Chatting with John Dahl: From Gandhi to a Mobster Hit Man

Independent Film Channel LLC

If you're missing The Sopranos, I have a movie for you. You Kill Me is a black comedy starring Sir Ben Kingsley as Frank Falenczyk, a mobster hit man with a drinking problem. Like Tony Soprano seeking help from a therapist, Frank is forced to dry out by his mob boss' insistence, so he starts going to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Along the way, Franks gets a sponsor, played by Luke Wilson, and finds love with Laurel, a younger woman (played by Téa Leoni) whom he meets while working at a funeral home and helping her prepare her stepfather's funeral.

Jim Spellman/WireImage.com

I sat down recently with the movie's director, John Dahl, to talk mobsters, sobriety and working with Sir Ben.

You Kill Me was first written 10 years ago, but it's so current today with the popularity of The Sopranos and sobriety and recovery being in the news so much lately, especially in Hollywood.
Gangster movies are forever. The recovery angle is why it's so now. But it's a bit of a farce. This movie says the most important thing is to be sober. You kill a few people, so what? Just make sure you do it when you're sober.

Did you have AA advisers on the set?
No. People have asked me if I've gone to AA meetings to sort of source it out and I guess I felt going to an AA meeting to look around at people was sleazy. That's disrupting the whole integrity of it. One of the writers, Chris Markus, has a family member in AA—that's how it started. He went to a meeting and he came back to (cowriter) Stephen McFeely and said, "You can say whatever you want at these meetings!" So, they kind of tested the limits—what if you were a killer and getting sober meant killing people even better?

Did you call Ben Kingsley "Sir Ben"?
Out of respect, I called him Sir Ben, which is hard for Americans because we don't like titles. But, you know, he's such an elegant, very genuine, very sincere man. He's earned being a knighted English actor.

He's known for staying on set even when he's not shooting. Were you intimidated at all?
It's kind of great. He'll just be sitting there in a chair and people would talk to him a little bit, but not much. One day, when we were doing a big AA meeting scene, he spent most of the day talking to the extras. I said, "Do you want to go back to your trailer? You've got a big scene to do." But he said, "You know what? I realized when I was doing Gandhi how important the crowd and the extras are for me and my character. I feel like I'm rehearsing."

I grew up in John Gotti country in Howard Beach, New York, and you really got the feel of the Mob in this film. What is it about the Mafia that we find so fascinating?
It always used to amaze me. But I totally get why these guys are there and why the cops look the other way.

Why do you think they look the other way?
It's money. I think they just follow the money. Look at Los Angeles. If the city wanted to stop illegal drugs, they could. That's a huge cash economy in this city. Go downtown on a weekend—billions of dollars in cash. Also, there was a statistic that came out this year that said marijuana is the biggest cash crop in California. What's that tell you?