In 2003, Josh Hartnett was at the height of his popularity, and Harrison Ford was fresh off a run of modest hits like K-19: The Widowmaker and Random Hearts, when the two came together for Hollywood Homicide, a cop comedy that centered on high profile murders in the rap world, and played Hartnett’s KC as a young goofball who had understanding of the music world necessary to help Ford’s Joe, an aging sergeant under investigation by internal affairs, to solve the case. The result was a fine, if forgettable, buddy cop movie, but a lot of what people remember about it never made it onscreen.
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During the press junket for the movie, Hartnett and Ford kept up an antagonistic banter, and after rumors of on-set squabbles, it was hard for fans or the press to figure out whether it was a “bit” or not. The “feud” attracted attention and, since Hollywood Homicide didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, became the only thing some people even remembered about the movie.
In the years since, Hartnett has tried to clarify things a little, and in a new interview with The Independent, he again played down the notion that there was any real animosity between the actors.
“Drama sold newspapers, especially back then,” Hartnett said. “But we actually got along really well. There were things that we disagreed about on set as far as [the script], and there was a lot of rewriting happening. But it was misinterpreted as ‘They don’t get along!’…It certainly wasn’t a set that was filled with tension. I think I did call him ‘the bane of my existence’ when we were on the press tour for that movie, but that was just because he was constantly ribbing me. And that’s just his way.”
Contemporary reports said that Ford nicknamed Hartnett “Punk,” and Hartnett called Ford “Old Fart,” and a 2003 report recently resurfaced by Entertainment Weekly said the two had a pretty serious communication problem on set, and would sometimes go hours without getting any productive work done.
“I think there was a testing period I had to endure,” Hartnett admitted. “But we ended up getting along near the end.”
Per the synopsis at Google Play Movies, in Hollywood Homicide, “after music mogul Antoine Sartain’s (Isaiah Washington) rappers are murdered, Sgt. Joe Gavilan (Harrison Ford) and police Detective K.C. Calden (Josh Hartnett) start to investigate. Initially distracted — Joe by his real estate transactions, K.C. by his acting aspirations — the partners pull together when internal affairs officer Bennie Macko (Bruce Greenwood) starts hounding Joe. The two men prove skilled at police work, but they’ll also need help from Joe’s psychic gal pal (Lena Olin).”
The movie is available for sale at digital video on demand vendors, but does not currently appear to be streaming free anywhere.
