DIRECTOR'S NOTES By James Marsh

Writing and Development:
In 2001, I read the script for "Monster's Ball" co-written by Milo Addica. It was a striking and shocking read, and there seemed no chance of a script like it ever being made. It was too dark, too dangerous, had too many black characters. I wanted to write something as good as that, so I tracked down Milo.
After a few cagey phone calls, Milo agreed to meet me somewhere in Texas. I had figured the story of our film should be set there, whatever the story was. We ended up in Corpus Christi because I liked the name and had seen images of gothic looking oil refineries nestling up against a tourist beach.
During those phone calls, we had talked about Bible stories and fairy tales and myths, and discovered a mutual fascination for movies with the kind of structure and reversals and cruelty you find in legendary tales. We'd also talked about an anti-hero, a prodigal son, and Milo suggested a guy who's just got out of the navy and needs to find a home.
Before Milo arrived in Corpus Christi, I discovered a remote location which had the genuine whiff of evil about it, so I drove him straight there from the airport. It was a swamp surrounded by towering oil refineries, plagued by mosquitoes and littered with bullet casings, women's underwear and children's toys. That night we found a bloodied skinned animal about the size of a small dog but with no head or legs. Obviously, someone in our story was going to end up in this God forsaken place and it wasn't going to be pleasant. In the final script, it serves that function but also became a kind of Garden of Eden for our main character and a place of strange beauty.
We started with this location and the vague notion of a guy getting out the navy. We wrote a first draft in Corpus, but it was so terrible that Milo threw it in the garbage when he went home. Then I began to think about this navy guy going home and killing his best friend from childhood. Milo went one better - fratricide - the worst kind of murder. Back to the Bible: Cain and Abel.
Then the work started. Our characters needed to be Christians. The father needed to be a minister. The navy guy had to be a bastard come to get his inheritance. A king come to get his crown. His queen? He could fall in love with his sister without knowing who she was. That kind of thing always happens in legends. And at the end, our anti-hero would commit the most appalling crime, but he would take the Christians at their word and asked to be forgiven and saved just as it tells you in the Bible.

Influences:
There's an interesting gothic tradition in American cinema to which "The King" owes a debt. Key reference points for me can be found in the movies that best exemplify this tradition: "Night of The Hunter", "Psycho", "Badlands" and "Blue Velvet". The world in all these films is one of heightened realism - of the familiar rendered strange and threatening and characterized by a brooding atmosphere of anxiety and violence. All of these movies have a strong sense of the elements, the landscape, the weather, day and night. These aesthetic concerns are also prominent in the visual world of "The King".
Another major influence on some of the themes in "The King", and therefore relevant to its style and execution, is the work of directors who have a strong sense of religion and more specifically religious faith. There are the Protestants like Dreyer, Bergman and latterly Lars Von Trier who stress faith and suffering, and Catholics like Bunuel, Bresson, Scorsese and Hitchcock who emphasize ritual and guilt. These directors have presented religion as a real living force in the world and have taken religious faith as a very interesting starting point for dramatic stories. That's what we have tried to do in "The King", with the knowledge that most Americans declare a faith in God and a considerable number of them share the worldview and the ideas of our characters.
Since the script was completed in early 2002, the film and its themes appear to have become more specific and relevant. Religion now plays a more significant role in the political culture of the nation than at any time in living memory and decisions based on faith, prayer and the notion of divine providence and forgiveness have become part of the political discourse.

Production:
Influences are good to acknowledge but the main objective for me in directing the film was for it to find its own personality through the choices and talent of our cast. The actors were given complete freedom to make their own choices in wardrobe and personal styling, and the film was shot in long takes, which allowed the actors complete freedom of movement and expression across a whole scene. This shifted a huge burden of responsibility on to the cast who showed tremendous commitment, audacity and stamina through the course of shooting as many as 12 different scenes a day in the ferocious heat of a Texas summer.
Other important contributions to the film came from the Director of Photography, Eigil Bryld and film editor, Jinx Godfrey, both of whom are long standing collaborators of mine in my documentary work. Jim Wilson, who produced the film with Milo Addica, made many useful suggestions throughout production and post-production. All the local cast and crew in Texas gave blood, sweat and tears to the production, as did our executive producer at ContentFilm, Sofia Sondervan who gave us full creative freedom along with her unyielding support.
The most important collaboration of all was with the film's co- writer and producer Milo Addica. Throughout the whole genesis, writing and production of the film, Milo was a passionate, inspirational and uncompromising ally.

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