Cindy Evans, the costume designer on Oliver Stone’s ‘Savages’, worked closely with Stone and the actors to give each character a signature style that would complement the look of the film. Stone notes: “Cindy’s costumes really stand out. She got that sexy beach vibe. She comes from ‘Lords of Dogtown’, ‘Thirteen’, ‘Laurel Canyon’, and she understood that Southern California/Laguna mentality.”

With multiple characters and story lines, it was important to establish a detailed costume bible. Evans offers: “In my research, I looked into everything from Orange County to Mexico, even classic movie references. I compiled all of it onto boards that I created. They were an important visual tool to define the characters and tone. It is also a necessity to help gain a visual dialogue with the collaborators.” As did production designer Tomás Voth, Evans tested the limits of design. “We tried to keep it naturalistic with a heightened sense of realism, but all the while pushing the boundaries with color and stylistic choices.”

Her costumes also reflected a collaboration with her director. For instance, the taciturn Chon, whose wardrobe is mostly functional, has a fondness for Hawaiian shirts, which arose from Evans’ dialogue with Stone. “There was a simple brutality to Chon’s costume choice. I wanted it to feel basic and a touch utilitarian,” she says. “A lot of that had to do with Taylor’s attitude, posture and physique. I wanted it to feel like he could start a fight at any moment. Oliver wanted to push him in a more playful direction, to reflect the lighter and happier times with our three leads. So in came the Hawaiian shirts and a bit of color.”

Whereas many of Chon’s clothes had structure to them, Ben’s were more free-form: loose, worn green trousers, batik shirts and scarves, souvenirs from the many countries he had visited on his path to enlightenment. The designer shares: “The intention was to give him a unique worldly flair, all the while keeping him grounded to his California beach roots.”

O is a bit of a clothes horse, though her fashion—a unique layering of pattern and fabric—is all her own. Evans used O’s style to deliberate effect with a purple chiffon dress and underlying slip that became her wardrobe for much of the film. When Lado kidnaps her, soon all that is left is the ethereal white underlay that, like O, becomes battered and vulnerable. It is modeled on a painting of O’s Shakespearean namesake and the Pre-Raphaelite work “Ophelia” by Sir John Everett Millais.

For her part, Blake Lively brought artist Sage Vaughn onto the production to design O’s nature-based tattoos. “O’s a free spirit,” Lively says. “Maybe that’s why she’s in love with two men, because she wants to be free and open and not close-minded. She’s experienced a lot of privilege, but she’s also experienced a lot of pain. I wanted to see that in her tattoos because she needs a reminder to smile every day. Sage designed O’s tattoos, and he actually hand-painted them on me. Then Bill Corso took molds of them, and we had tattoos made.”

Her captor, Lado, and his colleague Alex were a sartorial study of opposites. Lado, with his oversized cowboy boots and black leather jacket, is a hulking contrast to the elegant Alex, with his bespoke suits and ties. Evans explains: “The character definition between Lado and Alex was based on hierarchy and privilege within the Cartel world. Lado was meant to feel like he was working his way up the ladder and will never get there. And Demián Bichir wore those suits so well; he looked amazing in them.”

Their boss had a glamorous style reminiscent of 1940s actresses: plunging necklines and shoulder pads, as well as an affinity for silks, bold colors and towering heels. Elena sports substantial bling and propmaster Kirk Corwin notes that Salma Hayek had definite ideas about it. “Her wedding ring was a big thing for us,” Corwin says. “Salma knows fine jewelry and I’m a prop man, so I know costume jewelry. She told me in the nicest possible way, ‘There’s some costume jewelry that’s very nice…and there’s some that’s not.’ So we stepped it up a notch and I learned new sources from her.”

Corwin also inadvertently served as the inspiration for Dennis’ wardrobe. He explains: “I met John right after he had his first costume meeting with Cindy. They were planning a more Western look with him, like a bolo tie and snakeskin boots. I walked in to talk to him about his props: watches, rings, that sort of thing. He said, ‘Would you mind having Cindy take a look at your clothes? And your shoes, what kind of shoes are those? I like those.’ So his wardrobe ended up looking very much like what I wear to set. I’m not a fashion plate but I guess for John and that character, I was.”

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The production of Oliver Stone’s new ‘Savages’ began filming in Malibu, which doubled for Laguna. Producer Moritz Borman explains the logic: “Oliver likes to stay as chronological as possible so that the actors can grow. It’s a good way of doing it, if you can logistically afford it.”

For about two weeks, the cast and crew decamped to a former baseball player’s 3,500-square-foot house that boasts a breathtaking view of the Pacific. The area that became O, Chon and Ben’s residence features vaulted ceilings, sliding glass doors and an outdoor dining area with a fire pit and a spa. Production designer Tomás Voth lent it a Zen/rock ’n’ roll vibe: Layers of colorful Indian tapestries and small shrines to various Hindu gods were folded into pops of primary color from vibrant, raucous paintings. Of course, he added the requisite paraphernalia a weed grower—and smoker—might need.

Voth also had to create a version of Mexico in California, specifically Elena’s villa. One of her many domiciles, this residence had to reflect her power, wealth and isolation. The production found an extraordinary property called the Hummingbird Nest Ranch in the Santa Susana Mountains. With its Spanish-style architecture and décor, it looks exactly like a grand Mexican hacienda— replete with stables, fountains, a swimming pool, an endless façade of windows and a mammoth, regal bedroom. The Hummingbird Nest Ranch may accommodate up to 5,000 people, yet Elena and her security were the sole guests. It was, in fact, an exquisite jail.

Despite all of her wealth and power, Elena’s alone, and that’s what the team wanted to convey in her villa. “For her to be ‘queen of the Cartel,’ to survive, persevere and succeed says a lot about her ambition,” Voth says. “We wanted her home to reveal that, as well as what she had to give up attaining it. So we designed the villa from the character out. I wanted it to be elegant and massive and also offer a glimpse of what it is like to make it to the top and be completely alone. Fortunately, we found this fantastic place in Simi Valley that looks like Tijuana, and it fulfilled everything we needed.”

