Kevin Bacon and director Jon Watts are happy to be here. They’re 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 – Marvel’s eagerly anticipated reboot of Spider-Man – or desperately trying not to sound like they’re 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.) Cop Car stars Bacon as a corrupt sheriff whose car has been stolen by two prepubescent kids, and who will stop at nothing – even shocking violence – to get it back.
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 film’s young star Hays Wellford has his own fascinating theory about the movie’s unsettling conclusion. Some spoilers are to follow.
Related: ‘Cop Car’ Review: Babies, You Can’t Drive My Car
CRAVE: A lot of people have been talking about what this film isn’t. “It isn’t a feel good kids film about joyriding and a wacky sheriff.” But not enough people are talking about what it “is.” 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 don’t 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. It’s based on a recurring dream I had when I was a kid…
Which part?
Jon Watts: I’m like ten years old and I’m in the passenger seat of my mom’s car, and my friend Travis is driving, and he’s ten. And we’re driving around our small town and I’m afraid we’re going to get in trouble, and we keep passing people that know us but no one stops us. And then he’s going faster and faster and I’m getting more and more nervous that we’re going to crash, and that I wake up. It’s just this nervous tension dream that I’ve had my whole life.
Focus World
You just didn’t trust your best friend at the time?
Jon Watts: I don’t 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, “Whose police car is it?” and then with in mind we just sort of…
“Kevin Bacon.”
Kevin Bacon: [Laughs.]
Jon Watts: It’s Kevin Bacon’s! You know, I’ll tell you something that I haven’t told anyone else. One of the influences of the movie, because not my people… did you ever play Sierra adventure games, like King’s Quest?
Yeah, I died of dysentery many times. [Editor’s 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, Hero’s Quest, King’s Quest, and then all the LucasArts ones, Monkey Island and all that. We watched the playthrough of Police Quest 2…
Kevin Bacon: What’s a playthrough? I don’t know what that is.
Jon Watts: It’s one of these games where you’re just a character picking up objects and using them together, and there are police ones where you’re like trying to solve a crime, and the playthrough is just someone who has recorded their screen on their computer as they’re playing.
Sierra On-Line
You don’t 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: You’re just watching someone do it, and we watched the playthrough of Police Quest 2 and we’re like, “Let’s make a movie that’s sort of like that,” where you’re 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 you’ll get eaten by the snake!
Jon Watts: Exactly! And then it’s 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 hadn’t 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 don’t 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? “If I’m going to do this you’ve got to give me some more shit to play.” Because I’ve done that in the past, where I say I think it’s 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 don’t need any more scenes and I definitely don’t need any more lines, but I want to make sure that we’re 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 it’s seen, and the vibe and the feel of everything.
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 Kretzer’s 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, I’m asking you…!
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 wasn’t there. He’d 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 haven’t had guests over in a long time.
Kevin Bacon: Yeah. There’s some…
Jon Watts: A game of solitaire…
Kevin Bacon: There’s some beers around and it’s not… it hasn’t tipped into Hoarders, but it’s 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 don’t really know a lot about the kids’ backstory. They say they’ve run away. They say they’ve come 50 miles, but probably not.
Jon Watts: Yeah.
But we also don’t know a lot about Kevin and Shea Whigham’s backstory, and what exactly happened to them, and couldn’t help wanting to draw parallels, asking myself are these those two kids grown up, potentially? Is this the path where they’re going, eschewing responsibility, giving in to fits of violence…?
Kevin Bacon: I never thought of that.
That’s all just me being nuts. Okay.
Kevin Bacon: Well, it’s not you being nuts at all. It’s fantastic. I mean to me that’s what’s 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.
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 asked…
Kevin Bacon: That’s the kid with the longer hair.
Jon Watts: Yeah, yeah. Someone asked at the Q&A, “Did you guys make it at end?” And he was like, he thought about it for a really long time and was like, “I think that because of all the emotional stress that my character has been through, I think we’re still trapped in the back of the cop car and never actually got out, and the whole ending of the movie is my character’s hallucination that everything is going to be okay.”
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? That’s amazing. So if it’s open to interpretation I say that Hayes is right. That’s what it is.
Dimension Films
I like that a lot. There’s an elephant in the room and I have to ask about it… when is Clown coming out?
Jon Watts: I don’t know! It’s 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 haven’t 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, wasn’t that demanding of me? To see his other film? What an asshole!
Jon Watts: There was a moment though where I was like, “Oh no, is he going to watch it and then like, never return my phone calls?”
Kevin Bacon: No, I fucking loved it. I loved it. It’s awesome.
You know what they’re probably doing now is they’re probably waiting until Spider-Man comes out.
Jon Watts: Yeah.
Kevin Bacon: Oh gosh…
And they’ll put it out opening weekend as well. “See the other film from the director of Spider-Man!”
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, I’ve heard nothing but good things for, like, ever.
Jon Watts: Yeah! I’m a… I mean, I’m a fan of it. [Laughs.]
I would hope so.
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s 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.
