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ON THIS PAGE: A THRILLER DRIVEN BY EMOTION: SCOTT FRANK PLOTS THE LOOKOUT; BRAIN-DAMAGED HERO: JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT PLAYS THE LOOKOUT; A BLIND MAN LEADS THE WAY: JEFF DANIELS IS THE LOOKOUT'S ROOMMATE; ABOUT WRITER-DIRECTOR SCOTT FRANK
READ MORE: CHARACTER-FUELED VILLIANS: THE LOOKOUT'S BANK ROBBERS/ SHOOTING THE LOOKOUT
A THRILLER DRIVEN BY EMOTION: SCOTT FRANK PLOTS THE LOOKOUT
Scott Frank, the acclaimed screenwriter who makes his directorial debut with THE LOOKOUT, loves thrillers, but even more than thrillers, he loves great characters. This first became abundantly apparent in his early career with his screenplay for the imaginative and romantic thriller DEAD AGAIN, directed by Kenneth Branagh, as well as his moving tale of a misunderstood child genius in LITLE MAN TATE directed by Jodie Foster.
Frank also became known as the ultimate adapter of one of the most character-driven crime novelists today, Elmore Leonard, with the run-away hit GET SHORTY. This was followed by OUT OF SIGHT, an unsparingly clever adaptation of another Leonard novel that put the zig-zagging romance between a rogue criminal and a female Federal Marshall front and center.
Now, with THE LOOKOUT, Frank puts one of the most unconventional and compelling sets of characters he's ever written at the heart of an audacious small-town crime. His lead character, and completely unlikely hero, is the kind of person that writers typically avoid - a brain-damaged janitor who appears to have little hope for any of the things people usually strive for in life: love, money or a meaningful future. Heartbreaking and seriously damaged, Chris Pratt might not be what anybody expects as the big gun of a heist movie - but that's exactly what intrigued Scott Frank.
"I've always loved those European thrillers that were dark and interesting and full of people that you really care about," says Frank. "There's this overriding sense of dread and suspense because you're so invested in the characters - and I always wanted to write a movie like that." Two additional elements conspired together to inspire Frank to pen THE LOOKOUT.
"I knew someone who had a pretty horrific head injury and the fascinating thing about him is that, when woke up, he was somebody else. I thought a person going through that kind of terrifying situation would be very interesting to locate inside a thriller," he explains. "And while I was thinking about that. I read a little about the banking situation in the Midwest and how there were all these little banks that would once or twice a year receive USDA money, so that on one particular night there might be several million dollars in a vault that usually contained very little. These two stories started to come together and THE LOOKOUT flowed from that unusual person in that unusual situation."
Frank grounded THE LOOKOUT in a searingly realistic and consistently fascinating portrait of Chris Pratt's descent from an idolized young athlete with what he confesses is "the perfect life" to a young man living amidst the confounding labyrinth of brain damage. Frank gave Chris a series of bizarre yet medically true-to-life elements of traumatic head injury: a lack of short term memory, which causes him to have to write all essential information in a notebook he must carry at all times; lack of inhibition and emotional liability, which causes him to blurt out things he doesn't mean to say and to be swept away by intense emotions that come out of nowhere; and a complete lack of organization skills, which can turn a simple task like opening a can of food into an epic battle.
It's no wonder that Chris comes to rely on the savvy of his room-mate, Lewis, another of THE LOOKOUT's deeply fascinating characters - a blind man with a sharp tongue and a wicked sense of humor who literally tries to lead Chris's way through the darkness.
"These are characters who I think have a real emotional pull," says Frank. "And I wanted the suspense of the film to emanate first from that."
The story of THE LOOKOUT first came to Frank early in his career, when he began building on the bare bones of the screenplay with producers Walter Parkes, Laurence Mark and Executive Producer Laurie MacDonald, all who would remain devoted to the project for more than a decade. "Without Walter, this movie would never have existed," says Frank. "He was key in the development, even traveling with me to Kansas City early on to conduct research for the screenplay."
"Scott first told me the general idea for THE LOOKOUT in the late 1980s and it was literally one of the first pitches I heard as a producer, but soon after, Scott got LITTLE MAN TATE off the ground and put THE LOOKOUT aside," recalls Mark. "The project continued to evolve over the years, but I always felt this movie was in Scott's DNA. What's exciting about it is that it is an emotional thriller, and very much a tale from a writer's heart. The touchstone here is the theme of how stories get you through life and how sometimes you have to start at the end and work your way back to the beginning."
