SOUND AND FURY
"I think we all have these ideas that there are
lines that we would never cross and people we could
never be," says Jodie Foster, the star and executive
producer of "The Brave One." "And yet,
you don't know who you would become in a certain circumstance.
You might assume, intellectually, what your ethics
might be, but until you are forced into a situation
that challenges you, that changes you, you can't know
who you would be."
Director Neil Jordan agrees. "'The
Brave One' poses some uneasy moral questions. I think
when we are wronged, a part of us would love to react
with a kind of primitive brutality so we could right
it immediately. But we don't because civilization
teaches us not to do that. So the spectacle of seeing
somebody descending into a morally questionable area
is both horrifying and fascinating at the same time."
When the script for "The Brave
One" first came to producers Joel Silver and
Susan Downey, it had all the hallmarks of a vigilante
action genre film, with one important distinction:
the vigilante was a woman. "When we read the
script, we liked that it was a hard-edged action picture
but was about something bigger," Silver remarks.
"It was thrilling and suspenseful, and it also
had a very dark, emotional story about a woman who
suffers a terrible tragedy. Erica Bain is attacked
and beaten and her fiance is killed. Physically she
comes back to health, but her life is completely changed.
She has to reach into herself to find a way through,
and she does...but the way she does is what set the
story apart for us. In order for her to survive, she
has to find the courage to overcome the fear and take
back her life in whatever way she can. That's what
makes her 'The Brave One.'"
Downey offers, "The original
screenplay for 'The Brave One' was by a father and
son writing team, Roderick and Bruce Taylor. It hit
every mark you want a genre piece to hit, but with
a woman in the central role, it brought something
different to the concept of a vigilante movie. Then,
as the script evolved, we brought on Cynthia Mort
to add a female voice to the writing team. Since the
story is essentially Erica's journey, it was important
to understand from a woman's point of view why and
how she would choose to act, and what the aftereffects
would be."
"The second you put a woman
in a role like this, you have to ask different questions
because her actions are so uncharacteristic,"
notes Foster. "Generally speaking, women don't
kill people they don't know; they don't kill randomly,
which I think makes the path Erica takes all the more
interesting. It was interesting to explore her inner
turmoil, her confusion. She doesn't exactly know what
she is doing or why she's doing it, but at the same
time, she almost marvels at her actions. What she
does understand is that fear has turned her into somebody
unrecognizable and, in turn, caused her to assume
the mantle of a killer."
Foster goes on to observe, "Her
encounters with danger change as the movie unfolds.
The first time, it's this anomalous thing and terrible
violence comes to her. The second time is also happenstance;
she's in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the
next time, she realizes that she had the option of
going to safety and didn't choose it. Perhaps it isn't
entirely clear to her what her motives are, but my
feeling is that in reenacting a situation of the worst
fear imaginable, she gets to experience it completely
differently. She gets to change the characters and
the outcome, and if she can change the outcome, then
maybe she can bring back the dead, as crazy as that
sounds."
With Foster in the role of Erica
Bain, the character underwent some changes from the
original script in which she had been a newspaper
reporter. Downey explains, "Jodie came on board
with the idea of her being a radio personality, which
lent itself to the concept of having voiceovers to
help understand Erica's mindset and her feeling about
what she was doing. You're always a little hesitant
to use voiceovers in a movie, but her occupation makes
it feel completely organic to who she is as a character."
"It made sense to me, and
I think it really informs the movie," Foster
attests. "Erica is somebody who lives in her
head. Everything is expressed through her voice so
it's easy for her not to have a sense of her own body.
In some ways, her fiance was her physical identity,
so when he is gone, it's as if she doesn't have a
body anymore. She becomes a voice in the night, almost
like a ghost, and the interior voice that we get to
hear gives us a glimpse into her soul."
Neil Jordan relates, "Jodie
and I agreed that her character would be a bit sound-obsessed.
She travels around the city recording the sounds of
the subway and the traffic and the hum of machinery
as a way of telling stories of the city. Later that
obsession evolves into a different, far more brutal,
obsession with the streets."
DIRECTIONS ON THE MORAL COMPASS
It had been Foster who first suggested Jordan to direct
"The Brave One," and the producers were
immediately on board with the idea. Downey recalls,
"Joel and I have been huge fans of Neil's work
for a long time. Obviously, he's an incredible filmmaker
and he is known for exploring complex, sometimes dangerous
topics in a compelling way, so we both thought it
was an amazing idea."
