Strange Days Movie Notes
From the Strange Days
Press Kit
Los Angeles, December 31, 1999. The eve of the Millennium.
Worldwide tension mounts during the final hours of this century
as humanity holds its breath for the odometer to click over to
triple zeroes. Is it the end of the world, or the beginning of a
new one?
In the digital underground of this violent and chaotic city,
human experience is bought and sold as the newest form of illicit
entertainment. Through these neon nights and "STRANGE
DAYS" moves LENNY NERO (Ralph Fiennes), street hustler,
ex-cop, and panhandler of stolen dreams. To him the city is like
a big coral reef ... a giant food chain. Alive and dynamic. A
place where a fast fish can eat and avoid being eaten. Lenny can
talk himself out of trouble fast, but into trouble faster. Lenny
is a charming bottomfeeder who could sell Dr. Scholl's to a
snake, and he seems to know everybody. But now somebody he knows
is setting him up for a fall, and he suddenly finds himselfin a
maze of paranoia, deception and murder.
See, Lenny sells "clips" -- little bits and pieces of
peoples' lives, everything they saw, heard, and felt for thirty
minutes captured on a digital recording. They call it "the
wire," and Lenny has everybody hooked. If it has anything to
do with the wire, sooner or later it washes up on his beach. As
Lenny says, "This is not like TV only better. This is life
-- a piece of somebody's life, straight from the cerebral
cortex." It's all there, powerful and true -- the physical
and emotional purity of raw human experience. Sight, sound,
taste, smell, touch. You go through it whole, as if it were
happening to you right then, right there. Users call it playback
and in a future far more dangerous than our present it has become
the drug of choice. If it can be recorded, it can beexperienced
and Lenny is the man who can make anything happen -- safely and
discreetly --wherever and whenever you want it. "I'm the
Magic Man," he likes to say, "the Santa Claus of the
Subconscious. You say it, you even think it, you can have
it."
Lenny's greatest gift is insight into human nature -- the talent
of a world-class psychiatrist or bartender -- the ability to see
into people, to say to them what they may not even be able to say
to themselves. He knows about longing and desire, pain and
frustration. He knows what people want, what their subconscious
minds want, and whythey do things. He knows the importance of
fantasy, and of seeing through other eyes. Lenny's stock in trade
is human experience. There are a million stories in the City of
Angels, and Lenny has the highlights available for your pleasure.
Sex. Thrills. Violence. And maybe a little vicarious love. All
that good stuff. If you want it. If you can pay for it. If you
can handle it.
Anything but death. Lenny doesn't deal in death. He refuses to
buy or sell "blackjacks" -- death clips. But tonight
death will be dealing with Lenny. A girl Lenny knew named IRIS
(Brigitte Bako) used to do "wire work" for him,
recording clips he could sell on the run. Desperate. Terrified.
Before she can tell him why, she's brutally murdered. And when
someone anonymously slips him the killer's playback recording of
Iris' death, Lenny can't help but become an emotional accomplice.
Playback won't let you flinch or look away. Lenny must relive the
crime from start to finish, allowing the murderer's psychotic
elation to mix with his own horror.
The clip becomes a door into a mirror-maze of intrigue, betrayal
and relentless pursuit by forceshe doesn't understand. It leads
inexorably toward a secret so lethal that it may bring the entire
city down in flames. In a flashpoint society, Lenny finds himself
holding the ultimate lit match. And on New Year's Eve, the mother
of all partiesthreatens to turn into a riot so big you'll see the
smoke from Canada. Lenny is fighting way out of his weight class,
running to stay alive, racing to solve the puzzle before it
solves him. There are only two people he can really trust in
these strangest of days. It's MACE (Angela Bassett) he calls for
help and transportation. She's a stunningly forceful woman who
makes her living as a security agent, offering protection to the
wealthy and powerful clients who ride in her armored limousine.
Lenny, neither wealthy nor powerful, is always begging rides off
her. Mace doesn't approve of his current profession ("Face
it, Lenny. You sell porno to wireheads.") but their unusual
relationship predates all that. It was forged in a better time,
before Lenny becameaddicted to his own hustle. Now, she's the
only friend he's got who can look past the facade and see Lenny
for what he truly is: a romantic in a world that's lost its
balance, trying to survive with as little pain as possible.
