Edgar Wright On The Running Man: An Empire Podcast Interview Special

0:14Chris Hewitt:Hello pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to a very special, spoiler special, interview special. Edgar Wright's The Running Man, his Glenn Powell starring adaptation of the Richard Backman, aka Stephen King, novella, is now out on all forms of home entertainment, including shiny discs packed full of extras. So, it's the perfect time to bring you my spoiler special interview with Edgar, in which we get into a lot of the film's key moments, including its fidelity, or otherwise, to the shocking ending of the King book. But first, we start off by talking about one of the film's many Easter eggs. This is a really fun chat, as always, with Mr.

0:55Wright.

0:56Chris Hewitt:Enjoy. We are delighted to be joined on the Running Man spoiler special by the film's director and, of course, co-writer, Edgar Wright. How are you, sir? I'm good. Obviously, people are listening for Running Man spoilers here, but I want to start off by talking about a 1972 film called Skyjacked. Oh, yes. which is in your film yeah so this is this is a sort of strange kind of I wouldn't even call it an easter egg because it was unintentional so you know we started working on the script in early 22 so myself and Michael McCall who I co-wrote Scott Pilgrim with and one of the ideas there's a scene in William H.

1:37Macy's like basement he's a sort of black marketeer and he has this little underground lair where he kind of sells things that cost to people who need meds and all sorts of things. He's a wizard in the black market. Anyway, and he has these kind of cathode ray TVs, the TVs that don't watch you back. And we thought, well, what if an old movie is playing on there? And what if the old movie is foreshadowing for something that happens later? So because the third act involves a plane sequence and kind of like a hijack, in inverted commas, we thought well let's have a hijack scene on one of the TVs and so we were talking about the airport movies from the 70s and then I said to Michael McCoy I'm sure there's this film called Skyjacked I'm pretty sure in this film called Skyjacked this guy holds up a plane with a live grenade and that could be the little foreshadowing thing that foreshadows a grenade as well there's a grenade, yes it's sort of two for one it's eight shadowing oh my god You know, your brain got to that pun quicker than I did, and I'm now annoyed.

2:46Eight shadowing. Classic Chris Hewitt. Thank you.

2:52So I'd seen Skyjacked. I don't think Michael had seen it, so he watched it, and we found the scene and said, okay, this is great, and we'll kind of use this. We literally used a line from the scene in the screenplay. and then cleared the clip and then you know, the person holding the grade, the person who takes the plane hostage in Skyjacked is James Brolin. So this is a long time before Josh Brolin comes into the frame for Killian and gets cast in the movie but then when he does, it suddenly occurred to me it didn't occur to me straight away either it was like, I sort of said I said to Josh, I said, hey you know your dad's in this as well And he goes, what do you mean?

3:33He said, there's a cliff of Skyjacks. And he goes, no way. Actually, in the scene, also in the scene, is Rosie Greer, who is in that scene as well, who is Josh's godfather.

3:45Chris Hewitt:Oh, my God. Yeah. So, actually, when Josh watched it for the first time, he watched a sort of screening near his house in California. And we were talking about it on the phone. And I texted him and said, did you see your dad? He goes, yes, I saw my dad. He gets a nice big close-up. beautiful shot of him that tickled me immensely I saw the film, the first time I saw it, I've seen the film twice I saw it the first time but I didn't recognize it as skyjacked and then second time around I did some digging I was like, that film, there's something about that film You know the one person who spotted it?

4:21Chris Hewitt:And of course you would is Joe Dante That's the thing, I kind of think only you would make that connection on a first watch It's a John Gilliman film It is yeah there we go so about two years before Towering Inferno if I'm right and thinking amazing alright so that's enough sky check for the time being but you're right I mean it does it does foreshadow obviously what happens at the end of the film but it also foreshadows the grenade as well and the YVA sequence has probably been my favorite gag in the film which is Ben going the Y yeah which tickled me immensely but it's also I have to give credit to Michael McCall for that gag Oh, really?

5:01Chris Hewitt:Yeah. I mean, Glenn. No, I mean, I don't have to. No, you should. But there's also this really, really intense, sprawling action sequence. Listen to the regular podcast. Edgar shot that over many, many months in several different countries as well. Was that the hardest thing to pull together in the entire movie? I mean. Just in terms of your action on different levels. You've got Ben doing different things. He's on a roof. He's naked. It was all difficult. It was a very complicated movie, and it's a lot of sort of moving parts. And there's a lot of, to create kind of these action sequences that traverse a lot of ground, it's a lot of work.

