187 code meurtre

The screenplay for "187" (which is the California state penal code for murder) came to the attention of Icon Productions, the production company founded by Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey, when screenwriter Scott Yagemann saw Steve McEveety's credit in "The Man Without A Face." Yagemann wondered if this McEveety was the same one against whom he swam competitively as a youngster. He called the Icon offices and reacquainted himself with McEveety, who was indeed Yagemann's one-time competitor. McEveety connected with the idea of the story for "187," which was fueled by Yagemann's years as a substitute teacher with the Los Angeles public school system. "When we met up again," recalls McEveety, "Scott started talking about what he had done for a living and how frustrating it was teaching, and that was really what he wanted to write about."
The script was inspired by events that happened to Yagemann during his time as a teacher. "I had a kid threaten to kill me. I later found out that he had stabbed a teaching assistant the semester before, and I was never told anything about this kid," recalls Yagemann. Yagemann discovered that teachers must personally research every student's file to check for any violent history; the information is not forwarded to them as a matter of courtesy or safety. He notes, "The title is blunt, just numbers, the code for murder. It's impersonal and I think that's just what happens to some of those kids in the system. Their individuality, their personality, is just erased. And everything just becomes numbers to them."

McEveety presented the script to Icon President and C.E.O. Bruce Davey and Mel Gibson, Davey's partner and co-founder of Icon Productions. "Icon and Warner Bros. shared the vision that this story needs to be told," comments Davey.

When Director Kevin Reynolds, who had helmed such action-adventure movies as "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" and "Waterworld," read the script for "187," he was struck by "a ring of truth. When I met with Icon, I said to Mel, Bruce and Steve that it looked like a teacher wrote the script. And they told me that one did." Reynolds, following the physical demands of his previous projects, was eager to direct a more intimate film, bristling with intensity.

"The last few projects I had done were big, logistically monster pictures and I was getting tired of that. I wanted to do something that was dramatic and more of a performance piece," says the director.

Recalls Davey, "I think that Kevin was looking for a change of diet from the action genre, looking for something more contained, more character-driven, and he identified with the material and wanted to do it."

McEveety concurs, "Kevin had a passion for this material. Once we signed him, he worked with Scott and constructed a whole vision for the film that expanded on the script."

Once Reynolds was brought on board, the filmmakers began their search for an actor to play Trevor Garfield, the passionate teacher backed into a corner by the hostile circumstances confronting him in an inner-city classroom.