Cinematical

His namesakes Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson made immediate genius debut splashes on the movie scene, but Brad Anderson, 43, has taken a slower, more indirect route, one more like the long, steady careers of John Ford and Howard Hawks. (By the way, none of these Andersons are related, and I am not related to any of them.) Brad Anderson has turned into a solid, dependable genre director, highly skilled and capable of making any kind of movie. Unlike most filmmakers today, his films are based on ideas, stories and characters rather than marketing concepts, and so they tend to hold up well past their sell-by date. So far they include the romantic comedy Next Stop Wonderland (1998), the sci-fi romance Happy Accidents (2000), one of the decade's best horror films, Session 9 (2001) and the haunting The Machinist (2004).

Opening July 18, Anderson's new film Transsiberian is more like a classic thriller in the Hitchcock vein, even taking place on a train as many of Hitch's films did. Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer star as American couple Roy and Jessie, on their way back from China and taking the famous train. Ben Kingsley also stars as a Russian narcotics detective. Roy and Jessie meet a younger, traveling couple, Abby (Kate Mara) and Carlos (Eduardo Noriega), and find themselves entangled in a web of drugs and murder. Normally, the man is the hero in this type of story, but this time it's Jessie, a reformed "bad girl" making a go of it in her marriage with the simple, happy Roy (a train nut). Cinematical recently enjoyed a brief phone conversation with Mr. Anderson, and that's where we began:

Cinematical: Was Jessie always the main focus of the story, or did you switch around a male character at some point?

Brad Anderson: It was always a woman. I'd always wanted to set a story on a train. I took a trip after college and I though it would be a great location for a story. I'd always had this concept of this woman, this Russian woman, who was a killer. She's an attendant on the train, one of those grumpy people. My initial concept was that one of those women was a killer and she would off passengers on this train and she would leave the bodies in the middle of remote Siberia. If you're going to bury a body, Siberia's a pretty good place to get away with it. It was against the convention of having a serial killer be a guy. But then [co-screenwriter] Will Conroy and I kind of started finessing the story and we started to go less "serial killer" and go for something more believable. My first couple movies had female protagonists. It's just always more interesting. I've always liked the idea of taking the man's role and switching it around. You can ask yourself, did she invite this upon herself? Is this part of her bad girl past coming back to haunt her? It makes it more interesting than if it's just a guy. Then it's also interesting when she's trying to cover it up; she's in a more vulnerable position. We also spoke about "Crime and Punishment," which has a guy who kills a woman and then is stalked by this inspector, especially since it was set in Russia. And The Machinist was Dostoyevsky as well. What better place to amp up the level of paranoia and suspicion?

Cinematical: That's funny. I've never thought of you as a Dostoyevskian filmmaker...

BA: It's the notion of guilt. Guilt ran thought a lot of his stories. And our last three films have had guilty characters.

Cinematical: Most directors talk about how it's so cold on movie shoots, but you really were shooting in the cold. How did you cope with it?

BA: When we first started, it was the warmest winter on record in Eastern Europe. We had to shoot all the scenes inside the train first because there was no snow. And we started to get concerned because we were running out of things to shoot and there was no snow. We were starting to think we'd have to use fake snow and it would look really cheesy. They told us it would snow by December, but it didn't until January. Then it was minus 30 degrees. The trains started breaking down, and the camera started conking out. The hardest part of making this movie was shooting inside the train set. You had two places to put the camera. That was the hardest part.

Cinematical: I found one other movie that takes place on the Transsiberian express. It's called Horror Express (1973), and it stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

BA: When I was editing in Barcelona I was taking the train home and I passed this little kiosk and I saw this video. There it was called Panic in the Trans-Siberian Train or something. So I watched it and it was hilarious. It has these zombie creatures. It's so bizarre.

Cinematical: I didn't realize it before, but there's actually a whole subgenre of train movies. Hitchcock did a bunch, and James Bond always takes the train...

BA: I don't think we were trying to pay homage. It just used to be the way that people got around. And there really aren't any trains around anymore like this one. We always wanted to make it a little more old fashioned in the sense that you get to know the characters. You kind of get to know them and invest a little in their scenario. And then you throw in the complication. The pacing in this story was always going to be a slow build, almost like a train.

Cinematical: By the way, I didn't really mean to imply that you were paying homage to anyone, just that Transsiberian is a great addition to a really cool subgenre.

BA: Yeah. No, I think I have my influences, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Polanski. But when I'm making the movie you're caught up and you're not really thinking about anybody else. And then when you look back you go, oh yeah! That's in there. I'll take it!

Cinematical: Your producer on this one was Julio Fernandez, who also produced The Machinist. How did you hook up with him?

BA: Julio and Carlos Fernández. They're kind of like the Weinsteins of Spain. They're distributors, they have a theater, but they also recently got into production. My movie Session 9 did pretty well in Spain and they knew who I was. They were always interested in working with me. We had that script The Machinist floating around and we weren't able to find the financing for it here. So they said yes, and the only stipulation is that we had to shoot it in Barcelona. It turned out to be a good relationship with Filmax for me. The next one I'm hoping to do with them as well. These aren't big movies, but they've given me pretty much creative freedom. It's like these big financiers: there's always some associate producer looking over your shoulder. The European thing is the auteur. They believe in the director and they feel like if they take a chance, they'll get something back.