It was this bulked-up dude and kind of
a smaller, suited, eyes-on-the-horizons
dude. Jim said, “Isn’t that an interesting
relationship?” And so we started there.
Then all this other stuff was just, “How
do we fill in the world?” Dorothy was
a back-up singer he met at a video shoot
at one point — I wrote pages and pages of
stuff. But as the research got deeper into
the NFL, and as I realised it had to be a
personal story, it started to fall into place.
Levy: I know that, famously, other actors
were considered for the parts of Jerry and
Dorothy. But every once in a while you
get an intersection of performer and role
in that once-in-a-generation kind of
confluence, and I feel like you had it with
Cruise, you had it with Renée Zellweger.
Was the movie I’m seeing the result of
what you wrote in the room alone? Or
did it evolve as you ran it and rehearsed
with them and would rewrite based on
their voices?
Crowe: The script was set when they
first came on, but we would jam on it
and rehearse.
Levy: This is post-Rain Man, so Cruise
is the biggest star in the world.
Crowe: He is the biggest star in the
world and coming off of just having done
Mission: Impossible, which opened while
we were shooting. And made, like,
$75 million [actually $458 million
worldwide] , which was unheard of
at the time.
Levy: Talk about an immediate imbalance
of power! There is that interesting George
Clooney quote, where he said that on
every movie there’s this kabuki theatre
aspect, where the director and the star
both pretend they don’t know that the
star has more power. Because it only
works if there’s this illusion of giving it
up. So what was the power share and the
giving up of it on Jerry?
Crowe: Here’s the brilliance of Tom.
He’s been deeply playing this kind of
character part, rolls onto the set first
thing one morning, and everybody starts
applauding Mission: Impossible’s opening.
He’s playing this kind of interior scene,
but he looks at everybody like we’re all
part of the team, and he smiles, and he
applauds for them and says, “Let’s get to
work, guys.” He worked very hard to
make sure that our movie felt intimate for
everybody. And all the other actors.
Levy: One thing I love about Jerry
Maguire is the secondary characters. You
have Jerry and Dorothy at the centre, but
at every stage, as you go through the rings
of Saturn, if you will, the character work
is so diligent. You’re not lazy, even as
you get to supporting characters. I was
talking to Ryan Reynolds [about Free
Guy] and he said, “Can we challenge
ourselves to make the smallestClockwise from top
left: Director Shawn
Levy turns interrogator
with, below, Jerry
Maguire writer-director
Cameron Crowe; Cuba
Gooding Jr as Jerry’s
star, well, only client,
Rod Tidwell; Biggest
star in the world Tom
Cruise as Jerry; The
X factor: stunning
newcomers Jonathan
Lipnicki and Renée
Zellweger.
❯