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I am Number Four

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : John is an extraordinary teen, masking his true identity and passing as a typical high school student to elude a deadly enemy seeking to destroy him. Three like him have already been killed ... he is Number Four.

 

Opens February 18, 2011

Runtime:1 hr. 50 min.

 

Q&A with Director D.J. Caruso, Actor Alex Pettyfer

 

(Q): Can you tell us what is “I Am Number Four”?
 
(DJ Caruso): “I Am Number Four” is a science-fiction action film, as you can tell, with a real strong character. I read a manuscript about 10 months ago and from that manuscript we worked on the screenplay and turned out to have a movie and less than a year later here it is up on the screen.
 
(Q): You hear about adaptations of any book but especially young adult novels are getting picked up a lot faster, developed a lot faster, but they’re still held up. This one came together so quickly. At which point did you both become involved?

(Alex Pettyfer): I read the script and fell in love with the character of John and I was sent for an audition and didn’t do too well and then went back.
 
(Q): What happened? What do you think happened?
 
(Alex Pettyfer): I went in and I didn’t think I was right for the part, so I very respectively shook everyone’s hand.
 
(DJ Caruso): He started to read and then he just stopped and he said “Nuh uh. I’m not right for this. I’m not going to ruin your movie,” or something like that.
 
(Alex Pettyfer): I love DJ’s work and I wanted to work with him I just didn’t want to screw up what I thought was an amazing film.
 
(DJ Caruso): It wasn’t a ploy but it could have been a ploy because right away I knew when a guy looks like this and has that vulnerability that he’s make a great character. He’d give you the reason to have doubts and the fear, and the fear that he had in the room was a fear that I wanted him to bring to the character.
 
(Q): How did you become involved?
 
(DJ Caruso): DreamWorks, Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider bought this manuscript for Michael Bay to direct and Michael Bay was going to go off and do “Transformers 3” so they said “Would you be interested in turning this manuscript into a screenplay and see if you can get it going and get it out by next President’s Day? And I said “I’ll sure give it a try.”
I was looking to do a science-fiction movie, movies that I was younger, like “Back to the Future” and “Goonies” are movies that are in rotation in my house and I thought if I can make a science-fiction movie in the spirit of those movies with a little bit more action that would be something I was looking to do and this kind of fit that bill.
 
(Q): By the same token, it has some pretty important, successful, and popular source material, so there’s a following there. Do you both think about the following it has and the legacy this book has and this whole series when you’re approaching it and how do you retain your creative independence?
 
(DJ Caruso): The freedom I had as a filmmaker was when you’re developing a manuscript, unlike the directors of “Harry Potter” or “Twilight,” the readers had expectations of what the movie should be because they had all read the book. This book didn’t come out until we had about three or four days of shooting left, so I felt very free to make decisions. I didn’t know what the readers liked or disliked, so it gave me freedom.
 
(Alex Pettyfer): I can speak on it from a character perspective. Playing John obviously there are certain things in the book that are noticed and certain things in the film that aren’t. The fact is in the film I’m not as aware of where I’m from and the whole origins of my story, and in the book I am. When I got the script I kind of tried to stay away from the manuscript and the book because the book didn’t get released until one week before we finished the movie. That was kind of freeing.
 
(Q): Did you both kind of keep an eye on the reaction to the book as it came along?
 
(DJ Caruso): We really didn’t have time to. We knew it came out and sold really well in the young adult version of the “New York Times” bestseller list so we heard that was doing well. When you’re making a movie it’s just kind of the day to day grind. It’s kind of interesting to know now. It’s kind of odd because the book and the movie are working together for the first time. Usually the book cements something but it seems like together they’re working, so people are real curious about what’s in and what’s out right now, which is kind of nice.
(Q): Why don’t we watch a clip?
 
(DJ Caruso): I think the first clip we’re going to show is Number 6’s introduction and Number 6 is someone in the movie where it’s sort of a mystery about who she is and whether she’s a good guy or a bad guy and she’s sort of on the trail of Number Four. So this is the introduction of Number 6.

(Q): Can you talk a little bit about assembling this cast?
 
