One Day as a Lion continues director John Swab‘s remarkably prolific career, with five films released in the past two years alone. He’s an expert at mining magic from miniscule amount of money, and elevating gritty little genre pictures into excellent example of efficient indie thrillers. One Day as a Lion marks the first time Swab is directing someone else’s script (Scott Caan), and it’s a bit different as a result.
The film stars Caan as a desperate man who agrees to take out a man in serious debt at the behest of some gangsters; Caan’s character, Jackie, needs quick cash to afford a lawyer for his imprisoned son. Jackie botches the hit, knocking down the first in a line of swirling dominoes which includes a waitress scamming her rich mother (a hilarious Virginia Madsen), a gun nut holed up in his rural country compound, a pair of profanely funny gangsters, and much more. Swab and Madsen spoke with MovieWeb about the film.
John Swab on Directing Scott Caan’s Script
Swab has made all of his films with producer Jeremy Rosen for the past five years, and the two of them have one of those rare but prosperous friendships some directors develop with a great producer (such as Jean-Luc Godard with Alain Sarde). It was Rosen who brought One Day as a Lion to Swab.
Jeremy, the producer on it, knew and was friendly with Scott’s agent, and they had seen what we were doing, and he reached out to Jeremy and gave him the script,” explained Swab. “And Jeremy met with Scott, they got along, and thought that it might be right for me to direct. And we had a discussion about that and doing something a little more lighthearted. It was a great exercise and a lot of fun, and I learned a lot.” Swab elaborated:
I’d never worked with somebody else’s material before. So it kind of changes the approach to how you do things a little bit. I just learned how to be completely divorced from the text, while also protecting it and keeping the spirit of it alive. It was an interesting experience, and you know, like I said, I gained a lot from it, and I’m grateful for the movie we got out of it.
A Great Cast Keeps Things Moving
Swab’s direction is tight as usual in One Day as a Lion, and he credits that to trimming the original script a bit to keep things flowing. There are many moving parts in the film (an amazing J.K. Simmons, a very fun Frank Grillo, a stand-out Virginia Madsen, a snarky Marianne Rendón, and more), and Swab keeps the wheels turning to ensure that it’s always fun.
“The original script was about 30 pages longer than it ended up being for shooting, so I went through, and I made some pretty heavy suggestions to Scott with how to kind of streamline things and make the movie just kind of really move,” said Swab. “I feel like with a movie like this, if you want people to have fun, you can’t hang around. You’ve got to just keep moving and get from one character to the next, to keep them vibrant, to keep people on their toes.”
Virginia Madsen Stands Out in One Day as a Lion
One of the most vibrant characters in One Day as a Lion is ironically one relegated to a wheelchair and with a fatal sickness. This is the ‘black widow’ character, Valerie, played by Virginia Madsen, who masters a kind of manipulative, menacing mother in a way that’s both hilarious and depressing. In the film, Jackie is convinced by Lola, a waitress who witnesses his botched mob hit, to pose as her husband in order to receive money from Lola’s mother. This way, Jackie can pay for his son’s lawyer without trying to kill a terrifying debtor played by J.K. Simmons.
Madsen (Candyman, Sideways, Her Smell) may only feature prominently in one lengthy scene, but it’s one of the most memorable in the film. “I like a movie where you’re sort of going to a place that you don’t necessarily [know],” said Madsen. “A small town in America, with like abandoned buildings, and it’s got a desolate quality to it […] It becomes immersive. You just want to stay there and be a part of it. It’s kind of like a throwback to other movies that have that sort of Americana feel.”
“I really, really love Scott’s writing,” continued Madsen. “I really responded to the script immediately. And I’ve been experimenting with comedy, which is not something that I was usually ever hired for. So it’s cool to learn a new skill later on. And with [Valerie], she was so hateful, so mean to her daughter. She hates her daughter […] She relishes in upsetting her.” Madsen elaborated about her character like the pro that she is:
She’s dying, and there’s nothing she can do about that. The only control she can have is to upset people and make them do her bidding. And as you can see, what she must have been like when Marianne’s character was little, it just must have been awful, like she was just never good enough. When you play somebody that is hateful, they don’t think they’re hateful. Right? They think they’re righteous […] She doesn’t think of herself as like a bad guy. She thinks of herself as knowledgeable, supportive, like she knows all. She hates women, and she’s got a real talent with the male species.
Madsen sunk her teeth into the role of Valerie and had a great time doing it and working with Swab for the first time. “I love the ways he shot the film,” said Madsen, “he was a very chilled out presence, which I appreciate it. I liked him very much.”
The Ballad of John Swab and Jeremy Rosen
Swab and Rosen are continuing their collaborative efforts after One Day as a Lion with a new film. “We’re prepping a movie that I wrote now that I’m very excited about,” said Swab. “I believe it to be the best thing I’ve ever written.” It looks like he’ll be continuing his rapid rate of filmmaking, after directing this, Little Dixie, Ida Red, Body Brokers, and Candy Land in the past couple of years.
“All the films you’re referencing, Jeremy and I have done together,” explained Swab. “And you know, we’ve done them in such a rate, in a pace and predominantly in the same place as well, in Oklahoma, to where you get familiar with the people you’re working with, the place you’re working with, so much so that they become resources rather than things you’re trying to figure out […] We’ve kind of built a machine, I would call it a well-oiled machine. So there’s very little guesswork with a lot of things by way of production.” Swab continued:
Story is most important to Jeremy and I, and protecting the story. So when it comes time to make a movie, I mean, it’s just he and I in charge. There’s very little outside influence, which is really nice. We get to protect what we’re doing, and protect the integrity of that. And I think that’s very important, because I think what you see in a lot of other indie movies, there’s so many people putting their hands in and trying to manipulate it that eventually, once it’s done, it’s very far from what it initially started out trying to be. And with us, we figured out how to keep it as intact as I feel like is possible on that scale.
It’s been that way for years now between Swab and Rosen, one of the most artistically lucrative pairings in the indie film landscape, ever since they met. “It’s a funny story,” began Swab, “I was in L.A., selling my first movie, Let Me Make You a Martyr. I was having coffee at a coffee shop, and I was with my dad, and Jeremy was at the table behind us. And he had his dog, Roxy, with him. And my dad asked him what his dog’s name was, and we started talking. We got along there. I kind of told him what I was doing, he told me what he was doing.” Swab concluded:
He was rolling out his movie Dog Eat Dog at the time, and I sent him the script for Run with the Hunted, and I sent him the screener for Let Me Make You a Martyr. And about three weeks later, he flew up to come meet me in Woodstock, New York. We had a conversation, and what started out as a business relationship turned into, you know, best friends who’ve traveled the globe together and eaten more f*cking tiramisu and pasta than you could imagine. So yeah, it’s been a gift, that only could have come out of just sheer chance.
Sheer chance or cinematic destiny, Rosen and Swab are plowing forward with some of the most interesting independent films around right now. From Lionsgate, One Day as a Lion is now available in select theaters, and also on digital and on demand.
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