before Independence Day opened, people on the street were like, 'Will, what's up?' The day after, it was, 'Hey, Mr. Smith. How are you?' There's a whole different level of respect." (Fans may have also recognized his girlfriend, Jada Pinkett, who enjoyed her own rise with The Nutty Professor and Set It Off.)
All that heat feels a little alien to the smooth-talking Smith. He's finished filming next summer's Men In Black, a sci-fi comedy in which he costars with Tommy Lee Jones and--surprise--some more aliens, and is trying to stay grounded on and off screen. "Right now, I'm just getting my golf stroke together," he says. And at the moment, he seems to have no discernible handicap. --Rebecca Ascher-Walsh Suffering constant irritants like last summer's alien invasion, planet Earth seemed to be having a shortage of luck in 1996. No doubt because Will Smith, 28, hogged it all. Put aside that he seems to have been born knowing how to rap, act, and make people laugh. This year he proved he also has an innate sense of what it takes to be a movie star. With a casual puff of a cigar, a commitment to "whup E.T.'s ass," and a swift right hook, Smith distinguished himself among the ensemble cast of Independence Day, the year's highest-grossing movie, and went from being famous to being famous. "I was recognized from TV, but this is way beyond that," says the actor. ? What really sets Smith apart, though, is that he has arrived bearing a uniquely varied r?sum?. First, he was the rapper Fresh Prince, who, along with his partner, DJ Jazzy Jeff (Townes), enjoyed three platinum albums and two Grammys. Then, in 1990, he slid his way onto television as a street-smart kid on the right side of the tracks in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. When the show ended its run this year after six seasons, Smith might have gone the way of that red-haired guy from NYPD Blue. But he'd already drawn good reviews as a gay con man in the 1993 drama Six Degrees of Separation and lured large audiences as a cop alongside Martin Lawrence in 1995's action comedy Bad Boys.
With Independence Day, Smith showed those films weren't flukes. Now, "there's a whole difference in the way people greet me," he says. "With TV, I guess people feel like they invite you into their homes. The day before Independence Day opened, people on the street were like, 'Will, what's up?' The day after, it was, 'Hey, Mr. Smith. How are you?' There's a whole different level of respect." (Fans may have also recognized his girlfriend, Jada Pinkett, who enjoyed her own rise with The Nutty Professor and Set It Off.)
All that heat feels a little alien to the smooth-talking Smith. He's finished filming next summer's Men In Black, a sci-fi comedy in which he costars with Tommy Lee Jones and--surprise--some more aliens, and is trying to stay grounded on and off screen. "Right now, I'm just getting my golf stroke together," he says. And at the moment, he seems to have no discernible handicap. --Rebecca Ascher-Walsh
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