Memory as a Lens of Truth: Adam Cooper Discusses ‘Sleeping Dogs’

“Let sleeping dogs lie” is a phrase that basically means that by addressing a certain problem you could make things worse. It’s like poking a sleeping bear. In writer and first-time director Adam Cooper’s latest thriller Sleeping Dogs, the sleeping bear is Russell Crowe’s character’s memory.

What Cooper enjoyed about co-writing this one with frequent writing partner Bill Collage was that they reframed the narrative through Crowe’s character Roy Freeman. “Reframing the truth through the lens of a character whose own memory is unreliable was interesting.”

Cooper has helmed many big-budget projects as a writer. Allegiant, Exodus Gods and Kings, and Assassin’s Creed are just a few of the high-profile projects he’s brought to life with his words. However, he initially started out wanting to be a director. “When I moved to Los Angeles in 1994, I wanted to be a director. Prior to graduating college, I'd spent summers in a directing program, then a summer in Los Angeles working in post-production. I directed a short film my senior year of college. I became a writer as a means to that end.”

Lucky for him, writing didn’t just pay the bills, it became a career for him. “I was fortunate as a writer and kind of fell into writing as a career. There was another movie that we'd written together for Universal that I was attached to direct but didn't end up coming to fruition. I guess what I liked about this project was that I liked what it was thematically. I liked the idea of the role memory plays in shaping the people that we are and the choices that we make. The opportunity to explore that lens through the mystery/thriller/suspense genre was interesting to me.”

Much like how the case in the story finds Crowe’s character Roy Freeman, this project found Cooper. He didn’t go searching for it. In 2016, literary manager Pouya Shahbazian sent him the galley for The Book of Mirrors by Eugene Chirovici who is a Romanian thriller writer who was writing in English for the first time. Cooper found the book riveting.

“I read the book in one sitting. It was a really compelling read. The book is very different from the movie in a lot of respects. The book exists in installments where segments of it are told through three different characters. The character that Russell plays, Roy Freeman, is the third installment in the book. I don't remember how many pages the book is, but Roy exists mainly in the last third of the book. I thought it was really compelling that the book presents the idea that truth is a point of view.”

Cooper and Bill Collage (Emancipation) have collaborated on numerous projects. When they approached this one, it was after they decided whose perspective the story was going to be through. There are three main points of view in the book. They chose the detective’s perspective.

“As you know from the movie, there's not a lot of omniscience to it. Pretty much all of the events that happen are experienced as the protagonist is experiencing them. That was the guiding force. What is the journey of this man who starts out isolated and alone and his world is kind of colorless? Over the course of the story, as he gets deeper into this reinvestigation, the world starts to open up for him and he starts to reconnect with people and starts to feel more connected, which is important to him.”

The title was born from the protagonist’s narrative journey. As his memory fades, Roy Freeman is a man longing for connection, for something to tie him to reality. According to Cooper, “This gives him context to who he is.”

This was one of Cooper's most challenging projects because he had to wear many hats. The important lesson he learned from it was, “ The valuable lesson is when you take on a challenge like this, choose people who have your back who you think are talented and who you believe in. Embolden them as storytellers.”

Directing his first project has informed him of how he’ll approach other projects in the future. “When you’re a writer, you put ideas on the page and you don't think about the practical implication of what you've written because you're not intimately involved with the production. But when you're a director, you have to think of the practicality of how you're going to do things. What you learn as a writer/director is that you get to tell the story three times. The first time when you write it. The second time when you direct it. And the third time when you're in post-production. What you find out through this process is that oftentimes things you think you needed in the story end up on the cutting room floor. I think directing will make me a tighter writer, a more economical storyteller.”

Cooper has written a variety of genres but there are certain elements that pique his interest and draw him to a project. “I'm really drawn to characters who are in crisis. That can take a lot of forms - identity, morality, faith, financial, familial. I also like to see the characters emerge from the crisis as a whole.”

The Bourne Identity, The Girl on the Train, and The Woman in the Window are all book-to-screen adaptations that have protagonists that have memory loss. There are certain threads to these types of stories that intrigue Cooper. “A good thriller has a compelling character journey at the center of it. There are also hidden elements of it, where you're teasing out information in a way that is kind of dangled like a carrot for the audience. You always want it to be forward-leaning from scene to scene. Characters who are dubious in their presentation and motive are also key.. And then of course, music helps.”

Sleeping Dogs stars Russell Crowe, Karen Gillan, and Marton Csokas. The Avenue Entertainment film premieres exclusively in theaters on March 22, 2024.