Budget

We had no money. I mean, it was the first one. We had a very limited budget. And I got a bit desperate. I came up with a firm over at Farnham, I believe, who were rake on me. And I got in touch with a gentleman there. And he said, well, what do you want to do? I said, well, I've got, I think it was 12 stations, 12 operators. And each man has to have his own.

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Well, I held it about as long as I thought we could, you see. And now when it's run, a few of the conoscente, I mean, there are still, there are some people who begin to giggle, and this pleases me very much because it was meant as a faintly comic effect. If you remember, you first see his hand, then all the props, the gunmetal case, the little lighter, the woman shoveling the money across, and finally she says, and this is a very, very interesting point, she says, and to whom do I make out the check?

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Ken Adam remembers the challenge of preparing the set for M's office on a limited budget. I tried to give M a traditional background of a good taste English paneled office with, since he had been ex-navy with ship models and naval pictures.

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come what may, and he was frantically rewriting on the set whilst they were shooting it. And that was for tax reasons as well, that the film had to be shot within a certain window of opportunity, otherwise the money wasn't going to be there. Yeah, and even James Caplan, you know, he didn't have time to develop the screenplay as it should be either. And, you know, it's a very complex storyline, you know. It's film noir. It's investigative, you know, plot.

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on a small budget and a fast shooting schedule. So you've really sort of set the bar high for what you're trying to achieve in such a short space of time. Well, it was budgeted by Graham Ford, who had just come off Brazil, as the line producer on Brazil. And Graham did a budget, and it was way, way over a million. And the producer said, well, we can't go ahead.

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it wasn't going to happen right so uh i went over to don hawkins uh apartment and i said don you know let's look at the budget and see what we can do um but but don didn't really know anything about budgeting i had some experience because i did some production managing on some other stuff so i sat down and i went through the budget and i started making cuts um all over the place basically until i got it down to somewhere between five and six hundred thousand

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four months after the main unit was completed, and after we'd already cut the film together. It was always in the script, but I'd run out of money, and I couldn't afford to do it with the main unit. I had to beg my French producer to let me go back to South Africa and do it. To his credit, he eventually agreed. It still had to be done very cheaply, and I had to call in a lot of favors.

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I mean, one thing is getting the idea, but executing it's another. Shot required placing a 100-foot crane on a very rickety wooden pier. In the original script, we got to see Yuri's childhood in Ukraine. Ten-year-old Yuri comes up with the idea to pretend to be Jewish to escape the Soviet Union. But that part of the story had to be cut for budget reasons.

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We intentionally try to change the characters too much over the 20 years the film takes place. Those fashion changes often look very contrived and financially we just couldn't afford to. My schedule was actually so tight that I could be shooting a scene in the early 80s and an hour later a scene in the late 90s.

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But the idea was we were already behind budget before we started. Correct. We wrote too big a movie. But they bought it already. Now, this scene, we shot everything that we shot. We shot in Toronto. Yep. Right. And is your nephew in the elevator on this one or your assistant at the time, David? My nephew. Right, right? Very good, David. In this elevator? Yes. This is the one where he's in the... Yeah. If you look closely, I was also on that elevator. Oh, right. Yeah. Right. Right.

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Really? You said we couldn't be here? Yeah. Don't go up there. Oh, the production. They didn't want to pay for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The city of Toronto didn't say don't come here. Our budget was already blown before we started production. But then we were also in profit partway through the shoot. That's true, yeah. Because we assumed foreign sales. Foreign sales to Germany. But they were all contingent on a U.S. release. Right. Which didn't happen. So at this point we were going, ah, we're...

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What's he going to do? Charlie, my son, brought up, how did he pay for the hotel room? I said, I had no money. No, I had money. No, no, we figured what happened is we lost that scene where he earned the money doing the fence. I mean, the painting the house. We lost that. The hotel room, I think, was before the fence. No, you'll see. No, no, no, before the fence, but after what would have been the painting the house and fed the rats.