(DJ Caruso): There are certain times in your career as a filmmaker where you have a lot of freedom. “Disturbia” was one of those for me, where they basically said “Find the best guy for the role,” and I felt the same way here in “I Am Number Four.” They basically had okayed the movie and said “Go make the movie, now go find the best people,” so it wasn’t like “Go get Brad Pitt and we’ll make your movie.” So it gives you a lot of freedom as a filmmaker to go out and really kind of search and casting all over the world basically, London, New York, Australia, and just find the right people for the role. It’s a laborious and at times real fun process and ultimately seeing Alex come in, once you anchor the movie off of someone like Alex it was trying to find the right girl to play Sarah, who sort of is his love interest as the movie progresses.

I got it down to about six or seven girls and Alex was gracious enough, we screen tested for a long time, and then ultimately Dianna Agron came free from “Glee” and so I screen tested her and she was fantastic. Teresa Palmer was someone I had been aware of for a while and she came in and read and got the part in the room just like that. And Timothy Olyphant I’d been a fan of his. Just sort of assembling the cast with a lot of freedom as a filmmaker is great because usually the studio’s looking over your shoulder having to approve things but when you saw the cumulative group that we put together everyone got really excited.
 
(Q): Alex, when did you meet your other cast mates? What were your discussions and how did you build a rapport with them?
 
(Alex Pettyfer): DJ has this way that he described. Who was the director that taught you this?
 
(DJ Caruso): It was David Lean. David Lean loves to bring everyone together as a family before the movie starts with wardrobe fittings and dinners and so I try to follow that to make sure all the cast members by the time we get on a boat and go to location we all have good relationships.
 
(Alex Pettyfer): So we just all met for dinner and as you do you either hit it off with people or you don’t and we just happened to all love each other and were really excited about the movie that we wanted to make.
 
(Q): We’ve all been to high school, we all know that sometimes you feel like an alien and in real life you’re playing an actual alien in high school. How did that dynamic affect your role and the character and building it?
 
(Alex Pettyfer): You said it. I never wanted to come and start putting out my hand and stuff like that. I saw John as, obviously he’s this alien, but it was more a time as being an outsider for me. He has this dark secret and he can’t tell anyone and he has to keep his head down, so that was really the alien time for us.
 
(Q): One of the things, DJ, I’ve noticed about your films especially recently is your rapport with actors in action and sci-fi and thrillers. The rapport you can sense with your actors is very palpable. Can you talk about developing that?
 
(DJ Caruso): I always feel when you know you’re making a genre movie and you want to elevate the genre movie the best way to do that is through character and developing relationships with the actors. So I think it’s always important to take the time to develop the relationship as a filmmaker to actor and also to develop that sort of friendship and trust so that when you get to the end of the action you really care about the people and all the stuff that’s going on around them. My process is to really build the foundation and the rehearsal process.

We basically don’t read lines over and over again, we just kind of discuss each scene and what we want to feel and what we’re going to do, and once we lay that foundation together it’s my job to I call it “police it” in a way and keep them going and keep them on track, or find ways to push it further. It’s important to me that you develop those relationships before you get out there in the trenches because once you’re out there it’s much more difficult and more pressure.
 
(Q): Why don’t we watch another clip?
 
(DJ Caruso): Timothy Olyphant plays John Smith, Alex’s guardian, and John Smith is sort of disenfranchised. Whenever someone comes on to them or they sense something’s different about Alex’s character they always have to uproot and leave, and so that’s sort of this grifter relationship they have. So now something’s gone wrong in the new town; the problem is he finally has fallen in love and he fell in love with this Norma Rockwellian town and so John is deciding that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to leave.
 

 (Q): Alex, when you have a part like this where there’s a telekinetic thing going on how do you kind of get into that mode?
 
(Alex Pettyfer): First of all, you’ve got to learn how to say it and then learn it in an accent, because saying “telekinesis” is pretty much hard enough saying it in an English accent, let alone an American. I don’t know. You fantasize as a kid and you’re out in the backyard and you pretend you’re Batman or Spider-Man and you just kind of bring that inner child back. As DJ said, everyone fantasizes about being a superhero, and I got to live it.
 
(Q): And you also got to do some stunts on this. Can you describe what that process was like?
 
(Alex Pettyfer): I did do some of my stunts on the movie and a lot of it was to do with wirework. Beforehand we had two months training. It was wirework and flexibility training. I find it hard enough to bend down and touch my toes, let alone do back flips off of 80 foot cliffs. So yeah, it was an interesting experience.
 
