|
Once the script was complete, it was time to begin the casting process.
The impact of "The Devil's Advocate" clearly rests on the characters
of Kevin Lomax and John Milton, two powerful men, one at the beginning of
his career and one in robust mid-stride. Their emerging conflict is the
core of the story, and it required two charismatic and gifted actors to
fill the roles. Taylor Hackford feels confident that he drew the ideal
mix in Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino.
Says Hackford, "Keanu has a different, perhaps stronger, presence in
this film than the one we're used to seeing from him. Here he appears as
a young man who has never had doubts about what he wanted, who's succeeded
in life by trying hard and not wondering what else may have contributed
to his success. I think Keanu has done a terrific job of bringing that
kind of competitive, non-reflective, all-American guy to the screen."
"Kevin's an ambitious man, a moral man, too, but he wants things,"
says Reeves of his character. "He comes from poverty, and he now wants
personal and material gain. He's never lost a case, he's vain, and he's
proud he's an attorney. He wants to win; he wants to know that no one can
beat him. Kevin's a man who's very much about control, and he always thinks
that he has the answers. He even says in the height of his wife's trauma
that `I'll win this case and then I'll focus all my energy onto her.'"
Adds producer Anne Kopelson, "At the beginning of the story Kevin's
never really encountered something he couldn't handle. He thinks it's all
because of his abilities; he doesn't acknowledge the things in life that
he can't control."
John Milton is the essence of Kevin Lomax's temptation, the invitation by
a modern-day Satan to enter an underworld that is represented by the excess
of our most worldly pleasures. "He is the fulcrum," says director
Hackford. "You feel Milton's presence in every scene, not only the
scenes that he's in, but also the scenes he's not in, because you know that
he is manipulating everything that happens. He is very sardonic, very funny
and he can be cruel. But he's never really pulling the strings by himself
p; he's giving people their choice, their free will to decide.
"Al Pacino was the first actor I thought of for the role of John Milton,"
continues Hackford, "I told him what I wanted at the beginning, he
bought the vision, and then started coming up with his own ideas, and the
character of John Milton really blossomed."
Mary Ann Lomax is played by Charlize Theron, who made a substantial impact
on audiences with her role in the independent release "2 Days in the
Valley." Recalls Hackford, "I auditioned Charlize along with
a substantial group of talented young women and she was an immediate standout;
she had the range of emotion, from cocky to desperately vulnerable, that
I was looking for. Despite that, she tested four times for us before she
got the part p; and the reason is simply that she is so beautiful that
I was afraid audiences wouldn't be able to empathize with her. In the end,
though, Charlize's talent and perceptiveness convinced me that she was the
right woman for the role."
"Mary Ann is a powerful presence in this story," says Anne Kopelson.
"She's very proud of her husband, and she's an outgoing, flirtatious
and successful woman in her Florida hometown. When we first meet her, she
seems almost like a female version of her husband, and they're very well
matched.
"The difference between them becomes much clearer after they go to
New York. We realize that Mary Ann has an inner voice and that she listens
to it, unlike Kevin. She knows that being a big frog in a small pond doesn't
guarantee her success in New York City; she's insecure and doesn't try to
be more sophisticated than she is. And when she sees people surrendering
themselves to appearance, possessions and status, she knows that something
is wrong."
Agrees Arnold Kopelson, "Mary Ann loves to see her husband succeed,
but she isn't greedy. She quickly gets overwhelmed by the demands of a
successful Upper West Side lifestyle, but she can't convince her husband
that they are falling away from each other. John Milton is wise when he
sees that Mary Ann is the biggest threat to him in his plans for Kevin."
Veteran stage and film actress Judith Ivey plays Kevin's mother. Says Hackford,
"When Judy came in to read with Keanu, I could see on Keanu's face
that they liked each other. There was a connection between them and it
showed in their interaction. You could believe that she was his mother
right from the start.
"She is an interesting character in the movie; at first she seems completely
peripheral, like a detail of Kevin Lomax's life. As the story progresses,
however, we come to understand her strength and we're even a bit surprised
by the way she responds to the events that unfold around her."
Kevin's behavior changes when he arrives in New York and encounters a diverse
group of people whose attitudes are different from his own. At Milton's
law firm, Eddie Barzoon (Jeffrey Jones) is the managing director, a cocky
sophisticated and hardnosed attorney who encourages Lomax to enjoy his new
opportunities. But when Barzoon himself begins to question his loyalty
to John Milton, he finds that it's difficult to break the commitments he's
made.
Craig T. Nelson plays New York's most powerful real-estate tycoon, Alexander
Cullen, who is accused of a brutal triple homicide. Cullen makes Kevin
feel powerful by entrusting his defense to the young lawyer, but Kevin takes
on a bigger job than he'd realized when he begins investigating Cullen's
life. Nelson, known to millions of television viewers as the affable star
of the hit series "Coach," demonstrates his talent for dramatic
roles and darker shadings in his portrayal of Cullen.
