It must have been very difficult to balance all the assorted characters in Smokin’ Aces. Did you have to lose any characters during the writing process?
“Yes, as a matter of fact. There was a Swedish hit man that I lost in the script that they said there was no Swedish hit man on record or anything. And this is the guy who’d beaten himself to death in the course of like two days with his own broken arm. I just thought it was too dark and too weird. Again, it was like me kind of biting off more than I could chew, and I thought that was a bit much.
Then there was a character, I can’t remember the character that I combined… I think there was one other guy in the Ben Affleck crew that I cut out. I just thought it was too extraneous. There was a doctor, there was a cardiologist that Buddy was calling throughout the film, this guy Gill, Dr Gill. He kept calling him and the guy was on the golf course. He was flying to see him and he was going to pay a lot of money to get him this medicine and give him this anti-inflammatory stuff. I wound up cutting him out in the script process. It just became too cumbersome. (Laughing) It was like one more character that I didn’t know what the hell to do with.”
Will there be a director’s cut somewhere down the road or is this the final cut?
“This is my final cut, but I certainly wouldn’t object to doing something that was longer and kind of just allowed to be a bit more garnished, and maybe consider that original scripted ending as a potential director’s cut ending. But that’s always fun. You never know. In the wild and wooly world of DVD and home video, you never know if six months down the road this could be a special edition and all that good stuff. These things just tend to kind of accrue popularity over time so who knows? I certainly wouldn’t rule that out.”
How easy is it for you to do commentary on your films?
“I like doing them. I think it really demystifies the process and I think we should do that more often than not. I think too many times we get very precious with stuff and we don’t want to share. We feel like we’re, who knows, we’re betraying or sharing state secrets, and I never felt that way. I think it’s a decent thing to do and it kind of connects you in a way. It’s a craft, like anything else. You have to bust your ass and really work hard, but it’s not something that’s untenable.”
Can you give me an update on what’s happening with Bunny Lake is Missing and White Jazz?
“Bunny Lake, because of the time constraint, because we got into a situation where we’re already kind of up against it in turns of not having sufficient prep time, I don’t know that we can come back around to that one. If we do, we’ll have to do it in a couple years. But what I really want, what was locked into that slot was always White Jazz, which is what I’m doing in the fall with George Clooney. That’s moving ahead. We’re on schedule to start in November, start shooting, and then start prep in late July, early August, so that is happening. And then right after that I think I’m going to do Killing Pablo – the Mark Bowden book which I’ve been dying to do for a couple years. So that’s the interim plan right now and hopefully everything is like a month away from really solidifying. White Jazz is basically happening, we know that. And then I’m going on a scout here in another three weeks to South America to get the Pablo boat underway.”
