Here is what the talented directors had to say:

IAR: To begin with, were you two fans of the Ghost Rider comics before making the movie and what brought you into the franchise?

Mark Neveldine: I didn’t know anything about it. I never saw the movie or read the comics, but Brian did and told me about it. It just seemed like a great character to tackle, and Nic Cage was in the movie! How could we not do this film?

Brian Taylor: We’ve been wanting to work with Nic forever. He was our number one guy for Chev Chelios in Crank. But he was way out of our league at that point and Jason (Statham) was just coming up and obviously we wouldn’t have it any other way now but at the time he was our idle. So we could finally work with him and do a Marvel Comics superhero movie, and this was not just any superhero, but a superhero with no cape, no tights, and no face.

Neveldine: And no eyes!

You have both had great luck casting actors in your films that really go all out for their roles. For instance, Jason Statham did all of his own stunts in Crank. Now you have Nic who, on set, was painting his face like Baron Samedi, wearing black eye contacts, and sewing ancient Egyptian artifacts into his jacket so that he could channel their energies during his performance as Ghost Rider. So what’s it like to work with an actor that has so much dedication to his role?

Neveldine: It makes your job easier but at the same time it raises your level so much higher. Suddenly we’re taking the job more seriously and we’re pushing ourselves to make this thing as great as humanly possible.

Taylor: We’ve been really lucky with casting. Directing movies is really fun but what makes it fun are the people. At the end of the day action is a lot more fun to watch than it is to film. Blowing up cars and stuff, that’s all great, but it’s a lot of work. It’s methodical, it’s little pieces, it takes forever, and it’s kind of dangerous. But the real fun stuff, when you’re looking forward to getting out of bed in the morning, is when you’ve got a guy like Nic Cage going balls to the wall doing a scene that you know is going to be so over the top. That’s the thrill. We kept having these moments when Nic was doing stuff and we were like, that’s going to end up on YouTube; this scene that just happened is going to be in montages forever.

Besides giving an amazing performance did Nic bring any ideas of his own to the filmmaking or storytelling process?

Neveldine: We had the blueprints, which started from (David) Goyer’s script originally, but then Nic just brought so much detail to this world and he really dove into who Johnny Blaze was, who the Ghost Rider was. He studied insects and tribal dancing, all sorts of things. He really wanted to get this right; he’s a method actor.

Taylor: I think it really inspired him that the first thing that we brought to him, conceptually, was that we wanted him to play this as a dual role. In the first movie he didn’t play the Ghost Rider, it was stunt guys or CG or whatever, but that’s the title character of the movie! We all wanted to see the Ghost Rider come out but when he did, we lost one of the greatest actors in the world, he’s gone and it’s now just a stuntman. So when we told him that we wanted him to do it as a dual role, that we wanted him to develop Zarathos (the demon that actually possesses Johnny Blaze and turns him into the Ghost Rider) as a character with his own physicality and his own personality, he got real excited about that and it became the main basis of his preparation and research. We did movement rehearsals and things, putting him on wires, trying to make him move backwards and forwards. How would a demon really move? It’s kind of like a Pharoah but it’s kind of like an insect, I don’t really know what the hell it is. He’s using psychological warfare on the people that he kills as much as physical. It’s about messing with your mind and doing strange things that are inexplicable.

Neveldine: You saw the upside-down “Compass Move” where he’s just spinning randomly out of the blue.

Taylor: You’re like, “What is that, what is that?”

That’s right and just before that scene he had his back to an enemy and he was just standing there, swaying from side to side right before he was about to pounce on him.

Neveldine/Taylor (simultaneously): It’s the Cobra! It’s the Cobra!

Taylor: We had names for all that stuff. We had names for all of it. It was the Cobra, the Compass, and so on. If the bad guys are that freaked out by it and they don’t understand what is going on, well it should be the same for the audience, they don’t really know what he’s doing either. They just know that they don’t want to be in the same room as him.

You’ve both said in the past that at times it was dangerous making this movie. You also have a reputation for doing whatever it takes to get the shot, whether it be holding on to the back of a motorcycle on rollerblades or hanging out of a helicopter. Were there any shots that you were a little nervous to try and get on this film because you were afraid that you might actually die?

