November 13, 2003
NEW YORK TIMES
A High-Risk Film on the High Seas
By Anne Thompson
_________________________________

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 12 - Every once in a while a Hollywood studio throws out the hit-formula playbook and bets that smart moviegoers will go along for the ride. "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," which opens Friday, is that rare case.

"It's a $135 million art film," said Russell Crowe, who is winning praise for his robust portrayal of Patrick O'Brian's seafaring hero, the captain of H.M.S. Surprise, Jack Aubrey. "I'm confident the audience exists."

"Master and Commander" was able to chart its own course because the studio hired a strong, confident director, the Australian Peter Weir, who held out for what he wanted. He concentrated on the action from the 10th book in the O'Brian series, drawing elements from the first. He asked that Russell Crowe be ready to shoot in 2002, not 2003. He demanded enough post-production time to make the computer-graphic effects look so real as to be invisible, forcing the studio to give up a prime June slot and push the release back to November. And he refused to make changes in the rough cut that were demanded by 20th Century Fox's financial partners, though it meant a daunting marketing challenge.

"I look back and feel like I just stepped off a high wire stretched over the Grand Canyon," Mr. Weir, 59, said on a recent visit to Los Angeles.
Finally "Master and Commander" eschews more Hollywood conventions than most such megabudget epics. The film even goes so far as to leave a love interest out of the story; the captain looks longingly at one sultry native, but that's it. And the French captain whom Captain Aubrey is relentlessly pursuing is not demonized. You hardly see him. He and his ship, the Acheron, are phantoms, the objects of fearful superstition on the part of the overmatched Surprise crew roaming the seas off South America in the age of Napoleon (a shift from the book's action, which was set during the 1812 war between Britain and the United States).

"This was quite something to push through the studio system," Mr. Weir said. "You couldn't have made it without a studio executive at the top of the tree who loves the material."

Three years ago Tom Rothman, then Fox's production president, seized an opportunity. Mr. Weir was dropping by the studio to see what projects it might have for him. He had directed only 12 movies in 26 years, including "Gallipoli," "Witness," "Dead Poets Society" and "The Truman Show." This director, who has received three Oscar nominations, was notorious for turning things down, including "Gladiator," for which Mr. Crowe won an Oscar for best actor. Mr. Weir had even passed on "Master and Commander" seven years before, when Mr. Rothman was at the Goldwyn Company. Fox was now developing the project, so Mr. Rothman decided to try again.

"It's a rare property, and it took a rare director to do it right," he recalled. "Peter for the length of his career has been able to enliven a genre with character, which is exactly what Patrick O'Brian did."

At the end of their meeting Mr. Rothman reached behind his chair. "What I really think you should do," he said, pulling out a mock captain's sword and presenting it to the director, "is take command of the Surprise." Mr. Weir asked if he could keep the sword.

Mr. Weir researched tall ships in England, then asked Fox to buy a reproduction of an 18th-century frigate, the Rose, which eventually was reoutfitted as the Surprise for the movie, even before he had a deal to make the film. At a June 2000 meeting Mr. Weir persuaded Fox to let him place the story almost entirely on the open sea. Mr. Weir and the Australian screenwriter John Collee set about writing a script.

Clearly the expensive enterprise called for a marquee star. In late 2001, when Mr. Weir offered "The Far Side of the World" to Mr. Crowe, he was interested in playing the tough but benevolent Captain Aubrey but was already committed to Ron Howard's boxing film, "Cinderella Man." Any chance the director could wait a year? No, Mr. Weir firmly told him: "The ship sails with the tide." So he made himself available.

Mr. Weir and Mr. Crowe worked closely for several weeks with the Oscar-winning screenwriter of "A Beautiful Mind," Akiva Goldsman, to beef up the relationship between the violinist captain and the cello-sawing Dr. Maturin, played by Paul Bettany. "I love the contrast and the contradiction," Mr. Weir said. "Russell was interested in adding Jack's confusions, metaphors and aphorisms."

