Interview With "Sleeping Dogs" Director/Writer Adam Cooper

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[00:00:55] That's o-l-l-y.com

[00:01:00] You were listening to the next best picture podcast.

[00:01:03] And this is Giovanni Lagos interview with the writer and director for Sleeping Dolls.

[00:01:08] Adam Cooper.

[00:01:09] What's this about?

[00:01:10] One subject to the head.

[00:01:13] I'm sorry.

[00:01:18] I don't understand.

[00:01:19] None of it.

[00:01:22] We'll be boring the electrodes in the memory centers.

[00:01:24] The temple of the wild loves.

[00:01:26] You sick, what?

[00:01:29] I'm doing a clinical trial.

[00:01:32] I've prepared a lot of stuff.

[00:01:36] My doctor says I gotta keep my mind active.

[00:01:39] Joseph Wheat is mine because it makes sense.

[00:01:41] Tell me how it really went down.

[00:01:43] I ain't no killer!

[00:01:45] Make it right!

[00:01:46] Or I'm dead.

[00:01:49] He tells me he didn't do it.

[00:01:51] This is the next best picture podcast.

[00:01:53] I'm Giovanni Lagos and I'm joined by the director of Sleeping Dolls.

[00:01:57] Adam Cooper.

[00:01:57] Thank you so much for joining us.

[00:01:59] Thank you, Giovanni.

[00:02:00] Where are you?

[00:02:01] I'm in New York.

[00:02:02] How about you?

[00:02:02] Where are you at all right now?

[00:02:04] I'm in Los Angeles.

[00:02:05] There are sirens going by so I apologize for that.

[00:02:08] I live in Flatbush,

[00:02:09] so I have sirens going by all the time.

[00:02:11] So if anything, I'm sorry.

[00:02:12] Yeah.

[00:02:13] Were you from New York?

[00:02:15] No, I moved recently.

[00:02:17] Like six months ago, I lived in Florida most of my life.

[00:02:19] But my whole family is from New York,

[00:02:21] so you know, it's that phase when they get older

[00:02:24] and they're like, let's go to Florida.

[00:02:25] But instead for me, it was just way younger.

[00:02:29] Cool, man.

[00:02:29] So Sleeping Dolls, based on a novel by Eosir Voshi,

[00:02:34] very curious how familiar with the

[00:02:37] Cameras, what inspired you that I wanted to...

[00:02:40] I have to adapt this story?

[00:02:43] Well, I'd like stories with dubious protagonists,

[00:02:47] anti-hero stories, conflicted characters.

[00:02:52] And in 2016, a producer, manager, I know his name is Puyah Shibazian,

[00:03:00] who I met on the movie, Alegion,

[00:03:03] sent us this book, The Book of Marrors,

[00:03:07] as a galley it was pre-publication.

[00:03:10] And the book is...

[00:03:13] In many ways very different from the movie,

[00:03:15] or at least in sort of the rollout of the narrative.

[00:03:18] But in the last third of the book,

[00:03:21] because the book is told in sort of three installments,

[00:03:24] each one fronted by a different character,

[00:03:28] the third installment involves Roy Freeman,

[00:03:32] homicide detective with early on Saddell Alzheimer's,

[00:03:34] whose test with sort of picking up sort of the third thread

[00:03:40] in the book and then sort of investigating

[00:03:42] the remainder of the narrative to its conclusion,

[00:03:45] that character was really, really compelling.

[00:03:48] And so because of that character's specific circumstances,

[00:03:53] it felt like a great lens through which to sort of tell

[00:03:57] the narrative of the book, but the narrative of the book has been

[00:04:00] entirely reframed through the lens of that character.

[00:04:03] So because this is your directorial debut if I'm mistaken,

[00:04:07] yes, and you've been writing for a long time.

[00:04:10] So when you're writing this script,

[00:04:14] what made you prefer to focus on the whole Roy Freeman section?

[00:04:18] Obviously it's a detective story.

[00:04:20] It's easy to get people invested in that.

[00:04:23] But what made you feel that would stand out more?

[00:04:25] Because when you're writing and you're adapting,

[00:04:27] you always do the lens of certain things work better.

[00:04:29] And a film, what applies that is more cinematic.

[00:04:34] I'm wondering what made you want to latch onto that

[00:04:37] preferred to the other sections and frame it in that way.

[00:04:41] I think the other characters in the book didn't have culpability.

[00:04:47] They were ultimately responsible for any of the events of the past.

[00:04:52] There are people who were,

[00:04:56] regardless of the other sort of fictions that we created based on the book

[00:05:01] and Roy's involvement, what the book had was a man who 25 years ago in the book

[00:05:10] was the homicide detective on a case and was responsible for putting a man behind bars

[00:05:16] who is now on death row.

