Ask Deon Taylor about his favorite story about Las Vegas, and what happens in Vegas definitely stays there. “I don’t have any that I can tell,” he laughed. “I can start. ‘I walked into a casino,’ but that’s all your gonna get.”
Not so in the director’s new film, Fatale, in which sports agent Derrick (Michael Ealy) has a misguided one night stand in Sin City with a mysterious stranger played by Hilary Swank. Their paths are set to cross again in unexpected, and deadly, ways as Derrick finds himself in the middle of a plot that could destroy his life.
While he wanted the film to be a steamy, twisty romp, Taylor said that he also wanted to inject a sense of real-world concerns into the story. “There are so many unusual, crazy cases of people being framed for things they haven’t done, and we have a justice system where a lot of people never get a chance to clear their names, or really get their side of the story told. I just thought, how interesting would it be to drop something of that tone inside of a thriller. So someone’s really fighting for something. Its not just about someone who had an affair – it’s deeper.”
Taylor was fresh off of his 2019 inverted home invasion shocker The Intruder when he came up with the idea for Fatale. He immediately reached out to Intruder screenwriter David Loughery, an industry veteran who had cut his teeth in big budget SF like Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Dreamscape, but had also penned another erotic thriller, Obsessed, while mixing action with police misconduct on 2008’s Lakeview Terrace. That combination made him the perfect fit for Taylor’s twisted tale. The director said, “I gave him a phone call and said, ‘Hey, man, I’ve got this idea, let me pitch it to you,’ and he went crazy. He was like, ‘Wow, this is insane. We’ve got to write it.'”
Austin Chronicle: Derrick’s on the edge of fame, so you have this added tension: he’s not just a guy being framed, who knows he’s being framed, but you also have this tabloid attention.
“When someone says something wrong about you, it’s very hard to make a first impression again.”
AC: There’s a real throwback feel here to the classic era of big-budget erotic thrillers from the ’80s and ’90s like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.
DT: The energy of films like Body Heat were when audiences went to the movies and got to just enjoy. A little bit of fantasy and a dose of real life. I wanted that vibe, and me (cinematographer Dante Spinotti) talked about how to actually do a film like this. A lot of these films are very formula driven: Man sees woman, cheats on his wife, she’s a crazy lunatic, but this movie takes a completely different turn. Both of this characters are very, very human. Ely wants out, but she needs him for something. There to me was the strength. It’s Strangers on a Train. It’s a real dilemma that people can enjoy for 90 minutes.
AC: And Daniel’s an all-time great cinematographer. I watched Manhunter when I was too young to watch Manhunter. You worked with him on Black and Blue, so what keeps you coming back to him?
DT: He’s electric. Even if you didn’t like the film, even if you think it’s the dumbest thing you’ve seen in your whole life, you have to still look and go, “Wow, this is an absolutely beautiful film.” I love how he lights. I love how people are alive in the camera. If you watch the film, it starts out vibrant and sexy. It goes to Vegas and kind of stays like that. And then it just becomes tense. Light goes away, things become stripped away, and you’re 55 minutes in and it’s Hilary Swank coming down a rusty hall with a shot gun. Normally people would stay glossy or stay lit, and he knows how to find pockets and moments of light.
The other thing with him is that, in Black and Blue and also in Fatale, we’re dealing with some really interesting choices in term of black and white characters in the same frame. He does a wonderful job of balance. His lighting tells a story.
“A 74-year-old, multi-Oscar nominated cinematographer working with a Black filmmaker who is self-taught. That’s the whole story.”
DT: You can watch and see, if there’s a dark skinned person on camera and a white person next to them, it takes a little bit of time to get them right. It’s just what it is. It’s the energy of what the light is doing. Dante is a genius of lighting, because he’s lighting the gun in your hand. He understand all of it, and that’s really important when you’re dealing with a black filmmaker and he’s trying to tell a story that is culturally relevant to all people.
But, yeah man, the invention of some of these cameras recently, and lenses, and the way that people look at things now, it’s completely different from where it was five years ago. … I’m just happy that times have changed, because it all goes back to people being treated fairly. And it goes on step deeper than that: On some of these big movie sets, it’s making sure that you have the correct hair and makeup people for African American people in film. Because the same barber you might use, I don’t use. Or the same make up person who is doing make up for that white A-list actress cannot do the same for that Black A-list actress. That’s all coming to the light now, and that’s a great thing. Because it’s a melting pot. A 74-year-old multi-Oscar nominated cinematographer working with a Black filmmaker who is self-taught. That’s the whole story.
Fatale is in theatres now. Read our review here.
This article appears in The 2020 Top 10s Issue.
