IN 1997, JAMES MANGOLD BURST INTO HOLLYWOOD WITH AN A-LIST EPIC ABOUT A SHERIFF BATTLING HIS OWN TOWN. AS COP LAND HITS 25, WE TALK TO THE DIRECTOR ABOUT THE MASTERPIECE HE MADE THROUGH SHEER FORCE OF WILL

WORDS ALEX GODFREY ILLUSTRATION TONY STELLA

“A BELLY HANGING OVER HIS BELT, HE IS A SLUMP-SHOULDERED MAN, PUFFY, WILTED. DULL WITH BOOZE.”

FREDDY HEFLIN IS the first person we meet in James Mangold’s 1996 shooting script for Cop Land, playing a Lethal Weapon pinball machine. He’s a nominal sheriff in a town inhabited by corrupt cops; a doormat who will become a hero; a turtle who finally comes out of his shell; a classic character that gave its actor a chance to surprise audiences, and its writer-director an entire career.

James Mangold wrote Cop Land in 1994, while production delays had temporarily halted the shooting of his debut film, Heavy, a small indie about a lonely cook. Cop Land was supposed to be small, too — but things changed. Thanks to that script, and to Mangold’s stubborn determination, it ended up starring a stunningly heavyweight cast. Stallone. De Niro. Keitel. Liotta. And on, and on, and on.

It is a film about dizzying levels of police corruption, resonating today more than ever. And there was drama off-screen too, with Mangold thrust into a post-production process in which he — and the film — just about survived. “As all things with the light of day and time going by reveal, Miramax was a real cesspool of crossed alliances, and strange allies and enemies,” he tells Empire now of the studio that gave him almost everything he wanted — at a price. “And I was a young man in a very weird place, just trying to stay above water.”

MANGOLD WAS DEVASTATED when Liv Tyler delayed Heavy, just as it was about to go. It was 1994: Tyler was the co-star (alongside Pruitt Taylor Vince), but had been offered another film (Silent Fall) she couldn’t turn down, so Mangold would have to wait a whopping six months to get her back. “It was really painful, because I was poised to make the movie,” he says. “You finally get together what little money you can to make a movie, and then you postpone it. So I suddenly had this crushing six months. And I didn't know what to do. And I was broke.”

So what did he do? He wrote. Years earlier, aged 21, he had a deal at Disney but was fired from directing a TV movie after three days. Scarred and depressed from the experience, he went home, so here he was at 30, back living with his parents in New York’s Hudson Valley, finishing a master’s degree at Columbia University, his debut film in limbo. But something personal began to percolate.