'Lawnmower Man', Director's Cut, Director, Brett Leonard

0:00Brett LeonardBut what happened was because the film did so well, it was the number one film for New Line that year. Sarah Risher, the executive there, came to me and said, "Look, why don't we do your director's cut? There's a bud… bunch of people here that are fans of your director's cut, and now we could release it for home video." So I said, "Okay." Well, I took the ball and ran with it. It's 35 minutes difference. I put more than half an hour back into the movie, mostly in the first act, right, which is the whole thing with the chimpanzee and with, Jobe, played by Jeff Fahey. All of that character buildup, his cha… connection with, Dr. Angelo b… through that experience, and I love that section of the film, which by the way, was incredibly difficult to shoot. I don't know if you've ever shot with a s… a chimpanzee that could bench press 1,600 pounds.

0:58Jawad MirWelcome back everyone, yet to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams podcast, The Making of Stories. I'm your host, Jawad Mir. Today, my guest is Brett Leonard, who's a director of the film, The Lawnmower Man, which came out in the early '90s, starring the unknown Pierce Brosnan, who had been known at the time for Remington Steele, but this is before he played James Bond. And we talked about the director's cut edition, which is available on Amazon Prime. Great film, way ahead of its time. Brett Leonard also directed Virtuosity, with starring Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington, who I had the pleasure of speaking with ear… late last year. And we talked about the director's cut, we talked about the behind-the-scenes stories, we talked about the producers, the distributors, and how the film was way ahead of its time. Even for the early '90s film, the VFX were quite incredible. So do check out my conversation with director Brett Leonard, and you can also listen to the Virtuosity conversation at the end of this video. Thank you so much. I don't know if I ever saw the film in the '90s when it came out.

1:57Jawad MirBut, you know, watching the director's cut and seeing how relevant it is…... To even like sketch…

2:06Brett LeonardIt's almost weird. I mean, I recently watched it again, and I only watch it with people because I can't watch it myself. That's... I feel like it's, it's some kind of strange masturbation…

2:16Jawad MirRight

2:16Brett Leonard... To watch it yourself. But, i… it was surprising to me how completely relevant it is right now. I mean, I'm like, w… I... You know, how did that happen? I can't really tell you. It's very,.. It's a very mysterious process, this thing called storytelling. Very strange.

2:36Jawad MirIt is. And I, honestly, I didn't even read anything about it. I just know the title, Lawnmower Man. Okay, Lawnmower Man.

2:43Brett LeonardYeah.

2:43Jawad MirLike, you know, and then it would start off with a…

2:45Brett LeonardWell, what's that? Yeah, exactly

2:46Jawad Mir... With a, with a chimpanzee, and I'm like, "How is this Lawnmower Man," right? And then it just kind of went in that direction, and it was…

2:53Brett LeonardYeah

2:53Jawad Mir... It, you know, it was, it was a very interestingly unique film, timely film. And certain parts of it obviously haven't come true in today's reality…

3:02Brett LeonardYeah

3:02Jawad Mir... Like the way…

3:03Brett LeonardYeah

3:03Jawad Mir... But the way it has become so accurate about certain things, I wonder if that is going to become…

3:09Brett LeonardYeah

3:09Jawad Mir... Accurate in the near future.

3:11Brett LeonardWell, you know, I think, I think it's, you know, it's an allegory, first of all. It always was meant…

3:15Jawad MirYeah

3:15Brett Leonard... To be an allegory. You know, to talk about the title for a second, you know, this came from a Stephen King short story that had nothing to do with virtual reality. It's a seven-page short story about a, you know, challenged man who's the lawnmower man in a small town, but actually is a disciple of the god Pan. And he exacts revenge on, you know, a nefarious character, a father, abusive father, in the short story, with the famous scene of the lawnmower being controlled by him and mowing this guy down. It's seven pages. It's very, it's a very light, little story. So when I was given that and they said, "Make a movie out of this," I was fe… pretty daunted. I was like, "Well, I... There's not much I could do with just this." And they had a hor… I mean, the producers originally had a horrifying, idea that was about young women being chopped up to be fertilizer, and that was the, why he was called the Lawnmower Man.

4:19Brett LeonardAnd I said, "No, I don't wanna make that idea into a movie." Yes, it was a slasher movie idea, whatever, but it was not for me. So I said, "But I have this science fiction thing I wanna do, and I think I could fit it into this concept." And so I did. These days, n… this would never happen, by the way. This is, this is a completely strange thing where someone takes a Stephen King property and then just kinda throws it out and makes their own thing of it. I mean, I didn't realize at the time how weird that was, you know, because I am a big fan of Stephen King, by the way. I love Stephen King, and many of the things in the film are homages to the Stephen King canon. You know, the shop comes from Firestarter and all these things that I'm, I'm referencing King universe things because I wanted to be true to his oeuvre, you know, and yet make my own film about virtual reality. So it w… and it… the reason that came about is because I was introduced to the actual technology by a man named Jaron Lanier, who coined the term virtual reality and had one of the first commercial companies, VPL, that was a virtual consumer company.

5:35Brett LeonardVery rudimentary at that time, the technology, but we utilized a lot of his headsets, a lot of his technology in the film. So in some ways, the film is more, is p… part science fiction, part allegory, and part science fact, and that is also what makes it a kinda weird amalgam. I've only come to realize these things are weird over time. For me, it made perfect sense at the time. Smash all these things together, kind of a mashup… Put Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a structure around it, which is really the story, and a little bit of Flowers for Algernon, well, you know, by Daniel Keyes, and also the movie starring Cliff Robertson called Charlie. These are all influences of mine. And a bit of the Outer Limits episode, The Sixth Finger, starring David McCallum from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., you know, later on NCIS. And, I don't know if you remembered The Outer Limits as a series.

6:37Brett LeonardIt came…

6:37Jawad MirI do

6:37Brett Leonard... Off of the popularity of The Twilight Zone.

6:40Jawad MirX-Files and Twilight Zone.

