Michael Stahl-David Talks Cloverfield

Monsters! Handcams! Improv!

by | January 3, 2008 | Comments

It’s been somewhat lost in all the excitement surrounding January releases such as One Missed Call and Mad Money, but there’s a little monster flick called Cloverfield coming out this month — and one of the movie’s stars, Michael Stahl-David, is here with a new interview to help us remember where to spend our ticket money on the 18th!

Stahl-David sat down with ShockTillYouDrop‘s Ryan Rotten to talk about his experiences behind the scenes of the J.J. Abrams-produced Cloverfield, admitting he “thought it was something I was going to be completely embarrassed of” before discussing the way director Matt Reeves used handheld cameras and improv to bring his vision to life:

“It felt like we were on a search for truth together…[Reeves] wasn’t going to make me do something I didn’t feel was real. If there was something on the script I didn’t feel quite like it would happen in that moment, we wouldn’t do it. I would say something else, do something else. It wasn’t about trying to be clever and come up with your own stuff. It’s not a very talky movie, it was more about questioning what would you do in this situation? What would I do?

“I think in some ways it’s as much a survival movie as it is about the monster. The monster is definitely the problem, but you’re seeing it the way we would, we don’t pan back and watch it perfectly. It is going to be exciting. It is contemporary film vocabulary — this kind of first-hand account, something that could’ve been on YouTube or something. Someone just holds up the camera and starts filming, there are probably other accounts, [our footage is] just the one the government happens to find.”

The footage the government happens to find, eh? Sounds like things don’t end so well for Stahl-David and his band of merry monster fighters — but then again, wherever Abrams goes, unexpected twists are sure to follow. To read more of Stahl-David’s interview with ShockTillYouDrop, follow the link below!

Source: ShockTillYouDrop