Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

EXT. ROOFTOP – HELL’S KITCHEN - NIGHT

A FILM CREW is split into several units, all of them working to bring the Marvel Comics property DAREDEVIL to big-screen life.

One unit is setting up for a series of complicated cable-cam shots, while another unit is busy capturing footage of JENNIFER GARNER in full Elektra gear leaping off a roof in pursuit of Daredevil, who is not actually on-set, since he’s at the premiere of SUM OF ALL FEARS in Washington.

And as everyone works to set up the next scenes and finish the current scenes, two guys stand off to the side, trying to be unobtrusive even as they marvel (all puns intended) at what they’re seeing.

That was the scene last Friday night in downtown Los Angeles as my buddy Craig and I found ourselves invited at the last minute to come down and watch a night’s worth of work on Mark Steven Johnson’s $75 million adaptation of his life-long favorite comic character.

We could see the set from blocks away, as soon as we got off the 110 Freeway. Giant lights on top of buildings, the entire area lit up brightly at the street level. It looked like you could land airplanes right there on Skid Row. Cop cars were parked around each bank of lights, and the parking garage had fairly heavy security.

We were literally in the part of downtown that Adam Rifkin was talking about in his current sleeper hit A NIGHT AT THE GOLDEN EAGLE, and when we parked and walked down to the street, we called Brian, Mark Steven Johnson’s assistant, and asked him to come find us.

Looking up at the buildings across the street, we could see elaborate wire rigging over the buildings, but we couldn’t really see much else. It was just a few moments before we were joined by Brian. Craig and I agreed later that Brian was the spitting image of Keifer Sutherland in Fox’s 24. Thanks to the film’s night schedule, he even had a bit of that same bleary-eyed manic energy going. He led us across the street and over to a large industrial cage elevator that ran up the side of the building. A guy was waiting there to operate the thing, and we headed up to the top floor, where Brian led us inside.

The entire top floor of the otherwise empty building has been transformed into a production office, with the various departments all housed in rooms that they’ve built. It’s impressive, big-budget filmmaking at its most efficient. They’ve been using this one cluster of buildings, adapting them from scene to scene, redressing them as the whole of New York’s skyline.

We had to walk up from that floor to the actual rooftop, and when we got there, we were shown the cable-cam rig first, a special setup that was going to be used later in the fight between the night’s two stars: Bullseye and Elektra. Anyone who is a fan of the comic understands that this is a pretty big evening in comic history. This is something special being brought to life, one of those moments that fans have been waiting to see for a lot of years. Brian told us that they were shooting several units at once, though, and that they were rolling on another roof. As we followed him over to where the action was, we passed a broken window smeared in blood, and he explained just what had happened there. I’m going to try and tread lightly on spoilers, but I’ll say that it sounds like an intense moment, a brutal ending to a fight just before someone learns something shattering about their opponent.

We rounded a corner, and the first thing we saw was Jennifer Garner, strapped into a wire rig, standing on the edge of a roof. I enjoyed the pilot for ALIAS quite a bit, but I only watch a certain number of hours of television a week, and I never made room for the series on my schedule. I’m beginning to think I made a mistake.

