The character of Tonto was certainly clear to Verbinski but he needed to find a way into the story that was compelling. “We`ve all heard the story of the Lone Ranger, but I think telling it from Tonto`s point of view particularly was of interest to me, says Verbinski. “Once I had that idea and said okay, well that`s the way in, particularly with Johnny, I just felt like we had to make Tonto relevant. I think in our version of the Lone Ranger you could question who the sidekick is really. Is it Tonto or is it the Lone Ranger? I love Don Quixote, so the idea of sort of telling Don Quixote from Sancho Panza`s point of view has always interested me.
With the story in place and the iconic Johnny Depp signed on as Tonto, Verbinski turned his eye on finding the perfect actor to portray the Lone Ranger. When he met Armie Hammer (“The Social Network, “J. Edgar), Verbinski knew he had found his man. “We really wanted his character to not belong in this world he returns to. He arrives on the train to come back to his hometown, and his hometown`s not the same, says Verbinski. “When I first met Armie, I just knew immediately that he had a different way of looking at things that fit the part. There was a sort of boyish enthusiasm, and I just thought he was perfect.
Verbinski explains the all-important relationship between Tonto and the Lone Ranger in the film. “We know that underneath it you have two belief systems that are completely divergent and you`re going to collide those together. In that collision neither of them has a tribe, in a sense that Tonto`s an outcast from his tribe, and in many ways the Lone Ranger`s an outcast from his tribe. So the Lone Ranger is sort of ‘tribeless` as well in terms of his belief, his classical sense of what justice is, and he`s living in this world where he can`t find purchase with that belief system. But he doesn`t lose his moral compass. And I think those two guys are a band apart, and they`re kind of setting sail together.
Verbinski`s approach to making “The Lone Ranger was to ground the film in reality and authenticity. “Everybody knows the tropes and archetypes of the western, explains the director. “It`s not like these are flying saucers and giant robots; we`re not creating a world you haven`t seen before. We`re creating a world that people know. So the idea of putting up a green screen and shooting everybody was not what we wanted to do. You get a different performance when you put actors on top of a train at 40 miles an hour, than if they`re standing in front of a green screen with a fan in their face.
In order to bring that reality to the screen, the production built an entire fictional town and laid five miles of train track on which two engines built specifically for the film ran. “You have to have the street, and then a town, but I think the bigger challenge was the trains, comments Verbinski. “The movie takes place in the backdrop of the Transcontinental Railroad, so once you have this kind of setting you`re going to have to have a great train chase. And there are a lot of great train chases that have been filmed before, so you want to kick it up a notch. And that was really fun and exciting.
The production shot in five statesArizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Californiato find the perfect locations to depict the story of “The Lone Ranger. Describing the experience, Verbinski states, “The landscapes are amazing. They hold so much value and history; there are no strip malls. It just feels like it`s very important to take us back in time. And it wasn`t just these amazing locations, it was the amazing people we met along the way too.
Taking the production on the road to so many locations was a tremendous undertaking akin to a “big, moving circus and the filmmakers relied heavily on their transportation department. But being in the wilderness had certain perks, as Verbinski relates, “In Monument Valley we just circled all of our motor homes and we slept in them. We built a fire pit, circled the wagons and camped out there. It was beautiful and it snowed. We did the same thing at Canyon De Chelly. We all slept in the parking lot in our motor homes. You become a family, so it`s great for morale.
Verbinski points out that the reason a place like Monument Valley looks so beautiful is because people are not allowed to drive anywhere they want to. So the crew had to carry cameras and techno cranes into the locations on foot. “The crew, I have to say, has been the best I`ve ever worked with, praises Verbinski. “A lot of the guys are people I have worked with before, and they`ve just kicked it up to a completely different level. It was just a lot of hard work; we`ve had to carry cameras into locations where we were not allowed to drive. People worked really, really hard.
Despite the hard work on location, there were moments that made it all worth it. A highlight of the filmmaking for Verbinski was when Captain Fuller (played by Barry Pepper) rode up with the cavalry in Moab. “He dusted himself off, and we`ve got all those blue suits with the wonderful butte right behind him, which I`ve seen in a hundred John Ford movies, enthuses Verbinski. “I felt like I was reliving something. You feel like you`re on sacred ground. It felt really beautiful to be there, and to frame it up, and see them all ride at the camera. There`s a beat that`s beautiful and then the dust comes. It blows and just overtakes you, and you just go, yeah that was fantastic. To get that shot is joyous. Everybody feels it.
When asked what audience should expect when they see “The Lone Ranger in theaters, director Verbinski says, “They should expect the unexpected. It`s a great story and we`re going to take you for a ride.
Q&A follows:
F***: What makes “The Lone Ranger exciting to take on?
