A BP Interview with Director Tony Scott

---

On Friday, Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures in association with Relativity Media presented a Scott Free /Escape Artists production, “The Taking of Pelham 123.”  The film stars Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, Luiz Guzman, James Gandolfini and Michael Rispoli.  The film is directed by Tony Scott, written for the screen by Brian Helgeland and is based on John Godey best selling novel.

The taking of Pelham 123 began life as a novel.  The title comes from a combination of the station the train departs from and the time in which it departs.  The book’s central puzzle kept readers guessing.  In those days one may wonder, “who would rob a subway train” which is enclosed in a system which seems impenetrable… one would probably be crazy to do so.  Even if they were to get away with the money, there’s nowhere to escape.  The first adaptation of the novel for the screen was in 1974; the film starred Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw and remains a cult classic today.

The filmmakers approached the new adaptation not as a remake of the classic film (which they felt stands on its own) but instead, they returned to the novel, retelling the story as a highly contemporary thriller and reinventing it for a modern-day New York.  Tony Scott commented that this is a great story, yet unknown to new generations of filmgoers.  The world, and in particular – New York City, has changed immensely since 1974.

John Travolta says that though the new film has some of the same elements as the first adaptation, the new film is “The Taking of Pelham 123 on STEROIDS!”  It’s very intense, very hyped and very contemporary.

Producer Todd Black says about the film that it felt right not for a remaking but a retelling.  The retelling would set the film apart from the earlier adaptation in crucial ways.  Helgeland stated he was much more interested in the development of a relationship between the dispatcher and the hijacker.  He felt neither the novel nor the original movie really forced Garber (Denzel) and Ryder (John) to crawl under each other’s skin to figure each other out.

In the film the goals of the central characters “Garber” and Ryder” are the yen and yang to each other.  In that, Garber seeks redemption – he seeks to clear a stain on his reputation, a charge of bribery that resulted in his demotion from MTA Administrator to Dispatcher – which drives him to go head-to-head with the hijacker.  Ryder seeks revenge – he is terrifyingly intelligent and a red-hot manic, one moment showing mercy then in a split second exploding in deadly fury.  In Ryder’s previous career he thrived on Wall Street until imprisoned for embezzlement, now his motivations include settling a score with New York City.

It’s interesting how I viewed the scene of Ryder coercing Garber to admit to the bribery charge as Garber innocently admitting to the charge in order to save the hostage that Ryder was threatening to kill.  Of course, most of the audience saw Garber as guilty.  I thought the director left the question of Garber’s guilt open but I think I’m the only one who saw him as innocent…

Tony felt very strongly about shooting in the authentic tunnels when the decision was made to make this movie, says Barry Waldman, executive producer.  Tony wanted the sound and the fright of being in and around moving trains for the subway to become a third character after Denzel and John.  Waldman continued, usually people build sets and try to reconstruct them on a stage instead, but there’s nothing like capturing reality.  It’s difficult, it’s dirty, but it’s exciting.  It a challenge and it was with temperatures above ground hitting 100 degrees and below ground even hotter.

Scott filmed in the subway for four weeks, the longest and most extensive shoot ever in New York’s subway.  The production was granted access to areas NYC Transit had never before allowed a film crew, including the makers of the original Pelham.  Shooting in the tunnels can be a harrowing experience, with 400 tons of train roaring past only inches away, while the train’s “third rail shoes,” or electrical conductors, speed by even closer, with 600 volts of electricity coursing through them.  Scott viewed the tunnels as a unique and separate world.  His goal was to touch that world in a way that he felt nobody has ever touched it before.

Following is an interview with Pelham director, Tony Scott.

Did you take the 6 train here?

No. I went to 42^nd street to check a print.  I didn’t take the train. Actually, does Bloomberg still take the train or not?

He claims he does… Actually, he takes a car to an express train.

Well, that’s what motivated us to put Gandolfini on the train.  That was the story, research always drives my movies.

How extensive was the shooting in the NYC subway system?

It was all here.  We did everything in New York. I think for the first time, they gave me the opportunity to use real toys and real trains in the subway.  What we shot in the motorman’s booth with Travolta was on stage, but everything else is real.  All other movies where you see actors on subways they make them build sets, it’s very hard to catch the real feel, and you always sense there’s something not quite right, or something wrong.  For instance, “Money Train” was mostly done on stage in L.A.  This was all done here with full-on cooperation.  I think they gave me full-on cooperation here because the original was one of New York’s favorite movies.

