IONCINEMA.com’s “IONCINEPHILE of the Month” puts the spotlight on an emerging filmmaker from the world of cinema, and unlike most folks who we’ve previously featured in this space before, this month’s helmer doesn’t need much of an introduction. David Michôd‘s feature debut was among the most buzzed-about titles from this year’s Sundance Film Festival edition, and since it’s debut in Park City’s Egyptian Theatre, the ensemble crime drama was crowned with the Grand Jury Prize: World Cinema Dramatic and has been collecting accolades ever since. Animal Kingdom receives its theatrical release August 13th. You can also read David’s favorite top ten films by clicking here.
Eric Lavallee: During your childhood…what films were important to you?
David Michôd: Star Wars and Jaws were two films I watched a hundred times when I was a little kid. I also remember seeing Grease 2 and Fame on a double bill when I was about 10. Grease 2 made me want to be Michelle Pfeiffer’s boyfriend and Fame made me want to say ‘fuck’ all the time.
E.L: In your formative years, what films and filmmakers inspired you?
D.M: Apocalypse Now was the film that made me interested in filmmaking. It was the first time I remember being aware of, and drawn to whatever the crazy hell was going on behind the camera.
E.L: At what point did you know you wanted to become a filmmaker?
D.M: It was never a burning childhood ambition. When I finished an arts degree at Melbourne University I stumbled into a job at the Department of Education. The job was OK and perfectly worthy, but I remember being unsettled by the accidental-ness of it. I remember freaking out a little bit, thinking, ‘if I don’t choose a career, some career is gonna choose me.’ So I took a stab in the dark, applied to film school, and luckily got in. Although I think I would’ve rathered apply to rock star school if there was such a thing.
E.L: I know Animal Kingdom was something your worked on over the course of several years, I was wondering first what was the genesis of the project and second, did the number of players (the Cody family members plus Leckie) change drastically over time from your first draft to your final shooting script?
D.M: I moved to Melbourne from Sydney when I was about 18 and found myself reading a lot about Melbourne’s rich (and richly documented) criminal history. I got especially engrossed in a couple of books by Tom Noble, who was the chief police reporter at The Age newspaper during the 1980s – a particularly dark and dangerous period in Melbourne that marked the decline of armed robbery as a serious professional pursuit. It marked the decline of the old-school bandit and the professional crews of bank robbers. It also marked the end of the era of the old-school cop and the hardened core of the armed robbery squad of the Melbourne police.
This period, this profound shift in the criminal and police culture, and the palpable animosity it seemed to incite between to the two groups, I found relentlessly fascinating. When I finished film school I started writing a screenplay. It took me a few years, however, to work out what the hell I was doing. I don’t recall the number of players changing significantly. What changed over the years was the tone, the story, the thematic focus and the quality of the writing generally.
E.L: I’d be interested in how you came up with characteristics/traits/features of all your players, but I’ll limit the choices down to two members of the Cody family: what were you looking for when you picked Ben Mendelsohn to incarnate Pope and James Frecheville to play the youngest family member?
D.M: I wrote the character of Pope for Ben. I wanted Pope to have Ben’s unpredictability and his strange, almost playful, air of danger. I also wanted Ben’s charisma and force of personality – the character needed to be manipulative and quietly overwhelming. More than anything, though, I wanted Ben’s talent. He’s one of the best actors on the planet.
James had a quiet and effortless naivety in a strong, almost imposing, physical presence that I really liked for the character of J. James was 17 when we did the film, but he doesn’t look 17. He’s six-foot-two and looks physically at home in this family of dangerous criminal men. And yet, emotionally, he’s a long way from home. James carried that awkward, socially inept, emotionally unformed, almost mute quality so common in teenage boys really well. But like Ben, what I was most drawn to in James was his performance ability. The detail with which he was able to fill his performance was pretty remarkable for a kid his age.
E.L: What kind of acting work did you do with James prior to filming?
D.M: I put most of my energy into getting James and Laura Wheelwright (who plays Nicky) comfortable with each other and therefore comfortable with the idea of acting just being like pleasurable work. I wanted them to take it seriously and yet to feel relaxed enough to find it all playful. As inexperienced as James was, he is a naturally gifted and intuitive performer and I was relieved to find that I could direct him the same way I would any of the other actors. I simply wouldn’t have had time to micro-manage a performance out him if I wasn’t getting what I needed.
E.L: I imagine there were logistically and technically several difficult scenes to shoot in the film (from chase sequences and gunplay, to long takes with multiple characters filling up the frame), but I was wondering if you could highlight a sequence that was harder to come by that, on film, looks deceptively easier.
