Actor/Producer Ian McShane and Director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego talk to The Inside about location, instinct, director, tone and texture in regards to their new character thriller: “American Star” from IFC Films.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 The reason of her interest in you
00:15 is that you remind her of her father.
00:18 What are you doing?
00:19 Meeta knows the target.
00:20 You know, the one you're involved with.
00:22 I'm not involved with anybody.
00:23 Don't lie to me!
00:24 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:27 Prove I'm the one!
00:30 Let's go!
00:31 I don't need no one!
00:33 I'll finish this job.
00:34 What's really interesting here is the existential nature
00:42 of this story.
00:43 You know, the aspect of the assassin--
00:46 because an assassin usually, in my perspective,
00:48 would be time meets opportunity.
00:51 And yet, all this man has is time.
00:53 Could you talk about finding that psyche of him in--
00:56 but then Gonzalo sort of finding that milieu to place him in,
01:00 specifically that island?
01:02 Well, yeah, we prefer the term--
01:04 I prefer the term government operative to assassin.
01:06 I mean, he is a product of the British Army,
01:09 a product of, you know, dirty ops, psych ops, died dirty.
01:14 He's been everywhere.
01:15 He's done everything.
01:16 He's not a man hired privately, unless you think that.
01:18 But he disobeyed his first cardinal rule, which is get in,
01:22 do the job, and get out.
01:24 And bad intel, and he stays, and he pays the price.
01:29 He pays the price, but he also gains something from it
01:33 over three days with an emotional attachment
01:35 that he never wanted before.
01:37 And he finds out that one of his emotional attachments he has,
01:40 and he has, in a way, created some kind of monster
01:44 with somebody.
01:45 And I just think, you know, we've
01:47 talked about this project for a long time.
01:49 I mean, we worked together on another movie called
01:52 "Hollow Point" back in 2016, which
01:54 is, you know, with Patrick Wilson, Johnny Legs,
01:57 John O'Connell, which is a very underrated Western noir.
02:01 So it really is.
02:02 But it got lost in distribution hell at the time,
02:04 or whatever went on.
02:05 You're unlucky.
02:06 This time, I think we're luckier.
02:08 And it's a better picture.
02:10 But he makes good pictures.
02:12 He's a very gifted filmmaker.
02:14 And it's a pleasure to be asked to work with him.
02:15 And it took a while.
02:17 And I was involved with it from the onset
02:20 to the actual making of it.
02:22 And I'll let him take over from there.
02:23 Gonzalo, amigo.
02:26 Amigo.
02:27 [LAUGHTER]
02:29 Perfecto for the beach?
02:32 I'm Gloria.
02:33 Wilson.
02:35 What do you do?
02:36 Security.
02:38 I deal mainly with business.
02:41 So why are you here?
02:42 Just making sure everything's in order.
02:44 It is.
02:46 This ship, the American Star.
02:50 It's on the other side of the island.
02:52 Do you always go on holiday alone?
02:55 I like meeting people.
02:58 They say there are three sorts of people in PortAventura.
03:01 Those who live here, tourists, and those
03:05 who are running from something.
03:07 I don't live here.
03:09 And you don't look like a tourist.
03:12 I think we always felt like the assassin, or government,
03:19 or hitman, or whatever we want to call him.
03:22 For me, it was secondary.
03:23 I mean, of course, this is the reason why we do the movie.
03:26 And it's the perfect metaphor to describe the passing of time,
03:34 how you get older, the lost opportunity, the lost love,
03:37 the family, how you can portray those things.
03:40 But it could happen to anyone that
03:41 is so focused on his job, that never have time
03:45 to really enjoy and feel about what he really wants.
03:50 Of course, him having that past, it makes him stronger,
03:57 and having more scars, and it's more difficult
04:00 to reach inside of him.
04:03 And that somehow shows us a better way
04:06 to make this relationship with Max, or with Ryan,
04:10 or with Nora, like reflecting all these different aspects
04:15 of his life, like the childhood, or the parenthood,
04:19 all those different elements.
04:21 So I think that the turning point of this creep
04:26 was when we found the American star, actually.
04:29 When we discovered the shipwreck in Puerto Ventura,
04:33 that already when we started writing,
04:35 we was not ready there.
04:36 It's completely sound like five, six years
04:39 before we started writing it.
