Adaptation & source material

Joss Whedon

It became apparent that the two of them walking into a dark room, looking for something, and then talking to someone who had clearly called them there, gave us the information that we needed, and also kept them a little more mysterious. The scene was so mundane, and they were So... Just such normal bickering siblings, that it didn't... Didn't really add to their grandeur. This is the first time we see Ultron. And I look back, and I'm... The fact of him sitting in that chair is very, sort of, based on the great, sort of, John Buscema kind of... "The tortured king and the weight of the throne" kind of thing. But then he stands up, and that's how he's revealed. And I thought, "That's less cinematic than it could have been," after the fact. Children... This little bit that he says here is also really important in the theme. Simply because one of the first things I ever wrote when sort of just freestyling about Ultron in my head, was that children all kill their parents, because once you have them, you no longer care as much about yourself. You accept your place in the cycle of the world, and you know that you'll die, but there's something more important to you than that. And then, in parenthesis, I wrote, 'cause I was sending this out as a memo, "Don't worry, nothing like that will ever appear in the film." And then it actually did. But I do think that a connection that even I didn't make is because so much of this is about power... Yet also, so much of it is about family, and the responsibility we have not just as leaders or as heroes, but as parents. There is no time when anybody in the world understands what the truly powerful can do and go through, unless they're parents. Until the moment they're parents. And then, suddenly, they have complete mastery over somebody's mind. Not forever. In the case of my kids, not even for that long. But there is the ability to uplift or destroy. It is a perfect connection between what is going on in this movie, politically and thematically, and what is going on personally. This shot here is one of my favourite shots in the film, just the way Ultron listens. Again, ILM, they had James Spader's performance to work off of. They had face-capture on him, so he wore cameras on his face the whole time. But they really took it and used it, and managed to make a man who's made out of metal not just sound, but move like Spader and give the performance. When James took the gig, he said, "I don't wanna do voiceover work. "I wanna be able to give a performance." And, my God, he did. And they did such an extraordinary job of capturing it, so much so that when he is standing there doing nothing, I cannot stop looking at him. I developed a huge... Not even a man-crush, like a teenage girl-crush on Ultron. Like, I want a picture of him over my bed, and I wanna write about him in my diary, and I wonder if he's thinking about me. He's just gorgeous. 'Course, there's a lot of gorgeous to go around. This bit, there was a lot more of. We played the mystery of "What's up with Barton?" a lot. Is he still possessed? Is he villainous? Is he something terrible? Ultimately, we just kept the fact that he says, "I don't have a girlfriend," and then later says, "Girlfriend." My issue with it was simply... I mean, people felt, "Can we get some time out of here?" My issue was, I've just felt that people would only think that he was talking to Fury. Since he had been a S.H.1.E.L.D. agent, and we've never seen Fury, and we know that S.H./.E.L.D. is gone, that they wouldn't think that he was up to something dire. They would just think, "Oh, he's listening to his old boss." And the dancing I would have to have gone through to make that clear that he wasn't just didn't seem worth the effort. So we kept just a little bit of it. I miss it. I miss the idea of, "What's his dark secret? "What's his dark secret?" 'Cause I think it's important. His dark secret is obviously the crux of the film. And, I mean, the fulcrum, the thing upon which the entire film revolves, um, changes.

36:29 · jump to transcript →

Joss Whedon

I wrote him before as, I would say, polite. And here, he has his own thing, his own agenda that goes beyond humanity. And later on has what is, for me, the most important moment in the movie, based on his understanding of life beyond us and our agenda.

