When director Zack Snyder was finishing his first film, a “Dawn of the Dead” remake, others in the edit bay inquired: Who was that woman barging in with helpful rejoinders like, “You know what, that sucks. You should change that”?
“That’s my girlfriend,” he’d sheepishly reply.
Snyder married TV commercial producer Deborah Johnson in 2004, the same year “Dead” was released. (Snyder’s commercialmaking home is Believe Media.) The couple has been mixing business with romance ever since, exchanging costume or set design ideas over glasses of wine. Deborah produced each of his movies since “Dead,” including the surprise hit “300,” the new female-focused action fantasy “Sucker Punch” and the next Superman franchise reboot.
The couple can’t imagine not working together. “In Hollywood, there’s a lot of hidden agendas and people are out for themselves. We go to battle with each other,” Deborah Snyder said.
The duo has a lot riding on “Sucker Punch,” Snyder’s first film not derived from outside source material and his most unhinged. It features a mélange of over-the-top movie-geek eye candy: jet packs, dragons, samurai swords, Nazi zombies, plus heroines in pigtails and stiletto heels packing heavy weaponry. The mix-and-match insanity of it all is intentional, Snyder said.
“I want the net result to be like the movie ends and you’re just like ‘What the…'” he said, smiling.
Young Australian actress Emily Browning stars as a girl trying to break herself and others out of an insane asylum while escaping into two levels of fantasy. Snyder’s signature swirling camera movements and stylized, computer-generated sets are paired with a bombastic rock score.
“It’s pretty fearless,” said Oscar Isaac, who plays the villain Blue in a beard and eyeshadow. “In the sense that he is unashamedly putting everything that he thinks is cool, every idea that he’s been wanting to see in a film — he puts it up there and does it very boldly.”
But actors on set know that each decision also goes through Deborah.
“They take risks together. They make really simple decisions together. Every little thing, they’re creating together, whether it be in the same room or not,” said Jena Malone, who plays a character named Rocket. “She approved all the costumes, all the hair and makeup. Everything went through the both of them. So you have the ultimate imagination and the ultimate kind of grounding.”
The Snyders’ Cruel and Unusual Films production company has at least four other projects churning — a constant stream of meetings and logistics updates.
“I’m always sitting there drawing or whatever. I’m always working. Because it’s a family business, it’s all hands on deck all the time,” Zack Snyder says.
The couple treasures whatever escapes they can get. They go for walks with their two Laboradors, spend time with Snyder’s six children, and recently wrapped a year-long renovation of their post-and-beam home in Pasadena. Their three vacations in the past five years were post-wrap trips to beach resorts: Los Cabos, Mexico after “300,” Turks and Caicos after “Watchmen” and Bora Bora after “Sucker Punch.”
They don’t expect another break any time soon. The Superman film, set to star Henry Cavill as the Man of Steel, is in pre-production. The Snyders — working with another husband-and-wife team of Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas – have cast Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Superman’s parents.
Snyder says he wants his Superman to be “immensely physical” and to face “a credible threat” from whatever villain is featured, “because I feel like that’s a thing that I’m not sure I’ve seen for a while in the Superman world.”
His biggest challenge, ironically for a superhero movie, is adjusting his own filmmaking approach to be more down-to-Earth, more realistic.
“I’d say that Superman in some ways is divinely different from the movies that I’ve made in the past,” Snyder said. “Only because it doesn’t exist in a stylized world. It exists in the real world.”
Disney Pledges $15 million In L.A. Fire Aid As More Celebs Learn They’ve Lost Their Homes
The Pacific Palisades wildfires torched the home of "This Is Us" star Milo Ventimiglia, perhaps most poignantly destroying the father-to-be's newly installed crib.
CBS cameras caught the actor walking through his charred house for the first time, standing in what was once his kitchen and looking at a neighborhood in ruin. "Your heart just breaks."
He and his pregnant wife, Jarah Mariano, evacuated Tuesday with their dog and they watched on security cameras as the flames ripped through the house, destroying everything, including a new crib.
"There's a kind of shock moment where you're going, 'Oh, this is real. This is happening.' What good is it to continue watching?' And then at a certain point we just turned it off, like 'What good is it to continue watching?'"
Firefighters sought to make gains Friday during a respite in the heavy winds that fanned the flames as numerous groups pledged aid to help victims and rebuild, including a $15 million donation pledge from the Walt Disney Co.
More stars learn their homes are gone
While seeing the remains of his home, Ventimiglia was struck by a connection to his "This Is Us" character, Jack Pearson, who died after inhaling smoke in a house fire. "It's not lost on me life imitating art."
Mandy Moore, who played Ventimiglia's wife on "This Is Us," nearly lost her home in the Eaton fire, which scorched large areas of the Altadena neighborhood. She said Thursday that part of her house is standing but is unlivable, and her husband lost his music studio and all his instruments.
Mel Gibson's home is "completely gone," his publicist Alan Nierob confirmed Friday. The Oscar winner revealed the loss of his home earlier Friday while appearing on Joe Rogan's... Read More