Antoine Fuqua Interview, Shooter

MoviesOnline recently sat down with director Antoine Fuqua to talk about his new film, "Shooter” starring Mark Wahlberg, Michael Peña, Kate Mara and Danny Glover. From the director of "Training Day” comes an edgy, non-stop action thriller about an honorable and brilliant marksman who finds himself in an unthinkable situation: framed as a Presidential assassin. Plunged into a shocking vortex of terror and conspiracy, the rogue shooter discovers the race is on to prove his innocence even as he is pursued by every law enforcement agency in the country, as well as a shadowy organization on a relentless manhunt aimed at destroying the secrets he has uncovered.

For Fuqua, the story had a combination of qualities that he felt would add up to one of his biggest challenges yet. "This project had all the elements for me: conspiracy, government corruption, action and, most of all, Mark Wahlberg,” he says. "I thought Jonathan Lemkin had really nailed the screenplay. It’s got a great plot, great characters and also great scope. It’s big and it’s fun and I also believe it’ll make audiences think. You really have to pay attention because there are so many plot twists and turns.”

The bottom line for Fuqua was his fascination with the characters, especially with Bob Lee Swagger and his trial by fire in the course of just a few short, life-altering days – as everything he thought he knew about his country and himself comes into question. "Bob’s a man who has always put his life on the line for patriotism, for honor, but now he’s been betrayed and left completely isolated and alone. Every single move he makes has to be strategic, but you also see him grow quite a bit as a man in the course of the film,” Fuqua observes. "I think audiences want to see cool action, but they also want to be drawn in by great characters like Swagger.”

Some of the film’s most visually stunning and exciting moments come at the climax atop a frozen glacier, where Swagger has a rendezvous, at long last, with the men who set up him up to take the fall. This sequence was shot high atop Rainbow Glacier, near the resort town of Whistler, British Columbia – a gorgeously primal locale, but one not necessarily well-suited for filmmaking. Accessible only by helicopter, the first issue was simply getting the cast and crew to the glacier for the five-day shoot.

"Just getting there was incredibly complicated,” explains producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. "The choppers can only take five or four people at a time and we had to have 70 to 80 people up there, plus a lot of heavy equipment, so there was constant ferrying around, and there are only a certain number of hours pilots can fly. We had to factor in how much gear each person would require to survive for several days up on the side of this glacier. We also had to figure out how to provide bathroom facilities in the middle of nowhere, and how to keep our cast from getting frozen up. Of course, we knew the weather could quickly turn fierce and dangerous at any minute, so we kept our fingers crossed. It was a really amazing adventure.”

For Antoine Fuqua, the location had to work because it was just too perfect not to use to its fullest potential. "I kept saying ‘I’ve gotta shoot on this glacier, I’ve gotta shoot on this glacier,’” Fuqua recalls. "It’s just so spectacular. When you’re there, above the clouds and on top of nothing but ice, it’s like being in another world. Visually, for me, I just couldn’t see doing it anywhere else.”

Fuqua has established himself as one of the foremost industry talents of his generation. Through his diverse body of work, he has achieved his goal of making highly stylized films that resonate thematically and personally with audiences around the world. He confirmed his place as a young director of unique vision and craft with the extremely successful release of Warner Bros.’ "Training Day,” which chronicles one brutal day in the life of a corrupt cop. The film starred Denzel Washington, who won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, as well as Ethan Hawke, who was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor.

Fuqua’s recent features include "Tears of the Sun,” starring Bruce Willis and Monica Belucci and the Jerry Bruckheimer production of "King Arthur,” starring Clive Owen and Keira Knightley. He also directed "Lightning in a Bottle,” a filmed concert celebrating the history of blues which was produced by Martin Scorsese. Fuqua revealed an impressive stylistic flair with his debut film, "The Replacement Killers,” featuring Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun-Fat and Mira Sorvino. This was followed by the comedic thriller "Bait,” starring Jamie Foxx.

A native of Pittsburgh, Fuqua studied engineering at West Virginia University before moving to New York in 1987 to direct music videos. Fuqua joined Propaganda Films, where his narrative sensibility garnered him many awards, making him one of the industry’s most sought-after music video and commercial directors. He has directed videos for artists such as Prince, Coolio and Usher. In addition, he has directed commercials for domestic and international clients such as Pirelli, Armani, Reebok, Nike (Jordan Brand) and GMC. He continues to direct studio pictures, as well as directing and producing projects through his own banner – Fuqua Films. Recently he set up a distribution deal with HBO for his award-winning documentary "Bastards of The Party” (which he produced), on the evolution of gang banging.

