CraveOnline: Was The Iliad always the book Claire and Noah were going to focus on?
Rob Cohen: Yeah.
Why? What was the reason for that particular choice?
You know, in the first draft there was no reason why. Right? It was just, she was a classics teacher at a private school – I made it a public school – [and] he seemed to be interested in that arena. But I got down to the Achilles part of it, because Achilles is a very interesting hero, or anti-hero, in Homer, in The Iliad. One of the things I began to see is, if you identify with Achilles, then you’re already halfway to being a sociopath, because Achilles was a sociopath. He believed that anything he did was justifiable because he did it.
And anybody who goes through life going, “It’s okay for me to kill these people at Charlie Hebdo because I did it, I was justified because they were doing X, Y and Z,” those people are going to be in trouble. It’s one thing when you have a classical hero that kills and humiliates, pulls Hector around behind his chariot and defames him, and is at war – a war he’s going to lose – and all the time justifying it, justifying it… So I sort of made it a little more directly related to Noah.
“If you identify with Achilles, then you’re already halfway to being a sociopath, because Achilles was a sociopath.”
When Noah gives her a first edition of The Iliad, that book’s really old. Is that like a thousand-year-old book? I don’t understand how this works…
No, that’s a first edition of a modern edition.
There was some confusion, like, “How old is that book…?”
The book is probably… a book like that was probably published in the ‘50s, with gilt on the cover. I’m a book collector so I picked that one out, so it’s like a 1950 edition of The Iliad. In real life a book like that costs $300 from a bookseller. He says he picked it up at a garage sale. Well, in the backstory we know he inherited the parents’ money, because he’s [SPOILER] the sole heir and no one’s pinned the murder on him. [END SPOILER.] So whether he bought it at some expense and said it was a garage sale, or it really was a garage sale…
Who’s to say?
It’s a gift. He wants to show her that they have a bond. Open her eyes. “You see, we have a bond. I think you’re really sexy.”
Thank you!
Oh…
Oh, sorry.
Well, you are.
Well, thank you very much.
I’m sure you have a lot of women.
That is not true at all.
Now you’ll take a page from Noah’s book…
I think everyone should use this film as a handy how-to guide. You should make a video…
[Laughs.]
…that’s like a “How To Guide to Dating” from Noah’s perspective.
That would be so sick!
Wouldn’t that be twisted? That might be really funny.
That would be a twisted thing…
It’s not too late to get it on the Blu-ray. That’s all I’m saying.
I know. I’m going to be like, “Stop production!”
