Adaptation & source material

And it became so overstuffed with information and so sort of overburdened with its own enormity that we eventually decided we didn't need one. And we shot, obviously, everything for the prologue when we were doing the original photography. But then I remember that as we got into post-production and cutting, we felt that the prologue was possibly redundant and we developed an entirely different opening, which was more revolving around hobbits and what hobbits are.

0:59 · jump to transcript →

then this sequence started to feel like there was just too much narration. To some degree, that's probably true, but it is such a delightful sequence that I just felt that it deserved to be seen. And so, you know, for good or bad, here it is on this extended cut. Obviously, it establishes the book that Bilbo is writing, which we now see later in Rivendell.

9:01 · jump to transcript →

but it's possibly not the best way to introduce the character by seeing him in this manner first. The shots here of Gandalf and Frodo talking were done after the original Hobbiton scenes were shot. One of the difficult things with the beginning of the film was the fact that we have to talk about Bilbo

13:24 · jump to transcript →

A little peckish. Just when you're waiting for the lunch break to happen and you look around and see if there's any nibbles and the craft services table's a bit far away, but there's always a lambus bread lying there in the prop department. Pete, that's desperate. Yeah, no, that's where it all went when the props people were complaining that somebody was stealing it. It was me. It wasn't Gollum after all. There should be enough. So these are the pick-ups. This stuff here that we're looking at, these close-ups, were done four years after the original shots. The journey home.

8:15 · jump to transcript →

It was very windy that day. It was very windy and the wind kind of dictated the look of the scene to some degree. You know, it was creating problems for Christopher. His hair was blowing into his mouth while he was talking and his beard and robes were blowing around. But I kind of like the look of it. It has an organic kind of reality to it. And it was interesting because the original shooting of that scene back in 2000 was done with the wind and the look and the feel. And when we wrote some extra lines for him to do last year...

13:26 · jump to transcript →

We did those pickups three years after the original shoot in a studio this time. We weren't out in the parking lot. So we had enormous trouble getting all these wind machines in and we had to blow his hair to the same degree because it had to match perfectly. And so Christopher was now in the studio delivering lines, battling against this enormous wind machine that we had blowing into his face.

13:54 · jump to transcript →

about a million different ways to get the elvish rope into the... I know. Because it was just such an iconic moment. It's a lovely part of the book, and it was always tough to fit it in. It didn't have a story imperative, unfortunately. Well, you realise it's become a DVD special edition kind of thing now because the giving of the elvish rope to Sam was in the Fellowship extended cut, and then the using of it is in the Two Towers extended cut. If you look at the movie version, it doesn't exist. It's kind of cute.

4:24 · jump to transcript →

The Frodo that we see here at the beginning of the film... ...is more similar to how Frodo ends up at the end of the film... ...after he's travelled the journey that he's about to go on. Fran and I went hunting for something that could remind Frodo of the Shire. Sure enough, there it was in the book... ...and the salt is actually something that Sam does carry all the way. We can't leave this here for someone to follow us down. Who's going to follow us down here, Mr Frodo? The little prefiguring of Gollum is quite nice too...

5:20 · jump to transcript →

It's sort of the one place we could find with all these jagged rocks and mountain peaks. Because the Emmen Muell scene is something that I love in the book as well, the idea of just walking around this misshrouded mountainous countryside and getting lost, going around in circles. Let's face it, Mr Frodo, we're lost. And the wider shots were shot about two years earlier, weren't they? Well, the wide shots were done in the original shoot, yeah, the wide location shots and the close-ups that we're looking at now

6:16 · jump to transcript →

You know, New York's the all-pissed-off city. And I said, yeah, watch The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3. It's probably the most accurate movie about what people are like in New York City. And, you know, when you see Pelham, you know what New Yorkers are like. And you get a sense of the rest of the city, of course. But this movie is based on a novel by a guy named John Godet or Godi. His real name is Morton Freedgood.