Adds Walter Parkes, who would soon become the co-head of DreamWorks Pictures, after first developing the project at Amblin: "What always fascinated me about this project is the blending of genres - on one level, it's a taut crime thriller, but on another it's also a pure character piece about a kid trying to find his place in the world. The whole theme of the Golden Boy who loses everything is so compelling and universal, and one I think that has always been important to Scott."
Parkes was especially intrigued by how the screenplay integrated action with insight into the inner workings of the human brain. "I had previously been involved in AWAKENINGS about the neurologist Oliver Sacks and one of the wonderful things Sacks does is to look at the gifts that neurological deficits can bring. It's really interesting that Chris Pratt turns out to have certain strengths that allow him to save the day in a completely unexpected manner," says the producer.
Even as Scott Frank's writing career took off in all kinds of unexpected directions, the tale of Chris Pratt continued to haunt him. The script continued to go through new iterations, drawing the attention of some of Hollywood's top talent in various tantalizing configurations, but never quite happening.
"For years, THE LOOKOUT was one of the great un-produced screenplays in Hollywood," notes Parkes. "What was clear is that this was a very singular piece of writing, and eventually we all started to think this was a fitting piece for Scott to make his directorial debut."
But taking a chance on a first-time director brought a whole new complication to what was already a daring screenplay with an unconventional hero. Just as the project once again began to flounder, Spyglass Entertainment producers Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum came to the rescue - and added their considerable support to putting the long-awaited project at last into production.
Barber and Birnbaum have a knack for spotting thrillers that break the mold, as they did with the acclaimed box-office phenomenon THE SIXTH SENSE. They were instantly impressed with what Scott Frank had accomplished with THE LOOKOUT. "We thought it was a terrific story - at once a taut, smart thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat and a very emotional experience for the audience," says Birnbaum. "It's a truly remarkable piece of writing and we loved it so much, we knew we wanted to make it."
They also supported the idea that Frank should direct the picture, despite his lack of experience behind the camera. "When we met with Scott, we realized that he already had every single shot in his mind and a great overall vision for the film," says Gary Barber. Adds Birnbaum: "Scott clearly has all the makings of a great director, as well as an amazing writing. He's very clear, very professional and most of all, very passionate. As a young director, he likes to share ideas and kick things around and quite honestly that makes the whole process of making the film much more fun and creative."
After so many years devoted to developing the screenplay, Parkes and Mark were equally impressed with Frank as a director. Says Parkes: "What was surprising is that Scott never let his creative ownership of the movie get in the way of his directing. I was really impressed with his ability to let go and allow the interpretation of his material to happen organically." Mark continues: "Scott really has his wits about him as a director. He proved to have an extraordinary way with actors, with a very natural feeling for how to guide them in complex performances."
Now, Scott Frank faced what he knew would be the biggest hurdle to making this story work on the screen: finding the cast who could do his iconoclastic characters justice.
A BRAIN-DAMAGED HERO: JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT PLAYS THE LOOKOUT
At the heart of THE LOOKOUT's building tension and intensity is Chris Pratt, a young man whose very life has become an insoluble mystery without any clues, even before he becomes involved in a bank heist.
Still in the early stages of recovery from a severe brain injury, Chris battles with the basic things the rest of us take for granted - what to say, who to remember, even how to make dinner. But, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays him, he is also a man who harbors much more inside him that it appears, a man desperately in search of who he really might be in life. He might look like a patsy, like a nobody, like the guy that other people can use, but he proves that he's much more than that.
Writer-director Scott Frank searched endlessly for an actor who could turn Chris into a real human being in a palpably tough predicament, who could make the role raw, moving and even funny at times, without a drop of sentiment or the maudlin. In the beginning, he wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for. "I never have preconceived ideas in my head when I write because you'd be disappointed if you don't get who you had in my mind for the character. So I actually often write with dead actors in mind," he admits.
Now, however, he needed someone very much alive who could handle all the complexities of the part - a risk-taker with his own ideas. After a year of searching and endless auditions in vain, he'd nearly given up.
