💊🎰🚨 It's Go Time

This is not announcing a legacy sequel feat. Chappell Roan called Good 2 Go.

Friday’s theme for Inneresting will include references to Go, so here’s a compilation of a few times John has written about this film.

Did you originally write Go as an out-of-sequence story, or was that something you and Doug Liman changed after the script was written?

–Chris

Although there’s hardly a trace of it left in the script, the deep underlying story of Go originated from Alice in Wonderland. Even before I came to L.A., I’d been pondering ways to stage a modern Alice centered around a rave, with a white Volkwagen Rabbit to get us into the action. (The White Rabbit would ultimately become the Mazda Miata that Adam and Zack drive, and the Cheshire Cat is still there, though now he speaks telepathically to Mannie.)

Fortunately, I never wrote that script, because it would have been horrible – clever for the sake of being clever. But those Alice thoughts were still rumbling in my head when in 1994 an aspiring director friend asked me to write a script for him to direct as a short film. What I wrote was called "X," and detailed a supermarket checkout clerk’s attempt to pull off a tiny ecstacy deal at Christmas. My friend never got around to directing it, but other friends would read the script and ask questions: who was Simon, and why was he going to Vegas? What’s the deal with Adam and Zack? Are they cops or what?

I knew the answers, so two years later when I had the time, I wrote out the full version as a feature. The first section, "Ronna," is the short film script, almost verbatim. Rather than wedging all the new plot into the first section, and ruining its tension, I started the movie over twice, each time following a different set of characters. It became one story told in three parts.

Inevitably and frustratingly, Go gets compared to Pulp Fiction. While I think they’re vastly different movies, the truth is, I don’t know if Go could have been made without the success of Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary’s film. While there had been plenty of non-linear movies before it (Rashoman, Mystery Train, Night on Earth), none had the kind of popular acceptance Pulp Fiction did. By the same token, Go wouldn’t have worked told "straight."

IMDb has message boards for every film and every filmmaker. I would strongly advise you to never read them, and in particular, don’t read them for any film you’ve worked on. You will walk away feeling a little worse about yourself and humanity.

But today, while looking up the name of an actor in Go, I ignored my own advice and clicked on one of the message board threads, which brought up an interesting point:

Did anyone else notice that even though the film was shot in 1999 and focused on young people that no mobile phones appeared in the film? Unless I missed something it seems like this was a deliberate decision by makers of the film. I like the choice.

The strip club guy who Simon shot may have used a mobile phone to call the Riviera to find out which room Simon and his friends were staying in. I don’t recall, it may have been a carphone. It still doesn’t explain why no other characters in the movie use a mobile when they had the opportunity.

The answer, of course: the film came out in early 1999, and cellphones weren’t yet ubiquitous in Los Angeles. They existed, to be sure, but they were relatively expensive and rare. We hadn’t even settled on the lingo yet. Here’s how I describe one early in the script:

Adam’s friend ZACK is behind him in line, YABBERING into a cellular phone.

Even my mother wouldn’t call it a “cellular phone” today. Later, Simon uses the current term to refer to the Ferrari’s built-in phone:

SIMON
It’s a cell phone. They can trace where we are even if we don’t answer.

(There’s still little consistency between cell phone, cell-phone and cellphone.)

Whatever you call them, there are two such phones in the movie: Zack’s and Vic Jr.’s. Ronna uses a pager, which is as much as she could believably afford as a grocery store cashier with rent trouble.¹

Years later, it seems natural to expect that every character in Go would have a cellphone. Their modern-day equivalents would. And the story would have had to change. Some examples:

• Todd would have called Simon to check on Ronna before selling her anything.

• Claire would have called Ronna, rather than paging her, while stuck at Todd’s apartment. Todd would have insisted on knowing why there was such a delay.

• The conversation between Todd and Simon wouldn’t have necessarily happened in the hotel room.

• Todd would have called Simon the moment he realized the pills were swapped.

• As originally scripted, Ronna was conscious after being hit by the Miata. She could have called Claire, Manny, or 911 to get help.

• After the shooting at the strip club, Simon and Marcus would have called Tiny and Singh, warning them to pack up.

• Simon could have (but might not have) called Todd to warn him about the Vics.

• Claire would have called Ronna after being ditched at the rave.

• Ronna and Claire would have tried calling Mannie when looking for him.

Looking at this list, I’m really glad there weren’t a lot of cellphones when making Go. None of these changes are horrible, but they demand extra work to explain why characters aren’t just picking up the phone. Getting people face-to-face in movies is crucial, and cellphones work against that.

Thank you for writing one of my favorite movies. I saw Go at the theater when it was released and it has since been one of my favorite movies. One my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies is Todd Gaines.

There is one part that has always left me wondering. Was Todd really going to kill Ronna?

On one hand, Todd simply didn’t seem like a murderer. A sleazy drug dealer? Yes. Murderer? No.

On the other, in a deleted scene, he did pull a gun on Claire and left Ronna for dead after Adam and Zach hit her with the car.

Todd also didn’t come across as stupid, reckless or naive. It seems if he wanted to kill someone, he would have chosen a better place than a very public party where he likely would have been recognized by his clientele.

This has always been a dilemma to me. I was hoping you could shed some light on it for me.

— Thomas

Todd Gaines never shot anyone, and had no intention of killing Ronna. He wanted to scare her.

Look at events from his perspective: He’d been played for a fool by a cocky teenage girl. Beyond the sting to his ego, she’d cost him money. If word got around out how she’d outsmarted him, other customers might lose their healthy fear of him. He knew where Ronna would be, so he decided to go find her.

When their conversation was interrupted by a poorly-driven Miata, Gaines bolted. I’d consider that fight-or-flight, a self-preservation instinct. When they find a girl’s body, you don’t want to be the guy with a gun.

In conversations with Tim Olyphant before we shot the movie, we discussed that Gaines probably wasn’t a full-time drug dealer. Maybe he went to art school, or worked as a club promoter. For set decoration, we gave him an art table and a bunch of illustrations.

If you met Gaines on a rainy morning — like Claire later does — you might think he’s a pretty nice guy.

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🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com or Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art

1. I can’t find the link, but I recently read an article about how bad we are at remembering when technologies started. How long have fax machines been around? How about DVDs? When did television go color? If it happened during our lifetime, we can often match it up to a specific purchase; the first DVD I owned was Go. But my daughter will have no idea whether the fax came before the telephone. In fact, she may never really understand a fax. ↩

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