The Exorcist and French Connection film-maker on violent urges, working with Harold Pinter and his new movie Killer Joe
Would you like some water?
I'm going to have a cup of tea. English breakfast. Oolong. With lemon. I only drink English tea wherever I am. I love it. David's if possible. They don't have that here. (1)
So I was just speaking to Tracy Letts (2), and he said he thought one of the key moments in Killer Joe was when Joe speaks about the concept of fairness and contractual justice.
Well, Joe is a very moral character, as well as being twisted and bent. He's a dichotomy, which is what I favour in characters. He's both good and evil and I believe they both exist in everyone I've ever met. Sometimes we can control our most vile and violent responses and sometimes we can't. But in the film he's in control by any means necessary.
Does love mean he loses some control?
What he and Dottie (3) are both about is family. She's been abused by her brother and her father. I don't know if she's been sexually abused. There are people who see the film who reckon that. It's possible. Certainly she's been mentally abused by this dysfunctional household. And it's possible Joe had a similar kind of upbringing. And it's possible that the bond that exists between them is family. It's a strange kind of family but then, so many are. Many of us are in similar situations. Weirdness is the stuff of drama. Tennessee Williams characters were often equally strange in their own ways.
Do you think that work done with broad humour or graphic violence is often received more snootily?
Almost everything I can think of should be leavened with humour if possible. Not Goon Show stuff. But most people, viewed from the outside, can be humorous to others. I find humour in these characters' attempts to do the best they can. They do some very stupid things, as do most people who are desperate. I directed a film many years ago of Pinter's The Birthday Party. His work – called comedies of menace when it first appeared – was very influential on me. The year I spent working with Harold is the year I learned everything I know about drama. He prepared me for almost everything I did afterwards.
In what way?
He wrote instinctively. He didn't plot. He told me that with The Birthday Party, one day he woke up and the characters just came through the door. It was as if it was dictated to me, he said. He opened himself to his unconscious.
Is that how you work, too?
Yes. I'll find a story I like, and then I'll kind of riff on it from my own experiences.
You've said you were drawn to Killer Joe because it chimed with your feelings about innocence, victimhood, vengeance and tenderness.
Yes, and loneliness, paranoia and obsession. I've from time to time felt the urge to do violence. I still do, but I curb that.
How?
My conscience kicks in and I'm able to deal with that through the films I do. If I wasn't a film director I might have become a serial killer. I was very angry with no reason to be. We grew up in poverty, like in Killer Joe, but I didn't know I was poor. Everyone I knew lived the same way.
Why a serial killer?
Violence uncurbed is dangerous. You have to channel it. Many of the great painters or composers led very violent and strange lives.
Can people be too censorious of violence?
Some people. I don't generalise, Catherine, I can't generalise. I'm always surprised.
When was the last time?
No, I'm constantly surprised. I'm constantly surprised at people's reactions and behaviour. How they conduct themselves publicly and privately. Constantly!
Footnotes
(1) The Intercontinental in Toronto, where Friedkin was premiering Killer Joe in September 2011.
(2) Pulitzer-prize winning playwright of Killer Joe and Bug, both of which he adapted for the screen, with Friedkin directing. He said: "Joe does have a moral code and he comes into a place without moral structure. A place where it's hard to know you've made a bad decision because you don't have the food to tell you. Joe is very polite and he presents an appearance of structure and order. There's an echo of a Christian ethic going on there. A sense of what's contractual and what's fair. Though clearly when the mask comes off there lies a kind of chaos."
(3) The character played by Juno Temple, offered by her brother and father as a retainer until they can pay Joe his fee for bumping off their mother/wife.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jun/29/william-friedkin-killer-joe
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