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Yeah, which is the thing with TV, you know, the difference between TV and films, and TV you have a lot of time to develop these things, and this kind of movie you really have to hit it hard, and the audience to get it right away, and you have those few minutes to get a point across. I think it helped, I mean, at least then from that point on, and the audience hopefully would understand that it's very unlikely that she's going to back away from her goal, which is obviously take the money.

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that he maintains in his life. Yeah. That was CGI, right? That was CG, yeah. That was the only, well, not the only, I think there's a couple of CG moments in the movie and that was, that's probably the fanciest CG effect in the whole movie, ironically, is the piece of treat of hot dog that is thrown to the dog that had to fly over the fence and land. All that was done actually in Uruguay, in our country. Because the money's in there and the paranoid fuck doesn't trust nobody.

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These are all pieces that are going to come back, right? The bell that is going to be, that is the alarm system that the blind man has for what's happening on the cellar. We're still in one shot here, aren't we? Yeah, it's one single shot that starts at the door and ends up upstairs. Of course, we'll know that the money is right somewhere there. Closet. And the door to the cellar.

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Well, they had a very low budget, really, I think. They had a low budget, and the low budget and Lawton's intentions sort of coincided because he wanted a not quite real dreamlike fairy tale atmosphere to a lot of this. He told the people that he was working with that he wanted the whole thing to be, from the boy's point of view, almost as if it was a nightmare that he was having. What was the budget, Terry, do you recall?

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Fortunately found, unfortunately, after I'd already published my book. But, you know, it's fun. Now that Agee, 2009, next year it'll be his centenary, and they'll be able to republish it. And basically what it is is it's an extended version of the film, beat for beat, including something that was not in Grubb's novel, which is to hint strongly that he's hiding the money. That's him.

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There is one funny outtake in this scene of Mitchum looking a little bit alarmed by one of the torches getting a little close to his head. And, of course, there's this wonderful moment of revelation coming up where she's talking about the money, and we're finally going to find out what she doesn't know and what Mitchum doesn't know, but the kids know. And you throw it in the river! In the river!

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built our mausoleum set in this small warehouse. And this warehouse had just gorgeous cement floors. They were brand new. And for a low budget picture like ours, it was really great because we were able to use our dolly. And you can see the floor there was so flat without laying any track. We were able to get a lot of movement in the picture moving around, something that's difficult for independent films on a budget.

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There's a crew guy, and there's my dad in the background, and Reggie's mother. We made this film on a very tight budget, to say the least. And it was very ambitious in a lot of ways. And so there are a few corners that we had to scrimp along the way. Now, right there, that was the first shot of the cuda, wasn't it? Yeah, well, we'll get to that in a second. But I wanted to talk here for a moment about this...

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You know, the one thing that we really attempted in the photography of this film is we really tried to get motivated natural sources as much as possible. And even on a low-budget picture, we were always trying to work the lighting into how the film was made from the design point of view, even though the design was primitive in a lot of ways. And so fire came into a lot. You know, we tried to light a lot of the sequences, either with candles in that particular scene. We have a couple of scenes by firelight.

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Gary Goddard

I'm the director of the movie, Gary Goddard, and I've been asked to give some commentary about the making of Masters of the Universe, which I will be doing here as we watch the movie. Over the credits here, I'll just say that Masters of the Universe came my way because it was a very popular toy at the time, an animated cartoon show. Ed Pressman was looking for someone to be able to adapt this into a story that could be done for a budget that the studio would accept, that would also be able to bring the story to life as a live-action picture.

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Gary Goddard

and to meet the budget and schedule and get it out for summer, but we did do that. I like this shot also, this shot where you have Skeletor overpowering on an epic scale, dominating the screen, and you introduce your hero here against him as he turns in camera. It was very deliberate, pitting him, hero, who is watching the devastation of his world, Eternia, and the overpowering presence of Skeletor.

