Summary

• Marmalade is a romantic heist comedy that explores the lengths someone is willing to go for love.
• The movie pays homage to classic films like Raising Arizona and Bonnie and Clyde while adding its own twist.
• The director, Keir O'Donnell, carefully crafted the look of the film and chose a talented ensemble cast to bring the characters to life.

Sometimes, true love can lead to dangerous situations, as in Marmalade. The romantic heist comedy revolves around Baron, a mild-mannered postal worker in a small Southern town who falls head over heels for the titular newcomer, only to be drawn into a bank robbery that forces him to question how far he's willing to go for the woman he loves.

Stranger Things vet Joe Keery leads the Marmalade cast alongside Camila Morrone, fresh off her Emmy nomination for Daisy Jones & the Six, and Aldis Hodge. Written and directed by Ambulance's Keir O'Donnell in his feature directorial debut, the movie is a charming, funny, and surprisingly twisty thrill ride.

In anticipation of the movie's release, Screen Rant interviewed O'Donnell to discuss Marmalade, the various genre inspirations behind the romantic heist thriller, lessons he's learned from the various directors he's worked with, and a potential Wedding Crashers 2 return.

Keir O'Donnell Talks Marmalade

Screen Rant: Keir, kudos on Marmalade. I love that you're writing it, you're directing it. When did you first land on the concept for this, and when did you decide you wanted to be the one to direct it?

Keir O'Donnell: You know, the whole idea started years ago, probably six years ago or something. The kernel of it all started when people asked me as an actor, "If you could play any role, what would you play?" I never had an answer for that, you know, you always wait for scripts to come in, and you're like, "Yes, I can do that," or, "No, I can't." But, if I could create something out of thin air, what would it be? And that's sort of how these characters started formulating. On top of that, it was like, "Okay, now I have these sort of characters, how can I put them into a storyline?"

So, it was paying homage to the movies that I grew up loving, like Raising Arizona, and True Romance, and Usual Suspects, and Tim Burton movies, and was sort of like, "Oh, can I mash that all together?" But, one genre I've always loved is Bonnie and Clyde, anything in that realm of lovers on the run. I've always found that fascinating of we're rooting for these people who are doing really horrible things, for the most part. Even something like Natural Born Killers, you're looking at it sort of in disgust, but they're the people you're with the whole movie. So, I was like, "Okay, can I take that trope and flip it on its head." So, that's kind of how it all started.

I can totally see the Coen Brothers vibe, but I also get a little bit of Wes Anderson here and there throughout the movie. How did you go about deciding on the look for this movie? Obviously, you just mentioned you were pulling a lot of references in the writing process.

Keir O'Donnell: Yeah, so when I finished the script, I knew the world so well, because when you're writing it, you have to become the heads of every department. You're creating the costumes, and the casting, and the lighting, and everything else, I knew it so well. But I was like, "How do I convey this?" So, I created a lookbook that went with the script, and luckily, I look back at that now, and it's almost identical to what's on screen, including colors and costumes.

You have to surround yourself with amazing collaborators who come with great ideas, and you have to make sure that you're not kind of like, "No, I want it this way." So, people brought their A game to this, and really thought outside the box, and it was kind of like, "Okay, as long as we're all making the same movie, you can sort of start to blend thoughts together." I wanted it to feel like a '90s film, so that's kind of where the color palette started. I wanted it to feel kind of old-timey, and like a weird, whimsical fable, and the tonal palette felt right for that.

It definitely had a very timeless vibe to it. You have such a wonderful ensemble in this movie, Joe is very much at the heart of it, what was it like finding the perfect person to lead the charge on the cast?

Keir O'Donnell: We had our work cut out for us. I created these characters that all have a duality to them, and they all have many layers. And part of it, creating these characters, was, "Can I create sort of a stereotype, a trope, to sort of pull the audience along?" And then, of course, without giving too much away, it's sort of like, "Can you flip that around at a certain point, get ahead of the audience and then have them question, 'Oh, I really got duped here and there.'"

So, part of that was, "Okay, we have to find actors who can really show us a couple different gears, and are able to really sink into these characters and make them believable." Joe, I am just a massive fan of his. He's early on in his career, obviously, but he has such a sweetness, such a genuineness, such a warmth on screen, and that was immediate that we knew we needed that for Baron. I met with Joe and right away, he just got it, and we collaborated and decided on the accent, and sort of his look, and everything else. It's just a joy to see, and for people to see him in such a different role than on Stranger Things, which, of course, he's so known for at this point. This, hopefully, is just going to put him in a whole different realm.

