You Kill Me finds Sir Ben Kingsley playing a hitman named Frank whose abuse of alcohol interferes with his ability to do his job. After messing up one particularly important killing, Frank's forced to leave Buffalo to dry out in San Francisco. Once there, he attends AA meetings and gets a job in a mortuary where he meets the uninhibited Laurel (Tea Leoni), a free-spirited woman who doesn't mind Frank's occupation in the least.
Following Up a War Epic with a Dark Comedy: You Kill Me director John Dahl’s last film was The Great Raid which told the true story of the liberation of American Prisoners of War from the notorious Cabanatuan Japanese POW camp in World War II. Choosing to go with a comedy after a war pic was done because the filmmaker likes to change things up. “I love doing these kinds of films. They're just hard to get made,” explained Dahl. “Black comedies are always a challenge. If I take a script and I try to go out and cast it, people read it and go, ‘Eh,’ you know? It's a hard kind of film to get made because it's hard to tell what it's going to be. This film at least you start with the script, Ben Kingsley and Tea.
Even at the beginning of that journey, it's a little hard for people to see. But as you start to add more and more of the elements, it becomes a little more obvious to people the kind of movie it's going to be. But as Hollywood becomes more interested in a way of letting marketing departments dictate what kind of films they'll make, because they're so tired of going to meetings on Monday morning with the marketing guy saying, ‘See, we told you, you needed a…’, they want things that are genres. Things that are easier to sell. These are less obvious.”
On Women and Relationships: Asked her opinion on why her character Laurel would fall for a guy who’s not good for her, Leoni replied, “It's funny that you say that because actually, I would say in this context that Frank is a perfect choice for Laurel. So he's a drunk Polish hitman from Buffalo…the little things. I think that one of the things that attracted me to this script actually, there wasn't that gratuitous monologue on page 45 where we find out why and how damaged Laurel is. And that this guy could come in and simply speak the absolute frank truth and how maybe inexplicably sexy that is. We've been trying to tell guys how sexy that is for centuries. They don't seem to get it. And in that way, I think Frank was a great choice. I mean, I wouldn't really want my daughter to date him, but that's just me.”
Leoni doesn’t see her character as fearless. “I think she's more awake to her fears, maybe, than most. So maybe she's courageous in a sense, but you could also say she was stupid or you could say she was exhausted. I don't know, but I expect that she recognized this guy, cloaked in alcoholism and murder.”
Working with Sir Ben Kingsley: “You know, the interesting thing about Sir Ben is that first of all, I didn't know that you were supposed to do the Sir and then the first name, so when I first had lunch with him, I thought I was supposed to call him Sir Kingsley which frankly I thought was very sexy,” revealed Leoni. “Because Sir Ben, that's sort of funny. What happens if your name's Chuck? You're going to be Sir Chuck? Whatever. I thought it was pretty sexy.
I insisted on calling him Sir Ben long after he almost demanded that I not because how often are you going to get to make out with a knight? But he's one of the most charming people I think I've ever met. And I say that because I think that's part of the experience of working with him. It's very hard to work with an a**hole. Really. I don't care how good they are, it's very hard to get through to them. There's usually some kind of pig-headedness or disconnect. And he's really available. He's a very sensitive and interested person. We had really interesting talks about the character together and certainly when we all got to Winnipeg, those were some very interesting talks about the script and what we were doing. They weren't your average run of the mill, ‘So, where's the funny?’ kind of talks.”
Laurel’s Dark Sense of Humor: Leoni was into it and loved that particular characteristic of Laurel’s. “She's drier than I am a little bit, I think. She reminds me more of David [Duchovny]. My husband has more of that sense of humor. I don't really see Laurel getting into pratfalls, either doing them or appreciating them. Her loss. I think pratfalls are hysterical. But I did think she was funny.”
And speaking of her husband, Leoni said she does ask for his input on potential film roles. “It's funny because I do always ask David to confirm what I believe is my instinct about projects. If I hate it, I ask him to read it and if I love it, I ask him to read it. All the stuff in between I don't bother him with. He read this script and he certainly got me in it, which was interesting because I think some people didn't. Didn't see it, and I did. ‘Boy, I'm setting myself up for a big smack in the head with a big shovel,’ but David got it. Definitely.”
