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The Truth About Rod Lurie
Always political, the writer-director—and West Point grad—rips a story from the headlines to reveal Nothing But the Truth
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RL: Later, I met with Kenneth Branagh about doing a film. I sat with him and told him, ‘I think you’re one of the great actors.’ He said, “Oh, no you don’t,” and he recalled in detail a review I did of his movie Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The thing is, though, he wound up wanting to do the film—but it never got off the ground. There was a time when [talent agency] CAA didn’t even want to let me through the door because I’d written some vicious things about a couple of their clients. But look, in the end if you have a screenplay that people want to make, or if you do a film that does well either critically or at the box office, memories can fade really quickly.
MM: Of course, you don’t pay attention to any reviews you get, right?
RL: (laughs) No, I can’t say that’s the case. It’s become less of an obsession with me over time, on a film-by-film basis. But when one of my films opens, or a TV show premieres, I’m at my computer, refreshing Rotten Tomatoes every 10 minutes, getting pissed off when they post a positive review and say it’s a negative. But you know when the reviews really hurt? When they’re right and you just can’t disagree with them. And you think, ‘Goddammit, I fucking deserved that. I wish I could go back in the editing room again.’ Those really get to you.
MM: Many critics have made much of your liberal politics, especially when writing about The Contender, “Commander in Chief” and, now, Nothing But the Truth. I’m sure that some of those folks would be surprised to learn about your military background: You’re a West Point grad and you served a stint in the Army as an artillery officer. How do you think that experience prepared you for moviemaking?
RL: Well, you can say what you want about people who graduate from West Point, but those guys are hard to rattle. And those guys don’t feel stressed. They feel pressure, but they don’t feel stressed. So when you’re on a film set, and you’re behind schedule, or your prop person has really fucked up, or your actors don’t have their lines memorized—there is a sense of calm that I can directly connect to my education there. And to the time management that we learn at that school.
All of my films have come in under budget. They’ve all come in a little ahead of schedule. And I think that also owes a lot to the fact that I recognize a calm team when I see it. Like, there’s a guy named James Spies who’s been my line producer, who I see as an incredibly efficient guy. I surround myself with people like that. Like I’m building my own army.
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This story was published in the Winter 2009 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
The Truth About Rod Lurie
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