Over 20 years ago, Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke teamed up for Training Day, the crime thriller about a rookie LAPD officer who learns over the course of a day how corrupt his senior partner is. One of this flick’s most memorable scenes (and SPOILER alert for those who haven’t seen one of the best movies of the 2000s) is when Washington’s character, Alonzo Harris, angrily exclaims “King Kong ain’t got shit on me!” while threatening the inhabitants of a neighborhood that he’d once controlled, but have now turned their backs on him. While recalling shooting that iconic scene, director Antoine Fuqua shared the major concern he had about it on his end of the filmmaking process.
While chatting with Fuqua about The Equalizer 3, his latest collaboration with Washington, ReelBlend co-host Jake Hamilton mentioned how the actor had told him in a prior interview that he ad-libbed King Kong line in Training Day. As such, Hamilton wanted to know what Fuqua’s reaction was all those years ago when Washington dropped that unscripted piece of gold, and the filmmaker responded:
I was so in that moment with [Denzel Washington], I was watching him, and I just saw him go into a different place. And so at the end of it, it was just like, ‘Is it in focus? Did we get that?’ Because I knew it wasn’t happening again. Because he was in the moment. That’s a one-take thing, there’s no other take. In fact, it’s a little buzz on that anamorphic lens, it’s a little soft. But I was just like that’s it. … I was like, ‘You sure?’ Because that’s on film? It wasn’t digital back then. So I didn’t get to see it until I saw the rushes.
Thank the cinema gods that the camera was properly focused when Denzel Washington shouted about King Kong, because as Antoine Fuqua stated, the star of movies like Philadelphia and Remember the Titans was only going to do one take of that particular moment. Granted, there are plenty of other notable elements from Training Day, but “King Kong ain’t got shit on me!” has undoubtedly played a major role in it still being fondly remembered two decades later. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it helped Washington secure the Best Actor Oscar at the 74th Academy Awards, so props to whoever was running the camera on the day. Here’s the scene below in case you need your memory jogged.
Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke were joined in Training Day by actors like Eva Mendes, Scott Glenn and Cliff Curtis, while Antoine Fuqua was working off the script penned by future Suicide Squad writer/director David Ayer. In addition to being met with many positive reviews (it ranks at 74% on Rotten Tomatoes) and Ethan Hawke being nominated in the Best Supporting Actor Oscar category for his performance as Jake Hoyt, the movie made nearly $105 million worldwide off a reported budget of $45 million. If you’re now in the mood to watch Training Day, it can be streamed with a Max subscription.
As for Washington and Fuqua’s latest team-up, The Equalizer 3 begins playing in theaters on September 1. Don’t forget to see what other 2023 new movie releases are slated for the rest of the year, or get a jump on next year with the 2024 movie schedule.
