Almost a year ago, I ran an extended interview with William Monahan for his directorial debut London Boulevard. Starring Colin Farrell, Keira Knightley, Anna Friel, Jamie Bower, David Thewlis, Ray Winstone, Stephen Graham, Eddie Marsan, and Ben Chaplin, the film is about a man just released from prison (Farrell) who falls in love with a reclusive young movie star (Knightley) and finds himself in a duel with a vicious gangster (Winstone). At the time, the movie was about to hit theaters in the United Kingdom, and our wide-ranging conversation covered the making of the film and all the other projects he was involved with. When I posted the interview, I said it was one of the best conversations I've ever had with any filmmaker.However, with London Boulevard now available on VOD in the United States and hitting theaters November 11, I recently sat down with Monahan again and we have bested our last conversation. During our 45 minutes conversation we covered everything from his thoughts on VOD and what changes were made to the film, the digital revolution, the crime genre, writing dialogue, and working with actors. In addition, he gave me updates on The Departed sequel/prequel, Sin City 2, The Gambler, Tripoli, Becket, Mojave (which might be his next film), and revealed there is another version of Kingdom of Heaven that no one has seen. Hit the jump for more.Since I know a lot of you like the highlights, here's "13 Things to Know" from my wide ranging interview with Monahan. Although I really recommend reading this one in full:
- Even though London Boulevard opened in the UK quite a while ago, he hasnât made any changes to the film for its US release.
- During the editing process, he took out 20 minutes from the film. He would have liked to keep that footage in, but he says there will never be another cut of London Boulevard.
- He didnât know that nearly an hour of footage had been cut from Kingdom of Heaven until he saw it in theaters, but says he didnât care. Heâs learned âto be a professional and not a precious authorâ in the business quickly.
- He recently learned that thereâs an original cut of Kingdom of Heaven that no one has seen.
- The rights to his novel Light House were purchased by Warner Bros., but Monahan says if it ever becomes a movie it would be an indie comedy and not a big movie.
- On Oblivion/Horizons, he wrote one draft of the script and revised it a little bit after director Joe Kosinski went and talked to Disney. He hasnât been involved with the project since then.
- A remake of The Gambler for director Martin Scorsese is his next job. Heâs going to change the setting for the remake. Heâs also dipping back into the Dostoevsky original for his take on the material.
- Heâs currently finishing up Sin City 2 for Robert Rodriguez. Heâs been working on the script for four weeks. He says his job on the project is âessentially to be Frank Miller.â
- Regarding The Departed sequel, his idea for the film is to set it before, during, and after the action of the first film, with all the actors coming back. The middle section of the sequel would be actions that take place during the original Departed, but arenât onscreen in the original.
- He says Warner Bros. wanted to see a synopsis of The Departed sequel, but he doesnât do synopses or pitches. If Warner Bros. can come up with the money for all the actors to come back, he says they could do the sequel at anytime. But he doesnât know if the film will ever happen.
- Monahan is producing The Art of the Heist and The Chaser.
- He plans to be shooting his next film as a director in March. It will most likely either be Becket or an original thriller called Mojave. If Becket gets together before that time, that will be his next film, but if it doesnât come together then heâll move right into Mojave in Los Angeles.
- Tripoli never officially went into turnaround at Fox. Monahan owns the original script, but Fox owns the rights to further development drafts, so he says sooner or later itâs going to be an issue and theyâre going to have to come to some arrangement.
And before getting to the full conversation, hereâs the trailer for London Boulevard. Itâs definitely worth seeing on the big screen.
Collider: So to start things off, how did IFC get involved in the film? Also, I noticed the film is on VOD right now and then it goes theatrical. Youâre at the forefront of the Video On Demand revolution. Thoughts on VOD?
