I had the extreme honor to sit down with Richard Gere and the other actors of Brooklyn’s Finest last weekend. The movie opens in theaters on March 5th and it’s a heartfelt tale of cops in the city that never sleeps. After watching the movie I sat down with the Golden Globe winning actor and had a very deep and intimate conversation about being in the projects in Brooklyn, his numerous roles involving prostitutes and more. Check it out below.
Richard Gere compares Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman & Chantel in Brooklyn’s Finest: What people forget in Pretty Woman, not a day goes by that I don’t have someone come up to me and say ‘my wife has seen it 85 times, my daughter has seen it,’ that there is in fact a blow job in the beginning of Pretty Woman which is a fairly graphic one, but you don’t remember this because it’s a Disney Movie.
Xilla: Antoine Fuqua took you to the projects in Brooklyn to make this film, while you were there did you talk to the people of the community?
Richard Gere: Yeah.
Xilla: What do you remember about the conversations you had with the residents there and how was it being in the projects?
Richard Gere: You know the first image that comes from the outside was when I went to the West Bank, in Palestinian territories, I went to Ramallah and it was during a curfew and no one was going from the Israeli side into Ramallah. It was curfew time, you see, Israeli troops where everywhere all the roadblocks were up and we some how got in. When I showed up in Ramallah they were like children in their openness of just thank you for coming. The only time we see westerners here they’re yelling at us or selling us guns. That’s it.
In a way I felt that way in the projects it was like, what you guys are really here, you’re not just here to beat us up or yell at us or pass through, you’re actually here? You’re actually talking to us it was kind of that same revelatory feeling of you know we are all just human beings and we are all trying do the best we can to get by. We have real issues. I was walking around saying these building that this could be an incredible art center because I know there are great dancers and great musicians that could really lift the community so we would get into discussions with locals and I know for them it was like wow someone is really thinking about us in a deeper way rather than just afraid of us.
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