You wouldn’t expect young actors used to catering, air-conditioned trailers and plenty of free time on set to give all that up for long weeks of push-ups, weightlifting and sweaty male bonding.
But before filming began on “Alpha Dog,” the thinly veiled fictionalized account of the true-life murder of a San Fernando Valley, Calif., teenager, the young male cast members endured a grueling fitness regime demanded by director-writer Nick Cassavetes.
“It was pretty intense,” said Shawn Hatosy, who plays the trigger man in the film. “It wasn’t something I would want to go through again.”
Cassavetes says the daily workouts were designed to develop the testosterone-fueled “chemistry” that bonded the real-life players in the story.
“There’s nothing like shared pain to bond people,” Cassavetes said. “We had to sell it on screen that these guys had known each other since they were little kids, and the boot camp was a way to turn them into a pack. It broke down a lot of defenses. They didn’t want to do it–but I said you had to do it.”
“Alpha Dog,” which opens Friday and also stars Sharon Stone, Bruce Willis and Emile Hirsch, is based on the 2000 kidnapping and murder of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz, and the subsequent conviction of four men and forthcoming trial of a fifth, Jesse James Hollywood.
The notorious case remained in the news for years because Hollywood, at age 20, was one of the youngest ever to make the FBI’s Most Wanted List. He spent almost five years on the lam until his capture in March 2005.
Hirsch, 21, who plays Johnny Truelove, the character based on Hollywood, said he often felt uncomfortable on the set because of the overamped dialogue and rawness of the action.
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“I was pretty afraid in my bones most of the time,” he said. “But I think that makes the toughness of my character more believable. It’s a story about ego–two guys who wouldn’t back down. It wasn’t about the money. It was who was going to be the alpha dog.”
The story takes place over three summer days in which pot dealer Truelove kidnaps Zack Mazursky (Anton Yelchin) as a way to extort money from the boy’s brother (Ben Foster), who owed him money.
“When I first read about the case, I just kept saying, ‘There’s no way this is gonna happen,’ ” said Hatosy, 30. “I kept thinking, ‘Someone will stop it; there’s no way they’re going to kill this kid.’ The whole thing could’ve been avoided every step of the way.”
To illustrate the point in the film, whenever one of three dozen witnesses is introduced, their name and witness number is flashed on screen.
For many, the star of the film will be Yelchin, the teen actor who plays the doomed boy.
“I felt so much pain for what happened to him,” Yelchin, 17, said. “He couldn’t really escape what was going on. He trusted those people. He thought they were his friends.”
‘Alpha’ adventure
The making and release of “Alpha Dog” has been a long process.
It was originally filmed three years ago, but when real-life suspect Jesse James Hollywood was caught, director/writer Nick Cassavetes had to dump his original ending and called in some of the actors to shoot a new one. The project also was put on hold over business issues between the original distributor and the producers. At the same time, lawyers for Hollywood fought unsuccessfully to have the film’s release halted on the grounds it could deprive the defendant of a fair trial.
[L.A. DAILY NEWS].