Thirty years after his Oscar-winning hit, the director examines the high-stress atmosphere that produced some of its most iconic artistic decisions.
Occasionally, someone will bemoan on social media as to why films such as The Fugitive are no longer produced. In fact, the decline in adult-oriented crime dramas and thrillers predates the blockbuster craze of the last fifteen years, according to Fugitive director Andrew Davis.
Davis achieved a unique achievement with the film,
which marked its 30th anniversary in August: it was a commercial and critical success, earning seven Oscar nominations and one win for Tommy Lee Jones in the Best Supporting Actor category. It certainly wasn’t the goal of the Harrison Ford-starring movie, which was an adaptation of the same-named 1963 TV series, to become the third-highest-grossing picture of 1993 or an Oscar favorite. The reason the big studios no longer give priority to movies with the scope and scale of The Fugitive is because Warner Bros. only tried to score a base hit rather than going all out.
Jaws was the first. Studios were always looking to invest in a home run when you could make a film that could play everywhere and earn enormous box office returns, Davis tells The Hollywood Reporter. However, Terry Semel and Bob Daly, the co-chairmen of the WB, stated, “We’re happy hitting doubles.”
The fact that Davis’ film only required ten weeks for postproduction adds to its already impressive quality. The minimum amount of time a director must have, by today’s standards, before submitting their first director’s cut is ten weeks. In the case of The Fugitive, the studio was eager to get shots of adults and teens before classes resumed.
Can you get this thing out by August 6th?
Warner Bros. distribution chief Barry Reardon asked. Davis remembers. “I would move from room to room with the six editors—three of whom were main editors. I checked in on each patient as if I were at a dentist’s office. And after that, we were detested by all, who said, “Well, if The Fugitive could do it in ten weeks, why can’t you?” The studio told us not to touch anything after we showed them the movie. We adore it.
Below, in a recent interview with THR, Davis also talks about filming the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day event and the one occasion when Ford had to wear a fake beard. parade scene on the fly.