1:02 · jump to transcript →

and uh it was a great device because it pays off towards the end and it was not in the book one of the things that's interesting about having revisited the book is that john goatee or morton friedgood uh wrote a novel that you you know was destined to be a movie it's so uh crisp and cinematic in fact it's written in an interesting style where the narrative propels forward but

2:46 · jump to transcript →

as the motorman or the conductor. In the book, Joe Welcome is also as interested in the opposite sex, and they make a whole lot more about that. In fact, there is a hooker character in the car, the hostage car, which has more page time, let's say, in the book. But since it's a character that's more textural and not

5:07 · jump to transcript →

The whole opening was, I suppose, really inspired by the book. There's a wonderful description of how the convicts in this era were used to refit, build, maintain the warships in Toulon. And so they were kind of used as slave labor. And so this idea of the convicts effectively doing a chain-gang song, pulling in this wounded warship, I found very interesting because the warship is both an image, a symbol of state power,

1:08 · jump to transcript →

And the boat, although it's CGI, is based on HMS Victory, which sits down at Portsmouth. And we took every conceivable angle of photo on it and did a LIDAR scan of the exact design of the hull and then reprojected still images of the Victory.

2:07 · jump to transcript →

This is Colm Wilkinson. Fans of the musical will know exactly who he is. He invented the role of Jean Valjean at the beginning in The Royal Shakespeare Company, and it's an absolute delight to have him coming back to play the bishop. There's something very moving about the original Jean Valjean inspiring this Jean Valjean, Hugh Jackman Jean Valjean, on his way.

7:37 · jump to transcript →

And the only thing I knew when I started writing the book was that I was to portray Blackie Berg and something horrible would come there. I didn't know where it was from the beginning. I didn't know it was going to be a vampire. But then as the story went on and I knew it was going to be a love story about young people, I came up with that a vampire would be the best horrible thing to come there. And this is also very typical 80s. The policeman coming to visit your class talking about drugs.

5:12 · jump to transcript →

And Walken was a character in the book that I had a lot of trouble with, because I didn't want him to be just a monster. It would have to be someone that you could feel empathy for. And I used a lot of space in the book to describe him in such a way that you could feel some sort of empathy. And amazingly enough, I think this goes through, even though he's only got a short role in the movie. Per Ragnar, who plays this character, does an amazing job, and

9:55 · jump to transcript →

re-edited the sequence because in the original in the book and in the script the tormentors come into the to the toilet and they bully him in there but we thought that when we had edited the film too much violence came too early so it sort of punctured the pressure so we wanted to wait a little

15:19 · jump to transcript →

Hello, I'm Len Wiseman, director of Total Recall, and we are watching the director's cut, which I'm very excited about. I'm really happy with the theatrical cut. There's just things that, as a filmmaker, that you put a lot of time into that you really start to miss from the original cut, and so it's great for me to be able to work together with Sony. They were very supportive of putting out a director's cut.

0:02 · jump to transcript →

I'm Len Wiseman, director of Total Recall, and we are watching the director's cut, which I'm very excited about. I'm really happy with the theatrical cut. There's just things that, as a filmmaker, that you put a lot of time into that you really start to miss from the original cut, and so it's great for me to be able to work together with Sony. They were very supportive of putting out a director's cut.

3:00 · jump to transcript →

very excited about. I'm really happy with the theatrical cut. There's just things that as a filmmaker that you put a lot of time into that you really start to miss from the original cut and so it's great for me to be able to work together with Sony. They were very supportive of putting out a director's cut and be able to just have that still be alive in some form.

7:42 · jump to transcript →

It's funny, I was always proud of the fact that on my films I always asked that the author's name be put ahead of the title. This started way back on the first Godfather movie. Mario Puzo, who wrote the novel, did not have that right, but I insisted on it. And then that went on with other projects, Bram Stoker's Dracula or John Grisham's The Rainmaker. I've always been proud of the fact that I always gave the author the premier position in the credits.

