Unless you saw his 2008 debut feature THE ESCAPIST (and you should), it's likely that you hadn’t heard heard the name of director Rupert Wyatt, until his staggeringly awesome RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. I had the great fortune of talking to Wyatt three years ago at San Diego Comic-Con, not long before APES was released, and I knew even then that I had found a kindred spirit. This guy knows his movie and can talk about pretty much any area of cinema. So when I heard that for his next project (after a few false starts and doing the pilot for the AMC series “Turn”), Wyatt was tackling a remake of the great James Toback story THE GAMBLER, originally starring James Caan, it made a degree of sense to me.
This time around, Wyatt is working from a screenplay by Oscar-winner William Monahan (THE DEPARTED) and slotting in Mark Wahlberg as the literature professor with a gambling problem and a loser complex. The new version is loaded with great supporting performances from the likes of Brie Larson, Jessica Lange, Michael K. Williams, and especially John Goodman, who is quite simply terrifying. But more importantly, while some plot point mirror the original, many others do not, and focus shifts from pure gambling to places in the professor’s life where he is also taking big, life-changing risks.
This interview took place the morning after Wyatt and I did a post-screening Q&A of THE GAMBLER, and we had a great time alone and with the audience when he was in Chicago not long ago. It looks like his next project will be a 10-part, sci-fi series called “Echo Chamber,” originally developed for HBO, although that may not be the case any longer. But the plan appears to have Wyatt directing all 10 episodes, but we’re just not sure where it will air. Until then, please enjoy my talk with Rupert Wyatt; it sounds like it might be a while before we hear from him again…
Capone: Hello again. How are you?
Rupert Wyatt: Good. I checked out the site this morning. I saw you were talking to Bennett Miller not long ago.
Capone: I did, actually. I ran into him back in April at Roger Ebert’s film festival. They showed a really nice 35mm print of CAPOTE, and the next day we both were going to New York for different things, and I ran into him at the gate. We’d never met before, but we just started talking, and he was really excited about FOXCATCHER. It was about to premiere at Cannes, and then I said, “If you go on tour, let’s do a Q&A screening.” He’s like, “Yeah, sure.” And I wasn’t going to hold him to it, but sure enough, he made it happen. He said, “I said I would, so here I am.”
RW: Oh, wow. Yeah, we shared a D.P., Greig Fraser
Capone: On this film?
RW: Yeah, he was terrific.
Capone: I guess he shot FOXCATCHER a long time ago, because it was supposed to come out a year ago.
RW: I guess he did, yeah. That’s right. And then it got delayed, and he tinkered with it, which is always a brave move, because a lot of people read negative things about when a movie is delayed. And in that case, obviously, it was for the right reasons.
Capone: I thought about this last night after we spoke that this film and PLANET OF THE APES, the last two films you have made have been films that, in theory, no one was looking forward to, because everyone thought “This doesn’t need to be done.” There had been this bad experience, actually with Mark, on the previous PLANET OF THE APES movie. People were so convinced that your version was not going to be good, not because of you.
RW: I hear you, man. That’s why I got the job.
Capone: With this film is like, I’m sure the few people that are familiar with the original are wondering, “Why do we need to remake this film?” This one I think you can make a better case for. Plus, I don’t think that your goal is to rake in the big bucks with this movie. You just want to tell the story.
RW: I don’t think the idea of remaking THE GAMBLER is necessarily a commercial decision.
Capone: No, it’s not a cash grab.
RW: [laughs] Not many people would necessarily look back to 1974 to the Karel Reisz movie and say “That’s box office gold.” But yeah, it’s interesting you say that, because APES, I always remember it and was well aware of it at the time of it being this kind of poisoned chalice. Like I said, it’s why I got the job, because I had done one small movie, and there were many, many directors in the mix for that job from Kathryn Bigelow to Oliver Stone, all of whom declined prior me. Actually Scott Frank was my predecessor. He was working on it, and he left because of creative differences with the studio. So it kind of fell into my lap as an opportunity, and it was one of those, “This might send me back to England with my tail between my legs.”
And there are many examples, as we well know, of filmmakers that make one film, come to Hollywood, crash and burn, and they go to film jail. So I knew that it was that kind of decision and that tightrope. And I was fortunate, I guess. People’s expectations were so low that we vaulted the bar. And APES obviously was not a remake; it was a reboot. But with THE GAMBLER, I never set out to remake the original. I read Bill Monahan's script and saw very quickly that it’s not a film about addiction. It would be erroneous and frankly disrespectful of me to try and re-tell James Toback’s personal story. And obviously, that’s what the original was in so many ways. This is much more the story of a man who’s looking to get out. There’s a great book called “The Dice Man.” Do you know that?
Capone: I know the title, yes.
