LEXI ALEXANDER: A THE GIRL WITH THE GOODS
The director, Lexi Alexander who worked her way through film school as a stuntwoman, is a bundle of Germanic high energy not seen since Marlene Dietrich landed in Hollywood. A former World and European Karate Champion, who moved to Los Angeles at the age of 19 to become a filmmaker, she's seems to have an unstoppable German zeal to do anything a filmmaking man can do, but better.
What does it mean for a woman to take on the big studio boys and direct a Marvel comic geek adaptation? A lot of eggs maybe, as well as the support of Gayle Anne Hurd, herself enjoying the success of the most recent version of The Incredible Hulk which she helmed as Producer.
Alexander was "discovered" after she made Green Street Hooligans with Elijah Wood as a disaffected Harvard expellee who moves to London and gets mixed up with the football hooliganism underworld. When you make a good looking action film for as little as 5 million dollars in an extraordinarily expensive city like London, the studios are bound to come calling, because, as she herself puts it, "I don't need the 200 million dollars Ironman has".
At the same time she wasn't "jumping out of her chair" when the project was first offered, knowing little about comic books in general, and nothing about the Punisher series. She was also wary of the number "2" (as in sequel) after the title on the original script she read. But Marvel sent her two cases of comic books and she was hooked. She thoroughly immersed herself, looking at fansites, taking note of what people didn't like about the previous versions and she was off.
She admits she wasn't the first choice to direct the film, some old schoolers having reservations about a woman, with only one feature behind her, directing this kind of beat-em-up tale. But when she was about to pass, a friend threatened to "kick her ass" urging her that it was a glass ceiling breaking opportunity, and she had to do it. Once she was on board though, neither the executives nor anyone else she worked with seemed to make much if anything of her gender.
Next Lexi had to convince Ray Stevenson (Frank Castle/Punisher) to get on board. When his name came up at a casting meeting, she admitted she hadn't seen any of his work. Instead of waiting for a screener, she rented the first episode of the HBO series Rome. Halfway through, she stopped it and emailed the producing team stating, "If I'm not getting him as the Punisher, I'm not doing the film." She didn't want a pretty boy, but a "real guy's guy" as she puts it. Fortunately, she and Stevenson are at the same agency (CAA) so she made sure she spoke to him directly telling him, according to Stevenson, "Now Ray, you are Frank Castle...you are going to be Frank Castle...you are going to do this movie...if you have any doubts about this movie I will put them to rest and if you think you're not going to do this movie then you're still not understanding what this movie is and I will explain it to you." Who can argue with that?
Stevenson was immediately dispatched to her trainer to get in shape while she conceived of the look and execution of the film. It was important to her that they tone down the colors and make them more in line with the blues and black of the comic book world, so much so that at the last minute all of the costumes had to be redone because Alexander realized the wardrobe had 8 different colors while the film had only 3. Even her agent admitted to her, after the fact that, he was afraid it was going to look like "shit" but in fact turned out great.
Alexander would ideally like to movie between the studio and the indie world which each has it's own sets of challenges. She's getting a lot of comic book scripts and although she doesn't want to be pigeon-holed admits that once she starts reading and visualizing how she would do it, she's in. Lexi lavishly praised her whole team including her fine "all proper, classically trained actors" like Stevenson, Dominic West (Jigsaw) and Wayne Knight (Micro). She says the whole effort was first and foremost with the The Punisher fans in mind and they seem to like what she has offered them. Next up for Lexi Alexander...well she won't say, but there is no doubt that it will take a football teams worth of bad Hollywood boyz to stop this woman.
The Punisher: War Zone is in theaters now.
