Prison-escape thriller The Escapist, the debut of Brit director Rupert Wyatt, is indie movie heaven. But he went through hell to make it ...

by Dan Jolin, Empire, May 2008

London Underground is not very happy. It's 3:40 am on March 2, 2007, and there's a 30-man film crew shooting a prison-escape movie on the tracks in the tunnel just beyond Charing Cross Station. L.U.'s on the phone to shivering first-time feature director Rupert Wyatt "going apeshit." Ironically, the scene Wyatt is rushing to complete involves a small gang of absconders -- including one-time Shakespeare Joseph Fiennes, City Of God's Seu Jorge, and "Empire Icon" award-winner Brian Cox -- desperately scrambling to get off the tracks before they go live at 4 am. For Wyatt, Fiennes, Cox, et. al., it's the same problem: if they're not wrapped what is in fact the last scene of the shoot within the next 20 minutes they'll be well and truly "fried".

"It was mad," recalls Wyatt almost a year later. "But it was brilliant -- it provided the classic example of how supportive somebody like Brian Cox can be. Not only was he pleading with the authorities to let us stay on the tracks, he was also pushing a dolly around to speed things up! I got a call the next day from his manager questioning why his star client was pushing dollies around. ..."

In many ways, this is a typical example of the frantic, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants nature of true independent filmmaking, but it's also telling that not only does the 35-year-old Wyatt's debut, The Escapist, feature a relatively high wattage cast, but he somehow managed to inspire them -- not least the sixtysomething Cox, star of two Bournes, one X-Men and a few historical epics -- to get their hands grimy, too. Not to mention risk electrocution. ...

Brian Cox is not very happy. Having had a constructive -- if tough -- experience shooting Rupert Wyatt's signature short film, Get The Picture, during 2004, he's just been asked over dinner if he'd mind helping out with the director's planned feature-length version of that piece, a war film entitled The Fourth Wall.

"Rupert, I've spent a lot of time doing favours for directors by playing parts in their movies," booms Cox. "And it's fine -- I don't mind doing that, I'm happy to help. But occasionally I want something to come my way! It's all very well doing favours for young directors, but I'd like someone to do me a favour and give me a great role I'd love to play!"

During the ensuing discussion, Cox advises Wyatt to think of something "contained" and to go and look at the kind of movies he loves, the kind that made him want to become a director in the first place -- specifically, John Sturges' Bad Day At Black Rock, which starred Cox's all-time favourite movie star Spencer Tracy.

Sure enough, Wyatt took Cox's comments on board, went away, and with his friend and collaborator Dan Hardy, put together the undeniably "contained" The Escapist, which concerns the tailor-made character of quiet, rumpled lifer Frank Perry and his bold plan to break out of an unnamed London prison, via a perilous and convoluted route, to visit his critically ill daughter. Told through an ambitious, Christopher Nolan-style flashback/forward structure, and even weaving in epic, mythic elements (Frank and co.'s escape plays out like a journey through the underworld), it knocked Cox sideways. Here, finally, was something that would enable the veteran actor "to lead from the centre as opposed to the side". ("I don't want to do it all the time, though" Cox adds. "It would be too much of a burden. I wouldn't want Brad Pitt's career for anything in the world, or even Harrison Ford's! I'd go nuts.")

"I couldn't believe it," he says. "I thought, 'This is incredible.' I was completely blown away by the script. We'd talked about these kinds of men in extreme situations, like Wages Of Fear or Rififi, and it had galvanised Rupert. Then what was even more impressive was how he got through the long and arduous process to get the film going."

Wyatt himself suspects he wouldn't have managed it at all without Cox's support. Having made several short movies from a young age (he won the BBC Showreel '88 short film competition when he was just 16), and done a few stints in TV, he'd long been desperate to make his mark on the big screen. "I tried to get four other feature films made and failed," he admits. "The difference with this one was we had a lead actor who stuck with it through thick and thin, and I think that just gave people a belief in it -- the financiers and the other cast. Everyone just stuck to it. Brian was the tentpole of the film."

"My involvement certainly helped with the casting," nods Cox. "Rupert already had Seu Jorge and Liam Cunningham; I was instrumental in getting people like Joe Fiennes, because I'd worked with Joe on Running With Scissors."

In addition, Cox and Wyatt secured up-and-comer Dominic Cooper (Starter For 10, The History Boys) as wing virgin Lacey, Steven Mackintosh as predatory addict and rapist Tony, and Damian Lewis, who was already part of Wyatt's Picture Farm production collective, in the key antagonist role of Rizza, the inmates' psychopathic boss. But it's Fiennes' involvement which is most intriguing -- as hoodied hardnut Lenny, he's been cast very much against type. "He's always played these remarkably straight-laced gentlemen," concedes Cox. Even after Cox convinced Wyatt that Fiennes was the right man for the job, Fiennes himself needed convincing. "He himself, to his credit, was very questioning of it," says Wyatt. "But he managed to transform himself and commit himself -- he's a brilliant physical actor."

Joseph Fiennes is not very happy. When he took the role of safecracker Lenny Drake, he'd singled out the long, involved scene in which his character constructs a ratchet -- utterly crucial to the escape plan -- from very limited materials (including, bizarrely, a diamond tooth) as his favourite, and the key reason why he'd come on board. But, on one of the shoot's almost uniformly testing 25 days, he's just been told by his director that they have only 15 minutes to get the sequence in the can. "There's no leeway in the schedule," he's told. "We can't put it back another day. ..."

