Video:Public Enemies - Bryan Burrough and Ann Biderman Interview
with Rebecca Murray'Public Enemies' author Bryan Burrough and screenwriter Ann Biderman teamed up on the red carpet at the film's LA premiere to talk about bringing Burrough's book to life on the big screen.
Transcript:Public Enemies - Bryan Burrough and Ann Biderman Interview
Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the LA Premiere of Public Enemies.
Author Bryan Burrough and Public Enemies Screenwriter Ann Biderman
I read the book. I loved the book and I was reading it thinking how the heck are they adapting this into a movie because there are so many different stories...
Bryan Burrough: "They took one."
What do you think about that?
Bryan Burrough: "I'm waiting for Public Enemies 2, Public Enemies 3, and Public Enemies 4."
Exactly. That actually could work.
Bryan Burrough: "Actually it had to be done that way. There's literally no way with all that was going on in that particular book that you could make anything short of a mini-series from the book, so you had to take one story. And I think if you were going to take one, Dillinger was the one to take. I think they've done a wonderful job - Ann and Michael [Mann] and everybody associated with the film."
When you writing it, is he the one that you were most enchanted with?
Bryan Burrough: "No. Oh no, I was a Bonnie and Clyde person from the word go. I put Dillinger off to the last because I knew so little about him. I just had never encountered him. I was intimated by the amount that had already been written. And it was only as I slowly got into it that I started to realize, 'Wow, this guy is the star of the story.'"
How easy was it for you to adapt his work?
Ann Biderman: "Not particularly easy. It was challenging, a tremendous amount of material but an abundance of riches."
Did you have to go outside of his work to get any of the research done, or did he provide everything?
Ann Biderman: "Michael and I did research on our own as well."
Bryan Burrough: "Michael had some angels that he wanted to accentuate that I had not done enough on."
Particularly?
Bryan Burrough: "Particularly the role of organized crime in setting up the context between the future of crime and kind of the past of crime, which is what Dillinger was. And that's a wonderful angle of the film that I'm happy to see played up and I wish I'd played it up more in the book."
Well there's your sequel to your book. What do you think of this cast?
Bryan Burrough: "What would you think? You're a writer who has written a book, you work over your garage, and you wake up one morning and Johnny Depp is going to be in a movie of your book. Oh, and by the way Christian Bale. Oh, and by the way, Michael Mann. How do you think I felt? I nearly fainted."
How long did it take you to work on that book?
Bryan Burrough: "Four and a half years."
And is everything that you found in your research in the book or do you have more?
Bryan Burrough: "Oh, god no. I actually had to cut the book by 25% in the last three months because my editor said I had too much. I fell in love with the topic, literally, loved it. Could have married it."
I actually had to map out the people because I couldn't follow them.
Bryan Burrough: "I know, there's just too much. I feel like in that book if I can get people through the first 20% I've got them. But where I lost people was the first 20%."
Why are we still fascinated with this time period?
Bryan Burrough: "It was the last time that literally cops and robbers were running around the country at large. It does not happen anymore. It can't happen anymore. Once somebody gets identified, whether it's the Unibomber or Andrew Cunanan, they're dead. They're caught. Law enforcement has advanced so far that these days are just gone. These were the, as Michael Mann loves to point out and the movie shows so wonderfully, this was the end of an era."