More than most films, Street Thief benefits from an interview because the film itself generates so many questions for the audience. How much of this look at the life of a seemingly-real burglar is a documentary? How much of this is hype? When the director says he has “first hand” knowledge of the actual crimes depicted in the film, what exactly does that mean? How was the story crafted? How does the arrest of the producer tie in (or not)? I had anticipated that Malik Bader, the director and star of Street Thief would be evasive on some of this stuff, after all, some of these questions aren’t easy. But Malik didn’t dodge the questions at all, and for anyone who has seen the film, that is exciting news.

If you’ve never heard of this movie, you can learn more about the context of the film from our review of its premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival and all the controversy it generated (if you’re interested, click here). Also, because the interview was over an hour long, I’ve broken it into two parts. In the meantime, I encourage you to watch the film on A&E tomorrow (June 21st) and to leave a comment below or to discuss it in our movie forum — I’m very interested to see what you, our readers, think, and if you think I’m right that this is an important movie to see.

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CSB: Were there any changes made between the version of Street Thief that was shown at the festivals and what will premiere this Thursday on A&E?

Malik Bader: Just a little shorter sequence, where he’s kinda scoping out the grocery store, which… that has actually gone through quite a few revisions, because originally when we made the film, you know Kaspar Carr leaves the supermarket, and he goes and changes into this Mexican cowboy dude’s outfit — it’s going to be on the DVD on the deleted scenes. When you break into a place and you turn off their alarm, you gotta leave to make sure the cops aren’t coming. Even if you took out the alarm, even if you really know what you’re doing and you cut the phone wires, there’s always that small chance that somebody saw you or there’s a radio backup and so you leave and come back, and that part we kind of felt that, you know unless you’re a hard-core crime enthusiast, or you’re trying to use this as a how-to video….

It’s kind of, it has kind of a slow pacing, and I enjoyed wondering when the film opens up, what the hell am I watching? Is this guy a burglar, is he a cop? What’s going to happen, kind of not knowing until you see him at the table with all the money going into the counter.

CSB: I hadn’t noticed the change when I watched it….

Malik Bader: Very, very subtle. I mean less than 30 seconds came out of the opening at Tribeca, and four minutes came out from our original director’s cut.

CSB: Let’s step back a second then, it sounds like — maybe not an inspiration but just your sense of approaching the film — your goal was to put the audience in the shoes of the person who is committing a burglary, understanding it, being there, in contrast to an Ocean’s 11-type, surreal portrayal. When did you first become interested in that, or when did you first think about trying to get to it from that angle?

Malik Bader: I’ve kind of been familiar with the whole world of crime, just growing up in Chicago. You’re always kind of fascinated by crime, and then you start to make friends that are in those circles, and some grow up and leave that stuff behind, and some take it to the next level. I knew these guys growing up and I knew some of these guys that made their living as professionals in certain fields, but they were also burglars, and I knew guys who were strictly burglars. I mean they had their car and their apartment and their lives, and these guys you knew took down scores. I mean, they didn’t go around advertising it, but you knew. And some of these people, I would hear their stories and find them unbelievably fascinating, just ordinary people that you think are graphic designers or bankers — and they’re not taking down the place they work at, but they’re taking down like night club scores and grocery stores and gas stations. And the guys who usually get away with it are guys that you know selectively look for their places, that aren’t dying to get $500 bucks, that don’t have drug habits. Guys who, you know, have kind of a controlled life, and it was trying to examine that. And also the anxiety that even a guy like Kaspar Carr goes through before a score and the paranoia. How the hell do you cut yourself off from relationships and not trust anybody — to not want anything long term with this kind of goal in mind?

