Looper was one of my favourite films of last year, and I wasn’t alone. It was the sort of film which I wanted to show my friends, particularly the friends who think cinema is in a cycle of endlessly repeating explosions swept up in a CG maelstrom. As a fan of Brick and the vastly underrated The Brothers Bloom I loved the world Johnson created with Looper and, more importantly, the heart he gave to the story. Critical hyperbole ensued and it become one of the year’s most well reviewed films, flying the flag for original, non franchise stories to be told.
I had to chance to sit down with the film’s writer and director and as we talked it was clear as day that he loves what he does, thinks carefully and responsibly about what he puts up on screen, with an empathetic eye on the audience’s response. Bloom and Brick were brilliantly unique tales from a world close to the one we know and Looper continues this theme.
I spoke to Johnson last week as the DVD and Blu-ray launch drew near (it’s out today so if you haven’t got a copy already consider this a call to action) and I began by asking him about the transition from the ebullient brightness of Bloom to the near future darkness of Looper.
‘You learn a lot from each movie,’ Johnson began, ‘ I’m very proud of Bloom but it was a bit of a traveling circus, it was big and unwieldy and bursting at the seams. Coming into Looper it felt nice to try the opposite. I was trying to hone the story, shave it down to its essence. It’s a very different animal. When I was writing Looper I was focusing everything on making sure that the story worked, and then the design elements of how we were going to make the cars look, how we were going to make the streets look, that happens later. What was a big pain in the ass in the writing was the time travel stuff, how much of that to explain. So conceptually and also physically how much are we going to show this system working and how much to put in the audience’s hands. ‘
The audience took it and ran, with theories about what the film was actually about as well as the usual paradox spotting and galleries of fan art finding their way online. ‘I think it’s awesome that people are chewing on it and coming up with their own stuff, in terms of how I engage with it that’s something I’m still figuring out. I’m on Twitter and I’ve always enjoyed being part of the conversation but it’s led to questions popping up on Twitter, questions I know the answer to, and it’s the hardest thing in the world to resist giving an answer to it. Especially if I think it’ll be more enjoyable for the person to figure it out on their own. That’s not a bad thing, there’s something nice about a filmmaker being able to engage with people who are watching the movies. If I had the option when I was young and filmmakers I admire, like Sam Raimi, were on Twitter I would have totally been asking him stuff.’
The script appeared on The Black List in 2010 and before we got to a crucial scene I was particularly keen to go into I wondered if the writing process was simply a honing of the story of Joes Old and Young. I asked him what the moment was when he felt he’d nailed it.
‘You never think that… At some point you just think ok, well I guess I have to go and make the movie now. The number one thing for me, through writing and also through production, was earning that ending, both through a plot and an emotional perspective. Everything involved with that, from making Joe’s character arc as clear and as clean as possible to making sure the different elements of the plot fit into place, that’s where the lion’s share of the work went into. And it’s figuring out what is absolutely essential to have on screen, that goes for scenes, lines of dialogue, words in lines of dialogue… ‘
I wanted to talk about the killing of the child. It was a moment which made me gasp and wonder if Johnson hadn’t gone too far. For much of the early stages of the film Old Joe’s missions seems to be the one to root for until his plan unfurls in dramatic and sickening fashion.
‘That scenes came in relatively late, not very late but it wasn’t what we started out with, but I realised what the big dilemma was going to be with Old Joe and young Joe. It was something I avoided for a while, but there came a point where it became clear that this was something we were going to need to have happen. My least favourite thing in a movie, what will make me hate a movie more than anything else, is when I feel a filmmaker is trying to push a dead rat in my face, to shock me. So when there’s a moment like this, as a filmmaker, I treat it like it’s radioactive material and spend more thought over how that scene played, why it played… There was probably more concentrated thought gone into that moment than anything else in the whole movie. My producers were saying, “Is this absolutely necessary?” and I said I wouldn’t have it in my movie if it wasn’t absolutely necessary and if it wasn’t then we’d lose the audience at that point. It’s integral to the film, and because of where it goes I feel I can stand behind it.’
It works because when we’re at the end we know for certain that Old Joe will carry out his plan and that Cid is in terrible danger…
‘Yeah, it’s so important narratively because when Old Joe comes into the diner scene he’s a zero and he sets out that he’s got this plan to save his wife – and it’s Bruce Willis you know? So he’s the man with a plan and Young Joe has to learn his lesson. The intention was always to show the moral weight of what Old Joe was doing and to have the audience turn on that. Old Joe’s doing what every action hero does, he has a problem and he solve it by finding the right person and killing them. We’re used to seeing that framed as a heroic act in action movies and if he was finding and killing an innocent adult I don’t think the audience would have had that turn. So it has to be something that did make you think that there’s no possible way you could be on board with this. It makes you confront the reality of taking a life for your own agenda.’
The success of Looper, and the thankful avoidance of Inceptionedque PR bluster (It’s Intelligent Sci-Fi! Time Travel…with Brains!), means that more of us have joined in anticipation of what he does next. I asked him if his next film would be as distinctly different from Looper as that film had been from Bloom,
‘The next thing I’m doing is also sci-fi but it’s very different to Looper, I had a really great time working in science fiction and the next thing which grabbed me was also from there. Tonally and otherwise it’s very different from Looper but I’m still in the middle of writing and you never know until you’ve finished exactly what you’ve got. The thing I love doing is telling my own stories, at least for now. I love big franchise movies and some of our best filmmakers out there are making them, but for me right now I’m writing my next thing. It’s just the coolest thing for me to be able to make my own movies and tell my own stories.
