Jay Russell studied film at Columbia University, earning his degree in screenwriting. He made his directorial debut shortly thereafter with 1987’s End of the Line, starring Wilford Brimley and the up-and-coming Kevin Bacon.

Russell then kind of disappeared for a good long while; but the 21^st Century has been very good for his career, and the latest in a very good run of projects for him is Walden Media’s adaptation of The Water Horse, a very gentle family film about the Loch Ness Monster.

Courtesy of a national publicist, PtP Managing Editor Greg Wright was able to talk with Russell over the phone about the history of the film business, some of its great players, and the meaning of The Water Horse.

I had the pleasure of participating in round-table interviews with Barrie Osborne during the press tour for Return of the King, and I found myself just being kind of stunned sitting in the same room with a guy who was one of the producers for Apocalypse Now! And now, of course, he’s done the Lord of the Rings series, too. Were you intimidated working with him at all?

Jay Russell: Well, I was just excited to work with Barrie. I mean, you look at his resume, and Apocalypse Now! is on there, and The Matrix, and the Lord of the Rings movies, and Dick Tracy. It’s just on and on an on. The Cotton Club—he’s worked with Coppola on a number of movies. Barrie is so experienced and has seen it all; as a filmmaker, it makes you comfortable walking out on the set, because you know Barrie’s taken care of everything ahead of you. He’s just one of the greats.

And that’s one of the functions of a producer, isn’t it—to almost be the Chief Servant on a film?

JR: Well, I would describe Barrie as this kind of Great Advance Man. He’s the one who goes in ahead of the film and makes sure that everything’s set, that every last detail has been taken care of. He’s got one of the great mathematical minds of anyone I’ve ever met. In making this film, there were three weeks of shooting out on this lake down in New Zealand near Queenstown, near where a lot of the Lord of the Rings photography was done. And every morning we had over two hundred people in the cast and crew that had to get on boats to go over to the base camp of the set, because the location where we were shooting was very remote—specifically and intentionally so, so that you couldn’t see any modern buildings or anything. So we had to take like a half-hour boat ride each way every single day, and there was this amazing flotilla. And for a film company, that’s just a nightmare. But Barrie made it all just seem easy. And that was one example of the almost military— You know, Barrie was in the Army way back, and I think he brought a lot of that experience to what he does now.

One of the most interesting documentaries about the film industry is Lost in La Mancha, the movie about Terry Gilliam’s failed attempt to film the story starring Johnny Depp.

JR: Right.

Watching that film, it really seemed like Gilliam could have used someone like Osborne to help keep things on track!

JR: I think so. I think every filmmaker could use someone like Barrie. In fact, I think Barrie is working on the new Justice League movie, so hopefully that will come out really well, too.

Now, I understand that your original aspiration was not to be a filmmaker, but to be a musician.

JR: That’s how it started. I started playing piano when I was about five, and then at twelve switched over to trumpet and played that through college and went to school on a music scholarship. And I just thought all along that’s what I was going to do. I had no reason to believe otherwise until in college when reality slapped me in the face, and I realized that there were so many players who were so much better than me; I didn’t feel like I could ever achieve the level that I wanted to hit, musically. So it was kind of a funny thing. While I was deciding what to do with my life—because I was sort of knocked over backwards, not knowing, Am I going to go into science; what am I going to do?—I started spending a lot of time over in the theatre department and writing scripts and making short films, and started getting encouragement in that area. The next thing you know, this whole other passion took over and I just went for that ride. And fortunately, at this point, the ride just hasn’t stopped.

Obviously, not all filmmakers come to the art with that background. How do you feel that your experience with music affects your work as a filmmaker?

JR: One of the things that struck me early on was the symphonic structure of the screenplay. The story has the same rising and falling, and the repetition of motifs and themes. It’s a very similar structure. I don’t know if that made it easier for me, but it certainly gave me an insight into storytelling. When I set out to make a film, I go through this process where, for me, it’s important to hear the music first. By that, I mean a general sound and style. And sometimes I’ll carry with me to the set certain pieces of music that are inspiring certain images in the story—or even some noodling around that I’ve done myself on the keyboard—just so that if I ever get lost or in trouble, I can always come back to this music; it gives me a basis for the film, if that makes any sense at all.

Yes. It sounds like you were probably a big fan of Sergio Leone’s films.

JR: Well, the sound and the music is at least half of what makes those movies so memorable. I think if you go back through the history of film, you’ll find that’s the case. Music is just hand in hand with the image.

And for me, that’s part of what makes the movie experience magical. I remember seeing Dr. Zhivago when I was probably eight years old or something, and the score to that film has never left me. It was part of the magic that created the whole aura of the piece.

JR: It’s got one of the most haunting themes ever written. “Lara’s Theme.” You can hear just the first few notes of the piece and it just takes you back. It’s interesting—I have a nine-year-old son, and we play this interesting game when we’re going to school. There’s a particular channel on XM radio—it’s called Cinemagic, and they play just movie scores. We play this game where we try to guess the movie that the score is from based on just the first few notes we hear, and my son—I don’t know if got it from his dad or not—has got a great ear. If he’s seen the movie, he can usually get the score within the first few notes. And the other funny thing: When you edit a movie, you always put in a temporary score just to help the movie “play”—and when I showed him The Water Horse for the first time, he was able to tell me every single score I’d used for the temporary score. The music is a real part of the filmmaking—finding the right music to go along with the film.

In The Water Horse, Anne, the mother, claims, “There’s no monster, and there’s no magic. There’s just this war and death, and everyone acting insane. What’s wrong with everyone? It really seems to me that The Water Horse argues that part of what’s wrong with everyone is the loss of belief in magic.

JR: Yes, exactly. It’s the loss of having something to believe in. Without giving away too much of the story, all of the characters are carrying this weight on their backs—this burden that they’re not sharing with each other. And so you have three main characters in this movie who have isolated themselves from each other. So they’re carrying this pain, and Emily Watson’s character is probably carrying the most pain in the movie. And because she’s lost her sense of belief, she’s become cynical. So when she says to the boy in the most crucial scene in the film, “There is no monster, there is no magic,” she’s really saying that there’s nothing much to live for in this world. And then she turns around and sees the creature herself. And Emily gave this amazing performance in the moment, and we see all that weight just drop off her back. And you see this moment of awe in her face. It’s one of my favorite moments in the movie, and I thought Emily did such a great job with it.

Well, for what it’s worth, I enjoyed the film, though a lot of the early reviews have not been very kind.

JR: Ironically, the two reviews that came out the other day—the trade reviews from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, both of which can be very nasty—were both very positive. I think what’s happened in film criticism—and I spent a number of years studying film criticism—is that reviewers are seeing so many films. They’re seeing far too many films, in my opinion. So I think what happens is that their senses get dulled to the point that they respond— It’s just like, if you’ve been poked with a needle for hours, you’ve lost your sense of feeling, and the only thing that will make you feel anything is being poked with a nail, or a hot match or something. So what I’ve noticed with film reviewers is that they tend to respond to things that tend to be more outrageous, because it’s the only thing that’s catching their attention. And, well, that’s not really film criticism.

Be sure to also read Greg’s review of The Water Horse.