Aubrey Plaza and John Patton Ford on Emily the Criminal, getting into trouble and classic crime films
Saddled with university debt, a graduate turns to credit card fraud in new thriller Emily the Criminal. We asked star Aubrey Plaza and director John Patton Ford about their own brushes with deceit.
Emily the Criminal is a brisk thriller about a young design graduate in Los Angeles who turns to crime when faced with $70,000 university debt. In the eponymous role, Aubrey Plaza excels as a bright, pugnacious woman so desperate for money that she accepts $200 to buy a TV using stolen credit card details, a scheme she’s been tipped off about by a co-worker at her food delivery job. She soon breaks so bad that she’s stealing a $100,000 BMW.
Debut feature writer-director John Patton Ford’s taut, energetic film has won many admirers since it premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January, including Guillermo del Toro, who described it on Twitter as an “Incredible debut film. A real tough crime film” with “No sentimentalism. No easy answers.” In London for the UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival, Ford and Plaza discussed their own crimes, lying at work and how they made the film.
John, what inspired you to come up with the story?
John Patton Ford: Being broke, in debt, working crappy jobs. I wanted to create a character that I could get behind and someone who would be a hero to me in that moment.
You lived in an area where there was criminality happening. What neighbourhood was that?
John: I don’t want to say because I still have friends who live there. If I say what neighbourhood it is, it’ll be very clear what ethnic group in Los Angeles was behind this crime and it’s an awkward thing to talk about. I grew up in a law enforcement family, my dad was in the FBI, so I knew some of the telltale signs.
I’m no expert but a medical supply storefront that never has people going in or out of it is the biggest telltale sign of organised crime. I saw this thing and that thing and I was like, “Man, something was going on. People are making money here.” Two years later there was this huge cover story in the LA Times – a massive FBI bust, they arrested 96 people. The entire affidavit was available on the internet, so I read it. That’s where I heard about this credit-card crime. A lot of the dialogue in the movie is dialogue I got from wiretaps that were on the affidavit. That’s where the nuts and bolts of the crime came from.
The film starts with a disastrous job interview in which Emily is caught in a lie. Have you ever lied at a job interview?
John: Oh yeah. 100%, I’ve lied in a job interview. I can’t think of what, but I’m sure I have. Resumé lies, pumping up your resumé. Restaurants, I always said I had way more experience, I worked as a waiter much more than I had. But I was quite honest that I’d never directed a movie before this one. You can’t really lie about that. There’s the internet.
Aubrey Plaza: Yeah, I’m sure I probably have too – lied about skills that I’ve had. You can write “horseback rides, swims, whatever”.
John: Those are actor lies. Every actor knows Spanish. Every actor can ride horseback.
What’s your best lie that you’ve used?
Aubrey: I would say horseback riding. I definitely lied about horseback riding because I took lessons when I was a kid, but I wasn’t that skilled at it. That got me into some trouble one time when I was shooting something and I had to do some stuff on a horse. I lied and said I could ride bareback and got thrown off during the rehearsal. But then I didn’t tell them that I got thrown off so that I could then do it on the actual day. So that was a double lie.
One of the catalysts for Emily’s behaviour is her $70,000 student debt. What can be done about students going to university and accruing such debt?
John: It comes back to the fact that schools aren’t subsidised now the way they used to be in the US. From World War II until 1980, we had the best schools in the world. They were highly subsidised, they were affordable, there was a GI bill. We had a 70% corporate tax rate. Then Ronald Reagan got elected and the world has never been the same, especially the US. They deregulated everything. Suddenly universities weren’t getting money from the government any more and that got passed down to the people.
Add to that corporations never pay taxes and keep all their money in offshore accounts that never gets put back into the economy. Guess who gets left holding the bag? This is the system that we have. And we normalised it because it’s gone on for four decades now. My entire lifetime has been this slow decay of how the US economy works. Now people are going into $100,000 of debt to go get some degree and they’re not going to get a job when they get out anyway. Then houses and costs are going up, it’s just crazy.
