How do you ‘break up’ with a friend? We have all had people in our lives that we wanted to shoo away. What would happen if you broke up with your friend with frightening results? This idea is explored in the new thriller from writer/director Joel Edgerton, The Gift. In The Gift, Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) are a young married couple whose life is going just as planned until a chance encounter with an acquaintance from Simon’s high school sends their world into a harrowing tailspin. Simon doesn’t recognize Gordo (Joel Edgerton) at first, but after a seemingly coincidental series of encounters and mysterious gifts prove troubling, a horrifying secret from their past is uncovered after nearly 20 years.
His many acting credits include Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Smokin’ Aces, Zero Dark Thirty and The Great Gatsby. He now makes his feature film writing and directing debut with The Gift. Joel recently sat down with the National Monitor to discuss his career, his influences and how our past can come back to haunt us at anytime.
You had worked a lot in Australia, but would you consider the Star Wars movies to be your big break in the U.S.?
Star Wars was the thing that allowed me to jump on the boat and head over to the U.S. It was kind of a bit sneaky though because I was only in the movie for like five minutes. No one knew that for the 18 months or so that George [Lucas] was shooting the movie so I used that to start breaking down doors. With Star Wars, you don’t really have to break down doors. They kind of open up for you.
I loved Animal Kingdom by the way.
Thank you.
Was that kind of a break for you as well?
It’s funny. You come to America and you think that the things you do over here will lead to the next round of work over here. So then I went back to Australia to do a nice, little, independent movie and it made some pretty big waves [in the U.S.]. A good movie is a good movie.
You had mentioned previously that when you wrote the movie, though there wasn’t a specific incident, you imagined someone you hadn’t seen in a while tapping you on the shoulder.
It was a simple idea. I wondered what it would be like if 25 years after high school, you run into someone by chance who you hadn’t treated so well. I’m interested in the fact that bullying and all this terrible stuff that happens at school is so constantly in the zeitgeist sadly. But what would that be like? I thought it was a rich beginning point for either a broad comedy or the movie that we created. My sensibility is more Hitchcock, suspense thriller, psychological thriller and [the idea] became a really good starting point.
Though there wasn’t a specific incident that inspired the movie, looking back, was there something in your subconscious that you had seen or heard at school…?
School is a really volatile place. My experience in school was very much like The Wonder Years. I had a very Fred Savage kind of existence. I played a lot of sport. I had a lot of great friends, but there were a lot of other things going on. I was part of that group mentality of being cruel and mean spirited to other kids. On the other side, I knew what it was like to be scared to navigate school from being bullied and chastised by other kids. Those experiences definitely informed [the script]. Once I started writing the movie, I started having conversations with lots of other people about those things. It’s amazing the kinds of stories you hear that are very, very tragic.
Mind you, I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again, but we’re not trying to make a documentary or essay about bullying. This is a very dark underbelly, cautionary tale. When you write something, you ask questions and people share their stories. It’s amazing what you hear about what a terrifying place school had been for some people. It’s funny because we finish school and go off into the world [you realize] there’s a different moral code in school. You get punished by having detention or suspension or whatever. When you look at some incidents that have happened at some schools, it’s heartbreaking. Then you go out into the world and everyone forgets about it supposedly. Then maybe someone taps you on the shoulder and says, ‘hey, remember me? We went to high school together.’ And you’re like, ‘oh no! What kind of a person was I?’
What kind of person do you remember you being?
Exactly. I’m interested in that and all the characters in the film. Rebecca is very much the center of the movie, the loving, more innocent person at school. She was probably a witness to many things as well. Jason’s character is definitely the one in the bully shoes. And now we’re saying, as an adult, how much or how little people can change from that person they were in school. It’s also about the people we spend our time with. Who were they and what’s in their past? What sort of skeletons do they have in their closet before our time with them? Do we have the right to know and will that affect how we feel about them? I think of couples watching this movie and turning to each other wondering, ‘what aren’t you telling me?’
When Jason receives that CD that says ‘Play Me,’ was that an intentional homage to Fatal Attraction when Glenn Close gives Michael Douglas the cassette that says ‘Play Me?’
No, but there are other homages in the movie. I watched a lot of these types of movies – Pacific Heights, Fatal Attraction, Cape Fear, Single White Female; and even movies like The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby, in particular, there are homages to those two movies. I can only hope in this film that we’ve created memorable characters. We remember Glenn Close [in Fatal Attraction]. We remember Max Cady [Robert De Niro in Cape Fear]. One of the other things I wanted to explore in this film was where roles of hero and villain can shift.
True, in many movies it’s black and white. The hero is good and the villain is bad.
Yes and as an actor, I think the most interesting roles are those of the villain because you’re always trying to find the humanity and the reasoning that makes them a human instead of just a bad person. Similarly, when you’re playing a good person, you’re looking for the rougher edges. As a writer, I try to keep that mantra in the back of my head that not everything is black or white. It’s those gray areas that really fascinate me.
Again, not to harp on this, but I keep going back to Fatal Attraction. Glenn Close was probably a little unhinged before she met Michael Douglas, but being dumped put her over the edge. In The Gift, meeting Jason was your character’s trigger.
People can be a bit like volcanoes. Things get pushed to the back of your brain and certain events will bring them back up. There’s nothing like running into an old acquaintance to bring those old memories back. I was very careful – yes, this is a thriller and at times, terrifying – but I didn’t want to make a slasher movie. Or a body count movie. Or a buckets of blood movie. What makes this movie terrifying, is that nothing would have happened if Jason’s character had apologized or made some sort of restitution. I wanted to put the line in the movie, but I didn’t: your future is your past. If you haven’t cleaned up [the past], then perhaps you haven’t changed.
The Gift is now playing in theaters.
