Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. I’m verrrrrrry curious about this one. I didn’t flip out for THE MATADOR, but I thought it was a solid triple, a good film that marked Richard Shepard as someone to watch in the future. THE HUNTING PARTY sounds like a hell of a follow-up, and I’m glad Elston Gunn sat down with him for a few minutes for this chat:
Hello. Elston Gunn here. The last two years have been kind to Richard Shepard. After directing the pilot episode of CRIMINAL MINDS, which has been renewed for a third season by CBS, Shepard's dark comedy THE MATADOR, starring Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear and Hope Davis, opened to postitive reviews and earned Brosnan a Golden Globe nomination. Shepard then returned to televison to direct another pilot. This time, it was for ABC's UGLY BETTY, which earlier this year earned him a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Comedy Series. While that show was gaining popularity in the United States, Shepard was in war-torn Bosnia already busy at work directing his next feature, THE HUNTING PARTY (formerly known as SPRING BREAK IN BOSNIA), starring Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Kruger, Joy Bryant and Dylan Baker among others. Shepard based the film's screenplay on "What I Did On My Summer Vacation," the October 2000 Esquire article by Scott Anderson, which tells the true story of five journalists including Anderson, Sebastian Junger and John Falk, who make a haphazard attempt to catch Bosnian war criminal Radovan Karadzic, but are soon mistaken as a CIA hit squad. In the movie, the hunters - a discredited reporter, a cameraman and a young journalist - become the hunted. The Weinstein Company, who also distributed THE MATADOR, will open THE HUNTING PARTY wide in the U.S. on Friday, August 17. You can watch the trailer here. Shepard took time to answer some questions for AICN. [ELSTON GUNN]: First of all, congratulations on your DGA Award. What was that whole experience like for you? You were there for Martin Scorsese's first win as well. [RICHARD SHEPARD]: It was such a blur. My adrenaline was pumping. I was drinking like a fish, but I couldn't get drunk. My wife kept saying I was going to win, but I really didn't think I had a chance. When they called my name, I thought I had imagined it. And then when I finally got on stage, seeing Scorsese in the audience... wow. All in all, it was a great night. Of course, the next morning you still have to take the garbage out. [EG]: UGLY BETTY, of course, became a hit for ABC. That must have provided, at least, some subconscious positive juju during grueling days of shooting in Bosnia and Croatia. [RS]: When we were shooting the pilot I don't think anyone quite knew if the show was going to be a hit. You can never really know. It was kind of a risk for ABC and they were definitely placing their bets. But it was a helluva lot of fun. America Fererra is a brilliant actor and the people behind the scenes were really smart and talented. I like doing pilots because they are like mini-movies. You cast the show from scratch, pick the locations, the look of the whole series and then it's over two months. I was in Bosnia when UGLY BETTY premiered in the states and got the incredible ratings news from the internet. It was a good day. [EG]: The last time we did this, you had just directed an episode of CRIMINAL MINDS, THE MATADOR was about to open and you were going to start writing THE HUNTING PARTY. It's been an eventful two years for you. Are you feeling good about your career now? [RS]: It's been a great few years. THE MATADOR opened a lot of doors for me. I was able to do the pilot of CRIMINAL MINDS which led to BETTY. I was able to get THE HUNTING PARTY going, which would have nearly been impossible if not for THE MATADOR. If THE HUNTING PARTY was a straight thriller, maybe, but it's a mixture. A mutt. Drama-thriller-black comedy. It took Richard Gere and Terrence Howard and Harvey Weinstein seeing THE MATADOR for them to trust that I could handle the material. [EG]: Though you direct these television projects, do you still think of yourself as a writer first? [RS]: I am a writer/director of features. I am very, very lucky to be able to do my own original material in movies. For TV, I'm a hired gun. I try to make the very best pilot I can from other people's scripts. It's fun. A lot of pressure, obviously, but less than if you wrote the material as well. [EG]: What brought you to THE HUNTING PARTY? Was it something you wanted to do, or did the Weinsteins already have it? [RS]: After THE MATADOR I was asked what I wanted to do next. I kept saying I wanted to do a thriller set in a post-war environment, sort of along the lines of THE THIRD MAN. A young executive at Intermedia, Alex Litvak, gave me a copy of an article from Esquire that Mark Johnson and Intermedia owned about these journalists' attempt to catch the most wanted war criminal in Bosnia five years after the end of the war. I knew very little about that war, and was at first put off. But it stayed with me. I met the journalists, I went to Sarajevo and actually went into the deep woods of Bosnia on the hunt for this war criminal, slowly got hooked and found an angle I could write a movie on. The movie was developed at Warner Independent, who financed the script and helped us get Gere and Howard, but when President Mark Gill left Warners, we took it to The Weinsteins, who were incredibly jazzed about the project. [EG]: What was it like adapting someone else's work into a screenplay - a nonfiction piece, nonetheless? [RS]: It was challenging. Especially since my whole take was that I was going to do my own research and change characters to fit what I learned and wanted to say. I think I made the story have more of a political aspect, and found a lot of dark humor in the fact that the world says they want to catch these war criminals, but like our "hunt" for Osama Bin Laden, don't do a lot about it. The article was a great jumping off point. And the real journalists were incredibly helpful. Four of the five have a great cameo in the movie. [EG]: So, how much research did you conduct for the project? Did you talk to Anderson, Junger or Falk? [RS]: We talked a lot. Talked and drank. (Slivovice is homemade plum brandy of the