And it's MAX (Tom Sizemore), the most loyal and dependable
lowlife you could ever hope to meet, to whom Lenny turns for
spiritual solace. Max is an ex-cop too, getting by on a meager
disability pension and his own unique brand of cynicism.
"You know how I know it's the end of the world, Lenny?
Everything's already been done.Every kinda music, every
government, every hairstyle. How we gonna make it another
thousand years, for Chrissake?" Good question. The only
positive thing you can say about Los Angeles 1999 is that the
city is still standing. The long-awaited "big one"
hasn't hit yet, though many would consider it a blessing if it
did. Police and National Guardsmen fill the streets, enforcing a
tenuous illusion of order while Molotov cocktails take out BMWs
three blocks over. Gunfire is common now, buildings smolder,
residents are boxed in on all sides by military checkpoints.
Violence, poverty, class/race warfare. Los Angeles is a city
under siege, an occupied nation where the camera eye and the
helicopter spotlight define the limits of your freedom. The
execution-style homicide of rap star/militant activist JERIKO ONE
(Glenn Plummer) pushes racial tensions even closer to the
breaking point. Martyred, Jeriko's prophecy of revolt hangs over
Los Angeles like an H-bomb. Lenny, Mace and Max must navigate
this exploding landscape and fit all the jagged pieces together
before it's too late. It makes for a crazy jigsaw: Iris' death,
Jeriko One's murder, cutting closer to Lenny than he ever would
have thought possible. Whoever was chasing Iris seems to have
caught Lenny's scent; anonymous playback clips keep appearing,
pulling Lenny deeper into mystery and addiction, nailing him with
guilt and dread.
Lenny's greatest fear is that whoever killed Iris may now be
after FAITH (Juliette Lewis), an up-and-coming singer and the
singular implacable obsession from Lenny's former, happier life.
The memories of his time with Faith are what keep Lenny together.
But Faith has put those memories far behind her. She loved him
once, maybe. But whatever she felt is part of a surrendered past
which only Lenny will not give up. Lenny keeps it to himself,
safely preserved in a tattered shoebox full of playback clips.
But the past keeps scrambling the present, and the closer Lenny
gets to the truth of all the killings, the more he puts himself
at risk. Only one thing is certain: Lenny's got one last chance
at a new beginning. All he needs to do is get the woman who loves
him to help him the woman he loves. And somehow make it through
the night alive.
As the year ends, the century dies, and the millennium
approaches, he must make good, turn himself around or sink into
darkness. Street savvy, funny and fast, Lenny has always made the
smart pick. But as the world spins toward thelast midnight of the
century, living or dying may not be up to him.
Happy New Year.
Twentieth Century Fox Presents A Lightstorm Entertainment
Production, A Kathryn Bigelow Film, Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett
in "STRANGE DAYS," starring Juliette Lewis, Tom
Sizemore, Vincent D'Onofrio, Michael Wincott. The score is by
Graeme Revell, with additional score by Deep Forest; and the
music supervisor is Randy Gerston. The costume designer is Ellen
Mirojnick; the production designer is Lilly Kilvert; and the
director of photography is Matthew F. Leonetti, A.S.C. The film
is edited by Howard Smith, A.C.E. Special visual effects are by
Digital Domain. Rae Sanchini serves as executive producer. The
story is by James Cameron, and the screenplay is by James Cameron
and Jay Cocks. "STRANGE DAYS" is produced by
JamesCameron and Steven-Charles Jaffe, and directed by Kathryn
Bigelow. Millennium Approaches
The last day of the last year of this century. The eve of a new
millennium. The concept of a world about to kick over into the
year 2000 has fascinated many -- and as we hurtle ever closer to
"2K," millennium madness will undoubtedly take hold.
One of cinema's most imaginative and successful filmmakers was
also intrigued by the subject, and decided to explore it via a
treatment for a possible motion picture. "I was fascinated
by the idea of the millennium -- what it would mean and what it
wouldn't mean," remembers James Cameron, the writer-director
of the blockbuster films "The Terminator,"
"Aliens," "The Abyss," "Terminator 2:
Judgment Day," and "True Lies."And what it meant
to Cameron was a world not dissimilar from our own. Extrapolating
from today's headlines, he pictured a society enveloped in an
ever-increasing web of paranoia, violence and socio-political
upheavals.
