Todd Phillips: ​‘The world is wak­ing up to the fact that the sys­tem is rigged’

Todd Phillips has worked in Hol­ly­wood long enough to know exact­ly how the game works and how to play it. He dropped out of film school in the ear­ly ​’90s to make a doc­u­men­tary about the noto­ri­ous punk rock­er GG Allin, and by the end of the decade he was mak­ing his first main­stream com­e­dy, the Amer­i­can Pie-lite col­lege romp, Road Trip. Yet despite going on to achieve mas­sive com­mer­cial suc­cess with The Hang­over films and 2010’s Due Date, his career tra­jec­to­ry up to this point has been nei­ther cal­cu­lat­ed nor espe­cial­ly tac­ti­cal. He has no inter­est in mak­ing a Mar­vel movie or reboot­ing a fran­chise for a quick buck. His phi­los­o­phy is sim­ple: make the movies that you would go see.

Com­e­dy is Phillips’ forte – specif­i­cal­ly bud­dy movies of the barf-and-ban­ter vari­ety – and although his new film, War Dogs, isn’t quite the laugh-a-minute thrill ride you might be expect­ing, it nonethe­less feels like a nat­ur­al exten­sion of his film­mak­ing style. It’s fun­ny, but it’s also Phillips’ most dra­mat­ic and polit­i­cal film, owing to the fact that it takes place dur­ing the Iraq War and tells the insane true sto­ry of a pair of cocky, Scar­face-aspir­ing gun run­ners (played by Jon­ah Hill and Miles Teller) who bite off more than they can chew. We sat down with the writer/​director recent­ly to dis­cuss some of the film’s themes and get his thoughts on the state of mod­ern comedy.

LWLies: War Dogs isn’t strict­ly a polit­i­cal film, but it res­onates part­ly because of the fact we’re still deal­ing with the fall­out of the Iraq War.

Phillips: Yeah, well this movie takes place at a time when America’s for­eign pol­i­cy couldn’t have been worse, when our boy George Bush was run­ning the shit show. The rea­son I want­ed to make this movie wasn’t polit­i­cal, although I do believe in the pol­i­tics of the movies. But real­ly, the part that blew my mind was the fact that this was a true sto­ry. Ulti­mate­ly, at the end of the movie, you realise that it’s not an indict­ment on these two kids who just found a loop­hole and took advan­tage of it, it’s actu­al­ly an indict­ment on the Pen­ta­gon and their lack of over­sight and their will­ing­ness to look the oth­er way when it ben­e­fit­ted them. So in that respect it’s very much a polit­i­cal state­ment, but it’s the truth that turned me on to it.

There’s a lot of talk about how we’ve now entered the post-satire age. What’s your take on that?

It cer­tain­ly seems that way. Also there’s a thing going on right now where the world as a whole is wak­ing up to the fact that the sys­tem is rigged, that the shit is stacked up against the lit­tle guy. So when you get movies like The Big Short or Mon­ey Mon­ster or hope­ful­ly even this movie, you realise that these char­ac­ters are pawns. I do feel like that’s become more of a thing recent­ly in movies. It hap­pens to be Trump’s theme, even though he couldn’t be more part of the fuck­ing sys­tem if he tried. The guy has balls, you’ve got to give him that.

The Pen­ta­gon is con­spic­u­ous in its absence in War Dogs. It feels shady and face­less. Was that a con­scious reflec­tion of how the organ­i­sa­tion appears from the per­spec­tive of ordi­nary Amer­i­can citizens?

It was, because these guys didn’t deal with the Pen­ta­gon direct­ly all that much. What the Pen­ta­gon was doing was using all these mid­dle men that gave them just the right amount of dis­tance. The real­i­ty is you couldn’t source 100 mil­lion rounds of AK ammu­ni­tion in the world unless you did it in a nefar­i­ous way. The Pen­ta­gon knew that; there was a drought after two Iraq wars, so they knew these kids were going to acquire them ille­gal­ly. Bradley Cooper’s char­ac­ter says in the movie, ​“The gov­ern­ment wants to look the oth­er way, don’t give them a rea­son not to.” They gave them a rea­son not to because they end­ed up on the cov­er of the New York Times.

This feels like a dark­er, more mature film than we’re used to see­ing from you.

Yeah, I mean the Hang­over films got pret­ty dark…

Sure, but this isn’t a com­e­dy in the con­ven­tion­al sense…

Right. The thing is, there’s dra­ma here. I guess it is a more mature film. It’s a true sto­ry and we want­ed to make it as real as pos­si­ble, so we tried to stick close to the sto­ry. I think one of the films that helps things feel more real is, real life is a blend of com­e­dy and dra­ma: your days days are nev­er entire­ly dra­mat­ic, and they’re prob­a­bly nev­er entire­ly comedic. Life has its moments, you know – even when you’re ridicu­lous­ly sad some­thing fun­ny can hap­pen. I think that helps to ground it and make it feel more authen­tic and real. It wasn’t like I was try­ing to do a hybrid thing.

Whether it’s The Hang­over films or this, do you always get to make the movies you want to make?

