Mr. Floppy 03.01.08: Domino

Posted by Peter Bielik on 03.01.2008

Why don't you just read the article?

Happy weekend everyone.

The column has been fairly irregular as of last, but that's because my focus had shifted to school for some time, but now that school problems are solved (until June at least :-)), I can once again provide with a weekly dose of movie flops.

On a related sidenote, Jumper which I expected to flop, has so far performed pretty good. I'm happy for the filmmakers, because it once again seems this year will be a healthy one for box office.

Quick comment on Oscars:

After quite some time, I was really happy with this year's awards show. No Country for Old Men definitely deserved to win in my book. I was one of the few people who actually weren't that surprised by Tilda Swinton and Marion Cotillard winning. I thought the Academy wouldn't give Cate Blanchett yet another Oscar for a supporting part (it's obvious they believe she'll get another one for a leading pefromance in the future) and there was no one else more suitable than Tilda Swinton. She proved many times she's a great actress and it was actually refreshing to see the award given to someone that really is only concerned with being a great actress and not at all with glamour surrounding the work.

I was also genuinely happy for Marion Cotillard since she did a phenomenal job and flat out deserved to win. Thank god the Academy chose not to be completely boring this year, with not awarding Julie Christie a very predictable Oscar for another strong, heartfelt story about a mentally unstable person.

Other than that, I'm also happy for Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard for winning the Oscar for Once. It was nice seeing the two geniuinely happy and surprised when they won. It was`an impressive feat for such a small movie. Also Jon Stewart (and anybody who allowed this) showed extreme class, when he brought Marketa Irglova back after the orchestra unceremoniously cut her off.


The show wasn't so entertaining (probably too little time to write it better), but I'm very happy with the winners.


And since I have no creative bridge that would connect this brief intro with the following article, I'm just going to start it without writing anything even vaguely resembling a bridge.




Year of the cock-up: 2005

Budget: $50,000,000

Domestic gross: $10,169,202

Foreign gross: $12,753,350

Worldwide gross: $22,922,552


I think an average movie fan will certainly not be unfamiliar with the name Tony Scott. He is the younger brother of a hugely respected veteran director Ridley Scott. It goes without argument who is more famous of the two, but Tony Scott has managed to achieve quite an impressive feat with his career- he stepped outside of his brother's shadow and while he has never achieved the same level of success, he definitely developed his own style that is easy to tell. He certainly can not be criticized for being a talentless parasite on his brother's career.

Throughout the years Tony Scott directed many pictures that have had huge success at the box office and are well known among people- Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State or the recent Man on Fire. All these made good money (in case of the first two HUGE money) and can be considered very good representatives of the action genre. While Top Gun for example hasn't aged that well, it's still fun to watch and can at least serve as an enjoyable trip down the nostalgic road.

Outside of these well-known hits, Tony Scott also directed the cult favorites True Romance and Last Boy Scout.

True Romance is of course one of Quentin Tarantino's first scripts brought to life and it's stockpiled with famous faces hamming up their respective parts (Gary Oldman as a rasta drug dealer, Christopher Walken as an Italian mobster, James Gandolfini as a sadistic thug and of course Brad Pitt as a stoner). Last Boy Scout is one of screenwriter Shane Black's (Lethal Weapon, Long Kiss Good Night, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) best works and one of Bruce Willis' best roles. If for nothing else, the film is worth checking out for the absurd amount of absolutely hilarious dialogue that provided the world with some of the best quotes ever.

In these early films, Tony Scott was yet to develop his trademark visual style which started to really show with Enemy of the State. With every following film, this style became more and more visible throughout Scott's film until it reached its culmination point in Domino.

The story isn't overly complicated. Tired and unsuited to the pretentiousness of her high-society LA life, Domino Harvey leaves the glitter behind and sets off to become a bounty hunter. She quickly falls under the wing of veteran hunter Ed Mosley and his crew and becomes an unlikely natural in the art of bounty hunting. But things really heat up when a masked gang pilfer the contents of an armored car, and before long the mob, a crazed TV producer, the FBI and a terminally ill child have all got caught up in the crazy situation.

Of course, the story is all the more interesting, once you find out it's based on an actual living person. In 1994 Tony Scott was sent an article from the British newspaper the Mail on Sunday by his business manager Neville Shulman. The article, written by Sacha Gervasi and titled My gun for hire: Why a movie star's rebel daughter turned into a bounty hunter, was about an English woman named Domino Harvey who was working as a bounty hunter, apprehending fugitives who had skipped bail for the Celes King Bail Bond agency in South Central Los Angeles. While Harvey was one of the few female bounty hunters, what caught the attention of Shulman and Scott was that she was the daughter of the late actor Laurence Harvey.

