What happens if you have a more pronounced ability to pick up psychic cues - to hear thoughts, move objects, suggest ideas to strangers? You start working for the Division and they teach you how to hone those powers to where you almost seem like a real life superhero. But then what happens if you want to leave the Division? The answer: it's going to be complicated.

NICK (Paul McGuigan), a young American expat with the ability to move things with his mind is hiding out in Hong Kong to avoid being placed under the control of the DIVISION, the American supernatural intelligence agency. He’s a loner who wants nothing to do with the government or the resistance movement trying to bring the Division down, until the day a young clairvoyant girl, CASSIE (Dakota Fanning), turns up on his doorstep, claiming to have had a vision of their future. Cassie sees that Nick is going to save her life … but if he doesn’t help her, they’ll both wind up dead. Nick agrees to follow along with her plan – trying to elude the evil CARVER (Djimon Hounsou) – until the plan leads him to KIRA, his long lost lover (Camilla Belle).

Paul McGuigan, known for his unique style behind the wheel of "Lucky Number Slevin" and "Gangster Number One," directs Summit Entertainment's Push, a sci-fi thriller which looks guaranteed to please. The multi-talented cast includes Dakota Fanning, Paul McGuigan, Camilla Belle and Djimon Hounsou..

After speaking to Camilla Belle and Dakota Fanning, Paul McGuigan took a seat next to me and recognized me from the time we spoke exclusively for "Lucky Number Slevin." As always, a pleasure talking to the relaxed and easy going Mr. McGuigan. I look forward to our next meeting Paul, perhaps for the DVD at a later stage.

Question:

This is a globalized cast, was it your intention to bring all different kinds of cultures?

Paul McGuigan:

"I wanted the best people for it first of all and it just turned out really that Djimon was really interested in this world. He's really interested in the whole psychic world...part of his culture. We were shooting in Hong Kong so we had quite a strong Chinese cast as well which aren't here today, but you know, played a big part in the movie. It was great you know, this whole idea about psychic warfare and the manipulation of psychics by governments as something that has been going on, you know, from the Cold War right the way through. You can actually read about it on the internet, it's really fascinating. So, to me, if it's a global question, then yeah, I wanted it not to just be about America, you know, manipulating people. I wanted it to be everybody, you know, the Chinese try, the Russians, everybody you know, they're all in on it. You know, if you read on it, it's really fascinating. I'm not the kind of person who is a conspiracy theorist but, because it's there in front of you, you know, you can read about remote viewing, you can read about all sorts of things and it's really fascinating. That's why I took the film because I thought, well here's a movie, here's a genre that I've kind of shyed away from because you know, I was involved with stuff at Marvel before and I could of went...hmmm...I don't know, but this I really enjoyed because it felt real to me. It was almost like 'what if' you know? What if it's gone a little further? What if we don't really know the truth, and then you take it a bit further yourself and you highten it to more movie terms...sorry that's a long answer" *laughs*

Question:

What inspired you visually for this film?

Paul McGuigan:

"It was a few things. First of all, Asia was a big inspiration, you know, Hong Kong. Even though it's a very modern city, it's also a very spiritual place as well; it still has kept that, retained that...which is an interesting mix...mystical if you like. There's beautiful colors, I'm a big fan of colors...I wanted to use the colors. We did all hand-held, there's no green screen or blue screen in the movie at all. In fact, no that's a lie, the only green screen is when they're driving the cars because it would be the most boring driving sequences because cars don't go very fast or very far out there so...So what tried to...and what we do is we augment...what we did through the camera, we augment that in post, you know, like the special effects. But to be honest with you, we did most of it through the camera and that's the only way I can do it because I wasn't really. I'm not really...I haven't had that much experience dealing with green screen before so I decided rather than trying to work with that I would do it for real. So we would throw people quite violently around, you know, people would get hurt quite a bit. That wasn't my intention you know but. They realized how dangerous it was but they were like...You know Dakota and Chris did a lot of their stunts it was great. You know, we all had to muck in because no trailers...it was that kind of deal. It was fun to do. And my style is very much off the hoof, you know I shot on sixteen mil, I shot on video, I shot on every format you can imagine...stills you know...and just threw everything at it because I felt these people have so many...you have to create a visual language because there's so many flash forwards, flashbacks...it's a very complicated visual film. So I had to set up a real visual style for each of these sections so that people could get into your visual language."

Question:

Was there anything you added to the writing?

Paul McGuigan:

"I worked with the writer very closely because the version I got was a lot different to the version you see on the screen and I really wanted to visualize these flash forwards, flashbacks. For instance, we had things like a cup cam, and this was a glass cup and if you had the history of the cup...we do that in the movie - you see the history of the cup. Basically it was a cup with a camera attached to it and we kind of just threw it around the room and then we speed it up and make it kind of funky. It was really easy to do, it was really lo-fi*. I think that's what I brought to it, I tried to keep it...because writers can write big you know, like cars getting thrown around and the Empire State Building falling over or something. I was like no no no no! Let's keep this quite...so people can feel attached to it; people can feel like there's something cerebral there but it's something that they don't think 'Oh, that's stupid' you know? We did go a bit big, but that's because we're making a movie as well you know?" *laughs*

lo-fi - Low fidelity.

Question:

Can you talk a little about working with Dakota Fanning on this?

Paul McGuigan:

"Dakota? She's amazing, you just met her. I don't think I have to say much. When I met her we had cheeseburgers and Coke or something and...but I was the child and she was kind of the...I learned a lot from Dakota - what I learned was to be more relaxed. More confident with who you are. Because Dakota reads the scripts and she gets it and then she says yes, I've learned that you know. She must get sent a lot of scripts and if she doesn't get it, you won't get her saying yes, you know, and she said yes and that was it. That was the last conversation we had."

Roundtable Interview Attended By: Peter Dimako, Editor in Chief.

Thursday, April 24th, 2008 1:45PM PT. At the San Diego, Comic-Con

Sex Drive (2008) (Released date: October 10, 2008 )

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