APOCALYPTO

CS: Where was the film shot?
Gibson: In the jungles in Catemaco in Veracruz, in the state of Veracruz. And then the rest of the film was shot closer to the city of Veracruz. We found a farm with some jungle in case we needed to catch up on any foliage moments and we were able to build the city there on some guy's farm.

CS: Can you talk about the casting, how you found everyone, the lead actors?
Gibson: I consider this a major motion picture alright. It is independent yes. Farhad [Safinia] and I wrote it and we just went out and found the people, but it was important in my mind that the people that we found be in some way immediately identifiable as some kind of archetypal types from mythic, from a mythic perspective, you know. So that if you had the hero guy you wanted that guy. When I met him [Rudy Youngblood] he said that to me, I mean, that's what I got from him. Or the guy that played his father, you know, that gets his throat cut, or the guy that played his big friend, you know, lovable but tough. So you are sort of looking at those archetypes of myth and it was important if you are gonna do a film that has themes in another language and involving an indigenous culture, that everybody is able to identify with them, immediately, otherwise it's just too alienating. So that the casting process. You had to find people who had those qualities already. Who just look like you imagine they should. In a predictable way sometimes and yet didn't betray the kind of people, the feeling of real people back in the 16th century in the jungles or in some of those Mayan cities. And I think it's the first film ever where you've got, you know, it didn't have somebody like me or, you know, it had just indigenous Native American guys in the four biggest parts and then all the rest were Hispanic guys. And big parts there too like the guy that played the real wacky guy, the Middle Eye guy [Gerardo Taracena], who gets clubbed, he's just from Mexico City but, and when I went to Mexico I did a lot of casting down there and we have Zapotecas from Indians, you know, there's two, like the woman who says that prayer across the stream, she's Zapotec and lives in the city of Oaxaca [pronounced Wa-ha-ka] and the guy that gets bit by the snake. None of these people had acted much before, ever. So it was, that was challenge, for them and for me and it was kind of like, since it's going to be out there, it's kind of like having the Super Bowl and picking a guy who looks kind of able from the crowd and saying, "you be the quarterback." Because that's what you are asking, they have never been in that position before. So it took a little give and take but they were amazing how they picked up. I think they did a brilliant job. I mean, they all look pretty natural and stuff. But, a very long process of finding the right people. Right up to the day before we shot one scene we hadn't found the right guy. They kept bringing fine looking fellas, you know, they'd been in the gym and they looked tough and all this kind of stuff and I'd look at the guy and just say, "well, he just looks like a guy from the gym." I mean, why would that guy be the king of this whole city? Why would that guy be the king? I said, I don't get it. I want to look at this guy one time and know he killed all his brothers for the position. That he's probably really sick in some way, that he's powerful and he's all those things, but that guy, that Farhad found working at the docks (laughing). But when you look at him, you go whoa! He's kind of frightening, he sort of had this kind of Egyptian Pharaoh kind of like, he looked like a king. You knew why that guy was the king when you looked at him, for me. I don't know if it said it to you. But, he just looked like, yeah I'm the big cheese for a reason. He looked dangerous and he was oddly handsome and it was like, you know, he just kind of had it all going on. So those things are difficult.
[Co-writer and co-producer] Farhad Safinia: That was a strange day.
Gibson: It was a strange day for him walking around the docks looking at guys. (laughter) He almost got punched.

CS: The docks where?
Safinia: The public docks in Veracruz port city. We couldn't tell anybody why you were checking him out.
Gibson: You know, he even got a few takers. (laughter) But some people wanted to hit him and some people wanted to hug him. He didn't know what to do. So it was odd assignment. But, we did that a lot. We would just see people and go whoa! Like that little girl that played the Mayan, you know. I've revoiced her since because it sounded a little sing-song-y and it's truly frightening you know, but what an amazing child. Seven years old, never saw a floor before. She's really from a village where she lives on the dirt in a hut in a village smaller than the one you saw here [in the film], where those people lived and it's not that different.