04:41 So we never were lucky to really see it ourself.
04:45 But the ship itself somehow was telling us things from Wilson,
04:50 and Wilson was telling us things from the ship.
04:53 And the fact that the ship was in Puerto Ventura,
04:55 that it's a really difficult landscape, full of scars,
05:00 and full of texture, and dry, and it's like, oh, you love it
05:05 or you hate it.
05:06 So it was like the perfect environment to tell the story.
05:10 And also, the fact that Puerto Ventura
05:13 has another really important side,
05:15 that it's like the touristic part of Puerto Ventura.
05:18 It's this kind of tourism that have
05:22 all these kind of all-included things when you go to a hotel.
05:25 And somehow, when I was there the first time,
05:27 I felt like I felt like lost summer holidays,
05:31 like the kind of '70s holidays, when you really
05:34 go to a restaurant and you still hear Julio Iglesias singing
05:37 there.
05:38 You know, like they're using that music.
05:39 And we wanted to protect that as well,
05:41 because it was a beautiful contrast with the landscape,
05:44 with the shipwreck, with Wilson, and how
05:46 Wilson is going to discover this new life.
05:50 And for him, it's like full of color and full of things,
05:53 you know, like full new things to discover.
05:55 And of course, we confront him with this different character
05:58 that make him think about his life.
06:01 You don't like my company?
06:03 Hm?
06:04 I could give you a hand with the job.
06:09 [WIND BLOWING]
06:12 Dodger that.
06:17 It's your job.
06:17 Speaking of which, the target will be here in a couple of days.
06:26 So get your holiday time in now.
06:30 What do you know about this crowd, anyway?
06:37 I didn't even know that.
06:39 Rule number one, the less you know about the target,
06:50 the better.
06:50 What's rule number two?
06:56 Wilson, it's funny.
06:57 He's in this sort of beautiful landscape,
07:00 and yet he's so isolated.
07:01 And yet he's looking for connection.
07:03 And that's sort of the interesting thing,
07:05 because, you know, Ian, the energy between either
07:08 with Coleman, the envoy, or with Nora,
07:12 or even with his fellow government operative,
07:14 there's an interesting that he wants to be connected,
07:17 and yet he's disconnected.
07:19 Can you talk about finding sort of that yin and yang
07:22 within him?
07:23 Well, you know, the actors were terrific.
07:25 I mean, the relationship with the kid, working with the kid.
07:28 I mean, we rehearsed a little bit.
07:30 But then when we came to do it, we
07:34 filmed also those two major scenes.
07:37 It was very important.
07:38 One scene we filmed early in the morning for the light,
07:40 and the other scene at the magic hour, the last scene,
07:44 where they throw the toy into the--
07:48 but it never felt rushed.
07:50 You know, I had a relationship with Oscar, and he trusted me.
07:53 I trusted him, which you have to do.
07:54 And Gonzalo directing, whatever.
07:56 And it was just the most natural thing in the world,
08:00 as it did with the relationship with Nora,
08:02 when he cast the incomparable Fanny Ardant as the mother,
08:05 to do that very enigmatic scene.
08:08 Dancing, you don't know what--
08:10 and Wilson's, whoa, he's out of his depth in many ways,
08:12 whatever.
08:13 But the casting was hugely important,
08:17 and they all brought--
08:18 Absolutely.
08:19 Yeah.
08:20 But--
08:20 Yeah, and they were all really--
08:22 I remember when we found Adam Nagaitis,
08:27 and I remember talking to him.
08:29 He loved the script.
08:31 And I have the tendency, because I
08:34 started doing really independent movies and arthouse movies,
08:37 so I love to talk to the actors.
08:38 I love to rehearse.
08:39 I love to do so many things.
08:40 But sometimes actors, I mean, already
08:43 knows how to do things.
08:45 I'm not going to waste his time telling, blah, blah, blah,
08:48 blah, you know?
08:49 And when I talked to Ryan for the first time,
08:51 I started speaking, and then he said,
08:54 I know how Ryan is.
08:56 Just let me show you.
08:58 And I said, perfect.
08:59 That's perfect.
09:00 And he came on set, and he was just being a beautiful Ryan.
09:04 Beautiful, because he's fragile, but he is really
09:10 scary at the same time.
