Rod Lurie Interview, Resurrecting the Champ

 Posted by: Sheila Roberts

MoviesOnline sat down with director/producer Rod Lurie at the Los Angeles press day to talk about his new movie, “Resurrecting the Champ” inspired by an article published in 1997 by Los Angeles based-reporter J.R. Moehringer that retraced the life of a former legendary boxer who went from being a Chicago City Golden Gloves Champion to narrowly missing a shot at a title fight to winding up homeless on the streets of California. The drama features knock out performances by Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Hartnett and also stars Kathryn Morris, Rachel Nichols, David Paymer, Teri Hatcher, and Alan Alda.

In his heartfelt article entitled “Resurrecting the Champ,” Moehringer explores the rise and fall of his subject, and in the process he confronts not only his subject’s demons, but also his own. Calling him his “180-pound Moby Dick,” Moehringer writes that, like Ahab, he stalked his subject and learned more than he bargained for about himself in the process. He also explained how he gained a greater understanding about “the eternal tension between fathers and sons.” For like Erik Kernan in the film version of “Resurrecting the Champ,” J.R. Moehringer never got to know his father either. And like Erik, it haunted him.

Lurie had read Moehringer’s article and was determined to make the film. “It’s such a wonderful story about fathers and sons and the honesty between them,” says Lurie, writer and director of the critically acclaimed political thriller, “The Contender.” “It’s also about a profound friendship that develops between two people who are very different, and ultimately very similar. I’m proud I got the chance to explore the story on film.”
 
Producer Marc Frydman, who had worked with Lurie on “The Contender” and later on “Commander in Chief,” was certain Lurie would be the perfect candidate to direct “Resurrecting the Champ.” “Rod used to be an entertainment journalist, so he knows the pressure a reporter feels to check the facts and deliver a good story,” says Frydman. “Besides that, he actually boxed at West Point and is a true lover of the sport. There was no better man for the job.”

Since the story is so profound, Lurie admits that there were several people interested in making the film. “I really had to fight to see this picture come to life and those of us involved have always felt very personal toward the material,” he says. “It was as though by making this film we would all become better people, and in fact, I think that’s what happened.” Rod Lurie is a terrific guy and we really appreciated his time. Here’s more of what he has to tell us about his new movie:

ROD LURIE: Let the games begin.

MOVIESONLINE: WELL, YOU CERTAINLY HAVE A BACKGROUND IN JOURNALISM. IS THAT WHAT MADE THIS SO INTERESTING TO YOU?

Rod Lurie: Yeah. Absolutely.

MOVIESONLINE: HAD YOU READ THE ARTICLE?
ROD LURIE: Yes, of course I read the article — I read the article in 1997. I tried to get the job as the writer and Mike Medavoy wouldn't hire me. He hired three other writers in a row over six years and then eventually I said, “Hey man, can I take a crack at this finally?” And he said, “Okay,” and then we got the greenlight. So, god bless, after all is said and done. Those three screenplays were really good and the two writers who have credit on the film — Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett — certainly deserve the credit.
 
Much of their material is in the movie. But yeah, I read it and I thought — my god, that's a good story. And it touched on so many different themes for me. The primary difference I would say — there are a number of differences — but the primary difference is that J.R. Moehringer, the writer, does not have a boy. He doesn’t have kids. He isn’t married. And I really wanted this. His story is about him and his father — in fact, the three previous screenplays were all about the reporter and his dad. And I really turned it around completely. His dad isn't even alive in mine, and I wanted to make it about the little boy —him and his little boy.

MOVIESONLINE: BUT HIS DAD'S A PRESENCE EVEN THOUGH HE’S NOT ALIVE.

ROD LURIE: He's a presence, but he's really an active — I would have had to have hired a big name actor because he had such a big role in the other screenplays. I would have hired Alan Alda.

MOVIESONLINE: CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE CASTING OF THE TWO LEADS?

