Scott's Hit American Gangster--The Crucial Edit

Even given the presence of two major stars, the imprimatur of one of Hollywood's most successful producers in Brian Grazer, and the presence of Ridley Scott as director, the $46.3 million weekend take for American Gangster left much of the town slapping their foreheads in admiration or envy. Even Universal's Nikki Rocco, who proudly claimed to have seen the movie several times, told an interviewer, "Face it: This is a big result for an R-rated movie that runs over 150 minutes."

The figure also jump-started the film's Oscar campaign, in an awards season where other serious-minded dramas have garnered critical acclaim but lacked the requisite box office profile to make a run. Not only the best opening for both Washington and Crowe (and second only to Hannibal for Scott), it was boosted by a strong showing (36 percent of the audience) among African Americans.

Original director Antoine Fuqua has said he feels Universal Pictures (and then-production chief Stacey Snider) pulled the plug on him back in October of 2004 because he was aiming for a truly gritty version of the Steve Zaillian screenplay (which at various stages was worked on by Richard Price and potential fill-in director Terry George before reverting to its earlier form). But given the palpable grit and box-office strength of the film, he'd best mark it up as another lurch in what's been a sometimes-snake bit career despite his formidable talents. (He has the consolation of Shooter's reasonable worldwide gross-marginally bigger overseas than domestically--of $95 million.)

Even with a stellar array of filmmakers, Gangster was a tough nut to crack. I spoke with seasoned film editor Pietro Scalia, who won Oscars for his work with Scott on Black Hawk Down (Best Editing, 2001) and Gladiator (Best Editing, 2000) and had previously shared an Oscar with Joe Hutshing for JFK and added a nomination for Good Will Hunting. He emphasized that Scott's choices on set equipped him with more than enough raw material for shaping--but given that the film's twin protagonists had parallel but separate stories for much of the running time, the search to find the film's final shape required a prolonged, probing edit bay siege he did alongside Scott:

We did a lot of restructuring and reworking of scenes during our first weeks after shooting when we were back in L.A.-- to figure out how to get this big wheel into motion. And we tried literally a dozen different variations specifically in the first act because that was essential--how do we get it going?

I remarked to Scalia that a number of scenes where exposition typically might have dawdled along were delivered more crisply than is the norm--we've given room to finish an exchange or fill in certain links to the forthcoming scene for ourselves. (Scott has a term for the kind of character who typically comes along with an expository speech in such dramas--"Irving the Explainer".) Says Scalia:

You don't always have to give the end [snippet of dialog] when you make the film. When we work, the participation of the viewer is just as important as the film on the screen.

So I think it's always part of the equation that the viewer will fill it in the answer--they will make their own conclusions about what a scene means, how to react to certain dramatic events and I think that's essential because that gets the viewer engaged. The length of a movie is not about minute--it's whether you're interested or bored, if the pacing can keep you interested.

Scott decided early on to keep his palette and locations properly dingy, true to the spirit and look of the city at the time:

I think the aesthetic Ridley was after was to make it feel real, and it's hard nowadays to find 1968-1970 New York--but the goal wasn't to go after the brightly colored cliches of the Super-Fly black exploitation films, but to keep it more into the neutral colors. And also not to go for James Bond-type shootouts, but believable action by keeping the camera moving. Call it documentary style or cinema verite', but a lot of times he would use multiple camera positions, and rather than trying to capture long, complexly designed shots, the ethic was, `Grab the moment--let's capture what is real and let's use the accidents within the frame

When the time came for the payoff of Crowe and Washington encountering each other at a crucial turn in the story, says Scalia, the slightly haphazard feel served the scene well:

I love that scene, I love the look on Denzel. It's not technically a great reveal [of Crowe] but I like that we barely see it at first. I built it slowly, Denzel coming down the stairs, walking towards you, looking left to right, looking back to his family--a little bit of High Noon--with Amazing Grace playing behind.

Scalia sums up with an acknowledgment that, as he and Scott found via the film's key test screening in Pasadena,

Fundamentally what works in American Gangster is that we have two great characters and two wonderful actors playing these characters. We realized that after screening it the audience was totally captivated--we didn't have the usual gangster film with a lot of shootouts, a lot of action ot keep your adrenaline going, it was just the interest I think in these characters' story. My favorite scene is the last scene in the film between the two guys across the table and we always hoped-- did we earn an eight--minute scene between these two? We had said, hope the audience will like it as much as we do, because it's interesting to watch these two guys talk to each other