The director talks Duke Nicholson, Julia Fox, William H. Macy and the making of his first feature, with Frances Bean Cobain among its executive producers.
In The Deputy, Duke Nicholson stars as Toby Sawyer, a punk-rock drummer who takes a part-time job with the sheriff’s department and quickly finds himself in over his head. What starts with a seemingly simple assignment from Chief Kreuger (William H. Macy), guarding a body until the coroner arrives, takes a darker turn when the corpse disappears and Toby is pulled into the corruption surrounding the town.
It’s an unlikely place for Toby to end up, which is exactly what interested director Matt Sukkar.
“There’s an inherent humour in him being a fish out of water and also just the idea of him having all this responsibility while being totally unqualified,” Sukkar says. “And then at the same time with all of those surface level eccentricities to the character, he has a lot of heart. And he’s driven by the care that he has for his son.”
Sukkar was still reading the script when Duke Nicholson, the grandson of Jack Nicholson, came to mind. The two were already friends and had been looking for something to make together.
“I knew he was Toby, like, really early on in the read,” Sukkar says. “I called him before I finished the script.”
He told Nicholson, “I’m reading this really great script. Like, it reminded me of you. No offence. But I think this is the one.”
Casting Toby may have come together quickly, but financing a first feature around a new lead was another challenge.
“I was only gonna get this film funded if I had some recognizable names supporting Duke,” Sukkar says. “He’s at the beginning of his career.” Sukkar, meanwhile, was making his feature debut.
Sukkar eventually brought together William H. Macy (Shameless), Tiffany Haddish (Girls Trip), Stephen Dorff (True Detective), Billie Lourd (American Horror Story) and Julia Fox (Uncut Gems). Frances Bean Cobain also served as an executive producer.
“It was important to me that the film’s cast always felt real, while also unexpected,” he says.
Fox’s role in the film is brief, but her scenes still stand out. Sukkar, who has known her since growing up in New York City, says she spent less time on set than most because of her busy schedule, and he was grateful she made the trip to Mississippi. In true Julia Fox fashion, she still found a way to put her own stamp on the character, suggesting that the cashier wasn’t actually Felicia, the name on her work shirt, but simply someone wearing Felicia’s uniform.
“I was like, great. I love you for that idea,” Sukkar says.
They wrote it in.
Sukkar saw The Deputy in tones of black, brown and red, working with cinematographer Alejandro Mejía to build the film around that palette.
“I always saw the film as being black, brown, and red, or white, maybe, but that was a colour palette that I just kind of really instinctually felt like was what the film was asking to be,” he says.
Mejía initially imagined something cooler, and the final look developed somewhere between their two ideas. “It takes place at night. It’s a dark movie. You can see it.”
Sukkar was just as particular about the score, wanting Toby to have a recurring theme in the spirit of classic ’70s crime movies, where a melody becomes almost inseparable from the lead character. With composer Daniel Vildósola, he developed a guitar motif that reappears throughout the film with different instrumentation depending on the scene.
“I just instinctually felt like there should be theme music, kind of drawing on a classic ’70s crime movie with a lead role that has like a recurring tune that you associate with him,” Sukkar says.
Even with a clear vision, the production had its own surprises.
During a nighttime scene with Dorff and Macy, a streetlight that the production had been assured would remain off suddenly came on. The footage they had already shot would no longer match, leaving Sukkar to deliver some bad news to both actors.
“I had to like, go to Stephen Dorff and William H. Macy and say, ‘Hey, everything that we shot is now unusable because it’s not going to match, we have to start over,’” he says.
He remembers it as one of the lowest points of the shoot. On other days, falling behind meant shortening scenes or combining them entirely. Sukkar had spent years directing music videos, but a feature required a different kind of flexibility.
“I might not have all the setups that you have in your mind, but it better make sense, you know, or else you really did fail,” he says. “And I think we passed that test.”
He’s already thinking about doing it again. Sukkar has written Happy Birthday, a road-trip movie about a young man trying to make it to Las Vegas for his 21st birthday while, as he puts it, “a lot of things go wrong.”
“It’s also kind of like crime and comedy coming together,” he says.
It’s familiar territory after The Deputy, and for now, Sukkar seems happy there.
The Deputy is now available in select theatres, on digital and on demand.