ROD LURIE: Well, Samuel Jackson is — there are very few people on the planet earth who could play this role and get it green lit at the same time. In fact, it was just him or Morgan Freeman. Morgan was a producer on the film years ago — he was going to be the star of it — and it was just one scheduling conflict after another, and eventually — in fact, that was in 1997, and by 2006 Samuel L. Jackson finally got old enough that he could possibly play it well. And now there were two people, that could play the role, and we told Morgan, we're going with Samuel Jackson, and we did, and we offered it to him on a Friday, and on Monday he said yes. And I see why. I mean — to me this is his Ratso Rizzo — Midnight Cowboy — Dustin Hoffman. It's an absolute . . .

And Josh — there's a wider universe of actors to choose from, and I hadn't really thought about him, and his agent Tracy Brennan recommended him. And we went to him actually with the version number 3 of the screenplay where he has no kid and where he is a much younger character. I guess he didn't really respond to that, but I like taking actors outside of the elements where they have been before and put them into a new one. I want people to question the casting before it begins and then we’ll… What I really love is when the actors knock out a part and people see those people in a brand new light. which includes Sam by the way. And in this case, Josh is a guy who's married with a father who's a professional journalist. It bore no resemblance to anything he'd ever done before. He's an actor of such sincerity that I really thought he would be terrific for it, and when I met with him — this kid really just wants to be great. He's dying to show the world he's a great actor because he really comes with the baggage of being so handsome that the matinee idol thing has been there forever, and no matter how much he tries to shed it — that's no doubt why he was initially hired by Michael Bay and being in movies like The Faculty — but he's a damn good actor and extremely diligent about his work ethics.

MOVIESONLINE: How do you approach directing actors of this caliber?

ROD LURIE: I do a lot of due diligence on actors before I start shooting. I call other directors to find out what the story is, how to direct them. Every actor has some insecurity and you have to figure out what it is ahead of time and start working toward it. Right now I'm on the phone with every director who's worked with Kate Beckinsale or Vera Farmiga or Matt Dillon who are all in my next film.

The thing about Sam is that Sam comes fully formed. He created the look of Champ, he created the shuffle of Champ. I think I decided that the scar should go on the left instead of the right, and that's it. He had the dreadlocks, he had the teeth. Everything was formed by him. Basically with Sam, it's a matter of simply trust and — with Sam, you really yell action, you go and make a salami sandwich, you come back and you go “Cut!” And you say, “We've got it. Alright, alright, let's move on.”

Now, Josh craves direction more. He invites it, and in this particular case, his director was also his technical adviser. I was a journalist and I told him things like — when you pick up a phone, you pick up a pencil at the same time. That’s what we do. Even if we don't notice that we’re doing it, we do it. Because we know we're going to have to take notes. It's not like — hello, let me get a pencil before we start talking. We need to be fully prepared. You don't know when information is going to come. The realization of a story when it's forming is also sort of a beautiful thing for us, right? So I was able to give him that sort of guidance. But also he comes full of ideas. He's a very challenging guy and he challenges you in a good way. He wants to understand. He's a real actor. He's not a pretty boy.

MOVIESONLINE: IS THIS THE FIRST TIME YOU'VE WORKED WITH A ONE-TAKE ACTOR?
ROD LURIE: Well, we did two takes (laughs). I don't like the one take, because just in the event there's a matching problem or something wrong with an extra walking in the background, whatever. Let’s see…one take? No, he’s the first. Josh likes several takes and I would only give him two or three. It's a style of directing, of putting a fire under people's asses sometimes, and in general just to get as much energy and panic into the performance as possible. Redford didn't need so many takes. Redford, no matter what you did, the performance is not going to change. He's very good but he's just not going to change. He's got his style.

