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Kevin Bacon and director Jon Watts are happy to be here. Theyâre laughing and smiling and sitting in a semi-dark room at The London West Hollywood, fielding question after question from journalists who are either desperately trying to get a quote from Watts about his next film â Marvelâs eagerly anticipated reboot of Spider-Man â or desperately trying not to sound like theyâre trying to get a quote, or both.
I sat down with Bacon and Watts with my own agenda: to learn all about the genesis of their incredible new film Cop Car, and what the heck they think this enigmatic crime thriller means. (I have my own theories.)Â Cop Car stars Bacon as a corrupt sheriff whose car has been stolen by two prepubescent kids, and who will stop at nothing â even shocking violence â to get it back.Â
What I discovered is that the film has more to do with dreams and video games than anyone in the audience might expect, and that the filmâs young star Hays Wellford has his own fascinating theory about the movieâs unsettling conclusion. Some spoilers are to follow.
Related: âCop Carâ Review: Babies, You Canât Drive My Car
CRAVE: A lot of people have been talking about what this film isnât. âIt isnât a feel good kids film about joyriding and a wacky sheriff.â But not enough people are talking about what it âis.â Is it a cautionary tale? What do you think of it as?
Jon Watts: [Laughs.] About not stealing police cars? I think you can take that lesson from it for sure. I mean, we never went into it thinking we want to tell a story to teach people some sort of lesson. It was more just an idea we had and we wanted to follow it through.
But you had to articulate your ideas to each other. How did you discuss the film? Did you think of it in terms of a straight out drama, or were you thinking about the crime genre, or the coming of age genre�
Jon Watts: I guess so, but I donât know if you do have to articulate it. I wrote it with my best friend so we have the same sort of sensibility. And the whole idea started as a dream. Itâs based on a recurring dream I had when I was a kidâŠ
Which part?
Jon Watts: Iâm like ten years old and Iâm in the passenger seat of my momâs car, and my friend Travis is driving, and heâs ten. And weâre driving around our small town and Iâm afraid weâre going to get in trouble, and we keep passing people that know us but no one stops us. And then heâs going faster and faster and Iâm getting more and more nervous that weâre going to crash, and that I wake up. Itâs just this nervous tension dream that Iâve had my whole life.
Focus World
You just didnât trust your best friend at the time?
Jon Watts: I donât know, I always thought it was a pretty evocative image though, so I thought maybe it would be cool if it was a police car, and then I was pitching that to [co-writer] Chris Ford and he was like, âWhose police car is it?â and then with in mind we just sort ofâŠ
âKevin Bacon.â
Kevin Bacon: [Laughs.]
Jon Watts: Itâs Kevin Baconâs! You know, Iâll tell you something that I havenât told anyone else. One of the influences of the movie, because not my people⊠did you ever play Sierra adventure games, like Kingâs Quest?
Yeah, I died of dysentery many times. [Editorâs Note: Sierra Entertainment did not produce Oregon Trail. Bibbs is wrong.]
Jon Watts: Yeah. [Laughs.] I loved those games growing up. All of them, like Police Quest, Heroâs Quest, Kingâs Quest, and then all the LucasArts ones, Monkey Island and all that. We watched the playthrough of Police Quest 2âŠ
Kevin Bacon: Whatâs a playthrough? I donât know what that is.
Jon Watts: Itâs one of these games where youâre just a character picking up objects and using them together, and there are police ones where youâre like trying to solve a crime, and the playthrough is just someone who has recorded their screen on their computer as theyâre playing.
Sierra On-Line
You donât have time to figure out all the tricks yourself but you want to see how the game is played.
Kevin Bacon: Oh, okay.
Jon Watts: Youâre just watching someone do it, and we watched the playthrough of Police Quest 2 and weâre like, âLetâs make a movie thatâs sort of like that,â where youâre just watching a character pick up objects and use them together, starting with this dreamy premise.
The first thing you have to do is plug up the snake hole. Otherwise youâll get eaten by the snake!
Jon Watts: Exactly! And then itâs like, what objects does he have in his car? How can he use them together to get his cop car back?
Kevin Bacon: Wow, you guys have got a lot of time on your hands.
Jon Watts: Really, I was surprised at how compelling it was to just watch Police Quest 2. [Laughs.]
So you had none of that in your head, Kevin? I know I talked to you at Sundance but I hadnât seen the film yet. You said that you were interested in the script and the story, but what did you talk about with Jon? What were your conversations together?
