The Charlie Rose Show: Transcript

Cinderella Man

2005 Charlie Rose Inc.

CHARLIE ROSE, HOST: Welcome to the broadcast. Tonight, the movie "Cinderella Man" about James Braddock, stars Russell Crowe, Paul Giamatti, and is directed by Ron Howard.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL GIAMATTI, ACTOR: He was a guy who stuck by him through thick and thin. He was his manager. In the movie, it’s fudged a little bit, makes him his trainer. It’s a more kind of dynamic relationship.

(CROSSTALK)

PAUL GIAMATTI: Yeah, but he was definitely - I mean, he was a very savvy businessman, and he was extremely good at managing the guy`s career, stuck with him. I mean, I think they were genuinely friends.

RON HOWARD, DIRECTOR: Trying to direct the boxing scared the hell out of me. I didn’t really - there’s been -- it’s just been done well so many times, and I wasn’t sure what I could - what I could bring to that. And I thought about it and I agonized over it, and what I decided was, you know, I was over-thinking it because it was - it was going to be Russell Crowe in the ring. This, you know, Russell is - is a brilliant actor. And so, my job was less about making the fights, you know, cinematically spectacular and more about making them personal, relatable, so that the audience felt like they were going in the ring with this character, Jim Braddock.

RUSSELL CROWE, ACTOR: Every time I tried to sort of walk away from it and forget about the script and just like - just go, whatever, you know, somebody else is going to do it and just leave it alone, what called me back was everything that I had read about him after he`d been a champion. I mean, I liked who he was before he was a champion. I liked who he was when he was a champion. I liked who he was after he was a champion, you know. And he was this man, who was -- the tip of his zeitgeist moment, you know, where the working class of America were, like, hungry for somebody to show them how to get out of this thing with -- you know, without magic, just with hard work.

Russell at the Charlie Rose Show

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE ROSE: The director and the stars of "Cinderella Man" for the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHARLIE ROSE: Ron Howard is here. He is one of our best filmmakers. His latest film is called " Cinderella Man." It is based on the story of depression-era boxing champion James J. Braddock. Also, joining me, two of the film`s actors, Paul Giamatti, and for the first time at this table, Russell Crowe. Here is the trailer for the film.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RENEE ZELLWEGER, ACTOR: Every time you get hit, it feels like I`m getting hit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s old. He`s arthritic.

PAUL GIAMATTI: I`m sorry, Jimmy. It`s over.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go home to Mae and the kids, Jim.

RUSSELL CROWE: Go home with what? Go home with what?

They said I`m through, Mae, that I can`t be a boxer no more. Now, they keep cutting the shifts down at the dock, and you just don`t get picked every day. We`ve got nothing left to sell.

RENEE ZELLWEGER: I think we need to pack for kids.

RUSSELL CROWE: And send them away, that all of this has been for nothing. If we can`t stay together, that means we`ve lost! That means we`ve given up!

PAUL GIAMATTI: I got you a fight. This one fight, and one fight only. It`s not a comeback.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looks like old Jim Braddock out of retirement.

Where the hell did that come from? Win again, and things maybe start getting serious.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you do? You beat this guy easy last time?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, he ain`t the same guy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They say the papers are getting all sorts of letters from people saying you`re their inspiration, like you saved their lives or something.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You could be the next champ, Jimmy!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you scared for your husband`s life? Max Baer has killed two men in the ring.

RUSSELL CROWE: People die in fairytales all the time.

RENEE ZELLWEGER: What`s worth it, Jimmy? What`s worth it?!

RUSSELL CROWE: I have to believe I`ve got some kind of say over our lives. When things are bad, we can do something about it, make things better for our family.

RENEE ZELLWEGER: I`m always behind you.

I came to pray for Jim.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So did they. They all think that Jim`s fighting for them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This fight`s as good as murder. The first punch he lands, you`ll sleep forever.

PAUL GIAMATTI: You`d better beat this, you have to beat this from the inside out! From the inside out!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: " Cinderella Man."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE ROSE: I am pleased to have all of them here to talk about this film. Welcome. Great to see you. Great to see you again.