"We sat down with Neil and
talked about the script and our ideas for where the
movie should go, and we were very much on the same
page," says Silver. "He had a great sense
of the characters and brought so much to the development
of the story. He's just a great talent."
Foster comments, "I think
Neil is fascinated by the moral dimensions of characters.
His movies tend not to be easy black and white stories
because the human animal often does things that cross
the line and all of his films have dealt with that
in different ways. I honestly have never worked with
a director who is so intensely primal and organic
in his choices and every choice he makes is about
the characters."
"I like characters who are
confronted by things that lay between darkness and
light, characters who have to cross moral boundaries,"
states the director, who offers that "The Brave
One" presented him with an opportunity to delve
into several of the subjects he finds most intriguing,
as well as to work with an actress he calls "an
icon of the American cinema."
Jordan remembers, "When I
read the script the first time, I found it to be so
compelling. Then I reread it several times, and each
time I found something new. One of the most fascinating
things was that it had a woman in what is normally
a male preserve, and picturing Jodie as that character
made it doubly so. The thought of working with her
in this role just added to my compulsion, but even
that was just part of the attraction. There were so
many things in the mix, so many ideas contained in
the story: there was the idea of this woman on the
radio being this disembodied voice drifting through
the city; there was the idea of danger found within
the city she knew and loved; there was the idea of
two different responses to injustice, one being a
legal one and the other being individualistic acts
of revenge. Which is right, which is wrong? Is either
of them entirely right? When I looked at all of those
elements, I realized that if I couldn't make something
out of this, I must be getting either very old or
very tired," he laughs. "So I told them
that as long as I had the freedom to mold the story
and make the characters live and breathe, I was in."
THE LAW OF OPPOSITES
In "The Brave One," what Jordan refers to
as the "legal" response to injustice is
represented by NYPD Detective Sean Mercer. Terrence
Howard stars in the role of the police detective who
is drawn into the case of a series of homicides that
are all connected...and all appear to be in the pursuit
of some kind of vigilante justice.
"Terrence blew me away in
this role," Jordan states. "He has that
physical grace and presence and his face radiates
with emotions, spoken and unspoken. He brought an
enormously strong emotional and moral core to Mercer."
Coming into the role, Howard recognized
that Mercer is a man who has been defined by his faith
in the law. Arguably, it may have even cost him his
marriage. But he never imagined his faith in the law
would be tested by someone on the opposite side of
it. The actor offers, "Mercer is a by-the-book
cop who believes in the system, but at the same time
he's becoming frustrated because the system doesn't
always allow him to protect people the way he wants
to. Part of him is truly upset that his hands are
tied by this moral dilemma that we call justice. And
then somebody, seeking their own justice, comes up
with their own solution that is certainly more expedient.
How does he deal with that? The worst thing you can
do as a police officer is begin to understand why
a criminal made the choices he made because then you
are no longer taking a stand. If you step into that
gray area, the law breaks down and human nature takes
over."
Jordan remarks, "What I love
is that both characters find themselves entering gray
areas from opposite sides. They are both wrestling
with questions of moral responsibility and crime and
justice and retribution, and they each respond to
them in different ways. It's a very interesting dichotomy
because they are also very connected."
"It was a delicate balance,"
adds Downey, "because you want them to connect,
yet you also have this cat and mouse game between
Mercer and the unknown vigilante he is determined
to catch. So they are two people who are connected
on a very personal and emotional level but whose actions
put them fatefully in direct conflict with each other."
Jordan emphasizes that the connection
between Erica and Mercer, while strong, "is not
a love story in the traditional sense. It's more a
meeting of souls and minds. They have both lost partners
and now they are alone, lost at night in this city.
So it is a story of friendship...and of possibility."
Both actors agree that the relationship
between their characters is as much about what is
lost as it is about what they gain from each other.
"There is an intense bond between Mercer and
Erica," Howard asserts. "In another time
or circumstance, or if they had not walked down the
roads they chose, I'm sure something could have come
of it. So that becomes another loss for both of them."
Foster adds, "Each of them
has a fascination for the other. I think they are
attracted to each other's hearts, in some ways because
they are opposites and in some ways because they are
exactly the same. I know it is true in life that we
are often drawn to people because we want to know
what it is like to live in their skin. Erica sees
in Mercer her moral counterpart. He would never cross
the line and she wants to understand who he is, perhaps
so he can save her.
