Scott Speedman
Interview By: Dan Deevy
DanDeevy@TheCinemaSource.com
The last time I sat down with Scott Speedman was way back in 2004 before the release of the amazing indie film, The 24th Day. Now, 4 years later we’re across from each other again to talk about his latest character-based low budget endeavor, the Seven-esq detective film, Anamorph.
“I play a guy named Detective Carl Uffner,” he begins. “My favorite last name of any guy I’ve gotten to play by the way. Who’s sort of a rival detective to Willem Dafoe’s character and we’ve been put together on the same murder case.”
Now for those of you who are expecting the obvious 'recently-made-detective-works-with-seasoned-old-detective' movie you’re in for a surprise because that’s not at all what this film is. The relationship between the two is far more turbulent and interesting than that.
“It was great because I think you can get into these movies with the older cop/younger cop type of thing where it’s the rookie cop learning the ropes from the older guy. (Willem Dafoe) would hate me calling him the older guy by the way, but he knows what I mean,” he laughs. “But my part was written as the same age as Willem Dafoe’s so it was kind of cool to come in and be much more of an adversary. And so he comes on these cases and he [Speedman’s character] just sort of has this instinct that there is something going on that Willem’s character has some connection to these murders so he’s sort of watching him solve these murders and just waiting for the other shoe to drop; just watching and waiting.”
Even with a great script these days it’s tough to make a real impact in the overflowing ‘Cops and Robbers’ market in Hollywood. “It’s really hard also because of television, I find, because there are so many damn cop shows on right now,” he says. “Inevitably when I read a script that has cops involved all I keep seeing are Law & Order episodes. If you’re gonna have generic scenes, unless you have an amazing visualist that can take it out of that sort of TV genre, it’s gonna feel to me sort of like television. I mean there are really good cop dramas, but there’s a hundred of them so it gets harder and harder to come up with something original within the acting, within the writing, within the directing [and] within the story telling.”
Speedman’s prior interest in the genre definitely helped him in envisioning what the final product would be here with Anamorph. “Whether it’s books or movies or whatever I’m a big fan of the genre,” he explains. “I wouldn’t say the ‘serial killer’ genre or ‘horror’ genre or anything like that, to me it’s much more a mystery, a detective story. I like Dennis Lahanes writing very much, Jim Thomason and Raymond Chandler those sort of novels.”
When forced to draw a
