We love speaking with filmmaker Andrew Davis. In late 2023 The Fugitive director came on our podcast The B-Side to discuss a slew of hidden gems as well as the 4K release of his Harrison Ford blockbuster.
Davis is back to talk about his novel Disturbing the Bones, a political thriller that reads like an entertaining, extrapolated version of some of his best films. The plot concerns an archaeological dig in Illinois wherein a body is discovered. It leads to a murder investigation amidst a global crisis spurned by a catastrophic, nuclear mistake.
The Film Stage spoke with Davis about the book, his Arnold Schwarzenegger action film Collateral Damage, his upcoming projects, and the state of both the film industry and the country.
You will earnestly learn about a lot of little things if you read/listen to this interview. Enjoy!
The Film Stage: Andrew Davis, welcome back! Today we’re talking about your novel Disturbing the Bones. This is a fun book, to start. You’re an accomplished filmmaker and I know it was developed during COVID. We spoke with John Sayles a couple of years ago––who is a great novelist as well as an incredible filmmaker––and he has a newer book called Jamie MacGillivray: The Renegade’s Journey ––
Andrew Davis: It’s this thick!
It’s a very long book, yeah! And Sayles was like, “Look, I knew I was never going to get the money to make [the movie] and I wanted to see how it ended, so I wrote the book. So I’m curious, your and Jeff Biggers’ book started as a screenplay then became a book––that’s what happened?
It was an idea that I had years ago that had been gestating, and I met Jeff and I realized that he had a real understanding of that area of southern Illinois that the story is set in, near Cairo. And so we started working on the screenplay, and I just got frustrated because to try to get all this information and these characters in this texture into 120 pages––I didn’t want to be held back like that. And so I said, “Let’s try to write this as a book and now we’re in the process of putting it back into screenplay form.”
I saw you had mentioned people like Emma Stone, Denzel Washington, and Tommy Lee Jones who could be perfect for these roles. A thing that stands out to me in Disturbing the Bones is that it feels incredibly well-researched. Were you guys just going to Cairo? Maybe not during COVID. Does Jeff just know that world really well? And you know Chicago?
[Jeff] knows that world because he’s from that area and across the river in Kentucky. His family was involved in coal-mining years ago, mountaintop removal. They fled to Chicago to “Little Appalachia.” Part of my world as a kid coming out of college in ‘68 and Medium Cool and Haskell Wexler, there were characters from that area. I have a friend who lives nearby, near Carbondale, and we drove down there. The history of Cairo is in my brain from the ‘70s, late ‘60s. I remember the troubles that were going on down there. And I was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. So there was a connection there. And then the gestation of the book––which I thank my friend John Weir––I was turned onto this Koster Dig years ago. He was a mentor of mine at the University of Illinois and he wound up working for the state of Illinois; he became involved in the Department of Transportation. In being aware of this archeological dig, which was very, very significant.
So I thought “Boy, this is interesting. What are we going to be remembered for? What is our layer of civilization [going to be remembered for]?” And I thought, probably our atomic missile systems and our bunkers, you know? And so that became the metaphor of what’s going on. So we took the Civil Rights struggle and the history of slavery and the Civil War and blended that with the layers of life today. And then, you know, got into this thing that goes on with The Package, which is a film I did with Gene Hackman, which is haunting me right now, which dealt with the generals not wanting to give up their nukes. And what was really interesting: we wrote the book and we created this Michelle Obama-type character [in Senator Elaine Adams]. And then Kamala Harris becomes the candidate, and it was haunted. It’s haunting. It’s very haunting.
There’s so much going on in the book, yet it feels very realistic. Is it hard to wrap your head around that as a creative person now? The book’s out. Are you just like: “I couldn’t have predicted this.” Or could you have? I guess you kind of did.
Well, the tensions––or lack of tension now––between Russia, the United States and the issue of the danger of hypersonic missiles is definitely something that’s been around and will continue. Unless we kill each other, get rid of them. Right? There was always the dream of if you could get rid of the nukes. So that’s ongoing. And with my background as a journalist…. originally I didn’t want to be a filmmaker. I wanted to be Walter Cronkite. Not necessarily on air, but to tell the truth about what’s going on in the world. Which is hard to say what the truth is these days. All of my films try to take either an action film or an exploitation film of some sort with some martial artist and make it real, make the stories real––whether it’s about Iran-Contra or whether it’s about cover-ups of police malfeasance. Those are all things that were important to me, and by doing films that had some entertainment value you could talk about those issues.