CS: Is that something you really wanted to capture? Bringing people that really did live this way and try to express that on the big screen easier?
Gibson: Yes, yes because there is something that you cannot counterfeit and that is a kind of, when you look at the face of the young pregnant woman, right? Did you notice how uncomplicated it was? And how, it just wasn't complicated, it was childlike. And that little girl was really childlike although she had to say some really nasty things to those guys and so many of the people that you got from, they just had that quality. And whether or not they were, they appeared to be. So, that brings a lot to it I think. You are more apt to believe it somehow.

CS: Were there any injuries on set?
Gibson: Oh yeah, one day it was very cold and it was the only one cold day. It was like a snap weird, freak day and it was when all those people were walking through with all the cuts and bleeding and stuff and somebody said, "hey, come over here for a minute we have a problem." There was a four year boy with a ferdelance [snake] wrapped around his leg trying to keep warm. A ferdelance is the thing you saw jump up and bite that guy in the neck, extremely poisonous, dangerous serpent and big. It was trying to be warm, it was like, "ahh I'll wrap around this 4-year old kid's leg" and he's going, "mom what's this?" We had to send the snake wrangler in to pry it off so I am really glad it didn't bite him. But injuries? Pulled muscles, ripped ligaments, what else? What else was there [to Farhad]?
Safinia: A lot of that kind of stuff, but also obviously the weather conditions. We had the camera crew on the ground in some of those city shots in 127 degrees Fahrenheit, it broke the thermometer. We had extras passing out. We had Red Cross there to revive them.
Gibson: The other thing was, I was very aware, I hadn't done this kind of stuff myself, and how easy it is to injure yourself. And it was important that these guys be safe. So ground was often prepared, they had footwear on that would support them, air splints, all sorts of stuff. If you need to take it out afterwards [in post] you do it. Take it off and make them look like they're barefoot. But the main guy there, I mean, this film was eight months of shooting and it was scheduled for four months of shooting. But with the weather, we had rain when it was supposed to be the dry season. We got animals, we had children, we had jungle, we had incredibly difficult set-ups and long set-ups and makeup and wardrobe and all that stuff and a huge team of people. When you are dealing with 800 extras you are getting them in stages through the day and they all had to be, their teeth, everything, had to be so a very intricate, very complicated process. That's why it took twice as long. Plus the fact that nobody was really seasoned as an actor on film, they didn't know how to do it. They didn't know about marks or cameras so I was teaching the whole time and of course that's gonna take longer. Now once they started to hear it and understand it and acting lessons as well, it was like uhh, I had to delve into my bag of tricks to remember what the hell I learned over whatever period it was. It was mostly about breathing, it was an interesting thing.

CS: This movie is less graphic than "Passion of The Christ," is that a product of, sort of, the reaction to "Passion of The Christ" because it was extremely intense?
Gibson: Well, that was intended to be extremely intense. I just wanted to zone in on that, that was the nature of that film was to be in fact, almost as graphic as you could stand and not have anybody run out screaming. With this, that wasn't it. That wasn't the main point of the exercise. So I did come back and pull away from stuff and you never saw in anyone with a hand inside anybody's chest cavity or anything. I don't need to see that, it's bad enough seeing the thing [the heart] beating. Like for instance, when that guy's son gets killed it's way downfield. I don't want to see it you know. Wherever I could do that I did it, but some things were necessary.

CS: Certainly not to respond to individual critics but do you find that as you move from one project to the next that you do sort of respond to whatever might be the sort of consensus reaction to the film?
Gibson: Well it depends on whether it's a fair criticism or not. And some of them are. And some of them you can learn from. But, I think, I have a meter that tells me whether it's bologna or not, you know.

CS: Is there something in particular that has been what you consider to be a fair criticism?
Gibson: Oh God, over the years, oh lots of times, from fair minded critics who really have a point of view and they say, "you know…" And they actually do have a point sometimes. I don't totally dismiss all critics. I've either had people say things and I think, "well, what the hell would he know?" And then you start thinking about it later and you go, "you know, he's right about that." And you have to admit that if you are trying to be honest, you know, and learn from that. So, all those bits and pieces, you have a filter, some of it just bounces off when you know that it's more about their ego than about artistic exchange. Some of it gets through and you understand that they are actually saying something that's pretty good and it's giving you a clue as to how sort of make something better maybe. Or maybe an area that you could look at because that's what feedback is, it just happens to be public feedback. Feedback in a situation like this for example is far different from somebody who has to put out in a newspaper. He's obligated to do other things as well not only feedback but he has to be entertaining and there's a certain level of snotiness he has to have, you now what I mean, it's a game. So, you know, you have to be able to separate all those other factors and look at the heart of what's coming out and take something from it if it is real and honest.