09:12 You never know what he's thinking,
09:14 but you want to hack him, and that's difficult to achieve.
09:17 And it's just because when he read it,
09:19 he knew exactly how to approach it.
09:21 Gloria doesn't usually introduce me to her friends.
09:29 You must have made a big impression.
09:32 She took you to see that ship?
09:39 Oh, the American star.
09:42 It's only a heap of scrap metal,
09:45 but Gloria has always found it fascinating.
09:56 Gloria hasn't realized yet, but the reason of her interest
10:01 in you is that you remind her of her father.
10:05 So he's a military man, too?
10:12 No.
10:13 And it's not that you look like him, either.
10:26 Well, whatever it is, Anne, I'll take it as a compliment.
10:34 Ian, could you talk about, was there
10:36 like a certain key thing you had to remember about Wilson
10:39 in order to play him?
10:40 Because in different scenes, I mean,
10:42 when you're in the bedroom, and just the details of how
10:45 he needs things specifically, could you talk about that?
10:48 And then Gonzalo, obviously you said
10:51 that Ian doesn't need direction, obviously,
10:53 because of his experience.
10:55 But you probably said a couple of things
10:57 to him that sort of reflected what
10:58 you wanted the movie to be, even before you
11:01 guys went into production.
11:02 You guys could talk about that?
11:05 We talked about-- yeah, we had--
11:07 what we had, we had about two days of really good
11:12 sitting down with the script, with all the actors.
11:14 We were there, and then we did camera tests,
11:16 and then we started filming.
11:17 But which was hugely important, which
11:19 meant there was no wasted time on arguing about the script
11:22 when you got on the set with any of the actors or anybody else.
11:25 It was like saying, here we go, and we
11:27 get into it straight away.
11:29 And he has a marvelous way with actors, you know,
11:32 Gonzalo, especially actresses, I think.
11:33 You trust him, which is important.
11:37 And yeah, I like to be directed, and I like to give a nudge
11:40 in the right direction.
11:41 Don't like too much talk when somebody points you in the--
11:44 no, but I mean, you know, because in TV,
11:47 you get a lot of directors who, you know, sometimes,
11:49 I mean, when you see these series,
11:50 I mean, you don't know where they come from.
11:52 They're from a different, different, affecting planet
11:54 that's never been seen before.
11:56 But they fit the quota.
11:58 But that's another subject.
11:59 Gonzalo is a gifted filmmaker.
12:00 He's his own guy.
12:01 And the gift was that we made-- that we could make--
12:04 we were allowed to make the film we wanted.
12:06 I mean, it came together over a period of years.
12:08 I brought in Mike Elliot, who I'd
12:10 made a film with, Jawbone, which is another terrific,
12:12 independent movie, British, with Johnny Harris and Ray
12:15 Winston, my friends.
12:17 And Mike had proved to be the sort of final link that pulled
12:21 it together, in a sense, with our Spanish producers
12:23 and Gonzalo.
12:24 And we made a movie.
12:26 And nobody looked over our shoulders for five weeks.
12:28 So we were allowed to make the film that we wanted to make.
12:32 And they said, that's a rare thing, you know?
12:35 So if anybody doesn't like it, it's your fault, Gonzalo.
12:38 I know, I know.
12:39 I take full responsibility of it.
12:43 About working with Ian, it's--
12:48 of course, I give him directions.
12:50 But we've been talking so much about Wilson.
12:54 And he knew Wilson sometimes better than me,
12:59 that he was bringing so many things to the set,
13:02 like so many things of the character.
13:04 And Ian, it's really, really specific with props
13:08 and with his things, with details
13:10 that are going to tell you very important things
13:13 about the character and those little details.
13:16 So the way he builds the parachute with this plastic bag
13:21 from the hotel and everything, and the fact
13:25 that he wanted really to iron his own suit
13:28 and all those little things.
13:31 When he's bringing up all those ideas and those things on set,
13:34 it's like, you understand that he is Wilson.
13:37 He knows really how Wilson needs to behave.
13:42 Someone turned up.
13:44 What kind of intel is this, eh?
13:47 Rule number one, the less you know
13:48 about the target, the better.
13:50 I've been told to stay on the island.
13:55 I work alone.
13:56 Think of me as the wind beneath your wings.
13:59 [MUSIC PLAYING]
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