Monahan: Well, it's the way everything's going to come out in the future, and that's a good thing.  I'm in the film business and honestly I haven't been in a cinema in a year. I were still in Manhattan, walking, I would be at the theater more regularly, because it's a contextual part of life. In truth, the cinema as a delivery system obviously has its days numbered. And that's not a bad thing. When you can buy any book in the world on your iPad, or off Amazon, you don't go the public library. The public library becomes about homeless gentlemen sleeping in chairs. I didn't have anything to do with selecting IFC. I don't have anything to do with distribution, or business, or marketing, but think it's a good choice by Graham, and perfect for London Boulevard.  It gets the picture straight into a dialog with the public, and it doesnât set the sights too high. They're very hip at IFC, and they get the film. The cineplex hasnât done film any favors as an art form.
London Boulevard came out in the UK awhile back and itâs now just hitting the States. Did you make any changes to the movie since itâs UK release?
Monahan: No, there have been no changes at all. This is the print thatâs been around the world. I'm most excited that it's hitting America now, because it gets to be looked at by 300 million people who have no skin in the British class system. I'd like to put 20 minutes back in, but no film gets out these days that you can't say that about.  I started out as a writer with an hour removed from Kingdom of Heaven. You have to make one print for the entire world, and that's something that influences the theatrical cuts of pictures to an enormous degree. It's a reality. You canât have one cut for the Sunni, and one for the Shia, and one each for Tories, Whigs, vegetarians, one cut for the Cineplex, and one for literary intellectuals. I cut London Boulevard pretty aggressively, but I liked the transitions and the elliptical feel that I got. Itâs not an exceptionally easy film to follow. You have to know that the paparazzo looks like Mark David Chapman. He hasn't got an expositional sign on him.
I like your honesty. It's refreshing.
Monahan: Refreshing honesty has been getting me in trouble since I was five, but it's probably had some positive effectsâlike not being a liar.
You mentioned that you took out 20 minutes. Is there a chance that footage could see the light of day on its home video release. Are you a fan of "directors cuts" or "extended cuts" or do you believe the removed footage should be placed in a separate section for deleted scenes. Also, is the 20 minutes of footage a lot of little cuts or are there a lot of whole scenes? And did you remove any storyline that you felt didnât work in the editing room?
Monahan: Thereâs not going to be another cut of London Boulevard. Iâm done. This is it. I'm a huge fan of director's cuts or reassemblies if they're good, but I remember being really excited about the restored version of Apocalypse Now, and then I preferred the original film. Kingdom of Heaven as a director's cut is the real picture, but in fact someone recently told me that there was another cut, the original first cut, which he said was just extraordinary. I've never seen itâand of course now I want to, if it exists, and so would everybody else. I don't want to talk about alternate cuts of London Boulevard. Maybe we'll see it and maybe we won't.  It's only recently in history that doing another version of a film became even an option and it's not real to me as an artist.  I already did London Boulevard. The record's cut, and it's out in America.
You bring up the director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven. As you know, I absolutely love Kingdom of Heaven and think it's one of those films from the past decade that's really been overlooked by critics and film fans. I have to askâ¦when did you first find out the film would be released without some critical plot points and almost 45 minutes of footage? And what did you learn from the process of making that film and itâs release?
Monahan: I didn't know anything about the cut of Kingdom of Heaven until I went in to see it in Manhattan at a screening. And I didn't give a damn if there were a hundred minutes out of it.  What got through was a marvel, and it still is. When the 20th Century Fox fanfare came up I nearly passed out, and when I saw "Written by William Monahan" directly after âDirected by Ridley Scottâ I nearly had an aneurysm.  What I learned on Kingdom of Heaven, because it was cut, is that people who have not read a script, look at a finished film and assume that what they are looking at is the realized script. In The Departed this was true, and I was glad of it, but it was not true in the case of the theatrical Kingdom of Heaven, and it has not been true on any produced film except The Departed. You learn to be a professional and not a precious author rather quickly. You learn to take your lumps, and appreciate whatâs on the screen, not what isnât, for whatever reason. Itâs not losing a child. Itâs business. You can have great victories or lesser victories but nothingâs a loss. Someone very wise said to me recently âIâve got final cut, mate, but if I donât make changes they donât put in the P&A.â
I'd imagine you do research when you're writing a script. What's the typical way you make sure the dialogue you're writing sounds accurate and the scenes feel real?
