Insight From Writer of the ‘Ransom’ Note

The ruggedly handsome, maverick airline mogul--certain that his kidnapped son will be killed--does the only thing possible: He turns the ransom into a bounty, assuring his son’s captors that they’ll never be paid--and never sleep, unless they return his son safely.

That’s the heroic view. Here’s another:

A union-busting, wife-deceiving, megalomaniacal ‘80s-style entrepreneur writes off the life of his only child and turns the payoff against the kidnappers, not because he feels it’s the best way to get the boy back, but because his ego will not allow him to be dictated to or controlled in any way, regardless of the cost.

It’s two . . . two . . . two movies in one. Maybe for two entirely different audiences. And when you consider who’s behind “Ransom”--which opened Friday (taking in $34.2 million in its first weekend) and whose major plot twist has already been exposed in trailer after trailer--it begs a question: What the hell is going on?

Mel Gibson, who stars as father-of-the-hostage Tom Mullen, is usually as good as good guys usually get. Ron Howard, the feel-good director of the flag-waving “Apollo 13,” has never been known for his dark, troubling undertones. Producers Scott Rudin and Brian Grazer can turn out the crowd-pleasing popcorn movies like no one else alive.

And then there’s Richard Price, the Bronx-born-and-bred author, streetwise intellectual, novelist and screenwriter, whose screen credits--”The Color of Money,” “Sea of Love,” “Kiss of Death” and “Clockers” among them--have been anything but standardized drama. Always ambiguous, always a nettle on the conscience of his audience, Price has--with the collaboration of the rest of “Ransom’s” creators--turned out an intelligent action movie, a psychologically challenging thriller.

“I don’t know what went right,” Price said, sitting in the living room in his offhandedly luxurious Manhattan townhouse. There’s a garden in the rear (past the kitchen, where copies of People and Entertainment Weekly, both with “Ransom” covers, are lying casually about) and paintings by Julian Schnabel (a friend, with whom Price consulted on the script for “Basquiat”). There are at least five kids running around the house--two are his--and more are en route. The place has a feeling of controlled chaos, i.e., family values, and the sense that here is a guy who’s done very well without handing the American public pap.

“Usually, with Hollywood movies, the criticism of ambiguity is, ‘These characters are way too complex for a budget this big,’ ” Price says. “Basically, the studio executive doesn’t want people confused: ‘Me want people happy, me want people leave movie, tell friend go to movie, see movie, spend more money on movie, go to mall.’

“Y’know, whatever ambiguity is in this character is fine; if people think he’s [a jerk], that’s fine, too. I’m just the writer. There’s like 50 people all with more power than you, piling in on top of you after you’re finished. I mean, you can’t control the final production any more than a mechanical draftsman can control the building that’s constructed from his dinky blueprint.”

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For all his resignation about the writer’s plight, Price still wears his social conscience on his sleeve. In “Clockers,” particularly, the state--and fate--of American’s urban underclass was as prominent a part of his story as the cops and the crack dealers. In “Ransom,” one character--who will remain nameless to protect the multiple plot twists that are not part of the TV ad--makes an extended allusion to H.G. Wells’ “Time Machine” and the tensions between the surface-dwelling Eloi and the dark, subterranean Morlocks. The symbolism is obvious. And it belies Price’s dismissiveness about his work’s political message.

“If you want to find one, be my guest,” he says with a shrug. “It wasn’t what I set out to do. I really wasn’t interested in creating a metaphorical parable for all that’s wrong with society, bring in the Trilateral Commission. That’s what novels are for. One of the things I wanted to cure in the original premise was its reliance on black and white: I was really interested in having this guy have something to pay for. It’s that thing about what goes around comes around, but also the hypocrisy of this guy who has a persona so popular he can make himself the centerpiece of his own national commercial.”

The commercial, seen in the movie’s opening scenes, posits Mullen as a roguish, Ted Turner-esque charmer and is as unctuously convincing a piece of television propaganda as has ever been aired--just because it’s so true to life.

