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Features
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Overriding the Original Gangster
What happens to Josh Brolin’s character in American Gangster is very different from what was initially in the script.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 10:10 AM
By Pam Grady
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Universal Studios
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Determined to stay true to the character
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[MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: If you have not yet seen American Gangster, new today on DVD, and do not want to know more than you should, click away. Now.]
Actor Josh Brolin laughs during a recent interview with FilmStew when I tell him that as much as I loved his overwhelmed good old boy Llewelyn Moss in the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men, I loathed his corrupt narcotics cop Detective Trupo in American Gangster. So much so in fact that I was happy when he shot himself in the head.
"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you," Brolin chuckles."We came up with that actually. That's not how the original ending of that character was. The way Ridley and Steve Zaillian had it originally, he was caught by the FBI with his golf clubs in his garage."
"I remember going to Ridley and I said, 'Dude, we can't. This guy is such a powerful character and so full of himself and the invincibility factor, just an awful man,'” the potential Best Actor Oscar nominee continues. “I said, 'We have to do something powerfully to end him.' He says, 'Well, what do you want to do?'"
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Universal Pictures
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Open to Brolin's suggestions
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Brolin began researching the subject and discovered that a lot of arrogant, bad-news cops like Trupo do kill themselves when cornered. More surprising, he found out that while, in general, when it comes to gun suicides, women aim for the heart, many men tend to blow their brains out.
With the exception of arrogant guys like Trupo. Rather than follow the norm, they – like the ladies - tend to shoot themselves in the chest. Not that this would have worked for Trupo. "He could survive or he couldn't survive," Brolin offers.
Scott had not given Brolin any real indication that he was going to go along with what the actor wanted to do until the morning that Brolin arrived at his trailer to find a whole new wardrobe with nine or 10 outfits spread out for his consideration. It was the wardrobe lady who told him, ‘You're killing yourself today.’
"I go, 'What? Really? Today?' She said, 'Yeah, Ridley says you want to kill yourself, so you're gonna kill yourself.'" Brolin sought out his director. "I said, 'Hey, man, we haven't even talked about this. How do you see it?'"
As the two men talked, Scott sketched, the scene coming to life on paper. "I started talking and talking and talking and he would draw as I was talking, and I remember him saying, the woods, for some reason, the woods were very melancholy to him as a child, so he drew some woods in there," Brolin explains. "By the time we finished, he slid it over to me, those were the shots, with the lady doing the vacuuming in the front."
"It's just so great to work with somebody that collaborative and that genius.”
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