Casting

Curtis and I had lunch and several phone conversations and probably a meeting or two and we found real common ground in how to mount the picture and the potential of populating it with different cast and that there would be a young cast and

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The last part chronologically to cast was Kevin Spacey's part. And it was the hardest, quite frankly. While all three actors are co-stars of the movie, I think in terms of screen time, that part had the least amount of screen time, but also had the trickiest part to pull off because he...

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A friend of mine just sold some reefer to Matt Reynolds. He's tripping to life fantastic with Tammy Jordan. Sorry, I lost you for a second, Sid. Contract players, Metro. You pinch him, I do you up nice feet. Kevin had worked with New Regency before on Time to Kill and had worked at Warner Brothers as well. He was on board, and we had locked our principal cast. No, it's not. It's felony possession of marijuana. Actually...

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Of course, in this sequence, I was dealing with relatives other than I knew the notion of some important mafiosi coming and being disturbed if photographers took pictures. But all in all, it was designed to introduce the audience to the cast of characters, let them be comfortable with who everyone was, and yet have it be in an ambiance that suggested the Italian-American

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instruments and don't really play but i find as a technique that having a real band enables you to kind of control the crowd and get them in the mood and and the fact that the band actually plays this is another expense so it was another one of my requests that to the producers i was just kind of spending money for nothing the casting of the mom uh she of course is uh

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well-known singer of sicilian descent morgana king a well-known jazz singer but when i met her in some audition situation she just made me think of you know the kind of handsome authentically sicilian woman that would be his wife also some of the judges they've all sent gifts there was a lot of tension on the set uh during the sequence this

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Did you have anything to do with the casting of the film at all? Because the cast is very interesting for this kind of film. Yeah, I did with some of it, and some of it happened when I was out scouting for locations and things and doing pre-production. But, yeah, a number of people I had interviewed or cast, and Bobby Leonard may be the most interesting of those because he had...

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been flown out. We'd been struggling to find somebody for this role. And he'd been flown out to Los Angeles from New York by Steven Spielberg for an audition for one of his movies. And by the time we heard about Bobby and that he was here, he was packing to leave. And we were in Century City. And so the producer and I grabbed a couple of scripts and raced over to Universal where he was.

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And the limo was waiting to take him to the airport as we rushed into his hotel room. And we did a very, very quick audition in which it turned out the two scripts that we had didn't match. They were different versions. And so as the producer was reading, was feeding lines to Bobby, Bobby had to figure out how to adjust them for the script that he had on the run. And it was pretty impressive how effortlessly he did it.

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I think it was a very painful day for her. I don't know personally what she was contemplating to get into this place, but I actually felt very protective and concerned for her on this day because she'd taken herself to this dark place. It's an extraordinary example of the kind of preparation that my ensemble cast did. I mean, Anne,

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I know a place where no one's lost. I know a place where no... Isabel Allen, what an extraordinary actress she is. I mean, I'm not aware she's acted in any professional acting before Nina Gold, my wonderful casting director, found her, but she's singing this live like all the other actors. And, you know, I think that song is incredibly important in terms of creating a connection between the audience and this character. But it does need to be sung well, and I think she sings it beautifully.

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Extra for the mice, 2% for looking in the mirror twice. He suggested that I watch Fiddle on the Roof, Norman Jewison's wonderful musical, which I'd actually never seen, and I must admit I did get very inspired by Topol and a couple of the sequences. There's a great sequence in it which ends up with this dance-off in a bar, which I found very inspiring for creating Master of the House. In fact, Sasha used If I Was a Rich Man as his audition piece in Los Angeles.

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Alan K. Rode

Another main attribute of The Killing is a cast of legendary character actors that I'll be discussing as the movie proceeds. The great Lucian Ballard was the director of photography, but it was Kubrick who chose every lens, arranged every setup, and every shot. More about that later. The art director was Ruth Sabatka, who was married to Kubrick during the production of The Killing, and more about that later as well.

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Alan K. Rode

I've read that this voiceover was imposed on Kubrick and Harris by United Artists, and some believe it detracts or dates the film. And I'm not one of those who feel that way. I grew up listening to Gilmore's voice on literally thousands of movie previews and television shows like Highway Patrol. For me, the voice of Art Gilmore is always a welcome presence. The cast of The Killing is a virtual character actor hall of fame, and this wasn't by happenstance.

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Alan K. Rode

There were no film schools back when Kubrick began. He was a movie savant. He watched literally every movie made in Hollywood and also internationally. He went through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's entire film collection twice. Kubrick knew every actor and knew exactly whom he wanted to cast in every role in The Killing.

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So now we're coming upon one of my favorite day players in the movie. Tell me where you found this guy. Well, he actually wasn't one of the real people who worked in the same role that he's playing in the movie. But he was from the area, and I don't know exactly how we discovered him or auditioned him, but he actually gets mentioned as one of the stars of the movie because he comes so early in the credits. So when you see the...

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the cast list in Leonard Walton or something. He's listed as one of the stars. David Drake. Oh, God. Now, all these parts were redone, like the trunk and the hood are aluminum to make the car lighter. There's fiberglass windows instead of glass windows on the side panels. Everything was authentic, the way it would have been done if you were building a car to race. Wow.

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In the 30s, James Stewart was a man in his mid-20s. A lot of the actors were men at a very young age. And I think maybe society's changed. Maybe people just aren't that mature. Also, maybe we just cast more boyish types because that's what the audience wants. Well, I do think, too, that you were given more freedom...

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I'm, you know, some of what I regard as the best actors in the world, and everybody wanted to do it. Everybody wanted to do it. They wanted to come to the set and just do the words that were on the page. Nobody wanted to actually, you know, normally when you do a movie, people come to the set and they want to rethink the characters or rethink the words, but I had such a smorgasbord of brilliant cast, and everybody just wanted to come to the set every day and do the words that were on the page, which I have to applaud Quentin for.

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And, you know, people say to me, God, it's such a great movie, you know. But honest truth is I have to give the real applause to Quentin Tarantino because he's the guy who put it on the page. And this is the first movie where all I did was to support what was on the page in terms of my casting, in terms of my look, and in terms of my styling and how I shot the movie. But it's a much easier process when you have a blueprint which you're so confident about.

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God, Patricia's so beautiful. So beautiful and so... ...and so sweet and so childlike. But on the other hand, she's such an odd, strange little bird. I think she was so great for the show. I didn't think of Patricia when I was first starting to cast the movie. I was looking at other people in other areas and then I saw...

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Hello, this is Bill Friedkin, the director of To Live and Die in L.A., and I'm gonna do this commentary now about the film without referencing the film itself. I'm just gonna give you my impressions, thoughts, and feelings about what went into the making of it, why we made it, what I saw in the material, a little background on the cast, and about some of the things that we were trying to do.

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The casting director was a guy named Bob Weiner, who's since passed away. He was a brilliant young guy who was not really a casting director. He was a writer for The Village Voice, which is a counterculture newspaper in New York, still going. And he would see every play and every unusual or foreign film. So he had a wide range of knowledge about actors around the world.

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And he cast the French connection. He brought me Roy Scheider and Tony LoBianco and others. Several years later, I guess it was about 12 or 13 years later, when I decided to live and die in L.A., I contacted Bob Wiener. He was living in Paris then and writing journalism. And I said, listen, why don't you come back here

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Yeah, you weren't working on the chopper that morning, John, were you? No, I was actually watching the chopper go up with you in it. So, again, the casting on the movie was a really fun but also at times difficult process because a lot of the bit parts had to come from the Vancouver actor pool. Yeah, and at the time Vancouver was really busy, so the pool was smaller than it normally would be. Fan 4-2 was up there shooting.

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They got up there and got started before we did. So a lot of the good local talent up there got sort of sucked up by the bigger movies. But we were fortunate. The young girl, who I think is both very pretty and very good, who you're going to see at the door in a second, we found her in Toronto. Yes, Kristen Hager. She's great. And this is Johnny Lewis here. Yes. Mindy Marin was our casting director.

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We needed to find people in the casting process who were really kind of people you would believe were in this town. We didn't want to break the wall of reality here by having really familiar faces. And so we were able to find really very, very accomplished actors who hopefully you haven't seen in a lot of movies before. And it was also the cool thing, too, a lot of our main leads were all stage actors from

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My name is Alex Cox, and I am the director and writer of Repo Man. And my name is Vicki Thomas. I'm the casting director. And I'm Michael Nesmith. I was the executive producer. My name is Cy Richardson. I was Light and the guy who did Bad Man. It's Juicy Bananas. My name is Xander Schloss. I am a PA and the late Fox Harris' driver-turned-actor. I play Kevin. I'm Del Zamora, and I played Lagarto Rodriguez, the older...

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And the actors really didn't like us, and they would eat our food, and we'd put a padlock on the refrigerator, and they broke the padlock to steal our food. And the only actor who would speak to either of us was Fox Harris. And so before Repo Man was even conceived, I'd formed this very, very favorable opinion of this guy Fox. He seemed really nice. And then when we were casting the film, Harry Dean Stanton said, there's an actor that you need to meet, because the only guy who can play this role is a guy called Fox.

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We used my car initially to cast this movie at UCLA Film School. That's right. I auditioned in that car at UCLA. My Chevy Impala was on a soundstage at UCLA Film School, and Biff Yeager was the very first actor. We read for the film. And I came with my girlfriend in separate cars, and she thought Alex was the strangest guy she'd ever met, and she left. Well, Alex had orange hair at the time, didn't he?

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But that's not what it really is. She ages with makeup. And so she read the script, and she was signed on in a second. She just completely got it. Now, it's interesting that the character of young Forrest came to us very serendipitously in that this young boy saw an open casting call.

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that was taking place i believe in memphis tennessee and he lived in northern mississippi and uh... his mom encouraged him to go ahead up and and try out for the film ellen lewis our casting director brought this tape out to us in los angeles and we were all i mean you had a big smile on your face because you had just seen this unique character that so far you hadn't seen anywhere and so we invited a number of boys out for uh... uh...

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All of the sequences that were historic in context required a tremendous amount of research because we reenacted these perfectly, which required finding cast members that looked exactly like the people who were in the real live footage and recreating portions of the event so it looked like at one time you could be watching the real event and another one a recreation of it and not be able to tell the difference between the two.

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Richard Donner

My name is Dick Donner, and I directed this wonderful film Scrooged. And Danny Elfman did the music. Paramount put up the money. A lot of great actors, a lot of great fun. And Scrooged was supposed to be advertised as, "You've been Scrooged." But, you know, people are chicken, and they were worried about the, you know, the right. You know which right I'm talking about. And, so we never said, "Scrooge," but I'm saying it now. And if you guys don't want to buy it, then go Scrooged yourself. How's that? Now, okay, this is a great little set. A wonderful little set. I have a lot of this at home. I know I shouldn't, but... And these are all the little people. We got little people from all over to come, and some of them turned out to really be Santa's helper. We didn't realize it and... But they showed up, because they heard about the casting and figured it would work. That... Last time a star appeared like that, it was Joel Silver. You should pardon the expression.

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Richard Donner

This is amazing. You know, we happened to be out there doing a documentary, and these guys... We actually were filming this, and then these guys showed up, and the attack started and we were lucky. Bob Goulet. Did I really make this movie? Robert Goulet in the Everglades. Cajun Christmas. Great man. Well, it's a great cast. Great names, great people. All a lot of fun.

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Richard Donner

Sure. "Hi, Mom." "Dad's in jail." "Oh, no, not again." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." That's it. We also got away with that. "Father Loves Beaver." How do you like them apples? Try that today with the you-know-what right. "Why, you can't say that." Don't they know what beavers are? These wonderful animals get trapped. There he is. William F. Burray. Look at that. He is so cute. The movie could not have been made without Bill. And Alfre Woodard. Alfre Wood... What a cast.

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The character of Stevens is played by Antonio Casas, born in 1911 in Galatia, Spain. Stevens' wife is played by one of its more conspicuous cast members, Cuban-born Chelo Alonso. Born Isabel García, Alonso was a former folie bergère dancer and one of the most prominent female stars of the Italian sword-and-sandal films of the 1960s, yet she plays this Mexican housewife and mother without a hint of glamour.

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that Leone courted her for the role relentlessly and that she was finally tricked into doing it when another actress, who had supposedly been cast, had to withdraw at the last moment. It was a two-day job for her. It's not mentioned in the film, per se, but Stevens wears a gray, weathered military shirt that, in combination with his stiff way of walking, suggests a man who's been excused from military service by some kind of wartime injury.

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and a number of West German crime pictures, including The Carpet of Horror, Hypnosis, and The White Spider. Strangely, no German director ever had the vision to cast him in a Carl May western, though Franz Josef Gottlieb later cast him in Wild Kurdistan, an adaptation of one of Carl May's Orient adventures. It took his casting in Sergio Corbucci's Minnesota Clay to get him started in westerns.

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Hello, this is David Naylor, and welcome to the audio commentary for Diamonds Are Forever. On this audio commentary, we'll be joined by director Guy Hamilton and many members of the cast and crew. The stories which you're about to hear reflect the personal recollections and opinions of those who provided the interviews. Some comments have been edited for time and clarity. They're not meant to provide the definitive history of the film. Diamonds Are Forever, the seventh James Bond film, marked the return of Sean Connery to the role of 007.

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He loves it. Roger, who I wrote for and I love dearly, Roger would fight on screen like a man fighting. Sean fights, fought like a man who really enjoyed it and enjoyed getting his licks in. He has that wonderful grin when he's fighting as if he already knows he's going to win. Joe Robinson, an actor and stuntman, had been Sean Connery's judo instructor before being cast as diamond smuggler Peter Franks. Robinson recalls his reaction to filming the elevator fight.

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met and worked with this man and have been the beneficiary of his fine direction. In the novels of Ian Fleming, Bond's CIA friend Felix Leiter was a Texan. Tom Mankiewicz recalls the approach to casting Norman Burton as Leiter in Diamonds Are Forever. Now, here we meet Felix Leiter. There had been several Felix Leiters. Guy tried in the whole style of this movie, when he had a fussier Blofeld, less of a thuggish Blofeld, he tried to find a Felix Leiter.

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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.

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Boy, talk about your great introduction to an evil character. Yeah. And he's not even the evilest of the evil characters. He's the sidekick. It's just... And he's 50. I know. Well, he got held back, you know? He was actually a stunt person who came in to audition as Ogre. He was way too old. He had a beard. I told him, you look too old and you have a beard.

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How old was everybody? I was born in 57, and we did this in 84. I was 27. Not yet. I was 26 while we were shooting. I was 29. You were 29, and I was 30-something. That's another thing that they would never do now is cast people as old as we were to play kids going into their first year in college. Now they'd get actual kids who were that age. Right.

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done a movie with her. I can't remember the name of the movie. She was in a film called Dream Child, wasn't she? That's right, Dream Child. Thank you for reminding me. It was 40 years ago. My memory's gone. Yes, so Nicola, he recommended Nicola and we liked her so we cast her as Nicola. Did you view the film to sort of get a sense of what she was like or was it a casting?

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Yes, it was a cast meeting. I can't remember if I saw the film or not. I mean, in terms of casting the actors in this film, some of that must have come through connections with the producers or perhaps through you. But did you, as a director, see people in other things and think, I want to work with them and let's see if we can reach their agent or let's see if they're interested?

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Well, the casting director was Gail Stevens. She was actually married to... ...Danny Boyle at the time. And Danny wasn't famous, actually, when we were doing this... ...but why he became so famous after that. But Gail was doing the casting and...

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And I don't remember because I'm 84. No, but you did. And then you cast everybody in the appropriate roles you felt they were right for. But you read everyone for Chainsaw. Now, this young lady really was a surprise. No, she's great. Kelly. Yes. Kelly Jo. Yeah, Kelly Jo. I almost felt that she came with the part in her.

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Freddie Shoup, remedial English, right here. Everybody just calls me Shoup. Okay, Shoup. Why am I here? Oh, thumbtacks. What a talent, though, huh, Carl? I remember when she came in to read and how torn away you were with her. She was terrific. You know, the same reaction I had to her is the reaction that when she first came out from the Midwest, Kansas, and the first audition was for

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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.

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It's really what I call action horror, adventure horror. Oh, absolutely. It's definitely adventure horror. It's save the girl, save the city. And honestly, Shawnee saves Kevin as much as he saves her, which is a little progressive for the 80s. You were working with casting director Joanna Ray. Correct. Who does all of David Lynch's movies and everything. I mean, her eye for talent, especially young talent.

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is second to none, especially back then. She's great. When you were casting the film, you were saying before how Donovan was such a great archetype for the hero, only to subvert that later on, kill him off, and then now we're left with... It's the old Psycho. ...Mulletron 2000 with Kevin Dillon. It was very purposeful on my part trying to emulate what Hitchcock did in Psycho, which is Janet Leigh's dead at the end of the first act. How did that go over with the studio, though? We were very... This was...

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I heard a story about how he became involved. Do you remember at all? Tell me. Well, he was unavailable originally. And then it was like a commercial or something like that fell through. And then all of a sudden it was like, oh, shit, I actually need a gig. And then that's how we show up. When you were casting with Joanna, was it something that she offered? Who came up with the idea? I don't know who, but the two people I loved were him and...

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some of these stills. And I'm reminded what an amazing, amazing cast we ended up with. Thank you Pam Dixon for putting together just an incredible cast that's gone so far since the film. Oh yeah.

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has a little Tank Girl debt to pay. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Which is fine. No, I'm not mad about it. You know what I mean? I'm not mad about it at all. No, it's cool. It's totally cool. But people call me and they think it's like I'm in a video. I'm like, no, that's Madonna being Tank Girl. No, that's Gwen Stefani being Tank Girl. Exactly. No, that's... And, you know, we're responsible for creating the Spice Girls as well. Because when we did these open casting calls... I remember that. ...which...

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three of the Spice Girls got tired of waiting in line to be part of the open casting call and said, screw this, we're going to start a band. And they always talk about it. They always credit it as how they got together because three of them met just waiting in line for the open casting call. Oh, there's our homage to Clockwork Orange right there. Yep. You mean the bowler hat? Yeah, the bowler.

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You know, I always like to add as much reality as I can to the film, so casting is a key already to try to get real faces, real, you know, Russians in this case. And there she is, and Glenn Close. Story has it that this movie originally was written for somebody else besides Harrison Ford. I believe it was Kevin Costner? Correct, yes. Beacon Communications, the company who developed the project,

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And now comes for a little bit of an inside situation. I cast for Radek, the Russian general here, Jürgen Prochnow. He's the star from Das Boot. Your old friend. Yeah, and I think if you have not yet bought Das Boot, you should do it now. Especially the new director's cut. Yeah, especially the new director's cut is very, very good. So here's Jürgen, and they get him out, and...

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So this is back on LAX airport, but it's meant to be, of course, Russia, where Gary and his bad boys are coming. And this was, I think, Gary Altman's first day. Yeah, it was. We shot that pretty early on. And boy, from the first day on, when I saw him doing this part, I just fell in love with this guy. Great choice. He was very good, very good. Yeah, I thought he's great. He's wonderful. Did you have a voice in the casting? That's always people ask me, do I have a voice?

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Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

The audition piece for Irwin was about four pages of almost undiluted text from the book, and it was a very, very difficult read. A lot of people were struggling with it. And we hadn't found Irwin, had we? She was a big, big search. But I remember Fran very, very early on had been tracking Miranda and keeping her in mind and had asked her to come in and read. Miranda was the only person who actually rang and wanted to talk about this character and what the scene actually meant.

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Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

Yeah, it's a lighter scene. It's a scene that actually has something of the spirit of the relationship in the books, doesn't it? I mean, everybody seems to remember of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit. They do. It's a great, memorable chapter. Yeah. And it was one that we really wanted to put into the movie. Yeah. We met Andy through the Hubbards, who did the casting in England, and they did an initial sweep through the main roles, and they presented Andy on a tape...

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Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

you felt the character needed. Well, what was interesting about that performance in the audition is that we were videotaping the audition even though we were just looking for the voice. What was compelling was actually seeing what he was doing. It wasn't just the voice he was using. It was actually seeing the expressions on his face. Because I remember it was a pretty rough, bad quality video that we ended up with. But I remember coming back to New Zealand and having the first kind of Gollum conversations with Weta. This was long before we started shooting. And I remember dragging the Andy Serkis tape in to show them

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Francis Lawrence

One of the fun things for me about this whole sequence is the intercut. I just thought that it could be a great introduction to the two characters and to the two worlds. And one of the things that I played with throughout the sequence is screen direction. So if you notice even from the very beginning, I typically have Jennifer facing left to right, and Joel facing right to left, as you can see here. It was a trick that I learned. I remember watching old Hitchcock movies, and watching Strangers on a Train, and there's... In the opening sequence, you see the two men who are moving toward one another, and eventually gonna meet. And it's something that I've employed a lot, I think, that screen direction is actually a huge benefit in storytelling. But especially in a sequence like this where you feel like these two characters are gonna end up on a collision course with one another, that narratively, you know that at some point, that they're gonna come together. American! Most of this ballet sequence here was shot in the Budapest opera house. And we had support of the Budapest opera, and the Budapest ballet company. And most of the other dancers there are all dancers with the Budapest company, and from a variety of places. There's some Americans, actually, and some Hungarians. Great group of people. And there was our nice leg break, one of the first specific, kind of, tonal hits in the movie. It was something I wanted to do with the movie, was to not hold back too much in terms of some of the shock, and audacity of some of the moments that take place within the story. And so to see the real damage done to her leg there... I just remember seeing, you know, there's been sports injuries over the years. And not too long before we shot this, there was a French athlete in some, I want to say some Olympic games or something, who had done some vaulting, and just kind of landed slightly wrong and bent his leg at this really horrible angle. And it was really difficult to look at, but we basically modeled the bend in her leg based on the images of this French Olympian. Word is they were vice cops, looking for Chechen dealers... or some family guy getting a blow job in the bushes. They weren't there for Marble. They just got lucky. Chances are they would have questioned you, and let you go. You can see here, one of our really cool locations. Maria, my production designer, was just really fantastic at looking for locations and scouting. And I think she had gone out to Budapest a few months before me. And we had also hired Klaus, who was our location manager for the Berlin portion of the Hunger Games films, and we liked him a lot. And he was nearby, and so he came down to Budapest and they worked together, and they found these fantastic places. These old abandoned hospitals, where the surgery Is, and where she's about to wake up, was this old, abandoned maternity hospital. And this fantastic space is part of a library in the seventh district of Budapest. Undercover narcotics agents saw what they thought... was a drug deal in process. You can see outside of Jen, too, that we really put together a fantastic cast for this movie. Jeremy Irons, who's an icon and a fantastic guy, and I think one of the best actors to have ever existed, was my first choice to play Korchnoi. And luckily he said yes. And Matthias, we brought in. I'd been a fan of his since seeing him in Bullhead and Rust and Bone and things like that. And he's so versatile. But he became a choice when we actually decided to skew the age of Dominika's uncle down a little bit. I wanted to add a little bit of creepiness to their relationship. And so the idea that, you know, maybe her father had a much younger brother, so that, as she was growing up, there was this, you know, charming, handsome, much younger uncle, you know, somebody that she might have even been attracted to, and he might have been attracted to her, was something that I wanted to play with in the course of this. And I thought he was just perfect for it. He's such a fantastic actor.

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Francis Lawrence

This is actually something that Justin and I, Justin, the writer, Justin Haythe and I debated quite a bit. We spent a lot of time thinking about Dominika"s living conditions. And part of it was from research that even though it seems like quite a glamorous job to be a principal ballerina with, you know, a real high-end ballet company in Moscow, that the living conditions would be quite modest. And I also thought it was important that they remain modest, because as she's fighting for survival, when she needs help from her uncle to survive, it's not about material things. It's not about getting a nicer place to live in, or keeping a nice place to live in, or keeping a nice car or anything like that. It's just keeping things as they are, in terms of the simple life that she actually has with her mother. And her mother is played by the great Joely Richardson, who was I think one of the last people we cast for no real reason. I think it was the last role that we got to. But she came in, and it was a bit tricky for her, and she was a trooper, because I think we cast her maybe 10 days or so before she started shooting, and she had a lot to do, you know? We had decided that her character, although you never hear it, had MS, and so we wanted her to meet with experts about MS, so she would know how to move, and how to make it look like she had trouble using her hands and trouble getting up. And she had to learn the subtle Russian accent that everybody had been training for, and she also had to learn how to play the violin. It's now a scene. I'm sure she's not happy about it, but we ended up cutting it 'cause she spent a bunch of time learning a song on the violin while giving a speech to Dominika. But she was a real trooper. She also did something interesting that I had never seen an actor do before, which was that she was really curious about the tone of the movie as she came in, and wanted to immerse herself in it. And so she came to Budapest a few weeks early, and she would come to set on days we were shooting other things, and she would just, kind of, watch and see what other people were doing, and see what I was doing, to get into the tone of the world a little bit. And I think it's honestly gonna be something that I carry into other movies that I do now, and inviting actors as they come in, so that nobody really starts completely cold again. Sonya? Hey. How are you? What is it? /'m scared. I went to see her at the hospital. The way she looked at me, she knows. She doesn't know. What we have done is a sin. They've always favored her. No one else ever got a chance. Is that fair? This was a fun sequence. This is another one of the dynamic sequences in the movie that really sets up the tone, and really specifically sets up how Dominika is truly an unlikely hero. I think without this, and this is something that we, you know, the producers and the studio and the writer and I debated about a fair amount, just in terms of how violent this sequence gets. Really sets up what Dominika's capable of. We shot this in a basement of an art school in Budapest, and Maria brilliantly changed this empty basement room, series of rooms, into a steam room, and locker room, as if it was at the bottom of a ballet company. And I think it looks really beautiful.

11:19 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence

And off to the side, in some side room, was this broken down bathroom that had this really strange tile. And you can see the tile here. We duplicated it. But it's based on a tile that was actually used in a bathroom. And it was this green, splotchy tile. And if you were to see the detail of it it actually looks wet, which I thought was really strange, because it basically makes it look like the bathroom is wet and moldy. And Maria and I really fell in love with it. And she did a mock-up of it. And at first, this is the only set that she and I went back and forth on a little bit. The rest we were in complete agreement right away. But this one, for a while, I was worried was too striped. It wasn't the color that bothered me, and it wasn't the tile specifically, but it was once you put all the tile together, it felt a little too designed for me. And what we ended up doing, and Maria ended up doing, was working on the contrast between the dark green stripes and the lighter stripes in the middle, so that it didn't become sort of too hypnotizing. It was almost gonna be too distracting before. I'll be able to take care of us now. You don't have to do this. Sparrow School. It was so well-described in Jason's book as being this place out in the middle of nowhere. And I think in the book, you actually have to take a hydrofoil over some sort of water to get there. But here we didn't do that. We just had that big snowy landscape with that drone shot of the car driving. But we found this place about an hour and a half away from central Budapest called Castle Dég that was a private estate at one point. And then I think, post-war, it became an orphanage. And oddly, I think an orphanage for Greek boys or something, which was really strange. But now it's, kind of, a museum and empty, and they really let us use it a bunch. And this was toward the beginning of our schedule. It was quite cold, and everybody was really sick. Pretty much people were sick from the first day we started shooting, but by the time we got here, which was about three weeks in, it had really spread like wildfire, and everybody was really sick. Which of course had to marry up with primarily shooting outside in sub-zero temperatures, which was pretty brutal. But I loved this location. And of course, this was the beginning of our work with Charlotte. I'm a huge fan of Charlotte's work, always have been. Loved her movies, think she's a fantastic actress. But the idea to cast her as Matron came when Justin Haythe and I were working on the script, and he had seen 45 Years, which had come out recently, and suggested I see it. And I did, and just fell in love with it, and just started to think about her. I mean, it's completely a different character, but just started to think about her for this role. And so we sent her the script, and at first she was interested and she was intrigued, but she thought that her character was a little thin. And Justin and I had some ideas, and so we ended up flying out to Paris where she lives and meeting her in an apartment that she uses to paint in. And we had a great little meeting. And I think sat with her for maybe an hour, hour and a half, and pitched her the take that we had on her, and some of the secrets that I have about her. So that if we get to make another one of these, that we can carry on into new stories. And then she said yes. And we got very lucky. And it ended up being really good for Jen, because she was there for one of Jen's, probably Jen's hardest scene to shoot in this movie, which was something that's coming up in, I don't know, 15 minutes or so. But it was great for Charlotte to be there for Jen.

28:11 · jump to transcript →

Filmmaker Paul Davis

John said, what the hell is a red phone booth doing in the middle of Wales? So they cover it up with the tree stump, which you see later when they leave. And of course, here's the slaughtered lamb. Half of the actors in this scene were cast from the Royal Shakespeare Company.

6:49 · jump to transcript →

Filmmaker Paul Davis

um he literally tried to cast every there's a young rick male there um and he was into john landis was introduced to rick male and adrian edmondson via frank oz who was in london making the muppet show and frank had seen their double act and took john to see it and john just fell in love with the two guys and offered them both roles in the pub um and of course rick said yes he was just joking joking i remember the alamo

7:46 · jump to transcript →

Filmmaker Paul Davis

So John had to take a swig of the beer and demonstrate, which must have been a great sight for the rest of the crew. Uh-oh. It's David Schofield, who at the time, or right before this, played the Elephant Man on stage and was supposed to be in the David Lynch movie, but David Lynch went on to cast John Hurt.

10:11 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

Hey, that's you. - That's me. So this was, uh-- I guess we... We could start about... Talking about the beginning of how this whole movie came about, really. I was in dire straits at the time, in terms of my career. I had just come off of a complete disaster, a big bomb. I didn't know if I was gonna direct again. I thought I'd have to go back to writing. So I was in Chicago staying at my in-laws' house... ...and my first daughter was just born... ...and John Hughes sent me, out of the kindness of his heart, two scripts. One was called Reach the Rock and the other was called Home Alone. One of them, it was rumored... I think it was this one. was written over a weekend... ...which some critics would probably jump on the bandwagon... ...and say, "Well, we always knew that." - Exactly. Ha, ha. So I read Home Alone and immediately responded to it. I thought it was just a great, great piece of material. And it talked about some of the things that I was interested in making a film about. Now, we had a meeting, I remember, in New York. I just-- It was-- You and my father were talking most of the time... ...and I was just imitating everything you were doing. Everything I was doing. - Yeah. You'd drink your water, I drank my water. Like that. I think I did that... I think I way overdid it. I think I just kept doing it the whole, like, hour. Well, you know, the interesting thing is we... Again, it was the kind of situation where we looked at hundreds of kids, again. And I was like-- Even though I didn't know if I'd ever direct a film again... ...I was like, "Well, you know, Macaulay was in Uncle Buck... ...and I don't wanna just cast him based on John Hughes producing the movie... ...because then it looks like I'm gonna give in to John Hughes and be a wimp." And I met all these... I met hundreds of kids. And when I met Macaulay, there was just no one else who came close... ...to what we needed for this film. I mean, really, in terms of an actor... ...a Child actor, at the time, you were the most unique, original kid I'd ever seen. So that was pretty... - Oh, thank you. I mean, I totally agree with you, but thank you anyway. But it really is-- It's sort of, uh... Because it was the fact that you, um... The camera loved you, obviously. You see the shots from the film. The camera loves you, but at the same time, uh... ... you were relatable to every kid in America... ...because you weren't an idealized version of a kid. Kids are used to-- Accustomed to seeing this ridiculously... Shirley Temple, and the curls and the whole thing, you know. And there was just something enormously real about you. That, and I could remember my lines and I had a lot of energy. That is true. You did have a lot of energy. Almost a sad amount of energy. It was, I mean.... Still do too. Uh, now, do you remem--? Like, this particular scene. We're starting from the beginning of the film. And I'm curious, because there were so many scenes in the film... We were talking before we started. where we would shoot your coverage first and then send you home... ...or I'd still be in jail. - Child labor laws. Yes, I'm still well-versed in the child labor laws. So there are obviously certain elements of the film-- Like this. Do you remember this being shot? - No. Because you weren't here. - I remember we did the whole... There was a whole sequence with, you know... ...people coming up the stairs, down. - Right. He's there, and the pizza guy's there. I remember that, and just like, you know, trying to coordinate that whole thing. But, no, in general, there's a lot of stuff... There's a lot of holes in it... In my memory. And this guy went on to do something on Nickelodeon. My kids know him. Yeah, Pete & Pete. - Yeah, Pete & Pete. Is it still on the air? - No, no. It lasted a couple years. It was actually a really kind of neat show. Yeah, my kids loved that show. But what was interesting about the whole look of this film... I guess we could talk about it a little bit. You'll even notice... Some people will think, "Well, this wasn't intentional." But we intended the film to feel like Christmas sort of. I wanted the house to feel very warm. You look at... - Greens, reds. Macaulay's wearing greens, a green and red shirt. There's a green and red jumper sweater on this guy back here. The wallpaper is all... - That's very clever. All conveying a warmth of Christmas and something that, uh... It just was interesting to us. So it wouldn't be over-the-top, but it'd feel warm. I wanted the house to feel like a warm place. Joe Pesci. What do you remember about Joe Pesci? What is, like, your first--? My first-- Gosh, I don't even... I have-- I still show this. I have a scar on my finger. - Uh-huh. We'll get to that part near the end... - Ha-ha-ha. ...when, you Know, he says, you know: - Okay. "I'm gonna bite each one of your fingers off, one at a time." During rehearsal, he actually bit my finger a little harder than I think he thought. I still have a little scar on my finger. It's my little Joe Pesci tooth mark. I'm telling you something, I believe... And I know Joe would probably get a little upset with me about this... ...but there was a little professional jealousy from a lot of the actors on set... ...because you were the star. There's this little kid who was the star, who we were all paying attention to... ...who was carrying the film. And there was a lot of passive-aggressive stuff going on. And I don't think Joe meant to bite through your finger... But, heck, you know, you never know. He was not particularly happy during the course of making this film. And I don't-- I think he would probably say the same thing. He had just come off of Goodfellas and Raging Bull, and he was... I don't know, did he win the Academy Award? He won for Goodfellas. His acceptance speech was, "Thanks," and that was it. Okay. Well, there you go, so, um.... And when he... I remember I was such a fan of his. Asking him to do the Goodfellas... The clown speech, you know. "Make me laugh," you know? "What do--? Am I funny to you like a clown?" And he would do that every day, and it was great. But at the same time, I could feel it from the actors. Because there's always a sense of rivalry between actors. There was this feeling of, you were the star of this movie, and that was un... That was not really common at the time. - Yeah, yeah. It created an interesting tension on the set, I have to say. Yeah, see, I never really felt that, but I was 9. Everyone around here knows he did it. It'll just be a matter of time... ...before he does it again. What's he doing? He walks up and down the streets every night... ... Salting the sidewalks. Maybe he's just trying to be nice. No way. See that garbage can full of salt? That's where he keeps his victims. The salt turns the bodies... ... Into mummies. Wow. - Mummies!

