I-SPY

Movie Production Notes

GETTING STARTED | Credits | About the Production

Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

The world of international intrigue makes for strange bedfellows in Columbia Pictures' comedic adventure I Spy, starring Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson under the direction of Betty Thomas, released Nov. 1, 2002.

Special agent Alex Scott (Wilson) and middleweight world champion Kelly Robinson (Murphy) are reluctantly paired for a dangerous mission to recover the Switchblade, the U.S.'s latest and most technologically sophisticated reconnaissance aircraft. The prototype spy plane has fallen into the hands of a nefarious arms dealer, Arnold Gundars (Malcolm McDowell), who plans to sell it to the highest bidder ­ a rogue terrorist with access to nuclear warheads. After the U.S. government fails to retrieve the plane through the normal undercover channels, the president asks Robinson to provide civilian cover for agent Scott to find the stealth aircraft before the terrorist transforms it into a delivery system for weapons of mass destruction.

Scott needs Robinson to penetrate Gundars' palatial headquarters in Budapest. An avid boxing fan, Gundars is staging a championship bout between the undefeated Robinson (57-0) and the reigning European titleholder.

The real contest takes place outside the ring, however, between the cocky Robinson and the put-upon Scott. After a series of near disasters, the two men finally bond in the depths of the Budapest sewer system. Robinson, the womanizer, coaches the shy, insecure Scott in the art of seduction so he can woo Rachel (Famke Janssen), the beautiful agent who is on assignment with them. In turn, Scott introduces Robinson to the dazzling world of espionage and high-tech spy gadgetry.

The newly forged friendship is put to the ultimate test when sudden disaster forces allies to become enemies and the two men engage in a race against time to prevent the Switchblade from embarking on its deadly mission.

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Credits

Columbia Pictures presents A Tall Trees/C-2 Picture Production in association with Sheldon Leonard Productions, I Spy, an action comedy from director Betty Thomas (Dr. Dolittle, The Brady Bunch Movie) starring Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson, Famke Janssen, Malcolm McDowell, Gary Cole and Phill Lewis. The film is produced by Jenno Topping, Betty Thomas, Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna. The screenplay is by Marianne Wibberley & Cormac Wibberley and Jay Scherick & David Ronn. Story by Marianne Wibberley & Cormac Wibberley. The film's executive producers are Warren Carr, Marc Toberoff and David R. Ginsburg.

The director of photography is Oliver Wood (The Bourne Identity, U-571); production designer is Marcia Hinds-Johnson (28 Days, Six Feet Under). The film is edited by Peter Teschner (Dr. Dolittle, Charlie's Angels, Private Parts). Special visual effects by Sony Pictures Imageworks, Inc. The visual effects supervisor is Carey Villegas (What Lies Beneath). The costume designer is Ruth Carter (Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X). The music is by Richard Gibbs. The music supervisor is Elliot Lurie.

I Spy has been rated PG-13 for action violence, some sexual content and language.

GETTING STARTED

In I Spy, director Betty Thomas deftly blends elements of hilarious comedy and high adventure. It's a delicate balance, she admits, one requiring just the right combination of complementary talents.

Both Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson have proven themselves adept at juggling action and comedy, the former in such classic hits as Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hours, the latter in the recent Shanghai Noon and the upcoming Shanghai Knights, both co-starring Jackie Chan. "What was so exciting about pairing Eddie and Owen was the fact that their styles are so divergent," says Thomas. "They both approach the art of comedy from a different vantage point. Eddie's energy is large, expansive and improvisatory, while Owen's rhythms are understated and sly ­ with a kind of Jimmy Stewart-like hesitancy."

The contrast of comedic styles was appropriate to the story which, according to producer Andy Vajna, "is about two characters who are totally opposite from each other and are thrown together in a situation where they must come together in order to survive. That opens the door for some wonderful, humorous interplay."

Initially, Wilson admits he was a little nervous about performing opposite one of his comic idols. "This is the first time I've had to work with someone who is so incredible at improvisation. At first, it was difficult to keep up with Eddie. But slowly I started playing off his riffs. I don't know if that's what people mean by on-screen chemistry. To me it's a feeling that you are really in a groove with what the other guy is doing."

Producer Jenno Topping credits Thomas's instincts with the pairing of Murphy and Wilson. "From the moment they first interacted, I knew she was right. Owen almost immediately won Eddie's respect, which is not an easy thing to do.''