Monahan: On historical you take the known facts, dramatize them, and then stitch them together by invention. Itâs a projective thing. Tripoli is based on nothing more than the bare bones facts that William Eaton was the United States consul at Tunis, and after the capture of the Philadelphia frigate, he was given gold by Commodore Preble to collect Hamet Bashaw, the "right Bashaw" of Tripoli, marched on Tripoli to effect a military coup, and his expedition was betrayed at Derna. The rest is me. The dialog situation is simply a matter of working in the English of the time, and at the time I wrote Tripoli I was or had been deep into Byronâs letters, and the letters of other Regency writers, and the correspondence of their American contemporaries, but thatâs not research, per se. If one didnât know that English already, one might not have formed an interest in the period at all. Tripoli is set in a time when America was brand new, and an underdog. If you don't know, or hope, that American envoys at one time never bowed to any monarch, you wouldn't be writing Tripoli. No one wants a reporter writing their historical drama. You want a dramatist doing it. It helps to know a shitload of details, but youâre doing imaginative work. Shakespeare wasn't doing history, he was doing Shakespeare. And none of us is Shakespeare, especially the Earl of Oxford, but that's how you work. Itâs worth pointing out with Anonymous going up on screens now that dramatic writing is magical, not material. The anti-Stratfordian argument has no basis except in peopleâs confusion and even anger about the nature and distribution of talent.
How much changes once actors get involved?
Monahan: You have conversations. Iâm usually the first guy to propose a change because Iâm continuing my process. We're in a context, in this business, a context in which most screenplays work on a very modest level of achievement, in that a lot of them aren't really written by what you would call writers. They're done by guys who have talked a good game and then have scrambled together the simulacrum of a drama, so actors are habituated to sometimes having to save a picture on the floor because it's usually part of their job, but they'd rather have a writer doing his job, so that they can do theirs. But I like nothing better than working with actors.
A lot of your credits have a criminal element viewed from both sides of the process. What is it about crime that you like as a cinematic device?
Monahan: A criminal has a kind of freedom by definition that the ordinary citizen doesnât have. The criminalâs able to realize himself in ways not available to the general population, if you want to put it that way. Theyâre interesting and unpredictable. Characters always have to break some sort of bound or other to be interesting. It also helps if theyâre paradoxical. One of the things that was absolutely true about Colinâs character in London Boulevard is that he was paradoxical; very violent, very sensitive, very much not this standard issue B-movie character trying to stay out of trouble after getting out of prison. He wants to get out of London entirely. Thatâs why, in the film, heâs dressed as an American, with his blue shirt and his desert boots, blues and browns, sort of the colors of Los Angeles, where the film ends up. And of the desert, which is where Iâm going to shoot next. Doing crime filmsâ¦maybe itâs to some extent a matter of taste. Certainly my first novel had a criminal element and was about the similarity of criminals and artists. Pretextually, it was sort of a money bag thriller. But it was aggressively not what it seemed to be. It was kind of Duchamps.
I believe Warner Bros. optioned your book.
Monahan: Yeah, they did. That was Gore Verbinski. Gore Verbinski optioned Light House when it was in galleys at Penguin-Putnam. There was a very funny thing that happened, which may have had an effect on steering me towards movies. If I can give a young author any advice, whatsoever, never let anyone announce the film sale of your first novel. Film rights are sold to almost every novel, but it shouldnât be the lead story in your first engagement with the press. Then you end up getting reviews like âa novel made for the screenâ and things like that. The novel ceases to be looked at as a novel. Such is the overwhelming power of motion pictures. Gore Vidal pointed out that the movies are the only thing anybodyâs really interested in. The association with movies and movie money can, and certainly did in my case, occlude a novel as a novel. Certainly some guy eating cardboard in Cincinnati has lost any ordinary impetus to review your novel decently if heâs just read you just got six figures out of Warner Brosâwhich incidentally was not true.
If Iâm not mistaken, you own the rights to the novel?