(CROSSTALK)

CHARLIE ROSE: Great to have you here.

Tell me how this got started, because -- how did you bring these .

RON HOWARD: Well, you know -- I was invited to the party.

CHARLIE ROSE: I know that.

RON HOWARD: Russell -- this is a character that he had his eye.

CHARLIE ROSE: Called you up, though?

RON HOWARD: Well, I knew that he was talking about the Braddock character when we were.

RUSSELL CROWE: We discussed it on the set of "Cinderella Man," just because.

RON HOWARD: Or "A Beautiful Mind."

CHARLIE ROSE: "A Beautiful Mind."

RUSSELL CROWE: I`m sorry. Of course we discussed that on the set.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: So, so on "A Beautiful Mind," you started talking about Braddock?

RUSSELL CROWE: Well, actually -- it goes way back. It goes to 1997, when I got a script, when "L.A. Confidential" had just been at Cannes, and Universal sent a script around for " Cinderella Man." I read it and I - I liked it. Not that I thought that the script in total was -- was fantastic, but the point - the point of the story, I thought, was great. And I thought it was really worth telling.

I met with the director at the time. It didn`t work out, and so the project went into turnaround. Another company picks it up. They go through, like, a list of people, one after the other, who then ponder it and consider it for a long time. And 2001, I finally got a phone call from Harvey Weinstein, saying it was mine if I wanted it. So, and that`s after dangling it for four years.

CHARLIE ROSE: How does that happen, a guy like Russell attached to a film that`s a great sort of underdog story? And it takes that long?

RUSSELL CROWE: Oh, but you`ve got to remember what a - what a -- it means now to have me in your movie is a completely different thing than a couple of links ago. You know, I was just some pain in the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) Australian a while ago. And now, it comes with other things.

CHARLIE ROSE: Not that long ago.

(CROSSTALK)

RUSSELL CROWE: I know where you were going, kiddo.

(CROSSTALK)

RUSSELL CROWE: I just knew where you were going, sorry.

PAUL GIAMATTI: You knew where I was going.

CHARLIE ROSE: Where were you going?

PAUL GIAMATTI: Oh, no, no, no, no. Let it lie. Let it lie.

RON HOWARD: So once the script is available he - asked me to take a look at it. And we had this great experience working on "Beautiful Mind." I was excited about it, but frankly, I looked at it and I - and I said to him, it`s like "I can understand why you want to play Braddock. It`s a great role. You`re going to be fantastic in this movie. And the movie is going to work, and as weird as it sounds, I`m just not sure why I should direct it." Now, I have - I love the character.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

RON HOWARD: I also love the relationship. I thought, well, this is a rare thing. It`s a - it`s a - it`s a love story about a married couple that really matters in a movie, you know. And I thought that was unusual.

I`d long been fascinated by the depression, for reasons that we can go into later, if you want. And I was always interested in finding a film that would deal with it in some relatable, kind of unusual way.

But to tell you the truth, trying to direct the boxing scared the hell out of me. I didn`t really - there`s been -- it`s just been done well so many times. And I wasn`t sure what I could -- what I could bring to that. And I thought about it, and I agonized over it, and I even discussed it a little bit with Russell. And at one point he said to me, "Well, why don`t you think about approaching the boxing maybe the way you approached the fires in "Backdraft."

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

RON HOWARD: Well, you know, that was an important clue for me, because with each fire in "Backdraft," I`ve looked at it cinematically from a different perspective -- almost from a different genre. One fire was a kind of haunted - haunted house fire. Another one was operatic. Another one was Vietnam, you know. And it - and it helped me cinematically get my arms around it.

I did that work as it related to these fights, and I began to make some inroads there, but ultimately, what frankly, what I decided was - you know, I was over-thinking it, because it was - it was going to be Russell Crowe in the ring. This -- you know, Russell is a brilliant actor and - and as seen even in "Gladiator" or other films .

