How ‘The Outfit’ Director Graham Moore Mined His Family History for a Twisty Crime Thriller About a Tailor
thewrap.com“The Outfit” germinated, it became clear this was personal enough that he should try directing it himself.The Focus Features release, which is in now playing exclusively in theaters, is a contained gangster riff that takes place entirely in one location and follows Mark Rylance as the mild-mannered owner of a tailor shop who gets roped into a gang war.
This principal idea was rooted deeply in Moore’s family history.“The emotional core of this came from my grandfather,” Moore explained. “When I was about 7, my parents split up, and my grandfather became just this huge figure in my life… He was, I think, the kindest gentlest soul I’ve ever known and he was a doctor in a small town with a corner store family medical practice.
And one of his patients happened to be the notorious mobster Jerry Catena.”In “The Outfit,” Rylance plays an English tailor named Leonard who operates out of Saville Row in Chicago and allows his place of business to be used for money drops for a particular mob crew.
But when one of the mobsters (played by Dylan O’Brien) shows up with a bullet in his stomach and a recorded tape that could spell doom in the wrong hands, Leonard gets involved with potentially deadly consequences.The story was born out of Moore’s fascination with what went on between his grandfather and this notorious mobster. “I distinctly remember my grandmother would always go to him and say, ‘What are you doing?
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