Monahan: I own the novel Light House. I bought it back. As a film project, I think thereâs a minuscule amount of money against it at Warner Bros.
Obviously this is an important work to you. Is it something that youâd want to circle back? Is it a movie or is it something that youâre happy exists just as a novel?
Monahan: It would make a decent movie. But by no means would it ever be a big movie. Itâs definitely an indie comedy, which I think is the determination that was made at Warner Bros. [laughs]
Thereâs a digital revolution going on in Hollywood. Things are changing: the business model is changing, video on demand, films being made on micro-budgets. Thereâs so much out there. You just directed your first feature. What is bubbling up for you to possibly do? Is the novel something youâd want to circle back to down the road?
Monahan: Novels are something I just walked away from when I went to work for Ridley [Scott] ten years ago. Maybe more than ten years ago. The novel may be dead as a commercial form. When art forms things die as commercial forms, something happens to the practice of those arts that isnât very pleasant. It used to be that a poet like Tennyson could keep his house and his coach-and-four and his staff of six servants on the income from poetry. That doesnât happen anymore. Poetry died as a commercial form and then it died as a serious art form. No one serious touches it. It used to be that somebody like F. Scott Fitzgerald could make a high middle-class income from working as a short story writer for the Saturday Evening Post and other outlets. That doesnât happen anymore. It used to be that a legitimate playwright could make a living on Broadway from writing decent plays. [Eugene] OâNeill made a living, certainly, at least. But each of these forms have sort of died the death in turn, and itâs a simple fact of that universe that talent then migrates away from these forms, and then the amateurs get in, like lunatics in the ruins, sort of pretending to be artists. If youâre ambitious enough to want to be a writer to begin with, you want to be a writer in some circumstances where there are rewards, where thereâs notice, where you donât have to be a teacher, and where youâre frankly not nuts for wasting your time. For me, film has been good because Iâm able to work at top crack, working at something I love to do, in the only literary form in which you can still make money. There are no famous novelists, not as novelists used to be famous. Iâve got things I have to do in fiction to sort of register my existence, before I kick the bucket, but it will never be my living and I know it. Plus it never moved fast enough for me and lacked cut and thrust. I need to be in the real show.
Also, there are a lot of people now writing books in their spare time who are now publishing e-versions of their books for 99 cents, being sold for Amazon or iBooks. The digital revolution is affecting all aspects of the writing process.
Monahan: Thatâs absolutely true, but one problem with the digital revolution, which may tie into what I said earlier, is that there can be a collapse of quality. You may not have liked the decisions made by publishers in the past, you may not have liked the decisions made by magazine editors or newspaper editors in the past. At least there was some quality control. There are frankly times when your poem about the fucking springtime should not be in print. Itâs just not good enough. We both know that there are websites out there doing news which are absolutely out of fucking control. They arenât doing news, they donât have an editor who came out of J-school, they donât have a lawyerâ¦
Iâm really nervous that youâre talking about Collider. [laughs]
Monahan: Iâm not. Iâm talking about the web as a sort of graffiti universe where they throw up incendiary shit, hope it sticks and gets picked up and then hope itâs really hard for the lawyers to find them. Ebooks are very handy, and itâs invaluable to be able to go online and grab any work you like the minute you think of it. But the web is to some degree a broth of psychopaths seeing what they can get away with in circumstances of anonymity. Look, we live in a world where one is unsafe in various ways because of the Internet. Anything can be said. Someone can look at your house from space.
You directed London Boulevard. I spoke to you a year ago and you talked about Becket. Iâm imagining that directing is now in the blood. What are you thinking about for your next picture? Are there multiple things that are there?
Monahan: Yeah, itâs very much in the blood. Itâs been very much in the blood since I started imagining films or shooting with 8mm when I was a kid. I made some films and thought about films, but then I went into writing. Becket is something thatâs definitely on the cards. We have to see where that fits in the schedule, because itâs a big picture and I have a lot of writing obligations at the moment. Iâm wary of anything with a budget over a certain amount. I have no reason as a director to have films go up in versions that I donât like. My only experience of film after ten years is honestly that if a picture doesnât get second-guessed youâre looking at four Oscars, and if a picture does get second-guessed, youâre not. Iâve got an advanced degree in that lesson.