6:41Brett LeonardAnd it was about a man who was, brought forward by technology in his capability and was, had telekinetic control of objects, and then utilized them in a nefarious way. And so that was very influential on me and the story. And I sort of mashed all these things together and then put real virtual reality technology kind of as a wrapper, and you get this strange little movie called The Lawnmower Man, you know? It's a…

7:07Jawad MirYeah

7:07Brett Leonard... It was, and it, you know, for whatever reason, it hit a, it hit a moment where people were very interested in something like this. Now, this was before the internet became popular, really. This was before email was that popular, and yet it all happened that decade right after that movie. And, you know, obviously virtual reality didn't, didn't develop, you know, at the same rate at all. But the idea of a virtual world…

7:37Jawad MirRight

7:37Brett Leonard... The idea that we live in a virtual version of reality on our social media, on the internet, in the web, those concepts, I think, just had their moment, and that moment was right then when we re… released that film. And so it became a kind of cultural phenomenon, weirdly enough…... Called The Lawnmower Man. I mean, talk about a random, you know, title that has very little to do with the actual concepts, and yet in some ways, I think that's one of the reasons it lives on because it is such a strange amalgam of those kinds of things.

8:14Jawad MirYeah. I mean, there is, there is only a handful of films that kinda predicted the future. You know…

8:20Brett LeonardYeah

8:20Jawad Mir... Robocop, Total Recall, Judge Dredd…

8:23Brett LeonardYeah

8:23Jawad Mir... Demolition Man, Truman Show, Edtv…

8:26Brett LeonardYeah

8:26Jawad Mir... Virtuosity, and this.

8:28Brett LeonardYeah.

8:28Jawad MirSo it's, it's, and Minority Report.

8:30Brett LeonardYeah.

8:30Jawad MirSo it's interesting that how, you know, you're able to predict all that. Well, obviously you don't have any s… you know, telepathic abilities or future-telling abilities.

8:38Brett LeonardNo.

8:38Jawad MirBut the cool, one of the things I realized, you know, as I was watching it, so, forgive me, like, you know, being in 2026

8:46Brett LeonardYeah

8:46Jawad Mir... Or even, like, if you look at early 2000s, the visual effects, you know…

8:50Brett LeonardYeah

8:50Jawad Mir... Improved drastically. But…

8:52Brett LeonardOf course

8:52Jawad Mir... I start, but then I start thinking about, okay, when was this film made? 1992, I think, or '91, right?

8:58Brett LeonardIt was, it was made in '91, released in '92.

9:01Jawad MirSo this was even before Toy Story came out.

9:03Brett LeonardOh, yeah. No, yeah.

9:04Jawad MirThis was even before Jurassic Park came out.

9:06Brett LeonardOh, yeah. Yes.

9:07Jawad MirRight? So if you…

9:09Brett LeonardYeah

9:09Jawad Mir... Keep that in context, it was especially the f… the last chapter when the actual characters are lip-syncing, like with the…

9:16Brett LeonardYes. Yes

9:16Jawad Mir... You know, the lips. I was blown away that how…

9:19Brett LeonardOkay

9:19Jawad Mir... Accurate it was.

9:20Brett LeonardYou're, you're picking up on something here. That was the first time a digital avatar character used phonemes to speak because, they've, Cameron had played with it in The Abyss with the face and all that, but it wasn't speaking. It wasn't using phonemes. We actually had a character talking that was a full digital character, and that was the first time a lot of that was ever done. We used scans of phonemes. We had to do individual scans of the lips and the face in order to get that happening with Angel Studios, a very, Joe and Brad Hunt and Diego Angel, had this company, and they were incredibly innovative, and no one knew about them. I found, like, these computer graphic companies that had done Mexican tire commercials, and, they had done the Dianetics volcano exploding commercial, which was very rudimentary computer graphics for that time, but you know, kind of advanced for that time, I should say, and v… gave them the opportunity to really innovate in a feature film, which paid off for me unbelievably because we had 27 minutes of digital effects in that movie.

10:29Brett LeonardThere's seven minutes in T2 at $120 million. So when we talk about the aesthetics of the computer graphics, they were designed to be an aesthetic that we could first do at that level of volume, but also that celebrated cyberdelia, the cyberdelic nature of computer graphic aesthetic, meaning it's not meant to be photoreal. It's meant to be something truly virtual. And it, you know, it's, it re… really interesting. Recently, a lot of people have gone and looked at that as a retro trend that had its own validity, not just trying to get to photorealism, you know? And so if I look back at the historic nature of when this was done and the volume it was done at, and a very low budget. I mean, this was a, you know, $5 million movie. You know…

11:18Jawad MirSeriously?

11:19Brett LeonardOh, yeah. Five million.

11:21Jawad MirWow.

11:22Brett LeonardYeah, no, my entire computer graphics budget was half a million dollars, okay?

11:27Jawad MirJesus.

11:28Brett LeonardThat was insane at that time. So I was considered an insane person by everyone that was working with me, by the way, except my partner, Jamil Ebanks, who was the producer. She was my partner in life and in work and, co-wrote the film with me. And she believed, and we believe, we actually are the special effects supervisors on the film as well, which is rare for a producer and director to be the effects supervisor. But no one else believed we could do it. I mean, it was, it was crazy. And then Chaos Images, Mark Momberg and some amazing people there, Michael Tolkin, they created this incredible software that allowed, you know, the clacking balls when the, when the agents become balls and spin away. That was very unique at that time, and they created a software that allowed that to be done procedurally, and then they…... Marketed that software later as Pandemonium, and that's how they actually made their money, w… from being a software developer that did those kinds of effects, which they played with on that film.

12:30Brett LeonardSo it has a really interesting history of how the technical innovation was invented, by people that weren't really in the film business, and then, you know, sort of branched out into other things. Angel Studios became a real-time physics gaming company, because of what they were doing, you know? They also, by the way, did my f… my Peter Gabriel video, Kiss That Frog. That was also Angel Studios, and, they were in… you know, incredibly talented people.

