Film Facts:

Cast: Russell Crowe, Salma Hayek
Shooting Schedule: September – October 1995
Location: Los Angeles, 3 days New York
Awards: None

Plot Summary:

The good news: Steve and Monica are together. The bad news: Steve and Monica are together. The great news: Academy Award® winner Russell Crowe and Salma Hayek portray the on-again/off-again couple in a savvy contemporary romance directed by Robert Greenwald (The Burning Bed) and written by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cristofer (The Shadow Box).

Mixing vignettes, photos, on-the-street interviews and New York settings, Breaking Up chronicles the pair's crazed romance. "It's a failure, but it's ours." Steve tells Monica. And from splitting up to making up, something whispers it's the love of their lifetimes. VHQ Online

Trivia:

Very short (24/28 day) shooting schedule

Favorite Scenes:

The last scene where Monica and Steve sit beside a bed and the sad, empty resignation of loss – of a life never led and love that without limits neither could fully understand and embrace, plays across their faces.

Comments by Russell:

Interview in the Austin Chronicle, Oct. 1997, with Marc Savlov:

AC: The new film, Breaking Up, is essentially a two-person dialogue. Did that pose any problems for you seeing as how it's not what you're usually doing?

RC: Well, what I've tried to do since being invited to make movies in America is not just take safer large studio and budget options. I've done some of those but I've also done, like, multiple co-production things with French, English, Spanish money -- things like that. I've tried to make smaller films, as well as the larger ones, because I'd like to look at the American film industry from many different levels and not just from the big one.

Breaking Up had a small budget and it was a very complex script in terms of what it asked from performance. Mainly, it was a series of really late nights -- just trying to cram those lines into my brain, you know? Because of that low budget there was no real rehearsal period. It was like "here's the script" and you're off. At the time we made it I was coming off Virtuosity with Denzel Washington, which was a very strange filmmaking experience in itself because of all the blue-screen work involved. I mean, you're in this blank room grabbing stuff out of the air that doesn't exist, and then three or four months later you've got a rose in your hand or you're playing the piano or something like that.

So Breaking Up was about getting down and doing something a little bit more basic and real and performer-aligned. It was a really fast shoot, something like 28 days, really intense. Part of the shoot was in New York City, and we were there at the same time as the Pope and the chess championship and the president, you know? I mean, there's bad enough traffic as it is, but when you bring all those clowns in... it was pretty rough.

Day to day, just working on it, was pretty challenging to try and tell that type of a story, which is really uncomfortable subject matter for most people anyway. Trying to stay true to the reality of those characters, you know, because they're both in their own ways sort of charmless people, copping out by taking a secondary option, right? They've met the person who is the passion of their life, but it's kind of too difficult. Trying to find the core of that love so that the people in the audience, when they see the movie, can say that "even though I might not necessarily like this guy, I know absolutely that he's really in love with this woman," and for all that character's faults, he can be forgiven because of that essential fact, that love.

It was funny playing that character, because to me -- and Robert [Greenwald, the director] doesn't really like it when I say this -- I just saw him as such a dick, you know? To me, he just doesn't have a handle on the things that are important in life. So it's interesting playing a character like that.

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Rough Cut Q & As

LA Confidential’s Russell Crowe gets scruffy, gruff and scatty. - Published September 18, 1997

I’m really overcritical about things, so you can’t take all things to heart. Breaking Up was a pretty good experience. Salma Hayek is going to get the respect she deserves when they see the footage from this film. People kind of see her as the Latin lover of the moment, but she’s one of those woman who’s intelligence matches her ambition. She actually does in that film one of my favorite lines in the cinema. The scene is like, the two characters haven’t seen each other in a while and we’ve kind of (his voice gets hushed and sexy) - - out of lust - - gotten back together again. We’ve spent the evening together and is halfway through the night and I’m feeling kind of suffocated. I’m creeping out of the apartment, putting on my cloths in the dark when she wakes up and now I’ve got to explain…..and the explanation doesn’t go very well. So, she starts on this tirade and finishes with, “Just for once in my life I would like to get laid and have a good night’s sleep.”

Comments about Russell:

"In the rehearsal period with Russell and Salma, one of the many terrific things they brought to the process was a great sense of humor. And Russell, especially at times (and I think this is one of his great gifts, and of course we've seen it all in more recent films) he has no ego whatsoever about looking like a jerk, falling, being a bad guy; there are a certain number of movie stars whose investment is in their persona as being good guys and they will do anything and everything to protect it. Russell's quite the opposite. He goes wherever the character takes him to go, whether it be mean, a jerk, foolish, silly, any of the above. And I think, (although one can never predict the future), certainly I felt that with his level of talent, and his refusal to run away from anything in the character, it was a great omen for where his career was going to go." - Robert Greenwald "Breaking Up" DVD commentary

"....As somebody who had been through several incredibly painful relationships, one of the things that I was very keen on bringing to the screen is the pain, and particularly the pain for men. I think culturally, because men don't talk about it in the way women talk about it; we don't necessarily go to our friends when we're hurting the way women do. I think we've kind of gotten a bad rap, i.e. we don't care, we're hermits, we're cavemen, we're Neanderthals. Whatever one's girlfriend, wife or ex calls us. And so I spent a lot of time with Russell and explored the notion of "When you're hurting, how does it manifest itself?"