"The wonderful thing about
Terrence in the role," she continues, "is
that he has such a depth of sensitivity and emotion
and yet he's playing this hard-edged detective who's
seen it all. The combination makes Mercer even more
touching. He has to act hardened in his job, but he
is not unaffected by it and Terrence conveys all of
that in his performance."
Howard has equal praise for his
co-star, as well as his director. "Jodie was
the first actor I've ever worked with who actually
made me nervous," he laughs. "Her eyes are
so true and her spirit is so honest. Our styles were
completely different, though. Me, I like to come in
and just make it happen. Jodie is very precise, very
analytical; she knows everything about her character.
I learned so much just watching her. Both she and
Neil taught me a lot about thinking in specifics.
Neil knows exactly what he's trying to shoot and he
is so patient. There were times I thought I'd run
dry, but he'd squeeze a little more and just that
tiny drop of truth would come out. That's what makes
him such a beautiful filmmaker."
BEHIND THE MICROPHONE / BEHIND
THE BADGE
Before shooting began, Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard
each engaged in research that was as individual as
their roles. Foster spent time at a local NPR radio
station in Los Angeles "just to see what they
do," she relates. "Watching them, what occurred
to me is they are not faces, they are not bodies.
They are just voices. You listen to these beautiful,
melodic voices, and it gets inside your ears and inside
your head. In some ways, it's so intimate, but it's
also easy for them to disappear.
"I also looked into post-traumatic
stress syndrome. I read a great deal about it, but
I think Erica is very different. She didn't get the
help she needed," the actress notes, revealing
that she also tried to put herself in Erica's mindset
by following her footsteps. "I walked a lot--like
crazy amounts of walking all over Manhattan. If you
have ever done long hikes, the first two hours or
so, you talk to people around you. And then, as time
goes on, it changes; by hour seven it becomes almost
a meditational experience...completely isolating.
So that was important."
To prepare for his role as an NYPD
detective, Howard worked closely with the film's technical
consultant, Neal Carter. After 24 years with the NYPD,
including time as a homicide detective, Carter recently
embarked on a new career, ensuring that the depiction
of police work on the big screen is grounded in reality.
In fact, his first film had been "Inside Man,"
starring Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster.
Carter spent time with both Howard
and actor Nicky Katt, who plays Mercer's partner,
Detective Vitale, advising them how to talk, think
and behave like veteran detectives. He took them to
police stations and even escorted them to crime scenes,
including a real homicide, to let them see firsthand
how things are done.
"He was so knowledgeable and
so willing to share his expertise," Howard says.
"He gave us such great insight into the mind
of a cop on the job. He showed us crime scenes and
literally took us through the handbook of what to
look for, what's important."
At one crime scene, Howard recalls
the thing that most struck him was "just the
mundanity of it. Here you have a dead person, brutally
beaten, and you think you should want to sit and say
a prayer. But the cops are there to do one thing:
find out who killed him. That's their job. It becomes
a puzzle. They can't take it personally because they
see it every day, and after the third crime scene,
I could understand how you become a little numb to
it."
Carter says that understanding
was reflected in the work of both Howard and Katt
on the set. "They really progressed fast. They
picked up on every little nuance, the subtleties in
how we walk, the way we dress, the way we carry ourselves,
even the way we joke. It became very natural. I mean,
when I watched them, they looked like real detectives."
THE SAFEST BIG CITY IN THE WORLD
While his cast was delving into the minds and bodies
of their characters, Neil Jordan was immersing himself
in the heart of New York City. "I am a foreigner
to New York," the Dublin-born director acknowledges,
"so one of the major elements of preparation
was going around, looking at every corner of the city,
finding places that people hadn't filmed before and
places that suited this particular story. There is
an extraordinarily graphic nature to the city that
I wanted to capture."
Joel Silver attests, "Neil
took a lot of time getting to know the city. He saw
it with so much love and admiration, and that's how
he wanted to depict it. It was very important to him
that the story not be seen as any kind of indictment
about the safety of New York City. In fact, we live
in a time when everyone, everywhere can relate to
feeling a lack of safety. It's certainly not specific
to New York."
Foster, who has both lived and
worked in New York, agrees. "The truth is that
New York is statistically 'the safest big city in
the world,' but if you are the victim of a crime,
the fact that you're a statistical anomaly doesn't
really help. It doesn't make you feel any safer to
say, 'Oh well, it was just me, but look at all the
other people that didn't get hurt.' If you are the
person who gets hurt, it's not so easy to dismiss
the fear. That really became a part of what we're
saying in the movie: the fear doesn't have to be justified;
more and more it is something that's sown into our
culture."