During arduous months of shooting at Fox Studios in Baja, Mexico (where "Titanic" was filmed), the film's budget climbed. And it shot up again as Mr. Weir and Industrial Light and Magic, the visual-effects house, realized how long the 730 visual-effects shots were going to take. It is much harder to make an authentic re-creation of a period than to create a fantasy like "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."

Mr. Weir said Fox was "terribly disappointed and depressed" at having to delay the movie until after the Disney pirate adventure, which came out in July, but Mr. Rothman said that it turned out to be a blessing. "We hated to follow another movie," said Mr. Rothman, who is now co-chairman of the studio. "But `Pirates' reminded audiences of how much fun a pirate movie is."

The word on "Master and Commander" (which finally clocked in at close to $150 million) so far is upbeat. The film has already garnered praise from Rolling Stone, The Christian Science Monitor and The Chicago Sun-Times, as well as a Time cover article that knocked Mr. Crowe off Vanity Fair's cover.

Even some ardent Patrick O'Brian fans are embracing it. "When I was starting to read these books," said Richard Snow, the editor of American Heritage, "I would no more have expected to see a big $150 million movie than `The Tractatus' of Wittgenstein. Weir resurrected a whole world there, did a service to history. A-plus all around; I'd like to see 12 to 15 sequels." Others complain about distortions of character and history.

Mr. Snow won't see a sequel unless the movie makes back its investment. (While Mr. Crowe is game to do a sequel, Mr. Weir is not sure.) When the rough cut was first shown to Fox's financial partners, Universal and Miramax (which are splitting half the costs and half the worldwide proceeds), they demanded changes, Mr. Weir said: more initial exposition on land, including more at stake on the mission's outcome for Jack and his wife. Fox stood fast behind the director.

"This was our concept," Mr. Weir said. "If we dilute it, it's like a drink that falls between two barstools."

After a "cruel" first research preview in a "no man's land outside of Denver," Mr. Weir said, Fox did get skittish. Research showed that "women don't like the movie," one Universal executive said. Both Mr. Crowe and Mr. Weir expressed concern about whether the marketing, which has stressed the film's action, would reach the right audience.

"Rothman assures me that their second broadside is aimed to demonstrate the emotional pull of the film," Mr. Weir said. "We're all human beings. We surely start at the same point. A satisfying entertainment gives us a feeling of shared humanity."

Mr. Rothman acknowledged: "The marketing is a challenge. We can't show the conventional girl in a bodice. But the emotional values are very satisfying to women. This is a mission movie like `Lawrence of Arabia' or `The Hunt for Red October.' " The relationship between Maturin and Aubrey is pivotal. "Issues of loyalty and friendship are very female values," he said. "In the end he turns away from getting his prey and saves his friend. That dynamic between them is appealing to women; it's like Butch and Sundance."

Surprisingly the studio's most powerful marketing tool has been Mr. Crowe, who has spent five weeks tirelessly campaigning in Los Angeles, Chicago, Texas, New York and at the world premiere in San Diego. To soften his bad-boy image, the studio booked him for an entire "Oprah" show, on which he provided a charming taped tour of his Australian cattle ranch and wedding chapel, and revealed his bookish nature.

And while Fox tends to be more conservative in its marketing expenditures than its rivals (it is not unusual for major studios to spend $40 million marketing a top-end release), as the holiday season shifted into high gear the studio was clearly going the extra mile. Fox placed a folded eight-panel glossy insert into major newspapers, said Jeffrey Godsick, publicity chief. The studio also gave away a DVD with 25 minutes of behind-the-scenes clips inside The New York Post. "These days we are looking for unique ways to deliver our materials," he said. "We need to crack through."

Now that "The Matrix Revolutions" has opened, Mr. Godsick said, the tracking research for "Master and Commander" is finally showing more definite interest from the crucial young-male quadrant, as well as from adult men and women. For his part Mr. Weir said he hoped the film, if successful, would prove instructive to the risk-averse Hollywood system.

"The pharmaceutical companies have experimental laboratories, which cost money to run," he said, "but they might come up with something. With no bold strokes, there's no future. That's poor leadership."

.

Email Anne Thompson

..Gary Dretzka
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Ray Pride
..Patricia Vidal