‘We’re doing the same job but coming at it from opposite directions and it’s like a joust.’
– Ridley Scott
Next up for Russell would be 3:10 to Yuma in 2007 – a remake of the 1957 Western, itself based on the 1953 short story by Elmore Leonard. It saw Russell team up with one of Hollywood’s most respected young actors – Christian Bale.
The Batman star, no stranger himself to a fiery reputation, said he’d harboured some trepidation about working with Russell. ‘We’d never met before and whenever people asked me what I was doing next and I said I was going to be working with Russell, they looked at me and said, “You’re going to be in for a rough ride with him.” [But] it was truly a pleasure.’
It’s no surprise that the pair bonded, although Bale did have to put up with Russell’s constant teasing about his superhero past. ‘It never stopped and it continues still. I actually had to buy him his own special rubber suit.’
Bale also had a reputation for going to extreme lengths to get in the mind of his characters – witness his skeletal look in The Machinist – and even Russell would have to sit back and admire his dedication.
Bale’s tendency to keep the accent was something that Russell was amazed at, knowing that it was something that he could never do. ‘If I did that at home, my wife would just be like, “Forget about it, man. I ain’t sleeping with Buffalo Bill.”’
With Russell’s ranch experiences, and having enjoyed his previous horse-riding films, it was a shoot he enjoyed immensely. ‘Probably since I was about nine or 10 years old I’ve ridden horses quite regularly, and I have a cattle farm. I have my own horses and stuff, so for me that was just a pleasure. Being actually able to be on horseback for nine or 10 hours a day wasn’t worrying me at all. You know, the more the better.’
And there was one particular scene he enjoyed – seeing director James Mangold struggling to cope with the environment that he was so used to. ‘Working with the horses and the cattle weren’t his favourite moments. He had a cracker of a time at one point where Jim thought he was going to be able to stampede cattle and they would take a left turn just because that’s how he marked the path.
‘I was trying to catch him. I said, “Jimmy, mate, it don’t work that way. You stampede those cattle they’re gonna go up that hill, and we’re gonna be hanging around here for two hours getting the cattle down from the hill.” He goes, “No, but the path’s marked clearly.” “It’s a fucking cow! It’s not gonna go around the corner like that.” He said, “OK, let’s see what happens.”
‘We did see what happened. Bang! Bang! They stampeded and up the bloody mountain they went, and two hours later we’re still twiddling our thumbs waiting for the cattle to come down from the top of the mountain.’
There was a different kind of trouble when a freak storm hit the set, blasting the crew with freezing temperatures. Visitors to the set would have been stunned to have been given hand-warmers in the normally hot surroundings, while truckloads of dirt were being driven in to cover the snowy conditions.
Russell formed a close bond with his horse during the shoot, and admitted it was tough to part company. ‘Doing these sort of movies with animals, you get close because it’s an intense working relationship – 10 or 12 hours a day for months – so it’s hard to say goodbye. There are some you have a deeper connection with immediately and you can work on that over time. I’ve found over the years that the more gentle you are with a horse, the deeper that connection gets.’
The film was a hit with critics, with many calling it an improvement on the original. ‘Here the quality of the acting, and the thought behind the film, make it seem like a vanguard of something new, even though it’s a remake of a good movie 50 years old,’ said Roger Ebert.
Russell would team up with Ridley again in American Gangster. Documenting the tale of a 1970s crime lord, a New Yorker magazine article titled The Return of the Superfly proved to be the inspiration for Russell’s next project.
The story of how Frank Lucas masterminded an operation to distribute some of the strongest heroin to hit New York City through his ingenious plan of smuggling the ingredients directly from Vietnam in the coffins of dead US solders is a compelling, exciting and thrilling one. It was ripe for the big screen.
That’s not to say that it didn’t have problems getting there. If the first attempt to get the story made hadn’t fallen through, you would have seen a completely different movie. It would have had Terry George on directing duties, with Don Cheadle and Joaquin Phoenix playing the Denzel Washington and Russell characters respectively.
The second attempt would have seen Washington reunite with his Training Day director, Antoine Fuqua, with Benicio Del Toro playing detective Richie Roberts. Spiralling costs, however, saw them ditch the film a second time, despite filming being only weeks away.
But Washington, who was still paid for his involvement in the movie despite it being axed because of his pay-or-play deal, hadn’t give up hope on the project.
The film’s producer, Brian Grazer, commissioned the script as soon as he read the article. He said, ‘I really love this story. It’s haunted me from the first time I was told about it and I just couldn’t give up on it. I knew that Denzel loved the role and I learned later on that he still had contact with Frank Lucas – that’s how much he liked the role and understood it. So, once I got Ridley Scott to say yes to the movie, Denzel said he would do it again.’
Scott said about making the film: ‘I’ve known Steve [Zallian – the film’s writer] for a long time. We’re friends and we worked together on Hannibal and he helped me out on Black Hawk Down. If Steve calls me and asks me to read something, I will, whether I’m going to work on it or not. If he just wants my opinion, that’s fine.