I know now you’re pivoting back to trying to get this made into a film, and it is such a cinematic book, not surprisingly. You brought up The Package earlier, and as we are recording, sadly, Gene Hackman has just passed away. You made The Package with him, and you’re taking the bones of The Package and adding to it. What was it like directing a guy like Gene Hackman? He was famous for challenging his creative collaborators. Not necessarily in a bad way, but he was one of these famous guys where you had to bring your A-game––he brought his A-game, vice-versa. What was it like? It’s a tender subject right now, but what are the memories of working with somebody like that?
Well, it was a learning experience, certainly. I had never worked with an actor of that caliber before. And actually it was the first time I’d worked with [Tommy Lee Jones] also. And they had just a few scenes together. It was great and scary. It was like I had to learn to give him space to find how he wanted to handle certain things within the context of the script and be able to work around that. You don’t tell Gene Hackman how to pick up the apple. So it was good. I’m very proud of the movie. I think he was 60 years old. He was doing a lot of action. He was banging himself around and falling down and rolling over. It’s an active role for him, this 60-year-old man.
We just covered a movie he made right after The Package, called Narrow Margin, which Peter Hyams directed. They’re both really great thrillers. They’re very different, obviously, But I thought of you because we just talked about Peter Hyams’ B-Side on our podcast and he is a cinematographer who directed. You started as cinematographer. Did you ever want to film your own movies? Or were the guilds an issue?
It’s interesting, because it is a blessing and a curse to work with a director who was a cameraman for the [director of photography.] Because I know how to pick locations that you can light well and use natural light. And I know how to support the cameraman, but when somebody says “I need 14 hours to light it” I say, “No, you don’t.” I did a film with one cameraman where we had to light the Hilton ballroom and he did it like [snaps his fingers] and the next guy said [we need more time] and I said, “No, no, no, Mr. So-and-So did it better. We’ll do it that way.”
Anyway, it’s interesting you mentioned Peter. Peter, I remember knowing about as a newsman in Chicago. He was on CBS News. His sister was married to David Picker, who hired me to direct Beat Street and write Beat Street, which I didn’t finish. And then Peter, I consider him sort of a Chicago director and also Friedkin, who worked with Gene. And Gene was from Illinois; he went to the University of Illinois. There’s a lot of connections to the world of Illinois and creative filmmakers. Wanting to shoot my own movies: you know, Frank Tidy and I had a great relationship and I was able to give my input to him. I didn’t feel like I was fighting to try to have something to say with the cameraman ever.
I think it’s incredible that anybody tries to do it. Steven Soderbergh does it obviously, famously. And Hyams too. I think it’s probably the right decision not to!
And the reality is that I feel like I’m shooting… what part of my job is, as the director, to shoot the movie. Pick the shot, pick the lens. When we’re scouting, the gaffer and I and the cameraman are all in a conversation about how we’re going to light it. I really feel like I can participate. I don’t have the burden of actually having to take the meter readings and finetune the flags and all of that kind of stuff.
The craftspeople who then become directors is a fascination of mine, because you’re giving up one thing but then you’re collaborating––you’ve mastered one thing and now you’re in the director’s chair. And I always have such a fondness for the creations that come afterwards.
Well, you know, Kubrick was a cameraman first.
Photographer, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Right. And so I’ve always said trying to direct a movie without understanding the camera is like trying to conduct a symphony and not being able to read music.
Okay, back to the book. When you’re crafting the story with Jeff and it starts as a movie and then you make it a book, it must have been liberating, then, to just be able to write more story, as opposed to being confined to a screenplay length. But did you then run into a problem of, “Okay, now there’s too much book. Let’s get more specific?”
