Making Gus Van Sant’s Venice out of Competition title Dead Man’s Wire “felt like guerilla filmmaking”, according to cast member Myha’la Herrold.
“We were in the dead of winter in Kentucky, everything was frozen all the time,” said Herrold at the Venice press conference for the film. “Physically speaking, it was hard on our bodies. Bill [Skarsgard] and Dacre [Montgomery] were out there for hours on end in below freezing temperature in Hawaiian shirts, and still making it work the way they did – it was impressive, shocking.”
Dead Man’s Wire is a dramatisation of the true story of Tony Kiritsis, who, in 1977, took the president of the Meridian Mortgage Company hostage with a sawed-off shotgun.
Skarsgard plays Kiritsis, with Montgomery as mortgage company president Richard O. Hall.
“Gus rang me and said he wanted me to play a 56-year-old. I’m 30, for the record,” laughed Montgomery. “We got hard at work doing a lot of different cosmetic things. It’s testament to Gus, which is to say everything is malleable. it’s an ever evolving process.
“When I create a character I feel so definite and set in my ways; the great thing about Gus is he forces you to think outside of that,” continued the actor. “Your character becomes an ever-evolving thing throughout the shoot as inspiration strikes him. It was nice to break me out of my 30-year-old bubble into my 56-year-old bubble.”
Herrold plays a reporter covering the incident, and said Van Sant suggested she base the character on US political activist Angela Davis. “Playing a reporter, a person witnessing something so grand they can’t believe it’s happening – it really wasn’t that hard. I felt that way anyway,” said Herrold.
Work out schedule
Colman Domingo is on the cast as a radio DJ, inspired by a real-life DJ from the time. Domingo, who has been Oscar-nominated for best actor in the last two years for Rustin then Sing Sing, said he only shot “two or three days” on the film, but fit it into his busy schedule before a shoot on a different film in London due to the chance to work with Van Sant.
“There are roles like this and artists like Gus where you will work out your schedule to do this,” said Domingo.
Producers on the film include Cassian Elwes, who worked with Van Sant on several films when Elwes was an agent at WME. The cast also includes Cary Elwes, Cassian’s brother. “I really badgered my brother to put me in this movie,” joked Cary.
“He didn’t have to badger me that much,” responded Cassian. “When Cary says do something, I’m like, ‘OK’.”
The subject of the film has parallels to both Van Sant’s 2003 Palme d’Or winning Elephant; and the case of Luigi Mangione, the US man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December last year.
Van Sant acknowledged the Elephant connection over “the tabloid-ness of the stories” but said the films “are different in the way they’re told.”
As for Mangione, the director noted that the project was well underway before the incident, although it did feed into production.
“The Luigi Mangione moment happened right after we started; halfway through prep, we realised there are things happening,” said Van Sant. “The [US] election happened as well – things that are dovetailing into our own project.”
“We thought ‘is that good or bad?’ – it was interesting. It probably affected us as we made it, but we didn’t change anything.”
Later asked if protagonist Kiritsis was a “loser” like several others in his filmography, Van Sant replied, “He was trying to be a winner in entering into a mortgage contract. Along the way he found he was starting to lose ground and become more out of control.
“I don’t find that he’s losing so much, but he’s fighting. In many films I’ve made, there may be sympathetic people who are fighting from the bottom.”
WME Independent handles sales on Dead Man’s Wire, which has its world premiere in Venice this evening (Tuesday, September 2).
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