The Big Picture - Truth, Fiction, and a Hollywood Heist Movie, With Bart Layton | The Big Picture (Ep. 68)

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey chats with writer-director Bart Layton about his path from unconventional documentaries to his ambitious new docufiction heist movie, ‘American Animals.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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for your extended free trial we walk around with these devices and we're kind of broadcasting our thoughts and photos and all that stuff constantly. And your value in the world is linked to how many people like your stuff. So there is this increasing pressure to be noteworthy. And I think a lot of that was what was driving this crime. I'm Sean Fennessy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most interesting filmmakers in the world. It's a hell of a time to be parsing fact and fiction at The Ringer. Today's guest is a master at it. Bart Layton is the writer-director of American Animals, another installment in our ongoing fascination with true crime. His movie starts as so many

heist movies do, introducing the characters who are played by a quartet of young actors that includes American Horror Story's Evan Peters and Dunkirk's Barry Keoghan. But then the real-life figures begin to appear in the film, interviewed in a documentary style as they recount the events of a complex plan to rob a university of highly valuable rare books. Suddenly, the story takes a new shape. Leighton, who has worked for years as a producer in documentary television and made his directorial debut with 2012's Doc the Impostor, deftly layers the real and the fictionalized in American Animals, blurring the lines we hold sacred in movie storytelling. I talked with the filmmaker about how he found this story, how he compelled the real-life figures to participate, and how he feels about the controversial movie company MoviePass

co-distributing this film. Here's Bart Layton. Very fun to be joined by Bart Layton. Bart, thank you for coming in. Hey, thanks for having me. Bart, your last film was The Impostor. This film is American Animals. They're both, in a way, true crime stories, and I want to know specifically what draws you to stories like this.

Oh, wow, good question. You know, my background is in documentary, and so I suppose you're always searching for true stories, which are stranger than fiction. There's enough remarkable true stories around to not need to make them up. And often, I guess, it's not so much the true crime element of it. It's more, I guess, I'm fascinated by decisions people make and what motivates them. And, you know, I guess in these two films, you know, one thing that probably unites them is that idea of a bad idea

that spirals into something completely out of control. Stories get misremembered or fictionalized and, you know, unreliable narrators and memory being a little unreliable as well. And so we play with all of that. Yeah, there's an extraordinary device in the movie that you use that I never really seen done before. I want to talk about that in a little bit. Sure. Yeah. But before we do that, I guess it had been six years now between the imposter and this film. So can you tell me a little bit about kind of what is happening in that time? Because the imposter is a sort of a true doc, even though you use some unique techniques to tell that story.

This is your first fictional work, quote unquote fictional. What's happening between 2012 and 2018? Good question. Well, quite a lot of things, actually, not least having a young family. And, you know, there's a thing of, you know, when you get buried in making a movie, you literally disappear into that for months. And, you know, and then you turn around and go, oh, wow, my baby is not a baby anymore. It's like a small person.

You know, how did I miss all that? So being quite careful. And also I jointly run quite a big production company in the UK. So have been producing and kind of exec producing a lot of stuff whilst writing this screenplay in the background. And, you know, after The Impostor, I was lucky enough to be offered, you know, a lot of narrative, you know, scripted movies, some of them quite big,

which was very flattering, although I was like, why the hell would you offer me a huge movie when I've only done a small documentary? But it was all intriguing. I liked a lot of them, but I never felt that I found anything that felt truly like I hadn't seen it before. A lot of screenplays that you get sent feel like versions of movies you've seen and the scenes feel like scenes from movies rather than scenes from real life.

I never really felt like... I felt like they were fun movies that I would probably watch on an airplane, but not that I necessarily wanted to spend two years of my life doing. And then this story kind of landed in my lap. And when I first heard about it, we weren't able to tell the story anyway because the guys, the real guys were in prison. Someone else, big Hollywood producer, adoption their story.

