PHILADELPHIA – “I’ll tell you, man, I love Philadelphia,” says Mark Wahlberg. “I’ve got a lot of love and loyalty for the place.” Which is one reason that Wahlberg – nominated for an Oscar for his role as a pugnacious, profane cop in “The Departed” – has been spending a lot of time here lately.
The other reason: work.
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Last summer, Wahlberg’s portrayal of real-life Philly barkeep-turned-pro-footballer Vince Papale carried the underdog sports pic “Invincible” to the top of the box office. The movie, shot here in 2005, is a wall-to-Wahlberg Eaglesfest, based on the scrappy 30-year-old South Philly brew-jockey who tries out for coach Dick Vermiel’s team – and makes it.
In October, Wahlberg was back in town – with Danny Glover, Michael Pena, Rhona Mitra, and director Antoine Fuqua – to shoot key scenes and a breakneck chase for “Shooter.” The thriller, based on Stephen Hunter’s best-selling “Point of Impact,” stars Wahlberg as Bob Lee Swagger, an ex-Marine sharpshooter who’s framed for an assassination attempt on the president in front of Independence Hall.
The city looks good in “Shooter,” with the bold blue spans of the Ben Franklin Bridge, the Delaware riverfront, Northern Liberties, and Thomas Paine Plaza (with its giant-size Monopoly pieces). Even The Inquirer building has a walk-on (actually, a walk-in: An FBI investigator enters the lobby and checks out the clock tower).
At one point, Wahlberg’s Swagger is garbed in an Eagles cap and jacket, staking out a Center City eatery. Two cops with a German shepherd roll by and try to arrest him.
“Well, that moment … when I had that Eagles jacket on, we shot that in downtown L.A.,” Wahlberg confesses. Another “Philly” scene, ostensibly on the banks of the Delaware, was filmed in Canada.
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“We were all over the place, everywhere,” says Wahlberg, on the phone from Los Angeles. “And I couldn’t wait until we got to Philly because that was the last stop.”
“Shooter,” which opens Friday, is in the tradition of such conspiracy thrillers as “The Parallax View.” Its vision of the political landscape, of power brokers warping democracy for personal gain, of ruthless government officials and the fall guys they manipulate, is a cynical one.
Or a realistic one.
“I loved the script when we got it,” says Wahlberg, who had been talking to Fuqua, the “Training Day” director, about working together. “We were actually attached to another movie, and I asked him if he wanted to make this one first and he agreed. It’s a throwback to one of those great character-driven movies of the ’70s that I grew up watching … It read a lot like ‘Three Days of the Condor,’ actually. And the ending, originally, was a lot more similar.” “Shooter’s” new ending is pretty radical. But it’s the kind of radical that gives moviegoers a big payoff.
“When I saw the final cut with a test audience, middle-aged women were screaming and cheering,” the star recalls. “I was trippin’ out on that … It was almost like the end of ‘Invincible,’ watching it with an audience in Philadelphia. You know, when Vince Papale scores that touchdown. People just erupt!” Wahlberg, who has two young kids with his model girlfriend, Rhea Durham, says a sequel to “Shooter” is a distinct possibility. Hunter has written two more Bob Lee Swagger books, and Wahlberg would be happy to revisit the character “if the script is there.” Ditto for the long-rumored follow-up to “The Italian Job,” and ditto, too, for “The Departed.” Sure, practically everybody in the latter is dead by movie’s end, but the original Hong Kong hit “The Departed” is based on – “Infernal Affairs” – spawned a prequel and a sequel. That fact has not gone unobserved by “The Departed’s” Oscar-winning team, Martin Scorsese and writer William Monahan.
“It really just depends on what it looks like on the page,” says Wahlberg, 35. “If we can make the movie as good or better than the first then it’s worth it. A lot of people just make sequels for the sake of a paycheck … I don’t want to do that.”
Wahlberg and Scorsese are already at work on another project – one that’s likely to bring the actor back to Philadelphia environs yet again. “It’s a series for HBO, about the early days of Atlantic City,” he reports.
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“We’re putting it all together now, hoping to start before the end of the year.” The duo will serve as executive producers, a title Wahlberg already has on the HBO series “Entourage.” A third series is slated to go on HBO, too. That one’s “In Treatment,” and stars Gabriel Byrne.
“He plays a therapist, and it’s actually going to be on five nights a week,” Wahlberg says. “The first four days (he’s) with four different patients, and then the fifth night, Friday, he goes to see his therapist.” (No, that won’t be Lorraine Bracco’s Dr. Melfi.)
Wahlberg has another high-profile pic in the can – and headed for Cannes, where it will premiere in May: “We Own the Night” is set in the 1980s. Robert Duvall and Joaquin Phoenix costar, and James Gray, who steered Wahlberg through “The Yards,” directed.
“I love, love, love this movie,” he says. “It’s a family drama.
Duvall plays the chief of police in New York, and I’m his son, one of the youngest captains on the force, and I head up this investigation of this Russian drug deal and I speak Russian. I’m the golden-boy son and Joaquin plays the black sheep … and then the whole thing comes crumbling down.” Wahlberg’s also discussing projects with his “Boogie Nights” director, Paul Thomas Anderson, and “Three Kings” director, David O.
Russell. And “Shooter’s” Fuqua wants a quick reunion, too.
“Me and Antoine were like, ‘Look, what do you want to do next?’ ‘Whatever you want to do,”‘ Wahlberg says.
“We just got on really well. We push each other in the right way.”
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