RW: It was banned in the ’70s. It was a whole treaty on the notion of free will, and it would actually make an amazing movie.
Capone: Is it about a guy who makes every major decision in his life with a roll of the dice?
RW: Yeah! He decides to live his life by rolling the dice, and he goes super dark. So he rolls a 2: “I’ll make a coffee.” If he rolls a 6: “I’m going to kill the gardener.” And so it goes to that place. So I saw this in that mold. It’s a guy who’s making gambles with certain aspects in his life and less about casino gambling.
Capone: Although, I’ve got to say, there are some great casino gambling moments in this movie. Even the second time watching it, every time he’s at a card table, I feel physically ill, because I know he’s going to screw it up. For him, it’s not about making money; it’s just about playing until you have nothing left to lose.
RW: Yeah. I’m not an addictive personality, so I don’t know it inside out, but I guess that’s what drives a lot of addicts is this sense. It’s a bit like vertigo; that’s the only thing I can relate it to. I have a fear of heights, yet when I’m standing on a ledge, I want to throw myself over. So I guess addiction is a little bit like that. You know what the repercussions are, yet you are compelled to go there. So for gambling addicts, they want to stay there, because they know that they’re not going to leave until they’ve got zero.
Capone: It does beg the question, is he a more interesting person when he’s owing people hundreds of thousands of dollars and has his life threatened every day? We have no idea what kind of person he’s going to be on the other side of this film if he kicks this.
RW: Well sure. It’s interesting, Lars von Trier said after coming out of rehab and that he’s terrified he can’t make anymore movies because he’s clean now. And I’m not a proponent of that at all. I think there are many examples. Tom Waits did some of his best work since he’s kicked the habits. But this is such a different story. I never wanted to mold this around the idea that he is an addict. Even his mother in the movie said, “I don’t believe this is a disease.” And at the end of the movie, he says, “I’m not actually a gambler.”
So it’s like a samurai story, like that great Melville movie LE SAMOURAI, where he chooses the place of his own death,. And in this case, he knows he’s going to end up in the Dragon Room at the end on day zero, and he’s going to put it all on black. And he’ll either come out of the Dragon Room, or he’ll stay in there and get killed, and that’s the journey. He’s journeying to the dark heart of his own personal mission, which is to get back to zero so he can be spiritually rich. And be able to say to Frank at the end, “I don’t owe you nothing. So I can say ‘fuck you’ to you.”
Capone: You mentioned last night that you had always wanted to work with Mark Wahlberg. Before working with him, what was it about him specifically that made you want to work with him? And now that you have, what did you learn from the experience?
RW: I love all kinds of actors, but in particular, I worked a few times with Brian Cox, who I think is one of the best actors there is, and primarily the reason for me is that he falls into that school of effortless acting. He has this ability to sit in a scene, and you are just drawn to him. And Mark falls into the same category, where they really are very understated performance, and when you have the ability to do that and not disappear, you can get very close to reality. And I think we’re all trying to achieve that in some dramatic sense, where it’s less about performance and more about inhabiting a situation and playing true to that situation.
Mark has an innate ability to tap into a moment and a situation, and not every actor does have that. It’s all about timing, it’s all about an understanding of their place, it’s all about being pushed. Whenever you work with somebody for the first time, it’s like a relationship. You have to get to know that person, you have to know what buttons to push. I hope I get the opportunity to work with him again. When you look at various film directors like David O. Russell, who works with the same actors, there’s a specific reason for that, which is you get comfortable in that place and are able to really push each other. I had that with Andy Serkis, where, by the end of making APES, we were really firing on all cylinders because we felt so comfortable with each other, we could actually test each other in that way. Mark and I, it would be great to do something with him again, because now I understand him. I can really work with him.
Capone: Is there any chance of that happening? Was that something you two talked about?
RW: We did. Everyone always says it when the relationship is good, “We must work together again.” But I hope so, absolutely. There’s nothing that I have on the burner right now that is necessarily something that he would want to do, but he’s a fine, fine professional in the sense that he’s a pleasure to work with.
Capone: Because he’s becoming more known as a producer, this has been one of his passion projects for a number of years, is he easy to direct? He seems to be a guy is used to being in control of the situation. But is he pretty amenable?
RW: He is. There are some actors I’ve never worked with—so I’m only saying this on second-hand knowledge—but there’s the Warren Beattys of this world who would probably want to take control of the scene, or take control of how things are done, because they are innately directors at heart.
Capone: He eventually just did that. He just took over everything.
