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While covering TIFF this year, I was invited to do something rare in this era of COVID-19 – an in-person interview. Even more exciting was the fact that the interview would be with Brian Cox and Kate Beckinsale. How is that for a dynamic duo? They were in town promoting Prisoner’s Daughter, a small-scale drama directed by Catherine Hardwicke that I was a big fan of. While I did extensive interviews with them and Hardwicke, which I’ll be running shortly, one thing I thought was interesting was their reaction when I brought up several of their more obscure films.
Beckinsale noted that it’s often the smaller, lesser-seen stuff that winds up being special to an actor, with her noting Rod Lurie’s Nothing But the Truth as a particular favorite. As it happens, one of my favorites of hers is a movie she did with David Gordon Green and co-star Sam Rockwell called Snow Angels. “I love Snow Angels,” she said, noting only something like three people have ever mentioned that movie to her. “I love that movie too.”
She suggested to Cox that he watch this underrated 2007 drama. Here’s the exchange:
Cox: What’s it called, Snow Angels?
Me: By David Gordon Green.
Beckinsale: Yeah., with Sam (Rockwell).
Cox: Oh, he’s good. I really like Sam. So what, is it on Netflix or one of those?
Beckinsale: Is it?
Me: I have the DVD.
Cox: Wow – old fashioned thinking you – the DVD!
Me: I’m a physical media guy.
Beckinsale: I love that.
Cox: I don’t know what to do with my DVDs now because I dunno…
Beckinsale: Coasters!
To note, the film isn’t actually streaming at the moment, but you can buy or rent it on iTunes. As for Cox, I couldn’t resist dropping the name of my Best Movie You Never Saw column and telling him that one of the movies I want to cover is a cool action movie he did with Rupert Wyatt in 2008 called The Escapist. Cox’s eyes lit up when I mentioned the movie:
That was a great movie to work on. It was wonderfully written. I’ll tell you this story quickly. Um, you know, I’m often asked to play these nice roles, but sometimes it’s only 10 minutes in the film. I don’t mind that. It’s good… I’ve done very well on that. But what happened was this guy, this Rupert Wyatt came to me… I had done a film for him, a short film for which he won a BAFTA…
He went on to say that Wyatt was keen to reteam with him, but Cox wanted to play a lead this time and was especially interested in doing something in the mode of Bad Day at Black Rock, a Spencer Tracy movie that’s one of his favourites.
I said, that’s something I’d really like. That kind of thing. So he went away and wrote The Escapist, him and his partner wrote The Escapist and they came back with the script. And I knew that when you get a script like this… I thought… I know that the world and his wife are going to give you notes on this script. So I’m going to lock it in a safe. So THAT will be the script that we do. You will have to go through this merry dance of doing all these… what do you call them – rewrites? And I said, but this is the script we’ll do. And that was the script we did. There were changes of course, but it was a great experience and a great cast.
Read my review of Prisoner’s Daughter here, and keep an eye out for more from my interviews with Cox, Beckinsale and Hardwicke.
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