And also his outcome, you know, I wanted people to question — is he just smarter than all of us and he just had this sh*t planned out from the beginning? Or, was this a guy who when, finally, he found these filmmakers and this attention, it set into this thing that fit into his life. Wanting to be the center of attention and talk and teach. So it was kind of a mix of all those things. But mainly it came from my experiences and my knowledge of crime and never really seeing that true essence in any Hollywood films, or even a lot of indie films. I mean, there are great films, but when it comes down to the character and what he’s going through — I mean a guy just pulled down a $7 million dollar heist, and they’re just happy and excited, but you didn’t see him going to the bathroom 17 times. And we talk about that in the film and just try to bring a life to that… how these guys go about and live their lives.

CSB: Excellent, I think the grittier the better. For me, an open question when we were watching the film was, when this guy says he’s two steps ahead of you, is he really two steps ahead of you or is he just trying to justify to himself….

Malik Bader: Exactly, exactly and I think you can see it that way. Because as a filmmaker when you step back and say “let’s make this real”. And we really put our money where our mouth was in every single respect, the film can‘t be — and I don‘t think I’ll ever be able to do that in any of my films again, where you can’t poke one hole in the film, like just plot-wise, story-wise. I’m writing a script right now and it’s hard, I just come from that school where it’s like “f*ck, it’s got to be real”. And any film I watch, it’s never real. Like I watch Michael Mann, I watch this, I watch that and Michael Mann is a guy who’s trying to keep it crazy-real. And I watch Miami Vice and I’m like “that can’t happen, that won’t happen, that ain‘t gonna happen..” But, to make a film, you gotta bullshit, and we didn’t want to do that in Street Thief.

And I’ve totally lost track of what the hell the question was…..

CSB: It’s all good, I was really just rambling. It seems like, one of the real challenges for this guy, Kaspar, that he has this secretive world that he builds up and the big exception is that he’s here on camera, and he’s got this need to talk. Was that something you tried to reconcile as far as the character, or was that just a needed fiction to get the camera focused on this character to make the movie?

Malik Bader: Yeah, it’s kind of like — I love crime. And I want to make a movie about burglars. And I want it to be real, and how do I do that? How do I make that happen? Initially we started to come up with these like, not bullsh*t, but these scenarios for how the filmmakers met Kaspar. And we had it all worked out, they were interviewing burglars in prison, and we were also going to do these sitting head interviews with real burglars, that I knew from Chicago, where they talk about why they went to jail and what they did — and it started to take away from the story. So the reason the one guy is still there, is to kind of break up the story, to get away from Kaspar for a minute or two, give it something to relate to, like “Oh, this is how that started. This is what climaxed in leading them to Kaspar.” And we were going to get into them meeting him, and how they found him, and kind of more discussions of like “can we finally go along with you on a score?”, and a little more info. It was more fun to hear this crazy, chain-smoking, you know, eating like a fat slob, foul-mouthed, real character, that it was getting into all of that. So we just left it up in the air and said if you really start questioning why this guy would do it, you’re never really going to truly find an answer, because he is not going to let us know, he’s not going to tell us. I know why, but I’ll never give that away because it should never be given away.

It was just a lot of scenarios from the people I met and the stories I’ve heard, and my own assumptions and ideas. If a guy wants people to think he’s dead, there are ways to do it, that are inconclusive but it’s inconclusive to the point that people who just want to close their cases will just kind of close them. [At this point in the interview, the phone connection cut out somehow. The interview resumed a minute or so later.]

CSB: So, it sounds like the answer to the question why would a guy like this open up on film is essentially that, you’re not going to get a satisfactory answer to that, so it makes more sense just to leave it?

