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  Revolution Studios In the film "Black Hawk Down," based on the 1993 Somalian rescue mission, Grimes is played by Ewan McGregor.

By Christopher Cobb

Daily Bruin Contributor

After a viewing of “Black Hawk Down,” at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood Monday, director Ridley Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer spoke on the process of turning the events of U.N. intervention in 1993 Somalia into the current blockbuster film.

“Black Hawk Down” is a major contender for next month’s Academy Awards with four nominations, including one for Scott, 64, as director.

Jerry Bruckheimer, 56, admits the film has been a long time in the making. Bruckheimer had targeted the book by Mark Bowden, which also lent its name for the film’s title. From there, it was two and a half years before Bruckheimer could decide on a suitable director.

Once on board, Scott became a major creative force for the film.

“I talked to Ridley, and as soon as we had a script … he jumped right in and started re-working it and worked out another four or five drafts,” Bruckheimer said.

Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann, played by Josh Hartnett, in his second war-related role in less than a year, easily became the focus for the film.

“Josh represents a character who actually was the person chosen essentially to be in charge of his troops,” Scott said. “So we have this good mess to start with the character, who is already feeling vulnerable, not because of what he did, but because of the new role he had to take on that particular day.” Choices for the rest of the cast were not as simple.

“This was particularly difficult because it became easily apparent that when these guys had their heads shaved and their helmets on, I didn’t know who was who, and so this pertained to the casting of the characters,” Scott said. “I’d better have very descriptive faces, so that the audience would understand, as soon as possible, who was who.”

But before Scott had to deal with casting, producer Bruckheimer knew he needed some other necessary support in order for the film to be a success. Even having worked with the U.S. Military on earlier films like 1986’s “Top Gun,” and last year’s “Pearl Harbor,” getting cooperation would be no small feat.

“This was under the Clinton Administration, and I’d mentioned that we’d brought the book to Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and he happened to be a fan of the book. Then I talked to the secretary of the army and he also happened to be a fan of the book. So we knew, at least in the Clinton Administration, we had supporters for the project, and it would have been very difficult to make the movie without them,” Bruckheimer said.

  American Cinematheque Jerry Bruckheimer (left) and

Ridley Scott (right) engage in a discussion regarding the making of "Black Hawk Down."

In an already strong production company, Scott knew it would be necessary to include advisers who were involved with the mission in Somalia in order for a maximum of historical accuracy.

“This whole film became about a process,” Scott said, “Them studying what goes down, which is really when the cause and effect starts to kick in, and how the plan shifts from Plan-A to Plan-B to Plan-C. I figured I really needed that hour-by-hour situation, because it all became about accuracy. The film you see is fairly accurate.”

Another member of Scott’s dream team was Pietro Scalia, who worked as editor on the last three of Scott’s films. On Sunday, Scalia took home this year’s American Cinema Editors award for Best Editing for this latest endeavor.

For Scott, Scalia rounded out the job started by the writer.

“The process of making a good movie is (begun) ideally by a great writer ... and at the end is finished off with another great storyteller, who is actually an editor,” Scott said. “A great editor has all the great storytelling in his veins, and Pietro has that.”

Revolution Studios Ty Burrell (left) plays Wilkinson and Jeremy Piven (on stretcher) plays Wolcott in the war flick "Black Hawk Down."

Because a rough cut of the film was finished by mid-August, and a final edit almost complete weeks later, the events of Sept. 11 did not affect the release. In fact Scott hoped to go ahead with the film in order to get back to normal.

Once the film was green-lighted for an early 2002 release, the marketing campaign began. Bruckheimer wanted to show potential audiences early on that this was not just another war epic.

“Ridley and I were presented with a number of ideas, and felt the approach that everybody would take was the safe approach,” he said. “It showed it as an action movie, with multiple heads (of starring actors) and helicopters going down, things we’d felt we’d seen before.”

The end result was a campaign that featured a solitary Josh Hartnett looking down from a helicopter with the tagline “Leave no man behind.”

According to Bruckheimer, studio executives were not pleased.

“It’s pretty frightening for them to finance (a marketing campaign) knowing we’re going for a more artistic manner,” he said.

Of course, this fear appears to have been unfounded; the film has already grossed over $100 million domestically with a continually strong showing due to multiple Oscar nods. It looks to be a blockbuster overseas as well.

This is not the first time Scott has tackled war for the big screen. Scott has visited the genre in 1997’s “G.I. Jane,” and in his first feature, 1977’s “The Duelists.”

The character of the warrior seems to have particular significance to Scott.

“In fact I never experienced actual service because it ended the second year I was in college, and I remember this desire, like a slight disappointment that somewhere in my genes, that I wouldn’t be going to war,” he said. “It’s also a character on the cutting edge of society, whatever that society is, whether it’s Roman or if it’s Northeast African.”

“So it must be something to do with my genes, and if I’m experiencing it as a moviemaker then theoretically, the audience is doing the same thing,” he added.