12:59Jawad MirThat's amazing, man. And, you know, it's, it's, like, I'm, I'm gonna jump a little bit here now.

13:04Brett LeonardSure.

13:05Jawad MirI was,.. I've seen Virtuosity. I've seen this.

13:09Brett LeonardYeah.

13:09Jawad MirPierce Brosnan was not Pierce Brosnan when this was made. Russell Crowe was Russell…

13:13Brett LeonardHe became Pierce Brosnan from this movie in some ways. I mean, he was, he was famous because of

13:19Jawad MirRemington Steele

13:20Brett Leonard... Remington Steele.

13:20Jawad MirYeah.

13:20Brett LeonardYes. But he was actually in a depressive mode when we did this movie because he had lo… Remington Steele was cut off in half-season, and Brandon Tartikoff at NBC had kept Pierce from being Bond because he had the option on him to be, continue to do Remington Steele. So then he called that option and then canceled it half a season in. So he lost Bond and lost Remington Steele, and then he came to, you know, audition or just meet with me, for Ma… Lawnmower Man. Now, you know, to my own credit, I always thought Pierce was a movie star. I mean, I thought he was an incredible throwback to the Errol Flynn era of movie stars, you know? So I was m… really happy to get him for the film, and he did an amazing job. He was, he was very focused. He was very committed to it. There's a kind of tragic dimension to the story because his wife, Cassie, his first wife, was dying of cancer at the time, and he kept staying to shoot the film because she told him, "You've gotta do this movie.

14:29Brett LeonardThis is an important movie for you." And it was his first sort of hit feature film, and, he got Bond very soon after that, so this, on his second go-around with Bond. So, you know, Pierce and I just... He's one of the best people I've, I've worked with in terms of a truly, you know, movie star level celebrity that just is a good person. He really is.

14:53Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. I mean, just to kind of fill in, I think Timothy Dalton got the James Bond role. I think he did just one or maybe two films…

15:00Brett LeonardYeah. He did two

15:00Jawad Mir... If my memory serves me right.

15:01Brett LeonardHe did two, yeah.

15:02Jawad MirTwo. And then Pierce Brosnan came back. But what I was saying was you have this ability, you know, Russell Crowe, Pierce Brosnan. I mean, even that l… little kid, he didn't become a movie star…

15:13Brett LeonardYeah

15:13Jawad Mir... But a year later he was in Last Action Hero with Ar… Arnold Schwarzenegger…

15:17Brett LeonardYep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

15:17Jawad Mir... And John Lithgow. It's, it… kudos to you to have that ability to be able to see talent before it becomes a star…

15:25Brett LeonardWell…

15:25Jawad Mir... Because that's a very rare t… talent to have

15:28Brett Leonard... You know, I think, I think it's because I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, because I grew up in a place where people just would go see movies to see movies, because we loved movies. And it was the middle of the middle of the center of the center. So my, you know, my movie experience was really the movie experience of sort of America writ large, you know? And I just felt I was in touch with knowing what the mass audience would respond to, and I think it's because I grew up there instead of in Los Angeles.

15:56Jawad MirIn Los Angeles.

15:57Brett LeonardWhen you grow up in Los Angeles, you're in a bubble of movies that doesn't give you a, you know, a connection to…

16:02Jawad MirYeah

16:02Brett Leonard... The outside zeitgeist. And, you know, it's, you know, like Toledo was a place where they would, market test more, s… fast food concepts than anywhere else in the, in America, as an example.

16:16Jawad MirWow.

16:17Brett LeonardSo that's…

16:18Jawad MirAwesome

16:18Brett Leonard... I think that's part of my connection to that, you know, that aspect of my work, which is... Do you know, by the way, I don't know if in Virtuosity, I think we talked about it, Callie Coco is the little girl. Callie Coco is the little girl…

16:31Jawad MirYes

16:31Brett Leonard... In Virtuosity, who went on to do, you know, Big Bang Theory, and now…

16:36Jawad MirYeah

16:36Brett Leonard... Has her own series on Amazon, and, I'm really... She's, she's got an amazing career, actually. Incredible.

16:44Jawad MirAwesome. You told me to watch the director's cut, which I did…

16:49Brett LeonardYes. Yes

16:49Jawad Mir... On Amazon Prime. So I haven't seen the original cut, right?

16:52Brett LeonardYes.

16:53Jawad MirAnd I also saw the note, the disclaimer about the minor jump cuts and all that.

16:57Brett LeonardYeah.

16:57Jawad MirSo walk me through the difference between the director cut… theatrical cut and director's cut, and at one point, at one point, did you, were you able to make the director's cut…... And why?

17:09Brett LeonardOkay, so that's an interesting story. So look, when we were finishing Lawnmower Man, it got p… picked up in what's called a negative pickup, meaning they picked up the negative cost of the film, by New Line Cinema. That was run by Bob Shaye at the time, the same Bob Shaye that greenlit the Lord of the Rings films for later for Peter Jackson. So Bob is a, you know, legendary figure. He's also legendarily kind of an asshole. He could be a very, like, he knew what... He was a drinker. Now, I love Bob because Bob was a very big part of my life and, but, you know, I think Bob would chuckle if he heard me saying this, because, you know, we had... He came into my edit room and he said, "Cut conversation, don't cut effects." You know? I mean, it was, it was really brutal, but I will tell you this: he was right for the theatrical cut. It needed to be a certain amount of length. It needed to have a certain punchiness, and it was a massive hit theatrically, so I can't say he was wrong, right?

18:12Brett LeonardThe thing is, there was a lot of story character-wise that I wanted to tell that was… Yeah, look, I was a young director, and it would just be too long a film. But what happened was because the film did so well, it was the number one film for New Line that year, they came back... I think Sarah Risher, the executive there, came to me and said, "Look, why don't we do your director's cut? There's a bunch of people here that are fans of your director's cut, and now we could release it for home video." And home v… at that time, home video just started to do director's cuts as a marketing thing, right?

