John, if I can start, it has been quite a year for you. So far you have been on quite a roll with two very, very good movies. With one you are the director and the other you are the producer.
Yes
How does it feel to be top of the heap again?
It feels good you know, I have not gone anywhere you know.
I mean with the movies, the good ones as well in between?
It feels good.
It felt good to work on a film like Hustle and Flow, come out as well as it has done so far, it is coming to Britain in about a month. That movie was very significant for me because it was my test to see if I could get a film made outside of Americas city system, my kind of movie outside of the system, then I succeeded in that I know that I will be able to do it again and again now, because of that.
Four Brothers earlier this year I shot back in January, so I had it ready for the summer, and I am on a film next week Black Snake Moan with Samuel L Jackson and Christina Ricci and Justin Timberlake. Craig Brewer who directed Hustle of Flow is going to direct.
One of the marvelous things about Four Brothers, from my perspective, is the way you have made a contemporary Western, and it suggests that we have always known you are a great lover of the cinema. But it also suggests that you are a great lover of that area - you clearly enjoy making it work?
I grew up on Westerns. I am from America , America has the cowboy culture. I grew up watching cowboys and Indians and playing with guns as you know, but at a certain point some of us think a sense of enlightenment and understand that the cowboys were the bad guys and the Indians were the good guys, but some people don't get the enlightenment; they just stay at the whole intrigue of being able to have that power, to have a gun even though it is a toy or whatever the power behind having that starts at an early age, when people are kids and stuff. But watching the Western movies as a child is the most loose forum of American cinema.
A lot of them had issues with revenge and trying to maintain the family tie, and with this lawlessness that was going on and how the guy who came into town, and drove the bad guys out, I thought maybe this generation has not seen a movie like that, most of the action films now are really hyperactive, they are done by video directors who don't really have a sense of story or a respect for acting.
I am going to try and do a non-traditional action movie that had emotional content to it, I noticed there is a lot in this country now with gun crime and stuff but the characters in this movie are played for reality. It makes you disturbed, you are shocked because they play as a reflection of reality as opposed to something being laughed at or just "oh yeah he got shot in the head. Ha! that is funny". I leave that up to other film makers - that is not the kind of reality I work with..
The scene where Mark Wahlberg's character has to end up using a brick?
I rewrote that scene. If you noticed, the scene starts out with them shooting at the house and one of the characters ends up getting hurt.
What makes that scene totally amazing is that the characters are scared - the main characters are scared, and that is what makes them not professional killers because their actions are controlled by their fear.
John, it seems to me that the cast are talented and convincing actors in your four lead roles but to have them create a believable bond of brotherhood is something else again. How did you go about that and did they ever sort of venture into the realm of being like real brothers with all the good and bad things that sometimes entail?
Yes, they basically did. I had them learn how to play hockey, we were shooting in Toronto , Canada - there was a lot more snow there than in Detroit where we would have had to lay down a lot more snow.
So, what happened was we got them on the ice and not everybody knew how to ice skate. André Benjamin had to learn how to ice skate as well as play hockey. They just spent time together, had dinner and would go to the discos together in clubs and chase girls and that is how they bonded.
Did they give each other a hard time as brothers tend to do?
Yeah they did, a lot of the stuff they were just giving them a hard time and stuff, I was feeding them lines and saying stuff like "hey, we are going to improvise everyday on this movie". My vibes on certain movies are if it is not on the book and the script is not what I want it to be a lot of times I just improvise everyday. You can only do it with certain types of films - this is the kind of film I could do it with.
It is one thing to get the guys bonding. How do people like your self, who are from Californian, suddenly [deal with being] exposed to lets say rather cold weather? It is not your kind of weather [shall we] be fair?
No, no I am from southern, sunny southern California, you can wear shorts and a t-shirt in the winter in January and this is my first time being in 20+ cold weather and that is why I signed up for it. I wanted to make a movie that was set in the cold and we could use the snow as a motive, and we did it. It is funny because the coldest days in the films are the most beautiful shot sequels in the picture, and that is real snow falling and all that stuff.
Depiction of Detroit on one hand and the soundtrack is a wonderful depiction of the corruption of the city. How did you go about building the relationship with Detroit?
Well Detroit is a very complex place, it is where the birth and the death of the American industry revolution [happened].
Even you go there and you go to the gas station and buy a crack pipe for Three or Five Dollars, and you can buy a razor blade from the same place a gas station for like 50 cent, to cut your crack, it is a really interesting place so much greatness has come out of that city and lately the only great thing to come out of it is Eminem.