(Q): Were there any particularly hairy moments in the stunt world for you?
 
(Alex Pettyfer): Yeah. In one of the previous trailers I do a back flip off a waterfall, and DJ has this one shot over and it’s a beautiful shot. And he said to me “Hey, dude, I need you to get closer to the waterfall.” I said “What do you mean closer?” He says “I need you to not do so much of a back flip off, just more kind of jump and dive.” So I said “Yeah dude, but the problem is my head’s going to be like that far away from the rock,” and he goes “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s fine.” So I’m standing there, and by the way, excuse my language, I’m pissing myself as it is looking down at 80 feet, and so I jump and all of a sudden I do the whole thing and it’s all a blur and I come back up and all I see is everyone like “Oh shit, oh shit.” Apparently I was on screen this far away from the actual rock.

(DJ Caruso): The camera angle made it look a lot worse but he was pretty close.
 
(Alex Pettyfer): The truth is I was actually this far away from the rock.
 
(Q): When you have a guy like Michael Bay involved in a film like this, I’m just curious does he show up on set? Is he like “This needs more explosions here. We need a lingerie model in this scene.” How does that work?

(DJ Caruso): I thin fortunately for me Michael was off making “Transformers 3” so he would just send me little emails about scene dailies and make some nice comments and stuff. When a Michael Bay name is on a film there’s a certain audience expectation, and I think this particular movie spends a lot more time with character and setup and ultimately builds towards a nice finale. It was fine. Michael was really helpful with the visual effects and stuff towards the end, but he was really good in trusting. I think when you have Spielberg who’s running the company and Michael it’s nice to have directors running the company because they understand everything that you’re going through. So having two directors as producers was very liberating.
 
(Q): And you worked with Spielberg before in a producer capacity. What’s the relationship like with him? What is he like in the developing process?
 
(DJ Caruso): I think the most amazing thing about Steven that you can’t forget is every time he talks about a script idea or a movie or breaking down a script or a movie he just saw is this infectious child who just loves movies. And he has this amazing ability to put himself in the seat and become an audience member and not judge the film from some cinematic genius standpoint. That ability to sit in the crowd and watch the movie and to feel what might not be working or what is working and then he’s able to communicate that with you. His editing room was across from mine so I would just have him come in and say “I have two versions of this scene.

Can you just sit down and watch these two versions?” And just from one viewing he memorized every shot, every cut, and can give you notes. Most people have to play it back again and again; he just has this photographic, cinematic memory and would give these great notes and great comments. So it’s great now to have three films with him. We have kind of this unspoken bond; if I ever need anything I just call him, and he kind of just gives you that freedom. He’s not hovering over your shoulder but he’s always there if I need him.
 
(Q): Let’s do one more clip. Do you want to set this one up for us?

(DJ Caruso): This is towards the end of the film. You’ve met Teresa’s character in the beginning, now you’ll see Number Four and Number Six are now going to be working together and you get the sense of how powerful these two can be together. And once they’re able to find the rest of their clan, the Six that are remaining, you’ll see you have kind of this perfect fighting machine. But this is the first time that they decide to work together as a team and it just shows you some promise of the relationship to come.

That was Sam, who ultimately becomes John’s best friend who sort of figures out who John really is, and that’s the first time you seen Number Six and he falls immediately in love.
 
(Q): The hand thing; how does it work? 

(DJ Caruso): Basically the lumen that comes out of John’s hand it’s something that he doesn’t realize how to fully utilize until the very end of the movie when you see the finale. But ultimately, when he has lumen coming out of his hands we have a practical effect of this real bright LED sort of pattern that was sewn into Alex’s palm with some things going off. So ultimately whenever he had this we had a real interactive light and then we put a CG enhancement on top of that. It’s always important for me to have something practical for the actor to play with so it’s not just fully make believe.

(Q): What was the toughest part about making this film?
 
(DJ Caruso): I think the toughest part for me is two-fold. One was I’ve never had so many visual effects shots. There are 799 visual effect shots. We’re a very modest budget movie for a movie that has that many shots so getting the effect shots done in time and only have from the time you start shooting to the time you’re finishing is eight months. But that’s more from a lifestyle difficulty. I think the most difficult part as a filmmaker was making sure that John Smith’s life was dramatized in an incredibly real way, because when you get to science-fiction action you want to make sure that you’ve done justice to the characters so that the characters’ reality is that reality so the audience can smoothly make the transition into believing John’s world and everything that he’s in. So I think it was probably combining the realistic drama with the crazy action and science-fiction.
 