18:45Brett LeonardSo I said, "Okay." Well, I took the ball and ran with it. It's 35 minutes difference. I put more than half an hour back into the movie, mostly in the first act, right? Which is the whole thing with the chimpanzee and with, Jobe, played by Jeff Fahey. All of that character build-up, his char… connection with, Dr. Angelo b… through that experience. And I love that section of the film, which by the way, was incredibly difficult to shoot. I don't know if you've ever shot with a s… a chimpanzee that can bench press 1,600 pounds. But it's, it's a crazy, dangerous thing. I mean, and he would, if there were women that may be, you know, at a certain point in their month, he would try to dominate them. He would, like, you know, literally smell them and dominate them. I mean, it was intense to deal with this chimpanzee, who by the way I think gives an amazing performance in the film.

19:41Jawad MirHe does.

19:42Brett LeonardYou know?

19:42Jawad MirHe does.

19:43Brett LeonardAnd, but Jeff, who got very close, he was being very brave to... Because that chimpanzee could suddenly snap and just rip its helmet off and go, "Ah." There's actually a shot in the film where he g… he does that, which was just him, you know, responding to not wanting to be pushed, and it shows sort of the intensity. So I was very happy to put those things back in the film. And then the good news is the film went out in that version, got re-reviewed, most p… most famously by The Washington Post reviewer at the time, who gave it a rave, saying, "A film recut, reseeded," you know, like, 'cause of Lawnmower. And it, he talked about the nature of director's cuts and how a director could really wanna tell a story and not get the chance to do so because of the way the film was cut by the distributor. So it was kind of a total victory for me, and it outsold the eight… the VHS version of the film in home video, like at Blockbuster, by eight to one.

20:50Brett LeonardSo it was…

20:51Jawad MirWow

20:51Brett Leonard... The director's cut what, wh… went out there in home video. So it was a great experience. It was kind of a vindication for me. I may, I may have even said something to Bob Shaye at some point about that. But he was just like, "We're just proud." You know? So he was ultimately a very magnanimous person.

21:10Jawad MirBut the interesting thing is, right, like, if you had released the director's cut as a theatrical cut…

21:15Brett LeonardYeah

21:15Jawad Mir... And the film had tanked…

21:17Brett LeonardYes

21:17Jawad Mir... Then…

21:18Brett LeonardThen we never would've had..

21:19Jawad Mir... You know, would that…

21:19Brett LeonardYeah, exactly

21:20Jawad Mir... Then everything else would be opposite. So in a way…

21:23Brett LeonardExactly

21:23Jawad Mir... It's a good thing. Yeah.

21:24Brett LeonardI have come to look at it that way. And, you know, film is a collaborative art form. I think, you know, especially young filmmakers, they need people like the Bob Shayes of the world to, like, you know, give them perspective on, "Hey, you want your, you want people to watch your movie, kid?" You know? I mean, this is what the great moguls did. They were very tough businessmen.

21:44Jawad MirYeah.

21:44Brett LeonardBut they loved storytelling. I will tell you, Bob did love storytelling. He really did, and it's proved by what he did with, you know, Lord of the Rings. He's the one who ca… you know, Peter Jackson came with him and said, "Okay, we're gonna combine all three novels together into two films." And he said, "That's stupid. You gotta make it in three films." W… I mean, he was absolutely correct with that, you know? So Bob, at the end, he vindicates himself.

22:12Jawad MirYeah. I remember Lord of the Rings, after that, New Line Cinema was bought out by, I think, Time Warner, after the success of Lord of the Rings.

22:20Brett LeonardYes.

22:20Jawad MirAnd, New Line was kinda like Miramax in the early '90s.

22:25Brett LeonardIt was.

22:25Jawad MirYou know, when…

22:25Brett LeonardIt was, yeah.

22:26Jawad MirAnd it was, I mean, we're, since we're talking about them, it was, it was one of those two of those companies were rare companies where they were actually, you know, telling, making films like Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting…

22:39Brett LeonardYes

22:39Jawad Mir... You know, y… your film.

22:40Brett LeonardYeah.

22:40Jawad MirSo many different things, and, like, kudos to them…

22:43Brett LeonardWhich would never happen today

22:44Jawad Mir... Because…

22:44Brett LeonardIt almost…

22:44Jawad MirOh, impossible

22:45Brett Leonard... Would never happen today. There aren't, there aren't b… I mean, I mourn the loss of that kind of middle budget filmmaking…

22:54Jawad MirYeah

22:54Brett Leonard... That they were very good at, and they were genre-based, and they did incredibly unique genre films. By the way, Bob Shaye, his first big success was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by Tobe Hooper.

23:06Jawad MirOh, was it? Oh, nice.

23:07Brett LeonardOh, yes. Way back when. And he came onto it as a distributor and was slogging it and saw that it was something special. Which, by the way, it really is. I mean, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the most effective films ever made, especially in the genre, you know?

23:21Jawad MirYeah.

23:22Brett LeonardAnd Bob was, that was his claim to fame.

23:25Jawad Mir100%. Go…

23:26Brett LeonardBut New Line came, New Line came from a very interesting lineage, you know?

23:33Jawad MirRight. Going back to the film, the lab or the, all that environment that you guys had created

23:42Brett LeonardYeah

23:43Jawad Mir... What, tell m… I mean, obviously it looked very bleak, like the blue tint…

23:47Brett LeonardYeah

23:47Jawad Mir... You know, futuristic and dark.

23:49Brett LeonardYeah.

23:50Jawad MirT… talk to me about creating that world.

23:52Brett LeonardOkay, so…

23:52Jawad MirWhat was the process? Because it's stark in contrast with all the green and then Lawnmower Man and the…

23:56Brett LeonardYeah, exactly

23:58Jawad Mir... Rest of it.

23:58Brett LeonardSo look, films are collaborative, and what I learned on Lawnmower Man, which was very lucky for me, 'cause it was my second feature film, my first really big feature film, was the importance of a production designer and the importance of a cinematographer, and I, both, I got two great people in those s… roles. Alex McDowell was the production designer.

