With his director's chair secured and this
"incredible" script in hand, Ratner set out to cast the movie.
Even during that process, the naysaying continued.
"Everybody I went to hire, they said you won't get them - Philip
Seymour Hoffman, you won't get him...I don't think anyone was sitting
there going, 'God, I've got to work with the guy who directed Rush
Hour'...they responded to the script at first, and then I got to meet
with them because they loved the script...Then I told them what my
vision was...I said, 'I'm not making a horror film, I'm not making a
gory film...I'm trying to go back in the direction of Silence, which is
leaving it up to the audience's imagination'."
Apparently, Ratner's pitch worked. Take a moment to consider this
impressive cast list. Academy Award Winner Anthony Hopkins. Academy
Award Nominee Ralph Fiennes. Academy Award Nominee Edward Norton.
Academy Award Nominee Emily Watson. Academy Award Nominee Harvey Keitel.
Tony Award Nominee Philip Seymour Hoffman. Tony Award Winner Mary Louise
Parker. He managed to assemble a dream cast that would impress even the
most seasoned directors in Hollywood. Not a bad effort for his first
"serious" movie.
"I want to work with the best actors. I can't take an actor, I mean
a person who is not a good actor, and make them good. I'm not, like,
some genius director, you know (laughs). But with a good actor, I can
feed them anything, and they can chew it up, and spit it out, and make
it their own, and make it great. So, I know that the key to anything,
after going and working with scripts that weren't fantastic going into
it, is that when you have a great script...you can get great actors, and
then you have a chance of making a better movie...Ted Tally's script was
really, honestly, it was unbelievable."
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