Q: How hard or daunting was the process of getting this made?
Matthew Vaughn: It was pretty difficult in the sense that every studio said no to it so we went and raised the money independently. I was lucky enough to raise the money. It took about a week but I have a track record with these financiers so they were on board. We just did it.
Q: Was there ever any danger that they would try to make it PG-13?
Matthew Vaughn: The investors, no. They were cool. They believe the fact that
Q: How emboldened were you after the Comic-Con preview?
Matthew Vaughn: It was a scary time and we hadn’t shown anything to anyone. We were very much the underdogs and to go on after Avatar was like suicide. But it played great and we all believed in the movie. When we made Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels we had exactly the same journey. We couldn’t anyone to finance it. We made the film and we couldn’t get any distribution, even when it was finished. Luckily we didn’t have that problem on this film but we believed in it. We knew we’d made something special. Just every day of filming was unique. All the people on this table, there was no ulterior motive apart from making a good film. No one was stalking us, no one was interfering. More movies should be made like that. A lot of the films that we all have to watch and sadly are pretty crap would have probably been much better if a filmmaker was allowed just to get on and do it.
Q: Did you have a cut assembled at Comic Con time?
Matthew Vaughn: Yeah, we screened a cut two days later and then got distribution.
Q: Your homages to the famous Spider-Man line “With great power comes great responsibility” and Wolerine, were you trying to pay homage without outright parody?
Matthew Vaughn: That was my point of view. All I can say is yes, you’re correct. It was a love letter, it sounds slightly pretentious. I hate saying the word postmodern but it was. Mark started it with the comic and we just wanted to take it further.
Q: Who did the fight choreography?
Matthew Vaughn: I had a second unit director called Tim Maurice-Jones. He was the DP on Snatch and we worked together on about three or four films and some commercials. I’ve worked with a lot of second unit directors and to be frank, they’re sort of pretty useless in the sense that they know how to blow things up, but it’s just boring and they don’t seem to care if it fits into the movie or not and they’re all wannabe directors instead of if you’re the second unit director, do as you’re told. Don’t try and do something that’s not the director’s vision. I’m sounding like a total megalomaniac but it’s the truth. Then we had a fight coordinator called Brad Allen who helped. He’s a really clever fight guy.
Q: Why did you choose The Spirit 3 for the fake movie title they go see on the cinema marquee?
Matthew Vaughn: Originally we did have Spider-Man 10 or 12 or something, and Sony weren’t happy about that. So we were working with a studio who’s got a bit more liberal minded open point of view. Whoever bought the movie, we assumed would have a superhero film so we thought we have a scene where all the different characters are in the same cinema watching a superhero movie. So you have the goons looking bored or Frank or Mark Strong looking bored while Red Mist, everyone’s just sitting in different areas in the cinema all interacting to a superhero film, but the studios weren’t interested in the movie, let alone giving us footage.
Q: What were the highlights of making the movie?
Matthew Vaughn: I just had fun. For me it just made me fall in love with making movies again and again because I did a studio movie beforehand. It was just painful having people interfering and giving you bad ideas that you have to spend your life fighting against for the safety of the movie. But we had fun, the whole thing. There wasn’t a bad day.
Q: How much of the stunts did Aaron Johnson actually do himself?
Matthew Vaughn: He was very dedicated. In the scene where he gets stabbed, we had an insane sound man, and when I say insane I mean he was really brilliant but nuts. But he had a breastplate and a stomach plate put in. He decided that the mic was making too much noise, so the sound man took it out but no one told us. So the stunt man was stabbing him and he had hundreds of little cuts, and didn’t complain once, which I thought was stupid but great.
Q: Is this movie really about Kick-Ass or more about the world he creates by unleashing the possibility of people becoming superheroes?
Matthew Vaughn: Well, his arc’s not really resolved until the end because the movie starts with him saying, “Why does nobody help people,” and halfway through he realizes that people don’t help people because if you help someone, you have something to lose. And then in the end, he says, well, I have something to lose but I still want to go and help someone, and that’s his arc. But he’s more like Luke Skywalker in the sense that he’s a nerd who gets trained up and then has to go off and do the final mission. I think also it’s a multi-character film. I mean, look at the poster, and that sort of sums it up.
Q: What are your thoughts on continuing the adventures of Kick-Ass and Hit Girl?
Matthew Vaughn: Um, I have a lot of thoughts on it. You know, I don’t feel like tempting fate. If the film’s a hit then I’ll start engaging on it, if it’s not then it won’t happen.
Q: Of all the superhero movies you were attached to, what made this the right one for you? Was it because it was self-aware and postmodern?
Matthew Vaughn: You’ve answered the question for me. I wanted to make a postmodern superhero film. I was looking at Thor, X-Men 3, then a lot of other scripts I read. They all just felt you could change the superhero characters and the film would be virtually identical, just a different goodie, different baddie.
Q: Did Nicolas Cage tell you he was going to be doing Adam West’s voice?
Matthew Vaughn: When we did the first costume fitting, Nic starts running lines which I was pretty impressed. The costume fitting was 6 weeks before we shot and he knew all his lines already. He started doing it with the Adam West style. I just encouraged it, I thought it was very funny. I wasn’t sure that we were going to do it on the day of filming, but we ran with it. I’ll say the only thing about Dark Knight that drove me nuts was the stupid voice, so we’ll have a silly voice as well but we’ll do it in a way that was actually meant to be silly.
Q: When do you know someone is the right person for the role?
Matthew Vaughn: God, it’s really obvious in the sense that what you see on the screen, I’m seeing in the room. It happened with all these actors apart from Chris, who came in to read for Kick-Ass. I said no, no way. I said I think you might be great for Red Mist and he was. Casting is really easy. If someone comes in and they’re the role and what you’re seeing on screen they did just as well at the auditions. I think the hard process is a lot of people that can’t do it and you have to sit there and be polite, say well done but no, thank you.
Q: Did you ever consider doing it the studio way, and compromising to work with them?
Matthew Vaughn: I think when you jump out of a plane you’re going to use a parachute. You make sure it works and you jump and once you’ve gone, you’ve gone. There are times when you think there’s a safer route to take, even on set with Nic Cage doing Adam West. We could’ve turned around and said, “You know what? Let’s just do a safety version of you doing it normally.” But I thought you know what? We’ve committed. Let’s just try and do something that will warrant being made outside the system.
