Modern Poison

IT’S A REMARKABLE, CHILLING TRUE STORY ABOUT THE LAWYER, Rob Bilott, who disclosed the practices of DuPont, particularly around Teflon. He comes from a different perspective—a defense attorney for the industry—and it becomes a decades-long and grueling process to reveal this story. That’s not really the kind of movie I’m typically known for. But I have always liked a handful of great whistle-blower films and the ’70s paranoia films, most of which were shot by Gordon Willis. It was something that fit into an interest I already had.

There’s an investigative aspect to the story, but what was really challenging dramatically was or . Rob’s story is more about using the legal process to get discovery of [i.e., obtain] decades of internal papers. They pile so much shit on him, expecting that there’s no way one person would ever go through it all—and they meet their match. He’s an inherently undramatic subject—he’s no Erin Brockovich. For all those reasons I liked the story even more. The Rob character bears little resemblance to a Capra-esque central figure who can rise up, find their voice, and stand as a heroic example. Rob is a particularly guarded, suspicious, buried kind of guy. So Mark [Ruffalo] plays it really locked up, scowling—it’s not that visceral, verbal, emotive Ruffalo that we expect.