/Film Interview: Martin McDonagh, Writer And Director Of ‘Seven Psychopaths’
Just when you thinkSeven Psychopathsis going to be a simple quirky comedy about crazy people, it hits you with the truth. The film is actually love letter to movies and a meta blend ofAdaptationandPulp Fiction. Those two films were the sophomore efforts of filmmakers we’ve since come to revere andSeven Psychopathsis the work of another man now on that path: writer/directorMartin McDonagh. His first film,In Bruges, is a model of how to blend genres the right way and with his latest, McDonagh enriches the genre blend.
His script has a screenwriter (Colin Farrell) trying to write a movie while his friend (Sam Rockwell) teams up with a dog kidnapper (Christopher Walken) to steal the dog of a mob boss (Woody Harrelson) who is dating a beautiful women (Olga Kurylenko) with an ulterior motive. Mix all those stories together, throw inTom Waits, Abbie Cornish, Michael Stuhlbarg, along with massive shootouts, flashbacks and just about the cutest dog imaginable, and you still don’t have any idea what to expect.
/Film was lucky enough to sit down with McDonagh to talk about the pressure of followingIn Bruges, the sophomore jinx, balancing all those storylines, the pitfalls of writing a movie about writing a movie, naming the main character after himself, shooting in Los Angeles and much much more. Read it below then go seeSeven Psychopaths, in theaters Friday.
/Film: So two for two, huh? Two directorial feature length films and I think they are both successes.
Was that something you were conscious of? I was actually thinking about the film and I could sort of see it as a sort of “AdaptationmeetsPulp Fiction,” which are two very successful sophomore efforts. Did you think about the sophomore jinx and maybe trying to avoid it? Even thought I know you did write the film before you didIn Bruges.
And obviously like you said, it is much bigger in scope and there are so many more characters and there’s so much more story going on, was that all in the script that way or was it in the editing?
Okay. At what point did you realize this movie was going to be a movie about a movie? I know you started with the idea of a psychopath and the story snowballed from there, but at what point did the “movieness” of it come in?
All right. Part of the reason I loved the movie is I love that meta thing, but there’s always a danger in being a little too “wink, wink.” In the writing and in directing, what were some of the challenges with that to rein it in or push a little too far?
As you were realizing that that was what this movie was going to be, did you watch any movies that it echoes, likeThe PlayerorAdaptation? Or was that just sort of maybe all in your film going…
And you purposely named the main character “Marty.” You could have named him something else and it would have, obviously, avoided any comparisons to you writing it, the Charlie Kaufman of it.
How much did Colin pick your mind about your point of view?
So now that the character is named “Marty,” even if you were thinking about it, did you put in a lot of your own struggles with writing the script into the film? Are there mirrors of that?
You mentioned how you’re not part of the Hollywood scene, but you set the film in LA, and shot it in LA. Was that essential? What was it like shooting here? When you think bout it, nobody shoots here anymore unless it’s on a sound stage.
[Both Laugh] God forbid…
So were all of the landmarks in the script? Was it always set in Echo Park? That’s sort of a random place to put an LA movie. I mean it’s great, but…
The reservoir is one that I’ve been to and you never see that in a movie.
You have a lot of dark humor and turn blowing off a guy’s head into a joke; is there a trick to making violence funny?
So how to you go about doing that? Is it like a scene-by-scene thing where you going in thinking that?
When you were writing, did you think of anybody for specific roles, or did they just come to you because you were friends and had worked with them before?
[SPOILER COMING UP - STAY FOR THE CREDITS]The last thing was, Tom Waits' character tells Marty to do something, and then Marty doesn’t. So when the credits start rolling, I’m like “It can’t be over,” but everybody else was walking out and then you hit with it. Was it written like that? Did you toy with…
