|
PRODUCTION NOTES
The Set-Up
"People are fascinated with con men like they're fascinated with mobsters - at least the fictional kind," says novelist Eric Garcia, whose manuscript for Matchstick Men was being considered for the screen even before Random House could schedule its first printing. "There's something mythical about them that draws us to them and makes us want to watch them operate.
"Maybe it's the idea that they're using their wits to make a living while everyone else is accomplishing the same thing through toil and effort," he muses. "I think the lifestyle appeals to us because the day may come when we get laid off or the mortgage is on the line and we'd like to imagine that, given the opportunity, we have the potential to make a quick buck the 'easy way' -- if only to see if we could
do it."
Garcia, known for his imaginative series of "Rex" books, featuring a modern-day Los Angeles private detective who is actually a latex-disguised dinosaur, is represented by a talent agency whose clients include producers/screenwriters Ted Griffin and Sean Bailey. Garcia's agent, who loved the Matchstick manuscript, sent copies to Bailey and Griffin, thinking it might strike a chord with them.
"It's a freight train of a plot with emotional depth, which is rare," says Bailey, a recent Emmy Award nominee as executive producer of the innovative HBO documentary series Project Greenlight. "It sparked both of us."
Griffin, who previously collaborated with Bailey on the noir drama Best Laid Plans and more recently was the screenwriter on Steven Soderbergh's stylish 2001 hit Ocean's Eleven, had a similar response. Jokingly calling it "Paper Moon in color," Griffin says, "it's primarily the story of a man coming to terms with himself through meeting his daughter and the relationship that develops between them. The con scenario is essential but secondary."
With Bailey committed to produce and Griffin to produce and write, Nicholas Griffin next came aboard to share screenwriting duty with his brother, marking their first official collaboration. To hear them describe the process brings to mind the Frasier episode in which siblings Frasier and Niles attempt to co-author a book and wind up wrestling on the floor. "Nick is the older brother but I outweigh him by 20 pounds and I believe weight outclasses age," quips Ted. "How
did we write together? By not being in the same room. If we had to be in the same room we'd just start tearing at each other like a couple of kids in the back of a station wagon on a long road trip."
"Plus," adds Nicholas, "there's the restraining order…"
Nicholas Griffin did some prep work by speaking with two FBI agents on the subject of con men. "It's not as far-fetched or antiquated as people might believe," he says, dispelling the notion that such small-time crooks only exist in the 1930s nostalgia of The Sting. "These characters still exist and they're still running the same old games, but they have also branched out lately to include the Internet and telemarketing."
Meanwhile, buzz on the project reached renowned filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Cast Away), who signed on as executive producer, with his ImageMovers Productions partners Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey joining the producing team. All that remained was to find a director to do it justice.
Rapke, who launched his producing career with What Lies Beneath in 2000, following a successful 15-year run as a talent agent, couldn't have been more pleased when one of his former clients, three-time Oscar nominee Ridley Scott, expressed interest. "I was in the agency business for a long time because I love talent and I love to be working with talent and supporting their visions," Rapke says. "This a wonderful
turn of events for me, having been Ridley's agent, to collaborate with him now in a whole different way in the production process."
Examining the director's scope, Rapke notes that "Ridley is known for some phenomenally big movies, epics like Gladiator and Black Hawk Down that use giant canvases. He's certainly one of the great visual directors. But at the same time, he's good at telling an intimate story with strong narrative, as he did in Thelma & Louise - something with a smaller production scale but still a big cinematic idea."
Starkey, who counts among his production credits Contact, Cast Away and Forrest Gump, underscores how Scott's deft touch suited the Matchstick scenario. "If you look at Ridley's body of work, you find character pieces in all of his films, even the ones that are better known for their scale and visual impact. At the core of those movies, it's really about the characters and that's what makes them work."
True to form, Scott cites the "unusually clever script" as piquing his interest in Matchstick. The legendary director, who was knighted this year in his native England for his contributions to the arts, has effectively interpreted a range of genres including science fiction (Blade Runner, Alien), historic drama (1492), action (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down), black comedy (Thelma & Louise), psychological/horror (Hannibal)
and fantasy (Legend). While diverse, what they all have in common is Scott's initial, instinctive reaction to a story or idea.