5:43So it's not the only complicated bit in the movie, but it's one of them. And also it's things like where you're just trying to be clever in terms of, you know, like shooting. You know, when Ben is looking out of the window and sort of giving voices to the kind of like the drunks outside the liquor store. you know, Looking At Glenn was shot in like London of the set that you were on in Leavesden and the reverse is shot in like Bulgaria like months later. So there was like a continuity thing, like actually we had the cast and crew the other day and I had to give the biggest hug to Lizzie Pritchard, our script supervisor because there's like an enormous amount of work to keep track of everything, you know?

6:21Chris Hewitt:Jesus, yeah because there's a lot of stuff going on in that scene and And one of the things, because we are tethered to Ben's viewpoint throughout the entire movie, one of the things we never really get to see, apart from in the scene with Elton, where Elton literally calls the goons on Ben, we don't get to see who dobs him in. We don't get to see who tips off the hunters about Ben's presence. I was wondering in that scene, is it Rich Hall? No, actually, no, I don't think it is. Also, I'm the first person to mention Rich Hall as well. I love the Rich Hall in this movie. I think the Rich Hall is actually the first movie he's ever done.

7:01Really? Like, I mean, he's obviously done a lot of TV, and it was on Saturday Night Live back in the day. But, like, I've known Rich for a long time, and, like, we thought of him for that part. And I think it's funny, he came in to do ADR, and he said, oh, I was surprised to get the call for the ADR. And I said, what was that? I said, I was so sure I was going to be cut out. I said, I'm not cutting you out, Rich. No, you know what? Honestly, I mean, it's something that Bradley says later. Bradley, the character played by Daniel Ezra, he said the network cheats. They can find anyone at any time.

7:33So there's an element where there are recording reports happening, where the public can sort of, you know, kind of snitch on somebody and get money. But it's sort of established by Bradley, who's the sort of super fan and the conspiracy theorist, that the whole thing is like a sham.

7:52Chris Hewitt:Yeah. Like, you know, it's why, because, you know, Glenn has that line to Daniel where he says, I don't understand, you could set up your grandkids for life with one record and report. And he says, you think the network would actually pay us that money? Or, you know, come up with some bullshit case and arrest us? So basically it's the idea that, like, they're not going to pay out. he's got a thing around his wrist which tells him that the time at any given moment they're not tracking him through that or the tapes which is something that's in the book if I remember rightly I think it's that thing I mean I think the honest answer is that we don't need to know Ben doesn't know, he's paranoid but it's not Stacy I don't think it's Rich Hall's character but is it the network are just kind of like cheating yeah because the hunters are on him very, very quick and bossed.

8:46Chris Hewitt:Yeah. Yeah, which is like suddenly Carl Glissman's in the street looking up. Was that something fun for you to play with in terms of, you know, amping up the paranoia? You're keeping an eye out for... Oh, yeah. I mean, there's something that's very vivid to me in the book, that sequence. Yeah. Where he's in the kind of the, you know, the YMCA. YMCA in the book and YVA in the film because apparently the C in YMCA took offense to the script.

9:14so apologies to the seas you've offended the seas I've offended the seas again so that was something that was really vivid to me from the book and it always reminded me the scene in the book reminded me of the scene in Butch Casting and the Sundance Kid with the super potty and the man in the white hat where that's such a great movie in terms of those guys are coming and they don't seem to be able to shake them and then you know another thing that's very vivid to me from the book is the idea that especially you know the narrative is tethered to Ben Richards and another thing from the book that I really wanted to bring to the screen a lot of other films of this ilk will like cut back to the network headquarters or you know cut to Sheila and Kathy and we did get notes about that you know script notes about that about what about expanding the perspectives in the movie and we were very you know sort of um we're very clear that we wanted to stay with ben and we thought that was more powerful and more intense that you only have the same information that he does you know so you don't kind of like can't really like jump around to sort of see what's around the corner you know there's we play a little bit faster than this within the yva that you cut outside to the hunters but by that point Ben knows that they're there

10:39Chris Hewitt:and you could maybe say as part of the TV coverage as well yeah well there's the rovers everywhere like it's going out Bobby T is commentating on what's happening so so that was so it's really fun in that respect to make it that intense but it does make it sort of challenging and freeing as well in terms of like keeping the focus on on Ben Richards that you know you're living vicariously through him well there's two things I want to talk about developing from that one is the opening shot I'm always interested in opening shots and the choices of opening shots and here we have the foundry the factory that Ben has gone back to to try and beg for his job back and then you do a kind of you pull focus and you see Ben's reflection in the window it's a really cool opening shot was that always how you began the movie?