D.M: There were plenty of days that felt really tough, but one that looks simple but was actually arduous was the scene in the diner between Smurf, Pope, Craig and Darren after the boys have been pulled in by the police. It’s just a simple four-people-around-a-table scene, but shooting people sitting around tables is never really simple. And coming straight after the long interrogation scene between J and Guy Pearce‘s character, which was quite still and institutional, I wanted the diner scene to have more life – not in terms of throwing the camera around, but in terms of coverage and cutting options. The result was that we spent about seven hours shooting this one scene and I think it drove the actors crazy. They were practically tearing each other’s throats out by the end of the night. I’m glad I did it though. The scene works the way I had hoped it would.
E.L: What ideas did you have for the style of the film? What inspirations (other films, location, paintings etc…) did you draw upon for the look/style, aesthetics of the film?
D.M: I always wanted Animal Kingdom to be a crime story with a certain size and sprawl. I wanted it to be about a wide variety of characters and to happen in a wide variety of locations. Lots of people all over the city. Similarly, I wanted the visual style of the film to reflect that sprawl. As such, my cinematographer Adam Arkapaw and I were quite willing to use a number of different shooting styles to suit whatever it was the story was telling us it needed at any given moment. So long as those shooting styles were subtley varied and all felt part of the same universe, then we were happy to play around.
E.L: Can you discuss the collaborative process you had with producer Liz Watts?
D.M: Never underestimate the importance of a good producer. Animal Kingdom was a script I had been writing for a number of years before Liz came on board and during that time I remember being told in a few meetings that while the script was good, it felt like a second movie. It was too big and ambitious for a first feature and really the sensible thing for me to do would be to go away and make a much smaller and more manageable film first. And every time I heard that, the more I wanted Animal Kingdom to be the first. I wanted to take the ambitious stab at something weighty and unwieldy and I wanted that to be my first movie.
Having said that, there was obviously an ever-present voice in my head wondering if maybe they were right. Maybe I was trying to bite off more than I could chew. When Liz came on board, however, a good chunk of that self-doubt went away. I was still terrified by the idea of making the movie, but Liz’s experience and creative nous made me feel supported, in safe hands. Liz knew shooting Animal Kingdom would be a serious challenge, but she believed it was do-able. And if she believed it, then I did too. You can feel sometimes like you’re losing your mind making a feature film and having a closest ally in your producer, someone who is relentlessly supportive, calming and creatively astute, is a profound leveller.
E.L: Can you discuss the collaborative process you had with 1st assistant director Phil Jones?
D.M: In many ways, I would say much the same thing about Phil Jones as I would about Liz. Whereas Liz, as producer, is there from well before the film starts to well after it has ended, a great 1st guides, supports, calms and controls for that intense whirlwind of pre-production and the shoot. And as is the case with Liz, when that 1st is also creatively astute, you suddenly find yourself with a profoundly valuable sounding board to bounce ideas off in the thick of the battle, when decisions – sometimes big ones – need to be made really quickly.
Working with Phil was great. He was 1st AD on John Hillcoat’s first film Ghosts…of the Civil Dead and on Andrew Dominik’s first film Chopper as a well as having a whole caeer’s worth of other stuff big and small to brag about, and having him around made shooting Animal Kingdom feel achievable and sometimes even fun.
E.L: Can you discuss the collaborative process you had with sound designer Sam Petty?
D.M: I love sound. I’ve come to realise – travelling around, intro’ing screenings, seeing the film play in cinemas all over the place – that I’m more concerned with how the film sounds than I am with how it looks. Of course I want the movie to look great, I care about it hugely and worked really hard to get it looking good, but bad sound in theatres is what really makes me panic. The emotional power of sound is so acute and yet so subtle or even invisible that I have seen the film play differently in really palpable ways depending solely on the quality of the sound in whatever cinema it might be playing in.
I think one of the main reasons I love sound, though, is where it comes in the process – right at the end. All going to plan, whilst a clear anxiety and trepidation always remains, by the time the sound part of the process rolls around the main trauma of making the movie is over and you can simply concentrate in relative quiet on making the thing really sing in those often subtle and invisible ways. Being able to share that experience with someone as entertaining and supremely talented as Sam Petty (whose talent is truly extraordinary) is a like a recuperative gift after having felt beaten close to death in the months and years leading up to that point.
Sony Pictures Classics releases David Michôd‘s Animal Kingdom in theaters on Friday, August 13th. Click here for local screening info.