"When I choose a project it's as though a bell goes off in my head, and I listen to that bell, which is my intuition," the director reveals. Once the process has begun, "all other aspects of a project start to come into focus."
Acknowledging that the story is essentially a comedy, "with humor all the way through," Scott notes that "it's also somewhat of a moral tale, which is all the more interesting because it's filled with characters practicing very bad behavior. For them, a good day is when they can take a few hundred dollars off a housewife in a Laundromat. They're not exactly what you'd call lowlifes, but they're pretty close.
Their saving grace might be that their victims are people who are themselves seeking a fast buck or doing things they shouldn't be doing, so it's a case of them getting caught with their trousers down."
As Bailey puts it, "We've made an honest movie about dishonest people. It's not a fantasy about the heist of $100,000 million in krugerands by some super-slick criminal masterminds, it's about skimming a little bit here and a little bit there from ordinary people. Guys like this really exist and this is how they live."
Overall, says Scott, "The humor is very dry, which is good because I appreciate dry humor. But I also like to see someone slip on a banana skin occasionally."
The Matchstick Men, the Moneybags and the Good Doctor
"Roy finds it necessary to pick the last little piece of lint off the carpet or wipe the tiniest smudge off a glass or he's not going to be able to sleep that night, and that's how he functions - barely," says Starkey. "He has a whole catalogue of nervous tics. It takes an actor with a certain sensibility to do more with these compulsive mannerisms than just play them for laughs. Nicolas Cage has the comic instinct
for that, but it's the vulnerability he brings to the character that makes you really feel for him, and I believe that's critical to the role."
"Choosing Nic was a foregone conclusion," Scott states. "I've been aware of his work for years - left, right, center, he does it all. He's an amazingly versatile actor. He always brings so much dimension to his characters, such sympathy and pathos, and such strength."
The Oscar-winning actor readily returns the compliment, citing Scott's involvement as one of the reasons why he joined the project. Since making his directorial debut with the romantic drama Sonny earlier this year, Cage was particularly interested in the opportunity to "watch a master at work" on Matchstick and refers to Scott's streamlined technique as largely a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it. He
gets his scene in two or three takes and that's enormously refreshing to an actor because it keeps your energy level up. We would be doing a scene and he'd make a couple of seemingly simple suggestions like brush strokes and the whole scene would come to life in a way that I never imagined."
Cage describes his approach to the Roy role as "a balancing act. A lot of Roy's behavior is awkward and you clearly see the humor in it," he explains, "but at the same time you see how frustrating it is for him. He has all these peculiar rituals and elaborately detailed routines for everything, but in truth his lifestyle would be very simple if not for the colossal effort he has to put into almost every single
thing he does."
Inexplicably, the only time Roy breaks free of his habitual twitches is in the brief stretches when he's fully immersed in a con. Once engaged, he plays his part with enough composure to convince anyone they're talking to a promotional prize broker or an agent from the Federal Trade Commission. Says Scott, "When he picks up the office phone, suddenly you see another side of Roy. Of course he has a hard time navigating
the open space between his car and the front door, then he has to wipe down the doorknob and sterilize the phone, but when he finally gets into it he's in control. His whole demeanor changes."
The rest of the time, he's a wreck. "He has a fear of being outdoors, a fear of open spaces," Scott recounts some of Roy's anxieties. "He only feels safe in the inner sanctum of his traditional suburban home or inside his car with the windows closed tight. His underwear and socks are folded into neat little stacks. He lives mostly on tuna, which he eats straight from the can to avoid dirtying a dish.
"There's a lot of Roy in me," the director wryly admits. "I can be compulsively fastidious. If I'm home alone and hungry I'm likely not to cook anything for myself because that would muck up the kitchen and then I'd have to clean it. So I actually have some things in common with Roy and began to identify with him more as the project progressed, which I found surprising at first and then really very amusing."
