THE ICEMAN ended a year long release process from its initial festival run to it getting released here in the UK to generally positive reviews. We recently had a chance to catch up with director Ariel Vromen to discuss the film’s journey as well what is in store for himself now that his six year long process of getting THE ICEMAN made is finally over.
The idea of making THE ICEMAN was planted in Ariel Vromen’s head after seeing a documentary about Richard Kuklinski.’ I saw a human being that was torturing himself for having such an ability and such a lack of emotion, doing such gruesome murders and being such a good soldier in a way, and then at the same time speaking of such security and love and building such a world of fantasy about his family, something he was lacking as a child and being such emotional about it, that contrast struck me and I was very fascinated by that, and that was sort of my initial interest in that story.’
Vromen himself however was not alone in his interest in Kuklinski as his project had to survive the competition of two similar projects with heavy backing. ‘There was a competitive project from Paramount with Channing Tatum attached to star, and once that went away, there was another production company that wanted to do it with Mickey Rourke that was financed by the Gaddaffi family, and at the time we thought ‘oh that’s that, their financing is pretty secure’ and obviously the revolution happened and their assets got frozen in the US. So President Obama really did me a favour there (laughs)’
When the project got to the casting stage, Vromen quickly figured out who he wanted as he lead actor, even though that was not an easy journey either. ‘Initially, you always have these dreams of casting Brad Pitt, you know (Laughs) But no, as soon as I sat down and really thought about who we possibly could get for the part, I didn’t give up and I didn’t want to compromise as soon as I knew that Michael was the right guy for the part. I saw him at an Oscar party when he was nominated for Revolutionary Road, and he initially said that there was no way we could get the film financed with him. But I didn’t want to give up on him, and then I accidentally bumped into him at a restaurant and we decided to shoot a test scene and we showed that scene to the financiers to prove that we could make this film with him.
With Michael Shannon on board, Vromen got to casting the rest of the characters with a red hot James Franco joining as Kuklinski’s fellow hitman, Mr. Freezy. However the unexpected death of Franco’s dad saw him having to drop out (he still retains a cameo appearance in the film) and be replaced by Captain America himself, Chris Evans. ‘I approached Chris Evans and just asked him if he would like to get really down and dirty for this after Captain America and he was like ‘I’m in’ instantly.’ Another actor who dropped out was Benecio Del Toro, but he was to be replaced by Ray Liotta, a casting choice that seems to fit perfect with the GOODFELLAS-esque structure and story. The biggest surprise of the entire cast is arguably David Schwimmer, a man mostly known from his ten year stint on the sitcom FRIENDS, Schwimmer is almost unrecognisable as Liotta’s sleazy henchman, Josh Rosenthal. ‘ With David Schwimmer, it was completely self initiated as he hired a make-up artist and really went for the role, he wanted to be seen in another light from Friends, and he kept telling me about Woody Harrelson going from Cheers into more serious work like Natural Born Killers, and he wanted to stretch his range more. I cast him because of that desire, but also because of the fact that he was such an outsider to this world, and in a lot of way so was his character, so it worked really well story-wise.’
Getting such an interesting character as Richard Kuklinski’s entire life story into a lean runtime of 105 minutes is not an easy task, and obviously it meant that Ariel Vromen had to choose on what aspect of his life he should focus on. ‘ Obviously the script went through a lot of changes along the way and initially it was more linear with the first act being more about his childhood, but we realised that when people read that it tended to send the wrong message of…’oh, you’ve been abused, now you have to become a murderer’, that statement was quite awkward. So then we decided to focus more on the love story because that was really what interested us. Him building this fantasy world and trying to keep the separate lives working next to each other for all those years, so starting on their first date and ending it on them separating became the obvious structure for the film.’
With THE ICEMAN out in theatres, Vromen is now looking on to new horizons although it is slightly weird for him having to let this project go. ‘ I have two films coming up that I want to do next year, one of them is based on a British novel called Snowdrops by A.D. Miller, and the other one is called Narco and is about drug-trafficking submarines. When you’re working on something for so long, you can’t work on that on a daily basis, so I had time to write a couple of other scripts and sort of prepare myself for when it was all over. But yeah it is weird, mainly because people dismiss the journey of a film-maker when they go to see a film, they don’t care about the struggles you’ve had on the way, they’re just looking at the end result. It’s kind of like having a baby and having other people judge it on a daily basis and not caring about how much love you’ve put into it. But how do I feel about moving on? I think it’s about time (laughs) I’m ready for my second child.’
THE ICEMAN is out in theatres now, and you can read our review of it here.