Voth’s designs helped Salma Hayek understand her character long before cameras rolled, even if initially they gave the actress’ husband pause. Hayek recalls: “Tomás kindly made me huge boards of every single one of Elena’s properties, that I kept in my bedroom, which helped me understand her. My husband saw them and said, ‘Wait, are we buying another house?’ I said, ‘No, don’t worry, they’re already mine.’”

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New movie ‘Savages’ begins in an idyllic California dream, and as it progresses, that reverie becomes a nightmare. “There wasn’t one wild idea that Oliver [Stone] didn’t get excited about,” says production designer Tomás Voth. “Because it’s ‘Savages’, it’s a slightly different view of reality. Early on, we agreed that there’s a subtext of hypocrisy: who calls who a savage and the notion that anybody can become one. Plus, there is a complex weave of Americans and Mexicans in California. There’s a border, but they are so much a part of each other that you almost don’t notice it. The idea was to translate that into visuals, so we had potent, vibrant colors. We wanted a hard edge and didn’t want the film to be monochromatic. That freed me to do wilder things than usual.”

The peripatetic production began at a Malibu beach house but traveled to such locales as Pyramid Dam in the mountains north of L.A., Dana Point and Laguna Beach to the south, the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley and Pacific Palisades, and downtown L.A. Voth had to rapidly refashion each site into a ‘Savages’ set.

“I’ve done a lot of stage work, but that didn’t feel right for this film,” he says. “The locations became so much a part of the design. Oliver and I were inspired by the locations when we saw them. He would start seeing the scene in a slightly different way because of the layout of the house or the geography of the landscape. The distribution of each space affected the dynamic of every scene.”

Producer Eric Kopeloff adds: “If we have to build, we try it on real locations. We did one day on a stage because we wanted to incorporate four different locations and that was the only way to do it. But 95 percent of our sets were practical locations, as close to what the script described as possible. So when you look out the window, there’s the actual ocean and the sun going down. You’re fighting the elements, but when you shoot that shot and the birds are flying by, it’s real…and helpful for the actors.”

While the company lensed for a week in Laguna Beach and Dana Point, aspects unique to production impacted the time spent there. “Our plan was to shoot a third of the movie in Orange County, two-thirds in L.A.,” says the producer. “We needed to make the movie in the spring and summertime because of the weather and light we wanted. We hit a lot of roadblocks—places that weren’t excited about us shooting there because of the content. And then we got into simple logistics. Laguna makes its money during the summer through tourism, so our footprint there had to be mitigated to after Labor Day. We came down for a week to establish the look and then came back after Labor Day to access the beach shots that required our actors.”

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Three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone returns to the screen with the ferocious thriller ‘Savages’, featuring the all-star ensemble cast of Taylor Kitsch (‘Battleship’), Blake Lively (‘The Town’), Aaron Johnson (‘Kick-Ass’), John Travolta (‘Pulp Fiction’), Benicio Del Toro (‘Traffic’), Salma Hayek (‘Frida’), Emile Hirsch (‘Into the Wild’) and Demián Bichir (‘A Better Life’). The film is based on Don Winslow’s best-selling crime novel that was named one of The New York Times’ Top 10 Books of 2010.

Laguna Beach, that glittering seaside resort in Orange County, California, is home to the privileged and the bored: Teens with too much free time and disposable income, as well as men and women kept perpetually young by an ample supply of plastic surgeons—all making a weekly pilgrimage to that suburban mecca, the high-end shopping mall. The temperate climate and the sparkling Pacific Coast give it all a faux laid-back sheen. O (Lively) knows all about that. She’s a lovely local who is certainly familiar with her hometown’s homegrown foibles and charms.

O is short for Ophelia…she has her reasons. She’s a unique spirit, as are her housemates—Laguna Beach entrepreneurs Ben (Johnson) and Chon (Kitsch)—an extraordinary trio who share a one-of-a-kind love. Ben, a peaceful, charitable botanist aspires to save the world. His closest friend, Chon, a former Navy SEAL and ex-mercenary, isn’t sure the world is worth saving. Ben, Chon and O keep to themselves and share a special bond…a postmodern family. They enjoy a quiet, well-appointed, free and easy lifestyle, made possible by Ben and Chon’s lucrative business: raising some of the best marijuana ever developed. Independent, fair-minded impresarios with a mind-blowing product, they are local heroes providing a product that people want.

Ben and Chon’s company, naturally, does not remain off the grid for long. Their legendary weed and innovative business model have attracted the keen interest of the Mexican Baja Cartel, headed by the merciless Elena “La Reina” (Hayek), her brutal enforcer, Lado (Del Toro), and her unscrupulous head attorney, Alex (Bichir). Elena demands a partnership with Ben and Chon, and nobody refuses La Reina without sacrificing something they hold dear.

But the Cartel underestimates the unbreakable bond among these three remarkable friends. Ben, Chon and, in her own way, O, wage a seemingly unwinnable war against the drug empire with the reluctant assistance of a dirty DEA agent named Dennis (Travolta) and a crafty accountant called Spin (Hirsch). And so begins a series of increasingly vicious ploys and high-stakes brinksmanship in a savage battle of wills.

From its provocative first chapter to its lyrical last page, Don Winslow’s audacious 2010 novel Savages captivated and stunned audiences and critics alike. Winslow describes that the genesis of his bestselling book was an unusual one: “I was sitting at my desk one day in a bad mood and I typed these two words, which would become the infamous first chapter of the book. Then I wrote 14 pages in a rush, and I e-mailed them to Shane [screenplay co-writer/ executive producer Shane Salerno] and told him, ‘Either these are really good, or I’m just crazy.’ A few minutes later, I got an e-mail from him saying, ‘Drop everything else you’re doing and finish this book while you’re in this voice.’”

