Interview: 'The Bank Job' Director Roger Donaldson

Australian-born Roger Donaldson, 62, may be the perfect example of a journeyman filmmaker, or a craftsman, the exact opposite of an auteur. You could watch back-to-back, for example, Cocktail (1988), Species (1995) and Thirteen Days (2000) and never guess that the same man made all three. His filmography is a perfect cross-section of Hollywood films, good and bad. He may be the only director nominated for both the Palme d'Or (for The Bounty in 1984) and a Razzie (for Cocktail).

The best thing about these types of filmmakers is that they're level-headed and tend to learn from their mistakes, picking up new skills and bringing fresh ideas to each new film. Likewise, he has worked with an impressive roster of actors and actresses, including many future stars and Oscar winners. He began as a still photographer and a documentary filmmaker before helping to organize the New Zealand Film Commission. His first films, Sleeping Dogs (1977) and Smash Palace (1981) helped put him on the map and brought him to Hollywood, where he has worked steadily for three decades. His previous film, The World's Fastest Indian (2005), was something of a personal film for him. He revisited a subject from a documentary he made in the 1970s, wrote the script and raised the money, shot partly in New Zealand where his roots are, and even reunited with Anthony Hopkins, the co-star of The Bounty.

Now, refreshed and recharged, he returns with The Bank Job, a crackerjack heist movie based on a true story. Jason Statham stars as an amateur robber swindled into knocking over a London bank to steal blackmail material from a safe deposit box. He's accompanied by a huge cast of robbers, crooked politicians, swindlers, secret agents, smut peddlers, revolutionaries and other interested parties, all looking for the spoils of the robbery. The film has a graceful clarity of storytelling and action, as well as a grubby, handmade feel as if transported directly from the 1970s. Mr. Donaldson recently dropped by San Francisco for a screening and a brief chat. We began by talking about -- what else? -- movies. Mr. Donaldson mentioned a couple of 2007 movies he felt were overlooked: Reign Over Me and The Hoax.

Cinematical: On a side note, I just watched Anthony Hopkins's movie Slipstream. Have you seen it? What did you make of it?

Roger Donaldson: I've seen it. I went to the premiere of it. You know what I felt after watching it, is that I didn't know what to make of it, but I did know what to make of it. It's incredibly like Anthony. I found it very inspiring in a funny way. It's like saying, 'Hey, come on, break all the rules.' I was taken back to Last Year at Marienbad and that existentialist sort of stuff. It's about image and ideas and feelings, it's about what cinema can do that nothing else can do quite the same way. So, you know what the movie's about, but if I think you had to tell the story, you'd be a little bit pushed.

Cinematical: Can you please talk about your beginnings as a movie fan?

RD: I grew up in a small country town in Australia called Ballarat, and there was a drive-in cinema, the Skyline, and my dad and I would go on a Wednesday night to see the Western double feature. I don't know how the hell he explained to my mother that I should be out on a Wednesday night at the movies when I should be home doing my homework. Anyway, he loved the movies and so did I. My mum was much more sophisticated than my dad, and she loved those English art movies, and so she would take me on the weekends to Melbourne, which is quite a way, and we would go see the more highbrow stuff. And so I managed to marry the two in my mind. I love entertainment, and I love Westerns. I've never made one, but I'd love to make one. I love the West. I love the desert. I actually did a movie based in Santa Fe, White Sands. I just love all that vast landscape. Nothing would make me happier than shooting a movie out in Monument Valley, or out there somewhere.

Cinematical: You're not credited as one of the writers on The Bank Job, but you did a ton of research. Is that standard practice for you?

RD: I always get involved in research, especially [with] movies based on fact. I think the obligation of the filmmaker with movies based on true stories is to get the truth -- because you can never get the facts. No one even knows what the facts are. But what you can get is the sort of period right. I don't think this movie -- some of the facts may be very hard to support if you dug below the surface. But I do think that what was going on in England at this time, with government and all that, is fact. So I try to be very honest to the story.

Cinematical: At some point you must have realized that you couldn't possibly get all the facts right for this.

RD: Yes. The biggest fact that is not as it is in the movie, is that I did manage to find one of the bank robbers. I'm pretty sure he was one of them. I spoke to him three or four times, and he wasn't consistent in what he was saying. So I feel like there was a lot more to his story than he was prepared to talk about. And even hinted that there were other people that were part of it but were never identified or brought to justice.

Cinematical: I think Jason Statham is a terrific actor, but lately he seems to get these movies that open on Friday with no screenings for the press.

