Brax­ton Pope: ​‘You’re nev­er caught off guard with Paul’

Brax­ton Pope knows a mav­er­ick genius when he sees one. The inde­pen­dent film pro­duc­er of The Card Counter, The Canyons and The Trust has worked with Paul Schrad­er, Nico­las Cage, Bret Eas­t­on Ellis and Kanye West (to name a few) and has exper­i­ment­ed with var­i­ous fundrais­ing tech­niques such as Kickstarter.

In an increas­ing­ly homogenised film cul­ture, he takes chances on mer­cu­r­ial tal­ent, eclec­tic scripts and direc­tors ban­ished from the main­stream. Orig­i­nal­ly work­ing in acqui­si­tions, he leapt into pro­duc­ing to have a greater han­dle on projects that bore his name. At the con­clu­sion of awards sea­son, he now reflects on Schrader’s mas­ter­ful Card Counter being left emp­ty-hand­ed, how Tiffany Had­dish came to join the film and the ups and downs of work­ing with Lind­say Lohan.

LWLies: What did you make of the awards season’s reac­tion to The Card Counter?

Pope: I thought that com­ing out of the fall fes­ti­vals that we were in with a good shot, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Inde­pen­dent Spir­it Awards but it was not to be. It’s real­ly tough to know how awards sea­son is going to play out and why cer­tain deci­sions are made or not made. Oscar Isaac deliv­ered such an impres­sive per­for­mance, a tremen­dous per­for­mance, he was so dialled in.

How did you come to pro­duce The Card Counter?

Paul Schrad­er and I are close, so when­ev­er he has a project, we com­mu­ni­cate and talk about it. He sent me the script and I remem­ber I was hik­ing and it was just this tremen­dous­ly com­pelling sto­ry. We got togeth­er and the idea was for me to pro­duce, archi­tect the financ­ing and put the whole thing togeth­er. We met when Lion­s­gate hired Bret Eas­t­on Ellis to write this shark movie and Paul came on board as direc­tor. The Euro­pean financ­ing on that went rogue and the movie implod­ed but I stayed in touch with Paul.

The first time you worked togeth­er was on The Canyons, which was crowd­fund­ed on Kick­starter, how did that come together?

After the shark movie fell apart, Schrad­er got in touch with me and said what Bret writes can be filmed rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive­ly as it’s peo­ple talk­ing in rooms. So he pro­pos­es that I pro­duce, Bret writes and he directs – the plan was to finance it, sell it and own it with­out being sub­ject to oth­er enti­ties. After Lind­say Lohan came on board there was nev­er real­ly a ques­tion of doing it any oth­er way because she couldn’t get insured and equi­ty investors would see it as dicey. I’ve nev­er done crowd­fund­ing since – I’ve not need­ed to – but I’m not opposed to it. The Canyons was a spe­cial cir­cum­stance and I viewed it as a pro­gres­sive exper­i­ment, some­thing for­ward think­ing to just try out. I didn’t know if it was going to work but I thought it was an inter­est­ing resource and I have no regrets about it at all – it worked for us.

How did you come to cast Lind­say Lohan?

I had some con­nec­tions to her at the time. She was going through some per­son­al tur­moil but she agreed to meet with me and Paul at the Château Mar­mont to dis­cuss a role that wasn’t the lead, it was a ter­tiary char­ac­ter. Lind­say very ear­ly in the meet­ing says ​‘I want to do the movie but I want to be the lead and that’s the only way I’ll do the movie.’ Lind­say has a charis­ma and I looked over at Schrad­er and I could tell that he was not exact­ly immune to her charis­ma. I knew what his answer was going to be. It didn’t near­ly hap­pen because a jour­nal­ist Stephen Rodrick from The New York Times was going to be embed­ded with us for a sto­ry. Schrad­er want­ed him, Lind­say did not. It almost became a game of chick­en and nei­ther would bend and it was giv­ing us all a degree of anx­i­ety. But in the end every­thing moved for­ward and he wrote his story.

What was she like to work with?

If you sched­uled things in the after­noon then there was lit­tle prob­lem but it was more chal­leng­ing have ear­ly morn­ing call times. Lind­say is very gift­ed and a very tal­ent­ed per­former but there are cer­tain aspects of her back­ground that would make life in gen­er­al a chal­lenge. When­ev­er we were film­ing, there were paparazzi chas­ing her. At my house there’s an alley and then a wall and paparazzi would jump over the wall. It was crazy. TMZ would reach out to peo­ple on the pro­duc­tion and try and get infor­ma­tion on her. It was this strange, strange thing. I still root for Lindsay.

How did Tiffany Had­dish come to be in The Card Counter?

The orig­i­nal idea was Ker­ry Wash­ing­ton and we were talk­ing to her when her sched­ule changed so she couldn’t do it and the role opened up. So then I sent Paul some infor­ma­tion on Tiffany and I believe he looked it over and then spoke to her. I don’t know if he ever watched Girls Trip but he felt like her back­ground as a com­ic would infuse the film with an ener­gy and dynamic.

What’s Paul Schrad­er like to produce?

Paul’s a genius – a hyper intel­li­gent guy who is very unfil­tered, at times brusque and incred­i­bly direct and can­did. I love Paul, but is he a dream to work with? No. I enjoy the expe­ri­ence of spend­ing time with him but as a pro­duc­er, you’re nev­er caught off guard with him because he’s very defin­i­tive in what he wants and he com­mu­ni­cates excep­tion­al­ly well – very clear­ly. There’s no improv, he only shoots what ends up in the movie. He’s very much like a surly gen­er­al but it’s a plea­sure to watch him direct, espe­cial­ly how he directs actors.

He nev­er wants to give an actor too much so always approach­es the actor in this real­ly low key way and gives just one note, the most impor­tant obser­va­tion he has. He thinks so deeply about every­thing. I talk to Nico­las Cage quite a bit and he’s worked with Paul a cou­ple of times. It’s inter­est­ing for me to get Nic’s per­spec­tive on work­ing with Paul – they’re very much on the same wave­length in that they like per­for­mances that give more ques­tions than answers.