Interview With "The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare" Screenwriter Arash Amel

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Next Best Picture Podcast, and this is my interview with the

[00:00:04] co-screenwriter for the Ministry for Legendary Warfare, Arash Amel.

[00:00:09] Gus March Phillips, I have a mission I want you to lead.

[00:00:15] Thank you, Sergeant. What's the plan?

[00:00:18] To neutralize the German U-boats in the North Atlantic.

[00:00:23] We're losing the war. Hitler is not playing by the rules, so neither are we.

[00:00:30] We both know that I'm not very popular with the administration.

[00:00:37] The reason they find you unattractive is the very reason I find you A-tractive.

[00:00:45] If I'm to do this, I'll need my own team.

[00:00:49] You won't like them. They're all

[00:00:55] bad. They'll need to be.

[00:00:57] Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Next Best Picture Podcast, where I am being joined right now by

[00:01:03] Arash Amel, the writer of the new film directed by Guy Ritchie, the Ministry of

[00:01:10] Ungentlemanly Warfare. It's quite a mouthful, but believe me, when you see the movie,

[00:01:15] you'll understand why. Arash, first of all, how are you today?

[00:01:18] I'm very well, thank you, Matt. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:21] No, thank you very much for being here to talk about this movie.

[00:01:24] I saw this just the other day, and I had so much fun with this movie.

[00:01:32] Normally that's the case when I go into a Guy Ritchie film. I know what to expect with his

[00:01:37] style at this point, but at the same time, I think with this one in particular,

[00:01:43] what was most surprising to me was that I thought that this was all original and made up.

[00:01:50] I had no idea if these people actually existed. So when you wrote this, did you write it to be

[00:01:58] a different type of film than Guy Ritchie came along and made into a Guy Ritchie movie? Or

[00:02:02] did you write it with the feeling of, hey, I want someone like a Tarantino or a Guy Ritchie

[00:02:08] or somebody to come along and make this a blast? In the worst Hollywood way, when I got

[00:02:15] involved in this project in 2017, the book was sent to me by Jerry Brockheimer trying to figure

[00:02:21] out how do we make this into a movie. When I read it, the pitch, and I'll explain how

[00:02:28] it ended up, but the pitch that I gave the studio was, this is The Dirty Dozen meets Oceans

[00:02:34] 11 directed by Guy Ritchie. There you go.

[00:02:38] The reason why that was the case was that I read this book and Damien Lewis's historical

[00:02:46] nonfiction book that is the basis of the movie and which itself is the basis of these

[00:02:51] sort of declassified war department files. Within it, I saw this absurdity, this ridiculousness

[00:02:59] of these kind of misfits being put together to go and fight the most crippled, the most

[00:03:07] mechanized advanced army that history has ever seen and sort of the blitzkrieg of the

[00:03:15] Nazis. It immediately sort of transported me back to the great war movies that I grew up with and

[00:03:23] not the ones of the 60s and 70s that really influenced me, which weren't serious, which

[00:03:32] weren't the kind of... There was long enough from the end of the war that pop culture

[00:03:37] started to claim the war and sort of reinterpret it. So, the works of John Sturgis,

[00:03:45] The Great Escape, The Westerns that influenced Alan Magnificent's Seven,

[00:03:49] The Dirty Dozen as I've said, Kelly's Heroes, Were Eagles There, it goes on and on and on.

[00:03:54] So, it's this blend of those 70s war movies and the spaghetti westerns. So,

[00:04:02] within that milieu, I was like, I want to see that movie. I want to see that movie. I want

[00:04:07] to have a good time. The lessons of that war and danger of being forgotten,

[00:04:12] Nazism is still here. It's not gone away. Here was a story that was this global coalition

[00:04:18] of different cultures and nationalities and people from all walks of life coming together

[00:04:22] to defeat Nazis. And who doesn't like that? I was going to say in the sense of like,

[00:04:29] and I don't mean this as a knock necessarily, this film doesn't need to necessarily be

[00:04:35] multi-layers deep in its messaging. It's very, very simple when you watch the movie.

[00:04:40] It makes its point across in the bloodiest, most fun manner possible. And sometimes that's

[00:04:47] all you need is to be reminded, hey, you know what? Movies can be fun and fuck Nazis.

