Domino never failed to surprise or inspire me over the last 12 years. She was a free spirit like no other I have ever known. Tony Scott

Domino Harvey, the inspiration for Tony Scott's film, died in her Los Angeles home on the evening of June 27th, 2005 at the age of 35. Scott had a lengthy history with Domino, whom he first met more than ten years ago after his business manager, Neville Shulman, sent him an article from what Scott refers to as a "rag newspaper" in London. The article depicted the life of a young woman who had decided to become a bail recovery agent and follow the seamier side of life, both personally and professionally. But what really piqued his interest was the fact that this young woman was actor Lawrence Harvey's ("The Manchurian Candidate") daughter, from a very privileged and gentrified background.

Scott immediately got in touch with the then-20-year-old. He invited her to his office and a week later, the two were in discussions to put a version of her life story on screen. Over the years Domino became a surrogate daughter to Scott. He attempted to watch over her and her comrades, but even the most concerned father cannot always dissuade his children from foolhardy pursuits and destructive behavior.

First Meeting

When I met Domino, she was living at home in Beverly Hills with her Mum and stepfather, Peter Morton, the famous restaurateur. Shed leave her guns in the garage and pick them up when she went on these bounty-hunting missions. She was living two distinctly different lives.

On His Fatherly Role

I kept telling Domino, Youre crazy. Watch out. Youre gonna kick down one too many doors.' But she said storming through those doors with a shotgun in her hand was the biggest adrenaline rush shed ever had, and it helped to quell the voices in her head, so there was nothing I could say or do that would change her attitude.

Meeting Domino's Team

I also met with Domino's team. They were infamous even ten years ago when there weren't that many bounty hunters around. They used her as a cover or as a carrot, whichever the situation warranted. But make no mistake, bounty hunting is a tough, dangerous business. On the Screenplay

Several different screenwriters took a stab at the story, but they were more interested in writing a very straightforward portrayal of Domino's life in a solid but way too linear. I read "Southland Tales" and I saw "Donnie Darko," and I thought Richard Kelly had an interesting voice. He takes an unusual and very imaginative approach in terms of his comedic elements and his darker, almost sci-fi side. He manufactured the story but left the characters as real, breathing people.

It's a very complex story. It's a huge jigsaw puzzle. The audience has to pay attention in order to stay with all the beats of the story. We play it in forward and we play it in flashback. But for me the story is really about a girl who lives in the house on the hill and dreams of being a bounty hunter and then escapes that dream by the skin of her teeth, time stood still for that period, and that was the real Domino.

Getting a Producer When I became certain I wanted to do the film, I called upon longtime friend and associate Samuel Hadida ("True Romance," "Brotherhood of the Wolf," "Resident Evil") to produce the picture. Sammy has always flown my flag. He trusts me, and trust was paramount in terms of making this movie because it's dangerous material. The box office appeal is not necessarily readily apparent, but he let me do my thing, for better or worse, and believed that I was going to come through.

Casting Keira Knightley

I first saw Knightley in longtime friend Jerry Bruckheimer's "Pirates of the Caribbean." I cast the 20-year-old Keira from gut instinct. Domino and Keira are different personalities to be sure. The real Domino was darker, a little more out there, but on the surface they are both English girls a little innocence, a little Princess Di mixed with discomfort at being slotted into that role. They both come from a different planet that does not mix well with the dark world of bounty hunting. I could see Keira as that girl. Taking Keira on this journey of being Domino Harvey was akin to how the real Domino felt when first being exposed to this dark world.

Conception of Domino We begin with a look at Domino's early years in England in order to capture the intense vulnerability of the girl at the core of the story. Domino is tough on the surface, toting guns and kicking down doors, but underneath, she is this vulnerable girl. She got lost along the way after her dad died, and even though there was a lack of connection to her mother, there is genuine emotion and a relationship of sorts that keeps Domino returning home time and again. You need to see that in order to understand the woman.

Working with Kids

I get a kick out of working with kids, and especially enjoyed the scenes with Tabitha Brownstone, who portrays eight-year-old Domino. Tabitha was spunky and feisty. She felt like an extension of Keira. I love the challenge of being able to get a performance out of kids, to get the kids to be real. In Hollywood there is a danger that children are over-coached and a little too predictable.

Domino's Onscreen Family Once I began the casting process, I realized I needed a sound foundation from which his characters could grow and decided that the family aspect of the trio was the place to start. Meeting and researching real bounty hunters proved to be an unlikely but incredibly fruitful well of information for Richard Kelly's rewrites. Most of these guys come from dysfunctional families. It's similar to the Hell's Angels. The only family connection they know is the one they forge with their self-selected, self-made group.

Domino, Ed and Choco were a dysfunctional family that worked. And it all came from Domino, who was searching for a father figure, and somehow Ed became that. They gravitated together because the family they created was the first real family any of them had ever known and addressing these family issues made all the characters much stronger.

Mickey Rourke

I always find role models for my actors in real life, and then I try and find actors who are those characters. Mickey Rourke was Ed and Edgar Ramirez was Choco. Ed was from Los Angeles and Choco was from El Salvador, but they were like brothers. I have known Rourke socially since I first emigrated to the U.S. more than 25 years ago. Mickey is a consummate actor. If you look at the main body of his work, anyone can see that he is brilliant at his craft. I honestly believe I cast the right guy and the rest will take care of itself.

Edgar Ramirez as Choco

Ed would sit on one end of the sofa and in my mind I could see Mickey on the other. They are so similar in personality and character. Mickey is the right age, he's grown up on motorcycles and in a boxing ring; everything in his life experience just crossed the Ts and dotted the Is in terms of Ed's character. It's called luck. I was able to get a psychotic quality from Edgar. Plus, Edgar is beautiful, a little bit like Jim Morrison or Val Kilmer, and he's smart. I was lucky to find him because we were down to the wire.

