Denzel Washington Tells Us Five Things, Most Of Them About Unstoppable

Tony Scott’s take on the runaway train subgenre is Unstoppable, a film loosely based upon real events that saw a train run wild on the tracks of Cleveland. And I mean loosely. The film’s second-billed star is Denzel Washington, and Bleeding Cool were lucky enough to talk with him recently about the film, and other things.

Here are Five Things he told us. What doesn’t come across so well in print is the man’s easy, breezy, cheery demeanour.

1. Working With Tony Scott Seems To Be A Bit Moreish

He hasn’t called me for Top Gun 2, but in the past 18 years we’ve done 5 movies. He calls me – that’s the first thing. It’s the only way it’s going to happen. And he says “Hey, do you want to do this?” He also makes excellent films, and it’s really a good mix for me. Sort of character based thrillers, or character based action films. We’ve had a lot of success together and I like him, he’s a nice guy, we get along. But I don’t know when we’ll work together again.

I’ve done a lot of two handers, maybe a lot with Tony – Crimson Tide with Gene Hackman, Pelham with John Travolta. Man on Fire was almost a two hander, one and a half hands maybe, with Christopher Walken.

2. Denzel Has Power

Chris Pine was just the best actor for the part. Tony gave me about six or ten tapes of different young actors and that was the one that stood out. I have casting approval. I didn’t have to get involved in casting Rosario, though. He said “What do you think about Rosario?” I said “great” and that was about the extent of it. In the actual true events it was a woman who was the boss.

Tony Scott wants my input but he’s the director, and one of the good things about working with him on so many films now is that I trust him. I know he’s going to shoot the heck out of it so I don’t even think about that. My whole thing is script development and then, personally, character development.

3. Denzel The Investigative Reporter

When I was younger, I didn’t know what I wanted to do but the beauty of a liberal arts education is you don’t have to know at 17 what you’re going to do the rest of your life. I went to college and said “I’ll be a doctor” so I started studying medicine, but then I was like “I don’t want to be a doctor, it’s too serious” so I said “I’ll be a lawyer”. So I started studying political science and, yeah, I don’t know. I took a communications course which led to journalism courses. They sent me to cover a city council meeting and I fell asleep.

But I still think I’m an investigative reporter, I just act out the part instead of write it. I research, check my sources.

I met the guys and learnt to drive a train by myself. I met the real guys, met the guy I play. He was the one talking about his daughters working at Hooters, so we put it right in the movie. He was a real edgy sort of guy. I think he moved up in the company.

Tony got all the news footage. It was amazing. These guys unhitched their train, went backwards and caught it. I don’t think they ran on the top of it like we did. It’s a movie – I’m sure there was no seventy piece orchestra playing either.

As we did more and more research we found out more and more. I know that when I got down there to the areas we shot in, it was like, wow – really depressed areas. We had an extras casting call for 50 men and 2000 showed up. People really needed to work. One town we filmed in was 70% unemployment. The reality of that really hits you when you get down there. I had never been to that part of the United States. We went to all of the old steel mills up and down the Ohio river which were empty and all owned by Russians. It’s a really rough and depressed area. They say it’s a place you want to be from, not in.

4. On Filmmaking, Unstoppable Style

The stuntman did the overwhelming majority of it but I had to do it. I ran on the top of a train moving at forty miles an hour. Like a fool. But I got used to it, being up there. One of the most frightening ones was when were about to go round that big turn. And the train is up in the air a hundred feet. I didn’t have to run at that part of the movie and I wouldn’t have.

We didn’t shoot anything on a set, I didn’t shoot anything with green screen or CGI, but what they did was they built a platform around the front of this train car and then they cut the back of the car off, put a circle track around the front half of the car. You see these scenes where we’re talking and we’re heading down a track at fifty miles an hour with this big contraption going around the car. There were two sections that we were shooting where there was a road alongside so they were flying along in a pick up truck keeping up with us, helicopters were flying alongside us. The helicopters were kind of frightening too because they were getting real close, they were right on top of us.

I can see the train as the villain of the film. Tony definitely shot it like that. Low angled shots to make it more imposing. It’s the beast – and we called it the beast. It’s like a monster. He tweaked the music and the sound.

5. Family Man

I don’t work hard at maintaining my privacy, I have a great publicist and he works hard at it. It’s his job keeping me on a low profile. I think that, to a degree, you can control that by not acting like or doing something stupid. Everything changes your life, not just being famous. The rain changes your life. You can’t walk around as much. I lead a great life. I’m in London speaking to strangers. I have no complaints.

I’m just a low key guy. I’m not at every premiere looking to be famous. I’m just an actor. I got a good job, and I try do my job well. I’m grounded to begin with, but my kids help. I keep them grounded.

My oldest boy, he’s getting in the business. He produced Book of Eli. He convinced me to do three movies – Training Day, American Gangster and Book of Eli. He’s got a really good eye. He really convinced me to do Training Day, I wasn’t going to do it and he was “No Dad, you’ve got to do it”.