0:21 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

So this, uh.... What's interesting about a lot of this movie is we would always put fake snow down. The foam and stuff. - The foam, and that's really... We had a Wisconsin ski... A bunch of guys who worked for this ski resort in Wisconsin put down snow. But... - That poor statue. Yeah, the statue was a running gag, and this guy... A lot of this movie was made on an extremely small budget. At the time, the picture was at one studio... ...and that studio didn't wanna make the movie, because of a $2-million difference... ...and it went over to Twentieth Century Fox. And we still were... We still made the film for a little above $18 million... ...which at the time was still a small budget. So we had to make things stretch, which we'll talk about through the picture. One of the great things about working with Pesci, I have to say... .IS his improvisational skills were terrific. And it was because of his training with Scorsese that... ...even on a picture like Home Alone, really comes in handy. He's a very funny guy, Joe. - Yeah. And his comedic instincts were really something I'd never seen before. Little snippets in pictures like Raging Bull and Goodfellas. But his ability to improvise was just phenomenal. And then John Heard. I cast John Heard because John Heard was someone I was always a big fan of. He was in this picture... It was called Cutter and Bone. Now it's called Cutter's Way. And his performance should've gotten an Academy Award. I've never seen it. It's Jeff Bridges and John Heard, and he is just amazing in that film. I was a huge fan, and it was always a dream to work with him. He also did this old film called Head Over Heels. And he was kind of a leading man back in his day. He's just a wonderful actor... ...and another guy who didn't really know why he was in this movie. At the time, he was sort of like, "Why am I doing this?" I remember feeling a certain amount of discomfort from him. He was like, "Why do I have to do this? Why am I in this kids' movie?" You know? "I'm a good a--" Understandable. No one really knew what this movie had the potential of becoming. We had always hoped it would be successful, but we never knew. Um.... Pfft. I always knew. You always had an idea. - I always knew. Now, this scene. Do you remember coming in on a Saturday to rehearse this scene? Yeah. - We had to rehearse this because it was so... Which was so chaotic with everybody. We ate so much pizza. I didn't wanna eat lunch. And this is something that was interesting. We... You'll notice that there's a rare shot in the film where... There's your brother. - Yeah, there he is. How are you guys--? He's working now, right? He's doing very well. Oh, yeah. He's doing very good, very well for himself. Un, this is typical of the style of this movie. Not the vomiting, obviously... ...but the separation of actors in certain scenes. Because Macaulay's time was so valuable... ...we needed to shoot Macaulay separately... ...and sometimes other kids as well. So you'll always see... I tried to block sequences where I could sort of keep Macaulay off by himself... ...and keep the other actors in another space... ...so I could shoot people separately. Child labor laws again. - Child labor laws. And we're-- And Kiery had to reshoot the chair in the face, I remember. Oh, yeah. - Like, he had to come back later. He was upset he had to get his hair cut like Fuller again. Oh, he was? - Ha-ha-ha. Well, he-- We made a special, very light rubber chair... ...so when it... - Yeah, that's... Yeah. That's-- I remember that. Catherine O'Hara was someone who I had, uh... ...Just loved her work on Second City TV. - Yeah. I mean, I was, uh... Aside from Saturday Night Live at the time in the '70Os... ...9econd City TV was the-- Sort of the place where you learned about comedy. And for me it was... I was just such a huge fan... ...SO It was, again, a real honor... ...to be able to work with her on both of these films. Yeah, no, she's incredible. Even just the stuff she's doing now. She's still--? Oh, it's great. It's great stuff. Both of his kids are still going to school here. I guess he missed the family.... You got a pretty good cast. Yeah, it's kind of interesting for a film that... But we treated it... The weird thing about this film... ...and the reason I think the film has kind of stood the test of time for a lot of kids... ... IS because we always treated it with respect. We never felt that we were making a movie for kids. We were making a movie for the parents as well. It had a lot of appeal. And you never-- You wanted to... You wanted the photography to have a certain elegance about it... ...and the camera to be moving. And it was really never... So many times today, people try to make kids' movies... ...and they always cheapen them. And we never-- I mean, certainly we got cheap with our jokes. Let's not pretend that we didn't. - Ha-ha-ha. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it's Three Stooges, you know? - Anything for a laugh. I

7:04 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

Branch was never one of my favorite shots. Always looked fake breaking off there. We could never get it right. We never had money. Shh! Movie magic. Shh! Don't say anything. Movie magic from 17 years ago. - Mm-hm. It's hard to believe. - It really is. Now, this guy was my driver. I have a nasty habit of casting my drivers in my films. A lot of these guys are Transpo. - Both of those two guys are Transpo. And that guy was Pete, who drove me every day to both Home Alone films.

13:28 · jump to transcript →

I don't think that works either. I think that's a bad idea too. Sigourney Weaver has explained that she sees Ripley as a loner type, and I agree with that. I think that's the right way to do it. I think they did have to separate Ripley. I know Michael Biehn is really upset about not being cast in this, and in the documentary he makes a passing comment about how Sigourney Weaver may have been behind that.

10:50 · jump to transcript →

But he does come across as quite level-headed and quite fair with his kind of putting his foot down with Fincher. But it's interesting that all the cast and a lot of the technical guys really liked Fincher. Obviously, Alex Thompson, you know, the DP had come in to replace the guy who had photographed Blade Runner, who clearly had Parkinson's. But he said, you know, David was a little bit kind of short with him and

15:26 · jump to transcript →

happy ending. It undoes the entire point of Aliens because Aliens is about saving Newt. That's what Aliens is about at the end of the day. She's the only one who matters to anyone in that movie. Ripley doesn't give a... Hicks doesn't give a shit. They're trying to save Newt. So to start by killing her undoes all of that. But then they're big enough problems in their own right but then you assemble a cast without a single...

20:23 · jump to transcript →

That's Cole, our stunt supervisor, right? That was. That was Cole McKay, who was our stunt coordinator. Sneaking a cameo in as the limo driver. Yes, yes. He made him buy me a drink for this. Yeah, Shea Duffin. What's going on here is we're rich. Did you have fun during the casting process for all these characters? Yeah, I tell you, I...

2:49 · jump to transcript →

Lisa London and Catherine Stroud were my casting ladies and they brought me great people and I sort of wanted to cast this thing and sort of get different looks and especially when the kids who are painting and Jennifer, I think they all sort of have a unique look. I like everybody to be ID'd immediately when you see them. I don't like three people with dark hair or three people with blonde.

3:15 · jump to transcript →

And that was dry ice. And it really, it kind of works. Everybody has to forgive me. It's been a while since I've seen this. There was our casting, Lisa London. These are fun shots how the characters introduced. You're getting glimpses and silhouettes and wise ass. Yes.

6:31 · jump to transcript →

an episode of Law and Order. Mostly a lot of theater, though. And she came to the project because that pilot that I mentioned, Class of 61, was an Amblin project. Which was the company that Spielberg formed with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall back in the early 80s. So they were all kind of aware of her, fans of her. So she was always in the casting pool for their movies and had been for a while. And this was the first one where it got this far.

7:54 · jump to transcript →

And he got small film roles in movies like Cool Hand Luke and Blake Edwards' western The Wild Rovers. But he didn't really get noticed until Sam Peckinpah cast him as Steve McQueen's brother in Junior Bonner. That came out in 1972. And the following year, Baker had his sort of star-making role in the revenge picture Walking Tall. That same year, 1973, he appeared in two other great movies, Charlie Varick and The Outfit. And then after that, he was in a pretty eclectic role.

9:40 · jump to transcript →

Trainor studied broadcast journalism at San Diego State University, where Kathleen Kennedy was majoring in film. And she worked in radio and TV news for a while, as did Kathleen Kennedy, before landing a job as a producer's assistant on 1941, which is the Steven Spielberg movie written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale that came out in 1979. Trainor married Zemeckis in 1980, and she appeared in her first movie when he cast her in Romancing the Stone in 1984.

13:11 · jump to transcript →

Alexander Payne

Dave was one of those guys who taught because they never wanted to leave high school in the first place. But basically, he was a good guy. I'd always liked Matthew Broderick a lot. I was so happy to be able to cast him in a movie, and I'm sure by the time you hear this on your DVD at home, I will have seen the film, but today when I'm recording this commentary, I still have never seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

8:41 · jump to transcript →

Alexander Payne

I was actually given the tape recently, so I have to see it soon. His casting has, for a lot of people, played with his image, almost his iconography as Ferris Bueller. But not for me, because as I said, I haven't seen the film. I just had always admired his acting, and I was happy to have actually something, an actor kind of approaching

9:05 · jump to transcript →

Alexander Payne

This guy... He wasn't... I didn't audition him or anything. Just on that day, I said, just go up to Mr. McAllister, up to Matthew Broderick, and tell him that...

14:51 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

did make the inquiry. I don't think Gandalf had been cast when you approached him, and he did ask. One of the first questions was, who's playing Gandalf? The smoking scene is one that I thought I would have to fight for. I was sure at some stage, because it's Hollywood,

19:21 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

And I don't quite know whether that comes across like that, but I guess it's sort of interesting. I think it does. Yeah. I remember seeing audition tapes for worms and spiders and earwigs. Oh, it was horrible. I hate them. Yeah. But that was really funny, after seeing hours and hours of audition tapes of actors that have to audition spiders and worms. Oh, yes. But the weirdest thing was we had, was it a weta? And that big centipede. Yes, we had a weta and a centipede. And a weta is, you know, this New Zealand, it's rather...

54:44 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

Yeah, a five foot tall gymnast on three foot high stilts that made them look like big people. We had fun casting this scene because we basically wanted to get extras that were the most unusual, odd, seedy looking people that we could possibly find. Because I thought Bree was a great moment to make the hobbits feel very much like fish out of water that...

1:00:14 · jump to transcript →

Commentary With Kathryn Bigelow And Jeff Cronenweth

in an environment as small as a submarine for months and months, not just with the cast, but with the crew, with equipment. When I first met Jeff, I was working out of some offices, pre-production offices in Santa Monica, and I had just a kind of very rough foam core mock-up of a submarine and a hatch, and, you know, I asked Jeff if he would, you know, we could kind of figure out

19:24 · jump to transcript →

Commentary With Kathryn Bigelow And Jeff Cronenweth

But our camera operator, on the other hand, often with his eye to the camera, we learned very early on that we would need to wear a helmet. And his helmet certainly got a workout because you would always run into gauges or handles and whatnot. And poor Liam Neeson, you know, being the tallest member of the cast, continually...

23:25 · jump to transcript →

Commentary With Kathryn Bigelow And Jeff Cronenweth

and they were both very selfless and collaborative with a very young rest of the cast, some of whom had never been in a film before, and let alone on anything this rigorous, this demanding, or in an environment this claustrophobic for a period of months. And it was a, it was pretty extraordinary watching them work, watching them work together,

47:46 · jump to transcript →

Richard Curtis

We never decided... Here we go. Stop, Hugh's turned up. Okay, this is the first time they've seen the film. Don't be ridiculous. - No, it's true. I'm just recovering from the sight of myself in that dodgy shirt. Yes, you do, you look terrible. - Yeah, I know. See what I mean. When Hugh first got the film, you were quite cross about Bill's part, weren't you? I'm still quite cross about it. I still think it could be trimmed, to be absolutely honest. You felt that you would take some of the attention. This was a controversial piece of casting. What do you think about this guy, Hugh? Very bad. - Oh, yeah. No, no, no. No, he has been good. - Who is he? He just looks a little long in the fang. I love you. - I Know. SO... - Who's that girl? That's not part of... No, that's Sienna Guillory, who's... -/ think we're watching the wrong film. She's so beautiful it hurts. We in fact shot this scene later. We thought we wanted to know a little bit more about Colin. Oh, good God. Bloody hell. - That was a tough shock. I've never seen this scene. Let's see that... Can we wind back? Right, so... - So what's the idea, that she dumps him? Yeah. That's the girl who, with the brother, dumps... So here we have Liam. It's very odd, just looking at that phone, it was very odd, talking on the phone to Liam Neeson, trying to ask him if he'd do the part. It's such a legendary voice, it strikes you that you're probably talking to an impressionist, not to the real person. Understood. Emma"s very good with vegetables. - Yeah. You used to always have food in your films. Yes, I used to get letters about it from my Japanese fans.

3:45 · jump to transcript →

Richard Curtis

love I've never seen any of this. This is looking very good, this scene. Very good, this film. - This is terrific. Look, it's Pikey. Who's that, with the guitar? Is that... He's a friend of our friend, Adams, and is an exceptionally good guitarist. - Oh, God, we're back to the boring bit. What the hell are you doing here? I just popped over to borrow some old CDs. The lady of the house let you in, did she? - Yeah. Lovely, obliging girl. - Yeah. This is Dan, who was one of our favorite actors, who came in for... To audition for some part, ended up with this one, and the next time I saw him, he was actually in Claudia Schiffer's house. So he's rather well-connected in a slightly annoying way. Blimey. - So he's the evil... Do you hang out with supermodels, Bill? - Not... No. Thomas? - No. But you, Hugh...

11:13 · jump to transcript →

Richard Curtis

Okay, this was all shot by the river. What's going on? Oh, yeah, he's a caterer. - Yeah, that's right. How much will you pay me not to reveal the secret of this scene? Taste explosion? No, you can reveal the secret of this scene. Okay, so this highly amusing scene coming up now about catering, with this girl, is a reworking of a highly amusing scene about catering which bore a remarkable resemblance, down to the last line, which was originally in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and which was one of my audition scenes, but which got cut from the final film. But waste not, want not. - Do you know what's most shaming about it is that when I put it in the film, I forgot to change the name on one of the lines. So it said, "Colin says this, Colin says this," and then, "Charles says this," for some reason. So this woman is the most extraordinary actress. I think you'll get to know her very well in the future. I've just worked out why I can never find true love. Why is that? - English girls. Now, this was Abdul's first film, I think, and I have never known a man be happier on a set. Yeah. He was lovely. I really liked him. - He had no nerve. Just always completely perky. Unlike some people. Hugh, over to you. What was my cousin like on the film set? Deep. - Was he? Yeah. Completely unflustered. We're talking about Thomas here, who is related to Hugh. Did you know that? Is that something you'd been talking about at school or were you shocked and ashamed when you found out? -/ think he's played it down. - Did you know? Did you know? I knew, yeah. - Yeah, okay. No, I mean, I wouldn't talk about it if it was me. His great-grandmother... - Yeah. ... Aunt Bala... Bala? -... yes, is my grandmother's sister. There you are. - Nice. And I used to play cricket with his Uncle George. Now these two... This was a very, very brave part to accept. Martin is a star of The Office, and the first time I saw The Office, I just thought, "He just has to be in the next film we do." - Crikey! Yeah. - And I mean he is the most wonderful actor. And Joanna here is so divine. She's marvelous. - And so guilelessly sweet. Yeah. - Nice face, too. She's getting married in a few weeks' time, and I spoke to her about her wedding and she said that her best friend wasn't going to be the bridesmaid because she'd had a breast job and she wasn't having a woman with enormous breasts walking behind her down the aisle. down the aisle. And then I said, "Well, who's taking her place?" And she said, "The dog." She's actually going to have a dog dressed in white. And I said, "If you thought that the people in the audience were going to be distracted "by a large-breasted woman, I promise you, a dog's gonna be worse." Now, this is clearly a sad scene. And the girl in the pictures is a girl that I've been in love with a long time called Rebecca Frayn. Yeah. - She's a director and a writer and her dad's Michael Frayn and her husband is Andy Harris. I managed to get her to agree that we could have all the prettiest pictures of her from her whole life. ls that... I see, in the photographs. - Yeah. Get out. Get out. - Yeah. No, I meant get out. So there we go, that's actually Rebecca as a baby and there's this wonderful... Oh, God, she's lovely.

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Novelist Tim Lucas

This would tend to support the view that Clint Eastwood's character is not a continuation of the others in this series, but rather the return of a great heroic archetype, much as Duccio Tessari did with his two Ringo films, A Pistol for Ringo and The Return of Ringo, both made around this same time, with the same cast playing very different characters.

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Novelist Tim Lucas

These questions may well have led to Lee Van Cleef being cast in a pair of Italian westerns as the anti-hero Sabata, the so-called man with the gun-side eyes, who wears much the same clothing and whose name means Sabbath. The bartender here is Ricardo Palacios in a very early screen appearance. He went on to much bigger roles. In fact, this same year, he managed to get bit parts in Dr. Zhivago, as well as a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum.

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Novelist Tim Lucas

Manco is greeted by a little hustler named Fernando, played by Antonito Ruiz, who the following year would be cast as the youngest son of Stevens, the boy we see riding the mule in circles to operate a watermill in the opening scene. As you know, this film is going to set up a kind of father-son relationship between Mortimer and Manco. And in this relationship between Manco and Fernando, we see a kind of son-grandson relationship taking shape.

31:41 · jump to transcript →

shot purse and a beret and a writing crop. I am the von Stroheim of my book. That's my book. I put the music in if I want music. I cast the book. I describe people I want to do. The movie has nothing to do with the book except it is the basis of the movie. But the vision of it and the mood of it and the color and the real casting for the movie, all of that's the work of the director. What the author of the book has to do

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of a world filled with gods. You know, this guy who had been up there with the gods up in Olympus and then was cast down. But he'd look back and he'd say, ah, there was Jimmy two times, you know. And he'd go, I mean, disreputable characters all, but in his mind as a young person, they were gods. And yeah, great warmth and affection between them all, even though within maybe a year or two they'd be shooting each other. Beautiful.

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You see, you are really writing what is basically a shooting script for the director who will be shooting the movie. It is probably the only way to really write a movie. Of course, you can never do it because it's so rare when that can ever happen. But a film, it was an education to me because a film is so clearly the vision of the director. He picks the cast. He picks the movie. He picks the color and the tone.

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Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

you know, they're not cast-driven. You know, it's about casting who you think is really right for the role, and a lot of times because of various considerations and the cost of movies, you know, getting exactly the right actor for the role isn't necessarily always the first, you know, thing on everyone's mind.

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Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

Sometimes it's about casting an actor that has a particular value that's going to help you get financing for the picture or have a certain name recognition in a particular kind of movie or kind of role. Well, I think the joy of that, too, I look as somebody who works with the financiers on this, the joy of it is that we allow the stars to be really the director and the producer, Jason. I think that those are the stars that we build the world around.

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Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

There we see Josh. He gets into it. In terms of casting, as we talked about Carrie and all the qualities she brings, she's beautiful and she's warm and she's empathetic and she feels reliable. She feels like a reliable narrator and I felt like that was an important quality for Lacey because she's the first adult character to believe in the movie as to what's happening.

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Yeah, I've heard this one before. The first time I saw this was in the editing room, and I actually didn't know that your dick was on camera. I was here on this location, but I was upstairs flirting with the girls upstairs. I think Mindy was just really happy when she showed up on set and there was an actual crew there, as opposed to me and my iPhone. I mean, it didn't really help that during all the auditions you just had that American flag Speedo on. And just kept rubbing butter on my chest. But that set the tone.

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And that was his choice. And Simon respected that. I was like, all right, Larry. You cast filmmakers like Larry and Kelsey in a movie because they can move the story forward with improvisational things like that.

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This role was originally written for... Adam wanted to work with the Angry Video Game Nerd, James Rolfe. But he was busy doing his Angry Video Game Nerd movie and then Adam was like, you know, I'm gonna have to... Well, yeah, and I was like, you know, like, I'm gonna... If I'm gonna cast an actor in this role, he's gonna be off-screen anyways the whole time and I don't wanna let an actor do the camera work because it's just gonna take forever because they're just not gonna understand, you know, what I want and everything.

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did not have a great deal of experience, with the exception of the three officers, Marcin, Ivan, and Zachary. Some of them are stuntmen that were recruited to fill in the seats. We had more seats than we had actors. And a lot of them were cast based solely on their faces. I had about 200 recruits of different levels of acting experience.

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I sent the faces to Eric, who really had the world of submarines in his head. I said, just from these, pick the ones that you feel are of the appropriate age and bearing for their different positions on the boat. And Eric sent me his selections of all of these actors. And regardless of their level of acting experience, I cast them for the simple thing that Eric said. Each one of these guys has a face that says...

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All the faces are great. And I remember what Chris likes to do when he's editing is work on a scene almost completely silent. And when I sketched out an assembly of this scene, I remember we used to watch it silent just to enjoy the feeling of pressure that we were getting from the cast. You should talk about the sweat con levels as well. Yeah, talk about the sweat con levels. So throughout the script of this scene,

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I always like to use a lot of improvisation when we rehearse and big, long improvisations. And what we did in this sequence in Lake Tahoe in Godfather Part II is we had the cast there a couple of weeks right on that location. And I went around and said, okay, this is...

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A playwright, I think he wrote A Hat Full of Rain, and a fabulous improvising actor and just a wonderful character. Well, you know, kind of right up there with the people from the cast of the first film. I believe he had a nomination for this picture. I'm not sure, but I think he did.

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of the arch-villain Fanucci, played by wonderful actor Gaston Moschini. Of course, in my mind, I had no assurance that Robert De Niro was really gonna work out in this audacious casting idea to have some young contemporary actor portray Marlon Brando at an equivalent age, so it's one thing now that the film is

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especially the geography above ground, is all completely accurate. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later on when we get to it. Again, this is a set. And one of the things that's so amazing about this picture, well, there's so many things amazing about it, starting with the casting. That guy who's at the board is a guy named Robert Wheel.

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And I think it just, the casting of Shaw and bringing that aspect of the character to a mercenary soldier, I thought was a just nice little choice. Somebody once said to me, a successful movie is all or are all the little things you do right. Well, you know, in casting somebody like Shaw and then Matthau and Hector Elizondo and Martin Balsam, et cetera, et cetera, these actors bring a lot of the character's life

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and um the buck stops the unit goes oh shit um but the character is playing in the movie is named warren lasalle which is a far more waspy version than the name of the character in the book which was murray lasalle um and you know at the time especially if you were casting out of new york if you were casting wasps you would cast tony roberts or william devane uh again uh guys who um

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And without understanding that, you didn't understand most of the story. That's the kind of line that you later realize is so important and only when you consult people. Here, of course, is our wonderful Patrick. I should talk a little bit about casting and how we first found Patrick, but first I'd like to talk about Emil Artelino, also...

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We spent days and days rehearsing the dirty dancing steps, and we had a theory. We had eight dirty dancers who we had cast in New York, and Kenny Ortega, our wonderful choreographer, and I had danced for them, and we'd hired these kind of gypsy dancers who were great, who you will see. And then we had a whole crew of dancers here in North Carolina, and we, for three days, shot the dirty dancing sequence. When...

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Jennifer is absolutely wonderful. We had had a camera running in the dance department all the time that we were doing rehearsals, which was very useful, because when Jennifer went back to dance, she said, I was never that bad, and we had to show her the early sequences to show her. There is Cynthia, who is so beautiful. I think it's just wonderful. And now comes the sequence that I think everybody remembers so well, when a baby comes up. Now, we were talking about casting earlier,

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So, yes, this is the footage of Charles Dance's character approaching, finding the Ripley character on the beach. For this scene, we at Amalgamated, with our U.S. and British crew, had to build a replica of Sigourney Weaver. And it was based on a life cast of her, a head cast only. She had just had a baby when we had a chance to do it. That's actually-- I believe that that is an actress, although I can't tell if that's a stand-in or our dummy. But that, of course, is Sigourney Weaver. But she had told us that she would be losing weight, so we had to... She had just had the baby and we had to extrapolate what her body would look like, and so you can see how accurate it looks in these shots. There it is. There. That looks just like Sigourney. It's funny, because we really labor over a lot of these things and that's the real Sigourney. So I think that's about it for the dummy. But it was a beautiful sculpture. Gary Pollard, who is a very talented British sculptor, sculpted that and it was used to save Charles Dance's back. So that he could carry Sigourney. Those are all the little lice. They're actually crickets, I believe, that ended up in Tom's suit. Because the crickets were all over the place and when Tom was wearing the alien suit, he had them crawling down his neck and into his briefs and all that. And in fact, there's a fake ox here, coming up, that was covered with the crickets as well. And even when we shipped all of our stuff back to LA months later, we opened the crate and there were full-grown crickets in the ox's body. So they're very hardy and tenacious little-- Just like the alien, I guess.

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The light coming from the top was a /K Zenon lamp, which gives you very straight beams, which I thought would be quite a good idea. I shot it up through a mirror because you can't tilt them down or the condenser burns. But we had a mirror above the set and I shined it from the floor onto the mirror. This autopsy scene was a favorite of Fincher's, too, because we had created a body of Newt that had multiple layers of tissue, skin and musculature that could be cut through, and the bones opened up. It's a lot of graphic coverage that's not in the final movie. The body of Newt was actually based on... Alec and I had done a life cast of Carrie Henn during Aliens, and while we were in London Bob Keen's shop actually had a casting of the head. We were able to get that and remold it, so we were able to duplicate what the actress had looked like some five or six years previously. There is intercutting here with the real girl as well. She has a lot of fuzz on her face. - Yeah. Backlit fuzz.

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And the warden - was that Brian Glover? Is that who that is? - was a wrestler or something? Cos I know all the British guys on the crew were very excited to see him. They loved him cos he was a wrestler. And everybody was excited from him being in American Werewolf in London, and doing his lines over and over. That's right. - "That's enough." "That's enuff." I think by this time I'd said "Why can't we see the lamp, guys?" And we pulled it into the shot. It had a sort of curious bluey-green feel to it, which I kind of re-echoed in the close shots. This is Lance Henriksen. I bought the big winding staircase from this movie. I had it shipped home and I put it in my house. That big cast-iron staircase. That big cast-iron staircase. The decision to go away from the ox as a vehicle for the birth of the alien was, as I recall, in our postproduction phase, because generally it was felt that an ox is sort of a cumbersome, slow, non-threatening animal. And that a faster-moving four-legged animal, more aggressive animal would be a more interesting host for the alien and that if it had picked up any of its host's characteristics it would be better if it came, for instance, from a Rottweiler than from a beast of burden, which was probably a good move. Although all of this stuff with the ox has much more scope to it, which I love. And there's always something about the... When you go back in and retroactively change a script, it's like a house of cards. If you can keep the whole thing from collapsing that's great. But somehow, sometimes little changes make it a difference. And not always for the better. But it's understandable. I think that the creature... You know, an ox... An ox alien... Eh, you know. Not very interesting. But it's actually quite a nice thing and it was weighted very... We built it so that it had an armature in it that we could just add more weight to it. Sandbags and what have you. It really was weighing at probably about 300 pounds for this scene, because it had to... This actor's kicking it. It can't just bounce around like a foam teddy bear.

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That was cool. Are you sure you brought enough guys? My favorite of the arrests, Benicio del Toro. Yeah, with the little steel drum in there. I was actually adamantly against the casting of Benicio in this film. And if you ever read the script and see the changes that we made because of the character that he created completely from thin air, you'll see that I was totally wrong in my instincts. No, but, uh...

5:49 · jump to transcript →

This was... The shot, almost exactly the way I envisioned it when I wrote it. Now, to the left is... To the left is you, and to the right is David Duncan, who's a dear friend of ours from New Jersey. Who was cast five minutes before the scene. Before the scene, and he's the one speaking. He's actually doing the talking. Yeah. And it was interesting, because I said, are you nervous? Because he knew all the actors from their work, and all of a sudden they parade in front of him, and I said, are you nervous? And he said...

8:01 · jump to transcript →

I think he sort of knew how important the line was to me in that scene. And he, without any sort of insistence on my part, Benicio ended up working the line into his character. Me and Fenster heard about a little job. Why don't you just calm down? What do you care what he has to say? I've never understood why he's telling him to calm down. I cast Gabriel in my head off the line.

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And that did generate some talk, debate, mainly because it felt like something different. It was definitely a throwback to prior films such as Indeed the Key or Salon Kitty for the 1940s Nazi Germany setting. And for the cast. I mean, Brass has always...

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made interesting casting choices. And definitely Black Angel is one of the most bizarre. You have an actress like Anna Galena, very different from kind of the brass actresses. And then a soap opera actor like Gabriel Garco. So that definitely generated a lot of attention, although it didn't generate significant box office takings. Yeah.

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Carla Cipriani and we commented obviously on the fact that as most people know she was most often than not this continuity or script supervisor for her husband although we we know that she she was also very much involved in the casting in the pre-production and even in the locations but it is first with the frivolous Lola

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Ted Tally

I went to New York with Dino, and I was very nervous. This was Tony, Anthony Hopkins. The thing I did know and what I was confident about was the type of movie I wanted to make. Like I said, I went in there knowing the tone of the movie, my approach to the movie, how I wanted to not show any of the gore. I didn't want to make a horror film. I wanted to make a film that was psychological, emotional, and smart. That was what was on the page. And the only scene that Tony had a concern with when I sat with him was this scene right here. Tony was concerned that as originally written, his attack on Graham here was too graphic. By the way, it's an interpretation because 10 directors would direct a scene in 10 different ways and show various degrees of violence. It's about showing the details of the guts falling out of his stomach, or the blood, how much blood to show. And I chose to play it mostly on their faces. Once the attack happens... Here's my little homage to Silence. You see the... - I see the bug. You like that. So I chose to play the violence part of this scene on their faces. I love this book. This is an original. My prop guy, Brad, found this original book from France, Larousse... When I read it, I had no idea what the hell it was. It's the bible of cookbooks. - Yes, I learned that quickly. He found this real old French cookbook. There was a lot of dialogue about how do we sell his moment? It's really just a subliminal thing. It wasn't really supposed to be so pointed where it was like, "Oh, sweetbreads." I thought sweetbreads was brains but it's not. It's actually... Thyroid. -... thymus. I learned so much about anatomy on this film. If you work on a Lecter movie, you learn a lot about cooking. I thought Edward was fantastic. There is a tremendous intensity of performances in this movie. And really a dream cast as Brett already said. If you could have anybody in the world for these parts and be lucky enough to get them. It's pretty much what happened to us. Great actors want to play good characters. They want to play great characters and all of these characters, down to Freddy Lounds, and other smaller roles, were just written so well. They were interesting and dynamic. And these actors were interested in playing this. To convince these actors to do a third in the series, all that went out the window when they read the script. Certainly once they started working. There's our cold opening. I'm very proud of this title sequence because it was actually done two days before we had to lock picture. My editor, Mark Helfrich actually was the brainchild behind this because... You re-shot the journal here in a very interesting way. Initially, this was done in a much more straightforward way with the images very flat against the screen. Yes, a lot of times. Mark is kind of... Everybody on my team, from my AD to my production designer, are filmmakers. Mark is a filmmaker in his own right and he just understands the visuals and storytelling. I love how, you know... But this was written. - Yes, it was. But the way that the camera roams over these pages and when we go in very close and it gets grainy, the camera movement left to right, up and down, is all not scripted, of course. This is something I don't really have the patience for. Mark kind of took this book that he was fascinated by. I think he has a copy of it in his closet at home. He just knew every page, every frame and went with Dante and literally just shot. This is a wonderful opportunity. This kind of title sequence is sort of old-fashioned in a way. But it's a wonderful opportunity for a screenwriter to get information in quickly to cover a lot of ground between the arrest of Lecter and where we are when the movie is going to start. Covering a period of several years, you are doing that without any dialogue just by these images. It's a very useful shorthand. Danny did the same thing that Ted did with the script in this sequence that Mark did with the visuals in this sequence. Danny did the same thing with the music. I think the music here is so fantastic. It's very much like a Bernard Hermann score, which I knew was a big inspiration for Danny. Danny is a big fan of Bernard, and this was his chance. He's done darker scores, but they've had a kind of lightness, or comedic darkness to it. Danny did something here that kind of made people's skin crawl in the theater, like, "You're in for it. "If you're gonna sit through this movie, you'll experience some stuff. "Shit's gonna go down."

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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

It's hard to pull off this stunt with rising excitement, meanwhile. I'm amazed by him in this scene. It is a very hard thing to pull off. This is an example of a scene that my editor, Mark, was particular about, collaborating with me and telling me, "Brett, how are you gonna pull this off?" I said, "I don't know, I'll just shoot it." He had me bring Edward to the edit room and took a video camera and shot the scene for me, before showing the way it might intercut since there are devices in here which are the flashes, and you've seen it in hundreds of films and I didn't want it to be false. He said, "I have an idea of how to do this." He shot the scene for me before I shot it. It was a great reference. We adjusted and tweaked things, but this is all protecting the cliché. You can see the power that editing brings to a sequence like this. It startles you and moves the story forward in a way that the story is always a leap or two ahead of the audience. And pulling them along behind it. That's a function of great editing. It is important here because once the audience is ahead of you, you're in trouble, they are sleeping. It's the same thing on The Silence of the Lambs, I used to worry that we were cutting so many tiny beats that the audience would be confused. And Jonathan Demme said, "Better if they're confused "for five minutes than bored for five seconds." And this film is very tightly edited. Gentlemen. Ladies. This is what the subject's teeth look like. The impressions came from bite marks on Mrs. Leeds. This degree of crookedness... Here we... Where was this? - This was shot in LA. This is shot in LA in a government building that the city gave us. Here's Bill Duke. - He's one of my favorite actors. Again, an example of the meticulousness that Brett brings to casting. These wonderful actors who could be the stars of their own movies, who are playing supporting parts in this. I literally called them and begged them to be in the movie. I love actors. I love great actors. I spend as much time on the smaller roles as I do on the bigger roles. It's important because an actor who has one line can take you out of the movie and hurt it in my opinion. It goes back to the whole question of tone. A single wrong note will make an audience self-conscious, and pull them out of the movie. This film is the opposite of any of the films I've ever done. Family Man, that had dramatic moments, was still a comedy. So you can go farther with realism, but this especially, when it's dealing with the FBI, forensics, and scientific... -[t has to be grounded in reality. - Very grounded. In order for the audience to accept the extravagant parts of the movie, the more baroque characters in the movie like Dolarhyde and Lecter, scenes like this have to be very credibly rooted in police reality, in procedural reality. Would you give that up? The other thing also is, when we're talking about the tone, the choice... I was thinking about It, why I really chose not to show, not only because of Silence, because even Silence might've shown more violence than this film. Really, because the only scene we have is the biting of the lips. We certainly tried to hold it down. But I think the reason was because when I went to the FBI at Quantico and started looking at all these visuals of serial killers' work, it was so disturbing to me. It really bothered me. I said, "Why do I want to do this to audiences? "It'll completely turn them off." As with Silence, what you really want to do with this movie is a detective story. You really want to do a psychological thriller, a detective story. You're not trying to make a horror movie at all. Sometimes they're referred to as horror movies. I've never understood that. To me, these are thrillers, detective movies. In this scene, Harvey's Jewishness really comes out. "You're the light of my life." He sounds like my grandmother. I love that line. I can't answer more questions. Here's Philip Seymour Hoffman, a great actor. Who we should not have been lucky enough to get for this small part. Yeah. He actually wanted to play Dolarhyde, and I wanted Ralph to do it. I had dinner with him, and then called them back a week later. He wanted to play Dolarhyde, and his schedule wouldn't let him do a bigger part anyway. And then I called him and said, "I think you should do Freddy Lounds." He said, "Let me read it again." Then he called and said, "I'll do it." He would've been good as Dolarhyde, in a different way. He would've been amazing. - I mean, a great actor is a chameleon. Remember? With the tubes hanging out of me? Forget that prick. This was a very difficult scene, too. This was difficult because... And this was a scene where Edward had a Iot of input as we were revising the script before we shot. Edward said, "This is a difficult transition for this character to make." Here he's out of the loop, he doesn't want to be involved in the investigation. He's sort of done a favor for his friend and mentor, Jack Crawford, but he doesn't want to get deeper into this 'cause of psychological and physical scars. Because of his commitment to his family, he doesn't want to do this. Now he has to do the most difficult thing he could possibly do, which is to confront Lecter again. There was a lot of back-and-forth and a lot of revision, and a lot of talk about how we might credibly motivate this transition in the story. Edward was actually very helpful here with his thoughts. I think it works. Because it's not the cliché of the guy jumping back... Getting back on the horse and showing off. I'm proud of how it turned out. Again, it was really Mark's editing of the scene. It's also Harvey's matter-of-fact performance here. It could, potentially, have been a real glitch in the story. Where the audience says, "He wouldn't go back to see Lecter again. "He's scared to death of Lecter."

