Original subtitles

By the early '90s,

Harrison Ford had traveled a long way from Indy to Jack.

Get down!

Harrison's combination of action star

and thinking man's action star.

Same day.

Made him a perfect Jack Ryan.

Hello.

Patriot Games proved the life

of a mature action hero was complicated.

The only person that disagreed with me was Harrison Ford.

Harrison is the boss.

I hate this job.

Finally in control of his career

and his films, his next project.

I am the fugitive, yes.

Probably the worst pitch I've ever done in my entire life.

Would find him chasing solutions

to problems he just couldn't escape.

I read the script and it didn't make a lot of sense to me.

This character was running away.

Your fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimmel.

But what was Harrison Ford running towards?

Well, you want the truth, or you want me to bullshit you?

There's no way out of here, Richard.

I said to Harrison, "Where the fuck am I?"

You never give up.

On a film where coming off the rails...

First cinematographer had to be fired.

...was both a feature...

- They had one shot at it. - ...and a bug.

We spent most of the night trying to dig out the cameras.

You find this man.

And exactly how much running

did the now middle-aged star have left?

He twisted his knee and he was in pain.

I mean, if you look at it, you can see him limping.

As a film,

perpetually searching for its own ending--

Everyone knew we were looking

for that third act while we were shooting.

- What do you got? - I got nothing.

Warner Bros. sent an executive out

to fire me if I did not put a love interest in.

What are your other hobbies? Brain surgery?

Threatened to serve up a Hollywood ending

of a different kind for its star.

Tommy was like

"Ain't nobody gonna win an Academy Award on this one."

"The Fugitive" doesn't work.

This is such a shit show, we're never gonna work again.

- This is a career killer. - Oh Jesus.

What if we told you that Harrison Ford's career

owes a lot to the French?

The French Revolution, at least.

Actually, not as much the revolution,

as a very famous book about it.

It was based on the Victor Hugo novel

about the French Revolution.

It's all to do with the 1960s TV show

that copied Les Miserables' storyline

about a wrongly accused man on the run.

And Dr. Kimble must be found.

It was a primetime drama

that needed only four seasons...

You like it?

I haven't seen much.

...to capture an entire generation.

Had I ever watched "The Fugitive"

with David Janssen? Are you kidding me?

Oh, so that big a fan?

Yep.

"The Fugitive" would be Harrison Ford's

next big move in 1993.

But the story of that film really begins

around 30 years earlier.

I was obsessed with that show.

Every week there was a cliffhanger.

He's innocent.

The law says guilty.

He almost got caught.

Week in and week out.

He almost caught the one-armed man.

Almost.

Knowing the one-armed man

would help prove Dr. Kimble's innocence,

78 million tuned into the series finale,

hoping for a happy ending.

I think the number of viewers

for that last episode was astronomical.

It had never been anything like that before.

It was just a matter of time

before someone thought this beloved TV show

could become a beloved movie.

We felt that we could create that tension as a feature.

Anne Kopelson was one half

of a Hollywood power couple.

Her entertainment lawyer husband Arnold saw potential

for "The Fugitive" on the big screen.

He really wanted to do this movie.

It was a big dream of his.

But first, he needed the rights.

Arnold soon found out who owned those when he met this man.

Well, I remembered the TV series

with David Janssen. It was a cult classic.

Keith Barish knew the series,

but more importantly, he knew the people in it.

I knew Dani Janssen, his widow.

She used to give great Academy Award parties

where most stars showed up

and we brought the rights to "The Fugitive."

Now, Roy Huggins was attached 'cause he owned the rights.

And Keith's company, Taft Barish, already had plans

to make "The Fugitive" into a movie.

David Twohy had done one draft.

There was enough there to see it would be a movie.

I knew one day I'd make it.

But Keith's business partners

didn't want to make "The Fugitive."

They didn't want to make anything anymore.

Taft decided that they didn't wanna make any more movies.

Not a chance! Now hands off.

Keith was offered the rights

to one of their two final pictures.

And they had "The Fugitive," "The Flintstones."

Yabba-dabba-doo!

I chose "The Fugitive."

When Arnold approached Keith

about "The Fugitive," he was telling Keith

exactly what any producer wants to hear.

Arnold came to me and said,

"I can get the financing for the movies."

I said, "I've heard that before."

He said, "No, no, no, I guarantee."

So it wasn't just that he knew the law

and he knew all the players

'cause he was an entertainment attorney,

but he was also a charming, persuasive guy.

