My Publicist Note Book

Producers could have never predicted just how much The Matrix — a low budget film — would impact movie making for years to come. The cyberpunk epic, written and directed by twins Lilly and Lana Wachowski, could easily have dropped out of sight. The Wachowskis, after all, don't always nail it ( Jupiter Ascending,  anyone?).  But with novel bullet-time camera work that still impresses today and intense—and intensely physical—performances from a diverse crew of actors like Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss . THE MOVIE'S ORIGINAL BUDGET WAS BLOWN ENTIRELY ON THE ICONIC FIRST SCENE Screenwriting instructors will tell you the opening scene of Trinity (Moss) kicking all kinds of ass is Great Writing 101. It better be, it cost the Wachowskis their original budget of $10 million. It was a calculated risk that paid off. Execs saw the footage and gave the sisters $50 million more. The level of computer-generated image...

“No one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”  Illustration: Owen Freeman Though made for a (relatively) big budget by a major studio and starring a recognizable name,  The Matrix  arrived as an unknown quantity in the spring of 1999. Would critics get it? Would audiences even show up? The answers were yes (mostly) and yes (decidedly). What first caught filmgoers’ attention via a weird-looking  trailer in which Keanu Reeves dodged a bunch of bullets in slow-motion would soon become a pop-culture phenomenon that would inspire sequels and spinoffs and launch the careers of a pair of sibling filmmakers previously best known for one acclaimed low-budget crime movie. The film seemed to come out of nowhere. It didn’t. In fact, if the stars didn’t align just right, and Warner Bros. hadn’t done the studio equivalent of taking the red pill and seeing what happened, it might not have happened at all.  The Mat...