21:36 · jump to transcript →

One other interesting note about this scene, that is a real keg with real beer, and Jacob Pitts, our delightful Cooper, really liked these scenes a lot. It's what we like to call method acting. That's one of the things we learned. Or simply drinking. - Aren't they the same? I guess we should introduce our cast, now that you've been watching for ten minutes. Scotty Mechlowicz as Scott Thomas. - Which is why we cast him. Make it very easy on ourselves. The beautiful and talented Michelle Trachtenberg as Jenny. And Travis Wester is her twin, Jamie. And that's Jacob Pitts going off to take a leak. And this was another one of our delightful cameos that we got because we were in Prague. Yep, that's Matt Damon, which... Everyone in the theater sort of goes, "It can't be. Is it? Is it really?" Why is his head shaved? He was actually in Prague shooting Brothers Grimm for Terry Gilliam at the time. And we actually went to college with Matt years ago. So we've been sort of friendly ever since. And he was in Prague and we asked him to do a day of work for us, and he agreed. The biggest favor ever. - Thank you, thank you, thank you, Matt. Yeah, Matt's just hilarious here. Matt's not watching this DVD. We're going to make him watch it. That'll be another commentary. That would be the biggest favor he's ever done. But the band was actually started by some other friends of ours from college. I guess this is as good a time as any... A couple of them were of Matt Damon's roommates in college. The band Lustra... - One of them. The band Lustra, good guys. And they wrote the song, which is really fun. We've known each other since college. I'm going to just talk now 'cause no one's listening to what I'm saying, because there's a naked girl on the screen. I wasn't listening. What were you talking about? Now this, in the unrated version that we're watching, she started off topless. In the theatrical release, if you saw it, we actually cut a different version where she started off with her top on and Cooper talks her out of her top. - He convinced her to take it off. And it was very strange, sort of, when you get into this whole nudity thing. Obviously, it's a hot tub scene, but somehow when her top was on and he talked her out of it, while it was a very exciting moment that he talked her out of it, it oddly made her dumber, even though she is sort of a stereotypical dumb blonde. - Right. And we always liked it this way, the way you're seeing it. We liked the scene to answer the question, "What is beyond gratuitous?" That's the answer. - There it is. And there they are. The answers. The other stuff we added back into the scene is just more of him screwing around with her. Because, to us, once you're at the nudity, it's how far he goes. This scene... - It's not about nudity. No, this scene was always about the crazy extent to which he got her to play with herself, as opposed to just getting her to take her top off. By the way, the banner in the background originally... This is what happens when you work in Prague. It's a big congratulations banner. The first day when we got there, it just said "congratulation," like one singular congratulation, which is a word we didn't know existed. Sort of a funny story about this scene, which, hopefully, we can tell. We were actually rewriting another movie, which I guess we'll leave nameless, that had a hot tub scene in it and we came up with this idea, which was the fact that a guy saying, "You have a smudge. You've got something on you." And we were really enjoying what we were doing so much that we didn't put it in that script. And we're like, "We'll use it one day." And here it is. Screw it. The movie was called Out Co/d, I think. Yeah, exactly.

7:55 · jump to transcript →

The other thing I was gonna mention... We're constantly behind in the mentioning. Part of the reason we ended up in Prague and actually ended up with Allan was because of Neno. - Yeah. Neno Pecur, who was Croatian. We hired him as an art director to scout Prague and to scout the real European locales before we knew we were going to Prague. Basically, he would go to Paris and go, "This is what it really does look like." Then he went to Prague and said, "We could do something like this here." And from his pictures, we used some of his actual locations that he took photos of and made the decision to go to Prague. And then Neno has worked with Allan for many years as his art director, and he helped us get Allan. The two of them, their team... They brought Bill... Cimino. Our set decorator. - Cimino. That's right. Just fantastic and along with the guys from Prague. I think it's now time to mention, though, at the robot scene, which was the first time... We've been writers for a long time and you sort of go, "Look, I think we know what this is gonna be. This is gonna be really funny. It's gonna be a slow-motion kung fu fight scene between two people being robots." You write it and it seems funny. There's the old joke about the writer writes "Rome burns," and the director has to realize that. We were on the spot here because it was easy when we wrote it to just hand it off, but now we handed it off to ourselves. Actually, this is one of the things... - At one point, we cut this, actually. At one point... - We cut it from the script. We talked about cutting it. We were afraid we didn't know how to realize it. We just were like, "What is this? This could be bad." Left it in for a table read. - We left it in for the table read. And it got such huge laughs at the table read that we realized, "We gotta at least try and shoot it." We then initiated a worldwide search for a robot man. This is J.P. Manoux, who's an incredibly talented actor. We found him here in Los Angeles. Yeah. We looked at all these mimes... We looked at real French guys. - ...weird acrobats, and French guys whatever, and, of course, a guy from LA who was actually a friend of a friend and was in the Groundlings, of course, ended up being a really good guy. He is just outstanding. - And he came in with this ability... I mean, a lot of what you're seeing, like him laughing and just his attitude as a French guy, was in his audition. We were also very lucky that Scott... - Scott, exactly. ...knew how to robot. I guess Scott grew up watching Shields and Yarnell... No, no. J.P. - Was that J.P.? Scott had an acting teacher... - Who was in the Barney costume. Yeah. - Okay. And we went there on a Saturday to basically work it out. And we had blocked off an entire Saturday. We choreographed the fight with little bits of Enter the Dragon and some Matrix in about... Twenty minutes. - Yeah, like, 20 minutes. And the first time we did it in Our crazy wide shot... because we knew to get a master... the crew laughed, and we were like, "Oh, okay." It was also-- This was pretty early in the schedule. And I think it was maybe the first time the crew thought, "Okay, these guys actually know what they're doing." Like, "This is something we haven't seen." Wrongly, but they thought that. - But they assumed it.

29:59 · jump to transcript →

We're in the French restaurant. You cannot tell by looking at everybody, but it is over 100 degrees in there. They turned off the air conditioning at this restaurant. No one told them to, but they thought they would help us by turning off the air conditioning. And the kids are just sweating. I mean, you can't even... If a take went wrong, we'd have to stop. You couldn't just keep rolling because they're dripping. And we actually had a guy, this poor English actor that we cast, who was actually really funny, who came in and was so hot and sweating so badly that he just couldn't focus. It's in the deleted scenes. You'll see some very funny scenes with a French waiter and some funny French waiter flashbacks. We just had to cut it, 'cause it wasn't... Featuring Jim Morrison and General Patton. The other thing... It'll come up again later, but them putting the food down leads to the food map joke, which will be coming. I'll tell that story later. It's good to-- We'll earmark it. - A little preview. This is the main Prague train station. And our production... - Again Allan and... Allan and Neno dressed it, so that people actually got off the train, a couple of people, and thought they were in Paris 'cause they saw the signs and they were very weirded out 'cause they had gotten on a train in, like, Hungary somewhere and they thought they were in Paris mistakenly. Michelle being a fantastic sport. The first of many indignities that she was forced to suffer. And Coca-Cola being a great sport. This is what shooting in a train station is about. Another one of these, "We are idiots, we don't know, so we'll set a scene in a train station." If you notice in the background... This is a game Alec likes to play: train, no train. Okay. This is my little game in this scene. Behind him, green train. That train is gone in the next shot. - Okay. No train. But who cares about the train, I mean... Train. - Again, the lesson learned... It's my game, I'll play it. - I know, but look at these backgrounds. No train. - These great, deep backgrounds. We are in a train station in Europe. We are not in Vancouver. No train. Train. - Michelle's scream turn is one that... She's just... - She did it fantastically. Different train. - We caught that attitude a little bit from our own little Se/nfe/d experience. It's what we like to call a Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Elaine move. The sort of being sweet, screaming and then going back to sweet. And Buffy was a hilarious show. - Can't say enough about Michelle. And I don't know if Michelle always got a chance... You know, she was sort of a supporting character on that show. And on this, she got to really shine with her comedy. Anyway, here's the maps. What I wanted to say is this is a Raiders of the Lost Ark map parody, which is a joke that is about, I don't know, ten years old. It's something we wanted to do a million years ago and again something we saved. There's the Jackie Collins book again. And the headline, "Merde Alors! L'Hooligan! I actually-- I don't know if I even told you guys this, but I was at an Iron Maiden concert about six months ago and I saw a guy wearing that Deep South Monster Truck 1987 shirt. Was that guy you? - Or whatever it is-- Rally '79. No, it wasn't me, but I envied him. Fred Armisen. - As what we... In the script, he's called the Creepy Italian Guy. Not, as some people wrote down in the test screenings, the Train Homo. We actually call him Creepy Italian Guy. And, again, just production-wise, we're shooting on a moving train here, which is yet another of our naive mistakes. - Do not shoot on a moving train. We thought, "Just put them on a train. It'll be easy." Just the most cramped quarters, limited angles. We actually shot this one scene in three different compartments. We had a compartment where we could look one way, a compartment where we could look another way... We pulled out walls so we could shoot different ways. And then we had one compartment where we were shooting in, one that we were shooting out. It was madness. - Plus... Fred, by the way, is just so funny in this. We, last minute... - We also... I'm sorry. I do wanna say that we also then shot it both moving and then did other shots not moving so that we could do the light effects of the tunnel. Which is a poor man's process, because there's no tunnel. This is obviously on a moving train. - 'Cause you can see the window. And then when we do the shots where it goes from light to dark or from dark to light, we pulled the train inside a barn and blacked it all out and then did the lighting effect by hand. So, the Creepy Italian Guy, Fred Armisen from Saturday Night Live... This was another thing where we originally went into this thinking we will find a genuine Italian guy. And, again, we searched the world for a real Italian guy. A lot of Europeans are not funny. They just didn't get the joke. - It's a language problem. They were simply performing the words of the script, but didn't necessarily have any idea what they actually meant. And Fred is someone who's just fantastic on SNL. That little shrug is awesome. So, that shot, for instance, is inside. I think we hired him... - And that's inside. We hired him on a Sunday and he was out there on Tuesday. Yeah. - So, really amazing. And, again, these are all these little touches that he added. I think Travis, who plays Jamie, is fantastic with him. They were a great pair. This was something we never landed on. - I don't think we ever got this right. We had a bunch of different things we shot for this darkness sequence. We had a lot of flashing lights and weird little things of Fred in various stages of undress. - What was going on in the dark. In the end, it was just undercutting... - This end reveal. Which, again... - And, I think, for the unrated version, we put this back. For the theatrical release, we kind of cut right here somewhere. No, exactly. - And then, for this one, we decided to let it roll. - This is something we just enjoyed. It's just that a guy with no pants sees more people and goes in. Actually, that's where we're sitting. That's the compartment where we are sitting with the monitor. To do it all over again, one thing that might've been enjoyable was had we come running out of the compartment. Just, the idea that the man with no pants... This is the very first thing we shot. - First shot ever. It's actually an interesting way to see our cast. The train revealing our cast and us seeing them for the first time. It was a neat experience. - A horrible-looking little train station. The first time we visited it was in winter and just looked awful. And, again, Allan and his guys just came in there... And I think, actually, the manager of the train station asked them to leave everything. Left it all, those flower boxes and the shutters, and just turning it into this beautiful, little French countryside place. That was always a fun shot, where he lays down and jumps back into it. You know, and again, day one, we must've done 30 takes on everything on day one. One of the things about comedy... - We also shot close-ups of everything. Every angle. Everything. - This is more toward the end. This is one of the two days we shot outside of Prague. This is not a great example, because this is more towards the end, but I also think we screwed up here. That's the thing, you look back... - We did it all in one shot. Which I think is the way to do this. We did do it all in one shot, but... One of the things, I think... When I look back at the movie, a lot of our starts of scenes, I find we... Definitely something we were never thinking enough about. So that you're kind of going, "We're going to this beach." And then they're just sort of walking. And maybe had we come off a sign... - That was one of my favorite things. Definitely a fun joke. - Also, it was freezing. You can see Scott... - It's freezing. The gray sky. Wish we'd gone in and maybe colored the sky blue a little more. 'Cause the sun does come out. But just something that maybe... If the camera had moved or something to kind of say "beach," as opposed to that weird stock shot of nothing and then this. And this scene seems to get a lot of people in an uproar. Everyone sort of sees it-- and people... There we are. - Right. This is one of the two days we shot outside of Prague. This is in Rostock, in former East Germany. This was apparently one of Hitler's favorite beach resorts. It's very close to where Wernher von Braun used to develop the V-2 rocket. Wall of cock. - Speaking of V-2 rockets... Everyone seems to laugh at this scene and also go... It is everyone's favorite and least favorite. In all the test screenings we did, it was the most favorite scene and also the least favorite scene. And I think a lot of it had to do with... There were a lot of, like, 18, 19-year-old guys who felt obliged to put it down because they needed to state that they weren't gay. We originally started off shooting it with sort of an idea towards an Austin Powers kind of a thing. You know, you could even see a couple of guys with ridiculously long cameras and stuff trying to cover penises. - Kind of strategically... And once we were there, it just looked dumb and we realized, to some extent... I mean, to us, the only rule is ever: "What's the funniest thing?" And, ultimately, 50 penises was the funniest thing. Everyone goes, "How did you get those guys to take their clothes off?" It's like, "This is Germany. We showed up with a camera. They were already naked." The most surprised people on the set were those 50 naked German guys when they found out they got paid. It was really weird. Like, we'd take a ten-minute break and usually if there's any nudity on an American set, people dive into their robes. These guys were just letting it hang out. If these guys could've taken more clothing off, they would've. We had this amazing German AD that day. Andreas. - Andreas. Who just yelled at them and yelled at their penises. By the way, Michelle, who was very nervous about the bikini scene, couldn't look more beautiful. She was, you know, "The bikini scene, the bikini scene." And it was sort of this big thing in her mind, which... She was nervous about it for no reason 'cause she... But I think also David went out of his way to make her feel comfortable, and also to light her beautifully. Also, again, this was very near the end of the shoot. And I think there was more of a comfort level with the crew, too, and the main camera team. The comfort level was bothered a lot by the fact that Jacob, once he took his pants off for that first naked shot, wouldn't put them back on 'cause he knew it bothered everybody. I think he really enjoyed how nervous he made everyone. And poor Eggby. Poor Eggby had to go up there with the light meter. That guy-- There was a lot of protest, a lot of discussion about the old man yelling, "Chica, chica." Which... For whatever reason, it's one of our favorite things. You get a shot of him. There he is again. "Chica, chica." Which always gets a nice rise out of the crowd. This is the most beautiful shot in the movie. Not shot by us. Shot by... - Gary Wordham. ...Gary Wordham and his unit, his second unit. And it's just absolutely beautiful. And here we are on another train. But, again, we are... Because it's a night shot, we are faking this. It's a poor man's process. Occasional lights moving on the side. Because we could not do a moving train at night. So, we are inside for all of this. SO, this is, like, our fourth version of a train car. And, originally, there was... You'll see in the original script. There was another train in the deleted scene. There was another train scene of them running onto a train. This had happened earlier. It was just too many train scenes and the movie just not moving. That, again, was another one of the lessons we learned. As a writer and then a director, there are lots of things on the page that are really funny, but sometimes, when you're actually then watching the movie, "Why are they still in Paris? Why is it taking so long? Why have they not gotten to the next place?" There were too many train scenes. That one flew out, this one was in. Even if the individual scenes are funny, sometimes the cumulative effect of all these funny things makes it worse. - That's exactly it. This is a joke we created after we had shot what we did. Thanks to our music supervisors extraordinaire, John and Patrick Houlihan, who found this amazing music that was playing under this fantasy. They found this piece of music and said, "What do you think of this?" We thought it was hilarious. We said, "What is it?" And they said, "Well, it's David Hasselhoff." We thought it was so much funnier if you knew that it was David Hasselhoff. So we were like, "Is there a video?" "Yes, there is." And not only is there a video, but this is the video. And it looks something like this. Which is incredible. - That is a real David Hasselhoff video. We're still not sure whether David Hasselhoff knows that his likeness appears in this movie. I think we licensed this... - David Hasselhoff, if you're watching this with Matt Damon, thank you. Thank you both. If the two of you are just hanging out and watching this, you were fantastic. But, yeah, the German company licensed it to us and he may or may not know. And Fred back again. Which makes everybody very happy. When we were cutting the TV spots and stuff, we tried to use this lick. It's one of the things that people felt we couldn't put in television spots. We had a really hard time cutting spots that... Even though it's an R movie, I guess spots for TV need to meet both... They have to be G. - They have to be G. 'Cause trailers need to be G. You can't have anything in the commercial that isn't in the trailer. Plus, you also have to meet network standards. So, we had a really hard time putting things in the commercial. - Showing people what's in the movie. Yeah, telling people this is a good movie. Now we're in Amsterdam. This is interesting... Except we are in Prague. - We're still in Prague. This is... Yeah, it's the Kampa section of Prague. Again, one of these early locations, they found this little canal from the original scouting photos. "My God, we can even do Amsterdam there." This is also-- In Prague, there's a very famous bridge called the Charles Bridge, which is basically right above the kids. There are just hordes and hordes of tourists lined up watching this. Yeah, it was like shooting with bleachers there. This was spring, when it was packed with tourists. And this is an example where on the deleted scenes, originally when they arrive, they go to a youth hostel for a very funny scene that we ended up cutting out because, basically, there was too much Amsterdam. They had an adventure and then they had these separate adventures. It's another one of these tough things, where the scene itself was funny, but its overall effect on the movie was negative. And then actually, oddly, if you go back, originally, Amsterdam was actually very different. Originally, in the script we sold, there was a scene where, instead of going to this sex club... - With Cooper. Instead of going to the sex club with Cooper, there was this whole nother scene. Actually, everything was completely different. The original spec script we sold is on the DVD, so you have to go back and check that out. Definitely worth checking out. - By the way, we should mention her. Lucy Lawless. - Lucy Lawless. Just funny, just hilarious, obviously, and gorgeous. The entire crew was just in love with her. So we shot long on these two days. By the way, when we were shooting on these days, you've never seen more grips and crew members holding lights that used to be held by stands and holding fans that used to be hung. Everyone needed to be in this room at this time for some reason. And she also-- She, being from New Zealand, knew our A camera operator, who we should also mention. - Peter McCaffrey. Peter McCaffrey, who is absolutely fantastic. The whole A camera team, our main guys, were just incredible. Just never a problem, and just really patient and wonderful with us. The brownies. I remember these brownies... Michal, our Czech prop man, would always come in and say, "I've got more brownies for you." He'd show up with these piles of different kinds of brownies from every bakery in Prague. Which, oddly, social decorum dictated that we eat. We didn't want to be rude. So we'd start these meetings looking at all these props with all these brownies and by the end, you had chosen a brownie and also eaten it. You weren't sure which one you actually liked. You were sick to your stomach because of the meeting and how badly it went and also because we'd eaten 50 pounds of Czech brownies. This is the lovely and talented Jana Pallaske who we found in Germany. We did casting in... - London. Here. We started in LA. We did casting in New York. We did casting in Chicago, Vancouver, Atlanta, I believe, Miami, and then we went to London, Munich, Berlin, Prague. We had people in Paris. We had people in Italy. - Rome, Paris. She came out of this, and again, this was another area where things moved around in the script. Originally, this was in London. - In the original script, this was Cooper... This was Cooper in London before they met the hooligans. When Scott and Cooper first got to London, they went to a pub and they met these girls, and this was a Cooper scene. Cooper went out in the alley and was getting blown and got robbed. Which happened to a friend of ours, by the way. And we just decided that there was... - Named Out Cold. There was too much... There was too much stuff going on in London, so we moved it to... You wanted to get to the hooligans. And originally in our script, Jamie was with Scott and Jenny at the brownie bar. While Jacob was at the Anne Frank House. We just decided that they should all split up and have their own stories here. And also, what if Jamie has all their money and all their stuff and he's the one who gets robbed... - It seemed like a good plot point. I mean, it is sort of traditional, but with Jamie playing... I'm sorry, with Travis playing Jamie as sort of the somewhat traditional, you know, stick-in-the-mud, him having a little bit of a sexual escapade as opposed to Cooper, who's more lascivious, it became a funnier scene. It also helped Cooper out because Cooper wants sex and he keeps getting... He gets a version of it in this scene, but not what he wanted. Not quite the version that he wanted. - Not what he was expecting. As opposed to going to London immediately, hooking up with a girl. It oddly felt a little strange that we were going to get him together with Jenny at the end of the movie after he had gotten blown in an alley. Also, he's looking for crazy European sex and he got it right off the boat. That is a crazy outfit. - Yeah, that's the sex superhero. She is the sex superhero. As are these guys. - One of these guys is a Czech policeman. Vilem. Guy on the left. - I can't remember what the other guy does. The other guy is a large Czech clown. They were just sweaty and having a ball. Their names are Hans and Gruber, which is a small inside joke, the name of Alan Rickman's character in Die Hard. Hans Gruber. And this is a very odd scene. Anytime you're not actually seeing our two main actors, a lot of this was done second unit. - Like the shot of his ass, the shot of him with the clamps was second unit. We had a limited amount of time with Lucy. We had two days. - That's second unit, not Jacob's hand. So everything that we had to get done with her and him, we did, and then what was really helpful was we edited it... Not we, our editor edited it. - Roger. Oh, yeah, mention him. The whole editing staff, actually. We had them over in Prague with us for reasons like this. Roger Bondelli and his assistant. Marty Heselov. - Marty Heselov and Davis. Davis Reynolds. And basically, he edited what we shot and it allowed us to go... "We need this, we need that." This is things we're missing which we could instruct the second unit to get, such as guy wheeling in cart, close-up of guy doing the shocking. And it did help having the editor there, which was something originally... The editor was not going to be with us in Prague. Very helpful to have the editor there to be able to look at scenes to know what we wanted to change. That-- We're a little behind. That was Diedrich Bader from The Drew Carey Show, who was hilarious. Really funny in Office Space and in 7he Drew Carey Show. And flew all the way out to Prague to help us out and did a day of work. He said the last time he was there, he'd actually been here in '89. He'd gotten drunk, climbed up a statue, fallen down and broken his arm, so he was happy to come back. The pot brownie scene-- It's so funny. When you show them in front of an audience, all the sort of younger kids, just the very fact... The mention of Amsterdam got people to go... And then the fact that they're actually doing pot makes them laugh. This, we were writing on the fly. We realized the scene needed something. He needed to say something embarrassing. So he came up with the gay porno stuff. But we tried, like, three or four things. When he was a little kid, he ate dog poo. "They told me it was a candy bar!" - Really high-class stuff. But this guy, who plays the Rasta guy... - Go Go Jean Michel. ...I think we did probably ten takes with him and he got each line right one time and we ended up using it. But he cuts together great. I'm not sure, when we were doing it, I ever actually thought the microphone was picking up a word he said. Yet, oddly, it was there when we got to the edit room. Helder with his walk-off home run right there. "These are not hash branches." Because I think he had been eating hash branches earlier. Yeah, he was not an actor as much as a man who had smoked a lot of pot. And again, ultimately, this was a longer scene. There was more to do about not being able to name the safe word and the monkey was originally brought out and you just start trimming 'cause, again, you're just in Amsterdam too long. We went into this scene... There was another beat where she brought out golf shoes with big spikes and was hitting him in the ass. - We cut that almost immediately. That we cut on the day we never filmed, because we were way over time. And we ended up shooting... - This actually cuts together great. These few moments. It's a huge charge to see this thing. That is a huge charge. - Then to the f#ugelkenhaimler. The flugelkenhaimler. Gotta mention Jeff Jingle real quick. Jeff created that. - Jeff designed and built that and then came over to Prague with it, traveled with it. How he was not arrested and thrown into jail by the customs people, I don't know. - Just did an amazing job on that. There you can see the Charles Bridge. - Yeah, the Charles Bridge is behind him. We lost out. We should be making these Vandersexxx T-shirts. Someone is selling them on eBay, but they're one color. They're wrong. If you're the person who's making them on eBay, just make them the same way. But it's a fun shirt. You can see all the bugs that are flying around there. We did it as a crew shirt, actually. We gave it out to the crew. Well, this is dawn. We shot all night. This is dawn for dawn. No, no. We shot this... This is dusk for dawn? - This is dusk for dawn. This is the first shot. We were shooting nights on the bridge, and that was the first thing we did, because we were shooting that Jamie thing and we ran out of time 'cause It was getting too dark. If you go to your deleted scenes, you will see a scene that sort of happens right about now, which is Jenny... Michelle Trachtenberg-- saying, "Look, boys, I'll take care of it," and she tries to sort of strip to get them to hitchhike on the autobahn, which is impossible. Again, we were out here on this highway way too long. This is the same deserted highway where we shot the bus driving around. Also, it was freezing. - We were here way too long. It was 30 degrees and drizzling. - This was, again, continuing the rule of every time we tried to do a close-up on Michelle, it rained or hailed. She was such a trouper. Cooper's shirt, by the way, says, "I Love Ping-Pong." This phone joke was interesting. We originally had the first one which took place on the bridge in London, and that always got a good laugh. And this one never really gets that good a laugh. But there's a third one later, the comedy rule of threes, that only really works as good as it does because the second one sort of exists. And so we left it in, even though we never loved it. This is Dominic Raacke, who is basically like the Dennis Franz of Germany. He's a big cop show star in Germany. Our casting woman-- What was her name? Risa Kes found him. And actually, there's another... We were talking about the clearance stuff earlier. God, yeah. - We shot about eight takes of this guy and you can see that thing hanging from his rearview mirror. Originally there was a Tweety Bird, a Warner Brothers property, hanging from that thing and we shot about eight takes and we moved on to a different shot and somebody was looking at playback and said, "Is that Tweety?" And we looked at the playback. "We'll never clear that." - And we just decided we'll never clear. So we had to go back and reshoot everything we had done. And the camera guys thought it was so funny that we had screwed up that it became a running joke. They kept the Tweety Bird and they began adding it. Every time we would set up to do a shot, they would roll a little film before we ended up doing the shot and they would put the Tweety Bird in front of the camera, so we have a reel somewhere of that Tweety Bird in every location that we shot. - And it's fantastic. He's wearing a pope hat. He's in the hot tub. We'd love to show it to you, but Tweety doesn't clear, so we can't. So just imagine every shot in the movie with a Tweety in it.

33:13 · jump to transcript →

She does something that's incredible. I just love the cast. Can you believe this cast? But the thing that's so amazing is watching... She makes it look so easy, especially in the Vatican sequence. That kind of strength and quiet, confident. She makes it look very easy. I love doing this. This is a very intense sequence to shoot. This whole... This stuff, you just...

18:26 · jump to transcript →

How did you get that out of her head? She was open to having a craniotomy. I was like, look. Carrie is so perfect. She will do anything for... Okay, now, here we go. We got Fish. You can't say enough about Fish, bro. Fish, I've known since I was a teenager. Isn't that amazing? I know. And I can't believe this is the first time that we've worked together. That's incredible. I know. He's one of those guys, and when we were talking about casting the movie, it was so important. Did we miss my... I missed the chocolate. Okay.

27:57 · jump to transcript →

He just said the chocolate line. Did I miss the chocolate line? I love the chocolate line. But it was so important that we cast the movie, for me, that we cast the movie with actors who, if I see them on screen with you, will hold their own. Because I did feel like it was a risk, given that it was you in this movie, that you wouldn't really be paying attention to other people. And so when you have actors like Billy and like Fish, who...

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James Mangold

Hi, my name is Jim Mangold and I'm the director of 310 Iyuma. And for the next two hours or so, I'm going to be talking about making this film and how we came to make it, cast it, shoot it and edit it and deliver it in the state it's in right now as you're watching the opening logos here. It seems to me the first question anyone would have about this film is why did you make it? And particularly because it's a remake of a film

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James Mangold

What I like to believe makes this sequence stand out is that these men look so completely comfortable with the weapons, on their horses, et cetera. And one of the ways I was really lucky in putting this film together with Kathy Conrad, my producer and partner, was that when we cast the film with Russell and Christian, what we got were more than just two of the best

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James Mangold

male actors in the world today, we also got extremely physical actors, men who are very, very comfortable on horses and with weapons and didn't necessarily need, you know, the three-month, quote, boot camp. While we did do that for many members of the cast, I think Russell, who owns a thousand-acre ranch in Australia, and Christian, who has done a slew of action pictures, both very well know how to stay on a horse

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Eng Commentary

Truffaut also cast his film largely with unknowns or with actors whose chief exposure had been only on television. Guy de Comble, playing the teacher, is one of the few exceptions. French filmgoers would have recalled him from Jacques Tati's 1949 comedy Jour de Fête, among other films. The classroom itself is in the Parisian film school on the rue de Vaugirard. Since he's the victim of injustice, our sympathies with Antoine are now cemented.

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Eng Commentary

They improvised and fashioned a bed for Antoine. We asked co-screenwriter Marcel Moussy how Truffaut had cast his first feature, and Moussy told us this. For the main role, Truffaut placed an ad in France World that said something like, seeking young boy of 13 to act in leading role in a new film. He didn't even spell out any physical characteristics. So lots and lots of boys came to audition, and they came from just about everywhere.

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Eng Commentary

Francois was able to eliminate most of them on the basis of interviews. And then he had a few do some screen tests, including Jean-Pierre Léo. Jean-Pierre had run away from his boarding school in the southern provinces of France to take a train up to Paris to audition for the role because he had seen the ad in the paper. So quite apart from his actual screen tests, which were immensely successful because he showed a vivacity and a liveliness that were decidedly uncommon.

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That's 69 Rupert Gow. Okay. The money didn't come in at the last minute. Well, listen to this. Possum says, that's an address in Paris where I used to live. He said, it's a murder story like Rue Morgue. So I cast the picture, and I built the sets. Beautiful sets. It's the same place we shot Orgy. So the day before we started shooting, my art director tells me, boss, the checks are bouncing. The checks are no good.

1:00:48 · jump to transcript →

69 Rupa Gal was later released as an Ed Wood paperback. Many of the films were also released as paperbacks. Let me find, if you can carry it for a minute, Rudolph. The sad part is that the 69 Rupa Gal movie, the script was all done. I read the script. The casting was all done.

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And Ed had a small part in it as like an MC at a show. He cast himself. He was going to be in it. And T.C. Jones, the female impersonator, was going to be one of the lead characters. And like Apostoloff says, you know, at the last minute, the money didn't come through from one of the people that was going to finance the film.

1:02:16 · jump to transcript →

John Mackenzie

Have a bloody memory. She thinks Paula is an angel and I'm the devil in disguise. Ah, well, me and Paula have only been divorced ten years. I was really delighted to be able to cast Helen Mirren as Victoria in the film. Yeah, it's coming along. It's one of the things we really felt about the Victoria character, that she wasn't... She should certainly not just be your usual gangster's maul, you know.

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John Mackenzie

It's quite interesting, a lot of these characters have sort of gone on and become, you know, quite well known in other areas. Now here we had a guy who came out of the blue. We cast about three different people for this part of Charlie until, for one reason or another, it fell through. And then we had this, I think, a brilliant idea to cast Eddie Constantine.

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John Mackenzie

They were all Irish, these guys, who are cast in those parts. This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper. It was nice to show that, you know, the Hoskins character, the Sian character, was such a sort of...

19:53 · jump to transcript →

And here's the introduction of our hero, Peter, or Murphy. Of course, when we were casting, we were not only looking for a good actor, we were also looking for an actor that had a good jawline. Because that's the only thing that you can see when he puts the mask on later, the robot mask. And we felt that if it would be a weak jawline, that that part of the face that was visible would make him look weak. So it was not only that Peter...

3:29 · jump to transcript →

Nicely done, Mr. Verhoeven. Yeah. I don't know if it was a stuntman. I think it was an actor. No, no, that was one of the stuntmen that... We had a lot of stuntmen who had to have lines in this, and they did really well. Right. Well, we cast 80% of the movie in Dallas, isn't it, John? Yes, because we could not take the entire cast from Los Angeles. Because we had no money, isn't it? Right, of course. And it worked out very well, because we were forced to be extremely creative, and the casting women...

35:49 · jump to transcript →

Well, it was written, isn't it? I mean, probably just the way it was shot and nice. Yeah, but watch the way the close-up comes in here. I really like this right here. Bump, that one. And that one. Look at her. She's great. Yeah. Originally, remember, we had cast Stephanie Zimbalist as a role. And a few weeks before principal photography, for whatever reason, she bowed out and we lucked into...

47:32 · jump to transcript →

This was all fun to do for the most part. You know, it was a movie. We were both working on a movie. We were both working on a major motion picture produced by, you know, a big company. That, by the way, everyone auditioned for. Everyone? All of the young actors and all of the young actresses from the 80s that became, some of them became A-listers and some of them didn't. They saw them all. And we wanted the choices. No kidding.

6:34 · jump to transcript →

They were so supportive of us, I think, because the whole cast, I think, just really felt very supportive of the young actors. You know, that was Mac and myself. Just like to point out, I think that's the first act of overt violence, the Garbage Pail Kids. Okay, now it's important to say this, and I'm going to say it. In the original script, all of this stuff that they do,

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for this project, for the Garbage Pail Kids movie. Those were the real guys. They showed up in their motorcycles and everything. Amazing. That guy actually lost a toe during filming. He did, but in another part of the movie. Right. Not at the hand of Alligator. Yeah, no, these were real biker dudes. These were real tough dudes. These were not central casting experts. These were the real guys. Amazing.

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That guy happened to have that birthmark. That's how you cast him? Yeah, he had the birthmark. It was going to save time. Did anybody ever notice it's in the shape of North Vietnam? No, no one commented. A wasted joke. Well, there was going to be a contest, you remember, like a geography thing. We never did it. I meant Gorbachev's real birthmark. It's actually in the shape of Vietnam. Do you remember our worries when we released the picture? We were concerned that the Ayatollah would kick off before the picture came out ruining this joke.