0:21 · jump to transcript →

patent, why can't you come up with something a little unusual for the godfather, something other than just cutting right to the wedding? And when he left, I thought about it and thought about it. And in the book, the part that was the most significant to me, I thought, was the notion that, of course, on the wedding day of the Don, the different people come

1:45 · jump to transcript →

shot in new york in the stage where we worked an empty stage where we had our sets the don's office and stuff and we shot the party where bobby duvall actually meets jack waltz there and just shot that second unit leading up to it before this was sort of the first test of power uh in the book you you learned that uh

27:40 · jump to transcript →

and the uniforms become actually more important, a more important resource than the kids. And we wanted to, what the book is really about for me is there are a bunch of kids who go to the front, you know, are basically lied to by demagogues and populists, and they go with enthusiasm and youth, and very quickly they realize that

5:50 · jump to transcript →

and so that's the montage we came up with and that became sort of uh we did it was it was basically an idea the idea was to create uh to a sequence that encompasses that capsulates the meaning of the book for us very subjective interpretation you know everyone probably has a different one but for us this was the interpretation of the book and we wanted to create a sequence that encapsulates that

6:49 · jump to transcript →

and as a childhood memory also because that's the time when I read the book first, when I was 15, 16 in high school and my friend lived around the corner from us. So the sequence comes to an end with the uniforms, you know, the war machine, the recycled uniforms and here you see the end of that and the name tag

12:14 · jump to transcript →

Hi, my name's Jim Hemphill. I am a filmmaker and film historian, and I'm here with... Screenwriter and author Kelly Goodner. And we're here to talk you through Congo, which Paramount released in 1995. It was directed by Frank Marshall, produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Sam Mercer, from a screenplay by John Patrick Shanley, based on a novel by Michael Crichton, all of whom we will talk about in great detail, I'm sure, as this movie progresses. Um...

0:17 · jump to transcript →

We're about to get here also into Laura Linney. We've seen her previously. But this whole thing between her and Bruce Campbell was actually added. It's not in the book. It's one of the main changes. I think it works really well. I like the ending where she blows up the satellite and everything. Anyway, in the...

6:36 · jump to transcript →

In the book, she was much more mercenary and she wanted the diamonds. And it was purely like to get ahead, to show she was ruthless, like I'll take the expedition. And there was no kind of human element to her at all, like what she does in her free time. There's no love interest whatsoever. But they, you know, it's a movie and you have to kind of identify with somebody. So they created that for her.

6:59 · jump to transcript →

book very much are in keeping with the book and some of them made their way into the final script you know isn't it true that lawton kept a lot of ag's lines and the lines from exactly he was an editor really exactly what i mean and the documentation that has turned up at the paul koner archive indicates that you know contrary to the accounts that ag was fired after 10 weeks he actually was hired for the final five weeks and so he under lawton's close direction cut the script

10:48 · jump to transcript →

Somewhere in the papers that I saw on this film, Lawton was quoted as saying he didn't want to be thought of as a credit hog and so forth, and that's why he didn't want to do that. And he did acknowledge, he said, sometimes I think you should get all the credit, but Lawton didn't want any of the credit. And Lawton remembered Orson Welles and how he was treated by everybody when he took all the credit for everything on Citizen Kane. Excuse me just a second. This gentleman uncredited is Paul Breyer, and this whole business with the hangman is one of the important elements that Lawton zeroed in on in the book that was emphasized. And again, there's a duality.

11:50 · jump to transcript →

The story of good and evil. H-A-T-E. The first time Lawton met with Mitchum after Mitchum read the book, Mitchum immediately started demonstrating what his ideas were for doing this love-hate business. Mitchum caught fire from the book as soon as he read it. And when I interviewed him in the 70s, he still remembered tiny details from the novel, even though he hadn't probably read it since 54. Now watch him.

18:51 · jump to transcript →

American movie that really used Part II or Rocky VII or that tradition was begun with The Godfather Part II. Now one handle I had on making a second Godfather would be to use the material from the original Godfather book that dealt with the story of Vito Corleone.

2:06 · jump to transcript →

from his days in Sicily through him coming to America and becoming the character who we remember as Marlon Brando in the first Godfather film. And that was all taken from the book, and I did research looking for photographs of real so-called mafia incidents in Sicily and thought it would be wonderful to go back to those same towns that we had seen in the first Godfather.

2:26 · jump to transcript →

So we conceived in the script to start in the very old days when there were family feuds and hills and massacres in the land of Sicily. Much of that was based on real stories, and even the death of the boy is from an actual famous photograph of, I think his name was Paolo Ricobono, who was killed and his body was found in exactly that position in a...

