Disowned at birth by his obscenely wealthy family, blue-collar Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell) will stop at nothing to reclaim his inheritance, no matter how many relatives stand in his way.
How To Make A Killing is the new dark comedy from writer-director John Patton Ford, and in the lead up to the film’s release in Australia on March 5, Nick L’Barrow spoke with John about creating the look of 35mm film on a digital camera, and the fun in playing around in a world of immoral characters.
Nick: I haven’t been able to find anything about this online – did you shoot this on film?
John Patton Ford: Nope. We wanted to, but it’s so hard to shoot on film these days, man. You’re just so cramped for money, and it’s about a half-a-million, $600,000 investment that becomes harder and harder to justify. But we wanted to shoot on film.
So, instead of doing that, we shot some tests on film. We shot a little 35mm in pre-production on an old stock that my DP and I loved very much. Actually, it was Greig Fraser’s old stock – shout out Australia! We projected it with our colorist, and we came up with a LUT, which is a camera setting of the digital camera that would emulate the qualities of film. So, we didn’t shoot on film, but we did everything we could to imitate the look. Hopefully we got close.
Nick: You got more than close, because I was genuinely convinced you shot this on 35 when I was watching it! And that look and aesthetic really adds a lot to the film overall. At what point during the process did you land on wanting the movie to have that film look?
JPF: It was early, because to me, it always felt like an old movie. It kind of felt like if Billy Wilder came back from the dead and just inexplicably directed a movie. That’s where we were at. What would it look like? We were looking at a lot of old… I guess the idea was a contemporary time and contemporary story but also kind of timeless. The aesthetic was there to kind of highlight the universality of it. I didn’t want it to feel too current.
Nick: I had a lot of fun with this film, which is interesting because there is a lot of immoral characters and qualities at play here. As a writer, is it exciting to explore the immorality of this story, and kind of take the audience on a ride where we are complicit to a lot of the bad things that happen?
JPF: Gosh, it’s a lot of fun. I don’t know why. But it’s like when you’re enjoying something that you’re not quite supposed to, or when you’ve crossed some sort of ethical line. There’s an adrenaline element to that. It’s like stealing a cookie out of the cookie jar, and I love that. I’m always drawn back to that. I also think there’s something compelling about asking the audience to empathise with someone that you wouldn’t empathise with in your day to day life. There’s something really humane and cool about that.
Nick: One of my favourite scene in this film is the conversations between Beckett (Glen Powell) and Ruth (Jessica Henwick). I’ll paraphrase, but Ruth mentions something along the lines of, “No one ever teaches you to dream small”. I’m curious to know if there was a moment on this film, or in your career in general, where dreaming small was actually the best option creatively?
JPF: Wow. That’s a great question. You know, in a way: my first movie. I think I tried so hard to get a movie made, you know? And you have all of these big dreams about stuff. And then my first movie was this, kind of, smaller thing that I made with my friends. We had, or at least I had, no expectations. I just hoped that I would finish it, and that it wouldn’t be terrible. Then it ended up getting into Sundance, and ended up getting distribution, and ended up getting seen on Netflix. There was something about, after so long trying to get a movie career going, where just making something really small with people I knew and cared about with no expectations that turned out to be the answer I needed. I don’t know if that counts as dreaming small exactly, but it was dreaming smaller than I had been, and it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Nick: Did that feeling fuel creating this story as well?
JPF: I think what fueled this is that like so much of my life has been about the ceaseless, bloodthirsty pursuit of a directing career. It’s incredibly competitive. It’s incredibly hard. And it occupied much of my young life. It’s just real estate that’s taken up by struggle. It’s massive. And when I finally kind of got there, I got the career, I got the movie a movie, I was like the dog that caught the car. I actually came to Hollywood and it sort of worked out. But what was wild was that I was at the juncture where I knew I don’t get any of that time back. I’m 40 now – what happened to all that time? I was struggling that whole time, and I got somewhere, but at what cost? I think that’s what informed this whole thing. If I had pivoted careers and done something maybe more rewarding moment to moment, would I have been enjoying myself for that time? Would it have been just as good, or even better? Maybe that’s something everyone contends with.
Nick: Your producer, Pete Czernan compared your filmmaking style to Tarantino, PTA, Martin McDonagh. Glen Powell threw Steven Soderbergh in there too. Who are some of your cinematic inspirations?
JPF: Oh man, I mean so many. There’s so many contemporary filmmakers that I’m such a huge fan of. Certainly Paul Thomas Anderson, also Joachim Trier. I’ve been a mega fan of his since Reprise. I also saw Oslo, August 31 in theatres in 2011 and it just changed my life. I still think that’s his best movie. I love Mia Hansen Love, a French filmmaker. I revisit her films all the time because she just doesn’t care about conventions, and her movies feel so true. Soderbergh I’ve been obsessed with. No one shoots coverage as cleanly as he does. Not to make this a geeky director conversation–
Nick: No, please do!
JPF: When you go to shoot a place, you think about the nuts and bolts about how you’re going to do it logistically. And he’s an absolute cyborg at the process of shooting a movie. He’s probably the best at it. With old filmmakers, I love Jacques Audard, especially late 90s Audard. And I’m the biggest fan of Sidney Lumet. I’ve seen every single one, and he directed like 60 movies.
Nick: I just rewatched Network last night after the passing of Robert Duvall, and that movie is a masterpiece.
JPF: I can’t believe that movie exists, man.
Thank you so much to John for his time, and to StudioCanal for organising the interview. How To Make A Killing is in Australian cinemas March 5.