‘I first read it about three and a half years ago and I loved it – great characters, great time period, great feeling. Actually, I don’t know whether I was getting offered it or not back then, but I couldn’t do it anyway because I was about to start on Kingdom of Heaven. But then when I was doing A Good Year with Russell I heard it had problems and wasn’t happening and I said to Russell, “Have you read it? What do you think? Let’s make this work…” And the fact is he knows Brian and I know Brian, so we both called him.’
Russell had worked on two of Grazer’s films – A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man – and at the same time as Grazer was trying to convince Scott to direct the picture, he sent the script to Russell in the hope he would star alongside Washington.
Russell was to play an honest if roguish and womanising New York detective called Richie Roberts.
Grazer said of the two lead characters, ‘One guy was an extreme version of a gangster and the other guy was like the perfect cop, the personification of what America thought her police officers should be. Richie Roberts even turned down a $1 million take!
‘He was an aberration at a time when there were so many corrupt cops. One guy, Lucas, has this great home life, a real family man, and the other, Roberts, wrecks his marriage because of his affairs. And these two huge characters are headed on a collision course.’
Talking about Washington’s character, who took over a small crime organisation when his mentor died, Grazer added, ‘But he just didn’t take it over, he took it to a whole new level and flooded Harlem with heroin. Frank Lucas was an entrepreneur not much different from any kind of white-collar entrepreneur who does things that are corrupt and involves the lives of other people. He was kind of the flip side of the American Dream.’
Washington added, ‘It wasn’t a case of him walking around being the tough guy all the time. He laughs a lot, cries a lot, and he’s not a bad guy – he’s just had this violent and unbelievable past. It’s like he said to me: “I was in a dirty business and there was only one way to do it. There wasn’t any room for nice guys.” It’s not like there’s your friendly neighbourhood heroin dealer.’
The film rested on the pair’s shoulders, but it was a burden they had no problem with. The pair had remained close friends after starring together in Virtuosity and were keen to team up again.
Russell said of the moment that sealed their friendship in 1995, ‘About halfway through the shoot, Denzel came to my trailer one night with two cigars and a bottle of cognac. He knocked on the door and was like, “Shall we have a drink?” And I was like, “Cool, come on in.”
‘So we sat there and we were chatting for about half an hour, 40 minutes, and I always remembered something he said, and for me doing American Gangster is a partial payback for him. He said, “You know, I’ve never said this to any other actor, but man, I wish I was playing your role.” So when I got the Gangster script, and I knew how much Denzel wanted to do it – I read it and the thing is, what’s great about it is the character of Frank Lucas. On the page it was Frank and really there wasn’t any other half at that time. There was nothing else going on. And that conversation, all those years ago, came to mind, because I’m reading it going, “Man, I wish I was playing Frank!” So the process of getting involved in this is really a form of repaying him, a certain loyalty from 12 years ago.’
As before on many of Russell’s films, he and Scott set about ‘beefing’ up the character of Roberts, with both agreeing that it was somewhat underwritten and Russell conceding that the character ‘needed a lot more work’.
‘But you know what, we’ve done that before. We did it with Gladiator and to a lesser extent we did it with A Good Year.’
Scott could be happy that he had two leads who could both dominate films on their own with their presence and charisma and wouldn’t be overshadowed by each other. And juggling two movie stars with movie-star baggage was doable, despite the many headaches caused by their constant moaning about the script. ‘We just sat in a room on our own and went over it again and again. And you know, these two are very similar – they want to know things are happening the way they should. That’s fine, I understand that.
‘They are always complaining. And they get pretty passionate when they complain. They’re always complaining about the writer. And I’m going, “Well, actually the writer is pretty fucking good…” This is not just Denzel, this is Russell as well. I mean, fucking hell! And I’m going, “I disagree. I think he’s fantastic, that’s why I’m here, right?”
‘We’re doing the same job but coming at it from opposite directions and it’s like a joust. And I’m seeing it as part of my job to let them see it how it could be and they are saying, “Yes, but I need this.” And so I will supply that as much as I can, help them as much as possible with that kind of discussion.’
He added, ‘But now I’ve just learnt that’s what they do and there’s no taming the beast, believe me. You have to let them agonise. With the best it’s part of the process – and we are talking about two of the best here.’
But, he conceded, ‘It gets to a point of craziness where there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Somebody has got to be the chef and somebody has to say, “No, wash your hands, you don’t chop onions that way.”’
Talking about his character, Russell said, ‘Well, I didn’t know anything about Richie. He wasn’t like a big feature in what we knew of Frank Lucas, so I wanted to know about him and who he was. The thing I found out was that he was a true patriot – he came out of school, had a look around and decided to become a Marine. He went into the Marine corps and whatever he discovered didn’t really satisfy him so he went into the police force. And what he discovered there didn’t satisfy him either, so he went to law school and became a prosecutor. And that didn’t satisfy him either.