Malik Bader: I think it’s more fun that way. It’s part of what I truly like… the most exciting thing for me was leaving the theater, and watching other people leave the theater talking about the film. “Dude, it was f*cking real” and “Dude, they were really doing those scores” and every one of our screenings in the US — and I’ve gone to all of our screenings — were sold out. And people, old ladies at the Tribeca thing were like clapping after the last score….. [at this point the phone cut out again. We got back on a minute later, this time for good…]

So, yeah, I think that’s kind of the fun of it, letting people come to it on their own, why would this guy do it, I think you can tell that he’s lonely, and he doesn’t have a lot of friends, and he’s got these guys that he can truly control, who have something from him that they really want, and they’re willing to go by his rules — that is rare to find. And there are rules that he has with them that we don’t really know, like who’s holding the film, who’s holding onto the tapes, and what are the rules for when they can come out to tape. And we had rules in our minds as filmmakers. We don’t really know them as viewers, but they do exist. In this situation, there would be, you can do this or you can’t do that. That’s why we show him hunting later, we wanted to take it out, and you know, if that really happened, time would pass, and you would just have to sit there in your office waiting for this guy to re-appear.

CSB: It sounds like the film evolved, so that at first it was going to focus on a lot of characters, and it evolved to focus mostly on Kaspar, so that the character who is in jail is now a fairly minor character. Did you consider taking him out altogether?

Malik Bader: Definitely, we did. Like when we started editing it together — the film was really made in editing which is closer to the way a documentary film is made, because we did shoot a lot of extra stuff in addition to what we wanted to shoot. And we wanted it to feel very spontaneous and just come together the way a doc would come together. And so, in the end, it’s very close to what our initial idea was, but it was just kind of cut up and shaped differently. And we did consider, did we really need him, and we felt we wanted to get a little break from Kaspar. And since it isn’t a very plot-driven film, in the beginning you’re just learning about this guy’s life and you’re just wondering what’s going to happen, you know, what’s going on? And we wanted something to just, you know, we could leave Kaspar for a minute and hear this guy’s story and get back to the action to find out what’s going on. So that it’s not all just talking heads, but it’s also not just Kaspar just plying his trade and taking down scores.

CSB: We watch a lot of foreign films here at CinemaStrikesBack.com and when it comes to crime films, today’s Hong Kong movies in particular, there are reports that some productions are tied in with actual gangsters, the “triads”, and the filmmakers have these guys on the set advising them, to keep it realistic, the “triad” culture, I guess.

Malik Bader: I love these films, some of these films I watched, like Triad Election was one of my favorite festival films from last year. I watched it at Chicago International last year, and it sucks that it never came out here in theaters or on DVD, I really just can’t understand that. I ordered it on Yahoo, from like overseas and just never got it. And after Tribeca, you have all these scripts and agents coming at you from Hollywood, and all this stuff, and when you watch a film like that, you’re like “Oh, now I remember why I want to make films”. So, it’s kind of, you know because it is cinematic, and you can feel the filmmakers kind of hand in it, and the way its put together, I just really enjoyed those movies.

CSB: Similarly, in different periods in the past, some of the old 70s yakuza movies from Japan for example, had actual gangsters on set advising the filmmakers (or making the films themselves in the case of Noburo Ando), so I began to think about this as I was watching your film again last night. I read somewhere on the Internet where you were talking about how there was someone on the set of Street Thief the whole time, an actual burglar advising you on….

Malik Bader: That was one thing in [the article at Traverse City Record Eagle (click here for link)], I think it was just taken out of context. We didn’t have, there wasn’t a burglar at all on set telling us what to say or kind of like advising us. But what I did say was every crime in the film was based on an actual crime that went down. Whether I knew the person who took it down, or heard from somebody who knew the person who took it down. Mostly, it was me knowing the person who took it down, reading about them, I had friends who gave me like the police reports and friends who gave me transcripts, and I interviewed some cops, and I’m very close with one guy who was on the run for two years, he went to Mexico, he came back, and they caught him in like a sting operation, and he went to court and actually beat the case. And some of the things the guy in jail was saying were based on his real life. And every aspect of the film like I said I wanted it to be able to hold up. So, we didn’t put anything in there that we thought could have happened, or that we thought it might happen this way, it’s all based on real stuff and how to take down a score.