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

RON HOWARD: . where he`s had physical action in a character, there`s no separation there. And if it was a great character in the scenes with his wife and family and his manager, I knew that that character was going to be as personal, and we were going to care about him as much, if we could follow him into the ring.

So my job was less about making the fights, you know, cinematically spectacular, and more about making them personal, relatable, so that the audience felt like they were going in the ring with this character, Jim Braddock.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. Tell me about Braddock. What was it about him?

RUSSELL CROWE: The thing is, you know, when I first read it, like I said, I love the point to point .

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

RUSSELL CROWE: . you know and .

CHARLIE ROSE: The point to point means?

RUSSELL CROWE: Well, I mean the a, b, c, d .

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right, right.

RUSSELL CROWE: . of the story, you know, this happened and this happened and this happened, and the fact that all these things and this change of fortune were real was, you know, a surprise to me, because I had never heard of the bloke, you know. But I also -- it was very attractive to me, because this was a pretty big change of fortune, you know .

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

RUSSELL CROWE: . to go from, you know, having your license revoked as a boxer to four fights later being the heavyweight champion of the world is pretty huge.

But every time I tried to sort of walk away from it and forget about the script and just like, just go, whatever, you know, somebody else is going to do it and just leave it alone, what called me back was everything that I`d read about him after he`d been a champion. I mean, I liked who he was before he was a champion. I liked who he was when he was a champion. I liked who he was after he was a champion, you know. And he was this man, who was -- the tip of his zeitgeist moment, you know, where the working class of America were, like, hungry for somebody to show them how to get out of this thing, you know, without magic, just with hard work.

CHARLIE ROSE: The Great Depression.

RUSSELL CROWE: And he became this point of their focus. And achieved the thing that they needed, you know, and then.

CHARLIE ROSE: Gave them inspiration to....

RUSSELL CROWE: . went on to his life. Reachived his normalcy.

CHARLIE ROSE: (INAUDIBLE), because in the end he died at what, 74?

RUSSELL CROWE: Seventy-four.

CHARLIE ROSE: Seventy-four.

RUSSELL CROWE: Seventy-four. Well, Jimmy went into the Army. He had one more fight, or two more fights, actually. One more major fight against Joe Louis, which he lost. Knocked Louis down in the first round, but Joe Louis knocked him out in the eighth round. Then he had another fight against a guy called Tony Faar (ph), which he won on decision.

After that, he retired, but he got a commission in the Army, and he served on the same docks in New Jersey, and then sometime in the Pacific, I think, as well. Some sort of transport deal, or whatever.

And after that, he opened a restaurant called Inn Braddock`s Corner" - - I-n-n Braddock`s Corner. Terrible name, terrible menu. And if you wanted to complement the menu, you`d call it basic fare. You know, and an unfortunate thing for Jimmy, he couldn`t -- he didn`t have the heart to charge people for money, being a man who`s lived through the depression. People would be eating in the restaurant, and he`d be like, "don`t worry about it, pal," and the whole thing sort of turned to nothing.

But he never regretted any of these things that he did. He had real estate deals here and there. You know, he looked after friends, extended family. You know, he didn`t drop a magic bundle on people so their whole lives changed, but you know, if somebody needed something, he was there.

CHARLIE ROSE: He lived the rest of his life as a hero.

RUSSELL CROWE: Well, no, no, that`s the wrong thing. What I was saying is momentarily, he was that man, right? But the greatest achievement of his life is in fact reachieving his normalcy, because he just went back to work. You know? And he did lots of different things, you know. Found out the place he was most comfortable at was back at the same docks he was earning 26 cents on during the depression. And he was running ac welders and flood lights when they built the Verrazzano Bridge.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, I saw that.

RUSSELL CROWE: You know, stayed engaged with the society, stayed engaged with his culture, which is the thing to me which is so special. He didn`t become a restaurant (INAUDIBLE), he didn`t become a drug addict, didn`t, you know, get on the piss, didn`t die in a plane crash with $10,000 mysteriously tucked in a brown paper bag in his jacket pocket, like other boxers have. You know? I mean, so here he was, in 1974, he died in the house that he bought with the winnings from his win in 1935...