MOVIESONLINE: YOU WENT TO SUNDANCE IN JANUARY. COULD YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCES THERE WITH THE FILM?
ROD LURIE: It was very cold in Sundance. You know, it's my second time in Sundance. I went with my little sister who had a short film there the year before, which did very well for her, and it's really very good for filmmakers in the sense that you have an audience that really loves film, and that's the good part. The bad part is that they really love film and don't tolerate shit, and when they don't like the film, it's all over town, and it's a little depressing. That was not the case with our film, luckily. But it was great being in Eccles Theatre with 1500 seats, something like that, and having that big an audience watch the film. But I think that Bob is right when he talks about it becoming not a monster that he never wanted to see created. You know, with the swag — the rich getting richer over there. Some of the films aren’t really that independent, including ours by the way. We had, as my recollection goes, one negative review coming out of Sundance. It was a person that was more pissed off that a film with Sam Jackson and Josh Hartnett was in any way at Sundance because that had the smell of a larger film. But the truth is it's a relatively low-budget film. It was made independently, which to me means one simple thing: you don't have somebody telling you how to make your film.

MOVIESONLINE: DON'T YOU THINK THAT HAVING CERTAIN FILMS WITH ACTORS OF THIS CALIBER OR A BIT OF A BUDGET ALSO HELPS THE LITTLE FILMS BECAUSE IT BRINGS COVERAGE TO THE ENTIRE FESTIVAL?

ROD LURIE: You're absolutely right, and I'm not saying that I shared that opinion, but it certainly was the opinion of a few people, but if it wasn't for films like that, I don't know that many people would travel up there. I mean people still are enamored at looking at movie stars and they enjoy that, and that helps the smaller films get some attention. If some of the bigger-name movies weren't there, would anybody see Once? Probably not. It probably wouldn't have sold. It got a lot of attention because the whole industry's up there looking for something. So your point is well taken. That’s exactly what you mean, right?

MOVIESONLINE: Yes.

ROD LURIE: I agree.

MOVIESONLINE: YOU SEEM TO BE A WONDERFUL ACTOR'S DIRECTOR. WAS THERE A LOT OF REHEARSAL?
ROD LURIE: A little bit.

MOVIESONLINE: IT SOUNDS LIKE SAM JACKSON DIDN’T WANT….

ROD LURIE: No, he wanted to rehearse. He rehearsed a little bit. We just sat down at a table and yacked it out, but like I said, he's really pretty fully formed when he comes, and some actors really like to find it in a moment. There's always a fantasy that you'll rehearse the film — like Sidney Lumet does — for two weeks and it’s intense. But no one's available. Like the film I'm starting on October 10th, some actors are starting two weeks in, some of the actors are starting at the beginning. No one's starting at once. So it's going to be very difficult to gather everybody. But sometimes if the screenplay's pretty good and the dialogue is pretty good, you’ll be amazed at how the acting can naturally flow from it. It's tough to get a good performance from a badly scripted movie.

MOVIESONLINE: IN THIS FILM YOU USED REAL LOCALES LIKE THE HOMELESS SHELTER AND THE NEWSROOM. IS THAT PART OF THE ‘TRUTH IS WITHIN YOU’ AS A REPORTER OR WAS IT JUST EASIER?

ROD LURIE: I despise working on sets. Sets always look like sets and they're never real, and I always like to be at the real place. And we had the real people. We had the real homeless people who were just sitting there having lunch, and there were real reporters working in the background as we were shooting. That’s like gold to me, and we had to pay them a lot less. And the homeless people, we made quite a donation to them.

MOVIESONLINE: CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR NEXT FILM – THAT PROJECT YOU MENTIONED YOU HAD A NICE CAST FOR?

ROD LURIE: Nothing But The Truth? It's a movie about a reporter who outs a CIA agent and is asked to reveal her source. One of the themes that I really like to explore, and I've done it in most of my films, is how far do we go to protect our principles? Principles only mean something if you stand by them when they’re inconvenient. And this woman is going to have quite an inconvenience when she won't reveal who the CIA source is. And the mystery of the movie is — who's the source? So Kate Beckinsale will play the reporter, the CIA agent will be played by Vera Farmiga, Matt Dillon will play the special prosecutor, Edie Falco will play the editor, and Alan Alda is going to play the Claude Abrams type, the attorney. He's the nicest guy, isn't he?

