Commando

As part of our series on video game adaptations, I spoke to Steven E. de Souza, writer and director of STREET FIGHTER. After SUPER MARIO BROS. and DOUBLE DRAGON, STREET FIGHTER was the third video game adaptation to be released in the Nineties, and unlike its predecessors, it actually turned a healthy profit. In our interview, Steven talks about several of the problems that plagued the production of STREET FIGHTER – like co-star Raul Julia’s failing health, which meant that the shooting schedule needed to be rearranged, which in turn meant that there was not enough time to work on the choreography of several fight scenes; and he also talks about the impact of the negative reviews the movie received.

Steven, who is probably the fastest-talking screenwriter in Hollywood, also shares with us tons of funny, absurd and insightful stories on several of the other movies he’s worked on – like DIE HARD and DIE HARD 2, HUDSON HAWK, RICOCHET, the TOMB RAIDER movies and the Schwarzenegger film COMMANDO.

For more on the video game movies of the Nineties, please check out our other interviews here on Talking Pictures, including an interview with Rocky Morton, co-director of SUPER MARIO BROS., an interview with Jim Yukich, director of DOUBLE DRAGON, and an interview with Kevin Droney, the writer of MORTAL KOMBAT and WING COMMANDER.

If you speak German, there’s also episode #38 of our Lichtspielplatz podcast with in-depth discussions of all these movies.

So here’s Talking Pictures with Steven de Souza!

The mp3 file can be downloaded HERE.
The Talking Pictures podcast can be found on iTunes: HERE.

Photo of Steven E. de Souza from imdb.com.
Special thanks to Dr. Wily, my Lichtspielplatz podcasting partner for audio editing. The music was created by Clark Kent.