Ramin Bahrani Interview

Last week acclaimed independent director Ramin Bahrani sat down with Liam Gannicliffe of Film-News to discuss his eagerly anticipated foreclosure thriller 99 Homes, starring Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon.

Film-News: Hi Ramin, thank you for joining Film-news today. First of all there is a clear trend in your films of them all being very socially conscious. Are these the kind of stories that motivate you most as a filmmaker?

Ramin: Well I’m certainly interested in the social world, it seems to often be ignored in a lot of mainstream American films. I think for me in this film the crux was the relationship between Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield, this kind of Faustian relationship. I initially went down to Florida to do my research and I thought I was just making a social drama, because the whole film is based on reality, everything from the violence to the shooting of guns, to the scams, to the details of eviction, to the fraud, it’s all based on reality. And if I told someone I’m making a foreclosure film they’d think it was just a depressing, sad movie, but it’s not and that surprised me because when I went down there every real estate broker I met carried a gun and I suddenly realised I’m making a thriller, I’m making a genre film in the social world which I hadn’t really done before. At Any Price hints at a genre but this was a full on genre movie with this kind of social heart.

FN: The stories about foreclosures seemed to be very prominent and in the news cycle in the year or so following the financial crash, was there an element of you wanting to remind people that these are still relevant issues or was it simply a story you wanted to tell?

RB: The story’s about right now, the film is set in 2010 but it’s about right now. The cycle of crashes is only going to get more intense and shorter, so there’s going to be more crashes and they’re going to be more intense. Even when these stories were getting covered and we were interested in it we were reading about statistics, we didn’t really know what it meant, when I saw things like the documentary film Inside Job and read articles and books it was very interesting, but when I went to Florida and I sat in foreclosure courts, which is called the rocket-docket because they decide your case in 60 seconds flat, and you see people lose their home in 60 seconds. When you see things like what happened to Andrew’s character, dual cracking, two departments from the same bank telling you opposing things to trip you up so you lose your home; when you go on evictions, I’ve been there, and you see people lose their homes, when you go to motels on the side of Highway 142 that leads to Disney World, and you see day labourers, gang members, prostitutes and normal middle-class families, not poor, living in that motel across the street from Disney World that’s something else. There’s so many kids there that school buses get diverted there to pick them up. That’s something different.

FN: Do you think that’s something only narrative film can do, reaching the human aspect?

RB: Yes I think so. The other thing that narrative film can do is, we touched on this, if you say to someone there’s a film about foreclosures they’ll say it sounds depressing, I’m not going to go; but in a fictional film you can turn it into a thriller, so now you have people on the edge of their seat watching a film, wondering what’s going to happen next, and when the movie’s done, hopefully you’re going to think ‘Oh, this was about something.’ This is about issues of wealth and inequality, the 99 homes, the 99 percent, that’s right now, Donald Trump is right now. One of the things that I feel is important is that the film takes no sides, it’s not an agenda film. What’s important in the film is people losing their homes, what is a home? For Michael a home is a box, it’s a commodity he can sell and make money off, I understand that, I can’t argue with that. But for Andrew a home is something emotional, it’s where he grew up and his son grew up, it reflects your values and your community, I understand that too, I agree with both of them.

FN: Your films don’t seem to direct people or invite people to judge any characters, there does however seem to be a clear arc in this film whereby both lead characters are corrupted by circumstance, and one is redeemed and the other is not. Was it significant that the film was resolved morally?

RB: What was important to me, and what I feel you’re hinting at, is that although Michael is a strong antagonist, that he is let’s say the devil in this relationship, he’s actually just a product of the system. When the Libor scandal broke and the banks were fined billions of dollars, they made countless billions more and nobody went to jail, that is the system we live in right now, if me or you go across the street and steal an orange juice we’ll go to jail but if you work in a big bank and you steal billions of dollars, you don’t go to jail, instead you get rewarded. So when you live in that system, people like Michael Shannon’s character come to life, he’s not an idiot, we learn what happened to his dad in that big speech, he’s not going to become like Andrew, why should he live in a motel. When the system rewards him for being corrupt he can live in a mansion, and take care of his family, it’s hard to argue with that. I think he’s morally corrupt, but I think I understand why he’s doing that. The same way if you told someone would you evict someone, they would say they would never do that, but look at how horrible it is what happens to Andrew and Laura, in ten minutes they get evicted; who would think just 30 minutes later he would be doing it himself, just five minutes later he’s working for the man who did it to him.

FN: Just to talk about the performances for a second, I thought watching Andrew Garfield that this was a different kind of role for him. We’ve seen him in late teen roles and young adult roles but this felt like a transition into very much an adult character. What made you think he was suitable for this role?

RB: It was Death of a Salesman. I saw him on stage in New York with the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman, directed by the late, great Mike Nichols, two giants who fell unfortunately, one way too soon. He was amazing and initially I had written the script for someone ten years older but Andrew and I met and talked a few times and I thought maybe the film would be even more interesting if he was younger, and I gave him the script and he said he wanted to do it and we spent a lot of time revising the character to touch on what was more emotionally truthful to him. Then we got Michael on board, I was on the Jury at Venice in 2009, and I grabbed him in the hotel lobby and said I have to work with you, you’re one of the five greatest actors in the world; and once I got Michael on board I rewrote it for him. For me both characters are transitions for these actors, we’ve never seen Andrew like this, we’ve never seen Michael like this. Michael’s always crazy or the bad guy, we’ve never seen him in these slick suits looking so handsome, and I wrote all this dialogue for him because I know Michael has a great sense of humour so I made all the dialogue more sarcastic and funny and dark. The two men have very different acting styles, Andrew moves more, Michael is like a bulldog, so I just sort of let them bang their heads together for two hours.

FN: Your films have a very distinctive verité style, does it become harder to achieve that when you begin to work with these big Hollywood names?

RB: When you have these actors it works. And also there is a mix, much of it is handheld but there’s also a lot of very slick steadycam work. We wanted the movie to have a very beautiful shine on it, the way Florida does, which again contrasts with what you expect, you expect dreary but it ends up looking quite beautiful. There is a lightness to it, there is a costume to it, it’s very shiny and bright, the homes are very warm, the mansions are cold, shot with steadycam, very distant. Andrew’s home is more intimate, and we used real people. The sheriff is a real sheriff, he actually does evictions, that’s a real clean-out crew, they actually take stuff out of people’s homes. When Andrew knocks on people’s doors to evict people, every other person is a real person in their real home. I gave them a scenario, but they were injecting it with their own life.