Now Arnold just needed

to charm the right studio.

Warner Bros. was the one that really stepped up.

Warner Bros. was a yes.

Now Arnold needed a writer to get the script off the ground.

We were working on a film called "Warlock,"

which had David Twohy as the writer.

This is the terrifying adventure

that could set the world on fire.

David Twohy's draft of "The Fugitive"

wasn't destined to set the world on fire,

so much as to get him fired.

But he managed to leave his mark on the script.

He did write the action beats, the jumping,

the dam or the car, the train crash.

He did have in place some of those action elements,

But before "The Fugitive"

could have a new beginning, it needed a new ending.

I don't think it was an issue

that the writers didn't get it.

They had their own version

of what they thought the ending should be.

Working out exactly

how the story would end was newly-hired writer

Jeb Stuart's first job.

Not his first job as a scriptwriter.

That was a little Christmas movie called "Die Hard."

Happy trails, Hans.

Some of the best action screenwriters of the early '90s

and the '80s had taken a swing at this.

And by the way, there was no star attached.

Which is where Harrison Ford enters our story.

Or he would if Warner

could lure him into taking on another franchise.

There was a pretty good idea that he might be up

for multiple movies based on "The Fugitive."

But Jeb was thinking one and done.

I made it clear at the time that I didn't want it to be,

you know, Fugitive One, Fugitive Two, Fugitive Three.

I felt like it ought to be a standalone.

Also up for debate,

exactly who should be the bad guy.

They felt like that the Gerard character

should be the bad guy.

I can't permit it.

Gerard was the police Lieutenant

convinced Dr. Kimble was guilty of murdering his wife.

I kind of pushed back that there was a different bad guy.

It wasn't the one-armed man, it's not Gerard.

Did you kill Helen Kimble?

Part of my whole thing too is that I'm looking

for different kind of investigative engines.

I didn't want the Gerard character

to be the only one who is trying to solve a mystery.

While Jeb was contemplating his bad guy,

Warner Bros. was searching for the right good guy.

The studio ultimately would make that decision

because they needed

to have somebody who could sell the movie.

If not Harrison, then surely the man

who was trying desperately

to have the same career, Alec Baldwin.

The studio did not like that choice.

Alec had got a bite for the Jack Ryan cherry

in "The Hunt for Red October."

How did you know that?

Before Harrison took the Clancy cake.

You don't miss much, do you?

Unfortunately for Alec,

Harrison already had a head start

and had just played a man wrongly accused.

You think I killed her?

Well, Harrison and his manager

was a woman by the name of Pat McQueeney

and she was a longtime manager of Harrison's.

And we established a relationship with her

in hopes that she could convince Harrison to do it.

While Jeb was still thinking about his bad guy,

it unexpectedly became his job

to land the good guy when he received a summons.

So I got on a plane in New York and I flew out,

and when I landed in LA I was told, "We're flying out

to Jackson Hole on the Warner's jet

and you're gonna pitch Harrison your story."

A golden opportunity. Except for one thing.

I didn't have a story.

I mean, I had some loose thoughts in my head,

but we were at the beginning of the process.

By the time the Warner Bros.' jet

landed in Jackson Hole in Wyoming...

Depending upon my pitch,

he may or may not do "The Fugitive."

...Jeb had conjured up something

to throw at Harrison Ford.

We sat down in his living room.

But would it stick?

I proceeded to tell him the story of "The Fugitive,"

which was probably the worst pitch

I've ever done in my entire life.

The missing link was if Gerard's not the bad guy

and the one-armed man is just the killer,

Who is the bad guy?

There's no point in asking you again, is there?

No, I'm afraid not.

And about this time, about 20 minutes

or 30 minutes, it may have been an hour.

It felt like five days

that I'm in this very uncomfortable pitch.

I'm realizing that his eyes are rolling back in his head.

And I know that behind me, all the producers

and studio executives are going like this.

It's not over yet.

Writer Jeb Stuart was in the midst

of the worst pitch of his life.

But it was very, very convoluted.

He needed someone to throw him a lifeline.

Harrison outta the blue said,

"I hear you're a tennis player."

I was, before I became a screenwriter,

I'd been a tennis pro and taught tennis

and was pretty good.

He was a big tennis player

and had a court out at his ranch

and he said, "Let's play a match."

It was the perfect opportunity

to break the tension.

But that wouldn't be the only thing to break.

In the process of the play,

Harrison's racket hit the bridge of his nose.

