Requiem for a Journalist

Paste: How long did it take you to get this into production?
Cuesta: It was written in about 2007, and Universal developed it. Scott Stuber produced it with Peter Landesman, and he wrote the screenplay, adapting it from Nick Shou’s book, Kill the Messenger and also Gary’s book, Dark Alliance. It went into turnaround because journalism movies were failing at the box office. The big one that failed called State of Play—it didn’t do well so they figured that they don’t work. That mindset is crazy. I think the budget was much bigger at the time, and then when it came to me they were thinking of making it for a smaller budget. I felt that I could make it work for the money that they wanted to spend on it—and it wasn’t a lot. I was the last one to come on board through Jeremy Renner. Once he was attached, he had a lot of say who we wanted to direct the film, and I think I was on top of the list for him.

Paste: What are some of your favorite journalism films?
Cuesta: Well, the main one—and I would say it was more of the first half of the movie—is All the President’s Men. The whole Pakula thing was very much a reference for me and the cinematographer. We kept referencing All the President’s Men, and we actually referenced The Parallax View—he actually is a journalist in that movie. I wanted to use that a little bit for our film. The idea of isolation—the idea of someone separating from society. That was sort of like Gary going out and fighting this unwinnable war and getting further and further from his family and from everyone who is pulling away from him.

Paste: Why do you think it’s a difficult thing to sell a journalism film to general moviegoers?
Cuesta: Well, look, this is a journalism movie, but it’s also a thriller. It’s a story about a guy who was very passionate and was right. He’s flawed, but you root for him. You root for the guy because he really, truly believed in truth and justice. Even when Michael Sheen says to him, “Some stories are too true to tell,” Gary’s like no, no, no. He saw himself as the watchdog. I think people relate to that. I don’t feel it gets caught up in the minutia of didactic journalism twerps and things like that. A movie like All the President’s Men could easily not work today. It was of its time. That movie is a procedural all the way to the end.

Paste: You have a diverse résumé of TV and film projects, but many of those characters are fictional. How did you approach handling a story based on a real person?
Cuesta: On this, I wanted to be on his shoulders and see the movie through his eyes and keep it subjective. There are moments in the film where I was either slightly surreal or ambiguous at times, which is very much a film fictional technique to use because it’s not a documentary, and it’s not a dramatization. It’s based on a true story, and […] I as a filmmaker [tried] to have the audience understand where he was—like you’re located with him. Those are the things that I’ve done with fictional things like Homeland. As a director, I tried to ground that show as much as possible. It’s completely not believable that anyone would ever be able to be in the CIA who is like [Carrie Mathison]. All that stuff is not believable. What Gary goes through in the movie happened. Did it happen exactly from scene to scene like we did it? No. I moved things around. Was he followed in a parking garage? No. I used that to inform the audience, have the audience feel what he’s beginning to feel. Also, in the scene when someone’s fucking with his car, that actually happened earlier in his career when he was digging into some local corruption stories when he lived in Cleveland. I used storytelling devices to inform paranoia and stakes—to push the story forward.

Paste: You’ve also directed episodes of Blue Bloods, Dexter, Six Feet Under, True Blood and the movie L.I.E. Do you seek out that kind of variety when you’re looking for new projects?
Cuesta: I know what interests me. I don’t like romantic comedies. I love the idea of doing an interesting love story, but they’re usually much more complicated. When writing a film, you just know—your instincts say, “I feel this. I relate to this character.” I have to know the protagonists on an emotional level and really understand why they’re doing what they’re doing like an actor would. I really have to know the tone and rhythm of the film to tell the story in the most honest way. That’s always been the case. For my first film, L.I.E., my main character was a little bit of me growing up. Not that I was abused by a pedophile or had that kind of relationship, but that was important. I remember writing the first scene in that script, and I’m like, “What did I used to do growing up? I used to walk across on the Long Island Expressway on this thing.” That’s where my protagonist is going to start. I wrote what I knew. I’m not an investigating journalist, but I understand Gary’s passion and how he doesn’t give up. I understand a bit of his home life, too. Usually, that’s the access point for me.

Paste: What about your connection to Dexter and Carrie Mathison?
Cuesta: It’s funny—I was telling everyone that I related to Dexter more than I related to Carrie Mathison because he is such an outsider. I relate to that a lot. But one thing about that show—I always thought it was my responsibility to never take the teeth out of the show. I wanted to always remind the audience that what he does is really horrible because there is a part of him that takes pleasure in it—and I’m not a serial killer.

Kill the Messenger opened in theaters Friday, October 10.