3:10 to Yuma: Another interview of James Mangold

Here is another interview of James Mangold about his upcoming western movie, 3:10 to Yuma. The interview kicks off with a discussion about Ben Foster’s character in the movie, Charlie Prince, the second in command and the right had of Ben Wade (Russell Crowe). James feels that some characters in the movie may not have major presence but they play crucial roles in the movie and Charlie Prince is one such character and Ben has done a very good job as Charlie Prince. One of the noticeable things about Charlie Prince in this movie is that he is wearing a white jacket which is unconventional in western movies. The hero and the villain is always distinguished by black and white but James feels that the black and white has been used too much in western movies to portray good and evil and it is time for a change. Here are some more questions and answers from the interview.

MTV: Having now seen the original “3:10 to Yuma,” it seems clear that film influenced “Cop Land.”
JM: Absolutely. It features a lot of echoes from that film. Stallone’s character [Freddy Heflin] is actually named after the actor Van Heflin. I was trying to make a Western fused with a kind of modern Jersey cop mob world. I think they are two of our most original forms, the mob movie and the Western. They’re two of America’s most original film forms where you get to examine issues of morality and loyalty in a much more interesting fashion than you generally get a chance to in other genres.

MTV: As a fan of the Western, what did you want to avoid with “3:10 to Yuma”?
JM: I felt that the Western had been hurt by a couple of things. One is the over historical epic-ization of the Western. The Western was never about historical accuracy or teaching a history lesson, not the great ones anyway. They were about character. To my taste, one of the mistakes in Westerns I’d seen was this ponderous sweeping Remington painting kind of Western with the big sweeping strings where suddenly I felt it was more about someone getting lost in the idea of making a Western than actually making a story about characters living in the West.

MTV: Tom Cruise was attached to this for a while. How did you arrive at Russell?
JM: I always wanted Russell. At that point he was attached to Baz Luhrmann’s movie. When he became available it became the greatest thing that ever happened to the film because I really think he was born to play a guy like this.

In his interview with Dark Horizons, Mangold said that he wanted to do this movie because he feels that he can add something to the movie and he can tell the story in his own way and I think this is the way he likes it to be told; dressing the bad guy in white jacket.

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