Features
FALL MOVIE PREVIEW/SEPTEMBER
SEVEN

STARRING BRAD PITT, MORGAN FREEMAN, GWYNETH PALTROW. DIRECTED
BY DAVID FINCHER.



Three days into 1995, the Sexiest Man Alive smashed into a
windshield. Brad Pitt was shooting a chase scene on the L.A.
set of Seven when he slipped on the rain-slicked hood of a
car, rammed into the glass, and severed a tendon in his hand,
requiring an emergency ward visit and several stitches. "I'm
not going to tell you what I said," cracks producer Arnold
Kopelson (The Fugitive). "Some expletive." Although Pitt
returned to the set in a few days, Kopelson had a right to
worry. As he got closer to making Seven, a tale of two
detectives tracking a serial killer who slays his victims
according to the seven deadly sins, Pitt went from being the
cute guy who seduced Geena Davis in Thelma & Louise to the
cute guy who seduced half of America with Interview With the
Vampire and Legends of the Fall. Suddenly, the flaxen-haired
stud-muffin from Missouri had become a star--and Seven was
supposed to be Kopelson's lucky number.

But getting Pitt to play crop-topped, gung ho rookie detective
David Mills amounted to more than a stroke of luck. "We had
lots of discussions of his character before we had him locked
into the movie," says Kopelson. "It was not just an actor
taking a job because we're paying him a lot of money." Indeed
Pitt, famously finicky with screenplays, had rejected a score
of offers before banking on Seven--a $30 million movie that
could bolster his thespian cred but baffle his teenybopper
fans. "It's a dark and moody film," says Freeman, who plays
lonesome, burned-out sleuth William Somerset. "There's a very
serious mood to it, dark and dank and rainy and somber."

It's a mood born of reality. Now 30, Andrew Kevin Walker wrote
Seven four years ago while manning the counter at Tower Records
and living in New York City, where he saw a veritable parade of
sins every day on his way home from work. "It was a depressing
time for me," the writer admits. Although Seven takes place in
a bleak, nameless metropolis, its Gotham gloom resonated with
Kopelson. The producer snatched the screenplay away from Penta,
a financially strapped Italian company, and brought it to New
Line. After director Jeremiah Chechik (Benny & Joon) bowed out,
Alien 3's Fincher, best known for Nike commercials and Madonna
videos, signed on--and instantly won the writer's heart. "One
of the first things he said," Walker recalls, "was that he
wanted to go back to the first draft." Oh, one minor change:
On screen, you'll see Pitt's character sporting a cast on his
arm after a clash with the villain. "He wasn't supposed to
break his arm, but that's what we've done," says Kopelson. "We
worked his injury into the story line." (Sept. 20)

BUZZ: Bloody. Good.