Only a Chicago filmmaker could get away with references to C.G. Jung, Roger Corman and Mike Ditka in the same interview. Actually, it was two filmmakers, but, because they’re brothers — and their new movie had just had its world premiere the night before — it’s easy to forgive such adventurous namedropping.
You’ll probably be hearing a lot about Larry and Andy Wachowski. Their dazzling sci-fi thriller, “The Matrix,” is in theaters nationwide, and if the presence of Keanu Reeves and amazing special effects still mean anything at the box office, it could become a blockbuster.
If it does, don’t expect the Rogers Park residents to go too far out of their way to court fame. Aside from briefly mentioning the title of their first picture (the sexy, neo-noir “Bound”), the biographical notes provided by Warner Bros. would only allow that the co-writer/directors have been “working together for 30 years,” but “little else is known about them.”
In fact, both of these unpretentious young men, who grew up on the South Side and attended Whitney Young High School, would be just as happy if nothing were known about them. They applaud reclusive director Terry Malick’s decision to boycott the Academy Awards ceremony and want it written into their next contract that they don’t have to participate in publicity junkets. Nonetheless, they agreed to show up at the landmark Argyle Hotel last week to discuss the project that has been their personal obsession for the better part of a decade.
“We don’t really have our finger on the pulse of the Hollywood community,” Andy said. “We like Chicago a lot, and we tolerate L.A. because we have to be here so often. It’s a better town to see movies in than Chicago, but Chicago’s a better place to live.”
Not that either of them has been able to spend much time back home lately. In an effort to save money and take advantage of tax benefits, “The Matrix” was filmed in Australia.
“From a filmmaker’s point of view, it was great,” said Andy, who’s 31. “The crews and the whole community were hungry and eager to prove they could swing with the Hollywood big boys.”
“Sydney never had a movie that was this big and complicated,” added Larry, who’s two years older. “Nobody had ever asked to fly a helicopter over the city. They didn’t have any landing pads, so we had to build one in a park nearby.
“On the first day of shooting, our main crew took over a skyscraper, while we had a second-unit crew shooting helicopter stuff. So we had a third of the city blocked off.”
It’s almost unheard of that a pair of outlanders with only one completed film under their belts (and a credited script for “Assassins,” which they disown) would be given the reins of a big-budget studio production. But “The Matrix” was their baby, and the Wachowskis wanted to deliver it.
“A lot of people offered us movies after `Bound,’ but we just wanted to do `The Matrix,’ ” Larry explained. “It took a long time to pitch to the studio, because upper management at Warner Bros. just didn’t get it. So we ended up getting some of our friends to help us storyboard the script and we drew this enormous comic book.
“After we showed that to (studio head) Terry Semel, he finally said, `We’re on.’ “
Even after seeing the movie, it isn’t crystal clear what the Matrix of the title is supposed to be, though it seems to represent the barrier between a cyberworld of biomechanical creatures and what’s left of mankind in the 22nd Century. Human beings are enslaved as pod creatures in a virtual universe that resembles contemporary Chicago. While the people imagine themselves going about their daily activities, their inert bodies actually are acting as batteries for their masters.
A cocky computer programmer, Neo (Reeves), is enlisted by a band of freedom fighters (led by Laurence Fishburne) who see their recruit as the messiah. After he joins the team — whose members live in a hovercraft and can beam themselves through the Matrix via an old-fashioned rotary phone — Neo is programmed to become a kung-fu warrior whose acrobatic skills and cunning are the equal of police agents.
“We’re big readers, and we’re interested in mythology and archetypes,” Andy said. “I think mythology informs a culture, especially when it’s used to investigate relevant political, social and technological issues. Through time, cultures sort of communicate with each other through interpretation of myths.
“Archetypes exist for a reason, and Jung argues they exist because they’re a part of human consciousness. We wanted to examine certain myths through the structure of this world and the relevant issues of this world.”
Although there are enough references in “The Matrix” to Judeo-Christian tradition, Buddhism, classic mythology and Japanese samurai to fill a term paper, most viewers will be drawn to the fast-paced action and gravity-defying fight sequences, which were choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, one of the top Hong Kong wire-stunt specialists.
“One of the great things about the Hong Kong style is that it originated out of this guerrilla-type filmmaking they have there,” Andy said. “Their budgets are fractions of what it is for a typical Hollywood picture. The Hong Kong wire work is about ease and it’s about speed.”
The Wachowskis may be relative newcomers to the industry, but their story is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Lifelong movie fanatics, both are college dropouts who left school to write comics and start a Chicago construction company.
“We were inspired by Roger Corman’s book, `How I Made a Hundred Movies and Never Lost a Dime,’ and wrote this low-budget horror movie, which we wanted to get him to make,” Andy said. “A lot of people read it, but no one thought it was accessible. Then, we wrote this other script (`Assassins’), which was bought by Dino De Laurentiis’ company, and he sold it to Warner Bros.
“Dino asked what we were doing next, and we said we wanted to direct `Bound.’ “
That film got respectable reviews and ended up making money. More important, it gave them the credibility as directors to be able to shop “The Matrix” as a package deal, with action maestro Joel Silver shepherding the project through Warner Bros.
“We had a (Mike) Ditka quote on the wall of our office when we were doing `Bound,’ ” Larry said. “It said, `The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare.’ That’s really the trick to directing.
“If you can be prepared . . . if you know what you want, on that day . . . you can get your money on the screen a lot better. So we storyboard and have long discussions about things.”
The brothers are back in Chicago, trying to grab a little R&R before coming back to Hollywood with their next idea. They are determined not to get pigeonholed by the studios into producing any one kind of film.
“We call a lot of the pictures made in Hollywood `McMovies’ — which isn’t a knock on McDonald’s or the movies — because they’re an exact product and everyone knows what it is . . . which is why people like it,” Larry said. “You go to McDonald’s because you know what you’re going to get. So we wouldn’t be very good at doing that. . . . We’d rather go back to carpentry.”
