Ahoy, squirts! Quint here withour main man in Chicago-land, Capone. He got a chance to chat up the director of GATTACA and, more recently, LORD OF WAR, Mr. Andrew Niccol. There's lots of great stuff in the interview below, squirts... my favorite being Niccol actually involving arms dealers in the production of the film... especially what eventually happened to the tanks in the movie. Like, I said, nifty stuff. Enjoy!!!
Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here. A couple of weeks ago, I raved my buttocks off about a little film opening this week called LORD OF WAR. It is great, trust me. With only a few films as writer and /or director under his belt, New Zealand’s own Andrew Niccol has amassed quite a stockpile of quality films in his arsenal, including (as writer only) THE TRUMAN SHOW, THE TERMINAL, (as writer-director) GATTACA, and SIMONE. I didn’t actually interview Niccol’s when he was in town with the film, but someone marketing his latest as writer-director, LORD OF WAR, must have liked my review and contacted me last week for this exchange.
CAPONE: I saw the film when you were in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, and my brother saw the film with you in Seattle a few days later, and we both noticed the same thing: that as a result of you making this film--and I’m sure this is the case for any filmmaker that tackles a hot-button issue--that you not only discuss the film as the filmmaker, in your case the screenwriter as well, but you also become a designated touchstone for the issue that rests at the center of LORD OF WAR.
Andrew Niccol: It’s true. I found that with GATTACA as well. I guess it’s an occupational hazard.
CAPONE: Is it something you attempted to avoid or are you willing to accept that responsibility?
AN: No, I would really like to avoid it and just let the work speak for itself, because anything I have to say on the subject is hopefully on the screen. But, there’s also the reality of publicity, so it tends to go with the territory.
CAPONE: The subject matter of LORD OF WAR is so big that it’s almost impossible to get your head around it initially. In a lot of ways the film reminded me of DR. STRANGELOVE in that it injects a lot of humor into the situation, as a means to avoid making the audience depressed that they weren’t really paying attention to the film itself. By adding a little humor to it, they’re actually able to cope with the scope of the subject matter.
AN: Right, and there is such an absurdity to much of this work. It’s sort of a macabre absurdity, but I wanted to convey that, and I felt adding humor was the best way. Making a “how to” film about arms dealing seemed to be an interesting way of conveying some of the insanity. For instance, even the scene at the arms fair, the fact that I even call it a “fair” like it’s some kind of carnival is ridiculous. And, you’ll have these mortal enemies going to the same vendor, buying the same munitions, going back to their separate countries, and going to war. Yet, they were so civil in this room full of guns.
CAPONE: I think that scene in the film where Nicolas Cage’s Yuri goes to the fair is the first scene where I questioned if that situation is how it is in the real world, not that I had a reason to doubt you. It seemed almost too ridiculous to be true. There are girls in bikinis riding tanks like they were the poll at a strip club.
AN: Yeah, but you look at any gun magazine, for instance, even on the smallest scale, guns and girls go together. This is just the same thing on a larger scale. The man selling a new tank is like [one] selling a new Lexus. They do it with the same amount of absurd fanfare.
CAPONE: So, you point out a lot of absurdities in the practice, but I also sensed you had a degree of admiration for these men. Is that a fair statement?
AN: Even the guys that I dealt with, practically, in making the film, who are arms dealers…I liked these guys. The guy who supplied all the tanks for me, when he said that he was going to have 50 T-72 tanks on that runway at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, he had them there. He was far more efficient than a lot of the guys on my crew. He was a very personable, amiable guy. I liked him, and then I thought “Oh, shit! He’s actually selling these to Libya next week.”
CAPONE: Is that true?
AN: Yeah, it was. All of those tanks that you see in the film, he had to have back because he was selling them to Libya. Of course, he would claim it’s a legitimate deal. Then you have to ask yourself, “How legitimate is any deal selling tanks to Libya, like that’s what Libya needs.” But anyway, I liked the efficiency. These guys are good businessmen. He was as good as his word. Interesting that you can be seduced yourself, even knowing what the consequences are.
CAPONE: I believe you mentioned that in the scenes set in the former Soviet Union, the thousands of AK-47s, you said that you actually purchased those?
AN: Yeah, exactly, we bought all of those guns, which is frightening that it was possible. I don’t think you’d be able to film in America with that amount of real weapons—to have 3,000 real weapons. Even with security, a production wouldn’t be allowed to film in America. But, in the Czech Republic, there were no such rules.
CAPONE: I know that you based the character of Yuri on a composite of five different arms dealers. How did you initially meet or find these guys?
AN: A lot of it comes from the headlines. You can get some of the most notorious people on the phone to talk about what they do, but sometimes they would not be candid with you, even if you can get through to them. They all deny. That’s why it’s so hard to combat, because they would all deny that what they were doing was illegitimate. They would say they’re doing legitimate deals. That’s why it’s so hard to pin them down; there are so many loopholes. That’s why Ethan Hawke’s Interpol agent character always looks so tormented during the movie, and yet he’s the one who’s supposed to be doing the chasing. Yuri looks fine, doesn’t break out in a sweat, while Ethan Hawke’s character looks completely tortured because it’s just so hard to enforce these things.
