2.Main Content

Training

25TH HOUR

Followed by the Script Factory Masterclass with Spike Lee, with Ed Norton and Barry Pepper
in conversation with journalist Richard Jobson.
The Screen on the Green. February 24, 2003.

Richard Jobson
Spike - this was an adaptation of a book which was changed quite dramatically from the original text. You introduced many new elements including the events of 9/11. Why was that?
 
Spike Lee
Well I think we were very faithful to the book. It was only the 9/11 stuff that was new.
 
RJ
Why was it necessary to bring in 9/11?
 
SL
As New Yorkers we felt that we had to reflect the change in the world and New York City. After the events of that day we thought we cant stick our heads in the sand and act like everything was hunky dory. We shot this 6 months after 9/11 and it’s still different today. We wanted to make our comment on it.
 
RJ
Why did you want to get involved with this project Ed?
 
Ed Norton
I was sent a copy of the script and it was extremely well written and unusual. I hadn't read the novel. It's unusual to see a novelist adapt their own book into a screenplay; some people take a crack at it and don't feel very good about the result. But it was very well done. It was emotional and thought-provoking and it poses questions about not examining the morality or immorality of what you're doing; the way people slide into the grey zones of immorality without being a ‘bad person’. And also, fifteen years on from when it was first written, it still seemed to have a good texture of New York as we know it now. The fact that Spike was going to do it was enough for me. I told Spike I’d do a walk-on for him or carry lights for him, except one of the first things was that in my own mind - and I wanted to be in synch with Spike on this - was that there was no question about the ending. No equivocating about it: this guy was going down. It’s a very different film and it says something so different if this guy slips the noose. The first time we meet this character, he’s not dealing drugs, he’s saving a dog and that slowly draws the audience/reader into a trap. We think he is someone who has love to give. By presenting him as a complex human being, David [Benioff] successfully puts you in a difficult position. He presents you with someone who is not a bad person, but with someone who had made bad choices. You are confronted about your own take on justice and you are forced to ask, "Is he getting what he deserves? Are the drug laws too harsh? Is he solely responsible? Is the father partly to blame? Should his friends have said something?" These are questions that are posed so intensely for us, and it’s because we can relate to him. If he was an obvious creep, those questions would have no impact, but because he’s a complex person, those questions become very bitter ones for us.
 
RJ
Those bitter questions are not the kind normally posed in a studio-financed film. Was it difficult to get this financed, Spike?
 
SL
No it came together really quickly, but of course the studio wanted Monty Brogan to be as likeable as possible, because studios think the more the audience likes the lead character, the more they like the film, so the more money they make.
 
RJ
Your films normally offer a glimmer of hope - this one is much more pessimistic. Would you agree?
 
SL
The film had to end the way it did. In the novel it's ambiguous whether he goes to prison or not, but we didn't want to glamorise a drug dealer. Still, for me the film is optimistic because he is going to prison even though he's given the option of running away. He takes responsibility for his actions. He brought a lot of pain to the people he sold this heroin and coke to - we see that in the scene in the mirror when he’s blaming all those people, but then and he says it's not those people, it's me. He has these last 24 hours in which he's trying to get to grips with it. It's human nature that we always wait till the last minute. When the plane is going down you grab your Torah or bible or your rosary beads. When you're rolling, you're not praying ‘cause you're living for the good time. In some ways, we also saw Ed's character Monty Brogan as someone who has a terminal disease. When you have a loved one with a terminal disease, what do you say without being trivial? What do you say to someone who is going away to prison and everyone is feeling guilty because they didn't intervene? The situation is very combustible. I also want to give the credit to David Benioff who put this all in the novel and also to Toby Maguire. He's the one who found the book and optioned it. Another key thing is that the studio decided to give David the screenwriter's job and they gave him a chance. They didn't have to do that; he is a first time screenwriter but he did a good job and now he's one of the highest paid youngest screenwriters working today.
 
RJ
One of the memorable scenes is in fact that diatribe in front of the mirror. Give us a sense of doing the scene. How did you prepare for it?
 
EN
It was one of the first things I noticed in the novel when I read it. I put a big red mark around it. He's obviously someone holding his emotions tightly to his chest and he doesn't reveal a lot about what he is feeling. One of the biggest challenges of playing him was figuring out with Spike where the moments were where you got a widow in on what he was feeling. In the book you come across this moment and it’s the first time he reveals his frustrations about what has happened to him earlier in his life. In the internal conversation in his head he comes to the conclusion it was his own fault. That line in the book is the same as in the movie: that moment when he says ‘it was you’ to himself is the first time you hear him acknowledge responsibility. One thing that’s exciting about Spike’s films is that Spike is great at exploding the form of the film to accommodate something like that [a direct address to a mirror] and make it a very dynamic. It was a bit of visual cinema and as an actor it’s fun because a moment like that frees you up from naturalism and literalism. We ran it for an hour or two and had a little too much fun. I threw in some stuff and Spike had me say ‘fuck the nicks’…
 
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