You saw Elektra’s costume yesterday for the first time, and I’ve read all the criticism and feedback and reaction, and I keep flashing on Kevin Feige as he said to me, “We’ve learned so much from the reaction on the original X-MEN. People saw the costumes out of context, and they freaked out. When they saw the film, it was totally different. We’ve learned that the initial negative reaction is just part of the process.” The same thing happened when The Green Goblin was photographed on the Downey “Unity Day Festival” sets. Marvel considered putting out a hero shot of the Goblin that they prepared, a shot that was later released as a bus poster. In the end, they decided not to make their marketing reactive to Internet leaks, and just stick to the schedule they’d already decided on. That photo yesterday is certainly clear and in-focus and features the whole costume, but it hardly tells the same story as seeing her move in it. James Acheson, who designed the costumes on SPIDER-MAN, is performing the same function here, and in my opinion, the Elektra costume is both functional for a fighter and just plain hot. Yes, she’s in black instead of the traditional red. That’s not unheard of over the run of the books, but that’s hardly the point. Color is an important part of the overall design of this film, and red is being used for two things: Daredevil and blood. The rest of the picture, all shot and processed using a bleach bypass look by Ericson (FAST & THE FURIOUS, 187, PAYBACK) Core, is carefully designed so that when that red shows up, it’s going to pop off the screen. A rose laid on the grave of a father. The life slowly ebbing out of a superhero, washed away by a heavy rain. It’s supposed to have a certain impact, and dressing Elektra in black was by design. This isn’t a superhero that Garner is playing. This is a girl whose father is killed, who goes after the person she holds responsible, and I believe her simply choosing clothes that she adapts to wear, instead of having some custom-made one of a kind costume. She’s not like Matt Murdock, with an entire lifestyle that has been chosen. For him, the costume makes sense. Bullseye is dressed real world, as well, and in every case, it’s clear that these designs were all created to allow the cast to move, first and foremost. This is a film in which much ass is kicked, and they can’t have the leads encased in immobile sculpted rubber a la BATMAN, and where spandex would seem a little... light. This is a world where leather and metal and snakeskin makes sense.

As we walked up, Jennifer was rehearsing for a stunt. Brian told us how Jennifer has done more of her own stunts than anyone expected at the start of the shoot. I admit, I had trouble focusing on what he was saying because I was watching Garner between rehearsals. She had a Sai, full-weight and made of metal, that she kept spinning between takes, twirling it with a practiced ease, the weapon a blur and her barely thinking about it. “She’s been doing that for two months now,” Brian said, smiling. “Pretty amazing, isn’t she? She’s going home for a while, and we’re actually shipping the Sais there so she can keep working with them.” She looked like a gunslinger in an old Western, so used to their particular weapon that it was more an extension of themselves than a separate thing. When you see Garner in the film, it’s her doing it. It’s not a digital trick. It’s not someone else’s hands cut in to make her look good. She’s like a machine, according to everyone we talked to, pushing herself every day to do more than they expect. She’s on the verge of stardom, with ALIAS already having given her a solid fanbase. Marvel Studios signed Garner to an option for two more films as this character (although just how that’ll work in continuity is a point they were notably slippery about, so as to protect the plot points of this and future films), including one film that focuses entirely on her. They have full faith in her.

Watching the four or five takes they did for this particular action beat wasn’t enough to give any sense of performance. Basically, she was just running to the edge of a roof in pursuit of someone, then jumping off. She was wearing a wire rig that will be removed later, and after the jump, she would just swing back towards the rooftop, where a guy would step out to catch her and stop her from swinging.

And that wasn’t the best job on the set. Oh, no. That would be the job of the two wardrobe assistants who snuck out between takes to rub leather polish onto the costume, effectively shining Garner’s ass. At least twice, Craig watched this process and fainted. He also started trying to bribe Mark Steven Johnson into letting him have that job, offering all sorts of contraband, cash, and favors, all to no avail.

Evidently, ass buffing is a union gig.

Speaking of Mark... it was at his invitation that Craig and I were visiting the other night. This wasn’t some junket visit, some managed publicity event. Mark and Craig are friends, and Mark and I have had an interesting evolution to our relationship. I am embarrassed now by the fervor with which I first attacked Mark on this site, and because of that, I understand where a lot of our Talk Backers go wrong sometimes. I worshipped the novel A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, and when Mark adapted the book into a radically re-worked story, I didn’t just reject the adaptation: I attacked it. And what I wrote was mean-spirited in the way that good, serious criticism shouldn’t be. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes you go too far in writing a pan of a film. And a big part of why I acknowledge that is because of the way Mark and I finally met and spoke to each other. Instead of it being a contentious slugfest (something I sort of deserved, truth be told), it was a conversation. One thing was immediately clear when we sat down to talk... we both loved John Irving’s novel. We just loved very different things about it. Our conversation drifted that first time we spoke, and one of the things that came up was his long-time love of the comic book DAREDEVIL. At that point, he was desperately chasing the assignment to at least be allowed to write the film. He had no illusions about being the first choice to direct. But as we sat there and he told me about how long he’d wanted to make the film, I couldn’t help but think he might just be the right choice. Passion counts for a hell of a lot in this town. People make films every day for the wrong reasons: they got packaged, or their agent says it’s “hip,” or the check was just too good, or they’re just looking for something that shoots at the right time. It’s a rare and important thing when you get someone on a film, particularly an adaptation, who genuinely loves a property with his whole heart.

