Andrew Niccol Finds a World of "Macabre Absurdity" By Sean Axmaker September 16, 2005 - 1:13 AM PDT "You're not a true internationalist until you sell weapons to kill your own countrymen." "There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?" The opening line of Andrew Niccol's Lord of War captures the film in a phrase: it's serious, it's sardonic, it has a sense of humor and a sense of outrage. It's also the first film to seriously address the reality of arms dealing in the world. It should come as no surprise that Hollywood was afraid to touch the script. The New Zealand-born Niccol, who left a thriving career as writer and director of commercials in London to make films in Hollywood, had to return to Europe to finance Lord of War. Technically speaking, it's a $50 million independent film. Niccol's first screenplay was The Truman Show, a techno-fantasy satire that rather presciently anticipated the reality TV boom. Hollywood was eager to make the film, just not with first-time director Niccol at the helm. By the time the production came together (under director Peter Weir), Niccol was onto his directorial debut, the cautionary genetics-engineering fable Gattaca, which was released before The Truman Show. Both films, as well as 2002 satire S1m0ne, are what he terms "social science fiction," films set "five minutes into the future." There is nothing futuristic in Lord of War, which uses the rise of a Russian-American entrepreneur from selling guns on the streets of New York to illegally running arms and equipment to hot spots all over the world to shine a light on the enormous business in international arms trafficking over the past two decades. His presentation of the material may not be subtle, but it is passionate and it is entertaining, maybe entertaining enough to get his message out to audiences that wouldn't otherwise consider the issue. I sat down with Niccol a few weeks ago, on the Seattle stop of his barnstorming promotional tour, for a brief discussion about Lord of War; I was also able to work in a few questions about his earlier films. You make your "hero," international arms dealer Yuri Vitale, a very attractive, appealing figure. Why? Because I think the Devil is that way. The Devil is charming, the Devil is glamorous, the Devil is probably a very witty guy. It's more subversive that way, somehow, and also I just think that's way it is. These guys are very slick businessmen, that's how they see themselves, so Nicolas Cage's character should be that as well. It was a lot of the reason for casting Nic; he does make the Devil charming. Cage is also an executive producer on the film. Did he get on board the production early on? Yeah. He was drawn to the material and he wanted to also explore that darker side of human nature and this project gave him that, so he attached his company to this project. I think he was also interested in the issue itself. He made Amnesty International a big part of it; he made sure they were one of the groups to benefit from the film. That's the charity attached to the film. Was it hard to find backing for the film? Yeah. It was made with foreign financing and then a studio acquired it afterwards, but they didn't really want to touch it to begin with. The timing was the timing from hell. The script was submitted a week before the latest Iraq invasion. But I don't really see the connection, clearly because there are always wars. Arms dealing goes on and on, whatever the current politics are. In fact, it almost has no politics. Whether Clinton is president or Bush is president, America is still the biggest arms dealer in the world. You make the observation in the film that guns have no politics, but you show a changing of the guard with a veteran arms dealer named Simeon Weisz [played by Ian Holm] who takes sides in the wars, and he is contrasted with the new face of the arms dealer in Yuri, whose attitude is: "Money has no politics. I'll sell to anybody." Is this something you found in your research? Absolutely. The end of the Cold War was a real change in the arms dealing profession. These guys that used to sell only to factions that they supported were replaced by cowboys like Yuri, who really had only allegiance to money. As he says, you're not a true internationalist until you sell weapons to kill your own countrymen. He really doesn't see himself as belonging to any nation. At the end of the film, you tell the audience that this story is based on true events. Is Yuri based on a specific person or is he a distillation of your research - and where did you do your research? Specific people, really. He's sort of a composite of five different arms dealers. And yeah, they're hard people to get on the phone. But I was surprised that in the making of the film itself I got a lot of cooperation. All those tanks you see in the film, that's not a CGI effect. Some guy in the Czech Republic owned a hundred T72 Soviet tanks and he said, "There's only one catch with this: you can only have them until December because I'm selling them to Libya." I would hear that and say, "Yeah, Libya, the first thing they need is more tanks." But he would say, "It's just a business deal. Khadafi wants tanks, I'm going to sell him tanks." That plane you saw in the movie belongs to one of the most notorious