Writer-actor tries directing
Tight, slow-building story puts social media twist on suspense genre
At this particular moment, Joel Edgerton is all about his movie The Gift.
To do promotional chats, he’s even returned to the Sherman Oaks house where he filmed much of the thriller. In fact, the 41-yearold’s about to launch into another session when his cellphone rings.
“Mom,” Edgerton says to his mother, Marianne, calling from Australia. “I am in the middle of an interview. I will call you back.”
He puts down his phone and smiles: “That’s how much I care about this.”
He’s having a bit of fun with his pronouncement. But he is making his directorial debut with The Gift, so the project’s a priority.
In the movie, Edgerton plays Gordo, an odd sort who ingratiates himself into the life of the childless married couple, Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall), who have just arrived in Los Angeles with great expectations.
As it turns out, Gordo went to the same high school as Simon, but they were far from friends. When Gordo becomes overly attentive with his presence and his presents, Simon becomes alarmed, which leads to a chilling series of events. The slow-build suspense is key. So are the performances, which mix effectively — a credit to Edgerton, who had never worked with Bateman or Hall but had always looked for the opportunity.
“And I knew both of them were cheap,” jokes Edgerton, who then becomes more serious.
“Watching them together in the movie, the reasons are now evident why I chose them.”
They needed to be. Time is money, and Edgerton didn’t have a lot of either for The Gift shoot. What passed for rehearsals turned out to be a walk-through at the Sherman Oaks abode.
“We had discussions and met separately, and then we came here,” says Edgerton, looking around the interior. “We were lucky enough to be on the set for a good day before the crew arrived.”
Directing was a learning-on-the-job experience for Edgerton, but acting in more than 30 films helped prepare him, including roles in Kinky Boots, Zero Dark Thirty and The Great Gatsby.
He’s been writing since he started out in Australia, writing short films (and directing two of them) in the late 1990s, and writing feature screenplays for Felony and The Rover over the past few years.
Acknowledging The Gift’s manipulative premise, the writer and director side of him points out that the story is combination of old twists and a few new turns.
“I wanted to make a film that had one foot in the genre world but also allow it to subvert that,” Edgerton says. Adding to the anxiety is the 21st-century reality that social media allow people to reconnect with others from their past without much effort.
“I wanted movie audiences to cast their minds back to those etched memories, so we could ruminate on where those people might be,” Edgerton says. “I had that as an idea for a terrifying starting point — if someone out of high school, leading a successful life, gets a tap on the shoulder.”
In other words, The Gift concept is fictional, and not based on a personal event.
“I had quite a good time in high school,” Edgerton says.
His menacing Gordo persona is all about acting.
“I really wanted to play a creepy, overbearing and misunderstood guy,” Edgerton says. “But I had to balance that with this question — ‘How do I do creepy enough that it serves the story but not enough to totally alienate the audience?’ ”