What can be done about it?
John: Force corporations to pay taxes. Stop believing them when they say, “Oh, we’ll leave the US. Oh, we’ll take our business elsewhere.” No, you won’t. Shut up. Pay your taxes.
The film’s scathing about the job market as a whole. In the second interview Emily has, the boss wants her to work for five or six months for free. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Aubrey: Yeah. It’s fucked. I don’t know what can be done.
John: That’s a cultural shift. We just need to stop normalising people working for free. The danger there is that if we continue to have internships, the only people who are going to be interns are people who can afford to be interns, which are typically people who come from a really narrow demographic. Chances are they’re going to be middle to upper class and white and everything else. It just boxes people out from opportunities, boxes them out from the economy.
That seems to be tied into the other stuff when Emily’s supervisor says, “You don’t like it, go to your shop steward.”
John: None of that was in the script. That dude just started improvising that stuff.
Was there much improvisation?
Aubrey: Just a little bit, not a ton. But there were some key scenes we loosened up a little bit. The script was so great we didn’t really have to do it. But there were moments like that that were helpful to make things feel more real and lived in.
The film’s tone reminded me of crime films from the 1970s and 80s. Was there anything from that era that influenced you?
John: So many crime movies from that period. Straight Time (1978), a classic LA crime movie that people have forgotten about. The cinematographer on that was Owen Roizman, who’s a gritty New York DP. He went to LA and that’s the only LA movie he ever shot. It’s so cool because it feels like New York but it’s not. Stuff like William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), even Point Break (1991), which I love. It’s using LA as a canvas in a way that you don’t usually get, and has fantastic set pieces. But it’s still real life and these are still real people. That’s what we wanted.
Aubrey, was there any among those films that you’re into?
Aubrey: Straight Time, for sure. It’s so fun to watch Dustin Hoffman in that movie. There’s definitely a similar thing going on with the characters where you think they’re going to come out the other end and then you realise, “Oh no, that’s just who they are.” We talked a lot, we had a lot of different references. We talked about some French films, Jacques Audiard films – they were all inspiring.
John: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) by John Cassavetes. I think of Cassavetes as being a New York filmmaker, which he was. But he made so many movies in LA we forget… A Woman Under the Influence (1974).
Aubrey: It’s one of my all-time favourite movies.
John: It’s fun because he’s doing it in a New York way with actors who are almost entirely from the East Coast. We wanted to take some of that energy.
Aubrey, you’re also a producer. What does that entail on a film like this?
Aubrey: I produced it along with Tyler Davidson. I was involved in every part of the process, so it was really a collaboration. I got in there in the beginning and once John decided he wanted to make it and he was going to let me be in it, we just went off to the races, tried to get money and got money. Not a lot of money, but enough to start the movie. We were very focused on the casting of the film. We spent a lot of time trying to find really great actors, even for the smallest parts. And just troubleshooting, dealing with all the problems. Every production has problems and disasters and things you have to figure out.
Having produced and acted, would you consider directing in future?
Aubrey: Yeah, I want to direct. I have plans to. I’ve just got to get my shit together. I want to direct John as an actor. I want to direct something I write and I don’t think I could ever write something like this. This is probably not in my wheelhouse, but it’s definitely a movie I want to be in.
What’s the most illegal thing you’ve ever done?
John: I got arrested in undergrad because I was having a drink underage. That wouldn’t happen here in the UK. I got 120 hours [of community service]. I had to wash fire trucks.
Aubrey: I’ve never been arrested. I have been thrown in the back of a cop car once when I was a teenager for going into a park after hours. I’m not going to tell you what I was doing there. Every teenager does that at the park.
At one point in the film Emily says, “I just want to be free.” When do you feel at your freest?
Aubrey: In the ocean, when I’m not working. Get me in nature while I’m not working, then I’m free.
What do you want audiences to get from this film?
Aubrey: I want them to be inspired to commit credit card fraud. Because anyone can do it, it’s not that hard.
Emily the Criminal had its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. It will be available to rent and own in the UK from 24 October.
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