[00:04:53] Yeah. I love that. That should be our new tagline.

[00:04:58] Right?

[00:04:58] Fuck Nazis. Yes, because I feel that we're in danger in this era for cinema where it is

[00:05:07] sequels and prequels and reboots and sort of an IP and so on, is that original cinema has

[00:05:14] kind of been booted off into this left field of seriousness and prestige not to knock any

[00:05:22] of that. But the movies that you would just go, it's an original movie based on something

[00:05:30] that may or may not have happened. And in our case, it did happen. But it's something that I

[00:05:34] go to and I have fun and I enjoy myself. And it was really for me, it was this forgotten

[00:05:41] genre of movie that was an opportunity for us to bring it back. And it's no coincidence

[00:05:45] that Jerry was the producer. I mean, this is the producer of The Pirates of the Caribbean

[00:05:49] and Humm Keddon. And you go back, the rock and you keep going back. It's a con air.

[00:05:56] It is meant to be a good time. And that was why from the beginning, my dream scenario was the

[00:06:02] guy would direct it because that swagger, that kind of, you know, fuck those Nazis and

[00:06:09] let's go kill them. I mean, there's only one person who can do that. I mean, it's a

[00:06:12] genre onto himself. So that was it. And it's interesting too when I watched the movie,

[00:06:17] it does have the feeling that, oh, this could be laying the groundwork for more missions. And

[00:06:24] there is a sequel down the line, but you're limited to history. These are based on real

[00:06:29] characters. What are you going to do? Just like make stuff up that didn't happen necessarily.

[00:06:34] So it could go either way here. So first to be clear that the number 62

[00:06:40] commander unit, which is what this was officially called the small scale raiding force

[00:06:44] operated all the way to 1945. So this was only David. And if you look at Damien's book,

[00:06:50] they ran for the whole of the war. They had some crazy missions. And in fact,

[00:06:55] some of those other missions are actually, they've been ported into the movie.

[00:07:00] And I'll give you one example is that the opening sequence where they,

[00:07:06] I'm not going to spoil it for anybody, but you've seen it in the trailer. They go in,

[00:07:09] they sneak into a Nazi camp and they kill a bunch of Nazis. And they, you know,

[00:07:13] trying to rescue their, their colleague, you know, Apple. That was actually based on

[00:07:20] a second operation that they did. So this operation was around January 42. They actually

[00:07:25] did September 42, which was to raid a Nazi base, a compound with a garrison in the Channel

[00:07:35] Islands to steal naval intelligence. And as all the details were exactly the same, they,

[00:07:39] they, you know, went up to these cliffs and this little boat, they called the little pisser

[00:07:44] and they find this cliff and they cut the, you know, wires. And in that scenario,

[00:07:51] it was even more ridiculous because the Nazis actually a couple of them fainted on the site

[00:07:56] of seeing them. You know, some of them ran away. Some of them had hair nets on and were

[00:08:01] in the shower. So they really caught them by surprise. And so I was like, let's amalgamate

[00:08:05] that with the, you know, there were subsequent missions that they really did raid and murder

[00:08:11] mayhem. So there was so many adventures that these guys went on. If I had the opportunity,

[00:08:17] if the audiences sort of created the opportunity for us to tell a subsequent story, there's

[00:08:23] plenty of mileage in history. So did you write this to be a one-off or did you write this

[00:08:30] with that open door? I wrote it in the hope that people would love to see further adventures.

[00:08:36] And Joey has been on record to say, I would, if he had his way, he would jump at doing another

[00:08:42] movie. So, you know, but I'm always nervous about putting the cart before the horse.

[00:08:47] Well, you know, you always put it out there in the hope and, and, and why not? I mean,

[00:08:53] if people want to see more Nazis being sort of wall to wall murder of Nazis, then who am

[00:08:58] I not to oblige? Well, I got to say, I love, love, love, love this group of characters here.

[00:09:04] And I think everybody just has such fantastic chemistry with each other and the movie is just

[00:09:09] so slick, so clever. I was curious to know how did you decide because there are so many

[00:09:16] characters, how did you decide which perspectives to focus in on the most? Because from my point

[00:09:23] of view, you know, a lot of attention is given to Marjorie and Gus March Phillips.