And also, we tried not to involve too many people, like at the supermarket with the helmet cam, there was no crew that walked in with me, that was my helmet cam, I made it, I walked into that supermarket, the only person who knew was the owner, who wasn’t at that location that day. I just walked behind the counter, behind the butcher’s line, I mean, it was all like the way it really went down. In addition to that, the attorney, the lawyer, we went there and he thought we were like real filmmakers, he’s a partner of my attorney, and he had no idea. He’s trying to talk to my brother who’s a producer, and he got so angry that we wanted to call the cops. He was like “you guys are dumb, you don’t call the cops, I‘ll make sure you keep your f*cking footage, just don’t call them, there’s no need to call them. Let‘s get this sh*t done the right way”. And we’re like “no, you gotta call them.”

And I’m sitting with the guy, the cop, waiting for the call, the lawyer thought they were so stupid, he typed up a quick disclaimer, saying you guys are like retards, and I’m not going to be held responsible for you guys later, when they take all your footage. So, he was advising guys on a real case as to what the circumstances of the film we made were. The movie theater — I really cut open a display, and crawled into it. And I filmed patrons. And, of course, I would get releases from them, you know, after they knew they were recorded. The behind the scenes production people would run up to people and say “hey, can you sign this, we’re making a film” but nobody knew we were recording them. So, you know, I could really disarm alarms, I could really record people’s phone conversations, I could really cut open a safe during the filming of a film. And those things were all real, in fact. So, those are things you don’t see in a big budget film, or you can’t really do it, you can’t take those risks.

CSB: That was going to be one of my questions, did you get releases, did the supermarket know? And it sounds like maybe after-the-fact the answer is yes, but before-the-fact, no.

Malik Bader: It was like, wherever we could get away with it, after-the-fact we did. So, for example, we got permission from the police department to film at that police station, the film office. But the cops there, they didn’t know. We wanted them to come out and chase us away, but they didn’t, you know. So we tried to push the envelope as much as we could. In the South Water Market, where Kaspar is telling you that they’re tearing the place down to build condos, well to get the shot we wanted on the back fire escape, we had to break into the wrong place. But, we were hoping to God after we pried the door open, because they were like going to demolish the place in the month, so we didn’t think there would be any damage anyway. But that’s like, you gotta get the shot, it’s really important. And I thought, we pretty much are real burglars now, so let’s just get this open and get the shot, it was to an abandoned wearhouse already, so we didn’t really break in anywhere. But it gets to the point where you’ll do it under any circumstances to kind of deliver what you’re trying to deliver here.

CSB: And I would think, especially for an airing on A&E, I would think it’s hard to get Tribeca comfortable, but it’s got to be especially hard to get A&E comfortable for a national broadcast…

Malik Bader: A&E just wanted to make sure, like they were just worried because my brother who was involved in that criminal case, that has nothing at all to do with this film, it’s just something that coincidentally happened on his own. Which, kind of, you know, people, journalists love to take things and run with them, and I guess that’s just the nature of the beast. But to make a long story short, they just wanted to make sure, you know, you need releases for every single thing, and you need to get errors and omissions insurance, and they just wanted to make sure that the project was legit. And, I felt that A&E was a weird kind of like, match for the film, because what they show is just not that crazy and provocative, and you know, it’s not HBO, and you know this foul-mouthed crazy burglar, but the executive Molly Thompson over there just loved the film. And when we started to think do we go with a smaller company to put it in a limited theatrical release in four to six theaters, and then cross our fingers and then nothing happens? And you have this opportunity to have A&E’s entire viewing audience watch the film? And it kind of becomes more about having as many people as possible enjoy the film and watch it.

CSB: You know, ever since seeing your film at Tribeca, I would periodically do an Internet search for news about it, and it seemed like the official website that was up for it disappeared, and…

Malik Bader: Yeah, we did that, not purposely, but kind of purposely, because it was still in the air, and what was going to happen with it. We thought we’d do more harm than good, if someone came out and wanted to get rid of everything out there surrounding the film, and bring it out as if it was something real, and if a distributor wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have anything against it. So, I kind of wanted to leave that option open for whoever picked it up and distributed it.