MOVIESONLINE: WILL YOU EVER BE WILLING TO GO BACK TO TV?

ROD LURIE: I am going to go back to TV. It was a very unpleasant experience for me, being fired from Commander In Chief, but —

MOVIESONLINE: DID YOU FEEL VINDICATED? A LOT OF PEOPLE REALLY LIKED THE SHOW WHEN YOU WERE DOING IT.

ROD LURIE: I don't use the word vindication because it sounds vindictive, but I will say that I think if we could all go back and change history, I would probably delegate my authority a little bit more and I'm sure the network would not have fired me and they would have certainly not brought on that guy, Steven Bochco, because he put a flame-thrower to that show. He brought the same old misogynistic spin to it and it went from Number 1 to Number 72, and I think he killed my child. I tried to be a gentleman to him in the press. I never said anything negative about him.

MOVIESONLINE: GEENA WAS WONDERFUL IN THAT.
ROD LURIE: She's amazing. She deserved the Golden Globe, and I feel for her. She was back on track, she was on magazine covers, and we really were doing something, and one man's ego destroyed this show and it was a disaster. I cried many times as a result of it. But I'm not put off to TV. I think we've all learned from it, all of us connected to it have learned from our mistakes, myself especially, and we have a project in active development. It will be an event because of the casting that's going to go with it, but unfortunately I can't talk about it. It's going to be a comedy, a half-hour comedy, single camera.

MOVIESONLINE: WHEN YOU TOOK ON THE TABLOIDS IN THE 1990s, DID THEY RETALIATE?
ROD LURIE: Well . . . there was a suspicion that Anthony Pellicano was hired by the National Enquirer to stop the story. I ended up being hit by a car. I don't want to talk about it too much because it sounds like drama queen stuff. But yeah, they tried to stop the article. They tried by legal means. In the end it's very difficult for one member of the press to try to claim bloody libelous murder against another member of the press. I must say to their credit that as much as they yapped about it, they never actually tried to sue me. Well, they couldn't. I was right and they were wrong. My articles were right on.

MOVIESONLINE: THAT WAS IN THE LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE?

ROD LURIE: Los Angeles Magazine. Yeah. But I did have a bad experience with that one private eye who I'm glad is in jail. He’s a bad guy.

MOVIESONLINE: WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO WRITE ANOTHER BOOK?

ROD LURIE: You know what, I'm never going to write another true crime book because that was four years — called Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. It took me four years to write. I got sued by everybody and it sold 4,000 copies despite how well reviewed it was. I mean it's too much work. I may do a book about the making of Nothing But The Truth which hopefully will have value when it comes out to be able to make that worthwhile.

MOVIESONLINE: YOU’RE NOT THE ‘GO TO’ GUY ESPECIALLY FOR COMEDY. IS THIS NEW TV COMEDY JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT?

ROD LURIE: Yeah. I think so. Actually it's an idea that my partner Marc Frydman came up with. That should be some fun. You know I wrote and probably will do -- after I do Straw Dogs -- there's a movie I'm making called State Of The Union, which is a remake of the Frank Capra comedy that I wrote and is a full on comedy. We’ll see whether or not it works. .

MOVIESONLINE: DO YOU HAVE A TRACY AND HEPBURN?

ROD LURIE: I do, but I can't tell you who it is yet.

MOVIESONLINE: WHAT'S YOUR TAKE ON STRAW DOGS?

ROD LURIE: My take on Straw Dogs is that no one's going to smile while they're being raped.

”Resurrecting the Champ” opens in theaters on August 24th.

Share

Related Movie News

Hatchet 2 The Last Exorcism FASTER Red Hill Red Hill Red Hill Hardware The Killer Inside Me A Serbian Film The Last Exorcism