Both Cage and Scott were careful not to exploit or distort OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) and phobias. "Some of Roy's situations aren't exactly funny out of context, but we tried to present them in such a way that audiences could see the humor in it. It meant walking a fine line," offers Cage. Acknowledging Jack Nicholson's portrayal of a similarly afflicted character in As Good As It Gets, he notes that "he
gave it some very entertaining moments without mocking people who actually have these kinds of problems. We aimed for the same thing in Matchstick. The humor is in the reality. When Roy sees a leaf blow into his swimming pool he has to go fish it out immediately. Just the sight of it makes him uncomfortable."
In essence, Cage sees the character as "a lonely man, resigned to his career as a con man. He's been divorced 14 years and hasn't connected with anyone romantically since then. He just goes about his daily routine, running scams, ripping off older people, couples who are least expecting it and probably other lonely people like himself. He feels pretty guilty about that, and in a lot of ways that fuels his neuroses."
Roy's partner-in-crime, Frank Mercer, played by Sam Rockwell, does not suffer from such issues of conscience. Perhaps the quintessential con man, he appears glib, charming, upbeat and full of angles, already working the phones when Roy pulls into office every morning. Frank owes Roy for his invaluable training, but clearly Roy owes Frank for keeping him focused, especially when he falls into one of his agoraphobic episodes
and has to be rescued from his own house. They're good friends and good partners.
"I think Roy discovered Frank," Cage imagines. "He took a liking to him, saw potential, taught him everything he knew and probably takes pride in seeing how much Frank has progressed. They have a bond and Roy is the mentor."
"Frank is the engine of the story," observes Bailey. "He's brimming with ideas. Sam Rockwell brings such exuberance to the role - every time he's on the screen it's fun. With Roy, there is clearly a price for his success, whereas Frank is completely comfortable in his own skin. That's what makes him so captivating; he exemplifies the joy of the profession. He loves living by his wits and being in the jungle. This is a guy making his way in the world through the sheer force
of his personality."
"Of course," Starkey playfully interjects, "all con men cover up the nature of their work with their charming personalities… much like movie producers."
Rockwell, who recently won critical acclaim as enigmatic television trailblazer Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, thoroughly enjoyed the role of Frank, "the flashier of the two," and sees him in some ways as Roy's respectful caretaker, recognizing that "Frank is very important to Roy - he's been Roy's only significant human contact for years."
Of his on-screen partner, Rockwell says, "Nic loves to be spontaneous, in the moment, which allows us to riff off each other and play around. Of course the dialogue was so tight it didn't require ad-libbing but we had freedom to incorporate our own personal touches in other, more subtle ways. It takes an unconventional actor to play an eccentric character and make it interesting and real."
"Frank balances Roy not only in their real lives but also in the good cop/bad cop roles they play in their various cons," explains Scott. "Sam can be anything from earnest to outrageous, quiet, loud, indignant - you name it. The first time we see the guys running a con in person they walk through the door looking like a couple of evangelists."
The bottom line, says Scott, is that "these guys consider themselves con artists, not con men or criminals, especially Roy, who regards his talent as nothing short of artistry." Their philosophy is that the victims themselves are tainted with greed and looking to make a too-good-to-be-true deal, which is how they get themselves fleeced. "I didn't take his money; he gave it to me," Roy often remarks, putting distance between himself and those he would consider common
thieves. Matchstick men don't use force and they don't break into people's homes, so they don't really consider it stealing.
One person who might disagree with this point of view is crass millionaire Chuck Frechette, played by Bruce McGill, who joined the Matchstick production after wrapping the role of CNN correspondent Peter Arnett in the award-winning HBO docudrama Live From Baghdad.
Frechette, long on greed and short on brains, never met a shady deal he didn't like and is about to make a significant contribution toward Roy's retirement fund - if all goes well. Rockwell, who worked with McGill in the 1997 drama Lawn Dogs, nails the flamboyant character in a single sentence: "Frechette is a rich, arrogant jackass, just waiting to be popped."