"I thought I'd seen just about everyone," says Frank, "but then I saw a trailer for 'Mysterious Skin' with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and I thought 'I don't think I've seen that guy.' When he came into my office, there was just no longer a question. I knew instantly he was going to be in the movie. Most people I'd auditioned had a tendency to play to Chris's disability, to really emphasize everything that's wrong with him. But what Joe did that was so different and daring was to simply bring a profound stillness to character. He was so quiet and still, that alone was haunting. You didn't feel you were watching someone mimic a head injury -- it was much more powerful and real."
Says Walter Parkes of Gordon-Levitt: "We've all been kind of waiting for the next generation of great American actors and I think Joe is a part of that. His technique is completely naturalistic and invisible."
Adds Mark: "The danger of this role was always that it might be over-done, but Joe shows that less is more by painting a very powerful portrait with very few brushstrokes."
A former child actor, Gordon-Levitt is perhaps best known for his role as Tommy Solomon in the oft-acclaimed, long-running sitcom "3rd Rock From the Sun." His films include A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, THE JUROR, 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, MANIC and MYSTERIOUS SKIN and he most recently took the lead role in the critically praised indie BRICK, which drew a number of awards in 2006. But THE LOOKOUT pushed him in ways no other role had before.
Right away, Gordon-Levitt knew THE LOOKOUT was going to be different. "It's rare that I get a script I want to read all the way to the end," he comments. "But this script was just so well written and every character was such a full human being, it made me excited to be an actor. With Chris Pratt, Scott Frank had created a hero who has so many layers to him, who is so complicated, there's no one way to feel about him."
He continues: "The movie also blends two kind of stories that don't usually go together. On the one hand you have this kind of fun, exciting bank robbery and on the other you have these heartfelt, in-depth characters. I think it's the humanity of the characters that makes the heist part so much more interesting."
Gordon-Levitt found that the more he examined Chris's character, the more thought provoking, and relatable, he and his frightening predicament became. He observes: "I think Chris's story is really about what happens when things don't turn out the way you think they will. He was this gifted athlete with a beautiful girlfriend and his future was supposed to be set. But in just one night, everything changed. Now, he's a completely different person and the question is: how do you reconcile a past that had so much promise with a present that offers nothing? Chris wants to be what he was, but he is who is. It's something I think we all wonder about on those days when you feel worthless, when nothing's going right. How do you deal with the world when it isn't what you planned for?"
To prepare for the role, the actor delved into the often bizarre and challenging world of the brain-injured, spending time with several young men who had survived accidents similar to what happened to Chris. But, he quickly discovered there's nothing cut-and-dry about playing a person with head trauma. "No two cases of traumatic brain injury are the same," he explains. "I spent time with different people with different conditions and you realize that everybody's brain does something different when it gets a hard blow, so the symptoms aren't alike in any two people. So, on the one hand there were certain things I wanted to make sure to be accurate about with Chris, but one the other I had some freedom to say 'well everybody's different, and this is how Chris is.'"
He also learned that brain injury is about "absence," the things you no longer have - such as memory, language, logic, perception - instead of the things you do. Subtlety was key to his approach. "Another thing that was interesting to me is that on the surface a lot of people with brain injury seem just like a normal person. It takes awhile to realize something's not quite right. That's what Chris is dealing with. No one can see how hard he is struggling," he says. Gordon-Levitt even boned up on his neurology, diving into the latest research on how the brain works, and what happens to people when it doesn't. "I did a lot of reading and learning a lot of stuff about the brain I didn't know before. It's fascinating to find which part of your brain deals with vision, or with finding the right words, or feeling horny or remembering something. And it's also interesting to realize that we've only just scratched the surface in learning about the brain. There's so much we still don't know."
But it is one thing to read about what happens when the brain's inner workings go awry and another thing to actually become that person unmoored from the ordered, rational universe we usually take for granted. Gordon-Levitt had to do the opposite of what people usually do in life - he had to cultivate confusion, discourage himself from thinking in a linear fashion, and shrink into his own private world. To get deeper into Chris's alienated, lonely headspace, he even isolated himself from friends and co-workers for a month, speaking very little.
"I got so into it, after awhile I couldn't think straight myself," Gordon-Levitt notes. And he quickly found that Scott Frank wasn't going to provide a lifeline via an easy set of rote instructions for him. "We did some rehearsal but a lot less than I expected," Gordon-Levitt recalls. "Scott could have gone symptom by symptom with me, defining Chris's brain injury or he could have gone memory by memory into his past, but he didn't do that. He showed a lot of trust and confidence in what he wrote and a lot of faith in me to just kind of let me take it in the way it occurred to me in the moment. I think that really freed me up to do my best."
