“L.I.E.” has jumped from must-see film on the festival circuit to bona fide controversy thanks to its NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
The controversy over therating is as much about what “L.I.E.” does not have — explicit sexual activity or graphic violence — as about what it does. The leading character, Big John, is a middle-aged ex-Marine with a predilection for sex with teenage boys. Most importantly, his contradictions and complexities are closer to Shakespeare’s villains than to the easy-to-spot, dehumanized bad guys of most movies.
The NC-17 rating is the imprimatur of the film’s power, says Brian Cox, the Scottish-Irish stage and screen actor who plays Big John.
“The rating validates the film. The reason it has the rating is because people don’t know how to react when they are sitting in the darkness of the cinema with themselves and the movie, and all their prejudices and all their fears come to the fore and it scares them,” says Cox.
“L.I.E.” stands for Long Island Expressway, which slices through the suburban enclave where a group of restless teenage boys engages in petty crime. The sensitive Howie (Paul Franklin Dano) is battling his grief for his mother, who was killed in a car accident on the highway. No less painful is his father’s emotional distance. Howie’s pal Gary (Billy Kay), a rebellious kid, entices Howie to burglarize homes in the neighborhood, among them the dwelling belonging to Big John, a man well known to Gary. Howie then becomes an easy target for Big John. We see Howie precariously balancing on the railing that overlooks the highway, and “L.I.E.” itself is no less precariously balanced — portraying Big John not only as predatory and manipulative but also as a father figure to the fragile boy.
” Director and Long Island native Michael Cuesta says that Lot 47, the distributor, had the option of releasing the film without a rating rather than take the MPAA’s NC-17. But many theater chains will not exhibit unrated films.
“We appealed for an R rating and did not get it. They said the subject matter is inappropriate.” says Cuesta.
Cuesta first wrote the script for “L.I.E.” with his brother, Gerald Cuesta. But they had trouble making Big John a multifaceted character, Michael Cuesta says. He called upon old friend Stephen Ryder, a former policeman who has made a second career as a writer and actor. The Bronx native drew on his experiences as a cop and a police reporter for The New York Daily News to realize the character on the page.
“We had a few characters like Big John in my neighborhood growing up, but after I became a cop we used to deal with these guys all the time. These kinds of guys inevitably come to the attention of the police,” says the burly Ryder, who looks like central casting’s dream of a cop-turned-writer. “Mike came under a tremendous amount of pressure to make Big John into this cartoon monster. I am in awe of his constant resistance to that.”
The young director and the veteran writer spent a lot of time huddled over the script to make not just Big John but the characters of the boys complex and realistic. They readily recall a breakthrough moment. “We were having lunch, and I asked Steve, `What does Big John want? What motivates him at his core?’ ” says Cuesta. “And Steve said, `To be a father.’ And boom, we were home from that day. I felt for the character, because he can never be a father because of his sexual dysfunction.”
For Cox, who first came to the United States in 1976 and moved permanently in 1991, shooting on Long Island showed him a peculiar side to American.
“When I first came to America, all I knew was what I saw on the screen growing up in Scotland. Now America means more wasteland, gaps between Wendy’s, the kind of lives that produce [what happened at] Columbine. That’s ripe for drama. And it is unplumbed.”
