By Christina Radish

Director Ridley Scott on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures' Body of Lies -Photo by Francois Duhamel/Warner Bros. Pictures 2008

Co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, along with director Ridley Scott and author David Ignatius, spoke with MediaBlvd Magazine about making Body of Lies.

MediaBlvd> David, how did you describe the two characters, Ferris and Hoffman, in your book?
David Ignatius> Something I’m really happy about is how faithful the movie is to the book, in the interaction of the characters, in its picture of the CIA struggling around the world against a very difficult adversary, and in the way in which these characters rebel against the situation they find themselves in. I thought it was captured well. The basic feeling I have as a writer is that this is the story I wanted to tell. The feeling that I hope  people have at the end of the book is the same feeling I had at the end of the movie.

MediaBlvd> When you describe them in the book, was it anything like the people we see in the movie?

David> The first time I talked to Russell he asked me, “Where’s Hoffman from?” I said, “I don’t know. Maybe he’s from some working class town in Massachusetts,” and Russell said, “No, he’s not. He’s from Arkansas.” He had decided that that was where this character was from and that that was how this character was going to talk. They obviously re-imagined the characters in a hundred different ways, but that’s now who these people are. I’ll never be able to read the book and read about Hoffman and not think about Russell, and the same thing with Ferris and Leo.

Leonardo DiCaprio> To put it simply, I saw my character as an operator in the Middle East, who was trying to operate and do his job in the higher moral context that his boss wanted him to. And, there was this great conflict, that was set up in the book, of this dilemma, where this character is consistently asked to do things that he doesn’t believe in, for the betterment of his country and this war on terror. He is accustomed to the Middle East and their cultures, and he meets up with this Jordanian intelligence officer who he grows to respect, and wants to do the best job he possibly can, but he’s being manipulated by both sides. Besides this being a great political piece that’s pertinent to our time, it was this fantastic cat-and-mouse espionage thriller that works on its own.

Russell Crowe> The first thing that I got was a phone call from Ridley saying, “How would you like to put on a large amount of weight?,” and that always appeals to me. That was a sell, right there. But, one of the other things that he said was that he wanted the character to feel like an ex-football player with bad knees who still had some grace about him, so that was also interesting. Everything else comes from the book and the way the character talks in the book.

MediaBlvd> Ridley, how do you see the relationship between Ferris and Hoffman?
Ridley Scott> I don’t think it was a brotherhood. I think it was very much a boss/operator relationship. Ed Hoffman might want to project his warmth as if it is a brotherhood, or a coach to a player, but that’s where the seduction begins. This is fundamentally about seduction and betrayal. He will betray his most valuable asset in the field, if there is a higher reward than losing his asset.

MediaBlvd> Russell, because you have such a great relationship with Ridley, would you pretty much do anything that he wants you to do?

Russell> I went through a period of time where, even after the great relationship we had on Gladiator, I didn’t fully realize that that was probably a unique situation in your performance life. He asked me to do Black Hawk Down, but I’d just done a movie where there was a helicopter in the background and I wasn’t interested. Then, he wanted me to do Kingdom of Heaven, but I was in the middle of doing something else, and I said, “Oh, you’ll have to wait a year,” and he said, “Fuck off! Who are you?” With the last three things we’ve done together, it’s basically him saying, “This is what we’re doing,” and me saying, “Okay, cool!” With Ridley, I’ll say yes first, and then work out why I want to do it afterwards.

MediaBlvd> What were your favorite foods to fatten up for this role?

Russell> It was not really a matter of that. It was a matter of choosing a sedentary lifestyle. That’s what I do, when I want to change things up. I do enjoy the fact that I’ve gone through periods of time when there isn’t any control. You eat whatever tickles your fancy. And, I just don’t exercise. As soon as we started the movie, I was actually at the beginning of the place I wanted to be. I’d ride my bike to set every day because I wanted to stay at a certain point.

Leonardo DiCaprio in Warner Bros. Pictures' Body of Lies - Photo by Francois Duhamel/Warner Bros. Pictures2008

MediaBlvd> Russell and Leo, did either of you do any research, in regard to the CIA and their protocol?

Leo> I got to talk to some people who worked in that field. It’s a very interesting subject matter to take on. Unless you’re talking about the CIA in the general context of history, we’re only now starting to learn about the basis of it being able to operate because it’s shrouded in secrecy, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to function. There’s a certain leap of faith that you take with all this stuff. It was really David’s research that he did in the Middle East, talking to Jordanian intelligence that helped. But, we did the best research that we could in that regard.

