Paul Soter's interview

Paul Soter director of Watching the Detectives
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Jul 31, 2006

On an extremely hot and humid day in Brooklyn New York, producer Celine Rattray was nice enough to invite me to visit the set of the new film, Watching the Detectives, written and directed by Broken Lizard member Paul Soter. At this point Soter is best known as the bootie flashing state trooper in the comedy cult hit, Super Troopers. It turns out that Soter is such a film buff and has crafted a modern romantic comedy that utilizes elements of film noir. The film stars Cillian Murphy and Lucy Liu and I got a chance to see Murphy acting out a bizarre scene that takes place in a movie. Murphy plays a man who is very nervous about bumping into his new girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend and is freaking out on someone who he thinks is the guy.


Daniel Robert Epstein: How’s it going so far?

Paul Soter: It’s great. It’s day three so a lot can still happen, but now that we’re two days into it, I know that everybody’s going to be great. I know our days are all makeable so I couldn’t be happier with what we have so far.


DRE:
What is the plot of Watching the Detectives?

Paul:
Cillian plays this guys who runs his own mom and pop video store. He is a couch potato and film noir buff and a guy who would rather be watching a baseball game than playing in a baseball game. Lucy Liu is this character who shows up in the store and has the exact opposite philosophy. Her feeling is, if you like movies and you like adventure, then that’s the way you should live. You shouldn’t sit around and watch movies where people get in trouble and chase people. You should just live that way. So it’s wish fulfillment gone crazy. Lucy embodies a character that really threatens to destroy Cillian’s life because it’s hardly possible to live your life as if you were in a movie.


DRE:
Is it a romantic comedy?

Paul:
There’s a lot of romance to it. But I guess it is a romantic comedy but I say that tentatively because the state of the romantic comedy is so rotten. It shouldn’t have a bad connotation. I’d love it if there were romantic comedies that I could go see. I’d love to see a trailer for a romantic comedy and say “Oh yeah, I’ll go see that”. Not something that makes me go “Oh man, there’s not a chance in hell I’m going to see that movie”. I thought I would make a romantic comedy for my sensibility that has romance in it but it’s not exactly like every other romantic comedy out there. This is something that has a very different angle and a very different conflict. It keeps you guessing and throws a lot of things at you that you don’t often see.


DRE:
So it has nothing to with the Jasper Carrott/Robert Powell series The Detectives.

Paul:
No, I never heard of that.

This is an idea that I’d had for a while. By the time I got it all put together it also worked out nicely because we had a break with Broken Lizard where Jay [Chandrasekhar] and Kevin [Heffernan] were going to be editing Beerfest. So I could run off and be in New York for a couple months and not disrupt any of the work that the guys were doing.


DRE:
What scene are you shooting today?

Paul:
Lucy’s character plays a lot of mind games with Cillian. She’s constantly trying to keep him on unstable footing so she told him that there’s this bald unpredictable violent ex-boyfriend who chases her from town to town whenever she moves. Now he’s seeing big bald guys everywhere. He goes out to get a newspaper and there’s a bald guy out there. He goes in the video store and there’s a bald customer that’s very suspicious. Today we’re shooting him in a movie theatre and there’s a guy sitting behind him, a big obnoxious bald guy. It ends up being Cape Fear with that idea of the big obnoxious guy sitting behind you ruining your good time in the movies. Periodically throughout the movie she starts to make him feel like he is in a movie. This guy loves movies and what this woman is doing to him is turning his life into series of scenes from movies and it sounds like it would be perfect but it starts to really drive him crazy.


DRE:
Is it mostly film noir type games?

Paul:
It is heavy on the film noir and some of it is just classic inventions. There is this scene where he gets interrogated by these two detectives and it’s a good cop and a bad cop. It’s a very classic interrogation from the films of the 40’s and 50’s. For the most part, these scenes that he ends up getting sucked into have a very film noir feel to them.


DRE:
Lucy Liu loves film noir.