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Gary Goddard

at the last two days of shooting. Last two days of shooting, everything you see here in Vasquez Rocks were shot in two days at the very tail end of the shoot when I was being pressured for budget and pressured for schedule. You've got to get this done. But there's a certain energy that comes from all that, I suppose, that you have to move things along and keep things rolling. So here we introduce our principal characters. And in this initial encounter, again, we meet...

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big cinema guy. His stuff was so riveting to me. So I couldn't believe this call was perfect. So he said, I want to do it. I said, well, I can't think of anybody who could do it better than you, thinking Mean Streets in my head, because it's the next step for Mean Streets. It's so clear to me. And he said, unfortunately, he said, because the damn book is a bestseller. And lots of people wanted to do it. And my agent, Sterling Lord, and all of these people were just sort of trying to divide the money.

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You know the look of the movie. You know the rhythm of it. And that's something very interesting and very good for a director of photography to know. Without using a gun, and we did the right thing. We gave Paulie his tribute. Actor Paul Cervino. In the scene where we're looking at the spoils of the robbery when the money is there, and we have to all be laughing, we did about eight takes. And before each take, I told a joke. I just told a joke.

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They must really feed each other to the lions down there because the guy gave the money right up. We got to spend the rest of the weekend at the track. Then I couldn't believe what happened. When we got home, we were all over the newspaper. At first...

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One of the reasons we added the comic book panels was entirely just to add some extra action in that we couldn't afford to do. Because I think one of the biggest limitations was what we could actually afford in terms of now digitally you would do so much, it would be so much easier to do it. But because the combination of the fact that the tank...

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And again, you never know whether you're gonna be able to afford these things. You never know what's gonna be acceptable. And so every time, everything is a little victory when you get to, when things like that end up actually in the film. What was your budget on this? It was about 25 million. Wow.

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16 guys running their faces and their ears. And it's brilliant because every ear expression and every eyebrow expression is what makes it work. And every piece of the nose, just incredible work from Stan's point of view. And we couldn't afford Stan Winston. He did it because he wanted to do it. He invested a lot.

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put his gun to the head of the cashier and was screaming to this guy to give him the money. And everyone in the store just was looking at each other and very slowly getting on the floor as if they were saying, oh, there's Nicky.

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Jefferson Obecks have done such a good job of watching her. This is literally the first time she's been alone. And when we found this location, that elevator we built. Oh, cool. Door and everything? Elevator, door, everything. We built it there. I walked into this location. How did you make it go up the floors? I'm kidding. Stop it. No, we built everything. In fact, half of our budget went into remodeling this entire location. This is your loft from downtown, right? It looks a lot like it.

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Hollywood. This film is an allegory from my experience in independent film with Ken. And Parker and Longbow end up at the end of the first scene and the end of the film bloody and beaten and completely savaged for being who they are. Right. And the money drives away with somebody else. And that the scene in the birthing room towards the end of the film...

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producer who also acted in his movies and he did sort of low budget production he created a studio there and did a whole series of films and I did I did a few there and then it was great fun it was sort of go out and do the best you can with what you got do you remember any films you worked on with him

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budget reasons or whatever. So there are always changes. But I don't remember his reaction in particular. Yeah, the way the sort of the gay subplot comes up is interesting because especially in the 80s films, it was usually handled...

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the chases don't compare to what they can do today in terms of scale and budget and special effects, where these are all practical things that we actually did there in the city. But we were told that they had complained all the way to the chief of police, and he got right in his car and came down right to where we were so he could watch.

