CraveOnline: The movie is called A Most Violent Year, and it’s set in one of the most violent years in New York City history. Why was that a significant backdrop when the story is at least partially about not trying to commit violence?
J.C. Chandor: Yeah, it was sort of about that counter-balance, exactly. So I think in this guy’s business, this would have been the story of the guy, living there. His wife and family and family and everything else, in the desperate times these people’s business and everything else they’re running perfectly and the whole idea is they were everymen. They were wealthy and entrepreneurial, but no more so than many of the houses you drive by wherever you are. [Laughs.] So they were prosperous and everything else, but the business is obviously one where, an immigrant business, which was growing and turning it into something else, or in the process of turning it into something else.
The fact that you see that person in the year when they would have been tempted to use violent means to protect themselves and protect their drivers, I just put it in what I considered the most tempting place. Which interestingly is actually the year before. It’s 1980 but they marketed the movie and made it 1981, which is the year the movie takes place in, but the crime statistics are actually from the year before, which is 1980.
Basically this movie for us is set in January, February of 1981, so the point is to see a reaction to the most violent year on record, but what these guys are doing is they’re optimistic. They’re purchasing a piece of property in essentially the absolute nadir. [Laughs.] The city is on fire and they’re running towards it, so that’s why they’re able to even afford the lot of land as it is.
That’s the cool thing. Even though the movie’s very dark and you have a character so pragmatic, there is this very optimistic undertone which is the opening action in the movie, putting the deposit down and making it a bet that New York City is going to turn.
New York City fell into a series of violent years, each about ten years after another after that.
Yes.
Does Abel Morales’ story continue? Oscar Isaac said he thought it would be cool if it would.
Yeah, I mean, I think we all love these characters. You know, the movie wasn’t a huge theatrical hit, to put it mildly. [Laughs.] But we’ll see. It seems my films, for better or worse, have all found a very broad audience in the ancillary markets. Margin Call was sort of a roaring success because of that. So it’s a cool way to see if an audience does grow naturally. I think Jessica [Chastain], Oscar and myself definitely love these guys, these characters, and there’s also so many cool forms of storytelling. You can do all these different multi-episodic things or movies. It’s just sort of a fun time to have cool characters.
So yeah, it did work out to be a total coincidence when I came across this year and I noticed that statistically, ’91 was sadly the sort of height of the crack epidemic, which was [not] spread [over] the entire city when you look at some of the crime statistics. It’s very isolated in these very dense areas of crime, which was horrible. And then in 2001, there’s this crazy spike and a total anomaly, because of 9/11.
But it’s a really cool time to be getting to tell stories. I feel totally humbled by it. Someone wanted to do a play of Margin Call. I don’t think we’re going to be able to do it but it was just fun to be able to hear that idea. It just seems like a really cool time when people are crossing all these different narrative boundaries. So if Oscar and Jessica are up for it, I’m sure I’ll try and come up with some ideas someday. [Laughs.]
I would love to see that. I would love to see where it goes. Maybe it’s a coincidence but all three of your movies seem to center around men, who at the beginning find themselves in a crisis, or an incredibly difficult situation from which to extricate themselves. Then the whole movie is watching them find a way out of it.
Yeah, [I] think one of the reasons why I [was] having to try and do interesting things narratively on a couple of other movies that I was working on was because as a filmmaker, I sort of know how to do that structurally now, and have really enjoyed it. [Laughs.] Because I think it worked well for my storytelling skills, if I’ve got them, but it’s definitely something that I have loved looking at.
But I feel like that also represented something that I was going through at the time, which is a career crisis, of would I be able to do this for a living and support my family with it. [Laughs.] But that is true, those three films. I always as a writer was a little embarrassed that that was the sense people were [getting]. It’s also naturally a great narrative technique, obviously. Crisis plays well in a two-hour run time.
You said that came from a specific time in your life, and your own concerns and anxieties. Are you past those now? Do you think your next film is going to be entirely different?
No. [Laughs.] I’m sure there will be anxiety laden in there. No, I’m working on a couple things right now, super fun. I obviously parted ways with everyone on Deepwater [Horizon], which was super, super sad, but I think in the end probably for everyone’s mental health the right thing. Because it’s a very big, scary movie and narratively it’s fascinating. So that movie was obviously very much about people in crisis! [Laughs.]
A bunch of the other stuff I’m looking at right now is all different kinds of stuff. It’s fun. Honestly, for five years straight here I’ve been pretty much writing or making or talking about a movie, or doing all three at the same time. So it’s been kind of a crazy five, six years for me. I’ve got young kids and a wonderful wife, [so] it’s kind of been fun for me to spend the last couple months here and still be [productive], just doing some writing and chilling out.
Are you writing screenplays?
Yeah, I am writing screenplays. I like to write a couple things at a time but I’m sort of only writing [one], and building a bunch of stories. I’m always very anxious to get back into that process. It’s definitely the most fragile part of the whole process for me. [Laughs.] Besides the morning after the release.
But besides that one day, the writing process, definitely super vulnerable. Yeah, I just kind of feel vulnerable through the whole thing. But I think that’s fun and challenging.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
