“People are crazy here, no?,” director Joao Pedro Rodrigues half-asks over the phone from LA, where he’s making a brief visit to promote Two Drifters (aka Odete), which opens in the Bay Area this week. His words bring to mind a certain observation by a Hollywood starlet that then became a Rex Reed book title. But in Rodrigues’s case the remark might partly be inspired by the star of Two Drifters – the person whose apartment he’s visiting, Ana Cristina de Oliveira, who has since gone on to a role in Michael Mann’s Miami Vice remake. De Oliveira plays a volatile character in Two Drifters, and some swear words delivered loudly by her bring this interview to an abrupt end.
Guardian: You’ve used the same bold red font for title credit in both of your features. Can you tell me a bit about deciding that?
Joao Pedro Rodrigues: I like it. I like red, it’s like blood. It’s like something that’s inside you.