(Q): What were the hardest parts for you Alex?

(Alex Pettyfer) : The hardest part was probably the physical aspect. It was probably trying to get a character that felt mysterious but at the same time have the audience relate to him and feel for him. And I think that’s where the vulnerability came in.
 
(Q): When you don’t have a back story and you don’t have the novels to read or certainly you don’t have a profile about this alien culture how do you two work out that character, that balance between the vulnerability in the human side and the alien side? Do you invent things? Do you read other science-fiction books or look at other stuff?
 
(DJ Caruso): In building the foundation the first thing I did because I always felt his character was disenfranchised, I made him watch “Rebel without a Cause.” I made him watch “Starman” and recommended a few other movies because “Starman” to me is the great alien love story. So you do sort of your cinematic homework and basically at the end of the day though we just really treated it as real as we could. Basically here’s a guy, and obviously alien being a metaphor for being an outsider, who’s an outsider who really is a guy who ultimately thinks what he wants and thinks what he’s going to become, he finds out that it’s not really who he is, that he has this greater calling.

Our theme I think that we kind of built together was once you accept who you are that’s when you become the most powerful person. Whatever you are in school or however you’ve been, whatever you are accept who you are, don’t be judged, and once you accept that you become more powerful. So that was sort of the theme that we hooked on to to take us through.
 
(Alex Pettyfer): I think what I loved about not knowing about the back story of John is that he was always discovering. When you discover things as an actor and as a character I think the audience discovers them with you. As DJ said, John, or Number Four, is this reluctant hero and when he fights he really means that he is going to fight, and when he discovers things he really is discovering them for the first time, and I thought that was nice. This guy does know that he’s different but he never had any signs of it. He just thought he was this abnormal kid. So yeah, I thought it was kind of beautiful not to know his past.
 
(Q): I know there are six novels that they’re making, right? Are you directing the rest of them?
 
(DJ Caruso): Yes. This is the first of sixth. We got to see the outline of the second book because obviously I didn’t want to kill anybody off in the first one that would make the author go crazy in the second one. But yeah, it’s the first of six. They’re still writing the second one, and if the audiences go and see the movie and have as much fun watching it as we had making it then we’d definitely all like to get together and hook it up and do it again. And as far as the screenwriting process, Alfred and Miles, who I’d worked with on “Smallville” had done the first draft, and then ultimately a really good friend of mine came in for two weeks who didn’t take any credit but I think is a genius.

I don’t know if you guys know him, his name is Scott Frank, who’s done some of the best screenwriting since I’ve been in this business. He’s just a genius and he came in and really helped me for two weeks and we hunkered down in South Pasadena everyday and really kind of honed the script. And then Marti Noxon came in, she was really fantastic and really helped with a lot of the teenage stuff and the dialog. So it was sort of a three writer process; everyone really contributed.
 
(Q): Alex Pettyfer, will you be my valentine?
 
(Alex Pettyfer): Yes. Only if you come here and give me a hug.
 
(Q): DJ, how hard was it to find the perfect locations to film?
 
(DJ Caruso): It was hard because initially once you read the screenplay you have these ideas of what you think the movie should be. Once we located the screenplay I work in a color palate and so basically all I do is lay out colors in my office of the mood and the colors I think the movie should be in. So in the opening of the movie he’s in Florida and he thinks he’s in paradise and life is very good, so it’s very blue and the sun is very warm and everything is very inviting. As the movie progresses and he has to get uprooted in that it starts to progress and slowly but surely he gets in the middle of the country and it’s rainy and it’s dreary and it’s earth-toney brown. So I lay out all the colors and then basically go on a location scout searching for those things and looking for inspiration.

His first house that he settles in there’s a painter named Andrew Wyeth who obviously he’s very famous, so I was trying to get some of the starkness of his houses and the blown out whites and the emptiness of the house. And then when he starts to fall in love with Sarah we start to warm up the town and look in Norman Rockwellian neighborhoods. So there’s that whole directorial process. It’s hard, particularly when you’re going in the middle of the country, you’re scouting in February in Pittsburgh, and you get snowed in for like four days and you can’t go out and look. It’s very difficult but eventually you settle in and you basically find or create what you need.
 