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Patrick Tatopoulos

So Dan was the art director on Lord of the Rings... ...and I met through a friend of mine, Gino Acevedo, the makeup artist. And we met and.... Since we already had a sense of what I wanted to see as a castle... ...came with some drawings at the beginning. Dan was perfect for that. Just took the drawing. As an art director, just became clearly someone that expanded the vision. But he's textured the style, you cannot recognise, I mean... Yeah, we were really lucky to get him. He was actually working on a different show when we got to New Zealand. And we thought maybe we wouldn't get him. But that other show had money problems... ...and shut down the production. And we were very lucky that he was able to step right into Underworld. Now, this was a scene that, at least, my recollection... ...when we originally sort of storyboarded it... ...wWe had a lot of werewolves in it, and then we couldn't afford them. So we went back and we begged Clint Culpepper... ...to give us about a hundred more werewolves. And he did. - Which he did. We also had to build this canyon right here. And I do think it makes a difference of just... Before, we were talking about doing a version... ... Which is just all within the trees. And, you know, Patrick, you and I talked a lot about... I liked the idea of you going from... There's a separation. You got the forest, and then this canyon, that then leads into... Leads into the meadow, yeah. Into the castle. Yup, and this castle, obviously, is a location that doesn't exist. So basically... - Neither do the rocks. What we had, it's basically like a golf course-looking... There was no rocks, nothing. It's very flat, very boring. And there was a lot of work to be done later on post and, you know.... The trees and the grass are basically all that were there. Yeah. The big crossbows. We only had one working crossbow, correct? Yes. - We still have it in storage too. We should take it out and play with it. We had a lot of, like, one thing working out of everything. We had one werewolf head mechanical. And we had to make it, you know, out of that stuff. So this wall behind. This is again basically the outside of the set. That set already, basically. - Yup. The whole courtyard and the little bit of the outside was built. We tried that shot right there, where the werewolf comes in. We tried that practically. And it just looked like.... Just dragging in a muppet. - A piece of rubber. Now, this is Rhona. - She is.

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Patrick Tatopoulos

It was interesting with Rhona because she had to create... ...a new character, you know, somebody... It's a different time. It's a much more rougher time. I mean, I think the warrior that she created... ...IS, In a sense, quite different from the Kate character. I think she did a fantastic job there. And I think she fits the tone of the movie very well. I was very happy. I mean, she looks great. And she has a very special quality of.... What I like best about Rhona is also the looks, how she looks... ...and tell a love story just by the looks on them. You'll see that through the movie, little moments like this, she really.... Beyond being a great... She works great with swords and things. Look at the shape Michael's in. It's incredible. This was-- He started.... He came off of Frost/Nixon I think in the end of October... ...and started shooting this in January... ...and had three months to go through incredibly intense physical training... ...to get into the shape that he's in in this movie. It was a Startling transformation that he was able to do to himself. It's good to be a Lycan. I'd like to be one. Yeah. That helps. Now, this is one of the great Dan Hennah sets. I remember Len and I came from California... ...in, what was it, for the first day of shooting... ...and we walked through the sets. And not only were they beautiful to look at... ...but the flooring was all corrugated. It looked like natural cement. And apparently, Dan had some sort of formula... ...where he could lay down these floors. And they made them look absolutely... They brought in a cement mixer and dumped it on the floor. And then there's this team of guys with forms and moulds... ... sort of going along with the cement mixer. So the entire floor is actually made... ...of two or three inches of actual concrete. It makes a huge difference. On the first film, we would've liked to, in the crypt, do that. Just didn't have the money for it. It was, you know, any way that you can possibly do it... . like a faux paint job. It just doesn't pick up the light. It doesn't work. The texture, yeah. - Here's a transformation. This was late in the game. This is Michael's suggestion or no? Am I wrong about that? - This was a scene, he was really... We actually tried to cut it. And he was so adamant that we had to shoot it. This one here. This turned out really well. Who did this? A company called Intelligent Creatures. From Toronto. - This one came out really good, yeah.

