[Movies] Writer Of Side Effects Talks About The Film's Twists (SPOILERS)
Posted by Joseph Lee on 02.18.2013
Don't read if you haven't seen it...
In an interview with Coming Soon, writer Scott Z. Burns talked about the twists that happen in Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects, which was released earlier this month. Needless to say, the rest of this article contains major spoilers, so don't read if you don't want the movie ruined for you.
On Channing Tatum's character being killed early: "It's the same insight Hitchcock had in putting Janet Leigh in ‘Psycho' is that part of the shock and part of the fun is to subvert that expectation as well. I feel like even the casting is an opportunity to subvert expectation. Whether it was happened to Gwyneth or Winslet in ‘Contagion' or Channing in this, just a willingness to flout expectations. I think as an industry, whenever Steven and I identify an instinct like ‘Oh you can't kill Channing Tatum,' that's exactly when it's time to kill Channing Tatum. I think it's good for Channing as well for people to see him as an actor that is willing to do that."
On making Catherine Zeta-Jones' character a woman: "It's basically the same trick as the rest of the movie. If you cast a good looking man, you would start assuming, ‘Oh, did Emily have a relationship with him?' It was as much about preventing an expectation as anything else. I think even that flouts some expectations. Why do we assume all the time that it's going to be a heterosexual relationship that's going to be someone's undoing. Again, it's the same thing with the process of writing where ‘This is what we expect, let's turn it around.'"
On using insider trading in the film: "Even the stock trade. It's not that they invested in a different stock that's going to up, which would seem intuitively like ‘If I trash one, I'll buy the other,' but even that they bought the trade that was the antithesis of the expectation."
