Well, to get back to your friend, way before you and I got to know each other I was a fan of yours, not only because of the work you’ve done, but the life you lived. I always gravitated toward the rockstar mentality. So, when you’re living that lifestyle, you do lose people, and it does affect you. I guess to a certain degree, you turn that pain to triumph. I never cry about what I did in my past, but I did it. A lot of it was terrible, other times were fun, and to be honest it does make you stronger than say someone who has played everything in their lives safe.
Steve Johnson: I play it much safer, but in some ways I miss the insane things I used to do, the extreme sports lifestyle, also the drugs and the sex. Now that I’m almost sixty, I don’t want to go out the front door because I feel the Grim Reaper is there. He’s waiting for me. (Laughs)
(Laughs) I think you’ll be fine. You’ve danced with her a few times. There were quite a few times where you had lost a contract after doing a ton of work. What happened to all of the concept drawings and everything you had worked on when that happens, and what’s the emotion you felt when that did occur?
Steve Johnson: It’s the worst feeling in the world. Every volume of Rubberhead details that, because I feel people are fascinated by what could have been. It’s the Ones That Got Away section, and it details Superman Lives, Clive Barker’s Mummy project – you can’t even begin to list those projects that will be in Volume Two. It’s a terrible feeling.
So when that happened I usually called everyone and told them that we’re going to a bar. That never worked, because when we were greenlit for a project we would do the same thing to celebrate. (Laughs) It’s crushing, it’s like losing one of your children. You’re passionate about your work and of course you want the chance to showcase it to an audience. There was Iron Man, so many of them, and it was one of the reasons I left the country. I lost eighteen million dollars on Where The Wild Things Are in 2006, and then Spider-Man 3, and I took it hard. We lost Lost Boys, and of course Predator.
When you were doing work on the now infamous Superman Lives, according to the documentary What Happened…, John Schnepp had stated that production was halted on the day of actual filming. Is there any truth to this, and from your perspective do you feel that this particular project would have put Warner Bros. and DC in a more successful trajectory when it comes to the Man of Steel?
Steve Johnson: Well, first of all, I don’t remember how that was shut down. All I know is that we did months and months of work on that. The documentary shows the possibilities. We were working on a spaceship for Brainiac filled with creatures, hybrid characters, we had so many great ideas for it. I think it would have been a great success! Nicolas Cage as Superman directed by Tim Burton, come on. I think it would have been amazing. The only tragedy is that all of that costume work that leaked online was unfinished. The fan community thought that was going to be the final product, so we took a lot of flack for it. I still to this day have no idea why the plug got pulled on it.
Let’s talk a little about The Mummy property that Clive Barker was once slated to do. Was this before or after the studio decided on the Brendan Fraser franchise?
Steve Johnson: Oh, this was way before that. Mick Garris and Clive were working on the story, it was going to be very dark, and it was true to the actual lore. Multiple Oscar winner Bill Corso was slated to work on it as well, and the mummies were going to look like mummies. It would have been great.