Balkans.) Those journalists are great guys. Incredibly helpful about what it is like to be a reporter. I did an amazing amount of research. I talked to people from the UN, The Hague, the State Department, the local government, I went to places where raids had recently taken place - to areas that the United States highly suggested I not go. [EG]: You are obviously attracted to the darkly comic. Did you feel you had to push that aspect a bit for THE HUNTING PARTY or was the whole story strange enough that you just had to play it straight and the comedy will unfold naturally? [RS]: It's not a "comedy" per se. No Richard Gere walking through a hotel lobby in his underwear and cowboy boots. But there are real funny moments in the movie. Much more out of the absurdity of the real situation. The real journalists got mistaken for a CIA hit squad (mostly because no one could believe anyone was actually looking for these war criminals). Stuff like that is pretty black humor. Plus, Gere, Howard and Jesse Eisenberg (from THE SQUID AND THE WHALE) had great chemistry. A lot of humor comes in the scenes with them and how they react to these real, ridiculous situations. But to me the funniest thing in the movie is the absurdity and charade that occurs as these guys realize that despite all the talk, no one in the International Community is really looking for these war criminals. Karadzic, the real man these guys were after, has been on the run for over ten years and published two books and a play!! He works more than I do. [EG]: I know you love actors, so let's talk about the cast. Was it a creative and collaborative environment? How did they surprise you? Gere and Howard alone look like an interesting team. [RS]: There's a lot of time in a car as these three head up the mountains searching for the war criminal, so if there wasn't a great vibe between the actors the whole thing would have crashed and burned. The movie depended on it. That's why casting is so essential. I loved Gere in INTERNAL AFFAIRS, the edgy, go for broke Gere, and he was psyched to find that part of himself again. Gere really pulled all the stops. It's an indelible performance, and Howard shines like you've never seen. He can do more with his eyes, then most actors can with ten pages of monologue. And Jesse steals the movie from both of them. The funniest few days was when Diane Kruger was on the set. For weeks, it had just been those three guys in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly, a beautiful woman comes around. It was like high school. I could barely get them to concentrate. [EG]: How was the shoot? You've made movies out of the country before, but what sets this one apart for you? [RS]: Shooting in Sarajevo was incredible. It's still battle scarred, but it's beautiful. Mosques and churches and synagogues right next to each other. It's also one of the only predominantly Muslim countries that doesn't hate America. We helped stop the war. There was talk of shooting in Bulgaria to save money but I agreed to cut shoot days in order to have the authenticity of shooting in Bosnia. Getting Terrence and Richard and Jesse to see the place where the war actually happened helped the movie enormously. Of course, we couldn't shoot the whole movie in Bosnia because of the political implications of the script. It would have been too dangerous. So, we shot the hiding place in the woods and a lot of our interiors, etc. in Croatia. [EG]: What did you learn while directing this film? How different was it than anything that you've done before? [RS]: We shot most of the movie handheld. My DP, David Tattersal (STAR WARS EPISODES I - III; THE MATADOR), had never done that, nor had I, it was a real run and gun style, and a fun challenge. Very few marks for the actors. Real daylight instead of lights. Actual locations instead of sets. It was a blast. A challenge. Plus, there are a few flashback battle scenes, and I had never done anything like that. That shit is hard. Fun, but taxing. Without a doubt, THE HUNTING PARTY is the most complex thing I have ever done. The mix of genres, the need to do justice to the story of the journalists, as well as the victims of the war, while still having dramatic license, was a challenge. I didn't sleep a lot. Got a few gray hairs. Drank much Slivovice. [EG]: It's interesting that this film is coming out a few months after A MIGHTY HEART (directed by Michael Winterbottom, who also made WELCOME TO SARAJEVO in Bosnia). These true stories of American journalists in peril hit home in a fascinating kind of way. [RS]: Real Foreign Correspondents have balls of steel. I love movies that take me places I'm too afraid to go in real life. Where real people do things I would never do. Making movies about them is cool. Seeing it is like an adventure all in the safety of a movie theater, and I think audiences respond. They certainly have in our research screenings. [EG]: And I like the line in the trailer, "Putting your life in danger is actual living. The rest is television." [RS]: That was a Gere improv!! Last day shooting. Last shot we did. I love it. It encapsulates the idea that by playing it safe, and having no adventures, you miss out on many of the things that make life so worth living. [EG]: What kind of films influenced you - maybe intuitively, if not consciously - for THE HUNTING PARTY? [RS]: David Tattersal loves to watch movies during pre-production and while shooting and talk about scenes he loved and how the filmmakers achieved it. It's a great motivator. Whenever I could, I watched all the best journalist movies. SALVADOR, UNDER FIRE. Watched a lot of Michael Mann movies - THE INSIDER, especially. Watched THE CONSTANT GARDNER. Oh, and I also watched a lot of porn. It was lonely in Croatia and I missed my wife. [EG]: What are you working on next? Are you still directing an adaptation of Jeff Abbott's PANIC? How is that coming along? [RS]: We finished the final answer print of THE HUNTING PARTY two weeks ago, so mostly I'm just recuperating. I'm doing a quick rewrite on a huge action movie for the Weinsteins, and then spending the summer promoting THE HUNTING PARTY. As for my next movie, I don't know. PANIC has a new screenwriter and he's really doing brilliantly, so maybe that. I'm also writing a new original, so... we'll see. Elston Gunn
