Call it casting against type: In the courtroom thriller “Primal Fear,” Richard Gere plays Chicago defense attorney Martin Vail, a man so enamored with seeing his face on television and on magazine covers that he alerts the media when he takes out his trash.
Gere, of course, has graced more than a few magazine covers, but harbors more ambivalence toward note pads and flashbulbs. This might only be expected of someone who has endured having his overnight guests photographed leaving his hotel, or who felt forced to take out full-page ads in international newspapers denying he and his former wife, Cindy Crawford, were gay.
Indeed, the day we speak, Gere confesses he is “girding his loins,” anticipating the four days of interviews he is doing to promote “Primal Fear,” which opened Wednesday.
But playing a media hog like Vail felt as liberating as it did ironic, he says.
“There was something amusing about wallowing in it,” says Gere, calling from his New York office. “(Vail) is a guy who knows himself really, really well, and is not in the least ashamed of what he does. He’s an ambulance chaser and he knows it, and he is very aware of how cocky and arrogant he is. He knows the impact he has, and uses it accordingly.”
The same might be said of Gere in “Primal Fear,” which is based on a novel by William Diehl (“Sharkey’s Machine”). It is also the first feature film directed by Gregory Hoblit, who took home four Emmys for directing, writing and producing television’s finest cop show, “Hill Street Blues,” and was nominated for the pilot of television’s second-finest cop show, “NYPD Blue.” Gere’s portrayal of Vail goes somewhere beyond cocky into the land of swagger, where audiences most like to see him.
“I know people like to see me playing wise guys,” says Gere. “And I know audiences also respond to a little scenery-chewing. In this movie, at least, it is appropriate. He is a defense lawyer, after all.”
Calling Vail a defense lawyer is like calling Mother Teresa a nice lady. Subscribing to the theory that the only so-called truth is what he can persuade a jury to believe, Vail attaches himself leech-like to a young man caught fleeing, covered in blood, from the room where Chicago’s archbishop was brutally butchered. It’s the kind of case, one character notes, that ensures a “Nightline” interview.
It’s also the kind of role that allows an actor to really cut loose, because, as Gere says, “all good defense attorneys are actors. All good prosecutors are too, and they all become defense attorneys anyway.”
Although he usually researches his roles, much of Martin Vail was fueled by instinct. “One of the things I concentrated on was ignoring the things I should be ignoring,” Gere says.
“There’s a story about an archeological find in Egypt (and) an ancient diary, one that is hailed as a tremendous discovery, until one man declares it a fake. And he says his tipoff was that the writer spent too much time talking about camels. Anyone who lived with camels, he said, would take them for granted. He wouldn’t be so infatuated with camels.
“I tried to do that with this role, and with acting in general. You want to ignore what you should ignore.”
One thing the 46-year-old Gere can’t ignore is his need of a hit. Although 1993’s “Sommersby” with Jodie Foster re-established Gere as a romantic lead, his films since have been box-office fizzles (“Intersection,” “Mr. Jones”) and he hasn’t had a certified smash since 1990’s “Pretty Woman.”
Gere’s personal life, on the other hand, has hardly lacked for attention. His marriage to supermodel Crawford was a subject of intense scrutiny, its old-style Hollywood glamor overwhelmed by new-style innuendo and sexual speculation. Their subsequent split fueled further gossip.
Gere was intrigued by the issues raised in “Primal Fear,” and when he quotes dialogue from the script that has Vail contemplating “the illusion of truth,” he can almost persuade you that the film has cerebral and spiritual seasonings. He says he has always tried to take every film he has done seriously, be it “Pretty Woman” or Akira Kurosawa’s “Rhapsody in August.”
“They all start off being big, you know, and they find their own level of importance, I suppose,” Gere says. “But after 20 years of doing films, I’ve come to accept that what is really important is being with other people, focusing all of that collective, emotional and spiritual energy on the work. In that, you end up being your best self.”
