‘Pain Hustlers’ Director David Yates Discusses His ‘Harry Potter’ Past – Armessa Movie News

The Big Picture

• Netflix’s “Pain Hustlers” is a scandal comedy in the vein of “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Dumb Money.”
• Director David Yates discusses wanting to create a contemporary story about the opioid crisis and a healthcare system motivated by profit.
• The narrative of the film focuses on Emily Blunt’s morally gray character, Liza Drake, and the ways in which good people can become corrupt in the face of money and moral dilemmas.

Netflix’s scandal comedy, Pain Hustlers, is in the vein of The Wolf of Wall Street and, more recently, Dumb Money, which premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Director David Yates, of the Harry Potter franchise fame, helmed the production with Emily Blunt starring as Liza Drake, a single mother who gets wrapped up in a pharmaceutical nightmare in the wake of the opioid crisis.

Based on the book by Evan Hughes, Pain Hustlers follows Liza’s rise from living in her mother’s (Catherine O’Hara) garage as a stripper to becoming an influential and crucial player in the failing Zanna Pharmaceutical’s turn-around. Unable to make ends meet and kicked out of the garage, Liza finds an opportunity with a client from the club she works at, Pete Brenner (Chris Evans), who offers her a job with Zanna. Here, she puts her people skills to the test and excels as she pushes the sales of their new, dangerous cancer drug. As Zanna enjoys financial success, so too does Drake, but at what cost?

In an interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Yates discusses wanting to create “a contemporary story that was part of the national conversation” and considers a healthcare system designed to profit rather than heal. He talks about focusing the story on Blunt’s morally gray Liza Drake, what it’s like working with the streaming giant Netflix versus a studio like Warner Bros., and the ways the narrative changed after test screenings. Yates also weighs in on the pros and cons of AI within the industry, adding, “It needs to be managed, and it needs to be managed with a view on what’s best for society, not in terms of what makes things more efficient or more profitable.” Maybe we’ll manage AI better than our healthcare industry? For more, check out the full interview in the transcript below.

COLLIDER: You’ve done a lot of work in your career, but if someone has not seen anything you’ve directed before, what is the first thing you’d like them to watch and why?

DAVID YATES: I would probably say, “Why don’t you watch State of Play,” which is a thriller, which is about journalism, which I love. I love stories about journalism. I don’t know why we don’t make more films about journalists because there’s something quite interesting about people who have to uncover the truth, especially in a post-truth world, where the truth is kind of like a moving target. So yes, State of Play, I would suggest.

Which of your films changed the most in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect going in?

YATES: Oh, that’s a good question. Probably [Harry Potter and the] Deathly Hallows: Part One, which is one of the Potter films. The great challenge of that film was it didn’t actually have a third act. It kind of ran out of steam halfway through, and Mark [Day] and I would often sit there kind of figuring it out and saying, “This movie doesn’t have a third act. How are we gonna…? Hang on, this is crazy. It doesn’t have a third act.”

Those two movies, Part One and Part Two, the idea was the first one was a road movie that was very sort of, like, take the kids out of the school, put them in jeopardy outside of that safe place, and see how they grow up and their relationship is tested. But then you go straight into the climax and the fireworks to the final one. So, we noodled Part One to bits to try and feel that the end of the movie had an escalation when, in fact, it’s Jazz Hands. [Laughs] There’s not much going on at the end in the second half of the movie, and I say that with great– People still say to me, “My favorite film is Hallows: Part One, mate. That was so amazing. It felt like a European road movie.” And I’m going, “Yeah, but the work we did in the edit was unbelievable.”

So, jumping into this project, it is crazy to me what people can get away with in America in the pharmaceutical industry, in the medical industry. It’s fucking criminal. What did you learn that really shocked you when making this film and doing research because it’s horrific?