CSB: A couple months ago, I finally found something listed on a subdivision of A&E’s website, like they were just starting to seek out advertising for it before an annoucement had been made that they would be airing Street Thief, and we actually put a post up on the website about it…(Click here to see that article)

Malik Bader: I actually noticed that, I saw that and I was like “holy cow, these guys are good”.

CSB: But I was like, wow, A&E, I wouldn’t have… you know, like, ok, good for A&E, but, hey, I think that‘s cool….

In any case, what I was trying to get at before (when I was comparing Street Thief with these triad and other crime movies), is that they basically described themselves as simply realistic crime dramas. Did you ever consider pitching it or describing it to people that way? What led you to want to emphasize a half-documentary, half-real aspect to it?

Malik Bader: It really came, for me it was more about feeling. You kind of get caught up in what you’re preaching or what you’re talking about. And we thought, if we tried to pull off a realistic drama, it’s actually much more difficult to do that than what we accomplished in Street Thief. You’re making a film, but you’re also trying to make it as realistic as possible, so how do you match up? We wanted to get attention for ourselves, we wanted people to take notice — I wanted people to take notice of what I was capable of cinematically, but also make something that people enjoyed. How do you match up to something like Heat, or Thief, or any Scorsese film on a tight budget, running and gunning in Chicago? So, we knew we couldn’t do that. My thing was how do I deliver a real look into the life of a burglar. And initially, it was really more about things like feeling. Like, I wanted people to really understand the tightening in a person’s stomach, and all the anxiety and hard work that goes into it. And of course some of that gets lost because you know, you’re trying to make a dramatic film, even though it is in the style of a kind of cinema verite or documentary of whatever you want to call it, you still want it to be dramatic and some sort of a ride for people. So, it was something that was thrown around, and it came from I wanted to give people a true look into the life of a burglar, and experience kind of what he experiences and feel what he feels, and it kind of came more from that than anywhere else.

And we knew it was going to be hard. We thought about maybe opening it up, and we talked about the ending. We had this idea where he would disappear, you would see the blood, and instead of the documentary searching for him, it would cut to like a beautiful 35mm, really anamorphic, kind of widescreen look, with these same documentary filmmakers in their office, with all these academy awards and all this shi*t on their shelves, and these guys are like “holy sh*t, you’re not going to believe it” and they run into a conference room and on the TV set, it’s like a Brazilian film crew, and Kaspar Carr has been spotted. And after this, what we were going to do was make the first two-thirds and after it was over, give this feeling that there was this cult following after Kaspar Carr, and after the documentary that had been made years prior, and you had just watched that documentary that was made years earlier, and here it is now, and on this Brazilian news, Kaspar Carr has been spotted, and all these Brazilian news teams are in front of his house, and Kaspar Carr comes out, and he’s married this Brazilian chick and they had a baby, and they can’t extradite you for non-violent crimes from Brazil, if you have a kid in Brazil, to the US.

CSB: Wow!

Malik Bader: There were other ideas, but where we were putting it together it was like so real, and so, and it was more real than we anticipated it would be. The sales agent who picked it up thought it was real, the publicist thought it was real. The Hamptons Film Festival and AFI Film Fest both invited it to be in competition as a real documentary, and we had to convince Tribeca not to list it as a documentary, and that’s another thing out there, that we tried to convince people, that we tried to pull the wool over people’s eyes. But we actually went out, that’s why I did the Q&A. You know, I didn’t want this film to be about is this real or not, I wanted it to be about, is it good or does it suck? And, so, but I think I f*cked up, I think I should have just not showed up, and there would have been a much crazier buzz about the film. And me worrying too much about the wrath of journalists had us go down the … And after we went down a million little pieces, this thing broke on Oprah, and so the publicist really worried about lying to journalists and putting a disclaimer out, and “what you were about to view is not real”, and we were like “man, the timing sucks for us so bad”.

