Charlie Waldo is a former superstar LAPD detective who now lives a life of solitude and minimalism. Three years after ghosting everyone, Waldo’s former flame and owner of a private investigation firm tries to recruit him to help solve the case of the murdered wife of a famous, eccentric actor, who also happens to be the prime suspect — and Waldo is all but forced to take the case.

Last Looks explores what happens when a man who refuses to own more than 100 things must get involved with Hollywood executives, actors, gangsters and the cops who hate him.

Starring Charlie Hunnam, Mel Gibson, Morena Baccarin, and Lucy Fry, Last Looks was written by Howard Michael Gould, based on his novel, and directed by Tim Kirkby.

Kirkby immediately took a liking to the detail in Gould’s script, as well as the fact that it involved an aspect he looks for in his projects: An upward punching underdog as the lead. Kirkby finds himself attracted to the broken man, the loser; the ones that people walk past because they’re a weirdo, he says. “I love that because I feel a bit like that.”

When it came to the evolution of the script, Kirkby says, “Howard had written a very tight script, so it only needed five-ten percent moving here and there, and he was open to changes, especially production changes,” Kirkby says. He adds as an example, “In the book and the drafts up until the shoot, Waldo lives in a little wood cabin, but just budget-wise we couldn’t do that, so we bought an old shitty caravan off eBay for $4,000.”

“We connected just as friends,” says Kirkby of the first time he had dinner with Gould, where they discussed all things Waldo (Hunnam) and how to move forward with the story. Gould was open to Kirkby’s ideas, which included taking one of the key characters out and creating a mystery around someone you see only at the beginning and the end of the film.

Hunnam also provided feedback for his Waldo character, which allowed them to tighten up the script without losing the details of the story. Because this was a detective story, Kirkby shared that he had to keep reading the script over and over to fully understand the detective elements and ensure it was consistent.

From TV to films

Kirkby has had an envious career in TV. He’s directed episodes of Grace & Frankie, Veep, Fleabag and was a creator of Brockmire. So, why make the leap from television to film?

“Every director wants to direct film, and I just found myself forging my craft and career in TV. I wanted to carve out and hone my craft in TV because I felt it was more immediate, you knew where you stood,” Kirkby shares, adding that the process is often getting booked, doing the job, and, once in a while, hitting something that’s special and beautiful. He enjoyed putting his voice on some of the episodes, experimenting and working with different actors.

He continues, “There I was crafting this lovely career in TV, but in my heart and what I really wanted to do was shoot a movie. Every year that ticked by was another year I wasn’t doing a film.”

Kirkby admits that he started his career being incredibly choosy and refusing feature scripts because they weren’t connecting. As he continued directing television comedy, he was trying to find something different than an out-and-out comedy.

“If you’re a comedy director, you’re going to get comedy scripts,” Kirkby says. When he came across Last Looks he thought it had a wonderful atmosphere that ticked a few boxes. “Then when I met Howard and we spent the whole dinner laughing; I thought this was my guy. He gets comedy very well but is also underneath that brilliant at structure and plot and story. I thought let’s do this, it’s quite a unique film.”

For inspiration, he thought back to the films of the 1970s that he would lose himself in, such as The French Connection, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, and Deer Hunter. “This had a flavor of that era for me. It had that sensibility.”

Kirkby's lessons in directing

Working with an Oscar®-winning director might sound intimidating, but Kirkby didn’t quite see working with Mel Gibson as terrifying.

“I worked up this career working with A-listers in TV,” Kirkby explains, which included Martin Sheen, Jane Fonda, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and many others. “When you work with these lovely A-listers, you discover how vulnerable they are and that they really want to give the best performance.”

When it came to working with Gibson, Kirkby was thrilled, as this was one of the top film stars in the world. “I Zoom him and he’s just a guy,” Kirkby states. “He’s funny and nervous and brilliant and sensitive and extremely charismatic, the most charisma I’ve ever seen in a human being.”

Their initial conversation centered around actors like Richard Burton, Oliver Reed, and Peter O’Toole as they tried to home in on the accent that Alastair Pinch (Gibson) plays — Pinch is British and plays a Southern judge on a fictional show.

In terms of directing, Kirkby notes that if you’re in sync with the actor or they are with the director, it doesn’t matter if you’re a first-timer or Adam McKay. “Actors don’t see it like that. They want you to honestly tell them what you think of it and how to make it better.”

His process is to call his actors and ask them what their process is. He follows it up by inquiring what they like about a director and what they don’t like. “This gets the actor included in the director’s process. That’s just how I work. Other directors sometimes tell them what they want and that’s it, but for me, I’m joined at the hip with the actor — they’re the ones in front of the screen, not me.”

The action-comedy Last Looks is now in theaters, on demand, and digital.