CHARLIE ROSE: The championship fight.

RUSSELL CROWE: . still desperately in love with his wife, having seen his three children grow, and his grandchildren born. And that to me was a beautiful, successful American life, and that`s why it was so important.

CHARLIE ROSE: But let me just -- my question, was he still a hero to his friends and to the community, and to people.

RUSSELL CROWE: Sure, but.

CHARLIE ROSE: . even though he chose to live the life he did?

RUSSELL CROWE: Sure, but the great thing about Jim is he didn`t feel he needed to live up to being a heavyweight champion every day. He was just Jim.

(CROSSTALK)

RON HOWARD: I don`t think, you know, the interesting thing about Braddock, as we were doing the research and really delving into this character -- and look, this research, as you can sort of see, that Russell is.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.

RON HOWARD: You talked about why did I do the movie? The other reason is, if you are going to go into a film, you want to be in a collaboration with somebody as thorough, as dedicated, and as talented as this guy, because he did does that kind of work. And it`s about his own character, but of course it also raises the standard for the entire film.

But here`s an interesting thing that came out about Braddock. I`m convinced that he didn`t love boxing. I don`t think he ever loved it. I think he found when he was about 15 or 16 years old, he dropped out of school, he wasn`t much of a student, he was working as a laborer, he found he could do it.

PAUL GIAMATTI: There is a great sense in which it was the guy`s job. You know what I mean? That`s what was really kind of cool about it.

RUSSELL CROWE: If you had the skill and heart, right, it was the best working man`s job in his time. Right? People were like, "wow, you`re a boxer!" I mean, remember, when he was young, he was earning eight grand a night.

Now the depression hits, right, and he loses his money, you know, the crowds dip, ticket prices -- tickets are very hard to sell; things change. But prior to 1929, prior to the stock market crash, being a boxer was a great living. You know? You had to work at it. You had seven fights every two months or something..

CHARLIE ROSE: And how good was he at that time?

RUSSELL CROWE: At first, right, when he was doing Golden Gloves -- remember, we`re talking about a time where 16,000, 18,000 people would turn out for the Golden Gloves every year -- when he was doing Golden Gloves, he was very snappy, and he was known to be a boxer, and he was a great white heavyweight. He got a boxing lesson by a guy called Tommy Loughran, and I reckon that that knocked his spirit about a little bit. And that also coincided with injury, sickness within his family and the depression. So all those things wrap up to what he then, you know, humbly called later on, "a run of bad luck," you know?

But remember, this guy as a pro was 21-0. We show that in the movie, 21-0, and 16 wins coming by knockout. And then he started to lose. But you know, to get to 21-0 as a pro, you have got to have some snap.

PAUL GIAMATTI: No, he was good.

CHARLIE ROSE: Joe Gould is his manager and trainer in the film. Tell me about the relationship.

PAUL GIAMATTI: Well, he was a guy who stuck by him through thick and thin. He was his manager. In the movie, it`s fudged a little bit, makes him his trainer. It is a more kind of dynamic relationship.

(CROSSTALK)

PAUL GIAMATTI: Yeah, but I mean, he was definitely -- I mean, he was a very savvy businessman, and he was extremely good at managing the guy`s career. Stuck with him. I mean, I think they were genuinely friends and good pals. But the manager`s career.

CHARLIE ROSE: Throughout the worst of the depression.

PAUL GIAMATTI: Throughout the worst of it, and managed it beyond, too, and managed to get -- from the Louis fight, he worked out an incredible thing where Braddock actually got 10 percent of Louis` earnings.

RUSSELL CROWE: Not Louis`. He did a deal with a guy called Mike Jacobs, which is a sort of an incredible thing. And later on, I think it`s about from `68, we`ve got an interview where.

RON HOWARD: Yes.

RUSSELL CROWE: . you know, Braddock points out that, you know, Joe Gould did this deal with Mike Jacobs, so for a decade, no matter what happened, because they`d given Louis and, therefore, Jacobs control of Madison Square Garden and the heavyweight championship, they would get 10 percent of Jacobs` earnings, right, not personal earnings, his gross earnings...

