The Indiana Jones actor confessed to Esquire that he had some responsibility for the long-rumored conflict between him and Pitt that erupted on the set of the cop drama. The controversy between Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt that occurred when they were filming the 1997 movie The Devil's Own is finally being discussed by Harrison Ford.
Ford claimed that his desire for his character to have a more complicated plotline like Pitt's also received opposition in addition to their differences over a director. Ford plays NYPD Sergeant Tom O'Meara in the movie. His family adopts Irish construction worker Rory Devaney (Pitt), but they soon learn that Devaney is actually an IRA terrorist trying to buy a shipment of missiles.
"First of all, I admire Brad. I think he's a wonderful actor. He's a really decent guy. But we couldn't agree on a director until we came to Alan Pakula, who I had worked with before but Brad had not," Ford clarified, citing his contribution to Pakula's 1990 movie Presumed Innocent. "Brad had this complicated character, and I wanted a complication on my side so that it wasn't just a good-and-evil battle," he said. "And that's when I came up with the bad-shooting thing."
"I worked with a writer but then all the sudden we're shooting and we didn't have a script that Brad and I agreed on," Ford said. "Each of us had different ideas about it." As a result, the movie incorporates a subplot for Harrison Ford's character in which he struggles with his moral choices after seeing his partner Eddie Diaz (Rubén Blades) fatally shoot a robber. But putting it all together while the movie was still in production proved to be a significant obstacle.
According to Chris Nashawaty, the film's budget grew from $70 million to roughly $100 million as a result of Pitt and Ford's disagreement in 1996. The fact that Devil's Own did not finish by its June deadline also led to Pitt delaying the start of production on his forthcoming feature, 1997's Seven Years in Tibet, by an additional two months. Ford now realizes that the two's impasse was primarily caused by his desires."I understand why he wanted to stay with his point of view, and I wanted to stay with my point of view — or I was imposing my point of view, and it's fair to say that that's what Brad felt," he said. "It was complicated. I like the movie very much. Very much."
Pitt and Ford "seem to have had different versions" of the movie in their heads, a producer from Columbia at the time told. Ford's representative, however, refuted "all these ugly rumors" regarding The Devil's Own and stated that there was no competition for the movie's lead part.
Elliott Page describes how a well-known actor once threatened to assault him