GORE VERBINSKI: I grew up in the `70s, so the Lone Ranger to me was pretty cardboard and two- dimensional. So what interested me was the idea of this story of a Native American and a Ranger as their worlds collide and they`re sort of shackled together on this journey.
It was the idea of doing the story of this relationship. We`ve all heard the story of the Lone Ranger, but I think telling it from Tonto`s point of view particularly was of interest to me. Once I had that idea and said okay, well that`s the way in, particularly with Johnny, knowing Johnny was going to play Tonto, I just felt like we had to make him relevant. I think in our version of the Lone Ranger you could question who the sidekick is really. Is it Tonto or is it the Lone Ranger? I love Don Quixote, so the idea of sort of telling Don Quixote from Sancho Panza`s point of view has always interested me.
Once we had Johnny as Tonto and that way in, that led back to the Lone Ranger and to creating a sense of who he is. Casting Armie Hammer really was the solution to that. We were trying to find a Jimmy Stewart-type character trapped in a Sam Peckinpah movie, if you will. In “Liberty Valance Jimmy Stewart is walking down the street in an apron with his pistol because he believes in something. We really wanted our Lone Ranger to have this belief system and then crash that into this world of gray where anything can be purchased, including justice.
Then to partner him with Tonto and let the laws of man vs. the laws of nature shape what that relationship is. Both characters fulfill each other and become whole. So that was really what interested me about telling the story.
Q: Are you a fan of westerns?
A: Yes, I`m a huge fan of the genre. I got into this story-telling business by watching Leone and Peckinpah when I was a kid. That was kind of forbidden fruit and I was always fascinated by that world. To actually go out with horses, and trains, and cavalry and Comanche is really fantastic.
Q: Did the idea of making “The Lone Ranger first come to you during the making of “Pirates?
A: Yes. We were on a beach somewhere, I think on “Pirates 2, and Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott [screenwriters] were talking about getting the rights to the Lone Ranger and bringing them to Jerry Bruckheimer. Jerry kind of liked the idea and they were so passionate about it. So I talked to Johnny and said, “Why don`t you play Tonto? That could then be interesting to me. We sort of kicked it around and talked about it a little bit, but not too seriously. Jerry didn`t have the rights yet, so Johnny started thinking about Tonto and I went off to do “Rango. Ted and Terry wrote a few drafts.
When we were doing “Rango, Johnny showed me a picture of himself dressed up as Tonto with a bird on his head that he had taken at some point. He asked me if I wanted to come back and work on this project. It was a really great image, so I began to think about doing it for real. The character was there, but what`s the story? So, we hired screenwriter Justin Haythe, and Justin and I went off to crack the story. I really wanted to tell it from Tonto`s perspective. So we had this hundred-year-old Tonto telling a story to this young boy and that`s our access point into the story, using this untrustworthy narrator.
From there, the story started to take shape. We worked on the script for 18 months, and then brought it back to Jerry and the guys, and everybody was excited.
Q: Why the choice for the film to be so live action?
A: Everybody knows the tropes and archetypes of the western. It`s not like these are flying saucers and giant robots; we`re not creating a world you haven`t seen before. We`re creating a world that people know. We know what horses look like, and we know the speed they travel, and we know what steam engines look like and feel like. We know what that reality is. So it was very important to keep it honest. So the idea of putting up a green screen and shooting everybody was not what we wanted to do. You get a different performance when you put actors on top of a train at 40 miles an hour, than if they`re standing in front of a green screen with a fan in their face.
There`s no dust, there`s no heat, there`s no wind, so you act differently and you perform differently. I didn`t want it to be an artificial environment.
Q: So it`s getting back to the way westerns used to be filmed.
A: It is a lost art. When they were making hundreds of westerns, you had tremendous access to stuntmen who knew how to fall off horses and do all of those things. Guys today need to relearn this lost art. If you have a stunt that you watch in a hundred other movies where somebody has to jump from a horse to a train, you just accept that as trope of the genre and you must do it. When you actually set out to do it, it`s actually really dangerous. Not only dangerous but it`s really hard to achieve as well, so you gain a respect for what these great western filmmakers had to go through on a regular basis.
Q: Why did you decide to build some of your own railroad track for the film?
A: We couldn`t just get on any train track we wanted. The train tracks that exist are being used and we can`t just shut them down. They`re transporting goods still. So we started by looking at how many different train tracks we could access at different times, and then we`d have to move to all these different locations with our trains. It quickly became apparent that we should just build the track we needed. In Colby we were going to build just a horseshoe track and get a lot of shooting done there. The only limitation to that was then when we had to have horses next to trains, we had to have controlled situations. So we have to have track that we can control that no other trains are going to be on.