Christabella, played by Connie Nielson, is the clever and beautiful lawyer
who is, in many ways, the female counterpart to Kevin Lomax. Says Nielson,
"Christabella will stop at nothing to succeed. She and Kevin are very
much alike: they're young, attractive and completely driven by work."
But Christabella's job is something Kevin doesn't fully understand until
it's too late.
Tony Award winning actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson was cast in the role of Leamon
Heath, the firm's representative who is sent to Florida to recruit and lure
Kevin to the firm. "I'm Milton's right-hand man and Milton's given
me a wonderful life. I have a beautiful wife, a luxurious Fifth Avenue
apartment, a big salary and everything I ever wanted. But to get these
things I had to sell my soul, like everybody else at the firm," says
Santiago-Hudson.
Creating the rarified world of New York's ultra-wealthy and privileged
is a unique challenge. The city's own style is universally well-known,
but production designer BRUNO RUBEO wanted to juxtapose it with certain
settings that were unforgettably unique to the character of John Milton.
For example, the spectacular interiors of John Milton's apartment were built
on a soundstage in Los Angeles. Rubeo explains, "We wanted Milton's
apartment to be very loose and very sexy. We didn't want to give the impression
that this was a man with a normal life and a normal apartment. This particular
set was designed in order to fully capture the mystery of John Milton.
"Some of the characters in the movie wonder, where does he sleep?
Where does he entertain? It's seductive, yet scary and mysterious, so you
can't really tell how far this place goes or where it goes. It is fitting
that one of the most stunning sets in the film serves as the location for
the film's finale."
The dramatic and minimalist law offices of Milton, Chadwick, Waters, were
designed and constructed on the top two floors of the Continental Club in
lower Manhattan, although John Milton's round office was built on a soundstage.
The stunning rooftop water garden of John Milton's office, however, was
actually built on the rooftop of the Continental Plaza building, where the
actors walked in a blustery February wind, inches from a 50-story drop,
on narrow platforms constructed by the production. Computer graphics added
the water at a later stage. "This way," recounts Rubeo, "the
actors walked from a soundstage outdoors to a real setting, but it all looks
seamless."
Real-life real-estate tycoon Donald Trump lent his own Fifth Avenue penthouse
to the production to double as the home of real-estate developer Alexander
Cullen.
The trial scenes were shot in both the federal and state courthouses downtown,
as well as in the Municipal Building on Foley Square. The company also
filmed in the neighborhoods of Chinatown and Soho.
While "The Devil's Advocate" is set in the real world of contemporary
New York, the events in the story are certainly not conventional, and their
representation onscreen required virtuoso technical abilities. Visual-effects
specialists RICHARD GREENBERG and STEPHANIE POWELL and Oscar-winning makeup
effects specialist RICK BAKER created the unsettling images that reveal
the true identities of John Milton, his law partners and their spouses,
as well as the dramatic effects at the climax of the film.
Says producer Arnon Milchan, "One of the most frightening things is
not to be able to trust your senses p; to look at something and not
be sure you can believe your eyes, for example. Time and again, there are
scenes in 'The Devil's Advocate' where Kevin and Mary Ann think they may
be seeing something very frightening, but when they look again, it's not
there. The doubt and the confusion is even more frightening than the specter
they thought they saw."
Explains Taylor Hackford, "We were careful not to let the monster out
of the box, so to speak, by using any images that were obvious. Things
appear and disappear in a moment; sometimes they seem real and sometimes
they seem like a bad dream, so that when the events in the story actually
do emerge into reality, the Lomaxes don't know what's real and what isn't
anymore.
"There is an important scene at the climax of the story in John Milton's
home, where he himself is transformed, first into a younger version of himself
that resembles Keanu Reeves, and then into an angel. To accomplish this,
we used life masks of both Pacino's present-day face and his younger face
p; the latter of which we obtained from DICK SMITH, who created it for
'The Godfather.' We also made a life mask of Keanu, and Rick Baker, who
did his training long ago with Dick, used all three to transform Al from
a mature face to a youthful face to a blend of his own and Keanu's youthful
face, and finally into an angel, which is, of course, what Lucifer was before
he was cast out of Heaven.
"The transformation is eerie and unsettling, but also very beautiful.
It reminds us where the Devil came from, and why he exists: he was the
highest angel, the closest to God, until his ego caused him to be cast away
from God. Today, we are so often driven by our egos p; and rewarded
for it -- that we forget how dire Lucifer's punishment was for his sin of
ego and vanity.
"We've created a very real-world Devil in this story p; a demon
whose world is our own, with all its mundane events. He appears in human
form and presents human choices, and his greatest lure is what we have in
common with him: our greed, ego, jealousy, competitiveness, lust, dishonesty.
"He is familiar, and that's what makes him so dangerous. But when
he is fully revealed, that's what also reminds us he was once divine. It
was losing the battle, giving up the struggle against those temptations
that damned Lucifer. So instead of showing him as something with horns
and a tail, we chose to show him as he once was, before his ego corrupted
him."
Suggestions? Comments? Fill out our Feedback Form.