I would say so. I’ve been offered some pret­ty big movies, super­heroes movies and oth­er stuff of that ilk. Those aren’t the movies that I go see. The stuff I make gen­er­al­ly lies with­in my taste at that par­tic­u­lar point in my life. I wouldn’t even make Road Trip now but at that moment that was a movie I would have gone to see. I kind of go with my taste above think­ing of my career and what would be a smart movie for me to make. I had built up a lot of good­will at Warn­er Bros; we made four movies in five years that all made a good amount of mon­ey for them which is what they wor­ry about. So I was able to use some of that good­will to get War Dogs made. This isn’t a movie that would get made in most studios.

Was it a ​‘one for me’ type deal?

A lit­tle bit, sure. The thing is, in Hol­ly­wood good­will is per­ish­able – it doesn’t last for­ev­er, so you’ve got to use it while you can. So that’s what I did, because I want­ed to tell a sto­ry that was a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent from what I’ve done before. What I’m say­ing is, it’s not like the stu­dio were dying to make this movie. They’re whole thing was, ​‘Okay, we believe in you, put a good cast togeth­er and go.’

What are the sto­ries that excite you now?

Stuff like this, stuff that’s based in real­i­ty. It’s fun­ny, my lit­tle pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that I start­ed when I was first get­ting into mak­ing films was called Stranger Than Fic­tion Films. It’s very much always been in my blood, telling sto­ries that explore and uncov­er the absurd­ness of real­i­ty. But my favourite thing in the world is direct­ing come­dies. That’s what I real­ly get a kick out of. There’s noth­ing quite like get­ting 500 peo­ple in a movie the­atre to laugh at the same time, it’s pret­ty exhilarating.

Adding laugh­ter into the world is nev­er a bad thing, right?

You know, one of my favourite things is when some­one recog­nis­es me – which is not that often by the way – and tell me that they saw one of my movies on TV or what­ev­er and it put them in a good mood. It feels good to bring a lit­tle humour into people’s lives.

A lot of peo­ple will recog­nise you from your cameos appear­ances in your movies – is there a rea­son that char­ac­ter doesn’t fea­ture in War Dogs?

He doesn’t show up in every movie. His name is Bar­ry, by the way. He actu­al­ly just out­right refused to work with Jon­ah Hill – I think there’s an exist­ing beef there. No… it’s just a ran­dom thing, I only real­ly do it if I feel par­tic­u­lar­ly inspired. He wasn’t in Hang­over 2 but he was in one and three, he was in Due Date. He’s the same guy. If you actu­al­ly track him through the movies… In Due Date he’s liv­ing with Juli­ette Lewis’ char­ac­ter, who he slept with in Old School, and he’s rais­ing Will Ferrell’s kids from Old School in Due Date.

That’s kind of tragic.

It is. But you know, every dog has his day…

Have you ever seen that super­cut some­one made of every McBain clip in The Simp­sons? If you put every sequence togeth­er it reveals an entire movie with­in the show.

Is that true?! That’s amaz­ing. I’m watch­ing that as soon as I get home.

What’s the secret to good comedy?

I think cast­ing. If you put the right group of peo­ple togeth­er, as long as they come from dif­fer­ent places comed­ical­ly, as long as you’re not tap­ping the same nerve, you’re gonna get that thing that every­one looks for which is chem­istry. Cast­ing is every­thing, and not just to com­e­dy but every movie. When it works well, you shouldn’t be able to pic­ture anoth­er actor in that role. You know you hear those sto­ries about how Will Smith was going to play Neo in the Matrix – how weird would that be? It prob­a­bly would have been fuck­ing awe­some, but in your mind it just doesn’t work.

Were Jon­ah and Miles your num­ber one tar­gets for this movie?

We wrote the movie for Jon­ah, so I wasn’t going to accept a no from him. It took us a while to pin him down though, he’s a busy guy, and he’s selec­tive too. The rea­son we want­ed him is that he iden­ti­fies the tone of the movie just by being in it – in oth­er words, the fact that he’s done dra­ma and done com­e­dy means he’s able to con­vey the tone of the movie on the poster or what­ev­er. And Miles is real­ly a busy guy as well, he works more than a fuck­ing porn actor. He was a great coun­ter­punch to Jon­ah though, and it was impor­tant that we found some­one who felt ground­ed and sympathetic.

What makes you laugh?

Dan­ger; comedic dan­ger. Will Fer­rell to me is dan­ger­ous, and by that I mean when I see him in a movie I don’t know what the fuck he’s going to do. And espe­cial­ly when you have a face like Will, who has these real­ly angel­ic eyes. His thing is, he nev­er meant to do wrong but he always does wrong. I love that.

What do you love about movies?

What I love about movies is what’s dis­ap­pear­ing which is the group expe­ri­ence. When I make a movie, the way we choose music and way we choose wardrobe for a film, I’m think­ing about the audience’s reac­tion to a moment. So noth­ing bums me out more than where every­thing is head­ed now, which is iPhone’s and TV. We’re going to lose that shared expe­ri­ence, which is so pre­cious and so powerful.

War Dogs is released 26 August.