Q: Talk about Johnny Depp`s take on the Tonto character.
A: That`s just what Johnny does. He creates these strange and bewildering characters. The one thing that I would say that is different about this movie is that he may steal the movie, but he`s not going to get caught doing it, if you know what I mean. He`s really aware that this is a two-hander, and that`s something I don`t remember him doing. He`s supporting Armie Hammer and Armie`s supporting him, so give and take has to be there. It`s an incredibly restrained performance in many ways.
It`s a different performance than Jack Sparrow waltzing through and owning the movie, trying to get his ship back or whatever. We talked early on and Johnny knew he was going to have to be much more generous in many ways. It was really enjoyable to see him go to that place.
Q: Describe the relationship between the Lone Ranger and Tonto.
A: I think it`s chemistry. We know that underneath it you have two belief systems that are completely divergent and you`re going to collide those together. In that collision neither of them has a tribe, in a sense that Tonto`s an outcast from his tribe, and in many ways the Lone Ranger`s an outcast from his tribe. We all want a good man to come and fix things but it`s kind of our nature to then destroy them when they come along. That`s why he wears the mask.
So the Lone Ranger is sort of “tribeless as well in terms of his belief, his classical sense of what justice is, and he`s living in this world where he can`t find purchase with that belief system. But he doesn`t lose his moral compass. And I think those two guys are a band apart, and they`re kind of setting sail together.
Q: What made Armie Hammer perfect for the role of John Reid, the Lone Ranger?
A: When you meet Armie, he doesn`t really have a cynical or jaded bone in his body.
When I look at Armie, I go that`s a guy who`s really trying to kind of take a bite out of life and say it`s here to be enjoyed. By him showing up on set, it cheers everybody up. Everybody`s kind of exhausted and at their wit`s end, and he kind of waltzes in with this “look what we get to do enthusiastic attitude.
We really wanted his character to not belong in this world he returns to. He arrives on the train to come back to his hometown, and his hometown`s not the same. You`ve got Butch Cavendish, you`ve got the railroad, and a sense of corruption, swimming in this world of lies, and he has to uncover the hidden truth. When I first met Armie, I just knew immediately that he had a different way of looking at things that fit the part. There was a sort of boyish enthusiasm, and I just thought he was perfect.
Q: Talk about the rest of the cast.
A: It`s a great cast. I`ve always wanted to work with Tom Wilkinson. I think he`s a phenomenal actor, so it was great to finally get a chance to work with him and to see how he just underplays everything so beautifully. I`m constantly amazed at what he does, and he makes it seem so effortless. He was a real get to me for Latham Cole.
I met Helena Bonham Carter years and years ago. She`s wonderful. I know that Johnny`s been in a lot of movies with her, but it just seemed like was perfect to play Red. She`s got such a bold persona, and right at the moment in the movie where we need the audience to bite into that jalapeno that`s hidden in the soup, there she is. And the same with Barry Pepper, sort of the same thing, and William Fichtner is a classical sort of villain.
Q: You had to move the production from location to location to get the shots you wanted. Can you talk about that?
A: We had to go everywhere. We shot in five states, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and California. The landscapes are amazing. They hold so much value and history; there are no strip malls. It just feels like it`s very important to take us back in time. And it wasn`t just these amazing locations, it was the amazing people we met along the way too.
Q: You had to build towns as well, correct?
A: I think you do that when you make a western. You have to have the street, and then a town, but I think the bigger challenge was the trains. The rest of it is pretty classical stuff, like the western town, Comanche village, that was all interesting, but really the train work was the huge nut to crack.
The movie takes place in the backdrop of the Transcontinental Railroad, so once you have this kind of setting you`re going to have to have a great train chase. And there are a lot of great train chases that have been filmed before, so you want to, kick it up a notch. And that was really fun and exciting.
Q: What were the weather challenges like during production?
A: In terms of the physical production it was the hardest movie I have ever made. It was 125-degree heat and then it would snow, then it would rain, and then it would be 45 mile per hour winds, and dust so thick that we had to shut down. I think the crew`s still getting dust out of their ears six months later.
Q: Did you have to use a lot of CG?
A: It`s a shot specific conversation. Certainly we had to do some stuff in the computer like things that just aren`t safe. We`re blowing up massive bridges and driving trains off bridges and things like that. So there is a certain amount of computer generated work. We`re trying to have a shell game here where you kind of can`t quite tell where the CG is. It`s important to keep the audience guessing.
Q: What sort of effect does the location traveling have on the crew?
