Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
There's a smokin' little crime drama about to his screens this weekend called THE LOOKOUT, written and directed by the well-established screenwriter Scott Frank, who got himself an Oscar nom for his adaptation of OUT OF SIGHT, and wrote or adapted scripts for THE INTERPRETER, MINORITY REPORT, DEAD AGAIN, FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, GET SHORTY, and an uncredited rewrite of the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake. THE LOOKOUT marks Frank's first time helming a movie, based on his original screenplay, and it's a stunning achievement of understated atmosphere and dead-perfect casting.
Normally, I'm not a big fan of interviewing directors and actors at the same (in fact, I'm pretty sure I've turned down interviews that were set up in such a fashion), because typically you have entirely different types of questions for each and one or the other ends up being ignored for parts of your brief time with them. But after I saw THE LOOKOUT, I realized that the intimacy of the work would probably result in a great group interview.
There's a great collective mindset at work in this film, and I deduced that a great camaraderie probably existed between the cast and crew. The actors in question are Matthew Goode, who plays the film's villain and is probably best known for his work in Woody Allen MATCH POINT, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has turned in one great performance after another in films like MYSTERIOUS SKIN, HAVOC, MANIC, and last year's jaw-droppingly great BRICK.
Before the interview commenced, I spoke with Joseph about time I spent a year-and-a-half ago with his BRICK writer-director Rian Johnson, and the conversation with the three continued from there.
Capone: Scott, I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a bold statement: I’m noticing a trend with your films--you seem to like crime dramas.
Scott Frank: [laughs] Yes.
C: That’s my bold statement! And, after many years of adapting some great books and writing scripts based on other people’s stories, you’ve returned to this genre in your first time behind the camera. What is it about this type of story that keeps drawing you to it?
SF: I’m not sure. I’ve written two other originals besides this: LITTLE MAN TATE, which isn’t a crime drama, and DEAD AGAIN, which I guess is kind of a crime drama. I love thrillers because you can do everything in a thriller. You can have romance, you can make them funny. There’s just something about them. And, also for me, I think there’s a little wish fulfillment--they have characters who are often a little bit of what I’d love to be, you know, were I four inches taller and just, generally, more manly.
C: I know you’ve had this screenplay for some time, right?
SF: Yeah.
C: Has it always been your intention that this would be the one you direct? Or, did that just sort of happen?
SF: No, Sam Mendes was going to direct it first, back in ’99, because I’d started it about 10 years ago. And then, David Fincher was going to direct it, and then he went off to do ZODIAC instead. It was sitting there, and I really was at a point where I didn’t want to rewrite for another director.
C: So, he was the last director attached to this before you took it over?
SF: Yes.
C: Joseph, since you left television, you have committed yourself to these darker, more serious films. I guess I’d ask the same question of you: What is it about those kinds of film that is drawing you to them?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: It’s just because these are the good scripts for which I was able to get the part. It’s rare to find a good script, and when I’m able to find one, I try to get into it. Sometimes they let me in, sometimes they don’t. [laughs] For some people, it's easy to get work. What I think it rare is finding good writing. I think that the reason a lot of dark stuff seems better is because we call it dark because it’s got both dark and light to it. And, that complication is what makes it good. A lot of the movies that they call lighter movies, I think, are just thin, because they don’t have any darkness. And, I don’t think THE LOOKOUT is all dark at all. It’s got a lot of hope. It has a lot of uplifted-ness, a lot of, like, ‘don’t give up’ and good positive things in it, as well as some horrible, tragic, terrible things in it.
SF: Hopefully, a lot of humor.
JGL: Yeah. At the screening we just had in Austin at SXSW, people laughed a lot. It’s a fun and funny movie. That’s my favorite kind of comedy, the stuff where you’re not pandering and reaching for punch lines. It’s just that the human beings you’re portraying are whole enough and strike the right chord that it makes the audience laugh.
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