It did some damage, let's say, a lot of blood.

Harrison hadn't even signed up

for "The Fugitive"

and already he was bleeding for his art.

T-shirt's covered in blood.

His nose is all you know, messed up.

It looked to executives

like Jeb's pitch had gone violently wrong

and Harrison wasn't going to let his blood go to waste.

He says to me, kind of devilishly,

"Let's not talk about any of this.

Let's just go back in and pitch the show."

And he sits down and he listens to the rest of the pitch.

And nobody says a word about the injury.

In need of a doctor himself,

Harrison Ford announced his intention to become one.

Love it, I'm in.

And everybody was like, what happened?

You know, oh my God.

Well they were looking at me, what happened?

Only Harrison Ford knows

what changed on that tennis court.

The good news for everybody is that even without a script

or a fully formed idea, he saw Dr. Richard Kimble

and it was the start of a really good collaboration.

Maybe the bleeding was an omen

because Harrison Ford had just signed onto a film

destined to test his limits.

Warner slated "The Fugitive"

for release in less than a year.

And the film still didn't have a finished script

or someone to direct it.

And that particular time,

we were invited to see the movie "Under Siege."

And what is this, huh?

You're in the Navy, man, you gotta look good, huh?

And after we saw the movie Arnold, he said,

"I think we found our director for 'The Fugitive.'"

Home Run.

I just finished "Under Siege," there was a wrap party

and Arnold Kopelson came up to me and said,

"I know your next film."

Before Andrew could even say yes--

Sunday night I got a call from an executive,

the head of production, Bruce Berman at Warner Bros.

congratulating me. And I said, "What for?"

And he said, "Well, Harrison saw 'Under Siege' over the weekend

and he would like to have you direct 'The Fugitive.'"

So they sent a script.

That would be the script

that Jeb hadn't really worked out yet.

I read the script and it didn't make a lot of sense to me.

But one thing that did make sense to Andrew

was the idea of working with Harrison Ford.

I said, "I better figure out what to do,

'cause I wanted to certainly do a movie

with Harrison Ford called 'The Fugitive.'"

So I went to this meeting and we talked and you know,

and I said, you know, I got some problems with the script,

but it was, you know, we're gonna continue

to work and make this better.

We'll figure out who's gonna play Gerard.

Andrew already had an idea for that.

I basically had Tommy.

Yes, of course, hence the name.

Tommy Lee was in "Under Siege."

They were friends.

And Roadrunner, out. Beep beep!

For the man to play Tommy Lee's deputy,

Andrew's mind turned to one of his first films.

The first movie I was ever hired

to direct was a horror movie.

I don't know what the title is. "The Final Terror"

or something like that.

Joey Pants played the monster and the bad bus driver.

And we became dear friends from that.

Wake up, pigs.

Joey Pants, aka--

Joseph Peter Pantoliano, Joe Pantoliano,

Joey Pants.

And of course--

I played Cosmo Renfro in "The Fugitive."

When I die, I wanna come back just like you.

Oh, you mean happy and handsome?

And Andy Davis called me up one evening,

he explained that there was gonna be a team

of Marshalls surrounding Tommy Lee Jones.

He said that he needed somebody like a comic relief,

somebody that could stand up, not be intimidated.

Yes, all right, Sammy, we got him.

But Joe's involvement

depended on another blessing.

You know, and Tommy had approval.

And winning Tommy's approval

depended on whether Joe liked the script.

Time for a drink.

So we opened a beer

and he said, "So what do you think of the script?"

I decided to charm him and I said,

"Well, you want the truth or you want me to bullshit you?"

And he laughed.

He said, "Well, you might as well,

you know, hit me with the truth."

And I said, "Yeah, well, these cardboard characters,

they don't even have last names."

None of that put Tommy off

because he agreed, and there was work to be done.

And he started strategizing with me.

Which meant I had the job.

My, my, my, my, my, what a mess.

It's a circus.

To play opposite Harrison Ford--

Thank you, I was just down to my last joke.

Actress Sela Ward was personally approved

by Harrison to be Helen Kimble.

Sela, she's a lovely woman, and she was in 110%.

Whatever needed to be done, she was there to do it.

Thanks, honey.

L. Scott Caldwell

had to come from nowhere to win her role.

The word came back to me that the studio head said,

"No, not too sure about her."

Because there wasn't anything on my reel that suggested

that I could do this kind of movie.

So we put together this little funky video and sent it in

and they liked the fact that I did that.

And I got the role.

