wayne
  kramer

Neither South African vice squads nor
 crooked producers could keep
 The Cooler auteur Kramer from
reaching the director's chair.

KRAMER: 21 days.

 R: 21 days!  I'm like, "This guy is a genius!"  Your skill is really amazing, and I think you're going to be huge.  Not knowing you, I felt you in the movie.  I felt that your personality or you came across.  The way I recognize that is when the tone of a film has consistency.  The performances.  When there's thought behind the lighting and the design––all the details.  To me, there were no mistakes made in the film.  When I watch movies like Scarface, there's nothing wrong with the film, there's not a mistake.  There's not a bad wardrobe choice, there's not a bad prop.  When I was watching your movie, I was saying, "There are no mistakes."

 K: I see them.

 R: Of course you see them, and I'm sure DePalma saw things that were fucked up in Scarface, but the truth is, to me, you have a tremendous understanding and control over the end result.  How old were you when you knew you wanted to be a director?  Or did you want to be a writer first?

 K: No, I always wanted to be a writer and director.  I never really separated the two.  I just always saw it as "filmmaker."  I was really young, probably ten.

 R: I was eight.

 K: I loved things that were dark and gritty like the Alien movies, Blade Runner, Chinatown.  I was obsessed, literally obsessed, with A Clockwork Orange.  Maybe it was just growing up in South Africa where the movie was banned.  They banned all of the interesting, controversial movies like Last Tango in Paris and The Exorcist.  And they would cut them if they weren't banned.  Video was a godsend for me because I could finally get pirated videos of these movies coming in from England and other countries, and I could see them for the first time.  Then somebody at my high school narc'd on me to the vice squad, and they came and raided my house.  I said to the vice squad cop who was taking away my precious copy of A Clockwork Orange, "I guarantee you I'll have another copy of it in a week."

 R: Who snitched on you?

 K: Some kid at school.

 R: What an asshole.  Did you do a short film?

 K: I did.  I didn't have wealthy parents, so only at age 14 or 15 did they manage to buy me a Super 8 camera.  I went to Johannesburg School of the Arts for the last two years of high school.  Previously I was at this fascist all boys' school where I was just dying, so I got all these students together and made a little horror film that was Friday the 13th-inspired.  I got these friends of mine who were in the art
 department to act in it, and they were just   terrible.  I showed some of the dailies to
   one of my art teachers, and he just--
    everyone just trashed it.  And I said,
     "Fuck it, I'm going to shoot it again...

 
D.P. James Whitaker preps a set-up.
 
Maria Bello and William Macy.


 
Camera crew.
Ratner: I saw your movie at Sundance at a midnight show.  I slept through most of the films at Sundance.  Yours was the only one that, not only did I not sleep, but I was literally on the edge of my seat focused on the screen.  I'm completely fascinated with anything that has to do with Vegas and gambling.  If I wasn't in the movie business, I'd be in the casino business.  I loved your film so much.  Not only the story that you told, but visually––because I know how hard it is, believe me, to shoot in a casino.  I did Rush Hour 2 in a casino.  It was what I wanted to do but couldn't (laughs) because of the scale.  When I found out you shot the movie in 30 days––

The Cooler production stills:
Alec Baldwin's light is read.