Neveldine: Just driving to work in Romania in the mountains you thought you were going to die.

Taylor: Yeah, and especially at lunchtime!

Neveldine: We did a wire thing when I was over a cliff and it was about a 500 ft drop minimum. You look up and you’re on one wire and that wire could snap at any given time. It makes the job more exciting, I wouldn’t say more dangerous; it’s all relative.

Taylor: But the funny thing is there’s so much adrenaline when we’re shooting that you never really think about it.

Neveldine: It’s like being at Six Flags.

Taylor: Other people who are watching get nervous. Sometimes we would do stuff on the Crank movies and after we the shot we would look at the people watching us and they were all pale. They’re like, “Oh my god, did you guys realize you almost just died there,” and we’re like, no we didn’t realize that at all because we were just trying to get the shot. You just don’t think about it.

I heard that you had your budget on this film cut from $135 million to $75 million, is that true? Now I realize you two have made great looking action movies for a fifth of that cost before, but on a big studio superhero movie like this, what was that experience like for you? Did you find that it hindered your process as filmmakers at all or did it just force you to be more creative with the production?

Taylor: $75 million? We wish we had $75 million!

Neveldine: They hired us because they knew we were the guys that could do it. They wanted our edge and our style but we made this movie for pennies and that was definitely a cause of stress. How are we going to get this big budget movie done and finish the graphics with this number? But we’re in the business of pulling it off.

Taylor: We won’t tell you how much the movie cost to make but $75 million would have been a luxury. $75 million would have been like, whoa!

Neveldine: We would have been shooting in Italy instead of Romania.

Taylor: We could shoot Transformers 4 for $75 million. This was not the big studio superhero movie that everybody thinks. We were shooting punk rock style just like Crank 2 out in very remote, dangerous, cold places of eastern Europe where they didn’t even know what a movie camera was, and just finding ways to make it happen.

This is your first movie that doesn’t have an R-rating, did you find that challenging and were there certain scenes that you had envisioned that didn’t make it into the film because of the PG-13 rating?

Neveldine: If (David) Goyer’s script wasn’t originally in place, and this wasn’t already a franchise, we probably would have written an R-rated movie but we knew they wanted PG-13. There was a story in place so we kind of just jumped on board. It was a little bit challenging but we found out you can tear dudes apart and burn them up, as many as you want, as long as you don’t see blood. You can also drop the “F-bomb” a couple times. You can say, “f**k”, but you can’t say “f**k” in the context of a sexual act.

Taylor: We had to drop the sex scene.

Neveldine: Everything he rides turns into a hell machine with flames. So, we weren’t able to have him “ride” her that day, if you know what I mean.

Taylor: We tried to push it as much as we could. We like the idea of a young audience getting in to see one of our movies, which they normally don’t get to see. We just want to make sure they have nightmares when they get home.

As a director, you’re in charge of the artistic and dramatic aspects of the film, as well as the cast and crew; but does it ever become difficult when there are two people in charge? Do you guys usually agree on everything or do you butt heads once in a while?

Taylor: It just means we never run out of ideas. A lot of times, on sets that we’ve been present on with other directors there are always moments where the director can get stuck. It’s a difficult job because it’s complicated. There are a lot of things you have to keep in your head and a lot of decisions you have to make. You have to answer questions all the time. A lot of times you can get paralyzed and we’ve seen guys just get stuck. Things stop moving because you have to take a breath. We never get stuck because when one of us gets stuck were like “Dude, I’ve got nothing,” “well, okay, let’s try this.” It’s kind of like Pro Wrestling. You tag in. It’s like Pro Wrestling in a lot of ways actually, especially with the tanning lotion, tight clothing, and bandanas. Lots of tanning lotion!

Do either of you have a project in mind that you might want to work on alone?

Neveldine: We have stuff we want to do under the N/T banner. We want Neveldine/Taylor to be a brand. We’ve done a little of that before in the past with stuff but we want to have as many irons in as many fires as we possibly can have right now.

Taylor: We’re working on a movie with sock puppets right now.

Sock Puppets, really? What’s that film about?

Taylor: We can’t say.