A: For instance, in Monument Valley we just circled all of our motor homes and we slept in them. We built a fire pit, circled the wagons and camped out there. It was beautiful and it snowed. We did the same thing at Canyon De Chelly. We all slept in the parking lot in our motor homes. You become a family, so it`s great for morale. It`s a big moving circus, and you rely heavily on your transportation department. They`ve got to be amazing, just like every department on this movie. The crew, I have to say, has been the best I`ve ever worked with. A lot of the guys are people I have worked with before, and they`ve just kicked it up to a completely different level. It was just a lot of hard work; we`ve had to carry cameras into locations where we were not allowed to drive. The reason that Monument Valley looks so beautiful is because you`re not allowed to drive anywhere you want. So we`re literally carrying techno cranes to achieve our shots. People worked really, really hard.
Q: How does it help having a lot of the “Pirates team on this film?
A: It was a lot of the same crew but also a lot of different people. It`s a nice mixed group; some of them I`ve done three movies with, some of them I`ve done one movie with, some of them I`ve done nothing with. So it`s like a fresh family. It didn`t feel like “same old, same old in any way. I think everybody was ready for a crazy adventure.
Q: How do you describe the tone of this film?
A: The tone is really kind of the razor`s edge because we`re dealing with issues that are full of gravitas. We are dealing with the plight of the Native American on one side and some really deep emotional issues. The story`s being told from the POV of Tonto, who`s kind of a little off. His own tribe thinks he`s a little nuts. So you`ve got a tremendous amount of humor as well.
You`ve got pain on the other side from John Reid, who lost his brother to Butch Cavendish. Yet there`s this dysfunctional relationship as these two guys, Tonto and John Reid, come together. So the tone is what glues it all together, and how you can make those moves and not throw everybody off the rails, and how you can move from absurd to real heavy emotion, and big action moments and the quiet moment. It`s not only the script and the performance, it`s Hans Zimmer`s score as well that sets the tone.
Q: Were there elements you knew you wanted to keep in the movie?
A: You have to have the most iconic symbols of the character. You have the silver bullet; you have the mask, you`ve got Silver the horse, that is fantastic and kind of steals the movie, and you`ve got the white hat. So there are these archetypes that are part of the character and story, as well as the fact that the Lone Ranger has a code and he believes in bringing justice to this kind of untamed west. That`s really okay but then how do we make him real? How do we make him flesh and blood?
He can`t just be out to avenge the death of his brother. That makes him very two-dimensional. I think at some point if you push the right buttons he would go there and he would be that guy. What`s inside that`s holding him back, and how does that define him? Does he have a dark side? Does he have the capacity to lash out? He`s traveling with Tonto, who`d just as soon cut this guy`s fingers off one by one until he gets the information he wants. But he`s with another guy who`s saying we can`t do that. I think the thing that was not explored was this relationship, and kind of turning it and saying this is Tonto`s story. I think that`s a fresh way in.
Q: What was the importance in putting the actors through cowboy boot camp?
A: There are a lot of scenes where the actor has to get off his horse when someone else is talking, and he`s got to adjust his tack, and he has to know what he`s doing. You don`t want to be on the shoot and the person behind the person who`s behind the person doesn`t know what to do with their hands. You have to be able to understand how to tighten a saddle, load a weapon and unload a weapon, and know how to get on and off a horse and ride a horse safely. These are not things that we do every day, so you have to go to boot camp, not only for safety in terms of riding horses, but also to make things feel real.
So it was very important that everybody went to boot camp. Even Ruth [Wilson], who doesn`t ride in the movie, was riding wagons, riding horses, shooting guns, just because her character would`ve done that in life at that time.
You can`t fake it. I don`t want to spend time on set trying to train somebody because something doesn`t look right. You`re looking at the frame wondering what that person is doing back there. You`ve got a whole world and everything inside that frame has to feel like it exists.
Q: What was one of your biggest days?
A: Every day was big, but Creede, Colorado, comes to mind, which is just beautiful. But we had to get our trains up into this mine and it was pretty vertical. We had to move them around and they had to make certain turns but the trains that we had couldn`t make turns so the track had to be adjusted. We were shooting nights and it was bitter cold at night there. Those were long days.
Q: Was there a moment where it was like this is great?
A: When Barry Pepper, who plays Captain Fuller, and the cavalry rode up in Moab and he dusted himself off, and we`ve got all those blue suits with the wonderful butte right behind him, which I`ve seen in a hundred John Ford movies, I felt like I was reliving something. You feel like you`re on sacred ground. It felt really beautiful to be there, and to frame it up, and see them all ride at the camera. There`s a beat that`s beautiful and then the dust comes. It blows and just overtakes you, and you just go, yeah that was fantastic. To get that shot is joyous. Everybody feels it.
Q: What can people expect to see in this?
A: They should expect the unexpected. It`s a great story and we`re going to take you for a ride.
The Lone Ranger opens here 4 July 2013.