24:22Jawad MirOh, really?

24:23Brett LeonardYeah, it was his first feature film.

24:25Jawad MirI've had him on the podcast once

24:27Brett LeonardYou'd been doing, you know, Fincher, it… I remember I saw you'd done Janie's Got a Gun, that video with, for Fincher. And I'm like…

24:33Jawad MirYes

24:34Brett Leonard... I want this guy, you know? And he was an incredibly talented production designer. He brought a huge amount to Lawnmower Man. We are s… friends to this day, by the way. And, he went on to, of course, to become the production designer of Man of Steel, Minority Report, you know, Watchmen. I mean, one of the biggest production designers of his era, and Lawnmower Man was his first film. So I… I'm very proud of that. And then Russell had done a couple smaller films, but Lawnmower Man was his breakout film. James Cameron saw Russell's work for Lawnmower Man. He loved it and hired him for True Lies and Titanic, and Russell won the Academy Award for Titanic. So that's my cinematographer from Lawnmower Man. By the way, James came to me and said, "I'm gonna take your whole crew," which he did. He took P… Patricia Whitcher, my line producer, who became one of the biggest executive producers in the business. He took the whole, effects crew, I mean, a lot of the visual ef… physical effects crew, and my, cinematography, all the gaffers, all those people went on to d… work on Cameron's next couple films.

25:44Brett LeonardSo he loved the, that blue look, which we did kind of, we wanted it to feel like the VR lab was underwater, you know? So we used a lot of smoke, very controlled smoke, and, that blue sort of almost effervescent look, was, Russell really doing some of his best work.

26:05Jawad MirYeah. No, it really, it really made the difference. And w… another thing, obviously, that the star of the film, you know, the two, the two, the leads ... Pierce and, sorry, I forget the gentleman's name. Jeff? Is it Jeff?

26:20Brett LeonardJeff Fahey. Jeff Fahey, yes.

26:21Jawad MirJeff Fahey.

26:21Brett LeonardYeah.

26:21Jawad MirThey really carried the film in the most amazing…

26:26Brett LeonardThey did

26:27Jawad Mir... Way. Talk to me…

26:27Brett LeonardYou know…

26:27Jawad Mir... About the process of working with them

26:29Brett Leonard... So they were b… they were both, Irish of, by lineage, so it was two crazy, drinking Irishmen that I got. And in my first big dinner with them, which was at Ivy at the Shore down here in, Santa Monica, and I'm a young filmmaker. I was there with my partner, Jamil, who had, was producing and wrote the film with me, and we took our two leads out to dinner, right? And of course, the, you know, my producer said, "Yeah, get the receipt and we'll re… reimburse you." Now, I didn't realize that you could go to a place like that and as your two leads began drinking glasses of port later in…

27:11Jawad MirOh, shoot

27:11Brett Leonard... It was at 80 bucks a pop. And so I didn't have enough money on my credit card to cover that dinner, so I had to go home while s… Jamil sat there with them, ge… grab cash to pay for it. I'll never forget it. And they were just having the most amazing Irish time together. They really got along. They both, you know, appreciated each other, as actors and, I could not have been, luckier with them in all honesty, because both of them truly committed to this crazy idea, you know? And they really, they really committed to it as serious actors, you know? And, you know, Pierce kept going, "I want to look funky. I wanna..." I said, "Yeah, but Pierce, you just happen to be one of the most beautiful men on earth, so I'm hitting you with under f… lit fluorescence," and spraying him down with sweat. He still looks gorgeous, you know? I'm like, "Oh, man, you know, this i… you're tough." And he goes, "I know. I know. It's all about the hair. It's all about the hair."

28:12Brett LeonardAnd…

28:12Jawad MirIt's, it's, have you seen his most recent film, the Thursday Murder Club?

28:16Brett LeonardYeah. It's great. It's funny. Yeah

28:17Jawad Mir... He's, he's still got it. He still has it, that charisma.

28:21Brett LeonardNo, Pierce is one of the greats. He really is. I think he was a great Bond, by the way. And I mean, they took the films the wrong direction the last couple of his films when he's, you know, surfing a tsunami, is, that's not the Bond, you know, that I want to see. But who he was as Bond, especially in GoldenEye and in the earlier films, was a really great version of Bond, you know?

28:44Jawad MirYeah.

28:45Brett LeonardAnd he pulls it off, w… with, you know, great British aplomb, even though that is not him. He is, he's, how can I describe it? He's an Irish flibbertigibbet. He's, he's, he's a wonderfully delightful Irishman, you know? You get a bit more of that in some of his recent work. Have you seen Mob Land?

29:08Jawad MirI've been told to watch it, but I haven't had a chance…

29:10Brett LeonardWell, but he plays…

29:10Jawad Mir... But I've heard it's great

29:11Brett Leonard... He plays one of the villains.

29:13Jawad MirYeah.

29:13Brett LeonardBut it's a very Irish film.

29:13Jawad MirWith the Helen Mirren, I think.

29:15Brett LeonardVery Irish film.

29:16Jawad MirYeah.

29:16Brett LeonardAnd he brings some of that aspect of himself to it, but in an evil lens, and it's terrifying. It's really terrifying. He's, he's very sc…

29:24Jawad MirI gotta watch it now

29:25Brett Leonard... Yeah.

29:25Jawad MirYeah.

29:25Brett LeonardBut and plus, he's bouncing off of Helen Mirren in that show.

29:29Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

29:29Brett LeonardAnd that's about as good a player as you could have to bounce off of, you know?

29:33Jawad MirOh, they were both in Thursday Murder Club with very…

29:35Brett LeonardYeah, I know

29:35Jawad Mir... Fun personalities. So…

29:37Brett LeonardYeah

29:37Jawad Mir... You know, talking about the film again, I… you kind of explained this because when I'm watching this, I'm trying to make, you know, the whole chimpanzee sequence, and then the film…

29:49Brett LeonardYeah

29:49Jawad Mir... Is going this direction and that direction…

29:50Brett LeonardYeah

29:51Jawad Mir... And that direction. There was something, with all due respect…

29:54Brett LeonardYeah

29:54Jawad Mir... Annoying about it, but at the same time, it was something that I cannot stop watching. I don't know how to explain that.