1:35:47 · jump to transcript →

Joss Whedon

This was exactly what I pitched, again, before the movie. Loki failed, Red Skull failed. Ronan failed. So, it's time. Third movie, it's time, which is somebody else's problem. There is one more thing I have to say. I'm not going to speak through 48 minutes of credits, though you should watch them all because every person listed in them did extraordinary work, and I'm enormously grateful. And I apologise to all the people I didn't mention because I should've. But I did promise that I would say something about an Easter egg. I dont... Usually, I try not to be self-indulgent. I just had a feeling there was a connection between the evils of this world and the evils of all worlds. And there is that one shot in Thor's dream of three guys in an archway, wearing three masks, and the masks are very expressionistic, so it might be hard to see exactly what they are, and we only held on them for a moment. And they were originally seen over a line of Thor's that was taken out, where he says, "It's been a long journey, and dark forces followed me." And the idea that there is something bigger at stake, which we hit in his revelation of the jewels, but "dark forces" was when you cut to those guys. Basically, though expressionistic, they are based on three animals, a wolf, a ram, and a hart. And some of you might know what that means to me. Thank you for listening. We're done.

2:13:24 · jump to transcript →

Nothing was gross. It just was textured. Wow. I love these spiders. I do, too. Yeah. They're great. I remember getting a photo from you, like, four years ago of a jumping spider and being like, this is so cute. Yeah. That being the origin of that. Yeah, totally. I think that was, like, six years ago now. Okay. These are all, these little tree houses, or many of them, are either built by or based on the art of an artist named Jed Volz. Jedediah Volz.

3:39 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, I know. One of my favorite things about the process is that I don't think any of us could possibly tell you, well, not with any reliability, what parts were fully written, what was improv, what was written based on improv. And, you know, it's cool. I think we did a great job of blending that.

18:24 · jump to transcript →

This is in Liz's apartment, but I think it was based on a whiff we'd done earlier. Because I remember Caroline congratulating me, being like, wow, you know it's really hard to sing flat. And I was like, that's the best I can do. Well, you're really not singing a note at all. You can't sing any notes. I can hear myself trying not to laugh. Is this song from Summer Camp? Yeah. Yeah.

1:06:17 · jump to transcript →

Thank you. Bob, one of the things you said that I want to bring up... I think one of the earliest phone calls, maybe even the first phone call, you said, "You could end the film "right with him riding the bus, defeated, deflated, "and that could be a great short film about a day where nothing went right." Yeah. And that's the attitude that stayed with me throughout. The idea that this is a godsend. This moment of these guys... I think the original plan was to have Ave Maria playing in the background for this moment 'cause it was literally a godsend. It was amazing. That person yelling "bus," the character's Teddy Kuznetsov, played by... Sasha Pal. - Sasha Pal. And that man right there is Daniel Bernhardt. Daniel Bernhardt is the man who trained me to fight for two years. That guy right there. He's one of the... He's the greatest. He's maybe the best stunt actor working for the last 10 years. Man, he's great. And you might know him from the TV show Barry. And you might know him from the big fight in Atomic Blonde. And you would know him from John Wick movies and Hobbs & Shaw and every other great action movie of the last 20 years, 'cause he's the best, and he's a great actor too. Bringing a lot of character to this whole sequence. But from the moment things got real with the possibility of me doing an action movie, I started to train, 'cause I was a comedy writer for 25 years, and I did a normal workout of any suburban dad. I hope these assholes like hospital food. "That girl's gonna get home safe."