But we started this kind of pen pal relationship. You reached out to them? Yeah. Those who don't know about it, you know, it's the story of a very, very elaborate, audacious art heist. And the strange thing about it was it was committed by a group of young men, very well educated, from good homes, attending very good universities. One of them was at one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in America and discovers that in that university, there is a rare books room,

special collections. And in that room are some of the most valuable books on the planet. And the value of those is in the tens of millions. And they sort of begin toying with this idea of, you know, what would it be like to plan the perfect robbery? And what happens is that fantasy, that kind of role play turns into something. I think they arrive at a place where they realize, you know what, we probably could do this, and we probably could get away with it. And so I wrote to them in prison. Well, how did they respond to your letter, especially since their story had already been

optioned and maybe they were imagining that it would be told at some point? Yeah, I think they were nervous about what it might turn into, what kind of a movie it might be. You know, one of them was anxious that it might end up like a movie like 21. Do you remember that? I do, yeah. You know, I haven't seen that, but I know... It's a sensationalized version of their life. And I think they had had very sort of different reasons for committing the crime, and it wasn't all about the money.

And so I think they all responded slightly differently to the letter. I think they hadn't had counseling, and they hadn't really been able to talk to their parents about it and you know they had a lot of time on their hands how old were they at the time at the time of committing the robbery they were in their early 20s and then and then when you first reached out to them they were probably in their mid to late so about 26 27 years old so what do you say do you say? I've made a film. I'm a producer. Your story is fascinating.

I basically sort of said I'm fascinated to understand a little bit more of, you know, what made you do this given that it seems incredibly unlikely you could have got away with it. It seemed, you know, you're not the usual suspects, I guess. And at least two of them had seen The Impostor, which was fortuitous. I think also they were just grateful to have an outlet for their kind of thoughts. And so I would get these very long and kind of surprisingly honest letters from them. And, you know, one of them, Spencer,

who's the character played by Barry Keoghan in the film, talked very honestly about this desire he had to become an artist. And, you know, I now know him very well. He's a very, very talented artist. I mean, it depends on what your definition of artist. Very talented draftsman, incredibly skilled painter. But he was reading about all the great artists that ever lived. And the one thing they all had in common was they'd suffered terribly, you know.

Dying poor. A number of people, you know, who all had known tragedy and difficulty. And he was looking at his kind of nice, quiet, suburban life with his lovely, supportive family, thinking, you know, what the hell am I ever going to have to make art about or to write about or to, you know, what voice am I going to have worth kind of creating any art of any value to people? And so that idea, to me, was so brilliant and fascinating. You know, the idea of a central protagonist whose main problem is that he doesn't have a problem, but he needs one in order to have a story to tell or to kind of find out who he is.

So really, as much as a heist movie, it's about these four sort of lost young men in search of their identity, you know? So did you know that you wanted your next project to be sort of a quote-unquote fictional narrative film? Not really. I just, I guess my starting point is always like, what is the best way to

tell this story? You know, with The Impostor, people always ask, well, it's just such an insane story. Why didn't you just turn it into a movie movie? And the truth of that is that, and we had a whole crazy bidding war after Sundance with people trying to get the remake rights to it. And the problem is when you try to fictionalize that story, it doesn't add up. It's too preposterous. And with this, there was an element of that, that the true piece of the story was so crucial to the telling of it, you know, and these real guys. So I wanted to make a narrative film, but I also wanted to find a narrative film, but I also wanted to find a new way of telling a true story. Did you land on this, this tactic that you've

taken by blending the real life figures and the telling of the story with this narrative engine with actors early on? Did you know that you were always going to do it that way? I think so. I think because of the voices that came through in these letters, because they were so honest and unusual and it felt like the thing they were talking about was really timely, actually probably more timely now than it was then. You know, this need to live a so-called special life, you know, to leave a mark on the world, to be an interesting person. You know, I think when it happened, that definitely existed. But now, you know, we inhabit a culture where, you know, we've got, we walk around with these devices and we're kind of broadcasting our thoughts and photos and all of that stuff constantly. And your value in the world is kind of linked to how many people like your stuff or follow you on Instagram, whatever it is. So there is this increasing

pressure to be noteworthy in some way. And I think a lot of that was what was driving this crime, and so the way they talked about their motivations and the people they seem to be felt, and actually, as you see in the movie, they're quite unusual, you know? They look a certain way, and I thought I have to find a way of putting them in the film as well.

