Interview: Matthew Vaughn

Not only is Vaughn young, rich, successful and married to a supermodel (Claudia Schiffer), but he now reckons he can direct films.

Sep 29 2004

The knives were out for Matthew Vaughn – and he knew it. This 33-year-old producer was fully aware that his decision to switch from producing to directing would go down like a lead balloon in some circles. Not only is Vaughn young, rich, successful, married to a supermodel (Claudia Schiffer) and now reckoning he can direct films as well as produce them, but he is also responsible for shoehorning Guy Ritchie into our cinemas and consciousness. For some people, that’s quite enough to lock him up and throw away the key forever.

However, favourable early reactions to Vaughn’s Layer Cake (an adaptation of the JJ Connolly novel of the same name, see Reviews) mean that I find a visibly relieved Vaughn when we meet. Still, wasn’t he tempting fate by picking a gangster story for his first film, especially when his two best-known producer credits, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, continue to spawn terrible pretenders to their throne? Haven’t we had enough Brit-gangster capers to last a lifetime?

‘I felt like I was putting a target on my head to be blown apart,’ Vaughn admits, ‘but also to pick a gangster movie was like putting fluorescent paint on my head so I couldn’t even hide in the dark.

‘I did give it a lot of thought though. I think the gangster genre has been unfairly treated. Every week there’s another romantic comedy, another thriller, another comedy… and they don’t get destroyed just for existing. I read the script and I believed it would be different. Yes, there are gangsters in the film, but they’re in the background. The foreground is Daniel Craig’s character and Michael Gambon’s, who are both gangsters but not like in all the other films we’ve done.’

Craig plays a smart, modern (and nameless) cocaine dealer who eschews an incriminating swagger and flash lifestyle in favour of an Audi and a practical approach to crime. The film opens with a long voiceover during which Craig declares his desire to quit the drugs game. Instead, events unfold to drag him into a dangerous vortex of double-crossing and power games, whether he likes it or not. It’s captivating, reserved, and Vaughn avoids caricature. He also manages to make London look alluring, dark and never clichéd. Along with the talents of Craig and Gambon, this all helps to elevate Layer Cake above the pack of recent homegrown gangster films. ‘We had a lot of non-actors on Lock, Stock… and Snatch,’ Vaughn explains.

‘As a first-time director, I wanted to cast the best actors I could get my hands on. Tweaking a performance is not hard, but pulling a performance out of someone who can’t even spell or read his name is bloody difficult. I had enough obstacles to jump over. I didn’t want to give myself more.’ It’s the first time that Craig has carried a film entirely, despite an already long and impressive career in films such as ‘Love is the Devil’ and ‘The Mother’. He gives a good performance – quiet, brooding, often silent. It’s very much his film.

‘Originally, the role was younger,’ say Vaughn. ‘Then an agent rang me and asked about Daniel, and I realised he had what I was looking for: he looks like Steve McQueen and he has the presence and the confidence to do what appears to be nothing. That’s hard, you’ve got all these other actors who are being a bit large, and you’ve got Daniel doing a Clint Eastwood. Even in the early rushes, Sony were worrying that no one was going to like the character, that we don’t know anything about him… I had to say, “Well, that’s him. If you don’t like it, go watch Bridget Jones 2 instead.”’ Talking to Vaughn, he never entirely removes his producer’s hat. He has worked in the film business since he was 19, which is 14 years now. He produced his first film, The Innocent Sleep, in 1996, when he was only 25. Lock, Stock… was his second, made for just £900,000.

‘I still think I’m a producer, I can’t say I’m a director yet,’ Vaughn admits, squirming a little. ‘I’m not ready to say it yet. I feel like a wanker saying it. It makes me grin and blush. But it’s all I want to do, assuming Layer Cake goes well.’ What sticks in the mind after watching Layer Cake are the brooding shots of Canary Wharf, from helicopters and from across the water in Greenwich. The nascent towers, flashing in the grey sky, neatly match the film’s nihilism and sense of a new order emerging.

‘I wanted to show the new bit of London,’ Vaughn explains. ‘And it reminded me of The Long Good Friday when Bob Hoskins is going “This is the future, and one day we’re going to be like fucking America!” He was bloody right!’