The third vital element in this fortuitous mixture was actress Famke Janssen, who portrays Rachel, a sexy spy with whom Wilson's character is completely smitten. "Famke brought an erotic volatility to the story," says Topping. "She was slightly intimidating to Owen, but also intriguing and sexy."

Like Wilson, Janssen gets to spar with Murphy on screen, a process she also found daunting at the outset. "There's a scene in which Eddie and I first meet and he just kept tossing lines at me and I kept going with it. It was really scary, but once I got used to it, a lot of fun as well."

Also crucial to the character mix was the right villain, Thomas attests, one who was not too overt. "Veteran actor Malcolm McDowell fit the role of arms dealer Arnold Gundars like a glove," she says.

"He is menacing, but in a quiet, dignified way," she continues. "Malcolm was totally believable as someone who could travel in international circles with ease but could also turn around and casually slit someone's throat."

With such a unique combination of talents, according to Thomas, "I knew that anything could happen and all I needed was to be open, which is not that easy in a film loaded with visual effects. As much as possible, if something wasn't working, we just kept at it until we were all comfortable with the scene or the particular bit."

Thomas is being modest, insists Topping. "Betty comes from a comedy background and she's great at fostering a creative feeling on the set, giving actors like Eddie Murphy the leeway to improvise and develop his interactions with Owen and the other characters."

The director's flexibility even extended to the film's action sequences. While doubles are occasionally used, Murphy insisted on doing some of his own stunts "because I was always looking for comic moments for myself and Owen that would also serve as a way of developing our relationship."

"It was a blast doing some of the physical stuff and trying to be funny at the same time," admits Wilson. "It gets your adrenaline pumping when you're hanging in mid-air and riffing with one another, trying to be funny and realistic within the context of the scene."

For Thomas it was crucial that the action sequences connect to our particular characters. "This isn't a James Bond movie," she says. "We didn't want the action to be generic to those types of moviesso we tried to mix our character comedy into the action sequences."

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

When veteran producer Andy Vajna approached his partner Mario Kassar about transforming the popular 1960s TV series "I Spy" into a major motion picture, he came with a unique perspective to the story. "What always intrigued me about the series was that we never found out how the two characters (played by Bill Cosby and Robert Culp) met," says Vajna. "I thought a great jumping-off point for the film would be to see how this odd couple came together and became great friends."

As Kassar saw the original series, it was less about espionage and intrigue than a wry take on adventure and friendship set against a colorful global backdrop. "It was less a show about the nuts and bolts of being a secret agent than it was about travel. They went everywhere and always seemed to be having a marvelous time. That opened up a whole world of possibilities for a film both in terms of humor and action."

In the series, Bill Cosby portrayed a tennis pro and, for a time, the filmmakers considered making Kelly Robinson an international tennis champion. Basketball was also considered, though Topping considered both sports too visually confining for the purposes of a big screen story on an international scale. It was Murphy who suggested that Robinson be a championship boxer, a sport to which he was well suited.

"I've done some boxing and my father was a boxer, so I already had a background in the sport," says Murphy, who trained for several months prior to production.

"Having an actor with a natural ability for a sport was a real asset," says Thomas. "It opened up the film in a much more exciting way than tennis or basketball. Having Eddie getting the blows and making the hits had a lot more impact than creating shots in which I would have to rely on stunt doubles." Adds stunt coordinator Brent Woolsey, "Eddie was so coordinated that it made the boxing sequences much easier to execute."

From its inception, I Spy was designed to be an action comedy with the emphasis on comedy and character. "That's what makes the movie so much fun and so different from other spy movies," says Vajna. "An antic spirit infuses every aspect of the story," says director Thomas. "We never lost sight of the comic nature of the action. We were always trying to find a humorous twist on the stunts involving the characters. We tried to be mindful that the action served to advance the relationship between the characters."

In creating high-tech spy equipment for Murphy and Wilson to use in their escapades, Thomas always made certain that they served a dual function ­ that they were fun, and also commented to the characters' personalities. "We have some cool gadgets in the film," says Thomas," and some not." Early in the film, Wilson's special agent character is always being handed useless equipment, with all the really inventive gadgets going to the '007'-type agent, Carlos (Gary Cole). "When Owen is given a spy camera, it's a large, clunky piece," says Topping, "while Carlos gets the really cool, slick, tiny camera that can be easily hidden. It commented on the fact that Owen felt insecure about the assignments he was handed, while Carlos got to cherry pick the more glamorous, high-profile gigs."