30:01Brett LeonardYeah.

30:02Jawad MirAnd when you watch it now, sort of reflecting back, even the director's cut, is that something that still sort of connects with you? I mean, was it…

30:10Brett LeonardYeah, I mean, look, there were reasons that the theatrical cut was the theatrical cut.

30:14Jawad MirRight.

30:14Brett LeonardThere were reasons that, you know, a… I mean, you know, a classic example of this is, I don't know if you've ever gone back and watched Apocalypse Now Redux.

30:23Jawad MirYes, I have.

30:23Brett LeonardI think every single thing that was put back in Redux should have been out. So it was, it's almost a masterclass in seeing…... How a film should be cut for theatrical release. And then the sequences were beautiful and amazing in and of themselves that they put back in, but at the end of the day, the overarching nature of the s… of the story was not well-served. I think in Lawnmower Man it's a little different. I think that there's a little bit of a, of a disjuncture with the chimp stuff moving into some of the other, you know, themes. But at the same time, he, Roscoe was a version of the Lawnmower Man. He, we see in miniature the story unfold, and then we're gonna see it happen to a human being. And, you know, it gave a character depth to Jobe, which I think makes him a much more likable character, and you feel for him more because he's not just a villain. He's someone who's, you know, he's a tragic figure, and he's someone who's, you know, t… a human being that becomes data, you know?

31:28Brett LeonardIt's a very, there's actually these, textbooks out there, one at, a London college of, film, that says it's the first movie where a human became data. Now, I actually think Tron was the example of that, to tell you the truth.

31:43Jawad MirYeah.

31:43Brett LeonardBut, you know, there you go. I'll, I'll, I'll take it where I can get it. But, you know, it's, it, Tron, by the way, was a very big influence on me. That and Brainstorm by, you know, Douglas Trumbull, his film Brainstorm. Which was not about virtual reality, but these all had themes connected to it and…

32:05Jawad MirSure

32:06Brett Leonard... Sort of, kind of aesthetic, cinematic concepts that were firing off for me that I was, I was paying homage to.

32:15Jawad MirAnd, you know, you talked about, Tron. One of the things when I was watching, the last act of Lawnmower Man, I think that the outfit that he was wearing…

32:26Brett LeonardYes

32:26Jawad Mir... The, what…

32:27Brett LeonardVery Tron

32:27Jawad Mir... What came into my head was, what came into my head was Tron 2 picked it up from your film, but then…

32:34Brett LeonardRight, yes

32:34Jawad Mir... You picked it up from Tron. So I thought there was a lot of similarities, which you've talked about…

32:38Brett LeonardYes

32:38Jawad Mir... Which is really cool. And Tron is one of the most, you know, pioneering computer effects movies.

32:43Brett LeonardIt is.

32:43Jawad MirActually, the pioneer. I, you know, I…

32:44Brett LeonardThere wouldn't be, there wouldn't be a Lawnmower Man without Tron. Or there wouldn't be me… most computer graphics without Tron. I mean, Steven Lisberger really was a pioneer at that time. And, it definitely captured my imagination, that's for sure. Even though how they did it, and it was so rudimentary, and the way they did the characters was literally, you know, by packing with, you know, high-contrast prints and allowing animation to glow through. I mean, it was a very mixed way to utilize hybrid approach to make the visual effects of the film, and yet they had those computer graphic sequences, which were done by a Cray, a Cray computer. You know, it was the m… earliest version of computer graphic visualization. So it was…

33:27Jawad MirYeah, PDI, it was called PDI, Pacific Data Images.

33:30Brett LeonardYeah.

33:31Jawad MirWhich was the…

33:31Brett LeonardWell, there was, yeah. Yep. And Southern, w… s… Ander… Sutherland and Anderson. There was a couple…

33:40Jawad MirYes

33:40Brett Leonard... Companies that were part of it. That, but they really just were computer hardware research companies that happened…

33:48Jawad MirAnd which…

33:48Brett Leonard... To have this hardware, you know?

33:50Jawad MirAnd which went on to make Antz…

33:53Brett LeonardYeah

33:53Jawad Mir... And then Shrek, and then it got acquired and swallowed by DreamWorks.

33:57Brett LeonardYep.

33:57Jawad MirBut

33:58Brett LeonardYep

33:58Jawad Mir... And the famous Simpsons sequence, the 3D d… three-dimensional, which I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

34:03Brett LeonardOh, absolutely. Yeah.

34:04Jawad MirIt's, it's, it's an incredible set of visual effects that you have. And I know people, when they hear me say that, they go, "I, am I crazy?" Like, they look so, you know, kinda like…

34:15Brett LeonardYeah

34:15Jawad Mir... Remember that TV show, r… was it Reboot? It was, like, a computer animation in the early stages.

34:21Brett LeonardYeah. Yeah.

34:21Jawad MirIt kind of, it kinda had that kind of a feel. But it…

34:24Brett LeonardYeah, except way before that. I mean, the thing is…

34:27Jawad MirYes

34:27Brett Leonard... We, look, if you put into the c… the context of when that movie was made…

34:33Jawad Mir100%

34:34Brett Leonard... Those effects are a miracle. I mean…

34:36Jawad MirA miracle

34:36Brett Leonard... A… and at the budget, it's, it's triple miracle. I mean, it, and that's a real testament to all my collaborators, in all honesty.

34:44Jawad MirI wi… I will say this. The scene that blew me away, even though you can probably pull that off on Instagram or filters nowadays…

34:50Brett LeonardOh, you can. Yeah.

34:51Jawad Mir... Is the molecule, like, the little balls of sort of…

34:54Brett LeonardYeah

34:55Jawad Mir... Everybody's kinda, like, broke.

34:56Brett LeonardYeah.

