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DENZEL ON MAKING 'PELHAM': Actor chats about new film; Is it an original or 'remake?'
The film, which debuted this past weekend at number 3, with $25 million, is listed as a remake of the 1974 thriller starring Walter Matthau, “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” but the film’s director Tony Scott, writer Brian Helgeland, and Washington told reporters that the film isn’t so much a remake as it is inspired by. While the lead characters of both films share the name (Garber) and both plots feature armed men hijacking a New York City subway train and hold hostages for ransom, that’s pretty much the extent of the similarities.
“I don’t think it’s a remake,” Washington said bluntly. “I think that it’s basically a story of a hostage situation on a train in New York City. I think that’s what the two films have in common. I don’t know that my character and the character that Walter Matthau played are that similar. And I don’t know why anybody would re-make a film – the literal definition of the word – to re-do it the same way.”
Scott chimed in explaining that the films are similar, but the characters, the villain and the hero, have very different motivations.
“I really love the original film and the last thing I’d want to do is to go in and muddy around with what they did so well,” Scott said. “The idea for me at the start was that using that as a title and something that the studio feels comfortable making rather than a kind of a nameless, orphan idea that you might make on your own, I was trying to use Pelham as a way to springboard into your own crime movie.”
Scott said that the main idea was to “stay away” from the original “Pelham,” which he was already impressed by.
“We had the same kind of situation as the core; a hostage situation in the subway,” he continued. “The similarities end there because we took our guys in the direction that we wanted to take them from there, rather than the direction they go in the original movie.”
The original film, instead, served as a blueprint and a tool, in a way to convince the company of success. In staying away from the original film, Washington plays a regular guy, a transit dispatcher in comparison to Matthau’s portrayal of Lt. Zachery Garber of the Transit Police. The actor made the request that he not play a cop or agent for the film, not only in contrast to the original, but to create a different depth for the film.
When asked where he created his “regular guy,” Walter Garber, he jokingly explained that he found his character in the local deli.
“I ate a lot and kept getting smaller and smaller sweaters to wear,” he said. “I was concerned a little bit about ‘Inside Man’ where I was a cop and a hostage negotiator. In this movie, when they handed [my character] a gun, he had never held one before; that he was an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation.”
Washington’s character and Travolta’s criminal mastermind character shared the screen with an even bigger screen player, though. Scott told reporters that it was New York City who was the true villain in the film and he made a point to make sure that the city itself was a character in the film.
“I wanted to make the city a very strong character,” he said. “This movie was a brilliant canvas in terms of the bowels of the City of New York down in the subway system to the calmness of the MTA control center. So I had a great canvas with which to work.”
“The Taking of Pelham 123,” which also stars Luis Guzman, John Turturro, and James Gandolfini.
“I’m not a leading man; I’m an actor,” Washington humbly said of his role in the impressive cast. “You get a part and you interpret the part, and I like the idea of him not knowing anything about how to solve this problem. And I think Brian and Tony really fashion excellent drama in this two-character play. It’s good writing.”
For our review of "Pelham," by Kam Williams, go HERE.
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