No matter what youâre thinking about doing next, is it going to be something you want to write and direct?
Monahan: Yeah, well I canât see a situation where I wouldnât at least re-write as a director something I was going to direct. At the moment, I wouldnât direct anything that I hadnât written. I can now say, as everybody else says, that it all depends on the script.
Are you in the position now where agents are sending you scripts and hoping youâll read them to possibly direct? Or are you trying to stay away from that kind of thing?
Monahan: Thereâs stuff coming in. Nobody at the moment really knows me as a director because nobody in this country has seen London Boulevard. Nobody in Los Angeles has seen London Boulevard yet. The visual style has led to some commercials offers, oddly enough, but I canât do that. Stuff comes in, âWould Bill consider this, would Bill consider that?â Directing oneâs second film is nothing oneâs representatives want to move to the front, let me say. If I direct London Boulevard, for example, Iâm off the map for a year and a half, if not longer than that, between shooting and post. I make far less money as a director than I do as a screenwriter. So when I finally say, âThis is my second picture,â letâs just say you canât get agents to light up when you announce that youâre going to burn two years of your prime as an artist for a fraction of your usual income. And letâs face it: I got badly hurt in Britain. But come what may Iâll be shooting in the spring of 2012, even if I take a big job that Iâm talking about now.
There was a week or a few weeks when your name was attached to a lot of different things. How are you balancing all of this stuff? Was everything that was reported accurate or was it all a little too far in advance?
Monahan: Well, youâll have to tell me whatâs being reported. As far as executing work is concerned, you do it all in order. You do it in contractual order. Thereâs no overlap, itâs just continuation of your ordinary work. You move from one project into another.
Iâve spoken to some writers that will balance two or three projects at one time. For you, are you âall inâ on one thing and thatâs it until itâs wrapped?
Monahan: Well, I think we talked about that before. I told you the way that I work in Massachusetts. I have a library room with four desks in it. On one of them is a spec, on one of them is a present work, on one of them is reading for a future work, on another desk is a novel Iâm not doing until Iâm a hundred and fifty, and things like that. But, contractually speaking, you just do one at a time when itâs on and paid and live. You do your real day on one project and the rest is just literary life. Or intrusions.
You worked on Oblivion/Horizons. What was that experience like?
Monahan: I wrote the first script for Joe after we went and talked to Disney. I had a one-step deal. I wrote the script and then I revised it a little bit, but one draft is all they had me for. So I moved on to other work after that. I donât have any idea what the script looks like now. Iâll be interested to see the picture.
I read in Variety or the Reporter that possibly The Gambler is something you guys are working on?
Monahan: Yeah, thatâs my next job.
So you havenât started writing it yet?
Monahan: No, Iâm finishing up Sin City now and Iâll move directly into The Gambler.
What is it about The Gambler that speaks to you and excites you?
Monahan: Dostoyevsky. Iâm going to reset it in a place Iâm not going to mention.
It wouldnât be Boston by any chance?
Monahan: No, no, certainly not Boston. Iâm going to reset it in a place thatâs very interesting to me at present and dip a little bit back into the Dostoevsky original.
Itâs obviously already been made, The Gambler. Is there anything from the other version thatâs going to seep its way in or is this a complete reimagining?
Monahan: It has a good structure. Iâll see how it goes. There are things like the Nazi-hunting angle which are obviously outdated by now. I like the structure. I donât think the picture is the Passion of St. Theresa, but I think itâs pretty good. If it was unsurpassable I wouldnât touch it. Itâs very 70s. Thereâs always a great hue and cry when you sign onto a âremake,â and thatâs always been sort of annoying me and freaking me out. This profession that weâre in is drama. What drama has been since the beginning is, you restage plays with new casts, or a writer will take a new run at an old story...I donât have an aversion to quote unquote remakes, because I understand what dramatic writing is, what the dramatic profession has always been about, which is talent, not the pretext for its exhibition. When someone bitches about remakes you know youâre not talking to an English major. Thereâs a particular mentality, usually male, where men need to insist on the supremacy of one thing, whether itâs a film or a band or a sports team or a motorcycle. Itâs like, dude, no one gives a shit, all motorcycles are good, find another way to define yourself.