Antoine Fuqua is a very talented director and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what he had to tell us about his latest film, "Shooter”:

Q: When was the last time you saw Mark [Wahlberg]? When did you finish the movie up?

Fuqua: Well, me? I finished the movie on Thursday night [Laughs]. I've been in a dark room. I saw Mark a few times, doing some ADR stuff here and there, but I haven't seen them all in a few months.

Q: If you just finished the movie on Thursday night, what was the thinking behind keeping the Anna Nicole joke in there?

Fuqua: I just think that it's dangerous for us to cut it out because it was done before her passing, and I think that when movies start to do that every time the world changes, we'd never finish. We'd been in the editing bay because the world is always changing, and then I hope that I'm not speaking out of turn, but she seemed to have a really light sense of humor when I saw her. I didn't know her personally, but I think she would probably laugh at it herself. I would hope so. I don't think that it's anything that degrading that no one has ever said before about her. It's just some cookie in Tennessee who says it -- Levon Helm -- he can get away with anything. So I hope it doesn't offend anyone.

Q: This movie seemed to have a lot of challenges especially with the glacier. Did everyone stay up there for the four days?

Fuqua: No. I was up there for three or four days, but they weren't. The glacier, it's just shooting on ice. You're up on top of the world and you're exhausted because the air is thin and there is nothing up there. We had to use a helicopter to take everything up there and it can go from minus five degrees because I had to be there before the sun came up to be ready. You can't walk in the same place twice because of footprints. There are no porta-potties for the actors. There is nowhere to really sit. We had to bring up these folding things for them to sit on. There's no cover so you have to be really prepared with every shot and every lens that you want because if you don't have it there, going back to get a lens takes about forty five minutes of your day and they have to take the helicopter back to base camp to get it. You have to keep everyone focused on the work at the same time and you're freezing up there.

Q: How high is it above the ski resort?

Fuqua: The ski resort was about a half hour helicopter ride below us.

Q: So you were right on the top?

Fuqua: I was right on the top. I scouted it and it was so beautiful. When I was up there location scouting, the snow was up to my waist when I first got up there. I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to shoot there because of the difficulties, and we couldn't tell where the helicopters would land because there was so much snow at that time, before I started shooting it. So I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to film there, but it was so beautiful that when I scouted other locations, I just couldn't get it out of my head and I kept thinking, 'Then I have to do it.' So eventually what happened was that the studio said, 'Well, you can shoot it, but you only have a certain amount of time, because to shoot there, you need more choppers. You need more support. You can only have, as opposed to a two hundred man crew, thirty to forty people at a time on the glacier. So everything sort of got cut in half, but it was worth it for me, visually for me, to have a little less time and deal with the elements, not knowing. The last day we got evacuated because a storm came in. We canceled the day.

Q: What time of year was it?

Fuqua: What time of the year was it? This was at the end of spring, about there.

Q: How many people on the set there fell right on their ass?

Fuqua: Oh, all of us including me. You step out of the helicopter and it's all ice there and if you're not prepared, it's just one of those things that's going to happen. It's going to happen. We had a crane up there that got stuck and when we got evacuated, we had to leave that up there for a week. Everyone fell. Ned Beatty fell. Danny [Glover] fell. Mark fell. There is a shot where the guy stands up after shooting way over at the other end of the hill and they look up at the guy coming down the thing, and the thing that's dangerous about that place is that the perspective is an illusion. I mean, we took a guy in a helicopter and put him up there, but walking down took forever. This guy was a mountain guy because that had to be a double, and I was rolling film on him going, 'Oh, my God, we have to go get this guy.' We were sitting there waiting and waiting and then he would just disappear completely and I was like, 'Oh, my God. Be careful what you wish for.'

Q: Was there ever any thought of doing the book as it was and not updating it? It seems though that if you were going to make it contemporary, that you had to do the things that you did.

