Footloose-- yes, a remake of the Kevin Bacon classic-- doesn't come to theaters until October, but director Craig Brewer is doing press interviews early because, as he puts it, "There's a lot of people that want to hate on it." He knows that nobody expected the director of Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan to take on an 80s remake about kids dancing in a small town. He knows you guys probably didn't want to see Footloose remade to begin with. But having just wrapped the film, he also sounds as confident as a director can be months before the movie comes out-- " I've never personally been more confident as a filmmaker that when the lights go out and the movie starts, I know they're going to love it."
I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with Brewer yesterday, talking about Footloose and what draws him to such wildly different projects. I'll have that full interview up on Monday, but first you might want to see what he told me about his plans to make a new Tarzan movie. Yes, that director of Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan is moving on to something else completely different. He's working on the script for Warner Bros., and while he's careful to say that his take is just one of several the studio is considering to revamp the man of the jungle, his personal take on the material seems pretty tough to resist. Check out what he had to say below:
I feel like I just keep making a movie about my love for [my wife], over and over again. Footloose is a lot about us because we're now parents, and I look at my baby daughter and flinch at the idea of something happening to her. Hustle and Flow is about us making our movies, dirt cheap and nobody was seeing them but we loved them and they made us feel special. And Tarzan, if we end up making my script, is a romance. It's about a couple who realized that they belong in the jungle, back where they started. I look at my wife and I think, "You're still my Jane." I'm a little bit older and I've got love handles right now, but maybe I should be that guy in the jungle pounding on my chest like I was when I was 18.And Tarzan and Footloose were both things you loved as a kid, right?Yeah. I've got to have a connection to them. I'm not going to do anything that I don't have some true love or connection to. I'm in a really great place, where I don't live in Los Angeles, my living expenses aren't really that crazy, and I don't do things for paychecks. I commit two years of my life to these movies, I have to love them, I have to have a connection to them. Even movies you absolutely love, it begins to wear on you.
Come back on Monday for much more from my conversation with Craig Brewer. Footloose opens October 14.
