ONE OF GARY OLDMANS MOST POPULAR SCENES WAS CREATED AS A JOKE
I am a HUGE Gary Oldman fan. So, when I saw he would be doing an extended interview with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (on March 13), I made sure to watch the show. It’s a very funny and very interesting interview. Gary Oldman is very funny, and Stephen Colbert makes him laugh quite a few times. One of the most interesting things that Gary talks about during the interview is that one of his most popular scenes in a movie was originally meant to be a joke so the director would laugh.
Gary Oldman has played some great roles including Sid Vicious (“Sid and Nancy” – 1986 – possibly his very first leading role in a movie), Lee Harvey Oswald (“JFK” – 1991), Dracula (“Dracula” – 1992), Ludwig van Beethoven (“Immortal Beloved” – 1994), Sirius Black (some of the “Harry Potter” movies), Jim Gordon (“The Dark Knight” movies), Winston Churchill (“Darkest Hour” – 2017 – he won the best actor Academy Award), and Harry Truman (“Oppenheimer” – 2023), but I think one of his most popular roles was playing the crooked DEA agent “Stansfield” in the movie “Leon – The Professional” and one of his most popular scenes in a movie is when he screams “EVERYONE!”.
If you’ve never seen the movie here’s a brief summary: A crooked DEA agent Stansfield (Gary Oldman) and some other agents go to an apartment of a guy (Michael Badalucco) that’s stealing from them. They kill everyone who lives in the apartment except for Mathilda (Natalie Portman) who is at the market when they showed up. When Mathilda returns to the apartment, she proceeds past her apartment down the hallway and knocks on a door of a different apartment, begging her neighbor Leon (Jean Reno) to open his door and let her in, which he reluctantly does. She soon discovers that her neighbor is a professional hitman who eventually helps her get revenge for her murdered family.
(fast forward to the scene in the movie)
Stansfield and the other men have Leon trapped in his apartment and are holding Mathilda hostage. After Leon kills the first few men that try to get into the apartment, Stansfield says to one of his men “Bring me everyone”. The other guy asks, “what do you mean?” so Stansfield yells “EVERRRRREYONNNNNE”.
In the interview with Stephen Colbert, Gary Oldman says that didn’t come from the director. He did a couple of takes and then he goes over to the audio guys to warn them that the next take will be loud. The next take is when he yells the word. He says it was supposed to be just a joke, but the director loved it so much it made it into the movie.
(It’s one of the first things they talk about in the link above. WARNING: If you continue to watch the interview after the scene is mentioned there is a MAJOR SPOILER if you haven’t seen the movie)
That was the most interesting part of the interview for me but there are other interesting items in the interview. I didn’t know he wrote and directed a movie – which has a record for the most times “the f word is said” – 428 according to Gary Oldman. If you’re a fan of Gary Oldman, I recommend you watch the ENTIRE interview.
If you don’t have Paramount+ and you can’t find the show on video on demand, you can see it on YouTube (in 5 parts – starting with the opening joke “Words You Can’t Say On Network TV” which is at the bottom of the list) at this link.
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