“Most irresponsible bit of filmmaking”: Oscar Winner Brad Pitt Disowned His $140M Movie With Harrison Ford After Calling It a “Disaster”
The Devil’s Own, a 1997 thriller starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford, was Alan J. Pakula’s feature film directorial debut. It received mediocre reviews at the box office but still managed to make over $140 million.
The two outstanding performers who worked together on the film have been candid about how difficult it was for them to film. Discover what the two of them had to say about their challenging experience making the movie.
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Brad Pitt called the movie The Devil’s Own a ‘disaster’
Actor Brad Pitt, back in 1997 during an interview with Newsweek, shared that the movie The Devil’s Own was one of the movies that was hard to film. He shared during the interview that they had no script, adding that they had a great script but it got tossed for various reasons.
Pitt noted, “To have to make something up as you go along–Jesus, what pressure! It was ridiculous. It was the most irresponsible bit of filmmaking–if you can even call it that–that I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know why anyone would want to continue making that movie.”
He further added that they had nothing, the movie was the victim of this drawn studio head, Mark Canton, who told them at the time that he did not care, they were going to make the movie, pointing out that he did not care what they had got as a script.
On asking why he did not walk away from the movie if it was going nowhere, Pitt added that he tried to when there was a week before shooting and they had 20 pages of dogsh*t and the script that he loved was tossed away. He later added,
“I guess people just had different visions and you can’t argue with that. But then I wanted out and the studio head said, ‘All right, we’ll let you out. But it’ll be $63 million for starters.’ They sell movies to foreign territories on box-office names and they can sue on what they could have made if you’d stayed in the movie”.
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Harrison Ford takes some responsibility for the filming of Brad Pitt starrer The Devil’s Own
Ahead of his movie Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the actor Harrison Ford spoke to Esquire where he explained that he was partly at fault when it was said that there was tension surrounding him and Pitt on the sets of The Devil’s Own.
He explained that he admires Brad Pitt and he thinks he is a wonderful actor and a decent guy, but they unfortunately, could not agree on the director until they finally came to Alan Pakula, who Ford had worked with before but Pitt had not. He further said,
“Brad had this complicated character, and I wanted a complication on my side so that it wasn’t just a good-and-evil battle. And that’s when I came up with the bad-shooting thing. I worked with a writer — but then, all the sudden, we were shooting and we didn’t have a script that Brad and I agreed on. Each of us had different ideas about it.”
Ford also acknowledged that he understands that his requests were largely responsible for the tension between the two actors, noting that he understood why he wanted to stay with his point of view and he wanted to stay with his point of view. The Indiana Jones actor said that it was complicated but he liked the movie very much.
What is Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford starrer The Devil’s Own about?
The 1997 thriller is about NYPD Sgt. Tom O’Mera, played by Ford, lives with an IRA member Frankie McGuire, played by Pitt, along with his family under the belief that he is a construction worker from Ireland.
In reality, McGuire had been working with a local Irish mob to obtain black market missiles to combat British troops in Northern Ireland. The movie opened with a mixed response at the box office.
Source: Newsweek
