‘King Ivory’ Cast on Making Fentanyl Crisis Crime Thriller: Venice Film Festival

An action thriller from independent director John Swab Royal Ivorya multi-faceted dive into the U.S. fentanyl crisis that weaves together threads from different perspectives on the war on drugs made its world premiere at Horizons Extra strand at the Venice Film Festival this week. Most of the principal cast were in attendance to reunite at the Lido after filming on a temporary basis last year in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The story follows Tulsa narcotics cop Layne West (James Badge Dale) as his battle against a local criminal element hits too close to home when his son becomes addicted to fentanyl. West sets his sights on taking down those responsible, including local Mexican cartel quarterback Ramón Garza (Michael Mando), Brotherhood Indian War Chief Holt Lightfeather (Graham Greene), who controls the statewide trade while serving a life sentence at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, and the local Irish Mob family gang, led by George “Smiley” Greene (Ben Foster), his mother, Ginger (Melissa Leo), and his uncle, Mickey (Ritchie Coster).

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Swab, who is from Tulsa and has been sober for nine years, has been open about his time as an addict. In his research for Royal Ivory (street name for fentanyl) spent time with the families of drug addicts, active junkies, government officials, police officers, trafficking victims, criminals, cartel members and prisoners.

Deadline spoke with Dale (1923, High city, Died), Mando (You better call Saul, Criminal) and Warrior Oscar winner Leo, who previously worked with Swab, discusses his experiences on the set of the film. Below are excerpts from those conversations, which have been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Jeremy M. Rosen is producing through his Roxwell Films banner, in his eighth collaboration with Swab. WME Independent is selling domestic rights.

DEADLINE: Melissa, how did you get involved? Royal Ivory?

MELISSA LEO: Well, there’s one answer to that question, John Swab. He’s a spectacular director who is incredibly, incredibly prolific and constantly exploring things that are familiar themes, but exploring them in ways that haven’t had the opportunity to be explored yet.

So with Royal Ivorywhat we’re looking at is fentanyl. Without any judgment, John magically explains in this video: this shit will kill anyone. It will kill the people who sell it. It will kill the people who buy it. It will kill the people who do it for the first time. It will kill the people who don’t know they’re doing it. It will kill the people who are hardened addicts.

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DEADLINE: Your character is a bit ambiguous because he’s part of a mafia family but at the same time he’s trying to protect his son.
LION: The gentle way in which (Swab) explores this difficult subject matter, in my mind, removes these ideas of bad people and good people. She’s a woman who’s a mother and grew up in God knows what circumstances… But I imagine, because of the nature of her brother, it’s a pretty criminal environment, and you grow up knowing what you know and you make your way in the world. So I don’t think she’s bad, evil or good. She’s a human being, a complicated human being. And that’s what draws me to working with John.

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DEADLINE: Michael, your character also seems to care a lot about his family, but at the same time is responsible for forcing people into the drug trade.
MICHAEL MANDO: What I find interesting about gangsters is that they are very human. We tend to put certain people in a category as if they are separate, right? They are human, just like everyone else. They have families, they have a sense of humor, they have compassion, they just have a point of view on the world that is very different from most of us on the other side of the border. And I think that comes from growing up with nothing, without opportunities, without seeing doors, at least from their perspective, not seeing how they can afford to feed their families and they come into it at a young age, like the younger character in this movie, and sometimes from outside circumstances.

Ramón Garza deep down wants to get caught. I think he’s a guy with a conscience who has an epiphany after seeing all this violence. He realizes, “I can keep running, but this is not the world I want my daughter to grow up in.” And I think there’s a certain parallel, even though their paths never cross, but there’s a certain parallel (with Dale’s West, who is also a father).

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DEADLINE: James, before you joined us, how well did you know about the fentanyl crisis in the States?

JAMES BADGE DALE: I did a lot of digging into it when I was preparing for the role. We have to protect the younger generations. I don’t have the solutions or anything, but it’s a problem that we have to deal with. And it’s going to keep evolving into something else. We have a responsibility to the younger generation to take care of them and hopefully inform them and make sure they’re okay. I have children. I’m scared for my children. I mean, my children are young, but I don’t know what’s going to happen in 10 years, and maybe it’s going to be something new.

LION: This is not John’s or his video’s statement, this is Melissa’s opinion on the subject. I think the opioid crisis is being inflicted by the United States government on its own citizens as a way to control people. It is my feeling that the government no longer has a religion to control the masses.

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DEADLINE: Is it important for you to pursue projects that raise important issues?

LION: That in itself is not particularly important. I am not a politician. I am an actor, right? What has become incredibly important to me, as I turn 64 in a few weeks, is the portrayal of women. And I am horrified to death by the inaccuracy of the portrayal of women in the United States, and I am even more horrified by the portrayal of women of a certain age.

John used my experience in the most delightful way, and my experience, my opinion, my taste; he gave me this incredible gift from a director to an actor, that he respects my perspective on the character, and I work with him because I have the opportunity to show women — even if it’s a smaller role — that I can see them.

DEADLINE: How did John facilitate filming in his hometown?

HOLE: Tulsa was kind of the Wild West — handheld, two-camera, running and disappearing, super young crew that had worked with John before. So we move around in that way, but John can just say, “Yo, yo, man, do you want to be in a movie?” So it’s paperwork, boom, boom, boom, they throw you in there, and he has this ability to talk to people that other people would maybe be afraid to talk to, communicate with them, invite them in.

MANDO: We had a scene where we had two guys who worked with my character, and we were in a car, and there was this whole intimidation scene with us. We literally grabbed two guys off the street. And it was fascinating when you’re working with, you know, great actors like James and Ben and Melissa, but also people who have never been on camera, and you and the director have to find a way to get them to perform.

LION: Tulsa is John’s favorite place, he knows it like Scorsese knows New York. It’s great to work with him there.

HOLE: You could tell John had put so much of himself into it, his heart and soul, and that meant something to him. It was a special job for me—that’s exciting when a writer-director has such a personal stake in it, and with his story, and he’s shooting in his hometown. It was a really tight script.

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DEADLINE: That was a really tight session, wasn’t it?

HOLE: We were trying to finish the film before the strike, so when they didn’t reach an agreement, we suspended production for five days. We were one of the first films to apply for a temporary contract, and we were in the first group of, I think, 30 films to get a contract. But we’re an independent film, so we lose five days of shooting, we don’t have the money to make those five days back. So we stepped up. We just went to six-day weeks.

DEADLINE: To what extent did your paths cross, given the film’s structure of separate but ultimately interconnected storylines?

MANDO: I have one scene with James and we don’t talk in that scene, and then I have one scene with Ben and we don’t talk in that scene either. It was so interesting. You see the other side of the story and you go, “Oh, you’re there. You’re the guy who’s trying to take me down.”

HOLE: I love these kinds of films where you weave these threads together. For us in Venice, the best thing is that I get to see Michael’s work. I get to see Ben and Melissa’s work. I get to see what they put into it. And it was one of those shoots that had this palpable energy of everyone giving their all every day, and that’s, I think, the spirit of filmmaking.