“How did we get there?” : The director of The Runaway with Harrison Ford has very bad memories of the Oscar-winning actor

Fresh off the success of Trap on the High Seas starring Steven Seagal, director Andrew Davis finds himself making The Fugitive alongside Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, the film adaptation of the hit series of the same name. The release date is August 1993, and filming begins on January 4: Davis has seven months to complete a project he hasn’t even finished writing!

The pressure is on, and Tommy Lee Jones isn’t the last to slow down. Urnal Technical card I was able to talk to Andrew Davies, who after 30 years has not only great memories with the actor:

Shooting under pressure

“We were at City Hall and Harrison had to go through the glass doors, chase Tommy Lee Jones, who was supposed to shoot him. And suddenly Tommy explodes and says that the US marshal doesn’t draw his gun like that, and most importantly. (…) he’s endangering all these civilians around him person”.

The actor leaves the set and locks himself in his trailer. Jeb Stewart, the screenwriter of the film, has to go to him and convince him by saying: “You don’t want to film Harrison, and yet, in the previous scene, the audience saw you shoot a black man while he was being held hostage. And now you’re not going to film a rich white doctor trying to film. ‘Escape?’

“I do not care”

Tommy Lee Jones will also have to listen to deliver one of the film’s most iconic lines: when Harrison Ford’s character declares: “I will not kill my wife” and that the marshal should answer “I do not care”Jones refuses. Here again, Jeb Stewart manages to give it a try. The takeaway is canned and that’s what we find in the final cut.

Davis holds no grudge against the actor, who ironically won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, the only statue won by the film, which miraculously managed to be released in time. Davis still wonders today Technical card : “How did we get there?”

Many lines are improvised on set, The Fugitive is partially written and edited daily, and Richard Jordan, who plays the villain, was diagnosed with a brain tumor during filming. He is quickly replaced by Jeroen Krabbe, who reprises the character’s already completed scenes. As for Jordan, he died three months after the film’s release on August 30, 1993.

An armada of six editors was assembled in a runaway seven weeks – a record at the time – but deadlines were met and the end result was well received by the press and public. It made 183.8 million dollars at the American box office, and 3.55 million dollars in France. Not bad for such a chaotic production!