My Filmviews interviews… Paul Verhoeven

Interview met regisseur over Steekspel, Total Recall en Robocop remake

Tricked is the new movie by Paul Verhoeven, which has been made through crowdsourcing. Everyone had the chance to be part of the project by writing the script, make music or simply by voting. The movie was made in 8 episodes. My Filmviews talked with Paul Verhoeven about making the film, the challenges he faced and his thoughts about the remakes of his most well-known movies.

What was the experience with making this crowdsourced movie, Tricked?
It’s a very intensive and long way to create a story. It is cheaper to start with a real story/script instead of doing it this way. It costs a lot of time, you really need the time you have between episodes to look at the scripts. When doing that you need to be honest to your audience – the users – by using what they suggest as much as possible, but you also be keen to change what isn’t right or doesn’t work structurally. You ask yourself: “Are we going to have a problem with this?” or “If we are going to do it this way is it going to be an endless road which we wont’be able to finish in 8 episodes?”. Continue reading

Tricked (2013)

Tricked review

After Black Book (2006) movie lovers had to wait a while for the next Paul Verhoeven movie. Two years ago he decided to take part in the “Ziggo Entertainment Experience”, a new concept and a new way of making movies, which he hadn’t done before. The idea behind this “Experience” was that only the first five pages of the script would be written by a professional script writer, in this case Kim van Kooten. Those pages would be made available, after which it was up to the “crowd” (or “users”) to write the rest of the script, come up with new ideas, make the music, promote the concept or simply vote on the ideas of others. Ziggo (a Dutch cable company) created an online platform which would make this possible and make it available to anyone. The movie was made in 8 episodes, which means time was needed between each episode to decide what the script would be. Has Paul Verhoeven, by using this new concept, succeeded in making a movie worth watching? Continue reading