[00:05:18] So there's a level of responsibility that that character feels

[00:05:22] for what's been done.

[00:05:24] And then the suggestion that perhaps he mishandled it or did it wrong

[00:05:29] and now there's an innocent man there, that character

[00:05:34] is bearing across.

[00:05:36] That character has responsibility.

[00:05:38] Whereas in the case of

[00:05:41] the New York based lit manager who is the first installment in the book,

[00:05:46] his role in the book is he receives a manuscript written by this guy named Richard Finn

[00:05:52] about events that took place 25 years ago and he's reading that manuscript.

[00:05:56] Right?

[00:05:56] And then the manuscript abruptly ends and he wants to find out more information

[00:06:00] and he goes and he finds out that Richard Finn is dead.

[00:06:02] This is in the book.

[00:06:03] But that character has no culpability.

[00:06:05] He's not involved in anything that transpired.

[00:06:08] The next installment in the book is there's an investigative journalist who 25 years ago

[00:06:13] wrote some stories about it.

[00:06:14] But likewise, that character has no culpability.

[00:06:18] So it seemed like a hotter choice to choose a character who had culpability was responsible

[00:06:24] for what transpired.

[00:06:26] He has his own existential crisis which is a crisis of identity and wondering who am I?

[00:06:31] Right because of the nature of his ailment.

[00:06:34] But he also has a moral dilemma.

[00:06:37] Did he put the wrong person behind bars?

[00:06:40] Irrespective of any mystery surrounding him or his own involvement.

[00:06:46] He has a present tense moral dilemma of maybe he did something wrong

[00:06:50] so that felt like the hotter choice narratively.

[00:06:53] I love how you talk about culpability and that leads to a more fleshed out

[00:06:59] dimensional character.

[00:07:01] Watching the film, there's certain noir-esque qualities that you feel from it.

[00:07:06] And this director will tell you every filmmaker always is inspired by something.

[00:07:12] Certain films that really be like, I don't want to do exactly that but I'm very much

[00:07:18] intrigued by what you did there.

[00:07:20] So I'm curious was there something about a film that inspired you while making sleeping dogs?

[00:07:26] Was it anything for me because when I think about culpability

[00:07:29] and I think about like detectives, I always think of something like double

[00:07:32] indemnity like ability while they're flick or old school like detectives like that

[00:07:37] that they weren't they were grizzled and they weren't perfect and they had these dimensions to them.

[00:07:43] Sure let me ask you a question first.

[00:07:47] When is your whatever you're going to do going to appear before the release of the film?

[00:07:53] I'm virtually done.

[00:07:55] So I'm trying to avoid spoilers.

[00:07:57] I'm trying to avoid let's just avoid spoilers about what I said.

[00:07:59] Yeah, I know what people are going to watch.

[00:08:02] Also about specific references.

[00:08:05] Just say there's an Alan Parker film that I really like a lot which is a touchstone for me

[00:08:13] and one of the things that was sort of just compelling as I was thinking about this film.

[00:08:20] I like Adrian Lines movie Jacob's Ladder.

[00:08:25] A lot.

[00:08:26] It was written by Bruce Joel Rubin.

[00:08:29] I like

[00:08:31] Scorsese Shutter Island.

[00:08:34] I can see that.

[00:08:35] I definitely can see that especially.

[00:08:38] I will touch on that.

[00:08:39] Okay, interesting.

[00:08:40] Yeah so I mean I like movies where the audience is unfolding.

[00:08:46] The audience is experience of the plot machinations are lined up in lockstep

[00:08:54] with the protagonists.

[00:08:57] There's no omniscient storytelling.

[00:09:00] There's no cutting away to third parties and their narratives.

[00:09:05] I mean the most we have of that in this movie

[00:09:08] is a linger on Tommy Flanagan's character when Russell's character is walking away after

[00:09:13] they've spent time speaking and Tommy Flanagan is also sitting in his car

[00:09:19] watching the outside of Russell's character's apartment when Karen Gillan's character goes in.

[00:09:25] But outside of that there's no there are no moments in the script that aren't lensed through

[00:09:31] the main characters experience of the events.

[00:09:34] So that was something that I tried to be really sort of steadfast in.

[00:09:41] And there are certainly moments of insecurity in storytelling where you're like well

[00:09:46] do I need to cut away something else?

[00:09:48] But I feel like by sticking with Russell sort of you know the time when he's reading

[00:09:55] reading that book of mirrors and sort of learning about events from the past

[00:10:00] I think sticking with Russell creates kind of a little bit of a claustrophobic narrative feel.