Jeff is a really fine writer and he was able to describe places and things and history really well. So we had to cut that back in some places. And I was saying, “Let’s keep the story going. Let’s keep us involved in what’s going. What’s the next beat that pushes the story forward?” And we had to move things around and make sure certain characters didn’t get lost. That we didn’t spend too much time with the generals and we didn’t spend too much time over here or there. So it’s a balancing act and it was liberating, in the sense that you could talk about what someone was thinking, which, in a movie, it’s hard to talk about what they’re feeling and thinking. And now as we go into the screenplay, the question is: is there a haunting voice that goes on somewhere? Is it narrative or voiceover or inner thoughts that will help us achieve that? Or we just say it’s going to play in the face of the actor?
You must have to choose a specific through line for the screenplay. Does it become Molly’s story mostly?
It’s a two-hander. I mean, it’s the story of the relationship between [archaeologist Molly Moore and Detective Randall Jenkis]. And the monster is [General Alexander] and how they deal with it.
But if we have less time with the general I fear we’d lose some of the best scenes in the book wherein the other generals turn to each other and say, “This guy is really crazy, eh?” Not to bring it to the current moment ––
Part of what we’re witnessing now!
That’s what I’m saying! I literally am reading it like, “Oh my God, it’s happening right now.” Except we don’t know what backroom conversations are happening. You almost hope, at the very least, somebody is having a conversation about somebody being like, “We have to stop some of this.”
The reality is that the Russian generals and the American generals have the same point of view [in the book], which is: we’re not giving these weapons up. We know they’re dangerous but we don’t trust anybody.
One thing I really like about the book is, early on there is a nuclear mistake that is a catastrophe. And it spark plugs the rest of the narrative, essentially. But life continues, right? There’s a murder investigation, there’s an archaeological dig, there’s mourning over the loss of a loved one, and although things do stall in part because of the aftermath, none of that goes away. Too often movies and books, they disregard that stuff––maybe out of necessity because you need to get to the plot. But [you guys don’t ignore it] in your book. You’re getting a lot of character work, even as the world is on edge, which I think is kind of crucial.
There’s so many parallels. It’s sort of In the Heat of the Night. It’s about this guy who has to go down into this very dangerous area and find out what happened to his mother. And so there’s that tension, and then one of the things that just sort of happened––and it’s interesting because it has to do with Jeff’s history and his understanding of people down there and characters that came out of his world. The fact that Michelle Obama is from the South Side of Chicago. Her father worked on the cribs, the city water system that delivered water to us. So the idea that [the book’s Michelle Obama surrogate Senator Adams] took care of this young man who lost his mother at fourteen, he comes up to Chicago now, and now she’s running for president, and he’s in the security detail and she recognizes him. That was always very moving to me.
Let’s manifest it: when you make the movie that will be an incredible moment. I want to pivot back to your films because I think the one movie that didn’t get brought up at all: I was rewatching Collateral Damage and I couldn’t help thinking that must have been an incredibly difficult movie to shoot, because you’re just in the jungle with Arnold Schwarzenegger for like half of the movie. What are your memories of making that movie? Was it impossible, or by then were you like an old pro and it was easy?
Arnold was easy to work with. The cast is great. I got into some trouble with the politics and one of the producers… because originally the movie was set in the Middle East. But I didn’t want to do a bunch of Arab-bashing movies at that time in history. It was before 9/11, and I remember I had worked in Columbia as a cameraman with José Ferrer on a little movie called Paco as a DP when I was very young. And so I said, “You know, the FARC [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia] was involved in fighting for rights for peasants.” There was a lot of crazy stuff going on in South America. I said, “Let’s set it there.” And the metaphor of Arnold being a fireman who sees his family destroyed and then he realizes later in the movie––there’s a very political speech there––that the same thing that happened to him happened to the man who killed his family [due to] United States foreign policy. What goes around comes around. And so I thought that was an interesting metaphor for all that, you know.
Yeah, that scene where you basically underline that whole thing. The terrorist’s plight, that he’s the flipside of that same coin. Kind of a brave statement when that movie came out. The film obviously got pushed back because of 9/11. But it’s a brave message, to be honest, to come out right after 9/11, because you are underlining the plight of people forced into these emotional responses that lead to more death. Tragedy begets tragedy.
