Oz busts out of Muppet mold with The Score
by BRENDAN KELLY
Montreal Gazette, Monday 11 September 2000
You might expect Frank Oz to be a funny, light-hearted sort of fellow. This is, after all, the guy who first came to prominence a quarter-century back as the voice and puppet-meister behind beloved characters Animal, Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show. As a feature-film director, he has also crafted a number of popular, light comic flicks, notably Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob? and last year's hilarious Hollywood satire Bowfinger.
But the 56-year-old director and puppeteer was looking like anything but a laugh riot one day last week on the set of The Score, his latest picture as a director. The heist-flick stars Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Edward Norton, and Angela Bassett in the Montreal-set tale of a veteran international thief, played by De Niro, who is coaxed out of retirement to orchestrate one last big-bucks score. On that morning inside one of the city's studios, Oz was seated staring intently at a monitor which was relaying the image of De Niro, decked out in head-to-toe all-black commando gear, scaling a wire cage just feet away from Oz. They were filming the climactic scene in The Score, where De Niro's character, cunning criminal Nick Wells, breaks into the Customs House on Place Youville just off the port and tries to make off with loot worth millions. Much of August was spent filming after hours at the real Customs House once all the federal employees had left the imposing building for the day. Now the film crew, which has been shooting in town since the end of May, has moved into the studio to complete the filming of the finale.
The atmosphere on the set that day was far from relaxed. When De Niro arrived, the tension level rose appreciably and a newspaper photographer was politely but firmly told to hide her cameras until the star actor went back to his trailer. Oz was equally wound up. He turned and glared at a reporter when he heard a hint of paper rustling, and his eyes seemed to burn holes through the monitor as he stared at De Niro in commando garb.
During a break from shooting, the soft-spoken Oz was happy to chat about the Muppets, Brando and shooting Montreal-as-Montreal, and he turned out to be a genial guy. But he was quick to note that The Score is a demanding project and conceded that there is a lot riding on the film for him personally given that it's his first dramatic film. From early films including The Muppets Take Manhattan through to more recent efforts, such as The Indian in the Cupboard and In & Out, Oz has stuck to the laughs. Oz, who joined Jim Henson and the Muppets team way back in 1963, is best known in the non-comedy world for portraying and providing the voice for Jedi Master Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and last year's blockbuster Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.
Until The Score, Oz was almost exclusively associated with Star Wars, furry puppets and frothy comedies.
"I've been known for comedies, but I've always looked for other things to do and I just hadn't found anything that I thought was really worthwhile," said the British-born director, who moved with his parents to the U.S. at the age of 5.
"I've been getting the best comedy scripts because I've been successful there. But I haven't gotten the best dramatic scripts because I haven't proved my mettle there yet. I don't want to be a one-trick pony. I like mashed potatoes, but I don't want to eat mashed potatoes every single day.
"When this came along, what I really liked were the characters. It's exciting to work on something that's character-based because it's not just a genre film. So it raises the bar."
There has been gossip about battling egos on the set of The Score and off-the-wall antics by Brando, but Oz insisted the problems were blown out of proportion. He said it has mostly been a pleasure to work with De Niro, Brando and Norton. In the film, the thief Wells (De Niro) is strong-armed by his longtime fence Max (Brando) to pull off one last heist, with the help of an up-and-coming thief (Norton).
"When you deal with someone like Marlon, you expect quirkiness," Oz said. "He is an extraordinary human being and an extraordinary actor. Were there problems? Sure, but not just Marlon. With Marlon, you just expect the fact that he's quirky. That's what happens with genius. They're not normal people. But he was gracious and very caring. Was it perfect? No. It was just out of differences of opinion on the creative aspect. Marlon's not the only person I've ever differed with. Marlon gets better press because he's more well known. He's a good hook for the press. It's unfair to him really."
The initial idea was to shoot here and set The Score in an east-coast U.S. city, but when Oz and producer Gary Foster came up to Montreal on a scouting mission last year they decided to actually show Montreal as Montreal.
"It added a dimension to the film that you wouldn't get elsewhere," said Foster (Sleepless in Seattle). "New York and Chicago have been shot to death. Montreal was fresh."
It also added something to the plot by having De Niro's character living and running a jazz club in Old Montreal.
"Bob De Niro's character, Nick, the fact that he lives in Montreal is important because it's a place he loves to live and it's right between Europe and the United States," Oz said. "He steals everywhere but his own home town. So it's a good safety zone for him and it's a good place for him to hop between Europe and the United States. And also there's just a beautiful style of life here that adds to the movie."
- Shooting on The Score wraps at the end of the month. It is due in theatres next spring.
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