RON HOWARD: At the Garden.

RUSSELL CROWE: At the Garden, right? So it ended up being like another 150 grand over the period of a decade. And in `68, they say how did that deal ever get worked out? And Braddock said, "well, here`s the thing, I had a cute manager."

PAUL GIAMATTI: Yeah, he was a real character. I mean, he was a colorful character.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let me come to the depression. What -- you were interested in the depression, and that is the backdrop?

RON HOWARD: Well, my parents were sort of -- you know, like a lot of members of their generation, sort of formed by the depression. And I used to hear a lot about it. My mom grew up in a small town, Duncan, Oklahoma, where her family did OK, but they were so worried about food riots and upheaval -- this was pre-Roosevelt -- the guy who owned the grocery store next door literally had a machine gun on the roof. My mom`s dad would keep all the bones and all the stuff and make a stew twice a week for people to come by and eat. My dad, lived on -- they never lost their farm -- grew up in a place in Kansas. They had a subsistence-level farm, but I used to hear about sort of the struggle of just getting by.

I was always fascinated by it. When I was in high school and we did our -- in 11th grade, we did our section on the depression, I asked if I could, instead of writing the five-page paper, which seemed like a lot of work, I decided to make a half-hour documentary, which took me weeks. I don`t know what I was -- but that was easier for me. And I completely lost myself in making this film. I interviewed about seven different people who have lived through it, on tape, edited together their interviews, did some narration, wrote some narration myself and did it, and did a kind of a Ken Burns sort of thing, where I got all the photographs I could get out of the Burbank city library, got my Super 8, Bauer Super 8 camera and a macro lens, and I would zoom in on faces and pan to this face or the other.

And here`s what stuck with me about the faces. Not only did I love making that film, and it was the first sort of long-form movie that I made, but here`s what I found in "Cinderella Man" that I had seen in those faces -- you know, poverty in rural communities is somehow not that shocking. It seems like those folks know how to suffer, you know.

But when you would see these men standing in -- in bread lines, or selling apples for five cents and still wearing their business suits, or women wearing their Sunday clothes, standing in a relief line, or kids, you know, trying to piece together a bicycle out of the scrap metal -- and behind them, you`d see huge bridges and skyscrapers, and you knew that this was happening in -- you know, in what was supposed to be the new utopia, you know. The rug had been so ripped out from under them, that in their eyes, you`d see shellshock, and I felt like that in movies, you didn`t really -- you rarely see that explored. And I thought, this family had experienced that thing that I had seen over and over again in those photographs, going back to my junior year in high school, and I thought that was, you know, a real important element of the movie.

CHARLIE ROSE: Take a look at this. This is where Jim and Jay, the kid, talk about the family situation, and this says something about the time and the relationship within this family. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSSELL CROWE: Things ain`t easy at the moment, Jay, you`re right. There is a lot of people worse off than what we are. Now, just because things ain`t easy, that don`t give you the excuse to take what`s not yours, does it? That`s stealing, right? We don`t steal. No matter what happens, we don`t steal, not ever. You got me?

Are you giving me your word?

CONNOR PRICE, ACTOR: Yes.

RUSSELL CROWE: Go on.

CONNOR PRICE: I promise.

RUSSELL CROWE: And I promise you, we will never send you away.

It`s OK, kid. You got a little scared. I understand. It`s OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE ROSE: I read an interview between you and you. There is a moment, though, in which you talk about what you thought your obligation was to the Braddock family and the legacy. You said you want them to know, I think, some sense that, look, this is make-believe, but we did our best. Just a reverence for the story.

RUSSELL CROWE: Yeah, this is just a movie, but they should know that.

CHARLIE ROSE: This is pretend is what you said.

RUSSELL CROWE: Yeah. We have, you know, we had his legacy firmly in mind when we were doing it. We were really, you know, we all -- as anybody does who comes in touch with the story, you begin to love this guy. So we just wanted to make sure the family knew that we weren`t fly-by-nighters and weren`t just taking advantage of the situation, that we were truly, you know, serious about it. I mean, for them to know his relevance in his time, who he was, I think is a great thing.