[00:09:29] You know, I think those are the two who probably have, I think, the most screen time in the

[00:09:33] movie. So how did you decide that I'm going to base my narrative structure from the perspectives

[00:09:41] mostly of these, of these two? The real life mission was actually two components. There was

[00:09:46] the guys on the boat that went down. And if you're interested at all, it was actually

[00:09:52] Apple, Alex Pettyfoot was never on the boat with them. He actually went on a separate ship

[00:09:57] just to do some research and see where the actual ships were. And so, but so that was

[00:10:01] that component. Then there was a ground component, which was actually run by in real life,

[00:10:08] a character called Richard Lippett, who was an SOE spy, together with local African Nigerian

[00:10:16] spies who were in and on Fernando Poe. And Marjorie actually didn't physically go on the

[00:10:21] mission. Marjorie was, was running that component for M. Annie and Fleming from Home Base.

[00:10:30] And when I came to the adaptation, I looked at Marjorie's character and I was very much of the

[00:10:36] thought that firstly, Marjorie was the most incredible person in real life. She was an

[00:10:41] actress. She has an IMDB listed credits. She trained female operatives to go behind enemy

[00:10:48] lines in France. So she was, you know, she was a trained paratrooper. So she would jump out of

[00:10:53] planes and stuff. And so she did all of that. I was like, my God, this woman is a bad ass.

[00:10:57] I want to see her there. And that's one point I think that, you know, you can make a leap

[00:11:01] with history. So what I did was that it was always going to be two components of the mission

[00:11:07] on screen. You were going to see Gus and his men and that on the boat. And you were going to see

[00:11:13] Marjorie and the composite character that Richard Heron became, which who Babs plays,

[00:11:19] who's one of my favorite characters in the movie as the spy. He became a composite of the

[00:11:24] real life Richard Lippett and the African spies that were there. And so you would see this kind

[00:11:29] of two operation, two halves of an operation at the same time that all eventually come together

[00:11:36] for this big, big finale. And so this back and forth with M and E and Fleming sitting in the

[00:11:42] middle. If you kind of look at it sort of in that way, and at some point being told to fuck

[00:11:47] off by, by, by Gus and his team, which, you know, a lot of that again was dropped from

[00:11:55] truth as well. I'm sure I'm sure. To all of our listeners of the Next Best Picture podcast,

[00:12:02] we know you love movies. We do too. Do you like going to the theater? Well, Regal Unlimited just

[00:12:09] makes sense. Regal Unlimited is the all you can watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself

[00:12:14] in just two visits. See any standard 2D movie anytime with no blackout dates or restrictions.

[00:12:22] When you want to watch a movie in a premium format like 40x, IMAX, RPX, or ScreenX,

[00:12:28] your Regal Unlimited membership gets you into those premium experiences at reduced cost. And

[00:12:35] with Regal Unlimited, you won't just save money on tickets. You'll also save on snacks. Members

[00:12:41] get 10% off on all non-alcoholic concession items. So if you're planning to see two movies

[00:12:47] this month, just two, you need to join Regal Unlimited. Sign up now in the Regal app or

[00:12:53] on regmovies.com slash unlimited. That's regmovies.com slash limited. And you can tell them Next

[00:13:01] Best Picture set you with the promo code slash regal nbp24. That's slash regal nbp24.

[00:13:23] to the cast too because I just get such a sense of how much they're enjoying speaking this dialogue

[00:13:30] to each other. It's done in a way that's so suave, so cool. And I'm curious to know,

[00:13:38] was it mostly verbatim or did the actors take your words and kind of twist them a little

[00:13:44] bit? Because what's up on the screen is fantastic, but I'm just curious how that

[00:13:48] translated once it got in the actors' hands. Well, with a movie like this where you have

[00:13:52] so many moving parts, there's so much and also once it goes to Guy, Guy has a very unique

[00:13:58] style of working in terms of actually looking at the actors and saying, what can you do? What

[00:14:03] do you like doing? What is your skill? What is your technique? Take an example.

[00:14:08] Isa was never supposed to sing. There was no singing in the original script,

[00:14:14] right? But Isa can sing and Guy was like, let's put a song in there. Let's have you doing a song.