(Q): What part of the story of “I Am Number Four” drew you most to the project, aside from the adolescent want to have telekinetic powers?
 
(DJ Caruso): It was literally the desire of accepting who you are. I have this belief that we always believe that we’re going to be something, and very rarely do we ever turn out to be the person we think we’re going to be, and usually we surprise ourselves. So I think for John it was the self-discovery of that journey, and once he accepts who he is and the sacrifice he has to make, ultimately as the movie progresses he makes a really huge sacrifice that’s really selfless. We tend to be very narcissistic at a certain age; you don’t understand the world outside of yourself. He starts that way as a boy and ultimately by the end of the movie he becomes a man and becomes a warrior and realizes it’s selflessness, and that to me was the most important thing to convey. In this really fun movie I think there’s a really nice underlying strong theme that’s sort of very liberating for people.
 
(Q): Getting to your part of John did you watch “Smallville”?
 
(Alex Pettyfer): No, I didn’t. I watched “Starman” and I think Jeff Bridges said something that was really weird and interesting. He said when he was researching the character he said “I watched a baby’s face and a bird.” So I kind of said what do I need to do to get into character? And I thought I’d probably look a little weird if I was leaning over someone’s pram, so I went away and as an actor and as playing John there’s a lot of resemblance. We always get up and we move and we have to pretend to be different people, and when I read the script that’s what this guy’s life was. He gets up, he moves to a different town, he changes his name, he tries to fit in for however many months or for a year and move on. And I just thought that’s really close to home and my job.

(Q): Alex, you’re in this movie based on a book, there’s another movie you’re in that’s coming out that’s based on a book, and there’s a lot of talk about movies that you might do that are based on books. So for the rest of your life people are going to think of you now when they read the book and I’m wondering if that’s intimidating at all or if that’s on your mind or if you can’t let yourself think about it because it’s too crazy.
 
(Alex Pettyfer): The thing with this movie, without trying to answer it in an arrogate way, when people read the book the movie has already been made. So when everyone was buying the book they were buying the book knowing who the character was, whereas I think when people bought the book of “Twilight” and then they heard that a movie was being made everyone had a fantasy of who they thought Edward would be, so I kind of got let off on that note. To be a part of a movie that has been a book, you were talking about “Beastly,” and “Beastly” is a class tale that’s been around for centuries. I think it’s the moral message that I think I really got attracted to, more than it being a book and then turned into a movie.
 
(Q): I was wondering what each of you learned and that was most important to you after the completion of the film that you took away and that you treasure now.
 
(DJ Caruso): For me personally, like I said, it was one of those films for me where I’d never had so many visual effects before, and that was a challenge. I really wanted to learn about that because I’ve always been sort of critical about visual effects. So what I really learned was that instinctively I was always trying to push for practical things to happen within the frame. So for example, when Alex is being chased by one of these aliens and monsters and it’s crashing through the wall I was really diligent about I still want to crash through the wall. So I’d have this big iron thing that weighed about 800 pounds crash through the wall so he has something to react to.

And so I think what I really learned, and there are a few times when I didn’t do that, where I got talked out of it, what I really learned is you have to go with your instinct and really have practical things happen within the frame so that when you put in the CG characters there’s a real sort of visceral element that you can’t really describe, there’s a texture, there’s real dust, there’s smoke. And so I think what I really learned is to really be diligent about that and make sure that today’s audiences are so sophisticated, don’t just go all CG; really have real, practical things in the frame that really help the actors and help you in the editing room.
 
(Alex Pettyfer) : I learned teamwork. I’m 20 years of age and to have 300 people on set is a big thing. It’s about me and DJ bringing people together and making a project that we love happen and do it right, I think.

(Q): What’s your all time favorite movie and why?

(DJ Caruso): That’s a really tough question. I’ll give you two. I think “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas” are probably my two favorite movies. And dramatically I think Scorsese was a genius when he made those films and still is a genius, but they moved me so much in a dramatic way. And then there’s a coming of age story that I just could never get out of my system; Lasse Hallström made a movie called “My Life as a Dog,” which to me is the greatest coming of age movie that I’ve ever seen. So those are probably the three that really get me.

(Alex Pettyfer) : “Clockwork Orange” and “Bambie.”

End.