On the Real Choco

The real Choco used to come into my office and sit and talk to me for hours. But he always spoke in Spanish despite the fact that he knew English. Delroy Lindo as Claremont Williams III

I chose Delroy because of his charm and good looks, not to mention his debonair style. Delroy is smart and he's got a great sense of humor. And he looks like a ladies' man. I needed all those qualities. As an actor, his integrity and commitment knows no bounds. He really wants to know everything he can about the person he is playing, and Celes King was a very smart man who saw opportunities and took advantage of them whenever he could. Some would say he was an opportunist, and Delroy portrays him so smoothly, you barely see what's happening.

Dark Comedy

Irrespective of the strong subject matter, I wanted the film to include comedic elements. I loved Kelly's concept of using actors from the long-running TV show "Beverly Hills 90210" to play themselves, along with an over-the-top television producer and his assistant, plus some bungling crooks peppered with a few shady Mafia types to round out the plot. When Ziering first read the script, he thought it was a joke and called his agent to find out what was what. Ian and Brian are charming and funny because they don't take themselves too seriously. They knew from the first read of the script how their characters were being represented and they loved it. People who grew up in the 90210' generation will get a huge buzz out of it.

Christopher Walken

Domino is my third film with Christopher Walken, who portrays Mark Heiss, a high-strung, television executive. Chris is fantastic. He could read the phonebook and engage you. I don't know what it is about this guy, people always think it's improvisation, but I believe he does a lot of homework very quietly. Hell ask how I see the character, then goes away and comes back and does his own thing. I get such pleasure out of watching him perform, watching his character come to life.

When Walken was on set, I was always laughing. Heiss is a manic, a ferret on crystal meth. Chris capitalized off that description. Kimmie has been sucked into the world of this ferret and is now part of the syndrome, so she acts like she's on crystal meth, too. It's the classic Hollywood boss/kiss-ass sycophantic assistant bond, and the combination of these two actors makes it funny because you don't expect to see them in those roles. They compliment each other brilliantly and Mena is a terrific springboard for Chris. Take after take, she would set him up and he would take off in different directions.

The Ensemble

It's a great cast, very varied and fun, strange and dark, a rock n' roll cast. They are inherently funny and that makes it easy for me to know what Im looking for when it comes to casting. Whenever I get into difficulty with actors, I know to suggest that they spend some time with the real people they are portraying. Charting the Relationships

Early in the production process the filmmakers created a flow chart so that they could keep straight the many characters and their interwoven relationships. We made a family tree, and we put it on the front cover of the script for a while so the story would be easier to follow because it became such a complex piece. It helped everyone to identify who was connected to whom and which one knew what about the other. The story is a dense smorgasbord of odd personalities from different walks of life.

Getting a Realistic View

Despite the film being a fantasy, I insisted on looking at the subject matter through real glasses. To that end, we hired Israeli-American Zeke Unger, a fugitive recovery agent for over 20 years who owns and operates Little Zeke's Bail Bonds, as the film's technical advisor. Unger was not only involved in the shooting of the film, but also offered his expertise and experience to screenwriter Richard Kelly as well as to the actors, putting Keira Knightley, Edgar Ramirez and Mickey Rourke through a brief training program. This movie is about heightened reality. We were invited to tag along with Zeke and some of his crew on a bounty hunt in the tough Los Angeles neighborhood of Compton late one Friday night. We rode in three SUVs. There I am with my little DVD camera, naively thinking, Hey, this is going to be pretty cool.' All of a sudden I see the guys putting on flack vests and pulling out what looked like AK-47s. Then someone says, OK, were going in. Light it up.' I thought that was some reference to flashlights when, in fact, it means get in there as fast as you can and surprise your subject. Theyre striding down alleyways, running in all directions. There was screaming and yelling, and dogs and kids running everywhere, and Im hoping theyre just putting on a show for me, but they weren't. It was wild. This happened to be one of the worst possible nights in one of the toughest districts of L.A. People get killed. Going after and trying to apprehend criminals, many of them dangerous felons, is not for the weak at heart.

But it helped me to tap into what makes these guys tick. And I can translate that to my actors. For instance one of the guys had IBS (Irritable Bowl Syndrome) and it became a trait we gave to Mickey's character because these guys get so nervous and so wound up, it affects them physically. Those little details are the things you can never come up with on your own unless you touch the real world in which the characters exist. The real world is always far more imaginative than anything we could conjure up."

Actual Gang Members in the Cast

With the help of long time collaborator Gusmano Cesaretti, I was able to meet and build a rapport with two bona fide street gangs from East L.A., a Latino and a Vietnamese. He created specific scenes to underscore the tenor and mood of infiltrating and going up against such a force. The same way I touched the real world in terms of the bounty hunters, Domino, her mother and the like, I had to find realism in the gang world. I didn't just use a bunch of great faces and extras on camera, I gave the real guys roles. It's a tough existence and you can never substitute what you find in real faces for what youre trying to cast. There is a brilliant energy from the experience of their everyday life you see it in their eyes.

Are These Guns Real

When Knightley walked onto set her first day of filming with one of the gangs, she immediately sensed a difference. With only the smallest hint of dread, she whispered to me, Are these guys real' A rhetorical question to be sure; before I could explain, she smiled and exclaimed, Yeah, cool.

Collecting the Guns

The prop department took great care in collecting the guns, whether real or replicas, used in every sequence immediately following each completed take. It's easy to get over-amped in the heat of a small room, filled with cameras, believable actors and a charged story. It was hysterical. Some of the scenes were incredibly intense, so we made sure someone accounted for every gun, every take.