Rick Mueller is the director of "Life, the universe and Douglas Adams". Rick interviewed more than 30 douglas' friends and members of his familly. Never dull, this documentary, produced by Joel Greengrass, is regarded by many fans as the ultimate doc about Douglas. Since this august, you can buy it on tape on Douglas Adams offical site.

FIRST QUESTION

Nicolas Botti : Rick, Who are you? Where do you come from? Rick Mueller : I’m a writer and filmmaker with 15 years of experience in the field. I started in corporate films (making films and videos for big companies such as AT&T), I’ve worked in commercials, feature films (I even starred in several MTV promos that were shot underwater) and started a company, POINTBREAK PRODUCTIONS, to produce my own projects. I was born in the state of Pennsylvania and now live just across the river from NYC in Hoboken, NJ.

ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY

NB : How did you come to work with Joel Greengrass on this project? RM : I knew Joel’s brother Jeff before I met Joel. I had finished my first documentary, which was also biographical, called BARNEY BERLINGER: A SPORTING LIFE, about an American athlete and outdoorsman and Jeff asked to see it. He really liked it and when Joel was hired to produce this film about Douglas Jeff showed him that film. Joel liked it too and approached me about working on L, TU & DNA. NB : You decided straight away, at the beginning of the project, to start a dialog with the fans, asking them what they wanted to see, and to help you to gather some information. Why? RM : From the start our mandate from Don Epstein (Executive Producer) was to make a film for the fans. How better to do that than to ask them what they wanted to know about Douglas? NB : The project has been finished very quickly. How did it happen? Did you encounter some difficulties? RM : We made a lot of phone calls! Really, that’s how it happened. This project was produced for approximately 1/4 of the budget of a typical documentary of this length and finished in about 1/4 of the time and although we had invaluable assistance from people like Sophie Aston most of the work was done by Joel and myself. In London, Joel was working the phones and email while I interviewed people. Part of the reason that we could accomplish everything so quickly is that we had the co-operation of Douglas’ estate and his family. It couldn’t have happened otherwise. All of Douglas’ friends and colleagues (well, almost all) were very helpful and open to talking to us and made the extra effort to fit into our schedule. Joel did a superhuman job of scheduling the interviews and producing in general. Some of Douglas’ friends just couldn’t make it. I know Dave Gilmore and Mark Carwardine were upset not to have been able to appear in the film, but Mr. Gilmore was on tour and he and his wife were expecting a child and Mark was traveling the world working on other projects. Robbie Macintosh so wanted to be in the film he had a friend of his shoot an interview (he actually interviewed himself, the outtakes were great!).

CONTINUE ?

Accueil / Homepage

Actualités I Le Guide I Le guide en Français I Série radio en Français

Extras I Douglas Adams I Mises à jour I Liens I Contact