Feature Interview by Becky Day
Set in the snowy regions of Canada, we follow Paul Barnell (Robin Williams) who is in a bit of a situation. Paul’s wife (Holly Hunter) has some form of mental illness akin to tourette’s syndrome and requires medical assistance. Unfortunately, Paul’s business is failing and he’s in debt up to his ears. However, he discovers a dead body in a dumpster which delivers him all the answers to his problems. Paul claims the body as his lost brother so that he can collect the one million dollar benefits but, as always, things that seem that simple never are. The two men who killed the man now want the body back, the insurance salesman knows that Paul is lying and goes to every extreme length possible to prove it, and then the real long lost brother returns for his share.
Director Mark Mylod (Ali G Indahouse) sat down with Close-Up Film for a quick chat.
You’ve directed mainly TV shows, such as ‘Shameless’ and ‘Cold Feet’, so how did this script land on your desk?
It was because I directed the Ali G film, which because it made a bit of money, I get a lot of American scripts sent to me. Mostly for like ‘American Pie 12’ and really bad slapstick, broad gross out comedy stuff. At the bottom of this pile was this script, it didn’t have a name on it or indeed a title. So I asked my agent to do a bit of detective work to find out where it had come from. They eventually tracked it down to being this American project that was just sitting around not really doing anything. I went over to meet the producers and I had this particular take on the script, the way I wanted to rework it. I wanted to take it away from Fargo as much as possible and make it more of a love story and they liked it.
So when you first read you realised the similarity to Fargo?
Goodness yes, it was a complete blueprint. I changed it loads; you should see the original.
The film was shot in Canada. It’s a very desolate location, where was it exactly?
We did the interiors in Winnipeg and the exteriors in Yukon, a place called the White Pass which is literally right on the boarder of Alaska. The other exteriors we did in a town called White Horse, which is actually the Capital of the Yukon, it’s not a big place.
What did you do for entertainment, if you couldn’t shoot, for instance? Did you go snowboarding?
“I did go snowboarding a lot actually… no I don’t mean snowboarding, because I can’t snowboard to save my life. I mean snow skidooing. The truth of the matter is I had so little time off. I know it’s like the best job in the world but it is bloody hard work and it really was very intense.
You have a great cast. Did any of the actors surprise you, or bring anything to the film that you weren’t expecting?
They all surprised me, it sounds terribly pompous, but as a director you always want actors, DOP, whatever, to do what you want in your head but make it better and what I had in my head I thought was good, but they all made it better. Holly Hunter though, with the evolution of her character it was so extreme, brilliant and exciting. Working with her in rehearsals I never imagined that we could get her quite that complex and still to my mind still actually have a real heart to the film and still get the comedy. I thought we might swamp it, if we started getting to many layers to it but she still had such a kind of clarity in her expression that she could do it all.”
It’s quite a dark themed film. Is that your preferred type of film?
Is it really though? There are dark moments. I don’t think the film is dark, I genuinely don’t and I’m probably being horribly blinkered from being too close to the film. There are dark moments, I mean he puts meat all over the corpses face so that it gets eaten by the wolves, that is kind of dark I suppose. There are dark moments but, I think if you look at it over all, I think the film is actually really gentle. I have this on going debate with myself as to whether the strange fusion of the dark, with the gentle and the funny actually works or not. I was really trying hard to make it work. It was a deliberate decision to try and blend those elements. Whether it works or not is up to the individual.”
What do you think is going to most appeal to audiences about the film?
I think wanting to see a character led, interesting piece that is not a genre movie, that is trying to be something different. It has wonderful performances and a really strange blend, but an ultimate humanity to it. Plus it’s really funny in places, you have to admit?
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