Although Killing Them Softly director Andrew Dominik has been in the business for over a decade, he doesn’t have a long catalog of films to his name. However, the few he has directed truly speak wonders of his talent. His first feature was Chopper, a comedic crime biography based on the story of an Australian criminal.
That film received three awards from the Australian Film Institute, including Best Director. It gave the New Zealand-born filmmaker plenty of attention. So much so that Brad Pitt couldn’t wait to work with him on his second project, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
That dramatic film also went on to get great reviews, despite some studio friction regarding the runtime. Five years later, his third film, the crime drama thriller Killing Them Softly, arrived in theaters in 2012. It brought a distinct political edge to the gangster genre.
Killing Them Softly tells the story of three men: Amato (Vincent Curatola), Frankie (Scoot McNairy), and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn). They try to outsmart the mob by robbing a card game hosted by Markie (Ray Liotta), shaking up the underground world. Jackie (Pitt) is hired to set things back in order.
He must send a message to anyone who thinks of messing with the mob and their economy. In dealing with the boss’s right hand, Driver (Richard Jenkins), and his trusted friend Mickey (James Gandolfini), Jackie realizes he has to use his professionalism to get the job done right. In this Andrew Dominik Killing Them Softly interview, the director discusses the film, his cast choices, and working with larger-than-life actors.
Casting Brad Pitt as a Mythological Figure
ShowBizCafe.com (SBC): How did you come to choose Brad Pitt for the main character’s role?
Andrew Dominik (AD): I know Brad because we’ve worked together before. Brad is not a person that you can cast as an everyman. I wouldn’t believe Brad in a supermarket in a movie, but I do believe him as a mythological figure.
He’s like the cool fixer guy in the movie. Brad has a certain mystery about him. No matter what he shows, you always feel like there’s the rest of the iceberg below the surface of the water.
Jackie is a good character, but he’s something to decipher. He’s not really letting you know who he is or what he thinks. He gives you some perspective about him at the end of the picture.
Having somebody like Brad who retains a certain mystery really gives that character a kick. I also think with actors you either have to cast them as somebody who’s close to who they are or the exact opposite. Brad is a generous guy and a generous spirit, so having him play somebody who’s completely selfish is fun for him.
Directing James Gandolfini
SBC: Did you have to give much direction to someone like James Gandolfini, who played a mobster for years in The Sopranos, about how to act like a gangster?
AD: The thing about Jim is that he’s really hard to direct because he spends so much time thinking himself up. It’s really hard to get a word in. He’s one of the great actors; there’s very little that he does that is not usable.
He’s a really sensitive guy and his approach to Mickey is to find his emotional landscape. Jim instinctively comes at it from there. I think he can find it kind of frustrating, and I know he was frustrated by the amount of dialogue that he had to get through.
In a way, this movie was the least amount of directing I’ve ever done. It was sort of more me just trying to get out of their way. If they made mistakes, I wasn’t going to use them or make them feel like someone wasn’t paying attention.
Basically that’s it. You just need to feel like the director is paying attention, that he’s not going to use bad takes, and he really wants you to do good. If you feel any of those three things, you can really muddle through anything.
You have to have ideas for actors too. It’s no good to go up to actors and say “ok let’s just do it different” and not give them an idea of what they can do. It’s encouraging for the actor to use their imagination.
When you are a kid and you are playing cops and robbers, you invent a story for yourself. Actors, I think, do the same when they are in a scene. You always have an idea on how you want the scenes to be.
However, how you get there and how the characters might negotiate that is something that you want to happen spontaneously as you go. You try for the film to live, not be dead like a thing encased in amber.
SBC: Can you talk about the ideas behind the film, such as the choice in music? Also, were there scenes that ended up differently than expected?
AD: The movie is called Killing Them Softly. I guess it’s about Brad’s idea that there’s a right way of killing somebody, to do it in the most painless way possible. The idea of one of the sequences was to dramatize a soft killing, or a killing that was like a lullaby.
There are three approaches to violence: not to show it, make it ugly, or make it beautiful. That’s an example of making it beautiful. It’s not what you’re expecting, therefore maybe it’s delightful in some way.
The Politics of Crime
SBC: Your film combines what we know as gangster movies with an acute political statement. What’s your message?
AD: Well I guess it’s just saying that America is not rotten all the way through. America is an economic idea as much as it’s an ideological and philosophical idea. Everybody is free to get rich.
I guess what you see in certain circumstances is that people are basically able to get away with things because they pay for them. The movie is very cynical; Brad’s character doesn’t see it as being a bad thing. Capitalism is almost like the economic idea of Darwinism, the economic idea of survival of the fittest.
That’s what it’s supposed to be. The idea that people vote for what products they like or what things they want. But there are certain things you don’t have a choice in.
You have to buy health insurance and most people selling you insurance are not worried about you being well. If you get sick they are going to try to not pay you. It’s about capitalism in a way; they are trying to get rich quick.
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