We did a tour of the subways, and it was so dusty, moldy and lots of mildew down there.  I can’t imagine spending months filming down there!  How was it for you?

No, I loved it down there.  But I’m from the Northeast of England, which is depressed mining and shipbuilding, so I grew up in this.

You said you did a lot of research for the film. Could you elaborate on that?

What always leads me in terms of my movies are characters, so for 20 years now, I have a family–which I call my “extended family”–and I send them out and I say, “Here’s the script, go into the real world, cast these people in the real world, and find me role models for my writers.”  So they go out in the real world and there’s this guy called ‘Don’–he got his start working in the D.A.–and in “Man on Fire,” he spent six months in Mexico City and found real bodyguards, a real mother, a real kid.  Then I reverse-engineer.  I don’t change the structure of the script, but I use my research.  That’s always been my mantra, and that’s what gets me excited, because I get to educate and entertain myself in terms of worlds I could never normally touch, other than the fact that I’m a director.  And I get paid well to do this, so it’s fun!

What about the control room?  I heard they don’t let anyone in there at all.

They let me in and it’s like NASA.  I can’t tell you where it is; otherwise I’ll have to kill you!  It was difficult for us to get in there because of the security–somebody could get in there and target the subways.  And when you look at the original film, I saw the original offices–which were just offices, really–and they had taken a regular building and just constructed it for Walter Matthau and the MTA with the graphics on the board.  But the real MTA is like NASA.  I went in there on a Sunday morning, a hundred people, it’s the size of a football field–three stories high–and you could’ve heard a pin drop.  Everybody’s on headsets, in suits, so I just took it right from that, and that’s what we did in our movie.

This is the fourth or fifth time you’ve worked with Denzel Washington…

I’m about to do five, I hope.  I shouldn’t have said that!

So what’s it like working with someone you’ve worked with so often?  Do you guys have a short-hand?  And does it make the day go by easier?

No!  Our days are always hard.  There is a short-hand, but there’s a terrible, old-fashioned word called ‘respect’.  I respect his process and he respects mine, and both of us are insecure in that we’re always examining and making what we do better, and my goal every day is to try and think, “How do I see these characters in a different way?” And I’m always motivated by the characters, and it’s the same with Denzel.  I mean you look at the four movies I’ve done with him, he’s always reached back inside himself and taken different aspects of his personality, from: “Crimson Tide“, “Man on Fire“, “Déjà Vu” and “Pelham,” he’s always given me a different Denzel.  And that’s what I do with all my actors.  I say, “There’s an aspect of you inside him, and I’ve got this guy over here, and he fits that aspect of your personality.”  With Denzel, he’s always delivered.  He’s one of those actors who can do nothing and communicate everything, and that comes from doing your homework.  If you feel comfortable about yourself, you don’t have to give.  You can just let the camera sit and do nothing–and I rarely do, as the camera’s always [moving].

Travolta performance is completely over-the-top.  How much of that came from John Travolta himself, and was there ever a thought that you could interchange Denzel and John characters?

No way.  They’re total opposites.  Denzel said, “Let me play the bad guy!”–He always wants to play the bad guy–”I’ve had enough of playing cops and good guys, let me play the bad guy!”  But with John, that’s so much of the research I gave to John–that’s more in terms of the back story, but the personality is John.  I give my actors a stack of tapes and research of the actual guys and I always look back at my real characters.  John’s character’s look came from a hit-man for “The Craze and another guy who just got out of jail had a Chicano mustache and shaved head–and John’s never shaved his head before.  It’s not about ‘being hip’; it’s about his commitment to the character.  He lost a lot of weight, he shaved his head–he made a full-on commitment to building the character.

Going back to Denzel, since you’ve done four movies together, does one of you decide, “Okay, I’d like to do a movie with Denzel,” or is it the other way around?  And did it feel like Ridley was playing with your toys when he did American Gangster?

I got jealous.  I was like a jilted lover!  All you do is you read the script and I sent Don out into the real world to give me ideas, and I said, “It’s Denzel.”  Denzel said, “I don’t want to play another cop or FBI agent,” but I said, “We’ve got a great guy!  And the guy in my mind who’s a role model is named ‘Ike’, and he’s an Albanian, 65-year-old retired MTA worker.”  He’s the guy I stole from in terms of the ‘guy next door’, and the personality traits.

How do you work with your brother Ridley?

If Ridley and I worked together on the set we’d kill each other.  But we’ve been in business for 45 years together, and when business is good in blood there’s nothing better, but rarely it’s good.  So we’re right arm/left arm.  And we’ve developed these companies now–our commercial production company RSA, and we’ve got Scott Free Productions.  He’s great.  He’s the nuts-and-bolts up at the front, and I’m the day-to-day.

