Director Oliver Stone and cinematographer Robert Richardson, ASC parlay radical stock options in the genre-blending U-Turn
Following the release of Nixon (see AC March 1996), director Oliver Stone had planned on pursuing filmed biographies of Alexander the Great and Manuel Noriega. But when those projects stalled for various reasons, the filmmaker opted to helm a more intimate film that would allow him to exercise his directing skills in a new genre. The $20 million U-Turn, drawn from John Ridley's script Stray Dogs, is a modern-day film noir set in the Southwest. The thriller tells the tale of loner-on-the-lam Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn), a quintessential drifter who cruises interstate highways in a sleek, scarlet Mustang convertible.
When Cooper's car conks out, he becomes stranded in the defunct mining town of Superior, Arizona (pop. 3,485), where he is surrounded by a cast of colorful, crazy characters including sultry Apache siren Grace McKenna (Jennifer Lopez). Cooper quickly succumbs to the femme fatale's spell, only to discover that she is married to gruff local real estate broker Jake McKenna (Nick Nolte), who unexpectedly offers Bobby a handsome sum to slay his philandering wife. The drifter doesn't realize, however, that he's merely a pawn in a double-cross scheme that culminates in a slam-bang climax inspired by such Sam Peckinpah classics as The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
Stone offers, "In a sense, U-Turn is my homage to film noir and also Westerns, because it has the rancher, the drifter, and all of the other characters [from the latter genre]. To me, film noir is about characters who are always desperate and alienated; the odds are against them, and the happy endings are few. Some people will tell you that film noir can only be associated with city streets, dark shadows and trenchcoats, but there's no reason why noir cannot cross into the Western genre. Body Heat was a very successful film noir, and it was set in the tropical Everglades. I respect the genres, but I don't feel that I have to live within their rules.
"This movie is very story-oriented, and I'm dealing with a genre that I've never worked in before. This is what Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and André de Toth did they just told stories, regardless of genre. I view this movie as one day in the life of Bobby Cooper, who gambles until the very end. You don't know which way he's going to go, because he has ups and downs all day long. Under those circumstances, I didn't want to spend more than [$20 million] these unreal prices in Hollywood are driving everybody crazy. I wanted to do this on the cheap with everybody riding the back end [profits]."
To realize this stripped-down fusion of genres, the director once again enlisted cameraman Robert Richardson, ASC, who's served as Stone's director of photography on Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Talk Radio, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, JFK, Heaven and Earth, Natural Born Killers and Nixon. Richardson's highly influential work for Stone has earned him numerous accolades, including an Oscar for JFK, Academy nominations for Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, and Independent Spirit Award nominations for Salvador, Platoon and Talk Radio. He has also received five ASC Award nominations, most recently for Heaven and Earth. The cameraman's other credits include Eight Men Out, City of Hope, A Few Good Men, Casino, and the recently released Errol Morris documentary Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.
During the hiatus between Nixon and U-Turn, Richardson pulled double duty on commercials as a director/cinematographer, and also endured extensive preparation for two aborted features Roman Polanski's The Double and Kathryn Bigelow's Joan of Arc. These prior commitments left him a mere three weeks of location prep prior to U-Turn's six-week shoot, which began last November. By then, Stone, production designer Victor Kempster and producer Clayton Townsend had already scouted Superior, which lies some 60 miles outside of Phoenix.
Though Stone views U-Turn primarily as a thriller, Richardson recalls, "My first thoughts were, 'We have a film noir in daylight: how do we do that?' Oliver had in mind Double Indemnity, Duel in the Sun and Touch of Evil. I saw closer links to [the more recent noirs] Red Rock West and The Hot Spot, both of which he had never seen. But it didn't really matter, because I felt we should burn them all and go in our own direction.
"In terms of the technical problems [of shooting in Superior], the main street was situated east-to-west, and at the head of the street was a police station set against the rock bluffs of Apache Leap [a spot from which, in the 1800s, Apache tribesman committed mass suicide to avoid capture by the U.S. Cavalry]. The sun tended to rise somewhere shortly after 8:30 a.m., which meant a short shooting day. Furthermore, the west end of the street, about three to four blocks down, consisted of typical two-story, Western-style mining architecture which provided little to no cover. It would be hellish to work that location and try to create any sort of backlight. The [120-page] script was essentially set within 24 to 30 hours on a hot day in the middle of summer. We had a 36-day schedule, and were supposed to provide hot sun for almost every single scene. I was worried about achieving that technically, because the weather fluctuated so much."
Richardson continues, "I kept a journal filled with notes on lighting, stocks, filters and Polaroids of the locale, and in it I wrote that 'there's a blandness of spirit [washing over the location] that will require a Robert Adams or a Lee Freidlander to penetrate.' Both [of these still photographers] have a unique ability to break through certain locations that you would ordinarily find sterile as in Adams' work with tract houses in deserts, or Freidlander's new book, which also captures desert landscapes. They both found very unique ways to present areas that are normally perceived to be extraordinarily common and bland.
"[At the time], I didn't know how to enhance the blandness that surrounded Superior the parched lighting of an almost noon-day sun all day long was going to provide nothing extraordinarily beautiful. My first instinct was to go black-and-white. I wanted the harshness of the light, and thought [a monochrome stock] was better suited to the grays, blown whites and crushed blacks. I also felt that handheld 16mm would be better-suited to the speed of the production and would help to create texture."
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