When you're writing a script like this, just from a practical perspective, do you write a scene and then say, Spencer now talks, real Spencer here? Like, how do you do that kind of it is I mean that was the other thing no one had ever really seen or read a screenplay like it before so people were like what because yeah it says real Spencer and actor Spencer I wrote the dialogue I guess it's more like a monologue for these guys you know I wrote the voices of the real guys into the screenplay based on what they had written in their letters.

When they eventually came out of prison and we shot these interviews, although they're not really conventional interviews, but they are interviews, they didn't say exactly what I'd written for them. The problem is that you write your script in order to get the movie financed, but then you have to go and get, you know, with actors, they deliver the lines that are on a page with, with real people. They don't. And you want, the last thing you want to do is turn those real people into actors, because then you lose the whole reason for them being there, which is to give this total credibility,

authenticity, remind the audience that this is real, they are real. And in doing so, as an audience, you're completely sucked into the movie because you're like, holy shit, this really happened. There's a wild disorienting feeling the first time you see a real person on screen in the movie that is great. And I can't recall feeling it watching a movie before, but I was immediately, my mind went to, well, what was shot first here? Was the script shot first? Were these interviews shot first? How did that work for you? No, that's, yeah, you've kind of hit on the nub of why it was sort of difficult because no one had a template for it. You know, there isn't a way of scheduling a film like this.

There isn't really a way of budgeting it. So I wrote the screenplay. Then I went and shot the interviews. But as I say, they only said half of what I expected them to say. The other half, I was like, all right, so what do I do? Do I try and feed them the lines that I've written for them? Because after all, they've already said it in their letters. It's not like it wouldn't be dishonest.

But of course, then you get, you end up with something that just really doesn't work, doesn't feel truthful. So then I was like, okay, let's throw all that away. Let's go back to the beginning and we'll shoot this as if it were a documentary interview. I mean, we hadn't got into the proper pre-production on the movie bit of it with all the actors and all the crazy circus that comes with that. So I was like, you just need to give me a couple of months to rewrite the script around what they really said.

How did they respond to that? They were like, well, there were a few people who, you know, it was like, you know, you have a time to make your movie and if you don't take it, you probably your movie will never get made. So if you're willing to run that risk, good luck. My feeling was, I'd rather make the right movie than a quick movie, you know, one that I was ready and I could and I felt was really gonna be this innovative thing. You haven't seen it before. So ultimately,

I did take that risk. And I said, well, you know, if the people who are backing it now aren't willing to back it in two, three months time, then so be it. And of course, then what happened was I'd already kind of cast Evan Peters in the lead role. And he then, when I pushed the dates back, he then wasn't available. And I really wasn't willing to do it without him. I auditioned every great actor of that age group, and he was my guy. He's terrific in the movie.

Yeah, and he's really a special actor. And I think he's going to be a big, big star. But, you know, so that caused us to lose some time and so we waited, but yeah, then eventually it all came together and I think it was a lot better for it, you know. Did you, it's interesting about putting the cast together and thinking about constructing the movie. With the cast and crew that you're working with, are you showing them films and saying, I want to capture this? Because it it's referential to a certain kind of heist movie or a certain kind of getting the gang together movie.

But is there also something in the tone and feel of what you're going for that you're trying to implicate to people? Yeah, I mean, it was a movie about young men sort of choosing or trying to live in a movie instead of their real lives. And actually one of them, Eric, who's now a writer, but at the time was studying accountancy with a view to getting a career at the FBI. And he wrote to me, this is from prison when the FBI whole that whole thing had kind of exploded. And he said to me, you know what, the thing about this was, it was like our version of Fight Club. He was like, it was our secret. We were planning this thing. No one else knew about it. It set us apart from everyone else in our kind of peer group. And it was like this adventure that we were going on together. And I think that's the thing they all kind of became addicted to,

this sort of movie fantasy. And I'm pretty sure that at least three of the four of them never imagined they would actually go through with it. I think they just wanted to take it as far as they could, right up to the kind of the edge of the cliff and not jump off. And then as you see, it goes too far. But that question of the movie references, they actually did that. They didn't know how to plan a heist,

so they went to blockbusters and rented every heist movie they could get their hands on. And they planned it based on movies. And so to my mind, there was a very good logic as to why to make these references to certain movies that they were watching, you know, the behavior of which they were kind of imitating in a way. There's something amazing about showing us the imagined version of how a heist goes and then what actually happens in the heist. I think it's one of the most effective elements of the movie, you know, and things are really difficult and painful and going to pot. And I don't know, can you just talk a little bit about, you know, contrasting those two things?

