Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a short phone interview I had with Joe Carnahan, who is out promoting the DVD release of his shoot-em-up bit of insanity SMOKIN’ ACES. We talk mostly about the cast he assembled and a bit on his upcoming WHITE JAZZ towards the end. When I was first greeted by Carnahan over the phone I asked him how he was doing and he said not very good. His home was just broken in to. That’s where we start… Enjoy the chat!
Quint: So was is just now that your house got broken into? Is that what you said?
Joe Carnahan: No, no it was Saturday. I think they were casing the joint. They basically went to the master bedroom and took my TV, but they didn’t touch my Kubrick collection, so I’m happy about that. I have my Cassavettes and Kubrick collection side by side and they left them, so yeah… It was a thief with no taste, so it ‘s good. Yeah, they just got the computer…
Quint: That’s horrible.
Joe Carnahan: It never feels good to come back in knowing some one else has been in your house. So you never know what horrors you’re going to uncover, but I think is a pretty straightforward kind of snatch and grab.
Quint: I used to have this sketchbook that I would take around to conventions and things. I actually picked this up from Harry. He had this sketchbook that he would take around and have people draw sketches in it for him. I had everybody from Mike Mignola, who drew a Hellboy for me, and there was a Don Bluth sketch… he did this beautiful Fievel from AN AMERICAN TAIL. Had tons of stuff in it, at least 3 or 4 years worth of collected sketches. I had the book in a bag in the front seat of my rental car in LA and unfortunately I had a digital camera on the top of it, so the bag was taken…
Joe Carnahan: Oh fuck man…
Quint: Yeah, you just know that guy’s not going to have any need for it, that it would just end up in some dumpster a block away…
Joe Carnahan: Right, absolutely dude, yeah…that’s the thing. They took this flat screen SONY that I have, which I didn’t give a shit about, but there was this nice little humidor with my name on it, which was a nice gift and they took that, which really fucking pisses me off. I was a lot more upset that they took that than the TV.
Quint: Well yeah, a TV is replaceable…
Joe Carnahan: Yeah stuff like that, like gifts… and they took a really nice watch… I would have given anything just to catch them. Just to be here when it happened, but again, nobody got hurt and this stuff is replaceable, so you can only piss and moan about it for so long.
Quint: Then they sit you down and make you talk with a whole bunch of journalists…
Joe Carnahan: Exactly!
Quint: (laughs)
Joe Carnahan: Exactly the experience I want! No, it’s been a lot of fun and I’ve had good questions…
Quint: Well, you’re not going to get anymore of those right now.
Joe Carnahan: That’s it dude, it’s over! No, it’s good. It’s at the end of the day, so we can all slouch…
Quint: Well I saw the movie at Butt-Numb-Athon. I loved the intro by the way.
Joe Carnahan: Oh yeah, the killing of (my assistant). Yeah, I thought since I couldn’t be there, I had to give a little something extra for the crowd.
Quint: Well, it’s always good to kick off a movie with a shooting.
Joe Carnahan: (laughs) Absolutely. Why not? Ya know, why not?
Quint: Well the movie went over really well at Butt-Numb-A-Thon.
Joe Carnahan: That’s great man. It’s one of those things, you know… It looks like a much more mainstream film than NARC and I disagree. NARC is a much more mainstream film, because something like SMOKIN’ ACES, you know going in it was going to polarize the number of people that dig it, that dig what it’s trying to do, and people that hate it for those very reasons. Any time you try to combine a kind of almost screwball slapstick dark comedy with really heavy end drama, it’s a pretty tight slalom. It’s one of those, it’s why I’m glad on DVD there’s the… you can develop a greater appreciation for movies, as opposed to seeing them one time theatrically. Beyond visceral thrills and just really great action stuff, the plot’s pretty twisted and convoluted and you ask an audience to take a pretty big… to literally follow a very serious thread in a movie that’s fucking wacky at times… You know what I mean? So I’m glad, anytime I hear it plays well, it’s always a comfort to me… [laughs]
Quint: I don’t think that you really have to go too far with the geeks considering your casting,. I love the ensemble aspect of the film… I mean, you even have Booger in the movie!
Joe Carnahan: I was consciously trying to like subvert what everybody normally does, you know he’s [Ryan Reynolds] been kind of a comedic… JUST FRIENDS… VAN WILDER and Curtis Armstrong played Booger. I tried to go against what these guys normally do and Bateman, Jason Bateman’s normally the straight man, so I kind of made him this kind of freak, you know? That’s always fun. It’s always fun to take an expectation and twist it somehow or warp it a bit so that they’re not doing what they’ve done before.
Quint: Was the seed of the story based on you wanting to get the big ensemble together?
Joe Carnahan: No, it’s really… It started with my fascination with kind of Frank Sinatra and the mob. This is the one time in your career you should really throw it against the wall and just fucking go all out on one and really indulge every creative whim you’ve ever had and see if it will congeal and see if one movie will hold it. And then realizing that and building archetypes that you thought would lend itself… certainly the Tremor brothers… the Tremor brothers are the Hansons in SLAP SHOT and [Randall] “Tex” Cobb’s character from RASING ARIZONA. That’s kind of the inspiration for those guys,. So knowing that you’re going to populate this film with really freaky larger than life king of characters, while at the same time you’re going to put very real, relatable characters in the movie and again man, it kind of adheres to that overall strategy, which is you know… There’s this shotgun blast that’s going to scatter everywhere and not be in anyway a direct hit on any one thing and that’s definitely the vibe going in and always my greatest concern. It’s like, shit man, I don’t know if audiences will be able to take this, the gear changes required for the movie, but what the fuck? Let’s do it! I may only get this shot once, might as well let it all hang out [laughs].
