Interview: Tom McCarthy on How Stillwater’s Consequence Is in the Details

In his new film, Stillwater, Tom McCarthy makes expert use of even transitional establishing shots to further our understanding of his characters. Blink and you might miss a moment when Matt Damon’s stubborn Oklahoma oil worker Bill Baker charges into frame and strides up the staircase of his hotel in Marseilles, where he’s stationed himself in an attempt to free his imprisoned daughter, Allison (Abigail Breslin). Bill moves with such single-minded focus that he misses an elevator that would get him to his desired destination more efficiently. Yet he lets his determination calcify into stubbornness and makes things harder for himself. For the laconic Bill, this movement conveys as much as any line of dialogue he utters.

Throughout the film McCarthy is aiming not to overpower us with self-conscious flourishes, but rather to ensure that every element of the film furthers the overarching narrative that he shaped alongside his three co-writers. With Stillwater, McCarthy lets recreating authentic worlds and crafting believable characters dictate his aesthetic choices, and his approach is all the more striking when considering his success as an actor in ensemble casts ranging from Meet the Parents to Good Night, and Good Luck, as well as a screenwriter who won an Oscar for co-writing Spotlight and received another nomination for co-writing Pixar’s Up.

Stillwater takes many turns over the course of its runtime. While the film starts off as somewhat of a gumshoe investigative thriller, it shifts gears to tenderly portray an unexpected romance between Bill and his unlikely partner, a Frenchwoman named Virginie (Camile Cottin), before ultimately settling into a groove as a plaintive meditation on memory and American morality. McCarthy’s knack for detail grounds the film through all sorts of narrative transmogrification. In a conversation recorded just prior to the theatrical opening of Stillwater, McCarthy makes visible the invisible work that makes this world believable.

As a multihyphenate within the film world, what do you see as the role of the director, and how is it different or overlapping with the other roles you play?

I think the director folds all that into one on some level. People often say, “What’s your favorite part of directing?” My short answer to that is that it’s the journey of the director, which starts off with me sitting around thinking about an idea. You’re engaging writers, watching the idea become a script, the script becoming a creative team, that becoming a filmmaking crew, then shrinking back down to an editor and a post team, then the varied journey toward release. I think I need that in my life. I don’t think I could just be a writer. I don’t think I could just be a director who shoots a film every year. I think I would burn out! I like the process. I love the research. I love working with actors. I love being on set, I love that energy. And I love the quiet of the edit room and the focus and concentration that takes.

I think, quite frankly, that the director is pulling on all that. I’m using everything I learned as an actor in terms of communicating, and understanding performance and arc when working with other actors. Calling as a producer, it’s all part of it. I’m a producer only because I do everything, not because I went to producorial school. Ultimately, as a writer, maybe in some ways I lead with that. Coming back to the script, the character is always my guide. There’s something intellectual in that pursuit, which I’ve always found to be really engaging.

My parents are from Oklahoma, and I spent a lot of time around men with Bill Baker’s brand of masculinity. It’s something distinct from both the South and the Great Plains. How did you and Matt Damon identify and capture that very specific texture?

Same answer: just by digging in. I realized at one point, to be quite frank, I spent a lot more time trying to understand by going to Marseilles, and I hadn’t been to Oklahoma. This is 2016, and I remember waking up with a start like, “Holy shit, I’m a phony! I gotta get to Oklahoma.” I went two days later, jumped on a plane, set up some meetings, pushed my assistant to find some people: one person in Oklahoma City, someone in Tulsa, someone in Stillwater. I just dove in. I just started driving around, got a rental car, met the people. and I started building relationships that continued over the next two or three years. Like a journalist, it’s just [about] accumulating bits, pieces, and facts, slowly incorporating them into story. Every little bit adds.

I remember being with one of my first scouts in Oklahoma, and she’s like, “You thirsty?” I said, “I am thirsty, what’ve you got, some water?” She goes, “No, but we should get a cherry limeade! I’ll pull right over at this next Sonic to get you one.” I was like, “Cherry limeade?” But you’ve just got to do it. That was enough sugar for me for like a month, but it sure was good.

It’s stuff like that. So I kept going, and then eventually set up enough of a network and met the right roughnecks that I thought Matt might really learn from. Then I brought Matt, and then there’s that next level. I went back with my cinematographer and my production designer, and every conversation was different. Again, I just love that process. How authentic can we get here? We have this character, Bill Baker, that I definitely knew Matt Damon was gonna play. If he’s not real, he’s not multi-dimensional, guys like you whose parents are from there, who spent time there, who’ve seen them walk and talk, you’re gonna call bullshit on that. And if you call bullshit, you’re not going to go on that journey, and the movie doesn’t work. That’s a lot of pressure on us as writers, and a lot of pressure on Matt to execute.

Stillwater is a film of such subtle detail, as in the “Je Suis Charlie” sticker on Virginie’s fridge and the shifts of a hat. And those details say as much as dialogue. Is that you making the world feel more lived in for the characters or for the audience?

Both. Regarding Virginie’s apartment in Marseilles, that had to feel like a place that changed over time. When we meet her, she’s still moving in. There’s boxes everywhere, the art’s down. Three months later after that time jump, suddenly it’s way more settled. Bill’s room is set up, but there’s still remnants of her stuff. Her books are in there, but Bill’s not reading those French books. All those little details let the actors get in and just disappear more and more into the reality of the scene. The more they disappear into the nuance and specifics of that world, they will take the audience with them. That’ll just happen naturally.

There [are] certain things we’re absolutely geeking out on as creatives. The first detective Bill goes to, we were like, “What kind of art?” I was like, “We should have him have photos of noir detectives on his wall because that’s how he sees himself.” Phil [Messina, the film’s production designer] is like, “Great, what movies?” and we started talking about that. Leaning in. In Oklahoma, we had these roughnecks on set with us. What does the trailer look like? How many stickers would he have on his helmet? What kind of stickers? What would that look like? The great part is when you work with a creative team like I had, which is incredibly experienced. They’re constantly surprising me, challenging me, and pushing me.

How did you all calibrate when and how frequently to acknowledge the elephants in the room of Bill’s positions on things like Trump or guns?

Laying out the story, it wasn’t like, “Hey guys, I think at about page 60 we should drop this thing.” When it came up, it just felt like right. You have Nedjma [Naidra Ayadi’s character] just staring at Bill, not understanding her friend at all, like, “Really, this guy? You’re gonna help this guy right now with your full life, your theater career, your kid, your work?” She just can’t help herself, it’s a curiosity. “If you’re not gonna ask him, I’m gonna ask: Bill, who’d you vote for? I’ve got to know. I want to have this discussion.” There’s human curiosity, same with the theater director, Renaud [played by Bastien d’Asnières]. He means when he says, “Wow, you’re from Oklahoma. That’s cool. I’ve never met anyone from Oklahoma.” I would feel the same way if I met a person from Chernobyl. “Wow, Chernobyl, fascinating! What was it like?” I would want to know. I think it was really just following the cadence of the interaction of characters. You can feel it. Ultimately, there’s the über-director/writer brain of like, “There’s times we’ve got to breathe. We got to release a little bit; the audience needs that.”

Ten years separate Stillwater from Win Win, but I feel like there’s a bit of a connection between two flawed protagonists who turn to extrajudicial means to keep up with an economy and society that they feel has left them behind. Do you see any parallels? Is there something about these figures you want to keep exploring?

That’s a really interesting point. Someone asked me how you get to a film like Stillwater in your career, and I do believe I wasn’t prepared to make a film like Stillwater until now. I think [with] every movie I’ve made, there’s a little bit of that in Stillwater. Every single movie from The Station Agent and [Peter Dinklage’s outwardly stoic Fin] to Paul Giamatti’s character in Win Win struggling to self-regulate and do what’s right. There’s a real question of morality and ethics in Win Win that’s buried beneath that story happening. This film takes on a similar thing of our own moral imperative. In a way, I think Paul thinks he’s doing what’s best and most right for him and his family at the expense of the elderly person that’s now in his care. There’s a real ethical lapse there that happened that he ultimately has to answer for. There are consequences to his actions. “Consequence” is a big word for Stillwater. That’s what elevates it beyond a typical thriller and into something that has a broader relevance.