In this gripping crime thriller, Russell Crowe stars as Roy Freeman, an ex-homicide detective with a fractured memory, forced to revisit a case he can’t remember. As a man’s life hangs in the balance on death row, Freeman must piece together the brutal evidence from a decade-old murder investigation, uncovering a sinister web of buried secrets and betrayals linking to his past. With only instincts to trust, he faces a chilling truth – sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.
As Sleeping Dogs launches into Australian cinemas of August 1, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the films screenwriter and director, Adam Cooper, about working on his directorial debut, how he chose to adapt a certain part of a novel, and the idea Russell Crowe came up with that changed the entire opening scene of the film!
Nick: I’m aware that Sleeping Dogs is based on a certain part, the character of Roy Freeman’s part, of a novel. I’m curious to know how out of the three different stories in the novel, you chose Roy Freeman’s story to adapt into a film?
Adam Cooper: Well, you know, the book is about something that took place in the past. In the book, the murder of Professor Joseph Wieder to place 25 years ago, and it was altered in our story really because of casting.
But I thought that in the story, it was about, sort of, points of view on the past, and a memory of something in the past. It was very interesting that there would be a character in Roy Freeman who was, to some degree, bereft of memory. And so, I was personally drawn to that character as kind of the fulcrum around which we could build a singular narrative around one character.
It felt like a missed opportunity to not have a character who’s sort of somehow unreliable in his memory, in a detective story that’s about recalling a case from the past. It felt like a great opportunity to tell a detective story but bring on an unreliable protagonist.
Nick: Was there ever a point where ideas for the other two parts of the novel could have been turned into films, too?
Adam Cooper: I mean, I don’t know how familiar you are with the novel, but the initial two parts of the novel are kind of siloed. It’s told from the point of view of three different characters, and the narrative is handled linearly, where it follows a certain character for a period of time, and they hit an investigative dead end. Then they pass the narrative off to another character who likewise hits a investigative dead end, and it ultimately it lands with Roy Freeman’s character who was the homicide detective 25 years ago, in the cast of the book.
So, no, there was never really thought of taking either the first character, who was a New York based literary manager, or the second character who was a New York based investigative journalist and building any narrative around them. What we did do was take their narratives and ultimately reassigning it to the character that Russell [Crowe] plays.
Nick: From a visual and aesthetic aspect, how close was your finished product of the film to what you were envisioning when you read the novel?
Adam Cooper: You know, it’s a funny thing, like the film you imagine that you’re making, oftentimes isn’t the film that you end up making for one reason or another. I mean, partly because when you’re reading something in it’s purest form, like a novel or work of fiction, and you start imagining what it looks like, I think what you’re imagining shifts from the time that you first read it, to then writing the screenplay, and then bringing in really talented department heads for production design and cinematography, it starts kind of forming in the way you imagined however long ago.
In my case, I first read the book in 2017, right? And the movie was made in 2023. So, all that time passes, and what you perhaps originally imagined has sort of been transformed so many times, over again.
One of the things the book did give you was this suggestion that it was kind of this neo noir. Because you’re dealing with the past. You’re looking at the past through a lens, and that lends is unique to whatever character is remembering it. There’s definitely a moodiness, kind of darkness, a grittiness, a rawness.
But, you know, the book takes place in the American northeast, in the fall and winter. So, what I was imagining then was stark trees, leaves on the ground. You see the characters’ frosty breath in the air. But we shot the movie in Melbourne, in summer. So, getting that stark, grim reality became kind of a different challenge, which we largely achieved with costume design.
I mean there are definitely elements of what I imagined in the finished product, and I’m very happy with how the movie looks. My DP did an incredible job, and our production designer was amazing. What you see on screen is a real testament to the incredible craftspeople and technicians in and around Melbourne.
Nick: You mentioned earlier how Roy Freeman is an unreliable narrator for this story due to his Alzheimer’s, what are some of the unique advantages and disadvantages of crafting a murder mystery around that element?
Adam Cooper: There’s actually a real freedom to some degree! The state that Roy finds himself in, there’s sort of a randomness to perhaps his emotion, to his associations, and the way in which he experiences the world.
But what I really tried to do was take what’s going inside Russell’s characters head and put the audience in lockstep with the way Roy is experiencing his life from the moment he wakes up and sort of gets the phone call and then proceeds. You are getting the information when he gets information.
I suppose that kind of omnisciently establishes that he’s in this space where he himself feels lost in his own apartment and his own world. So, you’re given that bit of information that you’re dealing with a character who has Alzheimer’s and feels a bit lost.
But then, every movement forward, you’re knowing this and experiencing it in a way that he would experience it. I think knowing that you have an unreliable narrator, especially in a whodunnit, or a why-dunnit, creates a kind of unease in the story.
Nick: I loved how you established Roy’s routine in the film’s opening scene with his use of tape with instructions and details about his life around his apartment. It feels like you established a whole other part of his story in the first 90 seconds of the film! How did you decide what was the necessary information to show the audience on that tape to establish Roy and this world?
Adam Cooper: I think audiences are smart, and the fill in the blank space with a continuation of what they’ve just seen. We certainly shot more than what is shown in the film. And then when you get into post-production, you start to gauge from the unindoctrinated viewer and people that you’re sharing it with about how much do we need here. And we definitely pulled back on it.
The tape idea wasn’t really my idea. I can credit Russell with that, because what was scripted was post it notes. And Russell’s feeling was that this guy is a cop, and the post it notes are really ephemeral. Like they can fall off the wall. And this is a guy who has a failing memory would need something more permanent. So, because he’s a cop, he may have used colour coded tape in his investigations, so transferring that idea to the apartment was Russell’s idea.
There was someone in the art department whose job it was to write all of these post it notes, and he probably wrote 1000 post it’s before Russell said, “Let’s do the tape” [laughs]. But I think it was a really good idea. It’s ultimately ended up being more visually interesting.
When you’re shooting, you never know how much you’re going to show the audience. A lot of those sort of decisions about how much to show were made in post-production, because we had tons of shots of tape that told more story. We tried to show just enough to show how much this sort of character sort of needs the guidance of that tape. There’s stuff that’s very practical, and then there’s stuff that, if you look closely, makes no sense!
Thank you to Adam for his time, and to Rialto Distribution and Ned Co PR for organising the interview. Sleeping Dogs is in cinemas August 1.