25:14 · jump to transcript →

Hutch here. Last night, that was you, huh? And then here, we got a great phone call with RZA calling his brother from who knows where and... I think, originally, he was supposed to be on an island. That's what we had in one of the lines. But then we kind of thought, "Well, how does he get there from an island so quick?" So it was changed to a nondescript location. I always like how you step into the shadow when you take this call. Yeah. - Hopetully it's not too on the nose, but I kind of like that the family's light in the back, and then here you are in a little bit of darkness. And he mentions The Barber. - The Barber. And that was not what he said in the original script. No. This is where... So this is act two and act two was very, very different. And I don't know how much in detail we should go, 'cause there's a lot of them. But the idea is that now Hutch gets the call, gets the message to go see The Barber, gets the message to go see The Barber, he gets the phone message, a text message, he goes, and basically what we used to have Is... What we have now is a compact montage of a much bigger act two than we originally had shot and envisioned, which makes the film much, much better. And that was something that David Leitch set down with Evan Schiff, our second editor. I finished... This is right as Corona was hitting the US, and we all had to go home, and I flew home. And David spent time working with Evan over Zoom to put the sequence together. By the way, if you pay close attention to the clothes on Hutch's character, you'll see that it's very lucky that he's always wearing blue. And may I say the reason why you're wearing blue, Bob? Yeah. So, early in preproduction Bob said that, "Guys, I think we should get some blue stuff on me." I'm like, "Why?" He's like, "Well..." I think you said your mother saw you wearing blue... - In the Spielberg film The Post. She saw The Post, she liked it. And she goes, "Your eyes aren't that blue." And I go, "Actually, yes, they are. They pop blue more if I wear blue." You see the blue in my eyes if I wear blue. They're kind of a blue-green, I think. SO anyway... So your mother... We have to thank your mother for putting us in this direction because it saved us in the cut. She will not be seeing this movie. Really? - No. Can we do a cut-down version without... She's 84 and does not watch violent films at all. ...to the tune of eight and nine figures. Anything good? - Fuck if I know. But what I do know is, if he doesn't know who you are yet, he will soon. Now, Colin is amazing. Colin Salmon. Oh, my God, what a great actor. And there's your wife. That's not much. There's my wife. Ten-year anniversary today. Dasha. - That's right. She's a filmmaker herself. - She is now. I have competition in my own household. Good luck with that. - Yeah. I have the same situation. My wife is a manager, but also a producer and a creative, and it's great. You gotta figure it out. It might take you awhile. Now, you guys have 10 years, so you're probably doing pretty good. We're all right. - But it can be hard. Yep. What the fuck? This guy's like, "Wait. Some of these pictures are me. "Who's got them?" - This is J.P. Manoux. He was actually... Bob, he was the second person cast in this film. Obviously, you were first and J.P. was the second. Well, he's great. He's freaked out, working at the Pentagon, and Colin's telling me who Yulian is, and who I've just gotten myself involved with, and about the Obshak. And how Yulian's men are overseeing the Obshak, which is obviously something that's causing him a great deal of stress, but also, he takes a certain amount of pride in protecting it. Goddamn Obshak. He's kind of like, I think, the... Not kind of... For me, the goal was to have Hutch be the quiet guy that's hiding a storm inside himself. Whereas Yulian is living the storm but doesn't really want to. Yeah. - So their trajectories are clashing. There's not a goddamn thing about Hutch in all the documents he can find. It's all blacked out, except for some awesome pictures of the people he's killed. And Dasha decides, "Fuck this. I'm not part of this." And now he realizes what he already knew because that character's smart. My brother tangled with a bad guy. I

42:46 · jump to transcript →

Can we just talk for one second about our black Russian? Araya. Araya is a great actor, Araya Mengesha. Yep. And he has a great part in here, and he plays it so well. Now, is he a stuntman? - No. He is an actor from Toronto. Yeah. - A great guy. And I give him a lot of credit because he... When I talked to him, I said, "Look, I want him to be... "I want Pavel, the black Russian, to be speaking Russian "and to sound as Russian as possible." Yeah. - 'Cause he's based on... I don't know how to pronounce it. "Amalgamation"? Yeah. - Of a few Russian black guys that I know. 'Cause, obviously, we don't... You know, we're mostly predominantly a white nation. Right. But the story that Pavel, or Araya, the character talks about how he's the son of an Ethiopian Olympian from the Moscow Olympics. That's all... There's a certain group of people in Moscow or in Russia who were the result of the Olympics. Just people came over, had sex and left. And so these hyper-athletic kids from Olympian fathers or mothers, fathers, they grew up with a very different skin color in a country which... People were not used to that in the slightest. So they had a very, sort of, in a way, great experience 'cause they were getting the right kind of attention. But obviously, with the right kind of attention also comes, usually, the wrong kind of attention. So he is based on a real concept. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I said, "Araya, it'd be great if you can, you know, spend some time "and I'll coach you a little bit and let's get the Russian right." And he did. Like, we spent, before recording, you know... Yeah. Twenty minutes a day just going over... - He's fantastic in this. Such a great guy. A joy to work with too. As were all these guys, but... This is a team of people, mostly Canadian stunt people, but overseen by Greg Rementer and Daniel Bernhardt, who did some of the fight choreography, all the fight choreography. Well... -[t was Daniel and Kirk together. Yep. - Well, together. I mean, Greg Rementer is this... What is his title here? -/ think he's both... He's the stunt choreographer and the second unit director. Yes. Anyway, it was a team effort.