2:54 · jump to transcript →

Ted Tally

And I'm Ted Tally, the screenwriter of this motion picture. Thanks for watching our DVD. I got a call from my agent who said Stacey Snider wanted to send me a script. Stacey called me directly. Stacey is the chairman of Universal for those of you who don't know. It said Red Dragon, and I said, "Red Dragon. Is this "the prequel to Silence of the Lambs?" I was familiar with the book but hadn't read it. At first, I was very insecure and said, "Am I like the 'Go-to' guy on sequels? "Why is she sending this to me? 'Cause no one can mess this one up?" And then, I saw Ted's name on it and said, "This is the guy who wrote Silence of the Lambs, "but didn't write Hannibal. "So, this must be special. "Why are they sending this to me? I'm not a dark guy. "I don't make dark movies. I do comedy." -/ think they sent it because you're cheap. - Exactly. So I read it, and I was completely blown away. Not to blow any smoke up anybody's butt in my presence, but the truth is the script was amazing. I called up Stacey and I said, "I want to do this." She said, "Now you get to meet Dino De Laurentiis." And I said, "Dino De Laurentiis "of Fellini fame?" - Scary thought! So I went to his house and first thing he says to me is, "Why do they like you? Who are you? "I never heard of you. What is Family Man, Rush Hour? I don't know these movies." I said, "Dino, I'm a talented guy. Trust me." And thank God, Ted had seen Family Man and Rush Hour, and his kids or someone in his family was a fan. Brett might not have been an obvious choice but Brett is an incredibly talented director and clearly ready to try something new that he'd never done before. He is a great fan of Hitchcock and of thrillers, and brings a tremendous energy and confidence to his work. I was such a big fan of Silence of the Lambs. You know what I was excited about? Most people asked, "Weren't you scared "of following in those footsteps?" First of all, I had three brilliant directors Michael Mann, Jonathan Demme, and Ridley Scott, who made three movies in the exact genre, but completely different. I was excited about it because, by watching those films, I knew what not to do or what I didn't want to do. I was able to decide on the type of movie that I wanted to make. And it helped me choose the tone of the movie. I realized I wanted to make a movie more like Silence of the Lambs. More Hitchcock-inspired. A movie that scared you by what you didn't see more than what you did see. I've read that the most important single decision you make in directing a movie is tone. - Absolutely. Because it's the direction of the film. It helps you with every choice that you make as far as the wardrobe, the production design, the music. The tone, to me, is really everything. Dante calls it, "The language of the film." We have to integrate what we're seeing now, Kristi Zea's set design with its dark, rich color in Dante's cinematography. The choice is even of the props. The integration of all of that, the wardrobe. It's sort of overlooked by people and it should be something that doesn't call attention to itself. But when all of those elements are integrated... Look at this moment here. You get a much more powerful movie if nothing sticks out. If everything is consistent in tone. Special Agent Graham. What an unexpected pleasure. I'm sorry to bother you again... If you see on the left-hand side over there, a little detail, I found this book of Sigmund Freud's office in, was it Vienna? That's where I kind of modeled Hannibal's office. I modeled the tchotchkes, the details.

