10 Awesome Facts You Need To Know About The 2019 Film The Kid

Directed by Vincent D’Onofrio, The Kid is a reinterpretation of the legendary outlaw Billy the Kid and his tussles with arch-nemesis Sheriff Pat Garrett. This classic Western tale has been adapted several times in American cinema, but this 2019 film sought to tell the tale from another kid’s perspective. Starring Dane DeHaan as Billy and Ethan Hawkw as Garrett, The Kid also features Jake Schur as the titular character.

The kid, Rio Cutler escapes his Southwestern home in 1879 to get away from an abusive uncle. His travels lead him right in the middle of the outlaw and the lawman’s game of wits. The Kid makes use of classic genre tropes while adding a coming-of-age narrative, interpreting the morality of violence and toxic masculinity along the way.

10 Second Directorial Feature For Vincent D’Onofrio

D’Onofrio is a highly versatile character artist, his most popular roles ranging from the naive Private Gomer Pyle in Full Metal Jacket to the hauntingly evil Wilson Fisk in Netflix’s Daredevil. Acting aside, he has also tried his hand at directing films, starting out with the 2005 short Five Minutes, Mr. Welles that stars Vincent D’Onofrio as Orson Welles preparing for his role in The Third Man.

In 2016, he directed a musical slasher called Don’t Go in the Woods, which featured a band rehearsing in a forest to find some peace, only to encounter a serial killer. The Kid marked his second feature film as a director.

9 The Film’s Emotion Came From Two Father Figures

Reimagining a kid between two towering characters like Garett and Billy possibly stemmed out of Vincent D’Onofrio’s own fascination with the two father figures he grew up with, his biological father and stepfather.

In a conversation with Slash Film, he explained how his real father wasn’t a trusted man while the latter was still “a genuine dude.” However, it was his father who had introduced him to creative arts like cinema. As he put it in his own words, “I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be cool to broaden it and make cool iconic characters that everybody understands, not just me, and put a boy in between them?’ And so, that’s why the thing has this combination of being classic and this kind of emotional trip, because of those two characters.”

8 The Magnificent Seven Cast Reunited

John Sturges’ adaptation of Seven Samurai was released as The Magnificent Seven in 1960. The Western classic received a stylish, modern update in 2016 by director Antoine Fuqua. The titular seven included in this remake included Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, and Vincent D’Onfrio.

The three actors are reunited in The Kid as Pratt plays the protagonist’s abusive guardian Grant Cutler, Hawke plays Pat Garrett, while D’Onofrio features as Sheriff Romero, another enemy of Billy the Kid.

7 Reunited Vincent D’Onofrio With His Daughter

The Kid also stars Leila George as Sara Cutler, Rio’s sister who runs away with him. George is D’Onofrio’s daughter, born when he was in a relationship with Emmy-winning actress Greta Scacchi in the 1990s. She was raised by her mother in the UK but relocated to New York City to study acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute where her father occasionally gives an acting masterclass.

Aside from The Kid, she was also seen in Mortal Engines as Katherin Valentine, a member of the bourgeoisie in the dystopian world the film is set in.

6 Jake Schur’s Father Also Serves As Producer

Another familial connection in The Kid is debutant Jake Schur’s father serving as one of the producers for the film. Schur, who was 13 at the time of filming, happens to be the son of Jordan Schur.

Jordan Schur currently serves as the CEO of Mimran Schur Pictures but had earlier gained acclaim in the music world, as the founder of Flip Records that helped launch the career of Limp Bizkit. As the president of Geffen Records, he also helped in supervising the career of artists like Snoop Dogg and Blink-182. As a film producer, he’s notable for the sports drama Warrior, partnering with Lionsgate, which was the same studio behind The Kid.

5 An Academy Nicholl Fellow Wrote The Screenplay

Andrew Lanham wrote the screenplay for the film based on an outline of the story by Vincent D’Onofrio. Lanham’s screenwriting career got a good-enough headstart when he received one of the five Nicholl Fellowships in 2010, a dream for every budding screenwriter. The fellowship program by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is an annual competition for aspiring screenwriters, some of whom ended up having their scripts successfully produced into a feature film.

Even though Lanham’s winning screenplay didn’t get a cinematic adaptation, he’s on the right track. 2019 saw him writing not just The Kid, but also the highly-acclaimed legal drama Just Mercy, as well.

4 Ben Dickey Got A Role Because Of Blaze

Ethan Hawke’s last directorial feature was Blaze, a biopic on country singer-songwriter Blaze Foley. For the lead role, Hawke chose a relatively unknown musician Ben Dickey who had no prior acting experience. He sent Dickey to his close friend D’Onofrio for some mentoring in acting.

A professional relationship bloomed in this process, as Dickey later ended up landing a role in The Kid, too. He plays the role of a lawman called Jim East.

3 One Of Many Collaborations Between Hawke and D’Onofrio

Real-life friends Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio have collaborated on more than one occasion. There is, of course, the aforementioned The Magnificent Seven. Both played members of the bank-robbing gang The Newton Gang in the film of the same name. Then, in 2009, Hawke played a septic tank cleaner who robs a mob boss (D’Onofrio) in the direct-to-DVD film Staten Island.

The same year, both also starred in Brooklyn’s Finest, yet again directed by Antoine Fuqua. Three years later, Hawke starred in the cult horror film Sinister, in which D’Onofrio makes an uncredited guest appearance as a professor specializing in occult practices.

2 Daredevil’s Matthew Lloyd Handled The Cinematography

The cinematographer for The Kid was Matthew Lloyd, the same man who had served as cinematographer for several episodes of Daredevil, the show that brought D’Onofrio back into mainstream pop culture.

Describing his experience with Lloyd from a director’s perspective, D’Onofrio explains, “just like in anything, some are just geniuses at what they do. Matthew is one of those people, who like any smart leader, will surround himself with all these amazing people, his operators, his dolly guys, his electricians. He’s a phenomenal guy.”

1 Recreating The Classic Billy The Kid Photograph

One of the only surviving photographs of Billy the Kid features him standing upright, with an 1873 Winchester rifle in hand, the gun’s butt resting on the floor. The holster for his revolver hangs on the left side. This prompted historians to think he was left-handed even though the photograph’s medium was ferrotype, which produces reversed images.

When Rio opens his eyes and sees Dane DeHaan’s Billy for the first time, he finds him standing in a manner that’s very similar to the photograph.

About The Author

Shaurya Thapa
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Shaurya Thapa is an Indian freelance journalist who mostly dabbles in writings on cinema, music, and human interest features. When it comes to Screen Rant, he writes lists on a wide array of subjects ranging from international films to mainstream Netflix series and comic book trivia. He also hosts a podcast called ‘BhindiWire’, an Indian parody of IndieWire.

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