Iâm excited to see your name attached to Sin City 2. To be honest with you, I was very shocked and very happy. How did you first get attached to that?
Monahan: I donât know, I guess Robert (Rodriguez) went to my agents and asked if I was available. I had a conversation with him and it just went on for two week periods with a reading period in between them. Itâs terrific stuff, I love being in that Sin City world and being able to do that hard-boiled kind of thing.
Theyâve talked about doing Sin City 2 for years. Is this one of those projects where theyâre gunning to get started at a certain point and is there pressure to get the script done?
Monahan: I wouldnât know anything about that. Itâs not the sort of conversation Iâd have. I just had a creative conversation.
Sin City is obviously Frank Miller. Are there certain things youâre looking at to bring into your Sin City? How much is it your own imagination?
Monahan: I should qualify my previous response about making things your own when you write them. In this case, my job is essentially to be Frank Miller. I have to, as an improvisational actor, be Frank Miller while simultaneously being Monahan. Itâs pretty cool because as a screenwriter, as a dramatist, what youâre doing all the time is inhabiting characters and improvising. In writing drama, thereâs a great component of being an improvisational actor and thereâs also a component of being an improvisational writer who can inhabit another personality and deliver something in the correct tone. Frank Miller is emphatically Frank Miller. Thatâs what I wanted to see in Sin City and thatâs what I want to see in Sin City 2.
How long have you been actually working on the script?
Monahan: Monday will be the end of my fourth week.
Were you able to create any âMonahanâ characters from scratch to add into this script?
Monahan:Â No, they are the Frank Miller characters.
Iâm assuming that youâre writing this knowing that itâs going to be an R-rated picture.
Monahan: Was the first one R-rated? Oh God, it must have been, yeah. I wasnât even thinking about that. Thereâs a whole class of shit I never think about. I was just about ready to let my twelve year old watch something the other day and my wife said, âYou canât do that. Itâs too bloody.â And I said, âWhat do you mean âitâs bloody?ââ Then I watched it and went, âOh yeah, it isâ. But the kids are never frightened by movies because they know especially well that movies are made up. Itâs interesting to think that my children know more about the process than many mature critics.
Any teasers for the fans? Something they should be excited about or something that youâre really happy with?
Monahan: I think they should be excited that thereâs a second Frank Miller movie coming out with Robert doing it, because Robertâs excited and Iâm certainly excited to be able to work on this material. Itâs going like a rocket.
Any news on a Departed sequel? Do you think it will ever happen?
Monahan: No. I think Warner Bros. would have liked to see a synopsis of it. I donât do synopses and I donât pitch. Personally, I donât know if itâs ever going to happen. I know the film, Iâve got the film in my head. Even if everybody didnât come back, which they could in the film as Iâve configured it, it would be a hell of a paycheck for somebody to write. The film would have to be absolutely superb.
Would you be in the future but go back to the past to tie it all together?
Monahan: My idea actually is to set the film before, during and after the action of the first film, which I think would be extraordinary. If those guys want to cough up the dough, we can do it any time.
Is it one of these films thatâs dependent on you seeing the original Departed or can it exist on its own?
Monahan: Essentially, in the middle section of the thing Iâve intended, youâd see actions that take place during the original Departed, but arenât on screen in the original Departed. There would be off-screen things that occur at that point in the story. But it would work seamlessly as a movie of its own.
Titles like Confessions of Pain, The Essex, The Associate, The Art of the Heist, The Chaserâ¦have you worked on any of these?