0:08 · jump to transcript →

Ted Tally

So that sequence, those two minutes of the movie, which could have been a very boring, dull sequence. I had a long conversation with Kristi Zea. It was wonderful. She called me up and said, "This book of Dolarhyde's. "What does it look like? What's in it? "How is the handwriting? What kind of photograph?" We had a long conversation which for a screenwriter... You don't often get a call from the production designer to talk about a prop. It was a wonderful opportunity to be part of the design of the movie in that little section. You've got a beautiful setup here, Will. This was actually in the Florida Keys. You know why I'm here? Was it Marathon? Yeah, I can guess. The location is meant to be Marathon, Florida. Dino wanted us to shoot in North Carolina because he had studios there and a house on the beach or Malibu because it's close to his house in Beverly Hills. But the truth is, I wanted to stay true. When I said I chose the tone, I'd really chosen the tone of the book, going back to the book. Everybody here was honoring the book. We really gave a lot of respect to Thomas' book. Tom Harris is a wonderful writer. When you're doing an adaptation like this, it's a great resource to everybody to be able to pick up the book, as you can go into more details than the screenplay. It's a help to both the production design and the actors, who can go back and find out details of motivation. It's helpful to everybody to have that bible to refer to. So when it said Marathon, Florida, I tried to stay true to that and actually go to the location in Marathon, Florida. It just felt like it was the tone and even the location, like Grandma's house in the same description of the rural area where it was, and the type of house it was. It was an old-age home once, which is really back-story, but Kristi incorporated that into the design. I was so happy that she and Ted really stayed true to the tone of the book visually as well when it described the locations. This was so much fun being down here, by the way. It was the end of the shoot, and we were just down there on the beach. This was probably the hardest scene I shot with these two guys. In what way? Because it's exposition? Anything with exposition... -/s tough. It's tough to make it sound like real conversation. But honestly, there's not a line in this movie that I'm not proud of. I mean I can't say there's a line... It was a tight script. We did cut a few lines and a few parts from scenes but Brett and I actually worked quite a bit on the script before the production started, and we had it pretty tight. And the shooting stayed quite faithful to the script. I have to say that every scene was hard for me because I'm used to scenes with not much dialogue. I, unfortunately, am a very talky screenwriter. So it was a clash of cultures. Coming from being a playwright, I guess. There is a lot of dialogue in this movie, I tell you. And it was not a single-spaced script. It's a long script, and I kept saying, "Make them talk faster. "Don't cut the thing, just make them talk faster." Ted's advice to me was, "Brett, when you're happy, "ask the actors for a take where they talk double speed." And I did that. Probably that's all the takes that Mark ended up using in the editor's room. He kept calling me, saying, "This movie will be four hours long "If you do not get them to speak faster." The thing you run into as a screenwriter, even with the best actors, is that you try to pace a scene to fit within an act structure and fit within the entire screenplay. But then actors wanna take very long, dramatic pauses. Actors want to look down and up, across the room, at each other, and finally say the line. - A lot of pausing. And that's what you're up against when trying to time out the length of the scene or act. I wanna say something about these actors. Once I got Edward Norton, I used Edward to get another actor. Once I got Ralph Fiennes, I used him, I got Emily Watson. - You parlayed them into each other. I said, "Philip Seymour Hoffman, I'm getting Mary-Louise Parker." I knew each one, who they were a fan of. I used them against each other to get them in the movie. I literally thought I'd be able to walk onto the set, and it would be the easiest movie I'd ever made because I had these brilliant actors. I could just say, "Action." I read one article or something about this movie that said this was the most distinguished cast that's been assembled in any movie in the last 20 years. But the truth is, it was probably the hardest movie I'd ever made because the smarter the actor, the more experience they have. It's a myth that these great actors don't need direction. They want direction more than any other actor. They want direction, but they have ideas of their own because in the end, it's up to them. They are the ones whose face is filling that whole screen. And they have to absolutely believe what they are doing, or they can't convince an audience of it. What I'm trying to say is, there was a lot of dialogue going on. A lot of intellectual discussions. And each of these actors are not only smart actors, but they're highly intelligent, all smarter than myself and... A lot of them have also directed or even written as well. They all had an opinion. And my job, I felt like it was my job to save the script. This was a script that worked to me. We had a table reading of it. It was fantastic. And Ted was

