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Joaquin Phoenix on We Own the Night
By Fred Topel | Image property of Columbia Pictures.
It's rare that an entire cast and group of filmmakers reunite for a second feature. Everyone usually goes off in their own directions and schedules could never be coordinated, even if they wanted to. We Own the Night is not cashing in on "From the team that brought you The Yards," but that is what brought Joaquin Phoenix back into a movie with Mark Wahlberg, directed by James Gray.
Phoenix on We Own the Night
"It’s working with James again, primarily, because I really liked working with him on The Yards," said Phoenix. "We’d stayed in touch and we’d talked about doing another film together. And when we finished The Yards I remember him kind of talking about his next idea, which actually kind of led to We Own the Night. Honestly, if James had said, ‘I just want to do this movie and I don’t have a script,’ I probably would have done it anyway. I enjoy working with James. I enjoy that process."
The film casts Phoenix as a nightclub owner in a family of cops. When conflicts arise, it puts the club owner in between both sides, in shootouts and car chases he is not prepared for. This may be the closest Phoenix will come to being an action hero.
"It’s so funny because to you it’s an action scene and to me it was like just on the back of a trailer in a fake car being like ‘Ahhh! Now they’re shooting!’ I honestly find that kind of shot incredibly difficult to do because it’s a bright, sunny, beautiful day. There was no rain. It was lovely and beautiful. And then of course the sidewalk is lined with a ton of people yelling, ‘Eva!’ And you’re like, ‘Right...’ So I’m driving and people are shooting at me. They’re shooting at my father and it’s raining and it’s very difficult to drive, and none of that is happening whatsoever. So I always find it really difficult to do that stuff and sell it. Hopefully it feels intense."
We Own the Night
We Own the Night
We Own the Night
We Own the Night
We Own the Night
Those onlookers sound troubling. Shouldn't a major car chase sequence be blocked off from the public, if for no other reason but for their safety? "It wasn’t a Spielberg picture where we have to block off half of New York. There’s four lanes here and four lanes here and we were on this side of the street, so this was all open to traffic. And all along the sidewalk was people. That’s how it always is. I watch movies and you see a character on the street, I know that just past frame are like a bunch of people."
In happier moments, Phoenix gets to make out with Eva Mendes. "You have some Barry White going," he joked. "No, I think the director’s the one who’s responsible for setting the mood primarily on set. There are things that you can ask for. You can say, ‘Clear the set. Let’s try making this as intimate as possible.’ It’s ridiculous. We’re in like a f*cking plywood box on a stage, okay? Here standing up behind you, the actors are bored, the dudes are hammering and stuff. And you’re like when you walk and it’s a set, right, up above you are rafters. You can imagine dudes up there eating popcorn, laughing at you kind of. It’s such a completely, totally bizarre thing. It has nothing to with the feeling in the room, hopefully of the feeling that was captured in that room. It couldn’t have been more of a stale, uncomfortable environment. It’s rare that you can go into a set and it provides everything that you could want, or makes you feel like you are right there in the moment. It’s always like that. ‘How are we going to make this work?’"
We Own the Night opens to theatres
on October 12th.
For the trailer, poster and more movie info, go to the We Own the Night Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Columbia Pictures.
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