Care to revise your statement, sir?

In the role of Kimble's friend,

or rather frenemy, veteran TV actor Richard Jordan.

I'm your friend, I understand. We all go crazy once in a while.

Think we wanted someone who was a kind of a waspy doctor,

who could be a real good friend of Harrison's.

Julian Moore also joined

in the role of Kimble's new love interest.

You know, she'd just done an Altman movie.

What are you talking about?

All these pedigree actors came on board,

not because of the script, but despite it.

The script was in really bad shape.

It demanded a first-page rewrite.

There were a lot of script changes

as we, you know, went along.

But Andy knew

he had the actors to deal with that.

And he wasn't afraid to let his stars take flight.

Knew Tommy was the guy.

We had done a lot of improvisation in "Under Siege."

Do I look like I need a psychological evaluation?

- Not at all. - And he wrote

some amazing material that's in that movie.

And so I knew that between Joey Pants...

Can you all hear me now?

...and Tommy Lee Jones...

Behold my finest work.

...we were gonna be able to figure out what the essence

of each scene was and give it language and words.

- The Fugitive. - Also helping,

the fact that the bones of the story

were already there in black and white

on the original TV show.

Now, six months a fugitive,

this is Richard Kimble with a new identity.

There were parts of the story which were

part of "The Fugitive" lore, which is the things that were,

you know, back in the television part.

He's falsely accused of killing his wife.

I found my wife beaten to death.

- Check. - There is a one-armed man.

- A man with one arm. - Check.

There is a character named Gerard. That didn't change.

Well, he told you about me.

Check, but what about this?

We did have the train wreck and the bus crash

because that was part

of the lore from the television series.

Taking almost everything

from the original TV show,

except these spinning transitions.

We wanted to have that type

of DNA from the television series,

but create a totally different story.

But Jeb was determined

to give his Dr. Kimble character more punch.

- Not literally. - No police.

So I was pushing Warner Bros. back and saying

that Dr. Kimble has to be the proactive character.

He has to be solving who killed his wife,

okay, if it's not him.

That was a question

Jeb had to answer for himself

as he struggled with the plot or rather, plots.

They had nine different versions.

It was the one-armed man.

It wasn't the one-armed man. It was the doctor.

It wasn't the doctor. At one point, it was Kimble himself.

"The Fugitive" was about to start shooting,

but it still lacked the one thing no film can do without.

We had those two acts, but we didn't have the third act.

It literally was a slug for an ending.

And it's hard to imagine today

that a major studio would allow that

to kind of sit there undeveloped.

This film about a fugitive

was now a production

chasing an ending that appeared to be on the run.

We got a gofer.

And if you don't have a third act,

you're hoping that the first two acts are good enough

so that you can figure it out.

They would be shooting a shot in the dark.

There was an ending to this,

but the threads were being developed as we were shooting.

And there was next to no time

to make it happen.

Open the door!

When shooting on "The Fugitive" got underway in early 1993,

producers had barely six months

to finish the film in time for a summer release.

But the story still didn't have an ending.

To make matters worse, the end had already arrived

for the man hired to shoot it.

First cinematographer had to be fired.

He just wasn't cutting it.

Frank was unjustly let go.

He shouldn't have gotten fired.

We were shooting the murder

and Harrison didn't quite understand

that those dailies were just a separate style.

Today, he would get it like that.

And so they brought in Michael Chapman.

A man with his own particular vision,

which he was keen to share with his executive producer.

Michael was a very crotchety person to begin with.

He would keep coming up to Arnold every day

and saying, "I hate being here."

And Arnold would say, "No, Michael, it's okay.

It's gonna be okay."

I didn't think he liked Andy's style.

Everybody knows Andy shoots a lot of film.

So there was a lot of frustration.

And I think, you know, it just happens.

Sometimes things don't go as planned.

If that sounds like a train wreck

waiting to happen.

You're right. That's exactly what producers planned

for a hero action set piece.

Well, it had to be in the beginning

because of the beard and the trial.

The train wreck threatened

to become just that before they even started.

I got a call from Andy saying,

"We can't find any of the locations in southern Illinois."

And I said, "You need to go to North Carolina.

You can wreck trains and jump off dams

and everything in North Carolina."

And so that's where they went.

North Carolina gave "The Fugitive" a location,

but it fell to this man to work out

how to make a real train go off the rails

without taking the production with it.

First car was going to smash into the bus.

And Andy thought, how could that possibly happen?

