Andrew Dominik does not look like a guy who could teach this country a lesson. With his floppy hair, fashionable glasses and ever-present cigarette, he resembles the kind of international hipster you'd find brandishing his American Express black card in Manhattan's Meatpacking District on a Thursday night. But don't be fooled by appearances.
Although Killing Them Softly is an adaptation of George V. Higgins' 1974 novel, Cogan's Trade, Dominik, who wrote and directed the movie, set the picture in the middle of this country's 2008 economic meltdown and presidential election. (News coverage of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama figures in the background.) Pitt plays Jackie Cogan, a mob enforcer sent to a grim-looking, rain-soaked city — the picture was shot in New Orleans — to investigate a poker-game heist, but the lowlife characters in this movie could be Wall Street bankers, film producers or overworked bloggers running and gunning to survive one more day in the rat race.
There's nothing like an outsider to point out the chinks in America's armor, and the New Zealand-born, Australian-bred Dominik bludgeons a number of this country's sacred cows and concepts, from Thomas Jefferson, who's dismissed as a hypocritical "wine snob," to "E Pluribus Unum" to the hopeful (but possibly empty) rhetoric of Barack Obama.
"America's not a country, it's just a business," Pitt's character says at a key moment in the film, and given the actor's reputation as a righteous liberal dude, it's a brave performance. I don't think that even Dominik would admit this, but beneath the noirish storyline, Killing Them Softly echoes the lyrics of the Who's classic song. "Won't Get Fooled Again": "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss."
In a frank and fairly amusing interview, Dominik, whose credits also include the excellent Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, shared his views on the reelection of President Obama, the "masculine confusion" that is prevalent in Killing Them Softly, his next planned picture, an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' novel about Marilyn Monroe, Blonde, and whether Brad Pitt can remember what it was like to be normal.
Movieline: After seeing Killing Them Softly, I've got to know if you were rooting for anyone in the presidential election.
Dominik: Obama. Yeah.
I ask because the message of your movie seems to be that it doesn't matter who's running America from the Oval office.
Well I think, obviously, that the president's powers can be fairly limited. But Obama was a better option than the other guy.
That seemed to be the rationale of a lot of voters this year.
I really believed Obama when he spoke in 2008, but I remember watching his victory speech after this last election and it was the same speech. Exactly the same speech. I felt like he didn't even believe it anymore. He seemed to be tired of saying the same thing. He even made the same joke about the dog.
Your film is distributed by The Weinstein Company, which is co-chaired by Harvey Weinstein, an avid supporter of President Obama. Was there any discomfort with the political aspects of your film?
How tight is Harvey really with Obama? He says he's talked with Obama. I'm sure Harvey feels tighter with Obama than Obama feels with Harvey. You know what I mean? But, yeah, he was uncomfortable about that stuff. And I think Brad was, too. But I don't know that the movie's really pointing its finger at Obama, specifically. It's pointing its finger at the lie with which American was constructed — this idea that we're all equal. Which clearly nobody believes.
It takes an outsider to tell us that. What made you decide to take a 1974 George V. Higgins novel and set it in 2008 at the time of the 2008 economic crash and the presidential election?
I guess it was everything going on at once. I found the book, and I needed money. And everyone around me needed money. All they were talking about was the economy. I realized that the movie was the story of an economic crisis, and I started to see parallels between this little story and the bigger story.
I've always suspected that crime movies are really about capitalism. I didn't watch The Sopranos and think Tony Soprano was a sociopath. He just looks like a normal guy with normal problems to me. So I felt like maybe here's an opportunity to make a self-conscious crime film. Fiction is how we organize reality — but what are we trying to organize when we watch crime movies? I guess it's the reality of existing in a dollar-driven society.
You mentioned The Sopranos. At its core, that series was a epic parable about the George W. Bush era, and, in some respects Killing Them Softly felt like an extension or a kindred spirit of that show. Were you inspired at all by the universe that David Chase created?
I love The Sopranos. It's a fucking great, great show. But not directly as far as the movie was concerned. There are actors from the series in the movie, but I guess when you're looking for goombah-type guys, David Chase found them all. So there's really no getting away from it.
James Gandolfini's character fascinated me. He seems to be a symbol of sort of our national loss of confidence.
Yeah, it's a mid-life crisis type movie, I guess. In a way, it deals with loss of vitality, which is how I was feeling. The other thing I really loved about the story was all the masculine confusion in it. Everyone was talking about women. We never saw these women, but [the men] were all confused about them. Masculine ideals have become very confused in the modern world. Political correctness is not our friend.
Please do elaborate.
It seems like women don't want men to be men anymore. They want men to be women. [Laughs] But they really don't want what they say they want. It's very weird. Do you know what I mean?
Don't get me started. Back to the movie. I don't think I've ever had a more visceral reaction to violence in a film. I was practically in the fetal position during Ray Liotta's scenes.
Groovy. I wanted it to be ugly. The whole idea of the movie is that crime is a drag. The criminals aren't even paying attention to the crime. The mastermind is probably in debt and needs to pay off his bookie, and the other guys are thinking about how they're going to spend the money or the girls they'd rather be fucking. Crime is a job and it's boring. It's also unpleasant. If you've got to fire somebody or kill somebody or discipline somebody, it's not something you want to do. And that's the reason you get paid to do it. So, if Brad's character is making a big deal about not wanting to kill people, I thought it was necessary to show how unpleasant killing people was.
Enter Ray Liotta. His performance in the beating scene is not something I'll soon forget. And he just told me that he's never been in a real fight in his life.
Really? See that's how confused men are. How can you get to middle age without getting in a fight? It wouldn't happen in Australia.
Why do you guys from Down Under understand violence so well?
I don't know. When I was a kid you had to fight. So you did.
You're doing a movie about Marilyn Monroe next, an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' Blonde. I feel the same way about Monroe as I do about the Kennedys — that pretty much everything you can say about them as cultural touchstones has been said. You obviously feel differently.
Well, I think people will be pretty shocked by the portrayal of Kennedy in the movie, which is about this orphan girl, Norma Jean, who is raised with a lie at the center of her self. And it's about how she projects this drama onto the world around her and gradually becomes untethered. So, I think it's going to explode a lot of people's assumptions about her.
How did you put together such a choice cast? Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy are excellent. And you've got Gandolfini, Pitt, Liotta and Sam Shepard.
Well, the basic idea was to typecast it — to look at it like a film noir and just say, "I'm going to go for types." So, you know, you've got the goofy looking skinny guy [McNairy], you got the sweaty Australian guy [Mendelsohn], and you can remember them. And then you've got the tough guys.That part of Mickey was written for Jim [Gandolfini] because he's such a great actor, and there's some real sensitivity about him as a person. I could forgive Jim anything because he's so human. And you need somebody like that for that role. Ray Liotta is a great actor, too. I don't understand why he never became like a movie star because I always found him so compelling on screen. And then Brad is, you know, Mr. Cool.
Does Pitt's star power end up working as an asset for you because this is not your typical tentpole picture?
I feel like you have to cast Brad in parts where he's extraordinary or exceptional in some way. I mean, it'd be very difficult to cast Brad as an everyman because I don't think he is one. He was an everyman maybe 25, 30 years ago, but can he even remember what it's like to be normal?
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