48:18 · jump to transcript →

Tim Lucas

$50,000, a pay increase of $35,000. In today's money, that's roughly half a million dollars, making the title of this film fairly literal. It was at this point that the original Italian version placed its intermission between the two halves of the film, identified as primo tempo and secondo tempo.

1:08:04 · jump to transcript →

Tim Lucas

Bianco's challenge starts out looking like pretty even odds, but the odds change as he advances. Strangely enough, of all the possible images that could have been used from this film, the original Italian poster art by Franco Fiorenzi, arguably the most beautiful issued on this film, pictured these three men in the distance behind a foregrounded portrait of Eastwood.

1:28:18 · jump to transcript →

Oh, look. Nice car, that, that woodie. Yes, and what was the tape playing? Was it Nixon? Nixon's-- which I... I don't like that speech being played, actually because it locks the movie into a time frame. I thought it was terribly clever. And that late November evening wasn't in time with Nixon's speech. Speech. And, you know, there's lots of things. Now we see this motorcyclist here. Those people who played Transylvanians were on the back of those motorbikes. They would have to go to the studio this very night, dress up, put all their Transylvanian gear on, and then put motorbike leathers on as well. Yeah. - And then go out on these motorbikes. They didn't drive them themselves. No, no. They had motorcyclists. They paid pillion passengers. Yeah. And, as Ramon Gow said, you know, I said, "Why are they coming in to do this? It could be anybody wet in the dark. And he said, "Could be a gorilla with a pipe, luv." Gorilla with a pipe? But I'll never forget the first day I saw the Transylvanians, 'cause they were rehearsing in a room in the house. And we didn't have Transylvanians in the play, and suddenly this door was open, and I don't want politically noncorrect, but it was so freaky because they were freaks. Sorry. - As indeed we all are. No, speak for yourself. And in the amazement of tall, small, fat, thin, you Know... You lost a sense of norms, you do. Sense of center. Yes, and I saw all these people dancing doing the "Time Warp," and I almost collapsed. I couldn't believe it. I thought... Because I didn't know they were going to be in this. I didn't know there was a cast of Transylvanians. No. - No. Well, when I went into the room and David Toguri was rehearsing them, Well, when I went into the room and David Toguri was rehearsing them, Well, when I went into the room and David Toguri was rehearsing them, and Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon was standing amongst these people, with hugely different, physically, SO very... I'll never work again for using the word "freak." It seemed to me that Susan and Barry, who most people would say are relatively good-looking human beings, seemed just as freakish. There was no standard. The standards had disappeared. Yes, that's what freakish-- yes, right. And that was interesting.

12:03 · jump to transcript →

And this was cut from a lot of the original versions. This song was cult. 2 Toftind the truth ? And we cut straight to the narrator's verse. He says to tell the truth and never lied. We cut Brad and Janet's verses in this song and went straight to the narrator's verse on the original movie. And it made no sense whatsoever. - I see. 'Cause we needed this. There was a very long intro that Richard Hartley had devised for this song. And I suggested they cut straight to Brad's verse. And they cut straight to the narrator's verse, which was cutting both Brad and Janet's verse, which was rather stupid because it's kind of nice to have these two verses. Make the whole thing tie up, the whole song tie up.