“I’m thinking about guys whose main marketing ploy is their own personalities,” Price said. “Guys like Donald Trump or Richard Branson. Or Frank Perdue: You hear the guy’s voice and you want to buy his chicken. And Mullen has parlayed this semi-phony persona into a fortune. Now, it’s time to pay. The thing is, how deep can you get into that? And in a studio film, not too deep. You strive for some ambiguity. It’s just not interesting if it’s Tom Trueheart vs. the bad guys.”

“Ransom,” which co-stars Gibson’s “Lethal Weapon III” co-star Rene Russo as Kate Mullen and Nick Nolte’s son Brawley as the abductee (and Price, in a cameo role, as a cop), had its share of off-screen subtexts. Gibson, who had an emergency appendectomy during filming, reportedly got $20 million for a role that’s not exactly a stretch. He and director Howard were making the movie last winter, while “Apollo 13” and “Braveheart” were vying for a best picture Oscar. Price’s involvement was a kind of happy accident.

“What happened is they [Disney] came to me in the fall of ’94 and had a script by this guy [Alexander] Ignon,” he said. “They said they liked the premise, but they weren’t landing anybody. I said all right, I’ll work on it for like two weeks. A script-doctoring job.

“And every time I finished a draft, they landed somebody. I did a draft, they got Scott Rudin, I did another draft they got Ron Howard, I did another draft they got Mel Gibson. By the time they’d gotten everybody assembled, it was two years and basically everything changed.”

“I guess I saw the first draft Richard had done,” Howard said, “and there was this great structure, plenty of twists and turns. But I had this idea I’d been kicking around about the anatomy of a kidnapping, and I started to talk to Richard about it and he was enthusiastic. This was before I was even committed to directing. Suddenly, we had this other side of the movie, the stress and psychology of the kidnappers, and that allowed us to take a tougher look at Tom and Kate.”

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By then, Howard said, Gibson was on board. “I think Richard was pleasantly surprised when both Mel and I encouraged this idea of Tom’s moral transgressions, of making him culpable in some way. I remember him on set, kind of chewing on his pen and going, ‘Uh huh,’ and I know he was thinking, ‘Ron Howard? Mel Gibson? I don’t think so. . . .’ ”

Howard agreed, “without a doubt,” that “Ransom” is the darkest movie he’s ever done. “It’s the first one that’s not primarily a celebration,” he added. Ignon’s script, inspired by the ‘50s film starring Glenn Ford and Donna Reed, was reportedly a lot closer to the original movie. “I had no idea there was another movie till I finished all my drafts,” Price said.

Of the film’s box-office success, Price said Monday: “It’s the first time in a long time I’ve had a down-the-middle, pack-’em-in box-office hit. It feels good. It gives me an excuse not to work on books for two days. Of course, on the third day, I’ll have to find another excuse.”

It’s safe to say that despite his enormous success as a screenwriter, Price thinks of himself primarily as a novelist. His first was the much-acclaimed “The Wanderers” (later a Philip Kaufman film). His next? A story inspired by the Susan Smith case. Scott Rudin has already bought the rights, which means the novelist’s film work will continue for some time.

“They each have their own advantages and disadvantages,” he says of his twin careers. “You write a novel, you’re utterly alone. Comparatively, you’re not making anywhere near as much money, but what you write is what shows up. You’re working on a movie, you’re constantly surrendering your stuff for others to execute. That’s the nature of it. On the plus side, if you’re working with a good crew it can be a lot of fun.

“I don’t think I could write screenplays if I didn’t write novels. If I didn’t have that outlet, I’d probably do something hideous, like direct.”

On the other hand, he’s a realist. “I always say it’s death to take a book and bow down to it as you make a movie of it. It’s gonna be the world’s most boring movie ‘cause you’re shooting a book. You have to tear [up] that book, realign everything, you gotta strip, chop, lower, louver everything and make a movie out of it. And the worst thing in the world to have is respect for the source material.”