How do you compress 100 years of boundary-pushing filmmaking, behind-the-scenes drama and technological advancements into four hour-long installments?
This was the challenge laid out before Leslie Iwerks and her new documentary “100 Years of Warner Bros: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of.” Iwerks, an unparalleled documentary filmmaker who is responsible for Disney’s wonderful “The Imagineering Story,” tasked Morgan Freeman with narrating the tale of a small studio that would soon conquer Hollywood and its ever-evolving filmmaking slate, which allowed for people to escape into another world or hold a mirror up to our own.
TheWrap spoke to Iwerks about how she whittled a massive, century-long story of Hollywood mythmaking into highly digestible episodes, focusing on the storytelling rather than the corporate upheaval and what her favorite Warner Bros. movie is (hint: it’s not a doc). Iwerks was in Cannes at the time, where the film was debuting out of competition.
Where did this project come from? And what was it like wrapping your mind around such a vast subject matter?
You know, it came to me after “The Imagineering Story” came out. I met with a Warner Bros. executive and they asked if I would be interested in doing the Warner Bros. 100 year, multi-episode show. I said of course, I was thrilled. And they also asked if I would do a documentary series on the history of DC Comics. Both projects went into development right away. And then DC got going first. And then Warner Bros. came during the middle of DC. We were really busy for quite a while and were immersed in this great, rich history of Warner Bros. It was it was nice.
I was really quite honored to tell the story. But to answer your question about how do I get wrapped my head around 100 years of films, it was definitely a challenge. I think the latter part of COVID I spent watching Warner Bros. films, which is pretty fun. I had a real purpose to watch these movies and really study them and try to understand what was a connective tissue or through line across the film’s over 100 years. And where do they fit into buckets or themes. But it worked itself out once we really started understanding the history of the studio through the eyes of the executives and the different regimes that really helped to crystallize the types of films they were making. And the reasons for those films. And the reasons in the vision that they had for the films that they would green light. Every episode has its own reasoning or themes of what they went and how different executive leaderships steered the ship.
It must have been fascinating to be making this documentary during a crazy regime change at Warner Bros. How did that kind of affect your process?
I guess. I think the question really became, do you get mired down into the executive turnover? Or do you get focus on what was actually going on in the world at that time and the impact on the movies and on theaters? And so COVID was really more of the story than it was about the transition of different executives. Because that was happening industry-wide, pretty much. There’s a lot of reshuffling during that time, a lot of studios were going through a lot of turmoil.
And as with any technology, things change when you innovate, like with sound technology that Warner Bros. innovated. That became a tectonic shift for the entire industry, which had to adapt and completely go from talkies to sound. Warner Bros., also, you know, was a big innovator with the DVD market and really pushing the DVD technology out there at a time when a lot of other studios were wary of it and asking how is it going to affect the theatrical business model? And not only did Warner Bros. convince these other studios, but the DVD became a bigger moneymaker than the theatrical movies themselves.
The way I looked at all this was the way in which it was 100 years of not only going through the ups and downs of the technological shifts, but the economic shifts in the in the world, the cultural shifts in the world. These films either made you think about things that you had not ever thought about before or they took you into territory that was a bit scary, that was not talked about, that was taboo. Or they took stories that were ripped from the headlines, that were everyday stories that you couldn’t believe are real. Warner Bros. loved taking these real-life stories that mirrored our own humanity and took you into those worlds. They weren’t just make believe or fantasy or fun, although they did those too, but they even like with a swashbuckler, like Errol Flynn’s “Robin Hood,” these films also always had a gritty edge to them, they always had a social edge, or a social component that made you think beyond just the face of the actual action or fantasy of it all.
This documentary is being released as part of the Warner Bros. 100 initiative. How do you thread that needle of delivering something that they’re going to be happy with that also serves as part of this larger corporate priority? It seems precarious.
I never felt precarious with this film.
I think it’s easy to see that if you go OK, here’s all these different shifts of leadership in the last decade, which is probably the trickiest. However, the way I look at it is you have to look at it through the lens of the time. And you could argue that in the ‘20s, and ‘30s, there were all sorts of upheavals and corporate dramas that we don’t even go into.
But you really want to look at the bigger picture here and say, what is it that Warner Bros. is known for? And what were the highs and the lows? And where are the emotional moments? And where are the things that made them achieve something beyond what others were doing? What made them different? What made them unique? And there’s a lot of films in here that were all that. And there were a lot of films that were kind of OK. And people are honest about that.
What makes a good doc, to me, is not about whether it’s supported by the studio. But they gave me complete autonomy to tell the story. It’s not that there weren’t notes, but they weren’t like, “You’ve got to do this” or “you’ve got to do that.” All the notes were really good. And I really enjoyed working with the Warner Bros. And I worked with a great group of historians who knew a lot about Warner Bros. history – way more than me. And I just picked their brain for months and we really worked to coalesce down the films that were really going to be the main ones to talk about in this whole 100-year story. That helped a lot, too. And then you’ve got to just keep winnowing it down. Kind of how we did it.
What is your favorite Warner Bros. movie?
That’s a good question. I’m probably “Blazing Saddles.” I love it. I was asking people on my crew, if you had to work on any Warner Bros. movie in history, if you were on the set, and you were there every day, you can oversee, you know, be a fly on the wall, what would it be? And so many people said they’d want to be on a Kubrick film. And I thought that was interesting. It’s obvious that people would want that in to see how he worked, but I would probably say “Blazing Saddles.” I mean, how fun would that be?
The first two parts of “100 Years of Warner Bros.: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of” are on Max now. The second two parts stream Thursday (June 1).