YATES: In principle, if you have a system that is supposed to take care of people, but it’s governed around the profit motive, that immediately blows my mind because I kind of think, “Well, that doesn’t necessarily seem particularly well-adjusted to take care of people.” You might want to exploit people when they’re at their weakest and their most vulnerable. We have a national health system that’s not perfect by any means, we always moan about it. Perversely, we’re also very proud of it. [Laughs] It’s a very British thing to be proud of something and, at the same time, kick the shit out of it all the time and say it’s the worst thing ever, but we love our national health system. But when you look at a system that is just purely about making money, being a European and looking at that system, I was immediately fascinated and horrified that the two, taking care of people and making money, can go together. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

I wanted to make a contemporary story that was part of the national conversation, and the opioid crisis certainly is. And I also wanted to make a film that was entertaining. I did not want to make a serious film that would push people away or make them feel like they were eating vegetables. I wanted them to come to the experience of watching this movie and be drawn into it and the characters but go away with a message, and the message is when certain forms of capitalism are just not properly managed, bad things can happen. It happened in the banking crisis, it’s happened in the farming industry, it can happen in the military-industrial complex. Capitalism is brilliant in the sense that it delivers so many good things, but when it gets out of whack, when the extremes become too great, or when it’s not properly managed, then bad things happen, and that’s really what our story is about. It’s about, “Look, you’ve got a good system; don’t let it run away with itself because people get a bit crazy when it does.”

The other thing about it is, I think a lot of people if they were put in the position of Emily, the fact is even if they were told, “What you’re selling is possibly gonna kill people,” there’s so much money involved that even the most good-intentioned person can become corrupt.

YATES: Yeah, and my hope would be that when people see the movie, they would relate to her character and realize that good people can do bad things when they get stuck in that moral maze, and they’re being told that “It’s all okay, it’s all okay, it’s all okay. You’re within the guidelines, and all we get is a fine, so it’s fine.”

One thing that was wonderful, we did a recruit screening a few months ago just to see how the film played. Emily was traveling on an airplane coming back from LA to New York, and this guy wanted to help her up with some luggage. He said, “Oh, you’re Liza Drake, aren’t you?” And she went, “What?” The film hadn’t been released at that point, and he said, “I saw your movie last night.” It was a recruit screening, and he loved the movie. They got into a conversation about what he would or would not do in her situation. Her experience became a sort of every-person experience, and he really related to her character. Emily phoned me and said, “You would not believe it. This guy saw the film last night, and he was just talking about Liza Drake and what he’d do.” That was an exciting moment for us because we felt we were connecting with a regular audience member who could see themselves in that position.

I think anyone, you know what I mean? If you get told you can make a million dollars, but you’re gonna sell stuff that could kill you, there’s a lot of people who are still gonna say, “It’s their fault for taking it,” or whatever. Money corrupts.

YATES: Yeah, money can corrupt.

Which is why it’s great that it’s in the medical industry for profit. I’m fascinated by the editing process because it really is where it all comes together. With this film, talk a little bit about what you learned from those first friends and family screenings that impacted the finished film.

YATES: I guess the most important lesson we learned was people really cared about her character, Liza’s character, and wanted to invest in that journey emotionally. If you look at that very first screening to the locked picture, I would say what we did is we just doubled down on exploring her emotional architecture through the story. There were probably one or two further perspectives within the story that we went off on tangents in that first cut to sort of really give the audience a kaleidoscopic experience, we had more points of view from different characters. We still had Emily at the center of it, driving the story, but there were more perspectives from multiple characters. And so what we did is that the cut evolved as we sort of lost some of those other perspectives, and we absolutely told Liza Drake’s story, and it just became an easier lift for the audience when they watched it. They fell into it more emotionally than they had done at the first cut, so I think that’s the first thing we learned. But that first cut that we showed, we got a massive score. We got like 90%. The audience loved it. We knew they were responding to it, we just sort of focused it even more on Liza.

What was the length of the cut that you were like, “It’s never getting shorter, this is it,” and then ultimately, I’m sure you cut stuff from that?

YATES: We lost seven or eight minutes.

Oh, that’s not bad.