MediaBlvd> Russell, in this movie, you look like you’re having the time of your life. And, Leo, you look like you’re a guy in the middle of the worst day of his life. How was it a challenge for each of you to come at that differently?

Russell> I was definitely having the time of my life because I knew that, ultimately, I’d be out of there in five weeks. It wasn’t going to be my responsibility. Somebody else was going to get blown up this time, and I was perfectly happy with all that.

Leo> I think the nature of the environments played a toll in these performances. We were there for three and a half extra months. People always ask, “Was it fun working on that movie?” I don’t know if that’s the operative word. It was challenging and interesting, but fun isn’t always the operative word.

MediaBlvd> What are your memories of making The Quick and the Dead together? How different was it to work together again?

Russell> Fond.

Leo> I was 18, at the time. We were both hand-plucked to do that movie. Russell had done Romper Stomper and I had done Gilbert Grape, and we were hand-plucked to do this big-budget film. We were both very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Russell> There’s a difference in our ages, but we were both in the same sort of position, where the people above us in the cast were Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone, and everyone below us in a casting position were all these really famous character actors, like Keith David. They were looking at the two of us going, “Who are these guys?” So, that naturally put us together in a way where we’d just hang out together because we didn’t care about status. We just wanted to enjoy the experience. The two things that have changed about Leo since that time are that he can drink legally and he’s no longer a virgin.

Leo> Russell is the same guy. He really is. I remember when I first started having these cliche ideas of what movie stars are -- that they’re egomaniacal pricks and tyrants -- but for the most part, they’re nice people. Russell couldn’t be more professional. He couldn’t be a more normal guy to hang out with. He’s intelligent and great, and he hasn’t changed.

MediaBlvd> Russell, a lot of the scenes in this film are between you and your cell phone. What was that like?
Russell> It’s the same as if you’re doing a CGI film and you’re supposed to be floating in a flock of black ravens. In fact, most of the time, when you’re on a film set, what you see in the audience has nothing to do with the experience of the actor. You’ve always got to be shutting off things that are going to affect your focus. It’s the same sort of thing, where you just zero in on the phone call. Some guys try to attempt to do that thing where both people are on the phone at the same time, which is just utterly a waste of time. I’m better off just doing the groove by myself. And then, if you shoot it first, the next person gets to hear where you were, and they will fold into that. If you’re doing it second, you listen to what they said and then you think about it.

MediaBlvd> Leo, you had to learn some Arabic for the film. Are you able to remember any of it?

Leo> Absolutely none! I can’t even remember a single word, to tell you the truth. But, we had an Arabic coach there that was really helpful because it was more so than any accent. You have to be so exact. And, there’s different dialects of Arabic, from country to country, so it was really, really difficult. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, language-wise, because it comes from the throat. It’s different. I also had to learn about the customs and the culture, so we had advisors for that sort of thing.

MediaBlvd> Leo, since you did most of your own stunts, were there any that were particularly challenging or painful?

Russell Crowe in Warner Bros. Pictures' Body of Lies - Photo by Francois Duhamel/Warner Bros. Pictures 2008

MediaBlvd> Ridley, how important is it for you, when approaching a film, to put your actors in these locations?

Ridley> The location is always another character. It’s up to me create a proscenium that’s so real that, when the actor walks into that proscenium, he’s actually affected by it. It becomes part of the world. The locations are the work.

MediaBlvd> What does that sense of location have for the actors?

Russell> It’s great and wonderful, when it’s there, but you can’t rely on it because the next thing you do may have none of that canvas and you may have to run it all in your mind. It’s the same as having a telephone conversation with someone who’s not on the other end of the line, or doing something in a room with a blue or green screen, where you’ve got to imagine everything that’s around you, that everybody else will see. It’s fantastic when you can walk onto a stage of that size. Even half of the Coliseum, that we built in Malta for Gladiator, was better than not having the Coliseum there at all. But, it goes both ways. It’s fabulous when it works and when you can be in that place and time that the character is supposed to be in. But, on the other side of that, being an actor, you can equally shoot Botswana for Texas. The game is a bit more ambiguous.