Winslow’s novel proved that rules are made to be broken, and he ended up crafting several chapters of Savages in screenplay form. “I was trying to bust out of the typical confines of the crime genre as it’s been defined lately,” Winslow shares. “I threw a few elbows and found moments where I thought, ‘This is better read or experienced as a piece of film rather than as a piece of a novel.’”

Salerno, with whom the author has collaborated for more than 13 years, was glad that he had encouraged Winslow to focus his energy into revisiting a world that the author knew quite well. The executive producer explains: “Don wrote what a lot of people consider to be the definitive source on the subject with ‘The Power of the Dog,’ which is the story of the drug war over 30 years—from the formation of the DEA to 2005. He spent six years researching it down in Mexico, Texas and California. This is terrain that he has chiseled his name into, and it’s a world he knows so well. With Savages, he was prescient in seeing the business move from the Mexican cartels into California. It’s interesting when real-life events start to mirror your worst fears.”

Not only was the book critically well received when it was published—Stephen King called the sexy, action-filled drama “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on autoload”—it was fast-tracked into a screenplay. Reflects Salerno: “The normal route for books, and certainly Don’s previous books, is to sell them straight to a studio. “We made the decision to do something different, and we optioned the book to Oliver Stone directly. We felt that this unique material wouldn’t benefit from traditional development, and it needed special handling. We felt that Oliver would get it and began a collaboration developing it and ultimately writing the screenplay together. From the time the script sold to the time that shooting began, it was about three months, which is unheard of.”

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For ‘Savages’, in cinemas on July 6, Oliver Stone assembled a unique trio to inform the characters of Spin and Dennis: Ralph Echemendia, the production’s hacker expert; Patrick Fourmy, the cannibis consultant; and Eddie Follis, a recently retired DEA agent. None would have been voluntarily in the same room as the other had it not been for their involvement in this film.

The longtime documentarian felt there was an element of verisimilitude to this material, especially “having to do with local pot growers, the influence and impact of the Mexican Cartel.” Stone explains: “We were dealing with the raw edge of the marijuana trade, and frankly, you get a lot of false information and media hype. On ‘Scarface’, I was a stickler for detail. I wanted to know what the poundage of cocaine was, what was being shipped, who was behind it, etc. For this, I tried to know the same thing about marijuana, but it’s harder to find some of those facts.

“That’s where Eddie came in,” the director continues. “He gave me some good facts, and of course, Don Winslow has been around it for some time. As has Patrick, who’s been in the marijuana business for years, as well as the music industry. A generous man and amazing intellect, he was a kind of Svengali to many of us on the set. Through them and my own research, I became familiar with the quirkiness of the independent marijuana movement. It’s not a cartel, so everybody grows in their own eccentric fashion. Ralph helped us to ensure that the pivotal scenes in which Ben and Chon get off the grid and then dabble in their own cyberespionage were accurate…and up-to-date. We tried to add as much of that into the film as we could.”

Echemendia’s input took the film’s showcasing of money laundering, electronic and computer surveillance and cybertheft into the 21st century. “I’m what they call an ‘ethical hacker,’” the advisor says. “I specialize in cybersecurity, mainly in offensive security—meaning actually breaking into a computer system. Oliver wanted to make sure the hacking scenes were realistic. He was interested in the layers and making sure we had real things in the movie. For instance, nowadays, information can be stored on what looks like little credit cards, not just flash drives, so we added that in—as well as real logos and the energy drinks that we like when we pull all-nighters.”

Follis’ expertise in the world of the DEA has taken him from Southeast Asia and South America to the Middle East and Los Angeles, where he worked as the assistant special agent in charge of wire room operations, gang operations and general enforcement against cartel figures. As he puts it, “I was essentially Dennis, without the corruption.”

Follis worked closely with Stone and John Travolta to make sure that the shady DEA operative would be a credible one. The former special agent recounts the experience: “I met with Mr. Travolta in Dallas for four nights. First of all, he was the consummate gentleman. Secondly, he had super absorption on every single topic—even how to move, how to control a room with merely his body language. He wanted to know everything. He asked all the pointed questions that would prepare him for shifting universes that Dennis deals in. It’s a very duplicitous, murky world, and he dove right in.”

“I grilled him,” Travolta adds. “Eddie is a version of Dennis. I wanted to know what it was like to get to know someone so well that you’re going to have to betray them within months or years. He said it was tough on him because he grew attached to the people he was getting to know, with the knowledge that they would never realize that he did them in, the covertness is so severe and acute. That was fascinating: How far as an actor do you have to go to fool everyone? As it turns out, you have to go very far indeed because your life is at stake. The government’s at stake. Everything’s at stake.”

Follis also managed to organize an elaborate rogues’ gallery so that the actors could engage in conversations with real ex-cartel members. Johnson, whose character becomes perhaps the most well-versed in all aspects of the marijuana industry, from the humane and altruistic to the cutthroat and brutal, got an eye-opening education. The English actor received a crash course in the culture and politics of the American marijuana industry.

“We had a great team from preproduction and on set to help us through,” Johnson explains. “We sat down right at the beginning with Eddie, who introduced us to people who were in the cartel and in the Colombian mafia. It was great and a little terrifying to hear their stories. Oliver wanted us to indulge in the most preparation we could so it would seem natural, so we would really know our stuff.”

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Perhaps the most challenging location for the production crew of the upcoming film ‘Savaged’ was Pyramid Dam, the west branch of California aqueduct in northern Los Angeles County. The craggy hills and valleys adjacent to the dam served as the three-day setting for an incendiary ambush between Ben and Chon’s men and the Cartel. The production was the first to be allowed to film that close to the dam and to conduct extensive stunts and perform pyrotechnics, all during high fire season. These sequences played out in August, and by the second day, temperatures soared to the mid-90s. Recounts director Oliver Stone: “There were some incredible vistas there, but we had to work at a crushing pace in very inhospitable conditions. It was tough, but everyone pulled together.”

