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I recently had the opportunity to attend the press junket for Triple 9, the new crime thriller from director John Hillcoat (The Road, The Proposition, Lawless). I joined a small group of journalists to talk about the project with its director and stars, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Clifton Collins Jr., Norman Reedus, and Aaron Paul. I've condensed the interview into the most interesting segments, which you can read below.
Ejiofor on his preparation for playing a soldier-turned-criminal:
Ejiofor: The research aspect of the film, for me, was about the physicality of the character and getting into the weapons, really. Because I actually hadn’t done a film with a lot of gunplay before. Little bits in some stuff, but not like a large amount. So for months beforehand, when I first spoke to John about the film, it was important to me and important to him to develop a familiarity with weapons and tactical training. So I was able to talk to and train with people from the Navy SEALs and start to work with them to develop that, which I got into over the course of a few months. I was enjoying it, but enjoying it in the sense of really understanding some of the psychology of this very testosterone-fueled masculine idea. So I was able to bring that into play in the movie, which I also think, because of Kate Winslet, it’s a complicated — all of that gang of guys are ultimately controlled by this incredibly powerful woman. The transformation of Kate was so inspiring in the movie as well. That’s slightly off topic, but yes.
I asked Mackie if the actors had time to rehearse beforehand and build their group's dynamic, or if they were just thrown into it:
Mackie: Not really. The way this movie was shot was, it was kind of sectioned off. I think Kate was going into Insurgent. So the first half of the movie was she and Chiwetel, and the second half of the movie was all the guys. So we didn’t really have rehearsal space, because it was really two different movies shot at the same time. But we got the opportunity to kind of get to know each other and get a feel for each other while on set and while shooting. The first few days were really easy, nothing crazy, and then it was ramped into shooting the action sequences and stuff like that. So I think the relationships we started is what you see on screen, why the movie worked so well because we actually really all liked each other and complimented each other really well.
During the opening action sequence, which is featured heavily in the trailers, someone asked whether that was really the actors filming that scene or if they relied on stunt men. Mackie jokingly talked about how he tried to get stunt men to take over, but Hillcoat wasn’t having it:
Mackie: We were like, ‘Yo, we’re wearing masks and other people can do this…what’s up?’ And John was like, ‘No, you have to do this because it sets you up for this and you need the feel of the gun and the heat.’ And I was like, ‘Dude, we’re acting.’ (Everyone laughs) No, it wasn’t really that rehearsed. We went up and John showed us the moves, we figured out where we were going to go and what we were going to do. The weapons guy told us where to go. It was more panic and free for all than rehearsed, I felt. A lot of the stuff — the die packet and all of that stuff — was John telling us what he wanted and how he wanted it to look than us taking days to rehearse it like a ballet. It was moreso just open, go for it, with limited rehearsal, I should say.
A foreign journalist essentially asked Ejiofor the same question about if he did research into gang lifestyles:
Ejiofor: Not really. The script, in a sense, was fully formed. I believed all of that to be gently fantastical. I was trying to understand the military component of everything. It was only really when I got to Atlanta and people were saying, ‘Some of this is heightened, but a lot of this occurs,’ that I was like ‘Oh, right.’ That was an avenue that could have been explored, but I think what’s real was that John had explored all of this research so in depth that really the script played out as ‘What I have to do is understand this guy and be plugged into this circumstance.’ (To Mackie) I don’t know if it was different for you. Was it?
Mackie: No, that was quite like it.
Ejiofor: Because Atlanta, in the end, became a very — the script became an education on the place as well.
Mackie: It was a very important backdrop.
Ejiofor: And the way that the production design developed and the places that we were going to, the locations and realizing that the script was an embellishment, it’s fantastical to a degree, but it’s also something you go into some of these areas and you’re like, ‘Oh, some of this isn’t. It’s the reality of this place.’
On the characters not being a typical collection of action movie specialists:
Ejiofor: What makes it different and what makes it interesting to play, I think, is that they’re not archetypal in the sense that they’re the bad guys and they’re trying to do this thing together and you split the cash at the end of the robbery and you go your own way. They have internal dynamics, this group of guys.
Mackie: I think what was interesting, the way this script was set up and the way John put us into it as chess pieces was, [Chiwetel’s character’s] situation was never apparent to [my character]. I feel like everybody’s reason for doing this was never part of the fold.