11:33no actually the first draft of the script me and michael worked on the treatment together and then he wrote the first draft um it started with ben in the apartment watching speed the wheel which is kind of how the book starts that he's in the apartment with his his baby um it was actually simon kimberg's idea i forget whether it was before we sent it to the studio but he said what about having a scene where you you see because in the scene it he talked to sheila about begging for his job back and swallowing his pride and doing something that you get to understand that something that ben richards is not doing lightly going back to sort of like a dangerous job where he's obviously already had some major fallout with his employer and been blacklisted so for somebody who's got a lot of pride like ben has to go back and sort of like beg for work is a big deal for for ben Richards and in the first incarnation of it that was talked about in dialogue and I think Simon Kimberg said what about what about seeing that scene and opening with it so we thought okay that's a good idea so we actually that that was something that then came later the idea of having that kind of like sort of cold open in the factory um uh but then it was the idea of like and I think I think actually if we went further it was like then it started in a sort of started on a close up of Ben and again it was a thing about trying to expand so it was like I didn't really I tell you what it was I didn't want to get outside to have any exteriors I wanted to stay in these kind of claustrophobic rooms in the first three scenes the first scene is in factory like office then a waiting room then their apartment which is windowless and then you're in a hallway and then finally with the opening credits you go boom and go into the world and there's a lot of world building in the empty credits yeah but it was i didn't really want to have like a wide shot of the exterior of the factory so that's then i came up well what if you just saw the factory through the reflection on the glass and then pull focus to to ben for the first line um and so that actually that scene in the office with david zayas was uh the first i think it was the first day that we did at leavesden on on the set it was a very ambitious scene to do first because young babies real babies in the shop first time working with babies and I gotta say really, apart from their amazing handlers the amazing handler Michelle but also Chung Hoon the DP and Richard Graysmart, the first lady are both fathers, unlike me and Glenn so they knew how to kind of deal with babies and like I mean it was those first scenes doing like the first three scenes with the baby was I mean it was amazing doing amazing doing that performance of real kids rather than like a dummy yeah like because it feels really real and also you do have to sort of navigate through like a baby about to ball its eyes out at any second

14:39Chris Hewitt:there's a moment during where Ben is watching Speed the Wheel I'm so glad that Hammy made it into the movie by the way I think on the there was a longer bit with Hammy that's on the deleted scenes my girlfriend is in that scene as well she plays Sean Hayes' assistant I love it were you seeing the little baby playing what's the baby's name I presume it was twins it was Sienna and Alyssa okay and they're just entranced so I don't know what you were showing them at the time oh okay I can tell you okay so I think I think yeah because Glenn is having to get the baby he's trying to distract the baby from crying yeah because the baby's been ill and in a lot of pain so he's sort of trying to sort of coddle her and she obviously went to sleep but he's trying to sort of just sort of mollify her and um you know Hammy the mascot on the show is that kind of like a very I had to explain to Michael Bacall what 321 was and Dusty Vin in fact when we were writing we watched an entire episode of 321 oh my god which if you've ever watched I don't know if you've ever re-watched an episode of 321 I haven't It is one of the weirdest, most obtuse game shows of all time.

15:49And then showing it to like an American who's never seen it. I showed him, we watched that and we watched the entire episode of It's a Knockout as well. For younger British viewers, I mean, me and Chris were showing our age now talking about It's a Knockout. So yeah, so Hammy was like our Dusty Bin. Dusty Bin was the mascot in 321. I'm thinking, well, if you have a giant hamster. I think actually in the script, I think it was maybe, it was written as being an animatronic hamster. so it was going to be a lot more like Dusty Bin size. I think it was my brother, maybe inspired by having seen My Neighbor Tutorial on the West End, was like, why isn't it a big puppet?

16:24I think at one point it was going to be inflatable, and then it was like a big puppet. So the hammy thing, so there's actually an extra bit probably on the Blu-ray because there's some sort of deleted extended scenes of like a bit called The Hammie Dance. Oh, that's amazing. But did you see in the end credits as well, that like sort of like down with hammy, flush hammy? No, I didn't see that. Oh, you didn't see that in the end credits? No. I mean, amongst lots of anti-authoritarian imagery, there's a sort of shot of Hammy and it says, Flush Hammy!

