Given that you’d generally not view your own films, is it a unique, different experience when you are observing it?
Not really. I was very happy with both of those but there’s little things that you review that there’s nothing you can do about. I think I found for me I got better results from not watching. It seemed that way.
With gamblers, did you understand the compulsion to gamble?
Oh yeah, we did a lot of gambling. We did a lot of poker. I personally like craps but we played and I played a lot of poker in Harrah’s in New Orleans, and a few home games here and there. We played a lot of poker. Yeah, I understood the compulsion to gamble. That guy’s name is Gerry. Look, Gerry’s got the great transformation myth belief. He thinks that if only this, this and this happens, everything else in life is going to be fine. If only he can hit the big numbers and this and that. But there’s a lot of roads into gambling and what it means. There’s a very good, I think, credible theory that the problem gamblers only gamble to lose. That’s really what it’s about. It’s about the losing, not the winning.
That sounds like serial killers really want to get caught.
Maybe. I don’t want to get too fast and loose with the thing but it does seem to me that you know the odds. Any serious gambler’s got to know that the deck’s against him ultimately. Okay, maybe you’ve got a poker game. Maybe that’s a different thing but in terms of casino house games or pokies. Well, you call them slots, we call them poker machines. Any gambler knows it so we did a lot of feeling out around that, but I’m pretty excited about that one.
An interesting thing about gambling movies is that the filmmakers get to decide the outcome, so they control the odds.
I like that. I hadn’t thought about that aspect of it.
Animal Kingdom was such a breakthrough for you, have you been working consistently since?
Not quite consistently but it’s been a little like a gyroscope if you like. The period that’s coming out now, very busy. Two here, Bloodline… Exodus was last year.
Exodus and Starred Up last year.
Exodus, Starred Up, Ryan Gosling’s movie.
Were you at Cannes for Gosling’s movie?
No, I wasn’t able to be there for that. But I was looking forward to going to Cannes with that. That was one of those things, I was working on Bloodline at the time and couldn’t get away, but c’est la vie.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
