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Your new movie The
Interrogation of Anna Goode - in a few words, what's it about?
The
Interrogation of Anna Goode is a story about how a person responds
when their world is upended and their eyes forced wide open. It’s about
the challenges to our perception that come when we’re forced to try and
understand our fellow man beyond a surface-level interpretation. I mean,
at the start of the film, you’ve got a guilty woman who has committed
unspeakable acts in the hands of two members of law enforcement, both of
whom each have their own ideas about justice. They have this woman dead to
rights. Open-and-shut as far as they’re concerned. But when one of the
men is forced to experience her point-of-view in a totally unexpected way,
the film becomes about the ways in which our prejudices can become
challenged and things we thought were simple become complex. It’s about
the spectrum of color in the world around us. How
did the project fall together in the first place? A friend of mine
is in law enforcement and I was always fascinated listening to the way he
would describe criminal psychology. And as we’ve seen in the world at
large these last several years, it’s gotten very easy for people to
become entrenched in our viewpoints and label others as wrong or evil or
ignorant or however we see them. It all started to make me think about
what would happen if a member of law enforcement was suddenly forced into
the skin of a guilty person but in doing so, learned something they never
could have imagined that gave them a deeper understanding of the world
around them, and their own humanity. From there, it just became a pressure
cooker about this interrogation that takes the most bizarre turn and the
people inside the room, working it all out. What
were your sources of inspiration when writing The
Interrogation of Anna Goode? Brinna Kelly [Brinna
Kelly interview - click here], my creative partner, and I both love a good
crime thriller. We get inspiration from all sorts of places, but really,
we love a good crime thriller. The development process for this film was a
really fun exercise in watching great crime movies all day and all night.
I think we probably watched L.A. Confidential more than about anything
else, just the intensity of those performances, the wry humor, the energy
of it. But we would watch hours and hours of intense, pressure-cooker
movies, and we checked out every single interrogation scene that we could
find. There’s a lot. I don’t think we found all of them, but we
definitely watched quite a few.
What can you tell
us about your co-writer (and star) Brinna Kelly, and what was the writing process like?
Brinna Kelly has been my creative partner across four features now,
starting in 2015 with The Midnight Man, then continuing with The Fare and
Forever Mine before we came to this project. I have to
say, the thing I enjoy the most about working with her is that she has
such a sharp mind, such a sharp intellect, that she can make the tiniest
adjustment to a line of dialogue or a character moment that it will
completely alter a scene for the better. She’ll make it funnier or
scarier or more heartbreaking. Being an actor herself and coming
originally from acting as a child, she understands what actors are looking
for in material, she has a very good sense of rhythm, and she just knows how to bring
all of that to the things she writes. The
Interrogation of Anna Goode wasn't the first time you've worked
with Brinna Kelly - so what can you tell us about your previous
collaborations? I would like to think we bring out the best in each other
as collaborators. She is so good with character, so good with story, that
I’m able to engage her throughout the entire process and she’s able to
offer such valuable insight and feedback. On The Midnight Man we
were both learning a lot, and I think we made a pretty good film there,
but we really started to find a strong voice with The Fare and
Forever Mine. Those movies are genre-mashes that explore challenging
ideas and delve into complex characters. We both really enjoy that sort of
thing and we have fun making those. But we both fundamentally have
mainstream tastes, so we keep coming back to the audience experience. Back to
The
Interrogation of Anna Goode: What can you tell us about your
movie's approach to the thriller genre?
