"Son of a bitch is trying to build a pipeline through his own cheap f*cking country. We didn't liberate Turaqistan to get hustled by some c*cks*cking fezzhead, Hauser. Terminate. You do that voodoo that you do so well.” - Dan Akroyd as the Vice President, "War, Inc."
John Cusack always had a knack for writing tight, effervescent dialogue and pairing the right actors and music together in memorable scenes.
If you are a fan of “Grosse Point Blank” and “High Fidelity,” you understand what I mean. Now he is bucking the box office poison trend of the war-themed movie.
Cusack has paired with first-time feature film director Joshua Seftel and written, starred and produced a cleverly modern war satire that hearkens a bit of Kubrick, and a dash of Sergio Leone in “War, Inc.”
The film’s premise is that modern war has morphed into profit engine for corporations. “War, Inc.,” is a fictional tale of a country, Turaqistan, occupied by a private U.S. company (Tamerlane) run by a former U.S. vice president (Dan Akroyd) who hires a hit man (Cusack) to kill an oil minister. Any similarities to Cheney, Blackwater, Halliburton and Iraq are...ahem... intentional.
Hauser the assassin must keep his cover as the Tamerlane Corporation’s Trade Show Producer in order to pull off this latest hit, organizing the high-profile wedding of Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff) while keeping a burrowing and secretly smitten reporter (Marisa Tomei) at arm’s length.
Cusack and his co-writers, Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser collaborated with director Josh Seftel and a cracking crew and cast that bring the not far-off-the-mark militarized Middle Eastern oil war tradeshow to a theater near you.
Director Joshua Seftel
Seftel is an intrepid documentarian; at age 22 and just out of college he received a National Emmy Nomination for his first film, “Lost and Found: the Story of Romania’s Forgotten Children”, a documentary he immersed himself headfirst into, living in the country and the orphanages where he filmed.
His subsequent work focused on senior citizens (“Old Warrior”) politics (Taking on the Kennedys), to an HBO documentary in honor of Bill Cosby’s late son (Ennis gift”) that focused on learning disabilities.
Eventually he became friendly with Cusack through director Alexander Payne, a judge at a film festival who looked up Seftel after admiring one of his films. Payne had given Seftel a script that Cusack was adapting, and a collaborative friendship soon followed.
Seftel and Cusack
Cusack and his writing partners were partly inspired for "War, Inc." by Naomi Klein's 2004 article "Baghdad Year Zero."
Together, Cusack, Leyner, Pikser, producing partner Grace Loh and director Joshue Seftel have turned in a great effort. Just as the title suggests, the film satirizes the corporations’ effect on modern war. These filmmakers have presented us with truths about our never-ending and seemingly privatized war, where the corporations are benefiting in profits but aren’t paying for it. We, the taxpayers are.
A moment of praise for the female cast of “War, Inc.”
Joan Cusack is top of her game as the Tamerlane corporate tradeshow liaison that shadows Hauser in Turaqistan. She is a force of nature in certain scenes, and you will love her barking of orders and subtle doling out of the corporate swag bags for the visitors who pass through the company doors.
Marisa Tomei is journalist Natalie Hegalhuzen, yearning to cut the crap; there to get a real story. She’s thoroughly frustrated at the government’s attempt to manipulate her “embedded” experience with simulated theme-park-esque situation rooms convincing reporters they were indeed in the trenches getting the scoop. She and Cusack have chemistry and shine together in well-written scenes.
Lastly we have the mesmerizing Hilary Duff as Yonica Babyyeah. A Middle Eastern pop tart layered in Kohl and Kitson, she does an excellent turn at messing with Hauser’s mind. It was an unexpected performance that worked overtime. The infamous scorpion scene was just a bonus.
First Look Studios is taking the percolating film to 20 theaters on June 13 and delaying the DVD release to October to allow the movie to organically build its word of mouth appeal.
This film is well worth your time.
Monsters and Critics had an opportunity to speak to Joshua Seftel regarding “War, Inc.”
This seemed a perfect crossover script for you. Who influenced you in the tone of this film?
J Seftel: It was the writers who were the biggest influence for me; their brainchild script – and when they gave it to me to read, I thought ‘this is the most absurd script I ever came across, just loved it.
It was so true, as I had seen these experience making documentaries and in my world travels; I had three co-conspirators and I felt like this material was right up my alley.
