December 14

Source: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

December 14, 2009

'The Next Three Days' production days in Pittsburgh come to an end Haggis, Crowe & Co. pack up after nearly two months
By Barbara Vancheri

Photo by Darrell Sapp

Paul Haggis, director of "The Next Three Days," starring Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks and Liam Neeson, stands in front of the bedroom wall where the Crowe character makes plans and budgets to get his wife out of prison.

Prison breaks were much simpler in Mrs. Soffel's day.

The warden's wife concealed saws beneath her spacious petticoats to help spring the jailed Biddle brothers in 1902. But in "The Next Three Days," Russell Crowe's character has a much riskier, thornier task at hand and no guarantee of success.

John Brennan, an English teacher and father of a 6-year-old boy, is masterminding a prison break in 2010 Pittsburgh.

"The Next Three Days," directed by Oscar and Emmy winner Paul Haggis and co-starring Elizabeth Banks, is scheduled to wrap up 52 days of filming in Pittsburgh today. The Lionsgate suspense thriller is about a Pittsburgher whose wife has been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

The police contend that Lara Brennan argued with her boss, waited for her in a garage and hit her in the head with a fire extinguisher.

John Brennan believes in his wife's innocence, but moviegoers will have to make up their own minds. As the writer, Haggis knows if Lara is innocent or guilty, but he's not spilling that secret.

"We only see what the police are reconstructing, and the evidence is overwhelming that she did it," Haggis said last week from the set doubling as the upstairs of the Brennan house.

"Her fingerprints are on the weapon, she was spotted leaving there. She had a fight with the boss, and there's blood on her coat, the victim's blood, so the evidence is just overwhelming. Circumstantial, as most murders are."

The exterior and ground floor of the Brennan home are in Regent Square, but bedrooms, closets and a bathroom were constructed in Monroeville.

So were a hotel room with adjoining rest room, authentic looking jail interior and storm drain, while a space encircled by a green screen was used for a car spinning out of control. The freeway background would be added later, with digital effects.

The bedroom of 6-year-old Luke Brennan, played by Ty Simpkins, is a cozy retreat with a Pittsburgh Zoo elephants poster on the wall, stars against a blue night sky ceiling and assorted games, dinosaurs and other toys.

An entire wall in John's increasingly spare bedroom is covered with photos, maps, reminders ("Avoid Tunnels? Trap"), and a financial and practical plan for freedom. He's been selling off his belongings, a card table has replaced a desk, and his finances are writ large with expenses and possible sources of income scribbled on a map. Elsewhere are photos and lists with details about passports and other documents. Haggis won't say if John succeeds in his prison break but he credits a colleague and her husband with discovering the French film "Pour Elle" that inspired "Next Three Days." It was a small movie, never released in the States, which had the core of something wonderful and a terrific structure, the filmmaker said.

The man who co-wrote "Crash" and adapted "Million Dollar Baby" was intrigued by "the idea of a man who would do absolutely anything to reunite his wife and son and also, it talked about what you have to do to become this kind of person to do that."

John consults with an expert, played by Liam Neeson, who broke out of prison nine times and wrote a book about his exploits.

"I had to ask myself, 'How would I do this?' " Haggis said. "I wouldn't know how to break my wife out of prison, so he starts researching. He's an English teacher, he goes online, he figures out how to break into cars, he figures out how to make keys, figures out all this stuff.

"You know he's never going to be able to pull it off, it's impossible and yet he comes up with a plan." Waving at the wall behind him, Haggis said, "This is part of him trying to construct the plan."

To make his movie as authentic as possible, the writer-director researched attempts to break out of jail in Pittsburgh. "I found articles about how people tried to escape from jail but didn't succeed, but they got close."

Haggis had been to Pittsburgh just once, many years ago, before he came here to study the city that plays itself and doubles for locations inside and outside North America. "Major [James] Donis at the jail showed me around, and the film office here was terrific. They took me around, showed me the T-trains and all that, and I was able to construct a plot from actually working in the city."

A Canadian by birth who long has lived in California, Haggis was taken by the character of Pittsburgh.

Talking about John Brennan, he said, "His father [played by Brian Dennehy] is a former steelworker who is retired. He comes from a working-class family, and yet he grew up and went to college and became an English teacher. It talks about how Pittsburgh has evolved" and yet clings to its roots and neighborhoods.