It was this really interesting place to have a real urban film, that is why I chose it. The music that I chose for the picture is not the traditional motown music that people are used to. It is soul music that was made between 1969 and 1974 when the Vietnam war was going on and the hippy generation was dying out, and America was kind of a confusing place, and good motown reflected this at that time, it was less romantic and more cynical. I guess I grew up on that stuff .
What I try and do in all my films is create kind of a vibe in the movie and that is what I wanted to do, I wanted to create a kind of vibe, a kind of soulfulness that is why I chose this music.
The four codas at the end credits obviously took a lot to make. Were they scenes that did not make it into the film?
Yeah they are scenes that were actually in the opening of the picture, but I felt like when I had them open the picture it sort of cheapened the movie. You see in a movie you get the run down I guess marks other movies it flashed back and I was like that is cheap, that is stupid, but I liked the scene, I said let's just put them in the end of the movie, I hope people just don't think that is what happened to the guys after the movie.
So I guess they are really like out-takes.
John can you tell us more about the logistics of shooting at Lake Simcoe with Chiwetel Ejiofor?
With Chiwetel, it was really cool It was really cold, part of the scene was really hard because you notice that it is on an ice slate and it is kind of overcast, and when the sun comes up we can not shoot . So sometimes we had to wait for it to become overcast and that is colder. It was hell having to do that and then doing the fight. Chiwetel, I love him because he is very athletic, one of the things I did when I was working with him on this picture is I told him I wanted him to look at Yaphet Kotto the American black actor who has done films like Brubaker, Alien and Across 110th Street . I am sure you guys have seen most of those films before, so I said "Right I want you to think about him when you are playing this American gangster" and he did it in such a way. He has lost 25 to 30 pounds since we did the movie because he has been running around central park, but in the movie you see how bulky he is and he actually knows how to box and he is a physical actor. I have to warn you Brits, that there is kind of a plan among American directors to steal Chiwetel from you, from England . Because he has done this movie with me and he is right now working with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen in the movie Spike Lee is directing he is a phenomenal actor and everyone is talking about him. He is the next big thing.
You mentioned at the lake with Chitwetel you had an ice expert to make sure that no one was sucked under the ice. There was a moment when the ice cracked, that must have been a interesting moment for you being in charge of the whole show?
That was a moment were everyone paused for a moment. You could hear the ice cracking, it was like walking on a piece of ice and a glass of water you could hear it cracking , but we kept on working. We worked the whole day but there was one day were it actually rained and there was about 2 or 3 feet of water above the ice, so then we could not shoot, we had to wait and come back at the end of the week.
We came back a week later, because if we waited too long the ice would melt. We had the clouds to worry about as well when we were trying to shoot. It was hell but as you see it is beautiful, you see those scenes and take particular pride. They were actually walking on ice to do that. We had the snow scrapped off the ice and then put water over it so you see the different patches that is why in those wide shots there always different patches, I got tried of just looking at white.
You're known for pushing racial issues since Boyz in the Hood. In this film you confront interracial family issues too, how do you think people will react to it?
People have reacted vaguely to it, you have to understand that this generation is kind of different. It's changing all the time. The ties the body ties are different, then the past not just in America and so it has been really wildly received it the scenes that people kind of dig the fact that these are not brothers and they don't really deal with the fact that they are different everyone around them that is outside their circle deals with the fact that they are different because it is ironic.
In the States the screenings have been well received I think because of the way you have used conflict to offset the gruesome nature at times of the violence. It seems to me that you were quite beloved convincing comic moment so we would not be overwhelmed by the violence?
What I was trying to do was add the flow you have to tension the release, and good sex, in a movie you have to have rhythm you have to have an urban flow, I think it kind of worked out good. Like on some days if I felt I needed a bit of humour, but you know certain places you did not want to mess about. You had to show it was very appropriate in places that it was.
I am thinking of the scene that is so believable. When the brothers are messing with each other, in the room throwing them little things, and I know that was quite a lot of improvising?
That was me off screen actually throwing them at Mark, and then André and I hit him in the eye, that is me throwing them.
Chiwetel, why did you cast him and did the other members of the cast appreciate that he was English?
