You’d think that the tabloid-perfect life of Domino Harvey would be more than enough material for a compelling bioflick.
The statuesque daughter of British film star Laurence Harvey, Domino abandoned a modeling career to become, of all things, an L.A. bounty hunter. Her hard-lived life of addiction and legal troubles ended in June, when, at the age of 35, she succumbed to what the coroner has deemed an accidental overdose of the prescription painkiller fentanyl.
Tragic business. But great movie material, right? Not according to Tony Scott, who, after a dozen years of working with Harvey to bring her story to the screen, opted for a sensory-assault fantasia that he likes to describe as “bounty hunting on speed.” The movie opens Friday.
“People always say that I’m doing style for style’s sake, and I’m not,” Scott said. “My sense of this world that I wanted to portray was a world of momentum and energy and danger. I wasn’t trying to do ‘Raging Bull’ in terms of Domino Harvey. It was, really, to touch the world.”
To that end, he tossed out several more conventionally biographic scripts he deemed boring and went with a screenplay by “Donnie Darko” director Richard Kelly. Kelly’s script worked up an elaborate–and wholly fictitious–plot that involved Domino and her skip-tracing compadres in a huge armored-truck heist.
All of which intrigued the one person who really counted: Keira Knightley. The up-and-coming star dug the psychedelic unpredictability of it all.
“It’s really nice to make a film that is completely different,” the 20-year-old said. “You see films that are so formulaic, it actually makes you want to vomit. Whether you like this film or not, you have to go, ‘Well, they certainly went there.’ “
As did Knightley. She got the “Domino” job while she was making a movie of Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice” in her native England.
“I had four days off in between finishing that and starting ‘Domino,’ ” Knightley said. “So I didn’t get the physical preparation that I would have liked. … I did have a couple of lessons in nunchakus; so there I was in my ball frocks, doing nunchakus on the side of things.”
Once she got to California, there was a quick run through bounty-hunting school. Then, Knightley was tossed into a scene in which Domino defused a standoff with East L.A. gangbangers by giving their leader a lap dance.
Her audience was played by genuine gang members.
“They were really great; they were sweet guys,” Knightley said. “Very respectful, great to my mum, had good conversations; they’d explain all their different tattoos to her.”
Knightley’s busy schedule also meant she could only meet the real Domino twice before production commenced. Both times, the wayward bondswoman was hours late.
“I based the character on my best mate, ’cause she was around a lot, and I could look at her,” she said. “Domino was around quite a lot during the filming, though, which was great.”
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The best thing Harvey told Knightley? Play me however you see fit.
“I thought, God, it’s a strong person who says, ‘Yes, you can take my name, and you can do with it what you want,’ ” Knightley said. “I wanted to create a character who would be able to say that, because I know that I wouldn’t.”