"Joe kicked off, and quite rightly so," says Wyatt. "It's not the way to be making films and I think everyone, from the producers to the financiers to me to him all realised this, but that's just the way it is in a small-budget movie. So then Joe just knuckled down, we got to cameras, rushed through the lighting and we just shot it in two takes because he didn't put a foot wrong."

From all the tales Empire hears about the shooting of The Escapist -- the Tube-track scramble, the ratchet incident, Cox's recollections of dropping into a freezing water tank for the sewer scenes ("Particularly horrific," he shudders. "Particularly horrid.") -- it seems the only comforting thing about the whole experience was tat it was, by necessity, over so quickly. Most of the four weeks of principal photography took place in Dublin, at Kilmainham Gaol, whose last prisoner was the first President of Ireland, Eamon de Valera, and which has formerly been immortalised as Noel Coward's government holiday home in The Italian Job. It was also, as Cox puts it, "A bloody cold place."

With Ireland being "very much a union country", Wyatt found himself forced into a rather more restrictive environment than he was used to. "On my short films I was used to having a crew that would work 18-hour days. Suddenly I've got only ten hours, and the house lights just go off whether you're in mid-take or not, and that at the beginning really riled me. But eventually I saw the rhyme-and-reason to it -- it made everything very ordered."

"What I admired most about Rupert," says Cox, "was the fact that fiscally he knew that he was under the gun. He never wasted a penny. He got a lot out of the euro. He got more than the euro gave!"

Wyatt is understandably reluctant to reveal precisely how miniscule the budget for The Escapist was, and will only say that it "should have cost five times as much as it did". Such information is still deemed sensitive as the movie hasn't yet been picked up in the States. And it's there that Wyatt's ambitions firmly lie. He moved out to Los Angeles in October last year, and is looking to get two features off the ground in Hollywood: the aforementioned The Fourth Wall, which is partially set in south-east Asia, and The Trail, "a modern-day Western set in New Mexico". Unsurprisingly, Wyatt cites Memento and Batman Begins helmer Christopher Nolan as his biggest inspiration among contemporary filmmakers, "in terms of the way he's been able to make his mark within the studio system.

"Possibly one of the hardest things to do -- and it's the opposite extreme to low-budget filmmaking -- is when you're working on a $100 million budget; and then to do that and still be able to hold onto your vision, I suppose, must be even harder."

Brian Cox is very, very happy. Towards the end of his conversation with Empire, he reveals he's already taken a sneak peek at our glowing review of the film, slipped to him earlier by a publicist. "I feel like I've died and gone to heaven!" he cries. "To be compared to Jean Gabin and Spencer Tracy. ... I needn't do anything else now! [Kim] Newman couldn't have picked two greater actors that I've tried to emulate. For me, those two set the marker.

"Making this film has been an extraordinary journey, really, and I just hope that it's the beginning. Well, it certainly is from Rupert's point of view. I think he's doing very well. It's wonderful because he's getting a lot of hype -- but we need people to see the film. We want to get the film seen; it's the next big hurdle. ..."

The Escapist is out on June 20 and will be reviewed in a future issue.

Caption: Frank (Brian Cox) gets an eareful from top boss Rizza (Damian Lewis) and right, director Rupert Wyatt talks through a scene with Frank (Brian Cox) and Brodie (Liam Cunningham).

Caption: Frank (Brian Cox) sees the light.

Caption: Left to right: Lenny Drake (Joseph Fiennes), Frank (Brian Cox), Brodie (Liam Cunningham) and Viv Batista (Seu Jorge).

Caption: Frank and the gang hit one of many obstacles during their daring escape.

Briefing: The Escapist

Released: June 20

Director: Rupert Wyatt

Starring: Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Damian Lewis, Dominic Cooper, Seu Jorge, Liam Cunningham, Steven Mackintosh

Plot: When unobtrusive lifer Frank Perry (Cox) discovers his daughter is critically ill following a drugs overdose, he resolves to bust out of the unnamed London prison in which he's incarcerated. But while gathering a motley crew of conspirators, he also draws the unwelcome attention of wing-king Rizza (Lewis).

Star Power

by Kim Newman, Empire, May 2008

Brian Cox is just the latest star to have helped out a film director in need ...

Kirk Douglas (Paths Of Glory, 1957)

Stanley Kubrick couldn't get backing for his downbeat anti-war movie Paths Of Glory until Kirk Douglas signed on as star and co-producer.

Charlton Heston (Touch Of Evil, 1958)

When producer Albert Zugsmith offered Heston the lead, the star noticed Orson Welles was to play the film's villain. Heston said he'd only appear if Welles directed too.

Lee Marvin (Point Blank, 1967)

Marvin was big enough in 1967 to bargain for final cut/cast approval on any of his films. On Point Blank, he got them -- and turned them over to director John Boorman.

Sean Connery (The Offence, 1972)

Connery only agreed to appear in Diamonds Are Forever if United Artists backed two films, Macbeth and The Offence, and intense drama about a cop interrogating a child molester.

Harvey Keitel (Reservoir Dogs, 1992)

Tarantino was all set to shoot his Dogs script for $30,000 when Harvey Keitel got in touch. Thanks to him, Quentin got an all-star cast and a $1.5 million budget.

Jack Nicholson (Man Trouble, 1992)

It doesn't always work out, though. The script for Man Trouble had been hanging around since the early '70s, but finally got made by Bob Ravelson with a cut-price Nicholson and Ellen Barkin. It subsequently sank without a trace.