Yeah. I mean, we had this expression that in their minds it was Ocean's Eleven and in reality it ended up as Dog Day Afternoon. Yeah, truly, yeah. And, you know, the whole idea with the kind of look and feel of the movie is that you start in something that feels quite naturalistic. You know, we're in a kind of teenage wasteland of young people wasting time. There's that sort of limbo space between childhood and adulthood and there aren't really places, you know, you're not at home wasting time. There's that sort of limbo space between childhood and adulthood. And there aren't really places, you know, you're not, you're not at home, but you're not allowed to go

to bars. And, you know, that, that was also something I wanted to be, to have a very authentic quality to. And, you know, I did plenty of research and hung out and talked to kids and asked them what they did. And we, you you know and they hung out strip malls setting shit on fire and things like that but then as they get into the the kind of plot and the planning of the robbery and descend deeper into this sort of fantasy the idea with the grammar of the film was that we also go deeper into movie world you know know, more sort of steadicam stuff, more stuff that is shot on track. You know, the soundtrack starts to change,

lots more kind of commercial music. Pop cues, yeah. Yeah, a few absolutely great songs that come up in there. And so we're also, as an audience, we're kind of encouraged to get into the movie and sign up for the ride and become one of the gang until such a point as we're kind of crashed back down with a thud into the reality of what really happens if you cross a line that you should never cross.

Ultimately, how important is the truth in a story like this? Because there's a coyness at times. You're making basically five different movies at once, right? You're making a documentary. You're making a heist movie. You're making a movie that is a meta commentary about Hollywood. You're making a movie about teenagers. You're making a movie.

There are a lot of different themes. It's great. I love that aspect of it. But is it important that it is true? I think it is because, you know, we're all so used to going into the cinema and then you see that caption card that comes up and it says, this is based on a true story or inspired by real events. And then you have that nagging suspicion that everything that follows is like a massive kind of exaggeration.

Sure. Until you get the cards at the end with the real people. And then you come out the cinema and start Googling furiously. You know, what did Molly from Molly's Game really sound like? With this, I just thought, you know, there's something about watching a documentary in the cinema that is so, you know, there's something about watching a documentary in the cinema that is so, you know, people are so riveted and connected, you know, if it's a, obviously, if it's good, but it's because they're not like in fantasy world, they're not in make believe it's, it's the same world that you and I inhabit. And that felt really important to keep hold of.

How much are you thinking about the audience and whether they're able to kind of understand all the different moves that you're making here? You know, audiences are most of the time are so far ahead of us. It's always really important for me that you treat the audience with masses of respect because half the time they're way ahead of, you know, where we think they might be. And, you know, the joy as a filmgoer, you know, the most fun you can have is when you're slightly confused, but in a really good way, and you're kind of running to catch up and you want to know all the answers, but you just don't want to know too much. So it was sort of, I felt like

audiences are so sophisticated, they're going to figure this out really quickly. And where they're not, hopefully, they'll be intrigued enough to just enjoy the sort of that kind of slightly confused, but really kind of intrigued state of where are we going? I know you've talked about this a little bit, but I'm curious to hear more. The movie premiered at Sundance and was really well received and was acquired in part by MoviePass, which is a ticketing service that people may have read about lately. What's it like for you to be part of a sort of a maiden voyage

with a company like this for distributing the movie? And is it really important for you to people to see the movie in theaters? Yeah, massively. I mean, it was picked up at Sonnets by joint distribution, which was The Orchard, who have distributed some movies I love and are an incredibly kind of passionate

film-focused group of people who are kind of, you know, it seems that their mantra is, you know, don't distribute a movie you don't love. And then MoviePass, who I, as a Brit, hadn't heard of, but I loved the fact that the whole focus of their business was get people into the cinema. And, you know, as a filmmaker, you don't want to make your movie

