STACK #124 Feb 2016

DVD&BD

Q&A

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of the craft. You get into those first rehearsals and you’re more studying what’s going to happen and seeing what’s going on and seeing what needs to be altered so that there can be behaviours that come naturally and the scenes can flow. They’re both super professionals and they are so talented that we worked for three weeks in rehearsals on getting it right. They were the ones that performed it. They had to get up on that stage and make it happen. I’m just the coach. Friction between parents and children is universal and relatable, but how do you ensure that it doesn’t end up too heavy, and the light is balanced with the dark? A lot of that ends up being in the script and in the editing room. You’re trying to make sure that any time there’s something dramatic that you’re shooting, there’s some way out of it, out of the pressure of the drama. Ultimately, you just craft it so that you can take a ride that is enjoyable and entertaining. I don’t want to make movies that are miserable for people to get through. You want them to be fun to get through, even though they’re deep. How important was it to you that this story was set in a small town, instead of a large city? That was important to me, and it was important to me because it represents less that it was a small town, than it was something that felt like the perception of the idea of home. I wanted it to be something that felt like something preserved in time, because our memories are preserved in time. I wanted it to feel like something that was sacred and important to be protected, because the judge put his whole life into protecting this idea, creating this home. I wanted it to be something that, in the end, when Hank has the possibility of staying, that you want it for him. He’s a guy who’s been exiled from a certain paradise, and when he arrives back into town -- this small town -- the first time he’s really not into it and it makes you wonder about him as a character. It’s a little engine that turns on where you are like, “What is it about this guy that is out of sync with these values, with this time, this place that he came from?” You learn that over the course of the movie.

Writer-director David Dobkin has created a compelling new legal drama starring two Hollywood heavyweights, which cleverly explores themes of filial respect and suspicion.

Tell us about how you originally formulated the idea for this project. DAVID DOBKIN: I had a very complicated relationship with my mother, and she was ill and dying over two years between 2005 and 2007. During that time I was just a little bit surprised -- my father had passed away prior – that I was going to have to go through a process of parenting my parent, and I was not prepared for that. It was an overwhelming experience, and at the end of that time period, the week after she passed, I sketched out this story about this family and this boy that came home. I think instinctually, because of the kind of volatility I wanted to show, it wasn’t going to be a son/ mother story. It was really kind of a much more aggressive, masculine movie. Robert Downey, Jr. as the son Hank, and Robert Duvall as ‘the judge’ father, is a marvellous pairing. How did you come to choose these actors? Downey was the first person I thought of the week that I sketched the movie. I had met him and we had really hit it off. It had been a while since he’d done a drama like this. He fit it perfectly because he’s entertaining. He’s fun, and it’s entertaining to watch him go through these experiences of trying to return home and be rejected by people and not accepted…

then slowly overcome them and overcome his own issues to be accepted. Duvall is one of the few icons of American cinema, and he is a ‘Paul Bunyan’ of a character. You really needed a mountain for Robert Downey Jr. to climb. You needed someone that was going to perform the movie and that character without any BS, who was really going to go at it and really do it, and be that hard and that tough on his son. Duvall has had a track record with that. So I knew he wouldn’t flinch. Duvall’s and Downey Jr.’s energies are quite different from one another; did the rehearsals start out in a challenging manner, at all? No. I think there was always some friction and I think that’s good. They are both masters

• The Judge is out on Feb 11

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