Interviews with leading film and TV creators about their process and craft. In the opening scene, Gibson’s veteran cop Brett Ridgeman and Vaughn’s Anthony Lurasetti are seen busting a Hispanic suspect and terrorising his Latino girlfriend — mocking her accent while she’s naked in the shower.
“He’s a terrific performer,” he shrugs. The writer-director’s latest, “Dragged Across Concrete,” is slightly toned down in that regard but has some viewers questioning both the film’s politics and those of its director — not least because it stars Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn as two cops who get suspended for excessive force and make casually racist jokes to one another. Discussing why she’s staying a distance for the duration of the conversation, working out where his attention is. I’ve read a lot of interviews with you and inevitably, justifiably too, you’re asked about the violence in your films. I love that too, for the record. Hug Chickenpenny: The Panegyric of an Anomalous Child. So you’re not opening up the hood of the car right before you’re doing the grand prix! Now there’s Dragged Across Concrete.
The actor may be on a comeback after his Oscar-nominated war movie Hacksaw Ridge (which featured Vaughn) but his antisemitic comments (“the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world”) spouted amid a DUI arrest in Malibu in July 2006 have never been forgotten. He was hugely complimentary to me. I look at the shot, the lighting, and go this is right, I’m comfortable with it. “I wanted to do a big scale crime piece and something that’s a little bit more in the style of my novels,” says Zahler, whose penchant for pulp fiction has seen him pen books like 2014’s Mean Business on North Ganson Street. But I saw the consistency in his work, and to me knowing that he could be real, and the way that I see real, I like to see someone who’s comfortable being in the scene and focused, and not showing a lot of technique. That’s by design. Coronavirus film and TV latest: follow Screen’s coverage, World of Locations November 2020-April 2021: digital edition, Cineworld secures $750m financial injection, plans to reopen in 2021, The eight Coming Soon projects pitched at TorinoFilmLab 2020 (exclusive), ‘69: The Saga Of Danny Hernandez’: Review. I’m not going to the movies for a lecture.
I know there’s a new Star Trek show, and I’m a Star Trek fan, given an opportunity to go in and direct something like that? Have something to tell us about this article?
And then after reading through it, talking about it after.
But I’m not chasing the biggest audience.
Look at the dialogue. Yeah. Rehearsal is key.
If Zahler is a provocateur along the lines of Danish director Lars von Trier, his one-man conveyor belt of scripts, novels and songs are enough to single him out as a unique voice. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. American filmmaker S. Craig Zahler is back at Venice Film Festival for a second year running, this time with his Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn cop drama Dragged Across Concrete. But it certainly doesn’t come from a place of wanting to condemn police officers, nor say that these are flawless people who don’t make mistakes.”, He says he knows people who work in law enforcement and hospital emergency rooms, and drew from their experiences. As for the stylised violence, there’s certainly a correlation.
They announced that is has a US release date for March 22, 2019, and an April 19, 2019 release for UK audiences, highlighting the film’s brand new trailer. Zahler wants to tap into emotions and provoke a response — but if you believe the filmmaker, he isn’t being reactionary. But I hoped that people would come out and say ‘holy shit, this is a completely different Vince Vaughn’. Anyone who’s seen “Bone Tomahawk” or “Brawl in Cell Block 99” knows that S. Craig Zahler isn’t the most subtle of filmmakers, at least where violence is concerned.
“And you’re entitled to it.
(I would call Bone Tomahawk a masterpiece; perhaps coincidentally, as a Western, it’s also the least on-the-nose of Zahler’s films, as far as cultural relevance is concerned.). If Woody Harrelson came in and did this, he would have done an excellent job, the transformation isn’t as big. Steven Craig Zahler (born January 23, 1973) is an American film director, screenwriter, cinematographer, novelist and musician. The world's first Kosher Prenatal + DHA. — TV Podcast, ‘Dick Johnson Is Dead’: Kirsten Johnson Made Cinema Magic Out of Embracing the Unknown, ‘Boys State’: How ‘Son of Saul’ Influenced the Documentary’s Up-Close Subjectivity — Toolkit Podcast, Introducing ‘Deep Dive’: Damon Lindelof and His Team Go Behind the Scenes of ‘Watchmen’, 37 Must-See New Movies to See This Fall Season, Zoe Lister-Jones Shook Up Hollywood with Her All-Female Crew, Now She’s Doing It with ‘The Craft: Legacy’, I Was a ‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant, and I Saw How Alex Trebek Embodied the Pursuit of Knowledge. They’ll tell you your piece is amazing and then, the moment they have it, will tell you how to make it amazing.
I think there will be people who watch this movie and find the two cops repellent and people who find them relatable and sympathetic.
To date, you’ve made two genre films, a western and a prison drama - tell us about making a cop film. I’ve publicly railed against ‘message’ movies, I think they’re didactic. It made sense that I’d write the screenplay to my own book, but that was the winning combination for the studio.
I knew he was a big guy. There are actors who are usually good. For instance, a character closer to this guy is someone like Woody Harrelson.
This director has risen to prominence in recent years, posing some pretty big questions. A couple of things. The budget was about $15m, a big step up from my previous one, and we were able to get it packaged pretty quickly. To complicate matters further, one of the film’s three leads is Mel Gibson, a noted conservative whose history includes accusations of domestic violence and records of anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic, and misogynistic language.
You’re not figuring it out for the first time. I would think that’s a menacing looking dude. It’s just that I see she brings more.
Zahler spoke to Filmmaker about his directorial bow, which follows four men (Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, and Richard Jenkins) on a mission to rescue a kidnapped woman from a tribe of cannibalistic cave dwellers.