Casey Affleck The Killer Inside Me Interview

THE KILLER INSIDE ME

Starring: Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Simon Baker
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Run time: 108 minutes

Synopsis: Based on the novel by legendary pulp writer Jim Thompson, Michael Winterbottom's THE KILLER INSIDE ME tells the story of handsome, charming, unassuming small town sheriff's deputy Lou Ford.

Lou has a bunch of problems. Woman problems. Law enforcement problems. An ever-growing pile of murder victims in his west Texas jurisdiction. And the fact he's a sadist, a psychopath, a killer. Suspicion begins to fall on Lou, and it's only a matter of time before he runs out of alibis. But in Thompson's savage, bleak, blacker than noir universe nothing is ever what it seems, and it turns out that the investigators pursuing him might have a secret of their own.

The Killer Inside Me
In Cinemas August 26
www.killerinsideme.com

CASEY AFFLECK INTERVIEW

Question: Lou is an antihero, but we develop sympathy for his character. How did you approach this dynamic?

Casey Affleck: I don't aim to invite sympathy, I aim to make the character a living person as complicated as any living person. How sympathetic they are will depend on how broadminded or insightful or compassionate the audience is.


Question: How hard was it to distance yourself from the violent scenes after they'd been shot?

Casey Affleck: I didn't take that much away with me because there were certain mitigating circumstances: we would do these violent scenes and then we would do another scene, in which some of the feelings from the scene before would spill over a little bit, and then you would go into a love scene and then you would go into something else. By the end of the day you'd have a lot of these feelings, which had been diluted by lots of other feelings.


Question: Why do you think your character fell for Joyce in the first place?

Casey Affleck: Well Joyce let's him be who he sort of wants to be. He meets this woman by accident and she draws something out of him that's been repressed for a long, long time. Once it comes out, it feels so good that he just can't stay away from her. However, he also feels like it can go no further, no one else can find out about it. He begins to feel that he's going to lose control. So he feels he has to kill her.


Question: Was it difficult to do the violent scenes with Jessica Alba?

Casey Affleck: No (it wasn't that difficult), it was easier than I thought it would be because Jessica made it so believable and she was so committed to the scenes. She was willing to go anywhere to make them feel as real as possible. She made it a lot easier for me.


Question: Did you do a lot of rehearsals?

Casey Affleck: Michael Winterbottom doesn't like to do very much rehearsal. So we didn't do too much of that. Michael is very courteous, polite, and very considerate and he would always talk about the kinds of things in a scene that might make people uncomfortable. He would make sure everyone was okay with it. So everybody was aware of what was happening, but we didn't rehearse it and I think it turned out just fine.


Question: Michael Winterbottom prefers to work with a very small team. Do you like these intimate sets?

Casey Affleck: Well, it depends on who it is. Sometimes there are sets with lots of people that aren't really involved in the scene in any way, and having them watch just feels voyeuristic and weird. But if there are forty people there who are all doing something I really don't care.

The Killer Inside Me Interviews

Michael Winterbottom - www.femail.com.au\michael-winterbottom-the-killer-inside-me.htm
Kate Hudson - www.femail.com.au/jessica-alba-the-killer-inside-me.htm
Jessica Alba - www.femail.com.au/kate-hudson-the-killer-inside-me.htm
Casey Affleck - www.femail.com.au/casey-affleck-the-killer-inside-me.htm

BASED ON THE NOVEL
BY JIM THOMPSON

James Myers Thompson (1906 - 1977) was an American author and screenwriter, known for his pulp crime fiction.

Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Despite some positive critical notice, notably from Anthony Boucher in The New York Times, he was little-recognized in his lifetime.

Only after death did Thompson's literary stature grow, when in the late 1 980s, several novels were re-published in the black LIZARD series of re-discovered crime fiction.

Thompson's writing culminated in a few of his best-regarded works: THE KILLER inside ME, savage NIGHT, A HELL OF A woman and pop. 1280. In these works, Thompson turned the derided pulp genre into literature and art, featuring unreliable narrators, odd structure, and surrealism.

During his tenure in Hollywood, he collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on paths OF GLORY and THE KILLING. His novel THE GETAWAY was adapted into the 1972 Sam Peckinpah film of the same name, starring Steve McQueen andAli MacGraw. His works saw eight subsequent screen adaptations including the James Foley- directed AFTER DARK, MY sweet and multiple Oscar-nominee THE GRIFTERS.