Josh Brolin
Whether it seems like it or not, it’s rough business launching successful comic book movies. For all The Dark Nights and Iron Mans, there are just as many (if not more) clunkers like The Spirit, Ghost Rider or even the twice in four years re-launched Incredible Hulk. So when an obscure comic book property gets the greenlight, you know there’s twice as much sweating going on behind the scenes strategizing how to launch it right so a franchise is born.
A supernatural Western about an ex-Confederate bounty hunter with a graphically disfigured face, Jonah Hex titles have been popping up in comic book bins since 1972. Featuring gritty, raw stories about vengeance and demons (both literal and figurative), Hex is the definition of cult title that’s done just fine off the radar.
But Hollywood has spent the last decade, first for television and then the big screen, trying to figure out how to groom Hex for more. The right chemistry finally came together in 2009 when Warner Bros. connected first-time live action director Jimmy Hayward with career comeback kid Josh Brolin.
And so it was on a late day in May outside of New Orleans last year that Hayward and Brolin welcomed a small collection of curious reporters to their set to prove some assumptions about their Western anti-hero wrong.
First off, this isn’t some B-movie as rumored. Despite a modest budget of $45 million, Hayward’s brought in a laundry list of behind the scenes talent from DP Mitchell Amundsen (Wanted) to industry leading makeup designer Christien Tinsley to give him more bang for his buck. So everything from the buttons on the period dressed extra’s clothes to the built from scratch, dust ridden theater-in-the-round freak show set hosting the action tonight screams high-end production value.
Secondly, Hayward’s enthusiasm for the process and reverence for the subject material puts a dent in the early rumblings that his glossy computer animation background wasn’t a good fit for the gritty demands of Jonah Hex’s world. Stiffening his shoulders a bit at the claim, Hayward is happy to provide some context. “Listen, I happened into animation by accident,” he says without apology. “I was always going to go to film school. I started experimenting with animation and winded up being okay with it. So I winded up doing the first Toy Story movie [as an animator] and I was like, ‘I’m going to do this and then go to film school.’ But then they asked me to work on the second one and off I went. By the time a couple years had passed, it seemed like it was too late. So I stayed [at Pixar] for awhile then went off and wrote. I always intended to make the leap over but it was just finding the right piece of material.”
After his success directing Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, WB brought him in for some meetings about Hex and what he’d do with it. Hayward says it was like a dream come true. He’d been a Jonah Hex comic book fan since he was a kid, and he had the issues and ideas to back it up. Lighting up when telling the tale of how the meeting went, Hayward emphasizes, “I had an angle. It was the tone I wanted to go for and the interpretation on how to encapsulate all of Jonah Hex. To me spaghetti westerns had dropped off and westerns got all serious and not as much fun along the way. I kind of wanted to use that as a jumping off point, not to ape them because I think if you showed Companeros or a (Sergio) Leoni movie to a modern audience they’d be “WTF?” to each other in text messages because their [pace] was so slow.”
But Heyward explains he wanted the look and feel of those masterwork Westerns for Hex, and the studio was intrigued.
However the most important hurdle was getting Brolin, who the studio had attached, lost, then wooed back as their Hex, onboard with what Heyward was pitching.
Sitting in his high-back chair just off the set in full Confederate coat and double-take inducing makeup, Brolin is laid back when recounting his concerns with the property in those early days.
“I didn’t like the script at all,” he says frankly. “But there was something about it that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I made the decision right away not to do it. I met with the guys [Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor] that were directing it before and I like them a lot but I didn’t see what they were good at and what I could bring to the script. I just didn’t see it, so I said no. So they went off to find another actor. Then Warner Bros. called me and said that I brought up a lot of concerns for them.”
Brolin digresses, “When I take a script I go through it and look at it in different ways. I don’t just read it and go yes or no – well, sometimes I do – but stuff that I connect to, I go through this whole process of trying to find what is about it that I connect to and is it real.”
With some glaring problems still a factor for studio and star, Brolin remembers Heyward came in with a blast of creative energy and a strong vision that gave the actor enough confidence to want to collaborate and smooth out the rough spots that had concerned him before. “Jimmy and I got together when we first decided to do this and said somebody has to be the leader. So I said, ‘You’re the director, and I put this together, but everybody should have input.’ So then we started working it. And you see that little spark in there and say, ‘Let’s pull it out and see what it looks like.’ And it’s gotten better and better and better.”
When asked just what Hex is turning out to be – a Western, a Civil War era actioner, or a supernatural goulash of all of that and more – Hayward smiles and says, ‘Yes’.”
“This movie has supernatural elements to it,” he continues, “and there are preposterous ideas in this movie. Jonah Hex deals out his own immediate sense of ironic justice in sometimes silly ways. He has Gatling guns on his horse and there are flamethrowers but it’s not goofy. It takes itself really serious. Sometimes sillier ideas work for me. To me the best way to know about Jonah Hex was to start off with the scarred bounty hunter that is a murderous maniac that everyone is terrified of. He’s a hero to some and a villain to most. But then you tear off the layers and you realize this guy was a good guy who redeemed himself for what he did in the Civil War. He had a family and a kid but it was all taken away from him which defines him as a character.”
And as equally defining is that face Heyward just alluded to, a grotesque scarring that literally creates a hole in the side of Hex’s mug. After months of testing with different make-ups and prosthetics, the usually ruggedly handsome Brolin has now gotten used to walking around set for the past six weeks with a face only a mother could love. As he preps to go back onto set, the actor chuckles and points at the uncomfortable application that pulls back his cheek from his gums for more than 16 hours a day. “For this [makeup] there were a lot of different manifestations, a lot of tries, a lot of cutting of my lip and bruising. But it makes me feel there. [Makeup and costumes] always help me out. I like clothes and walks; changing the looks.” As if to illustrate, he grabs his side piece and swings the dust from his coat and adds, “It just works for me. I don’t know how to do me. I know other guys who are great at it…but I do better when I get away from me.” And with that Brolin strolls back to the action, disappearing into a man named Hex.
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