MICHAEL
   KEATON

Michael Keaton has made a career of not playing it safe, so when an unfortunate illness beset the writer of his latest project THE MERRY GENTLEMAN, Keaton made his directorial debut with a film as multi-layered, quirky, and evenly balanced as his very prolific career.

Known best for playing Batman in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Keaton has always surprised audiences with his brave choices, changing from early comedy hits such as NIGHT SHIFT, BEETLEJUICE and GUNG HO to serious dramatic fare in CLEAN & SOBER and WHITE NOISE.

THE MERRY GENTLEMAN can be best described as a comic thriller, in which a young woman (Kelly MacDonald) on the run from her abusive husband meets Frank Logan (Keaton) and a friendship is formed although she doesn’t know he is really a cold blooded assassin.

To promote THE MERRY GENTLEMAN, Colonelscrypt was invited to a special conference where Keaton addressed the film and gave many insights into pulling double duty as actor and director that shows his versatility and honesty in his choices in film.

Q: When Ron Lazzeretti couldn’t direct THE MERRY GENTLEMAN, how much time did you think about directing? Was it immediate in thinking “I want to do this,” or was it a feeling of “What am I getting myself into here?”

MICHAEL KEATON: It was kind of both actually. I don’t really recall the moment because it’s been a while. I don’t remember how much time there was in between. I had been talking to him strictly as a writer. He wrote it so I wasn’t committed to anything except the role of Frank. I thought it was very well written and had a conversation on what his thoughts were about it very generally. Then I flew to Chicago, I’m rehashing in my head right now, and we got together with one of the producers and I sat down and asked a bunch of questions because I re-read the script. It was kind of a dead issue and I thought there was something intriguing about it so I think they probably thought “I don’t know why he flew here. There’s some very in depth questions and some not so in depth questions.” Anyway, I got to the Chicago airport and on the way back to LA I called him up and I told them that I wanted to direct this movie. That’s what’s gone black and blocked out of my mind because it all happened really fast because there really wasn’t any pre-production on this. In a way I think there were some things that weren’t too bad about that. We were kind of forced to make real quick decisions that you couldn’t dwell on and put your head down and go “oh” so there may have been some advantages to that.

Q: Did that make it easier or harder for you to develop your character because in a sense like your role as Batman, there is a duality in acting and directing and with your character of Frank?

MK: That’s a very good question. I don’t know if this will answer it but the two things about being in it as well as directing it was that it made it hard and it made it easy. Talk about duality (laughs). I actually liked directing myself to be honest with you because when you hear about actors being shorthand with directors, this was the ultimate shorthand. I already thought about what I was going to do and had made my decision on what the tone was going to be and so I knew how I was going to fit into that. It sped things along quite a bit otherwise it was as difficult as it was given with a limited amount of time and a limited budget. You always run into situations but Chicago was really great about giving us places to shoot and the crew was great, really terrific, but you still run into obstacles. Given that, being in it was really advantageous. Directing myself was really advantageous. The bad part is you give yourself a little less attention to yourself, I know I did, than you probably should. The next time around, I would probably stop and really give myself the benefit that an actor needs especially somebody who’s directing it as well. You can shortchange yourself in some situations with the other actors in making sure they got what they need, that they like what they’re doing, and that they’re open to discussion even though they didn’t have much discussion at the time. You don’t give yourself that luxury. You give yourself a couple of takes and look over to the cinematographer and say “Was I in the frame?” then you go and you gotta shoot for the day.

Q: How was that duality in the sense of an actor being that Frank had dual idenities?

MK: I’m not so sure he had two identities frankly, I think he had to keep what he did obviously hidden. In that sense, criminals have two identities I sense. You’re committing a crime and you don’t want anyone to know that you’re committing a crime. I guess everybody has two identities so I hadn’t really thought about that. If you look at it, he didn’t act much differently than he did other than that he’s a man of few words, extraordinary precise, and efficient.

Q: Was part of the appeal for you in the script because it wasn’t a typical Hollywood ending where the character gets away?