It definitely felt far different from that, and even from Free Guy. Who would you say in the cast surprised you the most in terms of bringing something to the character that maybe wasn't already in your mind or on the page?

Keir O'Donnell: I think people are going to be shocked by Camila's performance of Marmalade, you know. She carries the film in a lot of ways, and that's by design, right? It's like, "Look over here, look at her," she has to be magnetic, she has to be pulling him along and pulling the audience along. So I knew certain levels that I wanted and needed, but when Camila came in, she's very early on in her career, and so I think people are going to say, "Who is that?!" She has this sort of electric dangerousness to her, but she's very kind of magnetic and charismatic. She would do takes, and every take was sort of wildly different, and really in the pocket, but kind of really would kept me on my toes. So I knew, "Oh, man, if we can just bottle that and put that on screen, that's exactly what it needs. This kind of unhinged sort of surprise."

She reminds me a lot of Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers.

Keir O'Donnell: Patricia Arquette from True Romance, as well, in there. Again, trying to pay homage to those things to be like, "Oh, this feels familiar," and then sort of ramping it here and there and find your own tone with it.

Given that this was an independent production, with something like a bank robbery in movies, sometimes people want to lean into it and show it off. You didn't go that route with this movie, you went with the "less is more" approach. Was there ever a thought of having some big sequence to highlight the robbery?

Keir O'Donnell: No, I always wanted it to be how it is now, which I found that to be almost more of a challenge. Like, what happens if you don't show it? What happens if you have a movie about a heist, but you don't show the actual heist? The heist is sort of everything surrounding it, so it becomes then, well, there's so many times you don't really see the real prep for a heist. You do in giant movies, like The Italian Job or the Ocean's movies, and things like that.

But I wanted it to be like these people who are not like career criminals, necessarily. It's like, "How do you go about it? Oh, we gotta get a mask, we gotta get [etc.]." So, I really wanted to do the day-by-day approach to how an everyday person would be like, "How do we rob a bank? This is the way we'll go about it." And then to not show it, then you show the aftermath of it, so I liked the idea of kind of cloaking that in a little bit of mystery.

One thing I did want to ask you was you've worked with so many great directors over the years, and even recently, you worked with Michael Bay on Ambulance, which in itself is sort of a heist movie. What are some of the biggest lessons you've taken from any of your past directors in making your debut on this?

Keir O'Donnell: Yeah, it's a massive advantage that I've had 20-plus years of working with all sorts of different directors, from legends like Clint Eastwood and Michael Bay, these really different masters of their craft. All the way down to first-time directors, I've seen sort of what works and what doesn't work, at least for me personally, and I've seen how people interact with crews, and how they interact with different actors and just what their process is.

I've certainly picked and stolen from them along the way. [Chuckles] Michael Bay, for instance, he's just ferocious with shooting, he's just constantly like, "Let's film this, let's film that. Oh, look where the sun is, let's do that." And I'm like, "Oh, my God, it's a big-budget film, but he's shooting it like it's an independent." So I certainly took that spirit with me to go like, "Time is money, and we don't have much of either, so you just got to grab as much as you can." It creates a bigger film.

Many moons ago, you starred in a little, maybe unknown, movie called Wedding Crashers. Vince and Owen keep talking about trying to make a second one happen. Do you have any thoughts on possibly coming back if they found a way to make that happen?

Keir O'Donnell: I have heard rumors, I've heard rumors of something floating around. I would love to jump back into that world, of course, put the Todd hair back in, get it going. I would absolutely love to do that again.

About Marmalade

MARMALADE is an edge-of-the-seat crime-tinged romance tale. Recently incarcerated Baron (Keery) strikes up a friendship with cellmate Otis (Hodge), a man with a well-versed history of prison breaks. As the pair hatch an escape plan together, Baron recalls the story of how he met Marmalade (Morrone), the love of his life, and their “Bonnie and Clyde” style scheme to rob a bank in order to care for his sick mother and give the couple the life they’ve always dreamed of.

Read our other interview with star Aldis Hodge.

Marmalade hits select theaters and digital platforms on February 9.

Source: Screen Rant Plus