Strange Days (film)

Producer James Cameron conceived the story of Strange Days around 1986.

The story of Strange Days was originally conceived by producer James Cameron around 1986.[1] He eventually presented it to his former wife and director Kathryn Bigelow, who immediately found it impressive.[2] According to her, "These two characters on the eve of the millennium, with one character trying to get the woman who loves him to help him save the woman he loves. It's this great emotional matrix."[2] After a series of dialogues, Cameron and Bigelow developed the film's society and political element. Cameron focused more on the romantic side, while Bigelow centered more on "the edginess, the grit" part of the film, which was something she was always interested in.[2] Cameron later wrote a 90-page treatment based on these dialogues,[3] stating that it was "practically a novel, but it was unwieldy; it needed structure."[1] The treatment was then presented to screenwriter Jay Cocks, who turned it into a script.[1] Cameron felt that the resulting script was very well structured and only did a dialogue polish on top of it.[1] The script was completed in 1993.[4]

Bigelow was motivated to start work on Strange Days shortly after a series of cultural incidents that occurred in the United States in the early nineties, such as the Lorena Bobbitt trial and the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King verdict.[5] Referring to the latter, she noted, "I was involved in the downtown cleanup, and I was very moved by that experience. You got a palpable sense of the anger and frustration and economic disparity in which we live."[6] She also developed the character of Mace from Cameron's original script to make "valuable connections between female victimisation and racial oppression."[5] The film was named after the 1967 song of the same name by The Doors.[7] Both Strange Days and Cameron's 1994 action film True Lies were part of a multimillion-dollar production deal between Lightstorm Entertainment and 20th Century Fox. However, the financing was unevenly divided between the two films, with Strange Days being initially budgeted at $30 million and True Lies at $70 million.[4]

Academy Award nominee Angela Bassett was attached to the film from its early stages, after Bigelow sent her the treatment document and Bassett accepted the lead role of Mace.[8] In January 1994, it was reported that actor Andy Garcia was close to being cast as Lenny.[4] However, on February 3, 1994, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Ralph Fiennes had been cast instead and that he was wrapping up negotiations to play the role.[9] Fiennes' starmaking role in Schindler's List, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award just days later, impressed Bigelow enough to cast him as Lenny. She stated that the role "required somebody who had a tremendous amount of intelligence, complexity, depth, a series of qualities that I really felt only Ralph could supply."[4] Cameron, however, had first felt that a "glibber and slicker" actor would be better for the role, but admitted that Fiennes made Lenny "a sexier character—a guy you can care about very much."[4]

The Hollywood Reporter also announced that Irish rock star Bono was expected to join Fiennes and Bassett in the role of Faith's love interest Philo Gant.[9] In March 1994, columnist Army Archerd reported in Variety that Bono was still being sought for the role,[10] which would eventually be played by Michael Wincott. In May 1994, a third Academy Award nominee, Juliette Lewis, was cast alongside Fiennes and Bassett.[4] The fact that Lewis was able to sing was important because the producers wanted to avoid lip-synching.[4]

Filming of Strange Days was originally announced with a start date of May 12, 1994, but that date was delayed to June 6, 1994 as the cast was finalized.[4] Bigelow said that the O. J. Simpson murder case "[echoed] the film events", adding that Strange Days was filmed during the summer and fall of that year.[11] The film was entirely shot in the greater Los Angeles area over a period of 77 nights.[4][8] Producer Steven-Charles Jaffe said that the city was generally very cooperative, except for the subway scene as the team only had four hours a night to film it.[8] Jaffe, however, remarked that Bigelow "was so well prepared that what would have taken another director several weeks to do, she did in a matter of days."[8] The production team also received permission from the West Hollywood film commission to film on Sunset Boulevard for a two-day period, which required the shut down of several lanes of traffic.[4]

The scene where the crowd celebrates the turn of the new millennium at the end of the film was shot at the corner of the 5th and Flower streets, between the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and the Los Angeles Public Library.[12] Over 50 off-duty police officers were hired to control an assembled crowd of 10,000 people, who had to pay $10 in advance to attend the event.[4][12] The film-makers also hired rave promoters Moss Jacobs and Philip Blaine to produce performances featuring Aphex Twin, Deee-Lite, as well as "all the cyber-techno bands they could garner".[4] It was reported that a total of $750,000 was spent on the event, which included the production's rental of half of the 1,300 rooms in the Bonaventure.[12] The event started at 9 pm on a Saturday night and ended shortly before its scheduled end at 4 am, as five people were hospitalized for suffering overdoses of the drug ecstasy.[4][12]

The film's SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot (POV), required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation.[4] A full year was spent building a specialized camera that could reproduce the effect of looking through someone else's eyes.[4] Bigelow revealed that it was essentially "a stripped-down Arri that weighed much less than the smallest EYMO and yet it would take all the prime lenses."[13] Cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti was also hired to help Bigelow film the scenes, which were choreographed weeks in advance.[4] The opening sequence, which features a 16-foot jump between two buildings by a stunt performer without a safety harness, took two years to co-ordinate and has hidden cuts.[4][13] For example, the jump was filmed with a helmet camera, while the run up a stair escape required a Steadicam.[13] According to Cameron, "We designed transitions that would work seamlessly. It was a very technical scene that doesn't look technical."[1] The sequence where Iris runs in front of a speeding freight train was shot backwards, with the train backing up. The footage was then reversed during editing.[13]