MK: I didn’t think about whether he should get off or not. It was really about not being that complicated. The situation came up. I thought the story was well written even though there were things we couldn’t shoot and things we had to add. It was the situation of actually building the movie which I really liked. What I liked was the underlying potential and obvious to some people levels that were in it. Symbols and things that I thought would let seep to the surface without pointing a flashlight at them or making a big deal about it. I wasn’t sure if I could get that across or make that happen but I just thought there was something in this that I’m drawn to. I thought it was manageable. I really just understood it. I just always knew that it was very quiet. I always knew that it was a quiet movie and I always knew that I was always willing to trust the pace of it. I told everybody that I’d probably get killed for this. Some people probably won’t kill me for it but it’s all me. Give it to me and I’ll take all of it. I don’t care. I’m good with that. There are going to be some people who don’t like it I suppose but so far we’re getting a really, really nice response. Personally I look at it and there is some stuff that I like but I don’t love. There are some things that I really, really like a lot and there’s some stuff that I’d like to fix. Really, I loved that they’re also real people. GOMORRA was maybe my favorite movie of the year last year. I just liked it in that “I know who those people are” as opposed to people on screen that you know as “Actor X” in a hat. A lot of people still don’t know Kelly (MacDonald) which was great because she just disappears into the story. That’s gold for me as an actor. To me I always felt that the less people who knew about you, the more advantages you have as an actor to just be the role and not just be “It’s him with a turtleneck” or “It’s him with a bad accent.” It’s just insane. I don’t know how you can get away with it now because there’s such exposure on every level. Then there’s also the business end of it where you have to have a presence out there so people get to know you. In this, there are a lot of Chicago actors, people I haven’t seen. Bobby Cannavale, a lot of people don’t know him and he’s so great, and Kelly while she’s so respected and growing, she’s going to be a giant star, she’s extraordinary. I liked the actors and I liked the city. I wanted it to be American but I hope this doesn’t sound pretentious but I very often like the way Europeans make movies. I like that I think sometimes they don’t care about having to please certain things. Jean-Paul Belmondo, look at the way he looked when he got older, kind of a gray, hound-doggy, cool, rough edged real human being look. They never ran away from that. They never ran away from spaces and silence and complicated things. With that said, I wanted it set in a real American place and I wanted it to be a generic city in the best sense and I didn’t want to shoot it like “There’s the L” or “There’s Wrigley.” I just wanted it to be this place with this people. And also there’s this underlined thing where it’s really real and it’s absolutely not real at all, you know what I mean? Did she see him and did he see her? If you really had the time and the money and all that stuff, you could break the script apart and do that. Maybe we were lucky that we didn’t have that time and just said that we were going to trust this stuff and that it would play and it would work and you would just put your head down and don’t look back.

Q: Given that you had the ground running on this, how much deliberate thought did you give to the style and the tone of the film and how much were you discovering on the fly?

MK: A lot. I heard it. I saw it and what really helped was because I knew the DP I wanted and given that we didn’t have much time I went early to Chicago to scout locations and shoot photographs of locations I wanted to use. I called Chris Seager who is tremendous and let me set my shots up. Then you get to the realities of “When am I getting that shot?” and “Can we make that a day shot?” and “Does that make more sense?” and you realize what you are going to get and what you’re not going to get. He just finished a project and he had no prep time and I said “You’ve got to trust me with these locations. Some of them are not going to change because we don’t have the time to change them. You’ve got to help me figure out light because it’s winter and we don’t have a lot of time for light if you know what I mean.” It was a big adventure for me to go to a location and feel it as much as this was where I wanted to shoot. I took the crew guys on location scouts and even they were going “Where did you find these places? We live here and we didn’t know where these places are,” which I loved. I loved scouting and figuring the story but then you had to change certain things. Originally Frank popped a guy in the nighttime and I looked at the reality of the schedule and also I loved this place I wanted to shoot at. One thing I had learned early on was that there were things we had to take out. We’d be there shooting now. It was huge and tons of money would have cost and these guys had never done this before so they had to realize that a lot of this stuff would never happen so they needed to build other things. Anyway, I liked the idea that he did it in broad daylight, the courage and the specificity about him saying “Don’t matter to me. In fact, if they found out, I’d kill a guy right in broad daylight. That would scare them even more.” I was hoping to film that scene with the bright sun in the winter and without sounding too pretentious, I wanted to establish a shot with the winter bear trees whenever I could in the corner of a frame, and the winter light on the trees throws a beautiful shadow. I liked that feel and tone and I knew when I got there it was going to enhance what I was going to do. That’s what we were going for and we can’t turn back if we want to (laughs).

Q: I really enjoyed the pace of the film.

MK: Thanks.

Q: Was there any sort of problem in directing Kelly because everything was balanced well and was there a problem in getting her to fit within the pace of the film?

MK: No and she was real cool with it. She was an extraordinary help because she’s so good and she’s unbelievably prepared. She is really prepared and professional. I got lucky because she doesn’t like to discuss things really. There was a conversation on the phone and I can yammer on but I wanted to give her as much as I could because we didn’t have a lot of time and at one point she said to me “You can stop talking now,” which I kind of loved. She could’ve said “Shut up” and that would’ve been fine with me. I laughed. I got it but I told her when you do want to talk, we’ll talk about what you want to talk about and she doesn’t like to unless she needs to. I thought that this was someone who has got this down. She knows what she’s going to do. She was totally prepared. We wasted no time on her and she didn’t ask a lot about “Why shouldn’t this” or “Why that?” There was an unusual kind of feel when we were shooting but it gave the actors a place of “Don’t worry about it and relax.” I always knew I had to tighten it and loosen it and mess with it anyway. I didn’t know if it was going to work. Just because I said this is what I was doing didn’t necessarily mean that it was going to work. She really underplays a lot of things so nobody overshot the mark.

