Back in 1997 came “The Devil’s Own,” a thriller that would mark the final film of legendary helmer Alan J. Pakula (“All the President’s Men,” “Presumed Innocent”), which saw Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt team on screen.
The film revolves around Pitt playing Frankie McGuire, a member of the IRA who comes to the United States posing as an immigrant construction worker named Rory Devaney in order to obtain black market anti-aircraft missiles.
The plan is complicated when Irish-American police sergeant Tom O’Meara (Ford) and his family take in Rory, unaware of his true motives, to help him out. There’s also a subplot about Tom lying to protect his partner Eddie (Ruben Blades), who fatally shot an unarmed thief in the back.
The film was seen as a flop, snagging poor critical reaction and taking in $140.8 million worldwide from an $86 million budget. It also made headlines regarding its two leading men and talk clashes on set between the pair, who have never worked on screen together again.
In a new interview with Esquire, Ford talked about the conflicts and takes responsibility for what happened:
“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.
Brad had this complicated character, and I wanted a complication on my side so that it wasn’t just a good-and-evil battle… That’s when I came up with the bad-shooting thing.
I worked with a writer – but then, all of a sudden we were shooting, and we didn’t have a script that Brad and I agreed on. 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. I like the movie very much. Very much.”
The full interview is up at Esquire and goes into some colorful times Ford had filming various movies on location.
