Through the 2024 lens, “Dogfight” plays out as a subtle, private film you’d expect from indie director Nancy Savoca (“Household Saints”), but that’s not what Warner Bros. He thought he would.
“They were thinking about Porky’s. They thought it was a comedy,” director Nancy Savoca said on IndieWire’s Toolkit podcast to talk about “Dogfight,” which enters the Criterion collection on April 30.
“[River] was in Florida at the time I was in the Bronx, and we talked for several hours on the phone, and it was just a wonderful conversation,” Savoca said. “He was talking about looking to explore other characters and opposing the roles he was playing. I was very interested in betting on someone I couldn’t understand.
“I was really excited because it meant that the discoveries I was going to make, I could film, so it was a good, juicy conversation,” said Savoca, a Bronx local who remembers the end of Phoenix. the call. “He said, ‘By the way, your voice sounds like my mother’s. She’s from the Bronx, too. ‘ I said, ‘Okay, I like it. I’m like his mother. ‘”
There were facets of the original script that neither Savoca nor Phoenix understood or considered believable. So he supported Savoca in the structure of Rose’s female role, making the film more of a two-person film.
“[Rose] was a catalyst. She was essentially there so that he could be aware of what had just happened,” said Savoca, who recalled how drastically that replaced after legendary casting director Marion Dougherty brought in actress Lili Taylor. “Once Lili was on board there I learned a lot to learn. It’s an exploration, a daily discovery of what that story could be and what you can dig and find. Basically, he builds his character so that he can be as complex as he is.
The rich subtleties of the performances made many lines of discussion and several pages of script superfluous and unfilmed. Hundreds of miles away from the studio, executives saw promising photographs and faked performances in newspapers. According to Savoca, they were satisfied with the project, perhaps naively, until their first screening of control at a Pasadena mall. Savoca recalled with horror knowing she had been screwed before the projector even started: the front rows were covered with young men, who began chanting “Dogfight, dogfight, dogfight. “.
A studio director came to help Savoca, who was crying. They thought she was nervous by nature. Savoca remembers responding, “It’s not a matter of nerves, will they need it or not?”They’re going to kill us. And the director is right: the audience reaction cards were devastating.
In essence, the film that Savoca had made was not aimed at the young market that Warner intended to reach. The studio believed that the challenge could be solved by making the finish less ambiguous, thus offering a clearer solution. to conflicting characters.
“I said, ‘I can’t, I don’t know how to do it,'” Savoca recalled in reaction to the studio’s request to rewrite and redo the ending. “I was hired. It wasn’t my idea. Maybe just do it [rewrites and redoes the ending], and I said, “As long as my calling is in it. Please remove my call [from the film]. “
The director recalled the painful last few days when she had toyed aimlessly with the film with editor John Tintori, knowing that the studio was in the process of reorganizing her film, but not aware of those projects.
“And the next thing I know, River calls me and says, ‘Are you going to be there?'” said Savoca, who remembers yesterday’s fateful call. “And I said, ‘Where?’ And he said, ‘Well, we’re going to do a shoot next week. ‘I’m not going to do it. ‘”
“He was totally supportive,” Savoca said. If he had left, I’ve got this movie, I’ve made this movie.
“Dogfight” enters the Criterion on April 30 with a new restored Blu-ray edition.