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Soter on Watching the Detectives + Boyle in Guardian podcast

05 April 2007 at 11:59 PM | by Melty_Girl

The Reeler interviews Detectives director Paul Soter

Cillian Murphy in Watching the Detectives
See more production stills and on location shots

NYC film news site The Reeler ran a fascinating interview with Watching the Detectives director Paul Soter today. Finally, some real information about Cillian's next film! And a new photo too!

About casting Cillian, Soter remarked,

"Cillian does a big variety of stuff you see in Europe, and yet in the States ... he's a bit pigeonholed. It's like Red Eye and Batman Begins and maybe 28 Days Later..., where he's seen as a very dark, intense almost kind of otherworldly figure. The character in my movie, Neil, is as regular a guy as you can get, and I think that he read the script and saw an opportunity to do something that would show an American audience that he is, in fact a regular guy. Because he is; he's one of the most down-to-earth people I've ever worked with. It was a chance for him to do something light and something funny, but at the same time, to show off that he's not this strange, creepy guy with these penetrating eyes. For those of us who've dug a little deeper, we've seen that range."

Soter is best known as a member of the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, so I've been wondering about the tone of Detectives—I can see Cillian doing comedy, but it is strange to picture him in a dude comedy like Super Troopers. Apparently, Soter was trying to shake things up in this, his first solo outing in filmmaking:

"I've already had reactions from people who are like, 'Oh, wow—it's really not a Broken Lizard movie at all.' It's intended to get a reaction more like a movie like Rushmore, which isn't about belly laughs, but is this incredibly engaging, incredibly amusing and entertaining movie. It's been a weird process to screen it and test it with audiences. I'm so conditioned to judging it on how many laughs there are, but it's not that kind of a movie. It's a comedy, and there should be laughs, but it's really just not the same kind of laughs as a Broken Lizard film."

S.T. VanAirsdale gets many other interesting tidbits from Soter, including that he intentionally made the female lead "the driving force for the movie, the generator of the comedy." The interview is definitely worth a read.

Boyle interview & Capa's voiceover

The Guardian's "Film Weekly" podcast features Sunshine, with a review and an interview with the always engaging Danny Boyle. I was transfixed listening to a clip from the film's intro of Cillian's voice-over as Capa, because it's more detached, softer, more gravelly than the one he did for the trailers... more detailed, more enticing... (How will I wait until September?!)

Thanks to Stu from The Reeler for telling us about his Soter interview!

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wissky
Posts: 3
Comment
brad dourif!
Reply #3 on : Mon April 09, 2007, 18:18:56
Ok, just had to thank you for bringing up Brad Dourif, someone I certainly hadn't allowed to cross my mind in quite some time. Now, that's creepy. Even before Grima.
Lilith
Posts: 3
Comment
Re:
Reply #2 on : Sat April 07, 2007, 20:25:25
Yeah, I always shake my head at these reviewers. The Washington Post reviewer just called him "bug-eyed." I want to say, "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
The Automatik
Posts: 3
Comment
Re:
Reply #1 on : Fri April 06, 2007, 14:24:32
"he's not this strange, creepy guy with these penetrating eyes. For those of us who've dug a little deeper, we've seen that range"

Thank goodness someone else brought this up. It gets under my skin to constantly hear him referred to as "creepy." I mean, he's not Brad Dourif, geez.