11:13 · jump to transcript →

Ted Tally

whispering in my ear, "Dude, don't let these actors do this." He was right. The truth is, the words, the scenes, and the story work, which is why I was able to concentrate on my storytelling, my craft as a storyteller. If I had these great actors saying what was on the page, then I could work on telling the story, moving the camera, picking the lenses, and a lot of other aspects which I don't really get the time to focus on when I'm doing a movie like Rush Hour, which has 10,000 times more shots. The kind of scene that we're watching right now with Edward Norton investigating the home where the family was murdered. Is this a harder scene to do than other kinds of scenes? There's no dialogue here, so that the storytelling is purely visual. -/s that harder or easier for you? - I think it's easier for me. When there's a lot of dialogue, I'm used to Jackie and Chris who, God bless them, are so much fun to work with. They do two or three words at a time and then I cut. And then I pick up like one sentence. These actors can do five pages without stopping. So I have to remember all the... Any notes that I want, I have to remember. It's a huge amount of thinking. I was physically exhausted making a movie like Rush Hour at the end of every day. In this movie, I was mentally exhausted, which is more exhausting. And these actors demand my attention, my focus, and they want to have dialogue, sometimes after every take about, you know, what they did. "Why would I say that?" - "Why would they do that?" It's always "why?" That is the big question. Sometimes I'd say, "I really don't know. "Can you just say what's on the page? "Because it's gonna sound good if what you Say is on the page." I allowed the actors to experiment with stuff, but the truth is, I always got them to do exactly as it was on the page. And 97 percent of the stuff that's in the movie was on the page. Maybe even more. There were little moments like this added line here that Edward added about the way the kids were shot and stuff. Which indicated he might have used a silencer. I think it's probably in the book. Edward does a Iot of research and has a photographic... Is it "-graphic" or "-genic"? Photographic memory. He memorizes not only his lines but everybody else's lines. So he is very well-prepared, and really puts a lot of thought, like all the actors into what he is saying in every moment. It's very striking with Edward, as with other great actors, how much they can achieve while appearing to do little. It's very internalized. I think Edward is very concerned to not have a single false moment. And I respect that integrity in him.

17:12 · jump to transcript →

His outfit and his red leather phallus is very much based on the work of Terry Adrian Gunnell, who is interested in mumming and fools and sort of theater in the Viking Age. Performance is maybe a better word. I keep him as a deep sworn friend. Come, brother.

6:15 · jump to transcript →

And this underground ritual chamber is actually based on a burial chamber in Orkney that's from a much earlier period than the Viking Age. The idea being that this was a place of religious importance to people who were here before the Vikings. And so they felt its significance and built a temple on top of it. But then underground, they're doing some more secretive rituals.

10:53 · jump to transcript →

So this, which we're about to see, which Ethan calls the Tree of Kings, is based on a tree from the Osseberg Tapestry, which is...

14:37 · jump to transcript →

But when I saw the review of the book that Nick Pelleggi did, it was interesting to me because the character of Henry Hill was, very simply, he was a foot soldier, and therefore he was privy to the nature of his character, the nature of his character, the kind of person he is, or was at the time, made him trustworthy to many different people on different levels. So he was privy then to all sort of a cross-section of that whole world.

1:10 · jump to transcript →

from the very minuscule to the top of the line in that world. I mean, later in Casino, we explored it even further, where it went bigger. I'm Nicholas Pileggi. I wrote the book Wiseguy, and I also wrote the movie with Martin Scorsese, Goodfellas. When the book came out, it was successful. It was a bestseller. And the Times was very good and generous, and there was a review of it in the Times, and Marty called.

1:39 · jump to transcript →

So I got as much of it in the book as possible. That, of course, was exactly what Marty was looking for for a film. Because that particular book, you can go and you can make about an infinite number of films because there are many other stories in the book and that sort of thing. But I chose it to go a certain way. And it was all based on the rhythm of Henry Hill's language. That is a part of the whole mob world, the way these guys tell stories about themselves.

6:50 · jump to transcript →

The fish market sequence, whilst it reads great in the book... ...and finally reads well in the screenplay... ...and I think comes off very well in the film... ...is kind of really a part of the film that's... I kept asking myself, is it necessary to have this? Why do we have to have a shootout? It doesn't matter how good it is, albeit it's conventional.

6:38 · jump to transcript →

one of the Vanderbilt houses that was one of his favorite houses. It's an extraordinary house that I decided, you know, had to really ask the question. All these are decisions when you're planning. I was reading the book and then in preparing the screenplay, how wealthy was Mason Verger? And so I figured that I had to make him really Vanderbilt wealthy, and being the black sheep, the son who strayed,

16:24 · jump to transcript →

He loves to, I think, visit certain films provided he's actually got... As he said, I don't mind the shortness of the part. He said, what I mind, it's about quality, not quantity. And he was very amused by the character. And as we can see and as we witness, he obviously had a very amusing time doing him because he creates humor out of this character that, you know, in the book is...

