entertainment
events
issues
music
art
hilltopics
the university
monday ◀
11.22.99 ◀
ten.a ◀
By B. Anne Hess Special to the Kansas
before filiming
acob Kozlowski, Abqucharque, N.M.
senior, shot at a man and ordered a
house set on fire this summer.
With a tradebook by Wunschwolter.
slavery," Wright said. "He was my umbilical link to that period and to a great resevoir of strength. I talked through him to the characters."
With his trademark Bushwick hong hair and a full beard, Kozlowski still looks the part of the Lawrence raider he portrayed in the movie, Ride with the Devil.
"Three to four days after my call back audition I got a call that I should cut cutting my hair and shaving," he said. "It stink."
the boot camp included horseback riding training, black-powder weapons training and history seminars. The actors also had a required reading curriculum including Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Edward Leslie's The Devil Knows How to Ride, a biography of "Tit."
Talking the talk
tion I got a call that i... ug my hair and shaving." he said. "It stuck." Kozlowski spent two days on the set in Pat torshburg. Mo, filming his sequence in Quantrill's raid on Lawrence. In his origina scene, the shooting victim lives and the house burns. However, most of the action ended up on the editing floor. The scene that didn't get cut took almost eight hours to film and produced one minute of movie tape. Kozlowski said he didn't think that some of his work had been cut. "I tinkled with the movie," he said. "Or
“It's not
Paul Meier, associate professor of theatre and film, taught the actors to speak Missouri.
biography of
W. I. I. a m
Quantrill.
"It was a rigor-
ous training
period," said
James Caviezel
who played
Black Jack.
"He had to drop a cer-
tain amount of
train amount of
them. There is
was no actual
your usual western. It's a war film that is very thoughtful."
I tucked in the movie, he said. "Or course, I was waiting to see myself fell then to burn the house down because those were my lines, but I understand that they have made those decisions, and I think they did a damn good job."
Koizler, a communications and Spanish major, didn't have aspirations to be an actor but knew Rite with the Devil was a war movie directed by Ang Lee. And since he'd grown up riding horses and hunting, Koizler's sake the part was right up his alley.
As dialect and dialogue coach, Meier worked with the 11 principal actors via audiotape and phone calls a month before shooting. Two weeks before, he started working with the actors every day. By the end of the six months of filming, Meier had worked with all 70 speaking roles.
like you aren't there
was no actual — Professor of theater and film
boot camp where
Meier said that the Taiwanese Amy Lee did, n't trust himself in working with the regional dialects because his English ears it were "Meier."
While Kozlowki knew how to ride a horse and shoot a black-powder gun, the 11 prince, pal actors were not so fortunate. To look and play the part of renegade warriors, they trained intensively for the three weeks.
we stayed in towels. We'd have all died or hypothermia if we had."
Boot Camp
Meier, who is the voice of Colin Withrow or the Worlds of Kun Mamba advertisements managed to keep up with his teaching schedule despite filming.
Cavizel originally didn't want to do another movie since he'd just returned from shooting *The Thin Red Line* in Guadalajara, for six months. But when he read the script, he liked the character of Black John. "He's just evil for evil's sake," Cavizel said. "The guy needed to believe in what he doing. No matter who they are — Al Capone or Adolf Hitler— they believe that they are doing the right thing. I wanted that to bring that to this character."
Top: Union soldiers return from battle in Lawrence in a scene from *Ride With the Devil*. The movie opens ninth-window on Wednesday.
Above: Sue Les Sheille (Jewel) romances Jack (*Skeet Ulrich*) in the beginning of the film but moves on to Jake (*Tobey Maguire*) after Jack's death.
— Contributed art
"if they were having a big action scene without it, much talking. I wouldn't go to the se," he said. "if it was a talky day, I'd go I worked about four days a week on average." Because the film was singer Jewel's first, Meier said he worked more with her than with the other actress.
jeffrey Wright Wright Hof, a former fightighter with the bushwackers. Wright dedicated the role to his grandfather.
