This interview contains mild spoilers.
“We wanted to create something in the tradition of classic Hitchockian thrillers like Rope,” said Graham Moore (The Imitation Game) who co-wrote The Outfit, a thriller about a master suit maker who must outwit a group of gangsters, with Johnathan McClain, best known as playing Alan Silver in Mad Men. “We wanted to pay tribute to the film noir movies of the 1940s and 1950s and update them with our own stamp,” elaborated Moore.
“We also talked about Miller’s Crossing (Joel & Ethan Coen) in terms of color palette and stylistic inspiration to create our film,” added McClain. They also looked to films like 12 Angry Men as an example of a time-appropriate, single location piece period. Once the writing duo agreed on the creative parameters of their film, they let their imagination guide them toward The Outfit.
Leonard (Mark Rylance) is the tailor (or cutter, more specifically) isn’t experienced in dealing with white-knuckle crime. He is a “humble, mild-mannered, unique Saville Row suit maker who works in a small workshop in a seedy part of Chicago,” said Moore. Leonard makes custom outfits for anyone willing to pay the high price, including gangsters. So it’s no surprise that he’s eventually thrust into their world.
Despite being softly-spoken, Leonard delicately balances these two words as deftly as he cuts his suits. “The Outfit started as Phantom Thread and ended up as Reservoir Dogs,” joked Moore.
Chicago: Locale and Character
The filmmakers chose to set their story in Chicago to illustrate Leonard’s sense of isolation after leaving his workshop in the prestigious Saville Row, London. “Leonard deliberately walled himself from the rest of the world,” continued McClain. This mystery added another layer to Leonard’s rich character. “Chicago enhanced his internal struggle of trying to break free from his own confines.” Chicago is markedly different from London, so the setting demonstrated that Leonard was a fish out of water.
Leonard’s small workshop sharply contrasted against the ominous and vast city outside which was revealed whenever the front door opened.
Graham Moore. Photo by Rob Youngson/ Focus Features
Similar to many strong stories, The Outfit had its roots in a true events. “In 1956, the FBI planted a bug in a tailor shop as part of an investigation,” revealed McClain. “This is the first time it had been done, so this was our jumping off point after we settled on the style of the film.”
Moore elaborated that their story did not replicate this FBI investigation and their story was entirely fictional. However, they did borrow heavily from the characters and world of the era. Both Moore and McClain have written historical characters before, so they took great care in portraying their fictitious characters as authentically as possible. “Every character is a research project,” declared Moore.
Who Is Leonard?
It may appear that the parallels between a meticulous cutter and an equally meticulous anti-gangster mastermind were a metaphorical construction to elevate The Outfit.
Graham Moore revealed that he and Johnathan McClain conceived Leonard’s character years before they wrote their film. “Johnathan and I were fascinated by the psychology of a character who spent decades of his life perfecting an extremely esoteric, difficult craft,” claimed Moore. To the untrained eye, the subtle intricacies and precision of cutting and stitching a suit may go unnoticed, but not to an expert. Graham and Johnathan spent many hours consulting with tailors to fine-tune Leonard’s character. “We visited various stores in Saville Row to get an idea of how their minds worked. They have an infinite capacity for detail and care, just like Leonard.”
Johnathan McClain
Leonard discusses the minutiae of his work in The Outfit when making a suit. He has immense powers of observation and explains that one shoulder is slighter lowered according to the slump in the wearer’s posture. “Leonard needs to understand their personalities, their social status, their fears, what they’re trying to hide and what they’re trying to show off. In some ways, Leonard understands the people that wear his suits better than they understand themselves,” mused Moore.
Build, Sustain, Release The Tension
Writing a thriller is a masterful exercise in building, maintaining and relaxing tension. “We did this by always keeping the gangster threat alive without letting it explode. It’s a simmering, rising build,” elaborated Moore. The Outfit also limited the use of common thriller tropes such as car chases and shoot outs. There were only nine gunshots in the entire film, so each one had to count. “Each gunshot was increasingly sinister and menacing.”
The first half of the film is mainly concerned with building out the world and the characters with few action scenes seen in traditional thrillers. Containing the action in a single-location and setting the story over two days or so also added to the sense of dread and impending danger because there was no escape for Leonard. “We became more creative and ensured each scene revealed new information about the characters and then subverting it,” said McClain. “We had a new reveal every few pages of the script.”
Moore and McClain lost track how many drafts they wrote to get to the shooting script. Graham confessed that there was a different draft every day. They even acted out scenes as part of their screenwriting process.
Richie (Dylan O’Brien) & Zoey Deutch (Mable). Photo by Nick Wall/ Focus Features
Plotting is an integral part of writing a successful thriller. It’s an exercise in pacing and character development. Moore describes his process as “little logic robots who plan every move while Johnathan shaves off the sharp edges to make the characters more real. People make mistakes and don’t always make the right choices at the right time. They have both emotional and thought-driven responses.”
The process also involved discussing plot from each character’s point of view. “The characters are like chess pieces even though there are only two players in an actual chess game,” elaborated Moore. “Each character is their own thinking, feeling chess piece. No two characters have the same agenda or act in the same way.” Figuring out each character’s goals adds to the narrative tension. He cites the character of Francis (Johnny Flynn) as an example. We realize he’s a gangster, but the audience doesn’t know what his end game is.
The cast is essentially broken down into two groups: Leonard and his secretary Mable (Zooey Deutch) and the gangster family. Each character had to function both as part of their group, but also as individuals. Since there are only seven speaking roles in the film it wasn’t that difficult. “We built full lives of these characters off the page so we could get glimpses of them on the page,” said Moore.
In order to build tension and individualize the characters, the writers started a scene with characters responding to something that happened off screen. Moore quotes an example of Mable and Richie (Dylan O’Brien) bursting into Leonard’s workshop looking for her keys without providing a backstory or context. Their outfits suggest where they were and what they might have been doing. Moore and McClain outlined these off-screen scenes without including them.
McClain is a fan of subverting stock character archetypes. Richie is the hard-boiled son of the mob boss, but becomes insecure and defensive after Mable makes an off the cuff comment in this scene. He accuses her of making fun of him. “We also wink at Mable’s fraught relationship with her father, but don’t fully explore it on screen. We like to have a secret for each character to hold and may reveal parts of it.”
The characters in The Outfit are largely internalized and most of their thoughts and feelings occur below the surface. However, there needs to be minimal stage direction on the page to allow the actors to externalize them into actions, no matter how subtle. They didn’t want to over-direct and micro-manage the set. A script only offers what the character is doing, why, and what they need to communicate.
