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"I wanted to meet Mann," says the 35-year-old Australian, who was filming the hockey dramedy Mystery, Alaska at the time, "and I wanted to tell him he should hire a 52-year-old. I made my little protest, he dismissed it, and we started talking." Four and a half hours and a read-through later, Crowe landed the gig. As the actor says, "I do tortured and flawed very well."
He also does fat quite impressively. After wrapping Alaska, the muscular Crowe settled down in front of the television for six weeks. There, he watched tapes of Wigand, scarfed down cheeseburgers, and guzzled bourbon. "I'd been told by everybody that Wigand put on a lot with the stress," says Crowe, who also agree to having his hair shaved back in an attempt to look older. By the time he arrived in Louisville, KY., set in April, Crowe was ready. Thanks to the videotapes, the actor had perfected Wigand's hand gestures and double-jointed walk; thanks to the burgers and a razor, he was also 238 pounds and balding. "I looked," says Crowe, "like Brando on a bad day around Apocalypse Now."
Crowe met Wigand for dinner, and "asked him some very tough questions--the only things I couldn't know from videotapes. I couldn't get the devastation of his wife leaving him. I couldn't get the despair. And before I met him, I didn't have a sense of his honor."
The $60 million production was up and running 16 hours a day, six days a week. The tension was palpable. "There was concern about how to shoot around certain things in the dialogue, which had to be adjusted for what is legally acceptable and what isn't," says Pacino. "You're in a bit of a minefield, and you sense it." Adds Crowe, "You can be as hard-nosed as you want, but you stand there every day with people falling apart, and it's going to get to you. And then you go back the next day and you've had no sleep, and now another character is having some form of catharsis..."
Early on, Crowe nominated himself as the film's "cruise director," organizing long drinking nights with Mann and Plummer, who would amuse them with stories about the business. Crowe ordered a customized Louisville Slugger for Pacino, a baseball fanatic; in return, Pacino gave Crowe a professional pitching machine.
But despite the baseball and booze, everyone had had enough.
On the last day of filming, "there was this thing Michael wanted me to
hang around for, we were miles from the base camp, and it wasn't going
to work," Crowe remembers. "Michael was talking to me about this
next shot, and I said, 'I've never felt like this before, but I'm over
this character. I've had enough.' He gave me a hug and let
me go. I went to New Orleans and got drunk and sang karaoke.
Then I went to a health retreat."