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Patrick Tatopoulos

This was part of what we described as our Spartacus sequence... ...where we wanted to have the slaves working on the rocks. Yep. This again, Dan Hennah and his.... It's an astonishing scale that we were able to get for the limited budget. Look at Larry. Larry's got the cruellest villain face. Ever. - Yeah, he was. I mean, Larry Rew's fantastic. He's just great, great expressions. And he was a local New Zealand actor, right? We found good actors in New Zealand. He was from there, and when we started to consider him... ... he actually decided to move to England. He came back from... What's the deal? - Yeah, that was weird. You will not always be his favourite, and when you fall... ...I will be there. I gotta say about Michael, really, because I was talking about Rhona. We just went through this. Michael... The first thing when I did the movie, I thought this is a bit of a fun little ride. He took the character and the part so... You guys saw that. He was so into it. And he was a real, real strong.... He was very big part of actually the way the character developed. He was very professional. Completely professional. And brings so much to the-- Yeah. I think you have to, you know, for these, it's.... You know, It's a different kind of film, but, you know, people that are... You know, If you were really into this kind of genre... ... you'd take it as seriously as anything else. And he is, actually. When you ask him what he likes, he likes Stephen King. He like that kind of stuff. - Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. These two actors are actually very well-known New Zealand actors... ...normally doing theatre and considerably more high-brow stuff. But they had a great time playing these roles. Orsova and Coloman. - Yeah, he's great. I remember seeing him early on... - David Ashton, yeah. David Ashton, yeah. Yeah, when we were going through all the casting and everything. He popped out. He was great. They're very solid actors. They're fantastic people. We're very lucky to have them onboard. And Elizabeth as well. - Yeah. This is so different from the type of roles... ... that she normally gets to play. They had such a good time, though. And who was the--? I Know we had a couple of different... . like, arrangements for their costume design. Who was doing for this stuff here? Who did these--? - Because I know that... Beanie did all the costume except for Rhona. Except for Rhona, right. Wendy Partridge did Rhona. Jane Holland, New Zealand? - Yeah. She did absolutely every costume in the movie. The only thing she didn't touch was basically Rhona's wardrobe. I remember when I showed up on set telling Gary that, you know... ...producing this one rather than, you know, directing... ... that I was jealous of the detail that you guys got out of it. It's like, in the costumes, in the sets, everything. I wanted to make you jealous about some things. I heard that, and you did, and you did. I'm already terribly, over the accent itself.

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I thought this was like the Rocky training montage. So this was co-written by Marius and Elan. And I said, look, start classically and then build it and get a bit more funky. But they did a good job. And I tried to... We didn't have the money to do it how I wanted to shoot this, but we got as damn near as I could with the equipment we had. I wanted to...

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from here on up here, go shot for shot like Spider-Man. So some of these shots you will recognize, but the last one, I couldn't do the camera following him from the back and then swooping up when he jumps, because we didn't have the equipment or the money. But independent filmmaking, there's not much I can do about that. Fuck!

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a really fun sequence of him, straight from the comic, of him hallucinating and having sex with spiders and stuff, but A, we couldn't afford it, but B, we just wanted to keep the pace up. Now we'll meet my lucky talisman, Jason Fleming. He's the actor on the right. I only made one movie without him and that was swept away, so he's gonna be in them all, hopefully.

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She's basically a dancer. She's not an actress, as I'm sure you were watching this. And I was always fascinated with her. She did another really excellent film after this called Agony of Love. It's probably one of the only good films that Harry Novak ever produced. William Wadsley? William Wadsley, yes. And it's really good. And she plays a somewhat psychotic housewife who's almost compelled to sell herself as a hooker. She doesn't care. I mean, she really doesn't even need the money. It's just...

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According to Steve, he was like an ex-FBI guy who put in $15,000. Yeah, and according to Steve, in an interview with him, he said, I matched it, and we were in business, so apparently the budget of this was $30,000. And that kind of makes sense. Yeah, so you want to mention her name too? Stephanie Jones. Oh, Stephanie, you're great in this. All right. Go on, she got some credit. Once, yeah.

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The guy who distributed Orgy was Fred O. Gephardt. May he rest in peace. So his initials were F-O-G, Fog. I should have known something. So Freddy gave me three checks for $5,000 each in advance. And what do I do when I have the money? I make a picture. So I had Eddie Wood write a script about a transvestite detective. Transvestite detective. Now, who else, right? Who else? About a transvestite detective in Paris called Seven...

