Breaking the rules

Aubrey Plaza in Emily The Criminal Photo: ENG Photography

Every year, there are one or two small films which make it through to the big awards lists and get a lot of positive critical attention, but they’re rarely as bold as Emily The Criminal. A blistering portrait of a young woman’s journey into criminal enterprise, it boasts an extraordinary performance from Aubrey Plaza in the title role, and it’s full of anger at the hopelessness which many people feel in today’s job market. When I met director John Patton Ford, I began by asking him if there’s a parallel between Emily’s journey and the transformation which the film’s success has brought about in his own life.

“There was,” he says. “It was a strange situation, you know, life imitating art or imitating life. I don't know who's imitating who. I had been working unenviable jobs for a long time after film school, and then I began to work as a screenwriter, which was a far better situation but still not something that I loved. I never intended to work as a writer exclusively so this movie was very much my Emily-esque shot at, having some agency over my life.

Theo Rossi as Youcef Photo: ENG Photography

“I think she's pretty unusual,” he says of his central character. “To me, it's a kind of an untraveled character in movies, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to make it. I've known some Emilies, in my life. I can't say specifically, but there's someone who I was really close friends with, I still am friends with. I remember sitting down to write the script and thinking, why haven't I ever seen a character like so and so at the centre of a movie? It's almost like, people are uncomfortable with female characters like that, like the audience doesn't quite know what to do with them, or they're so unfamiliar in a movie that it makes people feel uneasy. But you know, I love that character. She's so assertive and so unapologetic, and just doesn't really care how she's received. And I thought that was fun.”

I mention that I recently saw Aubrey Plaza in Jeff Baena’s Spin Me Round and there was a bit of that edginess to her there as well. Was that something that he saw in her straight away when casting??

“Yeah. Aubrey’s a really specific human being and she’s hard to compare to anybody else. The first time I met her, I was struck by how, yeah, there is an edge there. Every single interaction with her feels mildly dangerous, like you don't quite know what's going to happen. And you feel a little unsafe. And I don't mean these things in critical ways. I mean them in the most loving way. I love Aubrey, she's a great friend of mine now and is a wonderful person, but at the same time has this energy where you sort of feel like anything can happen when you're around her. And I wanted to use that to create a different kind of character than the ones we're used to seeing.”

Was it always a character that he wanted to work with? Or did he have an idea for the story beforehand?

“Oh, that's a good question. Um, I think I had the idea for the story first. I even thought about it with a male character, and I think I may have written part of the script of the male character, and then I just stopped because I had the idea to make it a woman, which immediately did a couple of things and immediately raised the stakes of the story. For whatever reason, it seemed like with a woman doing these things, somehow there were higher stakes and it was more dangerous.

Emily goes looking for an opportunity Photo: ENG Photography

“And then I think the unfamiliarity of the character was fascinating. The fact that it was something that I hadn't quite seen, or I couldn't think of any examples. It’s so rare that you have an idea in a movie that doesn't seem familiar, that doesn't seem sampled. So I just jumped on that. It felt very strange at the time that my first movie would have a female central character, I never would have thought – you know, like, what gives me the qualification? But I did it anyway.”

I suggest that her personality is part of why she has to do what she does, because when she's getting turned down for jobs, it may be partly about her personality and her being perceived as difficult, as well as her background.

“Yeah. It’s interesting to think of how a man would be perceived in the same situation, I can also see an instance where a man might not feel the same sense of shame. Gosh, it's so complicated, so hard to put your finger on, in that opening scene. There would just be so much less behind it if it were a man. There's just not a history of being made to feel ashamed about things. And it's a completely different ballgame for a female character.”

That’s something that interests me about the title, I tell him. Is it Emily, The Criminal, as in a person who commits crimes? Or is it Emily who is criminal by nature? Was that an intentional ambiguity?

“Yeah, it was intentional,” he says. “It's funny because the title is one of the things that we've been catching hell about now for a year. And I don't know, I still stand by it, I think. I think it is the movie. And it sort of asks the most integral question, which is this just who this person is. It this who she always is? Is this who she always was going to be? Or is this the result of circumstances? I don't know exactly. I'm not sure what the answer to that is, but I know that I'm compelled by the question. So yeah, that's where the title comes from. It's also a reference to some other movies which are a huge influence on this, such as Leon The Professional, or Bob The Gambler, which is an incredible French movie from the Fifties. There are a lot of movies with this exact same title.” He laughs.

