The Lookout director Scott Frank
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Scott Frank has been writing television and films before he decided to take on the directing reins. His experience working with Steven Soderbergh and Steven Spielberg on Out of Sight and Minority Report respectively surely was a part of what convinced him to direct The Lookout, an idea that has been percolating with Frank for a very long time. It is the story of Chris Pratt [played brilliantly by Joseph Gordon-Levitt], a promising young hockey player in high school who’s career is cut short by a car accident which kills his best friends and gives him a head injury that has left him unable to perform basic everyday functions. Four years later Pratt is a janitor at a local bank and he is targeted by small time hoods who want to use the naïve young man to help them rob the bank.

Check out the official website for The Lookout

Daniel Robert Epstein: I speak to a lot of first time filmmakers who are long time screenwriters and they tell me that when they’re directing they are very willing to cut stuff out but when it comes to working on a movie someone else is directing they fight very hard to keep every word they wrote in.

Scott Frank: By and large that’s probably true. I think the script matters more since the script is the only artifact that you ever were involved with so you really want to protect your screenplay. When I’m writing for other directors, I really want to make sure that thing that I did is a part of the movie because very shortly it becomes someone else’s and I’m no longer involved. That’s just the way movies are. Whereas when you’re directing, you’re front and center so you’re going to let go of things because it’s about the movie, not about the script. It’s also about making sure that the finished film works.

DRE: How long have you been thinking about this character?

SF: Since the early 90’s. I had this notion of a guy with a head injury for a long time but I didn’t want to make a movie about a guy with a head injury. But if you do a movie about a head injury it becomes a TV movie. I’m fascinated with identity and I tend to always write about that in my movies. It’s not conscious; I don’t have some pretentious notion of what I’m about. Identity seems to rear its ugly head every time I write a script. This character is about the idea that one day you wake up and you’re someone entirely different and you have to re-get to know yourself. That seemed pretty ripe for a story and also the horror and trauma of being able to remember who you were but you’re frustrated because you can’t be that person again. Subsequently since I love crime thrillers I was thinking about these little banks in rural America where they get all this farm subsidy money cash twice a year and yet they’re in the middle of nowhere. I thought “Why isn’t anybody robbing these places? There’s no one around, half of them of them aren’t even dedicated banks. They are just buildings that were turned into banks.” The two ideas became one because I thought of putting this guy with the head injury in a very rural environment and creating a thriller around him that doesn’t have to focus on the heist part of it. To me the heist is the least interesting part.

DRE: Is it difficult to make a modern film noir with things like cell phones and the internet?

SF: Minority Report was full of very advanced technology and we did try to have some sort of noir sensibility with all of that. It’s less about the props than it is about what’s happening. You just use them in a certain way.

DRE: I thought it was a very interesting choice to not make the audience see the movie from Chris Pratt’s point view. That means you weren’t going for things like a twist ending. What made you want to do that?

SF: I wanted the movie to be emotional and I wanted to be able to make fun of Chris. I wanted to be able to laugh at Chris so that we’re not feeling sorry for him in the wrong way. I wanted us to empathize with Chris and I wanted us to understand his dilemma. I felt that putting it all from his point of view would be cheap. I also felt that it created more narrative possibility to not have it just from his point of view.

DRE: Why did you decide to not a have a twist in the movie?

SF: Because I think there are twists in every movie so now we’re waiting for twists. I’ve written plenty of movies with twists and what interests me in terms of this was the journey and not getting too clever by half in terms of the structure.

DRE: I read that you felt the Thanksgiving dinner scene was one of the most difficult scenes to shoot.

SF: Yes, simply from a directorial standpoint the most boring thing to shoot is people sitting around a dinner table. I had no visual idea other than people sitting around a dinner table so what I did is I covered the hell out of it but in the back of my mind, I thought about it all being from Chris’ point of view at a certain point. We do the conventional “here’s everybody eating” but then it begins moving in on him and he explodes.

DRE: Sam Rockwell told me that on the set of Matchstick Men, Bruce McGill played the William Tell Overture on his throat [as he did in Animal House] for him.

SF: Oh, you’re kidding.

DRE: [laughs] It doesn’t sound like he did that for you.

SF: No, he didn’t. I love Bruce and I can’t believe I forgot to ask him that.

DRE: What makes you just say “We need Bruce McGill for this film.”?

