The Day The Earth Stood Still releases this Friday, and it's one of my most-anticipated films of the year. I still love the 1951 original and to be honest was rather skeptical about a remake. However, the awesome trailer and the information that slowly leaked out about the update got me excited about this movie. Well, I recently had a chance to talk with director Scott Derrickson about the remake, and here's what he had to say:

Yo: Hey Scott, how are you doing today?

Scott: I'm doing good. I'm losing my voice but I'm doing alright.

Yo: I'm sorry to hear that, but I guess that's the price you pay for talking with so many peons such as myself.

Scott: That's exactly right.

Yo: (laughing) Well first of all, I'm excited you're doing this remake and I find it fascinating that you met the director of the original movie; is that right? What was that like?

Scott: I did. The great Robert Wise, one of the greatest of the American directors in cinema history. I was a film student and I had a small film in a film festival in Indianapolis called the Heartland Film Festival and, this was in I think my first year in graduate film school, and he was at that film festival receiving a lifetime achievement award, and I asked the festival director if I could meet him and the festival director arranged a private dinner. I went to Robert Wise's hotel and had dinner with him in the hotel restaurant; it was incredible.

Yo: What was the one thing you really wanted to find out from him?

Scott: Well, I had so many questions, I had seen a lot of his films. At that point he made 39 films and I remember him telling me he wanted to end with 40; he wanted to do one more and he ended up doing one more. I mostly wanted to ask him about his films because I knew so many of them and loved them, in particularly a movie called The Haunting and The Day The Earth Stood Still. So I asked him a lot of questions about individual movies. Of course I asked him what every film student asks a major, successful director which is: what advice do you have for me as somebody who wants to become a professional, Hollywood filmmaker? He asked me, "what kind of films do you want to make?" I said, "I want to do what you've done; you've worked in all kinds of genres." I told him The Haunting and The Day The Earth Stood Still were my favorites, and he told me to start out in the horror genre. I asked him why and he said it's because it's the genre that most demonstrates your abilities with the camera and with sound design. You can be very aggressive in the way you direct and people will be able to see what you are able to do with that genre better than with any other genre and they tend to be less expensive movies. It's what he did; he stated off making some low-budget horror/thrillers way back in the day. I took his advice and that's when I made The Exorcism of Emily Rose and that worked out really well and now here I am talking about a remake I just did of his film.

Yo: I have to ask, why do a remake of such a venerated sci-fi classic? There's got to be some pressure and some risk in doing something like that seeing as how its such a tremendous film that's had a such a huge impact, especially on the sci-fi genre ever since it came out.

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