34:56Jawad MirI mean, to be, n-now it's, like, a filter, right? You throw in a picture…

34:59Brett LeonardYeah

34:59Jawad Mir... And boom, it does it.

34:59Brett LeonardYep.

35:00Jawad MirBut how did you guys get to do that? I mean, I can understand everything else to a certain extent, but what was that like? What was the p… process behind that?

35:08Brett LeonardThat wa… that was really me, I gotta be honest, me, accessing…

35:12Jawad MirYou crazy?

35:12Brett Leonard... My psych… my psychedelic, my psychedelic visions, from my, from my, misspent youth, you know? Which I was actually in at the time, so you know? I mean, The Lawnmower Man, was definitely, you know, the, some of the concepts and visualizations were very inspired by psychedelic, experience. And it was, you know, as an example, almost everything in Lawnmower Man is based on sacred geometries. We scanned in thousands of sacred geometries for those brain stem sequences. So people actually look at those brain stem sequences, and they pick up the symbols from different cultural references in there, and they'll send me, they'll send me freeze frames. "It's the yantre mantra," you know? It's, they'll, they'll see. And because I literally put a thousand references into that thing. A lot of that was also my partner Jamil Everett, who was a very spiritually, advanced person, and so she brought a lot of that perspective to it at the time.

36:11Jawad MirTalk to me about your partner, if you don't mind. I would love to.

36:14Brett LeonardSure. Well, Jamil was my first wife. We were, you know, she met me when I was a very young filmmaker. She was 20 years my senior. And, she really raised me as both a filmmaker and a, and a man, and, was one of the most important people in my life. She passed on about 15 years ago, maybe almost 20. And, She's absolutely equally, you know, the person that made The Lawnmower Man happen, for sure. She was a very unique being

36:50Jawad MirCan you remember, if by any chance, a sp… a specific story about Lawnmower Man where things were going down the hill or…... You were... Or, which I'm sure there were many, but it… or you were not agreeing to something that she was saying. Just sort of un…

37:07Brett LeonardSure

37:07Jawad Mir... Explaining to me who she was as a human being.

37:10Brett LeonardWell, you know, she was incredibly supportive. I mean, in all honesty, we didn't argue much because we were very much in sync cinematically. And she also in… really supported my cinematic vision. I w… you know, I w… I'm a visualist, you know, who I, you know, studied, you know, cinema as my life's work, and she recognized that and allowed me and protected me in that process. But she connected it to themes and emotion that was very important. So she would keep me on, you know, on guidance for making sure that, you know, we were making characters that people would feel for. And bringing a, you know, a deep empathic sensibility to the, to the storytelling. She was a storyteller in her own right. And so…

37:58Jawad MirThat's right

37:58Brett Leonard... But we worked very well together. It was a… an absolutely amazing collaboration, which spoiled me. In all honesty, it was my first big film. I thought, "That's just the way it's gonna always be." Well, not so much. Sometimes you get producers that are nowhere near as good as she was, at supporting, and you are actually in battles instead of being supported, so. She was, an amazing, collaborator in every, in every way, actually. And she knew when something was right. She was also very good at casting. She could feel, you know, when some… she knew about Pierce instantly, you know? And, so, you know, like I said, there's, there's very little about Lawnmower Man that wasn't truly a collaborative work between Jamil and myself.

38:46Jawad MirWonderful. Thank you for sharing that. You know, I'll sort of, kind of wrap things around based on our early part of the conversation about AI, and then also w… we, you and I have talked about this in person, but also we talked about there isn't a studio like New Line Cinema or Miramax now, right?

39:03Brett LeonardRight

39:03Jawad MirLike sort of like middle budget. Do you feel that void can be filled with films that are partially AI combined with, you know, live action?

39:15Brett LeonardBoth pa… partially AI and full AI. I'm

39:18Jawad MirFull AI

39:18Brett Leonard... I'm basically, I'm focused in this area very strongly right now because it changes the economic determinism of feature filmmaking and the gatekeeping of feature filmmaking. And so it's gonna open up and democratize the ability to create something truly epic, truly cinematically innovative, that for people that don't have to go and, you know, get millions and millions of dollars to do it. And yet for filmmakers like myself, I can still go get several million dollars, but I don't need to go get $200 million. You see what I'm saying? So…

39:56Jawad MirYeah

39:56Brett Leonard... It allows, it allows a imaginative process that is completely unique in the history of cinema. And

40:06Jawad MirBut how do we get around, sorry if I'm cutting you off, and again…

40:09Brett LeonardSure

40:10Jawad Mir... This is a conversation nowadays very open. How do you get around the whole copyright infringement element? Like, you know, for example…

40:18Brett LeonardI think it's a straw man, in all honesty. I think that, look, every one of us as filmmakers, as artists, stand on the shoulders of greatness. We all reference everything. Everything I've ever done references Stanley Kubrick, references…

40:31Jawad MirSure

40:31Brett Leonard... Hitchcock, references. So, and all my work is out there being referenced and I've experienced that my whole career. So, you know, I don't think that the way in which these models are learning at the core, unless it's absolutely taking something and plagiarizing it, is necessary plagiarism. It's not, it's just not the way human imaginative nature works. It's not the way we've built art forms on top of other art forms, you know? And the, I mean c… you can, you could say everything goes back to Euripides and goes back to, you know, Sophocles. I mean, y… y… you can't y… you must allow the march forward of ideas building on other ideas. I think AI is a natural evolution and progression of that exact same thing. Now, that said, I believe in humans in the loop. I also believe in, acknowledging provenance of ideas, acknowledging provenance of vision, and I think that can actually be helped by AI in the process, and that's something I've been working on, in the context of human in the loop workflows.

41:44Brett LeonardMy son, Shannon Leonard, is, a pioneer in this area, and has his own company doing that. And, it's a very unique time of invention of a new medium. The way I look at it is it's its own medium. Yes, it's in the evolution of cinema. I think s… I see cinema as an overarching sort of religion in some ways, but in the evolution of that cinematic religion, there is an evolution towards true immersive interactive experience, and experience that can be procedurally generated in real time off of the imaginative moments and dreams and interaction of human beings in a completely new collaborative framework, and that is very exciting. There's no rules yet for it, so I think we need to forge forward and allow this new medium to express itself and to form itself… There's going to be controversy. There's going to be unfairness.

