The Origin of Lucky Number Slevin: “The original script I had written was about a guy who was just incredibly unlucky. I was kind of intrigued by exploring the theme of luck and the idea of despite someone’s intentions or capability or talents or whatever, that the middle finger of God was kind of directed right at them perpetually. And ultimately that grew into this story that it is now.”
Writing to Match His Actors: When Lucy Liu signed on to play the coroner, Smilovic said he knew immediately that would completely change the way the character would be portrayed in the film.
“Lucy is a friend of mine and I had asked her if she would do the movie. She said, much to my surprise, ‘Yes,’ right away,” said Smilovic. “As soon as she came on it was just so clear what the character would need to become. I mean, Lucy is so whimsical and she is able to take really dark subject matter and really give it a sense of levity. Another actor may have taken the character of a coroner who is obsessed with the possible disappearance of Slevin’s best friend/her neighbor, and somebody who’s kind of got this clear death obsession or what have you, they might have made it macabre but she made it really light. And I wrote it like that because it was her.”
Speaking of the cast, Smilovic said it was surreal to hear the actors named as each signed on to bring his script to life. “Every day it was a different thing. You have to frame it in the context that we’d been putting this movie together for so many years and, at this point, we just assumed it was going to be a writing sample. It was done, it would be a writing sample, and nobody was ever going to make it. I was already becoming established because of [the TV series] Karen Sisco. I was getting other movie offers and stuff like that. It started to become clear to us that the movie would never get made. Then, for some reason, there was interest.”
Smilovic credits his producers with keeping the project alive. “The producers and their determination to never let go, to never say no, and to never take no for an answer. Robbie [Kravis] and Tyler [Mitchell] stuck with this and they never, ever gave up. Then Ascendant [Pictures] came on and they stuck with it and they never gave up. You stick with something long enough – a door closes, a window opens. You jump out of it and you land on somebody. It’s the right person, you know (laughing). A door closes, a window opens and you land on Bruce Willis. It’s like, ‘Hey! You want to be in this movie?’
Every time a piece of talent signed on I couldn’t believe it. It was a truly amazing experience because this cast had gone through many variations. Each time someone fell out, it wound up being for the best. The movie is impeccably well cast.
I would also say that Paul McGuigan coming on helped. When Paul did ‘Gangster No. 1’ he showed such vision and such imagination, and I think everybody wanted to work with him. The fact that this was the movie that he was so determined to make, that Paul who is getting all these other offers was so determined to make Slevin, that had so much to do with it because the actors want to work with a great director. So yeah, Paul was just hugely, hugely responsible for that.”
Sticking to the Script: More so than most films, it’s crucial with this sort of plot to stick to the script. Any small change in dialogue could have a dramatic effect later on in the film. Smilovic says that everyone involved stuck very closely to the dialogue he’d written. “Every once in a while I think that there’s somebody who adds a word here or there. But for the most part, everybody really stayed word perfect and tried to stay on point with the language, because there’s a rhythm to the piece. If you make an alteration, you risk destroying the rhythm. It’s difficult when you have this kind of back and forth banter going on between them - because the timing of it is very important - that you know when the response is going to come so that you can give your response, so that it can become organic obviously.”
Smilovic continued. “I did very little rewriting on set. I rewrote a lot right up until shooting. I rewrote a lot. Every time we’d get a new piece of casting, I would get incredibly excited and go back and sort of look at the character but now within the context of this actor playing this character. Sort of explore some of the natural attributes that that actor brings to the table and try to incorporate some of them into the character as well, because we just had such a phenomenal cast."
