Interview (Written): William Monahan

A /film interview with William Monahan (The Departed, Kingdom of Heaven, and The Gambler) whose newest movie is Mojave, which he wrote and directed. The movie stars Oscar Issac and Garrett Hedlund.

Usually in this scenario, there’s an average joe and the villain, and the former has to stoop to his antagonist’s level. In this case, Thomas and Jack are equals, and I like how you don’t explain why the artist, Thomas, is this dangerous.

Oh, yeah, because shitty backstory is the primary curse of motion pictures. My set piece story about that is I was once at a script conference. By the way, I give script conferences a good going over in Mojave, too, in the Ahab’s leg speech [Laughs].

I was sitting at a script conference once and in the script this guy punches somebody and beats him up or something, just physically overpowers someone. And one of the notes that came in from one of the junior executives sitting there was, “Well, I’d believe he was capable of sort of this thing if he had some military training.” I said, “What are you talking about? Have you ever been out on a Friday night anywhere in the world? Were you at Sidwell Friends until yesterday?”

One of the things in Mojave which is pretty good, it’s something I always wanted to explore — presenting a guy with no backstory whatsoever. And they are, as you say, what they do, which is what film is supposed to be all about. These characters are what they do. They’re not what they are as they are developed in some sort of fucking add-on later conversation with their girlfriend, which is something I actually also attacked in London Boulevard.

Yeah, absolutely. The whole speech about the girlfriend archetype making the male hero vulnerable.

Yeah, which is to say, “Tell me about your interesting fucking childhood.” Because, no, you are absolutely on it. It’s supposed to be someone is illustrated by their actions. If there was one thing I would change about Mojave right now, it would be that I wouldn’t have the opening at the house in Los Angeles. I would have just opened and put him into the car. However, not a lot of people are going to stand for that.

Is that frustrating?

Well, the thing is this is a collaborative medium in certain respects. You write autonomously. You direct autonomously. But then there becomes a point where it comes into a group think simply because of the amount of capital investment involved and risk. So you end up having conversations that the whole team is responsible for the film.

That’s just par for the course. That’s what it is. But the fact is, you might not be surprised to learn that someone who knows what they are doing, if they are left to their own devices are better at reading the market as it were than a team of wannabe experts.

A trailer for the movie Mojave:

For the rest of the interview, go here.