Punk Marvel. Punk Marvel. Punk Marvel.
During our interview, that’s the description Tony Kaye (dir: American History X) repeated six times to encapsulate his upcoming film, The Trainer.
The interview spanned everything from Green Apples to Edward Norton’s best performances to his reverence for The Beatles.
Kaye’s last feature, Detachment (star: Adrien Brody), was released over twelve years ago, and he was eager to detail the unlikely impact of Marvel movies on his new film:
“They make movies about intergalactic warfares, superheroes, incredible people... But what I've made here is a punk Marvel movie, which is about a human being and all the intergalactic warfare, the warfare, the war room inside the human mind, because The Trainer does have a deep analysis on mental health.”
Kaye’s The Trainer is deeply fascinated with distorting a core tenet of the superhero film: the god complex.
Here is his film’s synopsis:
Jack Flex, a delusional and shredded fitness expert living with his mother in LA, takes a maniacal swing at fame and fortune by inventing a weighted hat that promises to increase the flow of hope molecules to the brain, pursuing his version of the American Dream connecting with an army of celebrities and power brokers (Paris Hilton, Lenny Kravitz, John McEnroe, and Gus Van Sant make appearances).
Kaye pursued his American Dream in 1991, moving to the US from London after apexing as the most awarded commercial director in British history. In 1997, Tony Kaye started production of his first feature film, American History X, but later lost final cut in the editing room. This triggered Kaye to spend millions of dollars to reinstate his version of the film. But when these demands weren’t met, he took out a full-page ad in the NY Times calling for his director credit to be changed to “Humpty Dumpty.”
Kaye’s dead-set pursuit of artistic perfection broke the standard studio mechanism by which first-time directors' visions are consistently smothered (see Fincher’s Alien 3 or PT Anderson’s Hard Eight). For this, Kaye was effectively expelled from Hollywood.
Kaye, though, never stopped working, at points collaborating with Marlon Brando on new acting techniques and recently developing his acting method with the students of RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art).
His career was resurrected for a third act by the young and talented gallerist/actor/producer Vito Schnabel (EP: The Beach Bum), named after The Godfather’s Vito Corleone by his father Julian Schnabel (Dir: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).
Schnabel, who serves as co-writer, producer, and lead in The Trainer, literally knocked on Kaye’s door and brought him the idea for the film.
Kaye detailed his adaptation process:
“I went into [Vito’s] head with my soul-searching cameras and microphones. And I drew out this marvelous character called Jack Flex.”
Something he emphasized to me time and time again in his interview is he deeply studies all the actors he works with:
“What I'm interested in is extracting an acting performance from people in front of the camera. I am an actor's director. That's why when I worked with Edward Norton, I got his best performance of his fucking career. I worked with Adrian Brody on Detachment, a very underrated picture that Adrian's work is, is, is genius, beyond genius, beyond genius.”
Kaye is both a student, a deep studier of actors, and above all else, a trainer.
For More:
The Trainer premiered at the Rome Film Festival. No release date as of yet.
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