Hi everybody, it's Leonard Malton, and this is Malton on movies, and my guest today is

Scott Cooper. Scott Cooper has just made a little film, maybe not such a little film, one of

the better films of the year called Black Mass with Johnny Depp and an amazing cast.

And we'll talk more about that in just a minute. Welcome, Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Malton. What a pleasure to be here with you.

Oh, please call me Leonard.

Thank you, Leonard. Everybody does.

I'm very happy to have you here because you're not only a filmmaker, writer, director, you have been an actor, but you're also a movie buff.

And that's what we really crave on this show, is people who love to talk about movies.

Well, when you grow up in small town in Virginia with one movie theater,

you often are introduced to the world at large through cinema.

And if you're really lucky through world cinema,

because Virginia, at least small town where I'm from,

you often aren't exposed to, uh, uh, Japan, Iran, uh, France.

So it was through the eyes of Sajit Ray or through Kurosawa or Jean-Pierre Melville,

among many others that I got to see the world.

So, uh, uh, if not for cinema, who knows where I would be?

What drew you into acting?

Well, I grew up in a small town called Abingdon, Virginia, and that is where the state

theater of Virginia happens to be.

I think it's the crown jewel, artistic crown jewel of Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A great deal of theater, great deal of arts and crafts, music, bluegrass, music from that region. Country music down the road in Bristol, Virginia and Tennessee is where it was first founded.

All of those sort of things have made their way into my artistic worldview.

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