Warner Bros. Pictures dramatic thriller Body of Lies, is based on the novel of the same name by author David Ignatius

Leo> Of course it’s relevant and it would be great to have the real locations, all the time. We shot in Morocco, which doubled for a lot of different places. It’s more the attitude of the director that you’re working with and the environment that he wants you to be surrounded in. That’s what was great about working with Ridley. He’s like a human editing bay. He’s constantly saying to himself, “Do I believe this? Do I not believe this? Do I believe the people I’ve surrounded the main character with? Do I believe what they’re saying? Do I believe what I’m seeing through this screen?” He’s this bullshit filter, and he trusts his own instincts, on such a gut level. It’s great to work with somebody who will come in and say, “Okay, this entire scene is wrong. Get rid of three pages of dialogue or let’s move this outside. Whatever it is, I'm not believing it. Push it to an even further extreme.” It’s amazing to watch him behind the monitor, or in the tent with six different monitors and cameras from every different angle, and he’s just switching from monitor to monitor. He can efficiently say, “This is exactly what I’m going to use in the movie, and everything else is a profound waste of time. Let’s just not do any of that other crap. This is the moment that I’m going to choose, and this is the kind of thing that I want. Let’s go work on something that’s actually beneficial to the movie.” That’s the attitude that he has. You go in everyday and feel like you’ve done a day’s work, and that everything that you put effort into will wind up as a part of the movie. That’s the great thing about Ridley.

MediaBlvd> Why do you do your own storyboards?

Ridley> It’s all about focus. If I get lost, I just sit there and doodle. I spent a long time in art school, so I can really draw. So, I’ll doodle and suddenly find the beginning of the movie, in one picture. Right by the telephone, I’ve got a book of doodles. When I’m on the phone, I’ll be doing a drawing, which will end up big, if the phone session is long      

Russell> It’s not just that he draws, but he can draw upside down. He can put a piece of paper in front of you, so you’re looking at the piece of paper, and he can draw the frame for you. It’s a very strange talent.

MediaBlvd> You have a love story in this film, and yet the characters never touch each other. How tricky was that?

Ridley> In the book, Aisha was a French girl in the Embassy. I asked David how he felt if she was local. It started to underscore Ferris’s attachment and liking for the region that he was in. So, when he comes to that little lunch he has with her, where she’s obliged to have a chaperone there, which is her sister and the two kids, afterwards she says, “Ironically, my sister wants to go to America,” and he says, “Well, if you want, I’ll swap passports with her.” She says, “Don’t joke about things like that,” and he says, “No, I mean it.” That’s when you start to get a sense of his attachment to this particular place that he’s somehow found his own magic in. What’s really nice about it is that she’s taken what some would think are ridiculous aspects of the Koran, but that I think are charming, which is that she can’t touch, and cannot even shake his hand. According to the Koran, you’ve got to have a chaperone, and you can’t shake hands until you’re fully engaged in an acknowledged relationship, which probably means family. Today, in our society, anything goes. So, I think that’s a balance for reappraising some of the better aspects of being a little more reserved about relationships and how fast they travel.

MediaBlvd> Leo, can you talk about working with Mark Strong, who played Hani?

Leo> He gave a fantastic performance. He was one of the last people to be cast in this film. He’s done a lot of theatre in England, and he came in and was immediately taken back by the sleazy 70’s suits that he had to wear and the cheesy attire that he had on, but jumped into the role full-force. He’s so subtly conniving and deceitful in the movie. He embraced the character and just had such a great attitude, even though he literally came in during the last week of filming. He just knocked it out of the park. We really needed somebody on Russell’s end to be able to be the flip side of that coin. We needed somebody with some weight to them to be able to match up, power wise, when they sit in a room together, so that you don’t know whose got the upper hand. Thank God, we got Mark Strong.                  

MediaBlvd> Leo, what was it like to see yourself in the scenes where you were tortured?

Leo> We knew that there was this pivotal end-moment in the movie, where I’m in the hands of the enemy. That was the scene that needed to be the pivotal moment in the film. Unless that worked and was believable, and had the guts and the intensity and the weight to it, the film almost wouldn’t work. It was something we talked about at great length, and analyzed in every possible direction. What would a CIA agent, trying to do his best in this world, finally say, if he’s in that situation? What are the words that would come out of his mouth? What kind of tactics would he use to try to get out of the situation? What is he thinking about? Is he thinking about his own survival? The betterment of his country? What secrets does he release? It was one of the more complimented scenes for the movie, and one of the most intense, in the sense that we knew we had to knock it out of the park. I actually got sick, after the scene, for three days because there was just so much intensity put into that.