It’s interesting to have this left-wing point of view as a director in the midst of all of these right-wing kind of characters. Well, it’s really scary. If you look at the footage of 9/11, there are some very key shots of people running away, and on the billboard down the block is “Opening Saturday. Collateral Damage. Schwarzenegger.” And they pulled it. And then I remember, when we went to the premiere, Giuliani was there! You know, the hero mayor of New York.
Incredible. It’s such an inflection point in world history. Not unlike COVID in that way. I did have a question about pace, moving back to the book. It’s an incredibly fast pace, given all that’s being tackled. As a filmmaker, that must be a refined skill. Your movies have a great pace to them. Something like The Fugitive, you could teach that in schools; I think they do. It never stops and yet you’re getting all of the necessary information. How do you learn that?
I don’t know where you begin with that process, because I do think that a good contribution to that was from Dennis Virkler, one of my editors who cut The Fugitive. We did Under Siege together, also. From there on, Dennis and I and Dov Hoenig also. Shoe leather is a term. It’s a term [that references] people walking from A to B to get out the door or come in the room. Cut to the scene! Get to the meat! Tell me the story, you know? And then now, some of the cutting that goes on, there are such quick cuts you don’t have a sense of where you are! It’s close-ups and quick cuts. Context is also important to keep the pace believable and understandable.
I watch things with my kids––I’m talking about animated shows––and I cannot keep up with what’s happening.
My grandchildren, it’s the same thing. I watched what they’re watching and there’s so much going on––their nervous system, the wiring in their brains. It’s affecting people. I really mean it.
My wife and I talk about how and why our kids are able to process the information so fast. It can’t all be good!
Just imagine how, in a few years, we’re not going to be able to understand how to deal with your phone and your computer, and [the kids] will just bop bop bop and it’ll be done… I don’t know if I made another movie it would seem slow to people because of the pace of things. But you basically just try to absorb. Did I absorb what I needed to absorb? Am I getting the emotional content and I’m moving the story along?
Is there anything about Disturbing the Bones that you haven’t highlighted or you’re excited to re-explore as you develop the movie?
I just think the integration of a story about racial injustice and militarism and the danger of weapons and hatred is something that is very, very timely. And that’s a theme that we need to keep talking about. We need to figure out how to live together. I keep talking about my parents and their friends and rolling over in their graves or wherever they are about what’s happening right now. I wonder because NBC now seems like they’re bending the knee to get rid of everybody at MSNBC who might be challenging the administration. So I just hope that the studios are willing to take bold steps to keep making movies that are interesting.
It’s interesting: almost all the [Academy Award-nominated] movies are independent movies. Some of them are not very good, as far as I’m concerned. What they’re about and the content and stuff like that. Most of those films, the directors will not make a cent. They’ve put their lives in these movies and they’re never going to make a cent and they’re being nominated for Academy Awards and it’s a subject matter that is so weird and oblique that they’re not going to get a worldwide mass audience. I feel very lucky, having been a protege of Haskell Wexler, who was a Hollywood filmmaker, director, cameraman who allowed me to get into a world where, in those days, if you proved you could bring an audience they paid you for it! You got a piece of the action! But that doesn’t exist too much anymore.
I wanted to ask what is happening with that movie My French Amore, which Gene Wilder wrote?
Yeah, we’re working on the script for that. That’s another anti-war movie, really. I’m working on the script with a friend of mine, Alexis Nolent, a French writer, and we’re getting close to finishing that. That would be a nice, small movie to make. And, once again, trying to get that made, with the right cast. It would be good. I’m still trying to get this Treasure Island project off the ground. I’ve got to find a lead for that. And then [Disturbing the Bones] and My French Amore. Those are the three projects I’m trying to get off the ground.
I haven’t made a film in a long time. I’ve spent a lot of time on personal things with family and grandchildren and parents and stuff. But the idea of trying to make a movie now where you have to spend three years going nuts trying to raise the money and not have a distributor and then have nobody see it. It’s hard once you’ve been in the… once you make The Fugitive and you make studio pictures that get a lot of attention, you go, “Do I really want to go back to do that?” I’m happy taking stills and putting them together and sharing them with people.
Disturbing the Bones is now available from Melville House.