Lawless

Shawn M Lukaszewicz: John, How did you get involved with this project?

John Hill Coat: it started with the book. Then I got it to Nick.

Nick Cave: Had you done the “The road to middle of no where” yet?

John: maybe to much information here. I was doing a scene with Robert Deval on the road to the middle of no where and I received a call about a book I had to read, and So i did read. It was fantastic because I was looking for a gangster film to do. I Love genre films.

This book was from the perspective of the people who created the components in the backwoods so I gave it to my right arm collaborator friend Nick Cave; the master and he responded to the material like I was hoping.

Nick: that’s the story. (Laughs) I mean the book is amazing. I hope that the film renews some interest in the book because the book is a stone classic of americann literature and its a true story.

IFQ: Did you always know that you wanted to do an American gangster film?

Nick: He had bills to pay (laughs)

John: I actually grew up in Canada and brought up on that fantastic period of the seventies where these great film makers were re-inventing genres and that was a bit of a dream to participate in that at some point.

Nick: what the book had which was an original idea was that it was about the foot soldiers and working bees that create the very beginning of the whole process of this incredible kinda of wave of corruption that goes up and up and up into the cities and into the glamour and into the pin striped suits which is the territory that most film makers like to make films about which is the glamorous side to the whole thing.

John: it was like when the west ended, the hills in that area historically were full of various outlaws, and it was like the end of the west and beginning of the gangster era. It was such a treat to have such rich characters beyond the consequences of violence.

IFQ: Nick, can you explain a little about the sound track?

Nick: once the film was made we sorted thinking about the kind of music we wanted to do. John wanted songs and we sort of saw that the film related very strongly to what was going on presently. We started thinking about taking modern day songs and creating an oral illusion of doing these modern day songs but doing them in a blue grass hillbilly kind of version of them. Namely, the absolute insanity of the prohibition idea is playing out today along with the great embarrassment of American policy of the war on drugs; two great failures. So we could take a classic song by The Velvet Underground about amphetamine use like “White Light White Heaters” and get Ralph Singer who is an old time blue grass singer To sing it so that we could stretch time in that way.