You'd be forgiven for forgetting that Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt once shared the screen — and that they clashed on set. Back in 1997, however, Harrison, now 80, and Brad, now 59, costarred in director Alan J. Pakula's thriller The Devil's Own. At the time, the fellow marquee idols from two different generations, both huge blockbusters in their own right, didn't see eye-to-eye and squabbled over so-called creative difference. Now, 26 years later, in a recent Esquire cover story interview, the elder star explained what happened.
"Brad developed the script. Then they offered me the part," Harrison recalled of the film, in which Brad plays an Irishman and IRA terrorist in search of black market missiles opposite Harrison, an Irish-American cop tasked with apprehending him.
"I saved my comments about the character and the construction of the thing — I admired Brad," Harrison continued. "First of all, I admire Brad. I think he's a wonderful actor. He's a really decent guy. But we couldn't agree on a director until we came to Alan Pakula, who I had worked with before but Brad had not."
© Lawrence SchwartzwaldThings came to a head with a subplot regarding Harrison's character. "Brad had this complicated character, and I wanted a complication on my side so that it wasn't just a good-and-evil battle," he says now.
"All the sudden we're shooting and we didn't have a script that Brad and I agreed on," the Indiana Jones star explains.
"Each of us had different ideas about it. I understand why he wanted to stay with his point of view, and I wanted to stay with my point of view — or I was imposing my point of view, and it's fair to say that that's what Brad felt. It was complicated."
© Trench ShoreIn the end, however, Devil's Own, despite mixed reviews, garnered $140 million at the worldwide box office. "I like the movie very much. Very much."
Early on during the filmmaking process, Brad made headlines when he told Newsweek that the experiences was the most irresponsible bit of filmmaking — if you can even call it that — I’ve ever seen."
He later downplayed those comments. "Early in production … the script was a mess," he said. "We were right up to beginning filming, and we still didn't have a finished script. We worked it out. I like the finished film. I hope my comments won't do anything to harm it. We all worked so hard on it.''
Even back then, he said, "I respect Harrison a lot. He's the man. He's Indiana Jones, a movie hero of mine. Harrison seems to care for common sense. I look up to him because of his integrity.''
© Getty ImagesHe later told Rolling Stone, “[Harrison] is absolutely cool...Look, it was tough. It was the hardest film I’ve ever been on. But as for reports about out-of-control egos and people hiding out in trailers, that just wasn’t the case. It was everyone trying to make the best movie they could under the circumstances...I’m speaking for this situation that’s gone on for years. I felt a huge responsibility for that."
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