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And of course, the ubiquitous bear trap, a signature of David's work. In every movie, there'll be a bear trap. Now, did O.J. do that whole thing himself? Absolutely. Or we cut the stuntman. I think the stuntman fell out of the... But everything else was O.J. Everything else was O.J. Amazing work. And the entire cast is on that plane. I think we're coming up on my dad here. Every family member's in this, right? Yes. Always. There he is with the camera there. Third from the left or second from the right.

7:20 · jump to transcript →

Many people mistake him for George Kennedy. And there is George Kennedy. How did you cast George? It was just a question of cash, really. No, actually, what we wanted to do was have, you know, credible actors that people had seen before and make this seem like it was a legitimate picture. I think, who played it in the TV shows? Alan North. He was actually a wonderful actor. Great actor, but...

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Marco Brambilla Daniel Waters

obviously very different style actor to Sly. And working with Wesley was like completely unpredictable from day to day. And we had every type of actor in the cast from Nigel Hawthorne, who's obviously an Academy Award winning actor and who was new to the genre, let's say. And then Stallone, who usually worked with directors who don't request too many takes.

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Marco Brambilla Daniel Waters

while we were on a lunch break and we had to evacuate stage 16, which is the largest soundstage on the Warner's lot. And we had to stop shooting for a day. But all of this was really, really interesting because all the... Wait a second. Andre Gregory and Jesse Ventura. That's a great combination. That's a credit you don't see every day. That pretty much encapsulates the casting of this movie. Like we got my dinner with Andre and Jesse Ventura. The governor.

8:27 · jump to transcript →

Marco Brambilla Daniel Waters

a film actor at the time. And here, this is Rob Schneider, who I cast from Saturday Night Live. And this is one of the few actual practical locations in the film. So we found a kind of office campus in San Diego where we shot the police headquarters and built in a lot of the technology. I love the use of character actors delivering very silly dialogue, but they make it seem real.

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Fred Dekker

Now, in terms of the people that you've worked with throughout your career, I mean, you've had very interesting and very eclectic casts for all of your movies. And this one's no exception. In fact, re-watching the movie again, I was reminded of the fact that even the small parts, like you've got C.J. H. Pounder and Stephen Root and Daniel Von Barg and a lot of really great character actors in these roles. How much input did you have into casting?

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Fred Dekker

I directed the movie. I mean, those were all my choices. And I think this is one of the best casts that I worked with. I mean, in terms of the amount of talent, and I feel like I didn't give them enough to do. But boy, it was an embarrassment of riches, this cast. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about Daniel Von Bargen. He recently passed away not too long ago.

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Fred Dekker

Yes, I was going to ask about Phil's. This is not the first time Phil's has come up for you. It's been in every film so far. There's Jeff Garlin, who you know from The Goldbergs, which I think he created. And Curb Your Enthusiasm. Yeah, and he has two lines in this movie. This cast is pretty amazing. Yeah, again, that was when I was watching the movie. It's like, oh my God, there's Jeff Garlin there for a couple minutes. You put some really great faces on camera, even for the small roles in this movie.

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Peter Hyams

Wow. She's doing my job. C.C.H. Pounder is a wonderful actress. I had seen her in Baghdad Cafe. She has great eyes. Oh, yeah, we got all liquored up this morning. We start every day, then. I thought it was, again, essential with a film like this to try to cast it with the best actors in the world. What? He has no tongue. There are a lot of times when I put actors in half-light, and when you have eyes like C.C., it's really quite wonderful.

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Peter Hyams

silly girl in distress, and she gave it something. She gave it, you know, actors bring what they are. 90% of directing actors, no matter what anybody will tell you, 90% of directing actors is casting. This guy is no ordinary hitman. No, this one's extraordinary. Let's get the hell out of here. This place is making me itch. Don't move! Don't move!

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Peter Hyams

That to me is a very important effect in this film, and I'm pleased with it. I think it worked. I've never seen a film, frankly, that's bad or sloppy in only one area. So to me, the smallest parts have to be cast with the same amount of devotion as big parts. What an extra is wearing.

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Simon West

Oh, he's in real pain right now. We named the robot Simon, and the initials, the letters of that name are supposed to stand for something, and it's one of the puzzles I put in the film for people to work out what those letters stand for. Oh, well, that would be a no. But you said make it more challenging, so... I cast Noah Taylor after seeing him in Shine a few years earlier, and I thought he was such an unusual character that...

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Simon West

I thought she should do something beautiful, but also very athletic and daring. And this is a very impressive routine that Lara does every night before she goes to bed, but Angelina actually had to learn to do for real. Now, I never expected her to do all this. When I cast her, I never thought of her as a stunt person, but during her training program before the shoot, she just learned how to do this thing from top to bottom, and I realized I wasn't going to have to use stunt doubles at all.

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Simon West

This you must prevent at all costs. I'd always been a big fan of John Voight, and so it was great fun for me working with him. Every day I could come in and ask him about films that he'd worked on as I was growing up. And so one day I would get an anecdote about Deliverance, and the next day I'd get an anecdote about Midnight Cowboy. So as a film buff, it was a great piece of casting for me because it kept me entertained every day that he was there on the set. I told you I'd have

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Peter Becker

We should talk about the casting of the two leads.

26:31 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

So it was very clear when Roman and I had finished this script that the crucial thing was going to be who plays Sam and who plays Suzy, our two main characters. And that's really-- There's no movie if they aren't great. Well, we got our casting director, Doug Aibel, on very, very early, and we spent, I want to say, six or eight months or something searching for them. And along the way, we picked up all our scouts. There were lots of people auditioning, and we'd say, "Well, this one's still not quite the right one for Sam, but this is a great one. This is a kid at this moment in his life who's gonna be very interesting." And so by the time we did find the two of them, which was quite late in the game, we had all the other kids too. Jared, I remember, in his audition, was just... It wasn't his audition, it was him that really was entertaining. And Kara, in her audition, she played this scene as if she was making it up completely herself and just seemed completely authentic. And they were great to work with. They were very invested in the movie. And sometimes when you work with very young people, they learn the script and they know it better than anybody on the set. And they know everybody's lines. And they brought some special kind of emotion that only they know that has to do with they're really that age. They're really like these people. They understand them in a way we can only try to recall. If the movie works for them, it works because of these guys. Yeah, I remember seeing the tests, and Jared just stood out. I remember thinking, you know, he had such a different energy than I expected in our lead role 'cause we had sort of described him with his corncob pipe and kind of a little bit of a JD, and he had just this other quality, but I couldn't totally see it at first. But then, of course, it just couldn't have been better. It was just so right for it. But it wasn't really written in the way that he portrayed it. At least my mind's eye didn't see someone like Jared, but he's so one of a kind, it's hard to even imagine that till you meet him.

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Wes Anderson

Yeah, also I remember when we were casting Rushmore, Jason was not really what we had in mind. We had in mind somebody that I had always said-- Owen and I had this description of a young Mick Jagger, which Jason is a completely different-- Jason's like a young Dustin Hoffman.

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There we see they have a past. She's got a... They're in kind of an adventurous place in that photo. And you can think that maybe this couple has had an interesting and exciting past with some adventure. Anyway, there's the sweetest little girl in the world, played by Paisley Cadorath. Paisley Cadorath was an amazing little actress. We did auditions in Winnipeg because we knew we couldn't fly another person out from anywhere, and she was the only girl that could take directions. But more importantly, you can tell that she was really enjoying the process. And we, you know, make them do four or five takes of the same thing just to see how they'll fare. And she was just excited. Every time she'd run out of the room, we'd get the cameras all ready, Every time she'd run out of the room, we'd get the cameras all ready, and she'd run in and we'd rehearse, and she was perfect all the time. And I think when you watched the audition tapes... I remember getting a message from you saying, "We have to get this girl. I'm so happy that we matched perfectly on her." Fuck!

8:17 · jump to transcript →

What do we got, a rat or a possum? - Don't know. I hope you'll notice... I hope everyone noticed that the employee of the month mostly is Charlie, played by Billy MacLellan. But go ahead. Sharon is the... Go ahead, Ilya. So the cat lady, the receptionist, that was Sharon. We had a bit of a faux pas where we were supposed to shoot her scene right here in this reception where Charlie is standing. And we arrived and we painted it the wrong color. And it's the only time during the production where Pawel, the DP, and I were like, "Nope, can't shoot it here. "We gotta repaint these walls. Let's go..." We found that spot, and while we were shooting, Bob, remember, on one of the takes, she hit... She was so into beating the crap out of the ceiling, the tile fellon you guys as you walked past. Yeah. Safety's on. And how about this guy? Billy MacLellan was great. Isn't he great? Charlie, my brother-in-law, who's a huge jerk to me, waving a gun in my face. And he doesn't even know the safety is not on. So, take it. And he's such a tough guy. Billy's a good guy. What a great cast we had. So, keep my sister safe, bro. "This is a matter of need, principle of need." Tough guy. And I don't think the slap was written. I think he came up to me between the takes, said, "Ilya, what do you think of... "It feels like Charlie should be more of an asshole and buddy slap on..." Such a condescending slap. But he was so afraid to suggest it to you. And now you look at him and you go, "This guy's messed with guns before, "and he's not sure he wants one in his life again." But look out. Well, hide it in the fridge. That's always a good place for your extra guns. It's almost like he knew it might come in handy in act three. Yeah. - It's Chekhov's ridge, pretty much. What's that? - Chekhov's ridge. You know, the Chekhov's rifle? Chekhov's gun? If you see it on the wall in the first act, and it fires in the third, well, that's our fridge. Yes, that's right. Michael Ironside. - Yay, Michael Ironside. A great, great actor. - The man, the legend. And he's really good in this role. Kind of supportive, kind of friendly, but also hard on Hutch. Everybody's hard on Hutch. Bunch of hard-ons around him. If I'm gonna sell it, I want it to be... But he's a great actor and he delivers here, big time. Ilya, you put together a hell of a cast around me. Boy, the best. The best. I do. Well, it's pretty easy to get a great cast when you say that Bob is the lead. SO... You know, one thing that was concerning to me, and I love seeing Charlie and I love seeing the father-in-law here, and I love seeing Charlie and I love seeing the father-in-law here, is my character is so down for such a huge chunk of this movie. There's a... I mean, he starts to smile when he starts to cut loose and let out all his rage and frustration. But that's a long time in, and we talked a lot about this. This movie has always been... Has an offbeat construction with this long prelude, longer than most, with a lot of hard feeling and kind of... This guy's got an internal struggle that takes over this whole first 40 minutes, half-hour, 40 minutes. I think in the script, the bus fight used to happen around page 30. And I remember we saying, "Whenever... We'll get to it quicker. "It'll be like minute 25 at most." 'Cause I remember looking at several films as examples, and I think my favorite example was Oldboy, where the first real fight happens on minute 41. But there is a little pre-fight around 27. But it's also a much longer film than this was ever intended to be. Right. So it was that balance of, "Yeah, we want to set up the pins "before we shoot the ball," but at the same time, you're also releasing a film in 2020. Well, now it's 2027. But there's a certain expectation, a certain pace that you can't really rely on as a comfortable pace for a bigger audience. Hopefully, we'll have a bigger audience when it does come out. We are recording this six months before the film hits theaters, which is a little early. But you're absolutely right. There was a lot of discussions on how long and what we should spend time on before we hit what everybody paid to see. It's a different kind of action movie. It's trying to be... Just have more story, more character, more complexity, and I think a more delicate kind of complexity to these family relationships. The son's annoyed with the dad, the wife and the husband love each other but are estranged, but in the house, you know, together, they have a past. We don't quite know what it is. The little girl's oblivious and bringing nothing but sunshine into their lives. And then there's a feeling that this guy just has his own issues, his own challenge of being who he is. And all that turns out to be true and comes clearer as the story goes.

12:09 · jump to transcript →

Or was? So these guys, the Russian Mob guys, these are all immigrants from Russia living in Winnipeg. There's a community of about five or six thousand people, which was perfect for us. So there was an audition Saturday and Sunday where I looked at 200 people. And these three were... - They're great. Right away, I was like, "Well, they're not professional." This is the first time they ever appear on camera. And I thought they did a really good job. -/ think they do a great job. Boy, they look like great actors to me. And Alexey, he works all the time. Boy, they look like great actors to me. And Alexey, he works all the time. We were very lucky to get him 'cause he also lives in Canada. Yep. - Part-time. So, tell us about Alexey"s acting career in Russia. Will he walk again? There's a lot of films to talk about. I think the one that I suspect some people have seen in the West would be Leviathan. The Zvyagintsev film which was nominated for an Oscar, which I think had a very good chance for winning if it wasn't for the political situation at that particular point in time, unfortunately. Alexey, he's just always been...

39:33 · jump to transcript →

to have an innocence in their face. And so we really cast a lot of kids that you don't know yet, that you haven't seen in any other movie. By the way, Wiesengrund 53, the address, that's my best friend's address when I grew up. So it's a little Easter egg I put in there just as an ode to my best friend as a kid.

11:50 · jump to transcript →

quite old-fashioned, not typically handsome. Don't tell him that. And he... I immediately liked that. So we flew him in into casting, but I'm not the type of person who jumps at the first decision, because I really want to see everyone. So I saw a couple hundred more, and we kept inviting him back. And our wonderful casting agent, Simone Béat,

44:08 · jump to transcript →

when he made this movie. And the main character is 18. And in the beginning I thought, this character has to be 18. You know, this actor. I've got to find an actor who can play it. And then I cast a lot of 18-year-olds. And I realized after a while, they're too young. They just don't have that... Because Felix needs to play the arc from, you know, youth and innocence and enthusiasm, the laughter that you saw in the end, in the beginning, to complete...

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SFX Maestro Christien Tinsley

two films, he used the same prosthetic. And so the piece was actually never made for David, but it created this character based off of the old sculpture working on David's face. And so when we got the cast of David and re-sculpted it, we had to re-sculpt it with the idea of what the old prosthetic

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SFX Maestro Christien Tinsley

And he had the molds already, so we read it. We just cast new pieces out of his molds, and we made a chest piece for her and the arm piece there and stuff just to kind of, you know, give it a look. And he was like, yeah, I want tubes in it. I want, you know, blood pouring down her face. And we were like, okay, yeah, we can, you know, get some tubes in there. And so Heather and Ryan...

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SFX Maestro Christien Tinsley

He thought that we had just cast from his mold or duplicated his mold somehow and cast prosthetics. But the truth of it is we sculpted it from scratch, copying his original piece as best we could, but basically side-by-side sculpture as opposed to the casting and molding process.

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Commentary With David Kalat

Here he is as Dr. Yamane, a role he reprises in the sequel, Godzilla Raids Again. The Times sniffed at Godzilla's cast. Not a one of them can act. What's that again? Did you mean the best actor in the world can't act? Yowza. Not all of Godzilla's cast were experienced veterans of Kurosawa's demanding sets. Akihiko Hirata as the

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Commentary With David Kalat

Grant, an A-list star of light comedy and amiable action films whose popularity would keep him a top marquee name for many decades. In contrast to Kochi's insecurity, Takarada swaggered onto the set and introduced himself as the star. The grizzled crew chuckled, Godzilla's the star. And since the monster is the star of the show, to talk about the cast, we really need to talk about the special effects director, Aiji Tsuburaya.

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Commentary With David Kalat

This scene represents another of the transformative changes wrought by Honda on the material, casting such an admired actor as Takashi Shimura turned Yamane from an alienating kind of mad scientist into a heroic central figure. Yamane's upset that the government's response to the problem is to try to kill Godzilla. He wants to study it.

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kind of long-haired, pin-up type guy. And there were plenty of actors around who had that sort of wounded angel martyr counterculture look. Well, isn't it his very presence in these scenes, which are slightly problematic for an audience, because we're on his side because the guys he works with are all a crowd of jocks. Yes, that's right. And they're deliberately cast. Actually, I understand that the...

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From this point on, from this point on, we stop looking at him in the same way. Yeah, he also becomes... Yeah, there is... He's also mad. I mean, that's... Yeah. He's right and he's romantic, but he is also insane. Isn't there a touch here of Jack Nicholson in The Shining that really he's pretty much over the edge right from the beginning? Oh, yeah, yeah. There's nowhere for him to go. He's Bruce Stern. In fact, Jack Nicholson wouldn't have done this film because he was a bit... He'd moved on to doing different types of movies. But he would have been in the frame for the casting.

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Again, according to Mark Hermod's book, the original casting for this was Larry Hagman. Of course, later on known for Dallas. But at that time, he'd been in I Dream of Jeannie playing an astral, hadn't he? And that probably was... But he decided he'd been offered a chance to direct a film.

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I got to go. I think there's been an accident out there. This was a practical location also, I believe, in Venice, if I'm not mistaken. That's right. We were in Venice. The end of this scene is the scene that we used for the audition. I remember really clearly when I read for Wes at the audition, they picked this one scene with Tina. And it seemed like I did it a million times by the time we finally got to it.

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There's an interesting story with Johnny's casting. We headed down to four guys, and the other three were like surfer dude and, you know, the typical handsome kid and everything else. And at the time my daughter was visiting, she was about 13, with a friend of hers, and I said, what do you think, surfer dude? And they both at the same time said, Johnny Depp. There was like absolutely no doubt in their mind. It was completely unknown at that time, but they just fell in love with him by seeing him once or twice in casting sessions.

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Yeah, it's all there. You had that quality of the girl next door, the all-American girl, right? The first casting, I just thought, well, I found Nancy. The brick. The brick. Is it the brick? I think it was Marilyn Monroe. Their hair looks a lot better than mine. You know what I mean. Yeah, well, the camera likes you. Thanks, Josh. That's very kind of you to say that.

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sort of get your mates around you to work, it's always much more pleasant. So I always have a list I give a casting director of people I like and it would be nice to be working with. Of course Cubby Broccoli was the producer and Michael Wilson, who produced together with Cubby, would always

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was in the whole stealing there. Patrick also, Patrick McNee also was my Watson when I played Sherlock Holmes, which we shot at 20th Century Fox with a wonderful all-star cast. John Huston playing Moriarty and Gig Young.

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David Huddleston, Jackie Coogan. Amazing, amazing cast. Produced and directed by Boris Segal, whose daughter, Boris's daughter, who is so wonderful, the crass American series that I love, The Al Bundy Show.

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Pat McClung

This is Pat McClung. I was the model-shop supervisor on the film. They're wearing modified costumes from Outland, or the basic suit is from Outland and it's been redesigned and they put some stencils on it. This is microglitter and fuller's earth blown on there. I remember in this scene the batteries in the flashlights kept going out. You would think this would be an easy scene to do, but, as with everything in this movie, it was harder than it looked. There are no easy scenes with Jim. There's that nice dissolve, the contour of the earth matching her face. When we shot this, a matte painting combined with miniature and perspective, there are some perspective gags going on there. We used a clip of Sigourney's face in the viewfinder to line up the curvature of the earth, so we had a nice match. I wrote the piece obviously with Sigourney in mind for the character. I was told she was on board and I should just toddle off and write the film when in fact no deal had been made with her whatsoever. So here was a script that was written that everybody wanted to make, in which she was in every scene, and they hadn't made a deal with her yet. That's why she got her first big payday of her acting career. She got a million bucks, which was a big deal. She might have been the first actress to get a million dollars for a movie in movie history. It was all because it was mishandled by the producers. She was the main character and they hadn't made the deal. She was worth every penny of it and more. When people saw the film, they realized that. I Knew what a phenomenal actress she was. I'd never met her. I had her picture up while I was writing the script. I went off the character that had been created in the first film, took her much further. Of course, this is Paul Reiser. I certainly had no idea what a great comic actor he would prove to be, and certainly that's how people think of him, not as a dramatic actor. I just read him in a lineup of actors in the normal casting methodology, and I thought he was really interesting, that he could play this really sincere but slightly smarmy guy who could then turn evil. This is a dream sequence, but you don't know that yet. I remember from the premiere screening of the film that the incomplete chestburster scene here really got people cranked up and on edge, set the tone for the whole movie, that you were here to be messed with, which is a good way to start off, I think. The way you get a cat to hiss like that is you put another cat close to it. I had no idea. I didn't know what you did to make a cat do that. But that's standard procedure. Bring a cat it doesn't know close to it and it'll do that.

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Bill Paxton

Everybody's archetypical in this thing. I don't remember all the stuff hanging off of Mark. Chicken bones. I look like a boy. That's what we liked about you. Was this the day, Michael, you were passed out by the lockers and Sigourney walked by and said "There's my leading man"? Am I mistaken with another day? Somewhere around in here. I had to audition. They made you audition for Fox. No, it wasn't for Fox. They had a limit on how many Americans they could bring over. So they auditioned a lot of Englishmen for that role. The casting director, Mary Selway, and I had to meet every member of the North American registry from British Actors' Equity who was interested in being in this film before we could bring anyone from the US. I think we must have met and auditioned 3,000 people.

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Bill Paxton

Carrie Henn, who plays Newt, was an astonishing find. Mary Selway, our casting director, and her associate, Sarah Jackson, searched throughout England and, in fact, I think the entire British Isles, trying to find a young girl who could portray this character. And we had every young girl who wanted to be an actress, or whose parents wanted them to act, to come in and audition. Almost all of them had done commercials, and every time they delivered a line they would smile. Of course, this is a little girl suffering from traumatic stress. She's watched her family wiped out, every other person on the mining colony wiped out, and I think we probably had 500 little girls on tape. And Carrie was found at a US Air Force base in England. Her father was a US serviceman serving there. And she came in and auditioned, never having acted even in a school play, and was dead on from the very first reading. She's such a good little actress. Has she done anything since this? She has a normal life. She did not pursue acting as her career. One of the things that we were very concerned about was whether or not this film would traumatize her. It's very intense and unlike now, where we could composite creatures in seamlessly, or create one digitally, she really was terrorized by the alien warriors in the film, and she understood it was make-believe. Her parents were tremendously supportive and she really had her feet on the ground. This really is acting.

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Gary Goddard

We were able to have a great cast headed by Frank Langella. I had seen him in Amadeus in New York on Broadway. I had already known his work from film. At the border between the light and the dark stands Castle Grayskull. This is, of course, the opening shot with Castle Grayskull. And the concept here was to create an entire world, a sense that you were in a different place. And the scale is quite epic. You see the sorceress there in the eye.

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Gary Goddard

Chelsea Field, Robert Duncan McNeil, Christina Pickles. I'm very happy with the cast and how they came together and formed a kind of a company. And again, I think that rapport between the shows and the film itself.

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Gary Goddard

And all the shots here now establish, you know, death, destruction, the fact that Eternia has been overrun, and that our heroes are essentially on the run. Now we're introducing another character that's going to, you know, be one of the key elements in the storytelling. And that is going to be Gwildor. We'll see him in a minute. Dolph is going to rescue him. This is Dolph Lundgren. This is his first movie after the Rocky movie. Ed had already lined him up for this movie, actually, when I came on board. He was the only cast member that was

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We asked another kid who came into audition. He said, you know, a kid that sort of vaguely resembles me or looks like he could be offspring. And he took me straight to this kid. So he was a real find because he had a lot of natural ability. Most of the other actors here we found in Ireland. This guy was from Dublin.

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I'd done virtually nothing before. I think she just finished a drama education at Oxford. And, you know, whenever I do the audition process for, you know, casting, it's... I don't make anyone read because I think you don't find much else out than whether they can read or not. It has very little bearing on...

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So of course I cast her. What does that mean? Beautiful. But I belong here. And it's John Toll again, ladies and gentlemen.

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Darren Aronofsky

We called him the mustache-less man. In fact, I think in the script it was the mustache man, but then I cast Stanley Herman and made it into the mustache-less man. He's always singing in my films also, so. This scene is supposed to be funny, but I think most people just get creeped out.

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Darren Aronofsky

Mark Margolis was actually cast by our casting director, Denise Fitzgerald. She ran into him in a supermarket and told him she had a perfect role for him. And he was like, there are no perfect roles for me. But he came in, read, and once again we cast him on the spot. He was perfect for the role. I thought he actually was too young when I first met him, which is amazing because...

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Darren Aronofsky

And that's King Neptune, who's a character that I've dealt with in several different projects that I've written. King Neptune is actually the living King Neptune who's somehow lost his trident in this world of evil and is searching for it with a metal detector on the beach of Coney Island. And right there, he finds something else. It's not his trident, but it's almost as good. And it intrigues Max and brings him over. The original King Neptune that we cast was a...

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Noah Baumbach

Now, this is Noah, Noah Baumbach. That's me in the back there. Playing the role of Phillip, Zissou's aide-de-camp. I mean, Drakoulias's. I was cast during a writing session. You said, "Who could play Phillip? Well, you could play Phillip." That was casting. - That was it. We chalked that one off the list. Drakoulias's glasses, by the way, are modeled on Sergio Leone's. The stoplight on Owen's hat, I believe I saw on a kid outside of Bar Pitti. Oh, yeah. - He had a hat with a stoplight on it. So these things, the significance of them is left open.

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Noah Baumbach

We had-- This was actually something we did a little research on was sort of the more modern-day pirate situation, sort of inspired at least the sort of design of these pirates and the vibe that we get from these pirates. Yeah, I know we talked about the pirates being kind of-- Trying to make them feel like documentary style and that the movie would suddenly snap into kind of a William Friedkin-type of very real, very energetic. In the end, however, the pirates arrive while a guy's playing a David Bowie song on the deck of the ship, and Bill's sitting here in a blue-tiled-- There's so many things to undermine it, and it ends up being some-- And also, by the way, my idea of what the pirates would look like is not reflected in the film. This is what we kind of-- This was trying to do, but somehow it ends up being much-- They end up being funny and... We cast people who we had in Rome. They're not real pirates. They're-- And they brought-- You know, there's more about these-- You know, they brought themselves to it and the feeling on the set. And it ends up, I think, being different from what I envisioned and being more like the rest of the movie. I don't know. I think it affects different people in different ways. You're talking about... the editing style of the movie. I was thinking about it there with the quick cuts as the pirates come rushing in. Sort of... Another thing I've sort of thought about, which I didn't mention, is like when he opens the correspondence stock, and then suddenly we just cut right to the-- You know, rather than take the time to show him opening the-- Yeah. - You know, and-- You know, but at the same time, you like to do a lot of long takes and a lot of, you know, let the actors really kind of behave in scenes, and I think it's a-- We've talked about sort of a French New Wave style of editing... Yeah. - ...that we respond to, sort of, you know, just getting the boring parts out of the way, but taking time with the stuff you think needs to take time. And I feel for some people-- A movie like this, for a lot of people, I think it plays as deliberately paced. And then for other people, it seems like breakneck. But I think for a larger number of people, it's slow. But, you know, it's just sort of-- Now, here's something we do here. We go to a very... Very cool timing, in blue, for this section of the film. During this pirate attack thing here. And then it comes back to the warm, because most of the movie's time, very warm, very yellow, a lot of red. And... And in the end, I think the way the movie looks, it's also very saturated colors. The way most of the movie looks is sort of inspired by the way the Ektachrome stuff looks, which was not the original idea. It's just sort of what felt right as we went along. Although this sequence, to me, looks more like... Like Bud Cort looks like the way the photographs look, the way they're printed on the front page of The New York Times. - Right. The way that has some documentary kind of feeling. Yeah, there is that Friedkin feeling of sort of '70s color, or at least '70s color as we now experience it on television. Yeah. These things are filtered through things like that... I like how Bud does the Portuguese. Yes, Bud studied very carefully how to get his dialogue in Tagalog, I think, it's Filipino. He'd originally learned it in Indonesian, but then he had to switch. And he had it very precisely figured out, although we also had his Filipino translator on the set with us, who Bud ruled over and... ...is his sidekick.

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Noah Baumbach

Willem is very touching here. Yeah, Willem brings something to it. Now, I mentioned Noah Taylor. Noah has obviously played a lot of much bigger, fuller roles. And he's a really wonderful actor. In our movie, he has a line here, a line there. But his presence on the set was quite strong and he was very-- He was really valuable to the movie in ways that you wouldn't know. He was sort of the one who-- There are a lot of non-actors in Team Zissou and he was the one-- A lot of people who had never been on movie sets and certainly a lot of people who had never been sent away to location for periods of time, and he was their guide for that, and he was kind of their acting coach too. And he was-- He was a great person to have on the set. Well, pretty much everyone... Cast and crew really committed to, you know, be sort of immersed in this for months. There wasn't-- I guess some actors came in and out a little bit, but certainly most of Team Zissou had to be there for the whole shoot. Yeah. See, in the background here is a cane with a dolphin, albino dolphin handle. Zissou has albino dolphins, but it's-- What you can't see is engraved in it is "T.E. Mandrake," Zissou's mentor. Right, we saw in-- The picture was behind Hennessey, when they were on the boat, in the background. Right. And actually the person who sort of plays that part in the photographs is Jacques Henri Lartigue, a French photographer who I've always admired. But the person we wanted to use was Nic Roeg, the director Nic Roeg, who we weren't able to get over to Italy. It was all kind of last minute, and he-- But you were always gonna pose him in the same position that Lartigue is in that picture, right? Holding the... Well, yeah, we were gonna pose him-- No, I mean, we were gonna pose him in the water... standing in the water with a fishing net and a kid running behind him, something like that. What the painting is, when you see the painting. Now, this shot in the hallway, by the way, is the only shot in the movie where we actually use the camera to suggest that the boat is moving. It kind of rocks back and forth, which is funny because we watched a lot of different movies that are about-- Set on boats and set underwater, those things, and they all use a different technique. There are lots of different-- They gimbal the whole set, or they make the camera move. The Black Stallion was one of the ones we liked, and those scenes on that one, they don't do anything to suggest. They just trust that you know we're on a boat, and it works the same way as any of the others, except for one shot where they look down a hallway when they rock the camera. I don't know why they had one shot to do that. I think because the boat is sinking, and they wanted to just get that feeling. But we did the same thing. We never did anything to suggest we were on a boat in terms of movement. But for one shot, we made it rock back and forth. I remember when we were looking at some of those undersea movies or movies-- People on boats, The Abyss commentary taught us the term "dry for wet." Yes, yes. The Abyss taught us dry for wet. The other person I learned dry for wet from was Roman Coppola. Who, Roman, early on I asked his advice about some of the things, and Roman was very excited about the movie. Roman knows a lot about things like stop-motion and dry for wet, which is shooting underwater without water, using smoke and lighting to suggest that you're underwater. Which you can only do with miniatures, you can't use actors. You can't use people, although it's been done. In wet-- In crazy suits. - Really? The way you'd shoot, like, the moon.

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They speak Russian with Armenian accents. The rest of you probably won't notice. And there really are Russian mobsters in Little Odessa. Some of them actually wanted to be in the film. Although I always find it's better to cast that kind of role with actors. Real people often don't seem to be very authentic for some reason.

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and coming up the mountains of Afghanistan. It was harder to find authentic looking extras, but I had a great extras casting director, Mito Skellen, who did an amazing job finding faces to populate the various countries that Yuri visits in the course of the film. That's not one of the extras.

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when half the rest of the world is at war. The moment gets a big laugh in screenings of the film, especially in L.A. When the screenwriter writes that he finds a young Iman and a young Naomi in his bed, casting better live up to it. Leah Cabidi and Jasmine Burgess

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John Cameron Mitchell

and I wanted a totally new character to fit into that slot of the film. And she gave an incredible audition, made me crack up, she made me cry. But it was really a year into the workshop process, which is the way we created the film, which was through improvisation over two and a half years with all you guys.

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John Cameron Mitchell

Paul and PJ were in a relationship before they were cast in the film. And, you know, the beautiful energy was... I just remember when I heard that you guys got together before the film got cast, and I was like... I just had this thrill in my heart. It's like, because I loved you both and admired you both as actors so much, and I'm like, oh, my God, they're together. And look, they're together there. And it's like this...

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John Cameron Mitchell

You know, I didn't want to tell you, but, like, I wanted all of you guys in the film before I started auditioning. But I wanted you guys to go through the audition process just in case something felt wrong or the other actors didn't have a rapport. But all four of you, I wanted you guys in.

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We did a DI grade, which film can't quite cope with, but HD can, the way of the future. Clark and Evan, who are Marty and Todd, they were in the first ever read-through. Before I go out to the public with a script, when I say the public, Hollywood, I like to do one read-through with the actors. So I actually flew to LA and I said to the casting director, just get me some,

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kids, you know, some American actors, so I wanted to make sure it feels American, so I didn't look like an idiot putting the script into the system. And we ended up casting Clark Duke and Evan as Todd and Marty, Lindsay as Katie, and Amari as Marcus, and Garrett Brown as the father of Dave, otherwise known as Kick-Ass. So, yeah, so that was...

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The one thing that I try to do, because Hollywood's so silly how the casting process, they sort of cast everyone individually. Or they'll say, hey, let's put George Clooney together with Tom Hanks. That's going to be great. And then it might not be great. You have to see chemistry. It's either there or it isn't. You can't create it. And it's naturally done. So the way I cast is I don't actually cast anyone until I get them all in a room. And I sort of mix and match. And it's pretty tough, because some poor kids got

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Yes. Who was, all you need is kill. He was Emily's stunt double. And incredible Wushu champion. And we kept thinking about who do we want for this? We were going to cast an actor. It was going to be a misdirection. But it was just too much. What we wanted out of this scene was, you know, that this guy basically kicks the living, you know.

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And this woman, Fionn, she is so perfect. The extra casting in these scenes, it's a very big deal. You don't think much about it. But look at all the extras, especially the extras in the church. They're extraordinary. A shout out to all of them. It's one wrong extra can really take a scene apart. Everybody in this was really excellent and helping to convey. We came up with this right before. Improv.

1:35:03 · jump to transcript →

Well, it's all... Look at the light. First of all, she's a brilliant actress. Michelle Monaghan is incredible. And came to us at a point when we hadn't worked out a lot of this business in the camp. We knew this scene. Remember, they were going to have a baby at one point. Yes, they were going to have a baby. Two days before, we lost that. Oh, I cast a baby. I looked at it and was like, this is just too much business in this scene. It's getting in the way. And it was also Luther who said... He's fantastic, too. Oh, he's amazing. Please, it's like... Well, this is a very tricky scene because all the actors are playing...

1:47:34 · jump to transcript →

And I really didn't want to have to shoot this on a green screen or something horrific like that. So Naomi Liston, the locations manager, had to create a road to get us here. The crew had to hike to set. The cast was helicoptered in. It was quite a feat to get out here for this Knut Laker sequence. Also, again, you can't tell, but it was cold as hell. I mean, these guys who were playing the...

1:09:52 · jump to transcript →

has such an incredible face and command and intensity. At her audition, me and Carmel Cochran, the casting director, just started to, like, cry when she was saying this, which there's nothing to cry about, but she's just so intense. And I immediately got up and said, you have the role. She's something else.

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depiction of Oðinn, but that's how he generally appeared to people, if he did, is in a cloak. I see my father and mother. So, Fweylin, who plays Cormleth here, like, her audition for this character was so excellent that this scene became a lot larger. And originally, you didn't see this woman being sacrificed, but Fweylin, when she auditioned, she said, are they going to kill me?

1:43:14 · jump to transcript →

Tim Burton

Yeah, and then we never got the chance to do it. What happened? A boat accident. Arthur Conti playing Jeremy, I think I first met him. He was a friend of my son's. We went to school with him. But I didn't know he was an actor. I didn't know he was the grandson of Tom Conti. And then when we were casting Jeremy, Sophie, the casting director, sent in the tape, and one of them was Arthur, and so...

