Robert De Niro steps behind the camera for the second time with the dramatic film The Good Shepherd. De Niro not only directed the film but also produced the pic and played a small but crucial role. The Good Shepherd explores the early days of the CIA, focusing on how the organization affects one man (played by Matt Damon) over the course of his adult life.
Why is the story of the early time period in the CIA’s history relevant for people today?
“I know I am supposed to say I think it’s relevant. I don’t know if it is. It happens to become relevant in certain ways because of what’s happening, and all the attention to the CIA in general. The only direct thing that I think of off the top of my head is the Abu Ghraib thing in the interrogation scene. We researched it and looked for other things, and that was one that came to mind. Because it was so simple and effective and powerful and horrible I felt it would be a good thing to do in this scene.”
Do you encourage the actors to take on your style or do you accept theirs when you're directing?
“I like to think that they have to find it in their own way. But it doesn’t surprise me if it creeps in, how I would do it. That’s possible, but they ultimately have to be the ones that are comfortable with what they’re doing.”
How did you decide on Matt Damon as the right choice for the lead role?
“I was originally going to do it with Leonardo DiCaprio, so I went to Matt and he said he would do it. There are only a few actors I would do it with, and I’ve been very lucky to do it with him on every level.”
Why Matt Damon?
“Because he could do it. If there were certain actors that I would be given the option to work with… Not that they wouldn’t have been great in other things, but it just wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t have turned me on to do it. It would have been all that work for nothing. You already go through an enormous amount of work and you at least want to believe that the people in it are doing it for the right reasons.”
And casting Angelina Jolie as his wife, Clover?
“Same with her. I was very lucky to get her. She had always wanted to do it; she expressed an interest. We had a few meetings [about] her wanting to do the part. She surprised me even more with what she did.”
Matt Damon plays a man trying to keep a lot of secrets. What sort discussions did you have with Damon over how to play the character of Edward Wilson?
“Some things you don’t talk about and it’s just known. It’s understood. You talk broad strokes, but basically it’s moment to moment - scene by scene. Every set up that you do, everything is precisely modulated and raised and lowered.”
What did you learn about the mindset of CIA types from your years of research and study?
“The only thing that I learned was that people in the intelligence world are very smart and very interesting people. And the nature of it, the other part - the deception - which you always hear about, it’s been seen in other movies. All I know is what we did in this movie and that I tried to make it as believable as possible. I don’t know because there was also this mythology that [supported it]. It’s not literally what it was, but it’s kind of the thing. I wanted to have it as credible and real as possible.”
The Edward Wilson character belongs to the secret Skulls and Bones society. Were there any rules you had to follow as far as what you could and couldn’t include in the film?
“No, there were no rules or anything like that. We got information from things that were written in books and basically put that together. I think the skeleton of this was Eric’s, and I just wanted to pull it together and make it a rich ceremony of a sort. And include what I thought was right and what wasn’t. I couldn’t expect to find what they did exactly, but I don’t even know if it matters. Yeah, we heard about the mud-wrestling [Note: Damon wrestles as part of the initiation process], but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. We just wanted to try and figure out what it could be, without making it silly or sensationalized. Like the mud-wrestling, we heard that happened so it made it okay.”
How did you determine how much about the formation of the CIA to include? What had to be cut out due to time constraints?
“I had to take a lot of stuff out, but I’ll put it in the extended version and some other ones in the DVD version, hopefully. I’m happy with the version we have now and so that’s okay. I also want to tell the story. I don’t want to confuse the audience. There might still be parts that are confusing. I think there might still be parts that are confusing and I think that’s okay. You don’t always have to have the answer to everything. There are certain trajectories character-wise that I took out so that we could focus on the other characters. I thought that would probably make sense at this point. And for anybody who really wanted to see the other part of the story, we’ll have that absolutely for them.”
Without giving anything away, did you worry the climatic scene would make the audience lose all sympathy for Matt Damon’s character?
“I never worried about the sympathy for the character. If you followed the story, you’d get empathy for the character - for the dilemma of the situation. That was something that I was okay with.”
Page 2: Godfather Comparisons, the Cinematography, and Storyboarding The Good Shepherd
