Xzibit Hosts ‘Getaway’ Shelby Event (Photo Credit: Darius Stone)
On Tuesday evening, The Source Magazine was invited to a special evening produced by SA Studios and The ID Agency, which featured an in-depth Q&A with ‘Getaway’ director Courtney Solomon and stunt coordinator Charlie Picerni, hosted by Rapper and car enthusiast Xzibit. Warner Bros. “Getaway,” a gritty, heart-pounding action thriller starring Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke, actress and international music sensation Selena Gomez, Academy Award winner Jon Voight, and a tricked-out Shelby Super Snake hits theaters today.
We had the opportunity to interview Director Courtney Solomon at the event. Check out what he had to say about working on “Getaway.”
“Getaway” is a race against the clock film.
Courtney Solomon: It is for sure. It’s a race against the clock film, but to me if you’re talking story-wise, it’s a love story. Because it’s only about his love for his girlfriend. That’s it. That’s what motivates everything that he did and it’s real simple. It’s not overly complicated because I wanted the movie to be like the ride, the ride is the experience. You get the movie and enjoy it. It’s like “Fast and the Furious” on steroids. Literally, from the sound to the camera angles and all that. But at the core it’s also a heist story, as well. It’s an action movie and a race against the clock for sure. But more so than anything, his main motivation is a human perspective and it’s his love for his girl and that’s it. I don’t think any of us would do anything different if we were put in his position.
What was the inspiration for using the American muscle car, the Shelby, in the film?
Courtney Solomon: It’s a character in the movie. Just like Ethan and Selena and Jon Voight, it’s a character. It’s in every shot of the movie, they’re in this car, this chase scene goes on and on…I mean look at that thing. Look at how banged up it got and it still looks good…This is part of our life and I felt it had to be an American car and the Mustang is the American car that we all had – my parents had and my grandparents had it.
You used three red cameras to shoot the film?
Courtney Solomon: Three red cameras, but there were days with five red cameras as the average, but we were never without three red cameras. So when you’re shooting this movie, studying your cameras through every shot is taking a long time…and it’s also because of the distance that you cover in one take. If we’re shooting this scene, it’s just the four of us talking and I can figure out different ways to shoot that and it’s not going to take that long to set that up. But if we’re going to travel from here to 500 feet down that way during the take, I have a lot of ground that I have to cover.
Can you speak about your decision to fund the project yourself?
Courtney Solomon: We did fund the movie ourselves. It was always a Warner Brothers movie, but the deal was that they release the movie and we’d pay for the movie, so it was like real love…my company is known for doing that. My company is called After Dark Films and we’ve made forty smaller movies in the past 4 years and we give younger filmmakers an opportunity to make movies and we do foreign sales and all that kind of stuff to fund the movie…No pain no gain…
There were some stories that you guys destroyed 130 cars during the course of filming?
Courtney Solomon: We truly truly did…as soon as they were wrecked there was a tow truck to pick them up and if we had a take two of shooting, they couldn’t just sit there in the middle of the road wrecked…so some of them were like three quarters wrecked and I had to go back to the studio to where the junk was and I was like, “Holy Sh*t.” I don’t know where that picture is, but I have a picture of it and it’s truly like you walked into a junk yard.
Reporting by Darius Stone.
