An agent attempts to capture the world's most wanted art thief in Director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s action-comedy, Red Notice.
Thurber’s film finds the director once again collaborating with his Skyscraper and Central Intelligence star, Dwayne Johnson, as John Hartley, the FBI’s top profiler, who is forced to partner with the world’s the greatest art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) and the notorious art thief Sarah Black (Gal Gadot) on a daring heist.
On November 24, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Thurber discussed the making of Red Notice during a Q&A moderated by Director Jaume Collet-Serra (Jungle Cruise).
Asked about his process for balancing his comedy sequences with the action in the film, Thurber replied, “I start with the story. The first thing I try to do is just picture the scene or the sequence on the movie screen on the inside of my forehead and how I want it to feel, how I would cut it. Then I try to write that down in as few words as I possibly can. I really love action-adventure comedy. When that's done really well, it's so satisfying to make people laugh and to give them some thrills or chills. That’s the kind of movies I loved growing up. Anybody who's seen Red Notice, I think it's obvious that Raiders of the Lost Ark was really big inspiration for me. We definitely spent a lot of time watching other films, mostly for tone, camera movement, etc so that's definitely a part of the process. But [director of photography] Markus [Förderer] and I and I shot listed the entire film together. We spent two or three weeks in a room just going through every scene.”
Thurber’s other directorial credits include the feature films, Skyscraper, Central Intelligence, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and We're the Millers; the pilot episode of the series Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes on Television; and episodes of the series The Loop and Marry Me. Thurber has been a DGA member since 2003 and currently serves as a member of the Theatrical Creative Rights Committee.
You can listen to Thurber's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.