Thomas worked closely with stunt coordinator Woolsey to keep the action exciting and, at the same time, appropriate to a comedy. "Brent would stage the action and then the principal actors would have input and I'd suggest changes until the sequence built to the right level." Ideas came from everywhere, Thomas continues, including her first assistant director Richard Graves who initially came up with the car carrier idea. She also coordinated with second unit director Billy Burton. "At first I tried to be on the set with him after I'd finished shooting my day. But very soon you let that go and connect at dailies."

Principal photography began on September 12, 2001, in Budapest, Hungary. Taking a cue from the original series, Vajna decided that the movie should be set in an "exotic location ­ to create a sense of real excitement in the audience. We haven't seen Eastern Europe used much in action films, especially Hungary. Budapest has been used in movies before, but never as Budapest. It has generally been used as a substitute for Paris or some other European capital. So for the audience it was an entirely new experience. And it just so happens that Hungary is my home."

Thomas had scouted locations in England, Germany, Ireland and the Czech Republic before traveling to Hungary. The minute she arrived in Budapest, "I knew that this was the place. It was glamorous and fresh, and they were so cooperative in giving us access to places in the city where we wanted to shoot, especially the Buda Castle, which is now the National Art Gallery (which is used in the film as Arnold Gundars' palatial estate). It was the equivalent of having access to shoot at the Lincoln Memorial."

Although the filmmakers were lucky to secure Buda Castle, the use of that location presented them with some challenges. Director of photography Oliver Wood explains, "The Castle was honeycombed with caves underneath. So every time I wanted to bring in a heavy piece of equipment in for a shot, we ran the risk of the equipment sinking into the road down to the caves underneath."

Also, the grounds of the Castle are so extensive that the production's first and second units were filming on either side of the Castle at the same time. "It was an amazing feat. In some ways it was surprising that we didn't trip over each other. Action is taking place on one side, and on the other Betty is tackling all the great character stuff," says producer Kassar.

The task of turning a national monument into Gundars' private palace fell to the film's production designer Marcia Hinds-Johnson. "I wanted the place to appear lavish, but on a human scale. I didn't want Gundars' private living quarters to look institutional, so I gave it a warm, lived-in feeling with comfortable furnishings and personal touches that reflected his wealth and taste." In the larger, more open public spaces, Hinds-Johnson fashioned the film's central party scene with costumed guards on horseback, beautiful bikini-clad women in the central fountain, and a regulation size boxing ring in which Murphy's character and his opponent playfully spar on the eve of the big fight.

One of the most difficult sequences was a car chase along a narrow road next to the Danube River. The first challenge for shooting the nighttime sequence was closing down the thoroughfare and lighting it. Wood had to go to Germany to rent a dozen enormous lights for the sequence, which were suspended from two cranes on either side of the river.

Stunt coordinator Woolsey worked with Thomas to methodically plan the elaborate sequence in which Murphy and Wilson are being chased by Gundars' thugs while they are aboard an 18-wheel car carrier. "So Eddie and Owen are on the car carrier and we're blowing cars off it onto the bad guys on this narrow road by the river. That was probably the most difficult scene to control because you had so many people and vehicles on such a narrow road."

Equally daunting was an elaborate two-step escape sequence where Murphy and Wilson are lifted from a tramway into the air by inflating a large balloon and then dropped to safety down a tunnel into the Budapest sewer system. "We used two three hundred foot cranes and ran a high line between them," Woolsey outlines how it all came together. "First we put a traveler system with a descender attached so we could glide across downtown Budapest and drop them down the tunnel. We did it flawlessly," he adds proudly.

While Murphy and Wilson did some of their own stunts, Woolsey imported half a dozen crackerjack stuntmen from the U.S. and another 18 from Hungary, which presented him with another challenge, the language barrier. Instead of explaining stunts once or twice, it required five or six go-rounds to make sure that everyone was on the same page and there were no mishaps.

Although there is a great deal of comedy in I Spy, Woolsey assures action audiences that the trip will be satisfying for them as well. "We've got car chases, car wrecks, explosions, gunfire, airplanes, high falls and fights ­ just about every kind of stunt you can imagine."