Post by politicidal on Apr 10, 2021 19:27:47 GMT
He insists that he has no idea how or why the rumor about the Lone Ranger and Tonto battling werewolves made it into the news coverage. Perhaps he wasn't, but it would line up with the finished product suggesting that the villain Butch Cavendish (played by William Fichtner) is a wendigo and then just aborting that by the second half.
TEXT:
The Lone Ranger is a film of many distinctions; unfortunately, most of them aren't particularly good. A slick reimagining of the classic Western hero, the film re-teamed Disney with Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski after the runaway success of Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, another surprise hit in a similarly forgotten genre. Despite excellent production design and some thrilling action sequences, The Lone Ranger’s inconsistent tone (plus an out-of-control budget and a badly miscast Depp) led to a lukewarm reception that resulted in a box office failure, and the movie quickly became another cautionary tale about blockbuster filmmaking. There’s also a long-standing rumor surrounding the film that has since become something of Hollywood legend, which suggests that an early draft of the script had the Lone Ranger and Tonto encounter actual werewolves.
Recently, Verbinski spoke with Collider’s Steve Weintraub in an in-depth interview about his impressive career, The Lone Ranger included. The director shared some details about the film’s long development history at Disney, beginning as an idle conversation between Verbinski and Pirates producer Jerry Bruckheimer and ending up in the hands of Pirates scribes Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott. Verbinski broke down some of the process while stressing that the werewolf thing was definitely not his idea:
"Let me see if I can recall this correctly. So we were making Pirates 2, and Jerry said Terry Rossio and Ted wanted Jerry to buy the rights to The Lone Ranger. I said, immediately, 'Johnny should play Tonto.' I just blurted it out. I was like, 'Lone Ranger, Johnny, Tonto.' My mind immediately went, tell the Tonto story, because the Lone Ranger story has been told so many times. I go to talk to Johnny about it on his boat. I think it was Pirates 3 maybe. He said, 'I like that idea.' I think Jerry thought Johnny was saying he wanted to play the Lone Ranger or something. But in Jerry’s mind -- now it's cast. Johnny is interested at that point."
But Verbinski says at that point, he left the project, and development continued without him — which is where those werewolves come in:
"So Jerry got the rights, and then what happened? I disengaged. Rossio and Elliot pitched me a version that I didn't really respond to. But I was like, 'I wish you well.' I love those guys. So they went and worked on it. I did Rango. It came back around like four years later, where Jerry had said, 'Do you want to come back on?' I said, 'Well, I'd like to do the version I was originally thinking about.' Somewhere in the interim, without me involved there was a werewolf, that's where the werewolf thing came from. But I never read that draft… So that was off in some other cul-de-sac. It wasn't part of my world at all. Then at the point when it came back… I think they had exhausted the other path. It was Johnny who called me and said, 'Can you come back in?' And he had sent me a photograph of him in Tonto makeup and the bird on his head. And then, I pitched my original idea to Justin Haythe, and we just started working on the script."
Verbinski also further broke down his approach to telling the story from Tonto’s perspective, and how the idea of having the film bookended by Tonto's narration was an early and indispensable part of his pitch. Finally, Verbinski explained the major impact deconstructionist Western films he saw as a kid had on his filmmaking career, and how their influence can be felt in The Lone Ranger, Rango, and Pirates of the Caribbean:
COLLIDER: At the beginning of Lone Ranger you have Tonto in the museum and then again at the end. I'm curious, was that always the idea ... of having him in the museum as the narrator? Can you sort of talk about how you came up with that structure for the movie? Was it ever going to be something else?
VERBINSKI: No. That was a central from my original pitch, to have Tonto then tell us the story. We have all heard the story of the Lone Ranger. But you've never heard it from Tonto's perspective. That was the opportunity to reinvent it. So, that was fundamental to me reengaging, this is how I would do it. It's not how Rossio and Elliott wanted to do it. And it was really frankly, they're the ones who brought it, they said, we love this movie. We want to make it. They had some thoughts and they tried, and I had a different perspective on it from the outset. So, that was always there.
I should say, I grew up watching Peckinpah and Leone movies before I studied the genre. So, my entry point was always the postmodern western before I even knew what that was. The end of the gunfighter, no place for honest thieves in a corrupt world. They were always morally ambiguous characters in those movies. And then, later I saw John Wayne movies and studied Howard Hawks and John Ford and all that. So, that idea that the future is coming, whether it's the railroad, whether it's the East India Trading Company, it's there in Rango, the inevitability of the future and what happens to the gunslinger or Captain Jack or any of these characters when they're confronting progress. And because of Tonto’s perspective, it's in The Lone Ranger quite overtly.
When these guys in the 60s and early 70s started to mess with the genre and go, what happens to the guy on the horse when the automobile arrives? That is what fascinates me, that collapse of some bubble or balloon or belief system. I think that's really when you're forced to look at things differently. And that's when everything changes for you. You turn everything upside down, you see, it's when a kid sees the gum under the table. Basically, it's a different vantage point…
I grew up, again in those formative years, with Monty Python, Black Sabbath, and Kafka. My sister gave me The Metamorphosis when I was like 11. There's something that happens at that prepuberty stage that I think sticks with you forever. It's an odd collection of forces for sure. But when you make a movie, you often need to access your inner child to find something honest. And I guess they're still there."
