STACK September 2016 Issue 143

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18 SEPTEMBER 2016
CINEMA
INTERVIEW
In 1960, director John Sturges gathered the leading men of the day for
the classic western The Magnificent Seven. Steve McQueen, Charles
Bronson, Yul Brynner, Robert Vaughn and James Coburn delighted
audiences as a group of gunslingers hired to defend an oppressed
Mexican peasant village. Now Antoine Fuqua has assembled a star-
powered septet to retell the same story, recruiting the likes of Denzel
Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke to deal with the outlaws
who have brought a sleepy western town to its knees.
I n keeping with Hollywood’s mandate to
bring more diversity to the screen, Antoine
Fuqua’s motley crew features actors of all
colour, including Denzel Washington, Byung-hun
Lee and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo. If it smacks of a
self-conscious colour-by-numbers approach, then
the director begs to differ.
“I thought about it and I didn’t think about
it,” he says when STACK meets with him at an
editing suite in Los Angeles. “When we were
discussing who the lead would be, we had
a list of the usual guys and I was in a room
with MGM and I said, ‘You know who would
be amazing as a lead like Yul Brynner? Denzel
Washington.’ And the room went quiet and
then everybody says, ‘You think he would do it
because he hasn’t done a Western before?’”
recalls the director, who got on the next flight
to New York to talk with his Training Day and
Equalizer leading man.
“Denzel knows I love Westerns
and so we had lunch and talked
about it. And then from that point it
just opened up the floodgates to be
more diverse. I didn’t think about
it as colour. I just thought I needed
a powerful lead and colour was a
conversation that came after.
“It’s a different world we live
in and, to me, the movie is about
terrorism and it’s going to take us
all to fight terrorism, so that’s what
this is. That group represents the
world today.”
The race card will play out regardless,
although Fuqua insists his own Magnificent
Seven are such mean killing machines, it will
render audiences colour blind.
“You’ll see a scene where we first meet
them in the bar – when Denzel goes into the bar
and the whole room goes quiet – and naturally
some people will think that's because it’s a black
man walking into a bar. But my thought was
that they look at all the Seven like that because
they’re all mean, tough men. And when those
guys walk in a room it's not about race, it's that
they’re afraid of these type of men, whether its
a Native American walking in or Denzel walking
in, or Chris Pratt walking in. They get the same
reaction. From everybody.”
Shot in Louisiana and New Mexico, The
Magnificent Seven was fraught with such
difficulties that Fuqua doubts he would make
another Western, having thoroughly got it out of
his system now.
“That old saying, ‘Be careful what you wish
for,’ comes to mind,” he smiles. “As a kid you’re
like, ‘I want to make a Western,’ and you’ve got
the guns and you’re playing and it’s fun and you
can go home and eat and mom is there and your
friends. You can quit whenever you want and get
mad at your friend and walk away because you
wanted to be the indian today.
“But the reality of filming is that horses do
what they want. I’ve had that experience before,
but this was a reminder. Having a big cast of
actors is challenging, every day. Filming it in a
place where it rains constantly, where your set
washes away, is challenging. Most of the time it
was over 110 degrees.”
And his worst nightmare? “That’s got to be
a scene where we had hundreds of horses
storming down a hill and explosions
going off. Now that was daunting.”
While Fuqua and Washington are
old friends, the director was thrilled
to introduce Pratt to audiences in
a different way to how we’ve seen
him before.
“I love Chris. Chris is charming,
he’s funny, but he has an interesting
depth in him that’s yet to be
discovered and I wanted to put him
with Vincent D’Onofrio and Ethan
Hawke. I wanted to see the young
star with all these guys and play
with that soup.”
To me, the movie is about
terrorism, and it's going to take
us all to fight terrorism. That
group represents the world today
Words: Gill Pringle