Hawke knew he was helping Washington win the Oscar.
“I said to my close friends when I got that job, ‘If I do my job right, Denzel Washington will win the Academy Award for this,’” he shared on The Dan Patrick Show last year. “It’s a Jason Kidd job. You’re throwing the passes, and Denzel was making the shots.”
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Denzel Washington knew he wanted to be in the movie right after reading the script.
The actor requested to meet Fuqua soon after. “We wanted to make it as realistic as possible and we wanted to make sure this character Alonzo was contemporary from what we know on the streets,” Fuqua says on the DVD commentary. “He’s a bit of a gangster, but he’s charming, he’s sexy, and he’s intelligent and he’s mean and he’s tough. He’s the guy that we all wish we could be. It’s like meeting the devil for the first time.”
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Fuqua cast Ethan Hawke after seeing him on TV.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Tobey Maguire, Freddie Prinze Jr., Scott Speedman, Paul Walker and Ryan Phillippe all tested for the role of Jake, but when Fuqua spotted Hawke on TV one day, he knew he found his rookie. “I said, ‘This is Jake,’” the director reveals on the DVD commentary. “Ethan Hawke is a young man who has grown a lot since everyone in Hollywood has seen him. He has a lot at stake as a man, and that changes you.” The two had a four-hour meeting to discuss the film, and Fuqua calls it “one of the most interesting meetings I’ve had since I’ve been in the business.”
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Washington and Hawke had a hard time shaking their characters.
Considering the intense subject matter, it’s hardly surprising that Washington and Hawke kept going as Alonzo and Jake even after the cameras stopped rolling. “Everyday on the set I was dealing with Alonzo, which is a little horrifying sometimes because you don’t know what’s going to come out of his mouth,” Fuqua says on the DVD commentary. “The most disappointing thing was that every time I yelled ‘Cut!’ these guys would rattle on as Jake and Alonzo and I would go, ‘Turn the camera back on!’ But it’d be too late because we’d be out of film.”
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They filmed in dangerous locations.
One road to authenticity was filming in gang-ridden L.A. neighborhoods. “There’s no other way to make this movie,” Fuqua says in the commentary. “You had to shoot this movie in real locations. There are so many incredible faces. There’s a texture you can’t get anywhere else. It made the actors and myself understand a little bit about the world they were portraying.” The cast and crew also used the opportunity to bring something positive to the community. “I came from the streets and I wanted them to see me do something positive,” says Fuqua, who grew up in the Pittsburgh. “Maybe that’s inspiring in some way.”
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Snoop Dogg was a disciplined actor.
His role as the wheelchair-bound, drug dealer may be brief, but the rapper took the responsibility seriously. “Snoop is actually a really good actor,” Fuqua says on the DVD commentary. “I never had to wait for him. We had over 200 people show up on the street — people screaming ‘Denzel! Snoop!’ I could barely get the shot out.”
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The cast met with real undercover cops and drug dealers.
To bring a level of authenticity, Fuqua introduced the cast to some of his undercover cop friends and connected them to real gang members and drug dealers. “I did a bunch of these drive-arounds to figure this whole thing out,” Hawke says. “Everybody I met — their goals and aspirations [were] to serve the community and to be a hero. That’s what these guys dream about.”
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Macy Gray worked with the wardrobe department to nail her character.
Snoop and Dr. Dre make cameos in the film, too, but it’s Macy Gray’s role as the trash-talking, talon nail-wielding wife of Sandman that steals the show. “As soon as I read the script and saw Sandman’s voice, I could just hear her voice,” Fuqua says on the DVD commentary. The director, who was friends with the singer, visited her in the recording studio to drop off the script. She signed on the next day and did her own homework to understand the part. “She went around the neighborhood to get a vibe for the people,” Fuqua says. “She wore a wig and a gold tooth and people didn’t even know it was her. She was ghetto fabulous.”
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Washington pushed for a more violent death for his character.
In an interview with NPR in 2013, Washington revealed that the original script had a weaker, less punitive fate for Alonzo, one that hinted at a sequel. “It was a cop-out,” he said. “I told the director I couldn’t justify him living in the worst way unless he died in the worst way. We made it an awful, violent ending. I thought that’s what he deserved.” And it was Washington and Fuqua who developed the idea of putting Alonzo’s son in the middle of the fray in the earlier confrontation. “We had a little resistance until we talked it through and everyone got on board,” Fuqua says on the commentary. “I’m really happy we got that one in the movie because in a lot of the fire fights in these areas, there are so many children around. There was no way to have a confrontation happen without having this child in the scene.”
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Washington ad-libbed the ‘King Kong’ line.
Even when he’s about to meet a gruesome fate, Alonzo still thinks he’s indestructible, like when he famously shouts, “King Kong ain’t got nothin’ on me!” As Washington told GQ magazine in 2012, he came up with the line himself: “The character's ego, he just did not think he could lose. That was his problem.
