©Courtesy of Black Bear

Exclusive Interview with Writer/Director David Michôd

Q :  There’s a Netflix documentary called, “Untold : Deal with the Devil,” which is about Christy Martin’s documentary, you wrote the screenplay with Mirrah Foulkes and Katherine Fugate. What was about this Christy Martin’s story that stood out for you to make a film, and this is your first film about working with a real person, right?

David Michod: I too saw the documentary that Laura Brownson had made, and I thought it was incredible. I thought Christy’s story was incredible and even more incredible was that I’d never heard it before. Normally, I probably wouldn’t want to make a film that was recreation of documentary. What I found most intriguing about Christy’s story was the mechanics of the relationship that she was in. What is called a coercive control relationship. So, I saw the potential for a movie to be more intimate than the documentary could be, and to focus very closely on the detail of how their relationship functioned.

Q :I heard Christy was on set most of the time. You did obviously write the screenplay with two of the female writers. But I’m curious to know were there any additional elements that you added to the script after you met Christy?

David Michod: I think the things that Mirrah and I learned about Christy when we first met her and started talking to her that we hadn’t really seen in the documentary or in any of the materials that’s on the internet, was just how beautifully sweet and gentle and kind she is.

We had assumed we would be meeting a kind of tough talking fighter, and we did, but we also grew to understand that there’s just a really beautiful soul in there as well. And I think it was important to us that the character have that lightness, at least at the beginning of the movie. I think Sydney does that very well. 

Q : What’s engaging about this film was not just showing domestic violence scenes, but also little subtle moment of toxic masculinity throughout the film. Such as not talking to Christy in the beginning of the film, and Jim mentioned like “She’ll have a coffee instead of pie, stuff like that. Could you talk about the toxic masculinity that spread out throughout the film?

David Michod: Yeah, this is how this coercive control works. It’s a particular kind of intimate partner abuse that doesn’t always necessarily involve physical violence. It is most often perpetrated by deeply insecure men with a quite profound abandonment issues. I think Jim certainly fits this bill. I did quite a lo of research into this stuff when I started working on this movie. 

And found it quite frightening how predictable these relationships could be, they all function the same way, they adhere to the same template of emotional and psychological control, that is almost always born out of a man feeling his masculinity is challenged, unsure of his own masculinity. That’s what I love about Ben Foster’s performance, he understood that he wasn’t just playing a monster, he was playing a broken man. 

©Courtesy of Black Bear

Q : Speaking of Ben Foster’s transformation, Ben Foster as Jim Martin was remarkable, even though Ben said he never met Jim, due to the service to tell the Christy side of story in a right way. After I saw the documentary, I think he really picked up the mannerism of Jim. Could you talk about his transformation? 

David Michod: One of the things that I like about Ben is that he does the hard work before he gets to set. Yeah, we had a brief conversation about whether he would reach out to Jim, to sepal to him directly. We both decided that wasn’t a good idea. But there’s a lot of material to study. And Ben’s kind of primary aim was to make sure that he was capable of humanizing the character. Despite how noxious he was. And he does that, he is a smart guy. he’s a very beautiful mix of intellect and intuition which I think the character needed. 

Q : I heard Sydney Sweeney did three months of training, even built her own gym in the house. What kinda preparation did you ask her to do or she pretty much do it by herself. I also heard that Christy was on the set. So, could you talk about how did you choreograph her fighting sequences?

David Michod: Sydney is incredibly hardworking woman, the first time I met her, I knew she wanted to play this character and she’s going to work hard. So, to the certain extent, I was able to let her do that work, with a boxing trainer named Matt Baiamonte and then, with our fight choreographer Walter Garcia. Those guys were really amazing at what they do, and I was in Australia while she was in America training.

She would send me videos every now and then, showing me how bigger muscles were getting or how good her combinations were getting. I knew she was doing the work. Once I arrived, it became about working with her and with Walter Garcia on just making sure we had all the fights choreographed in a way that would be achievable on a tight schedule. There’s a lot of fights in the movie and we’re moving really fast. 

Q : Could you talk about the choice of music in this film? Some of the music sounded like 90’s Rap music and when Christie fights in Las Vegas, song was like a church song. So, could you talk about selection of the music?  

David Michod: I certainly wanted to have the needle drops to have a period appropriate flavor and I want to most part would be fun, knowing that Anthony Partos’ score would be providing the kind of emotional weight and the foreboding.

And that piece of music in the middle during the Deirdre Gogarty fight, it’s called “The Beatitudes” by Arvo Pärt. It’s just such a beautiful piece of music. I always knew I wanted the Gogarty fight to be the kind of spiritual center of the movie. Maybe I went heavy handed, but it moved me in the cutting room.

©Courtesy of Black Bear

Q : Let’s talk about Christy’s fight with Laila Ali sequence. You hired a real boxer named Naomi Graham, could talk about creating a fight sequence with a real box against Sydney Sweeney, why did you make that decision and how do you choreograph that fight sequence?

David Michod: Well spotted that was a challenge. All the other female fighters in the film who play Christy’s opponents are really great trained stunt women. For some reason we were finding it very difficult to find someone who would just match the particular physical attributes of Laila, she was very tall and strong. She towered over Christy. And so when we went looking through the stunt community, we were just struggling to find someone who would fit that bill.

And so we widened the search a little bit and there was Naomi, she’s an Olympic boxer and a wonderful person. But the challenge with her is that she had to learn to fight in a different way just to shoot the movie, because obviously what she does is train to win. And what stunt performers do is train to lose convincingly.

They train to look like they wanna win. So for Naomi it was, about conditioning her to feel free and loose, and get her to perform the combinations that she was learning without pulling her punches, but she did connect a few times.

Christy, that whole fight with Laila in the movie Sydney does with a big mark on her face that might look like makeup, but it was actually real a big red mark around her eye, which we were very worried was gonna turn into a full blown black eye the next day. Fortunately it didn’t, I think that fight on set was probably the closest Sydney came to actually being scared. 

Q : This will be the last question. This film talks about the parents not accepting the sexuality of child and also dealing with the domestic violence, but you made it with positive light. So, could talk about how do you want an audience to take away from this film? 

David Michod: Yeah. I don’t think I would’ve made this film, if it hadn’t ended with Christy’s kind of reclaiming herself. I want an audience to take away the feeling that they’ve had a genuinely moving emotional experience in cinema. But more than anything, I went into this movie wanting to understand how these coercive control relationships work, because I was that guy who would ask dumb question why doesn’t she leave? I knew there’s a good answer for this, so I wanted to find out what it was, and doing that research, I learned these relationships are so common. There are so many women trapped in them. There are so many women dying in them. And the more visible the mechanics of them are, I think the better we will all be. And the better placed we will all be to recognize it when we see it, and to offer helping.

©Courtesy of Black Bear

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