It was Die Hard in my father's workshop. And so when that opportunity came up, the possibility of doing it, it's more the teenager in me who says that, 'I have to, of course I'm going to.' So that's the fun of reinventing, or just getting involved in things that really, actually loved as a kid growing up wanting to grow up to be a director.
Len WisemanSo the question never comes up. I love to work with actors who I feel really confident in knowing what I'm going to get from them. And making a movie is such a risk that it's comforting to build up a good support team in production as well as cast.
Len WisemanOne thing that is very different technically is that you don't get a lot of coverage in television. Not like you do on a film. I know we don't have time for separate set-ups, so I will design a scene where I'm hiding multiple cameras within that set-up. That way, if I don't have time to do five set-ups, I can do four cameras in one set-up. It's a different kind of approach for that. For the most part, a lot of television, in a visual sense, lacks time for the atmosphere and putting you in a place.
Len WisemanWhen I started doing television, I thought that I would change the way that I shot, the way that I blocked, and the technical side of it. You're not going to change your relationship with the actors or how you approach the characters. That wasn't any different.
Len WisemanThe three-breasted woman was very much at the top of my list in [original 'Total recall']. Like I said, I was fourteen! I remember Arnold [Schwarzenegger] pulling that big tracker out of his nose and freaking out about that. I remember going through the immigration booth where their face splits open with that heavyset redheaded lady. So there were a lot of these little moments that I remember.
Len WisemanI love helicopters. In fact, my wife and my friends, the myth of the chopper in the sky is that Len's going to stop and look at it. I love, probably, destroying them, yes. You know, It's the big elements, the big toys, the trucks the helicopters, and things like that. You have a few tools to play with.
Len WisemanI had made a list of about ten things that I remembered from the original 'Total Recall' before I went back and watched. It had been about twenty years. I wanted to write it out before I watched it again. And I felt if those things stayed with me long enough, those are the things that I wanted to highlight.
Len Wiseman