Scottish filmmaker Kevin Macdonald shared an intriguing behind-the-scenes anecdote about the production of his 2009 fiction feature State Of Play this afternoon at the Edinburgh Film Festival, where he gave a keynote Q&A session alongside his brother, producer Andrew Macdonald.
In the session, chaired by Edinburgh TV Festival head Rowan Woods, Kevin was asked about his filmmaking forays in Hollywood, when he zeroed in on State of Play.
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“I didn’t realize at the time, but looking back, that was a pivotal film in Hollywood, as well as for me, because it was sort of the end [of an era],” Kevin said of the film, which starred an A-list cast including Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck.
“Donna Langley mentioned it too when she did Desert Island Discs. It was a turning point movie for her at Universal and the rest of Hollywood because it was conceived as an all-star, intelligent thriller for adults at $100 million. Can you imagine that today?”
Kevin continued to say that the film was originally seen by its studio, Universal, as a star vehicle for Brad Pitt, and he was tasked with tightening up the film’s screenplay and went looking for a writer to collaborate with to complete the job.
“I got Tony Gilroy, who was very hot off the back of doing the Bourne films and many other great films,” Kevin said. “We spent two months in his apartment, rewriting the script, spending untold amounts of money, and then showed it to Brad Pitt, and he hated it.”
Kevin added, “That was just the beginning of a long and very Hollywood-y saga, which I’m glad I had. It was the tail end of a certain kind of wasteful Hollywood filmmaking.”
Pitt was later replaced by Crowe. The film’s starry ensemble also features Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright, Jason Bateman, Jeff Daniels, and Helen Mirren. The film tells the story of Cal McAffrey, a fictional journalist, and his probe into the suspicious death of the assistant and mistress of a Congressman.
Kevin added that the entire film was shot on a sound stage in Hollywood.
“We knocked down the wall between two huge sound stages,” he said. “We had to build a big enough set for an office, even though we could have just gone to Washington, D.C.. But because Brad had a young family at the time and didn’t want to travel, we built this set that in the end he didn’t end up being able to use.”
This afternoon’s session between Kevin and Andrew was the centerpiece of this year’s Industry section at Edinburgh. Andrew is the Chair of the festival, and before the session, the pair screened one of their early shorts, which was shot on site at Edinburgh in the early 90s.
The short features the brothers attempting to sell the screenplay for Shallow Grave to a producer. They are unsuccessful in raising funds for the film, but Andrew explained that the short helped to launch their careers.
“It screened on the last day of the festival in ’92,” he said. “From that, we met this amazing woman who was the commissioning editor at Scottish television called Maxine Baker, and she then commissioned us to make a series called Shadowing.”
He later added: “And when we were making this TV show Shadowing in Edinburgh, we got the script [for Shallow Grave] to somebody at Channel Four.”
Shallow Grave was eventually directed by Danny Boyle, marking his first collaboration with Andrew. The pair went on to make Trainspotting and several other features, including The Beach.
This year’s Edinburgh Film Festival ends on August 20.
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com ’
