I read this comment from Alan Parker [Bugsy Malone, Evita, Angela’s Ashes, Mississippi Burning]when he was making Bugsy Malone; he said that if he were run over by a bus during the making of that film, that there was only one person on set who could take over as director…and that’s you! How old were you?
“I was about 12-and-a-half. I’d just wrapped Taxi Driver for Martin Scorsese, and then I was on a plane to London to shoot Bugsy Malone for Alan Parker.”
He said that you just paid such attention to everything…
“I guess I did! I’ve always been fascinated by making movies, I started at three, and by the time I was six, it was very clear to me that [directing] was what I wanted to do. So I spent a lot of time paying attention.”
And it’s not like you’re prolific; its four films over a quarter of a century. But they’re coming in a bit thinker-and-faster now.
“Yeah, it’s crazy that I’ve actually only [directed] four movies. I directed my first film when I was 27 [Little Man Tate]. But I have two children, and a big career as an actor and there were just lots of other things happening where I couldn’t focus on directing. Eventually I had to – in a very disciplined way – sit back and say, ‘Okay, well now is my time to really focus on directing.’”
How did you become connected to Money Monster?
“I read the script from a big pile, and I thought it was wonderful and that it needed a lot of work, so I got together with the producers and hoped that they would let me come on board as the director. Then we spent about two-and-a-half years getting the script right [originally written by Alan DiFiore, Jamie Linden, Jim Kouf] and adding a lot of different elements to it. Originally, it was far more about satire. What we added was the scope and the international elements; the global world relevance of what is really going on in the financial world today.”
How difficult is it to get a film like this up-and-running now? It’s one of those films that Hollywood used to make a lot, and now there are more difficult, we are seeing less and less of them.
“We were really lucky. Why these mid-range movies are very, very rare now is because they aren’t franchises, they are original content, original stories, and they are really about character and emotions, there is also an element of ‘comedy-drama’ in there, which more dramatic films of this nature try and steer away from. The number one reason why we were lucky, was that the script was good. The first actor we showed it to was George Clooney, and he came on board so fast, and everything just happened really quickly from there.”
How important is it for a film like this to have the likes of George Clooney and Julia Roberts?
“This film wouldn’t have been made by the studio if it wasn’t for George and Julia. Definitely. That being said though, this is a genre film, it’s a film designed for the general public, it’s fast paced and thrilling, and there’s cops and bombs and things like that, and so it was important that this kind of movie be geared towards that. I started out saying that I really wanted to make an intelligent movie that was sophisticated, that demanded something a bit more from the audience, that asked the audience to work a bit harder, and we hoped that that would be a rewarding experience and not something to turn them off.”
How important is the humour?
“All my movies have humour in them when I’m directing. I can’t talk about anything too intense without cutting it just a little bit, and for that reason there will always be humour in my films. There was actually a lot more humour at the beginning of the editing process. It’s a natural thing that [directors] do, is you shoot a lot of the humour; some of it works, some doesn’t; then you end up cutting a lot of it out.”
Which phases of the filmmaking process to enjoy most? Because I don’t imagine the ‘before’ is all that fun…
“Yeah the absolute worst part is getting the movie set up; finding finance, getting the production green light, finding all the right people; that’s the worst part. The best part interestingly is the score. The score is always the most rewarding part because you’ve been sewing in all of these scenes and technically putting the film together; putting together the skeleton. Then, the music is the last thing that you do that erases all the seams. It’s the part that gives the audience a full and complete experience where they forget that they’re in a movie theatre.”
Money Monster is shot in real time. What are the challenges of that method?
“Oh my god, it’s so hard to explain to people why it’s so difficult to shoot in real time. T takes anywhere from 40-45 days on a film like this to sometimes 100 days, sometimes 110. When you’re shooting something in real time you have ‘one event’ that happens over the hour and a half, and in this case that event is happening to a broadcast journalist/host, one camera operator, a director and sound engineer, but it’s also experienced buy all these different people through the various screens; there are 30 different images present at any one time; eight monitors in the global command unit for the police, there’s three screens for the hackers in Iceland, five for the ‘quants’ in South-Korea, in the many coffee shops featured, bars; they are all watching this happen through the screens in the moment, and they are all responding to it at the same time. Coordinating the various responses of seemingly disported and isolated groups is greatly challenging, because logistically, it takes a lot of planning. Julia for example is mostly in the control room throughout the film, George isn’t there with her for 99% of the film, but most of her dialogue is with him; she’s in his ear as the director of the show. But filming that; none of those people were there with here, George wasn’t really ever with her, so she was acting to either playback or to green screen for most of the film.”
