IFC Films will release the upcoming thriller Clean, starring Oscar winner Adrien Brody, in theaters and on VOD on January 28, 2022.
“Clean, a man with a violent and criminal past, seeks, redemption after being awakened by a personal tragedy,” reads the synopsis. “He dedicates his life to his broken community and the safety of a young girl who reminds him of his daughter. When her life is put in danger, it ignites, a return to the darkness and violence he’s worked so hard to leave behind. In his attempts to save her, he might very well save himself. ”
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ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Academy Award winner Adrien Brody about his new film Clean, the collaborative process behind it, and scoring the film himself with production help from Austin Wintory.
Tyler Treese: I know you worked on Bullet Head with Paul Solet before this. What about that experience really made you want to collaborate to this degree?
Adrien Brody: I think Paul is just a very talented guy and it’s funny when I read Bullet Head, and when I first had my initial conversation with Paul, I thought his writing was so interesting and unique, and I had been wanting to write this, on my own for many years and had a vision of a story I wanted to tell and this man and this world, and I guess I didn’t have the confidence to do it alone. I’ve collaborated, written, and embellished upon many, many roles that I’ve played. However, I guess it felt like too big of a responsibility to just do on my own and he was someone that I had a sense of trust with. So I pitched him the idea to come do this, and he loved it and also has many similar influences, both in life and in storytelling, and the kind of films and writers and directors that we admire. It was a really exciting task to set out and do this. I ended up being more inspired as I was making the film and the music that I was creating started to feel more and more like Clean. Then I had come up with a theme and I pitched Paul this theme for Clean that ultimately we ended up making something that had a really meaningful, creative immersion in my life. It’s an amazing thing to finally be sharing it with the world.
I wanted to ask you about doing the score. I know you worked with Austin Wintory, who is a great composer, for production on it. Can you speak to that process and getting to show off another side of your creativity?
Austin was a wonderful asset and he’s very talented. I’ve been composing and making beats and sequence music for 30 years now. There were moments, I almost scored a film that I did just before The Pianist, and ultimately didn’t have the time to do that, and the director was a wonderful guy and we had a whole plan in place for that, and that would’ve been really exciting. So, that passion for music and the understanding of it has long been within me. I just, again, hadn’t had the courage to really do something cohesive with it. As this evolved, it just was like a grinding thing within me, this burning noise that I had to kind of put into existence and it’s an amazing thing.
Then to have a theme that I’d come up with sketching on an iPad, ultimately be played by a full orchestra and beautifully played by a woman on a French horn and its kind of longing and melancholiness only gets come to life in greater capacity. Then I worked with all these wonderful, talented rappers from up in Utica and songwriters and singers, and we produced original music for the movie. It was such a wonderful, additional creative [outlet]. It was all-encompassing, this project for me creatively. So that came about after the fact of setting out to do this. I just was really looking for a role and a story that I felt was both meaningful, that spoke to what’s ailing this great nation, and also is exciting as hell and fun, and that we can merge the two.
Clean is this character with a very violent past, and he’s doing everything he can to kind of stray away from that for a while. Then he’s kind of forced into getting very violent and there are some wild action scenes in this. So how do you view that character? Do you see it as like a relapse into his old ways? Or how do you view Clean?
I mean, he definitely relapses for sure. I mean those NA scenes, where he’s in treatment, obviously go well beyond. I feel he has the strength and tenacity to not, even though heroin is such an addictive substance, I feel like he’s there really to keep himself on straight and narrow with regards to that violent past and his propensity for violence. The reference to all that heroin is obviously acknowledging another great injustice against our society with the pharmaceutical accessibility that went unchecked for many years of narcotic drugs and now all this fentanyl on the street killing everybody. We’ve been plagued by drugs.
So I wanted there to be some truthful elements of that, but Clean was desperately trying to prevent any more. I think all of it led to the great failings as a father and that was the ultimate thing that broke him to change his ways and give back to society, et cetera. The irony is that all that he’s yearned to suppress ultimately does the most good in the right capacity in this context, and gives this girl that he’s mentoring a chance out of the hood and out of the oppression and pressures of society, especially to underprivileged children and that all is part of it.
This film’s gonna surprise a lot of people, you really get to show a different side of yourself as an action star with these really intense fight sequences. How exciting is it that you’re already known for your tremendous range, but you’re showing even more here and sharing a really thrilling side of yourself?
Thank you. I’m excited about it. I’ve had this on my shoulders for so long. It’s not really something you can see by seeing the movie because we are used to seeing movies. I’ve witnessed how hard it is on me and making movies just as an actor, or how hard it is for anybody on the crew. You know, just lugging lights around, being on the grip department in the middle of the cold and breaking your back, eating crappy food, and working long hours. It’s so hard on all these people.
So what I know about this more than in any other movie is by managing all these details with my producing partner and, it is such an achievement that we’re here in spite of myriad obstacles and catastrophic setbacks and the world, even to have a movie in a theater right now, it’s just I have so much that I’m grateful for. So it’s a real moment in my life that I spent a lot of hard work. [It’s a] long time coming. So yeah, it goes well beyond just sharing the work, it’s having somehow managed to complete everything in a way that meets my satisfaction after all these years, and then to share that is the most meaningful.