But the only question

William had to consider was--

How are you gonna make that work?

The answer, two numbers.

13 cameras, one take.

- That's it. - They had one shot at it.

We knew that we weren't gonna have a motorized train,

so we had to figure out a hidden cable system

that we could pull the train and make it go

and plow through all the dirt.

It sure was bigger than anyone expected...

The train was going so fast.

...by becoming both the train wreck

and a wrecking ball.

So it went flying all the way forward

and hit the mound

where our Vista Vision camera was.

The shot was in the can.

Now it was just a matter of finding the can.

We spent most of the night trying to dig out the camera

so we could unload it and get the film into the lab.

As the film that still had no ending

rumbled on, the actors filled in the blanks

as they went along.

I know for a fact that the ad-lib line

that really Tommy used was the Peter Pan line

when Harrison jumped off the dam.

The guy did a Peter Pan

right here off of this dam right here.

Because I looked in the script after that

and I didn't see it.

We were making that stuff up every day.

Poole, you gotta get some new boots.

I told you not to wear the heels.

And it was sprinkled throughout the final cut.

Well, think me up a cup of coffee and a chocolate donut

with some of those little sprinkles on top.

The best line that's come up is, "I don't care."

I don't care.

I think Tommy thought he made it up.

I think Jeb Stuart thought he made it up.

And finally I said, "Well here's one.

This might not work, but let's just try, 'I don't care.'"

I don't care.

And Andy said, "Cut. We got it. That's perfect."

They found an old, old draft from Walter Hills,

that had the line in it.

Well, who cares who dreamed it up?

The line was in the movie.

But all this ad-libbing was keeping "The Fugitive"

in a state of flux.

Even the trailer for the movie was more organized

than the movie it was promoting. In fact--

Before we were finished making the movie,

they were shooting a trailer for it.

Unlike the feature film, the script

for the trailer's main scene was totally locked down.

The "Listen up" speech, which is kind of the famous speech.

Listen up, ladies and gentlemen.

Even though it wasn't actually in the movie.

Well, somebody at Warner Bros.

in the publicity department found an old draft with it.

I remember Tommy was like, "Oh Christ."

He didn't wanna do it. He didn't like it.

You know, when he did it, he was commenting on it.

I could tell he was pissed off.

"Your fugitive is Dr. Richard Kimble."

Your fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimble.

And in a classic chicken and egg moment, this happened.

One take, he just, he just nailed it.

And then they put it in the movie.

And it was great, by the way.

Go get him.

Even the man who loved

to be in control wasn't getting off

his marketing obligations to the studio.

He went off in the woods with somebody

to shoot him running through the woods for the trailers,

all part of that same trailer stuff.

The cart was most definitely before the horse now,

and it was about to crash.

And he twisted his knee

and he was in pain. It was serious.

While the movie trailer for the movie with no end

was completed, having maimed its leading actor...

He actually had a limp through the rest of the shoot.

...Tommy Lee Jones almost suffered a worse fate.

When this chopper scene saw his foot crushed,

nothing was going to plan.

Tommy, he would say,

"Well, this is such a shit-show,

we're never gonna work again."

And how is a movie with no end...

I hadn't tied the end of the pieces together.

...possibly going to end well for the cast.

Tommy was like, ain't nobody gonna win

an Academy Award on this one.

Not for the first time in his career,

Harrison Ford felt powerless

to save what looked certain to be a high profile flop.

And I looked at Harrison

and then he could tell what I was thinking.

And the cost might be far greater

than Warner's Box office losses.

Well, you know, I had a pretty good career.

This is a career killer.

The production limping along,

it,

and its leading man limping,

feeling his end was certain.

"The Fugitive" moved to Harrison Ford's hometown

for the rest of the shoot.

Background just came in from Chicago.

And I've heard that Harrison takes credit for it,

which he should because he's from Chicago.

And I remember when I first flew to see him

in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I got off the plane

and he says, "We're going to Chicago."

Now on home turf in the windy city,

Harrison tried to take control

of an out of control production,

Son of a bitch, our boy came home.

And he did so by letting go

of the script in the film's most improvised scene yet.

The interrogation scene was terrific.

Andy had given Harrison a perfect setting

to make the crucial Kimble interrogation scene

feel authentic.

He had a real cop

who had been in three or four of my movies.

He had a guy who had been put in jail for shooting a cop

and they were gonna interrogate this rich doctor.

Did it happen upstairs or downstairs?

The people were real.

