SC: Well it was daunting. Whitey Bulger and Billy Bulger and Connolly's story is easily worth an 8 hour long form series, but it was important to chronicle his rise and fall in South Boston from the mid 70's till he left in the 90's. His time in Santa Monica was very undramatic. He lived well below the radar, spent time in 99 cent stores, walking in Palisades Park, CVS pharmacies stocking up on cleaning supplies and socks. I mean it was bizarrely remarkable, but not dramatic. So I felt like we really focused on the fact that you can't outrun your past. 

SC: Yes, indeed. Let's be clear, I had a very unremarkable career as an actor, but you do learn from certain directors and sometimes directors really have a very odd relationship to actors, almost adversarial at times as though they're only needed to move along the narrative or to really get across their larger themes of the film. I would say, honestly, the things that I've learned most about acting were my times spent with the actor, writer and director Robert Duvall -- whether doing hours of improv with him, several movies with him, how he is always searching for the truth emotionally and psychologically in a scene and will let an actor know that. Those are the sort of things that I have really learned from more than other directors I've worked with. 

SC: You can but probably not in the way that Robert Duvall would say that. Robert Duvall has earned that as an national treasure, but I revere actors and I really respect that they all have different processes. When you have a guy like Joel Edgerton, who's not only a remarkable actor but extremely bright and understands so much more than just his character, it makes my job much easier. With a guy like Johnny Depp, who has probably been in 40 films I'm guessing, he's seen a lot of different directors and you deal with him differently. Then you deal with Benedict [Cumberbatch] differently. 



You deal with Juno Temple, who's an English actress, like Benedict, who is extremely well trained. Then you work with actors who are much more emotional and intuitive. So you really have to understand how they really approach material, but the most important thing, I think, is to make them feel safe, don't over direct them, only give them a little bit of advice when you feel like you weren't accomplishing what you need and just continue to revere them like I do. 



JE: I think, also, Scott's at a point where -- certainly I know after seeing his first two films -- that there's this general excitement to go work for a guy like Scott and I think even back then and certainly much more now, this magnified idea, there's probably a ton of actors out there who would be excited to get a phone call to say, "Come and work." The pleasure for Scott, I assume, is that whole kind of A-team of actors that is the lineup of "Black Mass" is, as a director, there's not so much in need to teach anybody how to act. I think that great actors become better owners of their character than a writer ever would at certain point. The great job is just to guide them and I think that Scott was incredible at that.  

JE: I'm some part head and some part heart. I like to get to a place very early into a shoot where I'm operating more on instinct. I think the lead up and the anticipation and the preparation is somewhat more of a cerebral experience than what happens later in the shoot. 

SC: Critical. Johnny Depp, as we know, is beloved by most people who see his films. So you bring a little bit of that to almost every film. I knew that Johnny would make this physical transformation. We had a lot of surveillance footage to look at. That really was not the thing that I was most impressed by, but it really Johnny's interior and phycological transformation because he's extremely thoughtful and kind. So to see him play this sociopath the way that he did was a remarkable transformation.  



One of the things that I said to Johnny from the very beginning is, "I hadn't see a great deal of danger in his work and we need to see danger in every moment, but not the type of danger that feels forced, but that feels earned and that it comes from a very central place." Because he's very economical and very measured in his movements. It's a man who doesn't blink a lot in a scene. It's a man who's very comfortable in his own skin, who understands the distance between himself and another actor that perhaps those 18 inches that we all give one another, maybe he'll give them 12. All those sort of things are things we talked about. 



I said to him, "I remember that Al Pacino once told me that when he was ascending to the status of the head of the Corleone family, that he would wear 20 pound weights on either ankle so that he would move with gravitas." And I said, "Johnny, you may not have to do that, but that's how we need to move." 

JE: On one hand, as the actor playing opposite of Johnny, I had a certain admiration for him growing up. Which conveniently, I could just carry into the film because my character had a certain pedestal relationship with Whitey, so that was sort of a convenient thing for him. I get excited when someone calls me and says I get to work with someone that I admire. I don't get scared about it, but there's definitely an exciting anticipating of being at the starting blocks. 



So sometimes the first couple of scenes can be a little bit jittery and interesting, but I found that the scenes on the docks really interesting because it took on this weird relationship that sort of had a bit of a bromance to it in John's mind. I don't think in Jimmy's mind, but it felt like, Hey, we're pals and we're gonna make this thing happen together! Especially John [Connolly] as a character, who's such a chameleon with whatever he needs to be with whoever he's with, and had a real kind of frenetic energy at times and playing off of a very snake-like stillness and menace. And Johnny [Depp] was a good contrast of energy for me. 



SC: One time, I invited Fred Wyshak to come by the set to see Corey Stoll portray him. He loved what Corey was doing, he thought it was fantastic. This is a man who's playing the federal prosecutor who brought down the Winter Hill gang and John Connolly. And he says to me, "Corey's amazing, but who's that guy playing John Connolly? Is he from South Boston?" And I said, "No, that's Joel Edgerton and he's from Australia." He said, "Scott, it's uncanny. He has captured the way he moves, the way he talks, the way he looks." He said, "I just can't believe how remarkable it is."