We’re talking about a guy who remembers going to sit outside a comic book store as a kid, waiting for the store to open, waiting for the comics to come out of the box so he could get the first copy of DAREDEVIL off the stack. We’re talking about a guy who had elaborate storyboards drawn up of entire sequences before he ever wrote a script, who has seen this film play out in his head for his entire adult life. We’re talking about a guy who sleeps in a trailer on the set because he is drunk on the world he’s bringing to life every day right now.

When he came over to talk to us, he had the biggest smile on his face. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him so happy. We talked for a while about what I’m up to, what Craig is up to. We didn’t really have to ask what Mark is up to. All around us, the crew was setting up for another sequence, breaking things down and moving them as we spoke. He talked about sequences that they’d already finished, about certain scenes. He gushed about his actors, with Jon Favreau drawing particular praise for his ability to really give life to Foggy Nelson, Matt Murdock’s partner in his legal practice. Someone drew Mark away from us to ask him something, and I turned and found myself face to face with someone I’ve talked to via e-mail before, but never met. Kevin Feige, who I mentioned earlier, is the Executive Vice President of Marvel Studios. Right now, he’s actively working as Executive Producer on DAREDEVIL, HULK, and X-MEN II at the same time. In fact, he laughed as we started talking and pointed out the dust that was all over his shoes and pant legs. “We were in the desert all day with HULK and Ang Lee,” he said. I was about to ask who the “we” was when Avi Arad walked up.

Harry and Avi have had a contentious relationship at times over the years, and I know we’ve been a righteous pain in the ass at various points, but Avi couldn’t have been more gracious face to face. We’ve met before in my Bruce Wayne guise, when I pitched a Marvel property to Avi and several Artisan executives a little over a year ago. Didn’t get the gig, and I didn’t think Avi would remember. He did, though, and said so right away. As all of us started talking, the thing that struck me is how much more at ease Avi seems now than three years ago. When Marvel Studios started to try and get all these properties into play, the deck was stacked decidedly against them. As we were standing on this rooftop in downtown LA, SPIDER-MAN was swinging past the $300 million mark domestically. There’s a lot to be happy about. GHOST RIDER’s move to Columbia had just been announced. Avi told me that PRIME was just set up at Universal, and that several other properties were starting to heat up as well. We talked about David Self and SUB-MARINER (“it is a whole world that you’ve never seen in a movie,” Avi promised) and Jonathan Hensleigh and THE PUNISHER, which is supposed to be a high-impact action film. We spoke about the first ILM footage of the Hulk in action, which they had just seen a few days earlier in Northern California.

Actually, we talked about HULK quite a bit, and about the reaction of crowds in theaters in LA when they realize what the teaser trailer is for. There’s actually two BIG moments. First, when they realize it’s for HULK, they cheer. Then when they realize it’s still a full year away, they groan, disappointed. Kevin talked about how happy they were to have ended up with Ang Lee on the film. After CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, Lee put out the word that he wanted to do a big summer film, and he was offered 40 films. “He turned down 39 of them right away,” Kevin smiled. Lee is a comic-book fan from childhood (look at THE ICE STORM for his canny use of some iconographic comic book images), and he really felt an affinity for this one particular property.

I also asked them about other particular properties that I’m dying to see, like FANTASTIC FOUR and CAPTAIN AMERICA. In both cases, Marvel is working quietly to develop the material, waiting for the right take, the right script, willing to sit on these titles until everything falls into place. They’re in no rush to screw up anything at this point. They managed to negotiate the tortured process that brought SPIDER-MAN to the screen, and they’re seeing the end results right now. They have a great case study to refer to now, an example of how patience can be a virtue and result in something really special that connects with an audience in a powerful way.

By the time Brian came back to find us, almost an hour had slipped away. The crew had relocated to another part of the roof entirely, and we were all invited to take a look at the next setup. Avi excused himself so he could take his daughter home, and the rest of us walked over for a look at Bullseye and Elektra, fully engaged in combat.