YATES: Yeah, it’s nothing. I would say, actually, if you look at that first cut to the last cut, the difference is nuanced. It’s subtle. It’s not big. I’ve been in situations where I’ve looked at a cut and thought, “We’ll never get anything out of this,” and then five weeks later, you’ve managed to find 15 minutes of cuts, and you go, “Where did that go?” [Laughs]

Emily Blunt is a very talented actor. Is putting her in a movie like a cheat code in a video game?

YATES: Oh, that’s an interesting question. I think what Emily’s got is empathy. The audience has enormous empathy for her, and I think that’s a real plus for a character like this because you want the audience to really root for her and care for her when she’s doing good things, but when she’s doing bad things, as well.

Completely. She and Chris are really good together. Obviously, you’re not gonna know what you’re getting with those two caliber actors until they’re on set together, so what is it like on that first take when you’re like, “God, please let this work?”

YATES: I kind of knew they’d sort of fizzle together. I just had a feeling. When we weren’t filming on set, if they were together, they’d always be hanging out together on set, building that rapport, sort of getting time together, joking around together. So by the time they got on screen together, it was very present, the chemistry that they had. So, I honestly wasn’t really too worried about it. I had felt it would be fine.

They’re both kind of talented.

YATES: Yes.

What do you think would surprise people to learn about making a big Hollywood movie that they wouldn’t know?

YATES: That’s a good question. That’s a great question, actually. I would say probably the most surprising thing is probably not that surprising. I’m just thinking about the more obvious things now, but night shoots really suck. [Laughs] And if you ever decide to become a filmmaker or work in the industry, if you can– I mean, sometimes night shoots are so necessary, but they’re really tough. I often fantasized about making a whole movie at night, and then I decided it would probably take five years off my life if I did because they’re really nasty for everybody because your whole life has tipped upside down.

The other thing I would say is the surprising thing about movie sets that people might be surprised with, they’re surprisingly ordinary places, ultimately. You came to the [Harry] Potter studio. My overriding memory of that space where we made those films is the kids would be in school all day when we weren’t filming with them, and it was a very kind of normal everyday environment. The roof would leak because it wasn’t fixed, so we’d have buckets catching the rainwater. It was the least glamorous thing you could ever imagine. What we did very carefully, and this was partly David Heyman, very wisely, but we kept everyone grounded, anchored, real, you know? You only realized how crazily popular and successful the stories were when you went out and you premiered them, or you went out into the real world. But when you came into that bubble, it was very regular. People ate in the canteen and just hung out, and it was all very, very, very normal. It could have been a college campus. It was just regular.

My one memory of the studio was just how massive it was. I remember walking down this thing to go to whatever, and on the right side were just a ton of props stacked on top of each other in a cage-type thing. It was like, “These are just toys that we’ve discarded.”

YATES: Yes. All of those things ended up in a museum at some point, I think.

Oh, for sure. Talk a little bit about what it was like with Netflix on this. You’ve obviously worked for Warner Brothers, and I’m curious what it was like working for Netflix and the notes they gave, and the collaboration with a streamer.

YATES: It was pretty much very similar to the way I work with Warner Brothers. They’re very supportive. They’ve got a huge machine that is there for things that you may need. We had some very nice execs. Usually, when you do a cut, you present it, they’ve got notes, and my process with notes is you always fully engage. So you sort of push back on the things that you don’t think will work or help, and you really embrace the things that do. But I’m very specific and very clear on the things that I think won’t help, and I absolutely enthuse about the things that do. And my experience is if you have that level of engagement, so you push back, but you embrace things that are good, then execs normally kind of relax a wee bit. I think it’s when you put up a brick wall and go, “Nothing’s gonna change here,” you know? So it’s a dialogue, and some of the notes were good, and some of the notes were crazy and didn’t work, and some of the notes were really excellent.

Can you give an example of a note that you’re like, “Wow, I didn’t think of that, that’s really good?”

YATES: It’s a very good question. I have to go back and look at the specifics, honestly. They very early on were saying, “Look, it’s gotta be about Liza.” So they chimed with the audience, and actually, from the very first start of developing the screenplay, it was all about Liza. So, in the joy of building that world with all those wonderful characters, you put a first cut together, and you can’t help but lean into Brian d’Arcy, you can’t help but lean into Chris Evans, Andy Garcia. So they just sort of bring you back to what got them excited about the thing you brought them in the first place. That’s a helpful perspective, I would say. It’s a collaboration, and it works.

