|
|
|
|
In the twisting, turning plot of Criminal, con artist Richard Gaddis (John C. Reilly) partners with the seemingly naive Rodrigo (Diego Luna) to cash in on a counterfeiting scheme. While in pursuit of an impressive payoff, Richard must deal with his estranged sister Valerie (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and stay on top of a game in which no one can be trusted.
Set in Los Angeles with a story that takes place in a single day, Criminal is helmed by first-time director Gregory Jacobs and produced by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney. The screenplay is by Jacobs and Soderbergh, and based loosely on the Argentinean film Nine Queens.
In this interview, we joined the rest of the media to field questions to writer/director Gregory Jacobs. Though Criminal marks his directorial debut, he has worked as first assistant director for a large number of films, including Erin Brockovich, Solaris, Traffic, and Ocean's Eleven.
GREGORY JACOBS
Contributed by Michael J. Lee, Executive Editor
for Radio Free Entertainment
August 30, 2004
Media: Did you have an easy transition from assistant director to director?
Gregory: It was harder and more terrifying than I thought, but I felt that I was prepared.
Do you feel this was the right film for you to make that transition?
Yeah. I had seen this film Nine Queens which I really liked, and I had been thinking about working on this LA story that I wanted to tell. And it seemed like the perfect marriage of these two things that I liked: one is the con movie, and the other is the LA story that I wanted tell. And it seemed like the right size. I knew I could handle it. It was a story I knew I could adapt and write and direct, and it just felt like the right piece.
The ending of Criminal is different from that of Nine Queens, isn't it?
Yeah. The ending was different, which I won't talk about, because I don't want to give it away. And I tried to bring in these issues of race and class and LA as a character in the movie, which I thought was different than the original. I tried to make John's character a little bit more dysfunctional than he was in the first one. But LA as a character was something I really wanted to bring into the film.
Are the scams in Criminal the same as in Nine Queens?
Some of them are. Some are different. They're sort of mix and match. Soderbergh and I met with these cops who work the con beat in LA, so we hung out with them and they sort of walked us around. Met a couple of con men, met some interesting characters. It was pretty tough to get to meet a real con man.
Why did you choose to handle both writing and directing duties for this film?
Well, when I saw the film, I really had a sense of what I wanted to do and what I wanted the story to be. And there's this sort of LA thing that I had been working on. So I felt like I wanted to get that into the script. I wanted it to be a real representation of LA, I wanted it to feel real. I wanted to get my love/hate relationship with LA, and bring as much as I could with this multiculturalism that I think LA is into the story. So I felt like I had a sense of what it was. I just wanted to sort of dive in it and do it myself.
What do you hate about LA?
The traffic. [laughs] No, no...you know, my complaints are everybody's complaints. But I also think it's an incredible place, and I don't feel like this is a story in which I talk about how much I hate this city. It's more like I just wanted it to be this slice of life representation of this city.
Where are you from?
I grew up in New Jersey. A town called Harrington Park.
How involved were Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney in Criminal?
They were perfect producers, they left me alone to make the movie.
Clooney never asked to star in it?
No, he had his own stuff he wanted to do. But they were great, they helped me get the money for the movie and during post-production, they viewed a couple cuts of the film. They're both really smart guys and great filmmakers, so I was happy to have them look at some cuts and give their two cents.
How did you decide upon casting Diego Luna and Maggie Gyllenhaal?
Well, I really wrote it with John and Diego in mind, truthfully--had them in mind from the beginning. I felt like I had never seen John play anything quite like this, but I had always been such a fan of his for a long time and thought it would be really interesting to see him in this role. And in wanting to make it an LA story, I felt like Latin culture had to be represented somehow. And then Diego, the same way, I felt like I had seen him in a bunch of stuff. Loved him, obviously, in Y Tu Mama Tambien and Frida. So I really had those two guys in mind in writing it, and would have been pretty devastated if they didn't agree to do it. I'm so lucky that they agreed to do it. So as soon as I had John cast, then I could sort of decide on who would be the sister. And Maggie was the first person I thought of. You know, I think she's great and a really strong actress, and felt like she could go toe-to-toe with John. And it's not completely in a different universe that they could be brother and sister. There's some connection there I think you could buy. And I didn't want it to be like the film noir femme fatale, and I felt like they were the perfect triangle.
Who do you think is the hero of this film?
I'm not sure. You know, I heard a hundred different opinions. I filmed a couple of different takes. I don't think anybody in the movie is purely good, or purely bad. To me, it was more fun to write characters who are flawed. They're all sort of fun to write and fun to direct because they're flawed, and flawed people are interesting. I think most of us are. I'm certainly not all good or all bad, you know. There are shades of that in all of us, and that's what I thought was kind of interesting about the movie.
So who did you root for in this movie?
I rooted to make the schedule and get all the scenes exposed. [laughs]
What about the audience--who do you feel they root for?
It's funny because I think you root for John even though he's despicable. Diego's clearly the way in for the movie for the audience, but I also believe that in spite of John's character's many flaws, I think there's an element of humanity there that maybe isn't revealed until the end. But there's a remote, slight element of humanity. That's my opinion.
RadioFree.com: You mentioned that you filmed a few takes on the final scene. Is the ending that we see what you always had planned, or were there earlier versions of the script that had an alternate conclusion?
No. I've got to say, it's pretty much what I always had planned. I just meant I had varied a couple of different takes. This schedule, which was a low-budget movie schedule...there wasn't a lot of breathing room. Once we went into shooting, we sort of hit the ground running. There isn't a lot of variation from what's in the script.
The ending seems a little open. Is a sequel a possibility?
I never thought of that, honestly.
Steven Soderbergh has said that making a film is about being reactive. Do you work under that philosophy?
I think there's a lot of truth to that. I had things planned, but I think really good directors are open to when actors come up with great things or when something happens spontaneously. I think you really have to be open and be able to react and be receptive to things.
Along those lines, who in the cast brought something unexpected to the film?
I think, truthfully, they all did. I felt like the best thing I did was cast the movie with who I cast. And I thought they all were great in that they all brought something to it. We had a week of rehearsal before we started where we really worked out all the kinks, because we didn't have a lot of time on the set to. It wasn't like there was all kinds of improvising going on, because the schedule was so tight.
As the assistant director in Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Twelve, what challenges did you face?
That was a hard one because it was all over the world. That was just sort of trying to move the circus from one country to another and make sure that I had the right actors in the right country at the right time.
Was it difficult to reconcile Ocean's Twelve's schedule with Criminal's?
Well, when I was finishing post-production on Criminal, I was starting pre-production on Ocean's Twelve.
So you never really had a break between the two projects?
Not really. A little bit, but only in post-production.
Were you still able to concentrate on delivering a final cut of Criminal while you were working on Ocean's Twelve?
Yeah, because I had locked picture on Criminal. It was more post-production sound stuff and things like that that I was doing. And I was thrilled to go work on Ocean's Twelve.
At this point, do you think you'll ever go back to being an assistant director?
I don't know. You know, I would never say never. I love a lot of the people I've AD'ed for. If the situation was right, I would do it.
Was maintaining Criminal's continuity a problem from a directorial standpoint?
It is tricky. It's 24 hours and what may be taking place two minutes later, you're actually shooting two weeks later. So that was pretty hard--trying to keep everybody in the moment in the way you need them to be. You say, "Okay, don't forget now, this just happened. And here's where you need to be right now." But the actors are so great, they're just consummate pros.
What was the biggest challenge in making Criminal?
That, and trying to just complete the volume of work. There's a lot of traffic in LA. When we had to make company moves, it was...you don't want to take the 405.
|
|
|
|
|
