By Gill Pringle & Jeremy Nigro
Todd Phillips is sticking to what he does best with his new comedy, War Dogs. Based on an article in Rolling Stone by Guy Lawson, War Dogs is the true story of two stoners from Miami who won a $300 million Department Of Defence contract to supply ammunition to the Afghan military. Jonah Hill, Miles Teller and Bradley Cooper star in the film with Cooper also serving as a producer. Phillips has become an expert crafter of the buddy comedy with Road Trip, Old School, Due Date, and the wildly successful The Hangover trilogy, which grossed over $1.4 billion USD. He’s continuing that trend with War Dogs, this time applying his style of comedy to a true story, and hoping to shed light on the stupidity of the US government of the time.
What is it about “buddy” movies that you get so attracted to? “It’s not ‘buddy’ movies. It’s more where guys make bad decisions that affect their life in a real, visceral way. It’s not so much that it’s a ‘buddy’ movie. I would make a movie with girls in the same way. I just like that point in life where you went that way instead of that way, and while it might be more exciting, it’s just bad news. I like bad news!”
So is the film very true to life? Did you take a lot of creative licence? “Any time that you take a story like that and turn it into a movie, you have to fill in a lot of gaps. You’re dramatising things, and changing timelines. You’re shifting certain things to make it worthy of a film, so to speak. It’s interesting, because I’ve been down this road before with movies. You read a great article, and you go, ‘Ooh, that could be a great movie!’ As you start doing the work, and the writing, you go, ‘You know what? This should actually have been left alone.’ Not every article is worth being a movie. Some should just be articles. But this one, we just dug and started writing, and yes, making stuff up, and borrowing stuff from real life, and borrowing stuff from the article. It just kept feeling really good to us.”
What’s it like to film back in Vegas? Are you treated like a homecoming hero? “We are treated very well in Vegas, and Bradley was there with me, of course, and we shot a little bit of it at Caesar’s, so it’s very much like our home away from home.”
Was this your original cast? Were there other people in the mix? “At one point, we were doing it with Shia LaBeouf as Efraim and Jesse Eisenberg as Miles. But I had gone to Jonah before, and Jonah couldn’t do it. Then I went to Shia, who was going to do it with Jesse, and then something happened with Jesse’s schedule on Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice. This happens on movies all the time…someone becomes unavailable. Jesse became unavailable, and then Jonah became available, so it’s just one of these things that happens. It took us a while to get the movie going. We were writing for a long time.”
It’s hard to believe how much Jonah Hill changes from one scene to another when he’s shooting a movie. “Yeah, he’s a little erratic, but in a weird way. It was really good for the character of Efraim, because he’s kind of that guy, or that was the guy that we were portraying. So Jonah, to me, is really electric as an actor for that very reason. You don’t know what you’re going to get from an audience’s perspective. He’s just one of my favourites that I’ve worked with, because he just has this electricity in him when he shows up to movies. And audiences love him.”
Did you talk to any Government officials? “Yeah, we did! We researched it, and we spoke to some people at a procurement facility, which is where these deals get dished out. It’s just the way it’s done…it’s crazy, right? [Laughs] It was actually done in response, in America, to people saying, ‘This is crazy! All these single bid contracts going on like Halliburton!’ Dick Cheney used to run it. So Bush reacted to that, and started this initiative, like we say in the movie, ‘To allow anyone to bid on a contract.’ What a dumb answer to that! [Laughs] As opposed to saying, ‘Alright, we’re going to correct it on this end’, we’ll say ‘Okay, anyone can bid on it! There! Now you’re happy? Everything’s fair.’”
What does Bradley Cooper bring to a project like this as a producer? “Bradley and I are partners. 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 script, and he’s in the editing room. He hangs out, and he’s obviously in the movie. We just became really close while we were working on The Hangover, so we just started working together in a larger capacity.”
Will we ever see a Todd Phillips movie with a female lead? “Sure, yeah! If I found a story, like one of the great female lead movies in the last year. If it came to me, and I had the vision. I thought Joy was so underrated. If I see something like that and it comes to me, I would be open to it, for sure!”
What did you want to say with War Dogs? “When you walk away from the movie, hopefully, you’ll realise that it’s an indictment, not on these two guys, but on the US Government. Bradley says it in the movie. He says, ‘The US Government wants to look the other way. Don’t give them a reason not to.’ And it’s actually true. The US Government knew that they couldn’t get a deal for this kind of money. They knew that they couldn’t get 100 million rounds. There was a drought in ammo, because there were two wars going on. Where are you going to get 100 million rounds of ammo? The US Government knew, when you go to guys like this, that they’ll figure it out! It’s a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of thing. So to me, and maybe this is asking too much of an audience, but when you walk away from it, it’s not, ‘Oh, these guys are douchebags’; it’s like, ‘This is an indictment of the US Government, and their process of arming foreign militias, and the way that we do the business of war.”
War Dogs is in cinemas on August 18.