Yeah they did not care he was just a great actor, they were like "wow". Because I had everyone see Dirty Pretty Things and they were like "this guy is serious". He is a very funny guy. The way he got the role was he was doing a movie called Kinky Boots and he was dressed up like a transvestite and he went to his dressing room and took off most of his make up but he still had these eyebrows and a little bit of the make up, the rouge on, and he put his self on tape and started doing this gangster, and so we got the tape, but he said I am doing this movie so excuse the eyebrows and all this, so we were like "wow if he takes the eye brows off and the little bit of rouge he is really going to look like a bad guy", so it is funny if you imagine him doing it. I think what really sealed him off was the way he delivered that line "God damn it I like the way you do business". The way he did that line I was like "wow", you just laughed when he said that line.
In the film you have that hilarious scene which in this country [ UK ] is described as an urban myth. When Sofia and Tyrese are getting it on as they are on top of the washing machine, is that something you had heard or is it an urban myth?
It is not an urban myth. It is supposed to be on a spin cycle, and the woman's breast are supposed to be on the washing machine so it is a spin cycle.
You clearly saw something in Sofia , that she could inhabit the skin of this woman and give you what you were looking for. Is it important a couple of ladies in the film as it is mainly male-orientated, two very important ladies in the film?
Sophia is enough woman for like five guys. I really wanted to have someone in the movie, the main woman be someone who the men would be like "wow". A lot of the women are going to be looking at the guys so you have to have someone in the movie basically no matter how wild she got the men will forgive.
Most inexperienced of the cast is young Garrett Hedlund who again delivers for you, what did he do at your audition that made you think "yeah he is the guy"?
Garrett had a great audition you really felt his emotion. This is his third movie he has been in Troy. Troy was his first movie he played Brad Pitt's cousin and then he was in Friday Night Lights, and now he is in this movie. He is 20 years old and he has got a great career ahead of him and I loved to work with him again. He has a great face the camera just loves his face.
Another actress we're familiar with over here [ UK ] is Fionnula Flanagan. Why did you cast her specifically, and as an American?
Because Fionnula reminds me of a woman that had a really profound affect on my life. Gladys Rockfound was my 12 th grade English Teacher, and she was the one to expose me to some great literature and helped me learn how to write. She was a creative woman, with an afro and beautiful blue eyes. And Fionnula came in looking just like her and she has this heart and soul, I just fell in love with her. I was like "I have to have you in the movie"; she was a lot of love but tough at the same time.
You do not see her very much in the movie, but she kind of embodies the whole movie she is kind of the heart of the whole film, I thought she did a excellent job.
Did she surprise you at any point because she is a respected actress a lady of a certain age as you say she is a tough cookie?
She is a tough cookie she hung with the guys. She is great you can not treat her like a grandmother or anything she is just a really tough lady, she is so good. It is so great to work with her because she is a professional and she just gave it her all.
In interviews throughout the States, you say that this is the film that Mark Wahlberg has been waiting for. You have given him a great opportunity he has obviously grabbed it with both hands. I think this is one of his best performances. Can you perhaps say what you think of Mark's contribution to the movie and his performance?
Well Mark is great. The thing about Mark is you have to understand that Mark is the only young American actor that has kind of had the life, like one of the black rappers. He was on the streets, he got into a lot of trouble and he only got into the music business because his brother was in a group 'New Kids On The Block'.
And he was like "Wow you know maybe I will hang out with him". He was not a great rapper, he did not make good music but it was to get himself out of a situation, model underwear, got into a couple of films then he did Boogie Nights with Paul Thomas Anderson.
Then he has done movies here and there and now he is still a young guy, and he still has a boyish look but he is becoming more and more of a man. When I was doing the film Warner Bros had just put out the '30 Gangsters Series' so I was watching like Public Enemy, Angels With Dirty Faces, and watching all those movies and I was thinking about Mark.
I wanted his character to have this tough, tough front but then he can break down like he does in his mum's bathroom. You forgive all the stuff that he does in the movie because you know that it is coming from a place of emptiness and pain, and that is the reason he is kicking ass the whole movie because he is just hurt.
Like when he is at the dinner table he is the only brother that does not see her sitting there, where she usually sits at the head of the table because he can not accept that she has gone. I think that he did a lot of things in this movie that we worked on together. My favourite moments in the movie are when they have a form of non verbal communication, that is what we were really working on, and Mark really stepped up his game. He is becoming one man now he is not so boyish I think that helped his performance.
Did you, Andre and Tyrese ever offer Mark a critique on his music career?
Nobody ever talked about that. I told him I did not like his music, and I have known him for 12 years, he is like "Hey whatever".
I don't think he has liked it too much either?
He can not stand people bringing it up all the time. I feel sorry for him the way they keep going at him. He has evolved into a really good actor and I think he is going to have a great career. He has just finished working with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. Mark is going to be around for a long time we have talked about this for 12 years.
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