Oscar-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line, Gladiator) stars as the black sheep of a family of police officers in the dramatic thriller, We Own the Night. Written and directed by James Gray, We Own the Night follows nightclub manager Bobby Green (Phoenix), an ambitious and hard-partying man who's totally disconnected from his family of New York cops. Bobby's never told any of his current associates about his family, opting instead to keep the law enforcement connection hidden from his boss and friends. But when his brother (played by Mark Wahlberg) is put in charge of a narcotics task force focusing on a Russian drug dealer working out of the nightclub he runs, Bobby's two worlds collide in dramatic fashion.
The Appeal of We Own the Night: “Well, honestly it’s working with James again, primarily, because I really liked working with him on The Yards," explained Phoenix. "We’d stayed in touch and we’d talked about doing another film together. And when we finished The Yards I remember him kind of talking about his next idea, which actually kind of led to We Own the Night. So, that was really primarily [the appeal]. Honestly, if James had said, ‘I just want to do this movie and I don’t have a script,’ I probably would have done it anyway. I enjoy working with James; I enjoy that process.”
Getting Into the Action: Asked if this is the closest he’ll get to playing an action hero role, Phoenix laughed. “You obviously haven’t seen my early work. Well, I guess. I don’t really think of this as [an action movie]. There are a couple scenes. It’s so funny because to you it’s an action scene and to me it was like just on the back of a trailer in a fake car being like, ‘Ahhh!’ ‘Now they’re shooting!’
I honestly find that kind of shot incredibly difficult to do. Because it’s a bright, sunny, beautiful day -- there was no rain. It was lovely and beautiful. And then, of course, the sidewalk is lined with a ton of people yelling, ‘Eva!’ And you’re like, ‘Right...So I’m driving and people are shooting at me. They’re shooting at my father and it’s raining and it’s very difficult to drive,’ and none of that is happening whatsoever (laughing). So I always find it really difficult to do that stuff and sell it. Hopefully it feels intense.”
People really were lining the streets during the shoot. “Yeah. It wasn’t a Spielberg picture where we have to block off half of New York,” said Phoenix. “But you know, we were on one…there’s 4 lanes here and 4 lanes here and we were on this side of the street, so this was all open to traffic. And all along the sidewalk [were] people. That’s how it always is. I watch movies and you see a character on the street, I know that just past frame are like a bunch of people.”
Working with Mark Wahlberg: “You know, working with Mark again, I had a great experience with him on The Yards. And it’s always a strange thing, honestly, at least for me, when I think about working with somebody I’ve worked with before because I think when people get to know you kind of personally, it becomes more difficult to try and convince them that you’re the character. You know what I mean? It’s much easier for them to go like, ‘Wait a minute. I know that part of you,’ or whatever. So it makes you nervous where when you go and you’ve never worked with anybody before, they don’t really have any idea of how you behave so you can kind of get away with anything. You’re like, ‘This is the character. This is the character.’ Then they’ll just look at me like, ‘ Don’t pull that stuff.’ James is like, ‘You can’t do that. I saw that in 99.’
But you know Mark’s kind of…well, he kind of pisses me off because in scenes like that, he’s just really good. I remember having this scene, we were going to shoot this scene and the crew was ready and James started making some changes and started being like... I remember I was kind of concerned what I was doing in the scene. He started talking about it and came up with this dialogue for Mark after me, and went to talk to Mark. Mark was like, ‘Whatever you want me to say.’ And we go to set and of course I have the pages and I’m going through reading everything. ‘Hey Mark, how do I say this?’ And I get there and Mark like take one just does it as if he’d always known these lines or if he was just saying it. I couldn’t f--king believe it because I guess it just felt like I was really struggling. It made me really envious that somebody could just kind of like go in and hit it. He just kind of has that, there’s a real honesty to Mark. There’s a real authenticity to his work that I think is impressive. I don’t know that you see a lot of that in acting. There’s a lot of irony in acting it seems, and Mark is really true.”
Getting in the Mood: The opening scene in We Own the Night is a sexy bit with Joaquin Phoenix and his onscreen girlfriend Eva Mendes. Phoenix joked that in order to get in the mood “you have some Barry White going.” But seriously, romantic scenes are hardly that while they’re being filmed. “I think the director’s the one who’s responsible for setting the mood primarily on set," said Phoenix. "You know, there are things that you can ask for. You can say, ‘Clear the set. Let’s try making this [as intimate] as possible.’
It’s ridiculous. We’re in like a f--king plywood box on a stage, okay? Here, standing up behind you the actors are bored, the dudes are hammering and stuff. And you’re like when you walk and it’s a set, right? Up above you are rafters. You can imagine dudes up there eating popcorn, laughing at you kind of. It’s such a completely, totally bizarre thing. It has nothing to with the feeling in the room, hopefully of the feeling that was captured in that room. It couldn’t have been more of a stale, uncomfortable environment. It’s rare that you can go into a set and it provides everything that you could want, or makes you feel like you are right there in the moment. It’s always like that. ‘How are we going to make this work?’”