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And there was this sort of cynicism and this concern about what people think, you know, how it's going to play politically. And then, of course, there's the bottom line is where are we going to get the money? Because New York City was broke for the most part. New York City didn't have any money. It's hard to believe, but it's true. And it's interesting to sort of go back and see that.

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You know, it's the craft service budget on a Tom Cruise movie or something like that or a major studio picture. But, again, Warren LaSalle basically is the deputy mayor. You never see the deputy mayor, you know, at press conferences. You never hear about the deputy mayor in New York City. But clearly he's the guy who's running the city. Mm-hmm.

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It's interesting that that was validated, not with this movie, but the movie The Money Train, which was in 1995, which had Woody Harrelson in it. And who am I forgetting, Nathaniel? Well, Robert Blake was in it. And Wesley Snipes, of course. And wasn't Jennifer Lopez in that too, I think? Yes. Apparently, somebody did try and rob a subway train or the money train. And by the way,

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Stan Winston

I'm Stan Winston. I created the creature effects and the alien effects for A/ens. I remember Jim trying to figure out how he could make the beginning of this movie impressive. He said he wanted to use a robotic laser. It was an afterthought and it wasn't in the budget and I remember having the gall to say to him "If you wanna use it, you have to pay for it." And he did. - Is that right? This robotic arm and the laser came out of his pocket. I wanted a seamless blend from the end of the first film into the beginning of the second film. I certainly wanted to honor all the things that were good about the first film. So I went to school on Ridley's style of photography, which was quite different from mine, cos he used a lot of long lenses, much more so than I was used to working with. But the smoke, the backlight, the textures, the way he forces the frame by putting a lot of equipment, machinery and foreground pieces, I really studied all that. I wanted there to be a stylistic continuity. I also wanted to have my own style grafted onto that so that I felt enough of a sense of authorship to make it worth doing.

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Pat McClung

We had a big budget cut, or we had to save money, and the budget for this set got cut. Peter Lamont came up with a great idea. There's a mirror at the end of the set and another mirror behind the camera. I think we only had three of those hypersleep capsules. I think we might have had four. We mirrored them out to make them into 12. If you're clever you can see where the mirror is but I can't see it right now.

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Bill Paxton

I heard that some of the studio execs were screening footage back in the States, and they were a little perturbed and asking "Where's the effects shot?" Gale Hurd said "You just saw an effects shot." She was referring to that perspective shot. They were completely fooled by it. They thought nothing had been shot. They thought they were spending huge amounts of money on these sets. They said "You spent so much and there's no miniature." She said "No, that is the miniature." It was a smart move on Cameron's part, to do it that way very quickly in the film, so the studio wasn't worried quite as much about what was going on 5,000 miles away in London. It does make it a bit tricky to shoot, though. If anything goes wrong, you're stuck with it or you have to fix it later but with a reshoot. You can't really fix it later. So that worked out quite well, but with actors and everything there's a lot on the line. Something we've lost sight of over the years is that with this era of filmmaking, not only for live-action but for miniatures, there wasn't much ability to go back and fix something. Now, digitally, you can change an actor's face, you can get rid of wires, do all kinds of tricks, split-screen, take elements and change shots. But at that time you had to plan these things and make it work within a narrow tolerance, otherwise that was it, that's what wound up in the film. IIt reminds me of a stage play. You're doing it live, in a sense. What was on film was it. There was no going back. You could only do it so many times. There was a limited budget to work with and it had to work on film, no matter what.

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Yeah, we had, I mean, I'll give Trimark credit because they did give us, you know, they gave us enough to make a pretty good movie with a 24-day schedule, which is a good schedule for these low-budget direct-to-video movies. And, you know, I think as we went along, they started to get somewhat happy with the picture. I don't think...