The other side of LA Photo: ENG Photography

We just get these little hints about Emily’s background from the interview, and then little bits that she says later. Was it important not to tell us too much about the assault in her past, and so on?

“Yeah, I didn't want to get too specific with that. You know, in a way, it's not very important. The important thing is that she has some kind of smudge on her record that has informed pretty much everything in her life. That's the important part. The minute that we get super granular and specific about what that thing was, suddenly that becomes what the story is, and that becomes what people are thinking about. And I wanted the movie to be very present, and to have very little exposition, and all we're really given is just behaviour. We're just watching the behaviour of the characters and taking everything away from just how they're behaving in the present.”

I note that I find her relationship with Youcef interesting, because from the start, he seems to see potential in her being like that, whereas other people have seen her as a problem.

“I think the moment that someone believes in you, that is a very attractive person in your life. And in a way, there are some who might argue that falling in love with someone else is really just falling in love with yourself, and you've met someone else who sees something in your that they find valuable, and you're falling in love with that. I wanted to play upon those things in the story. I don't know if anyone's ever recognised those things in Emily before, until Youcef does, and it’s incredibly validating the moment that he does. That's what we wanted to feel.”

It’s unusual to see a film in which the romance is so heavily predicated on the way personalities fit together.

“I think there's plenty of good old fashioned lust in the movie as well.” He laughs. “But sure, there's this thing of like, they both kind of are using each other. They both recognise that this other person can help them get something that they currently need and that feeds into ‘they're attractive’. And also, they're not necessarily that nice to each other, which is something I really liked. They have kind of a competitive hostility. They're kind of one-upping each other the whole time. And it's, in a weird way, their own version of flirting and their own version of courting each other, trying to beat the other one.”

Forged ID Photo: ENG Photography

Did he get pushback on that? Sometimes it's hard to pitch a film where you don't have an ‘easily relatable’ character.

“No, not really. And that was just because the movie is so small. It wasn't as if we were at a big studio trying to keep a roomful of executives happy. It was so tiny. There were two financiers and myself and Aubrey Plaza and we didn't have a ton of oversight. So no, no pushback on that or anything else. The challenge was just getting the movie made for such a low budget. That was the challenge.”

So when did Theo Rossi come on board?

“Oh man, like ten days before we shot the movie! Like, at the last minute. Aubrey had already been on board for three years and we needed someone to play that character and we were having the hardest time. We just couldn't find the right person. And when you think about the qualifications for the character, the challenges become very clear. We needed someone who spoke Arabic and someone of Middle Eastern descent and someone who had a work visa to work in the US. This was Covid. We couldn't fly anyone in from out of the country. We needed someone available, the right age and who jives with Aubrey, who wants to do the part. It was just impossible. And then Theo just kind of came out of nowhere, and was in a way different, a little bit, than what was on the page, but we all realised it could be really interesting and perhaps better than what was on the page.”

He’s interesting because when we meet him, he's the character who absolutely knows what he's doing, or seems to, and Emily's a newcomer. But there's a streak of vulnerability in him which comes out quite early on, which is rare in a male character.

“Yeah, yeah. I wanted him to seem a bit intimidating at first. And then when the revelation comes around that they might hook up with each other, I wanted that to be sort of a surprise for the audience. But you're right, we do learn that he's got some vulnerabilities. And I always felt like it's a story about this woman who's starting straight and becoming a criminal, and a guy who's starting a criminal and becoming straight, and they meet each other in the middle for the week, a brief, fleeting, thrilling period of time. And then they’re separated again.”

Emily at Work Photo: ENG Photography

As for researching Theo’s criminal enterprise, that was easier than one might expect.

“I live in LA,” he says. “I used to live in this neighbourhood that had a bunch of organised crime going on in it. And I didn't know what exactly, but I knew something was up. And then one day, there was this big bust, it was like an FBI bust, and they they took down like 100 people and you could read the entire like affidavit on the internet. So you could read all of the things that the authorities had catalogued this crime ring doing, you know, and it was fascinating, the whole thing. It was full of transcripts of wiretaps and all of these specific details.

