Known as a director of broad comedies that furrowed the Saturday Night Live or National Lampoon spirit, Ivan Reitman's comes back with the genre that gave him his laurels and biggest box office hit: science fiction comedy in the vein of Ghostbusters and the more recent Men in Black: Evolution. An actual Sci-fi and horror fan (he did produce David Cronenberg and made such oddities as Cannibal Girls back in the seventies), Reitman discusses through this interview the ins and outs of his comedy leanings and their evolution in a long switchback career.

As a director on this film, was it easier to deal with aliens or human beings?

Neither like to listen! (laughs) I was very fortunate because I had an excellent group of human beings in this film. It was one of the most pleasurable experiences of my career. David Duchovny, Orlando Jones, Sean William Scott and Julianne Moore were just a dream cast and they worked together like fine musicians. They counterpointed with each other and created the subtle comedy of this film.

Evolution is a pretty short film - this is no Pearl Harbor here - with a quick, smooth rhythm. Was it your intention to make it a tight, fast and short film from the start?

I believe that all films, particularly comedies, can only be a certain length, as long as the story can hold. I remember those wonderful movies from the forties - never were they over 90 minutes long and I very much believe in this style. I think comedy has to be smooth. I wasn't setting out to make Evolution a short or long film, but a good one! (laughs)

Evolution, like some of your previous films, is about a group of individuals put in a very dangerous situation. So the question is directly: what should we be afraid of, and what are you afraid of?

I'm afraid of many things, and at the same time I've decided to approach my life with as much as joy as possible. I think it's one of the reasons that I do comedies, to lighten other people's lives. I think this movie is meant not to be taken seriously but there's always a message underneath. And when one watches it more than once, you can see certain things that will be apparent.

There are many physical jokes in the film, about farts and things like that. How free is one to actually do such things in a big Hollywood production?

I think I'd be fortunate to make really the films that I would like. I think this is a film that is humorous and that is meant for a broad range of audience, from very young to quite old, and even though there are things that are quite physical, about our body and everything, I still believe that these are fit subjects for humour! (laughs) And there is a very long tradition of humour in this subject, from the earliest movies that were made in America, the silent films. I don't believe this is actually vulgar, this is just comedy that is based on our bodies and it expresses things that we all understand!

In view of these jokes, one might say you're the comedy counterpart of David Cronenberg, for whom you produced Shivers and Rabid back in Canada...

David Cronenberg is a very fine fellow filmmaker from Canada. Yes, his films always had to deal with bodily functions, particularly from a very serious and frightening side. My whole film vocabulary is really on the diametrical other side, it's a comic vocabulary. It's interesting that having started our careers together, here we touch certain touchstones that are similar but from a kind of totally different storytelling viewpoint.

There is more than a bit of satire on the police, the army and the politicians in this film. Would you say that very often the solutions come from the individuals more than from those institutions?

Yes, I believe that it's always the intelligence of the ordinary man and the individual that has to be listened to carefully. I think having come originally from Czechoslovakia and escaping communism, and then growing up in Canada, has made me very sensitive to this area, and of course both Canada and America, as France is, are wonderful free countries where we can trust ourselves. And I find that, in cinema, it's good always to have this underlying idea, and I think it's one that we all respond to.

Did you ever fear that David Duchovny might bring over too much baggage from the X Files?

Movie stars always bring their baggage to their film, so whether it's Arnold Schwarzenneger, Robert Redford or David Duchovny, there is a sense of what they have done in the past that reflects on the movie that you make. And that always adds, particularly in comedy, a certain resonance to whatever is happening in the film.

Where does that Head & Shoulders idea come from? It sounds and looks like a big ad!

First of all I want to clarify that no money changed hands. There was nothing paid for this. In fact, we had to buy the shampoo ourselves. I just thought it was a good idea. There is a long tradition in these films to look for the magic solution, that simple solution that is in front of everybody but everyone overlooks. In the film, we needed a quasi-scientific solution, so whe chose Head & Shoulders because in fact that shampoo has the chemical formula that we needed!

Before making Evolution, you were working on a new Pink Panther movie with Kevin Spacey in mind. Though this project seems to have been dismissed, one can easily say that Julianne Moore acts in Evolution like a female Inspector Clouseau...

In fact, I am working on a script for the possible reintroduction of the Inspector Clouseau character with Mike Myers. In terms of this film, Julianne Moore had done a number of serious roles and wanted to do something lighter. She had read the script and loved this part. We had a meeting and she said: 'You know, I like this part very much, and I will do it as long as I can fall down more. Because in fact in this scrennplay, at that time, this charater wasn't a clumsy character. She asked if she could do that and I said: 'You know, I did something like that with Emma Thompson in Junior, and I'm very concerned that I'm gonna be found as the man who takes some of the finest actresses in the world and makes them very clumsy and ridiculous-looking!' And she insisted that she could look very intelligent still and play a strong character. I very much wanted her in this, so I acquiesced and I'm very much happy that I did, because I think she adds something special to the film.

Why did you stop the evolution with the blue monkey? Were there any more ideas developed in the script?

We in fact tried to go further in the screenplay. For a while we had a creature that was very much human-like. And it wasn't very interesting. So we skipped that and went to the story as we have it, which is that because of what the army did, there was an evolutionary response that created this very large creature, and we ran for the ending. It was a more satisfying conclusion.

Is Evolution based on any serious scientific theory?

There is a theory that is very popular called panspermia. Which is very much what this movie is based on. Which is that, perhaps 4 billion years ago, some meteor fell that contained some spores or some germs that evolved over to everything that is living today on this planet.

Where does you interest in Science Fiction films stem from?

As a young boy growing up in Toronto, every Saturday afternoon, I would go the local matinee and often it was either a science fiction or a horror film. And I loved the films of the late fifties and early sixties like War of the Worlds, It Came from Outer Space, The Blob... And I think there is a kind of an honest hommage to these films as part of this film. But in terms of my interest in science fiction, it certainly started back then, and in fact, I've made oother science fiction beyond this one, but they are not often thought of as science fiction, movies like Twins, Junior and even Dave really have a kind of science fiction undertone to them.

Is the final giant creature of Evolution an actual hommage to The Blob?

The Blob certainly made an impression on me as a kid. I wasn't really thinking of the blob, although it might have some of its consistency. We were just looking for something original, different from everything else that is in the film, and formidable beyond thought.

Why, as a director, did you decide to subvert the science fiction genre through comedy?

I don't think that by doing something humorously, you subvert it. Certainly, there was no desire to subvert the science fiction genre in Evolution. I actually treat the science fiction part very seriously. Many times in the movie the audience jumps up because they're frightened, and they are because they believe in it as they watch the film. But my language in film is comedy and I find you can sometimes make a greater point by working in comedy. I'm able to do social commentary as part of it, and I think it puts science fiction in a world that we understand better and actually lends it more weight.

Do you have as joyful an approach to life as you have to films?

I don't think we can escape from the reality unfortunately. I think we must deal with life ourselves. The way I deal with it is obviously by trying to lead a joyful life and also trying to bring more comedy into the world.

Robin Gatto