Instead of layering in many visual effects during postproduction or splitting the scene between several locations, Stone used the geography of the roads and hills to film much of the crucial heist scene in-camera, in one place. Armed with exploding vehicles and serious firepower, from RPGs to IEDs, the filmmaker captured what he needed. As it turned out, the production team found this particular location by accident.

After they were given the wrong directions, the team convinced the caretakers to show them the location. But at the time, they were told they wouldn’t be allowed to shoot there. Producer Eric Kopeloff says that they broke a cardinal rule of filmmaking: “You do not take a director to a location that you can’t shoot at because that’s the location the director will want. Oliver couldn’t get it out of his head. We’d show him other places and he’d say, ‘No, it has to look like that place.’ With Oliver, there is no ‘We can’t shoot there’; there is ‘Go figure out a way.’ So we brought a bunch of government agencies together to entertain the idea of filming there. U.S. forestry, state forestry, fire, land management, Homeland Security, California Highway Patrol—they came together, and we went through our ideas. We wanted to do this at the height of fire season, and if we were responsible for a fire there would’ve been hell to pay.”

The intense heat, rugged terrain and number of scenes needed to lens in a small period of time proved to be daunting and exhausting for everyone except actor Taylor Kitsch. Kopeloff says: “Taylor couldn’t get enough of it. This was like him just waking up on a Saturday morning. He was in his element.”

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Don Winslow’s Savages, laced with the politics and trade of marijuana, areas that have long been of interest to the writer/director, riveted Oliver Stone when he read it in galley form. Shane Salerno & Don Winslow & Oliver Stone adapted the novel into a screenplay, and in less than a year, Universal Pictures secured the worldwide distribution rights. Soon after, principal photography began. Of his interest in crafting a film out of the groundbreaking novel, Stone relays: “I thought the book was well done. It’s about power, betrayal, money and questioning current values.”

Savages features multiple themes that recur in Stone’s movies: layered power struggles, shifting loyalties, examinations of the best and worst of human nature, explorations of complex family relationships and a compelling look at damaged people, some of whom find their own kind of heroism.

Stone reflects that this project called to mind ‘Any Given Sunday’ and “the corporation coming into football.” About the economy of scale, he says: “Above all, it is a power move by the Mexican Cartel into the United States to cut in on the independent distributors and producers. In the movie, the Baja Cartel is more interested in volume than the boutique-sized operations. But wherever you have volume versus independent growers, you’re going to have a clash. Walmart doesn’t want to have competitors.”

Frequent Stone collaborator, producer Moritz Borman offers that there is a natural inclination to search for parallels in ‘Savages’ with Stone’s earlier films, but that the director isn’t interested in retreads. Borman says: “Obviously, people will try to compare ‘Savages’ to some of Oliver’s other movies, but the style and message are different, and it’s a different story. But it certainly has some of the intensity of his other pictures. He has always had something to say, and therefore has turned out these films that have survived.”

His fellow producer, Eric Kopeloff, notes that the director is as interested in characters as he is in a geopolitical backdrop: “That’s what excites him about making movies—finding a story where you can go on a ride with the characters. Oliver’s someone who never stops trying, never stops doing different things to stretch the medium.”

The translation of a lauded novel into an engaging movie is often an arduous one. For example, the film’s explosive ending, which Stone likens to a Spaghetti Western, captures the tenor of the book but doesn’t follow it to the letter. That divergence, Kopeloff notes, is part of the process of moving from one medium to another. He says: “There’s a liberty when you adapt a book into a screenplay, from a story perspective, from a time perspective. If we shot every scene in the book ‘Savages’ we would be easily sitting for five hours. We held true to the book in a lot of ways, but we also took cinematic liberties to heighten the story in certain places and give the audience a visual and character ride.”

Winslow expands upon the differences in penning a novel versus a screenplay: “Primarily, as a novelist, you have to become aware that, at the end of the day, these are two different media with a lot of different needs, and that can take a little getting used to. For instance, a chapter in a book can accomplish just one thing, whereas a scene in a film has to accomplish two or three things simultaneously. Screenwriting is an extremely demanding artistic form that has to take so many factors into account at once.”

In the story, the Baja Cartel admires Ben and Chon’s product and process and wants to acquire their business. However, they disdain their lifestyle, especially their unorthodox relationship with O. On the flip side, Ben, Chon and O are as equally repulsed by the Cartel and their methods. At various points, as the contest between the Cartel and Ben, Chon and O becomes increasingly ruthless and violent; just who is the savage becomes blurry and subjective at best. Stone sums: “It’s ironic that both sides identify the other as savages.”

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As actor Demián Bichir’s scenes in Oliver Stone’s new movie ‘Savages’ occurred over several months, he had a good deal of time to observe and contemplate Stone’s style. In step with Taylor Kitsch, Benicio Del Toro and Salma Hayek, he likens his director to a commanding officer readying his soldiers for war. “Like any great CO, he is hard on his troops because what they see in battle will be 10 times more serious,” the performer notes. “They have to be prepared for anything.”

As the renegade Spin, Ben and Chon’s hacker genius extraordinaire, Emile Hirsch found common ground in a shared sense of humor with his director. “We have similar comedic sensibilities and made each other laugh,” Hirsch says. “He was like a gentle bear of a guy to me. So cool, so detail-oriented.”

For his part as the financial brains behind Ben and Chon’s multimillion-dollar operation, Hirsch had to deliver a great deal of specialized dialogue. He says Stone provided him a comfort zone in which he could play the scenes without stressing over the jargon. “Of course, I don’t understand the intricacies of money laundering,” he states. “I just learned the lines and the context of the scene. As an audience member, you buy the illusion because that’s the magic of movies and storytelling.”

