Sheridan explores drug war in ‘Sicario’

‘Willful use of violence as method of doing business’

LOS ANGELES, Oct 29, (RTRS): Taylor Sheridan has made his way in the industry as an actor, but with Denis Villeneuve’s “Sicario” and the upcoming “Comancheria,” he has said he’s interested in exploring the American frontier 150 years later. What’s changed? What hasn’t?

“Sicario” in particular was an opportunity for him to look at the consumer appetite of the country through the bleak spectrum of the seemingly un-winnable drug war. He spoke to Variety recently about being attracted to the inherent drama of that backdrop, what it has to say about the increased military footprint of foreign policy and what, if anything, might be the best solution — in lieu of a good one, anyway.

Question: So, to say the least, this is a heady and dark subject matter to dive into. What kind of research did you put into the project?

Answer: It’s a pretty easy thing to research if you want to, as far as an understanding of the calamity that was taking place at the time I wrote the screenplay. You can put in any number of searches into Google and come up with a host of articles. There’s a tremendous amount of various blogs and writers in Mexico who have written some very poignant and tragic things about it. I went there, but there’s a certain amount of how I did some research that I’m not sharing with anyone. There’s a real sensitivity, obviously. And people who are in Mexico who I spoke with, for clear reasons, I’m just leaving all that out.

Here’s the thing about the film that’s worth noting: The landscape is cartels and the drug war. But that’s not really what the movie’s about. It’s really a broader philosophical question of what is the rule of law? Who adheres to it and do the ends justify the means? What is the consequence of a consumer nation and that appetite? Those are the things that I was really exploring, and this, coincidentally, provides the perfect landscape to explore all of them. So there was a contractor with a defense intelligence agency that I spent quite a bit of time talking to, as I understood how one could manipulate law to allow certain things to take place. Now obviously it’s an imagined circumstance. I’m not insinuating that our government is sending out SEAL teams to strike at people in northern New Mexico, but if they were doing that, this is how it would be done.

Q: That having been said, what did you think specifically needed to be explored in the drug war that hadn’t been touched upon yet?

A: It was the totality of violence as a means of doing business. It was literally, to me, the most shocking thing about the architects of the drug trade, their willful use of violence as a method of doing business. And it’s literally that impersonal to them. Effective ways of using violence to control a populace — that’s what they do. And it isn’t just killing. It’s killing and mutilating, displaying — it’s terrorism, essentially, except it’s not to achieve a political goal, it’s to make money. It’s a multi-billion-dollar-ayear industry. There are guys on the Forbes 400 list because of their involvement in the drug trade. More than one. And that’s just what we know. So it was worthy of exploring in a way that showed its effect on law enforcement and on the effect of, “When does law enforcement become military intervention?” Obviously it’s a very relevant subject as we’ve done it in two places now and we’ll probably start it in a third in Syria, where we went from soldiers with an operation and a goal to policing in that same location, policing the people we were fighting a war with. It’s an odd, fascinating contradiction, and by the way, not the intention of the military. So I imagined a logical progression of that. What if we applied that same theory right here?

On the notion of terrorism, I can’t even wrap my head around the concept of stuffing bodies into the walls of a house. Beyond just being an effective means of hiding them. It’s so arbitrary and bizarre.

I don’t understand it either. But there’s so much of what’s done that I don’t understand. And I don’t try to understand it. I just show it. I heard a story about someone who literally cut the face off of this man and sewed it on a soccer ball and kicked it down the street. How do you — there is no understanding that. But ignoring it isn’t going to help.

Q: What did you make of the pressure to change your leading character to a male?

A: I think there was some pressure on Denis, or it might have been a conversation that they had. The pressure on me was prior to Thunder Road, etc., getting involved. Very early on I took a meeting with a producer who asked if I would change the role to male so a specific actor could play it. I used a couple of strong adjectives in my reply and haven’t spoken to him since. Q: Why did you feel so strongly? A: I didn’t want it to be just this do-gooder guy. I wanted it to be someone that had sacrificed a tremendous amount to achieve her position of respect and authority, and I wanted to see the consequences on her face. I didn’t want it to be, you know, Ronda Rousey. I didn’t want it to be this physically superior being. I wanted it to be somebody that was mentally strong and emotionally strong and had willed herself to be respected and good at her job, and it took a tremendous toll on her personal life, and to me, that was indicative of her dedication. That’s the kind of person you would believe would fight for the rule of law, somebody that had given so much to it, that had paid such a price to protect it. I thought it was extremely important that we be able to witness that and understand it instantly just by looking at that character. So to change that in any way would minimize the impact of that. And then we would just start questioning: “Well, why doesn’t this person just go along with it? Why is this person so resistant? Maybe you should try this. Nothing else is working.” But if you can really feel how much she has committed to this, then you never question her morality.