And so was the look of genuine bewilderment

on Harrison's face.

I'm told that Harrison didn't wanna know the line

so he could just respond to it,

which may have been very smart on his part.

Is she insured?

Yes, she is.

We had shot Harrison

and he had a 12-hour commitment

or 10-hour commitment,

he had to go back to the hotel.

Filming continued in Harrison's absence, until--

Harrison was in his car ready to go home.

And he heard that we were still shooting.

And he said, "What are they doing? They can't shoot.

I gotta go back and play off screen to these guys."

Coming back to support his co-cast,

Harrison instead went deeper.

And I think that's when the shot happened

where he really broke down

and the steady cam moves in on him.

How tall is he?

He took everything from me. Oh, Jesus.

And he's, you know, teary-eyed.

So it was fate again

that allowed that to happen like that.

While Harrison Ford

was trying to save the movie

with the sheer force of his performance,

the studio was trying to save it by issuing edicts.

Warner Bros. sent an executive out

to fire me if I did not put a love interest in.

I had made a pretty strong stand

that they should read the script.

The man was convicted of murdering his wife

and he's returned to Chicago

to prove that he didn't kill his wife.

And that's probably not a good place

to stick a love interest

that you're just gonna hop in bed over, okay?

And they kept saying, yeah,

but we've got Julianne Moore.

Thanks, thank you very much.

But Julianne Moore,

the potential love interest, was a very expensive

square peg in the story's round hole.

As they were rewriting the script,

they found that it was just more of a burden.

And also it became an issue that Harrison had lost his wife.

So the fact that he would be having a love interest

seemed a little insincere.

Or to put it another way--

Somewhat horrible, if this guy starts,

you know, fucking the doctor.

His wife has just been murdered, it just--

How can you develop a relationship

in the midst of, you know, what we're doing here?

Jeb was holding firm.

They could have Julianne Moore in love

or they could have him on the project, not both.

Next thing you know, there's a knock on my door

and an executive for Warner Bros. says,

"Unless you put the love interest in, you're fired."

And I said, "Go ahead and fire me.

But you should walk down the hall

and tell Harrison that you've just fired me."

Which they did.

And about 15 minutes later, they walked back

and said, "You're not fired.

Okay, we think it's a terrible idea

to put a love interest in."

Who changed those orders?

Good news for Harrison Ford

and his picture, bad news for Julianne.

Andy sat her down

and just said, "You gotta look at it the way it is."

And after the film was done, everybody said,

you know, that would've been on the cutting room floor.

Those scenes, you know, for sure.

She was great. She was sweet.

I'm sure she was really disappointed.

Probably still hates me for this day.

I'd like to go home now.

Julianne's role wasn't the only thing

that needed to be drastically cut back,

following yet another studio decree.

I remember that famous phone call. The studio said,

"We are paying a lot of money

for Harrison Ford's wonderful face, his very handsome face."

And Warner's CEO felt Harrison's beard

was stealing his high-priced show.

Bob Dailey said, "I don't pay Harrison Ford this money

not to see his clean face."

He was, you know, an old movie star, you know?

Harrison's beard,

part of his character's disguise,

suddenly had to go mid-shoot.

So what did producers do?

But the timing worked out fine.

They just made it part of the story.

It was a good way for him

not to look like the Ha-bearded doctor.

That scene, very vivid in my mind

when he's in the bathroom cutting his, you know.

That's a fantastic moment.

Harrison's physical appearance

could be changed quickly.

But his physical well-being remained a work in progress.

Only there was little progress.

Harrison blew out his leg, his knee,

doing a stairway stunt.

Richard.

Already carrying an injury,

Harrison had re-injured his left knee. If not bleeding

for his art, then definitely aching for it.

It swelled up like a cantaloupe.

The film that famously starred a one-armed man

was now at risk of adding a one-legged lead.

We didn't have anything else booked to shoot that day.

We'd shut down that whole area.

So Harrison insisted on finishing shooting

with this horrendously painful knee.

That's a pro.

I mean, if you look at it, you could see him limping.

There was enough bad luck going around.

But Harrison's injury

would be put into perspective

when news broke of a co-star's predicament.

We had some tragedies on that job.

The guy that was playing Dr. Nichols,

the actor that was playing had a brain tumor.

Actor, Richard Jordan, had suddenly fallen ill

after shooting for just one week.

They discovered he had a brain tumor and he had to leave.

And it was like, whoa.

A wonderful man and a wonderful actor,

unfortunately required an operation.

