2009 has been one of the busiest years for you in a very busy decade. This year alone, you worked on everything from "Jennifer's Body" and "Survival of the Dead" to "Public Enemies," and 2010 looks like it'll be more of the same. How do you keep that pace and keep the ideas fresh?
It's challenging. The film that I'm on right now, "Predators" -- I've worked with Robert Rodriguez [the film's co-writer and executive producer] since "Four Rooms" and "From Dusk Till Dawn," so we've had a tremendous working relationship for 14 years. I had 62 people on that crew and 13 weeks to realize all these different creature concepts on top of the last 12 months, where I went from Berlin with "Inglourious Basterds" to Albuquerque for "The Book of Eli" with Denzel Washington and David Valdez, who was the producer on "The Green Mile" and "The Time Machine," which we worked on. We wrapped that and went on set for "Piranha 3-D" for Alexandre Aja, with whom I did "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Mirrors." And then it was back to L.A. for "Sorcerer's Apprentice," and then on to "Predators." And Howard Berger spent the last six months in Australia working on "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader."
So to answer your question, I don't know how I keep all of it on track, but I've been doing it for 25 years. And I have a great crew, with a lot of people that I've worked with for decades and help me realize all the stuff that we want to do. I've always said that the first two or three weeks on a movie are the most exciting. The slate is clean, and you sit with the director and start riffing ideas and get a feel for the creative process. The director on "Predators," Nimrod Antal, was such a fan of the original "Predator," and had this great enthusiasm for the project, and that gets you charged up. When you meet with a director and they're excited, it's like the Frankenstein monster. That energy blasts you and then you start to see things coming together. You get your sculptors and your mold makers and your painters going, and the stuff comes to life. You know, that Frankenstein analogy is a good one.... (Laughs.)