Kate’s based on an actual person. When I met the person, I was so taken by that essence in her. And interestingly enough, the person I based Kate on, in the real world, has [ Josh Brolin’s character] Matt’s job and is someone who had been deployed overseas and operated around Pakistan and had been in Iraq and worked in all these places, and yet, she’s 5-foot-4. She’s a buck-oh-five. And she is extremely intelligent and extremely capable, and you could tell she worked at it, and you could see the toll. I thought that was fascinating.

Q: Speaking of which, I imagine you were aiming to make her a surrogate for the audience, but there’s this sort of mystified indignation about the character. She’s quite passive in some respects. That’s pretty tricky to pull off in a protagonist.

A: Yes. I broke a lot of conventions. Look, I spent a long time as an actor. I spent a lot of time playing pretty ordinary arcs. So with these characters, I really tried to break a lot of the rules I had been held to. Matt has no arc whatsoever. We have no backstory on anybody. We don’t know anything. Information is leaked out as little as possible. Kate is completely impotent once she gets in this machine. She has no ability to effect any change except to try and get someone to listen to her, which turns out to be almost

impossible. She is the eyes of the audience and I needed her to feel in the dark to magnify the audience feeling that way, and I needed her shock and indignation to mirror ours.

My idea with this was to play with the idea of, “Who is our protagonist? Who am I rooting for here?” I really wanted to shift that perspective. So when we meet her, we see she’s capable. We see she’s good. We see her overcome obstacles. And then we meet Matt, who’s charming, who’s wildly capable, and we start to really like him. Then we wish she would shut up for a minute and let’s turn this guy loose. And then we meet this wildly sad, strange man that we don’t know anything about [Alejandro, played by Brolin Benicio Del Toro], that seems to have complete liberty to do whatever he wants, but he’s not even American. And then we start to empathize with him, and hopefully the audience roots for him to be turned loose.

In Everardo Gonzalez’ latest doc “El Paso,” the helmer applies focus to what is one of the most evil aspects of the drug trade, the manipulation and murder of journalists and their families. In this film, he has chosen to look at the takedown of photojournalists on the border between Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas.

Having established himself with prize-winning docs “Los ladrones viejos” (“Old Thieves”) and “Cuates de australia” (“Drought”), Gonzalez edges forward with “El Paso”, powerful and pacey, skillfully shot and well edited.

Gonzalez is perhaps a cornerstone of documentary journalism in Mexico, and Variety sat down with him to talk about where the country is to go.

Question: You are a well-experienced director, and with ‘El Paso’ you have confronted the techniques of intimidation and kidnapping of photojournalists to control the message. What should we do with the drug war?

Answer: Firstly, we should break up the criminal state. That would be a first great step. The police should work to help citizens. The military should help the citizens. Impunity is the great problem in Mexico. No one pays for great crimes if you are rich enough. Only the poor pay for justice in Mexico. Q: How do you change that? A: Just applying the law. The laws are there. But no one executes them.

Q: But how do you apply the law when there is legal immunity for every elected official?

A: That is one of the great problems in my opinion. It’s tied to global economic policy. Money rules over politics. As long as the state has no government over its domain, then this will continue to be the situation.

That is one of the great problems in Mexico. What is needed is a social democracy ... a government that is imbued with the need to help its own people. We need a government that cares about its education system, its own future, as well. Whom does it serve, to whom does it pay out.

Q: There are different kinds of crime and different sets of corruption. Clearly the United States has its own kinds. But it remains important to pay attention to photojournalists who are doing the most important work, and they are supposed to be protected ... What is the role of a documentarian, basically our brother and sisters in portraying our world. this is something close to us. So what is our job?

A: I think our job is to be witnesses first, and then to be people with compassion for the rest of them. We really need to bring solidarity to our sisters and our brothers. So, of course, we are very close to journalists in Mexico, so we are the ones who must protect them. The lack of solidarity is also one of the causes.

Q: You have a capacity for drawing out the natural state of your subjects. What’s the trick? How do you get them to not pay attention to the camera?

A: It’s very difficult, but it’s a common issue. It’s like visiting the mother-in-law. One must seduce her by respecting her rules, making oneself subject to her boundaries. My work has always involved homes and families that are not my own.

Q: Do you really believe protests can affect anything?

A: It’s all of us. If we don’t touch their wallets, it doesn’t mean anything. A general strike ... If these guys don’t earn anything for two days, then we might feel something. What I mean is that all journalists must be really united with the rest.