‘Mayday’ interview: Directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein on ‘Top Gun’ nostalgia and working with an ICBM

It was slightly surreal to watch John Francis Daley, who played little Sam Weir from Freaks & Geeks, all grown up and firmly ensconced in the movie business. To imagine that same dorky Sam and his nerdy friends hunched around a basement playing D&D, now as one half of a filmmaking partnership with Jonathan Goldstein that has taken them from Horrible Bosses and Spider-Man: Homecoming to directing Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, made me unexpectedly well up with nostalgia. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein | Photo Credit: Apple TV The filmmakers’ latest film, Mayday, takes their genre-fluent sensibilities into the Cold War. Written and directed by the duo for Apple Original Films, the action-comedy stars Ryan Reynolds as Troy Kelly, a hotshot U.S. Navy pilot stranded behind enemy lines after a covert mission goes awry, and Kenneth Branagh as Nikolai ‘Nick’ Ustinov, an eccentric former KGB agent who becomes his unlikely ally. Largely set in Soviet Russia and steeped in ’80s pop-cultural iconography, with an unmistakable affection for Top Gun, Mayday finds the two filmmakers leaning into the decade’s particular blend of Cold War paranoia and pop-cultural excess. Goldstein and Daley spoke to The Hindu about their latest collaboration.Spycraft and the ‘80sMayday pays close attention to the nuts and bolts of Cold War espionage, from period-specific technology to KGB tradecraft, and for Goldstein, some of the groundwork began with the spy films that first drew him to the genre.“I was a big fan of the James Bond movies as a kid, still am,” he says. “I love the notion of a seemingly ordinary person who is not quite a superhero, but almost one. And that’s what Kenneth Branagh is in this movie.”The filmmakers also wanted the period details to hold up under scrutiny. “We did do a lot of research in terms of what technology might have been available to them during the time,” Goldstein says. “The Altai satellite phone that they go find, was a real thing. So we try to be as true to life and reality in that period as we could be.”That attention to period detail extends to the film’s contrasting visions of America and the Soviet Union, which Daley experienced through both personal memory and research. Having grown up in the ‘80s, he found himself drawing on the pop culture of the period while shaping Troy’s perspective. John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein. Kenneth Branagh and Ryan Reynolds on the set of ‘Mayday | Photo Credit: Apple TV “I showed Kenneth the show Freaks & Geeks and told him to act exactly like I did when I was 14 years old,” Daley jokes, before quickly adding, “No, not really.” He did, however, draw heavily from the decade’s visual language. “I did draw a lot of inspiration from the aesthetic and the clothes and the pop culture of the 80s while making this film.” The connection runs even deeper through costume designer Debra McGuire, who worked with Daley on Freaks & Geeks, and later reunited with him for Game Night and now Mayday. The period also offered them a useful visual contrast. “I think the ‘80s is such a vibrant and interesting period of time in our history,” Daley says. “One that we got to sort of explore from both lenses — through the American lens when our guys are walking through the Gaslamp District in San Diego, with the hair and the music; but then also a look at the ‘80s in Soviet Russia, which looks very different and recalls a little bit more of the sort of that ‘50s aesthetic. It was really fun to play with that contrast.”Turning ‘Top Gun’ on its headThat contrast is especially sharp in the film’s relationship with Top Gun, where the mythology of the American action hero becomes something Goldstein and Daley can poke at. Goldstein sees Tom Cruise’s Maverick as the perfect archetype to turn upside down. “Top Gun is a seminal film for Americans in particular, because I think they look at Maverick as both, the iconic American hero, and a rebel at the same time,” he says.That idea became the blueprint for Reynolds’ Troy. “That’s what partly drew us to this notion when we started coming up with the idea of Mayday: how do you take that iconic figure and turn it on its head a little bit by putting him in a situation where he can’t solve every problem, where he actually needs the enemy, ‘to save his butt’.”The filmmaking