Lurie's Straw Dogs pays homage to Peckinpah's film (itself adapted from Gordon Williams' novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm) in many ways, but the former journalist-turned-filmmaker has a vastly different view of the world and of the psyche of his pushed-to-the-brink hero. "I think Peckinpah was essentially a pessimist about man," Lurie explained, "and if you read his interviews around the time of Straw Dogs it's very depressing to read what he has to say about humankind. I'm certainly more optimistic. I think that at the very least, we can be saved by our parents and saved by the society around us. It just depends on how those entities behave."
Much changed, too, is Lurie's version of Amy Sumner, portrayed by Susan George in the original film. Bosworth's Amy is a different creature -- a native of the fictional small Mississippi town who at once rejects and seems to crave the kind of masculine ideal she grew up surrounded by. It's Amy, not David, who ultimately understands the gravity of what transpires when frictions give way to explosive, destructive violence. "The most dramatic thing that I wanted to change was in the portrayal of women in general in this film," said Lurie. "As great a filmmaker as [Peckinpah] is, we have a very different outlook on life and on women."
Read on for Movieline's in-depth (and spoiler-free) conversation with Lurie -- a former Movieline contributor -- about his version of Straw Dogs, the inevitable comparisons to Peckinpah and his 1971 film, dealing with hecklers in the blogosphere, and the agony and ecstasy of reading reviews.
This is an interesting return to the fold for you, in a way.
Yeah! I loved working for Movieline back in the day. It was really great, and there was never an article I wrote where they didn't say "Don't forget to be irreverent!" It was really great. I had to stop writing when I started making films, but those were really great days. I was writing for Movieline and Premiere at the same time, and they were just such wonderful outlets.
It's a shame that the era of the print movie magazine is over. You were there in the heyday!
There were such great magazine writers. I remember it would take me days to get through Vanity Fair, Esquire, Movieline, Premiere, GQ, and now Movieline is not in print anymore, nor is Premiere, and in those other magazines I will nitpick the articles I read.
Jumping into Straw Dogs -- I sat for an hour after watching it just talking about the film, it's so thought-provoking.
Thank you, Jen. I've had more than one person tell me that they felt like they needed a drink after seeing the movie, and you're right: It is designed for people to talk about the film. It is definitely a genre picture, and it's definitely a thriller, and it's definitely an audience-pleasing film, but that's not the kind of film I solely want to make. I do want to make movies that will get people talking, because it was made with that intent.
Movies like the original Straw Dogs and other films from the '70s in particular don't really get made anymore. Do you feel like this was a way to reintroduce that kind of filmmaking to modern audiences?
I'll be straightforward with you: I think this is not that kind of film. I love films from the '70s and I've made movies like The Contender and Nothing But the Truth, which were meant to evoke that feeling. But this was one of my attempts to make a film that I think has the speed and the energy of 2011. I will say that I do think that the slow burn element of the film is evocative of those films, and I think that the audience is rewarded for getting to know the characters by caring about them and caring what happens in that siege at the end. But almost every filmmaker I know and every filmmaker I meet says, "I want to make a movie like the ones from the '70s." Every single one. Maybe our movie is more like movies from the '60s; I told my DP that I wanted it to look like the rich movies from the '60s, like Cool Hand Luke or The Professionals.
The kinds of themes being discussed, the kind of story and how challenging it is though -- that's of a tradition from 1970s moviemaking that is, sadly, something we don't get very often anymore.
You're right -- I see your point, although last year I was very happy to see how dramas like Black Swan or The Social Network were doing so well, and they did deal with stuff that was uncomfortable and dealt with protagonists that weren't necessarily fully heroic. And it is a difficult thing, A) to make those films and B) to debate them afterward. You know, sometimes I wish I had it in me to take on a straight-on studio job, a romantic comedy with wonderful actors like, you know, you make a movie with the wonderful Rachel McAdams and the fantastic Jake Gyllenhaal. A comedy. And both of those actors have certainly done great in independent work. I would love to make a movie at some point that I can sort of just ride into the sunset with. Instead, I've always made life a little difficult for myself. And now is no different.