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Tim Burton

Did you hear me? Lydia? Who are you yelling at? Justin was a great addition to the cast because, I mean, I didn't really know Justin very well. I've seen him in a couple of things and thought he was really strong and really liked him. And then meeting him and then realizing he's a really great writer, too. And so he's a real mixture of things. And for me, he's another one who got into the whole spirit of improv and really helped develop his character. I mean, the character was written, but...

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Tim Burton

You just wait here. I'm going to go find out where we're supposed to go. Make sure to ask where my dad is. The afterlife is not much different from life. It's just only slightly different and darker. In the waiting room, I used a couple of cast members, people that I worked with on Wednesday. The cat lady, I remember having a great look, and she was a good one for me. And then the kid who got, strangely enough,

1:04:18 · jump to transcript →

and featuring Francis the Talking Mule. It was very catch-as-catch-can for Clint until 58, when he was cast in the role of Rowdy Yates on the hour-long CBS Western series Rawhide, opposite Eric Fleming, both men playing cattle drovers.

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He appeared in several all-black, quote-unquote, race films, including 1939's Keep Punching, appeared on stage in both the Federal Theater Project and the American Negro Theater Productions, and then in 1951 was hired onto Amos & Andy forever after typecast as Jones, though CBS forbade him from cashing in on the character in the years after the show went off the air, threatening legal action when he toured with other former Amos & Andy cast members.

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Howard Sprague on The Andy Griffith Show and spinoff Mayberry R.F.D. He was also Mickey Mouth, the father of Donnie Most's Ralph Mouth on Happy Days in the late 70s. Another, the meek, milquetoast husbands who recur through the film. Wife Uncredited, played by Beth Howland, would soon be with Tabak on the cast of Alice in the role of Vera Gorman, for which she would receive four Golden Globe nominations. Born in Boston 1941,

1:15:51 · jump to transcript →

What a great nose this man has. He also did a really good job. Obviously none of these people had ever been in front of a camera before. Casting Bruno and Isabelle...? Because of "The Story of Adele H", Isabelle was already a big star, which wasn't true of Bruno... - No, he was a star of the theatre. ...even though he had just done "The American Friend". There were several films that had made him very well known. He wasn't a big international star, but he was already quite important for the European cinema. Did you choose the cast yourself, or was that...? Yes. I decided that myself. And Kinski as we will see. We always knew we would not make the film without Kinski. That makes sense. For Kinski... The strange thing is that even though we haven't seen him yet, you can already feel his presence. The whole film works towards that. You get closer to him. Right, that is the result of the dialogue, images, and the text. We planned how we would work towards that. In total, I believe that Kinski is in the movie for less than 17 minutes runtime. Nevertheless, he dominates it completely. ...in the graves and the undead. That is great dialogue with the undead and... For this I read a lot of the vampire literature of the 18th and 19th century, and then used parts of it. Neither Bram Stoker nor Murnau have that. You have always been interested in liturgy and things like that, right? Maybe that's the result of a traumatizing religious period when I was younger. When I was 14, I converted to Catholicism. Texts like that, liturgies, or very ritualistic things... The ritual itself. All that resonates somewhere in the background in many of my movies. Along the street... The ritualistic and liturgy necessarily are connected with the film structure and the music. Yes. I also noticed that frequently you use references to the music of the Middle Ages... Yes. Without it being spherical. It confuses me... Then I'll just have to walk. It confuses me that you see yourself in connection with the Middle Ages. I see a lot of Biedermeier here. Laurens, this is not the Middle Ages. That would be mistaken. I am fascinated by the Middle Ages where everything that had been valid for centuries... Knightly life, thinking, and behavior... suddenly fell apart and new ways came about. I'm similarly fascinated with the Migration Period where 1,000 years of antiquity were lost. Afterwards, that knowledge was only preserved in monasteries. It was no longer common knowledge. - Ah, I understand. So here we have a Goethe-like person on his way to the monastery. Here you can associate pretty much anything. It has something very gloomy, and it was shot in fast motion. Here we jump... This was built in the Partnachklamm in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. You enter right behind the ski jumps. I absolutely wanted to shoot there because it is such an impressive location. This is also a theme that already appeared in "Aguirre" or with the waterfalls in "Fitzcarraldo". The interesting ritualistic element reminds me of church choirs. Beautifully done by Florian Fricke. This was a so-called choir organ. It wasn't electronic at all. It sounds as if it was half-natural and half-electronic, but it does sound idiosyncratic and weird. It was not easy to shoot here because it is so very narrow. You can see here that there is barely enough space to let someone pass by. And again Jörg did a great job, I think. Yes. Here we jump to the High Tatras. This is a white water on one of the highest mountains of the High Tatras. These landscapes work seamlessly together. My home, Bavaria, and this landscape have something that makes them look interchangeable. Yes.

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Murnau's film was often interpreted as a foreshadowing of the Nazi regime. Later other films were interpreted in the same way such as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". I am not so sure about that. But I believe that the cinema of that era foreshadowed a vision of something very sinister coming. This is my favorite scene between Isabelle Adjani and Klaus Kinski. The way this was done was exceptionally simple. The vampire coming in through the door doesn't have a reflection in the mirror. You know that vampires don't have reflections but only shadows. This is our special effects guy, Cornelius Siegel, who also built the clock. He had vampire ears and cast a shadow for me. And now there is the step. Kinski stood right next to the camera on the right, outside of the frame. Now the shadow has to disappear. There, and now we see his hand. The way it was done is so simple, it's hard to believe. Kinski is so amazing. I can only thank him on my knees. Do you sometimes see a downside to all this luck? Is it both? Or do you really perceive it as nothing but luck? When I see this... - This is... No doubt. It doesn't bother me at all that I had to go through awful stuff with him. His screaming and yelling, the scandals, his rampaging, when he destroyed locations... I'm not talking about that as much as the fact that he is dead now. You miss him, right? Not really, because after "Cobra Verde", I knew I would no longer work with him. Yes, of course. That was... - It was clear. That was approximately three years before he died. So I can't say that I miss him. But seeing him in character like this, I do think about what an important part of my life he was and the extraordinary experiences we had together. And in that regard I do miss him. There is an empty space. ...nothing in the world. Not even God Himself can touch that. Even though Jonathan does not recognize me anymore... The dialogue is completely different than Murnau would have done it. Come to me and be my ally. That would save your husband and me. The way he suffers because he cannot experience love you would not see in a Murnau movie. The savior can only reside within us. And rest assured... This is a special moment with Kinski. She now shows him the cross... Yes, this is a wonderful scene. ...that she wears around her neck.

1:14:18 · jump to transcript →

He has learned how to use the camera. He knows how to use his tools. Sometimes I wonder who expresses whom. Do you express Kinski or does Kinski express you? I do have the impression that it is almost symbiotic, complex, and sometimes unsteady. We complemented each other. Some things he did, I could have somehow done, too. "Fitzcarraldo", after everything went down the drain and we lost our first cast because the lead actor, Jason Robards, fell severely ill. I had to ask myself who would play the part. I saw two options. Either Kinski does it, but if he doesn't want to or can't do it because he is booked for two years, then I can only do it myself. You actually considered...? I would have also done it. But I thank God from the bottom of my heart that he came in and did it. We often almost switched person, part, and existence. Together we were a volatile combination. We were always a critical mass. With Kinski there were constantly screaming tantrums and other crazy stuff. But I was able to compensate for that, to discipline him, and make him productive for the camera. "Nosferatu, the undead." "He drinks the blood of his victims..." "...and turns them into phantoms of the night." This is also a beautiful piece of work by Henning and Jörg. The green and the blue. - Yes. And the costumes. It is always the combination of many different things. For example, the type of flower bouquet on the table hit the mark exactly. Topor always reminds me a little of Lorre. Yes, if you put it like that, he also reminds me of him. But he was far more eccentric and convoluted. "...an unnatural creature. He has to obey laws of nature. The sign of the cross compels him." Yes, this is again completely typical for the genre. "The sacrament can make it impossible for him..." "...to return to his lair." "If he misses the cock crow because of a woman of pure heart," "...daylight will kill him." The idea of a woman with a pure heart has played a role in literature for centuries. Yes, his is also such a beautiful scene. Yes, it's wonderful. Almost tableau-like. The way how he pushes him away. What does my master command? You can't copy that. I said earlier... - That's the expressionistic... There can also not be any eye contact between them. Almost like Munch. Great. ...the Black Death are with you. People also laugh during this scene. They don't laugh at the movie, but they recognize that inside of us there is something stylized and weird. It's difficult to pinpoint what exactly that is.

1:17:59 · jump to transcript →

Well, you saw a ton of people for this, right? Didn't you see... I have to tell you, I found an old casting sheet in my garage, and I actually saw my agent, and he came in to read for Brad. Wow. Amazing. But you saw all of those people that ended up doing the Hughes movies and other stuff? Yeah, we saw Ally Sheedy, do you remember her? Yeah. And Meg Tilly, and...

1:49 · jump to transcript →

You were there all the time, which was so great, so totally great. Now, unfortunately, when we shot a lot of this stuff, they had been up all night, and so they went from looking like teenagers to looking like 30-year-olds. Yeah. Robert looks like he's been down a long road there. And actually, there were two real-life teenagers in our cast here. One was Phoebe, who was really a teenager. She was 19.

3:33 · jump to transcript →

Because those guys don't know the joke. Or at least then, all the stoners would just be funny in ways they had no idea they were funny. And so it was really kind of almost a violation when Don Phillips said, we've got this kid coming in from TAPS, and he's supposed to be great. And then it was Sean, who I don't think even read. I don't think he even auditioned. We just hired him.

26:08 · jump to transcript →

It's also the red of the video drum set on the television screen, so they are literally being bathed in the signal. Just before this film was cast in July 1981, Debbie Harry released her first solo album, Cuckoo, whose cover, designed by the Swiss artist H.R. Giger, showed her face being horizontally penetrated by four skewers. That cover may well have influenced Debbie's casting and the directions taken by Cronenberg's screenplay.

16:31 · jump to transcript →

Carol Spear told me that it was painted a particular shade of red that was reputed to have driven prisoners of war deranged under steady exposure. I'm going to audition. I was made for that show. It has something that you don't have, Max. It has a philosophy, and that is what makes it dangerous.

31:36 · jump to transcript →

so her casting was probably predicated to some extent on a plausible resemblance to both Debbie Harry and Julie Kaner, though they actually hardly blur at all in the final cut. Sonia was born in Ottawa Valley, Ontario in September 1958, and she has had her most lasting success in television, where she has worked steadily in such series as Falcon Crest, Airwolf, Odyssey 5, and Street Legal, for which she's won a Gemini Award.

39:31 · jump to transcript →

These are people who you believe are local anchors. And when we get to the newsroom itself, you'll see that they're part of the cast. Thank you. Here's that red deal. I'll stop talking about the red deal. You'll see it for yourself. I don't think there'll be any Q&A.

11:43 · jump to transcript →

I never told you the reason I was telling you everything before. Hey. Those audition tapes I sent out, I've been hired by your network for the Washington Bureau, so I'll probably be seeing you at work. What? Sorry.

19:09 · jump to transcript →

It was a surprise, and so we at Embassy... You want copy? Yes, all 15. Everybody you see in the newsroom now was carefully cast. Dissolve to the rifle. Now, should I... Just a two-second dissolve! During the research, I was at the NBC station, and I actually saw somebody run, and I said, thank God, they're still running against deadline. And that's what this was based on. ...well's enduring portrait.

22:10 · jump to transcript →

I'm so glad that we could have Tandy Newton because we have been looking for this cast for quite a long time. We had interviewed so many stars, so many good actors. We tried to find someone who had a similar quality of Audrey Hepburn or a little bit like Ingrid Berman. We had a meeting in London with me, Tom, and Tandy. And then we find Tandy, she's so charming, so cute, and she's extremely smart.

14:38 · jump to transcript →

For Schoenberg, I mean Ethan Hunt's boss, we were trying to cast the English actor Ian McCullen, but somehow he had a schedule problem because he was working on a play and we all liked him so much. He's such a great actor, but somehow his schedule didn't work out. We also have a schedule problem because we got to shoot a scene right away and we tried to figure out how to use some of the actors.

24:03 · jump to transcript →

I hate casting process. It always bothered me. And I have never liked it, you know, because I'm the man that it's hard to say no. Sometimes it's so sad for me, you know. But for my theory, whoever could come into the room, they're all talented. They're all good, you know. And it's so difficult to make a choice. When you see somebody, they're all looking for a chance and they all wanted to be part of the movie so eagerly.

56:17 · jump to transcript →

the camera panned over so it looked like the house was flying up into frame and it was completely a mockery of Star Wars. How'd you come up with Kristen? Joe, you're doing a wonderful job of hosting the DVD, I must tell you. Joe Kramer, everyone. About, I'm sorry? Kristen. Kristen Lehman. Francesca. Kristen was one of the last people cast and we were having a great deal of trouble finding the right

8:32 · jump to transcript →

And that's the thing with Benicio. You're never going to get what you expect, but you're always going to get something great. Yeah. And I love this look right here. It's one of my favorite moments right here, where he just means. He does such a great job with his eyes. And here is our man Dylan Cussman. Yay. So great. He was cast literally, literally at the last minute.

26:15 · jump to transcript →

She came to Los Angeles. It was the day before we had to cast the role. And we went out for dinner, and dinner turned into coffee, and coffee turned into being out at three in the morning at Cantor's with myself and Ken and Mark Ebner and a group of the most offensive people I've ever known in my life. These friends of mine. Are they going to be on the other commentary track? Oh, God, I hope not. And...

48:07 · jump to transcript →

of a large family who had prominence both politically and otherwise in the state of Virginia, and therefore was wealthy enough at certain points to actually be able to influence people at a fairly high level. I cast Gary Oldham for this part. I've never worked with Gary before, but I think he's one of the finest actors we have.

16:54 · jump to transcript →

humor if we can find it. In fact, I cast Ray from time to time, as often as I can, try and go to the gym. And I was in the gym in Los Angeles, and I kept seeing Ray Liotta. Occasionally, we'd actually be riding on a bicycle or treadmill or something where I didn't know him.

44:18 · jump to transcript →

But Il Mostro was so complicated a story to tell, which really didn't go anywhere, that eventually we had to cut him out. In fact, the guy that I cast as Il Mostro, who did a good job, he's not an actor, is this guy here, the guy with the lectern, where we bring them together, where we actually see Il Mostro witness Hannibal dealing with

1:10:27 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

Andy wasn't originally going to be Smeagol, was he? We sort of cast Andy for the voice way back at the beginning, and we had ideas for other actors, didn't we, for Smeagol? Sort of, it's amazing because it seems so obvious now, doesn't it? It took us a while to get to the point where we thought, well, obviously we should have Andy. This sequence always felt like a good place to start the movie because it's like an origin of the Ring story, and if you start with that and you end with it going into the crack of doom, it had a kind of nice unity to it.

1:32 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

John Noble's a really interesting actor. He's someone that is not very well known, just from the mere fact he hasn't made many films, but he's a very experienced stage actor in Australia. And Denethor's a very Shakespearean character, and John's done a lot of Shakespeare. And when we auditioned him, he was making the lines come to life and giving them meaning in a way that I'd never heard before. The archaic language was suddenly making sense to me because he was putting

45:45 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

all the emphasis on the right words and delivering it in such a wonderful way. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to cast him, was I just loved his interpretation of that language. But it is not now. We also didn't want to put a beard on him, because I think when you read the book, he's even described as having a beard in the book, but we just ended up with so many...

46:13 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence and Akiva Goldsman

These are our, now that we're gonna start to see our creatures and things here, what we did was early on we were actually gonna use prosthetics. And we had cast a group of 40 dancers and parkour acrobats to be our creatures. And we had outfitted them with all these prosthetics and these skin suits and clay and ash and all this kind of stuff. It was very elaborate and we got them out in the first night in Washington Square Park.

33:54 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence and Akiva Goldsman

You know, we wanted to shoot this in front of Grand Central. It was one of the trickiest things. The city had never shut this viaduct down before, and we needed it for six days. So they let us do it over three consecutive weekends, six days. So we would actually shoot for two days, go away for a week, shoot for two days. We really lucked out again with weather. You know, there was one moment where you see the mannequin move, and we had actually had a little thing running where we cast people to play our mannequins. And in the background of some shots, you can see they're real people playing the mannequins and not

46:17 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence and Akiva Goldsman

I'm running in on the haze. I always liked the idea that, you know, you might think it's his wife and daughter, but then you quickly see that it's not. It's kind of a hot Brazilian girl. Hot Brazilian girl. That's Lise Braga, whom we love. We cast her first off. She was the first person we met with. She was...

1:02:27 · jump to transcript →

Kent Jones

Yeah, great film. - [Anderson] Yes. Now, we have here three important actors in the cast. Ralph Fiennes, who is someone who I've known for a number of years, and I've always loved Ralph in movies, and I'd seen him on the stage too, and this part was written for Ralph. And, you know, I don't know who else in the world would play this part.

10:51 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

But he has such an interesting voice as a painter that this painting, it has a-- There's an aspect to it where you know it's not exactly a period painting, but he brought so much detail that is like Holbein, and the way he did the furs and the velvet. And he actually-- We cast a boy-- His name is Ed Munro. --who sat for him. And the whole painting was done-- Milena Canonero made a costume for him, and the boy sat for him. And anyway, he's a wonderful painter.

33:14 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

And living in real igloos that they built for the movie. I remember Michael Chapman talking about what a-- An igloo is a wonderful place to shoot at first, because it's like a-- It's a silk. The whole igloo is a wonderful silk. It glows. But then as your fire continues, eventually you're in just a kind of brown... You're in like an oven. And it loses some of the luminous quality that it has at the beginning. So then you have to ask your cast to build you a new igloo.

56:09 · jump to transcript →

while we were shooting it. And I was always hoping that someone will build a store like this. That's what you hope. You make a movie, you go. Yes. Everybody's like, I want people to want to be in this store. There's Sean. Sean Harris hiding in the record booth there. And this is Hermione Korfeld. Very talented. Absolutely wonderful, wonderful actress who we cast off of a headshot and came in and just really was, she really clicked with you. It was a really surprising chemistry with you. She was terrific.

6:23 · jump to transcript →

The armor, our props. Simon Atherton. Yeah, he did. Our whole crew. I mean, the crew on this movie, thank you, because these sequences don't get done without that kind of commitment. And you can't take for granted the fact that what's happening in the midst of all of this chaotic sequence, that's a full opera that they have staged. And a separate opera director came in. We cast the entire thing. And all of that had to be...

31:53 · jump to transcript →

All that cast, we just picked up these little shots. And you remember, you came to the set and you were like, what are we doing? And I was like, I just, I've got this idea. I just want to feel like a little bit of a, it's almost like a great escape moment. You know, I want to feel like a buddy moment between the two of you. And as soon as you looked at the shot, you were like. I got it. Yeah, you're like, I know what to do. And you two guys just did it. It was so great. I like this idea of the old IMF.

45:02 · jump to transcript →

interested in having dialogue and using more about the dialogue, whereas it seems to me the dialogue here is just functional. It's basically just helping to illustrate each separate stage of the marriage. And also the change in Cain. People will think what I tell them to think. Yeah. Wells lamented at one point when he was talking about an actor that he says, I'm the sort of actor who always gets cast as a king.

53:25 · jump to transcript →

It has to do with his bearing, his voice, his size. But he was fond of makeup as well, and was fond of the makeup in this film, and enjoyed getting older. Also, I mean, he was treated as a king while he was growing up. I mean, you know, it seems like that has a lot to do with... Well, that may be so, but I think as an actor type, if you're casting a play, he's a king type. Wasn't he ever in love with her? He married for love. Love.

53:54 · jump to transcript →

And notice, you know, maybe it's false modesty of putting Orson Welles at the bottom of the cast list. Yeah. You know, like... Yeah, but remember, it has two sets of credits. One at the beginning, which it says, a Mercury production by Orson Welles. Yes. And at the end, where Welles' name barely appears. Yeah, I see that actually Mark Robeson, who was a...

1:58:32 · jump to transcript →

Film Stephen Prince

provide an epic context for this iteration of what has always been the essential Kurosawa vision, of the self cast upon a lonely voyage of discovery. It's a very nice shot. Kurosawa uses visual effects very tastefully. The knife that he carries bears suggestions of suicide, lingering here as a possibility. Kurosawa's brother Heigo killed himself with a knife.

12:05 · jump to transcript →

Film Stephen Prince

in a bit of ultra-weird casting. Kurosawa and Scorsese met in the 1980s when Scorsese was valiantly trying to put the issue of film preservation on the industry's agenda. Kodak's Eastman Color film stocks were fading badly. The dyes were unstable, threatening to destroy the heritage of cinema. Scorsese was very active in trying to rally industry support for a solution to the problem.

1:06:57 · jump to transcript →

Film Stephen Prince

He is most closely identified with the films of Yasujiro Ozu, for whom Ryu's plentiful appearances became a signature element of style, as Toshiro Mifune's presence did for Kurosawa. He made 14 films for Ozu, and the first of these was in 1928. He was 84 years old when he worked on Dreams, and his stature commanded attention and respect from the cast and crew.

1:43:13 · jump to transcript →

E. Elias Merhige

a lot of ideas that are reflected in the actual story that you're going to see in Shadow the Vampire with this idea of science meeting the sort of ancient world, you know, when Murnau goes out into the mountains with his cast and crew to create this vampire film and chooses to use these actual locations, these actual places where the Templars once lived and fought and laughed and

4:21 · jump to transcript →

E. Elias Merhige

which would kill him and that which is something that he hasn't been able to see for centuries. Like a child, he's sort of casting his own shadow over that which he longs for, these images of the sun and images of the clouds. It's a very beautiful scene and it was a very important scene and I basically begged my crew to stay on for an extra 45 minutes to film this scene because otherwise it would not be in the film.

41:01 · jump to transcript →

E. Elias Merhige

And here Murnau is manipulating his cast and crew very much the way Carrie did in the previous scene with the peasants for an effect to create this ultimate film that takes you to a higher level, to a higher level of experience, to a higher level of perception. You will get a nice hot meal in Wismar right after we're done with the ship.

57:23 · jump to transcript →

many people probably would have noticed, but it is an interesting little detail. These two guys are really, real fun to work with. And Alan. They're just, I really had a great time with this cast. I mean, same with the last one, I've just been really blessed with really fun actors. Not only great actors, I think, but just, they're really fun. I did not want your past history

20:32 · jump to transcript →

And, of course, the cast is from everywhere, so... My co-editor, Kelly Matsumoto, cut all of this fight sequence here and did a fantastic job. There's a ton of footage and fight cutting is always very complicated. I think she really kept things moving here very well. You go back there, there's a good bent...

30:00 · jump to transcript →

all their work at Imaginary Forces. And just to finish off with one last applaud to Alan Silvestri, the music here is probably the best in the picture. Again, I've got to say thank you to my entire cast and crew. They made me look good. All right. Thanks, Bob. See you next time. Bye.

2:02:41 · jump to transcript →

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland

This is one of the scenes that was part of the casting process, wasn't it? Yeah. It was Selina's fall in love and fuck lines. Yeah. There's a bit of Danny's writing coming up here. Did we keep that?

31:15 · jump to transcript →

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland

And in this scene, it's really our first attempt, having laid a little bit of groundwork to try and create a relationship, a spark between the two of them. I probably went over this scene in a way more than any other because this was the scene that we were using in casting of the two of them. And so we heard this scene again and again and again with lots of different actors and

54:44 · jump to transcript →

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland

This is our really big continuity error coming. Oh, yeah, you mean Marvin there on the right. That's Marvin there, who you'll see later appearing as the chained-up Mailer, already infected. That's because we changed cast after we'd shot that film and promoted Marvin into the part of Mailer. And we had to...

1:07:17 · jump to transcript →

And so it was pretty interesting to go back to the trailer with all the little other doggy smells. My dogs were just constantly like, what the, what is going on, Mom? Who have you been hanging out with? Exactly. And it's also interesting that Charlize's dogs are also all rescue dogs. Johnny Lee Miller was another terrific addition to the cast. Great guy.

29:47 · jump to transcript →

and then complete her mission. Savandra, show them where you are. Do you see? It's interesting that we really did have a multinational cast. The hit squad, we hired them all out of Berlin. And...

53:42 · jump to transcript →

Giroux, played by Patterson Joseph, was out of London. Sophie from London. Johnny Lee Miller from London. Amelia Warner, who plays Una, we cast out of London. Martin from New Zealand. Really was a United Nations cast. And Pete. Oh, and Pete. Pete Possilthwaite. Great Pete. My God. You just look into his eyes and you just melt.

54:11 · jump to transcript →

to kill. So what do you do when you have a lot of time? You get into complicated puzzles. This was also the scene we used when we were casting. So I heard this text thousands and thousands of times and we've gone through it thoroughly.

21:01 · jump to transcript →

grown up, though they're so young. They are 12 as they are in the film. And we had a casting process that lasted over like 12 months and we met I think a thousand kids to find those two. But they really make this film a lot and

31:15 · jump to transcript →

A critical moment for the actors, Cora and Lina, to kiss. Of course, everything else was nothing compared to this. But they do. And for me, this is the best film kiss ever. With blood. I love this. What did you think when you saw them first? Well, the first time I saw them together was you showed me this early casting thing.

1:37:34 · jump to transcript →

a little bit of bridge building between mother and son, and now another abortive attempt at romance. Isabella, I totally love the way she looks in this sequence. You see the beauty of her face and the loveliness and the intelligence of her acting. This is a young woman who did not speak English, really, when I cast her.

56:00 · jump to transcript →

Um, the actors here are just so charismatic. And all of them, to the person, just the loveliest people I've ever worked with. And I've worked with a lot of people. And, uh, if I did come back to do the fourth one, it would only be because I can't bear that I won't work with this cast again. Um, somehow, we have to make that happen.

1:18:23 · jump to transcript →

two sequels and a third one coming, and XXX had one sequel with a cast change. And, you know, I didn't do those for reasons. There are too many new ideas and too many new things to explore.

1:40:14 · jump to transcript →

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.

9:10 · jump to transcript →

Patrick Tatopoulos

Bring them in. SO, like, the nobles are coming now. When we just started to play with the movie... ...and the look, the nobles should be the one that... The only touches of colour in the movie. Because we're in the Underworld world... ...Which is very blue and brown. We're trying to bring colour from those guys. They're the only few people that should be looking... ...also like the actual period of time, which is 12th century. And, you know, the vampire world is a little tweaked. It goes, you know, it feels futuristic and past. Those guys should feel like the period. That's more or less, the way the people look at the time. So it was fun to do something, in some ways, truly period-y. This is our biggest set, the great hall set. When you see the wide shot, the entire thing is set. We built the entire thing. There's no set extensions at all. lt was a huge set, but it was one of the first things that we shot in the film. And being in that big cathedral-type space... ...Was great for everybody, because it really got everybody... ...1nto the spirit of the film, and really feeling positive... ...about the production design and how great everything was gonna look. Tim Raby, I mean, when we did the casting... -... Tim Raby is playing the, you know... - Janosh. I just love the way... Yeah, he was fun. He's good actor. He's fantastic actor. I also love the way you did when Viktor actually rushes over... ...I love that you stayed in Coloman. Yeah. - You just see that... It's almost like, watch this look, and it looks like: "Oh, God, here we go." And he just, I guess, supernatural freak of motion... ...and Coloman's look was like, "Oh, shit." It's coming now, and now. Remember this, though? The first time we shot this stunt, they forgot to turn the camera on. The guy had to go back and do it over again. "What do you mean the camera was not on?" It's, like, one of those classic movie moments. So I always felt we went slightly overboard on the impact. But, you know, it's an old castle. You could believe the rock Is bit... - I love that shot. Oh, yeah, this one. It was littlke much, but... Viktor giving benediction to the other nobles.

31:53 · jump to transcript →

Patrick Tatopoulos

Now, there's a very Underworld prop. Yeah, it shows up all over the place. - You know, this was something that.... There's many things to.... Actually, that I can actually address now. I'm hearing questions that are asked, and I don't really get to answer them. The.... The Sonja back-story... You know, Sonja was always the one that.... Well, Selene reminded Viktor of his daughter... ...and there was a similarity between them. And when we actually shot the death scene of Sonja... ... ln Underworld 1, we actually... People talking about, "Why is she blond?" "And now you've got Rhona Mitra, and she's got dark hair." "And couldn't the filmmakers just go back and watch the first film?" Of course we watched the first film. And it really just came down to a budget in the first one. And, Richard, you'd probably remember... ... that we literally, we had... We were given the okay to actually shoot that. One day. We got one day. - That back-story. One day, and no money, and one actress... ... that even remotely had an interesting look, but had blond hair. And at the time... Then we had, like, a day to find her too. And it bugged me at the time, I'm thinking: But it's supposed to be Sonja who reminded... Viktor. - Viktor. And so she has to have dark hair. And we asked the actress to dye her hair... ...she wanted more money. It was one of those things that you just think... And it just couldn't happen. We literally did not have the money to pay to dye her hair... ...and then have it coloured back again. And we didn't have time to build a wig that looked appropriate in one day. And so there we have it. And Sonja was more of a blond girl. And so that's.... I would actually now love to, in some version... ...take the death scene that we have now... ...and put it in Underworld 7. Funny you should say that. That's what I was doing all day today. - What do you mean? Recutting the genetic memories using footage from 3... For fun? - Yeah. For who? For a future... Exactly, just to have it in the bank. Cool. - Yeah. You know, there's a.... You know, I'd love to see this whole series all put together... ...because I think, unlike a lot of series... ... this actually does tie in fairly well, hopefully, to the other films... ...and actually arrange them in a proper timeline. With this one first. - Yeah, it really does. And therefore, kind of swap out... And also, just money-wise, we didn't have the ability... ...to do the kind of set and setting for her death scene in the original one. We had to revamp the crypt, which I never think really sold... There was an interesting thing when I watched it again... ...While we're doing this one, that there was actually Lycans... ...people standing around the room. Yeah. It was interesting. Actually, when you first talked to me about directing this one... ...I was thinking she was gonna be blond... ...because of that, because you had established that. I was not thinking. When I was starting to think about casting... ... I was like, "Oh, so she's Eastern European blond. That's what she's gonna be." - No, not at all. I was actually.... I was amazed at how many people actually, for a scene... ...that shows up for, you know, maybe 30 seconds... ...1n the original film, how much everybody really remembered... ... that she had, you know, blond hair, and.... I guess of course they're going to. For me, it's just... To do an entire film where the whole basis... ...of Viktor saving Selene is that there was such a parallel... ...to his own daughter that she had to be dark hair.

36:47 · jump to transcript →

Richard Wright, producer. Mans, director. Bjorn Stein, director. Gary Lucchesi, producer. James McQuaide, executive producer and visual effects supervisor. What, you get two titles? - Well, you know. Big shot. So here we are... ...at the beginning of the fourth Underworld movie. That's right. Been a lot of them. The first appearance of Len Wiseman's... ...new logo. - New logo. The world premiere. - In 3D, no less. Oh, my God. It's like our life flashing before our eyes. Yeah. We've lived through these. Exactly. I think it's fun to say that... ...I think we cut the... Edited the whole film for eight weeks... ...and then we spent three weeks editing the first three minutes. That's exactly right. - It was crazy how to get it... And it was, "Shall we do a recap or shall we not? Does it feel cheesy with a recap or is it good?" But I think that everybody agreed in the end... ... that we have this wonderful library or cupboard of wonderful images... ...SO let's use it. And it's a wonderful way to get into the mood... ...and this is the world. lt has been a while too, since Underworld 2... ...where this one picks up from. We're reminding ourselves of all the characters. It's not cool, but in the end it... Wow, it really works. Yeah, I had a friend-- We had a premiere yesterday, actually... ...and I had a friend who hasn't seen the prior ones... ...and she said it was helpful... ...to just get into the soul of what this is, so.... And it's so nice to see Michael Sheen... ...and Scott Speedman and Bill Nighy. Yeah. - Losing their heads. killed the elders.... Yeah. One of the things we really liked when we got the script... ...was that number four... That it was the beginning of something new. That it was not just number 17 or something. It was.... The trilogy was done... ...and now we got into something new... ...which is exactly what we're watching right now. And this was a big thing how... That we wanted it to be brutal... ...and hand-held and gritty, using a camera language... ... that hasn't been used in Underworld before. Yeah. To turn everything upside down. This is another part of the film where we did... ...a tremendous amount of work trying to figure out... ... how to frame the fact that we're 15 years in the future... ...and the world has changed... ...and how you do that economically... ...In a different camera style than the rest of the film. Because this is in 2D, not in 3D as the rest of the film is. One of the biggest inspirations for this intro... ...Was actually the Gavras video, the M.I.A. video. What's the name of that? "Born Free." - "Born Free." Oh, that guy. - He's great. This guy, he's just at casting... ...and we realized that we need something... ...and we cut this rollout and then suddenly we needed him... ...SO this is his casting tape. - His audition tape, yeah. Yeah. - Yep. Used it in the film. I love that head shot. James really enhanced this with the visual effects he put into it. These creatures, yeah. The creature shots. Because they weren't shot that way. Yes. They're hard to come by, these creatures. That one was a real one. That's a real one. - Yeah. A real Werewolf. Yeah, we had a few. - Yeah. We can cast them in the forests of Vancouver. What we just saw... That girl on the wall... ...IS Kate's stunt double. - Yeah. She did... - Alicia. Alicia Vela-Bailey, yeah. She took iPhotos of her body for each bruise she got. She was black and blue, this girl... ...and she's the toughest girl I've ever met. Went to the hospital more than once too. Yeah. - Yeah. But as he said, the toughest girl I ever met. Yeah, always with a smile. Always with a smile. And you will see her getting thrown around a lot in this one. All of those flying-into-the-wall sort of things... . It's actually a person, Alicia, getting thrown in. Or Kate sometimes, as well. - Yeah. So we wanted to start off in 2D, gritty... ...and then since this is 3D movie... ...we wanted it to... Really make it big... ...when we see Kate for the first time, and that's when we switch to 3D. This shot was actually planned to start inside the fire... .In the beginning, inside a skull... ...and then going through the flames... ...a Vampire skull, but it became too tedious. That was the four-hour version. Yeah, this... We're very European. European version. Very... It was also a shot that we fought to keep in... ...and there was some obstacle to that... ...but we succeeded in keeping it in. Obstacle being money. - I love the way you say that. We ran out of money. And you see the surroundings here is-- We tried to create... Since this is the first time we introduce a man really... ...In the Underworld franchise... ...we wanted to find architecture... ... for the city that wasn't, you know, just another city. And after a lot of thinking and looking.... You know, we were thinking the first film was shot in Budapest... ...and it had that gothic feel to it and... By the way, great blood splatter there. - I love it. That was beautiful. And then we found something-- If you haven't been to Eastern Europe... ... you see all these beautiful houses... ...but next to them you have these concrete, hard, depressing buildings. And there's something called brutalism. You mean brutalism? - Brutalism, yes. A word we've heard 700,000 times during the making of this film. You were insanely annoying by just trying to put brutalism in... ...brutalism in, put brutalism in... ...to find what we call neo-Goth. Which is a new Goth. - Neo-Goth, yeah. This plate's actually from Underworld 2. This was.... We were doing tests for that boat that exploded... ...and we went back and found the footage... ...and stole that plate and revamped it here for what you see. Yeah. The secret of every great artist is knowing where to steal. Where stuff is hidden, in this case. - Yeah. It was one of the biggest challenges that we didn't have Scott Speedman. So that was a face replacement of a stuntman... ...and I think that was the trickiest part to pull off, I think, in the movie... ...because we're setting up this love story. She's running for her love and we don't have the real guy. Yeah. - But I think because of the recap... ...we do get that.... Do you see that city in--? That city is all CG behind her that's burning. And I remember James had said, "What do you think?" And I remember we asked about that, like, months ago... ...or half a year ago, and I forgot about it... ...and then you just come up with this. It was like a birthday present. I was so happy. All these backgrounds in it... ...makes It so much richer. And remember this next shot coming up too of Kate swimming... ...was really the last footage that we shot on the movie. Yeah. In the tank. We all had this great concern that, you know... ...can Kate swim or not? She ended up being a fantastic swimmer. She was great. She was.... This is more than swimming. It's performing underwater. She held her breath so well. lt was unbelievable. We were.... - Yeah. Well, that's typical Kate, you know. Everything she does, when she does it is, like, perfect. Yeah. - Yeah. But filmmaking's about being afraid... ...things aren't gonna work. - Right. We had anticipated the worst and we were wrong. And this is-- Originally the Underworld title was here. This is our homage to Tree of Life. - Yes. We had the title here at one point... ...and this is a transition... ...which is very abstract and weird, actually. But I'm happy with it. These were the things... ...that I remember it was hard to describe. We were very sure exactly how we wanted it... ...but we couldn't really say "this is how to do it"... ...because we'd never seen it before. But now when I see it... James, who did this? - Celluloid. Fucking great. - It's great. Yeah. It's great too, because we added the spin... ... sort of late in the equation. This may be an intellectual idea. Hopefully it works. To sort of make the audience... ...particularly when you see it in 3D, disoriented. Kind of like Kate was as a result of being underwater... ...being Knocked out and waking up 12 years later. There's something about spinning... ... that sort of makes you visually confused. Also, not only the spinning, but also the kind of... ...stop and motion feel to it, that it's... - Time passing? lt has a time-lapse feel to it... ...which, you know, was a subtle way of saying time has passed... ...actually, 12 years. - It's one of my favorite shots. Yes. - This is beautiful. Another very disorienting shot, though. So this is actually Alicia hanging here... ...and it's Kate's face replacement on her. Yeah. And the ice is CG. - Yeah. Smoke is CG. I am glad that we put the name on the glass there, "Subject 1." Yeah. So nobody would get into the wrong tank. No, but the thing is, I don't think it's just for like: "Oh, it's for the idiots." But I think it looks good. Subject 1 sounds brutal, I think, in a very good way. There's that word again. - Yeah. And remember that set initially... ...when we first saw it, had all these shower curtains in front of it... ...and we asked Claude to remove them. Yeah. - Oh, right, yeah. One thing that we really wanted to do in this movie was that... And we told Brad, who was the excellent second-unit director... ...and stunt coordinator, we said that we very.... We want to hurt Selene a lot. "Could you find somebody we can do that to?" Yeah. Because she wasn't that hurt in the other movies. We said, "We really want to--" Do you think anybody's listening to you right now? The naked girl, I'm watching that instead. Everybody's so nervous when you shoot something like this... ...but Kate was so cool. She was. Yeah. - Yeah. It was nothing. - Here we have Stephen Rea. Yep, there he is. Our Irish. - Yeah. I think, yeah... I really liked working with him. He was... Stephen is a handful, but he's also.... He gives you what you need. Is there anybody in this film that ended up doing their native accent? The North Americans were doing English... Kate. - Yeah, Kate, that's true. Everybody else was doing a different accent. Sandrine Holt there. - Sandrine Holt. Hurry. Releasing... ...maximum dose of fentanyl.