itself also borrows from the practical approach of Joseph Kosinski’s sequel, Top Gun: Maverick. Since the production did not have access to real American F-18s or the cooperation of the U.S. Navy, like Top Gun did, they found another way. Ryan Reynolds as Troy Kelly, a hotshot U.S. Navy pilot, in a still from ‘Mayday’ | Photo Credit: Apple TV The film also borrows from the practical aerial work of Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick. Without access to American F-18s or the U.S. Navy’s cooperation, the filmmakers found a more circuitous route to the same illusion. “We employed a lot of the same approaches that they did on Maverick in terms of how we shot a lot of the flying stuff,” Daley says. “We did a month of aerial photography in the south of France before we shot principal photography. We took these French fighter jets and re-skinned them in post-production to look like F-18s.”Daley adds that the Top Gun influence was ultimately more interested in the cultural afterlife of the film than in recreating it beat for beat. “We never intended the film to be too much of a homage to or satire of Top Gun. Rather, we wanted to look at the nostalgia and fandom people have for the film.”Missile crisisThe production’s commitment to realism extended considerably beyond aircraft. For one sequence, the filmmakers tracked down an actual Soviet Intercontinental Ballistic Missile launch trailer in Hungary and built a replica nuclear missile to go on top of it.“Luckily, we found a man in Hungary who had collected Soviet weapons from the Cold War period, including that ICBM launch trailer, the bottom part of it, which we then built a sort of fake ICBM missile to go on top of,” Goldstein says. Kenneth Branagh and Ryan Reynolds in a still from ‘Mayday’ | Photo Credit: Apple TV The practical reality was somewhat less glamorous. “It weighed many, many tons, it took a long time to get it from point A to point B, it spewed out a lot of smoke, which was not always ideal when we wanted to film it. They even had to raise some power lines in Budapest, where we filmed it, because the vehicle was too high to fit under them,” he adds.Finding the right Russian villainThe film’s supporting cast also benefited from the filmmakers’ desire to avoid familiar genre tropes. Marcin Dorociński plays Alexander Volkov, a KGB officer pursuing Troy and Nick, who wants to see the Gorbachev era’s glasnost reforms brought to an end. The Polish stalwart, perhaps best known internationally for playing Vasily Borgov, the formidable Russian chess grandmaster opposite Anya Taylor-Joy in The Queen’s Gambit, brings a similar inscrutable quality to Mayday.“It was a very long search for that role,” Daley says. “When we finally found Marcin, we knew that this was the guy that would play Alexander Volkov, mostly because he wasn’t playing this sort of stereotypical mustache-twirly Russian villain, but rather sort of understated and nuanced, very charming character.” Marcin Dorociński as Alexander Volkov, a KGB officer pursuing Troy and Nick, in a still from ‘Mayday’ | Photo Credit: Apple TV There is also something disarming about him. “You can always tell what he’s thinking, and there is this slightly sinister nature to his personality in the character,” Daley says, quickly adding, “certainly not as a person, because he was a delight to work with.”“And a ping pong champion, as it turns out,” Goldstein adds.Daley chuckles. “Yeah, he went to ‘ping pong halls’ on weekends and would just play all day, which is very funny and anachronistic. It doesn’t feel like what a villain does in his free time.”Soundtrack to the ‘80sFor all its Cold War espionage, Mayday has a conspicuous fondness for the pop culture of the decade. Van Halen’s “Jump” opens the film, while Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” soundtracks a montage of Troy and Nikolai driving through Russia. The filmmakers’ own ’80s tastes, however, are somewhat more eclectic.“I guess it was alt-rock before they called it alt-rock,” Goldstein says. “So things like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Lou Reed and Frank Zappa. That was my kind of music growing up that I loved.”Daley has his own candidates. “I don’t know if it would soften the hearts or harden the hearts, but it was good stuff,” he says. “I like Devo and Duran Duran and a number of others. But honestly, the 90s music scene was more my generation, just because I was born in 1985.”Mayday streams September 4th on Apple TV