16:52Chris Hewitt:Oh my God, I can't get on board with that. I'm sorry. I'm pro-network. You couldn't find a toilet big enough to flush that one. When it comes to Hammy, I'm very, very pro-network. Oh yeah, to answer your question, what was I doing to make the baby engage with the TV? Yes. I had a stuffed toy. I don't think it was a hamster, it was like a fox. And Basie Glenn would say, look at the fuzzy hamster and i would we play the music and i'd be sitting behind the camera waving this toy and it would work for about 10 seconds and then they get bored but that's what that's what the baby's looking at you got the shot you got the shot uh at what point did you and michael uh hit upon the idea the motif that runs through the movie of the sock oh that that that was all that was all but cool that's a great a great idea i think sort of the ever just um you know staying there throughout and becomes the thing i mean it's something i really love in the script and it was right there from the first draft the idea of um keeping it like he returns it because he's kind of like accidentally taken it into the network building and sends it back to his like wife and child and then she sends it back to him to keep bit for luck and you know i find that really sort of powerful and sad i mean it was something it a big difference between this and the 1987 film as well is and something that's a bit a little bit different to the book as well but you're going on a game show where nobody's ever won and everybody's died yeah like doing the game show and so we had to kind of instill this sort of feeling of obviously ben makes the decision to sign on the dotted line i mean he's very much kind of like hypnotized into it by by josh brown's character but we always like felt those like scenes felt like a um like a soldier going off to war there was this feeling of like duty and this this is something that i have to do and you know i feel it like so in this in in i don't know if you not coming back.

18:59And even if he does, he's not coming back as the same person.

19:02Chris Hewitt:He notably doesn't promise to Sheila. She says, promise me you won't go in the running man. He says, I promise you. I'll get you out of here. Yeah. I mean, it was something very profound to me in the book that really stuck with me as well, is that he also walks to the network building. There's something key there. I mean, not just in terms of money. He's not getting on public transport to go to the network building. I mean, it's that thing, if you live in a city and you don't have the cash, it's like, I can walk. It's like sort of like, but just seeing him walk all the way from like his side of town up to the sort of uptown to me is like really key.

19:43And, you know, it's that we talked about it in terms of the movie because he's going to the network building to get money because their daughter is sick and they're struggling and medicine. in this near future dystopia is massively overpriced. How the hell do they come out with these ideas, guys? No idea. So it's like they can't afford real medicine and they need their daughter to see a doctor and his wife is already working way too much and in a sort of an environment that's probably not safe. So Ben makes the decision to go to the network building but he doesn't intend to go on The Running Man, he thinks I could go on one of these other shows and risk injury, not death.

20:30So he sees Speed the Wheel on the TV and says, well, I could do that and get a thousand bucks. So we always talked about it, but then when he leaves the apartment, it's like the longest trip to the pharmacy ever. Chemists for the UK.

20:48Chris Hewitt:Should have done it the other way around. Boots. Put on your boots. get your boots on and get the boots but also the sock thing is really interesting because first of all it tells you that agent Doug is on the up and up one of the few nice guys yeah he's one of the few nice guys at the network he literally goes to the apartment and does what he said he would do gives him the 500 new dollars and brings back the sock and I imagine he has a major part to play in keeping them safe throughout the rest of the film even though we don't see that but then but then you it's the only time but he sort of says the line that kind of Ben hasn't really thought about yeah like he's when he's explaining what he does and says you know like family liaison and says no point winning all that Jack just to get your family robbed and killed yeah and you see kind of like that I love Glenn's reaction to that line because it's like he hasn't thought about that until this point yeah he's thought about his own like health like I might be going on this show I might like be injured or die that he hasn't thought about the repercussions to them.

21:52It hasn't occurred to him

21:54Chris Hewitt:until that point. Which is really interesting and it pays off in a really, really lovely way also. Now, in terms of the last couple of minutes of the movie, I think you've done a reverse Frank Darabont with this film. So Frank Darabont took The Mist, which was a novella that literally ends in the word hope. Yes, it's an open-ended conclusion to that story. But he took that, literally has the word hope as the very last word in that story and turned his film adaptation to something that was quite devoid of hope. It was quite hopeless in many, many ways. Great film, obviously. You've done the opposite.

22:30Chris Hewitt:King's ending is bleak and nihilistic and it doesn't end well for anybody. Instead, the family are still alive. Kathy and Sheila are still alive at the end of the story. We get a lovely reunion through the socks with Ben. Can you talk about that? landing on that aspect of things finding hope from the hopelessness I think we always it wasn't even a thing where it was even a conversation with the studio in the sense of we knew we weren't going to do the ending of the book for some obvious you know like real life reasons but also it was finding a way where you could still have an ending that had the fire of the original the Richard Backman novels are the work of like sort of in the same way that like it's his dark half it's his dark half it's like his his Richard Stark to his Donald Westlake not that not that Stephen King's Donald Westlake is any kind of softie like but you know I talked to Stephen about that because it was something where it was it was a combination of like all of the Backman novels like are the work of sort of like an angry young man like one of them is now in a print he won't let rage be red.

