Bringing Out the Dead
Short description
Frank Pierce works nights as a paramedic in New York City, racing through the streets in an ambulance to reach people who are overdosing, injured or suicidal. The job has worn him down: he cannot stop seeing the people he failed to save, and he has tried everything short of quitting to get himself taken off the shift, without success. Among the calls and the exhaustion, he meets Mary Burke, the daughter of a man he tried to revive, and becomes involved in her troubles while struggling to make peace with his own.
Martin Scorsese directed the film, the twenty-first of the thirty-eight he has directed in chronological order, following Kundun and preceding Gangs of New York. Paul Schrader wrote the screenplay, and Scott Rudin and Barbara De Fina produced. Nicolas Cage plays Frank, with Patricia Arquette as Mary, and John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore and Marc Anthony among the supporting cast. The production cost about 32 million dollars and took in roughly 17 million worldwide.
It draws an audience rating of 6.8 from around 81,000 votes on IMDb and 6.6 from about 1,280 votes on TMDB, while a critics' rating stands at 7.3 from 116 reviews, noticeably above the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Before filming, Nicolas Cage went on 24-hour shifts with a team of doctors.
- In the episode where Frank tries to save Rose (Cynthia Roman), the actors intentionally played the scene in reverse. This added a fantastical quality to the film – it created the impression that even the snow wasn't falling, but rather seemed to be lifting off the ground.
- During filming, Nicolas Cage – who played Frank Pierce – changed an average of ten shirts each night, as they were constantly getting soiled with blood, sweat, and dirt.
- Before starting to write the screenplay, Paul Schrader went on several ambulance calls to see for himself what paramedics had to deal with at work. On his first ride, the paramedics were attending to a homeless man who had fallen onto the subway tracks and been hit by a train.
- One of the ambulance patients was played by Joe Connelly, the author of the novel on which the film is based, who is himself a New York City paramedic.
- The dispatchers, who never appear on screen, were voiced by Martin Scorsese and Queen Latifah.
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