[00:10:06] And that was something that yes it was shot that way but I think

[00:10:11] it really got sort of honed in on in post.

[00:10:15] So you know we tend to that this mystery this whole case I think any good detective film you

[00:10:20] want to keep the audience is guessing but a big key and to keeping that mystery

[00:10:25] is the way you edit the film you know Roy is suffering early on said all simers he's taking these

[00:10:30] medications he's got notes everywhere he's trying to keep focused of like what I remember when I'm

[00:10:35] learning so how important was it for you that through the editing you used as a way to keep audiences

[00:10:42] like on the edge? I think that there was more of it more of the stuff that you're referencing

[00:10:49] in earlier cuts of the film sort of reminders of his mental state and what's going on.

[00:10:56] And I think some early shares of those cuts I think a lot of people felt like hey we get it

[00:11:03] we get it. You know I also think that Russell even absents sort of cutaways to things on the walls

[00:11:12] or you know water dripping from a faucet where there's a piece of tape that's as hot and the

[00:11:15] piece of tape that's as cold. I think you know even absents those things I think Russell does a

[00:11:21] really good job of just reminding the viewer of his state of mind just in the subtlety of his

[00:11:27] performance and we didn't need quite you know quite as much as it related to sort of you know

[00:11:34] reminders around his mental state or you know you know there were I think there was formerly maybe

[00:11:43] even an additional scene that sort of tracked the evolution of his illness. I mean right now it's

[00:11:50] pretty much the opening there's a spot in the middle and then we were revisited at the end so

[00:11:56] there are three scenes geared towards it and absent that it's really just Russell sort of filling in

[00:12:04] filling in the blanks when he's in different scene work telling somebody hey I forget a lot of

[00:12:09] shit or you know asking a character away and I was the investigating officer like reminds you of

[00:12:16] it without hitting you over the head on it because it exists in a certain genre it's not you know

[00:12:24] it's not the movie still Alice you know which is a move about a woman with Alzheimer's and the

[00:12:30] effect that her Alzheimer's has on her family and her own life right. It's kind of more a plot

[00:12:37] mechanism through which characters revealed. Another way he used it that I thought was enjoyable

[00:12:43] there's a scene where Roy goes to a bar and he's asking about the bartender he's like stuff happened

[00:12:49] he's like oh yeah like practically like he knew that or like he just plays into it and it's this

[00:12:53] slightly comedic way you talked about Russell Crowe it's obvious we need to talk about the legendary

[00:13:00] Russell Crowe when you were writing did you always have Russell in mind for the role of Roy Freeman

[00:13:08] or were you thinking of someone else and then through meeting Russell came to be.

[00:13:13] I mean there was a very short list of of dream actors and Russell was high on the list of

[00:13:20] of dream actors but I wasn't I think at the time in the early in the early goings of

[00:13:26] of writing there wasn't so much of a type because so much of his persona the characters persona

[00:13:33] had been robbed by the illness. So it gave you a little bit more sort of a blank canvas as a man

[00:13:39] right there was this presence of him that's sort of been that's isolated him and made him a bit

[00:13:47] of a shell of a man and then there was a past that was much more sort of raw right so

[00:13:56] there wasn't one specific person in mind in the early goings but he was definitely very high

[00:14:03] on the short list. That's great also the fantastic you know Karen Gillan's part of the Zon Sombl

[00:14:11] and you know we mentioned Noir's earlier so real quickly was it very inspired you know the way

[00:14:16] you translated her character to film of like femme fatales you know this very mysterious character

[00:14:22] in how she's playing into the story. Yeah I mean I think that when you hear femme fatale

[00:14:29] you think of double indemnity you think of postman always rings twice of diploma you think of

[00:14:37] body double you know we think of Brian diploma and I think this kind of a cliche associated with it

[00:14:46] that immediately sort of contrasts a certain kind of image and I kind of I really wanted to cast

[00:14:51] against type and I think Karen is often known for sort of her more comedic work and I kind of thought

[00:15:01] casting an actress such as Karen in the part created its own level of sort of confusion and

[00:15:08] misconception before you even go into watching the movie so I think it was it was it was it was a

[00:15:16] deliberate it was a deliberate choice. Well I think we're gonna have to wrap up sadly it's been such

[00:15:23] a delight talking to you thank you so much thank you all right be good have a good day

[00:15:32] here everyone thank you so much for listening to Giovanni Lagos interview with the director

[00:15:36] for Sleeping Dogs at the Cooper here on the next best picture podcast Sleeping Dogs is now

[00:15:42] playing in theaters from the Athenio. You have been listening to the next best picture podcast we

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