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You know, it's so interesting because actors always find different ways into their characters. MARTIN: So speaking of absurd, whose idea was it to give Efraim that laugh? So I think if you do it right and if your sort of attempt is at reality, even when reality is absurd, it's going to be a balance of tones. I mean, how many days or how many months have you had that are purely dramatic? And how many months have you had that are purely comedic? Real life is a mixture of those things.
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And there is something really exciting about documenting real life. PHILLIPS: And this just seemed like one of the worst. PHILLIPS: It wasn't that I wanted to make a political movie, it was that I do happen to like movies about guys who make bad decisions. Was that something you'd been interested in for a while? But it's also - maybe not a political commentary - but about political things, which is different for you. MARTIN: Todd, people probably know you best as the director of "The Hangover" trilogy. It could have been selling oats, but it was selling guns. But initially, he saw a loophole, and he went for it.
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That, to me, was the most interesting part is that he's really easy to paint as a criminal - he eventually is. But just the idea of what he's doing, initially, is not illegal. I think his lines of ink are pretty thick of - already drawn. HILL: Well, I don't think he was trying to figure out his moral calculus (laughter). MARTIN: Can you talk about what the gray lines were for him, then, in this story, in this plot? Where was Efraim kind of trying to make decisions, figuring out his own moral calculus?
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And I like playing characters that, you know, a couple could go see the movie and one person could love him and one person could hate him. But I think morality is so individual and personal, and people draw their own lines of what that means for them. But I'm very, very attracted to morally ambiguous characters, not just pure bad guys or pure good guys.
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HILL: Thankfully, there wasn't a lot I connected with Efraim. But was there something that you connected with in him, in Efraim? I mean, you - when you talk to actors, often they say, oh, but the bad guys are always more interesting to play. Efraim Diveroli is the character who you play. MARTIN: Jonah, you intimated that this guy's character is not - I don't know, he's not a nice guy. And the more we kind of looked into the story on our own, it just kept feeling more and more like a movie. And the fact that it was real was actually the thing that first struck out to me. This is a cool setting, but I just don't believe it. In other words, if it had been a piece of fiction in The New Yorker, I'd be like, oh, these characters are really good. PHILLIPS: What stuck out to me was the idea that it was true. MARTIN: Todd, why'd you want to make this film? Phillips had already beaten me to the punch. MARTIN: You're like that's the guy for me. And that paired with a character that was so manipulative and sociopathic and charismatic at the (laughter) same time. I mean, I read it and was completely blown away by what I was reading 'cause the story was so unbelievable. You actually, I understand, tried to grab this story for your own creative purposes before you realized Todd had already optioned it. Jonah Hill and Todd Phillips join us now. The film is called "War Dogs." And it co-stars Miles Teller and Jonah Hill as the masterminds of this racket. It's now the premise for the new film from director Todd Phillips. It is a true story, first told in a 2011 piece in Rolling Stone.
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These two 20-something pot-smoking guys from Florida figured out how to sell old Chinese ammunition to the U.S. And many of those contractors made a whole lot of money, including David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli. government was awarding hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts to American companies, everything from fixing air conditioners to supplying weapons. At the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.