Paul:
Yeah, but she just loves movies. That was the thing with Lucy and Cillian both, it spoke to them as not just people who are actors but people who like movies. I wanted to make a movie lover’s movie.


DRE:
How do you like working with the actors?

Paul:
It’s been exciting. I was worried that there wouldn’t be the same atmosphere and familiarity and relaxed vibe that we have on Broken Lizard movies. We’ll bring actors in, but generally speaking it is people that we’ve worked with before. It’s a very family style setting. But everybody seems to have taken on a very team attitude. It makes a big difference when you do have that environment for shooting a movie because the hours are long. When we’re all having a good time and the day goes by faster. I took the Broken Lizard approach to a film set and applied it to this and everybody is thanking me for it.


DRE:
How long have you been working on the script?

Paul:
It had been a couple of years and then I met [Watching the Detectives producer] Celine [Rattray]. After that it took a little time to get the scheduling right and work it out with the actors.


DRE:
Are all the Broken Lizard guys going to be doing their own stuff outside the group?

Paul:
Yeah, the guys are all now finding things to do on their own. We feel comfortable now if one guy steps away for a while knowing that the other four guys can carry the ball. So everyone is doing that in different ways, whether it’s directing or writing or acting. We’re developing a project for Warner Bros that we hope is going to get shot this fall with Jay directing. It only helps the group when the guys continue to work and succeed individually.


DRE:
You must have learned a lot from Jay with him directing all the Broken Lizard movies.

Paul:
Absolutely. I got really lucky that through all these Broken Lizard films and Dukes of Hazzard, I’ve been able to watch the process from start to finish so it’s like I got a free education. I know how everything works. The key is that you’ve got to have it in your head, to know what you want and then be able to articulate what you want to your cast and crew.


DRE:
How is your confidence level with directing?

Paul:
Well the first morning, I thought I knew everything I’m supposed to do and say. Then there’s that moment where I realize that everything was ready and everyone was waiting for me to call action and I was lost in thought. I just have to remind myself “I have to say action to get these guys started.” That’s the only thing I bungled a little bit. But otherwise no.


DRE:
Are you going to making a Hitchcock cameo in Watching the Detectives?

Paul:
I thought about the Hitchcock cameo. Originally the plan was to give each member of Broken Lizard their own scene so I gave myself one. Unfortunately, Jay and Kevin are trying to lock picture on Beerfest so we tried to make it work but it doesn’t look like Jay and Kevin will come in. We’ll still have [Steve] Lemme and [Erik] Stolhanske’s and cameo so I’m giving myself a whole scene playing a UPS guy. I’m an actor so I might as well play a little role in this thing.


DRE:
How did you select your director of photography?

Paul:
I knew we had the opportunity do some cool stylistic stuff. It’s a comedy and it’s a simple movie so I didn’t want it to have a lot of bells and whistles because, as I said, I want it to be a movie lover’s movie. I want people to say “Oh I see, you’re evoking this here and you’re evoking that there.” Since it is a character that is literally pulling this guy into scenes and genres, it would be cool if we could make those things subtle but noticeable. I didn’t want just a big blown out comedy look so I really wanted somebody who had that eye. When I saw Christophe Lanzenberg’s reel, there was just no question about me hiring someone else. His stuff is beautiful but it’s also got depth. He has done work in black and white as well so I was very happy that he was into it. Plus he’s French. I’ve always wanted to have a French cinematographer. So I sit around looking at the monitor and I hear French spoken all around me. That’s really cool.


DRE:
I saw a pic from Beerfest where you are hefting a beer keg over your head.

Paul:
A couple people have said that. That’s actually Nat Faxon. He’s got some bathing cap on. Nat plays one of the German bad guy team members. They drink while they are training and they lift kegs over their head. So they had to do all that *beep* in Beerfest.


DRE:
Did you go back when they were reshooting some scenes from Beerfest?

Paul:
No, we just needed a quick piece that was more about some logistics or something. I was lucky enough to not have to jump back.

by Daniel Robert Epstein
http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Paul+Soter+director+of+Watching+the+Detectives/

Lucy Liu is the best!