Director Tony Scott has had a lengthy history with Domino. He first met his muse, Domino Harvey, more than ten years ago after his business manager, Neville Shulman, sent him an article from what Scott refers to as a “rag newspaper” in London. The article depicted the life of a young woman who had decided to become a bail recovery agent and follow the seamier side of life, both personally and professionally. But what really piqued both men’s interest was the fact that this young woman was actor Lawrence Harvey’s (The Manchurian Candidate) daughter, from a very privileged and gentrified background.
Scott immediately got in touch with the then-20-year-old. He invited her to his office and a week later, the two were in discussions to put a version of her life story on screen. The director always planned to begin with an outline of Domino’s life, but from the start never intended to produce a strictly biographical piece. In some cases, he even shied away from using people’s real names “because I was misrepresenting what had actually happened in their lives,” the director says.
Over the years Domino became a surrogate daughter to Scott. He attempted to watch over her and her comrades as best he could, but even the most concerned and involved father cannot always dissuade his children from foolhardy pursuits and destructive behavior.
“I kept telling Domino, ‘You’re crazy,’” Scott recalls. “She was into lots of dangerous things other than bounty hunting, and I said, ‘Watch out. You’re gonna kick down one too many doors.’ But she said storming through those doors with a shotgun in her hand was the biggest adrenaline rush she’d ever had, and it helped to quell the voices in her head, so there was nothing I could say or do that would change her attitude.”
“When I met Domino, she was living at home in Beverly Hills with her Mum and stepfather, Peter Morton, the famous restaurateur. She’d leave her guns in the garage and pick them up when she went on these bounty hunting missions. She was living two distinctly different lives.”
“I also met with Domino’s team,” recounts Scott. “They were infamous even ten years ago when there weren’t that many bounty hunters around. They used her as a cover or as a carrot, whichever the situation warranted. But make no mistake, bounty hunting is a tough, dangerous business.”
Several different screenwriters took a stab at the story, but to Scott’s dismay, they were more interested in writing a very straightforward portrayal of Domino’s life that Scott describes as “solid, but way too linear.” When Scott gave the same assignment to Richard Kelly, he got more than he bargained for.
“I read Southland Tales and I saw Donnie Darko, and thought Richard had an interesting voice,” says Scott. “He takes an unusual and very imaginative approach in terms of his comedic elements and his darker, almost sci-fi side. He manufactured the story but left the characters as real, breathing people.”
Kelly came up with the thread for his fictional story while sitting at a Santa Monica Department of Motor Vehicles office attempting to correct a snafu with his driver’s license. The DMV acts as the conduit for all of humanity; it is the source of all information and the nucleus of each story within the film. Kelly also uses the shortcomings of the DMV as an allegory for America’s poor overall health care system.
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