Home >  A & E >  Movies/Videos

Sunday, March 09, 2003

By Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Antoine Fuqua skipped the flutes of champagne, the chocolate-candy Oscars and the chance to bask in the Academy Award afterglow a year ago. Even though he had directed "Training Day," the movie that earned Denzel Washington his Best Actor honor, Fuqua had work and family concerns to consider.

"It was exciting. Oh, my God, it was one of the most incredible feelings to know that I helped Denzel to get what he always wanted and deserved. I was equally thrilled that Ethan Hawke got nominated." Hawke co-starred in the dark cop drama.

But the thrill was short-lived because the Pittsburgh native was due in Hawaii for his next film and his wife, actress Lela Rochon, was pregnant. "We went straight from the Academy Awards home. I packed my things, got in the car, went to the airport, got in the jet and started filming 'Tears of the Sun' the next morning, so I haven't had a chance to have a party yet."

Now, Fuqua finds himself trying to separate the rumblings about impending war from his film, which stars Bruce Willis as a Navy SEAL who leads a group of special forces into the Nigerian jungle to rescue a physician and, it turns out, a band of refugees.

"I'm hoping that the film doesn't get lost in war propaganda. People are saying it's a pro-war film and all that stuff. It's just about making a conscious decision to help others, in any situation."

For Fuqua, "Tears of the Sun" isn't just another Willis action picture.

Although shot in Hawaii rather than his first choice of Africa ("it was post 9/11, and it would have been irresponsible and dangerous to do that at that time"), the movie features six dozen extras who are African immigrants, many of whom survived violence similar to that dramatized in the film. Some witnessed the massacre of their families; others were forced into exile by unrest and civil war.

The extras represented a cross-section of Africans and included six "lost boys" of Sudan, orphans who embarked on a years-long trek to safety. Along the way, the young children were stalked by lions, attacked by militias and bandits, plunged into crocodile-infested waters and forced to survive on rain water and tree leaves.

"I had to stage their nightmares -- nightmares that they had lived," Fuqua said of the extras who lend authenticity to the film. "I had some of them break down crying. ... It was hard. It definitely opened their wounds."

The 37-year-old director from Homewood couldn't help but be changed by his experience making "Tears of the Sun."

"When I started the project, I felt strongly about two things. One is that I definitely wanted to make a statement about what's happening in Africa. ... And I have more passion today now, after talking to them and hearing their stories and looking into their eyes, spending all that time with them. It's a disgrace that there's not enough being done. There's no reason.

"The other is that the Navy SEALs are anonymous heroes. These guys don't make much money, they don't get fame, their names are not on the news. They get dropped off in the middle of God knows where and they've got a job to do, and most of the times, they get it done.And a lot of the times, some of them don't come out alive. ... I call it 'Little America' risking their lives for 'Big America,' " he says.

On the set, Fuqua kept a copy of the book "The Silence," featuring harrowing pictures from Rwanda by French-born photographer Gilles Peress. It has "images that would make you cry. You can't believe the atrocities that are happening, and it's real and it's happening right now as we speak. It's heartbreaking."

Even though he wanted to send a message, Fuqua also had to make an entertaining movie that would lure patrons to the box office. And he had to make it with, and starring, Willis, who doubled as producer, a job that involves keeping an eye on the bottom line.

"Some days, Bruce and I would be standing in the middle of the rain with mud up to our knees and the sun is gone, obviously, because it's raining, and I didn't get a chance to finish the scene and he's my producer and we gotta come back here tomorrow. And he goes, 'Is there something you can do to move faster?' I'm like, 'We're both standing in mud up to our knees, I don't think we can move any faster.' ... He'd have to be conscious of money and stuff like that."

Shooting in jungle-like conditions, Fuqua had to stage muddy marches, explosions, battle scenes, burning villages and toppling trees. Once something's blown up, it's blown up, which is why Fuqua says, "You've got to have a Plan A, B and C. ... There's no real cover in a movie like this. It's not like 'We're going to go shoot indoors because it's raining.' You're in the jungle; you have to keep going."

He is now preparing to shoot a retelling of King Arthur starring Clive Owen from "Croupier" and, as Merlin, Stephen Dillane, now on screen as Virginia Woolf's husband in "The Hours."

"It will be the Dark Ages, much grittier, much darker, before he became king." It builds to the Battle of the Saxons. He plans to start shooting in Ireland in late June and anticipates his epic will be on the scale of "Braveheart" or "Gladiator."

Not bad for a man who once took in Bruce Lee movies in Downtown Pittsburgh or, if he could catch a bus or a ride, Monroeville. When it came time to make "Tears of the Sun," he kept such movies as "The Wild Bunch," "Seven Samurai" and "The Magnificent Seven" in mind.

"I love those types of films about men who have skill and put their lives on the line."