"My grandfather is the my living link to
"Jewel is a hard kind of girl, a farm girl with his r's." he said. Meier landed the job by interviewing with director Ang Lee and submitting a tape of the character's voices.
cast a skin of young men. They're virgins, an
yet they've killed a dozen men."
A Tight Grip
"It's not your usual western," Meier said. "It's a war film that is very thoughtful. Everyone loses in war, and this shows it. Aug
must be inefficient, but they run a really tight ship." he said. "They're professionals for a reason."
Lawrence history comes alive on film in stunning Devil
be a grip on the Ride with the Devil set for three days. He stayed for almost two months. Holt said he had two basic functions as a grip. As an extension of the light crew Holt customized the set by casting shadows crumfishing and adding color. He also built cranes or track for the cameras so the cameras were mobile. His work schedule involved 12-hour days, six days a week.
He said he nea nainly nine enough girl work to pay attention to other aspects of moviemaking. He learned the most from watching director of photography Frederick Eimes, an award-winning cinematographer. "I've worked with idiots and worked with Oscar winners and now I know the difference," he said.
Quantrill's Raid came through Lawrence on August 21, 1863, when Missouri iregreats, known as Bushwaggers, walked through a fogbreakers, shrouded South Park and manued the city's male inhabitants.
A lot of people think that expensive movies
Ride with the Devil is And Lee's rendition of the raid! It'a a rendition worth seeing, jake Reedel (Tobey Maguire), the son of a German immigrant, and his best friend Jack Bull Ckles of Miski Urich) join a gang of Miske souri Bushwhackers after a band of Kansas Jayhawkers murderers' family.
Film focus
Rating: R
Grade: A
Where: Opening in December
of South Wind 12, 3433 Iowa
St.
Running Time: 2 hours, 18
minutes
Ride with the Devil opens in New York and Los Angeles Wednesday. It will open in Lawrence on a yet-to-be determined date in December at South Wind 12, 3463 Iowa St.
Dugged in the mudmom of Union soldiers, they fight in skirmishes in Missouri before they hunker down for the winter in a hideout on Confederate sympathizer" farm. They are joined by George Clyde (Simon Baker and
evolves from a battle against the North into a struggle for personal freedom.
The one downside to the movie is that the climactic Quantrill's Raid scene, where Lawrence is burned by BUSHwhackers and virtually every living Lawrence man is murdered, doesn't match the violent pitch of earlier shootouts and later moments of tension. It is during this scene, however, where you can see the University's own Jake Kozlowski to a fine job of killing a Lawrence resident as the Bushwhacker listed as "Lawrence rider" in the credits.
Yes, she does have a breast in the movie, but as all the discussion on the Internet has confirmed not, 'the breast she hares isn't hers. It's her body double's.
As in any good movie moral clarity clouds as the characters realize the untaintiness of the cause for which they fight. Roedel, marginalized already by his German ancestry, soon becomes disillusioned with his revenge crazed comrades and identifies more with Holt, a fellow outsider.
"I wrong. I can'tain't it wrong." Roote (?) says of the war late in the movie. "It just is." For Roeteel and Holt, the war
Lee wisely places Rodal and Holt inside a diner eating a surreal breakfast of coffee and eggs for the duration of the massacre. Inside the diner, the scope of the movie can shift from the historical epic back to the personal development of these two characters, where the true strength of this movie lies. Besides the narrative, special must be made of Lee's attention to details of the era and setting. In the film, you can dry grass crumple underfoot, the popping sounds of guns in the distance, the rasp of rifle close and the rasp of the war-era crack pages of Civil War-era books.
Lee also knows where to look to capture the beauty of the countryside.
Many shots focus upward on the trees of Missouri, evoking transitions in time by showing the seasonal transformation of the land scape.
Visually breathtaking and locally considered to be an accurate film portrayal of the Missouri-Kansas border war, *Ride with the Devil* is a ride worth taking.
>
1