Kevin Bacon: You know, about the character, about who he would be. I think that I was initially afraid, [to Jon] or at least I donât know if you were afraid that⊠I was afraid he was going to think I was going to be lobbying for more lines, you know? âIf Iâm going to do this youâve got to give me some more shit to play.â Because Iâve done that in the past, where I say I think itâs there but I need to have another scene in order to really be able to tell the story of this guy. What I said to Jon was, I donât need any more scenes and I definitely donât need any more lines, but I want to make sure that weâre on the same page in terms of, like, who he is and whether or not we can give little hints to his life through the way that you shoot it, and itâs seen, and the vibe and the feel of everything.Â
Jon Watts: We talked about what cassette tapes he has in his truck.
Kevin Bacon: Yeah, stuff like that. We talked about that kind of stuff.
Focus World
We do get to see inside Kretzerâs house.
Jon Watts: Yeah.
Kevin Bacon: Yeah, that was an important thing. We talked a lot about that.
What was important to be in there? What was important to not be in there?
Kevin Bacon: Exactly.
Well, Iâm asking youâŠ!
Kevin Bacon: Specifically?
Yeah, what was important to you?
Kevin Bacon: I think we wanted to give the impression that he had had a family but that the family wasnât there. Heâd come back and it was just these dogs. So what happened in terms of that?
Jon Watts: And the carburator being fixed on the dining room table means you havenât had guests over in a long time.
Kevin Bacon: Yeah. Thereâs someâŠ
Jon Watts: A game of solitaireâŠ
Kevin Bacon: Thereâs some beers around and itâs not⊠it hasnât tipped into Hoarders, but itâs not really well taken care of, you know? And then the stuff in the duffel bag, obviously, and the blow, all that stuff.
Focus World
One of the things I was thinking as I was watching the film is that we donât really know a lot about the kidsâ backstory. They say theyâve run away. They say theyâve come 50 miles, but probably not.
Jon Watts: Yeah.
But we also donât know a lot about Kevin and Shea Whighamâs backstory, and what exactly happened to them, and couldnât help wanting to draw parallels, asking myself are these those two kids grown up, potentially? Is this the path where theyâre going, eschewing responsibility, giving in to fits of violenceâŠ?
Kevin Bacon: I never thought of that.
Thatâs all just me being nuts. Okay.
Kevin Bacon: Well, itâs not you being nuts at all. Itâs fantastic. I mean to me thatâs whatâs cool about the movie, is that we want people to try to fill in the blanks, and fill in the blanks for themselves I think.Â
What sort of blanks have you seen that are interesting to you, or have there been any odd interpretations, or unexpected theories?
Jon Watts: Yeah, the very, very best one is by Hays [Wellford], from the movie, talking about the ending. Someone askedâŠ
Kevin Bacon: Thatâs the kid with the longer hair.
Jon Watts: Yeah, yeah. Someone asked at the Q&A, âDid you guys make it at end?â And he was like, he thought about it for a really long time and was like, âI think that because of all the emotional stress that my character has been through, I think weâre still trapped in the back of the cop car and never actually got out, and the whole ending of the movie is my characterâs hallucination that everything is going to be okay.â
That kind of fits in with your dream.
Jon Watts: How crazy is that, that this ten-year-old kid came up with that ending? Thatâs amazing. So if itâs open to interpretation I say that Hayes is right. Thatâs what it is.
Dimension Films
I like that a lot. Thereâs an elephant in the room and I have to ask about it⊠when is Clown coming out?
Jon Watts: I donât know! Itâs come out in almost the rest of the world. Like, it did really well in Italy and got great reviews in England. I like follow it on Twitter. [Laughs.] But Dimension has it, they just havenât released it in the U.S. yet.
Kevin Bacon: Tragedy.
Jon Watts: Kevin saw it. Kevin insisted on seeing it before we made the movie. Forced me to do it.
Kevin Bacon: Yeah, wasnât that demanding of me? To see his other film? What an asshole!
Jon Watts: There was a moment though where I was like, âOh no, is he going to watch it and then like, never return my phone calls?â
Kevin Bacon: No, I fucking loved it. I loved it. Itâs awesome.
You know what theyâre probably doing now is theyâre probably waiting until Spider-Man comes out.Â
Jon Watts: Yeah.
Kevin Bacon: Oh goshâŠ
And theyâll put it out opening weekend as well. âSee the other film from the director of Spider-Man!âÂ
Jon Watts: That would be so funny.
That would be great.
Jon Watts: I mean, you know, you make a movie and you just hope people get to see it.
Yeah, Iâve heard nothing but good things for, like, ever.
Jon Watts: Yeah! Iâm a⊠I mean, Iâm a fan of it. [Laughs.]
I would hope so.
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William Bibbiani (everyone calls him âBibbsâ) is Craveâs film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.