CHARLIE ROSE: There was a moment while we were looking at this -- and you turned to Paul and said, "have you seen it?" And he said, "not yet," because of whatever. And you said.

RUSSELL CROWE: He`s been working.

CHARLIE ROSE: He`s a working actor.

RUSSELL CROWE: Yeah, well, he`s been working in Eastern Europe.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

CHARLIE ROSE: Practical (INAUDIBLE)?

PAUL GIAMATTI: No, not practical. That`s big bucks. Practically.

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. And you said -- you said you want to sit -- you would love to sit next to him and watch him watch the movie.

RUSSELL CROWE: Yeah.

CHARLIE ROSE: Because?

RUSSELL CROWE: Because I know that it`s going to be substantially more than even in his wildest dreams he thinks it may be.

PAUL GIAMATTI: It will be way more, yeah.

CHARLIE ROSE: The emotional power of it.

RUSSELL CROWE: I know he.

PAUL GIAMATTI: I couldn`t conceive of the epic size of this thing in the little discreet pictures, pieces of it that we were doing. I mean, it`s a huge movie, so I can`t wait to see it.

RUSSELL CROWE: (INAUDIBLE) the other day, who was it, Joe Broncannan (ph), Joe Jenet (ph).

PAUL GIAMATTI: Yeah, oh, yeah.

RUSSELL CROWE: He came up to me after the premiere in Los Angeles, and he just said, "you know, this Ron Howard guy. Check him out. Check out movie." And he said, "and you, and you, who knew you could be funny?"

PAUL GIAMATTI: Because I was screaming in his ear the whole movie, driving him crazy.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right, all right. Do you have a title, other than principal actor in this film? I mean, what is it -- are you producing? Are you doing anything else? You just brought the property to a director that you were comfortable with working with?

RUSSELL CROWE: That`s right. And you know, and a couple of people have said that, and I do, in a film with Ron, I`m given quite a fair amount of responsibility, you know, basically as much as I want to take. If you feel you can do it, off you go. You know, like in the boxing stuff and the choreography. You know, with this, I kind of, you know, would work it and then bring it to him, in then, you know, 70 percent finished state, and say what do you think, what do you need, what would you like to change? What, you know -- and then he would say, you know, just go through the complications of it. I`d go back, fiddle around, you know, that sort of stuff.

I think it`s-- when you`ve got a guy like Ron, who is a two-hands-on- the-wheel captain and leader, you know, once he`d given me that yes, that he was going to do the film, I can then step back from it. I don`t have to worry about it then, because his integrity is, you know (INAUDIBLE).

CHARLIE ROSE: But you still continue to have an involvement, as you say.

RUSSELL CROWE: Of course.

RON HOWARD: Yeah, you`re working with smart.

RUSSELL CROWE: But that`s why you want to work with people like Ron, where the information exchange is continuous.

RON HOWARD: And if you`re directing smart actors, you know, what`s going to be your number one asset? I mean, as a director, just being as cold and calculating about it as you possibly can. Is it where you put the camera?

CHARLIE ROSE: No.

RON HOWARD: You know, it`s.

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

RON HOWARD: I love the interaction, you know. You know, great actors take responsibility for characters, and you know, and it`s exciting to see what comes of that.

CHARLIE ROSE: So do I see here a collaboration that will continue and you guys will think about possibilities of working.

RUSSELL CROWE: We`ve already started talking about another one, and in the very first conversation we had about that other one, we talked about our mate here as well.

(CROSSTALK)

RUSSELL CROWE: But it`s just so easy, you know, it`s just so easy.

PAUL GIAMATTI: It was very easy.

RUSSELL CROWE: I`ve been doing this gag, you know, (INAUDIBLE) screenings and stuff, and saying, you know, there`s a new type of high- performance Italian machine available, you know, you got your Ferarri, you got your Maserati, now you got your Giamatti. This is like endless gears, the smoothest transmission.

CHARLIE ROSE: Can do -- anywhere can go.