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when it first came out, because I think, you know, people were expecting, you know, went theatrical, and they're saying, well, this is just kind of a low-budget horror movie. But I think later on, people kind of get it. And I did hear that Ron Howard's daughter and her boyfriend, it was one of their favorite movies. They loved Leprechaun.

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But I think that's when the crew started to have fun, you know, that kind of stuff. They got it. I mean, I think the crew really, you know, they worked on a lot of low budget movies, a lot of horror movies, and this sort of was a hybrid. Yeah, very much so. It's a great word for it. And it's funny, even when the character is doing these slightly lighthearted things, I think it adds to the dementia of it. It's crazy. Yeah. Now there they think he's gone.

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It had to be built, and we stroked the set just a day before the station opened, and people were starting to ski again. So it's hard to believe it's a ski station, but that's what it is. But when we went there for prep, which was on a Friday, just to go look at the whole set and everything, there was no snow. And we were shooting on Monday, and we had to have snow there. Well, the thing is, we didn't seem to be able to get enough cash to get fake snow. No, we didn't. It's funny, because we didn't have the money to bring in fake snow. But then the thing is, once you're actually shooting in snow,

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budget looks better, but somehow you're probably going to end up spending more money on location, like you're saying. Yeah, this next shot coming up here, we built the floor. The background of this is actually from Underworld 1, and we just reused the shot. And so these guys coming in are on green screen just to save a bit of cash. There's a lot of great shots like that. Yeah, and the shot, actually, those guys that came in, originally was a shot with Kate coming in through in the first Underworld. That's right. And we removed her and hit her, and we hit her in the group of people. Yeah, we did. She's actually there, but you can't see it.

12:19 · jump to transcript →

This is a lot from Underworld 1 as well, just taking pieces. And when the coffin rises, that's all from the first one. I forgot about all that. Yeah. So that's new, huh? That's new. That's old. But what we did is we just... We didn't... This was a scene that we were possibly... I think we didn't have the money to do it. And so I was trying to set up how we could do it with a lot of the footage from Underworld 1 and not have to build so much. And...

13:17 · jump to transcript →

Alan K. Rode

My good friend, the late actor Richard Erdman, who worked with Jay in Cry Danger and Saddle the Wind, told me Adler confided to him that he ran away from the school after setting it on fire. Jay's screen career is filled with these great little character vignettes, of which the killing is certainly one. Maybe even less than that. You know I wouldn't pull a thing like this. I knew I couldn't afford to. I'm glad you said that, Randy. I was going to point out as much myself.

5:49 · jump to transcript →

Alan K. Rode

Sawyer's character was another Kubrick modification from Clean Break. Lionel White characterized the bartender as a childhood friend of Johnny Clay who was stuck in a poor neighborhood with a trampy daughter. Instead, we get Joe Sawyer as an otherwise honest Irish-American bartender who lacks the money to take care of his sick wife. And we see right here, we feel his impotent frustration of being unable to provide for his wife. That angst by Sawyer is one of the more touching moments in the film.

9:42 · jump to transcript →

Alan K. Rode

Today, isn't it? Huh? What makes you think that? Again, Kubrick's composition, the two-shot with both of them at the table, the light coming through the kitchen window that gives you the indication that it's early morning. Even with a limited budget, it's just masterful. I'm in it, Sherry, and I'm getting fed up.

38:21 · jump to transcript →

John Mackenzie

The opening of the film, which is this cottage emerging from the dark, was not how it was originally intended. I did shoot a very much more elaborate opening, which went on and on and on, and it showed the origin of a suitcase which is about to be delivered to these men full of money. Well, before that, there were scenes where the money was hijacked.

1:27 · jump to transcript →

John Mackenzie

from a van in the hills of some distant country, and you see the money being transported across Europe and eventually arriving here in England. But it seemed to me, as it was pointed out, that this was rather an elaborate opening, and really it was complicated enough without introducing all this other stuff, and it would leave the audience a bit mystified. So I eventually cut all that and started with the cottage, and then took up the suitcase theme from here on.