Beyond inventing what he calls a place and time of "gloom
and doom," Cameron was intent on creating real characters
with whom audiences could become involved. "I also wanted to
do a kind of redemption motif. I always had in mind the fate of
this one guy, Lenny Nero, and his ability to find what's right
and what's wrong. If one person can elevate themselves or redeem
themselves then, by extrapolation, we all can." Wanting to
put "STRANGE DAYS" in the hands of a filmmaker with
whom he was in stylistic and thematic sync, Cameron turned to
Kathryn Bigelow to direct. Noted for her skill at merging a
signature visual style with strong, vivid characters in such
films as "Near Dark" and "Blue Steel,"
Bigelow hadsimilarly collaborated with Cameron on the
highly-regarded 1991 action thriller "Point Break."
"Kathryn is a unique filmmaker, I think, in that she's able
to capably balance character and visual," Cameron points
out. "Like me, she wanted to do a story that had a very
accessible emotional basis so that the audience would care about
these people."
Bigelow's reaction to Cameron's story idea was immediate and
strong. "It was a tremendous piece that offered so many
opportunities. When I first became involved with "STRANGE
DAYS" four years ago, I saw a way to draw one possible
future, think about it and maybe derail it; imagine it and feel
it as you watch. Is this the end of the world or the beginning of
another one? "That's the core of "STRANGE DAYS"
and what moved me --compelled me -- to make it," Bigelow
continues. "Those themes, and these characters: a hustler
with an undiscovered conscience and a guide through the
underworld who has the strength, and the love, to survive. The
interlocking story of Lenny and Mace becomes a parable in noirish
disguise, a story about the pervasive need to watch, to see. It
calibrates the fragile balance between viewer and viewed, screen
and audience, spectacle as medium and subject. It puts us all in
the picture."
As these characters began to take shape, Bigelow worked with
Cameron to give the story an increased political edge, taking it
beyond a film noir relationship thriller. "I had always
thought of Los Angeles as an apocalyptic city," Cameron
explains. "Kathryn wanted to play that theme out a little
bit more, and give it a wider scope." The strong political
edge is largely provided by the film's setting -- a
multi-national mega-metropolis at the burnt out core of this
millennial madness. Los Angeles. For Bigelow, the nature of
L.A.'s gender and racial blending provided a perfect microcosm in
which to set the story. "Los Angeles is a real cultural
polyglot, and I think that was essential to the piece," she
explains. "It's the optimum frame of mind for STRANGE
DAYS."
Work continued on the story, with Cameron, who had only planned
on writing the initial treatment, expanding his work into a
unique, hybrid piece which he called a "scriptment."
"I always tell myself 'I'm not writing a script, I'm just
writing a treatment,'" says Cameron, who customarily juggles
three scripts at the same time. But the characters and story he
had outlined had really drawn him in. "I got really into
it," he recalls, "and I just wrote the scenes because
the characters become so real to me. So at the end of the day, I
had this 'two-headed calf' that is sort of a novelistic template
for a movie, with all the scenes in it." Having committed to
start work on "True Lies," Cameron was unable to expand
his "STRANGE DAYS" scriptment into a full script. So,
he and Bigelow brought in Jay Cocks to work on the final
screenplay. An Academy Award(R) nominee for co-writing Martin
Scorsese's adaptation of "The Age of Innocence," Cocks
had previously worked with Bigelow on a screenplay about Joan of
Arc entitled "Company of Angels."
While the playback technology known as SQUID was always a
pervasive presence in the story and script, Cocks and Bigelow
continued to add dimension to the characters and bring their
Lenny and Mace," says Cocks. "We didn't want to do tech
and glitz. We wanted to do street. And we wanted to give a very
vivid sense of a city in terminal social disorder. And a society
really on the razor's edge." In fact, Cocks points to a
famed writer who made Los Angeles a vivid character in his works,
as a touchstone. "I came to this from more of a Raymond
Chandler angle than a William Gibson angle," he says,
offering a strong preference for the former's L.A.-based,
hard-edged detective stories over Gibson's techno-thrillers.
Cameron, who, during a window of opportunity took another pass at
the script, mentions a different literary influence. "I
wanted to do a David Mamet science-fiction film," he says,
referring to the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter
and director, known for his dense and gritty, hard-edged
dialogue. "I wanted to do a film that was so character-based
and realistic that the rhythm of the words, the way the people
talked, was a critical part of the overall design and style of
the film."