Really, how so?
Well, you're remaking a movie from an iconic director and from the minute we announced it everybody was on my ass in the blogosphere, telling me that I couldn't carry his jockstrap and I'll never be Sam Peckinpah...
Do you usually read all of that stuff on the Internet?
Well, I don't read all of it, but I read what I find. I'd like to be able not to. I have several peers who never look at a word, and I'd really like to get to that point. At first it sort of just infuriated me, and now it just sometimes makes me scratch my head a little bit. I suppose that the most unnerving thing is that so many of the people that write about film on the Internet are anonymous, so they're more like hecklers than actual critics, or people writing on the bathroom wall. It's very easy to be anonymous.
Remaking a film like Straw Dogs immediately invites scrutiny, but on top of that you change the film's setting, in a significant way, by transplanting the story from rural England to the American South. The way that it plays out it becomes a red state/blue state-divided film. Was that the intent?
I certainly never intended for the film to send any political message about a conservative-liberal issue, and I do not see this film as a red state/blue state film at all. The reason why I set it in the South is because to me, it was a way of creating the best fish-out-of-water situation that I could find for my lead character. I wanted to find two extremes in lifestyles, and it seemed to me that taking somebody from an intellectual world and planting him into a world that is almost purely physical made sense. Now, some of the greatest thinkers and writers of our time have come out of the South. However, this is a community where everything about it is geared towards violence: football, hunting, preachers talking about a God that will smite you from the earth if you behave badly. It's the principal difference, I think, between the two films in my opinion. Peckinpah was making a movie about a man, and men in general, who are biologically-inclined to violence. My movie seems to be stating that violence is conditioned from how you grow up and where you live.
When David fights at the end of our film, he is fighting like the people of Stalingrad did -- fighting with his wits and because he has to. It's not part of an internal rage, which is how Peckinpah represented it. It's not a criticism of Peckinpah. I'm just coming at it from a different approach, which is the very reason [for making the film]. When people say, "Why the need to remake Straw Dogs?" Well, there's no need, but I did have a purpose, and the purpose was to experiment and see if I could put a different sociological spin on the exact same story.
You and Peckinpah, through your respective Straw Dogs, seem to have very different views on humanity.
That's exactly it. It's really interesting because the reviews I'm reading seem to be divided between people who understand that and people who don't get it, who are simply hung up on saying, "Well, if he doesn't have Peckinpah's themes then he doesn't have any themes at all." The truth is that I do have a very different view of humanity; I think Peckinpah was essentially a pessimist about man, and if you read his interviews around the time of Straw Dogs it's very depressing to read what he has to say about humankind. I'm certainly more optimistic. I think that at the very least, we can be saved by our parents and saved by the society around us. It just depends on how those entities behave.
You wrote David Sumner as a Hollywood screenwriter instead of a mathematician as he is in the original film. On top of that, he's got a line emphasizing that he's a screenwriter, not a director. What was the thinking behind this -- was it personal for you?
Oh, that was just funny. I think he's trying to say that he doesn't believe that directors really work. [Laughs] There wasn't any real thinking behind that, to be honest with you. My girlfriend said to me, "I just realized that you are David." And I said, "No, I'm not! But he's who I want to be." I sort of want to have that inside of me, that courage and that conviction and that intellectualism. I think I probably come short in all of those areas.
Well, your Straw Dogs may be a film that makes the screenwriters of the world happy nonetheless, because --
We kick ass!
Yes! And David's story seems to speak to the loss of control that writers often feel in the filmmaking world.
Yes, but I think that at the end of the film David is very much in control. It's sort of what I was going for.
What I found more interesting even than what happens to David is what happens to Amy, whom we are made to understand really well but through subtle means, via the writing and Kate Bosworth's performance.
I think so, too -- but Jen, do you mean to say that as a professional interviewer of filmmakers you expect me to sit here and talk to you about the end of the film? [Laughs]
Well, here's what I'm getting at, without revealing what happens in the film: I just feel that by film's end, Amy has much more of an understanding of what has happened to the both of them.
