The police warning was as straight-forward as they come. If director Antoine Fuqua and the crew of “Brooklyn’s Finest” insisted on filming in Brownsville, Brooklyn, they would be on their own. The neighborhood, just east of Crown Heights, is among the city’s most crime-ridden: gang members reportedly control the streets, prostitutes work the corners, drug dealers infest the housing projects.
The neighborhood is so violent that a few years ago, the military created a training program at the local hospital because its emergency room most closely resembled that of a war zone. About half of the patients had either been stabbed or shot.
Don Cheadle (left) plays an undercover cop, while Richard Gere is an officer who’s about to retire in “Brooklyn’s Finest,” directed by Antoine Fuqua.
But Fuqua, who also made the Oscar-winning “Training Day,” wanted an authenticity for his police drama that could only be found in the Van Dyke projects, the run-down collection of public housing units that spawned Mike Tyson and members of the Wu-Tang Clan. So in the summer of 2008, Hollywood came to Brownsville — for what was among the first, and quite possibly one of the last, times.
“Putting actors in real environments surrounded by real people is what gets me excited,” Fuqua says. “Shooting in the buildings of the projects, not in Canada somewhere where someone says, ‘That’s not New York.’ I get passionate about being in it.”
“Brooklyn’s Finest,” opening Friday, spins out three parallel storylines that collide bloodily in the third act. Don Cheadle is an undercover cop who’s dug himself into a drug-dealing network run by Wesley Snipes. Ethan Hawke is a young narcotics detective desperate to beg, borrow or steal enough money to buy a new house for his expanding family. And Richard Gere is a weary beat cop one week from retirement who’s forced to train eager rookies.
“I know there was all this talk that Brownsville was going to be dangerous, but yeah, that’s kind of anywhere,” Cheadle says. “You just have to know where you are and treat people with respect.”
To ensure fewer problems, the production hired local gang members and the Nation of Islam for security. Money was also spread around to certain factions in the neighborhood.
“Money makes everyone feel better,” says Fuqua, who was raised in a Pittsburgh housing project. “Guys are struggling, they’re hungry, so you give them some money.”
The moves worked. Fuqua says he and the cast never felt in danger. Word is, rival gangs even called a truce for the duration of the shoot. About the worst thing that happened was someone stole one of the production’s massive air conditioners.
“Everyone was real respectful,” Fuqua says. “Anyone who came around and was possibly dangerous, they saw the Nation of Islam cats there, so they behaved a certain way. And the gang members were standing next to the Nation of Islam working, so [troublemakers] knew not to do anything stupid.”
Not only did the rougher factions of Brownsville rarely cause problems, they proved to be an asset to the filmmakers. One scene in the film, which details a drug dealer’s apartment-based operation, was the result of a tour Fuqua got from a real hustler.
The cast also received guidance.
“I had people coming up to me and saying, ‘What you’re playing? I’m that real cat,” Cheadle says. “I’m like, ‘Oh, good. Can we sit down? I’ve got this scene coming up.’” The actor consulted the man on everything from slang to whether his wristwatch was right.
During another scene in which a drug dealer is shot in a drive-by, the extras (made up mostly of neighborhood residents) were ordered to duck and scatter when the guns went off.
“This guy comes up to me and says, ‘That ain’t how it would go down,’” Cheadle says. “I said, ‘What would happen?’ He said, ‘If there’s a dude who drives by our neighborhood and shoots at us, there’s no running or ducking. I’d get my burner out, and we’d go post up.’ So I said, ‘That’s what we should do.’”
In the reworked scene, onlookers pull out guns and chase the car.
Some of the movie’s authenticity can also be credited to its writer, Michael C. Martin, a former East New York resident who sold the screenplay while working as a subway signalman.
The sale ran him afoul of his MTA bosses, who tried to have him fired for what they claimed was a second job. Martin quit about a month after pre-production began. During his MTA disciplinary hearing, however, it became clear just how powerful the allure of show business was.
“One supervisor was being all serious, following protocol. The other was going on about, ‘Did I meet Ellen Barkin? How tall is Richard Gere?’” he says.
Martin wrote the first draft over three months while recovering from injuries he got from a car accident. The impetus came from his then-roommate, a police academy student.
“He saw a woman selling porn to underage kids and made a citizen’s arrest. He thought it was the right thing to do,” Martin says. “But he got chewed out [by his superiors] and told he should mind his own business. It broke his spirit in a way.
“Every police officer thinks they’ll put a badge and uniform on and change the city. Then they face this harsh reality,” he says. “I wondered if I could make a cop movie that didn’t have that typical cop-movie thing. It was more about the cost of being a police officer.”
And as the gritty “Brooklyn’s Finest” demonstrates, the cost is high.
