Writer/director Joe Carnahan followed up his critically acclaimed drama Narc with the twisted action thriller/dark comedy Smokin' Aces. Carnahan's Smokin' Aces features an incredible cast that includes Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Ben Affleck, and Martin Henderson, as well as a couple of biggies from the music world - Alicia Keys and Common. Piven stars as Buddy 'Aces' Israel, a magician who envisions himself as a major player in the mob. But Buddy's far from being ready for the big league and soon it seems every hitman in the States is trying to hunt him down to collect a million dollar bounty.
Smokin' Aces hits DVD on April 17, 2007 with a batch of bonus features including an alternate ending, deleted scenes, and commentary tracks. In support of its release on DVD, writer/director Joe Carnahan took the time to answer a few questions about his film and what viewers can expect from the Smokin' Aces DVD.
What made you chose the ending you used in the film over the alternate version included on the DVD?
“You know what? That was the original scripted ending, the one that’s on the DVD. It’s called the cowboy ending. I guess, for me, I wanted to play up more the dramatic moment at the end, the ending that was in the theatrical release and there was a real abruptness and hostility to the original scripted ending. Although maybe in the final summation it may have fit the film better, I felt in that moment I wanted the film to relax a little bit as opposed to yet another jolt that kind of very suddenly, very abruptly ended the film.
Obviously it was an artistic decision, but a conscious one. You always carry a degree of regret because you feel like that was the one you had to orphan. But at the same time, I’m glad that people will get to see it because it may become the preferred ending. Who knows? Maybe it will give the opportunity for people to watch it in a different context and say, ‘That’s the way I prefer it going out, like that,’ as opposed to kind of the more drawn out way.”
Did you ever test the alternate ending with audiences?
“I think there was a moment where we were thinking about testing that other ending, but I just had this kind of gut feeling. I just don’t feel good about it ending that way. It feels too vicious, I guess, you know? And I thought it would create more questions than it would answer. But you know, listen, it’s not the first time I’ve been wrong. (Laughing) I’ve been wrong dozens of times…”
It really sounds as though you would have preferred to have had the alternate ending attached to the theatrical release.
“Well, listen, that was the ending I wrote in the script. I’m glad that I’m making films in the day and the age of the DVD because you really don’t ever feel like you’re leaving a soldier behind in the field of battle. You feel like everybody’s reunited down the way, so that’s its own kind of really great advantage. Now a lot of films that they don’t really find their audience, because there is such a proliferation of movies these days that seem to get lost, they can really be discovered and enjoyed on DVD. Certainly that was the case with Narc. It really found its fan base after the fact, and I think it will be a similar thing with this.
It definitely is a movie that requires more than one viewing. That sounds like such a cop out, but it was always intended to be something that you really had to stay out in front of, or had to watch again, because it wouldn’t give you an accurate depicting of the thing and you’d pick up more. I know people that have, friends. I have yet to talk to someone who hasn’t seen it twice and hasn’t really liked it the second time. You know being able to come out on DVD certainly permits a fair amount more exposure to the movie.”
The DVD format really allows you more freedom to try out different scenes. Do you ever shoot specifically for the DVD?
“You know what? I never do but once you get into the cutting room very, very quickly you realize, ‘Okay, these things are meant for the DVD. They don’t kind of adhere to the overall, to what I want to do, where this movie needs to be, so this would be a great addition on the DVD.’ But very rarely do you shoot just for the DVD because if you ever try to run that excuse on a set, the studio will shut you down immediately. It’s like, ‘Don’t worry guys, we’re doing this for the DVD.’ ‘All right, get out of here.’ DVD’s always great after the fact, but nobody ever wants to like just, ‘Oh, we’re going to shoot this one just for the home video.’”
Your actors wouldn’t be happy with you.
“No, they don’t tend to really cotton to stuff like that.”
Is there any one deleted scene in particular you hated to lose from the film?
“There was a conversation between Ryan Reynolds and Martin Henderson’s character at the end that I liked quite a bit, that I thought put a nice little bow on things. But again it seemed, and it was in the kind of the La Ronde-like structure where everybody would intersect with everybody else at a certain time, those were the only two characters that didn’t cross one another’s paths. But, in the script they did. And there was a bigger moment early on where Ryan Reynolds was shown the missing fingers from Martin Henderson’s character and returned those fingers to him at the end. It was kind of heartbreaking to take that out, but I just thought it became too bleak and too weird to keep in the movie at that point, because it was kind of weird. But again, and because the movie does rush really between wild kind of flourishes of screwball comedy and really heavy drama, that’s a hard enough slalom course to hit on its own. That’s going to always produce mixed results in terms of what people are gonna thinking of the movie. People are going to go, ‘This is great, I love it. It was all over the place.’ Or they’re going to go, ‘I hate it. It was all over the place.’ So that was tough enough without compounding it, without trying to do scenes like that. But that was one that I kind of missed.”
Page 2: Joe Carnahan on Balancing the Ensemble, Commentary Tracks, Bunny Lake is Missing and White Jazz