[00:14:19] And then what if that song was in German? Let's have you singing in German. It's like,

[00:14:24] well, I can't speak German. That doesn't matter. So with a movie like this, it's

[00:14:31] where it's a lot more to do with the feeling and the actors actually inhabiting the

[00:14:39] roles. My job was actually to create such a solid structure of character that they could then go

[00:14:50] on and they could bring their own twist to it because I feel that's why they work, because

[00:14:56] Guy allows the actors to bring that sort of, the joy of inhabiting the clothes of this

[00:15:02] character and really running with it. And I think that's where you see in Henry's performance,

[00:15:08] for example, like how much is truly enjoying it. So it's very much an entire collaborative process.

[00:15:15] And I think with movies of this type, if you try to hold and you try to control and you try

[00:15:22] to be too rigid with what the text is and what's being said rather than the essence of

[00:15:28] what's being said. And look, can we use sort of these words to convey the same meaning as

[00:15:35] those words? Let's do it. Like it's not, you know, it's as long as we're all moving

[00:15:41] towards the same target and we're trying to all make the same fun and suave and sophisticated movie.

[00:15:48] Right. Right. What was the hardest scene to write?

[00:15:52] Oh my God. The hardest scene to write. The hardest, it was actually the hardest sequence

[00:15:58] to write. Okay. Was the, I don't want to give the ending word, but the hardest sequence was

[00:16:05] technically trying to balance the tension between what was happening in the party.

[00:16:12] Yes. What was happening in the boats you have, if you think about it, you have

[00:16:18] two tugboats coming in three ships, a party happening at the same time. And

[00:16:25] what I'm very happy with is that that was actually constructed very early on. That was one of the

[00:16:30] sections of the movie that just didn't change all the way through. And obviously there was some,

[00:16:35] you know, you know, concessions made for production and so on, all those things.

[00:16:39] But they're trying to sort of maintain the tension while making sure no one gets confused.

[00:16:47] And I hope you weren't, you were very clear as to, you know, who was stealing what and what

[00:16:53] was the ticking clock and who, what was happening. So that whole sequence was the part that I was

[00:16:59] most nervous about because really the whole movie is building up to that. And the engineering of

[00:17:04] that had to be right. And often, you know, that's the forgotten and unspoken components

[00:17:10] of screenwriting. Like it's not just the dialogue with the words on the page or the

[00:17:15] characterization. It's actually construction of, Hey, did these 30 minutes of action

[00:17:21] actually make sense? And, you know, if we're cutting between, you know, five different scenes

[00:17:26] and you see it in the end of Nolan movies, like where it's just the intercutting. It's,

[00:17:30] yeah, it's a lot of writing to get to that, you know, even before you shoot a frame.

[00:17:37] So that part of it was my sort of my sleepless nights.

[00:17:43] I think about that a lot in terms of how you're basically already editing before an

[00:17:48] editor or anybody ever comes along. Like you're like, you know, pre-editing the film when you're

[00:17:53] writing it essentially. And I think that that construction is something that a lot of people

[00:17:59] don't tend to think about, especially when it comes to intercutting. I think people think

[00:18:03] scenes just are sometimes written out from beginning to end and then it's finds itself

[00:18:07] later in editing. And it's like, no writers have to think about how this is all going to

[00:18:13] work. Essentially, you kind of have to play it out in your own mind, if you will.

[00:18:16] So all that really does make a lot of sense to me. As we get to the end here, you have such

[00:18:23] a varied filmography from sports films and war films and action films. And, you know,

[00:18:31] you've had your hand in a lot of different projects. I'm curious to know what is both,

[00:18:36] would you say, your comfort zone? And what is maybe say an unknown area that you're like,

[00:18:42] I've never done that before, but that seems like a very unique challenge that I would want to

[00:18:46] take a crack at. I have never done horror before. I don't know why. I think maybe I just

[00:18:54] don't enjoy the feeling of making myself scared. You know, I prefer to sort of,

[00:19:00] you know, laugh. So there's, you know, that's one area. But it's interesting because I asked

[00:19:09] of myself and, you know, over the years, there is a common trend through most of the movies

[00:19:16] is that typically they're always about misfits or outsiders. There's somebody,

[00:19:22] Marie Colvin, who was kind of going to complete outsider. Yannis, who in basketball