17:23 · jump to transcript →

when she read the book and the script of Fast Times that we should consolidate the action in the mall and that the mall should be the centerpiece of the movie. And I have to say thank you, Amy. You're welcome, Ken. Actually, I'm an agoraphobic. I don't like going outside. So the idea of a bunch of fast food places on a strip outside in fresh air was frightening to me. I was just waiting for malls to be invented.

0:48 · jump to transcript →

just like you wouldn't want me to come to your house some evening and discuss U.S. history on your time, understand? Yes, sir. You originally wanted Fred Gwynn, didn't you, for the part of Mr. Hand, and he didn't want to do the script because there was too much nasty stuff? Well, I forgot all about that, but as it was in the book, he was a big, heavy guy, sort of like the Hawaii Five-0 character. And then when we all met Ray Walston, who everybody loves from something, and...

10:37 · jump to transcript →

I just thought it was kind of matter of fact for these girls. It's fantastic. And it's so real. Which was the point of the book and what you were a real cop about on the movie. Well, the book was... The whole thing was like fast times. It's like too fast. They're too young for all of this. They have to look like little kids. Right. Real. Because all the teenagers on TV looked like 40. Yeah, and Grease, where they were...

13:35 · jump to transcript →

that upset about if you look at the original concept and to this but i think it does kind of reek of let's play a bit safe let's kind of keep it i suppose continuity wise with aliens because once you see like um the mess hall or whatever the kitchen whatever it is you've got that kind of similar sort of hadley's hope design to some of the rooms um so they are carrying over some sort of elements of production look to this film um

8:00 · jump to transcript →

relating to the movie, and I made a Withnail and I 2 poster, which is some artwork of Withnail and I with the alien attacking them. Because it turns out that that really is what David Fincher was going for as well, because he's a massive Withnail and I fan. Now, this shot here, when she wipes off the moisture, the condensation, sorry, of the... Oh, that's the original photographer's work. Is it Jordan Cronenworth? Yeah, yeah. I'm getting names wrong today. Yeah, Jordan's something unpronounceable. I've always thought of him as...

29:36 · jump to transcript →

in the later part of the 90s, in terms of progression of photography and style. And he's already doing it in 91. So he's like, that's what I've got him. Because this is what the 90s is in terms of filmmaking. That's it, isn't it? Yeah. I often find myself thinking, why hire a director based on their visuals alone? Hire someone who can actually direct actors and...

41:25 · jump to transcript →

It really grosses the audience out, which I think is interesting. Yeah, they actually think they see his tongue being cut off. They don't see a thing. Now this, Arnold really, he was such a trooper, but it's really creepy being mummified like this because you can't move very much, you can't really breathe. It kind of freaked him out a bit. Here we have a little ILM work here, CG scarabs. If you see the original plate for this shot, the guy who walks in there dumps out about half a dozen plastic...

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scarabs just as place markers. ILM did a great job on that shot. Now this next shot's a combination of every trick in the book, first unit photography, second unit photography, ILM, so you went from here to miniatures, models, matte paintings, the whole thing. And then a main title by Kyle Cooper,

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it's very well executed too it's interesting because i mean it's it's one of the the cheapest gags in the right in the book i mean it's it's a really it's it's shameless in fact but but it works it's it's fun to be in a preview audience or or even better with a paying audience and sitting there watching them all jump when he uh pushes that mummy out now i shot this scene in this in the script i told john hannah that he was going to be drunk

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Kat Ellinger

Hello and welcome. My name's Kat Linger and I'm an author, editor and critic. And welcome to my commentary for 2000's Bes Moi, co-directed by Coralie Trin-Thy and the original novelist of the controversial novel published in 1994, Bes Moi, Virginie Dupont.

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Kat Ellinger

the womanhood in general and how we treat rape and how it can often define us. Based on DuPont's experience, she was actually raped by three men at gunpoint when she was 17 years old, her and a friend. And so not only do I find it an incredibly cathartic film, but from a feminist point of view,

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Kat Ellinger

what a powerful political statement that can become. There is this sense of porn always being somehow lesser. And one of the things I love about the character of Nadine, played by Karen McComb, or a.k.a. Karen Back, and it's used in the book much more, is she's a porn junkie.

