Director James Mangold and cinematographer Eric Edwards lend cowboy aesthetic to Cop Land

For most filmgoers, the term
Westernconjures up iconic movie memories: saddle-backed horses, dusty frontier vistas and stubbled faces beneath Stetson hats. Thus, it initially seems a bit curious when writer/director James Mangold says that his film Cop Land, about a brotherhood of modern day New York City police officers living in the New Jersey suburbs, fits into the same genre as any John Ford or Sergio Leone epic. "The great thing about Westerns was that the world was so simple," Mangold explains. "You had the Native Americans, the bad guys, the new homesteaders and the cavalry. That was the universe; there were no squabbles between different law enforcement agencies, no IRS agents, and not even any telephones. It was a pretty simple world, and that increases drama. Nowadays, any situation that arises in a movie has multiple solutions, which makes it hard to create a cleanly formal story.

"One of the things I tried to do in Cop Landwas construct a kind of Western town in New Jersey," he continues. "People are packing their own weapons, and they live across the Hudson River from the place they fear, which they hope doesn't encroach on the new frontier that they're building at home. They've hired a local citizen to protect the town while their men go away across the river, and they're hoping that the men don't lose their lives. One of the challenges of Cop Landwas the fact that the story does take place in a much more complex world. We were dealing with this old story structure built for a simpler world, and trying to combine it visually and plot-wise with new structures and new looks."

Cop Landstars a suitably paunchy Sylvester Stallone, who reportedly gained 38 pounds and worked for scale in order to portray Freddy Heflin, the ineffectual sheriff of the fictional town of Garrison, New Jersey. Presented as a quiet hamlet across the George Washington Bridge, Garrison is home to legions of New York City police officers. Ironically, little respect for law enforcement exists in Garrison: rogue cops carry guns, speed through school zones and harass out-of-towners. The hearing-impaired Heflin, who failed to make the NYPD in his younger years, spends his days directing traffic and keeping an eye on the local kids. When he discovers a web of corruption and murder among his colleagues, however, Heflin must finally stand up for the town and himself.

Mangold's first feature film, the critically acclaimed Heavy,chronicled the romantic longing of a painfully shy short-order cook. Cop Land represents an abrupt about-face in terms of subject matter. "Heavywas about people who are incredibly inarticulate, if they speak at all," he notes. "This film is about people who are extremely articulate, even if the language they use is vulgar or colorful. Cop Landdepicts a culture that's about language, yet there is a lot going on in the scenes besides what's being said."

Mangold first sought out Cop Land's director of photography, Eric Edwards, 12 years ago when the young director was looking for a cinematographer to shoot a short film about three hunters in the snowy Idaho outback. "I had seen Last Nightat the Alamo, one of the first true independent features, which Eric had shot. It was a very interesting low-budget film, done in black-and-white and set entirely in a bar. I met with Eric in Los Angeles, and he just blew me away with his intelligence and his 'big picture' instincts about my script."

Although the short film never got made, Mangold remembered Edwards when he encountered the cinematographer 10 years later while promoting Heavyat the 1996 Sundance Film Festival."Jim saw me on the street and said, 'You're going to shoot my next picture,'" Edwards recalls with a laugh. "I didn't know who he was! But then I read the script for Cop Landand really liked it. He wanted to see the physical nature of a Western transposed to this small New Jersey town, and I thought that sounded like a cool idea."

A native of Portland, Oregon, Edwards was an enthusiastic still photographer in his youth. During high school, he became friends with classmate and future director Gus Van Sant, and in 1971 the duo made their first movie, The Happy Organ, as part of a class project. "We had a senior thesis at our school where we could do some sort of 'real world' experience," Edwards recalls. "Gus and I teamed up and made this movie, which was based on the jazzy organ song of the same name. We learned how to edit, how to A and B roll, and how to print film at the local laboratory."

In the mid 1970s, Edwards and Van Sant were both accepted into the Rhode Island School of Design. Upon graduation, Edwards headed back to Portland and quickly shot a first feature, Property, which became a finalist at the inaugural U.S. Film Festival. The cinematographer proceeded to shoot a variety of respected independent films, while Van Sant moved to Los Angeles and earned critical acclaim for his directorial efforts Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy.

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