The rhythm of Lenny Nero's slick, rapid-fire patter is used to
peddle what could be called the ultimate drug, a technology
featuring full sensory playback. Although SQUID plays an critical
role in the story, the filmmakers nonetheless see the technology
primarily as a symbol of the experience of watching a motion
picture. "To me this is a movie about living
vicariously," shares Cocks. "SQUID's just a metaphor.
It's a metaphor for your dreams and fantasies. And it's a
metaphor for the way we all live through movies." Bigelow
elaborates on the film's self-reflexive and voyeuristic themes.
"We're a society of watchers who seem to be addicted to
vicarious thrills. And SQUID is just an extrapolation of the
cinematic experience. The technology satisfies a certain
appetite, a certain hunger, that is really part of the human
condition. As Lenny says, 'We all need to take a walk on the dark
side of the street, it's what we are.'"
Impressed with Ralph Fiennes' ability to connect to his
characters in "Schindler's List" and other projects,
Bigelow cast the Academy Award(R)-nominated actor as Lenny Nero.
"Ralph's performances are so seamless and so complete,"
she points out, "and his transformation is so genuine in
every character he's played." "The role of Lenny Nero
required somebody who had a tremendous amount of intelligence,
complexity, depth and a wide range of emotion," Bigelow
continues. "It's a series of qualities that I really felt
only Ralph could supply."
Interestingly, Fiennes was not exactly how Cameron initially
visualized the character. "I saw Lenny being a little
glibber and slicker," explains Cameron. "But what Ralph
brings to it is a kind of transparent honesty and vulnerability,
even though Lenny's a liar and a hustler. He made it a much
sexier character, a guy you care about very much. There's a
reality in the way Ralph played it. You say, 'I get this guy. He
seems real to me.'" Lenny's likability, however, is often
masked by a myriad of character flaws, and no one offers a him.
"He's a hustler," Fiennes states flatly. "He's a
loser. Lenny has slid down from the code of behavior of the
'upright policeman' to selling this illegal form of visual
narcotic."
In researching his role as a former police officer, Fiennes spent
time in the field with LAPD vice and narcotics detectives. The
actor is quick to point out that the film's projected social
tensions are not necessarily reflected by the police department
as a whole. "I hung around with policemen who were extremely
helpful, very understanding and very perceptive about the kind of
problems that people have to deal with. There's a way of life out
there that's very sad and dirty and lonely, with people selling
themselves just to get a few minutes' kick with ecstasy or crack
or something. I mean, it's sad. But it was very interesting for
me to get both perspectives." The experience also gave
Fiennes strong insights into how his character might have fallen
from the LAPD's good graces. "I don't think Lenny was a very
good cop," admits Fiennes. "Working vice you tread a
very thin line. You go into gambling houses and brothels. You do
drug deals. Those people have to believe you're genuine so you
start to play a role. I think you can easily slip over from
knowing that you're a policeman on this side of the law to being
on that side of the law. It's quite common, I gather from talking
to vice cops. And if a guy working vice is found to be sustaining
a relationship with a prostitute, he will be kicked off the
force."
This was Lenny's fate, presumes Fiennes, more so than trafficking
in illegal playback clips; when he fell for a young runaway named
Faith, played by Juliette Lewis. "She inspired him and he
wanted to sort of rescue her from this dark pit that she was
in." While their relationship is clearly a thing of the
past, Lenny remains deeply obsessed. "He sees something
special in Faith," explains Fiennes. "She has this
amazing kind of angry but also incredibly energized and awakening
singing voice which sort of grabs you by the lapels and shakes
you."
As described in the script: "Her voice becomes a
scream, an inchoate wail, a police siren. The pain and rage of an
entire, hell-bent tormented planet on its eve of judgment. Lost
in the song, Faith has found herself." "Faith was one
of the hardest roles to cast," remembers Jaffe,
"because you have extremely limited choices when the
character is defined as a singer, yet requires the skill of a
seasoned actor. We weren't sure if we wanted an actor playing a
singer, or if we should get a singer and hope she could act. When
we met with Juliette Lewis, we knew we had found someone who
could handle both the singing and acting."
For Lewis, who's lent her acting talents to such films as
"Cape Fear" and "What's Eating Gilbert
Grape," Faith's musical performances were both a challenge
and a delight. "I can't even describe it. It was so much
fun," she confides. "Just lately I've gotten to the
point where I can sing, because I was even more self-conscious
about singing than acting." "Juliette had mentioned
that she could sing," remembers Bigelow, "and that she
could utilize this other, untapped talent. So, we had her try out
a couple of songs, and it was just a revelation. It was a perfect
scenario." Bigelow uses a line from the script to describe
Lewis' no-holds-barred performance: "It was pure and
uncut," says the admiring director. "Juliette is truly
a fearless actor; she's just boundless in her approach."
