The Tone of Lucky Number Slevin: It'd be like trying to cram a square peg into a round hole to say that this film is a crime drama or a gangster comedy or a straightforward thriller. Smilovic agreed, “It’s true. I think that one of the things that everybody’s quick to point out is that it is kind of genre-bending. And that it does combine a lot of different genres and film sensibilities and doesn’t allow itself to just be any one thing, which I think more mimics reality. I can’t speak on behalf of humanity (laughing) but I know that I have days that are really light and days that are really dark. I know that I’ve had great tonal shifts in my life and that one tone never applies to any one thing, so I think that nothing is ever one thing. No one is ever one thing.”
The film has a Quentin Tarantino-ish feel to it, something Smilovic’s been told more than once. “I take that as a huge compliment. I think that he’s one of the great unique filmmakers of the last 15 years, of actually the last 30 years. He fits into the pantheon. He’s a phenomenal director, a phenomenal writer, and a phenomenal filmmaker. So, yes, I do hear that.
When I write, I try not to write with any...I don’t want to say intention, but I’m going to say intention. We are what we are, you know what I mean? I don’t think anybody wakes up and says, ‘I’m going to write in this voice today.’ We all have our own voice. I think that I’ve learned a lot from watching Tarantino movies and I’ve learned a lot from watching movies that Tarantino learned a lot from watching.”
Nearly 10 Years in the Making: Jason Smilovic wrote the script for Lucky Number Slevin back in 1997 and a lot has changed over the span of nearly a decade, including Smilovic’s writing style. Working on the script so many years after his first draft was an undeniably difficult task. Smilovic said, “It was interesting because when we finally got this movie set up, I’d already done Karen Sisco and really started writing professionally for a while. I’d learned so many lessons about writing and about drama and about storytelling that you don’t even realize.
When I wrote Karen Sisco I realized all of a sudden, ‘Wait a second. You don’t have to write everything because the actors have gestures and faces and they can do so much, and it can be the omissions. It can be not just what’s being said, but what’s not being said.’ You can achieve so much more than I’ve ever realized. It’s something that you can’t realize until you get into the production, until you see a screenplay become a movie or a teleplay become an episode of TV.
But, you know, when I had to go back and rewrite this later on, eight years after the fact – or whatever it was – it was like establishing a bridge with my past self. It was like traveling back in time and reconnecting with somebody eight years in the past and establishing this line of connection with somebody who really writes and thinks differently than I do. Having to, because this is the material that everybody signed up for, having to really reengage that persona and really get back into that head space and frame of mind.”
Asked how tough it was to reconnect with his past, Smilovic answered, “Incredibly, incredibly. I love Slevin. The project’s always been near and dear to me, but it’s something that I wrote at a time in my life when I was a different person and that’s undeniable. So I had to go back and reconnect with that person and make a deal with them, make a pact with them and say, ‘Okay, you give me what I need to finish this thing and I promise that I won’t inflict my judgments on you. I won’t try to write this as me, I’m going to write this as you.’ It was tough but ultimately I was able to make that arrangement with myself - and stay out of the booby hatch at the same time.”
