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HARRISON FORD:
“What was important in this case was to test the theory of our technology on people in the banking community and the computer world. What we found was if they were at all iffy on whether or not our concept would work we would add the one proviso that we hadn’t given them at the beginning, which was that their family was being held with a gun to their heads. Now would it work? Yes, it would.”
PAUL BETTANY on playing a villain:
“It’s so much easier than playing nice guys. I’m always really impressed by people that can play nice guys. Tom Hanks is brilliant at playing nice guys, he just does it so well. Whenever I’ve had to do it I just find it so confusing, because it’s much easier to get your fingers into the dirt. People don’t wander the world thinking, ‘God, I’m a psycho. I’m such a bad man.’ So Cox absolutely thinks of himself as a businessman, and there are endless justifications you can make for stealing stuff. There’s so much pain and suffering in the world, one upper middleclass family in America being held captive for 48 hours surely isn’t that dreadful. For us sitting on the outside, that’s psychotic, but for him it was another way to make a great deal of money.”
FORD:
“Paul is a remarkable actor. He’s got the whole kit. He’s a really solid intellectual and knows how to understand a story, and the problem of making a film. He’s a very instinctive actor and he has also a very professional demeanor, and I think he conducts himself in a beautiful way, it was a great pleasure for me to work with him.”
VIRGINIA MADSEN on the telephone call she received from Harrison Ford asking her to co-star with him in the movie:
“I was flying around doing publicity for Sideways, and I heard that the role in Firewall was going to go to another actress. So when there was this message, supposedly from Harrison Ford, I thought, ‘This is not funny.’ I thought someone was pulling my leg. He wouldn’t call me directly. So I called the number just to see, all right, who is it? I was like, ‘Harrison?’ This is Virginia Madsen calling you, Harrison Ford’ [she says sarcastically]. And as the conversation went on, I was like [gasps] – all of a sudden I felt like I was a little kid in school in the principal’s office. Then, of course, I was trying to be really cool and laid back. ‘Oh yeah, I really enjoyed certain elements of the script!’”
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THE CONCEPT:
