Brett Ratner Rush Hour 3
2007 Interview Part 1
Brett Ratner, the Miami Beach Cubanito who directs huge box-office hits and hosts such notoriously star-studded parties at his Beverly Hills mansion that he played himself at one of these high-powered schmooze fests in an episode of HBO’s Entourage. Is pretty confident his new film, Rush Hour 3, will get trashed by the critics. But he’s very whatever about critics. He can afford to be. His movies have made more than $1 billion worldwide. “More like $1.5 billion, but who’s counting?” Ratner says with a frat boy’s laugh.
He’s doing that Hollywood multitasking thing, chatting with you at the Shore Club’s Ago over greens and chicken paillard-and dealing with his cellphone, which doesn’t stop. It’s his mom, some buddy, another buddy, an assistant who wants to know something about the guest list for the Ruch Hour 3 premiere to be held in a few hours on South Beach.
“I swear to God I’ll probably get 90 percent bad reviews with this movie. But I have watched the movie with audiences, and the audiences f-------love it. Every movie I do gets bad reviews, but audiences aren’t really affected by reviews”.
Ratner, 38, prefers to take his cues from such friends as filmmaker Roman Polanski, who has a small role as a French inspector in Rush Hour 3, the latest meeting of the culture clashing Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. The movie, which features the sort of gags you’d expect from the franchise plus some fun stomach-turning fight scenes atop the Eiffel Tower, opened Friday.
“Critics are snobs. You think somebody like Roman Polanski, one of the master filmmakers, goes around doing acting jobs for no money? A director can appreciate a good movie no matter what the genre, “says Ratner, whos first Rush Hour made $250 million in 1998. Rush Hour 2, released in 2001, made $342 million. Last year, his X-Men: The Last Stand scored the biggest Memorial Day weekend in history--$123 million in just four days and more than $400 million over all.
“Somebody like Roman Polanski is not judging what kind of movie it is.” Ratner says. “People like him know that it’s easier to make a pretentious art movie than a movie that makes f------$500 million”.
