Strange Days is a 1995 American science fiction thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, and produced by Cameron and Steven-Charles Jaffe. It stars Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, and Tom Sizemore. Set in the last two days of 1999, the film follows the story of a black marketeer of SQUID discs, recordings that allow a user to experience the recorder's memories and physical sensations, as he attempts to uncover the truth behind the murder of a prostitute.
Strange Days | |
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Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Kathryn Bigelow |
Produced by | James Cameron Steven-Charles Jaffe |
Screenplay by | James Cameron Jay Cocks |
Story by | James Cameron |
Starring |
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Music by | Graeme Revell |
Cinematography | Matthew F. Leonetti |
Edited by | Howard Smith James Cameron |
Production company | Lightstorm Entertainment |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox (North America) Universal Pictures (international) |
Release date |
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Running time | 145 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $42 million |
Box office | $8 million |
Blending science fiction with film noir conventions, Strange Days explores themes such as racism, abuse of power, rape, and voyeurism. Although the story was conceived by Cameron around 1986, Bigelow found inspiration after incidents such as the Lorena Bobbitt trial and the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King verdict. The film was shot entirely in the Greater Los Angeles Area over a period of 77 nights. The film's SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot (POV), required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation.
Strange Days was a commercial failure and almost derailed Bigelow's career, making little more than a sixth of its $42 million production cost. Upon release, the film polarized film critics; some reviewers praised its gritty atmosphere and the performances by Fiennes and Bassett, while others criticized it for failing to comment on its violence. Nevertheless, the film's critical standing has improved over the years, with many fans feeling that the film has been overlooked by a casual mass audience and misguided critics. At the 22nd Saturn Awards, Bassett won Best Actress and Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director award.
Screenplay
In the last two days of 1999, Los Angeles has become a dangerous war zone. As a group of criminals rob a Chinese restaurant, the event is recorded by a robber wearing a SQUID, an illegal electronic device that records memories and physical sensations directly from the wearer's cerebral cortex onto a MiniDisc-like device for playback. Lenny Nero, a former LAPD officer turned black marketeer of SQUID recordings, buys the robbery clip from his main supplier, Tick. Elsewhere, a prostitute named Iris, who is a former friend of Lenny's ex-girlfriend Faith Justin, is being chased by LAPD officers Burton Steckler and Dwayne Engelman. Iris escapes on a subway car but Engleman pulls off her wig, revealing a SQUID recorder headset.
Lenny pines for Faith and relies on emotional support from his two best friends: bodyguard and limousine driver Lornette "Mace" Mason and private investigator Max Peltier. Mace has unrequited feelings for Lenny from when he was still a cop and stepped in as a dependable father figure for her son after her boyfriend was arrested on drug charges, but disapproves of his SQUID-dealing business. While Lenny and Max are drinking together at a bar, Iris drops a SQUID disc through the sunroof of Lenny's car before it is towed away. Mace picks Lenny up and takes him to a nightclub where Faith is going to sing. There, Lenny receives a SQUID disc from a contact and unsuccessfully tries to get Faith away from her new boyfriend, Philo Gant. Gant is a music industry mogul who managed the recently-slain rapper Jeriko One.
While in the car with Mace, Lenny plays the disc the contact gave him and watches Iris being brutally raped and murdered by an attacker at the Sunset Regent hotel. As they approach the hotel, Iris is taken out on a stretcher. The next day, they take the disc to Tick, who cannot identify the source of the recording, but recalls that Iris was looking for Lenny. Mace deduces that Iris may have left something in Lenny's car, and the two go to the impound and find Iris's disc. Steckler and Engleman appear and demand the disc at gunpoint, but they escape in Mace's car before being forced to stop at a dock. Steckler pours gasoline on the car and sets it on fire, but Mace drives it into the harbor, extinguishing the flames. When they reach the surface, the cops have left.
Mace takes Lenny to her brother's house and they watch Iris's disc, depicting that Iris was with Jeriko One when Steckler and Engleman pulled him over and murdered him because his anti-police lyrics and activism incited protests against the LAPD. The two return to Tick, whom Max reveals has been rendered brain-dead from forceful exposure to amplified SQUID signals. Lenny fears Iris' attacker covered their tracks by "killing" Tick and will come after Faith. Back at the nightclub, Lenny and Mace confront Faith, who reveals that Philo is afraid Iris' disc would reveal that he kept his artists under surveillance. Lenny and Mace disagree over whether to trade the disc to Philo for Faith's freedom or release it publicly, which could incite a citywide riot. As midnight approaches, Lenny and Mace sneak into a private party at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel that Philo is hosting for the city's wealthy elite. Lenny has a change of heart and tells Mace to give the disc to deputy police commissioner Palmer Strickland.
