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The Taking of Pelham 123 is an update of the ‘70s thriller with Walter Mattheau and Robert Shaw. The new version stars John Travolta as the hostage taker and Denzel Washington as the impromptu negotiator. This version also has Tony Scott directing, bringing his kinetic visual take to the New York subway based thriller.
Crave Online: What was your take on a remake of Taking of Pelham 123?
Tony Scott: I think the motivation of the characters is very different and the similarity is that it’s a hostage situation in the subway, but if you think about the two, you think about the Robert Shaw character. The thing about the Robert Shaw character, if you think about Denzel’s character, the whole motivation is very different. For one thing, Walter Matthau was playing a cop but also in terms of John’s character, it’s based off a real guy, who actually came out of Brooklyn and gravitated to Wall Street and worked for the city and then he went and did time in jail. He just got out of jail, before the movie, and his character is motivated by revenge, take revenge on the city of New York. In the original movie, the movie was about the million dollars, about “Let’s hold hostages in a subway for a million bucks,” it was sort of a stupid place to hold hostages because it’s a cul de sac. And this here, the John character, he had a plan, he had a plot. Luis Guzman, who is the guy who he happens to hatch the plot with in jail, so it is based off of real events and real characters. It’s an organic process in how to build a character. It was an MTA worker that we had as a role model but then Brian [Helgeland] brought on this other backstory. The glasses all become part and parcel and you start to feel how the character feels, whether it’s the wardrobe, the glasses with the lines in conjunction with the mannerisms.
Crave Online: What did you find out about the real MTA?
Tony Scott: It’s the size of a football field. It’s unbelievable. It’s like NASA. It’s the last thing you’d expect, especially if you look at the old one, because the old one is just sort of a grubby office with this subway thing on the wall. But in the real world, I get to educate and entertain myself by going and touching the real world and touching real people. And that’s my way into movies. So, I love that and I bring that.
Crave Online: What were your intentions with the film’s score and music?
Tony Scott: What we do is the search, in terms of finding people and we also do rip sheets. We also do what we call a rip-o-matic, so the first thing I did was cut together a DVD, which we cut together from the old movie and different movies, in terms of Denzel, and different movies, and it informed us of the tone of the movie and I gave it to [him]. So it’s an organic process of searching for the music. Organic is a word I keep using, but it just begins with homework. And then you come fully informed when you come to [set.] It’s very hard, actually, trying to talk to an actor about how they deliver their lines or how they should cut their hair unless it comes from a place of a strong point of view. And that point of view comes through a search.
Crave Online: Was it hard to get the actors to do off camera lines for each other? A lot of films would just cut them together.
Tony Scott: That made it great for the characters, because John developed that relationship. For me, it’s really a tough movie to do, because two-thirds of the movie is two guys on the phone. So I saw that as being a challenge, because I said, “How do we keep this anxiety and momentum going?” But it comes with the actors and the writing, but it’s a daunting challenge because it’s like two-thirds of the movie is two guys on the phone with each other, and the boys stay separate. John’s on one side of the studio and they shook hands once.”
Crave Online: You talked about Denzel’s character but what does Travolta bring to this film?
Tony Scott: John has a big heart. He’s got a big heart, he’s dangerous, he’s sweet. It’s sort of a contradiction in terms of what we expect from the bad guy. So, I think John, he’s funny, he’s smart and has this big heart, so he plays against what you’d normally expect from the bad guys.
Crave Online: Who was his character based on?
Tony Scott: John’s character is based upon, it’s a mixture. But it’s based upon a guy from Brooklyn who actually gravitated to Wall Street and then got caught up in the parking violations scam of ’94 and then did time. So his life was taken away.
Crave Online: When was Pelham filmed?
Tony Scott: In January. We started shooting in January of last year, and we finished in June. So we started shooting in the winter in New York and finished in the summer. So that’s why there might be snow in places and trees without leaves and then trees with leaves.
