In Confess, Fletch, Jon Hamm stars as the roguishly charming and endlessly troublesome Fletch, who becomes the prime suspect in a murder case while searching for a stolen art collection. The only way to prove his innocence? Find out which of the long list of suspects is the culprit - from the eccentric art dealer and a missing playboy to a crazy neighbour and Fletch’s Italian girlfriend. Crime, it's fair to say, has never been this disorganized.
Earlier this month, we sat down to chat with director Greg Mottola and star Jon Hamm about the challenges they faced bringing this classic franchise back to theaters and the pressure following in the legendary Chevy Chase's footsteps brings with it.
Hamm also reflects on how Top Gun: Maverick's success prepared him for this modern take on Fletch and comments on the chances of him playing the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Mister Sinister when the X-Men franchise is rebooted by Marvel Studios. How close did the actor come to playing the iconic villain? You can find his comments in full here.
Check out our interview with the Confess, Fletch star and director below:
Fletch fans have been waiting literally decades for a new film, so how did you both feel about being the ones to bring the franchise back and was there any extra pressure for you, Jon, when it came to following in the footsteps of Chevy Chase?
Jon: Well, you know, sure. Obviously, I was a massive fan of the first film too as I was of Chevy’s entire film oeuvre and career. He had a pretty solid run in the 80s whether it's Caddyshack or all the Goldie Hawne movies that he made. I even liked Modern Problems; I know a lot of people didn’t, but I did. I saw it at a drive-in theater. It was daunting, to say the least, to step into those shoes. The most important thing and the very first thing Greg and I talked about when we were making the movie was, ‘We’re not going to make a Chevy imitation.’ No one wants to see that. We already have that version. So, we kind of talked about it almost as a cover song: ‘Why don’t we make our own version of this and see what it looks like?’ How do you do that?
Well, you go back to the books. You go back to the source material. We thought, ‘Well, that very rich and the character is very different from the iteration that Chevy put on the screen in the 1980s.’ It was exciting to be able to understand that there is a different way to tell a story like this that seems to have some traction in the 21st Century when you look at the success of Knives Out, Death on the Nile, and the proliferation of these whodunnits and mysteries. That’s very much what we set out to make and I think we did a helluva job [Laughs].
And Greg, for you being the filmmaker, did you feel a similar sense of pressure knowing how long-awaited this movie has been?
Greg: Yeah, I was very nervous about it. And still am [Laughs]. It was intimidating because I also love the first movie, but I also love detective stories whether it’s Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, or all the movies that are made in the genre. That was part of the attraction when Jon came to me with this. I hadn’t read the books, but I knew they existed and heard that they’re great. Jon had read them when he was younger, so I read a bunch, and loved them.
I saw how perfect Jon was for it and thought, ‘Yeah, let’s do our version of it.’ I was thinking, ‘Why Fletch now?’ I think Fletch is the kind of guy who sees an injustice, a crime, or someone getting away with something and just decides, ‘Well, the proper channels are going to take so long and often don’t work, so I’m just gonna pull some scams, break some laws, and get to the bottom of this thing.’ I honestly think a lot of us would be able to do that in this moment of time because a lot of people seem to be getting away with stuff and nothing gets done.
Does coming off the back of a mega-hit like Top Gun: Maverick reassure you a little that people are open to returning to a beloved property like this one with new cast members?
Jon: Yeah! Obviously, Top Gun has a very different road to the screen than this, although weirdly, the originals were released within a couple of years of each other. There’s a reason you go see Top Gun on the big screen. It’s a thrill ride, it’s the action as you ride an F18 through a canyon. That’s all very exciting and the nostalgia is very much there with the original star coming back. With ours, we’re hoping it gets people to go to the theater because people miss the communal experience of going to a dark room and laughing together. There’s something therapeutic about that, something exciting about that, and something of a shared experience of love of story and going to see movies. I think you see it with the return of Broadway. People want to be in rooms together where they feel like they’re not gonna infect each other and [Laughs] have an unplanned week off work. This is all to that point: getting people back together and laughing.
Confess, Fletch arrives in theatres, on Digital and on demand on September 16, 2022.