The Big Picture · Interview
September 28, 2018/ 36 min/ Sean Fennessey
Sean Fennessey talks to David Lowery about turning a true bank-robber story into a fable, sending off Robert Redford, and the actor he wants next.
23 films across 1 segment.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
David Lowery on 'The Old Man and the Gun'
Redford's producing partner sent Lowery David Grann's article about Forrest Tucker, a bank robber and prison-escape artist still working into his 70s. Lowery took it four years after Ain't Them Bodies Saints and, by the time he shot it, had stopped wanting a true-crime film and made a Robert Redford movie instead. He leaned into Tucker's own self-mythology so he could be looser with the facts.
Lowery's Texas-outlaw film, which Redford's camp had seen when they approached him. He calls it a Western fairy tale; Tom Waits had also seen it and liked it before agreeing to a part.
His first time directing Redford, and the first time he'd worked with anyone of that stature. Disney let him make an original fantasy and just use the title. He also cites its production design here.
The film he made in the gap while Old Man pushed. He describes his next project as in its spirit but on a much bigger scale.
Lowery's favorite Redford film and performance. He loved that the gum and the horn honk were Redford improvising, and he played with that same looseness on Old Man. Notes the racer is a bastard where Tucker is charming.
Cited to place when Redford and Sissy Spacek first crossed paths, around Prime Cut, in the period between Downhill Racer and The Candidate.
The Michael Ritchie film Spacek was doing when she and Redford met once in the '60s in a casting office. She remembers it; Redford does not.
Named as one of the few films that can encompass a whole life. Lowery decided he'd rather narrow his focus than chronicle Tucker's decades.
Lowery jokes he made Ain't Them Bodies Saints partly because he wanted to make a musical and Tom Hooper beat him to Les Mis.
A big reference for DP Joe Anderson, with direct nods in the car chases and the long lines of cop cars.
Lowery pointed production designer Scott Kuzio to the Jacques Tati film to make the banks feel distinctive and slightly removed from reality; its monochrome gray fed the costume design too.
Where Lowery first found Tom Waits, as Renfield, at age 10, the start of a lifelong fandom that led to casting him as one of the over-the-hill gang.
The Danny Glover role everyone discovers, per Lowery, after first seeing him in Lonesome Dove.
Where Lowery discovered Jackson C. Frank's 'Blues Run the Game,' over the driving scenes. It's the needle drop he built into Old Man from the first draft, one he'd have walked away from the film to keep.
Cited for what Miles Davis's score did there, mournful but propulsive, as a model for the jazz-influenced music Daniel Hart wrote for Old Man.
Lowery wants to work with Brad Pitt and would rewatch this film pairing Redford and Pitt to test his hunch that Pitt in his 50s is where Redford was in his 30s.
Sean's aside: the new Coen brothers film he'd just seen, with another Tom Waits stretch (about 15 minutes of him) that gave Lowery a second dose of Waits after a decade without.
Lowery loved it and said aloud he'd have taken a Conjuring 3 if offered, his example of a for-hire job he'd jump at.
His pick for the last great thing he'd seen, the Claire Denis science-fiction film he most wanted to catch at Toronto. He calls it interstellar with more bodily fluids.
One of the Claire Denis films that made Lowery a fan of how she leans into strange patterns over narrative.
The other early Denis he cites, a horrifying cannibal movie he finds tender and sweet underneath.
What High Life reminded him of; he'd love a double bill of the two.
How Lowery knew of David Grann, the journalist behind the Old Man source article, before working from his writing.
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV / web series Lonesome DoveThe Good PlaceFelicitySlow News DayWorst Picks of the Week
Podcasts The Rewatchables
Ads Miller Lite