Tell me about the casting of Jack O’Connell [Unbroken, This Is England, Harry Brown]. Why a British actor?
“Exactly! Why a British actor? I really wasn’t looking for a British actor, in fact I wasn’t looking for a young actor, I was looking for an actor who was at least 35-40. I almost didn’t even want to see his audition, but when I did I was completely blown away. He completely transformed, and I was so moved with his ability that we re-worked the script for him. He really did a great job of bringing to life this distressed, pushed-to-the-limit working class young man from Queens.”
Tell me about the Sidney Lumet [12 Angry Men, Serpico, Network, Dog Day Afternoon] connection.
“Sidney Lumet, my favourite director. Dog Day Afternoon, Network are also virtually in real time, and Network actually also happens during a live broadcast. His films were such great references for us. You can never be as great as the great Sidney Lumet, we used his work as inspiration to honour him more than anything – not to be compared to him. Like me, Sidney was a child actor and his first film was 12 Angry Men, one of the greatest movies ever made. He’s written lots of books about filmmaking. Sidney is really a hero of mine because his ideas about filmmaking were that everything comes from the internal; the costumes, the makeup the set; everything comes from the emotions and the authenticity of the characters.”
Do you storyboard?
“I storyboard very little and only when I have to. Mostly for stunt sequences or very tricky shots where you’re using multiple cameras or scenes that need to be cut in a very specific way. Because I’m an actor, I think of filmmaking from the other side of the camera. I don’t imagine shots from the camera’s point of view; I imagine them from the actor’s point of view, so it’s very difficult for me to wrap my head around storyboards. It’s like turning my head on the other side of the experience. I also find that [storyboards] make things un-spontaneous, everyone gets a piece of paper and then suddenly they are all copying it verbatim and strictly following it, and that’s just not an organic way for films to happen.”
How long did you have to shoot this?
“It ended up being about 43 days to shoot, which is actually a lot these days, a lot of people are making films in under 20 days now.”
How do you think your acting career has informed your directing? Because if Alan Parker was right, you started directing when you started acting.
“It’s informed everything that I’ve done, especially directing – I actually can’t think of any part of directing that isn’t influenced by being an actor. The actor – aside from the camera operator – is the only person that really understands why a scene works and why is doesn’t and how a scene takes shape. For me, being an actor has made for the best transition. Learning how to work with actors, why an actor has undertaken his/her choice process, his/her motivations, how to work ‘with’ the camera as opposed to ‘against’ it. Generally, I liken the work of the director to the work of a conductor; you’re listening to the orchestra and you’re able to identify where the beat went off or where the trumpet needs to come in, you’re able to tell who’s flat; you’re able to identify the different pieces of the puzzle and how they’re working simultaneously. But you’re also able to enjoy the music completely as one thing. You can listen to it 150,000 times and you still have that kind of joyful, musical experience listening to the whole. That really is the director’s job, is to be able to identify those pieces and how they fit.”
George Clooney is also a director, how was it to direct and actor who is also a director?
“You’re always lucky when you’re a director when you have an actor in front of you who’s directed a movie. They really understand the idiosyncrasies of making a film and they understand how things are edited; it’s a real short cut. So I was so lucky to have George who’s made some great films, both as an actor and a director, he very experienced and that is always helpful. It’s funny, the first movie I made after I directed my first film, I was not very nice to the director because I was annoyed. I was annoyed at how wasteful he was, and without having directed anything before then, I didn’t realize how much waste there is out there. I killed myself on my first film to be able to get everything done and to deliver on everything I was looking for and as a result I suddenly became really intolerant of wasteful directors. But after about two or three movies, I kind of loosened up a bit, and realised that I should just stick to directing my own movies, not someone else’s.”
Money Monster is in cinemas now.