The principal and supporting female characters in Savages are independent, powerful, sexy, clever and compelling. The relationships between Elena, O and Elena’s daughter, Magda (played by Sandra Echeverría), vacillate between dominance, affection and betrayal. Throughout the film, there is a strong female voice, sometimes in terms of O’s narration. While Chon and Ben plot to rescue the captive O, she is never a damsel in distress. And O, Elena and Magda share a complicated, symbiotic affiliation that alters the game as much as Chon’s and Lado’s guns do. Says Stone: “I much enjoyed the interplay and influence of these dynamic women.”

In the Sanchez family, death is a given. Elena has lost her husband and two sons to violence in this drug war. She has sent daughter Magda to California to escape, and Stone was curious to explore what this would cost Elena. Raised in the life of the Cartel, Magda is able to look the other way when it comes to the manner in which her mother’s career has financed her luxurious and self-indulgent lifestyle.

“The relationship between Elena and Magda is pretty ruthless,” says the director. “The daughter resembles the mother in many ways, but the mother has a bigger heart. There is the transfer of feelings from Elena to O. When she holds her hostage, Elena kind of adopts O. O and her mother are very estranged, so on some level, initially, she is drawn to Elena. But ultimately there will be a shifting power struggle between these strong women, who develop a wary affection.”

Hayek was surprised by the offscreen bond that developed between her and Blake Lively, as well as between her and Echeverría. “I love these girls!” Hayek proclaims. “Blake was smart and fun and professional and imaginative and bizarre, in all the right ways. She was brave, not afraid to speak her mind and eloquent. From the first day in rehearsals, when she started talking about the character and the structure of the script, I thought, ‘We’re going to have a good time here.’ We started working on scenes on our own time, and when it came to doing the scene, she had taken notes on everything we did. I had so much trust and confidence in her. And as for Sandra, who I did not have the pleasure of knowing before, well, I feel so lucky to have two new friends.”

In turn, commends Echeverría: “I always respected Salma. She is a very strong, sexy, smart woman who has realized her dreams, and it was great to watch her channel all that into Elena. Now that I know her personally, I admire her even more. She had so many ideas and suggestions, so much energy and generosity, it was inspiring.”

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The cast of new movie ‘Savages’ rehearsed for two weeks before principal photography began, but throughout the production, director Oliver Stone utilized elaborate blocking rehearsals before filming. Occasionally, they lasted hours, as he and the actors went through long sequences that would play out over the next few days. After they completed privately working out the physical and emotional beats of the scenes, Stone invited the crew in to watch what had transpired, and served as the narrator. In the process, he gave everyone involved an instructive macro overview of the work ahead. For a movie with as many characters and plot points as ‘Savages’, the blocking rehearsals were critical.

This was nothing new for the filmmaker. “I’ve always done blocking rehearsals,” says Stone. “The scenes in this film were incredibly complex. We had five or six main characters, and the actors all had significant script input. These run-throughs are practical. First of all, you have to know where you’re going in the scene and what it’s about. Hopefully, you’ve agreed upon that beforehand, but the blocking is where it all plays out. The actual filming plan comes out of that. If you haven’t prepared before the blocking rehearsal, then you’re going to have a mess. But questions do arise, and the worst place in the world is to have some brouhaha on set…and things do reveal themselves in the process.”

This process, a hybrid of preparation and spontaneity, is one Stone enjoys, according to producer Eric Kopeloff. The producer notes: “We plan as much as we can in advance, but Oliver loves the experience itself. Some directors want to create the perfect moment, but he loves to see it evolve. That’s what makes his sets so interesting: the incredible drive and determination he brings, the aspect of discovery. He knows the direction he wants to take, but he explores it with the actors. He has a real love of characters, story and especially dialogue. It’s so important to him that it’s right, that the actors feel it’s right. It’s not about him and the script; it’s about how it ultimately appears on screen.”

One of the most elaborate rehearsals occurred atop a broad mesa in the stark Vasquez Rocks north of Los Angeles, the site known to the company as the “Desert Bowl.” Stone, many of the principal actors and the entire crew ran through the film’s operatic ending. This became a prep that began in blazing midafternoon sun and lasted long after the sun had disappeared behind the mountains.

The director shares his rationale for the protracted workday: “I knew it was going to be a long rehearsal because it was just too big and too important a scene. I did pare it down to six people, a desert, a showdown and snipers on the outer ring. There was the simplicity of a Western. But all of it had to be worked out: when the shots were, when the glass breaks, how many shots there would be.”

Stone is a longtime proponent of technical advisors, whom he employs to make sure his films appear as authentic as possible. A crucial part of his process was stunt coordinator Keith Woulard. The director commends: “Keith was the key person in all that. An ex- SEAL, he never lost his cool, and there were some tough moments for him. He was the most patient of men.”

Woulard had a particularly enthusiastic and able partner in Taylor Kitsch, who thoroughly enjoyed Chon’s willingness to deploy massive firepower whenever possible. One particularly complex move on the mesa required Chon to burst from behind an SUV and run in a crouched, zigzag motion across an arid expanse. His guns blazing, he had to race toward the targets of Lado and Elena, with multiple cameras trained on him. Kitsch was so in tune with the character and his mission that he nailed the scene in one take. It helped matters that Kitsch is very athletic and knows his way around a fight.

The actor was fortunate enough to receive experience in the methods and mannerisms of a warrior. “I trained with a SEAL prior to beginning Savages,” Kitsch says. “He was incredibly open with me. It wasn’t just about learning how to shoot semiautomatic weapons. He’d tell me stories about Iraq and Afghanistan, all of his buddies. It was special to be a part of an incredible opportunity that helped me to understand who Chon was. What I love about the SEALs is that you can walk by them on the street and you wouldn’t think twice. They don’t telegraph. But if you see them in their element, they are something to behold. I’m fortunate to call some of them friends now, too.”

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During their research to create Ben and Chon’s business for the movie ‘Savages’, director Oliver Stone and production designer Tomás Voth visited existing grow houses in the L.A. area. “They were everywhere, from the Valley to downtown,” the designer says, “but they are basically just plants with lights on them. If you didn’t know it was marijuana, there’s almost nothing to it. I started to wonder how we would make a grow house cinematic. I went back to an idea I had about using a regular house with a swimming pool. So, in Pacific Palisades, we found this wonderful house from the 1960s that had a covered courtyard with a pool that was perfect.”

This residence is perched at the peak of a winding, narrow hill in the Palisades, its sprawling backyard overlooking the Topanga Mountains and the ocean. Although that setting proved to be challenging in terms of staging support vehicles and gear, it offered the perfect venue for a high-end marijuana nursery. The props and set decorations required for this scene were quite specific to master growers Ben and Chon: jars of dope, centrifuges, a gas spectrum meter, drip system, grow lamps and, of course, the pièce de résistance, an indoor swimming pool filled with a prodigious amount of fake pot plants.

Filling the area with fecund cannabis was another unique challenge for Voth and his crew. It wasn’t as if they could rent a cache of marijuana. Voth explains: “For legal reasons, we couldn’t have a single real pot plant. For months, we developed a way of making the fake ones look ok for the wide shots. When you’re dealing with plastic and silks, it’s sometimes hard to make it resemble a living plant. For the tighter shots, we used a combination of several materials, after a lot of trial and error.” He adds, slyly, “none of which I would recommend smoking.”

The effect was so realistic that it fooled the cast and crew for a split second. Says art director Lisa Vasconcellos: “It was the coolest thing to watch people come to the set and say, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ People would walk up to the plants and smell them, knowing they were fake. That’s the fun of this film. We saw how far past the edge we could go. We could always come back, but if we didn’t try, what’s the point?”

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In Oliver Stone’s new ‘Savages’, Aaron Johnson plays Blake Lively’s character O’s other lover and Chon’s reluctant comrade in arms, the peaceable Ben, who is drawn against his will into a violent conflict with the Cartel. Indeed, Johnson was one of the first actors cast in the movie by Oliver Stone…even though neither man was initially sure what role he would play. “Aaron was one of the first actors I met with, in London,” recalls the director. “I thought he was fresh and new. I said, ‘You’re wonderful for this. I don’t know which part I want you to play, but please hold.’ And he did. He passed on a big movie he was very close on, just to stay with us.”

Ben, perhaps more than any of the characters, has to find and accept his inner savage, no easy feat for a self-proclaimed pacifist. “Ben becomes violent,” Stone states. “The irony is that Ben would like to stay out of the muck but he gets in, and once he does he realizes how difficult a dream he had. I guess none of us ever makes it through…we all get pulled into the muck at some point or another.”

Johnson offers that Stone was the reason he accepted whatever role he might ultimately play. When it turned out to be Ben, he was thrilled. “Oliver’s one of my heroes,” the actor shares. “He is a fantastic writer and filmmaker and amazing at putting all the pieces together in original ways. It was incredible to be a part of that puzzle. I’d never played a role close to this, but I had complete trust in Oliver. He is very challenging. He pushes you to do your best, to get to the next level and he always looks out for you. For a part like Ben, where there is a lot of emotional work along with heavy testosterone, Oliver helped me find that balance and strength.”

In addition to his three principals, Stone knew early on during preproduction that he wanted specific actors for the supporting roles. Therefore, he built the rest of the cast around them. They include John Travolta as the corrupt DEA agent Dennis, Academy Award nominee Salma Hayek as the imperious and ruthless Elena, head of the Baja Cartel, and Benicio Del Toro as Elena’s lethal enforcer Lado.

On both sides of the drug war is Dennis, an affable, manipulative DEA operative. A self-admitted opportunist, he plays fast and loose with Ben and Chon, as well as Lado. Two-time Oscar nominee John Travolta was brought on to act the part of the agent who has long eschewed his agency’s mission statement. “John was my first choice for Dennis. I’ve wanted to work with him for a long time,” Stone says. “And he projects a good-natured ambivalence, which fits the role of a DEA agent who’s AC/DC.”

It was as much the story as it was the specific part that attracted Travolta to the production. He says: “I responded to the overall impact of the script. I thought it would be a very cool movie, and I wanted to be involved.” Travolta adds that he found Stone to be very welcoming and an appreciative collaborator. “Oliver loved that I have played lots of different characters. He valued my process. That’s very inviting, especially since in a supporting role like Dennis—who connects all the dots in the piece—it was important to feel comfortable. Plus, Oliver had a vision for this movie. I knew that when I stepped onboard. Savages is quintessential Oliver Stone. It has political messages. It has moral messages. It has complications that are current and relevant.”

With two young daughters and a terminally ill wife, Dennis’ complications inform his choices. Travolta reflects: “It was a matter of what can I do to make him understandable, because he is double-dipping in an underhanded way between the U.S. government and the Cartel. But he finds a way to justify the bad things in his life. Like the other characters, he has a vulnerability and a duality to him. Yes, he was doing bad things but he was a human being and sentient, to some degree.”

The biggest prize Dennis could dream of delivering to his supervisors is Elena Sanchez, head of the Baja Cartel who is “negotiating” with Ben and Chon to take over their operation. Hayek offers that she rarely is considered for a role like Elena, the woman who orders O’s kidnapping before she falls for O’s charms. She says: “I don’t get offered villains that much, so Elena was so much fun to play. She’s strong and lives in a world that is violent and scary, and usually men are in her position. It’s daunting and difficult for men but even tougher for a woman, and she’s able to handle it. There is something intimidating, almost royal about Elena. Her nickname is ‘La Reina,’ which means ‘The Queen’ in Spanish. She has to have that presence; she has to command fear and respect. Otherwise the Cartel would never work.”

The actress offers a glimpse into Elena’s world, one devastated by loss: “She suffers a profound personal dilemma that reveals her one weakness, and there are aspects to her that we can identify with. Her Achilles’ heel is her estranged relationship with her daughter, so when O comes into her life, it is a fragile, emotional time for Elena. O brings new light to her life, even though the circumstances that bring them together are not ideal. She’s not completely divorced from humanity, as strong and bad and as cold as she is. That is great to find in a character. If you add to that the privilege of working with a director like Oliver and a great cast, it was a no-brainer.”

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Oliver Stone’s new drug-infused action drama ‘Savaged, in theaters on July 6, shows the rough and dangerous play between smalltime marijuana growers and the sinister Mexican Cartel. Besides Elena, the leader played by Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro’s Lado answers to another sinister mistress: La Santa Muerte, the goddess of death.

Lado’s vocation is to further the Baja Cartel’s business in North America and to solidify La Reina’s powerbase, instilling terror and mayhem as he goes. His cover is an ordinary landscaping company. But when his crew pulls up in its lumbering, battered truck packed with lethal objects, they mean to prune more than the palm trees. He has named his company La Guadaña (“scythe” in Spanish), and an oversize sickle of death—along with chainsaws and axes—looms behind the truck’s cab. On the dashboard sits a figurine of his ominous patron saint, La Santa Muerte.

The beautiful, yet disturbing, Santa Muerte phenomenon has been described as a cult of holy death in Mexico. As production designer Tomás Voth explains, it’s also a darker reinterpretation of Mexico’s veneration for one of the country’s most revered religious icons. He says, “They’ve taken La Virgen de Guadalupe and replaced her with a skeleton, and that’s who they pray to and ask favors of. It’s a mix of Mexican traditions of Día de los Muertos, Catholicism and Caribbean occultism. Believers ask for basic things: protection from death and from fire, but also that they prosper and that bullets hit their mark. I thought it was an incredible representation of Lado and all he stands for.

“That truck became the physical manifestation of Santa Muerte. I filled it with anything that had a sharp shape. Instead of putting the chainsaws inside, I placed them at an angle on the outside so that they cut a silhouette. I wanted the immediate feeling that if that truck is in your driveway, you’d better start praying because it’s all over.”

There is an aspect of the Grand Guignol to Lado, and nowhere was the theatrical macabre more evident than in a downtown warehouse that served as Lado’s den of torture. All manner of torment and agony were on display in the bowels of a rank basement. Elena’s henchman served as ghoulish ringmaster.

“I had to go to a very dark place to create that set,” Voth reflects. “In the script, it is just described as a warehouse, but we thought it had to be more than that: It’s a place where they torture and kill people in extraordinarily ghastly and brutal ways. That’s why I wanted it to be a pit-type construction; there’s no possibility of escape. It felt like a Roman colosseum: People could watch from above and the sides, like an audience watching Christians go to the lions.”

Director Oliver Stone suggested that Lado’s men might have a small moonshine tequila distillery there. Voth explains: “Lado and his team outnumber anyone unfortunate enough to be their prisoner, and they are drunk and celebratory. We thought this might be their hangout—a place where they cook, watch TV and bring women of ill repute—even though the walls and floors are bloodstained from all the killing. It became like something out of Dante’s Inferno. After three days, two days of prepping it and the first day of filming there, I had to get out. My head was going to explode.”

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From Tom Cruise in ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ and Val Kilmer in ‘The Doors’ to Michael Douglas in ‘Wall Street’ and Woody Harrelson in ‘Natural Born Killers’, Oliver Stone is known for eliciting searing, exceptional performances from his troupe of actors. A keen observer whose idiosyncratic, occasionally provocative approach is in service of performance and story, Stone’s style is referred to by cast and crew as “challenging but fair.”

It was critical to Stone that he select actors who could embrace the kaleidoscopic trademarks of the story’s characters. Indeed, ‘Savages’ features a sprawling cast, whose intertwining and parallel stories lead up to an explosive climax. Moreover, the battle between the Baja Cartel and Ben, Chon and O exposes complex emotional motivations and frailties in each character. O is not a mere party girl, and Chon isn’t simply a stoic killer. Ironically, Ben the pacifist, when pushed to the brink, is capable of extreme violence. Elena, for all her power and lethal detachment, is maternal and lonely. The methodically brutal Lado lives in fear of his petite female boss, while Dennis, for all his clever machinations, is ultimately a survivor with great loyalty to his family.

Fairly early on in the casting process, Taylor Kitsch landed on Stone’s radar as a potential lead for the thriller. When Stone contacted Kitsch to play Chon, the badass to Ben’s pacifist, Kitsch responded to the material in a very Chon-like manner. “I had read the book before it had been announced that Oliver was involved, but there were rumors that he had optioned it,” Kitsch recalls. “I thought, ‘Man, I would murder to play this guy.’ When I found out that Oliver was attached, well that was it. I felt that I would be a great fit.”

A trained killer and ex-Navy SEAL, Chon uses his skill set in fierce defense of the people whom he loves the most, O and Ben. Kitsch explains the motivation for this character who thinks drugs are a rational response to insanity: “Chon is a guy who has been jaded from day one. He’s seen so much shit in Afghanistan that his first reaction is always to go to violence. You’ll see a different guy when he’s with Ben and O. He can let his guard down with them, maybe even laugh and joke, and that’s rare for Chon. His real purpose in life is to protect Ben and O, and he will kill to do that.”

Discussing his relationship with the director, Kitsch reflects: “Oliver is old-school. It’s all about the work, which I admire. I loved how he would take a break, talk about the scene and work it out. It’s very settling. But you’d better bring your A game. Oliver notices every nuance, even if it’s just a glance. He will question why you’re doing it, which makes you prepare even more. When you do mess up, and everyone has that moment, he will absolutely let you know. But he will also tell you when the take is awesome. He keeps you on your toes, and your performance is better for it.”

Blake Lively plays the beautiful, warmhearted O—a free spirit who, when kidnapped, proves to have just as much grit and fortitude as the Baja Cartel. About his choice for the part, Stone commends: “Blake’s an impressive actress. She was only 23. She had a lot of input into her character and is fearless. Blake has to appear in the movie often in an unflattering light, and she never flinched.”

Lively becomes the voice of ‘Savages’, as O narrates the tale, and Stone used the voiceover technique as efficiently and specifically as possible. The director explains: “The idea of O narrating the movie grew naturally from the book, where she tells the story to the reader. But a voiceover in a film can potentially sap it of its tension by making it overly self-conscious. Insofar as the book has more than a hundred scenes and many characters, far more than we can afford in a movie, we worked to minimize the information and still use the voiceover to connect the dots.”

For her part, Lively liked the fact that “O is the one thread that ties everyone together.” Indeed, she interacts in multiple scenes with most of the other actors and had to run the gamut as a performer, and calls the shoot “intense, tumultuous and challenging.” Says the actress: “It was amazing because I got to exist in each character’s world, from this privileged life with the boys in Laguna to being tortured and in cages and being shipped off to Tijuana. It was a challenge to experience so much in a film on so many different levels—from ultimate happiness to ultimate pain.”

The Southern California native was fascinated by the story’s take on a nontraditional family and how three people could love each other that much. Lively offers that she treated O’s story with respect and care: “One of the main reasons that I felt that Ben, Chon and O were together is that they were each other’s family. They were each other’s everything. None of them had real families. They did not have anyone to learn from, no one who was there for them through thick and thin. And they found that in each other.”

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The political throughline of new movie ‘Savages’ appealed to actress Salma Hayek, who has witnessed the complexities of the North American drug war. “I am Mexican. I’ve known different aspects of Elena’s story,” shares Hayek. “It’s part of life in my country. What I hope the movie will do is make people aware of the level of the drug trade problem between Mexico and the United States. It’s not just a Mexican problem. It’s a problem we share: America and Mexico are partners in this trade. One country’s selling and one country’s buying, and it’s slipping through the hands of both governments.”

During rehearsals, Oliver Stone tested Hayek’s mettle. Indeed, any concerns the actress wouldn’t be “tough enough” were quickly allayed. The director, typically spare with the takes he requires, tasked Hayek with countlessly repeating a pivotal sequence in which Elena verbally eviscerates Lado and Alex. Elena, bewildered, frustrated and furious over a breakdown in her U.S. operation, castigates her men in a fever pitch of mixed English and Spanish insults and threats. Hayek delivered a bravura performance, as Stone knew she would, and by the end of the sequence, Hayek intrinsically understood Elena’s rage and confusion.

Hayek acknowledges that she’s grateful for the experience to work with the filmmaker: “I was elated to have been involved with Savages, as I’ve wanted to work with Oliver my entire acting career. I was extremely happy to work with him, but I was also a bit sad after the experience ended. Now that I’ve had one of my biggest dreams met, I can never have that dream back again.”

As Elena’s man up north, Lado runs the Southern California side of the Baja Cartel’s operation. He’s growing increasingly disgruntled by his demanding boss, and he’s using his brutal tactics to begin branching out on his own. To play the part of a psychopath who shoots detractors in the kneecaps, executes loyal henchmen and relentlessly whips a fellow employee to extract a false confession, Benicio Del Toro had to go to a very dark place. He reflects: “When you hear the accounts of the real people who have been involved in those situations or have been victims in the drug war, when you hear the stories of the people on both sides, it brings seriousness to the story, which helped keep everybody focused.”

Just like his fellow performers, the Academy Award winner chose to take part in ‘Savages’ because of the film’s legendary director. Del Toro reflects: “Oliver’s like a coach who coaches to win. He’s watching and listening to every play; he’s got that replay on in his brain. He knows the scenes inside and out. He will poke at you. He will make you mad, and then he’ll poke at you again. Then your blood will really be pumping, and then he will smile at you. And then you do the scene, and you don’t know what you did. But when you see it, and it works, you understand why you want to work with Oliver Stone.”

Naturally, Del Toro and Hayek share several scenes together, and they are powerful ones. Even though Del Toro is approximately one foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than Hayek, she definitely was his commander in chief. “I met Salma years ago, and I knew she was tough and had it in her to be the queenpin,” Stone says. “I loved getting Benicio to kowtow to her because his character is not scared of anyone but her. He had a lot of input into his character. Lado is a monster, but Benicio made him a human monster.”

Hayek admits that she enjoyed bossing around Del Toro. She laughs: “It was so much fun to be the jefe— to have these really tough guys work for me and take my orders. To have strong machos like Benicio Del Toro and Demián Bichir work for me, it’s like a female fantasy.”

Del Toro returns: “It was great working with Salma Hayek. Plus, she’s got Julio César Chávez in her blood, and it complements her beauty.”

Several additional well-regarded actors joined the ‘Savages’ ensemble in supporting roles, including Emile Hirsch as accounting whiz Spin and Academy Award nominee Demián Bichir as Alex, the Cartel’s urbane lawyer and chief negotiator. Bichir, who has a history with Del Toro and Hayek, shared most of his scenes with them. He played Fidel Castro opposite Del Toro’s Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che’, and he starred opposite Hayek in the television movie In the Time of the Butterflies, which she also produced.

Bichir discusses what attracted him to the project: “I’ve always believed that human beings have good and bad things about us. We can be amazingly wonderful or terrible. We all have that in our genes, and it’s hard to get rid of it; there’s a savage in every single human being. Some of us develop that a little more, a little deeper or tougher, and other people prefer to stay away from that side. Often, we don’t care about our neighbors in our own buildings, and we hardly say hi to each other in the elevator. We can live in our own bubbles, and that’s exactly what makes us savages.”

Of his experience on set with his fellow actors, Bichir offers: “I love playing tennis, and when you play with a great player, your game always improves. That’s how I feel about working with Benicio. He is just a fantastic, powerful actor. The great thing about Lado and Alex is the fact that they are so different. Alex is elegant, well-dressed, and Lado is primitive and rough. Most of my work with Salma involved talking to her via a laptop screen, except for one intense scene when she feels double-crossed. I hadn’t seen her for years, and she looks fantastic. She has so much grace and confidence and is a better actress than ever.”

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