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Bryan Singer
Cinemax.com: Bryan Singer

June 11, 2001

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Ruby: Hi Bryan! What is your favorite X-man and why?

Bryan Singer: Well, as much as I love Wolverine, I think my favorite is still Professor X, because he is the guy in charge and he's the guy that has to get everybody to follow his vision. I think I identify with him.

I Like Goats: Do you have any advice for aspiring directors when it comes do working with special effects?

Bryan Singer: Yes. Don't let the visual effects govern the story. Try to use them as a tool, like cameras, lights and sound. I remember visiting the set of "The Phantom Menace" and asking George Lucas if he thought I needed a cinematographer with more visual effects experience and he said quite the opposite. Work with someone you trust and the two of you will learn the visual effects along the way. I found that advice useful and I pass it on.

Rob: Can you tell us some of what we can expect from your vision for the new "Battlestar Galactica"?

Bryan Singer: I can tell you a little. It will take place some years in the future, not many. Forgive me, but I am contemplating how much I feel comfortable talking about. Let's just say that it will be very much in the spirit of the original but will have a very (for lack of a better word) "updated" approach both visually and character wise.

Jeska: Bryan, I've enjoyed all of the films you have worked on, especially "Apt Pupil" and "Usual Suspects," but noticed you haven't taken on a slew of new projects. Your films typically have a very strong subject/emotional power to them. Do you believe you are more "choosy" than other directors? If so, what do you look for before agreeing to do a picture?

Bryan Singer: I look for stories that are not predictable and that have an underlying layer of mystery and perhaps mysticism. Not totally supernatural, but more "out of the natural." I also like to work in different genres. This way, I don't brand myself and at the same time I get to learn. I also respond to language and characters--the way they speak--that sort of thing. It is the depths and the shades of gray and the ambiguity that exists within even the most conventional narrative structure that intrigues me. Or shall I say, that CAN exist. And so far, I work from the very beginning in the development of the material/the screenplay so each project takes a while.

Stokley: What, in your opinion, was you greatest accomplishment you made or felt about from making a movie?

Bryan Singer: I think it was finishing my first feature. A small film called "Public Access" which won the Sundance Film Festival in 1993. I was 25 and I made a feature film that won the biggest festival in America. Not since then have I felt such a sense of achievement. However, I like to think the films have improved to some degree. Because they sure do cost more.

Rogue Queen Of Hearts: Hello Mr. Singer. Were there any embarrassing moments on X-Men that you could share with us?

Bryan Singer: Yes. I hurt my neck real bad but I wanted to keep working so I arrived on the set with an assistant holding all of these icepacks on my neck. I was also on painkillers and they had also stuck this weird, electrical thing, which was supposed to ease the pain but I still wonder if it really worked. I looked absolutely pathetic, and yet I had to direct a very complex scene with action, so I would take off the electrical thing and the ice and doped up on painkillers, I would demonstrate the action in slow motion. The slow motion was not intentional and I looked very silly. And as much as the actors felt sorry for me, they couldn't stop laughing and eventually neither could I which only made it hurt more. But it got better pretty fast.

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