So he was sort of forced

to relinquish his role in the picture.

They had already shot all of Mr. Jordan's,

God rest his soul, all of his scenes.

It was time for Harrison

to make a clutch play to keep the film rolling.

And it required a Hail Mary

to a relatively unknown actor in Europe.

I said to Harrison, "Where the fuck am I?"

"The Fugitive" had just lost

e leading antagonist to poor health mid-shoot.

Dr. Nichols, hi.

They had already shot all of Mr. Jordan's

God rest his soul, all of his scenes.

Recasting and reshooting

had to happen almost at the same time.

You're getting pretty desperate, aren't you, Mr. Gerard?

The producers weren't grabbing

the nearest actor. Quite the opposite.

Because I have such a nice face.

That's why they choose me.

That face belonged to Dutch actor,

Jeroen Krabbé.

Later on, I did hear from Harrison Ford,

that was his idea. He'd seen my movies.

Jeroen was at home in Holland

when he received his biggest call up yet.

I was in my bed

and I got a call from my agent in Los Angeles

at three o'clock at night.

"Could you come to Chicago tomorrow?"

Excuse me?

So it was only the flight.

It was like, you know, eight hours to learn my lines.

Eight hours to read the script to see what the character was

and so on and so forth.

Suddenly, Jeroen found himself on a fast track

few actors ever get to see.

I went to wardrobe, I got my costume.

Then they brought me, they brought me to the set

and I met the director and I met Harrison Ford.

And said, "Okay, ready."

There we go, and that was my first scene.

- Dollar, mister? Spare change? - No, I don't want it.

No, thank you very much, I don't want it.

No! i--

Jeroen had only just met his co-star,

but he already had a friend.

I said to Harrison, "Where the am I?

What is this?

And he said, "Don't worry."

And he put his arm around me

and he said, "I'm going to help you, buddy."

And he did, he did.

And I'm very grateful forever that he did.

Following a few hairy reshoots.

In the beginning with Harrison's fake beard,

was just that I gave him back the car keys.

Here, thanks for the loaner.

The beard had to make an encore,

but this time it was fake.

Some eagle eye probably saying,

"Wait a minute now, that don't look the same."

Harrison had to wear a phony beard for that.

I don't like the way it looks, but we did it.

But phony beards

were not Andrew's most pressing concern.

Fugitive, they were writing it constantly on the set.

With shooting set to wrap in just six weeks,

"The Fugitive" still had no end and no end in sight.

So how are you, what's going on?

We had a production meeting the next morning

at eight o'clock and we positively had to have

the last 15 pages of the script.

And by two o'clock in the morning,

I suddenly had this horrible feeling

that there wasn't an ending.

I finally turned off the computer, turned off the light

and put my head down the pillow.

And I thought, well this is the end of my career.

And maybe it would've been,

but for a genuine light bulb moment.

At exactly 3:05, I woke up and turned on the light

and it just was all there.

You changed the samples, didn't you, huh?

And I sat down and for the next three hours,

typed up the last 15 pages.

But were those pages any good?

Jeb did not have to wait long for a verdict.

Everybody sat down and had coffee

and were reading at the table and they looked up

and they said, "Well this is great.

What took so long to have this?"

And no one really knew at that point how close we came

to not having an ending at all.

You know, I'm glad, I need to rest.

Warner Bros., Harrison,

and director Andy Davis all thought the final act

was a knockout. But not Tommy Lee.

He was worried about another knockout.

Nichols was gonna knock out Tommy Lee with the beam,

and then Tommy was gonna wake up

and somehow save Harrison's character.

And Tommy was like, "This is it's not gonna work."

But this time

it was Joey's turn to come to the rescue.

Hit me in the head with the beam.

And the bad guy gets my gun.

Tommy Lee Jones saves the day.

It was a great save.

The script was revised,

but when Joey read it.

They're gonna kill me.

He realized

he'd signed his own character's death warrant.

So I go running into Andy's trailer

and I go, "Andy, Andy. You can't kill me.

What are you doing?

You're killing me. What?

And I see Harrison Ford looking down at me

and he's shaking his head. And I go, "What?"

And he goes, "You should be dead."

I said, "Because what if there's a sequel?"

And he looked at me for a moment, and then he laughed.

Then he smiled and he said, "There's not gonna be a sequel."

I said, "Why not?"

He said, "Because I'm not doing this piece of again."

All right, it's all over folks, let's just stay calm.

As shooting drew to a close,

production raced to shoot Jeb's newly scripted ending.