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E. Elias Merhige

We begin on the next frame with Saturn Films. Interestingly enough, the name that Nicolas Cage chose for his company, Saturn Films, is a name that Albin Grau, the original producer on the 1922 Nosferatu, chose for his journal, a journal that went through six years of editions. The journal was about esotericism and theosophy and anthroposophy.

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E. Elias Merhige

this Promethean fire of genius, of pure creativity, wanting nothing more than to spread itself like a disease out into the world and to transform and change the world through art. You will see this Promethean figure embodied in John Malkovich, and we worked very hard together to create, you know, who this Murnau is, who our Murnau is, because our Murnau obviously is, though based on some actual facts, you know, from history, is

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E. Elias Merhige

Take a look at the original Nosferatu and compare it with the scene. It's just a stunning comparison. And then you have these guys outside of the inn. They've turned this old inn into this movie studio.

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and its guitar soloist is Bruno Battisti di Mario. The character of Angel Eyes, played by Lee Van Cleef, is introduced with a long ride into close-up, much like Omar Sharif in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, a film that, like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, was largely shot in Almeria, Spain. In the original script by Luciano Vincenzoni, Angel Eyes is referred to as Banjo, possibly in response to the popularity of the baleful Italian western hero Django, introduced in 1965.

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and he went on to make A Pistol for Ringo, The Return of Ringo, Left-Handed Fate, and The Big Gun Down, to name a few. Like Saturno Cera, he was later featured in Luis Buñuel's Tristana. He died at age 70 in 1982. In the original trailers for this film, it was Angel Eyes rather than Tuco who was designated as the ugly, perhaps because Lee Van Cleef was the third name down on the billing. But is Angel Eyes really ugly?

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Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, and any other aliases he might have to hang by the neck until dead. May God have mercy on his soul. Proceed. This dialogue doesn't exactly jibe with what is heard on screen, but it comes directly from the original dubbing continuity sheets, scripted by Mickey Knox. That one's pretty good, but wait till you hear the second one.

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James Mangold

In this case, very few people except film buffs know of the original 310 Iyuma, so we weren't really motivated by greed as much as we were the power of the story. And I always look at it more like a revival, like they'd make on Broadway, where you do another production of, you know, Death of a Salesman with great esteem for the original, but trying to remount the story and see how it plays.

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James Mangold

One of the first tasks in terms of adapting and updating this story by Elmore Leonard was figuring out what we wanted and what we didn't in terms of how we were going to attack it and what story elements we were going to emphasize differently than the original film and what we thought they really got 100% right in the original film. One of the reasons that Halstead Wells is the first credited writer on the screenplay of this film

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James Mangold

is because we felt an awful lot that Halstead did in his screenplay in 1957 for the original 310 in Yuma was really right, was dead on right, and there's some great writing in that film that, out of ego, I wasn't gonna just dispose with. I thought these actors, Russell, Christian, Ben Foster, Gretchen Moll, et cetera, would have a great time doing this stuff and playing these words anew.

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No, I always think that this is almost a film that people who saw at a very young age, my good friend Mark Kermode, who literally wrote the book about silent running, saw this when he was like 10 or 11, and to this day it's like his favourite science fiction film. And I think it's a film that...

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Logan's Run from the George Clayton Johnson, William Nolan novel. Even a little later, there was a TV miniseries of The Martian Chronicles from Ray Bradbury. Not a very good series. And these are all around this time. What's the thing that's different about this film from those movies? Go ahead. I've just told you, this isn't based on a novel. It's an original screenplay. And the thing about those other films is...

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Some of them are kind of what you might say dumbed down in the adaptation. We knew Harry Harrison, and he would always sort of complain about the Soylent Green is people and the murder mystery stuff. He said that that wasn't the point of the book. But in fact, the point of the book is to show overpopulation, which Soylent Green, the film, does absolutely brilliantly. The thing is, all those films, because they have this kind of...

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