[00:19:27] kind of was an outsider who now is very much the face of the NBA. And again, are misfits

[00:19:34] in the small scale rating force who were the epitome of like the misfits. And often it's,

[00:19:40] you know, they're going against the system. They're going up against, you know, really great

[00:19:45] odds. And somehow I ended up gravitating towards that and I looked at it and thought, oh,

[00:19:50] okay, there is this sort of DNA that could have runs through it. So for me, it's also an

[00:19:56] exploration of cinema because I remember being a teenager and seeing Shinra's List in Jurassic

[00:20:06] Park at the same, you know, the same year from the same director. And it made me think that,

[00:20:12] wow, like you really can tell stories that are in completely different genres and different

[00:20:19] styles. But as long as they speak to you in a way that you understand, like, you know,

[00:20:25] areas of cinema that you want to play with. And, you know, and I grew up, I was raised by cinema.

[00:20:30] So I was raised by theater and VHS. And, you know, I used to live in a video store

[00:20:38] from 10, 11, 12, I'd go and just see as much as I can. And so I feel sort of that somehow

[00:20:46] has created this sort of need that, you know, I would love to do, for example,

[00:20:53] a movie like Sneakers. Remember Sneakers? Yeah, it's almost like I watched that again recently.

[00:20:59] First time I saw it was when it first came out. And it's a reminder of, again, like,

[00:21:06] how cinema used to sort of move you and but entertain you and take you to places. And so

[00:21:13] that's kind of what I am exploring. It's kind of going into places that I don't know and

[00:21:19] being surprised. So that's kind of the underpinning of it very much.

[00:21:23] Well, Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is definitely the kind of film that as 10,

[00:21:27] 11 year old in a video store, I would have loved to have plucked off the shelves and

[00:21:32] I would have rewatched and worn that VHS tape out. That's for sure. But looking at your

[00:21:38] future here, I see you have some upcoming projects. Are you able to tell us a little

[00:21:44] bit about where we can find your work in the future? Yes. So both in film and television,

[00:21:49] we're currently shooting a TV show based on a comic book that I wrote for Amazon called

[00:21:57] Butterfly with Daniel Day Kim as a spy thriller set in Korea. We're very excited

[00:22:02] about that. Hopefully out by the end of the year. And keeping in line with history,

[00:22:09] Fred and Ginger, the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie with Jamie Bell, which

[00:22:14] we're working on behind the scenes. And there'll be a few announcements about that in the next

[00:22:19] couple of months or so. There's some really exciting sort of developments that-

[00:22:22] I talked with Jamie about that last year during the All of Us Strangers tour.

[00:22:27] Oh, really? Oh, it's in the next two, three months, it'll be something that I think will

[00:22:32] surprise everybody. And where, you know, it's one of those secrets where you kind of quietly

[00:22:37] excited and hope it all sort of holds together. But that's certainly sort of on the near term

[00:22:42] horizon. Very cool. Very, very awesome. Well, Arash, thank you so much for your time here today.

[00:22:47] I really, really appreciate it. I highly urge our listeners to go out and check out

[00:22:51] The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. There we go. It's a blast. It's a good time.

[00:22:56] If you like seeing very beautiful men and a beautiful woman just team up together to

[00:23:02] obliterate Nazis. This is the movie for you. So Arash, thank you so much.

[00:23:06] Thank you so much, man. Pleasure. Take care.

[00:23:36] Support, which you can also lend on over at Patreon for $1 minimum a month.

[00:23:41] You'll get some exclusive podcast content from us. Thank you all so much for listening as always.

[00:23:46] And we will see you all next time.

[00:24:06] Hello, it is Ryan and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite

[00:24:35] social spin slot games on Chumbacasino.com. I looked over the person sitting next to me,

[00:24:40] and you know what they were doing? They were also playing Chumbacasino. Coincidence? I think not.

[00:24:44] Everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumbacasino is home to hundreds of casino style games

[00:24:48] that you can play for free anytime, anywhere, even at 30,000 feet. So sign up now at

[00:24:53] Chumbacasino.com to claim your free welcome bonus. That's Chumbacasino.com and live the

[00:24:58] Chumba life. No purchase necessary. DTW reporting prohibited by law. C terms and conditions 18 plus.