0:10 · jump to transcript →

Oh, we started watching the movie. - Yeah. This is cool. - Will she make it? Got her clothes on. One of the things that we were very keen on... ... that we wanted, was that we wanted.... We had this ambition... ... that the audience should have their first breath... ...after the first 10 minutes... ...when she gets dropped off the truck... ...which we will see. And when I was watching the premiere yesterday with my wife... ...when she get-- She: At exactly that spot and I felt, "Wow... ... this was exactly what we were aiming for." I think the audience was a little surprised too. We had the premiere last night so we got to watch... ... the movie with a big audience. But they were surprised at the level of violence of the movie. This is a tougher movie than the other movies. Selene is a lot more badass in this movie. She kills a lot of people. - Yeah. Went through a lot more buckets of blood too. A sign of the times, I suppose. Yeah, you'll wish you hadn't done that. This was one of the big scenes in the trailer... ... that we had shown Screen Gems right at the beginning. I love the little splat of blood hitting there. That was sweet. I repeat, full containment... No, there was buckets of blood. I mean, it's.... Violence Is an aesthetic I think that, I mean, goes a hundred years back. Yep. Have we actually done a body count in this? It's a lot. You know what? I did once. Did you? What'd it end up being? - I can't remember. Counting Lycans and humans. Yeah, dead-- Corpses. Now, this moment was an additional shoot moment. It was the first thing we sh... - Wes Bentley, yeah. It's the last and first... - The uncredited Wes Bentley. The first and the last... - This jump was the first thing we shot. First day of shooting. - Look at this boom here. There. That hit in that shot, was Alicia... ...our excellent stunt girl, who just smacked... It sounded like the worst sound I ever heard. It's like, "We killed the stunt double on the first shot." And then you said, "Let's go again." The first day of shooting went so well... ... that I walked away thinking, "God, this is gonna be an easy movie." Oh, my God! - You were wrong. I was wrong. It was so difficult. This was the toughest by far we've done. They're not supposed to be easy. No. - There's a direct correlation... ...between the amount of suffering to do a movie... ...and how well it turns out. We never did a film, like, with this big budget kind of thing... ...but I think you always end up in the same position, you know? You don't have enough money. You always... Imagination can always outrun money. Yeah. - Yeah. The 3D made it more complicated too. Yeah, the 3D really-- You know, nobody had really done it. You know, how to plan it and how to shoot it and.... This is where we want people to breathe. Yeah, here. Here's brutalism again. - Yeah. I was talking with the cinematographer... ...ocott Kevan, last night and... Who did a great job. - He did a great job. And the person... I introduced him to my daughter. My daughter said, "Was this your first 3D movie?" He said, "No, my second. I made all my mistakes on the first one... ...So this one I could get right." Yeah, he was the only guy kind of who had done it. Yes. - And he kept telling us: "It'll take a long time." I remember-- Gary, you said: - It did. "If we go down the Amazonas, it'd be nice... ... to have someone who's been there." Done that trip. That was true. Scott was really there. - Yeah. He was great. But it's also-- It has been very... ...weird. - First shot of Kate. This was the first shot of Kate. Yeah. - First night. That terrible night when it would not stop raining. This was one of those.... - There's a gale right now. When the duck flew into the light? - Yeah. It was a duck who came from the sky... ...and landed in the middle of the set. The camera broke down about four times. Yeah. No, just shooting 3D was a weird experience in that sense... ... that we hadn't done it before and all the rules that you get... ... from various people who has done it... ...Just turn out to be not true or.... - Bullshit. Total bullshit. I don't know if the Red Epic that we used, the camera... ... kind of discarded some of them so it actually works now... ...and it's also.... You have to realize you're telling a story... ... you're not doing a 3D ride. Although this movie is like a ride but... No, but I think what.... True, because... .all these people that we talked about, they were technicians... ...and not filmmakers or storytellers. So they speak about the perfection of everything... ...and that's not really interesting, perfection... ...ecause what you go for is emotion, and emotion is not always perfect. It's also... You know, 3D is in its infancy. People really don't know the rules. When we took those classes... ... there'd been like six movies made and so people didn't know. Half of them were not real 3D, either. - Correct. Where you actually were using binocular cameras... ...to shoot the entire movie, which we did. I don't think any... There wasn't a rule they gave us... ...that we didn't break. - No. I mean, it was... - No. Everything. This is that hybrid POV, as we Call it. It's when Kate starts seeing through.... She thinks she sees through Michael's eyes... ...but it's actually India's. Eve, her daughter. This is so hard, I think, to decide as a filmmaker... ...when you do this. What it should look like? - No. Not technically, but I'm saying the suspension of disbelief... ...of is it Michael or not, and.... We didn't know... All the marketing now you've seen... ... you know, It's all out that she has a daughter in this one... ...which, you know, when we were planning this.... Hopefully that would be the secret. It's gonna be a surprise, yeah. - "Wow, she has a daughter." But.... And I think what helps us Is that we... - Michael Ealy, by the way. Michael Ealy. - Appearance of Michael Ealy. What helps us is the pace that we had to this. You just move so fast that, you know... ... you don't leave time for the mind to think that much. But it's.... Yeah, it's interesting. One of the scenes we shot here is outside in Vancouver. Vancouver-- When we heard we're shooting Underworld... ...and we're shooting it in Vancouver... ...we thought that was pretty strange because it's not gothic. But as Bjorn was talking about... ...when we found the neo-Goth and the brutalism... ...Vancouver Is fantastic. - We'll start counting... ...how many times that word comes. - You do that. It might be even more people than die. Yeah. A couple of words about Kate.... She's a movie star and a really, really good actress. Sometimes that's not the same thing. But she is, and she's very fun to work with. And she... You know, she's British, she always... Theo James. - Theo James. Very witty, yeah. - Young English actor making his... Who's also extremely funny. - Those damn Brits. Yeah. He's so funny. And you're around people who are gorgeous and funny... . It takes its toll on you. Yeah, it doesn't go together usually, yeah. No, and you just stand there in the middle and talking really bad English. I love this shot we did with Stephen. I remember we were shooting it, he was really somewhere else. He was... That was a scene we added after we had started shooting. It was Gary's scene. - That was my idea. We initially had a scene outside of here that l.... I remember seeing this location. I thought it was beautiful... ...but I couldn't wrap my head around a desk being in an exterior atrium... ...so I was struggling with that, but I'm sure glad we did it. I think it looks beautiful. I think you said when you saw it, "It's outside?" It started raining. - "It's outside?" And it was freezing cold. You remember how cold it was? Oh, my God, it was freezing. - God. This is the second... - Then we said: "We have all this concrete and it's freezing cold. Let's get water everywhere. That'll make it really comfortable." This is day one. Day zero, we did the jump we saw before. This is day one where it was full-on, all teams... ...SO this is the first scene that we shot of the whole film. And this shot was actually blown up. We had shot it wider, but we were able to push in on it. We did that with an enormous number.... One of the beauties of using the Red Epic camera... ...was the ability to push in and resize afterwards... ...1N postproduction. That's 175 percent. - Yeah. One of the things I believe that Mans and Bjérn should discuss... ...because we experienced it our first day of shooting... .IS that they are slightly unorthodox in terms of a directorial team. Slightly? They alternate the days they're shooting. So the first day, I believe it was Bjérn, right? You were directing the first day... ...and then Mans would direct the second day. And so, you know, you guys may wanna enlighten the audience... ...as to your procedure. - This was Mans. The prior one in the corridor, I did. I can't remember, but we always have the producer flip a coin... I did. I remember I flipped a coin. Yeah, flipped a coin and whoever gets the tails... ...whatever we decide, begins the day. The thing is, when I'm directing, Bjorn's my best buddy... ...as we Call it, and he doesn't do anything... ...except helping me. Nobody's allowed to talk to him. - Wait. We'll miss Wes getting thrown through the window. This is a totally reshot scene. - Yeah. We had another scene that was... - Just not working. No, it was a bit of a disaster. We got the opportunity to reshoot this, and I love this scene. I love it too. - It's great. This whole spider-webbing window thing.... That was actually Len Wiseman's idea of having him... ...be pushed through the window as it spider-webbed behind him. Yeah, we had.... Yeah. Fantastic idea. - Yeah, great shot. In the background, you see he's got little stuffed animals... ...because we wanted him to be a tinker... ...because he's been tinkering with her... What? I never saw those stuffed animals. I love this shot. I love this. It's too short. - Way too short. Yeah. It's way too short. You know, if you're starting to do movies or anything.... Please listen up, because Bjérn is saying something important. If you get into doing green-screen stuff, stay on it longer... ...because the visual effects will come in and you'll go: "Why the hell didn't we stay longer?" You had 36 frames of tail handle that you didn't use. So it's... So there. - Bollocks. I did not see that. - The famous.... Larz. Thank you, Larz. This is a 300-pound dummy in steel. Oh, God. Nothing.... I mean... Larz is the visual effects... - Special effects. Special effects. We thought, "There's no way. That's not gonna smash the car." Larz was like, "It's gonna smash the car." It did. - It smashed it great. Larz was right. It worked. And I love this shot of the camera pulling up... ...and catching Theo there. - Yeah. SO we are boosting up the mystery here. Theo, who is this guy. - The mystery man. And hopefully you don't know that he's a Vampire yet. He could be anyone, probably a human. Yeah, that was one of the challenges, as well, with the introducing. We introduce Michael Ealy, who plays Sebastian... ...and we have introduced David. We had introductions of a character called Quint, which is... Love this knife. - Yeah. The Uber-- Who was a Lycan, but it was taken out. Because there were too-- Yeah. Kris. - Kris Holden. Brilliant. - Brilliant guy, brilliant actor. It was taken out because there were too many people presented... ...and he gets presented after the car chase... ...and we only see him once. I'm not sure if that was perfect. In hindsight, maybe we should have. - But it's tough. That's... This is a movie where there's only one character... ... left over from other films. Every character has to be introduced. At a certain point, it's a struggle... ...trying to figure out ways to do it without overwhelming the audience. So we just caught a glimpse of the lower Lycans. And one of the things that we really loved in this one... ...was that we could expand the mythology and the universe... ...by inventing new creatures. And we liked the idea that they have been living in the sewers. There's one now. Yeah. And, you know, we thought, you know.... Here we thought Gollum. We thought rabid dog. We thought puss-- Run... Is that what you call it? Puss? Pus. - Pus running. Yeah. Saliva. Fucking crazy in the head. Rabid crazy. That... - Syphilitic. We wanted to because there's... One of the most wonderful lines... .In the history of Underworld is: "You're acting like a pack of rabid dogs! And that, gentlemen, simply won't do." That Michael Sheen says in Underworld 7. And we said, well, let's turn them into those rabid dogs now. They-- You know, they have lived here underground for so long... ... that they actually became these rabid dogs. Yeah, we actually don't see these guys as being human anymore. They're just Lycans. - And they... They turned out beautifully, James. Really beautiful. - These are my favorite Lycans. I think if there is a part five, there should be just these guys. I love them, just those.... The horde. - Yes. Really sick. It was the first time we moved away from suits. We always relied on practical prosthetic suits... ...and this was the first. This and the Uber are the two creatures that are purely CG. The Uber was hard to cast, so we had to go CG. This is an important moment. I loved shooting this. - This is where Selene sees... ...this child for the first moment. Without realizing who it is. - Right. She thinks it's Michael. I remember when shooting it... - She expected to find Michael. Right. Exactly. And she was so beautiful, and she looks so scared. Vulnerable. - Yeah. And the whole thing here we set up, you know.... We're gonna reveal later in the van, when she rips the Lycan's head apart. Hopefully that works, because we set up this girl as weak... ...as we see here, and vulnerable and so on... ...but she is the daughter of Selene, which means the girl's got powers. She's got the kick-ass gene. - Her name is Eve... ...which is never pronounced. - No. It isn't? We never say it? - We never say it. She says, "I'm Subject 2. You're Subject 1." So we might give her another name if we want to for the next one. Eve is perfect, I mean. No, but I think Selene is so beautiful... ...because Selene means moon in Greek. Is that right? - Yeah. Selene means moon in Greek? - Don't you know your Greek? Apparently not. Good Lord. Yeah. So here's the car chase, as we Call it. And it is pretty much... ...on the money on every shot that we storyboarded... ...which is extremely rewarding for a director... ...to see that it pulls off. This is also a triumph of visual effects. Probably half of the scene it was pouring down rain... ...and shooting in 3D, which means you can't really shoot. Shooting in 2D. We shot most of it in 2D. Because you can't shoot in 3D, the rain hits the mirror. The half-silvered mirror that you use in a 3D rig. So this whole thing was pieced together... ... from very, very rudimentary pieces.

10:50 · jump to transcript →

Now you got it, right? - This is what I love. Once the gre... That's it going off. Okay. - Yeah. Well, I didn't know. Last night was the first time I had seen this shot finished. The MPAA, remember, was really worried... ...we were gonna put a giant set of genitalia on him. Oh, they did. - Oh, they did. Yeah, that's the director's cut version. This was hard, I think. Because we had just been in this violent extravaganza. And now for emotions. But I think it works. - It works great. Because Kate is good and India is good. "You came back for me." - Yeah. And I remem-- This-- All... The tears and so on on Kate is completely real. Yeah. - But this is why she is, you know... This is why Kate is a movie star. She times it so the tear comes exactly where you want it. And I remember.... You only get that from professional actors. They know their body like, you know, true musicians. Go. I'll send them... ...on a different path, buy you some time. This is a part of the movie where we struggled... ...tried to figure out what to do now. How do we end the movie? - Yeah. We went through so many different permutations. We did film Michael watching them. - Yep. From the roof. - Yep. This scene was always in the film. - Yeah. That she comes back and finds the.... There was a period where we weren't. No. This was actually decided... It was not in the script. This was halfway through the shoot, we realized we needed this scene. We didn't wanna end on a rooftop... ...because it's kind of cliché a little bit. We did it in our Swedish film, Storm, actually... So then we ended it on a rooftop. - So-- But, you Know.... Sometimes cliches work. - Yeah. I think it's better than a forest. lt worked for the voiceover. Yeah, it was in a forest. Yeah. That was-- Yeah. But you want a nice wide shot. - Right. You see the city, see the world. And.... - The close-ups. I remember waiting for Len to write this voiceover, it took forever. But then he got it, and it was great. - Then he delivers. Because you get this "fuck, yeah" feeling. I've always thought that it's Kate that writes them... ...but Len actually does write them. Well, we'll never know, will we? I like those guys. That's those Swedish guys, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Wonderful writers, John Hlavin... ...Michael Straczynski, Allison Burnett. Yep. There's Len again. - Len and John Hlavin. Kevin Grevioux, shout-out to Kevin. - That's right. Anyone fancy a pint? - We have to trash everyone. We have to trash those guys for sure. - Producers. David Kern, there he is. - And David Coatsworth. Good on you, mate. Yeah, that's it. - That's it. Scott Kevan, DP. Excellent. Yep. - In the house. Claude Pare. - Yes. Award-winning production designer. Jeff McEvoy, the gentleman. - Yes. He was there the whole time. - Monique Prudhomme, costumes. Paul Haslinger, Underworld veteran. Are you gonna go through all of these? I'm just reading. It's not that hard. Tricia and Deb did all of the Underworlds too. Couple of small words here. - Needs no introduction. India, she was the third girl or second girl in the room. Remember that? - Yes, absolutely. And we just looked at each other. "This is the girl." "This is the girl." In, like, five seconds. Me and Bjérn never did big Hollywood movies. But you sure as hell had before. - Yes. "Does it work like this? Can we say yes?" You were like, "Yeah, yeah. I think we should go." That was amazing. That'll be the last time that ever happens in your career. When we saw Theo, we all liked him... ...from the very beginning too. - Yeah. But India was... She was the first day of casting. But Theo we cast in London, though. Yeah, but the moment we saw the tape, it was done. But that was after going through a lot of people in L.A. Yeah. A lot. - Yeah. Richard Wright. - Yeah, how about that? Yeah. Love that guy. Yeah. - Yeah. Paul Barry. I Know it sounds funny but... We forgot to shout-out to Paul Barry. Paul and Nee Nee. - Best first AD ever. And here it says.... - Brad Martin. Gets his own card, damn it. - Yes. As he should. You should work with him if you wanna do good action. Oh, you know-- I actually am right now. How about that? Good for you. I thought this Evanescence song worked too, quite frankly. Yep. America's biggest Goth band. They're Americans? Yeah. - Yeah. Dude. - Yeah. "Dude." - What? But there's-- It's... When you sit here... ...and look at the names of all the people that worked on the movie... ... you realize what a collaborative effort these things always are. The fact that the five of us can sit in a room... ...and talk about it is one thing... ...but the filmmakers are really everybody on this list. Well, but the other.... I agree, but at the same time l.... After we finished shooting the film, which was a very difficult shoot... ...we came back to Los Angeles and we cut at the Lakeshore offices... ...and Mans and Bjérn were there religiously every day... ...putting their heart and soul into the movie. And I think they were... They put their heart and soul into the movie... ...from the moment we met them to the moment the movie was finished. So as producers, I think we have to really thank them. Thank you very much. - Yeah. That was very nice words, Gary. Thank you. - You're welcome. We are as tall as we are... ...because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Yeah. - And I kept saying to myself... And this is the part where everybody turns this stuff off. Nobody's listening right now. - We worked our asses off. But James McQuaide delivered on those visual effects. I Know. I gotta tell you, man.... It only took five years off the end of his life. Oh, jeez. The best he's ever done. lt was fantastic. It is very therapeutic to watch this. It is, isn't it? Yeah. - Now it is done. We can move on. - It's done. Yep. And it's Friday night at 6:20 p.m. And.... Film's opening tonight. - Yeah. Have we got numbers back? Have we got numbers about how it's doing? Yeah, very good so far. The advance New York early-screening report... Excellent. Didn't you say that it did great in Thailand? Taiwan. - Taiwan. Thank you, people of Taiwan. - Yeah, thank you, Taiwan. Shout-out to Taiwan. All right, so this is pretty much it. Thanks, everybody, for listening to our babbling. And have a good night or a good day or whatever. Are you gonna say something in Swedish?

1:16:16 · jump to transcript →

Joss Whedon

But I think the most important thing about the movie is that it's mine. That it's all me, and that really because I'm the director and the writer, I really created it all myself. I think that's important to bear in mind. Especially because, while I've been talking, you've already seen the work of two other directors, not to mention the insanely large village, possibly a metropolitan area, full of people who are working in every frame to fulfil whatever vision it was I thought I had. One thing about this movie that you're gonna hear a lot is how extraordinary the crew, the post, the pre, uh, the production people, how they not just carried or fulfilled, but inspired this movie, which begins with this rather iconic image. Um... A very deliberate decision on my part was to start off with the hardest thing in the movie from the first one, what we refer to as the "tie-in shot." Rather than getting the Avengers back together, I wanted to say right up front, "No, they're in it. "And here's the very climax of the first film. "Here's the very thing you always showed up for, "all of these guys in one enormous shot "with a big slow-mo, kind of, uh, comic book panel moment." And my original concept had been that the very first frame would be the slow-motion part. Kevin Feige very rightly argued that without some context, people just wouldn't know what they were seeing, um, and wouldn't appreciate it as much as they would at the end of the shot. Which, um, turned out to be very true. When I talk about the other directors... There was a short shot of people running up the stairs that my producer, Jeremy Latcham, went ahead and got with our "C" cameraman, Sam, while we were in Dover Castle, which is right here and played as the interior of the fortress. Um... We were mostly stuck in big, beautiful rooms filled with equipment, and there are so many lovely little spaces. He said, "Shouldn't we go and get soldiers running about, "and show some of the stairwells and the halls, "and all the things that make this space more than just big rooms?" And we ended up using a lot of that footage. It was just grand. And, of course, the other director I'm referring to is John Mahaffie, who is an actual director, um, the second-unit director, who shot so much great footage for this movie. I shot about 100 days, he shot over 50. And some of them are elaborate. That's another, what I was referring to before. Some of the more elaborate stuff inevitably gets shot by second unit because the characters in it are CG, and requires camera setups that take hours and hours. And so on the one hand, I, being the most important director, the director of the first unit, I'm busy getting really the heart of the piece, and he's getting these secondary shots. Except that the "secondary shots" he was getting, I just used air quotes, you cant tell, but I did, were very much some of the most beautiful footage that was shot in the film. And I started to feel like Reaction-Shot Joe. I would just see these glorious things he'd stitch together, and then I'd... There'd be a close-up of somebody reacting to it. I was like, "That's me! I did that. I'm also a part of the team." Um... Because the team is how this gets done. You're gonna find that's also part of what we have to say in the movie. But in the making of the movie, it's very much the same thing. Both of these guys, Thomas Kretschmann and Henry Goodman, extraordinary thespians, who would come in to do smaller roles. I actually said, "If we made a movie with only the day players..." They worked more than that, but just literally people who were there for just a day. "we'd have the most star-studded cast you could work with." It's wonderful. It's probably a terrible thing about the industry that you can get amazing actors to play these smaller roles in franchise films, but it works for me.

0:42 · jump to transcript →

Joss Whedon

Oh, and now we get to Mr Spader. What is this? There's no way I can say enough about pretty much anybody in this cast. But if you have to start somewhere, um, James Spader and Paul Bettany is not a bad place to start. They are so extraordinary together, so much the people they wanted to be. And with James we were creating somebody completely new, and with Paul we ended up doing the same thing with the Vision. Because I originally wrote the Vision as Jarvis, and then went back in and realised, "No, he's much more enigmatic and interesting than that." And what Paul gave me was beyond my best fantasy of the Vision I'd read as a kid. Didn't have a fantasy of the Ultron I'd read as a kid because he was always just kind of mad. So my idea for who he would be was a sort of grand madness, a weirdness. Um... And, uh...

21:29 · jump to transcript →

Joss Whedon

And then I just kept working, and eventually figured out, "Oh, I'm shooting this in a very... Like it's Tne Age of Innocence, "and it's a party." And the whole point of this movie is you're at the party. You're invited. And I realised I had literally, with Much Ado, just shot an entire movie where people sit around and drink and talk. And the fact that I couldn't figure out how to shoot the after party scene, in a movie whose code name when we were shooting it was "After Party," very deliberately, was the source of some embarrassment. But we came back in, the cameras got looser, the lines got looser, the cast got happier, and it just started to flow. And they're all so good. And that montage was one of the first things I pitched.