Fuqua: Yeah, you did. No one unfortunately seemed to care about Vietnam anymore, at the moment, except the comparison to Iraq and also Abu Ghraib and shadow governments that we’re all now becoming familiar with, a little bit more by name, Halliburton and Blackwater and the oil pipelines in Africa – all of that stuff brings it up to date. The script went through a lot of different [drafts]. When I got involved, the script that you saw on the screen is roughly the script that I saw. Once I got involved, there were maybe eight or nine other scripts because the script has been around Hollywood for a while, and for some reason, it just couldn't get made. It was one of those things where I didn't want to go back and read all of those scripts or get back into the book too much because I knew that I would find things that I'd want and then it would sort of unravel. I would read the book and find things and go, 'This would be great.' I mean, the Memphis character is completely different so some of that character stuff that I really liked would've unraveled.

Q: What was the original movie that you and Mark were going to do?

Fuqua: That I was going to do with Mark? 'By Any Means Necessary.' Me and Mark were going to do that. It's a really great story. It's not the Lucky Luciano story, but it was similar. It was about terrorists in New York and how the government goes to a prisoner, sort of a Lucky Luciano type Godfather to get help because they believed that they were going to come into the ports and explode them. It was a really interesting idea, but at the time they were making 'World Trade Center' and we were still working on that script and we wound up both reading this and thought it was good.

Q: Is that project still in play at all?

Fuqua: The script is still being worked on and so we'll see what happens.

Q: Now that "Shooter” is finished, what are you going to do next?

Fuqua: I am thinking about that, but I have no idea though. I have a project called 'Without a Badge' that I've had for years and it looks like I just got the money for that independently which would be nice for me. It's about a guy who infiltrated the Cali Cartel to help bring them down in the late '80's, and he got so deep in it he started to believe that he was one of them and they had to kind of pull him out and get him some help psychologically because he believed that his name was Geraldo Bartone. He literally started living that life and behaving that way. I've had it for about six years, and I really want to do it because it's a great character study of that world that goes way beyond walking the line. He's on the other side completely. I mean, the guy basically became Scar Face.

Q: Is it similar in any way to 'Deep Cover?'

Fuqua: Not really. It's deeper than that and much more exotic as well because it's all in Brazil. Al Pacino would be in that one as well and hopefully Mark would play Jerry. So we'll see what happens with that.

Q: Would you do a sequel to this movie? I don't think you've ever done a sequel have you?

Fuqua: Yeah. I don't know. It depends on where my life is. There are a lot of other things that I want to go do right now that I haven't been able to do.

Q: Some people have started comparing this to 'Rambo.' Do you agree with that?

Fuqua: I guess. I didn't think about 'Rambo' much until people started saying it. As soon as you blow something up and a guy has a gun and he's ex-military, you think 'Rambo.' So I get it. I understand that sort of thing, but I don't think that's such a bad thing. 'Rambo' was entertaining and did well for its time, but not completely here. 'Rambo' is kind of a different sort of thing. This is a whole different deal.

Q: Were you looking to do more of a popcorn movie, a commercial movie, or did you want to touch on those issues that seem really, really topical?

Fuqua: Both. In a studio picture like this, I just think that it's difficult to make a movie that's strictly about politics. It's very difficult to get those kinds of movies made. I think that you have to find a way to try and make it commercial as well have some statements, have some perspective on politics, to say something. That makes it a little easier too for people sometimes to accept the information that you're giving them or at least for them to listen to it. There are scenes that we have that are long speech scenes about politics and who runs the country and who ran the national parks and who owns what. There was some pretty heavy stuff that I cut down only because it went on and on and on and became such an opinion. It became a little bit like, 'Shut up already.' I found myself sitting there going, 'Shut up now.'

Q: Was there any pressure from the studio to add more of a romantic element to the script with Kate Mara to get the females to the movie?

Fuqua: No. I think that I was more sensitive than they were. They were kind of like, 'Cut more. Get her out of the house.' I kept saying, 'She's the heart of it.' I just wanted to make sure we had that. We set the movie off with her husband dying. I wanted to make sure she had a presence, but the studio was like, 'Get rid of it. Is there any way to just have one scene.' I was like, 'I don't think so.'

Q: Her kicking the butt was great.

Fuqua: It was great. I was the one holding onto Kate as much as possible.

Q: Do you see a lot of catharsis for the audience in this considering the mood in the country right now? Mark talked about audiences cheering at the test screening and so on.

