We found they’d already sold the rights 10 times over and it had become such a cluster fuck that it seemed there was no way we’d be able to sort it out. John Herzfeld and I want to Lowell to see Micky and Dicky and talk about the possibility. I thought, this is the movie I should make. I first met Micky when I was 18 years old, and was a huge fan. I’d already built a ring in my backyard by then. I tried to make The Black Dahlia with Brian De Palma because there was an element of boxing in it. Wahlberg: I wanted to make a boxing movie, talked about a movie where I’d play Vinnie Curto and Bob De Niro would play his trainer, Angelo Dundee. They filmed that in Lowell, about Dicky, and called it the biggest crack town in America. I knew Dicky was supposed to be the great fighter but that he had his battles with drugs and I’d seen the documentary High On Crack Street. Dicky is older than me, he fought Sugar Ray Leonard in the 70s, so I wasn’t as aware of him as I was Micky, who was considered a superhero where I came from. Lowell is more like a suburb, but not a rich one. Mark Wahlberg: Lowell was 30 minutes away from Dorchester, we were on different sides of Boston. How far away were you from these guys and how aware were you of their story? Wahlberg joined David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman as producer so, when the project was on the ropes, Wahlberg helped rework the picture from a $50M studio film into a scrappy $20M indie:ĭeadline New York Editor & Film Editor Mike Fleming: Micky and Dicky were the pride of Lowell, Massachusetts. Wahlberg never stopped training, not when Damon dropped out and Brad Pitt came in, not when Aronofsky dropped out, Pitt left, and the project was nearly knocked out. The moment he learned nearly 5 years ago that he’d be starring in the movie alongside Matt Damon for director Darren Aronofsky, Wahlberg built a boxing ring his backyard, hired two trainers on his own dime, and trained hours each day to hone his skills. Christian Bale lost 30 pounds to play half-brother crack addict Dicky Eklund, but Wahlberg’s commitment was even more dramatic. Russell-directed drama in which he plays Irish Micky Ward, the welterweight who fought his way to an unlikely world championship. By that measure, few put in more work than Mark Wahlberg did for The Fighter, the David O. In this year’s wide-open Oscar race, many of the contenders are films that traveled long and hard roads just to get made.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |