For his upcoming movie Tower Heist, Eddie Murphy believed that it was time to return to familiar comic ground. “The theme of the film, with the workers being taken advantage of by the rich folks and then turning the tables, is timeless. One of my earliest movies, Trading Places, was like that. Those themes work forever. It was fun for me to work on because I hadn’t done a role like that in a while.

I’ve done a lot of family movies, and I’ve done a lot of projects in which the characters were not ‘street-y’ guys. There was a freshness to this.” Ben Stiller, the star of such box-office hits as Zoolander and Tropic Thunder (both of which he directed) and the three films of the Meet the Parents franchise, came aboard as Josh Kovaks, the workaholic manager of the tony building who has given up on his personal life to satiate the endless wants of his pampered residents.

Whether immersing himself in the minutiae of fine wines and the newest restaurants or keeping track of the birthday and anniversary of every affluent occupant, Josh may always be counted upon. With a decade of experience working in the building, he runs a tight ship and expects nothing but perfection from his staff.

The actor admits that he was intrigued by director Brett Ratner’s passionate take on the material, and the chance to join both the director and Murphy proved to be an attractive proposition. Stiller remarks: “I’ve known Brett for almost 15 years, and this is the first time that we’ve worked together.

He has incredible enthusiasm and an amazing sense of film history. He loves the filmmaking process, and he loves filmmakers. Brett works viscerally. He does his prep, but when he gets on the set is when it all comes alive for him.” Ratner returns the compliment to Stiller: “I’ve been a friend and fan of Ben’s for more than 15 years.

He is one of my favorite directors and actors. There is no actor with as much passion, commitment and hard work toward a performance than Ben. From our first meeting about Tower Heist, we were on the same page and completely agreed on the tone of the film that we all wanted to make.”

Problem solver that he is, Josh looks to con man Slide when it comes to criminal advice. The relationship between the two dates back to their time in preschool in Astoria, Queens, but the interaction that they currently have is the daily harassment that Slide gives Josh on Josh’s way to work.

Although both still live in the borough, the men are polar opposites who have taken separate paths. Josh works in the rarified world of vast wealth in Manhattan while Slide is pulling low-level crime gigs. But a criminal mind is a criminal mind, and Josh has limited options and time to get the pension funds back.  Josh knows he’s taking a chance to ask Slide to join in their con, but he takes the risk.

When it came to working with Murphy, Stiller led the cast in enthusiasm. As Murphy has been a fixture of the comedy landscape for decades, Stiller was excited to see him slip into a role that harkened back to memorable characters he portrayed in Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hrs.

“Eddie Murphy is iconic, especially for my generation,” says Stiller. “He defines a lot of what comedy is over the last 25 years, so it was very cool to work with him. I sometimes felt like an audience member as I watched him do his thing. I would think ‘Wow, that’s good. That’s going to be in the movie.’”

Shooting script locked and filmmaking team in place, Grazer reflected upon the project that began with the grain of an idea several years prior. He notes: “It’s difficult to imagine that a casual conversation six years ago has grown into such a fully realized film that is so grand in scope.

Plus, who could have known that, in this period of time, the global financial markets would teeter on the verge of collapse and the villain in our story would pale in comparison to some very real ones on Wall Street? Truth remains stranger than fiction.”

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The new movie Tower Heist, about a group of high rise staff members who plot to steal back their pensions from a unscrupulous Wall Streeter, mixes comedy and action with insightful social commentary, coupled with an empowering Robin Hood spirit.

It jump-starts the tale of newly disenfranchised who would be driven to commit a high-stakes robbery. The writers tapped into the battered U.S. economy, whose financial meltdown occurred amidst charges of corporate mismanagement, record high unemployment and financiers defrauding their clients.

They infused the material with a timeliness that made the premise all the more powerful and gave the ensemble cast much material to use. Outside the top billers, Tower Heist sports an interesting collection of supporting cast.

Michael Peña, who portrays bellhop/elevator operator Dev’Reaux, the newest member of The Tower staff, appreciated this ripped-from-the-headlines aspect of the film. Dev’Reaux’s freewheeling attitude rubs Josh the wrong way but also makes him a go-to guy to be a part of the heist crew.

“I love this story,” Peña states, “between the financial meltdown, unemployment and government bailouts, the little guy finally gets to have his day. To be able to get it done on their own terms with their everyday skills makes it that much sweeter for the crew.

I had family affected by the economic downturn while I was reading the script, so as much as Tower Heist is a big action-comedy, there’s an underlying anticipation to see it all play out.” Ben Stiller elaborates on Peña’s character: “We meet Dev’Reaux, who is brand new at the job and a likeable street guy, but puts his foot in his mouth a lot.

He doesn’t understand the hierarchy of how you’re supposed to deal with the tenants and gets under Josh’s skin, but Josh needs him, so he brings him onto the heist team.” Academy Award nominee Gabourey Sidibe follows up her highly acclaimed dramatic debut in Precious to play the role of Odessa Montero, a feisty Jamaican-born maid who works in The Tower while trying to secure her green card.

As the daughter of a locksmith, she possesses skills that prove to be invaluable to the team when the heist is devised. Though the Harlem-bred Sidibe conferred with a safecracker to refine her technique, she constructed her character by looking a little closer to home. “The thing about Odessa is that she is Jamaican,” she says.

“I am not Jamaican, but some of my friends are so I brought their blunt, quick-witted sass to Odessa.” The actress laughs, “I’ve been teasing them our entire friendship, so it was nice to honor them on camera.” Brett Ratner, the director, loved being able to introduce audiences to a very different side of the young woman who blew filmgoers away in her very first dramatic role.

Still, he admits: “I needed an actress to be able to stand toe-to-toe with Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller, somebody with a strong personality. Gabby is a breath of fresh air. She walks in the room, and everybody just gravitates to her. She’s pathologically positive, happy and smart.

She’s always got something witty to say. She’s constantly cracking a joke or whispering something in your ear to make you laugh.” The project gained further momentum with the casting of legendary actor Judd Hirsch, who rejoins his producer from A Beautiful Mind for this film.

Cast as Mr. Simon, Josh’s boss who fires several of his employees when they destroy Shaw’s car, Hirsch admits that he has a lot of sympathy for Josh, played by Ben Stiller. “I love Ben’s part. You don’t usually see parts like that. They’re usually banal or immune, but Josh is concerned with the lives of others and is always trying to get somebody straightened out.

But he’s the one who takes the fall. He’s trying to get something for everybody in a beneficial way. He’s Mr. Justice, and then has to go and pay the price.” “Judd is one of those talents who has spent the past four decades creating complex, memorable characters,” offers producer Brian Grazer.

“From his unforgettable roles on television shows like Taxi and Dear John to his stunning performances in movies from Ordinary People to A Beautiful Mind, he’s one of the most memorable performers working today. You see the conflict in his character’s eyes as he has to play the heavy and get rid of those who were involved with the vigilante behavior in Shaw’s apartment. We were thrilled to have him.”

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At the heart of Tower Heist is a ragtag group—a building manager with a score to settle, a desperate Wall Streeter on the verge of bankruptcy, a cash-strapped concierge whose wife is expecting their first child, a bellhop up for any adventure and a feisty maid hoping to stay in the country—looking to recoup their looted pensions.

Alongside a petty criminal looking for quick cash, they are ready to do what needs to be done to get the cash. The talented ensemble has a few aces up its sleeve as two names stand out in the roll call to elevate the material; the enigmatic Casey Affleck and veteran Matthew Broderick.

Casey Affleck, who portrays Charlie, Ben Stiller’s charachter Josh’s not-so-savvy (and broke) brother-in-law who works as The Tower’s concierge, cut his teeth on the heist genre as Virgil Malloy in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven series. Still, he knew the promise of working with Stiller, Eddie Murphy and director Brett Ratner was reason enough to revisit the genre.

Affleck notes “More than anything else, I just like Ben, Eddie and Brett, and it sounded like a fun film to do. I wanted to do a comedy, and I thought this was an opportunity to try and be funny.” With a wife on the verge of going into labor, Charlie is reluctant to join Josh’s crew of amateur thieves.

Producer Brian Grazer felt that Affleck, with his deadpan timing, was perfect for the part. “Casey continues to impress me with the fascinating choices he has made in his career,” offers the producer. “He is so droll, that with a slight vocal inflection or delivery of a minor tic, he can elicit a great number of laughs.

The fact that Casey has experience in the world of heist movies made him even more perfect for the job.” Matthew Broderick came aboard Tower Heist to portray Mr. Fitzhugh, a Wall Streeter who has suffered his own financial hardships and whose quarters in the ritzy building have been foreclosed.

Despite the dire circumstances, the self-professed squatter is a financier to the core and knows the tricks of his former trade. “Fitzhugh needs the money, and greed becomes his primary motivation,” explains Broderick. “That’s one thing I like about the caper movies from the 1970s like The Anderson Tapes. They really wanted the money or jewels or art. Fitzhugh’s mindset harkens back to that.”

For Ratner, the chance to work with the veteran actor was another reason to be excited about showing up for work every day.  He says: “When I was 12, Matthew Broderick was the biggest movie star next to Eddie Murphy, literally. I grew up on Matthew, and to have him play Fitzhugh was a great honor. I couldn’t believe that he was on my set sitting next to Eddie, Ben and all of these other great actors.”

Murphy shares his director’s assessment of the veteran stage and screen performer. He compliments, “Everybody in the cast is funny and likeable, and you want everybody in the cast to win. Matthew Broderick is one of my contemporaries. We came up around the same time. I’ve seen everything that he’s done, and it was great to be on a set with a master actor.”

You can watch Tower Heist in cinema on November 4.

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Tower Heist, starring Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy and Tea Leoni, lifts the curtain on the inner workings of a luxury high-rise and what it takes to keep hundreds of New York City’s wealthiest denizens satisfied. The residence managers for several high-profile hotels provided the filmmakers and the writers with insider tips about their experiences in overseeing top-drawer residences.

Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson recalls: “It was informative, to say the least, to speak with the people who work in these buildings. I interviewed everyone from doormen to housekeepers to building managers.  There’s a whole underworld to the New York building scene that exists in the basements that most people are unaware of. They make it all possible, and you just never see it. It’s fascinating.”

Almost every aspect of establishing Manhattan as the backdrop for Tower Heist’s action hinged on the filmmakers’ ability to execute some of the bigger set pieces conceived in the script. From the über-exclusive wealthy enclaves of Park Avenue to the working class neighborhoods in Queens, the crew needed to evoke the distinctive personalities of the city in a creative way.

Production designer Kristi Zea, who previously collaborated with the movie’s director Brett Ratner on The Family Man and Red Dragon — and most recently designed the luxuriously singular look for Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps — was the hands-on choice to visualize the diverse and complex production design.

Her extensive experience, particularly when it came to creating something as opulent as the character of Shaw’s penthouse apartment, was helpful in satisfying a multitude of requirements of Mark Russell’s visual effects department and Steve Kirshoff’s special effects team.

A tour of some of Manhattan’s most upscale hotels and high-rise residences helped to determine the scope of the fictitious building where the majority of the film was set. For the grand interior set of The Tower lobby, Zea ended up using an amalgam of what she observed on the tour, elevating the look and scale to create a sumptuously sophisticated design.

Ultimately, a sprawling top-floor apartment in the Trump International Hotel & Tower — located at Central Park West in bustling Columbus Circle — served as the model for the set of Shaw’s opulent penthouse. Zea recalls: “The inspiration was an empty apartment that was half a floor and had a staggering 180-degree view of Manhattan.

We were able to match up the walls of the building, but then what we did on the inside was all up to us. We had a blast with it.” With the cooperation of Donald Trump, who allowed the production access to several of his high-end properties, the filmmakers were able to incorporate true luxury locales in the film.

The Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York City was used to film exteriors, including portions of the re-creation of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a sprawling foot and car chase sequence that had the main- and second-unit teams winding along Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.

Ratner explains about lensing here: “That’s what’s so great about shooting in New York City. Every direction you put the camera, you have something special, whether it is an interesting face or a building or a landscape. When you point the camera in any direction, you have amazing visuals.”

Tea Leoni sums the cast’s thoughts on the scale of the production: “I can’t believe the city of New York gave us Columbus Circle for this scene. We had cars speeding and crashing through the streets. It’s a crazy scene with so much going on.”

Trump even offered up the rare opportunity to lens in the spacious underground parking garage and service center of the lavish Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. The real-estate mogul made a point of visiting the set during a break from taping his television series, The Celebrity Apprentice, several floors up to see how Ratner and the cast were faring.

A key element to envisioning the sophisticated penthouse apartment was assembling a status-affirming art collection. Ratner, himself an avowed art lover, had specific artists and pieces in mind for the film. Zea knew of Ratner’s dabbling in this world, so she elevated the design aesthetic to reflect his passion for it.

Occasionally, Ratner would place a call or send an e-mail to cut through mountains of red tape required to include reproductions of pedigreed world-class artwork. To evoke the tastes of a savvy art collector, Zea went with a modern-classic design approach, punctuated with important multimedia art.

She explains: “These days, it seems wealthy people want to have wall power. They want to have art on their walls that means something and shows people, just like a car, that ‘I’m rich, I’m smart and I know what I’m doing.’” Reproduction works from masters, including Pablo Picasso, Francesco Clemente, Richard Prince, Francis Bacon, Ed Ruscha, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cy Twombly, Roy Lichtenstein, Alberto Giacometti and Andy Warhol, fill Shaw’s penthouse set.

Says Grazer of the final art choices they amassed for filming: “It’s a shame that someone as dishonorable as Arthur Shaw is allowed to be surrounded by this much beauty.”

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Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy lead an all-star cast in Tower Heist, an action-comedy about a staff of blue-collar workers who seek revenge on the Wall Street swindler who stiffed them. After the crew at the luxury Central Park condominium The Tower discover the penthouse billionaire has stolen their retirement, they plot the ultimate revenge: a heist to reclaim what he took from them.

Queens native Josh Kovaks (Stiller) has managed one of the most luxurious and well-secured residences in New York City for more than a decade. Under his watchful eye, nothing goes undetected. In the swankiest unit atop Josh’s building, Wall Street titan Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is under house arrest after being caught stealing $2 billion from his investors. The hardest hit among those he defrauded? The Tower staffers whose pensions he was entrusted to manage.

With only days until Shaw gets away with the perfect crime, Josh’s crew turns to petty crook Slide (Murphy) to plan the nearly impossible: steal the $20 million they are sure is hidden in the heavily guarded condo where Shaw is being held by an FBI team led by Special Agent Claire Denham (Tea Leoni, Fun With Dick and Jane).

The burglary takes place in the midst of one of New York City’s most iconic events: the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Integrating the decades-old tradition into the story line was a daunting task that had the cast and crew re-creating the parade one week after the original. But to ensure that they fully captured the one-of-a-kind magic that only the real parade could provide, dozens of crew members gave up their Thanksgiving weekend to film portions of the actual parade on Columbus Circle.

Native New Yorkers Stiller, Alda, Leoni, Broderick and Sidibe had their own memories of attending the parade, while other members of the crew vividly recall watching the parade on television.  However, the production’s ambitious re-creation was awe-inspiring for the team.

“When I was a kid, my family would go to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and it was hard to get close,” says Leoni. “To be able to have front-row seats, so to speak, for even a portion of the parade, where I could take a look at all the balloons, was amazing.  It was much cooler than it was when I was a kid.”

Ratner agrees with his film’s hard-nosed agent: “I knew that the building that is the center of Tower Heist is a main character in the film, and I wanted all the action around this centerpiece. The shots of the Thanksgiving Day Parade that we captured were just incredible.

Though amateurs, these rookie thieves — including high-strung concierge Charlie (Casey Affleck, Ocean’s Eleven trilogy), broke ex-Wall Streeter Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick, The Producers), rookie bellhop Dev’Reaux (Michael Peña, Battle: Los Angeles) and feisty maid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe, Precious) — know the building better than anyone. It turns out they’ve been casing the place for years…they just didn’t know it.

Director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour series, X-Men: The Last Stand, Red Dragon) joins Academy Award^®-winning producer Brian Grazer (8 Mile, A Beautiful Mind, American Gangster) to lead a talented behind-the-scenes crew for Tower Heist. Grazer is joined in production duties on the action-comedy by Eddie Murphy and Kim Roth (Inside Man, Insomnia).

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