SF: Weight. I want someone who’s got real weight as a person, someone who lends gravitas, who’s slightly intimidating as a father, who you believe owns car dealerships and has been successful financially. Bruce just was that guy and he is such a pro. He can turn on a dime, he can emphasize one word very quickly over another within a 12 line phrase. But mostly he had the presence combined with the solidity he has as a performer.

DRE: Did you cast Matthew [Goode] from an audition?

SF: Yes. I had seen Match Point and Chasing Liberty so when my casting director brought him up, I said, “You’re out of your fucking mind. There’s no way that guy could ever do this. He plays like Rupert Everett, about as effeminate as they come. There is no way he’s going to ever convince me that he can be tough.” She said, “You should meet him” so he came to that first audition and just rocked my world. He had shaved his head and was totally different. He spoke with a flawless American accent and he had so much energy that I couldn’t keep up with him. He was bouncing all over the room. I brought him back several times, I really tortured him but he read with Joe [Gordon-Levitt] and they had unbelievable chemistry together.

DRE: I read that the story was partially inspired by a friend with a head injury but is the film in any way autobiographical?

SF: Not at the moment. But I think that there are issues like the father son stuff that are my own. When I wanted to be a screenwriter it was tough to get my father to understand that. There are always autobiographical elements but by and large, it’s just a yarn that visited me over a period of a few years. Ultimately, the characters become everything and that’s what keeps me going.

DRE: What made you decide to shoot this on video?

SF: It was a decision made by me and [cinematographer] Alar [Kivilo]. I wanted widescreen anamorphic. But those are long lenses and they require a lot of light, we were shooting at night so I didn’t have the money or the time to light scenes the way they would need to be lit. We tested the Genesis [digital camera] which they were using on Apocalypto at the time and what they shot Superman [Returns] with. I also tested Super 35. Capote was shot Super 35 and looked beautiful but I was worried about being a rookie and maybe wanting to change my mind about things. So we went to the Deluxe lab in Toronto and I tested all three formats, Super 35, Anamorphic and the Genesis package. I knew I didn’t want the Viper [FilmStream Camera] because I saw Collateral and Miami Vice and they’re beautiful but they look like video. When we tested all three formats, we didn’t mark them and we printed them all back to film

DRE: So you tricked yourselves?

SF: Yes and we found that Anamorphic was clearly the most beautiful but number two was the Genesis camera. It looked fantastic. In fact, the guy at Deluxe turned to Alar and me and said, “I’m a film guy but man, that is beautiful.” It looked like film and it had a great grain to it. There are only two shots in the movie that came out looking like video and that’s because the camera glitched. I vowed never to shoot HD as my first film and blah blah blah but it enabled me to shoot an hour longer every day and the manipulation in post was easier.

DRE: I read that William Goldman is a bit of a mentor to you, is that from working together on Malice?

SF: Yes, Malice wasn’t ultimately a happy experience for me but it was great experience to meet Bill. He’s someone I always call and say, “Will you look at this? Will you read this?” He always says, “Scott, do you want me to like it?”

DRE: Does he like anything?

SF: Yeah, he does but he’s also not afraid to say that he doesn’t like something.

DRE: What did he think about the script for The Lookout?

SF: He hasn’t seen the final movie yet. But I believe he liked this script, he had some thoughts but he liked it.

DRE: I read you may be writing a western.

SF: I wrote a Western but that is very tough road to hoe these days. I know they made 3:10 to Yuma but we’ll see what happens.

DRE: Do you want to direct that?

SF: Yes.

DRE: Will you still work on other people’s screenplays?

SF: I would work on other people screenplays but it depends on who the other people are. I really want to direct again soon if they let me.

DRE: I know this may be an old project but any idea what’s going to happen with the adaptation of A Walk Among the Tombstones?

SF: On the record I can tell you I hope it gets made. It’s all about having the right cast once Harrison Ford chickened out.

DRE: What made Ford decide to not do it?

SF: I think he was concerned about the darkness in that character.

DRE: It’s interesting because I read that he has no desire to do smaller or independent films.

SF: He said that to us. He said his customers wouldn’t want to see him in something like this, to which I would argue I’m not sure he has the same customers that he once had. I think there are a lot of people who’d love to see him in this. I still would love to see him do this movie. It’s the perfect movie for him but who knows?

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/The+Lookout+director+Scott+Frank/