SINGAPORE — First, a little introduction to Antoine Fuqua whose work may be familiar to movie fans but not so much his name. An American director and producer (born on Jan. 19, 1966), Antoine is the nephew of record producer and executive Harvey Fuqua of The Moonglows. Hoping to fly jets in the military, he took up electrical engineering and ended up doing movies, that is, after directing music videos for such artists as Toni Braxton, Stevie Wonder and the late Prince.
His first film was The Replacement Killers (1998), produced by Chinese director-producer John Woo (who helmed Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 2) and starring Chow Yun Fat, followed by Training Day (2001) for which Denzel Washington won an Oscar Best Actor. Antoine directed Denzel again in The Equalizer (2007) and now The Magnificent Seven, a reboot of the 1960 movie directed by John Sturges based on the Akira Kurosawa classic Seven Samurai.
Antoine represented The Magnificent Seven, one of the three movies highlighted at the Sony Summit in this city, together with Ghostbusters: Answer The Call (recently shown) and Inferno (starring Tom Hanks, again directed by Ron Howard as the third in the Dan Brown trilogy consisting of The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons), showing nationwide on Oct. 10.
The 1960 The Magnificent Seven stars Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, James Coburn and Horst Buchholz; and the reboot is topbilled by Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Byung-Hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Martin Sensmeier.
Distributed by Columbia Pictures, the Philippine office of Sony Pictures Releasing International, The Magnificent Seven is opening nationwide next Wednesday, Sept. 21.
Excerpts from the open forum:
Can you recall the first time you saw the original The Magnificent Seven?
“I was maybe 12 or 13. I saw it when the movies used to play at night and then at the end of the evening, the white snow would come on because that would mean the end of the evening. That’s way back in the olden days, by the way, before they had cable and they used to play the black and white movies and I would watch it with my grandmother. They used to play Westerns and that was where I saw The Magnificent Seven.”
What about Seven Samurai?
“When I saw Seven Samurai it kind of blew me away. I mean, I had no idea who Kurosawa was. I couldn’t wait for the title sequence to end. It went on forever with all the names. The movie introduced me to a world that, you know, for me growing up in the ghettos of America, it sort of opened my mind to another world that I wanted to experience.
“And watching how Kurosawa crafted the story and the compositions and the action for the final battle left an indelible picture in my mind. I think it was because I grew up poor and there’s always the influence of bullies. And when I saw the warlords that came in and took the people’s rice, it reminded me of a world that I know, in a strange way, of what that means when people come in and take something that doesn’t belong to them. And it just kind of blew me away. It really did. It transformed my thinking and it was just amazing.
“And since then, ironically, when I went to college, I studied the arts. I went to school to be an electrical engineer and I took an art class, a baroque art class, and they were discussing different painters and Kurosawa’s storyboards were paintings as well and the memory of Kurosawa came up again. It was like haunting me, this guy Kurosawa. And I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ It was amazing. Then, I saw Ran and all of Kurosawa’s other films and they really made me want to be a filmmaker. Kurosawa was the reason I want to make movies.”
You said that Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven are very classic old and influential films. Why do you think now is the right time for a remake?
“Well, movies are influenced by their times…you know, what’s happening in the world. And Kurosawa’s film is classic because the DNA of the story still remains the same: Tyranny needs to be fought by good people. That was always the story of Kurosawa. Samurai, meaning to serve, is what samurai means. The Magnificent Seven conveys the same idea…to serve. And there’s always the burning question of when do people sacrifice themselves for the greater good, for another human being?
“So it doesn’t matter at what point and time that you tell that story, it’s always going to be relevant. And in today’s society, as we see in the news, it’s even more relevant than ever. The good people have to step forward. Even some of the rougher type of characters have to step forward to do the right thing. So that’s why I think it’s the right time for it.”
How did you update the movie? If you did, and how much of the original did you retain?
“I never tried intentionally to so-called update it. I was just trying to tell a strong story and put my own stamp on the story. But most important for me was to keep the DNA of Kurosawa’s story, not to stray too far from that idea. I think what’s most relevant is obviously the cast. It’s a very diverse cast, which you don’t see normally in this type of movies. So to have Mr. Lee/BH (Byung-Hun Lee, a Korean) in this type of film, I think is fantastic. To have Denzel Washington as the lead I think is fantastic. So that in itself and in my own aesthetics, the way I shot it, things like that, it brings its own contemporary feel. But that’s as far as I went...I didn’t try to be cool; I didn’t try to put rap in it. I wanted to make it true to the genre, so to speak.”
You’re reteaming with Denzel. You’ve got Ethan Hawke, but you’ve also included other superstars like Chris Pratt into the whole mix. How did that affect the whole group dynamic?
“It was fantastic. The group dynamic was very interesting because you never know when you’re trying to put together actors of that magnitude all together and hope everyone gets along. So you know, as a director you’re a little nervous the first day when you get everybody in the room together. You worry that there’s going to be egos and all these different things. But it honestly didn’t happen that way. It wasn’t because Chris is hilarious. Chris would come into the room and immediately start cracking jokes. It’s just his nature. He’s just a good guy.
“With Denzel, I learned something from him which I try to take into my life. He said, ‘A sheep herder leads from behind, not always in front.’ I thought that was very humble of a man of his stature to say that. I watched him sort of sit back and sort of lead these guys. Ethan’s always full of energy. He’s sort of like he has more energy than anybody I’ve ever seen in my life. He doesn’t even drink that much coffee. He just comes into the room and like he loves it. He’s just talking and you can’t get a word in because he just goes on and on and on. Vincent is just such a powerful actor. And Ethan and Vincent are best friends so they had a rhythm.”
And Byung-Hun Lee (a Korean actor)?
“He’s so graceful, like a ballet dancer, so elegant. In fact, when he would come into the room sometimes, when we first were doing dress rehearsals and doing stunts, Denzel would lean over and go, ‘Stay away from that guy. That guy’s like the coolest guy in the room.’” (Laughs) “He was just the coolest guy in the room and so we would work really closely together on all the stunts. And he had a lot of ideas. His look, a lot of it was his idea. He was very influential. He was very helpful.”
How has your working relationship with Denzel evolved through the years?
“I think we’ve both grown a lot from Training Day, I hope.We’ve remained very close as friends and working together as partners that way. It’s like jazz musicians. It’s a rhythm. It’s interesting. Sometimes you have that rhythm with people. I have that with Ethan. I have it with Denzel. We respect each other quite a bit. It evolves over the years as I see him changing or as he sees me changing. He knows how much I love Westerns. He knows how much I love action movies. So when I went to see him about doing this movie he kind of sat down at lunch with me and he just started smiling. He said, ‘You want to do this, don’t you? You want to make this. You want to do it.’ I said, ‘Come on. I can see you coming over the hill in all black.’ I described it to him. He just started laughing. He went, ‘All right, I’ll do it. Let’s do it.’ That’s kind of how it was.”
(E-mail reactions at entphilstar@yahoo.)