Verbinski's love for the deconstruction of myths led to some interesting choices in The Lone Ranger, even though one of those choices was definitely not a werewolf. Hopefully he'll take another crack at the Western genre, which could use a shot of the same flashy, fun adrenaline he delivered to the once-radioactive pirate genre.
collider.com/gore-verbinski-lone-ranger-werewolf-rumors-interview/
TEXT:
The Lone Ranger is a film of many distinctions; unfortunately, most of them aren't particularly good. A slick reimagining of the classic Western hero, the film re-teamed Disney with Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski after the runaway success of Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, another surprise hit in a similarly forgotten genre. Despite excellent production design and some thrilling action sequences, The Lone Ranger’s inconsistent tone (plus an out-of-control budget and a badly miscast Depp) led to a lukewarm reception that resulted in a box office failure, and the movie quickly became another cautionary tale about blockbuster filmmaking. There’s also a long-standing rumor surrounding the film that has since become something of Hollywood legend, which suggests that an early draft of the script had the Lone Ranger and Tonto encounter actual werewolves.
Recently, Verbinski spoke with Collider’s Steve Weintraub in an in-depth interview about his impressive career, The Lone Ranger included. The director shared some details about the film’s long development history at Disney, beginning as an idle conversation between Verbinski and Pirates producer Jerry Bruckheimer and ending up in the hands of Pirates scribes Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott. Verbinski broke down some of the process while stressing that the werewolf thing was definitely not his idea:
"Let me see if I can recall this correctly. So we were making Pirates 2, and Jerry said Terry Rossio and Ted wanted Jerry to buy the rights to The Lone Ranger. I said, immediately, 'Johnny should play Tonto.' I just blurted it out. I was like, 'Lone Ranger, Johnny, Tonto.' My mind immediately went, tell the Tonto story, because the Lone Ranger story has been told so many times. I go to talk to Johnny about it on his boat. I think it was Pirates 3 maybe. He said, 'I like that idea.' I think Jerry thought Johnny was saying he wanted to play the Lone Ranger or something. But in Jerry’s mind -- now it's cast. Johnny is interested at that point."
But Verbinski says at that point, he left the project, and development continued without him — which is where those werewolves come in:
"So Jerry got the rights, and then what happened? I disengaged. Rossio and Elliot pitched me a version that I didn't really respond to. But I was like, 'I wish you well.' I love those guys. So they went and worked on it. I did Rango. It came back around like four years later, where Jerry had said, 'Do you want to come back on?' I said, 'Well, I'd like to do the version I was originally thinking about.' Somewhere in the interim, without me involved there was a werewolf, that's where the werewolf thing came from. But I never read that draft… So that was off in some other cul-de-sac. It wasn't part of my world at all. Then at the point when it came back… I think they had exhausted the other path. It was Johnny who called me and said, 'Can you come back in?' And he had sent me a photograph of him in Tonto makeup and the bird on his head. And then, I pitched my original idea to Justin Haythe, and we just started working on the script."
Verbinski also further broke down his approach to telling the story from Tonto’s perspective, and how the idea of having the film bookended by Tonto's narration was an early and indispensable part of his pitch. Finally, Verbinski explained the major impact deconstructionist Western films he saw as a kid had on his filmmaking career, and how their influence can be felt in The Lone Ranger, Rango, and Pirates of the Caribbean:
COLLIDER: At the beginning of Lone Ranger you have Tonto in the museum and then again at the end. I'm curious, was that always the idea ... of having him in the museum as the narrator? Can you sort of talk about how you came up with that structure for the movie? Was it ever going to be something else?
VERBINSKI: No. That was a central from my original pitch, to have Tonto then tell us the story. We have all heard the story of the Lone Ranger. But you've never heard it from Tonto's perspective. That was the opportunity to reinvent it. So, that was fundamental to me reengaging, this is how I would do it. It's not how Rossio and Elliott wanted to do it. And it was really frankly, they're the ones who brought it, they said, we love this movie. We want to make it. They had some thoughts and they tried, and I had a different perspective on it from the outset. So, that was always there.
I should say, I grew up watching Peckinpah and Leone movies before I studied the genre. So, my entry point was always the postmodern western before I even knew what that was. The end of the gunfighter, no place for honest thieves in a corrupt world. They were always morally ambiguous characters in those movies. And then, later I saw John Wayne movies and studied Howard Hawks and John Ford and all that. So, that idea that the future is coming, whether it's the railroad, whether it's the East India Trading Company, it's there in Rango, the inevitability of the future and what happens to the gunslinger or Captain Jack or any of these characters when they're confronting progress. And because of Tonto’s perspective, it's in The Lone Ranger quite overtly.
When these guys in the 60s and early 70s started to mess with the genre and go, what happens to the guy on the horse when the automobile arrives? That is what fascinates me, that collapse of some bubble or balloon or belief system. I think that's really when you're forced to look at things differently. And that's when everything changes for you. You turn everything upside down, you see, it's when a kid sees the gum under the table. Basically, it's a different vantage point…
I grew up, again in those formative years, with Monty Python, Black Sabbath, and Kafka. My sister gave me The Metamorphosis when I was like 11. There's something that happens at that prepuberty stage that I think sticks with you forever. It's an odd collection of forces for sure. But when you make a movie, you often need to access your inner child to find something honest. And I guess they're still there."
Verbinski's love for the deconstruction of myths led to some interesting choices in The Lone Ranger, even though one of those choices was definitely not a werewolf. Hopefully he'll take another crack at the Western genre, which could use a shot of the same flashy, fun adrenaline he delivered to the once-radioactive pirate genre.
collider.com/gore-verbinski-lone-ranger-werewolf-rumors-interview/