Shooting Jesse

Chopper Read was the hero of his first film. Jesse James is the subject of his second. Director Andrew Dominik clearly has an affinity for cold-blooded but magnetic bad guys. He tells Donald Clarkeabout sparring with Brad Pitt to get their elegiac western made.

MOST thoughtful enthusiasts for the bewitching, hypnotic (and lengthily titled) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford have found themselves comparing Andrew Dominik's film to the work of Terrence Malick. Sure enough, the leisurely pace, hypnotic shots of nature and lugubrious dialogue do remind one of Malick classics such as Badlands and Days of Heaven. But Dominik's career offers a more troubling comparison with that of the older director: where the hell has he been for the last seven years?

Malick did, it is true, manage to wait two decades before following up Days of Heaven (1978) with The Thin Red Line (1998). But young men tend to be more eager to proceed and, after directing 2000's fantastic Chopper, the grimly funny study of hoodlum Mark Brandon Read, Andrew Dominik quickly became the Australian director of the moment.

"A lot of movie stars had me on their list of people they'd like to work with," he agrees. "There'd be nine really famous names on their list and then, at the bottom, mine."

So what went wrong? Given the buzz around Chopper, we might have expected Andrew, a good-looking 40-year-old, to have polished off three more features by now.

"Oh, you know. I wrote screenplays that couldn't get made," he says. "I quickly realised that if you want to get a film made you need a movie star. I wrote a movie for Woody Harrelson, but he, apparently, is not considered a star. I worked for two years on an adaptation of Jim Thompson's Pop 1280. I came close to making a film of Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain. It was very frustrating."

Fortunately, Brad Pitt was one of those actors who had Andrew's name on their list of desired directors. The two men met shortly after the release of Chopper and began the lengthy business of developing an adaptation of Ron Hansen's poetic novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

"What's the film about?" you say. Oh, very amusing. Pitt plays Jesse. Casey Affleck, a fast rising star, turns up as the nervous young man who, though initially a great fan of the James brothers, eventually guns the outlaw down in cold blood.

Fifty years ago, a film about Jesse James starring one of the era's very biggest stars would have been guaranteed box-office gold. The western has, however, become something of a pariah genre, and neither Pitt nor Dominik was inclined to include overmuch violence in their film.

"It really is its own animal, this film," he says. "We did try faster-paced versions of it, but they weren't any better. They were much worse. But it was all there in the script. Nobody could have any illusions about how it would turn out. Warner Brothers were initially resistant though. Firstly, it's a western and then it's a slightly fruity western - it's about these two very close guys. But it was a deal because it was a Brad Pitt movie that cost way under $40 million. They couldn't say no to that. They hoped for the best and then they saw the movie and thought: what the f**k is this?"

Did they actually say that? "Well, politely at first. But that's par for the course. Anything that is a distinctive characteristic of any film is what they will end up complaining about. But that's nothing special to Warner Brothers."

Here we must address another chapter in the story of Dominik's missing years. Jesse James was shot in Canada and adjacent areas more than two years ago. In the time since, numerous versions of the film have been screened for test audiences and the project has gained a dubious reputation as a solid manifestation of the perils of artistic prevarication. The gossip has it that Andrew and Brad (who is also the film's producer) had slightly different visions of the central character and that the star eventually won the battle.

"There was a lot of arm wrestling and that's not unusual when you have a major force like Brad on the film," he says. "But we arm wrestled down to a two-and-a-half-hour cut that is very close to the best. I would say that it is about four per cent different to the version I wanted, but, of course, to me, it feels a bit worse than that. But that's normal."

It must be said here that the film does not look or feel compromised. Seductive, full of space and blessed by cracking performances from the two leads, The Assassination of Jesse James re-introduces sweep and scope to the western. It never shouts when it can whisper.

The squabble between star and director doesn't seem to have damaged their relationship in any significant way. It's clear from Dominik's tone that he retains enormous respect for Pitt, and there seems little possibility that - taking a cue from Robert Ford - he will turn against his erstwhile idol any time soon.

"Oh no. I love him. He is like an iron shield. He allowed me an extraordinary experience in Hollywood. He will go out and fight, fight, fight for what's worthwhile. Most people who have power won't exercise it and, actually, that's why they've got power. Brad is really ballsy. He's not afraid to twist people's arms to make things happen."

One can see why the character of Jesse James would appeal to Brad Pitt. Both men have, in their different eras, had to watch their life stories being distorted in the tabloid press. Both men lost a little bit of their inner selves to the public domain.

Further parallels exist between Jesse James and Chopper Read. If Eric Bana's stunning performance in Dominik's debut feature is any guide, the serial offender - he was convicted of bank robbing, kidnapping and numerous firearms offences - combined the inclinations of a psychopath with a capacity for persuasive charm. The Assassination of Jesse James is one of the few films to address that outlaw's undoubted homicidal tendencies.

"Yeah, there is a real thematic solidarity between the films, I guess," Dominik says. "Jesse is way more self-aware than Mark is, though."

I wonder what sort of relationship Andrew currently has with Chopper Read. The director was partly responsible for spreading the villain's infamy throughout the globe. Every hard man in the western world seems to have a copy of the film resting on his coffee table.

"I haven't spoken to him for about four years now. He is pretty much the way he is in the movie, but he's run out of steam now. He hasn't been back to jail for years. That's pretty extraordinary for him. When he saw the film first he really felt it was about 99 per cent accurate. He always said that, inside himself, he felt normal, but when he saw himself on screen he realised he might be out of his mind."

So why have they seen so little of one another recently? "Well he changed his mind about the film. He left the woman he was with and went back to his ex-girlfriend and she hated the film because it dealt with the other woman. So Mark has since changed his mind about the movie. He's not allowed to like it."

So there you have it. Even Chopper Read is frightened of somebody.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford opens next Friday