By Gill Pringle
“We are treated very well in Las Vegas, and Bradley Cooper was there with me, of course, and we shot a little bit of War Dogs at Caesar’s [casino], so it’s very much like our home away from home,” War Dogs director, Todd Phillips, tells FilmInk of returning to The City Of Sin, which he and his leading man, Bradley Cooper, so uproariously immortalised in their Hangover trilogy. In War Dogs, however, Cooper remains largely off-camera. “Bradley and I are partners,” Phillips explains. “We have this little company, and we’re making things together. This is the first movie that we’ve done together. We have a TV project that we’re working on, and we have another movie. Bradley is a creative partner for me. I showed him versions of the War Dogs script, and he was in the editing room. He hangs out, and he’s obviously in the movie too. We just became really close while we were working on The Hangover, so we just started working together in a larger capacity.”
Yes, Bradley Cooper does of course appear in the based-on-a-true-story comedy, War Dogs, taking on the small role of Henry Girard, a dangerous, high level arms dealer looking to exploit the film’s anti-heroes, David Packouz (Miles Tellers) and Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), two opportunistic gun-running rookies looking to profit from a governmental loophole. Sporting slicked back hair, an expensive suit, and weird, tinted spectacles, Cooper is the very picture of smarmy duplicity and amorality. “Those scenes weren’t really funny,” Jonah Hill tells FilmInk of the actor’s amusingly full-tilt performance. “Not like Bradley’s not funny, [Laughs], but they’re not comedic scenes.”
Hill’s co-star, Miles Teller describes shooting with the Oscar nominated superstar. “I remember during rehearsal, when you’re working with an actor of Bradley’s calibre, you don’t know what they’re going to do until the director calls ‘action.’ They haven’t revealed it yet, and they haven’t seen it before…they’re just going to come on, and I love that. I just love seeing what someone’s going to do with something when we haven’t rehearsed it in character. During rehearsal, Bradley had regular glasses on, and when Todd called ‘action’, I do the scene, and I just look at him, because I’m kind of like, ‘Are your eyes just a little bigger?’ [Laughs] That was a great choice of his, to have that where they’re just slightly larger, to have something that’s a little off. He just put it into his body, and Bradley’s just a great actor. He’s one of the best that we have in this business, and I really enjoyed working with him.”
War Dogs is cinemas now. Click through for our interviews with Miles Teller and Todd Phillips.
