Two Chicago filmmakers join forces to create 'Defiance'

Don't ask Edward Zwick to direct the next Spider-man sequel.

Or Batman or Iron Man, either.

"I'm a little bit tired of superheroes," said the director of acclaimed movies such as "Glory," "The Last Samurai" and "Blood Diamond."

"I'm much more interested in real heroism. If you look closely at real heroes, it's very complex. People who do extraordinary things often do them at great cost and with extreme contradiction."

Which brings us to his new movie "Defiance," which opens at local theaters Friday after making an award-qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles.

"Defiance" tells the fact-based story of the three Bielski brothers - Tuvia, Zus and Asael - who led Jewish refugees into the dense forests of Eastern Europe to escape death at the hands of Nazis during World War II.

James Bond star Daniel Craig plays Tuvia, the brother who wants to save as many Jews as he can. Liev Schreiber plays Zus, the brother who wants to kill as many Nazis as he can. Jamie Bell plays Asael, the youngest sibling, who wishes his brothers didn't fight each other so much.

"I was determined, that if I was going to tell a true story, that I would be truthful about the nature of the people who were at the center," Zwick said.

Clay Frohman, the screenwriter for "Defiance," agreed.

"Ed's characters, in virtually all of his stories, they look inside themselves," Frohman said. "They're gray. They're not black and white. I don't think the traditional guy who saves a burning building would be of interest to him. He's attracted to conflicted characters. The Bielskis were the least likely and most reluctant of heroes. They were mostly self-interested to begin. Nothing in their backgrounds prepared them for their roles."

Frohman and Zwick grew up together in Chicago's North Shore area. Every day after school when their pals went to play sports, Frohman and Zwick climbed aboard a bus and headed off to Hebrew school.

Later, they both wound up in California where they continued to see each other - and other displaced Chicagoans - while forging careers in the entertainment industry.

"We play softball together. We share a lot of common interests," Frohman said. "We both ski a lot. We went to each other's movies and read each other's scripts. We found ourselves on opposite sides of a table both typing on our own works. Originally, I saw the story in an obituary and I brought to the attention of Ed. It was natural that we would come together over this story."

The pair found a book about the Bielskis written by Nechama Tec. That paved the way for Zwick and Frohman to translate the story into a movie, filmed in the freezing woodlands of Lithuania.

"We did not go about this in any conventional way," Zwick said. "We optioned the book without any participation from any major studio. We began to work on it on our own without being paid. Eventually, after so much rejection, the way we got the movie made was to raise money from European distributors in England, France, Germany and Spain, then return here (the U.S.) with a financed film that we needed distribution for."

"Defiance" tells the grim but inspiring tale of how the battling Bielskis kept an entire community of Jews alive and relatively safe, deep within the recesses of the woods.

"We kept the sun out of the entire movie," Zwick said. "You don't see the sun or the sky. Ever. Until the very end when they come out of that river. That was deliberate. We really wanted to get that twilighted feeling of being in a dark forest."

Zwick said he had no problem casting Craig as Tuvia, despite his current association as British superhero James Bond.

"I got to know him (Craig) a long time before this," he said. "I was an admirer of his based on the work he'd done as a working actor in independent movies. I knew that he would utterly commit himself to this character and he was so capable of disappearing into a role.

"What I didn't know was what a generous and modest man that he is, and how much of an ensemble-trained actor and how much of team player he is. I can think of a few other actors - and I won't name names - who if they were playing the role, we'd still be in Lithuania."