When I was taking part in the roundtable interview with David Goyer I kept thinking one thing – how many fanboys would’ve loved to have been there asking him questions about his current and previous projects. Because unlike a lot of people who make one comic book movie or know a little bit about the genre, David is someone who’s written or directed a ton of them. If you look at his IMDB page you’ll see the list.

But the big thing that David is recently famous for is that he co-wrote Batman Begins and is also involved with the sequel The Dark Knight. Needless to say we tried to get any bit of information we could about the sequel but his lips were sealed. He said it was due to Christopher Nolan asking him not to say anything. Damn.

The good thing is we discussed a lot of other projects and one of them wasn’t yet known to any of us – he’s doing a remake of David Cronenberg’s Scanners. He said that while he’s not going to direct it he’s writing it to be a hard R, and yes we will see a head explode. If you’re interested in that film he talks a lot about it as well as a ton of other stuff. If you’re a fan of David’s you’ll dig the interview.

As always you can listen to the interview instead of reading it by clicking here. It’s an MP3 so you can easily put it on an iPod or a CD for listening in your car.

And I’m not going to have time to transcribe my interview with Margarita Levieva (the female lead in The Invisible) so if you want to hear her talk about making the movie you can listen to the audio.

The Invisible opens this Friday at theaters everywhere.

So, Batman?

I’ll tell you the thing about Batman, and I mean this sincerely. The main reason why I’m not going to say anything is because Chris doesn’t want me to say anything.

Doesn’t seem like a Goyer type movie.

Good.

What drew you to it and does it seem atypical of your work?

Well, I think to the extent that the public is aware of me, they will think it’s atypical for sure. If you look at Batman Begins or the Blade movies or Dark City or any of that stuff, they’ll think, “What the hell?” But in terms of the movies that I watch or the books that I read or things like that, I’m sure you have varied interests as do I. So I don’t think it’s atypical for me.

It’s based on a novel, right?

It’s based on a novel, a Swedish novel, that has never been translated, that was then made into a Swedish film that was not released here.

Where did you see it?

I saw a bootleg tape of it about three years ago.

You’re admitting you saw a bootleg?

I know, a pirated videotape. Through a friend of a friend. And I just loved the movie. I thought it was going to go a certain way. In fact, at first I kind of rolled my eyes when I was watching the film 20 minutes in. I was like, “Oh, I know where it’s going.” And then it didn’t go that way. And then there was another point in the film where I said, “Oh, I know where it’s going” and then it didn’t go that way. I just kept watching and watching and I really liked it. I really liked that it was, and I mean this in a good way, very European. It didn’t follow Hollywood conventions. So when I found out that Spyglass wanted to remake the film, I kind of chased it down. They were surprised that I wanted to do it but I argued very passionately to do it and convinced them.

Are there any Goyerisms in the film?

Well, the only Goyerism really is that in the garage scene, the character of Marcus is an auto mechanic and when he gets a call from Annie, if you look in the background, they’re working on the Blade car behind him.

Was this a blocking nightmare, things breaking and repairing in a single take, actors not paying attention to the lead?

I had no idea until we started filming how complicated it was going to be. I thought, “Oh, this is going to be a nice little melodrama.” But once you realize, because we did our first scene and nobody can interact with the lead character but nobody can make eye contact with him. And especially when you’re dealing with scenes sometimes when you’ve got 50 or 60 extras and takes would be ruined because that person was looking at him, things like that, then after a few days, you realized “Oh my God, this is actually really complicated.” Plus we did all sorts of in camera trickery. I didn’t want to do a lot of overt visual effects where he phases through walls or he looks like a specter or anything like that. But we did a lot of in camera trickery with motion control and things like that where he’s on one side of the room and then the camera moves over and there he is on the other side of the room. Obviously he broke the laws of physics to get there but we didn’t show it. So yes, there’s a scene in the movie where he gets angry at his mom and he throws the chair through the window, and we pan back to him and pan back to the window all in one shot and the window’s not broken. We did a number of things like that.

Did the Swedish version have tricks like that?

No, the Swedish version didn’t do anything in camera like that. It was all in cuts but I thought that was kind of fun. I don’t know if you noticed, the first three minutes of the movie are all one shot. Most audience members don’t notice but that was fun.

As a writer, to what extent are you a slave to the writer’s script as a director?

I think being a writer myself, I was more open minded and sympathetic to listening to what the writers had to say because I’ve had the experience of having my scripts get ruined. Now, I think the best scenario, when I worked with Guillermo del Toro or Chris Nolan or people like that, we would have a healthy but combative relationship which I think is good. That’s why Chris brought me onto Batman was so that he could have somebody to argue with and out of that would come the best material, so I really encourage that with the writers on this. I’m developing a number of things to direct that I’m not the writer on as well. I like that interchange. I think that’s good.

We won’t ask about the story of Batman, but how has the relationship with Chris on the new movie?

Well, the relationship was the same as the first one. We have a- - it’s just a great sense of mutual respect, all bets are- - we argue ferociously about things and it’s knock down drag out fights about things, but it’s good. We sit there when we’re working in his office or wherever we are and we just go back and forth and challenge each other and the best idea wins.

How hard is it to better yourself in a sequel with so many expectations?

It’s an enormous burden and something that we think about all the time.

And you’re conscious of it while you’re writing?

Sure. It’s scary. You get to a certain point and I really consider myself a fan as well, but even to the extent that I wanted to do, with The Invisible, it’s not a shot for shot remake but I really like the original film. I wanted to do it justice. I didn’t want to hack it out. The American audiences don’t know, they probably will never see the original film, but I really liked it. Or if I’m working on an adaptation of a book or a comic book that I really like, I consider myself a fan just like a lot of the audiences so I don’t want to let them down.

What’s going on with Green Arrow?

It's being written. I wish I had a more interesting answer than that. Just the writers started working like a week ago.

You’re calling it Supermax?

That's a working title.

What happened with The Flash?

Look, The Flash was just one of those- - it's so funny because it ended up happening the same day as Joss Whedon on Wonder Woman. We ended up a week later, two weeks later having lunch together, Joss and I. But fortuntately, I'm in a place in my career where I can pick and choose what I want to do. I reached a point- - you know, when you start out, you just want to get a job or you just want to get your movie made or things like that. I reached a point, I don't know how many years ago, where if I got a set of notes that I really didn't believe in, I wouldn't do. So then either I walk or I don't walk or something like that. The Flash, I still have a great relationship with Warner Brothers. I turned around a month later and sold them Supermax. It just became apparent that we wanted to do two different stories.

Do you find it frustrating working with studios?

It can be frustrating but the blessing and the curse of working with library characters like that is you don’t own them. I have a number of original projects that I’m working on as well but if it’s a library character, it’s Batman, if it’s Superman, if it’s whomever, you don’t own those characters.

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