‘Every one of these American institutions that he went into, in the country he absolutely believed in, was affected by some kind of benign corruption, so he ended up becoming a defence attorney because he could still be a patriot from that point of view. He could be an advocate for people without defence, stand up for people who required defence, and he could stand on the outside of the castle and chuck rocks. He could say: “I don’t care if you’re the president, it’s my duty to ask what the fuck you’re doing, mate.” So he stuck to his guns, and he stayed an idealist and he’s still a patriot. I really respect him for that.’
As research for playing Richie Roberts, Russell interviewed some of New York’s toughest characters, but his meeting with them didn’t go the way he expected. ‘With the first couple I met, I couldn’t work out why they were shaking. I thought they must’ve been dealing with some sort of extreme drug problem or something like that. But then one of the gangsters I was doing the interview with said about the other one, “No, don’t worry. He’s just fucking nervous. He’s nervous because he’s being interviewed by Maximus!”
‘This is a guy who may well have been responsible for killing people, but a movie star is a movie star.’
The real life Lucas was an ever-present member during filming, Scott revealed to Empire. ‘Frank was on set every day. And I found him to be quite straightforward. I’d ask him questions like, “Did anything intimidate you?” And nothing did. I mean, he’s a guy who flew to Saigon where there’s a war going on and does a deal which is going to run for the next five years.
‘Then you infiltrate the US Army there, through your cousin, and you do a deal with a two-star general, you organise helicopter pilots to move the dope, and pilots of transporters who are bringing it back to America in the bottom of the coffins of dead GIs – all on a payola, a backhander of $5,000 here or $10,000 there. I said to Frank, “You must have been worried.” He just shrugged and said, “What about?” He genuinely didn’t know what I meant.’
Talking about his encounter with the real life Roberts, who would also visit the set but far less frequently, Scott revealed, ‘I’d talk to Richie about the corruption. You know, “How bad was it?” And he’d say, “Don’t make it look like everyone was on the take, because they weren’t, but there was a lot going on.” So I’d take that on board.’
One scene saw Russell’s character attending the 1971 boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Smokin’ Joe Frasier at Madison Square Garden. After their attempts to film at the same venue fell through, they plumped for the Long Island ice hockey Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum instead. ‘We couldn’t afford Madison Square Garden,’ Ridley said. ‘I didn’t want to afford it. They wanted $350,000 for one evening and I said, “That’s crazy!” The sequence is four minutes long, so bollocks. We went to the hockey stadium and it looks just like it.’
Josh Brolin, who played Detective Trupo, admitted he was so nervous about starring with Russell that he feared his subsequent acting performance and wardrobe malfunction was going to get him fired. ‘I was a little plumper than I wanted to be. I justified it that the character’s tough and he needs to be plumper. I came to the set, they put the wardrobe on me and it was tight. I just get through my nerves with Russell, and improvise a little bit. I grab a chair and when I sat down the ass of my pants ripped right open. Usually, that’s a great ice-breaker, but I did the worst acting I’ve ever done in my life. I was shaking, I was nervous.’
‘I got back to my trailer, took off my pants, gave them to wardrobe and went to my trailer waiting to get fired. I finally got a knock on the door and Ridley says, “Josh, I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re bringing an incredible vulnerability to this role.”’
However, Brolin would later complain about working with Russell. In 2009, he was talking about his Milk co-star Sean Penn when he said, ‘Quite the actor, that Sean Penn. He’s not an asshole like Russell Crowe.’ Although, he did later explain, ‘It was the ambience of the room. I love him. I think he’s amazing. I was bummed out when I saw that. He’s a friend.’
Russell’s detective team in the film seemed to enjoy his company – particularly on their last day of filming, which saw them rammed into Russell’s cluttered trailer, which was piled high with scripts, family mementos and gym equipment, to enjoying a drink.
‘They were fucking great, mate. And that bonding was very, very important, because on screen we had to look like we knew each other inside out, look like we’re comfortable with one another. Richie Roberts and the guys on the investigation were very close and we needed to be exactly the same way.’
There was also the problem of a $60 million lawsuit being filed by a group of retired Drug Enforcement Agents, who objected to the portrayal of DEA agents in the film. A judge threw out the case, however, with Universal Pictures saying that they were delighted that the matter had been brought to ‘a swift and decisive close’.
New Yorker magazine was also angered that the film described the story as an original screenplay rather than an adapted one. Universal claimed The Return of Superfly magazine article was ‘used as a research material’ only, and that many of the characters seen in the film were not in the article.
Better news came from the box office, with the film nearly taking $50 million in the US alone on the opening weekend. Universal distribution president Nikki Rocco said, ‘It’s a great movie, and the timing was perfect to jump-start the business. The picture was well done and well marketed, and it was placed in the market at a time when its adult audience could embrace it.’
The film was generally well received by critics. Roger Ebert called it ‘an engrossing story’ and the Wall Street Journal a ‘great big gangster film, and a good one’, although The Baltimore Sun dismissed it as a ‘Scorcese, Coppola or De Palma cover version’.
Scott was pleased with the film, saying, ‘It’s nice to see a film, isn’t it? It’s a film. A proper film with no tricks. There’s no CGI. Nothing.’