Oh my God, you have that exactly right. The most dramatic thing that I wanted to change was in the portrayal of women in general in this film. I think she's a much different character than the one played by the great Susan George -- she's independent, she's fierce, she's more a partner in their marriage. And I think that it's a feminist film. I think there's a lot of women-fearing at the end of this film, and I'll tell you what, they weren't fearing at the end of the other one. That's not simply because she picks up a gun; I think her entire characterization is very important. I don't want to give away what happens but there's a pivotal scene in the middle of the movie that is very different than the Peckinpah version which was very controversial. Mine is equally controversial, but not because of how it depicts women or what it says about women. I have a daughter whom I love, I have a mom who I love, I have sisters who I love... The truth is that I couldn't get into the groove with Peckinpah's version of women in general. As great a filmmaker as he is, we have a very different outlook on life and on women, I think.
Without giving away that spoiler, I appreciated that there was less ambiguity in that key scene.
Right. And the truth is, a lot of people that are reading this right now who are familiar with the earlier film are rolling their eyes, saying, "Come on, stop being so coy -- we all know what happened in that scene!" But the truth is, when Sony did a poll on the movie before we shot it, we found out that something like less than 5 percent of the population even knew about the original Straw Dogs, let alone had seen it. So this comes as a complete spoiler to almost everybody who sees the film. I'm just not interested in discussing it in too great of a detail, other than to tell you that Kate and I had, amongst ourselves, a fundamental difference of opinion with the original of how that scene should be depicted.
That's an interesting point -- to audiences today who haven't seen the original, Straw Dogs may sound like just a genre action thriller...
I think it can be viewed in many different ways. It could be viewed simply as a genre thriller, and I'd bet you people who [liked] Saw would have a great time as they're watching it. But then there are people who do look at it as an anthropological film, and there are people that look at it as a plight among cinema because I dared to heretically remake Sam Peckinpah.
How do you feel a remake -- which is admittedly a simplistic term to use -- fits into your filmmaking career, as opposed to making original films?
I'll tell you, I really look at the remake as a genre unto itself. And there are some people from whom we would welcome remakes. For example, if we had heard that Quentin Tarantino was going to remake The Wild Bunch, we probably wouldn't have a problem with it. We'd say, "I wonder what he's going to do?" Or if the Coen brothers were to remake The Sting: "That's going to be interesting..." A remake should be an homage, for one thing, but people have to realize -- and I think they do -- we're not painting mustaches on the Mona Lisa. The film is still there. In fact, the very release of my film has prompted the release of a Blu-ray of the original Straw Dogs, which no one has been able to see up until now. I'll bet you that somewhere down there, or up there, Peckinpah's very happy that his movie's going to get a brand new lease on life, as they say.
What are you planning to work on next?
What's next in my life, what I want to work on now, is a little bit of my self-esteem and my relationships with others... [Laughs] I have a deal to create a show for NBC right now, so that's my next immediate order of business. And I'm going to choose between a couple of films. It's going to take me a little while to figure out. But the TV show is my absolute next priority.
Lastly: Does your background as a film critic make it any easier to read reviews of your own films?
It makes it easier in that I really understand not to take it personally, except those times when it is personal -- very personal. There's one critic who just wrote an attack on me that was extremely personal, it obviously comes from within his heart against me and not against the film necessarily. So I've had to deal with that a little bit. But I know what goes into the mind of a film critic, or at least the mind that I had as a film critic. So I know not to take it too personally. On the other hand, I respect so many of these guys that when they love the film it's very important to me and when it doesn't, it really makes me start to question myself. I got out of the film critic business primarily because I wasn't a very good one, I thought, so when I read reviews of the critics I do admire and they're negative on my film that means a lot. And when they're positive, it also means a great deal. But there are so many film critics right now because of the Internet that you just can't keep track of all of them. You just sort of hope for the best.
Straw Dogs is in theaters today.