8:57AM, Oct 12, 2009
We caught up with director Kevin Macdonald in the suitably executive surroundings of the Dorchester Hotel. The Oscar winner discussed why Russell Crowe is a genius, why Helen Mirren replaced Bill Nighy, 70s movies, and Obama’s favourite chilli restaurant.
The seemingly random shooting of a homeless bag snatcher uncovers a massive government conspiracy in Kevin Macdonald’s edge-of-the-seat thriller, State Of Play.
Russell Crowe gives another performance to savour as Cal McAffrey, a journalist assigned to the shooting. He discovers troubling links to his old friend and political animal Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) and the death of his mistress.
State of Play is available to rent on Sky Box Office now! Click here for details.
What made you remake State Of Play?
I saw the wonderful original TV series that Paul Abbott wrote and it never crossed my mind that I should make a movie of it.
I was then sent a script three or four years later by Universal Pictures who said Brad Pitt was attached to the film and interested in me directing it. That kind of thing gets your attention.
I read the script and recognised it as State Of Play. It was only when I came to the conclusion that a film could do things differently that I believed it could work.
Ironically, after that it turned out Brad Pitt didn’t do the film, and Russell Crowe came aboard. That turned out for the best, he’s far more convincing and full in the role than Brad would have been.
After Crowe joined the cast did you make any changes to the script or his character?
The script itself didn’t change that much, but, Russell had a huge input through lots of details – the way he chose to play McAffrey as this shambolic figure, that he was not afraid to appear really scared when being chased by the killer.
He looks terrified in a way that a lot of movie stars might have resisted, they want to look more heroic than that.
On the first day of shooting Russell turned up with a pink wristband for breast cancer awareness, because he thought his character’s mother died of cancer.
At first that seemed quite arbitrary, but it dawned on me here’s a character that has never formed a lasting relationship with a woman, has kept women at a distance in his life, maybe that’s because he lost his mother.
All those tiny details add up to a character you believed exists outside the two hours of the movie and that’s what Russell is a genius at doing.
Helen Mirren as Crowe’s editor in the film is something of a den mother. Was it because you cast Mirren that the character had a sex change from TV to film?
No, I was trying to make the story my own and change who the characters were, but the character I found most difficult was the editor.
Part of the reason was because Bill Nighy did such a fantastic (BAFTA winning) job in the original that every time I read one of the character’s lines I’d here Bill’s voice.
I woke up one morning with the answer, turn him into a woman. The film then becomes more interesting because you have Russell Crowe with two strong women in his professional life – the Rachel McAdams character who’s the blogger and Helen Mirren’s editor. That seemed an unusual character dynamic for a mainstream film and therefore more interesting.
When you had the lightbulb moment that it has to be a woman, did you then think it had to be Helen Mirren?
Yes I did. I’d met her once or twice briefly because I’d made The Last King Of Scotland and Forest Whitaker was winning so many Best Actor awards for his Idi Amin. And at these awards Helen Mirren was always winning Best Actress for The Queen.
I thought who would you want to see shouting at Russell Crowe and she came to mind. Helen Mirren is a wonderful authority figure, but she’s also very sexy and attractive, which is a difficult combination to find in one person.
While watching the film I was thinking it is reminiscent, in a good way, of All The President’s Men, Three Days Of The Condor and The Parallax View. Why do these 70s movies cast such a long shadow?
There’s definitely an influence of two of those films – I’m actually not a fan of Three Days of the Condor – but the other two definitely.
You can’t make a journalistic film in Washington D.C. without referencing All The President’s Men. And there are some subtle and not so subtle nods to that film – Russell Crowe drives a Saab like Redford did, there’s a confrontation in an underground garage, there’s a picture of Woodward and Bernstein in the mess of Russell’s desk.
With films you’re influenced by, you don’t want the impression to be too overwhelming or your movie is going to be dead. The concept was Russell Crowe was a 70s character, that’s where his natural home was.
Somehow the world had changed around him, and he had the same attitude toward journalism, but the newspaper office had grown, technology changed.
The film depicts journalism to be at the mercy of corporate interests. Do you agree with that?
I think that’s somewhat the case, but not in such a straightforward way as required for the film. But, for me it was important to reflect what’s going on in newspapers today, newspapers are dying, faster in America than in the UK.
But, there are still huge problems with online coverage – newspapers like The Guardian can’t make their websites pay. And if you can’t generate revenue through advertising then you can’t keep journalists on stories, or have the amount of journalists you need, and rely more and more on press releases. And the integrity of journalism suffers.
For me blogs are wonderful entertainment, but they don’t actively look for news, searching out interviews, knocking on doors, using up some shoe leather. They take bits of gossip, opinion, and comment on what they’ve heard, and that’s not strictly speaking journalism.
How did your documentary background influence this film?
I wanted to make State Of Play different from other D.C thrillers, which was one of the big challenges.
Making a documentary or a film set in 1970s’ Uganda, well not many people have seen that so it’s easy to make it interesting and novel. But, people see Washington on the news everyday, and in The West Wing and other movies, so you have to show a Washington that’s different to expectations and also feels authentic and real.
That required a documentary research approach: what’s a newsroom really like, how do people dress in a newsroom, how does a politician dress, what do their hearing rooms look like.
And I travelled around the city of Washington thinking about what hadn’t seen before. I’d never seen their beautiful Metro on film before, so I had to have that.
I wanted The Kennedy Center because it’s a beautiful monument to him, but there’s also something morbid about it which seemed appropriate for our one of our final scenes.
And Ben’s Chilli Dog where Russell Crowe’s character eats, and where Barack Obama took the mayor for lunch after winning the election.
Did you eat there?
I attempted to eat there. It’s the heaviest, greasiest food you’ll ever eat in your life...
Rob Daniel