"That's what I love about Pittsburgh. It's developed but it's kept its roots, and it hasn't fallen prey to what's happened to many cities, which is just chain stores everywhere and they've lost the character. There are chain stores, but neighborhoods have maintained their integrity."

Haggis' biggest challenge was finding the right actors.

"Russell's one of our finest actors, isn't he? He is a man who can portray an Everyman, who can show you so much without any dialogue. A lot of the script of this film has no dialogue; we've got many, many scenes that are silent, and that all has to play in his face, so I needed an actor who could do that and who you could care for."

The same was true of Banks, who followed "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" in Pittsburgh with turns as Laura Bush in "W." and a suspicious nurse in "The Uninvited." "I needed someone who was sympathetic but who you could believe could actually kill someone because it was important to me that the audience keeps asking, 'Did she do it or not?' and 'Why does he believe her?' " She brought the right measure of complexity to the role.

Haggis likes to challenge moviegoers and himself with questions, as he did with racial issues in "Crash" and whether Clint Eastwood's character should have honored a request from a onetime boxer in "Million Dollar Baby." And this time?

"One of the major questions I wanted to ask is if you know that by saving the woman you love, you could quite possibly turn into someone she could no longer love, would you do it?"

It haunts even him but as he says, "That's the wonderful thing about making movies. You don't have to make up your mind. It's the question that's important."

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

December 14, 2010

Oprah joins Souths' fight for Inglis
Brad Walter

First it was Jay Leno, now Russell Crowe has Oprah Winfrey - the Rabbitohs' newest member - selling the virtues of South Sydney, Greg Inglis and the NRL to the world. In a major coup for the club and the code, Crowe and eight of his Rabbitohs players will appear on the talk show queen's program being filmed today at the Sydney Opera House.

Crowe was yesterday confirmed as one of the celebrity guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show, along with Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Olivia Newton-John and Bindi Irwin.

Souths players, including captain Roy Asotasi, Sam Burgess, Dave Taylor and Chris Sandow, will be seated near the front of the audience, and are expected to feature on camera when Winfrey interviews Crowe.

The Academy award-winning actor and Rabbitohs co-owner is a regular guest on Leno's The Tonight Show in the United States, and spent nearly four minutes of his most recent appearance telling the program's 3.9 million US viewers about Souths and the club's signing of Greg Inglis. But the exposure the Rabbitohs and the NRL will gain from today's appearance will dwarf that, withThe Oprah Winfrey Show watched by an estimated television audience of 49m each week in the US alone. Winfrey has also signed up to become a member of South Sydney Football Club, and was allocated membership No.53026.

And it was obvious yesterday as Winfrey sailed on Sydney Harbour with Crowe that she had been kept up to date with latest developments concerning Souths and Inglis, whose contract is yet to be registered by the NRL. Asked by a reporter on shore whether she had a message for fans, Winfrey shouted: ''Greg Inglis''.

Crowe then flicked reporters a two-fingered victory sign as the yacht cruised past. The NRL has so far refused to list Inglis under the salary cap for $190,000 next year and $350,000 for each of the following two seasons after Crowe confirmed during his November 16 interview with Leno that the Test star would earn $1.8m over the next three years.

The rest of Inglis's money comes from four third-party deals totalling $200,000 a year and a $100,000 marquee player allowance with Star City. It is understood Souths were initially intending to announce Star City as their new major sponsor onThe Oprah Winfrey Show but plans to do so have been shelved. However, Winfrey and Crowe were yesterday wearing Rabbitohs baseball caps with the Star City logo on the side. Winfrey is the latest celebrity Crowe has convinced to support Souths, with Leno, Kidman, rapper Snoop Dogg, football star Cristiano Ronaldo, actors Ben Affleck, Christian Bale, Burt Reynolds, Jodie Foster, Pamela Anderson, Eva Mendes and Tom Cruise all having been photographed wearing Rabbitohs gear.

Crowe even once tried to get US media mogul Ted Turner to bankroll South Sydney before the club was expelled from the NRL in 2000 by asking the CNN founder's now former wife, actor Jane Fonda, to pass on a letter explaining that his arch rival, Rupert Murdoch, had taken control of rugby league in Australia and wanted to kill the Rabbitohs.