1:34:35 · jump to transcript →

Roger Moore

This was not the first time I had been in Venice. I remember distinctly the first time I was in Venice... ...Was in 1961. And I had been offered by Lew Grade a series called The Saint... ...and had read the script out there. My agent came out to talk to me about it. And I said that I thought it was just a little long... ...for a half-hour series. I said, "It is a half-hour series?" He said, "Oh, yes." I said, "Well, let's find out." He checked back with an assistant... ...wWho no longer.... Who shortly after that was not an assistant. Because when it came to... All my contract was built on... Based on it being... ...a 30-minute series. And, in fact, it was an hour. Then I came out of the press conference... ...We did a little readjustment, Lew Grade and I. I remember Venice very well for that. But it is the most beautiful city. It has this extraordinary history. It's a wonderful place to work if you like boats. Not if you like swimming. And I went in the canal a couple of times... ...Which is not quite as bad as falling in the klongs in Bangkok.

34:00 · jump to transcript →

Roger Moore

In 1950, we were in a production of Mister Roberts... ...with Tyrone Power and Jackie Cooper... ...at the Coliseum theater in London. People who know the play, they probably know the film. Mister Roberts was wonderful with Henry Fonda and James Cagney... ...and Jack Lemmon.

1:41:20 · jump to transcript →

It's actually based on a friend I grew up with, my friend's grandfather, who was in the scrap business, who said exactly those lines. And he was able to just pick the stuff up and smell it and taste it and tell you what the metal was composed of.

49:36 · jump to transcript →

By the way, Leo's character is based on two Chicago organized crime figures who are now dead who were fences and ran crews of thieves and were certainly no less vicious than Leo's characterized here. They're Milwaukee Phil Alderizio and Leo Rugendorf. Milwaukee Phil.

1:51:11 · jump to transcript →

desks, gathering the old gear. And then ticker tape, of course, became a really handy way of dealing with these people. And then we had no shame about doing cheap jokes of heads bonking into windows and blah, blah, blah. The music which John Dupre did is based on Eric Korngold's work. Korngold did the Seahawk and many of the great epics with Errol Flynn in them.

3:39 · jump to transcript →

They're harder to do than you can imagine. I forgot, we had another set here. We had this bit here, the modern building. Now that I'm looking at this thing, I realize why it costs so much. It just keeps expanding. It goes on and on, endless shots. The good thing on this DVD is the soundtrack is much better than it was in the original film.

10:00 · jump to transcript →

Civic TV was inspired by Toronto City TV, launched there in 1971 on UHF Channel 79, very much a progressive maverick station. One of their early distinctions was a Friday night broadcast called Baby Blue Movies, which ran softcore erotic features after midnight. Because of the City TV connection, it's often said that Max Renn was based on its founder, Moses Neimer, but that's not really true. Max's partners, Moses and Raphael, are played by Reiner Schwartz and David Bolt.

4:48 · jump to transcript →

Tales of Ordinary Madness, also released in 1981, making it ripe as a source of influence. Based on the book by Charles Bukowski, it shares some of this film's fascination with the protagonist as derelict, and Ornella Muti's character of the self-destructive hooker Cass has a lot in common with Nicky Brand. Also like this film, it ends by the seaside. On the set, Debbie Harry was considerably less accessible than James Woods. She didn't really pal around with the crew.

21:02 · jump to transcript →

riding bob richardson's motor guzzi and i'm doubling fox and now now robbie muller is shooting the original part of repo man with fox in the car varnum behind because this opening sequence is a composite of two different days of shooting the first shot by robbie muller who did this shot and the second day done months later by bob richardson

3:00 · jump to transcript →

But this is based on those experiments they would do with people where they would pretend to be torturing people in experiments and pump up the juice and stuff like that. And they found that nine out of ten people will just keep on turning up the electricity until the alleged subject is dead. And there were experiments done at universities with actors pretending that they were being given electric shocks. Wow. That's a good fireman's carry, Del. Yeah, Del. See, he didn't need to worry.

1:18:05 · jump to transcript →

Get your father's good looks. OK, profiles, profiles. They have the same nose. And that was kind of a gift in the casting process. We didn't cast based on the nose, but it was a plus. Little sound effect coming up here. Not believable, but got a laugh. I remember I didn't like that sound effect.

5:34 · jump to transcript →

into the frat house. Bobby still has the original pen holder that he swiped from the costume department. Hi, girls. Bobby has got the full nerd pack, which if you look in the nerd manual, he's got a slide rule. He's got the pen holder. He's got the belt installed, calculator, everything a nerd would need.