28:13 · jump to transcript →

Jake Szymanski

I'm Jake Szymanski. I had the pleasure of directing this film. And I think I may have just ruined my mic, hold on. Is this... Did I ruin it? - Hey, hi. Is the mic okay? - Yeah, the mic's great. Just don't touch it like that. Okay, /'m sorry. - Yeah, that's okay. I was worried I might have turned it off accidentally. No, no, no, you're fine. Do you need water or coffee or anything like that? No, I'm so good. I've got water right here. - Do you... Okay. - What's your name again? I'm Margie. - Margie, thank you so much. Of course. All right. - Appreciate it. Let me know if you need anything. Okay. Will do. Thank you. Okay, oh, and please don't press any of those buttons. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm sorry about that. Okay, that's okay. - Okay. Um... As you can hear, we are here on the Fox lot in the ADR room. This is where the magic of DVD commentary happens. So, into the movie. Mike and Dave. They need wedding dates. Here we go. Well, this is a fun little scene. We actually... The whole beginning of the movie takes place in New York City. But we shot all of this in Hawai. Fun fact. Downtown Honolulu. We doubled for New York. Which, I literally didn't think could be done. But, um, there were four angles. There are four angles and two locations that you can shoot in Honolulu and it looks like New York. Um, there's Zac, there's those beautiful, blue eyes just shining through. Um, this is a fun little scene. We got Marc Maron to come out to the island and shoot with us, kind of our intro to the boys here. Adam Devine, Zac Efron, playing Mike and Dave Stangle. And we almost cut this scene. We almost lost this. At some point there was a worry if we needed it, but I think it's really a fun way to set up that these guys, right what Marc says right there, they're funny, they're weird. We give them a win early on. We let them know they think they're awesome. And before their family kind of puts them in their place. Was it the hat? - I just found this over there. And here we go. At the opening credits. This was a fun journey, finding the song for this. We ended up finding this great song that we kind of remixed a little bit and redid some of the lyrics even before this opening montage here. This montage was great. Doing our Fourth of July, a family wedding and a 50th anniversary party here, shooting this. We shot all this, uh... The anniversary party and the outside wedding are the same location, actually. We shot all this down in Hawaii. Got all of our stunt guys in. A little secret about Zac Efron, very good at the trampoline. He did not need a stuntman or wires. He got on that trampoline and started doing flips immediately for camera. And Adam Devine was like, uh, "You need to strap me up "and swing me around with some wires here. "I can't do this." Um... Very uncomfortable, I remember, also, the straps on that trampoline. Um, we shot this right across from the hotel we were shooting at. This is, uh, the fireworks stuff there. Our wonderful crew here. Let's just talk about, uh, the Chernin company real quick. You see our producers here. Produced by Chernin, Peter Chernin. Jenno Topping, David Ready. Our excellent team of producers, who were with us on the whole movie. It was fantastic. Here's downtown Honolulu. We're trying to hide the palm trees. You put some stickers up on light poles, looks like New York. If you wear two, they break. It's an urban legend... - No, it's not. And here we go. Let's meet the family. Putting this together, it... First of all this is actually based on a true story, which is fun. The Stangle brothers are real and they really did get told they had to bring dates to a family wedding. God, look at this, look at this family we got here. Just the best cast we could have asked for. We got Mom and Dad here. We got Stephen Root and Steph Faracy. Stephen Root, man. How lucky are we to get these guys as Mom and Dad here. Stephen Root was, uh... We were already down in Hawaii and we were about to shoot and we still hadn't cast Dad. And we talked with a bunch of great people. And, um, I had to do a little Skype session to meet Stephen Root who I had never met. And, uh, we were just like, "You know what? If you can ever cast someone "who you think is, one day, gonna win an Oscar, cast that guy." And we were lucky enough that Stephen Root said yes to doing it. Here we go. Um, hey, Jake... - Mmm-hmm. I just want to interject here. Um... - Oh, yeah? Be careful of the heavy breathing. - Oh, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I just want to make sure. I mean, it's not an issue yet, but... I was gonna Say, is it coming through or... Not really. - Okay. But I can sense that it might. - Okay. So just be careful. - Okay. No, fair... Yeah, okay. No worries. - You're doing great. Should we... So did we cut or how does this... No, we're not cutting, no, no, no. 'Cause we're still... - Oh, okay. Keep going. I can't cut. - Should we go... Oh, so this is a one... Continuous, got it. - This is a one, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'll watch the, uh... Watch the breathing. Um... Where are we here? Oh, well, we're doing our little reveal. Kind of the big idea here of our grandiose opening montage where the guys are kings of the world. We see the reality of those situations. Oh, this poor guy. Our grandpa. When we were shooting this, we were dancing... And I kept thinking that he was acting out the death scene too early. And I kept yelling from behind the camera, "No, no, no, don't stop yet. "You're still having fun, you're still having fun. "You're not dying yet." But he wasn't acting. He was, for real, getting too tired and almost having a heart attack. And I was yelling at this poor man. "No, no, no! Smile, smile! Be happy! Dance, dance!" And everyone was like, "Jake, this is real. He's actually having trouble." And I felt so horrible about that. But he made it. You know what? He made it and I can't wait for him to see the film. You can each talk to one girl. Um, uh-oh, guys. Here's the idea for the movie. Two dates. Um... By the way, we also have not talked about... Look at these two handsome gentlemen who you believe are brothers somehow. Are you insane? - Oh, you're kidding. I love these guys together. Adam and Zac had a really, really fun time. Um, I mean, when we went to Hawaii to film this, we filmed in Hawaii, and they were just... We were trapped on that island together. So even when we shot all day together we just had each other to hang out with at night. And, um, I think Zac and Adam got really, really close. Which helped the chemistry and the brother relationship stuff. Everyone got along really, really well. It was a lot of fun. By the way, let's talk about the wonderful Sugar Lyn Beard playing our sister Jeanie here. And also the equally excellent Sam Richardson playing Eric here. Um, God, she's so great in this. Sugar... First of all, her name's Sugar. And we shouldn't overlook that. That's an important factor when you're casting someone. Look for the most interesting name to be written somewhere. Um, she was one of the last people we saw in auditions. And, um, we weren't sure who we were gonna cast yet for the sister. And we didn't feel like we quite had it yet. And then she, literally, was maybe the last person that came in. And she came in to the casting office and just nailed it. Just... We were all laughing so hard. She completely became the sister. I think we did the audition with the Ecstasy scene and the horses scene. And, uh, she was just so, so funny. She walked out of that room and we immediately went, "Wow, well, that's Jeanie right there." Same thing happened with Sam for Eric, by the way. He was just so, so funny in that role. That's the kind of guy Mike is. So, think on that... This is one of my favorite Zac jokes of the whole movie here. "Think on that, Dad." Having us laugh. You can see Dave's little... Dave's at his little art station there in the apartment. And that's a little thing that comes back Iater that, uh, isn't... We're not really showing you very clearly there. And then here we have the ladies. Tatiana and Alice. Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick. These two, who are actually very good friends in real life and had taken random trips together to islands and to beaches in Mexico, it was really fun to put these two together. And, uh... And have that kind of built-in chemistry going in here. He's already paid. God damn it! But a lot of green screen taxi shoot that we did. You should kick us out! - You should kick us out of this cab. Little bit of a hustle on the cab driver here. Three more blocks up on the right... and then kick us out! The Apple Pay bit I really, really liked. We came up with that on set. I think that was a pitch from Andrew Cohen, one of our writers. Andrew Cohen and Brendan O'Brien... I got a good idea. ...gave us a wonderful script to start with here. The writers of Neighbors, Neighbors 2 and upcoming, The House. Um, very lucky and happy to meet and work with those guys on this. Really funny stuff. And, uh, they would also just send in new jokes every day. That's kind of the way we did things, is we had the script and then me and the writers and other on-set writers would just bring a bunch of new jokes every day to pitch and to try. And so we would always play around a little bit on-set. Jake Johnson. Your little buddy is shit-faced. Jake Johnson, who we said, "Why don't you just come to Hawaii for a couple days? "And to do that you have to be in a scene in the movie." And he said, "That sounds pretty good, man. "That's... All right, yeah. I could do Hawaii." Um, and that's literally how we got him out here. We said, "I know Jake a little bit." I said, "Hey, if I could bring you out to Hawaii for a week "would you shoot for one night?" Boom. Done. Because it's my right. Playing Ronnie the boss here. Look at these, look at these, just New York rat women here that they're playing. The hair, that's a wig we have on Anna, which was really fun. Hey, Jake. - Yeah? Um, I just want to say if you don't have anything to Say... Mmm-hmm. - ...then you don't have to say anything. You... - Does it sound like I'm... Oh, just calling this "rat women" is a little... Oh, I wasn't... Okay. - Just... I didn't think I was stretching... - Yeah, no, it's fine. -/ just want to... I just want... - Are we still recording? You're doing great. What's that? - Are we recording right now? Yeah, yeah, all this is... Yeah. - Okay. Yeah, that's what we're doing. All right. I just... - Right? Yeah, I just didn't... Okay, yeah, I just... Yeah, I'm just... It's very clearly your first time and it's... It is. - /'m just trying to help you out. Okay. No, I appreciate... I definitely want... - Okay. If you have any tips or... - Great. I just feel like I'm not doing the comments here... Okay. Okay, sure. So I should get back to this. - Of course. Yeah, yeah. Just keep breathing, and move through it. Okay, I think... Okay. - Okay. I didn't... 1... Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay. - Thank you. Okay. Um, we're in the apartment. I'm tired of living like this. I don't know if I have anything to say about this. We've got a great little package we're selling here, man. A week in a tropical paradise... with two fun-loving, yet surprisingly well-read bros? I'm just gonna talk. Um... We got the boys here. So the ladies in the apartment, first of all. These were both sets that were built in real locations, downtown Honolulu. Um... We found spaces for the boys' apartment, girls' apartment right around the corner from each other. And then we built these kind of walls up against the real windows and built out our little apartments here. We met this couch on Craigslist. This was actually the scene, this scene right here, was one of the earliest scenes that we had worked with and that we shot for the chemistry read. We did a little chemistry read early on before we ever got into production with Adam Devine and Zac Efron. I think Zac was shooting a movie in Atlanta. We all flew out there and did a chemistry read and this was one of the scenes we did to see the brothers together. And, uh, obviously it was great. And we loved seeing Adam and Zac together. And, uh, so this is one that had kind of... We actually shot this... One of the last things we shot in the movie. Um, but they had had it in their mind for six, seven months by that point. I love the... We got these girls together, really, really fun. This was a last-second shoot we did just to get a little sense of the ad going viral and going around the world. And we got all these great performers, all these great actresses to just come in and do little cameos for that little thing here. You guys want to go to a wedding? Got a little classic date montage here. All the dates here we cast out of Hawai. This was all local casting and we found some great, great people. Those twins are actual professional gymnasts in training. And they're twin gymnasts who are very good. And luckily they were also great at acting. We got them in there. We found all these... Met all these great people. This is my buddy Bob Turton. Um, who, uh... We go way back. And, actually, we did not... Again, we did local Hawaii casting and I said, "Man, I got this bit I really want you to do. "But we're casting locally." And he just hopped on a plane and came on out. And said, "Let's do it." And Bob is one of the funniest, funniest guys. Uh, I went to college with him back in the day. And we've done some videos and shorts together. And I was so glad he could come out and be Lauralie, as I believed, what we named his persona of this guy who's in such a bad period of time in his life. He decides to try to pretend he's a girl to get this date from these boys. What did you say? - Nothing. Sounded like you said... None of this... Do you wanna fuck? None of this was scripted. None of the entire date sequence was scripted. I think the script just said they go on a bunch of dates. So we really had a lot of fun playing with this entire sequence with everyone who came in. I think, in real life the Stangle brothers ended up on... What was it, Ricki Lake? I know they ended up on, uh, the Today show. And maybe also Ricki Lake. And we got... The ad went viral. We wanted to make it a little more current. We got Wendy Williams. We got her to come out to Hawaii. We actually filmed... Even her set, we faked in Hawai. So we really did everything out there. Got to thank the Hawaii Film Board. Getting to shoot out there. It was fun. ...fo go with us to Hawaii for our sister's wedding. And I just want to reiterate... we're footing the bill for this because we're gentlemen. Free trip to Hawaii? I'm awake! Come on. Craigslist. - What's up? That's where you go to buy old patio furniture. Is there any, um... Excuse me. Is there any... ls there any water? - What's that? Is there water in here? -/s there water? - Yeah, there's... Yeah, we have water. - Is there any... Can I get a water? ls there any way to get a water? - OA, sure. /'Il... I asked you at the beginning. You didn't... You said... I know. I didn't realize. I'm sorry. I'm just... Now I'm thinking about whether I'm talking too much, based on what you said earlier, and I'm getting nervous. I think it's just drying my throat out a little bit. Okay, yeah. No, that's fine. I'll go get you water. I don't need you to get it if you can't... /'m the one working here. So... Okay. I... You can tell me where it is, I can get it. No, you have to... You're the director. And you have to do the commentary. Um, okay, I'll be right back. All right. Sorry about that. - It's fine. Thank you. You need to get over that, once and for all. Oh, man, I feel really bad asking for that water now. Oh, there is a water here. Hold on. There's a water on the floor here next to my desk. Okay, here's your... I actually found one. There was a water... There was a water down here by the desk. -/ found... - Yeah. I think I brought this... - Did you not look around you when you... We gonna go to Hawaii! Um, sorry, I just found... I think I brought it in at the... When I first walked in earlier and I forgot. Right. Okay, well, here's another one. We don't look like nice girls. Thank you. Yeah, I guess I haven't showered in a while. Oh, man. Thank you very much. I really do appreciate it. Yeah, of course. - Okay. We're gonna look respectable as fuck. Like nice girls. "Like nice girls. Like nice girls." This was actually, um... It's like that Jesus rag! "Jesus rag," one of my favorite bits. Nice girls was actually, um, an early studio note. I remember the studio coming in and saying like, "We feel like we just need to say, like, 'Let's push the nice girls angle.' "We should have the boys get told they need to bring nice girls. "And the girls need to look like nice girls." And it really worked. We ended up taking that and hitting that. And it's one of those great notes that really helps simplify and clarify a thing and everyone gets exactly what we're doing. So that's why you hear "nice girls" a couple of times. That was actually one of the earlier studio notes that I thought was a great note. That worked out a Iot. Ultimatum. - Well, we gotta figure something out... The old tomato joke is a joke that early on I was told, "You know, you can cut this joke. You don't need that joke." And I said, "No. This joke is what the movie's about." Not really what it's about. But the vibe of the movie. I fell way too in love with the old tomato joke. And I think our first cut of this movie, the editor assembly of this, was about five hours long. Because we had done so many alts and so much improv. And they just put everything in. And, I think, when I showed my producers one of the three-and-a-half-hour cuts that I was like, "You know, this isn't a real cut. "This is just kind of everything we're working with." They were like, "I mean, you can lose so much. "You can lose this. You can lose that. You can lose the old tomato joke." And I was like, "No, no, no, not... All those other things, sure, "but the old tomato joke we keep." So you can imagine that joke in a three-hour thing that's way too long. And, uh, well, it ended up in the movie. As I predicted. Anna had a really fun, uh... We had a lot of fun with this. There's a lot of stuff on the DVD, deleted scenes and bit runs about other lies she does here. This is a really fun reveal. See these girls in these nice dresses here. And coming up, we've got one of our first big stunts of the movie. This was always really fun. We had a great, great stunt coordinator, Gary Hymes, who did all of our stunts on this movie. He did the stunts for Terminator and Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. And he was great. So any time we had something like this, with getting hit by a car... That's a big stunt, but it's always really fun watching the audience watch this. And this is like one of those moments early on where I think it clicks in like, "We're doing this kind of movie. We're doing, like, a giant car hit. "And she's perfectly okay." It just sucks you right in. This was really fun to shoot. This is, again, downtown Honolulu. Outside of the one bar we could fake as New York. And if you look very closely, I shouldn't even say it, people will hate that I say this, the effects guys, there's a split second shot when Tatiana hits the car from inside the car looking out the windshield at her body. And in that shot, it only lasts a couple frames, and it's a blur, but there is a palm tree. That is the one palm tree that's in our New York footage. Um, but obviously it's so fast no one sees it. Are you okay? I am now. I saved her life! - She's okay! She's okay? - I saved her life! Thank you! I think, I'm pretty sure a lot of this, the just yelling, "I saved her life," and a lot of the yells, that was... Adam can go very hot. And Adam just added a lot of that in and it was so perfect. It's really fun to just tell Adam like, "Hey, go nuts on this one. Get excited." And he will. He can just go at 100% all day long. And it is the most fun thing to watch. So hard! This is always a really fun scene for me. This is like, when we did the editing, it was kind of always like, "Let's get to here faster. How do we get to here faster?" 'Cause it's really just seeing our four leads all together for the first time. And see it play out. See the con of the girls play out. See the boys falling right into it. So this was always kind of like, especially in editing we realized, "This is where it starts to feel so fun. "Let's just get here as fast as we can. "Let's get through all that other stuff." Got two waters now. It's actually quite nice. We can hear all of that. - Hmm? You drinking. Oh, I'm sorry. SO sip quieter? "How's the hedging coming? You been hedging? You hedged much?" Yeah, we're picking that up. - Picking that up still. Corporate greed, bailouts. Should I, should I cover... Does this help? On the floor of the NASDAQ and the U.N. Um... If I cover the microphone with my hand, does this help? That makes it worse. - Okay. Sorry. Um, just try not to drink anything. "But what I do have..." Just my mouth gets a little dry, so... It's not important. Uh, anyway. Um... "Skills that make me a nightmare..." Zac nailing the Liam Neeson impression in this. You may notice Zac Efron throws out a couple great accents in this movie. He's got the Australian at the bar at the top. He's got Liam Neeson here. He's about to have all of this different liquor bottle drawings which all have a different accent. And he added a lot of that in in a great way. He does a little research for each one. And he nails each one of those accents. That's a little post joke we put in. Little post image. Little ADR joke from Zac right there. A lot of dick jokes in this movie. Not gonna say I'm proud of it. Not gonna say I'm ashamed of it. Just gonna say there's a lot of dick jokes in this movie. And it is what it is. Done. Some of them are kind of smart. Maybe a couple smart dick jokes, maybe not. Maybe I just tell myself that to make myself fee! better. I don't know. What's the hardest thing about being a teacher? I don't know. Oh, um... The hardest thing... I think this was the whole... We did a whole run here with Adam and Aubrey that was just kind of, none of that, was not in the script, either. We're just like, "Let's check in with these two." And we Set up two cameras. We did a lot of cross-shooting on this movie. And we just let people go through 10 different ideas. And try a bunch of jokes. God, Anna's so, so funny here. Matt Clark, our wonderful DP on this, who... I know! I said, "I got to warn you, I want to cross-shoot a lot of this movie." And cross-shooting's where you have two cameras pointing opposite directions, so you can capture both people talking to each other at once. And some DPs won't do it 'cause some DPs, they just want to perfect the light facing one direction, 'cause it's the lighting that, really, you have to tweak. And you start worrying about compromises if you cross-shoot. But Matthew Clark took that challenge and ran with it. And we cross-shot so much on this movie. Um, probably even more than I needed to, I had him do. And he just did a great job with it. I love the look of it, that it doesn't look too Photoshop, airbrushed, perfectly shiny and bright on everything. I like that it kind of feels a little real world-y. I think Matt did a great job on that. ... like we're talking it over... like we're not sure if we wanna go or not. Oh, like... So fun to see Anna do these big jokes. I feel like... This was the fun part for me. I feel like I've never got to see Anna Kendrick do this kind of stuff before in a movie, ina hard R movie. Yes! And, God, I just think she really nailed it and knocked it out of the park. I think, Aubrey, who's so great, and you kind of expect that she can do it. And I think it was a little more like, I think, for the audience it's a little more of seeing her in a new kind of movie. Which I think is really, really fun. Here we are, shooting at the wonderful Turtle Bay Resorts. Um, on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii. We turned into our little fake resort. A funny story about this hotel, this is the exact hotel that they shot Forgetting Sarah Marshall at. And that movie takes place almost, the whole thing in that hotel as well. So, first of all, we did a lot, me and my DP, we did a lot of like, "Let's make sure things look different. "We're not copying the same locations and shots of Forgetting Sarah Marshall." The other funny thing is, in the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I'm pretty sure they call the resort Turtle Bay. Say, "Welcome to Turtle Bay." And it was an advertisement for Turtle Bay in a way. Turtle Bay was like, "Yeah, we'll give you a better rate on the room if you mention our name." So, when we started scouting and decided to shoot the movie in Hawaii, we were like, "We can do it at Turtle Bay. "We'll get a little discount on the locations." And the management for Turtle Bay read our rated R script and they were like, "Absolutely you cannot say this takes place at Turtle Bay. "Please, please don't show any of our Turtle Bay signage. "We don't want any of our guests to think our masseuses would do this at Turtle Bay. "We don't want to think we condone..." And we were like, "Oh, my God, can we shoot it?" They were like, "Yeah, please shoot here. You just have no discount." And, no, I mean, they were a lot of help. But we had to cover every sign that said "Turtle Bay" and make our own. And make our own logos and hotel names. And I always thought that was pretty great. And, you know, there's some stuff in Sarah Marshall, I think that's rated R. I mean, there's a penis flopping around in that movie. Hey, Jake. - Yeah. I just want to say you're doing great. Okay. Just calm down. - Okay. You've said "penis" and "dick..." - And, again, I'm just... About 10 or 15 times... - Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the Iast, like, five minutes, so. I don't think... I think it was just, kind of, the once. Oh, no. It was many, many times. Okay. And just, Margie, I'm sorry, but... And, again, is there any way to go back now to where you cut in and rerecord from there on out? Um, oh, you know, that's a great idea. Why don't I just forget that this is my job and that I know what's going on. And why don't you come in here and you take care of all of that. No, obviously I'm not... I just presumed that if you... Can only I hear you? 'Cause I'm... We're recording right now, right? Yeah, we're recording. But, you know, what you do when you presume, you make a... I think that's the wrong word for that phrase. So anyway, I just want to let you know that you're doing great. And this is really good stuff. Just remember to breathe and relax, and just enjoy it. Okay. I just want to do the commentary. Just kind of run it through and... Sure. - I just feel like I've heard a lot of... I've listened to a lot of commentaries. Have you? - Yeah. I think... Yeah, what do you mean, have I? That surprises me. Why does that surprise you? I mean, it's just, you know, you're doing great. ...With Alice. Well, I just don't think I've ever heard the sound engineers coming in during a DVD commentary. So I'll say that, as well. Well, you know, normally we don't. But if it's someone who's just kind of aimless, we'll try to help out a little bit. Um... So, my commentary has been aimless? It's been... No, it's great. It's so exciting. I mean, I don't even see how... Even if it was aimless, I don't see how telling someone that helps them. 'Cause now all I'm doing is thinking about if this commentary's aimless or not. Okay, so we're in a new scene, so if you want to... I am a teacher, yeah. Uh... The key to teaching children is repetition. Uh, okay. Uh... The meet and greet. Uh... I think I missed talking about the whisper scene. Another good dick joke in there. And, uh, this meet and greet, very colorful, very poppy. This, uh... sorry, I'm just really in my head now about this aimless thing. And I feel like it makes me sound more aimless. No, no, no. You're doing great. That was just constructive criticism, you know. Aimless rambling is what you're doing. And that's constructive, honestly. It doesn't. I'm trying to find the constructive part of that criticism. Um, the part where I said, "Aimless rambling is..." Right. So, okay. Like, build off that. You know, I'm good. I'll take, I'll do... I'm okay if it's aimless. -/'m good from here on out. - Are you sure? Yeah, I'll just be good from here on out, okay? All right. I'll just keep him on a leash. And there's no way we can Start over or go back? Unfortunately there is no way. This is set in stone. Okay, Sure, sure, sure. Uh, all right. So, listen. This was our first day of filming. And, uh, filming this meet and greet here. And, uh, there was a lot of very specific things that happened in this scene. And, uh, uh... God, this is so fucking aimless now. Jesus. Talk about the lady in yellow. If this is bad news, I'm gonna eat your ass. Sorry. - Okay. The bridesmaid, Becky. That was our horrible bridesmaid, Becky, played by the wonderful Mary Holland. Um, yeah, I should talk about everyone in the scene. Mary was great as a bridesmaid. Mary actually... I know Mary from the UCB world out in Los Angeles. And I think I had her come out and audition for, like, five different roles in the movie. I think it was kind of like, "I don't know how, where you're gonna be in this movie. "I just know I want you in the movie." And, um, we were lucky enough to get her. This whole scene, this whole sequence, by the way, of the meet and greet was our first day filming. And if there's any tip I can give to a first-time filmmaker, it is this. This was one of the biggest mistakes I made on the movie. Don't have your first day of shooting on your first studio movie be a giant meet and greet scene with 100 extras and seven main characters all in the same scene. And all of the actors on their first day. And everyone feeling each other out. And also, outdoors in Hawaii, where the weather changes every five minutes. lt was sunny. It was cloudy. The wind's going crazy all day. It was a real trial by fire at the top of this shoot. We spent our first two or three days out in this location with so many people. So, if you're out there making something and you want any tips, ask for the schedule, first day, first day you're shooting, to be indoors, two guys eating pizza. That's really the best you can hope for. Just two people sitting at a table talking back and forth. Maybe one person. If you have any scenes with just one of your actors in there, get going that way. Everyone's getting to know each other. You're feeling each other out. You're figuring out how to work with the crew. The actors are warming up to the characters. You don't need 100... You don't need to figure out where to put 100 people and how to get seven of your leads in there. That's crazy. You can do that week two. You can do that week two on a movie. That was the one crazy thing. But I will say, after we did that day one and two, we were kind of ready for anything for the rest of the shoot. Where are you going? Hi! So you know what? I guess, do it. I guess, do do it. I guess, do shoot with as many people as you can. 'Cause it kind of all felt downhill from here. Um... I'm fine. Yeah! Let's just forget about the past... God, yeah, we were out here for a couple days. This is, again, at the wonderful Turtle Bay, which I highly recommend to go out and stay there with you, your loved ones, your family. Um... I mean, we're drinking 'em like they're shots... but I don't think... But the wind, I mean, I hate to even bring it up, but if you just watch these scenes and watch people's hair or the backgrounds, you will see that the wind was just going crazy. So many takes where just the wind went in front of people's faces that we're trying to cut around here. So many shots, some shots are in the sun, some shots are cloudy, that we've spent days in our color correction, trying to even out. It was great. This is the wonderful Alice Wetterlund who plays cousin Terry here. You may recognize Alice from Girl Code and Silicon Valley. I swear I was watching Season 1 of Silicon Valley right when we were casting this, and saw Alice. And then she came in and read for us for this. And, oh, my God, she's so funny. Her and Adam in the scene, we have... There was just a ton of footage on the floor of these guys playing back and forth here. And she really became cousin Terry a little bit. Anytime the camera was on, she would end up being a very method actress, which I really liked. She really scarily became this crazy, rich asshole of cousin Terry. Very aggressive here. I like this little offensive sex song here. By the way, the real Mike and Dave Stangle right here. This is their cameo. They came in, they came down to visit the set. We wanted to try to work them in. And got one of the better jokes in the movie there. The old chlamydia joke comes out of those guys. And why do you think you're such a hotshot? Um, the real Mike and Dave came to set and you think maybe the antics that these guys are known for in their book or the story of this movie is a little overdone. They, pretty sure, showed up drunk to the set. They had already been drinking that whole morning. And then after we shot a couple takes, I was like, "Hey, you guys, if you could try to stand here more "and look this way more... "Try this." And they were like, "Hey, yeah, sorry if we're screwing this up. "We are just gone right now. "We've been drinking a lot of the wine, too, "In these cups that are being passed around." And that's not real wine. Like, the trays that the waitresses have in the background of that scene are filled with either rancid wine or just dark liquids to look like wine. And the Stangle brothers immediately got on set and started grabbing everything that they thought was a real alcoholic drink and downing it. So, they're the real deal. That is a true story. From the meet and greet. Well, from before that. One second. Um, Tatiana and Alice here kind of letting loose, letting their guard down a little bit after a long day of pretending to be nice girls. And then poor Mike just still trying to push it way too hard here. ...do whatever you wanna do. Being a little bit inappropriate. 'Cause that's what we were doing before. They've got Cockbusters. We had a fun run there of different porn names for Anna to try while we were shooting that scene. Which was very fun. She says the craziest stuff in her sleep. It looks like his dick is gonna pop. It's So veiny and hard. This is also... My student. I'm doing a Skype class session... This is one of the scenes, I think we have an extended version of this scene on the DVD. There's a lot of... He walks, if you notice, Adam walks up to the door with a bucket of ice and we used to have a lot of dialogue about that ice that is no longer in the movie. It's fun when you're shooting, and especially for me, I think, first studio feature, ... you are getting an A plus. I just wanted to make sure I got all the possibilities. Try a bunch of different lines. Try a bunch of jokes. And then you get into that edit room, and you are just lifting as much as you Can away as possible. Just trying to make it go like, find the joke, find the one that works best. Boom, move on. Boom, move on. Keep the story moving. This actually, this whole sequence of the girls here is from a cut scene in the movie. It's from the bocce ball sequence, which they even used in our trailer a little bit. And it's a great sequence that's on the DVD. And this is actually from them walking up to the bocce game. And that sequence is cut. But we still had to somehow capture the vibe that these girls were in their own element. And being themselves a little more and deciding to have fun. And so we ended up using that shot of them walking up the beach and stealing drinks by themselves before they join the group to kind of get that idea across a little bit. But it's part of this whole other sequence that's now just a DVD special feature. Much like this commentary. Jake, this is the DVD. "Welcome..." What? "...to Jurassic Park." Um, you just keep saying "on the DVD." This is a DVD special feature. But you could just say "on here." - Right. On here. Well, yeah, but it's not on here, the commentary track, it's... Do you currently know what this is for? Why do you need to tell me that, though? Why are you even telling me that? l'm sorry, Margie. - You're fine. I just want to make sure you know what's going on. I mean, does it really matter if I say "on the DVD" or "on here"? If people are watching it, the worst that happens is it's a little redundant to say "the DVD." Okay, if you don't care about maintaining any reality or like... What are you talking about, "maintaining reality"? Why are we having this discussion right now? Look, you know what? You're right. I'm just, I'm... What am I talking about? I've just done a million of these and... No, that's not... I know you've done this a lot. That's not what I'm trying to say. Okay. Look. I forgive you. Okay? I forgive you. This is great. I'm having a lot of fun. You're doing so well. This is where the dinos ran in the prairie! Really? Yeah. I'm a T-Rex. I'm coming to get you! Okay, thank you. Are you crying? - No. I'm not crying. What? Just, thank you. Wasn't this where Jurassic Park was filmed? This scene right here? Yeah, this is actually where they shot Jurassic... Yeah, how did you know that? Yeah, this is where they shot Jurassic Park. Yeah, I can tell. This was the real location where... And I think they shot some of Jurassic World here, too. And by the way, so fun to get to go shoot where they shot Jurassic Park. That's like a little kid dream, to go shoot in that location for the joke of ATV-ing where they shot Jurassic Park. This is also, this ranch, by the way, Kualoa, is where they not only shot Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, it's where they shot... They have signs up all over for movie tours. It's where they shot Godzilla. It's where they shot 50 First Dates, part of it. The most excited I was by a sign was there's an area that's apparently where they shot part of the movie You, Me and Dupree. So, we join a pretty special lineage of movies, all the way from Jurassic Park to You, Me and Dupree that have shot in this beautiful location, when shooting in Hawai. I still think we should go around. She just got some serious air, bro! Um, this sequence was a blast to shoot. And, again, the stunts and stunt drivers that we brought in on this were great. And we had to find the smallest, the best smallest ATV stunt riders in the country. Yeah, baby! To match, to body-double match the girls who are the ones who are obviously good at this and doing the tricks. So, that is a male ATV stunt driver. And one of the smallest male stunt drivers we could find to double for Aubrey Plaza. And same goes with Anna Kendrick. Um... And I think there was, we initially had a female ATV stunt rider coming in and I feel like something happened with her schedule. She had a show to do, she had an X-Games-type event to go do. And then, so she dropped out, and so we had to find, um, small men. Small men with... Your turn, Mike! Don't be a pussy! ... with, uh, adrenaline junkies, basically. I'm not gonna do it. Um... Mike, it'll turn me on... I think the only disappointing part of this scene was for Zac. He just wanted to ride that ATV so bad. Zac is a guy who already knows how to ride ATVs. And was so into being on that ATV. Like, every time I said, "Cut," he'd be off zipping around, driving around, going up the mountains on ATVs. And, literally, it's like Aubrey and Anna get to drive this ATV, and look like they're jumping it and have little shots like this. Where they're all actually on it and driving it. Adam and then Aubrey did this. And poor Zac is the only guy, because Dave is the character with enough common sense to not do this jump, that couldn't go zipping around on this while we filmed. And that was, I think, the only, only bummer of shooting this scene, was for him. Oh, boy. Oh, no, God! God, this sequence was originally... A lot of people comment on how long this jump is, how long he's in the air, how long I stretch this sequence out for. And I just want you to know, originally, it was another 25 seconds longer, that Adam was just screaming, floating down on her. We originally had it so long. But this is actually one of the scenes that changed the least from our rough cut of the movie that was three hours long to the final version. That ATV sequence was kind of always in that form. Our little transition here inside, off the blackness, onto Mary's wonderful, horrified face. Your face is making me think it's gonna be bad. This is one of those scenes that where if I'm really analyzing the movie, it doesn't make sense if you think about it. But you're having so much fun after that surprising ATV hit and watching her face and seeing everyone make jokes, that no one thinks about it. But if I actually looked critically at it, I'm going, "So she got hit in the face. She should be dead." Right? She's not dead. She should be dead. And then we cut to the next room and she's just standing up in the middle of a room with an ice bag on her face. She's not sitting down. And I was looking at her. And everyone's standing staring at her to wait to see what the face looks like. I have little rationalities I can tell myself to get around this and how it can work. "Maybe it swelled up. "The bruising got worse under the ice bag." Blah, blah, blah. But if you really think about it, it probably wouldn't go like this. That's what they call suspension of disbelief, guys. Welcome to movie making 107. Enough dancing! You and you... outside, now! God, this was So fun. Just telling, letting Stephen Root get mad at these guys. Calm down. Do you understand they've deformed our little girl... We were really worried this joke wouldn't work. She looks like Seal, for Christ's sake! "Looks like Seal." And we were kind of like, "Is that too dated? Do kids today..." And it kills. Everyone always loved that joke. I always thought... I had like three alts for that joke. I always thought we'd change it. Never had to. This was great, coming up with this on the day. Which actually is based on my own life. If I'm ever too tired and run into one of those doors, I can never figure out how to close them. And I asked Stephen Root if he could try trying to close it with the door that won't go all the way 'cause the other one's open. And, God, he's so funny. He's so great at just boiling over at these guys. There was another door, though. He can just close the other door. What? Well, he didn't see the other door. He just closed the one. But he was trying to close one but it was the other door that was open. Yeah, Margie, that's the joke. That he kept trying to close the door but there was another one to close. But he kept trying to close the other one. Did he not see the other door? I can't, I can't get into this with you right now, Margie. Okay. Everyone gets the joke. And this is not, I don't think this is... I mean, you said you've been doing this for a while. But I cannot believe that you think this is the right time to get into this. When there's a room, and there's usually one door, but sometimes there are two. And if there's two, I don't know why you wouldn't be aware of that. Well, to each his own, I guess. Agree to disagree. - Um... It's all fucked now. It's all fucked. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So, yeah, you agree to disagree. Great. Okay, well, yeah, I agree to disagree. Sounded like you wanted to say no. Sounded like you wanted to say you don't agree to disagree. I don't want to make this any harder than it already is. Do all the booths in the building have the mic inside your room like that? The mic to... - No, it's just this one. Yeah, sure. That's what I thought. Perfect. Um, let's get back to the old movie here. Thanks again for letting me join your spa day, ladies. I'm getting a little feedback in my mic here. Um... This is a fun little run here. Spa day. This is, so Alice now is trying to... Feels really bad about ruining the bride's day here, since she was a bride herself. And understands how big of a deal that would be. She's really trying to make it up to Jeanie. But poor Alice. She just, her heart's in the right place, the right intentions but she's gonna go a little crazy here. I didn't actually end up having one, So... Why? Every bride needs a bachelorette party. I'm sorry... By the way, Anna did great with that run, that giant run about dressing up like a prostitute. I'm pretty sure I threw that on her. She had never seen that written down. lt was maybe the third or fourth take where we tried something new. And I said, "Hey, try this really long run about your..." And just instantly, the next take, had it memorized. Had it better than I told it to her with perfect timing, perfect jokes. She just nailed it. She's awesome. Anna Kendrick might be the most professional person I've ever worked with. Little facts about working with her that you might want to know. She is always, always has her lines ready. Always on set ready to go. When you're filming a movie, you kind of have your actors, they take a break, they sit down between takes. You have, what's called, a second team of stand-ins to come in and adjust the lighting on... And then, when you Say, "Second team out, first team in," that's when your actors come back to set to start filming. Anna was always, you'd Say, "Second team out, first team..." Anna would be there. Waiting for everyone, Anna was always the first person back on set. Another fun thing about Anna, she's a woman of the world. She's a very knowledgeable person. She was always reading when she was in between takes, off set. Which is great. She's always got a book of new subject that she's into. And there was about three weeks on this movie where she was reading a book on the rise of Nazism in 1930s and '40s, Germany. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. How did you know that? It's one of my favorite books. Physically, no penetration. Why? /'m a history buff. All right. All right. Well, I hope so. Anyway, that's what Anna was reading as well on set. But the funny image would be, every now and then between takes, you'd look over at her sitting in her chair and she was just... You just saw her eyes popping over this giant book with a swastika on it. And we were like, "Anna, you got to... Let's put a different cover on that thing. "It just does not look right, that you're reading that book." Poor, sweet little Anna Kendrick with a giant swastika in front of her face. Oh, my God. How have I not Started talking about Kumail yet? When we had to cast this scene for the masseuse, whose name is Keanu, I don't think that's in the movie anymore, but in the script his name is Keanu, I wanted Kumail to do this and he... I think we went out to him and we asked him to do this scene. Said, "Would you come in and do a cameo and be this crazy masseuse?" And immediately he said yes. We got the word, he said, yes, he's in. And then he read the scene. And three hours later it was, "He needs to talk to the director before he'll agree to do this." And we actually... That was our problem with this scene is how do we explain that the scene of two naked people rubbing butts on each other for a happy ending massage, that this will be funny and not crazy and weird and something you'll regret doing. So, I think Kumail was actually in Greece with his wife on a vacation. Like, the first vacation they had had in a couple years. And he took a break from it to Skype-call me. I was in Hawaii, prepping. And he was just like, "Listen, man, I just got to know. "What are we gonna be showing here? And what kind of scene?" Like, "I'd love to do it, but are you gonna screw me on this?" Basically, he was saying, "Are you gonna screw me on this?" And I showed him some storyboards I had made up for this scene that had some of the crazy positions they were in. And I just sent him a picture of one or two of those. Said, "This is what I'm thinking." And he instantly was like, "Oh, I get it. It's a full comedy scene. "It's full weird-position comedy scene. I'm in." And then, also, three weeks later he shows up buff as hell. I did not know he was packing muscles like that. And he said he was worried about doing the nude scene. So he started hitting the weights even more. I mean, we're alone. How's Mike? Um, this scene we shot in an actual sauna. We did almost no set work on this entire movie. Everything was real, which is great for the production value of the background of Hawaii. But, God, this was a tight, this was maybe an 8'x6' sauna that we just actually shot in. So it was real tight to get in here and try to get these shots. And obviously, this scene, even from the early stage of the script, this was kind of the question of like, "And, uh, are we keeping the sauna scene in the movie? "What do you think of the sauna scene?" That was always the biggest question about this movie, is that, "Do you think this is the kind of movie "that keeps the sauna scene or loses it?" And I always thought you kept it. Originally in the script, cousin Terry was a man. It was a man. And we came upon the idea, someone had suggested during the prep of this movie, of, "What if you make it a woman?" And it's kind of a woman who's really forward and kind of almost a predator-ish, just a bisexual. It's not that she's straight, it's not that she's gay. It's just that she is down for anything, is her vibe. And so we decided to... We changed the role maybe a week or two out from production. Changed that role to a woman. Which I think adds a fun layer that you haven't really seen before in a movie. I love these little cut-ins here on Mike's face here and the sound she's making. Mike, I'm coming. - No! Oh, my God! I think that was, we were on set. And besides Adam screaming, we just said, "What's the worst thing that could happen "If you've already walked in and see your sister in the middle of a happy ending? "What's the worst possible thing that the sister could say to you?" And the answer was, just looking you dead in the eyes and saying, "Mike, I'm coming." And that's where that came from on the day, I believe. Terry! Poor Mike, just falling apart here. Shut the fuck up, Mike. Ugh. From one to the next. Cannot handle it. I'm gonna kick your ass. Adam Devine at 100% again, wonderfully. Poor, poor Mike. Mike's... This is where, I think, actually, you go from Mike being like an overly sex-crazed, like, "Who is this guy," to like, "I actually start to feel a little bad for him here." Here and in the next scene in the lobby with Tatiana. Um... God, so funny. And here we go. Back to Kumail again. Kumail is great. Kumail and Sugar were great together here. Just playful. And it was so fun having Kumail in to shoot because we would do the scene and then he would just come over to me and Say, "Hey, what other jokes do you want to try? "What should we... Should we try this, should we try that?" And he was so fun and great about just, "Let's keep thinking. "What else could be fun here? "What other jokes should we try?" And we would just sit on the side of the set for five, 10 minutes before each setup and just come up with more stuff for them to play with. And this is a perfect example of Kumail. You could develop cancer. Going off on his own, "Develop cancer." It's great. Um... Wait, you did that? These two. It's so funny. And that was another thing in the script is that we had to try to balance, and it's interesting. You'll see in the deleted scenes, there's a lot of scenes that got cut. But it was making this a true four-hander and balancing Alice and Tatiana and Mike and Dave throughout this movie, and having four leads is like... We shot a lot of stuff to make sure we could put it together in different ways. 'Cause when you're trying to balance that many people, I just wanted to make sure we didn't get back to the edit room and go like, "Oh, we wish we had this." Or, "We need this moment." And in truth, we had so much. We had too much stuff that we couldn't fit it all. The movie would have been two-and-a-half hours long. And I kind of think you don't want it to go that long if you're doing a comedy. You want to get people in the theater. Make them laugh. Make the story work. Feel for the characters a little bit. Send them on their way. But I think there's a lot of deleted scenes and extra jokes and bits on this that we put on the disc here. God, this, the banyan trees, by the way, so pretty to shoot in. And this is one of those scenes, these emotional connection scenes that I remember shooting and going, "You know what? We'll probably cut this way down in post "because we've got so much crazy, funny stuff going on. "We'll probably want to get back fo it." And the opposite is true. We got into the edit room, and you put this together and it's like, "Yeah." What a great reminder to check back in with the characters and where they are and what they want out of things. And we just were like, "What else do we have? What other lines did we try? "Let's put everything in this scene." Um, and it's so nice to take a break for a second with these two. And just re-establish the stakes and where we are. And I think it helps. I think those scenes with Anna and Zac in the movie help drive the whole movie and help reset for the comedy in the next scenes after that. And that was... Yeah, that was fun to see working as we put it together. Yeah, I'm totally overreacting. God, this is another, one of the ones from the first time I read the script. Tatiana's little run here about what she did and what it's like. lt was one of those things in the script where it was like, "Yeah, we got to do this in the movie. I haven't seen this scene before." It's just like Tinder. We did, we probably tried about 50 different things that we made poor Aubrey do and describe here before we got it down to three things for the movie. ...contracting them. Are you deliberately trying to hurt me? Is that what you're doing? What? No! I was just trying to get RiRi tickets... to make my best friend feel better, okay? We're on vacay. By the way, Adam Devine. Have we talked about him yet? What a great dude. We were lucky on this movie. Literally, everyone we... I'm so happy with our cast. Not only our main cast, our main four, but our secondary cast. I mean, just literally couldn't have asked for a better group of people. Not only with how funny and talented they are, but just great dudes. I didn't really know Adam very much before this movie. We had met a couple times about various things that we never really worked together. And then, I mean, when we first met about this movie, he was like, "I feel like I am Mike. "Like I know how to do this role more than any other role I've read." And I think he was right. He just really put everything into it. And always, he was always the best about, "Do we need another take? "Do you want me to try this?" He'll do it. No complaints. Always full of energy. And so funny, man. God, I just want fo... Hey, Jake. You coughed a second ago. ls there a bug in the room? Not that I know of. Did I cough? So you didn't choke on a bug? Made it up. All of it. No. What do you mean? I don't think I did. Why? Has that happened? You just coughed and it sounded like... I just assumed you choked on a bug. Well, I don't think that's a reasonable assumption, Margie. I mean, unless you know something I don't about the bugs in this room. I don't think I choked on a bug. That's the thing about a sound booth. It's always bugged. Oh, come on, man. Is that a pun? ls that what you're doing? Did you just try to put a joke on the DVD commentary? I don't... That was just a fact. I don't joke. I don't understand humor. Mmm-hmm. - So, I don't... Is that what you do when you work in the booth for this long? Do you just sit on something like that for, like, 10 years and just Say, "One of these days I'm gonna put the bug joke in. "I'm just gonna hit the mic button and pop on in"? Um, I will be telling my family and friends about this commentary and the fact that I'm a part of it, if that's okay. - Oh, my God. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I think that's clearly what's going on here. You lied? By the way, I think there is a way to stop and go back and rerecord sections. I know earlier you told... I mean, it's too late now. We're an hour into the movie. But I think... Yeah, there's no way we can go back now. There was a couple points at the beginning where we could've. We could've, right? I knew it. We're too deep, we're in too deep, as they Say. Well, for the first time, I agree with you. This is just what it is by this point. And I've got way too busy of a day to redo this. So it is what it is. You got any thoughts on this scene here? "Love hurts." How did they get up in that tree? "Love wounds..." We just had... We just stepped them. We had a ladder. They just crawled up in the tree. Climbing trees is dangerous. I don't have children, but if I did, I would say, "Please, avoid climbing trees because when you fall you could hurt yourself." I mean, I guess in a way that's reasonable. But, also, kids love climbing. I mean, you got to climb a tree. Kids love climbing trees. You got to let your kids climb trees. Well, I'll never have children anyway, so it doesn't matter. That's not... I don't want to open that door with you, Margie. I'd actually love to talk about it if you are... Yeah, no, I had a feeling you might. And I don't, let's not make that... Let's do that... That's another disc, okay? I just, I'm not sure if I'm firm on that decision to not have kids, or if I should consider... Should I freeze my eggs? A clear line in the sand. Well, all 1 can say is I would support you if you did. l'm gonna support anyone who wants to take that route. And it's a decision you got to make for you. All right, but let's really not go farther than that into this discussion. If/ freeze my eggs, will you go in on it with me? They're liars! No, I won't go in on it with you. It costs a lot of money to do that. /'m sure it does. But that's not my problem, Margie. I mean, you can decide to freeze those eggs or not, that's up... You said you'd support me, though. You got... I know you work, Margie. I know you work. I'm looking at you do your job right now. If you want to save up... Well, no... I mean, how much do you need? Uh... Tatiana was jerking off our cousin Terry. Are you crying? Cousin Terry has a dick? No. It's hard to see you through the glass. /'m fine. Let's just... - Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. We can talk about it later. Listen, if you need help, let's talk. No, no, no. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. I can't do that, David. Oh, boy. What? I mean, just... I just had a kid. And I love having a kid. And I get it if you need... I mean... I would love to know what that feels like. She really had to pee? Anyway it's... Let's talk... Let's seriously... Let's, you and me, let's talk afterwards. /... Okay. - Okay. That'd be great. I can't believe what's happening here. I do want to remind you, though, about the heavy breathing. Thank you, thank you. Appreciate that. I'm gonna walk in on Mom... I ama heavy breather. I'm kind of worried about breathing heavily in this thing. Careful, when you scratch your face it brushes the mic and then it fucks me up. But have you seen this Push Pop scene? I forgot to talk about this Push Pop scene. Um, love the... Zac went full Brad Pitt in Se7en here. He did a full what's-in-the-box on what's-the-Push-Pop. Also, a little thank you to my good friend, Lauryn Kahn. A hilarious writer who I know from back when I started at Funny Or Die, and she started at Gary Sanchez Productions, who we're out of the same office. And we've been friends ever since that website launched. And she was one of our on-set writers. She came out for two or three weeks pitching jokes. And, um, she pitched that phrase Push Pop. I think, initially, we had a different phrase in there and she's like, "Let's try 'Push Pop." It was great. You're out of control! By the way, we cut right out of this shot before Tatiana's about to throw a drink in Becky's lap. Which you can see all about it on the deleted scenes. There's a really funny runner of Tatiana continues to throw her champagne glass into Becky's lap and make it seem like she peed her pants. And that was one of the things I hated losing in this movie as we got it down to time. It was a really funny runner throughout the movie. Talk about the centipedes. Oh, there were centipedes that... Yes, I forgot. We shot... We're back at the banyan trees here, shooting at night. We shot for three nights out here. Like The Truman Show. And centipedes were falling from the tree on all the crew and actors. And they were the biggest centipedes you've ever seen. They were six, seven inches long, a centimeter thick. They were nightmare centipedes. And apparently what had happened was, people were so worried about how many bugs there were gonna be in the forest at night that they had sprayed for mosquitos the day before we shooted. And it... "Before we shooted," before we shot. And it got rid of a lot of all the mosquitoes and small bugs. But apparently it just kind of slowly stunned the centipedes 'cause they were so much bigger than the other bugs that it didn't kill them. And so, six hours later after they sprayed as it was shooting, the centipedes finally started dropping from the trees in a daze 'cause they couldn't hold on to the branches anymore. And it was raining centipedes as we shot. That is terrifying and the stuff of nightmares. And it is true. That is absolutely what happened. And then one of the crew guys took one of the centipedes and put it into a cup. And started walking around showing it to everyone while it would crawl in and out of the cup on his hand. Ugh! Did you guys eat them? No, no one ate them. That would be... You could, though. If you were trapped, that's exactly what you would eat for the protein. I would eat them without being trapped. What, why? What? Why on Earth would you do that? Well, if you want... Can we have that conversation about freezing my eggs again? I'd like to... I think we should wait. And honestly, not even for me or the commentary's sake at this point. I think for you we should wait till after this. Well, you're the director. I deserve to have a little fun. What is that? Is that... Are you mad at me? Do you agree with me? I have no idea now, Margie. This is gonna be so much fun! I just... Yeah, this is... It's gotten out of control. I apologize. I feel like I'm... I'm sorry. I feel like this is too much. It's... No, no, no. - It's... You're... You're fine. Please, don't. This is how we do it, baby. Come on. Let's just try to get through this commentary. Absolutely. Let's both do our jobs here. Right? - Absolutely, let's do that. We'll just get this thing done. - Please, Iet's do that. Um, You love that movie. We were shooting on... How's it a bad idea if you love the movie? We were shooting on a prime lens here. Probably about 40 millimeters. Oh, my God, commentaries are So... -... boring. - And we were... It's, like, what is this? - Margie. /'m just... You're talking about... -... hearing him and sitting in here. I'm listening to this guy... - Can she hear me? ...ramble on about things he thinks about. Oh, my... Do you know you put the mic on? - It's just, when... What the fuck are... What... What am I even... What is my life? She doesn't even know she put the mic on. - What is my life? I just can't believe it. I can't believe... It's just a waste of his time and my time and everybody's time. Jesus. This makes me feel really shitty about the commentary. Oh, shit. Yeah, you got the... Your elbow"s on the button! What's that? Your elbow"s on the mic button. - Did you... Hello, everyone. Oh, no, I know, I wanted that. Um, I'm just gonna adjust a couple of levels. And I'll be right back. They're two of the sweetest... Where'd she go? She's running out of the booth. All right. Our first soeaker tonight... Where... Oh, my God. Well, God, I don't know what she's doing or where she went. Fricking Margie. My eyes are dry. Just give it to me. Uh, all right, listen, let's... I'm sorry. Uh, let's get back into this. "...my speech." Doing a little Chris Rock here. God, I'm sorry. I'm just thinking about, I don't know what's going on with her right now. She's talking about these eggs. She's talking about how boring commentaries are. I don't think she's happy. I don't know where she went. I'm starting to get a little scared. I feel like I should try to lock the door to this room. I don't know what's going on. Um... Why aren't you on my side, Dave? All right. Let's talk about, let's talk about this movie again right here. Fucking Zac Efron bringing it strong and hard right here. Boom. We thought this was so funny of Zac being such a good actor and just straight up yelling as seriously as he could, "I'm gonna draw. Like an artist." We even used that phrase. By the way, Lavell, our Keith. I haven't had a chance to talk about Lavell yet. So funny. Such a funny guy. Loved him on Breaking Bad. And we were able to steal him out. And, God, there's another... There's a great whole runner with him that got cut that's on the DVD that in every scene he just talks about how he's on vacation and he still hasn't been in the pool yet. That he's living in paradise and he just wants to get in that pool. But he's been so busy getting the wedding ready. That couldn't make it on. But, man, he was so funny. Um... The mics are on! - You're just fucking pissed off... Here we go, guys. ... because Tatiana finger diddled Terry. There it is! By the way, great pitch coming up here from Mary Holland who a little later here, where I was like, "If you have any ideas for this scene let me know." I told all the actors on this movie, "Anything you want to try or any ideas you have, "or jokes you want to pitch, let me know." I'm always down to try stuff 'cause that's how I run it and I want them to try things I say, so if they got things, let's try it. And that's why Mary's holding that champagne glass there. When she snaps it and breaks it in her hand, that was her pitch. That just, she said, "Can I please, please, have a glass "that I just shatter in shock and ruin my hand with?" And I said, "Absolutely. Call props." Said, "Please get breakable champagne glasses for her." And we did it. There we go. Love it, love it. And we actually had to remove it from her hand, digitally, in the next shot 'cause we're using a take where she hadn't broken it yet behind Eric there. And so, then, uh, we digitally removed it from the shot after she breaks it. They got so... This was one of those nights where it was raining. Kind of every 25 minutes we'd have to break while it rained for five minutes. And it was very hot and very humid. And Zac and Adam doing that fight was really hard on them, actually. And they got so sweaty by the end of it when they were lifting each other up. I think Adam literally almost hyperventilated at one point. When we finally cut for lunch there, um... Adam just stripped off every piece, Stripped all the way down to his underwear. Took the suit off, took the shoes off, took the socks off. He was just so hot and the air was so thick and humid that he was having trouble breathing after that. It's 'cause these guys give it their all. They're pros. By the way, you will notice that we are doing night scenes here. And we shot so many nights. It's actually rare for a comedy. I think we shot three or four weeks of nights on this movie. And it's tough. You do one week in the day then you got to switch your clock and get up where you're shooting from 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. all day. And we were also shooting in Hawaii in the summer. Which meant the days were really long and the nights were short. And it can really mess with your schedule and the actors' schedule getting used to shooting all through the night for weeks at a time. They usually don't do it that much on a comedy. I think we shot a lot of nights for a comedy. Drama you might see it. People just change their schedules. They're up all night for a month while they're shooting. And I think we started doing, or at least once we did, we had nightcap drinks after shooting.

