Josh Trank’s new film Capone is a bit of a fever dream that plays fast and loose with its details. Instead of documenting the classic criminal’s heyday in Chicago, Capone glides through the gangster’s final days of seclusion on a Florida estate, where neurosyphilis eats away at his mind and body. It’s deliberately unpleasant, but it makes for a captivating performance from Tom Hardy.
During a recent interview with USA Today, though, Josh Trank fesses up to a few details that he added into Capone that can’t be proven. And one of them is related to the comically exaggerated carrot that Al Capone’s doctor (played by Kyle MacLachlan) convinces him to chomp on instead of the cigars that are destroying the gangster’s lungs. Trank admits:
1,000%, I’m guilty of making that up.
That sucks, because it’s funny to think that a doctor would “trick” a patient into quitting cigars just so that they could satisfy an oral fixation with a carrot. It leads to a very funny, Bugs Bunny-esque visual of Capone munching on oversized carrots that fit into his open mouth in much the same way that the cigar chunk did.
The carrot was kept hidden from the marketing materials for Capone, so we can’t capture an image of it. But later on in the USA Today interview, Josh Trank shares that when he texts with Tom Hardy, the two use the carrot emoji as a gag between friends, because of this silly addition to their serious drama. Trank reveals:
Whenever I communicate with Tom, I send him a carrot. It's kind of become our thing.
Capone is a real departure for Josh Trank, who burst on the scene with the extremely popular found-footage superhero movie Chronicle. His next career stop was a debacle, though, as Trank got caught up in a disastrous Fantastic Four adaptation, which set his trajectory back. For better or for worse, Capone is completely the movie that Trank set out to make, as he suffered no studio interference. He recently joined our ReelBlend podcast to open up about his process, and the results. Give this interview a listen!
Capone sidestepped a theatrical release (everything is sidestepping a theatrical release at the moment), and is currently available on paid VOD. This could be the new model for the immediate future, with other films (though far more family-friendly ones) such as Scoob! and Trolls World Tour making their way to streaming platforms. Josh Trank recently took to social media to thank everyone who gave his movie a try, whether they loved it or hated it. Where did you fall in Capone?
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