Bill Murray in "The Limits of Control," Focus Features, 2009

Talking with a colleague after the screening, we concurred that the film could be an elaborate Dick Cheney revenge fantasy. Bill Murray's villainous character even calls for someone named Addington.

[laughs] You're the first person I've talked to who's even noticed that. There's a layer of that in there, but the end is also purely metaphorical in that expression and imagination strangles conventional power of money and control. The end is, in a way, a convention that's not so important or interesting. I don't know, it's so hard for me to see the film. This's the case with any film that you spend two years making. You want people to see it for the first time, but I can never see it for the first time. It's impossible. It's a strange dilemma. The film's certainly constructed, to a large degree, in the editing. In the shooting, scenes were kind of modular, like when he's waiting in certain apartments. We tried to put them in different orders in the editing and found the musical rhythm of the storyline.

How much more footage is there?

There are a few extra scenes with Paz de la Huerta, the naked girl, that are not in the film. They were good scenes, but the rhythm didn't really need them. But those are really the only things removed. There was a theme in the film that we shot of these men in black that keep hovering around, like when he was in the train station. You see them in the airport in the beginning, briefly, but there were more of them throughout. Frankly, it felt heavy-handed and the actors weren't real great -- or maybe the directing of them wasn't, I don't want to blame them. It wasn't really happening, so those got removed. But that's about it.

Logistically, it seems like the most expansive film you've yet made.

I think "Dead Man" was more expansive. We traipsed across five states with horses and period wardrobe and had to shoot in places where you couldn't see a road or a telephone pole. That one was a little more complicated in that way. But this was kind of rushed, how we shot. Maybe that gave us something, I don't know. [laughs] It gave us a lot of anxiety and tension while shooting, which I generally don't like to have on the set, but it was kind of unavoidable due to the schedule. We were a little frazzled.

But you always seem so cool and collected. Maybe you hide it well.

I think I internalize it, but generally, I try to keep things calm, a little bit funny, and not take myself too seriously. With this film, a lot of that evaporated due to the pressure. That's kind of a drag.

I named the characters in the credits like paintings, "Lone Man," "Nude," "Blonde," "Violin," "Guitar," you know? I don't know how that answers the question, but [de la Huerta] just assumed that nude character, vulnerable but sort of a femme fatale. It doesn't quite pay off since there's obviously not a sexual thing happening, to her frustration, and her wanting to be more manipulative of him, but she's still mysterious, too -- to me, as well. I don't really know where that comes from. I have a film that I have notes and sketches on that I don't know when I'll make that is highly sexual, a love story of two young characters that fuck all the time. I've never really addressed that in a film. At some point, I'd like to.

In this film, I had an initial inspiration in my head: I still read a lot of crime fiction, but I used to devour it, and I read all the books a long time ago by Richard Stark, which is [the pseudonym for] Donald Westlake. This character he has, Parker, when he's on these criminal missions, usually heists and stuff, is always totally focused. He cannot be distracted by girls, parties, alcohol -- nothing. So that focus was part of the thing I had in my head for a long time, wanting to make a film with Isaach De Bankolé as a character like that, very controlled. Not distracted by sex came from those Parker books, which "Point Blank" is based on.

You named this film's production company after that film, as I saw in the opening credits.

Yeah, I love that film. We weren't trying to imitate it, but we were using it for inspiration because, to me, every camera angle in "Point Blank" is stunning. We watched it, Chris Doyle, [production designer] Eugenio Caballero and I, then we talked about the things we were struck by. We weren't trying to replicate them. It's a lone guy on a mission, but he's angry and out for revenge, so we drained all that from this story. Again, draining the action from an action film, what were we thinking?

Here's a question I've wanted to ask you for at least 15 years: how do you get your hair to stick up so cool?

I have a procedure [that I've been doing] for 20 years. I brush my hair back, and after I take a shower, I wear a wool hat for five minutes every day. When I take it off, I just take a towel and my hair just goes in position. I think it's been trained. It's the best way. I use a little hair grease sometimes, which Joe Strummer turned me on to. It's called "Black & White" and smells like coconuts. All those rockabilly and ska guys in England always used this stuff for their quiffs. Joe gave me a thing of that in, like, 1982 or something. I still have a lot that I've had for 10 years, so it's still good.

"The Limits of Control" opens in limited release on May 1st.

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