George Isaac, producer and director, tells View about his new film, London-based crime thriller All Things To All Men, how great it is to work in the greatest of cities with wonderful actors, how exciting it is to get his first choices for actors jumping on board, and also the trials and tribulations of being a producer and director in the complicated world of filmmaking.
Tell us about the film first of all, where did the idea come from?
There was no real kind of purposeful idea when I started out. I started writing after I lost some money on Woolworths, when Entertainment UK went down, because I'd produced Adulthood. We lost quite a lot of money, and so we had to cut our costs accordingly. The writing that we were receiving really wasn't what we wanted to make and produce so I spoke to my business partners, and basically said I think I could leave the company and take a bit of time to write a screenplay. I was juggling a few ideas, and thought I'd do a crime thriller.
Purely because it's one of those genres that if you do it right - because there's not that many that are done right - then it would be something that was quite enjoyable. So I started with the words 'pitch black' on the screenplay and took it from there. So that was really the ethos, and the idea of how I started writing, and then I'd been a big fan of things like Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City, Marathon Man, The French Connection, even Bill Duke's Deep Cover. I was a fan of all these pictures and I felt like no one's really done one in London for quite some time. Not really since Layer Cake, which was a big vista of London.
We're shooting right across London, we started off in Shepherd's Bush market, Wormwood Scrubs, and we're working our way right across the east, so we've done Bond Street, Oxford Street, Berkeley Square, Grosvenor Hotel, the London Eye, through Liverpool Street and eventually make our way over to east. We're going to try and give a complete picture of London through this film, I think we've got ninety locations on this picture.
What sort of London is it, is it touristy London or a more everyday London?
I'd say a bit more like John Mackenzie shot The Long Good Friday, keeping it very big, very wide. When we're talking about things like the London Eye, no one's really shot there, and it was kind of nice to shoot in the capsule. Generally giving you a wider picture of what London is. There's so many different pockets to London, that's why we started west and worked our way across east. But really it's just to give you a glamorous London, but not one that's iconic by landmarks.
Can you tell us a bit about the plot?
A cop blackmails a criminal into hiring another criminal, that's the basic premise. This criminal has to hire the other one into doing a heist, in a nutshell. I don't know how else to describe it, as it's an ensemble picture. It's no Reservoir Dogs, I'm not Quentin Tarantino and I'm certainly not Bryan Singer, but it's a kind of ensemble piece. And like the title says, all things to all men, eventually where greed and where the character pushes you, is where the story goes.
Who plays who, out of those parts?
Gabriel Byrne plays the criminal, who's blackmailed. Rufus Sewell plays the cop who's doing the blackmailing, and Toby Stephens is the thief that's hired. Then we have Elsa Pataky, who's a widow out for revenge, we have Julian Sands playing Gabriel's number two, and a close friend to him, James Frain, is the attorney general, and David Schofield is the police commissioner.
How early on did some of those actors get involved?
Basically I wrote the script for Gabriel. I've been told it's really quite rare to get the actor that you write it for. Very luckily for me I sent it to his agent and he responded really positively. I went to Gabriel and he came on board, I sent it to him in May or June and he was on board by early July. Obviously having Gabriel helped, giving it to other actors; I sent it to Rufus and again he responded very positively. That same week I took lunch with Toby, and luckily for me they all came on board. They appreciated the writing and they were all happy to work with a first-timer, which was gratifying.
You mention that it's a pretty high risk genre. You weren't tempted to go off and do a lovely Notting Hill-type romance instead?
It was just that I really do enjoy a good crime thriller, and there are just not enough quality ones made. I must have spent two years writing this script, and it was taking the care and trying to develop the characters; I wanted to go back to the old-school seventies kind of filmmaking where the characters drive the story, and push you forward. I've tried to shoot this film like it's down and dirty, like the seventies, a bit like how they shot The French Connection and films like that. It's not guerrilla at all, but it's trying to push the limits a little bit.
The budget of the film is only £3 million, but I'm trying to make a £10 million movie. What you could shoot in the seventies on a big budget is what you can shoot today on a low budget. A lot of people don't take that into their filmmaking and look back into the history of films, and see which ways they can tell the best stories. Even if you're on a limited budget there are many ways you can tell a great story, and that's what I've tried to do with this film.
You talk about filming in all the different locations, hotels and landmarks; how supportive have they been of getting London on screen?
They've been amazing. Grosvenor Hotel was amazing, London heliport which we just shot at, they were fantastic. Everyone has been extremely supportive of this project, even the product placement people have been amazing to us, and we're very, very grateful and appreciative for everything they've given us. Having come from a production background, I tried to be as respectful as I can on all locations and tried to get out of there within the time. Sometimes you run a little bit over, but I understand that we're disturbing people. I've tried to keep it in good shape at this end of the process and it seems to have gone well so far. They've all been really accommodating to us.
Did you go back and look at all those films you mentioned, in preparation?
Yeah, all of them, but from all genres as well. You can learn so many different things from other films. I've got this shot that's at the end of a particular scene, it's all in silhouettes on the hill when the sunset's coming over. That really came from Raiders of the Lost Ark, so it's not really any particular film. I watched those films because they're well-made crime thrillers as opposed to anything else, and trying not to get used to things that are substandard. Particularly trying to do a crime thriller, I wanted to watch the ones that are good. I watched many other films just to see where I could get other ideas of how I wanted to get my own voice across as a director.