“It was a lot of selling drugs, and a lot of like, gun sales and stuff. I didn't care about that. I see that all the time in movies. But then one of the things they were doing was this very elaborate credit card scam that involves getting random people to go in and do exactly what you see happening in the movie. I just thought that was so fascinating, that they even thought to do that. Like, that's so weird. And also, who are the people who they paid to go conduct the scam? Like, who are they? What's their story? So that's where the idea for that that initial thing came from.

“In terms of the details of it, you don't need to like go to a dark alley and then like pay someone to tell you how to commit credit card fraud. It's incredibly easy. Just get on like YouTube. There are instructional videos, very clear, it's not a secret how to do it. It's accessible in a way that's kind of horrifying. The embossing machine, which is that machine Theo used to make cards in the movie, is not like something that you have to, again, go buy in a dark alley. You can buy those off of Amazon. You can buy the fake cards off Amazon, you can buy the magnetising light card reader off Amazon. You can buy everything you need to rob Amazon, from Amazon.”

I explain that every criminal I've ever interviewed has approached it as a form of small business enterprise, and that's what seems to be happening in this film. Was he interested in the motives of people going into crime and how they compare to other people trying to set up other kinds of business, and the businesses we see exploiting Emily, and so on?

Emily takes time out Photo: ENG Photography

“Yeah, definitely. At the time I wrote this I was a young person starting to work in the professional world, and I was continually stunned at how criminal everything seems, how negligent just normal corporate behaviour is, with brinksmanship and leveraging and just the whole lot of it. You know, you're stunned by it, especially if you've been in school your whole life and you're in the world of academia, which is such a meritocracy, and then suddenly you’re in the world, and you're just watching what happens.

“I wanted that illegal fraud ring to operate like any other business operates. They just go about doing what they're doing, and if other people are suffering as a result of their profits, then it's, you know, too bad. But the point is profits. In that sense, they're just running a business, and in a weird way, you can make the argument that the harm that they're causing is not nearly as bad as the harm that many other businesses are causing. They're ripping off insurance companies, so cry me a river.”

And there's that amazing scene with the the internship and I think everybody who's worked in areas like film, or any kind of creative enterprise, has encountered situations like that. It reminded me of Monster with Charlize Theron, where there's a job interview scene which plays out quite similarly. Did he have any particular inspirations for this scene?

“We talked a bit about Erin Brockovich, which has a couple of those scenes, and that movie was a reference for us all around. But now I'm trying to think, because there's so many classic interview scenes throughout cinema. You know, what's funny is that that scene used to be much longer, and we ended up cutting it down. It used to be even like more of a thing. But it was definitely a moment where we got to kind of voice some of the themes of the movie out loud in a big, bold way, for better for worse. Yeah, if you've worked in a creative industry, chances are you've been part of that conversation before. Is it satisfying to see someone say all the things that you wouldn't dare to say? I know it was for me.”

And beyond that, the way that the film is shot, the cinematography, the locations, it all seems very deliberately downbeat a lot of the time. Was he tempted at any point to make it glossier as a thriller and to go down the route that other thrillers do? Or was it important to keep the tone that way?

Emily The Criminal Blu-ray

“It was pretty important keep the tone that way. A lot of it was just necessity. We didn't really have the money or the time to make it look like a glossy or more expensive thriller. But you know what it is? It's like, if you live in LA, you know that it looks and feels a certain way. Most movies just aren't faithful to that. In the reality of most movies, it's like the Kardashians, or something equally as silly, like a tough gang movie in South Central or something like that. The city is never just one of those things. It's not a monolith. It's more diverse and more full of all kinds of different colours and vibes. But more often than not, it's not the most aesthetically pleasing place.

“There’s no overarching design or idea to LA. It's just like a total mess, or at least that's how it always felt to me. So I wanted to kind of honour what it really feels like, being a person struggling to live here, working nominal jobs, not making much money. I wanted to honour that and tap into my own experience and my own memories of working in catering jobs and driving around downtown and looking for parking.”

So finally, how does he feel about the success and the attention that the film has got now?

“I feel great about it. I mean, it’s the greatest thing in the world. When we made the movie we were just a group of people running around trying to get something done. We only had 20 days. I mean, it was a tiny, tiny affair. And so for it to actually have a life and for it to be on Netflix and people have seen it and are talking, is the greatest thing in the world. I'm so grateful and just so, so happy about it.”