23:52And also, actually, The Running Man was written in 1972. It was like 10 years before it was actually published. But it was, you know, and it was interesting, obviously, because Stephen had to read the draft. You know, one of the things he said about the adaptation, he said, oh, I wondered how you were going to tackle the ending, and I think you came up with a really good solution. Because I don't think he necessarily needed or wanted to see the ending of the book. I mean, so I think that was always, we knew we were going to do that. And then I think the Sheena and Kathy element was something that I think maybe initially we were going to have it be like a revenge scene.

24:31But that, I think, was something that was just potentially beyond the pale as well. You couldn't do that. No, I know. I know.

24:39Chris Hewitt:You couldn't do that. You know those films as well, it's always a thing I find really fascinating, is when you look at the history of films with F cinema scores, they're usually films where it feels like the filmmaker has broken a contract with the audience, have done something too hardcore. A great example is Ridley Scott's The Counselor, which has a terrible audience score, and it's because of the treatment of Penelope Cruz's character, who you like and then is killed off-screen in a horrific way. and even though I as a sort of like a fan of like noir and gritty films think oh wow so ballsy most of the mainstream audience are like fuck this film like sort of like so I think so we knew that like doing like we did talk about that and having the finale be like sort of like a real like revenge but then it was actually sort of like the twist on that in terms of using that against him because also what the idea was is that and I think Glenn plays it perfectly in that scene even though his the sensible side of his brain is saying like this is a trick, there's something nagging in his there's something nagging in his gut that he might he can't rule it out because as soon as Agent Doug said that thing earlier on about like reprisals against your family it's been kind of haunting him and he's been having these kind of like death dreams versus premonition of what may have happened to Willie H.

26:16Macy's character then also he starts to sort of like imagine being reunited with Sheila and Kathy and her remind him that like this isn't going to end well so we like this idea of it feeling and actually there was a scene that's in the scenes that we actually cut out mostly for time and for pace but we did actually do the scene from the book where he imagines Sheila and Kathy's funeral

26:40Chris Hewitt:oh my god there's a part to it on a production level there was one part of it I wasn't entirely happy with and rather than reshoot we just cut the whole bit out and it made the whole thing flow better but we did see the first test audience and it was like him having another death dream but it was it was exactly where it was in the book and it was kind of just slowing the pace down at exactly the point where you wanted things to ramp up so it is not in the movie anymore but it might be on the on the on the blu-ray but it was that that idea of like of ben having these very dark thoughts about what might what might happen and what might be happening right now in like sort of a somewhere else in the city or in another city and so when like josh brolin is like sort of um suggesting oh no we're telling him there's something very that something terrible has happened.

27:35He cannot, you know, we've seen enough in the movie that they're like playing and manipulating everybody's image. Yeah, they can generate images

27:46Chris Hewitt:very fast as well. One of my favorite lines in the film is where even Josh Brolin's character, Dan Killian, argues against AI in a small way. Yes. Because Glenn has the line, once there's been a lot of jiggery-pokery with people's images. He says, you know, he says, congratulations, Mr. Rissage, you're killing it. He goes, killing it? People are dying, you fucking psycho. He goes, if you can fake everything, why don't you just fake the whole show? And Josh Brolin's Dan Killian replies, he goes, oh, believe me, we've tried. Yeah. You know, but like our audience likes those happy accidents. Yeah.

28:23And so it's the idea of calling sort of like human interactions, happy accidents. Because it is that thing where, I think the thing is, in writing this film, we had come from beyond the book beyond the 1987 film 25 years of a certain type of reality tv where i think over those years also an audience starts to kind of get wise about how the shows are made and how like even on a benign kind of like format like a singing show that you could people could be made a national laughingstock and people who maybe aren't equipped to deal with that kind of infamy.

29:04Chris Hewitt:That people can be made to be pantomime villains both like the judges and the contestants and that just a narrative can be created about like real people not characters in a movie like and there's something you know and it was interesting just before we started filming the sequences with Carmen Domingo and Josh Brolin that Jerry Springer documentary dropped on Netflix. And what was interesting about that is it seemed to confirm everything we'd written in the script about how complicit Jerry Springer was in what was happening on stage in terms of what the producers and production assistants would do to the people who were about to come out to rile them up so they would come out swinging.