Q: I thought she was great.

MK: Thanks and I thought all the actors were really good. Chicago is full of good actors. You don’t have a problem if you go there. Maybe I shouldn’t say this but Michael Shannon. He’s a Chicago guy and I was this close to using him instead of Bobby. I have to be honest. It was just a hair off but he has such an enormous presence that it just tipped it for me to the point where I wasn’t sure why she was married to him in the first place. He had a real heavy presence where in Bobby I looked at him and I could see where early on where they would have laughs together. I see what she saw in him. He was probably fun, a real guy,  and she couldn’t see that turning south. When Michael came into the room, I thought he was so great but I’m gonna go thinking “Why would she marry him in the first place?” Then you had the issue of does she have a real problem with guys which everybody brings up. My answer to that is she’s pretty good about it. She jettisons them. She didn’t hang in there. If she had a problem once or twice, she’s gone. Not with Bobby, that was an ongoing thing but this was like a victory for her. What I wanted to happen there at the end was just a moment where when the screen went black, she was free. She cut the last one loose and her life is going to be pretty good. She probably went out and got a dog and is probably having more fun in life. She’s cool. She finally cut the last guy left and the last guy was actually not a bad dude. Given the circumstances, the most dangerous guy of all was the best guy to be with for now.

Q: Can you talk about how you bounced the humor around some very serious subjects because the humor is never lost throughout the film?

MK: Thanks and I always saw that. I remember when I said to Ron “This is funny” and frankly the Sundance cut pulls a little more of that out to be honest with you. I always thought that was essential because it was funny and it’s OK to laugh at it. The whole party scene didn’t exist. It wasn’t like that but I felt at this point we needed to enlighten it. I wanted these odd, real life moments like I wanted her to leave that party like when you go to those parties and you feel like if you don’t get out of here now, you’re going to see something embarrassing or someone’s going to say the wrong thing and go too far and then you’ll see them in the office and feel terrible, I wanted that but those two guys I knew they were good, the two guys with the joke. The joke was in there but it wasn’t set up that way and I knew in my head I got a file where I know I had to grab this shot and that shot and if I need it to work I will need that but I knew I wanted to cut back and forth between the stairwell and the guys telling the joke. The guy in the stairwell was a little odd and creepy but funny. I loved the two guys and I also loved the two detectives in the diner, all that stuff. I do want to just direct a comedy because I still love comedy but I don’t know what it would look like to be honest with you. I liked this because it was hard. At one screening early on I thought that every place had a potential for a laugh, every one, which didn’t happen all the time. You shouldn’t take this movie too seriously because it’s really a tiny little movie and it’s not a big deal. I like it. I hope everybody else likes it. Of course, I like my cut better. (Laughs)

Q: Having mentioned you would like to direct a comedy, even though you don’t have a script in mind, do you envision what type of comedy you’d like to do?

MK: Now that I look at it, I’m not sure what it would be and the more I think about it, I think all those things I used to do comically, I’m not sure I would do that now and that’s what I like about it. I like to find something I think is off key. I like the different tones. I really respect big, silly, goofy, dumb, funny things like Will Ferrell really makes me laugh a lot when he goes out there and gets crazy but then when you watch what Steve Carell does in how quiet, quirky, and off center he gets and his timing is great and interesting. I like all different types. I don’t quite know. Now watch the next thing I do will be some really serious thing.

Q: You’ve worked with a lot of highly regarded directors over the years. What were some of the most important things that you’ve learned from your past experiences that you took with you for this movie?