18:00 · jump to transcript →

Sweet Bird of Youth, I don't know. What was the play? Yeah, she had done that at the Taper. Yeah, Sweet Bird of Youth. Maggie the Cat. She hadn't done anything big before and back home. She came and auditioned and got the job. Yeah. I mean, that's an extraordinary talent. I saw her in that. She was wonderful. For someone to reach on down through the sleaze and the slime, pick him up and hose him off. I mean, who knows? If we fail with even one shot, we might be losing the next Ted Koppel.

8:40 · jump to transcript →

He saw Old Bob. That's the original Old Bob, which came back. You can see the filament hanging off the end of it. Now he went and got it, brought it to you. Now this, he decided to do. Why? I don't know. Well, we started licking each other here at the end. I know, but why did he decide to get in there? That was an ad lib. We didn't expect him to do that. And we didn't expect you to do that either. That's as good an ending to a comedy as I've ever seen.

1:33:41 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

real New York voice. It was very funny. I said, oh, he's pissed now because he's doing his New York voice. Well, we have James Lawrence from Street Trash there. Exactly. Wonderful actor. I cast him just based on that. And Frankenhooker, I said, this guy's got to be in the movie. Great choice. So, yeah, if we want to talk a little bit about Remy Ryan there and her character, because I have to admit, when I first saw the movie,

16:26 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

I wasn't crazy about her being in the film either. It felt like it was a deliberate attempt to get kids to relate to somebody in the picture. Well, in fact, that's not true. Really? The original script, her name was Keiko, and she was, I think, full Japanese and should have been younger. I mean, when I was thinking about this character, I was thinking of Frank's drawings. And I was really...

16:54 · jump to transcript →

You know, it's funny that the script is almost verbatim, word for word, from the original script that I read in Italy, you know, after I finished Last Boy Scout. Other than the very end of the movie, the end of the movie, I'm a romantic, I think, in the end of the movie. I struggle with, because in Quentin's end, Christian dies, or the clown's character dies, and...

37:15 · jump to transcript →

except it's more deluded, you know, it's better. Again, I constructed the set. The set was based on that set, the Sahara Motel, which was the real motel down off Van Nuys in the valley. But then I put the Hawaiian motif on the walls and put mirror on the ceiling because I knew that when I was storyboarding the sequence ahead of time, I knew that I wanted Patricia, who'd been badly beaten, to be able to see the elements in the room.

1:19:28 · jump to transcript →

I always like that line. And there's the other album. Right. Well, I believe... Does this take place in Texas? Is that what's the idea at this point, right? Yeah. So we're almost in Mexico. There's a tunnel. Right. Well, this was the idea in the original as well that we'd make our way to Mexico. It was also funny because you're on the Canadian border and then he makes his way to Mexico. Yeah. Which we thought was...

1:19:38 · jump to transcript →

We did a sketch where we copied Reservoir Dogs, and I had dinner with him once, and he was very excited that that was based on it. The Fell on My Keys, of course, was an homage to the producers. Sure. Just doing my job. I do, however, have a few questions. Gene Wilder falls, and then I fell on my keys. Spent some time in New York City. Yes. Well, Bob and I are going up there next week, and I was wondering if you could suggest a show. Of course. Moby the Musical, a must-see.

1:26:19 · jump to transcript →

The acupressure. I don't know how that works, but it's always in the novel, always in the movies. This is the standard. If this were set in New York, it would just be focused on their sinuses. Take your death. I shall revenge my master's death. She's got a good comeback.

35:36 · jump to transcript →

No, in the book, Yu Jialong, Jane's character is a tomboy. It's very male-ish, kind of very boyish, aristocrat woman. And I realized shooting in the desert, even if I beat her to death, I couldn't make her that way. And this is the scene I realized she is sexy, very feminine. So it sort of gives you bad ideas. It took you that long to figure it out, huh? Okay.