Upon reading the script, McGill was especially impressed with how the story's natural humor emerges "without relying on jokes, per se. In Matchstick," he says, "it's the magic of human behavior that entertains us. Watching these characters interact is like being in a restaurant when you find yourself riveted by the conversation that's going on at the next table."
The filmmakers tapped Bruce Altman (Changing Lanes) for the role of sympathetic psychiatrist Dr. Klein, who steps into Roy's life when his former doctor leaves town. Unlike his predecessor, who simply kept Roy supplied with pills, Klein insists on slipping a bit of therapy into each session as well, encouraging his tight-lipped and tightly-wound patient to take a good look at himself.
Addressing Roy's myriad tics and phobias, Altman marvels at "how the body reacts, regardless of how we try to restrain it. In a profound way, this con artist struggles with his confidence as well as his conscience. He's in a profession for which you have to be completely in control, and the only thing he's unable to control is the movement of his own body. It's classic. We've all experienced something like that, the day
of the big event when the trick knee suddenly acts up."
Klein's gentle persistence eventually brings about Roy's revelation that he was once married and that his possibly-pregnant wife walked out on him, leaving him to wonder for the past 15 years about whether or not he has a child somewhere. Unable to muster the courage to contact his ex, Roy talks Klein into doing it for him and discovers - to his mingled joy and terror - that he has a daughter who is eager to meet him.
The 14-Year-Old Surprise
Having gotten Klein to make the first call, it's now up to Roy to meet his newfound daughter, Angela, a bright, vivacious 14-year-old, played by Alison Lohman, who earned accolades last year as star of the poignant drama White Oleander. As Rapke recalls, "when her name came up as a possibility I said to Ridley, 'you have to see this White Oleander stuff; she's really incredible.' She has the range to play both young and
mature, which is precisely the blend we have in Angela."
"Alison is effortless," says Cage with genuine admiration. "I never see the acting, she's so smooth and full of life and fascinating to watch. She has the ability to tap into her emotional resources and come up with something real every time."
When Angela meets her agoraphobic father for the first time it's in a park so he's woefully out of his element. "At first, she thinks he's a little dorky, the way he dresses and the way he keeps blinking; she's not sure what to make of him," says Lohman. "But the more time she spends with him the more she likes him. I think she gets a kick out of him. He makes her laugh."
Roy's myriad idiosyncrasies endear him to his daughter.
Regardless of his shady livelihood, Lohman believes that Angela appreciates "Roy's honesty. He is who he is and he isn't trying to hide anything, and I believe that's primarily what kids want from their parents, for them to be real.
"Angela's young and bored," she explains. "It's summer vacation. When she finds out her Dad is nearby she jumps at the chance to meet him. She wants to know what he's like. When she finds out he's a con artist, it's like a bonus. It appeals to her rebellious spirit. Naturally, she wants to know all about it."
"Meanwhile, Roy is desperately trying to juggle his professional life with these new elements in his personal life," offers Ted Griffin, "trying to be both father and criminal at the same time and keeping those two roles from colliding….which, of course, they do."
Angela's laid-back approach to life contrasts sharply with her father's anxiety-ridden existence from the moment she enters his house and walks onto his immaculate carpet without taking her shoes off. As her visits extend into long weekends, Roy comes home to find pizza boxes and the scattered paraphernalia of her life strewn all over the place while she lounges by the pool. It's the first time the pool has been used for anything
but reflection since Roy moved into the house.
"Angela's entrance into Roy's life is nothing short of an invasion - from his perspective," says Scott, with a laugh. "Mess, devastating mess! His inner sanctum is completely disturbed." Adds Lohman, "It's like turning a new puppy loose in the house."
But mess or not, Roy is anxious to forge a relationship with the girl and approaches the unfamiliar parental role as seriously as he does everything else.
As Cage describes the transformation, "Everything changes when Roy discovers this daughter from his early failed marriage. At first he's very hesitant about it, excited but nervous. How do you suddenly become a father to a teenager, especially when you're having a hard enough time just taking care of yourself? But one of the things that makes Roy so likeable is that he does take to it. He really loves her immediately and
he's willing to step up to the responsibility, ill equipped as he is.