Ejiofor: Anthony basically skipped over that part of the script because it didn’t have his name on it.
Mackie: I was like, ‘That’s gonna get cut!’ (Mimics ripping out a script page and throwing it over his head) (both laughing) ‘Russian, Israeli, that’s weird!’ (laughing) No, for me, it was more the backstory than it was on screen work. There was this whole storyline that John and I created that was actually quite fun and ridiculous and I hope makes the DVD. My dog had recently died, and I wanted a new dog. So me doing this was all about getting a house with a yard so he could have a place to run and be free and be the dog that I love, because my dog had died.
Ejiofor: Wait, are you saying in real life, your dog had died!?
Mackie: No, man, it’s a movie! Nah, man, I didn’t do the movie to get a dog. I did the movie because it was a good script and I wanted to work with you!
Ejiofor: I went to a darker place. I was like, ‘I didn’t know you were in pain! My God, I would have been more…’
Mackie: ‘Let’s go see some adoptees and see if there are any you like.’
Hillcoat spoke with us about not using shaky cam:
Hillcoat: I’ve seen situations where someone’s having a conversation and the camera’s kind of (mimics shaking wildly) doing that, and it’s like, ‘What the hell? Why? Why?’ I think there’s a time and a place for those techniques, and I think you’re right, there’s a laziness to it that’s like, ‘Oh, let’s just keep shaking it.’ But I think it has to be much richer and more planned than that. I’ve worked a long time with non-professionals and actors and mixing them together, so I kind of start more with the environment and the world before getting on to the techniques. Camera and sound. But that’s very important, so it’s kind of multi-dimensional in terms of thinking, ‘OK, let’s get advisors. This is a scripted action scene, but let’s see what the people that live this, what they say about this.’ So they were all reading the script from their point of view, saying, ‘Well, actually that would never happen. We do it like this.’ Then, not only were they advising on the script, they also advised on set and were actually in the film. That was the number one thing that created more realism.
Why he cast Kate Winslet as a Russian/Israeli mob boss:
Hillcoat: Amongst alpha males, you’ll always find a powerful woman that’s actually, nine times out of ten, more powerful than all of these guys that are showing off and trying too hard. I liked that energy. I found, through research, that a lot of crime organizations, when the husband is inside prison, the wife actually takes over, and I thought that was an interesting dynamic in the crime world. So I started looking at actresses and I wanted strong women that had incredible emotional range, and of course, Kate has all of that. I was even shocked when I looked through and made sure, I couldn’t believe she hadn’t played a villain. That was really exciting because sometimes villains are the juiciest role for an actor to play, and I knew that she would probably relish that opportunity, which she did.
I asked Hillcoat whether he was influenced by other movies in the genre or if he actively tried to avoid things he'd seen on screen before. Turns out, the answer is a little of both:
Hillcoat: It’s a combination of finding research that will make it real and unpredictable. ‘What actually happens that we haven’t seen that they haven’t exploited yet?’ [He references the red smoke coming out of the van that you see in the film’s trailer and poster, but asks that we don’t spoil what that actually is. He says that’s accurate to real life.] So that was one thing, but then I also referenced, obviously Heat, and I actually knew the ex-DEA agent who Michael [Mann] uses as an advisor and worked on Heat. I remember him talking about how, ‘Often these films are scripted where we’re kind of in the movie world and then these guys say ‘Hang on a minute, it’d be nothing like that.’’ What he was saying was in that situation, in Heat, it’d just be total mayhem. With that kind of firepower and with the police today, it’d be mayhem. So that’s what they worked on. So I took influences from like French Connection and Sidney Lumet, and I even showed Chiwetel because of his character, these films by Jean-Pierre Melville, because of that existential — the French are really into the crime film, but the way people have made this choice. It’s not like they can stop and say, ‘Oh, I’ll retire now or take another career.’ So it’s a combination of both. Referencing these influences of past cinema, but also noting how we can depart from that. That’s where the research helps, of the realism.