MK: I’ll tell you what happened. All the guys I always knew I would call and say “Hey, what would I do here? What do I do there? What happens in this? Come and take a look at this,” I didn’t call one of them because it was like I thought that I’m down this road. I almost don’t want to know what they’re going to tell me now and if I call them now and have to double think something because I wasn’t going to and I didn’t want to show disrespect to someone like Steven Soderbergh, who I love, and then he tells me something and I don’t do it, then I’m a real jerk. I couldn’t afford to so I thought to myself “Get on the phone and you have to call this guy and that guy and say what do you think and what should I do here?” By the way, I would do it next time. I would call them. I didn’t get a chance to do it because I had to go and even shooting I thought that I would get to them. I kept resisting it because another part of me thought “You know what? Just do it the way you started this whole business, you’re just some kid who figured out how to do this, just go do it. You kind of know how to do it anyway. You’ve done a version of this before. Just go do it and make your own mistakes,” like I used to when I started out. I learned by making my own mistakes and there was a big advantage to that. I probably wouldn’t do that again.  I’d probably go ask and say “What do you think? How do I do this?” of which I am a total believer. We had a pre-production meeting, I’m very clear and I’m very bottom line about this. I did something I never heard in any movie I ever did which was I stood up and asked everyone “Does everybody know the movie we are making?” because you would be shocked at how often when people start a project, not everybody goes “Oh, I know the movie we’re making.” It’s amazing to me. I had to say this. I said “Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s what it is. Here’s what ain’t going to happen. Ever. Here’s what we’re never going to get. Here’s what we kind of have to get to do,” so given that, any possible whining? Can’t happen. Don’t whine about anything not when you know what you’re doing and how it’s going to work. I thanked them way ahead of time and told them that just that the fact that you’re here and showed up to help me do this, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.  It’s the ultimate team sport. It’s great. I don’t like clubs. I’ve never been good in clubs. I’ve been asked to leave clubs. I always felt nervous about joining clubs. I would always get antsy when people invite me to join a club. I can’t do it. I always felt to be laughing at clubs because they are transparently stupid whereas teams, I love the whole concept. I would be at a park and I would see some guys on their way to a softball game wearing bad uniforms playing at a bad concrete ballpark and I’d get totally nostalgic. I love it. Filmmaking is the ultimate team sport.

Q: How did the title come about?

MK: It’s an original title and the problem with the title is that you know it comes from “God rest ye Merry Gentleman.” I don’t have to explain that but that was the original title and I didn’t know what it meant either. It’s her story and it should be about her.

Q: There wasn’t a lot of background on your character of Frank Logan. Was it intentional to focus his character solely on his relationship with Kate or because he was a hitman, you didn’t need to show it?

MK: I’ll be honest with you. We didn’t have the time and luxury because it is a transparent thing. I will probably be criticized for it because you’re right, it isn’t there, and that’s one of those things where in a way I looked at it and liked it and once I made the decision to pull the trigger and once the bullet leaves the barrel, there’s no going back. Sometimes that’s an American thing where you need to know. You need to have this. You need it and I actually don’t need to know a lot of things sometimes. I see some movies where I find myself going “I don’t care.” I tend to like not knowing but there are a lot of glaring things. It’s not vague really. It’s like there’s a little space in there. There’s a fable in this if you really want to look at it. It’s hyper and normal and real but also not at all at the same time.  It may turn out not to be such a good thing that we didn’t explain much about his background. It was never there. It wasn’t eliminated because it was never there. In fact, I would do little things to explain him character wise in that you knew him by what he did. One of my favorite movies is SEXY BEAST. I know nobody like those top three or four characters, but after one and a half minutes, you knew everything you need to know about all of those people. You got it all and that movie is the quintessential example of accomplishing that.

Q: One of the things that’s good about this film is that it showed a classic Chicago working class without overtly shouting it out?

MK: Thanks, that was the idea, don’t shout anything. Just let it be. Those things work for me. I’m from Pittsburgh. Those rotted out buildings and those bear trees in the winter bring out a stark beauty to the city. It’s also what it evokes, not to make too much of this but speaking generally, there’s a lot in here I look at and go “Whoa, that’s as ugly as it can be,” and by that I mean bad on my part but I love that there is this understated thing and Chris was really great about letting me say “This is what it looks like.” He got it and I was fortunate to have him and I can’t wait to use him again. When he gets the opportunity with a little bit of dough and a good director, he’s going to need a decent shop and he’s going to be big I think. He’s great to work with and the crew loves him. He’s tough too. He doesn’t goof around. He makes those boys hop to. They were tough Chicago guys and they were really great. They worked hard for him because he’s a decent human being. I like that kind of stuff. That’s what I loved about that whole feel.

Q: Are you enjoying directing or acting more and what satisfaction did you get out of this movie?

MK: In this case, since I did both, directing was more fun. In practical terms, you just don’t sit around. You know how movies work. A lot of the time, it’s boring. You’re looking for that sweet spot that might pop up every now and then when you’re in the scene and you’re in the moment. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some great actors, men and women, that I’ve had my share of moments where I go “Oh, this is good. This is why I do this. I really like this.” When it’s good, I love it but filmmaking for the actors is a lot of sitting around. You could be really prepared but you can’t prepare all day. There’s no sitting around as a director. You are working all the time thinking and problem solving. I like telling the story. That’s it. I know I’m really looking forward to seeing some theater while I’m here. You see a really good performance and get all jazzed up again.

Q: Are you going to do theater and what else is coming up for you?

MK: My limited theater experience was as a kid starting out in three plays. I was kind of good in one but I was mediocre in the others. I’m trying to fill a lot of things. My problem is I have a lot of interests.

Q: Thank you very much and best of luck with THE MERRY GENTLEMAN.

MK: Thank you very much.

(Very special thanks to Falco Ink)