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Well, well — what would Liam Neeson be doing in dark glasses at a morning press conference?
Neeson and Pierce Brosnan met the media yesterday to talk about their new movie together, a Western called Seraphim Falls. As for those dark glasses, Neeson said, quietly, “I’ve a little scratch on one eye,” unaware that some in the audience had noticed him at midnight having a pint or two at a festival party.
"Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it," Neeson added sheepishly. When the laughter subsided, Pierce Brosnan said, “I almost wore mine, too. But two Irishmen in dark glasses — there’s something suspect there.”
On the cowboy theme of the film, “I grew up on the pictures and on Westerns,” said Brosnan. “Clint Eastwood was one of my heroes, and John Ford type Westerns have always been on my wish list. I was enthralled by the script, and pleased that Liam was attached. We’ve known each other for years but never really worked together. And I’d seen Bullet In The Brain,” he continued, referring to the work of Seraphim Falls director David Von Ancken, “and it’s a beautiful haiku of a picture. And then, to shoot in Santa Fe — all the elements were there.”
Canoe Live: Watch video of the "Seraphim Falls" presser here
“My hero, even before Clint Eastwood, was Audie Murphy,” chimed in Neeson. “and those B-movie Westerns that he made. That whole Western myth, we were both steeped in it as children. To ride horses and shoot a gun and wear a cowboy hat — it’s that elemental. It was a joy."
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Seraphim Falls is set in the U.S. West just after the Civil War. Brosnan plays a hunted man, and Neeson is the man determined to catch him over something from their shared past. The whys and wherefores are slowly filled in as the hunter and the hunted go about their journey. The story opens in the Rocky Mountains, with Brosnan, shot and bleeding, escaping down a mountain and into a rushing river. Fatigue, wounds, hunger, climate, landscape and various bashings are but a few of the things against him.
It was a punishing shoot.
Neeson said, “Pierce had to get into the water and he had to be naked, so he had it worse than I did.”
“It was brutal,” said Brosnan. For starters, filming began in the mountains at an elevation of 12,000 feet and that, said Brosnan, “Took the stuffing out of you.”
Then there was the horseback riding. And the fights. And the falling down. And then there were those river scenes in Oregon for Brosnan. The water was so cold that specialists explained to the men that the life expectancy in the water without a wet suit was four minutes. Brosnan did the water scenes on a tether, landing near a log pile in the rushing river. Dangerous? The director was told that if the actor came off the tether he wouldn’t come up again until spring.
This rough and tumble role is quite a departure for the man who played the suave and debonair James Bond.
“I suppose I painted myself into a corner with suave and debonair,” said Brosnan, “and it was time to get out there and do a bit of acting, a bit of character work.”
When a reporter yesterday asked about Daniel Craig playing the new Bond, Brosnan feigned dismay.
“And this was all going so well,” he murmured. “Daniel who?” joked Neeson.
“I’m looking forward to it, of course,” Brosnan then said, enthusiastically, “the way we’re all looking forward to it — he’s a great actor.”