Harrison Ford has had feuds with several big-name actors throughout the course of his career, from Alec Baldwin over the Jack Ryan role to Josh Hartnett on the set of Hollywood Homicide. And you can add Brad Pitt to that list, who Harrison Ford butted heads with while making the 1997 thriller The Devil’s Own.
While Harrison Ford does praise Brad Pitt overall, he says in a new Esquire profile that their issues stemmed from exploring their characters and developing the screenplay. “Brad developed the script. Then they offered me the part. I saved my comments about the character and the construction of the thing—I admired Brad. First of all, I admire Brad. I think he’s a wonderful actor. He’s a really decent guy. But we couldn’t agree on a director until we came to Alan Pakula, who I had worked with before [on 1990’s Presumed Innocent] but Brad had not. Brad had this complicated character, and I wanted a complication on my side so that it wasn’t just a good-and-evil battle. And that’s when I came up with the bad-shooting thing.”
The Devil’s Own started with Kevin Jarre (Tombstone) as screenwriter. It then moved onto David Aaron Cohen and Vincent Patrick (Money Train) to help flesh out Harrison Ford’s police sergeant character before Terry George (In the Name of the Father) was tasked with improving Brad Pitt’s IRA operative. And then finally there was Robert Mark Kamen (The Karate Kid), who was writing while the movie was filming. Man, it sort of feels like writing one of our “What Happened to This Movie?!” scripts!
Harrison Ford continued, saying that the on-set differences with Brad Pitt may have put a strain on the production, but he still holds the movie dear. “I worked with a writer—but then all the sudden we’re shooting and we didn’t have a script that Brad and I agreed on. Each of us had different ideas about it. I understand why he wanted to stay with his point of view, and I wanted to stay with my point of view—or I was imposing my point of view, and it’s fair to say that that’s what Brad felt. It was complicated. I like the movie very much. Very much.”
When he’s a fan or not, The Devil’s Own is far from being one of Harrison Ford’s most beloved movies and Brad Pitt considers it one of the worst he’s ever done, even being quoted as saying, he experienced “the most irresponsible bit of film making–if you can even call it that–that I’ve ever seen.”
But the real question isn’t who you prefer over Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, but rather are you team Han or team Indy? In the same profile, Ford said, “[Fans] usually ask me, ‘If there was a fight between Han Solo and Indiana Jones, who would f*ckin’ win?’ And I say…‘Me, asshole! I don’t want to f*cking make shit up like that. I mean, what are you asking me that crap for?’” So that settles it!
Do you like The Devil’s Own? How do you think the chemistry between Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt was? Give us your thoughts below!
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