International music was chosen as the primary music style of Strange Days due to its variety of sounds and instruments.[4] According to music supervisor Randy Gerston, who previously worked on True Lies, this type of music helped the film-makers create a futuristic atmosphere, noting that "the world is shrinking and people are getting acclimated to strange languages being part of the pop vernacular."[4] Michael Kamen was the first composer hired to create a score for the film.[14] Michel Sanchez and Éric Mouquet, the French duo known as Deep Forest, were then hired to replace Kamen's work. In addition to their score, Deep Forest teamed with Peter Gabriel to write an original song for the film's end credits, titled "While the Earth Sleeps".[15] Australian composer Graeme Revell, fresh off writing an acclaimed score for The Crow, was then hired to replace most of Deep Forest's work, and he wrote the electronic-driven score used in the finished film.[14] Revell also teamed with singer-songwriter Lori Carson to write an original song that appears over the film's final scene, titled "Fall in the Light".[16]

Bigelow was a fan of English musician PJ Harvey, and chose two of her songs, "Rid of Me" and "Hardly Wait", to be performed onscreen by Lewis.[17] Alternative rock band Skunk Anansie appeared in the film, performing at the New Year's Eve event, and were encouraged to jam between takes, so Bigelow could record them live and give the rave greater authenticity.[4] Although the band would have a live sound on the film, they ultimately had to lip-sync.[4] Other musicians featured on the soundtrack included British trip hop artist Tricky, Belgian electronic group Lords of Acid and American heavy metal band Prong. A soundtrack album was released on October 3, 1995.[18] In addition, 60,000 promotional CD-ROMs, which contained production material from the film and music clips from the soundtrack, were made available only through the "College Special" issue of Rolling Stone magazine that was sold at record stores.[4]

Strange Days premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 6, 1995,[25] grossing $31,062 on that weekend.[26] It expanded a week later on October 13, 1995 in 1,691 theaters and grossed $3,656,012 on its opening weekend.[26] The film's poor performance at the box office was compared to Jade and The Scarlet Letter, which opened at the same time and had a similar budget.[27] Overall, the film went on to make $7,959,291 in North America, little more than a sixth of its $42 million production cost.[26] As a result, Strange Days was considered a commercial failure, due in part to the poor marketing strategy and lack of audience understanding.[4] The film almost derailed Bigelow's career, as five years would pass before she directed her next film, The Weight of Water.[24] Internationally, Strange Days was distributed by United International Pictures.[28][29][30]

Upon release, Strange Days polarized film critics. Roger Ebert, who gave the film four out of four stars, described it as "a technical tour de force" and highlighted the film's astute use of SQUID technology, stating that "Bigelow is able to exploit the idea of what is happening; she forces her audience to deal with the screen reality, instead of allowing us to process it as routine 'action.'"[31] The film's technical aspects were also praised by Variety editor Todd McCarthy, who remarked that no other film since Lady in the Lake in 1947 had "experimented so extensively with the subjective camera".[32] In a mixed review, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B−" rating, concluding that Strange Days "has a dazzling atmosphere of grunge futurism, but beneath its dark satire of audiovisual decadence lurks a naggingly conventional underworld thriller."[33] Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle criticized the film for failing to commentate its violence, saying that "Bigelow's style is so visceral [...] that her movie reminds us of a snuff film, rather than a well-reasoned cautionary tale about our animal instincts."[34] New York magazine writer David Denby called the rape scene "the sickest sequence in modern movies".[35]

The performances of the lead characters were highlighted very positively.[25][36][7] Writing for Chicago Tribune, film critic Michael Wilmington praised Fiennes' performance because it captures "the weaselly, pleading side of Lenny", while noting "the slight formality of his diction", which he felt gives the character depth.[7] Similarly, in her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin said that Fiennes "gleefully captures Lenny's sleaziness while also showing there is something about this schlockmeister that is worth saving, despite much evidence to the contrary."[25] As for Bassett, she felt that the character "looks great and radiates inner strength even without the bone-crunching physical feats to which she is often assigned."[25] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Strange Days Bigelow's "magnum opus" and credited Bassett's "standout" performance, describing her as "fierce, funny and heart rending".[36] In contrast, Sizemore and Lewis were considered miscast in their roles.[37][38] At the 22nd Saturn Awards, Bassett won Best Actress and Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director award.[39]

Retrospectively, the film's critical standing has improved. Roger Ebert's correspondent Michael Mirasol felt that Strange Days had some obvious weaknesses, including a dialogue that is too polished for its setting, but nevertheless judged its "devotion to its characters, its remarkable use of POVs to create its consistent atmosphere of apprehension and excitement, and most of all, its fearlessness."[22] In 2009, Drew Morton of the Pajiba website considered Strange Days an "extremely underappreciated film" and "the best piece of cyberpunk to grace celluloid since Ridley Scott's Blade Runner."[40] Strange Days also garnered a small cult following, who felt that the film has been overlooked by a casual mass audience and misguided critics.[41] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 66% based on reviews from 53 critics. The website's consensus states: "Strange Days struggles to make the most of its futuristic premise, but what's left remains a well-directed, reasonably enjoyable sci-fi fantasy."[42] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on a scale of A+ to F.[43]

Strange Days was released on VHS in the United States by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on April 2, 1996.[44] A special widescreen THX LaserDisc was released in the United States on May 22, 1996. The LaserDisc's special features included a 1-hour lecture about how the opening scene was filmed, two deleted scenes, a music video for "Selling Jesus" directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the original teaser and theatrical trailers, and photo galleries of storyboards and production stills.[45] On September 28, 1999, the film was released on DVD in the United States,[46] containing all the features from the LaserDisc version, except for the music video and photo galleries.[47]