3:10 to Yuma was no hard work for Russel Crowe

Well, 3:10 to Yuma may be difficult for Christian Bale because he had to limp through the movie but not for Russell Crowe. The 43 year old actor has played the character of an outlaw leader named, Ben Wade. For him working in the movie was nothing very difficult or challenging. The actor was present during the movie’s premiere in Los Angels and talked with the reporters about the movie. Buckingham Today reports:

Russell says getting into character as a gun-toting baddie wasn't such a stretch: "It's just all fun because it's all skill sets that I've already taken on board.
"I mean there's absolutely nothing about this job that was really hard work to me, except that the weather was a bit tough every now and then, when it got to about minus 15 I got a bit cold then in period clothes... but it was all just fun. Read the script, liked it, wanted to do all this stuff - I went to work with a smile."
Russell plays captured ruthless killer Ben Wade and admits it is hard to see his character's softer side: "Do I like the guy? I don't like the guy but I like playing the guy, I wouldn't want to hang out with this guy."

Crowe who now lives in Australia has his own farm and enjoys riding horse. Even James Mangold praises Crowe’s horse riding ability. Before 3:10 to Yuma Crowe worked in another western movie, “The Quick and the Dead.”

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Buckingham Today

Interview of the screen writers of 3:10 to Yuma: Michael Brandt and Derek Haas

After publishing two interviews of Mangold, I have found another interview of Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. Brandt and Haas are the screen writers of 3:10 to Yuma. These two brilliant scripts writers wrote scripts of 2 Fast 2 Furious. Despite knowing that not too many western movies are made these days, the two writers decided to write the script of a movie remake which was a big challenge in itself. Both Brandt and Haas grew up in Texas watching western movies and they know the conventions but the biggest obstacle was remaining honest to the original story structure at the same time bringing in some fresh twist to match the test of the present audience. Here are some questions from the interview published in IESB:

IESB.NET: Okay, so, how much guidance or inspiration did you get from the original? Did you change anything?
Derek: Yeah, we changed quite a bit. The original movie is almost like a two-act play, but the original movie pretty much takes place with Dan deciding that he's going to help take Ben Wade and put him on a train and then you cut to a hotel room and they're waiting for a train, and that become the second half of the movie. What Michael and I recognized was that there was an opportunity to basically create a new second act, a new chapter to the short story by Elmore Leonard, kind of the third act of the movie, and we said let's put the town a two days' ride away, and by the way they're going to have to ride along the path where the rail road is being put down, so there's literally a gorge, and Indian country, and a Chinese labor camp where they're laying the rails and blasting through, and come up on the town, which is a railroad town, which in our research we found were just dens of inequity for whores and gamblers and people trying to separate the railroad workers from their money, it just became a great way to update the original. And then the other thing that we did was in the original movie the son character is barely in it, just kinda in the first act, and we thought, what an excellent way to be able to see the movie through fresh eyes, as this morality tale that plays out through the son as he's idolizing the Russell Crowe character, Ben Wade, this kind of rock star in the West, and his father, who he is disappointed in, and he's got to watch his father do this thing.

IESB.NET: Okay, is there anything you wante to add to the script that just couldn't be done?
Michael: There's always a lot of that. We had a pretty big scene we had to cut because of budget that plays over a gorge, with a cable car that was transporting people across the gorge, and we had a big accident set on that which they ended up having to set on dry land because of budget, but other than that I think for the most part, everything we envisioned action-wise made it into the movie.

IESB.NET: What are your thoughts on Crowe and Bale, are they what you imagined for the characters?
Michael: They're more than we ever imagined. There's no way . . . They are the two perfect actors for these parts, you know, the rock star gunslinger who is full of charisma, who can smile and also kill you, is the perfect role for Russell Crowe, and there aren’t a lot of people on the face of the earth who can play that part and probably know they can play it as well as he does. And then Christian Bale has such a pathos to him, and just a real sense of true actors acting, and threw himself into the role putting, and honestly when Derek and I were envisioning these parts, we would have been laughed at if we'd said we're thinking Russell Crow and Christian Bale, so we really couldn't have asked for any more.

James Mangold also helped a lot in writing the script. Mangold himself is also a talented screen writer and he gave them a general idea of what he is looking for in the script which also helped the script writers. In the movie credit list, name of Halsted Welles, the script writer of 50's 3:10 to Yuma has also been included as per the rule of the screen writer's guild.

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IESB

Lionsgate planning to submit 3:10 to Yuma in the Oscar

One of the major reasons for shifting the released date of 3:10 to Yuma by Lionsgate is that the movie makers are planning to submit the movie in various award giving ceremonies including the academy award. The Envelope reports:

Meantime, Edward Douglas of Comingsoon.net tells Gold Derby, "I think '3:10 to Yuma' stands a good chance to make the Oscars' short list in a couple categories, particularly for writing and directing. Of course, I might still be bitter about James Mangold being shut out for his skillful direction of 'Walk the Line' a few years ago, but I think anyone who sees '3:10' would have a hard time (not recognizing his impressive skill). And the script, which was derived from the original screenplay from the 1957 movie is excellent, maybe the best script since 'Zodiac' . . . really sharp and reverential to the old Westerns without seeming dated. Which I think will go over very well with the WGA and Academy writers.

3:10 to Yuma is a remake of the 1957’s western movie of the same name. James Mangold who has directed movies like Walk the Line did a research on this movie during his university years and he liked it so much that he decided to remake the movie in his own way. Though critics and movie financers considered Western to be a dead genre, Mangold has managed two of the most successful actors of Hollywood to work in the movie. I have not seen Christian Bale working in any western movie but I have Russell is well experienced. In 1995, he worked in The Quick and the dead by Sam Raimi.

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The Envelope

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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