The challenge with The
Interrogation of Anna Goode
was that we wanted to keep as much of the action inside the interrogation
room as possible while still keeping it engaging and surprising. So that
became our focus. There are a lot of really great, single-setting
thrillers like the Ryan Reynolds’ Buried or Tom Hardy’s Locke, to the grand-daddy of all of them in my opinion,
12 Angry Men. It’s such a perfect atmosphere for tension and conflict. Our
approach was always to keep finding ways to tighten the screws so that the
audience would view the film as an engaging thriller first, instead of a
single-location gimmick movie. Since The
Interrogation of Anna Goode is mostly restricted to one pretty
bare room, what were some of your techniques to keep things visually
interesting? Josh Harrison is our absolutely brilliant
cinematographer, and that is the question that no doubt kept him up at
night from the time we pitched it to him. He did an amazing job of finding
ways to photograph the characters differently but tied directly into the
story of the individual scene, in a way where the room felt alive and
never stagnant. He’s an expert at finding the most cinematic and
thrilling ways to use every tool at his disposal. He has an unbelievable
sixth sense about using a dolly here, going hand-held here, focusing on
the mirror in this shot, dutch angle here, let’s turn the world and
cross the line on purpose, because of the sudden change in perspective.
He’s just brilliant and endlessly creative. A few words about your overall directorial
approach to your story at hand? My focus was always the emotional reality of the characters, most
notably John Savage, the FBI agent whose experiences and perspectives
really drive the entire story. I was always trying to keep us grounded in
his point-of-view, and everything we did with light, color, framing,
camera, music, was all in service of his emotional journey.
What can you tell us
about The
Interrogation of Anna Goode's cast, and why exactly these people?
I’m unbelievably spoiled by the cast on this
film. Brinna Kelly is a tremendously capable actor who can play so many
shades, so many nuances, and pays such attention to detail that I’m
making new discoveries about her performances long after we shot the film.
Neil Hopkins, I had the pleasure of working on a short television pitch with him years ago and I remember noticing him on
Lost. In even a
handful of episodes, he made quite an impression. Clearly not just on me,
but on the writers and producers as well, as they kept going back to him
for stories involving the character of Charlie. Neil brings so much
gravity and charm and then vulnerability to the role. He’s able to shift
his energy around like so few actors can. He was absolutely a blast to
watch. Max Adler I’ve known for many years. Brinna and I first worked
with Max on The Midnight Man, and he has always stuck with me. He’s
so plugged-in, he’s always listening and reacting, and he always finds
ways to surprise me. Like he did on The Midnight Man, he ad-libbed a few of
the best bits in the movie, bits that always garner a laugh from
audiences, because he’s got such a great sense of a scene, such a great
sense of timing and when to let the air out a bit versus when to ratchet
up the tension. I’m always looking for chances to work with Max. And the
rest of the cast, I really could go on and on. Katie Leclerc came in and
was just unbelievably terrifying in her single day. The character could
not possibly be any less like her in real life. She’s so sweet, so fun
and she just brings the energy up around her. But she was utterly
terrifying. Enrico Natale, I’ve known for many years, he’s a talented
filmmaker on his own and he was so intimidating in his sequence. Shauna
Emmons did such an amazing job playing two completely different
characters, two totally different viewpoints and experiences. A very tough
act, but she nailed them both. Same with Monica Lee, who I’ve also known
for a long time and who just walked in and did a great job with a tough
scene that required such vulnerability. And we had an amazing cast of
kids, Alexander and Mateo Saucedo and Shyann Rose Whitley. All of whom
were just such naturals and so fun. We were spoiled. And Shawn Mandel, our
poor put-upon public defender. That wrinkled suit was all his, we didn’t
have to do anything to make him look so beat up. Everyone was just awesome.
Do talk about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere! I try to
keep the atmosphere as light as I can, while still being focused on the
work. We had a tight schedule, some incredibly high page-count days, one
of them was a 25-page day. I don’t know how we managed to pull that off.
But the actors were all on their game and made those days go by so easily.
We had a small, tight crew and everyone was amazing. No bad apples. It was
really a great set to be on, despite the lean schedule.
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The $64-question of course, where can The
Interrogation of Anna Goode be seen?
On digital and OnDemand everywhere on April 8. Wherever you
download and watch movies. Any future
projects you'd like to share? Always developing a few
projects. We’ve actually got two more crime-thrillers in the works. Not
quite ready to talk about them just yet, but they’re both really
exciting films that I can’t wait to make. Anything else you're dying
to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask? Check out The
Interrogation of Anna Goode on April 8! Thanks
for the interview!
Thank you!
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