“I spent a lot time with Russell and we explored the notion of when you're hurting, how does it manifest itself? Sometimes...it's just in his eyes for a brief moment. He's just wonderful with his eyes. - Robert Greenwald -- "Breaking Up" DVD commentary

I adore Russell. He is so flattering" Co-star Salma Hayek on being showered with presents during the filming of the 1997 movie Breaking Up

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SALMA HAYEK, WHO STARRED WITH CROWE in 1997's Breaking Up, has a nickname for him-Bubo. And he has one for her-Buba. Hayek laughs when she talks about the difficulties of that particular shoot. The days were long, she says, and the amenities few. For example, Hayek arrived on the set one day and found, in place of a dressing room, a blanket on the floor. "I looked at Russell, and I just went, `Bubo?' And he says, `Yes?' And I go, `Did you throw a fit already?' And he says, `Yes.' And I go, 'OK-then I won't say anything.' Because I knew he must have killed them." –GQ 1999, Trish Deitch Rohrer

From Cathy, the page's editor: On May 3, 2005 I emailed Robert Greenwald, director and producer of Breaking Up, and he was kind enough to answer some questions. The questions I asked were based on his remarks in his Director’s Commentary on the BU DVD. CG - You saw Romper Stomper and knew Russell “…had the goods” to play Steve. Anything specific you could point to while you were working with him that gave you the sense that he would go on to become the actor he is today? RG – Russell brought a passion, intelligence and caring to the set every day. He had the talent and he had the work ethic to bring it all together. CG - Russell once said about his work, “Everything is internal. Film is a visual medium. I construct the character from the outside in…” You talk about him wearing a photographer’s viewfinder around his neck because “…he felt it was a way this character achieved a bit of distance from life.” Can you remember anything else Russell did to help himself get into the character of Steve? Is this technique unusual or not among actors you have worked with? RG - What was unusual about Russell was his total emergence and commitment to the role, from the viewfinder, to the photos in his apt in the film, to his wardrobe, there was not an element of his character that he didn’t explore and care about. CG - Russell has stated he enjoys having a collaborative relationship with a director. Can you elaborate on how this worked in your relationship with him and how does an actor who may want to be involved in the process in this way effect you as a director? RG - Any good creative relationship is collaborative, if you want someone to follow orders, join the military. Russell had ideas, he loved the exchange of different ways to achieve common ends, and he embraced the process fully. CG - You said you had to communicate to Russell and Salma “…using different language for each person because they work very, very differently.” Can you explain how you viewed Russell’s process and how you influenced his performance? RG - Like any good director, or basketball coach, you find a different way to reach different artists, some words, some body language, some eye contact, it all comes together in ways so the director is authentic and unique with each actor.

Reviews:

The Austin Chronicle:
Directed By: Robert Greenwald
Starring: Russell Crowe, Salma Hayek
(R, 89 min.)

When you're in love, when you're really in love, head over heels deep into that slick red vein, there is nobody else around -- just you and her/him. Lovers exist in a protective bubble that renders them oblivious to the mundane goings-on that surround them. The same holds true for the dog end of relationships, those interpersonal implosions when all you want to do is go bang, but end up hitting your head against the same kitchen cabinets over and over and over. Greenwald's closed, two-character study of a relationship plummeting earthward is dead on target; you can hear the wind whistling between Steve (Crowe) and Monica (Hayek), and you know it's icy cold, though not from any absence of sparks. Michael Cristofer's screen adaptation of his stage play provides a darkly humorous glimpse into a place to which we've all -- however reluctantly -- been. The film is rich in both comic asides and scathing, emotional fisticuffs. Photographer Steve is a shallow semi-goon, pointedly unaware of how rewarding the two-year-long relationship with his schoolteacher better half is. He's looking at all the odd angles and seeing none of them, while Monica, for her part, is running smack dab into a brick wall every time she tries to sit down and talk about things with her beau. Cristofer has laced his script with so many scenes adapted from what must have been real-life breakups that watching the film gets to be, at times, a virtual tour of one's past. You may find yourself sitting there associating just a little too closely with various scenes and situations, and, depending on your current romantic compass, this can dramatically affect how you feel about Breaking Up as a whole. Crowe and Hayek are perfectly matched, though, there's no doubt about that. Her Latin fire and his flippant indifference to the obvious suggest a pairing that should have gone supernova some time ago. Crowe's performance here is much more subtle (and precarious) than his turn in L.A. Confidential; any more vacuously smarmy and he'd be teetering on the brink of John Cleese. In an effort to open up the inherent staginess of the material, director Greenwald employs any number of cinematic tricks to keep things from becoming too static -- freeze frames, Hi-8 videography, and bracketing asides to the audience all come into play. To what extent you can tolerate these unconventional tactics may depend on how traditional a filmgoer you are. Nevertheless, Breaking Up is powerful, catty stuff; it's as close to the real thing -- the humor and the horror -- as I'd like to get for some time.

Web Related Links:

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Cinema/1501/indexbu.html

http://www.crowechicky.com/movies/breaking_up.htm

http://www.the-crowes-perch.com/Fbreakingup.htm

http://p199.ezboard.com/fcrowecrossingfrm8.showMessage?topicID=21.topic

http://www.kaspinet.com/Breaking_Up_Index.htm