Kevin MacDonald Q&A

4 months ago 21st Sep 10:42

Kevin Macdonald is a two time Bafta winner with movies such as Touching The Void and The Last King of Scotland under his belt.

The filmmaker returned to box office success earlier this year with political thriller State of Play, boasting an impressive cast of Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams and Robin Wright Penn.

This film went through different cast changes. How did you navigate through the changes?

I got involved in this through Brad Pitt’s company. We started developing the script but I wanted to make a film that was different from what he wanted. He ended pulling out really close to us shooting.

Edward Norton was going to co star but because we had to push the dates, he had another movie scheduled. Also Ed was a foil for Brad and once Brad was gone, Ed didn’t make sense.

You have this glossy beautifully dressed politician who the journalist has to admire and feel he is not as successful as his friend, and that was always difficult with Brad, because who isn’t more successful than Brad?

So I think things happen for a reason and in this case I ended up with a cast much better suited to the material.

What was it like to direct your first Hollywood film?

A lot of the adventure was to come to Hollywood and make a movie with big stars and I was given a lot of freedom from the studio.

The docos I made and The Last King of Scotland were rooted in reality and took you to a place most people are not familiar with, but this one was Washington DC and politics and journalism, so the challenge was how to make the very familiar not so familiar.

I wanted to make the kind of film I wanted to see, one that is entertaining but also makes you think and is smart.

Was All the President’s Men an inspiration?

It was one of the greatest journalistic films ever made. The journalists were very heroic and today everyone despises journalists for the most part.

After Watergate they were considered to be heroes and essential in the running of a democratic society, and the set of the Washington Post was a beautiful modernist work almost Kubrick like - very clean and crisp and it represented the future and optimism rationality as opposed to irrationality. I started to think to make this movie it would be like imagining the set of All the Presidents Men has been left to rot for 30 years.

I went to Washington Post and ceiling tiles are hanging down and the computers are twenty years old. It’s a great metaphor to what is happening to journalism and the perception of journalists in society.

That was the thing that excited me to make a film about journalism at a time with journalism is in crisis. It’s like a conspiracy thriller but it’s all true.

How did the movie change from the original miniseries on the BBC?

It’s a movie and it has to exist on its own. We took the basic plot of the journalist and the politician but essentially the characters are all different, what they’re like and their relationships are different.