42:45Brett LeonardThere's going to be people that are, you know, upset by the process. That's the history of mankind, human kind.

42:51Jawad MirThat's true. That's true.

42:52Brett LeonardIt…

42:52Jawad MirThat I agree with

42:53Brett Leonard... There's not any technology, any art form that has ever not had those controversies. So…

42:58Jawad MirI mean, if you look at, if you look at VCR when it came out, people thought…

43:01Brett LeonardYes

43:01Jawad Mir... Nobody would go to the movie theaters, then DVDs, DivX…

43:04Brett LeonardExactly. Exactly

43:05Jawad Mir... You know, and all that and so forth. But do you think that cinema as it is today…

43:11Brett Leonardhuh

43:11Jawad Mir... The way you and I have grown up with, the way you and I have worked on, would it still exist in its own realm?

43:17Brett LeonardYes. I think it will exist.

43:19Jawad MirI think so too.

43:20Brett LeonardI think it always will exist. We don't, you know, there's still painting, there's still dance, there's still, you know, concertos. There's still, you know, all kinds of forms that may not be the mass form that cinema was as we knew it in the 20th century. It was a 20th century form. When we hit the 21st century, it started shifting, and we are now in an evolutionary transition of cinema as an art form into something else, into something that's beyond that connects to simulation theory and all kinds of other things regarding the themes I did in some of my films. The idea of the virtual world becoming one with the real world. What does that mean? I'm not offering answers, but I'm definitely answering, asking the questions in the context of story and narrative.

44:09Jawad MirFair enough. What's,.. Is there anything that we should expect from you in the coming future that is public?

44:14Brett LeonardOh, yeah. Well, I mean, I've got multiple projects we're, we're about to announce. A really amazing one that's, that's, part of the life story of a very famous person, and it's, it's... The good thing about it is that it's extremely an organic story, and we're gonna be doing the majority of it full AI because it makes sense to do it that way. I believe you have to make sense for the tools to be used and certain ideas. Not all ideas are good for complete AI, but some are, and some are…

44:45Jawad MirYeah

44:45Brett Leonard... Hybrid ideas. And so that's gonna be advanced. And then there's, I'm forming a company, that is, with a co-founder, who's got s… some amazing, ideas and IP, and we're gonna move forward with this kind of new model for a story world building studio. Building story worlds that are inherently gamified, interactive with emergent interactive narrative components. That's the thing that I'm really kinda passionate about right now. How do we bring emergent interaction into the movie experience? And again, some of these concepts I played with in my feature films. So I'm just referencing them in a kind of French self-reflex of sort of manner. You know, it's, it's an interesting time for me.

45:35Jawad MirThat's awesome, Brett. Listen, a pleasure having you. I would love to continue chatting with you about the AI re… revolution and all those different things.

45:43Brett LeonardYeah. Well, you know, as some things come online, I'll come back and we can, we can announce some things, you know, when it, when the timing is right, and it's not too, not too long from now, so…

45:52Jawad MirAmazing

45:53Brett Leonard... I look forward to doing that.

45:53Jawad MirBut aside from that, now aside from that, this is off the record. This is, I'm not gonna…

45:57Brett LeonardYeah

45:57Jawad Mir... I'm trying to figure out a way myself…

46:01Brett LeonardYeah

46:01Jawad Mir... Making the films that I do, but also trying to utilize AI in a hybrid… ... Or a complete way. Any recommendation or book or suggestion or website? I mean, there's so much out there, right? If you are able to…

46:12Brett LeonardHere's my, here's my suggestion. Two tenets that we're, we're using as our tenets. Human in the loop. Nothing static in process. Because if you s… if you create a static process right now… ... You're gonna be behind in a week. You have to flux with the dynamism of the time with the tools that are evolving right now. Because we are in such a dynamism of evolving tools, you can't stop at any given workflow or any given process. It takes a lot of process experimentation, and don't, don't let that be daunting. Let that allow you to be imaginative even more, you know? And it's, it's a time for that kind of process experimentation, very much so. I think it'll, it'll…

46:58Jawad MirSo, sorry, go on.

46:59Brett LeonardIt'll, it'll lead, it'll, it'll lead to really good results that make sense for the moment we're in this huge transition that's happening right now.

47:09Jawad MirSo don't limit myself to any particular platform like the one that just made the Blad... Made the Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise just kinda go wild nuts. Is that what you're suggesting?

47:18Brett LeonardAbsolutely. But you can look and see which models are doing what you like the most. If, you know, photorealistic, you know…

47:24Jawad MirOkay

47:24Brett Leonard... Hollywood actors in a scene are what you want, then that platform is a very good one, you know?

47:30Jawad MirGreat.

47:30Brett LeonardSo you…

47:30Jawad MirAnd is there an animation one that you recommend? A computer animation type?

47:35Brett LeonardI mean, computer animation is really being subsumed by AI generate, generative n… process. It really is.

47:42Jawad MirOkay

47:42Brett Leonard... And, you know, obviously blending that in the context of gaming engines, how that becomes connected to real-time procedural generation, and then this idea of emergent interactive narrative, that's the amalgam, that's the jambalaya that I'm kind of playing with the recipe for right now.

48:01Jawad MirAwesome. Well, that's good to know. I'll, I'll probably reach out over email if I have any questions, if that's cool.

48:06Brett LeonardSure.

48:06Jawad MirJust to kind of…

48:07Brett LeonardAbsolutely. Absolutely.

48:08Jawad MirI appreciate your time, sir.

48:09Brett LeonardAll right.

48:09Jawad MirThank you so much.

48:10Brett LeonardYou as well. Great. Thanks so much.

48:11Jawad MirTake care, Brett.

48:11Brett LeonardBye-bye.

48:12Jawad MirBye-bye.