Hot Press meets Robert Zemeckis

Greeting Robert Zemeckis in the Corinthia Hotel in London, it feels like I should be saying “welcome back” to the director. After a 12-year hiatus from live-action filmmaking, new drama Flight is a thundering return. It’s been acclaimed by critics and nominated for two Academy Awards,‘Best Screenplay’ and ‘Best Actor’ for Denzel Washington.

“Everyone keeps thinking I haven’t made a movie in 12 years,” sighs the 61-year-old who is amiable and self-assured. “It’s like I’ve gone off and done opera or something.”
In fact, Zemeckis has been at the forefront of cinematic technology and technique, directing The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol. Despite a mixed critical reception, all three motion-capture films were commercial successes. Because they were animated, many cinephiles took the view that Zemeckis had abandoned his post as Hollywood’s mainstream poster boy to “muck about in the motion-capture playpen,” as the Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy recently wrote.
This dismissal of Zemeckis’ recent filmography ignores the fact that his visual innovations changed the game. It’s impossible to look upon the 3D motion-capture blockbusters of recent years without acknowledging the huge leaps in technology that Zemeckis has helped bring about. Indeed, when speaking to Hot Press in 2011, Avatar’s Oscar-winning visual effects artist Richie Baneham cited The Polar Express as a reference point in the early development stages of James Cameron’s visual spectacular.
However, to Zemeckis, it’s all the same, whether a motion capture picture, a traditional live action film, or an image captured on your trusty iPhone.
“Making movies is all the same — about telling a story.”
From the iconic, fantastical Back To The Future to 1994’s epic dramady Forrest Gump, to the unique journey of self-discovery that was the 2000 drama Cast Away, Zemeckis’ films have always had a powerful undercurrent of the personal.
Flight is perhaps his most adult movie to date. Chronicling alcoholism, drug abuse, the sex trade and moral ambiguity, the film is forthright in its presentation of a man struggling in a world of wavering morality. The director always wished to make an ‘adult’ film. However, he struggled in his younger years to find the right project.
“These were the films I fell in love with in film school, those great films of the seventies that were always filled with moral ambiguity. And we don’t seem to make them anymore. So when this one came along and was filled with such complexity and moral ambiguity and was at the same time very compelling and dramatic...well, for a screenwriter to be able to pull all those different elements together, it was worth doing.”
Having written the screenplays for many of his films, including the Back To The Future trilogy, The Polar Express and The Christmas Carol – as well as exercising complete creative control overe his animated features – the director admits that handing back the reins to actors and writers again was a challenge.
“As a matter of fact, the first thing I asked [writer] John Gatins was would he be on the set with me the whole time and be on location,” he laughs, “and he agreed to do it. I have to always embrace the writer.”
Zemeckis also faced a fresh challenge working with new leading man Denzel Washington. His style differs hugely from that of Zemeckis’ frequent collaborator, Tom Hanks. Hanks, says the director, “is one of those amazing actors who can literally be standing on his mark telling a joke. The AD will run up and say, ‘Rolling!’ He’ll stop the joke, shoot the scene and the minute cut is yelled go right on back to finishing the joke!”
Washington, on the other hand, proved to be a much more intense and internal actor.
“When it comes to the big day on set, then Denzel is very quiet,” Zemeckis admits. “Even if I were to ask him, ‘What do you think about what we’re going to do here?’ his answer would always be, ‘I dunno. Let’s see what happens.’”
One similarity between Cast Away and Flight are Zemeckis’ thrilling plane crash sequences, which are full of apocalyptic symbols.
“They are images that keep popping up!” Zemeckis acknowledges, laughing. “It’s probably to blame on my eight years of Catholic school!”

Flight is in cinemas now.