In Philo's penthouse suite, Lenny finds Philo brain-dead on the floor and another disc, revealing that Max and Faith are lovers and that Max "killed" Philo with an amplified recording of them having sex. Faith explains to Lenny that Philo hired Max to kill Iris, but when Philo wanted Faith dead as part of the coverup, Max decided to frame Lenny for the murders. Lenny and Max struggle in a fight, which culminates with Lenny throwing Max off the balcony to his death. Meanwhile, on the crowded streets, Mace subdues Steckler and Engelman but other officers take down Mace. Strickland arrives and orders Mace's release and to arrest Steckler and Engelman for murder. Engelman commits suicide; Steckler threatens Mace but the officers gun him down. Lenny then finds Mace and the two share a kiss as the crowd celebrates the turn of the new century.
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Development
The story of Strange Days was originally conceived by producer James Cameron around 1986. He eventually presented it to his former wife and director Kathryn Bigelow, who immediately found it impressive. According to her, "These two characters on the eve of the millennium, with one character trying to get the woman who loves him to help him save the woman he loves. It's this great emotional matrix." After a series of dialogues, Cameron and Bigelow developed the film's society and political element. Cameron focused more on the romantic side, while Bigelow centered more on "the edginess, the grit" part of the film, which was something she was always interested in. Cameron later wrote a 90-page treatment based on these dialogues, stating that "It was practically a novel, but it was unwieldy; it needed structure." The treatment was then presented to screenwriter Jay Cocks, who turned it into a script. Cameron felt that the resulting script was very well structured and only did a dialogue polish on top of it.
Bigelow was motivated to start work on Strange Days shortly after a series of cultural incidents that occurred in the United States in the early nineties, such as the Lorena Bobbitt trial and the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King verdict. Referring to the latter, she noted, "I was involved in the downtown cleanup, and I was very moved by that experience. You got a palpable sense of the anger and frustration and economic disparity in which we live." She also developed the character of Mace from Cameron's original script to make "valuable connections between female victimisation and racial oppression." Both Strange Days and Cameron's 1994 action film True Lies were part of a multimillion-dollar production deal between Lightstorm Entertainment and 20th Century Fox. However, the financing was unevenly divided between the two films, with Strange Days being initially budgeted at $30 million and True Lies at $70 million.
Casting
Although the script for Strange Days was completed in 1993, the lead characters were not secured in the cast list until May 1994. Originally, actor Andy Garcia was a potential candidate to star in the film, and Bono of the Irish rock band U2 was rumored to star as Faith's love interest Philo Gant. Ultimately, Academy Award nominees Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, and Juliette Lewis were chosen as the leads. Fiennes' role in the Schindler's List impressed Bigelow enough to want to cast him as Nero, stating that the role "required somebody who had a tremendous amount of intelligence, complexity, depth, a series of qualities that I really felt only Ralph could supply." Cameron, however, felt that a "glibber and slicker" actor would be better for the role, but admitted that Fiennes made Lenny "a sexier character—a guy you can care about very much." In contrast, Bassett was already suggested by Cameron since the beginning. The fact that Lewis was able to sing was appreciated as the producers wanted to avoid lip-synching.
Filming
The shooting for Strange Days was originally intended to start on May 12, 1994, but was delayed to June 6, 1994 because the full cast list was incomplete. Bigelow said that the O. J. Simpson murder case " the film events", adding that Strange Days was filmed during the Summer and Fall of that year. The film was entirely shot in the Greater Los Angeles Area over a period of 77 nights. Producer Steven-Charles Jaffe said that the city was generally very cooperative, except for the subway scene as the team only had four hours a night to film it. Jaffe, however, remarked that Bigelow "was so well prepared that what would have taken another director several weeks to do, she did in a matter of days." The production team also received permission from the West Hollywood film commission to film on Sunset Boulevard for a two-day period, which required the shut down of several lanes of traffic.
The scene where the crowd celebrates the turn of the new century at the end of the film was shot at the corner of the 5th and Flower streets, between the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and the Los Angeles Public Library. Over 50 off-duty police officers were hired to control an assembled crowd of 10,000 people, who had to pay $10 in advance to attend the event. The film-makers also hired rave promoters Moss Jacobs and Philip Blaine to produce performances featuring Aphex Twin, Deee-Lite, as well as "all the cyber-techno bands they could garner". It was reported that a total of $750,000 was spent on the event, and half of the 1,300 rooms in the Bonaventure were rented out. The event started at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night and ended shortly before its scheduled end at 4 a.m., as five people were hospitalized for suffering overdoses of the drug Ecstasy.
The film's SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot (POV), required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technic
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