watching the detectives Tagged Articles at Cinematical

During this year's Tribeca fest, I had a chance to talk to Paul Soter, director of the noir romcom Watching the Detectives, starring Cillian Muphy and Lucy Liu. Paul's name is already probably familiar to anyone who knows Broken Lizard, but he's intent on branching out as a mainstream writer-director, and his first film is proof that he has the chops. A strange and intriguing mixture of film noir and romcom spoof, Detectives is sure to get a distribution deal and be remembered as one of the festival's success stories -- it's also further proof that Murphy has a Gary Oldman-like ability to disappear in just about any role. The same guy who played an Irish revolutionary in 1916 is now completely convincing as a video store slacker who can't believe his good luck, when a mysterious babe walks into his store and into his life.

The whole time I was watching this movie I thought it was set in L.A., but someone told me that's not the case?

PS: Well, it was shot in New York City, but set to be kind of anywhere. I had originally conceived it to be more like a college town. There's an area where I grew up in Denver where there's a lot of mom and pop indie record stores, comic book stores, kind of places like that. Originally, the idea was that I was going to shoot it in Austin, Texas, and then for various reasons and then it turned out that we had to shoot it in New York. It turned out to be kind of a tricky thing, to come out here and find a way to shoot something in this city, that hopefully didn't look like the city. So we ended up shooting in Brooklyn, Queens, Bayonne, New Jersey, sort of all over the place -- everywhere, but the city. You say there was something in it that made you think of Los Angeles?

It may be just the whole film noir vibe that runs through it, that made me think of L.A.

PS: I'm glad to hear it, because I always hope that I pulled it off and it didn't just look like, around the city.

Did you talk to the actors about actually injecting a film noir vibe into the film, the acting, the dialogue, and so forth? Lucy Liu's character has a very femme fatale thing going on.

PS: Yeah, definitely. I tried to explain to them that a lot of the idea behind making the movie was that you take the dynamic between the male and female that exists in so many film noir movies and try and transplant that into a current film set, in the current day. So, you know, yeah, in terms of Lucy being a sexy, mysterious, possibly dangerous woman and Cillian being this guy who sort of thinks he knows the score, but everyone but he knows that he's being taken for a ride. Yeah, I wanted them to sort of be aware that that's what was going on while they were doing it.

"I can't shake the feeling that you're just blowing through town with a carnival." Dialogue from Watching the Detectives, a romantic comedy with shadings of L.A. noir that played at Tribeca this year. If the film were made sixty years ago, the male lead would first be seen in a downmarket private investigator's store front, leaning back in a chair with his feet up on a desk, as the dangeous female comes waltzing into his life. Today, it's a downmarket indie video store, where Neil (Cillian Murphy) lounges with his fellow employees, savoring their status as increasingly rare birds in a neighborhood being invaded by behemoth video store giants. Into the store one day waltzes Violet (Lucy Liu) a first-time customer who continually asks Neil questions about this and that and when he answers, points out that she's talking not to him, but to whoever is on the other end of her invisible Bluetooth handless. She eventually sidles up to the counter and announces that she has no membership and no driver's license, but she wants to check out anyway.

What follows is a gentle spoof on femme fatales and the men they inevitably drag along by the ear. The plot can't handle any seriously evil or crooked intentions on the part of Violet, so instead she's portrayed as having a screw loose -- a woman who enjoys walking her men into elaborate practical jokes and then doubling over with laughter every time they fall for it. She begins by showing up at the restaurant they choose for their first date falling-down drunk. When Neil refuses her aggressive, drunken come-ons, she reveals the put on and tosses it off as a half-joke, half-test to see if he would take advantage of her. In the real world, the man would run for the hills of course, but it somehow works here. For his part, Neil is a classic noir stooge who understands intellectually that he's being taken for a ride by this woman but can't help himself. "I've lived in Tasmania, Cape Town ..." Violet tells him. "That sounds incredibly ..." "Exciting?" "I was gonna say made up."

There's so much casting going on today, I figured it would be easier to abbreviate some of it because, let's face facts, I'm good like that. Oh, and I'm also cool like that and smooth like that -- ya know, in case you were wondering.

• Actor Justin Long is quickly becoming the go-to man for mediocre underdog stories. Soon, you'll see him up on the big screen playing the lead role in Accepted, a film about a guy who creates his own, imaginary college after being rejected from all the "real" schools. Now, it appears as if the comedic talent will star in the indie feature Patriotville, written and directed by Talmage Cooley. Here, Long will play a guy who, while trying protect his town's meager place in American history, attempts to prevent an Indian casino from being built over some historic battlefield. Here's hoping Long's acting career is a short one. Sorry, the joke was there. I had to.
• Talk about two actors I never imagined in a romantic comedy -- Cillian Murphy and Lucy Liu have signed on to star in Watching the Detectives, an indie pic produced by Peach Arch Entertainment and Plum Pictures. The rom-com is said to revolve around a film noir buff who winds up with much more than he bargained for after romancing a real-life femme fatale. Broken Lizard's Paul Soter will make his directorial debut with the film, while also penning its script.
• Last but certainly least, Taryn Manning will star opposite Freddy Prinze Jr. in Jack and Jill vs. the World. Pic, which I thought was called Dick and Jane vs. the World, is not to be confused with the Adam Sandler-produced comedy, Jack and Jill. So, either Variety screwed up the title or folks involved with the film realized Freddy Prinze Jr. was more of a Dick than a Jack. Written and directed by Vanessa Parese, pic revolves around a good guy who falls for a girl with a secret. Though I wish it were true, something tells me her secret isn't that she hates every film Freddy Prinze Jr. has ever been involved with. Oh well.