RON HOWARD: Go on any road, bucket seats.

RUSSELL CROWE: All the way to Eastern Europe.

RON HOWARD: Eight gears.

PAUL GIAMATTI: That would be a pleasure. But it was a very easy, confident team. It was an amazing thing. But the amount of trust and confidence that you`re given by him is extraordinary, actually. Extraordinary.

(CROSSTALK)

CHARLIE ROSE: Creates time.

PAUL GIAMATTI: Yes, and that as well.

RUSSELL CROWE: And you can do that.

PAUL GIAMATTI: Yes, you can. Yeah.

RUSSELL CROWE: If you get organized to a certain level.

PAUL GIAMATTI: Yes.

RUSSELL CROWE: And if you trust the lieutenants that you have around you in every department, and everybody knows what they`re doing, all moving forward, you know. The thing is, he didn`t have to raise his voice, but he will. You know? He will. Every now and then, he`ll just go hey, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. We don`t need that. You know, he doesn`t need to motivate me to work hard. Nor do I need to motivate him, and I`m just saying, you`ve got a 500-person gargantuan dinosaur around you, you know, and your leader has got to be strong, and he`s a strong leader.

CHARLIE ROSE: There is a point where you said.

RUSSELL CROWE: The point about it is that he creates time, and that time gives him time for discussion.

PAUL GIAMATTI: Yes. We actually get to know each other.

RUSSELL CROWE: We go back -- yeah, exactly, and play with this thing. We`re not just coming in and going blat, blat, done.

RON HOWARD: One of the things I`m proud of -- and by the way, Akiva Goldsman did a great job coming in and rewriting the script. And he`s a huge part of the collaboration. He wrote "Beautiful Mind" as well. But one of the things I`m really proud of are all the corner scenes in the center of the ring. Because that was stuff that was very hard to script. It was all kind of generic sort of coaching stuff. And at the read-through I remember even -- I took it out on you. You just had to read this stuff. But it was.

PAUL GIAMATTI: It was fine, but there was a lot of kind of, "get out there and hit him!" And stuff like that.

RON HOWARD: "Is that the best you can do, Joe?"

RUSSELL CROWE: When Akiva came into the process, though, Akiva came into the process knowing, right, that Paul was going to play Joe Gould, so immediately, that part of the script began a rapid change. And there was rhythms and stuff applied to Joe Gould, which, you know, Akiva thought would be really suitable for Paul.

So those -- this expanded, right? But if you think of this thankless task, right, it`s like -- I liken it to when I was doing a courtroom drama and I thought I was really cool because I got the role of the bloke who was accused. Right? Got to be the sort of lead role, right? Courtroom drama.

CHARLIE ROSE: I`m thinking, hey, cool.

RUSSELL CROWE: So what happens in the courtroom when you`re accused? You just sit there on your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) while everybody else gets up on that chair, right? And the director.

(CROSSTALK)

RUSSELL CROWE: And the director would come up to me at the end of the day, "look, just nod, grin, shake your head, and that will do it. Action, cut. Thank you, Russell."

And that would be my gig, until the very last day where I got to, you know, get charged or whatever, or the thing was read. It was just ridiculous. But he had the same sort of thankless task.

PAUL GIAMATTI: It was.

(CROSSTALK)

CHARLIE ROSE: In the beginning, but he's..

PAUL GIAMATTI: But it wasn`t so thankless, because it did expand out, and because you were very concerned with the realism of what was going on in the ring and the response outside of the ring, and I was kind of narrating in a sense what was going on, and you were very concerned about the correspondence between the boxing and my reactions and -- so it became a very complicated, full thing.

RON HOWARD: And I thought.

RON HOWARD: It was still done in the last five seconds of the day.

(CROSSTALK)

RON HOWARD: I felt that the interaction in the corner was actually an opportunity, again, not to just -- in addition to understanding the fights better -- which was really important to me, I was really interested in that, but it was also to keep understanding, you know, this collaboration between these two guys. And it became a, you know, another element. It became an important -- a really important relationship.

Continued...