Even though it took months, writing an ending

was still easier than working out how to film it

with only days left to shoot.

The last scene in the Hilton,

the big fight and everything.

That took like a week.

And it was actually Harrison

that set it all.

To Harrison, it's a normal thing to do, a fight. Not for me.

And that's the way that Harrison guided me through.

Fighting his antagonists

and still fighting the pain of his injuries,

Harrison Ford had survived a grueling shoot.

But when principal photography wrapped,

no one knew if the same could be said for his career.

Pretty good career up until here.

Then this is a career killer.

Good or bad, the film finally had an ending.

Or so everyone thought.

Dennis Virkler,

who was the main editor on the show,

realized that there was a lot of shots

that they did not get.

It was now mid-May

and with less than three months to complete the picture,

Harrison's work was by no means done.

If Harrison says he wants to come to dailies, you don't say no.

It was horrendously difficult for us in post-production.

As the movie that didn't even have an end

untithe end headed into post...

...it was suddenly the beginning that was the problem.

Our fugitive was not a fugitive

for the first 25 minutes of the movie.

We're reporting to you live

from the near North side home of Dr. Richard Kimble.

We all knew that it was good, but it took too long.

A rough cut revealed

they really needed to get the show on the road quickly.

The biggest thing was trying to get him on the run.

We had to find another approach.

Just as Jeb had plucked an ending out of thin air

at the last minute, it was going to take an editor

to do the same at the beginning.

Dennis was a really, really smart, good editor.

Dennis was one

of six film editors whose job was made harder

when "The Fugitive" became the first studio feature

to employ digital editing.

And a lot of people were terribly suspicious of it.

But not Dennis,

who mastered the Avid software well enough

to pull a rabbit out of a hat in just 48 hours.

He took it one Saturday

and he came back with this incredibly intercut opening,

and it just worked.

With the film in the can and cut,

the real test was about to begin.

I remember when Andy invited me

to an early screening of it.

The cast believed

it was most likely career oblivion.

And I was so nervous, I couldn't go.

My wife Nancy went and then she came home

and she said it's really good.

And I said, come on.

Harrison got on the phone.

And he said to me, "Yeah, we're gonna work again."

He said it was really, really good.

Test audiences agreed.

It got the highest numbers of any Warner Bros. show

that had ever been tested.

It was 98% very good and excellent.

First time Harrison saw it,

he leaned over and kissed me.

I got a call from Harrison.

"And I have to say one thing,

you made the movie. Thank you for that."

And then I fainted, I was on the floor.

The buzz around "The Fugitive"

was building fast, and when the movie premiered

in July of 1993, it seemed everyone wanted to see it.

Everyone, except for one person.

I haven't seen the film.

I can't stand to watch myself on film.

What?

But I hear it's pretty terrific.

It got seven Academy Award nominations.

The film that for the longest time

had no ending, was about to have the perfect ending

for one man.

Tommy was like, ain't nobody gonna win

an Academy Award on this one.

The Oscar goes to Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive."

Tommy deserved that.

He was really the glue on that movie.

Warner Bros. had a critical

and commercial smash,

the best performing picture in years.

It was just about as great

as it ever gets in the movie business.

And it seemed Joey Pants

had been right all along,

just like he told Harrison.

"There's not gonna be a sequel."

And I looked at him and I said, "Oh yeah?

you! We'll just chase some other $20 million asshole

through the woods.

Joey Pants got his sequel in 1998.

"US Marshals" was released.

US Marshall Renfro. Listen, we're gonna need both.

And the $20 million actor they were chasing

was Wesley Snipes.

I'll take the gun.

"The Fugitive" would ultimately run away

with nearly $370 million in Global Box office

from a budget of just 44 million.

We had everything going for us.

We had the biggest movie star who was a hero in the movie,

who hadn't been able to play

a kind of realistic character like this for a while.

Oh, you know, there's movies out there

people still talk about, you know,

and I'm glad that "Fugitive" is one of them.

Harrison Ford had become a box office titan.

In fact, there was really only one role left to ascend to.

All right, Mr. President.

I had this crazy idea.

The president as an action hero.

So who better to play the Commander in Chief?

I'm on the phone with Kevin Costner.

In a film called "Air Force One..."

Here comes Harrison, taxis right up by Air Force One.

...that could easily turn into Air Force Dumb.

I said, Harrison, this is gonna break the bank.

Sir, time to go.

I am certain it's not gonna work.