We recently got the chance to chat with writer-director David Ayer about his police drama End of Watch, which is now out on Blu-ray and DVD. The acclaimed film stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena as a pair of young patrolmen whose experiences on the gang-ridden streets of Los Angeles are realized for the viewer via a faux documentary approach.
IGN Movies: This was the best cop movie I have seen in ages. The thing that really resonated with me was the relationship between Gyllenhaal and Pena. Any of those every-day kind of scenes between them. They were just real guys, regular people. Can you talk about the demand I’m sure you put on yourself to keep this real and human, and avoid the cop movie cliches that I think people have come to expect?
David Ayer: Yeah, that’s exactly it. There are conventions and tropes, so when you make a genre movie, it’s like you’re handed this checklist of boxes you have to tick, certain moments and things that need to be said. To take a genre that’s this over-beaten dead horse, these cop movies, I try to find a fresh angle, and it’s tough. I’ve got a lot of friends who are cops, and I don’t think of them as cops, I think of them as my friends. They’re really good people, and that’s what I wanted to show. I wanted to have friendship and have all the cop stuff drop away and become secondary to the chemistry of these guys.
IGN: You really captured the gregariousness of these young cops, but as smart as they are there’s a certain fearlessness and sense of invulnerability.
Ayer: When you think about the job and what they have to face. The movie’s not even unrealistic. All of that stuff has happened in one form or another. Officers have been ambushed with AKs, there’s human trafficking, there are cartel runners all over LA county. All that stuff is out there, armed gangsters and automatic weapons. If your job is to confront these people and take them into custody, you can’t think about it too much. You’ve got to be game and ready to jump out of that car at any moment. If you don’t want to run towards gunfire, you’re in the wrong business.
IGN: Can you talk about the casting of, not just Michael and Jake, but I was pleasantly surprised at how many familiar faces and character actors popped up in the movie. For example, David Harbour and Frank Grillo. And until the end of the movie, I didn’t even realize that was Ugly Betty as one of the hard-ass cops!
Ayer: Yeah, that’s sort of the tough thing in this, the casting. Casting is the most important decision you make as a director, and I wanted people that felt real and felt like they could really police that neighborhood. It’s like America. Once we throw on the uniform and get out of training, [you’re like a standard-issue LAPD officer, which is a big face of the department. I wanted this diverse group, and David Harbour killed it. He’s the guy that’s in every precinct; he’s burned out and bitter, and he isn’t going anywhere. He’s just punching the clock. That sort of a stock character in the LAPD world. But it’s great to get really good actors and bring them in and then just let them do their thing. That’s my favorite part of the job as a director, working with actors.
IGN: You have your two main actors filming a lot of the scenes themselves. That took guts. I don’t know any director that would say, ‘Hey, why don’t you just handle this shot?’
Ayer: There are a couple of scenes in there that were entirely shot by Jake, which, yeah, is pretty nuts. But it’s part of the movie, you know. It’s not necessarily found footage-specific, because I kind of break the rules and use hybrid coverage style, so I didn’t get too hung up on who was holding the camera. It was more for me about, what’s the best way to tell this moment of the story. I’ve taken a lot of hits for shaky cam-style and all that, but it’s a mix. I figured it sort of tricks your brain into thinking it’s real when you see some of that coverage. But the other thing it does is it enables the characters to talk directly to the audience, so you get pulled into the friendship and relationships too. They can say things in a more direct manner than traditional drama.
IGN: That also works for the bad guys, if you will. Some of the most frightening scenes in this movie are just following that crew of gangsters just driving around. To me, it kind of spoke to the YouTube generation, who record everything, even if it’s them breaking the law. They just can’t not have their phone out. At what point in the story did you realize you wanted to have that sort of documentary feel from the bad guys’ point of view as well?
Ayer: That was thrown in right out of the gate. I wrote the script in about six days, and it just exploded out of me -- boy, I wish they all did that. But I’ve seen footage shot by gangbangers and them committing crimes. I’ve got cop friends who showed me video they’d shot on duty from cameras they were wearing. It’s just insanely compelling material. It seemed like, “Wow, I can intercut between these two worlds, these people using the same techniques on opposite sides of the law.” And it worked out. One of the first things cops do when they stop a gangbanger is go through their phone and see what kind of incriminating pictures and video are in there.
IGN: Why do you think it is that they’re recording this stuff? Are they just foolish in that regard, or is it kind of a narcissistic thing?
Ayer: Nobody ever expects to get caught. Nobody ever says, “Gee, I better cover my tracks so I can avoid an investigation.” Nobody ever does that. It’s all spur of the moment, and it’s every day for them. It’s just normal. In their world, it’s normal. It’s not like, “I’m going to go 007 on this one, because I’m pulling a crime.” That’s not how they think.
IGN: As much of a definitive cop film as the movie is, in a lot of ways it reminded me of a war picture, something like Platoon, where this an episodic nature to it. Were you aware of some of the war movie parallels, too?
Ayer: Yeah, I was. The big thing I wanted to show is that the LAPD is a military-style organization with uniforms, ranks and weapons, and they deploy to the streets and combat crime. A lot of the culture is very allegorical to the military, as is their mission and what they do. There are also a lot of veterans in the ranks of the LAPD. I wanted to show. The difference between a war and -- well, maybe not a current war -- is that a law enforcement mission will never end. They’re just holding back the tide.
Source : ign[dot]com
No comments:
Post a Comment