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Features
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A Feeble Fire
Despite the pedigree of Phillip Noyce, Derek Luke and Tim Robbins, the Apartheid drama Catch a Fire grossed only $4.3 million. They are all hoping it does better on DVD.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 10:45 PM
By Daniel Robert Epstein
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Kevin Parry/WireImage.com
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New Jersey native Luke
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When the drama Catch a Fire hit theaters last October, there were some who saw the film’s awards season potential as high. Then again, what serious drama released by Hollywood in the fall isn’t hyped in such a fashion?
But in the end, save for an Image Award nomination here and a couple of Derek Luke nominations there, the Phillip Noyce-directed Apartheid thriller landed at number five on the African-American Film Critics’ Association’s Top Ten Films of 2006 list (behind Dreamgirls, The Last King of Scotland, The Departed and Akeelah and the Bee), before quietly moving on to today’s DVD release date.
But this fact-based drama, which tells the tale of the transformation of an oil worker (Luke) into freedom fighter and sworn, tortured enemy of a South African secret police Colonel (Tim Robbins), has all the ingredients of a DVD sleeper hit. The script was written by Shawn Slovo, the daughter of real-life African activists and the inspiration behind the previous South African drama A World Apart; the director is Phillip Noyce, Australian auteur of films such as Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Quiet American and Patriot Games. And last but not least, the character played by Luke is based on inspirational local hero Patrick Chamusso.
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Anita Brugge/WireImage.com
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Robbins, promoting the film earlier this month in Berlin
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“Phillip [Noyce] insisted I meet Patrick the first week of shooting,” recalls Luke during a recent interview with FilmStew. “I was excited, nervous and felt overwhelmed, because I’m saying to myself, ‘Denzel didn’t do that [for Luke’s debut Antwone Fisher].’ But then it’s like, ‘I’m not Denzel.’ I saw Antwone maybe once or twice off-set. Patrick had an all-access pass.”
Towards the end of Catch a Fire, there is a scene that brings together Luke and Chamusso on screen. It is the actor’s favorite sequence of all.
“Throughout the film and publicity tour, Patrick and I became close,” Luke reveals. “He wasn’t sure who I was, but me and him coming together in the film is kind of showing where we are now in our relationship. He hangs out with me, his wife hangs out with my wife. They still owe me a safari.”
“As a matter of fact, when I first went up to Patrick’s house, he had this welcoming committee, with these kids singing in their native language,” he continues. “Their bathroom is outside and doesn’t have a cover. They knew I was coming so they put this sheet over the bathroom with my name on it. I thought maybe it was my own john. They said, ‘We’re just trying to give you our love and respect.’”
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Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage.com
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Filmmaker Phillip Noyce
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For co-star Robbins, getting to the heart of a sadistic interrogator and torturer like Nic Vos involved working closely with a number of different technical advisors, most of whom had served in the South African secret police. But the real-life activist said he made sure not to engage them in any on-set political discussion.
“I had to figure out who they were and I had to let them know that it was safe enough to tell me anything,” Robbins reveals. “I wanted to know everything, so I kind of encouraged their honesty. I don’t think I could have done that if I had said, “You know what, you guys are f*cked.” It wasn’t my job to judge them. It wasn’t my job to get in arguments with them.”
“You have to understand, culturally, compared to us, it’s like night and day,” adds Robbins. “In the sixties and seventies, rock and roll didn’t get to South Africa; Motown didn’t get there; and the best movies that formed all of our sensibilities didn’t get there, or were edited down. There was no real liberation there as there was in the sixties and seventies culturally in Europe and in the United States and Australia.”
For Luke, it was important on set to keep his distance from Robbins, partially because he was none too fond of the aforementioned advisors. But once the cameras stopped rolling, it was a different story.
“Tim used to take me to the clubs in South Africa,” Luke recalls. “Matter of fact, he took me to my first one, a hip hop club, where he danced and I didn’t. I said to myself, ‘Well, isn’t that the day! There’s this white guy dancing to hip hop and the black guy is sitting down.’”
Luke’s character does a lot of running in Catch a Fire, and although the actor felt he was perfectly fit enough, Chamusso thought different. The latter helped arrange with a dietician to have the actor subsist on a breakfast of apples and crushed almonds, a lunch of steamed spinach and a dinner of salad with lemon. This regimen began three weeks before shooting and remained in place during production.
“We did a scene where I’m running through the oil refinery and all those scenes are me,” Luke recalls. “I think we shot it for six hours, just me running… Up the stairs, down the stairs.”
“I got so mad at Phillip one day that I almost lost it,” he adds. “He said, ‘More, more, more!’ Then he says, ‘This time, don’t show those white Hollywood teeth!’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my god!’ So I had to reshoot some scenes.”
| For Robbins, playing the villain took him back to the very roots of his acting career. His first speaking role was that of a bad guy on the TV series St. Elsewhere, and for the first few years of his career, Robbins played nothing but this kind of pre-Law & Order episodic role.
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As Forest Whitaker has proved so brilliantly this film season, the key to portraying villainous monsters is to delve into the more human side of their evil nature. In the case of Colonel Nic Vos, research showed Robbins that the character was a descendant of Dutch immigrants who came to South Africa centuries ago to escape religious persecution at home.
“It was a daunting challenge, because I had my opinion,” Robbins admits. “I had marched against Apartheid and went to see Mandela. So I had my own personal prejudices about these [Afrikaner] people and I had to get rid of that.”
“They’re an oppressed people,” he adds. “The were pushed out of Cape Town by the British, so they went to central South Africa and settled in what is known today as Johannesburg. They went there in covered wagons and there was this massive exodus, so in their minds, they’re the oppressed people. A white Afrikaner believes they have just as much right to be there as a black.”
| Luke felt a different kind of responsibility while making the film. “I felt like I had to embody South Africa,” he reveals. “I felt that there were great mentors and actors who went before me, that I wasn’t sure wanted the story told again, or even by me. When I looked at Cry Freedom and all these other films, I felt like this was a story of these ordinary South African men and that the part that I’m playing in it is one to help build a bridge between America, South Africa and the rest of the world.”
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“We’ve all heard of forgiveness, but if you go over there and see the guy who tortured you at a gas station and he’s getting a pension and you’re struggling, it’s a totally different power.”
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