"What originally drew me to the project was the emotional journey. Here you have a father, trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter, and just as he starts to make some headway, she goes on a trip to Paris and gets engaged. She goes right from the step-father to the fiance, leaving my character in the lurch." recounted Liam.
Hollywood insiders who had read the original script would be hard pressed to recognize the movie that premiered last week, which underwent nearly a complete re-write after shooting started. It is speculated that when Pierre Morel chose Taken as his second project, he may have been overmatched by Liam Neeson's three decades' worth of experience in handling directors.
"I think it was the third day of shooting when Liam asked if he could ad lib some lines", Pierre explains. "I said 'sure'. Then Liam started explaining how he was going to chop the guy in a throat. 'Liam', I said, 'You can change the lines, but...' (Pierre adopts a gruff Irish accent to imitate Liam) 'What speaks louder than words?', I wasn't quite sure what he was getting at, '...actions?' Then he just said 'Bingo', cocked his finger at me, winked, and walked back on the set. Sometimes, I guess, you just need to let these things run their course".
And that course was run, causing a frantic rewrite of the script as Liam's ad libs started piling up and building on each other. The change in direction effected more than just the writers, as prop master Donn Markel will tell you. "Usually you prep most your work before the shooting starts, and you've got to remember this was originally going to be a tween rom-com. I was up to my balls in glitter and balloons until a week into it then suddenly Liam's asking me for 3 Uzis, a dozen whore outfits and an exploding trailer". Luckily, not all of the prep was for nothing, "At least we found a way to work the horse into the picture. And that goddamn jacket. I damn near lost an eye bedazzling that fucking jacket."Props weren't the only thing that needed to be repurposed after the changes. Unfortunately Pierre chose to shoot the most expensive scene first and was forced to find a way to tie it to Liam's narrative. "Originally, the finale was going to be Liam's character reconnecting with his daughter by surprising her with tickets to her favorite pop star, and we had all those shots in the can. But after Liam's changes it didn't really work... it just didn't seem to have the emotional punch necessary for the climax after you've seen Liam rip a man's testicles off [referencing a scene in the European cut], so I needed to just shove it into the beginning of the movie and add some guy with a knife or something, I'm not even sure how we ended up cutting that together."
Meg Cabot, who wrote the novel on which the screenplay was originally based, took her name off the project once she saw the finished product. "I don't understand what these people were doing. The father's relationship is an important B-story in the book, but it's about him learning that he needs to let go and let her live her life, and it's only that freedom which allows the daughter's love to re-blossom."
"It was obvious to me we were concentrating too much on the love story, and I wasn't sure the emotional turmoil of the father was making it to the screen. So I took that inner conflict, which you can't see, and transformed it into actual conflict, which you can definitely see." Liam sits back and chuckles, "Unless you get a chop to the throat. Then you're not seeing much of anything. BAM! Throat chop."