I’ve seen TIGERLAND. I’ve seen Tim Roth’s THE WAR ZONE. But for me, as for most of the filmgoing public, Colin Farrell is still a question-mark. We’ve been hearing his name for what seems like two years of hype now. HART’S WAR opened and vanished without a trace, but it hardly seemed like he was part of the campaign. That movie was sold on Bruce Willis’s name, and when it failed, it can’t be considered a failure of Farrell’s. He wasn’t even part of the equation for most people.

Now we see him front and center in the ads for MINORITY REPORT, but he’s so clean-scrubbed, so dressed down, that he almost leaves no impression so far. His role in the film is a little thankless, actually. He’s more of a device, an engine for one part of the story, than he is a fully-formed character. PHONE BOOTH is supposed to come out later this year, finally, and I’m curious, since that’s really the first thing we’ll see where it’s all him. He’s sharing the screen with Al Pacino in the currently-unscheduled CIA thriller THE FARM. And then next spring... he’s going to be unleashed as Bullseye, an assassin who can use any projectile as a deadly weapon. He’s preposterously accurate. Airplane peanuts can become lethal in his hands. So imagine what happens when Elektra throws one of her Sais at him... and he catches it.

The first impression I have of Colin when I am introduced to him is that he’s going to be a goddamn movie star when fanboys get a load of him in this film. He’s as immediately cool as Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, if not moreso. It’s almost a shame he’s the bad guy. There’s a bullseye target carved into his forehead, raised scar tissue in the center of his bald cranium. It’s a dare for his opponents done one afternoon out of boredom, and it’s distressingly real, even up close. Farrell’s being allowed to speak in his own Irish brogue for the first time in an American picture, and it gives him a growling bad-ass edge that he’s well aware of. The most important part of his costume is a long duster coat made out of some sort of skin... could be snake, could be shark. It’s been treated so it’s almost an electric blue when you catch it in the right light. We saw dailies where he was fighting Elektra, using the coat like an extension of his body, blocking her attacks with it, taunting her. There’s an arrogance to every single move he makes in the film. He’s the very best there is, and when someone gives him trouble, he toys with them before destroying them.

In the scene we were watching, Garner was on one rooftop, and Bullseye was next to a water tower on a higher level, looking down at her. She hurls her Sai, and he catches it, spinning it, then throwing it back, turning her weapon on her. Mark did three major setups for the scene. First, the cable-cam started behind Jennifer, racing up past her and towards Bullseye at high speed. It’s dizzying, kinetic.

The second shot was from the side, a reaction as Bullseye snatches the Sai out of the air, then spinning it and throwing it back. It’s just him in the frame, and they did it a few different ways. First, Farrell started with the Sai already in his hand and out of frame. He simply snapped his hand up, like he was catching something. He whipped his arm forward, as if throwing it, but without releasing. He did another set of takes where he actually threw the Sai at the end of the take. And he did one last set where there was no Sai at all, and he simply mimed the action, giving them the option of a CG take.

Then, finally, Mark did a reverse angle with the cable-cam, following the Sai as it raced from Bullseye back to where it started, including Elektra’s reaction. More than either of the other shots, this one required specific, difficult timing by Garner. She rehearsed it several times, and also tried a number of versions of the reaction for Mark. As she practiced and cameras were being set up and moved around, I got a chance to look at the storyboards for most of the film’s rooftop scenes, all mounted on giant posterboards. It’s elaborate action stuff, but it’s also powerfully emotional stuff. The last forty pages or so of the script are one big confrontation after another, all of them earned by what’s come before. In this case, action IS character. These people are defined by how they fight, how they lash out at this world of pain that they find themselves in. It’s not so much heroic as it is a reaction, any reaction, in the face of crushing sadness. They are forced into situations where their lives are less important than specific goals. For one person, power is what drives them. For another, it’s the thrill. For two of them, revenge is all that matters, but one of them makes a deadly mistake in terms of where and who they choose to attack. It’s the interplay between these characters that drives every second of the film. It’s a pure comic book film, almost a haiku. We have seen enough superhero films now that we sort of know the form. Mark Steven Johnson’s script, with some polishes by Brian Helgeland, is lean, fast, wasting no time. This isn’t an epic, and they don’t try to pump it up to one. This is a gritty, visceral action story. The production design is great, evocative of a New York that never was, perfectly, elegantly dirty. These rooftops are a perfect stage for this particular drama. It was impossible to be sure what was built by them, and what was real.

