the money in the next-door apartment and he goes to retrieve it. Violet escapes and calls Mickey, telling him that Caesar stole the money and forced her to keep quiet. Corky tries to stop Caesar from taking the money, but he assaults her. Violet arrives and holds Caesar at gunpoint; she informs him Mickey is coming and that he should run while he can. When Caesar refuses, Violet kills him. Later, Mickey, who believes Violet's story, tells her that he will find Caesar. Mickey wants Violet to be his girlfriend, but she tells him that she needs a clean break—which she makes by driving off hand-in-hand with Corky. Cast Gina Gershon as Corky Jennifer Tilly as Violet Joe Pantoliano as Caesar Mary Mara as Bartender Susie Bright as Jesse Margaret Smith as Woman Cop Barry Kivel as Sheldon 'Shelly' Christopher Meloni as Johnnie Marzzone John Ryan as Mickey Malnato Peter Spellos as Lou Ivan Kane as Cop #1 Kevin M. Richardson as Cop #2 Richard C. Sarafian as Gino Marzzone Gene Borkan as Roy Background and production Conception Film producer Joel Silver has said that after working as scriptwriters on Assassins, the Wachowskis made Bound as an "audition piece" to prove that they knew what to do on a movie set. Conversely, Lana Wachowski has said Joel "made that up." The Wachowskis themselves claim they "decided simply to focus on making their own directorial debut." They had the idea to write a story about how one might see a woman on the street and make assumptions about her sexuality, but how those assumptions might be wrong. They wanted to play with stereotypes and make an entertaining film that contained sex and violence, because those are the kinds of films that they like to watch. Seeing film noir as a genre within which they could tell a contained story and twist conventions, they described Billy Wilder as a big influence. When executives at some studios read the script, they told the Wachowskis that if they changed the character of Corky to that of a man, they would be interested. The siblings declined, saying "that movie's been made a million times, so we're really not interested in it." Dino De Laurentiis, the executive producer on Assassins, offered to finance Bound and his company produced it, giving them "free rein" with regard to the story. The film's budget was $6 million. Casting The