Lewis created her "live" performances in the recording
studio (a technical concession),
vocalizing two songs composed by P.J. Harvey, "Hardly
Wait" and "Rid of Me." Harvey's recent album,
"To Bring You My Love," reached the top of alternative
music charts around the globe. "I was so excited because
P.J.'s perfect," exclaims Lewis. "She's this gorgeous,
genius artist who embodies everything that Faith is. Kathryn felt
that way too. She's dramatic and she creates great music and it's
all from the gut. It's raw and emotional and it was exhausting
for me. I would get almost dizzy after doing it for a couple of
takes." In addition to the music's physical demands, Lewis
worked hard to find her own voice within Harvey's compositions.
"There are parts in her songs where she just goes off on her
own. She improvises the breaks, and it was really hard for me
because there's no way I could mimic that. I shouldn't, anyway. I
had to find my own way to sing her songs but stay true to what
she does. I hope she likes it."
Shooting her performance on stage was a longtime fantasy fulfilled: "I've
always wanted to play a singer -- to see how fun it would be to just get down
and sing." Myriad takes were required to capture Lewis' energy from the
wealth of camera angles envisioned by director Bigelow for the sequence. "The
only negative was that I couldn't sing live for sound editing reasons,"
explains Lewis, who nevertheless enjoyed her time on stage immensely. "I
didn't rehearse any of my physical actions. I would grab the mike, and I just
had a ball. The extras were with me and we were doing the scene together and
that's how a performer should be with her audience." As Faith performs
at the Retinal Fetish nightclub, Lenny again decides to try and renew a relationship
that has long since come to an end. "He's trying to hang onto something
that the audience will see is finished," says Fiennes. (Click
Here to see Lenny's Longing video clip)
According to Lewis, the relationship between Faith and Lenny was
doomed from the beginning. "The way I look at it, Faith
doesn't have the ability to truly be in love with another person
because that requires complete selflessness. I mean, Lenny helped
lift her out of bad circumstances. He sort of gave her integrity
and a little bit of self-respect, but then she meets bigger
opportunities." Specifically, she meets record producer and
talent manager Philo Gant. Michael Wincott chose to portray the
music industry honcho with a certain lonely
"romanticism," tempered by bitterness and distrust. As
Gant casually remarks to Faith, "Paranoia is only reality on
a finer scale."
Faith and Gant leave Lenny stranded in the solo corner of a love
triangle. "He's totally obsessed with her,"
admits Fiennes. "In fact, he recorded some of his happier
experiences with her and goes back to his apartment to relive
those experiences by himself. He's living in a kind of sad world
of nostalgia." Lenny's relationship with Faith is little
more than a magnetic fragment of the past. The trouble Faith
falls into, however, is very real. "A playback recording is
given to Lenny anonymously which shows the horrific murder of a
young prostitute," explains Fiennes. "The victim is
someone Lenny and Faith both know. In fact, she used to be
Faith's best friend. The playback technology plays a big part in
the story. There's a very sick mind at work and Lenny's senses
tell him that if this person knows Faith then Faith may be in
danger."
To Lenny's credit, he rises above his petty addictions and black
market dealings in order to save Faith, but he cannot do it
alone. Lenny turns to his friend Max Peltier, another ex-cop, for
spiritual solace laced with an all-too-perceptive cynicism. The
loyal and dependable Max is always there for the ever-troubled --
and ever-in-trouble -- Lenny. "Lenny relies on Max
to help him out in this situation," says Fiennes. "He's
loud, he's funny. He has a slightly crazy edge to him. He's a
kind of big bear of a man."
Having given Tom Sizemore his first acting role in "Blue
Steel," then working with him again on "Point
Break," it didn't take long for Bigelow to cast the
highly-regarded actor in this critical role. "I'm a big Tom
Sizemore fan," enthuses the director. "He's one of the
great actors working out there today. He's such a powerhouse,
he's capable of anything." "I knew Tom would be right
for Max," adds Bigelow, "and he would give it the right
mixture of nuance and affability, and you would have genuine
affection for him."
Sizemore brought his usual strong viewpoint to his character.