1:04:18 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

This is the only scene in which we made substantial changes after our first test screening. In the original script, Oz, towards the end of the scene, made a long declaration of love to Cynthia. We had never questioned this, but when we saw it with an audience, we realized that it happened too soon. It was only his second meeting with her.

33:41 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

It's in the same key as the original Max Steiner score. So we've got the old Max Steiner music and the Randy Edelman score playing together here and intertwining with each other. Looking for a new way to have a shootout, I thought it would be really good if Bruce shot in silhouette. Of course, the script called for this

1:06:17 · jump to transcript →

To me, I think that shot could have even been more effective. But you live and you learn, and it worked. This next sequence coming up is very interesting because it employs some photography from the first picture. This is new photography. When Steve conceived of this sequence, he always wanted to use photography from the original movie so that it would rhyme with it exactly. And you'll see that it does.

1:10:13 · jump to transcript →

you see how Oded has really learned how to ride the horse. He does a fantastic job in this sequence. And once again, when we get into the battle here, he's fighting things, and all these men are fighting things that aren't really there, which makes it very, very difficult. In this wide shot that's coming up here, if you were to see the original plate, there's all these guys in blue suits that are standing there

1:44:47 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

And all the taxis in the movie are gypsy cabs, which is, you know, in New York, you have these gypsy cabs uptown, which they aren't actually officially called gypsy cabs, but that's what everybody calls them. We just decided to institutionalize it for the movie. These dalmatian mice are made with a-- You just-- Probably shouldn't say, it's probably-- They're made with a Sharpie, but I don't know if that's legal. That's supposed to be Royal's mother. And, uh, we had a couple of runs of trying to find one and make one. And eventually we had to just cast a nurse, dress the whole thing. We had to find the right painter. And it was a whole production just to make that portrait of the nurse, which you just see for a second there, but I really liked it. A lot of stuff that should be easy, like, you know, dressing somebody in a red Adidas warm-up, that should be a breeze. You should just go to the store. But then it turns out they don't make the right color. And the red is different than the one they used to make. The cut of them is different. It doesn't-- You know, you end up having to make everything if you want it to be right. Like, for example, there's stained glass windows behind them here. We had to make those stained glass windows because the windows in the house, which they're based on, are six feet up above. They're at the top of the windows, as a result of which we never would see them in the entire movie. So we had to make another set and lower them down, so you'd actually be able to see them.

27:08 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

The text of these chapters is taken from the script, which I thought was right because I didn't think that... I thought the movie and the book should be the same thing, in a way. It's based on a fake book, but the book should only exist kind of as the movie. That's why, like, the words, "chapter one," "chapter two," aren't written on the pages. They're superimposed on it, so it can kind of only exist as a movie. A weird abstract idea, really, to no end, but that's sort of what I was trying to accomplish.

1:21:37 · jump to transcript →

filled the tank with powdered quinine and used our UV lights. And on the day of the shoot, got about 10% of the original effect and panicked and realized that for some reason it was only the tonic water that gave off that hue. And so I had every PA run out to every Costco in Toronto and came back with 800 bottles of tonic water and shot the scene. And I think it's quite effective. It's magnificent. When...

33:12 · jump to transcript →

We had to go another way because of some technical problems, but one of which arrived out of the original format we decided to shoot on. Going into the movie, we had always planned on doing it anamorphic, and although we weren't going to be the first submarine movie to be shot anamorphically, certainly I think Crimson Tide was shot anamorphically, which is a format.

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Barry Sonnenfeld

This is one of my favourite scenes. Tommy is just wonderful in this scene, and he doesn't have any dialogue. There are my favourite bike guys again. Rick Baker designed this little guy with those little hands. We've got the nitrogen tanks that you'll see all over New York City... ...that I'm pretending transport Men in Black throughout New York. That's part of their secret transit authority. Remember the use of cockroaches at the end of the first movie? Now it's all coming back to Tommy. He's rebooting. Danny's score here is beautiful. That's the original theme... ... from the first movie, where Tommy's old partner... ...asked him to neuralyze him on the rock in Arizona. And now Tommy's back, just with that smile. It's a wonderful moment. Fellas, I think he's telling the truth. - Then he's no good to us. Didn't I teach you anything, kid? - Pineal eye!

