The new action movie of the holidays is actually a Stallone movie, but you might not know that. Sylvester Stallone wrote the script to Homefront starring his Expendable buddy Jason Statham. Statham plays Phil Broker, a single father trying to leave his action-packed DEA life behind, but the local meth dealer Gator (James Franco) won’t let him. Gary Fleder directs and we got to speak with Fleder by phone about the film and some of his earlier work, including the first Alex Cross movie Kiss the Girls.
CraveOnline: Let’s talk about directing a Sylvester Stallone script. Is this the first script he wrote that he didn’t star in?
Gary Fleder: Mm-hmm. I guess so, yeah, how about that?
What comes along with directing a Stallone script?
In my experience with it, no different than other projects I’ve directed. I didn’t know until I got involved but he was unbelievably collaborative and I’d say downright deferential in the process. He originally had developed the script based on the book Homefront over 10 years ago. For a variety of reasons, many of which probably are beyond my comprehension, the film never happened. I think the project may have been dormant for a few years, and then Kevin King Templeton, who’s Stallone’s producing partner, gave it to me and gave it to Statham. I’ve got to say, Sly was great.
We had some ideas and notes. He did a couple of rewrites on the script, he was there for the rehearsal process. During shooting, he was watching dailies, he was watching the footage but he wasn’t on the set. I think he just knew that he didn’t want to distract or detract from the process of making the film. And then in the editing process, he saw the picture in one of the early cuts and he had a lot of really good ideas about the cutting. Some people forget that Sly is not only a wonderful actor, he’s also a filmmaker. So he and I would talk director to director about the film, both during the making of the film and also during the editing process. He was unbelievably supportive and kind to me the whole way through.
I certainly don’t forget that and I liked noticing the Stallone themes he likes to address about violence, people coming home trying to avoid violence and the violence that’s still there.
Yeah, I think if you even go back to the book by Chuck Logan, it’s got that paradigm of a classic western. In classic western structure, the plots tend to be pretty simple in a way, but what makes them interesting is characters and the character dynamics. I think that’s perfectly addressed here on the page that there is that. One of my favorite films of Stallone’s is First Blood. I love the film and I think there’s a lot of that feeling too of a guy, the outsider in a small town, he doesn’t want any trouble and then trouble finds him, so you’re right, there are these themes. I love First Blood. Of all the Rambo films, that to me is just one that really, really affected me. It just captured a lot about the outsider.
Likewise here with Statham’s character, Phil Broker. He’s the outsider and he doesn’t want any trouble and then trouble finds him. He gets to decide what kind of a man he has to be to defend himself. He either can walk away or not and I think that’s interesting to me and that goes back to that great classic Walking Tall, the Billy Jacks of the world, a guy who shows up and is trying to keep the peace and it’s not possible anymore.
The new element I think is wanting to be a good example for his daughter.
Yeah, which really goes back to a film I’ve been referencing a lot which is Man on Fire which I think is a masterpiece and I think, for me, Tony Scott’s best movie. It’s a great film and the relationship between Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning in that film really, really inspired for me the notion that if we didn’t believe this relationship with father and daughter, then the whole film would collapse. The film would not work and I’m really happy that the rapport with Jason and Izabela Vidovic who plays the daughter is very strong and very credible. They’re great together. That’s the key relationship in the film.
