Since his breakout feature directorial debut, “Animal Kingdom,” David Michôd keeps surprising. He’s gone from an Australian family crime drama to the tension of a near-future economic collapse to an Afghanistan war comedy to a gritty interpretation of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V” stage plays. With “Christy,” he tackles his first biopic, the shocking tale of Christy Martin, one of the most successful female boxers in history.
During our conversation last week, Michôd admitted that after so many male-dominated stories, he was looking for something centred on a woman “with attitude.” Not only did he find that in Martin herself, but in star Sydney Sweeney, who delivers the most transformative performance of her career. Most notably, it all began with Michôd simply wanting to make a movie. He felt it in his “bones”…
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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The Playlist: Looking over your resume and the films you’ve done before, you have never made a film in this genre or close to it. What drew you to this story?
David Michôd: Well, that it wasn’t, I mean, always, I think if you look at my resume, it’s like, I mean, they’re all very kind of different. I remember when I made “Animal Kingdom,” I started getting sent all sorts of Boston crime stories, and I was like, “Why on earth would I want to go straight back into that world?” In retrospect, I look back at all the movies I’ve made, and I didn’t set out to do this, but I realized I’d made a bunch of movies in a row about dudes who don’t know what’s going on. Who think they know what’s going on, and then realize that in fact they’ve been wrong about everything. And I was like, “O.K., this is interesting. I wonder where that is?” It seems obvious to me where it’s coming from. It’s like I’m either the dude who doesn’t know what’s going on, or my idea of a horror movie is living in a world that’s run by delusional egomaniacs. Anyway, I wanted to make a movie. I was feeling it in my bones. I really wanted to make a movie about a woman with attitude. And there was something about, I mean, Christy’s story was, she’s got the attitude. There was something instantly about that, for various reasons. She was a prolific trash talker and a fight picker, but more than that. And that has underneath it some really important things to say about, I mean, obviously, about coercive control and intimate partner violence. And I just went, “Oh, O.K., there’s a full world for a movie here that feels suddenly urgent to me.”
READ MORE: “Christy” Review: Sydney Sweeney Smashes Through Expectations In David Michôd’s Boxing Drama [TIFF]
How did Christy’s story even come into your realm?
Well, a wonderful man named Brad Zimmerman, who runs my company, he just came to me one day and said, “Hey, you interested in the Chrisy Martin story?” And I just said, “Who’s Christy Martin?” And then he was like, “Well, there’s a documentary on Netflix, Laura Brownson’s documentary, which is really great.” And I went and watched that and then had a meeting with Christy, and I pitched to her my deep and sincere interest in the idea of making a movie about her life. But she was talking to a couple of different people, and one of them was Kerry Roberts at Anonymous Content, and Christy just had to make a decision. And when she said, “I’m going to go with Anonymous,” and then I knew Kerry already, she just called me straight up and said, “Do you want to do it together?” And yeah. And then the train left the station.
Obviously, you can watch the doc, but talking to Christy herself, was there anything that she told you or you found out about her that sort of surprised you, or you didn’t realize was part of the story that somehow had not made it into the doc?
Not so much on a kind of facts and figures level, more on an emotional [one]. As I was spending time with Christy, I really quickly started to understand how beautifully vulnerable and sweet and funny and warm and kind she is. All of these things that she would be perfectly entitled not to be given everything she’s been through, given the world she’s from, and given everything she’s endured and survived. I just went, “Oh, this is some of that stuff informs.” One of the things I love about Sydney’s performance in the movie is how it starts with such delight. She’s just a ball of delightful energy at the beginning of the film. And a lot of that I think was for me, informed by those conversations that I was having with Christy, of just realizing how delightful she is, even though she was punching people in the head for a living.
Was there anything that you learned about boxing or having to cover boxing in a way that surprised you?
No, not especially. I mean, I think Christie was very carefully scrutinizing people. She’s understandably suspicious of, I mean, as I would be handing your story over to somebody else. But once that – and it happened pretty quickly – started to trust me and mirror especially my co-writer, she surrendered to the process, and I’ll be forever grateful to her for that. But then the fighting, I mean, I dunno, I just had this feeling like I wanted to take into the fight scenes in the movie. The same ethos that was in my movie, “The King.” I remember there was a little one-on-one fight between Timmy Chalamet and Tom Glynn-Carney. It’s just two men in suits of armor fighting each other. And I remember thinking the normal thing to do in a movie would be to have them engage in this unbelievably dexterous sort of fancy sword play, when actually this probably would’ve been a pretty brutal and exhausting just punch on, wearing unbelievably uncomfortable outfits. And so I went into the boxing stuff in “Christy,” feeling like I want to embrace the ugly. I don’t want this to be super fancy fight choreography. The choreography will be really detailed and specific, but it will be messy. And Walter Garcia, my fight choreographer, was on board immediately. It was like, “Yeah, let’s lean into the exhaustion and the mess and the swings and misses and just the mayhem of it.”
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I’m not sure Sydney Sweeney would’ve been one of the top 10 actresses that people would’ve thought would be perfect for this role, but what she pulled off is genuinely transformative. How did you know she would be able to knock this out of the park? Was it an audition? Was it a meeting with her?
Well, it wasn’t an audition. I only found out a few days ago that she would’ve auditioned for me if I’d asked her. But I saw her in Tina Satter’s movie “Reality,” the HBO film, a tiny movie. Not many people have seen it, I don’t think, but she’s, Sydney is so good in it. It’s a really challenging performance. So, I knew she had the acting chops. I knew that she had a fight training background. I knew she would be prepared for the physical demands of the role. And then it was just about the degree of hunger. How much did she want it? How hard was she going to work? Five minutes talking to her, I went, “Oh, O.K., that’s taken care of. She wants this, and she’s going to work really hard.” But yeah, you’re right. It’s like this beautiful thing. I had it once before with Timmy on “The King,” where it was like I was writing that movie with no idea who was going to play the character. I couldn’t think of who the actor was who fit the criteria that would get the movie financed, all that kind of stuff. But you just kind of have to have faith that by the time I get ready, by the time I get to the end, that person will have. It kind of happened with Sydney on this. [Co-screenwriter] Mirrah Foulkes and I were like, “O.K., who’s going to play this character?” Suddenly, Sydney Sweeney is like everywhere.
“Christy” is now in limited release
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