Quint: Since you got everybody from Ray Liotta to Matthew Fox, is there anybody you wanted that you didn’t get?
Joe Carnahan: Ryan Gosling, I think for a while was going to play or interested in playing the “Acosta” part, the Nester Carbonell one. I just got this weird call that Ryan Gosling wanted to play that part, but it didn’t fit. He wasn’t, obviously, Latin American… it wasn’t that character and while intrigued, I just didn’t think it was the right move to make. That guy would have been a lot of fun to work with though, but no man, it’s always fun when people want to chase the project and want to do it. One: they see it for what it is, kind of experimental and potentially weird, and they also see it as kind of spending a month in Laos, or rather a year [laughs] you know, working on this movie… with a 40 day schedule, so it was a very quick fitting kind of thing.
Quint: Yeah. I think, personally, my biggest draw upon hearing the plot and the cast, was with seeing Jeremy Piven as the lynchpin of the story. Did he chase the movie or did you go to him?
Joe Carnahan: You know, we kind of had a mutual admiration and I went and sat down with him and within five minutes I was like “OK, this is the guy.” Jeremy’s willingness to push it and do different things and take the mania and that manic energy… you know, like the Ari Gold character and go the other way with it… he’s very introspective quite odd. You know, he got the inherit value of doing that as a performer and wanted to give that a shot. Like I said, everybody that came to that part kind of “brought their own beer” and lawn chair… it was great. There is no pretence attached, everybody was in on the joke.
Quint: That’s cool and I really dug him in the movie, too. He has to be kind of a dickhead, but if you don’t feel for him, then you’re not going to worry about these guys coming to get him.
Joe Carnahan: Yeah, that’s why I wanted to give him moments, very quie, kind of deeply personal, where you’re watching a guy essentially kind of melt down. People ask me “What’s your favorite moment or favorite thing in the movie?” and it’s always the two shot of (Piven) and Common towards the end, where Common is essentially talking to Jeremy’s reflection. He’s no longer… he’s present and you can see him in the mirror, but you can’t see Jeremy’s physical shape in the frame, only the mirror and to me, that was the whole relationship. This guy is indeed a fake and he’s given up his friends and his friendships. You’ve seen the deterioration of that and obviously there’s a lot more of that material… there’s a much bigger kind of conversation in the bathroom and some of that stuff will be on the DVD, so it will be interesting to see people’s reaction to the more extended bits of that, little more details in terms of the ins and outs of that friendship.
Quint: So what else can we expect to see on the DVD?
Joe Carnahan: Well the original scripted ending, which I opted not to use. I shot two endings and the script originally ends with what I call the “cowboy ending.”
Quint: Somebody riding off into the sunset?
Joe Carnahan: [laughs] I wish… No, I just thought it was… in a movie that was, at times, really abrupt, it was making, again, really aggressive gear changes. I thought, this was a bit too abrupt and too hostile at the end, but I love the ending. I mean, it’s what closed the script, so I certainly had affinity for it and then there’s the Tremor brothers… they’re their original selves in the hallway and again, I shot those guys and there was always a constant decision to shoot each character the way they kind of want to be filmed and these guys are guys who have seen THE MATRIX three hundred times. So we’d shoot them in slow motion, with everything kind of poetic and over the top, so I had a three and a half minute sequence with them marauding through that top floor cut down to like a minute, so there’s another two and a half minutes of that that will be on the DVD. There’s a scene between Ryan Reynolds’ character and Martin Henderson’s character at the end that never made it into the movie that people will be able to see. In addition, there’s some really great gun stuff and a big stunt special feature in there that shows some of the stuff that we did, so it’s, dare I say, jam-packed with goodies… additional material.
Quint: So you’re moving on from…
[The publicists says “this will be the last one, because of time”]
Quint: So you’re moving on from publicity to preproduction on WHITE JAZZ right?
Joe Carnahan: Yeah, I’m literally going through a bunch of old Art Blakey, you know Chet Baker albums… all these west coast jazz brew back, that was just a fucking blast man and putting together this whole visual presentation. Basically, the thing is always avoiding getting the studio hung up on “period.” Any time they hear “period film,” everyone kind of clutches their purse, so I’m really doing just entry level stuff in terms of the research. I’ve got a really kind of skeleton crew working on it right now. We’re going to go kind of full-blown prep in late July/early August and really rip into that thing, it should be a lot of fun.
Quint: Alright, cool, that’s definitely something we’re interested in here.
Joe Carnahan: Yeah, that’s going to be something else. I’m really… I had to… we had to kind of change the Guy Pearce character around…
Quint: Yeah, because of the LA CONFIDENTIAL 2 thing…
Joe Carnahan: Yeah, exactly, but beyond that, I’m hoping that the people who really love the book will think we haven’t forsaken too much of that story. So, yeah, we’re steaming ahead full.
Quint: Well alright, cool man. It was good talking to you and good luck with the DVD!
Joe Carnahan: Alright bro, you too!
That’s all I got. Hope you enjoyed the chat. I’ve got a few more interviews in the pipeline. Keep your eyes peeled! -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