Talking to both Garner and Farrell between takes, it’s apparent that neither one of them is approaching this as a “comic book film,” somehow acting like they’re slumming the way Halle Berry came across in her X-MEN press. Garner is serious-minded, studying various action takes on monitors between setups to get a better idea of how she looks doing certain things. I saw one scene, shot a few days earlier, where she had to do a complex fight move. As a camera looks at her from overhead, she runs right at someone who is up against a window, running up the wall, pushing off from the person to grab a Sai out of the wall above the window. In the same move, she continues around in a back flip, landing and lunging at the same time to devastating effect. It’s a jaw-dropping move, and it’s really her. I saw three separate takes, and in each one, she hit her mark perfectly.

Farrell didn’t seem nearly as work-oriented between takes. Instead, he seemed to simply have some tap that he could open up when the camera rolled, some switch he could throw that instantly made him Bullseye. All the dailies we saw involving him are both funny and truly menacing. He’s got charisma to spare in character, but there’s something loathesome about him, too. In an ad-libbed move, he hisses at a rat as he climbs onto a rooftop, scaring the animal into a sudden, panicked burst of speed. His mocking, whiny “Daaaaaaaaaaaaredevil...” as he searches for him is unnerving. As we talked, he kept lighting cigarettes, then making them disappear in deft bits of sleight of hand, which he said he learned when working with Pacino on THE FARM. Both he and Affleck are smokers, and when shooting the more physical scenes, the two of them reportedly wheeze a bit between takes, while the impossibly fit Garner rarely seems ruffled by anything they ask of her. Despite these different approaches, they seem to all be enjoying each other quite a bit. There’s a lot of play with this cast, as Affleck and Favreau work to create a solid comic rhythm, and as Affleck and Garner work to bring life to one of the most affecting love stories in all of comic continuity. This is a film that lives or dies based on chemistry, and what I’ve seen so far is promising. Michael Clarke Duncan isn’t even on-set yet. He’s the last major cast member to start work on the picture. I’m dying to see him as Wilson Fisk. After hearing about his approach to the character, I’m more interested than ever.

Michael’s going to play the character smart, as a businessman, sophisticated and very aware of how he is portrayed by the media. He considers himself a role model in the community, an example, and when someone tries to smear him by accusing him of being a criminal, he’s not above taking them to task for believing in sterotypes. “People think that a black man can only get ahead in life by being a criminal.” He is a shrewd manipulator of character, a keen observer, and is as apt to mind games as physical confrontation. I can’t wait to see how he brings the character to life. I think they’ve done a hell of a job of defining him on the page, and he seems true in spirit to the idea of a believable criminal mastermind operating in plain view. Anyone worried about them playing him as a pimp or an easy stereotype should rest assured... they’re going to twist those expectations and throw something much smarter at you.

I hope I take another couple of trips down to these sets before they wrap photography. I was recharged by this visit. I love film sets, and when something is going on that people are genuinely happy about, there’s no greater feeling. It’s like a buzz that everyone’s feeling. There’s an energy between the crew and the cast, a sort of shared sense of what this might turn out to be. Mark Steven Johnson said something that really brought this film into focus for me, when he explained why Daredevil is called The Man Without Fear. “This is a blind man who hurls himself off of buildings, trusting in his other senses and gravity to get him to Earth unscathed. He puts himself in harm’s way for his idea of justice. Bullets don’t bounce off him. But he’s not afraid. He does it anyway.” I can’t wait for those moments when Daredevil “sees” his city or when he tests gravity and himself in those dizzying drops. No matter what the end result, one thing is certain about Fox’s DAREDEVIL: this is a group of people who are pushing themselves. This is not being phoned in. They believe in what they are doing.

And now, having seen what they’re doing, so do I.

"Moriarty" out.