There have been so many stories about the Ripper... what inspired you to make "From Hell"?
Well, the first script we read was a very Hollywood version of this. Kind of cheesy but there were elements that were interesting. Then we found out there was a graphic novel it was based on and we read Alan Moore's graphic novel, and it was a lot more intense than the script. And we said, "Wow, this is interesting, let's try to get more of the graphic novel back in the movie."
Was there any resistance from the studio about you making this movie?
Not so much the studios as the American press, who were like: "Why are these guys doing this?", because of what we'd done before and who we are. But if you look at the story, it's in keeping with the things we're interested in and also, at the time, we just wanted to do something different and not go down the same boring road of things we'd done before.
Given the violent subject matter, did you make a conscious decision to leave a lot to the imagination?
Yeah, we definitely had the approach of trying to be more suggestive about the graphic-ness of the violence. A lot of people walked away and thought it was a real graphic movie, but that's more with the atmosphere of the movie and the sound that you're hearing. They were fooled by it.
Were you familiar with the English actors you cast in the film?
No, we weren't too familiar with them. The surprise about the English cast was how professional they are, and how hard working they are and how they're not into frivolous activities distracting you from the set - like how many M&Ms they got in their trailer, and stuff like that. They're really about working. They work a lot - they do stage, TV. Out in America you get a young actor who wants to be a star, and he only acts when he gets a chance to act in a movie, so the experience is not there and they're drama queens.
