Wednesday, October 1, 1997
Fledgling director Kelley
finally hatches 'Locusts'
FILM: Tragedy reaches screen after decade's toil, with Vaughn in the lead
By Stephanie Sheh
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
It's all in the timing. And for first-time director John Patrick "J.P." Kelley, it was that fortuitous timing that lead to his obtaining a stellar cast for his first film, the dark, complex tragedy "The Locusts."
Kelley has been dragging around the project for ten years now. At one time when they were about to begin shooting, Vince Vaughn was cast to play a much smaller role, but buzz on a not yet released "Swingers" bumped him up to leading-man status. Kelley was unsure for the longest time whether Ashley Judd's schedule would permit her to work on the film. It was close, but luckily she finished her previous commitment in time. In fact, Judd was finishing filming "Kiss the Girls" one morning, and began shooting "The Locusts" that night. But the talented cast had faith in its director.
"It's hard to tell with a first-time director if he'll be good, because they've never done anything so you can't look at something and say, 'Oh, they're good,'" says Kate Capshaw, who plays the tormented yet wicked Delilah Potts. "And I asked (my husband, Steven Spielberg), 'How can you tell if a director's going to be good?' And he said, 'You can't. But passion and a really strong point of view helps.'"
Vaughn didn't need the reassurance of previous work.
"For me, first-time directors - because that was my experience with 'Swingers' - if I believe in the guy, I don't care how many films they've made or haven't made," Vaughn says. "Even if a director's made films that I may not have liked, if I connect with them when they talk about this particular project and trust them, I will proceed with it."
Not only did the actors trust Kelley's vision for the film, they put their performances in his hands.
"I trusted him and kept saying, 'Now if I go over the top, you have to pull me back,'" Capshaw says. "And even if I did go over the top, that's what he wanted me to do, and he's the director. Sometimes I think actors get in trouble with critics because basically they've done what the director has asked them to do. And then if you tell the director you're not going to do it, you become the difficult actor."
It has been a long and hard journey, but Kelley remains passionate about his work. The studio responsible for the film changed two times, but this was a hidden blessing, giving Kelley more creative freedom in setting out to make his American tragedy.
"I think it's one of those angry-young-man films," Kelley explains about his film. "You're, like, 20 years old and you're trying to get your stuff out. It's just full of that sort of - I hate to use the 'A' word, but angst. I really wanted people to feel something dark and hopefully tragic. I was shooting to make an actual classical tragedy as opposed to one of your more sort of European-style slice-of-life depressing films, which I appreciate as well."
Kelley's writing influences include Edward Albee, William Inge, Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams. Their effects are evident in "The Locusts'" dark and mysterious tale.
"When you're young and you're drawing on all of the people that you love, you end up - you could say 'borrowing,' but really stealing from everybody that you really love," Kelley says. "You're like, 'How did Tennessee Williams solve that scene?' And you really do go back and look and you're like, 'Oh, that's it.'"
When Kelley was toting his great American tragedy around town, while most people really responded to the script, they turned it down. Everybody just said the movie would never get made and if it did, it wouldn't make any money. However, Kelley kept pushing and pushing. Things eventually paid off.
Vaughn can understand Kelley's difficulty with studios and fighting over creative control of a small film. After all, it was that little ditty "Swingers" that rocketed him and friend Jon Faverau to fame. Although they treated their experience with the nonchalance of a couple friends doing a fun video, there was still the back-and-forth struggle for creative control. Vaughn gives an example of the kind of dialogue they would have with the powers above:
"'You got to change this.'
'No, we don't got to change that.'
'Well, you can't have Vince play Trent.'
'Who's going to play Trent? You're going to have this guy play Trent? You can't have this guy play Trent. I can play Trent.'
'Then Faverau can't play Mike.'
'Why can't he play Mike? I think he can play Mike.'
'Too L.A.-specific; can't have the area-code jokes.'
'What do you mean you can't have the area-code jokes?'
'They're not going to get that in Idaho.'
'I'm not making movies for the guys in Idaho. I'm making movies for what I know. I don't know Idaho. If they made a movie in Idaho, I'd love to see that, but I'd hate if they watered it down and tried to make it more L.A.'"
Jeremy Davies also understands the pains Kelley had to go through. After all, Davies, best known for "Spanking the Monkey," was the first actor to be attached to the project.
"Right now I think I'm particularly close to Flyboy, because it was something that I dragged around for a couple of years under my arm," Davies says. "(I) left a trail of blood with J.P. trying to get it off the ground."
In "The Locusts," Davies plays the quiet and mysterious Flyboy.
"(Davies) may deny this, but I know he basically holed himself up in a Glendale garage apartment for three months and didn't talk to anybody previous to the film," Kelley says of Davies' character preparation. "Once the take was over he'd move away. He purposely chose not to relate to Kate during the shooting, because that wouldn't be proper for his character. He related to Vince only the way Flyboy would."
Vaughn agrees that Davies really used a more method kind of acting approach. He says, "Jeremy was more quiet and off by himself doing his role, which was right for him and Flyboy. But every actor's different. There's so many actors that are so good; they just have different philosophies about how to get there.
"Some people use purely imagination, write out stories completely of back-lot histories of these characters," Vaughn continues. "Other people won't do a damn thing. They won't even know their lines until they keep it fresh. But brilliant actors do both. There's no right way. The only secret is to learn how to use your style and not intrude on someone else's."
Of his own style, Vaughn differs from Davies.
"I'm more of a gunslinger," Vaughn admits. "I show up and I like there to be no rules, probably a DP's (director of photography's) nightmare. ... If it says, 'He says this with a tear in his eye,' I might laugh my ass off when I say it. I don't like manipulated emotion."
FILM: "The Locusts" opens in Los Angeles on Friday.
Orion Classics
Threatened by Flyboy's (Jeremy Davies') growing independence, Delilah (Kate Capshaw) confronts him in "The Locusts."