CS: You are dealing with a lost civilization in this film so I am wondering how you researched it to make things authentic.
Gibson: There's a lot of books around. There's a lot of evidence being unearthed as we worked. They were digging out murals going, "look at this!" In fact, we even changed the murals that we drew on the walls when those guys were walking down the tunnel to emulate the murals that they just found. I mean, they were a whole different color scheme and we changed it and tried to match up with the latest stuff they found. Where were those found [to Farhad]?
Safinia: Remember the ones in the teaser?
Gibson: Yeah, they were blue and yellow.
Safinia: The ones that they discover at Bartolome were more…
Gibson: …sort of more browns and reds...
Safinia: Those are the ones that made it to the film.
Gibson: But we did keep some of the blue part of it going too.
Safinia: We did.
Gibson: It was sort of a hybrid mural. But, you know…
Safinia: We had advisors too.
Gibson: Oh absolutely, and some of the stuff was so cryptic when you looked at it, you think, "Well, what is that? Oh, that's snake!" But you couldn't quite make it out so we had to make things a little bit more readable. Because one's eyes don't adjust to that unless you lived in that culture and you were familiar with the signs, hieroglyphs and all that stuff, then it made perfect sense to you but for us we're looking at it going, "What is that?" You have to turn it upside down, "Oh right, ok, that's a jaguar's foot."

CS: So the human sacrifice ceremony was that pretty close as to what it was it that time period?
Gibson: I would think so.

CS: It was based off your research?
Gibson: Yeah, there was cardiectomies. There's a lot of hypothetical dialogue as to what's addressed and, but, I am sure that's what it was about. It was an appeasement of God's wrath, the hearts and bloodletting, I mean that's what it was about. So we just put words to it, I don't know if they used those words but they used something like them. But the cardiectomy part, it used to take them less than a minute to get a guy's heart out. That's if you didn't go through the ribcage, if you went under, through the diaphragm, less than a minute. There's a recorded, and this is in our history because Europeans were there, and they watched an Aztec festival and in a course of four days they performed 20,000 cardiectomies on people in one of their things, you know, a bloodbath. That's a lot of people. 20,000 people in four days? I think they must have had more than one temple going. Must have been like a three-ring circus. But even in four days you'd be hard pressed to get 20,000 hearts out of people. But apparently they did. And it was far more violent, the stuff that they would do to one another, than anything I showed. Believe me. We studied up on this, didn't we [to Farhad]?
Safinia: Oh yeah.
Gibson: Oh man, it's just awful what they did to one another you know, chewing their fingers off, cutting your eyelids off and your lips, ripping your tongue out, hanging you up and stabbing you in the genitals. I mean just horrific. Putting you up as a living target in the field like a firing range, firing arrows at you. At least we had our guys running when they were doing that. They used to just tie them up on boards and like, "hey, I think I can hit him right in the heart!" So they'd be doing target practice on real targets.
Safinia: It was all about humiliating them really.
Gibson: Oh, it was so much about humiliation. It was awful. If they captured you as a queen of another city? Oh God, it's a fate much worse than death or king, they kept this guy alive for nine years cutting pieces off and they were experts at it. They could open you up take out all your entrails, cauterize you and keep you alive, without your insides for quite a while. That's the really fascinating thing about the culture is that you have this incredibly sophisticated civilization on one hand and then there are such acts of barbarism in there. I mean they knew about the stars and the constellations and all kinds of things. They had buildings, libraries, books and a language, they were cultured. They were like the Greeks you know, but they also had this other thing with the human sacrifice, which I think came actually from the north and traveled from the Aztecs because there was commercial intercourse and stuff like that. They would have picked up a lot of the customs and there were conquests also. Sometimes you get an Aztec regime come in and sort of rule or conquer and rule so that it changed gradually.