"After Angela's appearance, little things begin to change in Roy's life," Cage continues. "He makes an effort to step outside more and to acknowledge people with a simple hello. We see Roy blossom a bit."
But Roy isn't the only one transformed by the relationship.
"There's probably a streak of larceny in all kids," says Starkey. "When Angela finds out her Dad's a con artist it's the greatest possible news. This is what kids dream about. It's exciting, like something they've seen in movies. And she's relentless - 'Oh, Daddy, take me on a con, show me how you do it, just a little one, please, please, it would be so much fun.' Well, it's fun in the movies but in real life
it's a difficult game and Roy doesn't want to bring her into it. But she's so persistent that he eventually gives in. Plus, I think there's a bit of pride in it too, regardless of his own conflicted feelings about his work, the truth is he's good at it and in some way I think he wants to show her what he can do.
"Of course," the producer concludes, "he regrets it."
"The repercussions of this unlikely father/daughter act could turn an innocent relationship into a potentially dangerous relationship," cautions Ted Griffin - not just for the two of them but also for Roy's long-term partnership with Frank Mercer.
"Frank is concerned she'll make them vulnerable. He doesn't want a third party, especially an amateur," Scott describes Mercer's wary reception to the girl. "He and Roy have a good double act and, to Frank's thinking, two is better than three. When you add a player, you increase the risk that something will go wrong."
Just Your Friendly Neighborhood Con
"Matchstick Men is actually set nowhere," reveals novelist Eric Garcia. "I specifically didn't name a place or incorporate landmarks because I wanted to show that this kind of thing and these characters exist everywhere. It doesn't matter if it's a big city like Miami or Los Angeles, or a small suburb of Topeka, Kansas - wherever you are, you can get conned. Your life can change in an instant."
Grounding the story in L.A. for the film, Ridley Scott maintained Garcia's point of view by selecting an area that could stand in for countless American cities with its ubiquitous housing tracts, strip malls, bowling alleys, coffee shops and Laundromats and its comfortable suburban atmosphere: the San Fernando Valley.
The director turned to his longtime location scout Stuart Barter to help uncover some visual gems off the beaten track throughout the Southern California basin. Barter worked closely with veteran location manager Janice Polley and together the pair helped Scott find and secure a variety of practical sites including spots in North Hollywood (Toluca Lake Car Wash), Burbank (Magnolia Park Arcade), Canoga Park (De Soto Pharmacy)
and Woodland Hills (Westhill Market), as well as the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen's Club downtown, Dodger Stadium parking lot, AMF Eldorado Bowling Lanes in Venice, and the Anaheim Convention Center in neighboring Orange County.
Production designer Tom Foden (The Cell, One Hour Photo), contributed original designs for Dr. Klein's office and the interiors of Roy's pristine, antiseptic home.
In addition to a stage set created by Foden, two Los Angeles locations doubled for the exterior of Roy's house -- an upscale ranch-style home in Woodland Hills and one of 52 unique edifices designed by California modernist architect Gregory Ain in 1948 that dot the Mar Vista neighborhood on L.A.'s Westside. Coincidentally, cameraman Mitch Dubin, who served as operator on the film for director of photography John Mathieson,
lives around the block from the latter, in one of Ain's incomparable homes.
"Stuart said I was going to like this austere pool," Scott refers to the Woodland Hills location. "We saw the house, and it also had this fantastic stone fireplace." As Scott recalls, the structure so impressed Nicolas Cage with its sense of tranquility that he expressed a desire to buy and relocate it to the Hollywood Hills.
"From the beginning," Foden relates, "we knew Roy would live in a spare and orderly environment - not only because of his obsession for cleanliness but because of the nature of his business. He has to be able to walk away from this house and never come back if there's trouble. This no-frills approach lent itself well to modern styling. Ridley's first sketch was a mid-century house on stilts overlooking downtown
Los Angeles. This evolved - partly influenced by our discovery of the Woodland Hills and Mar Vista sites - into a late 1950s, early 60s tract house."
