Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott on Reinventing Robin Hood
A cinematic staple gets a bold refresh this week courtesy of Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott, whose latest collaboration, Robin Hood, chronicles the exploits of the famous medieval folk hero in the days before he got involved in all that business of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. It’s the fourth such team-up for Crowe and Scott, who first paired together for 2000’s multiple Oscar-winning sword-and-sandals epic Gladiator. When they both gathered recently at a Los Angeles hotel for a small press conference to promote their latest outing, the usual manufactured formality of such events quickly vanished, giving way to something more closely resembling a casual conversation between a handful of cinephiles.
Both the director and his star talked openly about Robin Hood‘s turbulent trek to the big screen, in which the film’s original storyline changed dramatically and its budget reportedly ballooned to well over $200 million. (Crowe arrived to the conversation a tad late, in the midst of a conversation with Scott regarding the raging topic of the day: the rise of 3D.)
Have you considered doing post-conversions of any of your previous films, like Blade Runner, and re-releasing them in 3D?
Ridley Scott: You can virtually order it. I can virtually go to a company saying, “Can you re-3D this?” It’d be quicker if I sat there and did it with ‘em, which I would have (with Robin Hood). When you’re grading a movie, I’ll sit there with a grader, and we’ll flip through one scene. I’ll give ‘em two frames and say, “Like that.” They grade it, and you say, “Okay, I’ve got it,” and you do the whole scene. And you do the whole film that way.
Has anyone approached you to re-do any of your old films in 3D?
Scott: Yeah.
And your thoughts are?
Scott: Not really. I’d rather save that energy for something new. We could have done this in 3D, but everyone was so hesitant. (At this point, Crowe peered out the window and noticed a giant ad for Robin Hood draped on a high-rise, prompting him to exclaim: “I am a building!”) We didn’t bother because the film’s good enough.
Russell Crowe: Yeah but when that technology becomes [evolved] — and you discovered recently how far forward it’s gone — it’s not an invalid thing to do a 3D version of Gladiator. This is one of those odd movies that doesn’t happen very much. I mean, we made that movie in 1999, and every given week that passes, it’s screening somewhere as the principle movie that night in prime time. It’s one of those movies that’s lasted. So I can see a theatrical 3D release.You’re known for your usage of multiple cameras during your shoots. Would you be able to do that in 3D?
Scott: Not with that absolute freedom, but I was told you can’t do that with 2D cameras either, and we do. And (points to Crowe) he’s an expert at knowing where every f**king camera is and-
Crowe: It’s mainly because I’m a slut.
Scott: -and he knows exactly where the ninth camera is, whereas an actor like Bill Hurt [will be] saying, “I don’t know if he got the covering. Where’s my covering?”
Crowe: He’s talking specifically about a conversation I had with William at the end of one day. He was very morose and sitting in his trailer and the other Merry Men were all sitting around, having a better together, and I said, “Come and join us.” And he said, “Nah man, I can’t. I just don’t understand what’s going on, you know? I’m out there, I’m doing my thing, and not once did Ridley cover me in a close-up, and I don’t understand. Isn’t this an important part of the story? I’m not trying to overstate my contribution here, but I just thought …” And I was like, “Bill, he had five cameras going, man. Five cameras and we did four takes. Between each take, he’s gonna change the lens and change the way a particular camera moves. I absolutely guarantee you he’s got more close-ups than you shake a stick at.” And he said, “Is that how he works?” That’s how he works. Did he interrupt you? Did you stop you from doing anything? No. When you’re not doing what he wants, that’s when he’ll come talk to you.
Scott: And also it’s a preference or a choice for an actor — from one actor or another — as to what you prefer. Do you prefer to know where the camera is, or do you prefer just to be able to forget about it? It’s a choice, isn’t it?
Crowe: Yeah. Me, I like to live in the world. Why worry about it? I spend all the time that I need during a rehearsal situation to have look at where they are. I ask what lens they have on. I’ll do that between each take, to see what they’re changing. And I’ll get a pretty good idea what he’s gonna get, given the set of tracks that are laid down. But also I have that thing where – and this comes from growing up in smaller films – you don’t want to waste an inch of footage. You don’t want to be the guy whose back’s to the camera in the emotional part of the movie. So you have to be aware of the camera movement and what the camera’s doing. It’s just in a much more fluid sense when you’re on a set with Ridley.
Scott: I came to it through watching actors get frustrated when you do a [close-up] take off-camera and I’m saying, “Save it!” Except he’s not saving it; he’s actually giving it to him. So by the time I’m done [with the shot] and come around [to his angle], he’s done. He’s cooked. That’s something that would drive me crazy. So with two cameras, you just adjust the light a little bit – there’s not much of a compromise – and once you do that, you can then suddenly go, “Hey, we can put four, six cameras in here,” if you know where to put ‘em. Because if you regard each short sequence as a playlet — a play — then you’re covering maybe a minute-and-a-half or two minutes, better for the actor who is acting through the play without the stop and go of individual takes.
Crowe: And also better for the editor, because everything that happens in front of those six cameras is mathematically related. So it’s easier to cut together. I first had that experience prior to working with Ridley with Michael Mann, working with Al Pacino. And Michael just decided that he was gonna run two cameras on everything. Cause I like to work in the first three takes and Al kinda uses the first thirty to warm up. So Michael just decided that he was gonna get everything and anything that happens. When I’m on another film and somebody’s back to a single camera or whatever, I still make sure that the energy is high off-camera. I quite often have chats with younger actors who believe that their job only stars when they’re on-camera, and it’s like no, actually; you have to work on the other side of the camera at the same time.
Can you talk about the development process on Robin Hood? We’ve been hearing that it went through considerable changes in tone and structure from script to screen.
Scott: What you’re about to hear is totally normal and very everyday, and happens on almost every project.
Crowe: If you look at the two-and-a-half years between when we first were given the idea and the last day of shooting. I know people try to pump it up like it was “falling apart,” that this was going wrong, that was going wrong. The reality is we took a normal, responsible period of time to develop a story into a feature film that was shootable within a confined period of time. There was nothing extreme about it. Some of the things that were printed were simply that we couldn’t answer the question at the time [like] “Are you gonna play more than one character?” Well, at the central part of Robin Hood, one of things is disguise and deception, so I take on somebody else’s persona. So I can’t answer “no” to that question, right? But I can’t fully explain the reality of that because it’s giving away one of the fun bits of the plot. By not being able to answer it fully, you then leave this massive ground for interpretation. That was happening to both of us. We were trying to answer the questions as best we could in the time, and people were just running with the answer and creating something completely different out of it. Which wasn’t what we said or intended, or what was meant.
Ridley, your DVDs have been known to include a lot of deleted scenes. What can we expect from Robin Hood in the realm of bonus footage?
Scott: There’s 17 minutes more, which is not a lot, actually. We were pretty accurate. The first cut on this worked out to like three hours and four minutes. And did it work? Yeah, because everything was fresh … For the most part, the average is losing 15 or 20 minutes. That’s pretty average. But the 17 minutes we took out is very good stuff, and it’s going straight back into the DVD.
So you’ll be putting out an extended version?
Scott: Yeah. It’s exactly the same film, except interspersed in it are a few scenelets.
Crowe: Just little grace notes in terms of the characters and how their connections are formed.
Robin Hood opens everywhere this Friday, May 14, 2010.
