FILMING THE PATRIOT

Source: EW

The Patriot does have an odd pedigree. It was conceived by Rodat and Saving Private Ryan producer Gordon, then entrusted to Devlin and Emmerich as the labor of love the team needed to shed the stigma of 1998's Godzilla (which, despite its reputation as a box office flop, grossed $379 million worldwide). Rodat's rewrites — mostly self-imposed — were already into the double digits when The Patriot managed to attract, and ultimately attach, Gibson. When the star's Icon Productions made a bid to share in the distribution costs (and, of course, the profits), it got a cordial no thanks from Calley, who's known for generally choosing not to make such deals. The star instead settled for that record $25 million payday, a kingly compensation for which Gibson makes no apologies. ''What am I gonna do, not take it?'' the 44-year-old actor says. ''Look at all the people [the film industry] takes care of — it's kept this town racing. And it keeps a lot of people fed.''
Gibson's fee certainly sent the budget racing, toward what an insider says is more like $120-145 million. The film's pastoral South Carolina locations, near actual Revolutionary War historic sites in and around Rock Hill and Charleston, were supplemented by models and 160 visual effects shots, but unusually inclement Southern weather led to costly delays. Gibson says he offered the filmmakers only one piece of advice born of his experience directing 1995's similarly grand-scale Braveheart. When he heard that the shoot would last 85 days, the actor says he warned that they were optimistic by a good two weeks: ''They looked at me and went [he goes bug-eyed]. It ended up at 102 shooting days.''

Heath Ledger feared he might not make it past day 1. The rangy 21-year-old Aussie (10 Things I Hate About You) plays Martin's son Gabriel, a rebellious, battle-thirsty 18-year-old enlisted man who ends up riding on raids with his father and a ragtag band of fighters. Ledger says he prides himself on his self-reliance (he left home at 16 because ''I was in such a hurry to experience life — to create a soul — and the only way to do that was to put myself out in the arena in the middle of a pack of lions''), but he began his experience on The Patriot certain that he had muffed his audition. Partway through it he announced, ''I'm really embarrassed, but I have to leave because I'm wasting your time and I'm wasting my time,'' and hurriedly left. ''I guess they were curious,'' he adds, '''cause they called back and said, 'Come in, show us what you can really do.'''
For the film's September 1999 start, he arrived to shoot his first scene in a state of subdued panic. ''I hadn't been in front of a camera in a year, and I'm facing Mel Gibson,'' he says. ''I went to Dean and said, 'You've got to understand I'm freaked out.' I was delusional. But after one day I saw that Mel was super-relaxed — then it was a walk in the park.''
The walk became a run, in fact many runs, through fields laced with detonation cord under a mixture of peat moss, black powder, and cork (which flies up nicely when a charge goes off). At one point, overheated extras in a battle scene were reportedly ready to quit — until Gibson roused them with a speech. Then, he notes, ''even I took a breather. I said, 'Let the stunt guy do it in the wide shot. He's 10 years younger than I am.'''
Gibson's such an easygoing prankster, it's easy to forget his more serious side.
''I think anybody who has any sense of family would understand that the main focal point of the film is the personal story,'' he continues. ''Other things grow out of that — personal freedoms. People may take it for granted here, but the people who live in countries where they don't have that sure don't. This country, with all its warts and imperfections and everything, it's still the best place to live.''

Even as The Patriot turns manipulative for stretches, Gibson gives it a complex center. It was he who insisted the militia leader's dark past, marked by battlefield atrocities in the French and Indian War, be made explicit in a talk Martin has with son Gabriel. ''It's interesting to me to find the flaws,'' Gibson says. ''In the big scheme, the guy's doing the right thing, but there's the other aspect.... War is a really scary thing to me. I often thank my lucky stars that I wasn't born in some other era when you'd be shuffled off someplace to shoot at people — or even brain each other with objects.''
Gibson slowly tilts his head and raises an eyebrow, a gesture that seems to acknowledge the little vagaries of human nature. Aside from his one-word riposte to Tavington ("Soon"), he says he added just a single line to the screenplay, heard first in a voice-over during the film's opening frames, then later in Martin's deepest moment of despair: I have long feared that my sins would return to visit me. ''That's what I wanted that guy to be — tormented and scared and just waiting for karmic retribution to bite him on the ass,'' the actor says. And it's always fascinating to watch Gibson bite back.