PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Gangland, directed by Vincent Grashaw and written by Zach Montague, and starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Nick Stahl (read our interview with him HERE) is an intelligently woven and intense crime drama that’s begging to be seen. It’s obvious a lot of time and care went into making this film and I can’t recommend it enough.
A weathered tribal cop and his new trainee must find a ruthless fugitive, whose return to their rural Indigenous reservation has exposed its darkest secrets and could ignite a violent gang war.
To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with Lou about his role as executive producer, working with a cultural advisor, filming in Oklahoma, and more!
PopHorror: I have to tell you that growing up, La Bamba was one of my favorite movies so much that we watched it at my third-grade birthday party sleepover.
Lou Diamond Phillips: Excellent!
PopHorror: Until my friend started to cry because the plane crash scared her.
Lou Diamond Phillips: Yeah, well, that will do it. It’s put a lot of people off flying since then.
PopHorror: It’s really fun for me to speak with you today.
Lou Diamond Phillips: Thank you.
PopHorror: I loved Gangland. I thought it was so good so I’m excited to hear more.
Lou Diamond Phillips: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Quite honestly, it’s voices like yours that we need to get the message out about this film. It’s a little film, man. It’s up against Goliaths and it’s artisanal. I’m hand carrying it everywhere, so thank you so much for helping us out.
PopHorror: Of course! What was it about the script that made you not only want to play Teddy, but also executive produce?
Lou Diamond Phillips: The whole thing started with an email from my dear friend Megan Griffiths, who wrote and directed The Night Stalker. We’d done a couple of things together after that and I just found that she is an incredible writer/director with impeccable taste, obviously because she cast me in something. She sent me this email saying she had this friend named Vincent Grashaw that she knew from the festival circuit, that he had this script and I was his first choice, and could I take an extra close look at it? The script spoke for itself. I was in practically by page two, just such a strong powerful script. I knew the character. It’s wonderful at this point in my career to have roles that continue to challenge me, that get me excited, and that literally lean on the amount of experience that I have, the baggage that I have, the mileage that I’ve lived. All of that was in Teddy but it was also a story that I felt really needed more care than just showing up and punching the clock and doing the gig. Vince is that kind of director, too. He’s incredibly collaborative and he listens very well, but at the end of the day he knows exactly what he wants. That’s exactly the kind of director you want to work with. They were gracious enough to bring me on as an executive producer as well and one of the very first things that I did was bring on my friend Marcus Red Thunder, who had been the technical advisor on Longmire for six years because I knew that we needed somebody who intimately and respectfully would take care of the cultural aspects of the film. He had great notes about my character, he had great notes about reservation life and everything else, and he came and he was a conduit and ambassador for us with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation, who were really gracious to invite us in. Marcus actually appears in the beginning of the film; he’s the native man in the baseball cap who’s doing the blessing at the memorial. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to help shape and help platform what was going into the film, not just in the script stage but suggestions like Irene Bedard and Kim Guerrero, and Vincent was great of bringing me into the loop when casting Lane Factor and Elisha Pratt because both those characters were so, so pivotal to the film and the film’s success.
PopHorror: As an executive producer on the film, how did you work with Marcus Red Thunder to ensure that not only the characters in Gangland were portrayed with honesty and respect, but also that the communities were shaped authentically?
Lou Diamond Phillips: One of the first things he said was, “Listen, let’s not be specific to which tribe this is or which reservation it is. Let’s not say this is Porcupine in South Dakota or Rosebud.” Thunderstone is a fictional reservation. We don’t say what state we’re in, we don’t say which nation it belongs to. Part of that was it could apply to anything then because this is a problem that is very specific but it’s also very universal. I think about some of the stories I’ve told like Stand and Deliver, or La Bamba, which people would go, “That’s kind of niche.” When you start telling the story, you realize how universal and how it applied to so many different communities. This story could be set in the South Side of Chicago, East LA, Seattle, Miami. It could be ethnicity nonspecific. This story is about family and about community and about how young men can go down the wrong path and be tempted into this world when just trying to empower themselves and to be seen and to take their place at the table. A lot of those conversations were about that, with Marcus, and how it’s a problem on so many reservations. Also, with Teddy, we made the decision to not play him as Native, to actually say he’s part Filipino, which I am, and that I had married into the tribe. I thought that was a brilliant decision in the respect it painted Teddy as a perennial outsider, somebody who so desperately wants to protect and serve and be part of this community, and yet because of that, because of other things that are revealed in the film, he is held at arm’s length. It just created, I think, some really, really interesting dynamics.
PopHorror: When watching it, I did ask myself, what state are they supposed to be in? What year is this?
Lou Diamond Phillips: Right?
PopHorror: I noticed it didn’t say which state it was in and I didn’t see a cellphone, so it really could have been any state at any time. I also noticed that it was never said which tribe because when I was doing research for our conversation today, I saw some mentions of Cheyenne and Arapaho and I didn’t really want to name them specifically because I don’t remember that being in the movie, so I didn’t want to assume that what I was reading was correct.
Lou Diamond Phillips: It was shot on Cheyenne and Arapaho land and led to that beautiful, beautiful scene with bison, by the way. They were so beautiful to allow us onto the land, and as I said, Marcus, who’s Lakota and also part Cheyenne so it’s like… I’ve represented so many nations. There are certain specificities but there’s also certain generalities that can apply across the board and that was the choice to do that. Oklahoma represents so much of Texas through the Midwest all the way up to the Canadian border so it was this, could be anywhere, could be any place, and as you pointed out, could be any time. One of the things that I love about this script is it reminded me of the 70s character studies that I really love, like Taxi Driver or French Connection or some of these that were certainly thrillers and certainly have this momentum to them, but they very much hinge on character studies, not just in my character Teddy but in the fact that I think everybody who is featured in this film is interesting and compelling, and has a backstory.
Thank you so much to Lou for taking the time to chat with us. Gangland hits limited theaters and digital/on demand tomorrow, July 10th!