RW: Yeah, and you can see that. And that might be a good thing, who knows. Depending on who they’re working with. Or it might be a terrible thing. Mark is one of those actors, at least in my experience, who’s somebody that has a very clear understanding, clear viewpoint on how movies get made, and by that I mean that he’s first and foremost an actor. He shows up to set focused on his character, focused on exactly where his character is going to inhabit the scene. But as far as everything else is concerned, he’s incredibly receptive. So my job as a director is…I had carte blanche to really control the scene and control the movie creatively which is pretty rare when you work with a movie star.
Capone: You mentioned last night about how you wanted to profile different parts of Los Angeles than we often see in films set there. Do you think it takes an outsider to come in and really see the beauty? You can say, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a movie before. I don’t think anyone’s ever really captured this place in this way.” Do you think that worked to your benefit?
RW: I guess so. There are numerous examples: John Boorman, POINT BLANK, who was the first probably to show those great viaduct L.A. river basins. Wim Wenders with PARIS, TEXAS. Any number of foreign filmmakers that come into an environment, especially in the U.S., and skew it from their own personal perspective. I love Los Angeles, in so far as I love the architectural nature of it. As a the city, I prefer the high-rise notion of New York or Chicago, but I think interestingly, downtown L.A. has a microcosm of that, which is very un-tapped. When I say untapped, I was always fascinated to learn that so much of SE7EN was shot in downtown L.A., while it has that New York feel. So I think L.A. is an amazing cross section of all these different neighborhoods that you can tap into and get something out of. It’s very diverse.
Capone: We talked yesterday about the supporting cast, and there are some real obvious names we could drop, but I want to talk about Anthony Kelley. I didn’t realize this is the first time he’s acted. How did you find him? He’s fantastic in the part. It never would have occurred to me that he had not acted before.
RW: Yeah, he’s a terrific, terrific guy. It was a tough role to cast, because we wanted somebody who knew how to play basketball and of the college age. That’s a tough call, even in L.A., to find. More often or not, you’ll find a kid who can act, but can’t play basketball. So Sheila Jaffe, our casting director, put out a pretty wide casting net. We were close to going with somebody out of New York, but I loved the idea that he was a pure soul in a way that was on the verge of getting corrupted, and was making this very tough choice in his life.
Anthony and Sheila went down to casting in south L.A., and inadvertently set up the casting center right in the middle of a turf war. So a whole bunch of kids were showing up from different neighborhoods, and the police called and said, “You’re basically asking for people to cross gang lines, and this is not a good idea.” And Anthony showed up and even on tape—I didn't actually go that day, but I saw his tape—we pinpointed him as being the guy, and when I first met him, he was just a very positive guy who’s totally up for it. And it’s tough. His first day on set was the scene where he talks about his injury, and he’s in a theater, on a stage with Mark Wahlberg, his first day acting ever, and he has a two-page monologue. And most professional actors will get tense, and he was very, very calm.
Capone: That’s an incredible scene, because it’s not written naturally, because he keeps repeating “I have this knee.” It’s repetition. You said it was Shakespearean, but it’s also like Mamet. It’s like theater. It was that scene, actually, that made me think that this kid had acted for years.
RW: I really hope he gets more work and works again, because I know he came away from the shoot having fallen in love with the idea of being an actor. I think there was a moment in his life where he thought he was going to go pro as a basketball player, and it didn’t work out for him, as I’m sure is often the case. It’s wonderful to see somebody then find a whole new vocation, a passion, and he did during the shoot.
Capone: I noticed that Sonya Walger was listed in the cast list online. What happened to her?
RW: Yeah. That’s interesting.
Capone: You mentioned a bunch of cut material yesterday, but I didn’t know if you completely axed a storyline that she was a part of. I was curious.
RW: We had a scene where Mark’s character goes back to his ex-wife.
Capone: Did we even know he was married? Did that come up in this version?
RW: No. It was at the end of the script. We shot it. Midway through the movie, he made a choice to go, when he’s got his mother’s money, prior to going to the casino, he goes back to his old house. And I shot it in a way where you don’t know where he’s going, and you think he’s breaking into a house, and then gradually we reveal that this is his old life. And as he’s standing in his old bedroom, he begins to notice a bottle of Rogaine and a couple of glasses of wine, and a pair of tiny shoes, and he’s like, “Oh god, some guy’s moved in, and my wife has moved on.”
And then she shows up with a baby, and it’s his kid, and it was a great scene, actually, and Sonya was terrific. But we made a choice in post pretty early on, actually, that it was just a bridge too far, because we didn’t really know enough about other aspects of his past life, even though I was personally really keen to explore that. To just dangle that with the audience, and say “This is a guy who’s married who walked out on his kid.” We thought it would have been basically a tipping point for the audience to say, “This guy’s a prick.”
Capone: There are already enough reasons not to like him.
RW: Right. So sadly we had to lose the scene, but it was a great scene.
Capone: Well, it was really great to see you again. Best of luck.