Maybe that’s the reason that a movie hasn’t been made about this subject, because there’s such a gray area in arms dealing, because people would say, “Oh, well, you’re supplying our allies.” Then maybe there’s a faction over here that we want to help. It seems like it’s for the greater good, and yet a lot of innocent civilians die.
CAPONE: You make that point really graphically in the opening credits sequence where you follow the creating and “life” of a single bullet. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s very similar to the opening credits of, of all things, the new CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY movie, where they follow the manufacturing process. All I could think of when I was watching LORD OF WAR was, This is almost identical. And I’m sure that it was completely unintentional; but, in a strange way, it’s not dissimilar.
AN: Yeah, it’s almost appropriate, even though I haven’t seen the other movie. I always thought as well it was interesting to show Yuri’s journey, because he starts in the Ukraine and ends up in a running this massive operation.
CAPONE: Why did you feel that making him an immigrant was an important element to this story?
AN: I wanted to make the film as accessible as possible, and I just let the facts lead the story, because a lot of these guys are, of course, from former Soviet states because that’s where the guns are. So, they naturally had access to all of those weapons. Even the whole business of Yuri’s early life in Little Odessa is based on fact. A lot of Russians pretended to be Jewish to come to America to escape the Soviet Union. I just used reality and wove it into a story.
CAPONE: In a lot of films that feature arms dealers, the dealers themselves are usually portrayed more as organized crime figures or drug-dealer types. Was one of the missions of your script to show that in many cases the exact opposite may be true, that they can blend much easier into society than one might think?
AN: Yeah, and it’s also the way that they think about themselves. They think of themselves as businessmen.
CAPONE: You never had him guarded by a group of guys with machine guns or anything like that. He worked alone.
AN: Right, he wouldn’t want to draw such attention to himself. You get the feeling that he’s maybe never fired a gun—until he actually does. I quite like it, in some strange way—a movie full of guns, and they’re rarely fired in the movie.
CAPONE: Your films as both a writer and a director seem to focus on your so-called trademark, dealing with what people call “artificial reality.” But, I look at it more as a focus on people who are always being watched—either knowingly or otherwise. And, I think that applies to this film as well.
AN: I don’t like to analyze too much, what I do, because I’m superstitious, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it anymore. But one common thing I can see is that there’s always fraud. All of these people are frauds in some way or are hiding something. That comment about their being watched, and they feel they are, comes because they’re always doing something fraudulent.
CAPONE: An interesting point that you bring out in LORD OF WAR is the chicken-and-egg question: Would the wars have happened without the guns, or do the arms dealers exist because of the wars? What do you think the answer is?
AN: It’s been documented that these guys are somewhat political scientists in some ways. They’ll see a country where there’s an opposition group, and the opposition group feels they’re not being heard, and they will approach them when they’re on the verge of violent protest, and they will offer them guns. And then, they will go to the government, and they will say, “This group has now got guns. You need more weapons as well.” And, they’ll go back to the first group, the rebel group, and say, “Well, now you need more guns.” It goes on like that. So, what I think they do mostly is fuel the fire. They look for a fire and they fuel it.
CAPONE: So, it’s not uncommon for them to work both sides of the conflict?
AN: Oh no, in fact, that’s the best way to operate.
CAPONE: So, they’re like the one-man stockpiles basically.
AN: Right. Ian Holm’s character is based on fact. An arms dealer did, in fact, supply both Iran and Iraq with the same weapons in their war.
CAPONE: I wondered because Ian Holm’s character and Nicolas Cage’s character seemed like they had polar opposite approaches to how they conducted business. One of them was a guy who took sides a lot of times, and the other made it a point to take all sides, if it helped his business. Currently, what is the more common way they operate?
AN: The more common type now is Yuri Orlov, Nicolas Cage’s character…because what used to happen is that in the Cold War, there would be brokers. You would be working for the CIA or you’d be working for the KGB. There were only two ways: it was a closed shop. But, there’s been such a chaos in the arms industry as a consequence of the end of the Cold War that suddenly there were these cowboys that came into the market like Yuri, whose only allegiance was the money.
CAPONE: Were there any other films that you had seen that inspired the way you approached LORD OF WAR?
AN: Not consciously.
CAPONE: Are there any that you like in particular that might address similar subjects, or is this a first?
AN: No, there’s nothing that I would point out.
CAPONE: One last question: Can you tell me a little about PAANI?
AN: PANNI—It’s the Hindi word for water. Just don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.
CAPONE: That’s why I’m asking!
AN: No, I don’t mean to chastise you. It’s just that a friend of mine, Shekhar Kapoor [director of ELIZABETH and THE FOUR FEATHERS], was raising money in Cannes and said, “Oh, Andrew’s going to write the script?” as a way of raising money, and suddenly, it’s on the Internet forever. Even though I don’t speak a word of Hindi.
CAPONE: The story idea [about India 35 years in future, where war has broken out in a major city over water, which has become a precious commodity] seems extremely interesting.
AN: Yes, I like the idea of it.
CAPONE: So, it’s not something you’re officially involved in yet.
AN: Ah, no.
Capone
Email Capone here about the Gun of Rambo. He can hook you up!