CSB: It’s funny, I guess, I hadn’t scrutinized the credits enough, so when you walked out at the end of the screening as the director, it was like “Oh! Well…”

Malik Bader: Isn’t that fun! That was fun. And not that I fooled people. But it’s got to be exciting to see something and think it’s real, and then realize that it’s not. And I wanted that secret to be kept, and I just wanted viewers to watch it on A&E and argue about it. Like, I argued with my brother about Man Bites Dog. I don’t know if you’ve watched that film?

CSB: Sure.

Malik Bader: There’s that lady on the couch, and I don’t know if he shoots her, or what — he gives her a heart attack. And my brother was like “Bro, that’s f*cking real” and I’m like “Come on, it’s a film” and we know it’s not real, but we’re arguing about it. You know, it’s part of film, and it’s part of the fun of it. And that all happened after the fact, but it’s fun to kind of watch and experience.

CSB: I remember, at the screening I was at, literally the first question was “Why aren’t you in jail?” and then someone asked for their money back… and part of me was thinking “Wow, I thought we were all just having fun here”, but then I’m also wondering did you plant all these people to drive up the buzz?

Malik Bader: No, no. And you know, the only questions that pissed me off were the questions like “the documentary genre is so sacred, and what you’re doing is so wrong”. What does that have to do with this film, dude? You’re mad because you bought it, and you should be happy, because now you’ve truly experienced something that… Believe me, people are smart enough to know, that if they’re watching a doc and it’s not real, they’re going to know and they’re not going to buy it. You know, and if you’re watching it and it’s totally blown out of proportion, and it’s billions of dollars he’s taking, and kind of doing these high-tech explosions like De Niro does in The Score, you know, I think that’s part of why people were upset, because they bought it, and they just wanted it to be real. And I think most of those people are more the filmmakers than the average viewer.

So, yeah, that was — were you at the first screening when there was this old guy asking “Where did you find this guy and why did he agree to do it? And why do you look so much like him?” And I thought he was joking and was like “ha ha, next question” and he was like “No really, where did you find him and why do you look so much like him?” And a guy in the back yells “Yo, clean up your motherf*cking glasses”.

CSB: So, were you surprised at their reaction? Did you expect them to be as confused on it as they were?

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2 OF THE CINEMA STRIKES BACK INTERVIEW WITH STREET THIEF DIRECTOR MALIK BADER. THE FILM PREMIERES ON THURSDAY, JUNE 21ST ON A&E, 10PM.

A few additional thoughts:

I can’t wait to see how people react to the movie. If you think of it strictly as fiction, it’s excellent: an interesting lead character, good acting, an interesting way of telling the story, and above all, it feels very, very real. When it comes to details, Street Thief makes most crime films look like cotton candy fly-bys, and will definitely appeal to people who enjoyed the realism of a film like Narc, for example.

And I don’t want to over-sell it, it’s not an explosions-packed action film, it’s a crime movie, mostly a character study (there’s no violence in the film at all, for example), and (as I noted in my review of the film), I thought the ending wasn’t perfect. I liked it a lot, but I do think there are people who aren’t going to like it for whatever reason, and I suspect even they will be intrigued by it. You can go ahead and file this movie alongside films like Memento that are likely to be discussed for hours on end — love it or hate it, it’s a fascinating film, just because of the story and the kind of film it is: the half-documentary, half-reenactment aspect of it. Some will say it’s a bastardization of the documentary genre (and, certainly, the film was not made in accordance with austere-Maysles brothers-like principles), but one way or another, I think a lot of the film community will want to see it.

In any case, please check back for Part 2 of the interview, which will be posted soon.

Related Links:
::: Read our full review of the film’s premiere
::: Official Site
::: Street Thief Myspace Page

::: Discuss this with others in the Movie Lounge Forum

© Charlie Prince