A BLIND MAN LEADS THE WAY: JEFF DANIELS IS THE LOOKOUT'S ROOMMATE
No less a casting challenge was the role of Lewis, Chris's blind, acid-tongued roommate and surrogate guardian, who teaches Chris to remember thing by telling the story backwards. Once again, Scott Frank went in an unexpected direction, casting Golden Globe nominee Jeff Daniels in a role unlike any the versatile star has been seen in before. Daniels, who made his big breakthrough with Jonathan Demme's surreal comedy "Something Wild" and has gone on to a remarkably diverse career, most recently came to the fore with two completely different roles in Noah Baumbach's "The Squid and the Whale" and George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck." It was Daniels' stunning turn in the "The Squid and the Whale" that caught Frank's attention.
"I saw a part of Jeff in that movie I'd never really seen before," he says, "and I realized he could be funny and reprehensible and sympathetic all at the same time. I just saw all this stuff going on and I thought he'd be a lot of fun to work with. And, as with Joe, the minute we sat down to talk about it, I knew he was going to be fantastic."
Adds Walter Parkes: "With this role and his other recent work, I think Jeff is emerging as one of our great American character actors."
Daniels was lured to THE LOOKOUT by the script. "I'm just looking to do good writing," he says, "and this script was a character-driven thriller which is full of surprises, where you never know what's going to happen next but you're pulling the whole time for this kid to make it through. It was so well-written it immediately made me say 'sign me up.'" Once signed up, however, Daniels had a major challenge to meet, especially in shattering the mold of a character type that has become all too much of a movie cliché: the blind man. "What Jeff did with this role was terrific," says Frank. "We talked about all the different ways people can look and behave when they're blind but what Jeff did that was so great, was essentially nothing. His portrait was so subtle. We had met with someone who was blind, and at first, you had no idea he couldn't see you. He pretty much even looked you in the eye, which he said he had learned to do to make people more comfortable. And Jeff picked up on all of that so well."
Daniels also picked up on who Lewis is at heart. "He's definitely a free spirit and you never know what he's going to say or do. He's never let blindness be a handicap to him and I think he probably lives life more now than he did when he was sighted, so he's a very interesting character to play," he says.
To further dive into the experience of blindness, Daniels used the help of the Michigan Commission for the Blind in his home state. "They taught me the basics of reading Braille and using the cane and things like going up and down stairs," he explains. "But even more importantly, I got to meet a lot of people who've lost their sight and really see the attitude of these people and how they've overcome their problems. It was really a joy to look at life the way they do, so to speak." Daniels was especially intrigued by his character's relationship with Chris Pratt -- for theirs is no ordinary friendship. "They really need each other," Daniels notes. "Lewis is trying to walk Chris through his new situation and help him get back on his feet emotionally but Chris also helps Lewis. It's a real give-and-take. I like that about them."
They might appear like an odd couple of sorts, but on the set the two actors found a rapport that allowed the relationship between Chris and Lewis make to perfect sense. Says Gordon-Levitt of working with Daniels: "There was just an instant connection between me and Jeff. Lewis is so important to Chris because he's the one person who doesn't see him through the past, for who he used to be. He's actually friends with the person Chris is right now." Daniels is effusive about Gordon-Levitt's performance. "He threw himself completely into every single shot, every single day," Daniels comments. "He's always been a very good, inventive actor, but I think after this role, he's really going to take off." He has equal praise for Scott Frank. "I've worked with a lot of a first-time directors and the great thing they bring to a film, which Scott very much does, is passion. He showed up every day ready, excited and full of adrenaline. And of course, when the script is this great, the actors really want to deliver," says Daniels.
ABOUT WRITER-DIRECTOR SCOTT FRANK
Scott Frank makes his directorial debut with THE LOOKOUT, which he also wrote. Frank earlier won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the Best Screenplay Awards from both the National Society of Film Critics and The Boston Society of Film Critics, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for OUT OF SIGHT based on the novel by Elmore Leonard. Frank's other screenplay credits include THE INTERPRETER, FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, MINORITY REPORT, GET SHORTY (Writers Guild, Edgar and Golden Globe nominations), MALICE, DEAD AGAIN and LITTLE MAN TATE.
Frank grew up in Los Gatos, California and received a B.A. in Film Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
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