making two tough movies and drunkenness
Whipping scene in “12 years a slave.”
1.
McQUEEN [Black director] We couldn’t shy away from it, we had to go to very dark places. But in the evenings, we would all come together, we would hug each other, we would eat together, we would get drunk together, and then we would come back the next day. It was beautiful.
2.
Film getting raves, “Fair Play”, about a couple where woman pulls a financial coup and boyfriend freaks.
The audience response at preview screenings has been so interesting — clapping, gasping, even yelling at the characters.
People were reacting like it’s a horror movie, and that was very exciting to me. The intention was always to create this balloon of tension that you don’t know when or where it’s going to pop, but once it does, it just becomes this total dogfight.
This feels like a dangerous date movie. You may end up facilitating some divorces.
Couples that have come to early screenings, you see them start to fight on their way back to the car — like the man will say something, and then his girlfriend will slowly look at him like, “That’s what you thought?” So yeah, I can’t wait to break people up. I’m here for it.
Using financial institution setting.
The highs and lows, the stakes of that kind of work environment, felt similar to the stakes of the film and TV industry: You slip up once, and you can be out. And the work-hard play-hard aspect, too, I feel like is in both. It was another male-dominated industry that is hard for women to come up in — and when they do, they’re treated differently, as we all know.
How did you go about learning the jargon?
I took a bunch of hedge fund guys out for drinks! [Laughs] I got them drunk and just started asking them very simple questions. It was really like learning a new language, like Spanish or coding or something. And honestly that was the easy part. Writing the emotional arcs of the characters, that was much more challenging.
Journalist
5moGood story--nice art, too. I'm a huge fan of BI.