"Max is Lenny's link to his past life," remarks
Sizemore, "to police officers, to law and order and maybe
some sense of cohesion, even though Max seems totally not
cohesive himself. They were police officers together before Lenny
became kind of a 'trode junky and Max was let off the force
because of an injury." The partnership still works.
Sizemore's gritty Max complements Fiennes' smooth talking Lenny
perfectly, instilling events with a barstool-philosopher's
clarity. Max keeps Lenny focused on the gravity of his situation
-- a second set of eyes looking for a conspiracy with no apparent
limits. A very different kind of support is provided by Lornette
"Mace" Mason, a character whom Bigelow describes as
providing not only the film's moral center, but having "the
strength and conviction to see that through, and to be our
beacon, perhaps the only beacon of light on the horizon."
Mace has real-world problems. She's a single mother who puts in
twelve-hour shifts as a security expert and driver to make ends
meet. Mace doesn't want to get involved in Lenny's
Playback-fueled nightworld, but when she is drawn into it, she
doesn't flinch. "Mace basically comes off being a person
that you would aspire to be," comments Cameron. "She's
very strong, she's very capable, and she kicks everybody's ass.
It's that simple: You don't mess with Mace." Bigelow had
followed and admired Angela Bassett's early work in the films
"Boyz N the Hood," "City of Hope" and
"Malcolm X," in addition to her Oscar(R)-nominated turn
as Tina Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It?." It
was a body of work that virtually compelled Bigelow and Cameron
to see Bassett as Mace. "Her strength, power and command of
the screen as an actor was so vivid in that film," remembers
Cameron. "In fact, Kathryn dragged me to see it; she had
already seen it. And I said, 'Well, that woman could definitely
be Mace." For Bigelow, too, therecould be nobody else.
Shortly after being cast, Bassett met with Jay Cocks, who found
the actress' strength an important and helpful influence on his
writing the role. "Angela is just so immediate and she
throws out so much energy," enthuses Cocks, "that you
can harness a little bit of that and just throw it right back on
the page." Recognized for the unyielding commitment she
brings to all her roles, Bassett gave dimensions to Mace that
weren't necessarily scripted. "Mace is trying to feed a
family and survive. What's most important to her is her child, so
she probably went to a training school just to get another
skill," shares Bassett. A former waitress, Mace now has a
new career as an armed limousine driver, a profession which
reflects the times. "She works for a lot of the foreign
dignitaries and businessmen who come to Los Angeles and need
professional protection. Not only does she drive them in her
limo, but she also physically protects them. I'm sure that it
pays well. The stakes are high and these are perilous
times."
Bassett notes that, out of all the characters, Mace is the only
one who has chosen not to become involved with Playback in any
way. "Memories are meant to fade," Mace tells Lenny,
emotionally. "They were designed that way for a
reason." "Mace is the one thing in Lenny's life that
remains sure and centered and grounded," says Bassett.
"He tries to walk this thin line about how he's helping
mankind and he's providing a service with SQUID. He says, 'I'm
helping people. I'm the magic man. I'm saving lives.' The limits
get blurred after a while. When the money's there, your mind will
create its own reality if it wants to, and my character steadily
bumps up against that."
"We see her impatience with him using their
friendship," notes Bassett, who refers to Mace as Lenny's
"moral preservative." "They're good buddies, but
she disapproves totally of what he does. She tolerates him ...
just." "I fuss Lenny out," jokes Bassett about the
interplay between the two characters, "but we really do care
about each other. That's what should come across. Hearts connect,
you know? We are genuinely friends and we go to the line for each
other."
Bassett observes that Mace's function as partner/sidekick is a
role traditionally assigned to male performers. "Men get to
have all the fun and do all the fights," laughs Bassett.
"In this film, I get to save the day. That was one of the
most appealing things about the script. In reading it you say,
'Oh, this character was probably a guy at one point, but I'm glad
they turned him into a woman.' But then you hear that the
character was always perceived as a black woman and it's just
really cool and very right." "STRANGE DAYS" marks
Bassett's most physical assignment to date. "I was very
physical in 'What's Love Got to Do With It?,' but that's a
different kind of physicality. That was dancing. In this film, I
had to run and shoot and dive. There's a scene at the harbor
where I take my limousine and just drive it off the pier. I've
never been called upon to do anything like that before. It was
cold, dark and frightening, but it was also very exciting."
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