1:56 · jump to transcript →

John Mackenzie

find down and bring out. And I concentrated on this at the beginning of the opening of the film with the money and the scene with the guy in the pub who turns out to be Harold Shan's right-hand man. We don't realise that the setting is in Ireland. That is revealed much later. And when we keep going to this cottage, which is also an island, I may say, we're not sure whether they're...

3:51 · jump to transcript →

Kind of an energy. They're talking over one another, introducing his girlfriend right off the top here. Just kind of move it along as quickly as possible. Charlie, it's Wyatt. Wyatt? Yeah. About the swing loan. He doesn't get the money by 5.30. He's going to come and seize all the cars. I'm going to have to call you back. I really think you should talk to Mr. Babbitt on this. Tell him that you don't understand. I signed a check on Tuesday. You personally watched me sign it, and then you gave it to the mail girl. Come on, come on. I need this. Come on.

3:57 · jump to transcript →

As for my home and all other property, real and personal, these shall be placed in trust in accordance with the terms of that certain instrument executed concurrently herewith. What does that mean, the last part? What does that mean? It means that the estate, in excess of $3 million after expenses and taxes, will go into a trust fund for a beneficiary to be named in this document. Who is that? I'm afraid I can't tell you that. Who controls the money? You control the money? No, it's called a trustee. What is that? How does that work?

13:25 · jump to transcript →

Raymond, am I using you? Am I using you, Raymond? Yeah. Shut up! He is answering a question from a half hour ago. What good is $3 million to him? That money is only just gonna sit there for the rest of his life, and I need that money. You know I need that money. Yeah, you need them, so it's hardly like stealing, no? And when it's over, what happens to Raymond? He'll go back to Walbrook or a better place. No, with the money, I will put him in a better place. What difference does it make? He is gonna be just the same. Only you have his money. His money, his money. That man was my father, too. What about my fucking half? Where is my fucking half? I'm entitled to that money, goddamn it.

36:21 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

There was a church there that was real important that he spent some time in. So at that point, was this, I mean, obviously this would have been the largest budget you would have had to work with. And yet, was it a situation where Orion really felt that this was going to be a big step up from the second one? Or were they trying...

4:11 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

just because, you know, more bang for your buck in a movie like this is really important. But we really weren't wanting as far as the budget that we had from the get-go. I could have told them, you know, this isn't enough. And directors do that all the time, by the way. No, I need 10 more million. I was just happy to be doing it. And I have to say, in the movie's defense, I think it looks really good. I think it's got a flow to it. And I think...

23:44 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

Lots of Panaglide in this movie, or Steadicam, as it's also known. Well, it must have been fun for you. I mean, like I say, it was the biggest budget film that you had, so you must have had a lot of fun tools to play with to pull off some of these shots. Yeah. I mean, it was a real movie. Yeah. Let's do a crane shot here. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Let's do Panaglide here. Now, we're coming up here on A Missed Opportunity. This is Dick Hancock, who was one of our stuntmen. And...

46:30 · jump to transcript →

trading a lot of stories as we're watching this film that we both love so much. Yes, it's... considering that the entire music budget back then, I spent pretty much all of it on my plane fare to India to record this instrument. But I felt it was really important, the concept of Exotica,

1:17 · jump to transcript →

I had in mind from the very beginning, Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows, it was really difficult to get access to this piece of music with the very limited budget we had. This whole film was shot for less than $2 million. Actually, it's like 1.5 or something like that. It was insane. So how do you get a big song like this? And so how you get it is you approach the company, they say no.

8:22 · jump to transcript →

because it's the best thing for the film, is something that's very difficult to do now. But also, I look at this scene, I look at the performances, I look at the actors, how committed they are, but they're also framed in this... This was a set. This was not a location. So here's the amazing thing, is that you could theoretically have that freedom in a digital world, like ultra-low budget, but then you don't get to make sets like this. You don't get to kind of create this...

53:22 · jump to transcript →