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Barry Sonnenfeld

What's the book say? - We're off book. I say split some wigs. Now, coming up is my cameo. We're watching Martha Stewart, of course. That's me. This is Tommy Lee Jones' daughter, Victoria... ...and on the right is Stephanie Kemp, the associate producer. Now, the problem right here is, until this shot... ...I did not know that I was losing my hair back there. So I said to ILM, since they're adding all those worm guys anyway... ...which are like $90,000 a piece... Here you go again. Why not give me some hair? But they wouldn't do it. And I begged them to do it. I think they wanted to charge me more money. This is a real wall that was able to go up and down like that. And I love that there's this tiny, little room... ... with this huge closet of special weapons in the background. And she can stay up as late as she want... Which is every kid's dream. This was a new set we bullt. We called it the impound set. It was the same set where we parked all the cars... ... where Will and Frank were walking towards his new Mercedes.

1:02:17 · jump to transcript →

It's definitely one of the first things that grabs you when you watch the animated series. It's very unusual, very well done. This was always very interesting to me, to create a world that wasn't a futuristic world that felt like this kind of dreamt-up world, but something that had some kind of reality based on the issues that we're dealing with today. So I always liked that little write-up and that this world of Bragna with this voiceover that

1:07 · jump to transcript →

It would be impossible to do that. And I thought that Enzo Angeleri, who designed and cut this hair, thought that he did such a great, it was such a great throwback and homage to the original and yet something that we could work with. I just thought he did such a brilliant job. And it was also one of the first things that Peter Chung said when he came to the set was that he loved the hair, which was really great.

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Roman Coppola

I remember doing this scene was-- That driver? No, I don't remember the driver. Because he was-- That was a driver with henna hair who we always would see at the place where all the auto-rick drivers wait there. We would always see that same driver. He was our stunt driver for this shot. I remember this sequence, with the dialogue scene with the short story... Yeah. - ...we found a little hill so we could roll the rickshaw down the hill without having the motor on ruining the sound. Yes, that's right. We rumbled down the hill. And what's the name of that--? Of the boy on the bicycle? He was a... - Spot boy? He was a spot boy for us. He brought tea, chai, onto the set, and he was very bright. I'm trying to think of his name. One thing about Brendan's character, I just wanna-- Would just mention just as an homage is his hat-- There's a logo on his hat for Francis Whitman Industries, which is actually my father's business. I mean, he's retired now, but it was-- His business was called Mel Anderson Communications. That symbol was his-- It's his-- It's based on his logo. In this part of the train, we have Brendan's living quarters. I think this is the non-a.c. section. These cars on the Indian trains usually don't have windows. The engine, as you can see there, is-- The paint job on it is based on the Tata trucks that you see on the roads in India, hand-painted by the drivers.

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Roman Coppola

And that goes straight into this scene with-- This scene where we visit all our characters in the story while we're on this moving train, which, we built this set on the train. That's a door, actually, that you can see out. So this is actually where you are now, Jason. This is based on my apartment in New York. And, anyway, these-- - Yeah. All these rooms are built on this train with this dolly track in it.

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Wes Anderson

We have-- We had so many great people to be around here. But, you know, also, by the way, with this scene here, I mean, a couple of funny things. We could talk about-- You know, the shot where they come driving up on the train there, where we're looking through the window, is shot on a little section of window and chairs that are on a dolly out in this snowy place. Then, in the wider shot, we have front projection that we've shot in this auditorium that we're using as a soundstage. Front projection based on-- Which-- Inspired by 2001. Using this old technique of front projection, which is not my idea.

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Wes Anderson

Yes, we shot all these full-scale shots, and then the whole-- Everything else-- I mean, we built miniature landscapes-- Like what you're looking at there, it's all misty like that, but there actually is a miniature that was built, and these are based on reference of real locations, a bit modified, but they're miniatures. But this, on the other hand, is across the street from the hotel.

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