Six years between your first and second movie - why?
The truth of the matter is that it's very difficult to make this kind of movie. The evidence is all around you. Somewhere around 1980, there was a horrible perversion of the art form where somebody said "If you can summarise a movie in four words you've got a great movie." This is one of the worst ideas in the history of the planet. Also, it is frowned upon if you want to be critical of our culture and society. That is a product of a society that is very happy with itself. It doesn't have Watergate or Vietnam to contend with.
How did you design the look of the film?
It was an ambition with the movie to make it look like a series of paintings, to look almost seductively beautiful. It was like that line spoken by Burt Lancaster in Visconti's "The Leopard" - "the voluptuousness of death." There were to be no blacks - the moving equivalent of a painting by Caravagio. I took the director of photography and production designer on tours of museums and I also did paintings of each scene, which I did on my first movie as well.
Do you see "The Yards" as a film noir?
I spend a lot of my time trying to resist categorisation. I love film noir in cinema. Abraham Polonsky's "Force of Evil" is one of my favourite movies. But that seems to be the domain of the detective movie. What I was anxious to do was more of a social drama, which seems a genre that died. Something like "On the Waterfront".
Read a review of "The Yards".
Joaquin Phoenix, star of "The Yards".
