Josh Brolin is currently doing the rounds, promoting his latest movie Gangster Squad and has been talking a little about the Spike Lee remake of Oldboy. Josh claims that he had a few doubts to start with but, after talking to Chan-wook Park, he was convinced the film could be a hit.
Oldboy director Spike Lee
Brolin told Collider, “With Oldboy, look, it’s Spike Lee, its myself, there’s the DP Sean Bobbitt, who’s [frick]ing amazing, man, and me talking to Chan-wook Park and saying, ‘Do you mind if we do this?’ and his only request was just don’t do the same movie and it’s like no were not interested in that. Structurally, as a scaffolding, it’s the same movie, but what we do with is very different. It looks very different.”
He added, “Spike, about two and a half weeks into the movie cut together this four minute compilation just for me to look at. Not that I needed it, not that I felt like I’m lost, I don’t know what I’m doing. He just gave it to me and said, ‘Don’t look at this until you get home.’ And I watched this four-minute compilation and it looked fantastic. It was a massive, massive inspiration.”
Josh Brolin on Oldboy set
Josh continued, “We did eight minute to eleven minute long takes [in the motel room] where he would just let me go and do whatever. I’d be sitting there naked in the room and he would say, ‘You’ve been in the room thirteen years: go.’ And I would do eight minutes on that and whatever would come up. Some of it was really stupid and unusable. Some of it was really fun and interesting.”
Josh Brolin stars alongside Samuel L Jackson and Elizabeth Olsen in Spike Lee’s Oldboy, which is set to be released on October 11, 2013. Meanwhile, Josh can next be seen on the big screen, starring alongside Ryan Gosling and Anthony Mackie, in Gangster Squad, which is released on January 11, 2013.
Original Oldboy movie