Monahan: The Chaser Iâm just a producer on. Confessions of Pain, I believe has gone away, though itâs a good script. The Essex is a very big one that dates from about the time of Tripoli. Itâs a huge movie set in roughly the same period. The Art of the Heist is a book that was optioned. I didnât write a script for it, I was a producer on it. I think somebody said I was going to direct it but that was never actually the case. Itâs set in Boston and Iâd rather do a picture set in Albania than go back to Boston. I did Boston. I wanted nothing to do with The Town, but perhaps I was wrong because Ben had a success with it. The Chaser is with Roy Lee and Dan Lin, whoâs a producer at Warner Bros. They have a very good script and that may be heading quickly towards production, but Iâd let them give you the details about it. I didnât work on the script. Iâm a producer on the film.
Being a producer, what excites you and what challenges are there in the industry?
Monahan:Â I expect that as my company (Henceforth) evolves, as itâs doing, that Iâll start doing a lot more producing, both in film and television. Iâm merely a creative. I donât fool with raising money. But I can identify a project and a writer and put them together and thatâs what producing is. Iâm doing several things in Britain. I really think you have to have a UK presence and an American presence, so Iâve moved in that direction. Producingâs never going to take over my life, because I write. Iâm not always available for conversations.
Is The Gambler something you envision taking many months? Have you envisioned whatâs down the road?
Monahan: Iâm going to write The Gambler, which I donât think will take very long. Thereâs a possibility of another picture which Iâm in talks about right now. I think, one way or another, Iâm going to be shooting a film come March, whatever work stands between now and then. I definitely will be directing something at that time, I just donât know what it is. What I have right now is an original thriller called Mojave. If Becket gets together before March, then Iâll do Becket. If it doesnât get together before March then Iâm going to go immediately into Mojave here in Los Angeles.
What did you lean in the London Boulevard process that you take away to apply toward future films and future projects?
Monahan: I went into directing having observed and learned from the best. There was a certain standard of procedure. I found that I was equal to it. I thoroughly enjoyed directing, I liked it a lot. Itâs very satisfactory to see that you can do it. The art takes care of itself. The real issue is can you keep 200 people moving and happy. Everybody sits around waiting for you to make the mistakes of a first time director, whether itâs indecision or freezing on the cliff face or not knowing what to fucking do, or something like that, and I never did. I learned from Ridley how to come out of the trailer at a fast walk and make your decisions and keep it going. We were very much on time and under budget, as they say. That was a very important thing for me and very satisfactory.
What do you think the quintessential âBostonâ movie is?
Monahan: The Departed [laughs]. Good Will Hunting, also, except for Robin Williamsâ accent. Some of the things in it are just great: âCause fuck it.â âCause fuck itâsâ a very Boston line. I loved Good Will Hunting. A friend of mine called up baked, watching Good Will Hunting, and he said, âHey, man. They made a movie about us.â
If you could make a period piece in any period thatâs not the 12th century, when would you choose?
Monahan: The era I love most is the Federal period, just after the Revolution and the formation of the United States. The birth of America as a nation coincided with the Romantic era and Iâve always been thoroughly into the Romantics and Iâve always been thoroughly into America, particularly at the time when it was a brand new idea, when it was something brand new in the world. It was a very exciting time in the world because of the birth of America. Itâs also an interesting period in which to look at the United States because itâs a period in which the United States was an underdog. An underdog nation with no Navy, and of course thatâs what Tripoli is about. Tripoli is set in 1804. The Essex, which would be a mammoth production, is set in the War of 1812. Tripoli isnât really an epic. Tripoli is a tragic drama enacted in the open air on the coast of North Africa. I donât think thereâs ever more than 100 people on screen at one time throughout the entire picture. Itâs not quite the titanic picture one thinks. It could be done for 30. You can get epic effects without epic expenses. I think in Tripoli, the only possible CG thing would be the Constitution opening fire on Tripoli.
Who owns the rights right now?
Monahan: For one reason or another, Tripoli never officially went into turn-around at Fox because of some paperwork snafu. So weâre in a situation where the underlying rights, which means the original script, reverted to me. Fox owns what are referred to as âsterile drafts,â which means they own these further development drafts but theyâre not able to do anything with them. Sooner or later, itâs going to be an issue and we have to come to some sort of arrangement.