What do you think are the basic elements that turn an action-thriller into a classic?

Damn, that’s a very intellectual question!  I always get criticized for style over content, unlike Ridley’s films like “Alien” or “Blade Runner” or “Gladiator” that go right into the classic box right away, mine sort of hover.  Maybe with time people will start saying they should be classics, but I think I’m always perceived as reaching too hard for difference, and difference doesn’t categorize you in the ‘classic’ category.

Speaking of your style, you’re known for a very distinctive editing technique with freeze-frames, jumbled chronologies, slo-mo-”Domino” is an extreme example.

If you look at “Domino“, I sound like a broken record, but everything is driven by research.  I hung out with these bounty hunters who were all coked-up all the time–they’re all on speed or meth–and the movie was a product of my research.  My editor is ‘Skip’, and he’s been with me, and he started cutting all my trailers, and he cuts the signature sequences in my movies as well.  And Chris Lebenzon started with me on “Top Gun“.  But everything in the way I shoot the movie is dictated by the world when I touch it, so we had ride-alongs with bounty hunters who were [sniffing like crazy] in the back, and it’s a product of that.  But, I think I was wrong.  I didn’t let the movie breathe enough.  The script was great–Richard Kelly wrote a great script–and I got overcome by the insanity of the world I was touching.  I think I fucked up on that one.

You have two very interesting projects on the table. One’s another retooling of a 70s NYC cult classic, “The Warriors“…

Retooling–that’s a good word.  With “Warriors“, it’s not a remake.  I’m shooting it in L.A., and I’m doing it present day.  The original doesn’t stand up very well, because it was very ’70s New York, but this one I’m doing about the gang culture in L.A.  I met with all the gang members–from the 18^th Street to the Crips, the Bloods–I met all the guys, and they said, “If you get this movie on…”–because “The Warriors” is obviously their favorite movie–”we’ll all stand on the Vincent Thomas Bridge”–100,000 gang members in the beginning of the movie–”And we’ll all sign the treaty, and we’ll be there.”  But I’m thinking, “How hard can it be?”  Because it’s really about ten little Indians getting from point A to point B over the course of the night, but I can’t get the script right.  I’ve been struggling to get the script.  I’ve wanted to make this movie for ten years now–I love it–and I’ve got all these gang members.

There’s another movie “Emma’s War“, which has been in development for a long time, presumably with Nicole Kidman in the lead role, is that still happening?

It’s something I’m not going to direct, and we’re going to do it through our company.  I love it.  My dance card is so full, I’m so lucky!  I’ve got “The Warriors“, “Hells Angels” – I’ve got some of the best titles out there.  And I’ve been working on “Hells Angels” now, I’ve owned the Hunter S. Thompson book for 12 years, and Stephen Gaghan is writing the script right now.  There’s another one called “Lucky Strike“, about the guys who made the Reaper Aircraft, and Potsdamer Platz which is the guys that wrote Sexy Beast.  I’ve got all these movies ready to go.  They’re scripted, they’re budgeted, and now I’ve got to make them before I die.  I’m getting old!

When Ridley was shooting American Gangster, he was saying the city is impossible to control when you’re shooting.  Did you have that same experience?

I got lucky.  The Waldorf was hard, because that sequence, they’d only let me shoot six guns at a time, and each gun could only have six rounds in it.  I had to film all that shootout, and they wouldn’t let me use automatic guns, because you know they’re scared in the city.  Imagine staying at The Waldorf on a Sunday morning, and hearing all that gunfire.  I had to cobble all that together to make it look like-I stole from “Bonnie and Clyde, another movie. I actually stole it from “The Wild Bunch.”  No, I had a good experience here.  I had a few fingers thrown at me from cars going by.  But other than that, it was good.  And the Manhattan Bridge, that was hard, with the helicopters and the trains and the cars.  We did it on Sunday, and I was respectful of the times.  I didn’t run over.

Columbia Pictures in partnership with NYC MTA put together a special event for press to visit the old City Hall train station.  Using two cars of the number 6 train, we boarded and rode to the old station, viewed some of the tile and marble, had a “subway” lunch – hence in the subway… and completed our trip at the current City Hall train station where most of the press went into a giant room to view more tile, and original art.

Comments and inquiries can be sent to Stephanie R. Green at: SRG4Ent@aol.com

This story is filed under: Entertainment

Read more like this in: Denzel Washington, film, Hollywood