RD: I think it must be very hard. Obviously, he's graduated out of England. He's an international actor. How do you make choices that are in your own best interest? What is your own best interest? His fame has come from doing the Transporter movies, which are pretty much straightforward action movies. Crank, which I liked a lot, but these aren't movies that really show his acting chops. And I think in this movie he does get a chance to show that he's a pretty talented actor, because he's up against some pretty heavyweight people, so you'd see pretty clearly. Nobody would know better or quicker than me if he couldn't do it. What I saw was a guy that every day, would take the experience of working with really good people, and the next day be even better. I would love to make another movie with him. The experience is one that I will cherish. He's a very committed guy. He's a personable guy. He'll do anything; he's got a great sense of humor. He takes it seriously. He turns up well prepared; he knows his dialogue. He would give it everything.

Cinematical: There's a great work ethic that English actors seem to have.

RD: They do. That is very true. I think it's because the acting world there is much tighter and smaller and there isn't the same sort of glamour. The glamour there is to be thought of as a "Sir," to get knighted. That's the glamour of the British acting community. And that really takes, not just being a star, but being sort of a stalwart of the community and encouraging other actors and being part of the theater. I don't think it makes them any better as actors, but it's a different style.

Cinematical: I was very impressed by how clear this movie is. It's easy to follow. There are so many parts and so many faces...

RD: Nothing pisses me off more than when I get confused about two people because they've got the same hair or the same shaped head. I really made a big effort to make everybody totally original and stand out, accent-wise, and visually and even how I shot them.

Cinematical: I really enjoyed The World's Fastest Indian. It struck me that it must have been a re-invention, or a refresher for you. You wrote it...

RD: It was. It was a big change. It was done independently. I wrote it. I raised the money. I worked with someone that I'd made a movie with years ago, Anthony Hopkins. It was based on a documentary I made one of the very first times I came to America, 1971. So it spans my whole filmmaking career. In a way, what I did was re-visit the past, both artistically and emotionally. It was a cathartic film to do because it was about a lot of things. It was about New Zealand; it was about my passion for the craziness that makes people want to go faster, and why, the pointlessness of it all, and yet the philosophical nature of trying to do the impossible. It was an homage to my dad, who just passed away a few months ago. It was about what it is to grow older. It was an inspiration to the young. This guy was an inspiration to me. It transcended age. You couldn't help but be sucked along by the vortex of his enthusiasm. And talent too. And heroics. He was totally fearless.

Cinematical: Did you come off that movie having felt recharged?

RD: It was very satisfying. It was a little disappointing in that it never really caught, especially here in America. It had a small distribution companies in it, but I'd hoped that I could have got a bigger push for it. But it's become a cult movie in a way. It has a lot of very dedicated fans. If ever I wear a t-shirt that has "World's Fastest Indian" on it, people come up to me and say 'you gotta see that movie! It's fantastic!'

Cinematical: I'd guess that Species is the one that people most ask you about.

RD: No. I've got a fair range of movies, from highbrow stuff like Thirteen Days to less highbrow stuff like Species. The only thing these movies have in common is that I was interested in what they were about and what they were going to take to make. It started out, the script came to me, the guy who had been my agent took over running MGM. He was like, 'Roger. I've got this great script. It's this horror movie.' And I said, 'no.' And he said, 'I know you're going to be interested.' And I read it, and it was like, 'Oh the SETI Project!' And I'd read about Carl Sagan and all that stuff. And suddenly, I'm sucked into it. And it was like, 'Roger, you can do motion capture and digital animation and live action...' So suddenly there were a whole lot of things. And then I managed to get a very A-list group of actors and I managed to get a tongue-in-cheek quality that I felt gave a unique perspective on the genre.

Cinematical: I hope I don't offend you with this question, but would you consider yourself more along the lines of a journeyman or an artisan?

RD: Well, the truth is, I just think of myself as someone who likes to make movies. I've never really thought about where I fit in. Other than: my passion is movies and I started out as a still photographer and I came to directing -- the first things I did were documentaries. One particular documentary I happened to be in Chile just days after Allende was overthrown and assassinated and Pinochet took power -- very dramatic stuff. I was staying in this hotel and there was gunfire around the hotel. I was afraid to put my head up above the window line! I got held up by some young soldiers who were trying to drag me off to wherever, a couple of sixteen year old kids with guns pointed at me. And what I was there for was I was shooting this sort of "Boy's Own" adventure documentary about going around Cape Horn on a yacht. So I was headed down to Punta Arenas and I got involved in all this other political stuff and the documentary that I shot had nothing to do with what was really happening. I was a lot more interested... when Missing came along, it really captured what it felt like to be in the middle of all that. And so I thought, what I really would like to do is make dramas and not documentaries. So I got involved with some of the first films in New Zealand and made one called Smash Palace. So I wound up coming here. I just love making movies. I don't have a publicist. I don't push my own celebrity. I like talking about my work, and I like talking about the people I work with; movie making is not a solitary exercise. It takes a lot of talented people. So I don't know how I see myself; I see myself as a very caring, dedicated filmmaker that has a lot of movies that I hope I still get to tell.