Ridley> There’s an evolution of the character. You’re starting off a film with a man who is coming to a point of deep reflection, as to whether he’s actually doing the right job or not, and if he is, whether or not he’s doing it the right way. You’re starting a film with a guy who’s already half-way out the gate. He’s already in disarray, in terms of being a functionary and doing what he’s doing. Hoffman starts to sense that. So, when you jump to the end, if you believe in karma, and I’ve got this inherent belief in karma, you have to be in acceptance of what is dealt to you.

MediaBlvd> Russell, there’s a moment in the film when Hoffman tells Ferris to never have kids. What are your own thoughts on parenthood?

Russell> It’s the most fantastic thing I’ve ever experienced. It continues to get more fun and more complex, every day. We did actually debate quite a bit about Ferris’ attitude towards children. I think Hoffman’s attitude is that he’s trying to use Ferris in a certain way, so he may be expressing a momentary negative, but what he’s really trying to do his suppress his desire by doing anything other than his job. When Hoffman is on the phone, talking while his kid is going to the bathroom, it’s just a function of being a dad, that he can still do this thing while he’s taking his kids pants down, pointing him in the right direction and making sure he doesn’t get it on the floor. Then, he pushes him back off to bed while he’s destroying something on the other end of the phone. Hoffman needed distance between himself and the reality of what he was doing, so that it’s easy for him. He’s playing a video game, whereas Ferris is living it.

MediaBlvd> Russell, can you talk about your friend Nicole Kidman and her new baby? Do you trade parenting tips?

Russell> Sunday Rose was born on the same day as my son Tennyson, which is the 7^th of July. Nicole and Keith brought Sunday Rose around on a Sunday, which I thought was appropriate. Nicole had one look at my younger son, Tennyson, and looked up at me and said, “I’m a great believer in arranged marriages.” I believe she made the connection between Sunday and Tennyson, so Tennyson is already engaged. But, Sunday Rose is a beautiful child with beautiful, delicate features, and it was fun when she brought her around. I’m not going to be giving Nicole any parenting advice. She’s already brought up two children. She’s pretty well-versed.

MediaBlvd> Leo, everyone knows about your commitment to the environment and a green economy. How do you feel about the fact that we’re currently in the hugest bail-out in history?

Leo> If you’re talking about the environment and our country shifting to alternative technologies in ways to power the country, I’ve been profoundly disappointed for years. We should have started, eight years ago, to be less dependant on foreign oil, and we should have started to invest in some of these new technologies, but now we’re way behind the curve again. The United States should be the one to set an example for the rest of the world. Brazil is doing it. Other countries are starting to adapt these principles, but we haven’t. I’ve been outwardly supportive, as a Democrat, in the past and have gone out for John Kerry. People don’t want other people to tell them how to think, what to believe, or what’s right and what’s wrong, politically. The only point for me, in this election, is that I want enough young people to go out to the polls and actually vote this time. They need to register and vote because then we’ll get a real consensus of what this country is. We’ll really understand where our country is, morally. These young people will be able to dictate policies, for the next 50-100 years. My only wish is that we get a real representation of the future of this country in this next election, whoever wins.

MediaBlvd> Russell, what are you doing next?

Russell> I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. We haven’t done Robin Hood yet. It’s one of those things that we’re taking our time with because you don’t want to be doing Robin Hood unless you’re going to be doing it really fucking well. It’s got to be the best one ever done, otherwise you should do something else.

MediaBlvd> Will you wear tights?

Russell> I will not wear tights because, according to our research, they were not invented for another 300 years. I apologize.                    

MediaBlvd> Leo, can you talk about working with Kate Winslet again on Revolutionary Road?
Leo> Kate has remained one of my closest friends, and is the best actress of her generation. She brought the book to me, which was a portrait of America after the war, trying to basically become the idyllic image of what a family is supposed to be. It’s about two people trying to struggle to do that, who are basically torn apart because they feel like they’ve become cliches and have lost their identity. Kate and I basically knew that we could push each other’s buttons, performance wise, and knew  we could pull stuff out of each other. We’ve known each other since we were almost teenagers, so it was something that I jumped at the opportunity to do.