Together in LA to discuss the film - along with the only female member of the cast, Jessica Biel - the A-Team gang and writer/director Carnahan talked about bonding on the set and handling the crazy stunts.
Joe Carnahan, Sharlto Copley, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, and Liam Neeson The A-Team Press Conference
Joe, the studio had been working on this for years but if you’ll excuse the expression, the plan wasn’t coming together until they started talking to you. What came together in your mind where you thought you could make an A-Team movie work?Joe Carnahan: "Well, I was broke. That was job one. Listen, it was one of those situations where I looked at it. I was not the biggest fan of the show as a kid, so I think that probably helped because I didn’t have all these things I thought I had to pay homage to, I guess."
"Brian Bloom and I, we sat down to write it. For all the 15 years of all the scripts that they had, we found the central plot device in five minutes on Google. So it wasn’t like there was this tremendous heavy lifting. We literally went on Google and found out that Saddam Hussein robbed the central bank of Iraq 24 hours before Shock and Awe and literally had this guy go in with a stick-up note and say, 'I want $600 million in Euros, $400 million in…,' and we actually have a copy of the letter. I thought that was a great way to start. If anything, that was kind of the moment of inspiration. I went, 'Okay, we can probably make this work.'"
Bradley Cooper: "That’s good to know."
Jessica Biel: "I didn’t know that either."
Bradley, this is your first big action role so the fact that you saw the show as a kid, did that make it easier for you to make the choice to make this your first big action picture?
Bradley Cooper: "Well there weren’t a plethora of action movies that were coming to me - and I fought for this. The reason I wanted to do it was Joe Carnahan and Liam Neeson were attached. I asked for a meeting with you (Joe) and we met and we literally hit it off. We talked for like 2 1/2 hours - it felt like five minutes - and you gave me the script. You took me over to Jules (Daly), the producer, then you gave me the script. I texted you the next day and I said, 'I gotta do the guy.' And you were like, 'All right, bro’, let’s do this.' It was a testament to Joe fighting for me to get it because this was before Hangover came out or anything."
Joe, what did shooting in Vancouver mean for your production? And Bradley, what did it mean for your workout regimen?
Joe Carnahan: "For production, I came to love deeply the city of Vancouver. I thought the people were fantastic. You’ve got great crews there; you have great facilities. I can’t imagine with what we had to pull off, everything you see in that movie, there was nothing that wasn’t really shot in the Vancouver, British Columbia area. It was great because, like I say, you had really professional crews and to shoot what we did in 72-73 days I don’t think would have been possible elsewhere."
Bradley Cooper: "There was a trainer, Ashley Conrad, who was training me for the movie and she came out to Vancouver. They were providing the food regimen of 2,000 calories per day so it really didn’t matter where, hell traveled with me, so it didn’t matter where I was."
How did you cast it and know the team chemistry would work? And for the actors, what did you do to get that rapport or did it just happen magically?
Joe Carnahan: "For me, I think a lot of what my process is at least directorially is what we all did. We had a number of dinners and we watched the fights at Liam’s house, and it was all this stuff we did before the cameras rolled and after the cameras rolled. And to me, it’s a pet peeve of mine, you can look at a movie and look at a scene and say immediately, 'Okay, these people met each other a half hour before call.' I don’t think you get the best out of people. You need to know someone socially to have an idea of them, and this is why you see I have great affection and love and warmth for these guys because they became my friends. I think that if you’re only looking at it in a strict professional sense, then you miss the better part of it, which is at the end of the day it’s wonderful to make a movie but it’s better to make friends and some of these people will be my friends for the rest of my life – probably not Rampage but we’ll get to that later..."
Liam Neeson: "We got along with each other and I think, obviously, there’s a lot of that hoping that it will work when the camera starts rolling and it did. It was just an ease and a generosity between us and something clicked. We all liked each other and liked being with each other and looked forward to going to work every day. It was as simple as that and as complex as that, too."
Bradley Cooper: "And it made it easy because when the four of us were together, we were either doing something where we couldn’t see each other because we were doing action or we were locked in the sardine can of a tank or a helicopter for six hours or 15 hours. So we benefited from the fact that we all got along. Everybody is so different, as the characters are, but really the four of us couldn’t be more different and that’s kind of wonderful."
Joe Carnahan: "Jessica, why do you love all of us?"
Jessica Biel: "Isn’t it obvious? [Laughing] I have to say I had an incredible experience on this movie. Clearly everybody loves each other. It was literally like being around five older brothers. I was tortured and loved and cared for and picked on, as I should have been. It was a beautiful experience."