Tell me about the casting of Hilary Duff, what gave you the confidence she could carry of Yonica’s part?
J Seftel: She was cast early on. I wasn’t involved in this; it was done before I was on board as director. I wasn’t sure what to expect, you know, I knew her as Lizzie McGuire (laughs) so Yonica was such a departure.
Duff as Yonica
We were all wondering about this but she was really amazing. We also had to make her look the part, and that was hard. We downloaded a bunch of, let’s say, unnamed trampy pop stars for style guidance, and had to figure out what elements do we want to incorporate with her look. We did our thing and she still looked adorable, so we kept piling on stuff and reached the threshold of trampy.
Also, in terms of her developing this character, we worked on it with her. She took dialect and accent classes and even pole dancing classes.
Were you approached by John after he read that Naomi Klein article and was inspired to pen this?
J Seftel: I had shot a film called 'Breaking the Mold' a fictional film with middle school kids about air quality, which was the grant requirement, so I wrote the script about a librarian as pop culture satire featuring Kee Malesky, a famous NPR librarian.
The film was entered in a festival that Alexander Payne was judging, he saw the film and called me and said ‘you should be directing features,’ and had a script he sent me called 'Et Tu, Babe' that was penned by John Cusack and Mark Leyner. At that point, John, Mark and Grace (Loh) and I became friends who creatively began to collaborate.
The sight gag stuff, talk about that for a minute, especially the corporate swag bags to mollify visitors, the visible autobiography by "Oh, you know who," entitled, "How I Conquered the World and Dealt with Issues with my Father." What input if any did you have on those?
J Seftel: Well, that book is in the movie, all that stuff was again was a complete collaboration, the script was just filled with brilliant details and all of those little things, the swag bags, and all the props were all the result of an intensely creative set.
John and the writers, they threw things around on the spot; John’s brother Billy had the idea for the swag bag, and there’s something really fun about it.
When you have really creative people surrounding and you use them and their ideas to the fullest, I enjoy that experience.
Music is an important element in all John Cusack movies, how much input (if any) did you have with him finding the right song for the right scene?
J Seftel: When it comes to music – John has clear ideas of what he wants. He has his bands and people for the soundtrack, many bands that are his friends, that’s one part of the filmmaking that’s his.
Director Seftel working with a little boy who asks John Cusack for money in the war zone
What was your favorite scene in the film?
J Seftel: Well, I can tell you what the hardest scene was, it was when Marisa was held hostage and the making of her tape. She was being held while the terrorists were reading their demands.
I had watched the real life tapes of this; as did Marisa, and you know, how do you walk that line?
Marisa Tomei as journalist Natalie Hegalhuzen
We ended up doing a bunch of takes, Marisa played it very seriously, and she was disturbed by this and was intensely full of fear. After watching that take we were like ‘this isn’t working, it’s not funny’ so I whispered to the guys in the masks to do their part a bit more slapstick, and pretend it was their first time on TV and to be excited about that.
She reacted to that and grabbed their demand list sheet away from them to read it. It was just this long process, we wanted to honor the gravity of these real tapes, but make the scene comedic for the film. We did eight or nine takes; the producers weren’t happy about that.
Seftel and DP Zoran Popovic
Tell me about some of your keys .
J Seftel: Our production designer, “Kreka” Miljen Kljakovic, he was amazing, he walks around with a stub of a brown cigarette in his mouth, just chewing on it, never lit and would drink glasses of some Bulgarian Moonshine, he’s a genius.
He was one of our great assets, the stuff he did. That set he built on the side of a mountain in this lush green part of Bulgaria and made it look like the Middle East.
It was actually snowing in scenes shot in the Emerald City, so we had to make it look warm and Middle Eastern with filters and antique suede, to give it that desert vibe.
Zoran Popovic was our DP; he is amazing and I loved working with him. He would set up the camera and just get quiet for a few minutes, then would say ‘oh my God’ and of course it would be a great shot.
We used different equipment; we had five cameras rolling, with Zeiss ultra primes, 65 - 85 mm lenses and 24 -16 mm wide lenses. The look we wanted for the war scenes and Emerald City was dangerous – we used long lenses for those shots, the wider lenses for the interior shots. We also did a lot of smoke hazing in those interiors shots for atmosphere, texture.
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