and then realize that you actually made a TV show and that the only place it's really going to be seen is in people's living rooms. Because you shoot things very differently for the big screen. You also structure things very differently. I've made a ton of TV as a producer, exec producer, director, you know, and you can't allow for that kind of state of sort of semi-confusion that I was talking about, you know, where you spend, you know, think of a movie like The Usual Suspects or something, you really don't know what's going on for a good third, two-thirds of that film, but you really don't mind

because it's just a joyful kind of like trying to figure it out. You're along for the ride. The TV holds your hand. TV is very difficult to do that with because you're competing with millions of other distractions, the remote control, all that stuff. The fact that MoviePass was all about getting audiences into the theaters and that that would be the primary way of experiencing this film. That was kind of music to my ears, I guess.

You're going to make more feature films? Absolutely, yeah. What are you doing next? I'm doing an adaptation of a book, a brilliant book, which I totally recommend. Fiction or non-fiction? Yeah, it's fiction. It's actually a fictional story, but to be honest, it's probably less outlandish than either The Impostor

or this as a story. It's called Ravens and it's written by George Dawes Green, who's kind of a, he's just an amazing man, amazing writer. And it's, again, it's a sort of dark thriller. There's a caper element to it. There's bits of Fargo and kind of funny games and sort of darkly comedic at points. But it's also, again, it's about something which I feel is worth talking about. And, you know, this, again, it's slightly about this idea of sort of subjective truth

and which feels particularly relevant now, you know, this idea of people choosing the version that suits them rather than the truth, you know. And this is about a man who is sort of a charlatan in a way, but there's a mythology that's created around him and people don't want to burst that bubble. They'd rather have the version they want to believe rather than the factual version that might sound a little familiar to you.

What is it about these people that is so attractive to you? These people who are not what they seem, who are searching for something that is not what has been created for them? I think I'm always attracted to characters who are deeply human, occasionally morally quite confused, have their own weird set of justifications for why their behavior is not only acceptable, but wholly justified.

With this one, you know, there's a whole kind of Trumpian thing going on there of, you know, a guy who sort of is fundamentally probably not good, but people want a version that suits them. And so they'd rather choose that over the facts of what that person actually is and what they stand for sort of thing. That's one of the things we always talked about with this movie is, you know, it's all about crossing a line that you shouldn't cross. And then what does that feel like

when you've done that? And I think in in this case these young men regretted it almost instantly but they couldn't cross back it was sort of too late. We can't cross back from where we are now. Bart I end every show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen? What is the last great thing you've seen? Oh god I was just watching Dog Day

Afternoon with someone this morning because we were talking about movies and that was a big kind of uh reference for this movie and just looking at it again that era of filmmaking the way in which again it blurs the boundaries between kind of almost documentary and drama i mean if you watch the opening sequence to that, unfortunately, you can't really shoot in that way now. You know, I really wanted to shoot like that on this film.

It's like feet on the ground realism. Well, like, if you look at the opening, the first five minutes is shots of people who don't know they're in the movie. They're just going about their morning in New York. And I'm sure some of them were set up. And then he very, very cleverly weaves his real characters into all of these shots. His actual movie characters.

Sidney Lumet, you mean the filmmaker. Yeah, into these shots, which are kind of like they belong in a documentary. They're establishing shots from a documentary, and you are placed very squarely in the real world and you're being told this isn't movie land this is this is this is real and i think he does that so seamlessly and cleverly it's just so brilliant and then everything you see on al pacino's face in that movie he is literally he's right there inhabiting that whole chaotic disaster that comes of this really ill-advised crime.

And again, the similarity with American animals, and I wouldn't put them in the same league necessarily, but I would say the similarity is watching someone who's deeply unqualified to commit a criminal act, trying to do that and watching how it all unravels. Yeah, you say that you can't do that anymore, but you literally did just that in American Animal. So Bart, thank you for doing this today. I appreciate it. Oh, it's been great. Thanks, man. Thanks again for tuning into this week's episode of The Big Picture.

Please come back next week where I'll have a really interesting conversation with the director of what I think is the scariest movie in years. The director is Ari Aster and the movie is Hereditary. Get prepared. We'll see you next time. Thank you. days at mubi.com slash big picture. That's mubi.com slash big picture for your extended free trial.