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Interview: Daniel Craig and Matthew Vaughn

By Jeff Otto
www.uk.movies.ign.com
May 11, 2005
View online

Layer Cake already had a successful run in the U.K. last year and the special edition DVD is even available overseas. On this side of the Atlantic, the buzz is still building. Layer Cake's status has been raised by a series of outside events. Director Matthew Vaughn is now directing X3. Star Daniel Craig is now in the running for the coveted role of James Bond in Casino Royale. Supporting actress Sienna Miller has hit the U.S. tabloids as a result of her relationship with budding superstar Jude Law.

Now the film can finally speak for itself stateside. Layer Cake is a crime drama in the tradition of Guy Ritchie films like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells. Director Matthew Vaughn is actually the producer of those films and a longtime collaborator with Guy Ritchie. When Ritchie was unable to direct Layer Cake, Vaughn decided to give directing a try and soon found that he may have just found his true calling. For his star, he wanted an a-typical gangster – an actor who would look more like a metro sexual slick businessman than a thug of London's seedy underbelly. Daniel Craig fit the bill, his Newman-esque blue eyes and subtle smirk a perfect fit for the man described in J.J. Connolly's original novel.

IGN FilmForce recently spoke with Vaughn and Craig at the press day for Layer Cake in Los Angeles. Vaughn was happy to talk about his upcoming gig on X3 and you can find that portion of the interview by clicking here. Both Vaughn and Craig also commented on their involvement with Casino Royale right here. In the midst of all the rumor and upcoming project talk, Craig and Vaughn also found some time to talk about the movie they were actually promoting, the crime drama Layer Cake.

Although Vaughn admits he's getting a little tired of talking about X3, he doesn't mind the extra publicity giving Layer Cake a boost. "Do you mind asking me about X-Men? If it makes people go watch the film, fine. So be it. And maybe it will. The problem about the film industry is that it's too reliant on movie stars anyway and I think that's unfair. I think good movies should be given more chances… It's quite weird. This film has blossomed quite a few things. Quite weird for a little British movie, the effect it seems to be having on people's careers."

The boost couldn't hurt considering Layer Cake 800 lb. gorilla competition. "I have no idea how the film's going to do," Vaughn admits. "I haven't got high hopes for it doing well. I think we're opening on four screens. Hardly about to take over the world, and we've got Star Wars coming out, so we're in a pretty dire situation. But hey, hopefully people will go start seeing it and who knows? But yeah, I'd like people to see the film. That's why I made it and hopefully they'll like it."

Vaughn's involvement in Layer Cake involved a bit of fate at the start. "Strange story and it's a true one, but I had a phone call from a friend saying [he'd] just read a book called Layer Cake and [I] would love it… It would make a great movie. This was a Friday morning… Friday morning I get on the train to Belgium to watch the soccer match between Belgium and Germany and sitting on the train, the guy next to me was John Connolly, who started pitching, saying 'I've just written a book called Layer Cake' and I said, 'Wow, somebody just rang me up about that this morning.' I just couldn't believe it. So I read it and I liked it and I bought the rights…"

Craig was also impressed with the book and the way his character was written. "J.J. Connolly, who wrote the book, had a lot of praise from the criminal world. They said it's very close to reality. It's also a piece of fun as well so let's not get too serious about it."

"The script, it was great," says Craig. "It read brilliantly. I thought it was a clever piece of writing. I thought that it could be interesting. I like the moral angle of the movie, which is it doesn't just set up criminals and say 'Hey, we're getting away with it or not getting away with it.' It sort of sets up this world which hopefully you get emotionally involved with and then consequently hopefully enjoy the movie more. My character very definitely in the movie says, 'I don't like guns, I don't like violence,' which we're not stupid, you should know that there's gonna be guns and violence in this movie. The same way that he says, 'I'm only doing one more job and I'm out of here.' It's like, 'Yeah, right.'"

Vaughn didn't want the film to be seen as merely an imitation of the Guy Ritchie work, particularly because of his past associations with those films. "Lock Stock and Snatch were sort of capery and fun and I wanted to do something a bit more serious, more epic and more cinematic. And I thought the book gave me the foundations to do that."

Craig's character in the film is never named and is listed in the credits as XXXX. "We kind of thought about names," Craig says. "But you know the thing about it, if you were doing a more conventional movie, what's in a name? You hear a name repeated three or four times at the beginning of a movie and then you kind of forget about it. As long as you know who the lead character is, what they're doing, then it's sort of not that relevant, is it? He wants to remain anonymous and that's his deal. He doesn't want to make noise…"

Vaughn saw Craig as sort of the anti-gangster in his looks, which made him the perfect choice for XXXX. "For me, he didn't look like your usual cliché of a gangster. I wanted to do something different. I wanted to show the kind of elegant businessman-like drug dealers. There's a lot of them out there."

Somewhat surprisingly, Craig says that he's not a fan of guns and doesn't like to see them glamorized on film. "It's a horrible contradiction. I hate handguns; handguns are for shooting people and as long as handguns are around people will shoot each other. I think that's a simple fact. Sometimes they are a necessary evil. The trouble is, you put me in front of a handgun and I do go, 'Wow f***ing hell, that's amazing.' (Laughs) You know, I'm an actor and sort of tend to be in films where I use guns… They are big knobs, they are big c**ks basically. You get guys on screen and they're getting their c**k out and that I find boring. If you're going to use them in movies, you've got to find a way of using them that's gonna make you think about it. You get the gun out, it's like 'My God, someone's gonna get shot.' And that is horrible. I've seen a bullet wound and it's a mess. People forget that… I feel we glamorize it a bit, but I think you kind of have to have a bit of that. I think we succeeded in scaring people, that when guns were fired, people jump…"

Craig's character doesn't really see himself as a gangster. "It's business and it's kept as professional as possible. I didn't want to judge him. I wanted the audience to make up their mind about him and I think, hopefully, that's what happens. You can make up your mind about him. You kind of route for him, but actually he's a bit of an a**hole as well. I think that's what I like playing around with in the movie… You should be asking questions all the way through the movie. What's he gonna do next? But he sort of gets deeper into it."

Vaughn now feels that he may have found his calling as a director. "I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, to be frank. I really had a good time. It was fun. It didn't feel like work ever, so that's what was surprising to me… It was hard to get used to saying cut. Before [as a producer] I would be thinking it but I wouldn't be able to say it… It sounds really crazy, but directing is not as difficult as people say it is."