With apologies to The Shawshank Redemption, The Fugitive might be the greatest Aimless Sunday Afternoon Basic Cable Rewatch of all time. Is it Harrison Ford’s greatest? Nope. But it is a functionally perfect action-drama movie. And yet, it might actually be outshined by this doozy of an oral history—which, for all its lack of Harrison Ford, delivers more “how have I never heard that before?” details per square inch than seems possible. Read it, then watch the movie again. You were going to anyway, right?
Tom Wood: There’s a scene where we’re all sitting on the side of the train-wreck demolition site. We were questioning the dialogue and saying, “Let’s spark this up a bit.” I’m not the fastest thinker and was caught a little off-guard. Tommy turns to me [with the cameras rolling] and says, “What are you doing?” I go, “I’m thinking.” He goes, “How about you think me up a cup of coffee and a chocolate donut with some of those little sprinkles on top?” Later on, at the hotel scene, he says to me, “Don’t let them give you shit about your ponytail.” That was completely improv’d.
Daniel Roebuck: The quote that everyone brings up to me is “If they can dye the river green today, why can’t they dye it blue the other 364 days of the year?” That was an improv. And that was because we had that huge walk that we had to cover. And I remember asking Andy, “Did you shoot the green river?” He goes, “Yeah, we’re cutting it in.” And that’s how it came to be.
Joe Pantoliano: When we first get into the storm drain, I go, “Goddammit, I just got these shoes.” All the lines down there were improvised.
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