CS: You talk about all the civilization and culture, what was the key would you say it was in the writing or the directing or acting that you were able to humanize these people and render their culture as not purely barbaric?
Gibson: It's all to do with the human story. It's the universal mythic kind of tale brought down to a level that hopefully we can all understand. I mean, who amongst us hasn't played a practical joke. I remember as a 16-year old, me and my friends were together and we actually pretended that we were eating these things that were like cookies or something but they were actually dog biscuits, and the guy ate them in front of us all. He ate these dog biscuits with a cup of tea and he was like, and then when we said, "hey, they're dog biscuits!" He was so embarrassed that he was eating dog biscuits and that he'd been had he said, "I like them." He kept going and it was just hilarious.

CS: Like eating a testicle?
Gibson: Yeah, the tapir's balls, yeah (laughing). Same kind of thing. There's something in there. When I was 15-years-old, it was a really interesting thing. You are just growing up at that point and you're like, you're not complete at all at 15, my God, guys aren't complete at all. In fact I'm not complete yet. But it's like, at 15 you are really incomplete, and I just remember some older guy really sort of putting the jab into the middle of me by calling me, really the most insulting thing I could think of. He could have called me a horse's ass or a whore or anything else. It would have been fine, like I would have told him to go and get knotted but what he did was to call me "almost." "Hey almost," like that. And I was just so offended by that. And so that's where that came from in the thing [the film]. I mean [Jaguar Paw] he's almost, he really is almost and then he becomes, you know. So it's like an interesting thing. Those human experiences we have sort of get put into it but it's the heart stories. The guy's family and his wife, his father and the words he says. His father's giving him advice about fear and stuff, which is good advice, I mean it's solid advice, don't live with fear. The film is about fear. We've explored every primal fear we could fit into two hours and five minutes. It was 2:09 that one (laughter). I'm just messin' with you. No, I've got it shorter already. I got another version already that I've been cutting, so, that's not even it, it's not even finished yet, it's much smoother now.

CS: The waterfall sequence is one of the most amazing that I've ever seen, can you talk about the challenges of shooting that?
Gibson: Well, it was a real waterfall. The camera rig was the interesting thing. We used a spider cam with the Genesis on it. I think it was the first time Genesis has gotten really hooked onto a spider cam rig. So we had to span the waterfall and the river with cranes and put the cables up and anchor them in place so it was quite an elaborate setup to enable us to go from over the guys shoulder - down on the water - over the edge - spin around and then pull back in one shot. Then of course, you're not going to make a real guy jump off something like that, he'll kill himself. A cow fell over it one day. We were there, the cow was trying to swim across and I could see it on the B camera up top, the cow, getting toward the edge, you know. "Moo, help me!" And then it was just overtaken by the depth of water and just fell over the waterfall, it was like, "wow!" So I got to see how long it took. It hit the water and I thought, its toast, 'cause it was about 170 feet, this waterfall. It came up, somewhere on the other side and it was all like busted up and messed up and somebody said, "We better shoot it." You know, then the waves got it and it was upside down and bouncing off the rocks and it got into this deep water and one of the guys, one of the local guys, the cow, this is the weirdest things of all, the cow's in the water going, "Ahhh!" You don't know whether it's injured or what it is and it's just swimming. But this Mexican guy just goes up to the thing and he goes, and he dives in, right? And he goes up to the cow and it's like he said something to it. It was the weirdest I've ever seen. He's like, "You know the bank's right over there and you could just walk out of the water and up on that bank." And the cow went, "Oh, okay." And he just went whoosh and walked up and starting eating grass! (laughter) Alright? So it was like the weirdest, did you see that? [to Farhad]
Safinia: Yeah, I did.
Gibson: It was the weirdest thing ever! The cow was like, "AHH!" And the guy went up to him and [said] "it's okay just go up over there and oh, yeah, yeah." It was like the cow and him were talking, it was really weird. He did say something to it I swear. He didn't even grab it or anything. He just swam out to it, "Hey you know, uh, if you went over there you could…" (laughter)
Safinia: The cow was munching grass, it had short term memory loss or something because it felt like it didn't remember a thing.
Gibson: It was like [eating] and looking around going, 'What are all you people doing staring at me?" It was like really, it lived!