"I've always liked the paintings of John Register," Foden continues. "His use of strong afternoon sunlight and long shadows, combined with contemporary settings was an idea I thought could set the mood of the film. It provided a linear sectioning between order and disarray which really defines the character of Roy."
Anticipating close to a month of shooting, Foden's crew recreated Roy's ideal house on a soundstage. As the voice of experience, Scott relates how a film crew on residential property is always "very popular with people who want to see a film unit and cables for the first day and a half. Then by the third day you're in the way and they hate your guts. After three and a half weeks of shooting at that house we would have
driven them crazy, so we reproduced the house on a stage and I was able to add the pool."
The pool set was built to full-size length and width but with a depth of only thirty inches and filled with water on Stage 16 at Culver Studios. Symbolically, it proved deeper. "It's a point of tranquility for Roy, with the surface reflected at night in his living room," says Scott, who also called it "a fantastic lighting opportunity. Roy sits there night after night on his couch, with his cigarette, and stares
at the still water like watching a TV with no moving picture."
Much of Foden's work was concentrated on sprucing up existing locations such as a laundromat in the seaside town of Venice, where Angela tries her hand at lotto ticket scam; a supermarket with appealingly geometric window treatments in the far western reaches of the Valley where Roy stops for his nightly canned tuna feast; and the DeSoto Pharmacy, where the medicine counter was at a right angle to the front of the store rather
than in the back, an uncommon placement that made for workable camera angles.
Due to security and logistical problems of filming at L.A.'s international airport, the filmmakers relied on Foden to transform the five-story glass-and-steel Anaheim Convention Center into a reasonable facsimile of LAX for a key scene. As Barter recalls, "I had seen the convention center on a previous scouting assignment and was anxious for the chance to use it before another scout used it first as an airport terminal."
Scott's decision to film there marked the first time the three-year-old facility had been used in a Hollywood movie.
"The convention center's new addition is thoroughly modern, almost European in its architecture" cites Foden. "With long corridors and high ceilings already in place, all we needed to do was add signage, ticket counters, skycap stands and people. We added aluminum siding to an existing information kiosk to turn it into a counter, along with some custom booths and tables to create an airport convenience bar."
While "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" won't be one of the soundtrack's vintage tunes, Scott took his troops out to Dodger Stadium for a day's shoot to use the stadium's boundless parking area (Lot 24) to erect a bus stop overlooking downtown.
"Given that the wide shot showed us the large expanse of the parking lot, we figured there would be a number of shaded places in which to catch a ride to the stadium entrance," notes Foden. "Ridley wanted a specific look for a scene. The starkness of the glaring sunlight and shelter of the shaded tram stop provided a contrast of environments for Roy to have a heated discussion with Frank," adding that it's
this kind of attention to composition and visual effect that's typical of the director's style.
"A Summer Wind"
Scott notes that while Roy does not own a television, he has a turntable, on which he spins "an extensive collection of vinyl discs. Doesn't care much for modern music. What's interesting is that when I read the script I kept thinking of the 1950s and Frank Sinatra, and in my second meeting with Nic Cage, he said, 'if Roy listened to music, do you think it would be Frank Sinatra?' I immediately knew we were on the same
wavelength. Roy's music taste is consistent with the kind of clothes he wears and the kind of house he lives in."
The film's cool, minimalist score is provided by world renowned composer and frequent Ridley Scott collaborator Hans Zimmer, whose recent work on Gladiator earned him a sixth Academy Award nomination (he took the Oscar home in 1994 for The Lion King.) Additionally, says Starkey, "Ridley selected a series of songs he thought Roy would listen to. It gives the action a hip, smooth, jazzy feel." Among the pieces that might help Roy unwind after a stressful day are Sinatra classics
"A Summer Wind" and "This Town," Bobby Darin's rendition of "Beyond the Sea" and "The Good Life," and a couple of tunes from a band that helped define the 60s, "Tijuana Taxi" and "The Lonely Bull" from Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
|
