"Well this movie is made for them (the fans). I put in as many joy buttons as I could for them. I hope they’ll like it. I think what they’ll like the most of it is there is a beginning, middle and an end. I really wanted it to be a rollercoaster, I really didn’t have any interest in doing a movie about shoes and drinks alone."
By Lindsay Rondeau in New York City
Michael Patrick King is the man best known for running the show that is the phenomenon, “Sex and the City.” Four years after the HBO series ended (and 10 years after it debuted), the girls of the city – Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda – hit the big screen for one last adventure in romance and fashion. In the “Sex and the City” movie, King writes and directs the last chapter which takes fans four years into the future since the series ended.
Below we talked to Michael at a recent press day in New York City.
Q: Take us through the process of taking the TV series to creating it into a full length movie…
MICHAEL: First of all, it starts with the “Mega-Fan”. That was the first voice I had to quiet. They (the fans) are so smart and so present and the girls are on TV now, so there was a lot to wrangle in my head. I knew that the mistake would be to pick up where we left off. I knew that the girlfriends of these characters, meaning the fans of the show, had evolved, they got married or had children. So these girls just reflect them back. The reflection had to be real, so I knew I had to move these girls forward. I knew the actresses could hold it up. They look amazing and they are amazing.
The other thing that I realized was, I took a look at all the past episodes again and I said, “Oh, I can’t do any of that,” because the one things that I tried to do with the movie was not repeat anything that we had already done. And I knew the big story was, literally, “The Big Story”. The finale did sort of fulfill a completed feeling. It’s hard to complete a finale that people are happy with on television. There’s been a lot of flack about people being disappointed with series finales, and when we got away with it, it was like, oh, now we have to start again?
Q: What was the big difference between directing these characters and this story in a long format, as opposed to the more episodic TV series?
MICHAEL: Well, if you notice, there is almost less talking in the movie than in the series. In the series every time something happened they sat down and had a conversation. I knew that the story was going to be a bigger emotional run.
And, technically, the screen’s completely different, it’s a different shape. And I knew I couldn’t have a gigantic head talking to another gigantic head, in New York City that’s just not the way to go. It was enough for the girls to be close; I could just go in when I really needed to make an impact. We relied more on the emotional seasons and the physically seasons and making really pretty pictures. I wanted it to movie to move. It was a bigger picture and more attention to detail.
One of the examples is, in the series, the coffee shop scene was a set on a sound stage. And out of the window was a drop, so we could never really shoot outside the window. And in the drop, oddly enough, was a store front in SOHO that had three white wedding gowns, which was just in the background. So when we did the one coffee shop scene in the movie, we built a set in SOHO and we rented the storefront across the street and we put three white wedding gowns in it. It just made it seem more real, there’s a real street, real cars go by. The camera doesn’t lie when the screen is that big, so the details had to be done well.
Q: What were some of the challenges of shooting in the city?
MICHAEL: The very first day was with Carrie and Big, it was on the Upper East Side, and it was sort of the only “reality moment”. It was just us and the film crew and it was very stealth and by the end of the day people started peering in. The very next day The Daily News published our film schedule. It was like a celebrity petting zoo. “Go see the llamas! Go see the egrets! They’re going to be here!” And people were like, “Oh, there they are!” And it got bigger and bigger and bigger until the point when we were are Bryant Park, there were literally 500 people watching us film. By then we had sort of gotten it together and we had barricades and bullhorns. And really the only thing that made it possible to shoot is that we had really respectful fans.
The other crazy thing was, I would film something and there are so many paparazzi now with video cameras. So I would film something and then go home and watch one of those entertainment shows, and I would see my scene before I would see the dailies! And I would say, “Oh, that’ll work!” because I would see my scene on TV before I would see the dailies. Because they would get right behind our cameras and move with it.
Q: Did you shoot fake decoy scenes?
MICHAEL: We shot stuff that didn’t make it into the movie, but it’s too expensive to set up enormous fake scenes. So what I would do is through out fake lines. There were a couple of Carrie and Big exchanges and she (Sara Jessica Parker) was good at saying “These dream sequences are taking a long time!”
Q: What do you expect the fan the response will be?
MICHAEL: Well this movie is made for them. I put in as many joy buttons as I could for them. I hope they’ll like it. I think what they’ll like the most of it is there is a beginning, middle and an end. I really wanted it to be a rollercoaster, I really didn’t have any interest in doing a movie about shoes and drinks alone. It had to be about emotions because in a movie it has to have a scope and scale and I wanted people to cry and laugh.
Q: What would you say is the theme of the movie?
MICHAEL: I would say the theme of the movie is love and forgiveness and because I have four heroines, I have four different ways to love and four different ways to forgive. And Carrie says very clearly in the movie “I used to write about finding love, now I want to write about what happens after you find it.” So that’s what it is. You’re always making mistakes. In your thirties maybe you’re making mistakes by jumping into bed with the wrong person and in your forties maybe you’re making emotional mistakes because you are in bed with the right person. Anytime anyone is in love you can be 20, emotionally. So it’s really about exploring the love affair between the four women.
Q: What do you think of the syndicated series?
MICHAEL: I do actually see them. At first I didn’t want to because I thought, “Well, there goes all the sex scenes”. Which I was very proud of. We were able to take an avenue like sex, which at that time was only dark or pornographic, and we made it funny or in pink. But in trimming those scenes, people think the show is just about the four girls, which really is what it is all about and the sex is the fireworks to get your attention. My mother watches the show and she’s 84 and she likes the girls, she thinks it about the friendship.
Q: There are cameos in the show, so did you consider doing cameos in the movie?
MICHAEL: Look, the movie was busting at the seams. The first person I would put back in would be John Corbett. Because, you know Aidan is the heartthrob that got away and fans are split down the middle between Big or Aidan. And the fact of the matter is, John Corbett is such a thoroughbred and he’s really an A-list item and I think he’s so phenomenal, that four women, with all significant men in there lives, why bring in a thoroughbred if you’re not going to let him run? There’s really no time to really do that justice. So now he lives forever in people’s minds.
“Sex and the City” opens in theaters May 30th.
