Richard Shepard on Second Acts

Shepard’s career started with a bang — the sound that The Linguini Incident made when it bombed at the box office. Then 24 years old and just out of NYU Film School, Shepard said the movie killed his career before it started. "I was sent immediately to movie jail," he says. Now, with The Matador, a quirky thriller/comedy starring Pierce Brosnan, Shepard has proven that there are second chances in Hollywood. He has also directed Mercy, a thriller made for $50K, and just finished the first draft of Spring Break in Bosnia, a thriller/black comedy about the search for a war criminal in post-war Bosnia.

F&V: How did you get Pierce Brosnan on board The Matador? It’s clearly not a typical role for him.

When I wrote The Matador, I was prepared to make it for $250K as a digital movie. The script was sent to Pierce’s production company as a sample of my writing, for consideration for an open writing assignment— I never assumed he’d want to do it. But he called me and said he loved it and thought it was a great part for him. It was a pretty great f——-g phone call to get. It boggled my mind. I realized, wow, I’m not making this for $250K any more [The Matador was made for $10 million].

F&V: Brosnan produced the film. How did you work creatively with him?

Pierce loved playing this role and committed fully and completely to the point where I felt comfortable enough to suggest things that weren’t in the script. For example, I suggested in one scene that he walk into the hotel lobby in his underwear. He asked, "Can I wear my boots?" And I said OK. And the boots are what’s funny about that scene in a way. Pierce— once he committed and was ready to go, he was fearless. A lot of the funnier things in the movie came from me suggesting he do certain crazy things and his willingness to do them.

F&V: Talk about your vivid use of color in Matador.

I really wanted to push myself to be as interesting as possible visually, without overcompensating to the detriment of storytelling. There’s so much dialogue in the movie, I wanted the boldness of the color to keep it interesting. And the entire movie was shot in Mexico, where there are a lot of vivid colors. [Cinematographer] David Tattersall, production designer Robert Pearson and costume designer Catherine "Cat" Thomas and I spent more time than a lot of other movies, talking about the color palette for each scene, to make sure the wardrobe worked with the background color.

F&V: It was quite the coup to have David Tattersall shoot The Matador — how did that come about?

Pierce said to me, in his producer shoes, "I will let you pick your own cinematographer, but you have to get someone as good or better than David Tattersall," with whom he’d worked on Die Another Day. What was really funny about it is that Tattersall is one of the biggest cinematographers in Hollywood — his attachment as cinematographer can get a movie greenlit. Still, I wasn’t sure and I had David come in and interview with me three times. It was hysterical — by the time he got the job, we loved each other. I think he loved the script and thought it was hysterically funny — he responded to the idea that it would be a character-driven piece as opposed to what he does a lot, big action pictures. He hasn’t operated in 15 years and he asked to operate as well as DP.

F&V: What about the choice to shoot widescreen, for what is essentially a character movie?

I chose to shoot it widescreen [Super 35] because I wanted it to seem like the kind of big movie we always see with a hit man in a foreign country. I wanted to do that, but with a little bit of a wink. Pierce’s character Julian is on the rooftop with a gun — but he’s having a f——-g nervous breakdown.

F&V: Advice for the new filmmaker?

You need to be brave, even if sometimes it makes you unpopular. At the end of the day, no one — except maybe your mom — has sympathy for you if your movie doesn’t work. You have to live with the thing you did. When I went back and made movies for small amounts of money, there was no pressure with someone looking over my shoulder so I could figure out how to get the best out of nothing. Learning that and learning it correctly allowed me to put some of the things I thought I’d learned into play.

F&V: What did you learn from your failure at the age of 24?

When I started, I was so scared of actors and failure and being considered to be making the wrong decision. And that’s the wrong way to go about it. You have to be willing to fail. At 24, realizing my career was in worse shape than it was before I made the movie, I decided to rethink what I did, to not be stifled.

You can’t tell an actor how to act unless they’re a child or a dog. You have to make sure the actor playing opposite is perfect, that you’re in tune with the character they’re trying to bring forward. What the actor brings to the party is what’s the most interesting about making a movie. That’s pure pleasure.