CS: Did you guys get any footage of that at all?
Gibson: I kept telling him to turn the camera on, there's a cow coming over the waterfall! (laughter) And it's really loud you know? And the guy [DP] is saying, 'There's a towel coming over waterfall? Why would I turn the camera on?" He didn't turn it on. A lot of people wouldn't turn the camera on when I told them to. (laughter) It used to make me crazy. With the jumps for instance, the guy jumping off the waterfall. We found a 15 story building in Veracruz and we hooked Rudy [Youngblood] up to it on a wire and a harness and said, "Jump off kid!" He was like, "Ahh, Ahh." His knees banged together for a little while but he did it like ten times. He just kept jumping off 175 feet like, "Whee!" Then I'm watching him, and I'm giving him a hard time, I'm going, "You big sissy!" He's saying, "Shut up!" As they are dragging him away up on the wire because as they drag you away you turn into a dot going up 15 stories. I gave him such a bad time that afterwards all the stunt guys came up to me, and he [Rudy Youngblood] put them up to it, and they all just looked at me and said, "I don't suppose you would like to have a jump?" And I said, because I had to instill fear in the rest of the crew and I couldn't look bad I just said, "Hook me up." And they hooked me up and I went off but and I would have had presumed they would have turned the cameras on…(laughter)…but they didn't, and I'm like, "What?!" So it was another one of those moments. "Why didn't you turn the cameras on?" 'Cause I could have slipped in a subliminal frame…(laughter).

CS: I heard that after production was done you had a little village built or contributed to build some homes?
Gibson: Yeah, they had a lot of floods down there. It was like Louisiana down there in the southern regions. They had severe flooding and something like a million people were displaced and washed out. I've always been of the opinion that if you go into someone else's country to make a film you don't just go in there and stomp all over the place. You bring a gift. It's like going to somebody's house. You bring them a bottle of wine or a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates and it's the same sort of thing on a big scale when you're going in to somebody's country and they are going to help you make your film. You help them first somehow or you give them a gift or you help in what way you can. So we sort of assisted with the flood relief stuff down there.

CS: So getting back to the message of the film that you were talking about earlier, fear being part of the message, the quote in the beginning that, "A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within." Was that more of an analogy of fear overtaking society?
Gibson: Well, that's part of it I think. Fear makes one react in ways you wouldn't normally do because of fear. It makes the imbalance on the other side come out. You overreact or whatever it is and it underlies a lot of things. It drives, fear can drive. But, I think it's pretty true to say it in analyzing any civilization that has ended it's kind of crumbling from the inside out first before it was eventually engulfed by the outside. So it was sick, it's like, when sharks go for the sick ones first. Lions go for the young weak members or the old members of the herd. You know it's like they're overtaken by the outside because they are failing from inside in one way or another you know.

CS: Suffice to say, you are going to have an uphill battle selling this film. A two plus hour period epic that is not in English. What is it you hope to convey or message you are trying to present?
Gibson: Well entertain, educate and lift to a higher plane of awareness in some way. That's what I tried with this. I think I hit it but it's up to whoever views it. I mean it's really their call as to what it did to them. It's just two hours so it's not three hours. It's in another language, I know.

CS: As brutal as it was, did Disney/Touchstone ever come down to you and say lighten it up a little bit?
Gibson: No, they would've had to supplied the budget to have that right (laughter). But, they were concerned, of course, as they should be. But then when they saw it they were cool. They were like, "Well that's an R. I don't think there's any way out of it." And it is, it's an R-rated picture. After the cardiectomies it's an "aerated" picture. But, it's an R and it should be. It's graphic, I mean, there's a jaguar eating a guy. And that's what they do, they crush the skull first. I just found that out (laughter). Who knew? Interesting. As you said I think it's less graphic than the last film I put out.

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"That's the really fascinating thing about the Maya culture is that you have this incredibly sophisticated civilization on one hand and then there are such acts of barbarism in there."