So very much as I work with Warner Brothers, I worked in the same way with Netflix, and it was a very healthy, happy collaboration, I would say. They’re very different in the sense that, since they’ve got loads going on—Warner Brothers would have 15 or 16 things on their slate, so everything was super precious—I feel that we’ve been really taken care of, and we are a high priority for them. But when you work with a studio that’s got literally 15 or 16 things a year rather than dozens and dozens and dozens or hundreds, there’s a sort of slightly different ideology, I think.

Also, when you were working with Warner Brothers, these are films that have to perform.

YATES: For sure. We were also dealing with the top draw brands, as well. So for them, it was like a massive. But equally, every film is important, and we’ve really appreciated the attention that we’ve had and the support we’ve had from Netflix for this. It’s been great. It’s been good.

One of the things about Netflix is they have access to more data than anyone in terms of how people watch movies. If something goes on quietly for 10 minutes, what that means, and you can really get in there. So what I’m wondering is how much does the data that they have access to sort of get funneled a little bit to you in terms of when they’re watching a cut, “We know if we just do something here, the audience will stay more invested,” or has that never come into play?

YATES: That comes into play but never in a prescriptive way. So they’re not going, “The data model said this,” they’ll go, “We just know that people stay tuned in if we can…” but it’s not rocket science. We’ve been saying it for years, you know, keep them engaged and they’ll stay watching.” That’s basically what the algorithm is telling us, but you don’t need an algorithm to tell you that, you just know that if you make stuff that’s good, people will stick with it.

So right now, we’re in the middle of everyone talking about AI, and I definitely want to know your opinion. When you think about AI and its place in Hollywood, are you frightened? Are you thinking, “Well, we can use this tool to help facilitate what we’re trying to do?” How are you looking at it in terms of nervousness?

YATES: So, I have two views on it. One is the Cassandra view, which is when you kind of really assess what it will do not just to our industry, the film industry, but across all industries, you’re gonna end up with a massive displacement problem because you’re gonna end up with millions of people no longer employable. You know how important being employed and having a purpose is to everybody’s sense of well-being. It’s well documented that people who are unemployed or don’t have that sense of purpose in their lives can struggle with mental health issues, physical health issues, they live shorter lives. So, the idea that a technology can suddenly wipe out millions upon millions of jobs is incredibly disturbing. That’s the first thing. So, without question, it needs to be managed, and it needs to be managed with a view on what’s best for society, not in terms of what makes things more efficient or more profitable. We have to sort of link that to the health of society in general and what keeps us all feeling secure and safe. So, that’s one thing. But conversely, and this is the complete opposite of that, is that I have no doubt that AI, in time, will get to that point and will be a threat in some shape or form to many things that we all take for granted. But presently, I’m not absolutely sure it’s there yet.

Oh no, it’s definitely not there yet, but it’s fast approaching.

YATES: It’s fast approaching, yeah. Without a doubt, and in politics, in particular, terrifyingly, and its ability to influence and shape. There are so many things to be worried about, and there are then many things that we should be optimistic about – its use in healthcare, for example, and diagnostics and all of that, and in drug development and all of those things, and also in its ability to help us manage resources in a climate crisis. So it’s got huge potential for good and huge potential for absolute terrifying harm. I don’t think we’re really up to speed on the regulation of it. That’s the problem.

I’m just about out of time, so I’ll ask you one last thing. As a fan of your work, do you know what you’re gonna do next?

YATES: I’m going to just take a break with the SAG strike and the writers’ strike.

I say no this.

YATES: [Laughs] It won’t be very long, but it’s going to be a lovely time to just reflect and think about stories. There are a few things I’ve got on the desk which are all fun, but right now, I never stop, really. I’m really appreciating just stopping for a bit, while we work through these gyrations of figuring out the industry and how it should work. It seems like a good time to pause.

Pain Hustlers is now streaming on Netflix.