Jordan adds, "Since 9/11,
the city has gone through an amazing rebirth; it's
incredibly safe, but there's a sense that no matter
how idyllic the street life seems, it could all be
ripped apart at any moment. I think that's what we're
plugging into in this film."
In the weeks leading up to principal
photography, Jordan got a crash course on New York
City from executive producer Herbert Gains and production
designer Kristi Zea, who says she took her "marching
orders" from producer Joel Silver. "From
the beginning, Joel told me he wanted us to show New
York like no one had before, to pick locations that
no one had ever shot before, so he really threw the
gauntlet down. It was an interesting experience for
me because I was born and raised in New York and have
done a lot of movies there, so it was a challenge
for me to look at the city with new eyes."
Zea says she and Jordan drove all
over the city and its outskirts, "looking at
different neighborhoods and getting a response from
Neil as to what he liked and didn't like." In
one of those neighborhoods, they found the perfect
location for Erica's apartment building. The designer
reveals, "What we liked about the exterior was
that on either side of the building were lots where
there had been buildings, but they had been torn down
and in their place were gardens that the community
had reclaimed. So her apartment building stood alone
in the midst of this urban renewal."
Zea designed the interiors of the
building's hallways and Erica's apartment to look
like those of an old tenement building that had been
renovated but still had echoes of the past. She expounds,
"The idea was that the apartment had been completely
revamped, but the hallway, although it is clean and
has a fresh coat of paint, is still kind of eerie.
So you have a sense of the old juxtaposed with the
new."
On the edge of Central Park, they
found a location that lent itself in both design and
tone to the pivotal scene in which Erica and David
are ambushed. Zea notes, "We were scouting and
came upon this place called Stranger's Gate. It's
carved in stone right outside of Central Park. Then
you look up the staircase and it curves around this
huge boulder and, even with the lights, it looks a
little creepy. You have no way of knowing what could
be lurking there. We intentionally chose places that
could seem safe one minute and then feel strange and
frightening from a changed perspective."
ALTERED VIEW
Neil Jordan also collaborated with cinematographer
Philippe Rousselot to show that change of perspective
through the camera lens. "The entire story is
essentially experienced through the central character,
so I wanted the audience to see it through her eyes
and her emotions," the director says. "It
was wonderful to work with Philippe to explore those
concepts visually. Because we've worked together before,
I knew we could work out the most elaborate and complex
setups and he could deliver them."
Utilizing both camera and lighting
techniques, Jordan and Rousselot were able to convey
that Erica is seeing her once-secure world through
a prism of fear that puts everything off-kilter. Jordan
explains, "I wanted to express a sense of dementia,
so Philippe and his camera operator, Neil Norton,
came up with a device that moves on a Steadicam, which
we called a 'wobbly-cam.' It was great for certain
shots in which we were constantly shifting the paradigms."
"It basically rolls the camera,
allowing us to constantly change the horizon, which
gives the impression of Erica feeling off-balance,"
says Rousselot, who adds that they also used lighting
to shift from reality to an almost dreamlike atmosphere
for certain scenes.
The transformation in Erica can
also be seen externally, and Jodie Foster worked with
costume designer Catherine Thomas to create a gradual
alteration to her appearance. "She changes and
her look reflects that," Foster asserts. "She
starts out in layers and light colors, but as time
goes on, her clothes become darker and more spare.
There's a toughness to the way she looks and I think
it's an important contrast."
"They are very simple touches,
but they are very graphic," Jordan observes.
"Jodie is brilliant. She imagined her character
so completely; she was willing to take Erica to the
places--sometimes really dark places--in ways that
you instinctively and immediately understand who she
is and who she is becoming."
Susan Downey offers, "Jodie
takes us on Erica's journey--from the beginning of
the movie where you see her as someone who is very
comfortable in her life. Then everything shatters
and she is forced to figure out how to pull it back
together. She has to reinvent herself to find a way
to go about her life and feel safe."
"Everything changes,"
Joel Silver reflects, "because once this tragedy
occurs in her life, she can't look at anything the
same way--not her home, not her job, not even the
city she loves. She changes who she is...and she takes
us along for the ride."
Foster reflects, "Erica recognizes
that she was one person and then one day she woke
up and became somebody else, a stranger, somebody
who is different from anything she ever thought she
could be. Perhaps you could assume that you would
react differently...but until you've walked in her
shoes, you just can't know."