Fuqua: Yeah. It was my intention when I did certain things to try and hit a nerve, I guess, but I was surprised that in one of the test screenings that we did where it came from. I was surprised where it happened. I was surprised at the need and want for revenge in the audience and particularly with women. I was shocked. They were screaming, 'You have to kill him!' I was like, 'Whoa!' I was really surprised about that, but it's one of those things that I realize too, that there is a certain pulse, a certain need. People are just tired of what these guys are doing.

Q: This runs like an Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Are you planning a private screening for Dick Cheney and Halliburton?

Fuqua: I think that he has bigger issues to deal with right now [Laughs]. I have no problem about saying what my opinion is or what I think a lot of these guys are up to and so I didn't have an issue with it at all. I think that it's a cautionary tale really. I think that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. These guys are trained, these young men and women, to learn how to fight and learn how to kill and then they're leaving them out there to dry. They can't even get a decent place to heal. That's ridiculous and at some point that'll come back to haunt you and hurt you. That's kind of what the movie says. If you keep mistreating these guys, you could have a problem.

Q: Was it your idea to cast Danny Glover? That's the first time I can remember him playing a nasty guy.

Fuqua: For me, yeah, because Danny is the perfect politician. I wanted a guy that you trust and a guy that when he says I need your help and all the patriotic stuff, pushing those buttons, that you actually like, which is what the politicians do, and those are the guys that we vote for. The behavior behind closed doors is despicable.

Q: How about casting Ned Beatty who doesn't do a lot of movies? How did you convince him to do it?

Fuqua: We talked and got on the phone. We talked about the character and about my intentions with the character and he got it right away and Ned is a really smart man. Ned is the most fun. He's the most fun. He knows what this business is period. I got on the phone with him and told him what I was interested in and got a call back saying, 'Yeah, he'll do it.' It seemed difficult to get him, but once I got to him and we talked, it was the easiest thing in the world. It was like talking to an old friend. He got on the phone right away cracking jokes, and he knew right away about the Cheney ideas, right away. He started talking about power and how sexy power is and some guy that he knew who talked through his teeth and said, 'The truth is what I say it is.' That's all Ned, man. He locked into that right away and it was fun.

Q: Are there any extras on the DVD that we're going to see?

Fuqua: There are scenes in there that we cut out, like I said, some of these political conversations that might be more interesting on the DVD than seeing it in a theater. I didn't want it to be a three-hour movie. So things like that and some commentary from some of these guys.

Q: Do you think about the DVD when you're shooting now because it's such a part of the business?

Fuqua: No, not at all. I don't think about it at all, not even a little bit. It's hard for me to even think of TV lines. As soon as I hear that from someone, I cringe. As soon as I've got a scene and I'm really happy, someone will go, 'You have to get a TV line.' It's like, 'What are you talking about? We're moving on.’ Since when did that become part of the acting? I got what I needed, but don't go back because I need him to say heck.

Q: How did your British Columbia crew respond to some of the challenges on this shoot?

Fuqua: Great crews, great crews. There were a couple of departments that we got rid of halfway through. Some people aren't used to my sort of pace. Some people aren't used to physically doing a lot of that and so forth because logistically you move from the freezing cold to being out in the middle of the desert, and then all of a sudden we're in the middle of an urban city, and then you're inside of a small building at the FBI offices. So you're going a hundred miles an hour and that wears on some people and some people just can't handle that, but the majority of the crew was really, really strong and fantastic. They loved it because it was like a breath of fresh air because all of a sudden you're on an ice glacier which was a great challenge for them. It's fun for them to get out too instead of being on a stage, and then I'm dropping them right in the middle of Philadelphia. Some don't travel as much as I thought they did. Some people had never been to Philly or to Washington, just to see the capitol no less. So it was like a shot in the arm sometimes to change locations and it was nice to see that. The families would come and it was pretty cool.

Q: Can you talk about Mark in this role, because we get him right away even though he doesn't do a lot of the speeches?

Fuqua: Mark brings humanity to it. He's a humble guy. He's the guy next door. He's a young soldier on our ships and in Iraq. He's just an average guy as far as I'm concerned, and that's what's nice about him because that's why you care about him. He could be your son or your brother or your best friend. He's not some big muscle bound superhero with all the quick one liners and all of that. He's just a regular guy and I think that's the new hero of the day. It's just regular people doing what they can. That's what makes it work.

"Shooter” opens in theaters on March 23^rd.