arms dealers in Africa. He's Russian. You say to yourself, "I know these guys fly Antanovs in and out of here all the time. I'm going to need an Antanov. Where does the production get an Antanov?" From an arms dealer. And that same plane had been running real guns into the Congo the week before I filmed it with fake guns. And the crew is going, "It's authentic," except with thick Russian accents. Did these arms dealers read the script? Did they know what kind of film you were making? I think it's a bit like the Mafia in The Godfather. It's also so hard to enforce these laws that they don't seem to have any fear of authority. And they also have a line, they say, "It's a legitimate deal," and it's very hard to separate the legitimate deals from the illegitimate deals. They say, "We only do things above board," or they'll say, "I'm not in that business anymore; we're just freight transport now." What's the freight? [laughs] Running grain into the Congo now? There's a macabre absurdity to the world that I've found. That's why I adopted the tone that I did in the movie. Because you'll go to these arms fairs and mortal enemies will be buying from the same vendor, the same munitions, to then leave and try to blow the shit out of each other. And you think, "Wow, that's kind of weird." They're all acting very civil in this big convention hall and then they'll go off and go back to war. The snappy pace and upbeat energy throughout Lord of War is a stark contrast to the deadly seriousness of what Yuri is doing. It's a road movie to me, so I wanted that pace to it. And it spans 20 years, so I had to find ways of doing that musically as well, to use some touchstone songs from those eras. So, yeah, he's on the move and so is the movie. Eva [Yuri's wife, played by Bridget Moynahan] lives in willful denial throughout the film. Does she stand in for us? A little bit, yeah. I think that's absolutely true. We don't ask those questions. If you think of it on a wider scale, we are arms dealers since we indirectly profit from our government selling a lot of weapons. It's one of the biggest exports we have, and yet no one is up in arms about it, so to speak. We just go, "That's too difficult, Andrew, we don't want to look at that. Let's watch Paris Hilton." Is Yuri's relationship with the Liberian dictator Baptista [Eamonn Walker] based on anything specific? I used a composite dictator, but a lot of the events that I show are real. There is a well-known dictator with a well-known son who has caused mayhem in that part of the world. The rationalization even from that character is interesting. He was the one, this dictator pointed out, this whole business about the election in 2000: "How can you accuse me of rigging elections?" For him that was like, "Oh, great, I can always point to that and say, 'You think you're so squeaky clean, you're talking about democracy, well look into the mirror.'" I find that interesting that he'll do that. And he did have that speech pattern as well, it was quite interesting: hunt for a witch, lord of war instead of war lord or witch-hunt. The structure of the film resembles the rise-and-fall tales of gangsters and drug-lords, most recently seen in Blow: the outlaw antihero who the audience can vicariously celebrate before seeing them get their just desserts. Did you want to make a comment of the genre by choosing that classic dramatic structure? I guess we're influenced by everything, but I didn't deliberately follow that kind of formula. I was always just interested in arms trafficking because there is so much attention on drug trafficking, but this is so much more devastating. I started wondering, "Why hasn't anyone shone a light on this before?" SPOILER WARNING: On the next page, Sean Axmaker and Andrew Niccol discuss key plot points in Lord of War. Like... the ending. Do not click on if you want to see the film in a spoiler-free state of mind. Or, of course, until you've already seen Lord of War. next >>> Index "You're not a true internationalist until you sell weapons to kill your own countrymen." "Who would spend all their time watching people in banal situations?" back to past articles

Sean Axmaker A film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a DVD columnist for the Internet Movie Database, Sean Axmaker is also a frequent contributor to MSN Entertainment, Amazing Stories, Asian Cult Cinema, Greencine and StaticMultimedia.com. His reviews and essays are featured in the recently released Scarecrow Movie Guide. February 6, 2007. Mark Savage & the D.I.Y. Aesthetic by Jeffrey M. Anderson February 3, 2007. Seeing the Humor in Sexual Identity by Michael Guillen January 29, 2007. Smokin' Aces with Joe Carnahan and Jeremy Piven by Sean Axmaker January 26, 2007. Include Me Out: Interview with Farley Granger by Jonathan Marlow January 25, 2007. Grindhouse: Chapter Four - The 1960's by Eddie Muller January 19, 2007. Charles Mudede: Zoo Story by Andy Spletzer January 19, 2007. Mark Becker: Merging the Personal and the Political by Sara Schieron January 19, 2007. Micha X. Peled: The Lives of the Sweatshop Youth by Hannah Eaves January 16, 2007. Djinn: A Taxi Driver Dreams of Perth by Jeffrey M. Anderson January 12, 2007. Clint Eastwood: Flags and Letters From the "Good War" by Jeff Shannon view past articles