Tony Scott tracked Domino to Beverly Hills where she was living at the time with her mother Paulene Stone and Stone's then husband Peter Morton. He invited Domino to his office where he proposed a film of her life. Domino agreed and sold the film rights to her life. According to The Los Angeles Times, Harvey was paid $360,000 for the rights.

With the deal in the bag, it was time to gather more information about how this bizarre story actually unfolded. Tony Scott interviewed Harvey about her life and her work. Scott also met and interviewed Ed Martinez and Choco (played by Mickey Rourke and Edgar Ramirez respectively), who were Domino's bounty hunting colleagues. She took him to meet Celes King III, the bail bondsman who they worked for (played by Delroy Lindo in the film). Both Ed Martinez and Celes King III served as technical advisors on the film.

Steve Barancik wrote the first draft of the screenplay which Tony Scott rejected. Another writer was asked to write a screenplay but Scott also rejected this script. Scott described the two rejected screenplays as conventional biopics of Domino Harvey's life, which he found to be boring. Finally, Richard Kelly was asked to write the screenplay after Scott read his script for Southland Tales. Kelly was sent transcripts of Domino Harvey's interviews with Tony Scott, though he did not read the scripts that Scott had rejected. Kelly's work was liked by Scott and thus the film was ready to shoot.

The list of Scott's previous work can serve as a proof of why was it so easy for him to get a very good budget and more importantly, why he was given free reign over the final version of the film. All of his previous films were financially very successful, so in the vein of a good Hollywood tradition, the producers gave the director total creative control, which of course (also traditionally) didn't go as well as planned (for other examples of this, see- Peter Jackson's King Kong, Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, Stephen Sommers' Van Helsing, etc.).

Because of the total freedom from the studio, Scott was able to exhibit his visual experiments in full force and in doing so, he transformed the film into a 120 minute long acid trip. Tony Scott himself says that there are no rules in styles and music. And he stayed true to his words.

The filmmakers carried 6 motion picture cameras at all times- just in case the director would suddenly get kicked by his muse while filming a particular scene.

They shot many scenes at 6 fps, which created the effect of trails behind the moving people and objects. Scott himself described this technique as an "acid effect".

He first began using this while making commercials. The most well-known ones are for Marlboro and because of the eccentric visuals the title "Marlboro on acid" became synonymous with them. Richard Kelly used that term even as a scene description crutch in his script.

In order to get the trail effect in the scenes, the use of a high-speed film transferred in high-speed was utilized.
Also, Scott is always experimenting with colors in his films, as is evident in Man on Fire for example. He uses different types of cameras, film stock and alters the richness of colors or lack thereof.

The film's story is divided into many flashbacks, flashforwards and happenings in the present time. Of course, the creators wanted each of these three parts of the film to have its own unique visual look. To achieve this, they used color reversed film, which they cross-processed and photo-chemically manipulated. Color reversed film or cross-process basically means processing the film in a wrong developer.

This way, they forced the color pallet in a direction that has an affinity for red. It also increases the grain and loosens the structure of the film. In fact, it becomes so volatile, that a lot of times it's simply unmanageable by the filmmakers.

Domino was a third collaboration between Tony Scott and cinematographer Daniel Mindel (previously together on Enemy of the State and Spy Game), so they were very comfortable with working with each other. Mindel knew very well how Scott likes to experiment with visuals and with the creative control, they went all out with the visuals.

However, the film's overly eccentric style did more harm than good. It neutered the good performances a bit (Keira Knightley not so much, but Mickey Rourke and Edgar Ramirez were spot on), because the changing of filters and quick cuts are so rampant, that it might actually get a bit sickening after a while.

The critics didn't approve of this either and neither did the movie-going public. The film grossed abysmal $22,922,552 worldwide. That's a gross too low even for a low-end teenage comedy, not for a big-budgeted thriller with a marquee face (I think we can consider Keira Knightley that).

Personally, I enjoyed the film, even though the style really is taking too much attention off the story. The description "bounty hunting on acid" that was given to the film by its creators is pretty accurate. If you ever want to or need to give an example of a "style over substance" movie, Domino is the leader of the whole pack. I've seen many films where it's style over substance, but none where style absolutely drives substance into the ground as if it never mattered.





The award obviously has to go to Tony Scott. He shouldn't be ashamed of himself, because the film he made is a very interesting experiment and a visual blast, but the enormous commercial failure wouldn't probably occur if somebody else was sitting behind the camera. Or in other words- if the direction was more conventional.

Tony Scott just got a truckload of money and a free control on how to use them. He got to live out his dream by making a film without any studio boundaries. His career bounced right back with Déjà vu, which once again made a lot of money worldwide.

Tony- here's to you! Long live the experiments!

Since Domino was a Tony Scott vehicle, I hereby award him the title Mr. Floppy.





If you haven't seen this film, check it out, if only to find out if you are able to sit through it.

- Peter