SINGAPORE – Months after he died, the late composer James Horner managed to surprise his friend, filmmaker Antoine Fuqua, one more time.
Antoine (Training Day, The Equalizer) had been struggling with some challenges leading up to the remake of the 1960 American western The Magnificent Seven.
At the Singapore press conference for Magnificent Seven, Antoine shared one more story of a touching gift he received from James – after James had died in a plane crash in June 2015.
James, the composer behind the music of iconic movies like Titanic and Braveheart, encouraged Antoine to do The Magnificent Seven. Previously, he had rallied behind Antoine when he was making the acclaimed movie Southpaw– James reportedly did the music for free and paid his crew himself. There is a dedication to James at the end of the film.
His story sheds a lot of light on James and what was going on behind the scenes of the film:
He said he had gone to James' home in Calabasas, California to listen to the score of Southpaw, and had talked about some problems for Magnificent.
"And he started telling me about where he lived out there and he said they used to make Westerns out there. And he said, 'Antoine, you and Denzel, Magnificent Seven, Kurosawa. You have to do the movie.' And I said, 'I don't know if I have enough money.' And he said, 'Well what are you worried about? I’ll do it.' I said, 'What if I don’t have enough money for you?' He goes, 'Don’t worry. Figure it out.' Like basically shut up and figure it out. Stop whining.
"And then after that he took me inside his studio. In James’s studio he has no posters, no Academy Awards, nothing. What he has is toys from around the world...He had a tornado maker machine. He had puppets from around the world. He was an engineer. He used to fly planes, which was how he died. It was like walking into a beautiful mind. It was the most amazing thing I ever saw... And it reminded me of the wonderment and how beautiful life can be if you remain a child and keep your mind open to these things and dream.
"And when I left James I called MGM and I said, 'If I can figure everything out...” This was on a Friday, '...by Monday, you’ve got to give me a greenlight on the movie.' So I made all the phone calls, cut where I had to cut, and did all the things I had to do. I spent all weekend doing that and by Monday I got a greenlight on the movie.
"And then James passed away, which was a heartbreak, obviously. But while I was making the movie, after he died, his manager and the composer who finished the movie called me and he said, 'James had a gift for you. And we want to bring it to you.' And I’m thinking, it was a gift from one of the toys from his place 'cause I kept asking him can I just come and sit on his floor and look at the toys, it was honestly, it should be in a museum, what he had.
"And they came to my trailer and he said, 'James wrote the score for you.' And I thought, 'What do you mean James wrote the score for me. How? He didn’t see any footage, he never saw the movie.' He said, 'Yeah, he went through the script and he already started to compose the music and he was going to surprise you.' And they played it for me. Seven songs. It was actually 7 songs. It was 7 songs and, yeah, it blew me away. It was magnificent."
Antoine went on to complete The Magnificent Seven, rounding out a strong cast, including Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Chris Pratt, Byung-hun Lee, Vincent d'Onofrio, Martin Sensmeier, and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo. It's a huge, big budget film – but it is special to Antoine in other ways.
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He is a huge fan of the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and credits him as a big influence in his career. Kurosawa made Seven Samurai, which inspired the 1960 Magnificent Seven.
Growing up poor, Antoine says he saw parallels in the Kurosawa film to his own world view.
"And watching how Kurosawa crafted the story and the compositions and the action for the final battle and the idea that – because I grew up poor and there's always the influence of bullies, you know, when you grow up, whether it be gangs or anything.
"And when I saw the warlords that came in and took the people’s rice and it reminded me of a world that I know, in a strange way, of what that means when people come in and take something that doesn’t belong to them. And it just kind of blew me away. It really did," he said.
Later, being exposed to Kurosawa's work while Antoine was in school, influenced him to go into movies.
As Antoine says, a lot of heart went into the making of this film – but expect lots of action and large-scale scenes too, including a major battle sequence that's Antoine's own homage to Kurosawa.
The Magnificent Seven hits theaters September 21 in the Philippines. – Rappler.com