Of the people we spoke with that day, Clifton Collins Jr. was by far the most serious and willing to discuss the real-world implications in the film:
Collins: Franco doesn’t believe he’s a villain. He went to war, he developed a friendship with Norman’s character, with Chiwetel’s character. They saw and committed, I’m sure, partook in atrocities in hopes for the betterment of mankind, but you never really know. The rules of engagement change when you’re out there. Then you’re kind of fucked. Like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know. I’ll just go back home.’ It’s just not going to happen. You’ve got boys counting on you to survive. So when you come home and people don’t understand what you’ve been through, and they can’t fathom it and look down upon you, ‘baby-killer’ and all this other stuff, you’ve gotta find a place where you can reside or else you’ll become a statistic, one of the 24 per day that commits suicide. One out of four combat veterans end up homeless here in America. So you find the brotherhood, the blue line. There’s a lot of friends I have with past military experience, and now with the militarization [on the homefront], it just brings back more memories of combat. So for Franco, it was very easy to delve into that and feel like he was owed something. The lines of morality get skewed and blurred a little bit. You start to find the loopholes where you get to take things. There are things within the police culture that I think if the American public were aware of, they would just be in awe.
He spoke about how the layers of his character got him excited to be a part of this film, and I asked him if there was any other element that made him want to come on board this project:
Collins: The honesty. You hang out with a bunch of cops, they do a lot. You see them, eating pot brownies or smoking weed. Cops are wasted on cocaine, pulling somebody over, getting busted — the videos are everywhere now. There were 2004+ murders last year, zero convictions. There’s such a disconnect between the police and the community.
Norman Reedus plays the wheelman of the group in this film, and I know that Aaron Paul did a lot of his own stunt driving for Need For Speed, so when the two of them joined the interview, I asked which of the two would be the better getaway driver in real life:
Reedus: I’m sure he would.
Paul: I think it depends on what sort of vehicle. If we were on a bike, he’d — absolutely.
Reedus: I might take you down. In a car? Nah.
Paul talked about his preparation for the role and the crazy things he saw during his ride-alongs with the L.A.P.D.:
Paul: I didn’t do any military training, that wasn’t really a part of my storyline, but for anyone that was playing a police officer or an ex-police officer, John wanted us to spend as much time with the police force as possible. So I spent some time with the L.A.P.D., did some ride alongs. Saw some crazy [stuff]. We pulled over this guy, his street name was like, ‘Psycho,’ or something ridiculous. We pulled him over, and he gets out of the car, his girlfriend gets out of the car who was just shot in the last couple of days, his mom was in the back seat. He had a gun on him that he tried to ditch in the car with the serial number shaved off, he was already on his second strike, so he’s going away for a long time. Then we go back to the police department, and they have me go talk to him. They go, ‘Do you want to go talk to him?’ And I go, ‘No, I don’t want to go talk to him!’ (Everyone laughs) But he was apparently a fan of Breaking Bad. (Everyone laughs) Yeah! I see him look over at me, and gives me this nod, and I go, ‘All right, there’s my in, I guess.’
I asked if he learned anything from the guy:
Paul: No, I didn’t learn anything. But I saw the real, human side to it. This guy was born in it. He really doesn’t have a choice. This is his world. So I got to see a look at their world. It’s strange: what they’re doing, a lot of things they’re doing, are wrong, but I understand it.
I also thought I saw an intentional shout-out to The Walking Dead in the film, and the actors confirmed that was the case. The film shot in Atlanta, which is also where TWD shoots, and at one point in Triple 9, Paul's character waves a gun at a crowd and walks down the sidewalk toward the city. As he's walking, he passes a large road sign that says "Zombies Ahead." It's only on screen for a second, but I had to know if that was purposeful:
Reedus: That’s a John thing. Sometimes when we shoot in downtown Atlanta, they’ll put signs up to not freak people out, you know what I mean?
Paul: Was that just a left, abandoned Walking Dead sign?
Reedus: I think it was, and he kept it.
Paul: That is so great.
Both of these guys have played morally ambiguous characters before, so someone asked if that had any effect on their approach to playing these characters:
Reedus: I think you try to find something you like about the guys, try to make them as human as possible. As bad as they are, they have a mom.
Paul: Even the really terrible characters, as an actor, you try to find something really human about them. You don’t want to make them just absolutely evil. I always try to bring some sort of heart to my characters.
Reedus: Also, in this, we’re all coming together, Band of Brothers-style, to pull off something that one of our brothers needs to happen. We’re doing it because he needs it, so there’s a reason...which is kind of sweet. (Everyone laughs)
Triple 9 is in theaters right now.
