Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival January 18,2014
Plot(Spoiler Alert)
Richard Dane shoots a stranger to death after he breaks into his house during the night. The man Richard shot was Freddy Russel, a wanted felon and the son of an ex-con, Ben Russel. Ben Russel becomes a stalker around Richard and his family and that concerns him a lot. Richard later sees a wanted poster with Freddy Russel’s picture on it and realizes that the man he shot wasn’t Freddy Russel. Richard finds Ben and explains to him that he didn’t kill his son. So they dig up the grave and Ben sees that the corpse isn’t Freddy’s. Ben calls a friend of his, Jim Bob Luke, who is a private investigator and together the three of them work together to find out where the real Freddy is and why the police where lying about that burglar being Freddy.
Blaine: Jim Mickle was a big fan of Joe R. Lansdale’s work and he read his novel “Cold in July”. What Jim loved about the story was the idea of this man who is experiencing something new and even though he is not up to the challenge still he does it anyway because there is a part of him that wants to do it. Jim showed the novel to his co-screenwriter Nick Damici. Nick liked it as well. For six years it was hard to get a studio to finance “Cold in July”, put an ensemble together and work out a schedule. Jim Mickle almost thought it was hopeless to get it made until they met Michael C. Hall. Michael C. Hall read the script back in 2012 and he asked his agent if they were still planning on making the film. At the Sundance Film Festival 2013, Michael was promoting a film called “Kill Your Darlings” while Jim was promoting “We Are What We Are”. The two of them met at a party at Sundance and Michael asked Jim if he was still planning to make “Cold in July”. Michael C. Hall gave Jim hope for the project and “Cold in July” found it’s first actor to star in it.
What Michael C. Hall loved about the script was the surprising twists and turns it had in it. He also loved the humor. He was very excited to be apart of a project like this. It was interesting for Michael to play a character that was normal after playing a serial killer for 8 years. Michael C. Hall is great in this movie. Unlike Dexter, Richard Dane doesn’t like to kill a person whether they are innocent or not. Michael C. Hall asked someone who worked on “Dexter” to cut his hair and give him a mullet.
It was the casting director’s idea to cast Sam Shepard and Don Johnson as the other two main characters, Ben Russel and Jim Bob. Sam and Don were good friends and so are their characters and the casting director felt that those characters suited them well. Jim and Nick sent the script to Sam Shepard back in 2007 and he never got a chance to look at the script until sometime after. When he finally read the script, Sam met with Jim and Nick and they informed him that his good friend Don Johnson was going to be in the film as well. Don and Sam never had an opportunity to work together. Don would look after Sam and tell Jim if he wasn’t giving Sam enough direction for a scene. There’s a deleted scene where Jim Bob is explaining why is helping and he mentions the Korean war as well. Thing was it was too long so they had to cut it out. Don Johnson understood why they did it because he understands if a scene has too much in it, how it should go and what the audience needs to see and that surprised Jim.
For one scene, Jim and Nick were trying to think of something for Sam Shepard to say. They wrote of few different versions of what he could say, but none of them worked out. Sam had an idea for what his character could say and so he wrote it down on paper and that became his line in the scene.
It wasn’t in the novel that Richard Dane puts Ben in a hunting cabin after saving him from being run over by a train. He let’s Ben out of jail and they go to a motel. The night before they shot that scene, Michael C. Hall had a dream of him being in a play with Sam Shepard only it was on a soundstage. The reason why was because the cabin scene was shot on a stage and to Michael it felt like they were in a play. Also Sam Shepard was best known for writing a lot of plays in his career.
Richard Dane goes home at one point because Ben and Jim are going to kill bad people, but he doesn’t stay there for long. He tries to go back to his normal life to be with his wife and kid, but it’s hard for him to go back. He has to settle things first so he goes back to Ben and Jim to participate with what they are going to do. Jim and Nick took that scene out of the script, but then they decided to put it back in.
The biggest change for the story was taking Richard’s wife, Ann, out of the adventure. Originally she was supposed to have a bigger part in the middle section of the film. Ann would dig up the grave with Richard and Ben and they would get into an argument about if it’s a good idea or not. Jim Mickle felt that the movie worked better more if it focussed more on Richard and make it more his journey. The film would have been two and a half hours if they added the conversations between Richard and Dane and also all of Jim Bob’s dialogs.
My rating on “Cold in July” is four out of five stars.
