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John Dahl, You Kill Me!
November 6, 2007

Director John Dahl’s latest film, You Kill Me, starring Ben Kingsley , Tea Leoni and Luke Wilson, is a bit of departure of sorts from the neo-noirs--Kill Me Again, Red Rock West and The Last Seduction--that helped forge his career back in the Nineties. It’s got its share of murder, yes, but this time it revolves around a

boozing, flailing hitman (Kingsley) who moonlights at a funeral home and the go-for-broke woman (Leoni) who meets him and gets him back on his murderous track.

 

“You Kill Me is great and was great fun to make--it’s a small kind of quirky black comedy,” Dahl told us in a recent interview. “It had a budget of about $4 million, and when you’re doing a movie on that kind of budget—and with a shooting schedule of about a month—you’re there because you want to be there.”

 

Dahl pointed out that it didn’t hurt that Leoni and Kingsley were both co-executive producers of the film.

 

“They’re helping you make the movie by just being there,” he said. They know what we’re dealing with and what we can afford and what we can’t. Producing and starring in You Kill Me, it connects them directly to the film, more so than if they were employees of the studio. Sir Ben, he never complained and he sat on the set all day. It was the same thing with Tea. She wanted to get as involved as possible so she could protect the movie.”

 

At the mention of ‘Sir Ben,” I had to ask Dahl about the buzz that everyone’s heard about Kingsley concerning his wish that everyone refer to him by the title he received when he was knighted in 2001.  

 

“Oh, he likes to be called 'Sir Ben,' absolutely,” Dahl said. “I think for Americans, it’s kind of weird to call anyone ‘sir.’  I didn’t mind calling him that, particularly as he was so fine in the film!”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on November 6, 2007 | Comments (0)