So, I noticed while watching Spirit of Vengeance that there are characters in the movie that are clearly based on other marvel characters that can be found in the Ghost Rider comics. Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth) is clearly based on Blackout, and Roarke (Hinds) is obviously Mephisto, but they’re never referred to as such in the film. Danny (Riordan) seems to be based on Danny Ketch, who eventually becomes the next Ghost Rider in the comics, but Idris Elba’s version of Moreau is nothing like any of the Moreaus that appear in the Marvel universe? Was this intentional? Did you not refer to them by their comic book names for a reason?

Neveldine: As far as Blackout, we wanted a little more creative freedom. In order to do that, as long as we don’t call him Blackout, then we can bring in the power of decay.

Taylor: Yeah, but also because we thought it’s sort of corny and lame for a person to get powers and suddenly gloss himself with some name like, Blackout. “You are Blackout!” “No, I’m not, I’m Carrigan, I just look weird now.”

So it makes it just a little bit more realistic that way, correct?

Neveldine: Yeah! We pull a little bit of the cheese out because we’re a little goofy at times. As long as we pull that kind of cheese out it seems to work a little bit better.

Taylor: In some early screenings when Rourke says to Carrigan, “I give you the power of decay,” a lot of people thought that his name was Decay, like he’s a super-villain called Decay. No, it’s just a word. He doesn’t have a comic book name. The Ghost Rider doesn’t have a comic book name either, it’s Zarathos, and Rourke doesn’t have a name, he’s just Rourke. We wanted to avoid that whole thing of people having corny superhero names. The comic book people will recognize it.

Neveldine: We want the comic book people to recognize it, write about it, talk about it, and make a big deal about it.

Are you interested in making a sequel? Do you have any ideas about where you’d like the story to go?

Neveldine: Sure! We would work with Nic in a second. It just really depends on this weekend. If they buy into this take then, great! It gives us an opportunity to do something. We could take this further or reinvent another Ghost Rider. Make it it’s own thing, almost like comic books really do, and that’s fine.

You guys wrote and almost directed Jonah Hex, and now you have Ghost Rider under your belt. Are there any other comic books or genre properties that you’d like to adapt?

Neveldine: Debbie Does Dallas! I think we could redo that as an action film.

Taylor: That needs a reboot!

Neveldine: And in 3-D. It might need several reboots actually. That’s something we’ve talked about, thrown around over a couple shots of tequila. It might happen!

What are your favorite comics growing up?

Neveldine: Hulk!

Taylor: My favorite guys were Spider-man, Fantastic Four, Daredevil and all that but they’ve already made all of those.

Speaking of Jonah Hex, it’s been almost two years since that was released. Do you mind if I ask what happened? Did you guys leave because you wanted to do a dark, R-rated movie and the studio wanted a PG-13 fun-for-everyone type of film?

Neveldine: We turned in a hard R-rated script. They wanted to slowly delete some scenes and do some modifications. We left at a really early stage. We weren’t even in pre-production yet. We got out of it and then it became it’s own little movie. We love our script. We’re proud of it. People should get it downloaded online. Check it out, read it. But it’s a lot different. It’s 100% different.

Taylor: The script that ended up being the movie bears almost no resemblance to what we did. It was kind of a mutually amicable thing. We thought that character was a hard R, Sin City type of a character, and they wanted to make a broader movie. That’s totally fair; it’s their money. We’re not going to tell them what kind of movie to make. What we’re going to do is tell them this is how we see it. So we totally understood that we weren’t the right guys to see that one through. We love that character and (Josh) Brolin was a great choice for the actor, and the script that we wrote is one of our favorite things ever. There were a lot of great people at Warner Bros. involved in that movie from start to finish but sometimes things just don’t work out regardless of what people’s best intentions are. Sometimes it just doesn’t gel.

Finally, what’s the status of Crank 3?

Neveldine: It will happen.

Is it definitely going to happen? Do I have your word on that?

Taylor: Oh yeah!

Will it be in 3D?

Neveldine: Of course!

Taylor: It’s funny because there are a lot of things in 3D that you’re not supposed to do because it makes people puke. For Crank 3, we’re like, great; let’s do all of them!

Neveldine: We will make people puke!

To watch our exclusive video interview with Nicolas Cage about Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, please click here. 

Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance rides into theaters on February 17th.