0:13 · jump to transcript →

So It Meant We Had Bloody Marys At 5

By the way, check out those horses. Another big training stunt. We had to ship horses in from the mainland to get the properly-trained horses. 'Cause, again, there's a whole horse sequence of stunts that didn't make it into the movie, but that should be in the cut features here. We did so much work with those horses. And now it just seems like, "They have one scene where they let horses out." We spent, like, a whole week of nights filming horses. And there's so much more footage on the DVD. But that's how it goes. Got to learn to not be precious when you get in that edit room. And just follow... Make the story work. Follow the jokes, follow the story. Clean it up. This is a fun scene to shoot where these two actually connect and get serious here. We shot this over two different nights, I think. Which I was worried about breaking up the flow of the scene, how we had to shoot it. But I think we shot all the wide shots one night. And then we went in for these close-ups another night. And we shot this towards the end of our schedule and towards the end of our stay at Turtle Bay. And I remember the actors, there was a little bit of how, "We've been so goofy and crazy for so many weeks shooting this, "how are we supposed to get a little serious and shoot this scene now?" It was like we all had to take a moment and reset and Say, "Okay, how are we gonna shoot this "like a real connection and still get some jokes in there, "but make sure we don't undersell the connection here?" Can I assuage you a few questions? That's always a little tricky, to switch modes when you're kind of used to doing one thing. Pop into another. You got to make sure everyone's on the same page. ...8O people listen to me. And it's fucked up. Me, too. I'm a natural born leader. Like George Washington. Yeah. Or another leader. Oh, she's back, she's back. - Jake. Oh, yeah, hey. - Hi. Hey, Margie. All right, here's one. I had to go to the bathroom. Okay. You don't have to tell me that. - I had to pee. You don't have to Say... I don't know, why would you tell anybody that? A stranger, me, but definitely at work. Why would you... You don't have to tell me that. I just want you to know. I had to pee, okay. I was not overwhelmed, emotionally. Sure, okay. I'm not gonna press you on that. I'm just gonna let you say that and I'm gonna give that to you. I peed in there if you want fo... - You don't have to keep saying it. The more you Say it, the more it's pretty obvious that you're lying, in fact. So I would just... - Okay, why would I lie about pee? That doesn't make any sense. You were gone a long time. lll say that. I will say that. If you really want to get into it, no, I don't think you left to pee, 'cause you were gone way too Iong. And I heard very heavy breathing and heaving outside the doors. These doors are supposed to be soundproof and I heard you. Okay? So there. I don't... That must have been in your movie or something. It wasn't in the movie. Ooh! My little cameo in the movie. Margie... - Who was that guy? Not important. Listen... Dave! Hi. Now I have to pee. 'Cause you have... All this talk about pee. What's going on? Are you okay? - Me? Um, I should have done this before we started. There's no way to stop the recording? - No. We cantt. Once we start, we can't stop. It's just like a Snickers bar. Okay, I'm just gonna run really... "Just like a..." I'm gonna just run really quick. Will you, um... I know this is crazy and probably something you haven't done before, but would you just mind filling in commentary for me for the next minute here? - OA, uh... Okay. Sure. - Okay, I'm gonna run. Okay? - I've never done the... Okay. Okay, just keep it... I just don't want there to be a blank spot in this. So I'm gonna run to the bathroom. Go for it. Okay. This a really good time. Uh, Jesus. This is a naked woman. There are horses. Um... I'm a woman, Dave. Deal with it. I done... It's vagina, vagina hair. I didn't come from that bush. There's, um... He's in a Suit. This is an attractive woman. Hi, Becky! - God, your bush is huge. And then... Margie, I'm sorry, I actually don't know where... Where's the bathroom? I'm so sorry. I ran down the hall. I went to the... Where... Oh, sure. It's down the hall and it's to the right. Down the hall, to the right. Okay, is it going okay? It's going really, really good. -/ think I'm doing well. - Okay, awesome. I will be right back. Just keep going. Okay. Why the fuck would you do that? I don't think you're supposed to go into the mystery bag... the night before the wedding. This is excruciating. Um... But Mike was right about you two. Uh, different gestures. Dave, I'll be honest with you. This is a scene that was shot at nighttime. There's fire in the background. The wind feels so nice. They... You have to be careful when you shoot with fire 'cause you might get burned. I'm so thirsty! Dave, we should get in the ocean. Um, and there's a bridge. Just be quiet. Oh, my God. What is the point of any of this? /, um, can't swim. That's a fun fact about me. I never learned. Okay, okay, okay. Thank you. - Oh, God. Hey, thank you very much. Did that go okay? Yeah, my pleasure. It went really well. -/ think I got some really good info in there. - Good, good. I'm trying to think of where we're at. Where did I leave? I left in the horses scene. So, I know you didn't know a lot of the same details I know. But, uh, just fun facts about that scene. Got... What... If was shot at night. Jeanie had to be naked. There's a vagina. There was fire. You got to be careful when you shoot with fire. People got to be worried about that. And there's a thing on a bridge. And here... - I covered all of these points. You know, I'm gonna listen to this at some point. I'm amazing. What? Really? You covered all that? Yeah, I got all... I got about how fire is dangerous. Fire is dangerous. You got to have a special fire guy on set when you have any fire. Talked about naked. - They were naked. Really? Did you really talk about that? Yeah, I... Yeah. Wow. But you didn't... I mean, they're real naked... You probably didn't go into the detail of we had to cover the vagina with a merkin and all that. You probably didn't say that word. - No... Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. It's not important. I don't even know why I'm saying that word. But mostly just sad. Listen, this is a really emotional moment of the movie here. Dad! - Don't! And, gosh, Zac doing that Rastafarian accent will always get me. And you can see behind the parents in that shot a little hint of our deleted scenes. There was an exploded pig in the background of that shot right there that is part of an entire story line about a roasted pig that did not make it into the movie. And, again, is on the deleted scenes. And it's still left over, you can see that. That scene was initially horses running through and destroying the place and digging up a roasted pig that Eric was so excited about doing a traditional pig for his Hawaiian wedding. And it's all gone now. A little 'round-the-horn here of everyone depressed the next morning. This is a real hotel room that we're shooting in here. We changed the walls, changed the furniture a little bit. By the way, have I taken the time to just stop and say how wonderful of a person Zac Efron is, and how fun it was to make an entire movie with him? Zac is one of those guys, just one of the sweetest dudes you'll ever meet. And you're not... You know what I mean? And I think it's good for people to know that he is one of the nicest, nicest guys I've ever worked with. And so good at what he does. And takes it so seriously. And always has thoughts to bring to the scene. And it was a pleasure. When I first... I actually first met Zac years and years ago for a very guerilla-style Funny Or Die video back in the day. I think, around when the 17 Again movie came out. We made a little Funny Or Die video that Zac was in. And when I first met him for this, to talk about doing this movie, which is, you know, six years after that thing. He was like, "Wait, do we know each other?" And I was like, "Yeah, back in the day we did this little Funny Or Die video "for an hour one day. It was real quick," and da, da, da. And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, I remember. We shot that that Funny Or Die video." He goes, "Man, people really thought that video was cool. "I got some, like, good props for doing that video. "Thank you so much for doing it." I was like... That was the first kind of thing after being a Disney star that people are like, "Hey, man, that's really cool that you did that." He was like, "I always loved doing that video." And I was like, "I got him." I was really, really excited and hopeful that we would actually be able to get him in the movie after that. And we did. He was in after our conversation that day. And it was really fun to spend time working on the character and working on the movie with him. It was fun to spend time with all these guys. Aubrey Plaza, I mean, come on. Who else can play the crazy Tatiana? 'Cause Aubrey is so funny and so good. And also a legit weirdo who can be a very weird person in the... And I mean that in the best way. I love Aubrey. And she's Tatiana in a way that, I think, other people, you would have known they were acting to be the crazy girl, a little bit. And I believe Aubrey somehow, a little bit more. Um... But I think occasionally... we should think about how we make... Here we go. We did a lot of work on this scene. This scene is kind of cobbled together from another scene that's not even supposed to go here that we put at the end, put at the end here. I love these girls here, kind of, learning empathy for the first time. Learning to feel for other people. Deciding they have to run off and save the wedding. Poor Mike. He's less special, but I played him so hard. They must be so mad at us! They must hate us. Fuck! I would hate us. I would fucking hate us! I hate us, man. I hate us! Believe it or not, that cut was not planned. Originally, the guy scene and the girl scene was very separate here. And then we decided to put the girl scene in the middle. 'Cause our guy scene was getting a little long. And we found that footage where they both said the same stuff and it seems very planned, and it was not. It was a very happy accident. Don't let your loser older brother... This was actually, this entire ending here was exactly what I mean about how great Zac is and how much thought he puts into it. And when we were about to film this scene, Zac called me into his room before we shot and he said, "You know, I really feel like these are brothers "and this is about them loving each other and trying to build each other up "and they should be talking about stuff from childhood." And Zac was a big part of writing a lot of the options we shot here and that it made it in the movie. Like, the whole Ninja Turtles run to do here was Zac's idea about doing a run about the Ninja Turtles. We had a couple other ones that we cut out. But it's like I can't imagine the movie without it now. And that was all, that was all Zacky. We're not going anywhere... until our little sister, Jeanie Beanie Weanie... The best compliment we got about this movie when people started seeing it is like, "I actually believe these two guys are brothers." I actually, it's not one of those movies where people feel forced together. And I think that speaks to, um, how good they both are and how well they both got along. I love them high-fiving over breaking a TV. We are so stupid. This scene right here actually, end of the movie here, one of my favorite scenes to shoot, and one of the first scenes we shot right after the meet and greet, after we had already made the mistake of starting with everyone in the meet and greet, we went to this location, this is week one of shooting, and shot six characters in a small room together. So it was a real fun first week for me as a director. Just dealing with, figuring out all our characters right away. We want you guys to love each other. Love each other. This is a fun one to shoot. I think, actually, I love this scene. I think the Fox execs saw the dailies from this scene, and they said, "Jake needs to move the camera more. "We're nervous. It's week one. "He's never done a movie before. "Is this going... Is this going okay?" And, I think, in fairness to them, I did a lot of long takes where we did many runs of different takes and it seemed very Static. But I think it turned out okay. I think the scene works. Pacing's in the editing. I hope it does. Maybe I should have moved the camera more. I don't know. ... read this same paragraph for 20 minutes. Another early talk that was fun to have of notes that came in were about the outfits. And I think there were some people who were worried that Mike and Dave were wearing too many crazy floral prints or that seemed too crazy. And I was a big, big believer that that is exactly who those guys should be. And they should be excited about their Hawaiian vacation and wearing big prints. There's something kind of dumb and loveable about the costumes in this movie that our main four wear. That I'm very, very glad we kept in. And that I fought to keep in on these guys. I'm hoping when Halloween comes around I will see two dummies in Hawaiian suits, walking around, pretending to be Mike and Dave. We'll see. If that happens, that is all 1 need. That is my measure of success on making a film. Will anyone, the following Halloween, be dressed as anyone from the movie? We shall see. I was drinking puddle water and I had to go to the hospital... 'cause puddles are really dirty. One time I was on peyote... and I signed up for a T-Mobile plan. One time I got high. Listen, I don't want to be too rough on T-Mobile here. I got a T-Mobile plan on my iPad. And it was just a, maybe it was an easy joke to go for. We went for it, guys. I'm sorry. Damn it! Sixty percent of my investments are in some pretty... It's so satisfying to see Eric here just get mad and blow up. You can hear the whole, when we did our test screenings, you just hear the whole audience kind of open up and love it, and just love to see him get mad after this whole movie of being kind of timid and polite to everyone. And, God, Sam does it so well. This was one of the audition scenes for sure. Bam! Two hot air balloon tickets for our honeymoon. Saving the day. Saving the day with that hot air balloon. Surprise. Aww! Now another thing about shooting this, one of our first days, again, and we were doing really long takes. It was week one on the shoot and I was, again, wanted to make sure we got everything, got all the options we could get to make sure we could cut it together any way we wanted. And we spent the first half of the day shooting Zac and Adam and Anna and Aubrey. And Sug and Sam, Jeanie and Eric were just kind of waiting off-screen, feeding their lines to everyone. Being great, great actors and great partners. And then all this coverage on them we kind of shot in the last 45 minutes of the day. And I felt bad we had to rush through it. But while they were waiting off camera the entire day, they came up with this wonderful hand-clapping to do and pitched it to me to do it. And I think it was literally because they were bored all day just waiting to be on camera, that they started doing this. And, of course, immediately put it in and wanted it in the movie. And it's such a wonderful little accidental by-product of making them wait all day to shoot. Do you have Zac Efron's number? This way! What was that, Margie? Do you have Zac Efron's number? I'm good. So what part you like, brah? We need the whole pig. Mmm. No. But we need to feed 100 people. Could we please, please have the wedding here? Just wondering if he might be interested in going in on freezing my eggs with me. You can't ask Zac to help you freeze your eggs, Margie. You just can't do it. You don't know him. Please? You asked me but you don't really know me. You can't just go asking people to help pay to freeze your eggs. That's not how it works. Start a GoFundMe page or a Kickstarter if you're gonna be asking strangers, but don't just ask for people's numbers in my phone so that you can call them and ask for money. Come on. Okay, /'m sorry. And don't... You got a little nest egg built up, I'm sure, a little savings account. You've been working... How long have you worked here? I have a gambling problem. Oh, Margie, you can't bring a kid into that world. You got to get that straightened up before you're even thinking about the kid thing. I can't swim. What?

1:10:07 · jump to transcript →

So It Meant We Had Bloody Marys At 5

And I think I like that we did this a lot. And I'm thinking a lot of other movies we may have... They may have celebrated this a little more. And I kind of love that the audience is not into this song. And they are going way too far. Didn't Aubrey have an ear infection during this? Yeah, that's weird that you know that, Margie. But she did. She actually showed up very sick. It was very hard for her to physically hold that pose. And she was miserable between takes. And then just putting on that smile. Ooh, here we go. Real fireworks, by the way. We got to go out there and shoot and film, which was great. You know, there's also a great deleted scene I recommend looking at before the fireworks go wrong here of our masseuse Keanu and our bridesmaid Becky having a little moment in the crowd there. That's very funny, that didn't make it in the movie. And then, of course... And this whole, this entire ending was not the original ending. We actually... This was like an alt that, halfway through filming the scene, I was like, "Wait a minute. What if the fireworks go wrong?" And it's kind of crazy 'cause it feels like such the end of the movie to me, and it was something we just tried on the day, and so then we had to do all the fireworks in post. We didn't have any of it ready to go wrong. I didn't know you could do it this way. And then, of course, the reversal here, which I really wanted to see. Felt like I had never seen this joke in a movie before. I'm sure, immediately, now that I've said that, people will tell me it's been done a thousand times. But I really was excited about trying it here. And, guys, that's it. That's Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. We got some bloops. We got some fun bloops here at the end. And I really don't know where the time went on this. Um... Okay. Well he's dead, and so is Jon Snow. I think Margie ate up a lot of it, frankly. Um, and I'm just gonna Say it, Margie. Yeah. I take back the nice things I said at the... A moment ago. You kind of ruined my first DVD commentary. Oh, Interesting. - So, thanks for that. Um, but you know what? This is... By the time you are done making a movie and going through the editing process, you've probably seen the movie about 200 times. So when I watch this now, I'm so used to everything in the movie. It's... It can be... It just flies right by. It's hard to remember what to talk about. I hope there was one shred of something that was interesting to someone in this. And I want to thank my editors very quick. Jon and Lee, and Jon who did great work dealing with all the footage I gave them. I think they counted it, they said... We shot digitally on this movie, but they said we had shot the equivalent of 1.4 million feet of film on this movie. Which they said was more than Apocalypse Now. And I don't know how we did that for a 90-minute comedy. But thank you, guys, for going through that. I think you're forgetting to thank someone. What are we doing? Oh, yeah, well, our costume designer, Deb McGuire, who's great with all that. I mean, there's so many people to thank. I mean, really everyone on the crew was fantastic. Nan, my first AD, Lisa. I mean, we really had a really, really good strong crew. Someone in the... Someone who is here right now, talking right now. Well, Zac and Adam are on there right now and I... Maybe I didn't thank them immediately. But, obviously, our whole cast's... No, I mean, Margie. Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, again, I feel like you're faking an accent, randomly, Margie. And you don't need to. You've got enough going on with you. I'm Margie from Ohio. I can't swim and I need my eggs frozen. Zac Efron, call me. Margie, what is going on? You know what? I will thank you, Margie. By the way, got this little gem in here. Which I do want everyone to know, Zac Efron freestyled this rap. This was after we recorded, this was after we recorded them doing tracks for the songs at the end of the movie, at the wedding. Doing This Is How We Do It and You Are So Beautiful. And Zac was just in the booth and he was like, "Yeah, you know, I'd kind of like to try to freestyle." And we were like, "Let's hear it." And we just gave him a beat and this is what he did. And it's amazing. He did a little freestyling and I said, "Let's try it as Dave. "Let's freestyle in character." And then he started doing this. And we mixed it into a song and put it at the end of the movie. I can do that, too. - I done... Hey, ya'll, ['m Margie I'm real tall I like monkeys and I like the... And I like books It's not even hard to rhyme "tall," Margie. All, mall, fall. But it's... You went with "books"? My name is Margie and I am a mall Oh, my God. It's like, if I weren't in this situation, if I were watching from the outside, I'd be fascinated. I'd love what's happening here. But because I'm one of the people involved, it just, it's too much. My name is Margie and I play basketball I like it a lot because it's fun The worst, maybe the worst freestyle rapping I've ever heard. And you've had, you've given yourself three... I see you writing on paper. So it's not even freestyle, first of all. I know you're trying to come up with rhymes. And then they're not rhymes! But you know what? We came back from that... Anyway, Zac is very good at it and I was very happy he let us put this at the end of the movie ina... I like to say, it's, this is the Wild Wild West of our movie. This, the Wild Wild West song of our movie. Which I'm very happy to have. By the way, Snappers Bar & Grill in the special thanks. It was right across from our, where we stayed in the hotel. And they were a Packers bar that I found in Honolulu and they served cheese curds. And I was in. We had a lot of meetings there. Thanks, guys. All right, thanks, and, Margie, thank you. My pleasure, thank you.

1:32:15 · jump to transcript →

Now, of course, James Gleeson, wonderful character actor, oddly enough, was not originally cast in the film. No. They had another actor who was not as well-known, and Lawton was not happy with his performance. So after trying twice to do the same scene with Billy and Uncle Bertie... Emmett Lynn was his name. Emmett Lynn, that's right. Thank you for remembering. He just gave up, and a few days later they were shooting

16:16 · jump to transcript →

Did you shoot these? No, no. It's a great choice of an owl. That owl is so well cast. It's a hard world for little things. Yeah, that's beautifully counterpointed in a minute or two when she's talking about how children are manned at its strongest. Yeah, yeah.

1:22:00 · jump to transcript →

A little background on actor Timothy Moxon, who plays Strangways. At the time of Dr. No, Moxon was making his living as a charter pilot and crop duster in Jamaica. But before he moved to the Caribbean, he had been an actor in London, where he knew director Terrence Young, which led to Moxon being cast in the role of Strangways. Actor Anthony Dawson plays Professor Dent. Dawson appeared in many films for director Young, beginning with They Were Not Divided in 1950 and continuing with Action of the Tiger in 1957.

2:52 · jump to transcript →

Sean Connery seemed an unlikely person to become one of the world's top actors. He grew up in the impoverished Fountainbridge section of Edinburgh, Scotland. He joined the Navy at age 17 and was discharged three years later. He took a series of menial jobs before traveling to London for the Mr. Universe tryouts. There, he auditioned for a part in the chorus of South Pacific. Soon, Connery became serious about acting, and in 1957, he was cast by Terrence Young

23:12 · 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 →

Fran Fullenwider, who's, of course, no longer with us. She's in heaven too. - Yeah, she is. She wrote me a wonderful letter when my husband died. What, recently? - Recently. Yeah, I'm sorry about that, Fran. And I remember she was in trouble one day, and Jim Sharman was very cross and crotchety. Well, we had to get the film done in two days, was it? How long did it take to make? - Six weeks. Six weeks. And I stopped the show. I remember your dear wife Kimi saying to me that... I stopped the show because Fran had a coughing fit or something, and couldn't go on, and he got very cross with her. So I sort of called a strike. I don't remember that, but it's been reminded. I'm quite... people were quite proud of that. You were very bold in those days. Fair. I was fair. - Fair. I thought you were red. - Honorable. Oh. - Oh. There's the beauty. - There he is, Mr. Curry. We've been-- we had a-- you know, when we... when we were casting this originally, we had a young man called Jonathan Kramer, American who is now also in heaven. That was... - Who isn't in heaven? We're lucky to be here. - Well, you and I. And... well, maybe we're luckier to be up there. Yeah. Kramer. And Jonathan was gonna do this part, and Tim came along... uh, to audition for us. And I'm afraid poor, old Jonathan... No. - ...never had a chance against this guy. But I heard it was Tim came in and said, "Let's rip it up." But did he say that? - I don't Know. I heard that, but I knew Tim before this. - Me too. Um, because I was working at the Royal Court Theatre and so was he. I was playing much bigger parts than him at the time, and he was so rather in awe of me, I believe. I'm sorry, but he did. He was very kind and admiring. - Mm-hmm. I knew him in Har, of course, because we were in Hairtogether. Of course. And I always thought he was the most beautiful thing on stage, seriously. Really? And when Jim and I were talking about putting this show on at the Royal Court, I went along looking for muscle men. I thought that would be a nice thing for me to do, is to go around the gyms and see if I could find a nice muscle man to play the part of Rocky. What a lovely way to spend your day. - Yes. And then I went into a little gym in one of those streets, George Street or Blandford Street off, um... Yeah. And who was there? And hang on, Baker Street. Baker Street, Blandford Street, George Street, yes. Yeah, you're a man of London. - And there was this gym. I went into this gym and there was very sweaty men, ugly sweaty men. You know, been pumping iron. And there was-- there was this young man who was living next door above a place called The Speed Queen. I know. The launderette. - This was a laundromat, yeah. And I thought, "That's very nice." And he asked me what I was doing, and I told him what I'd been up to. Sorry, was he in the gym? - No, he'd been-- he'd been living... He'd just come out of the flat, the apartment above The Speed Queen. So why did he speak to you? Oh, 'cause he knew you from Harr. - He went, "Hello, how are you?" I went, "Fine, and..." blah, blah, blah. - Yeah. "I've just been doing some casting." - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And next thing, he auditioned for us. Oh, God, another accident! Well, kind of. - Yes. Wonderful. And I auditioned for you singing a Jessie Matthews song. Yeah, "Over My Shoulder." It goes, One care... I told you not to play the piano because the music would put me off. I said, "I've got this." I surely would have done because I can't play the piano. I said to Richard, "Hardly." -

23:38 · jump to transcript →

experience with the cub going on, right? Yeah, absolutely. His response is great. He's freaked out. That's so funny. The casting on this film was really something. How long did it take? Well, it wasn't that hard because the key roles, I used people that I had always, I had worked with before, like Reggie, of course, had been in all of my films, and Mike.

43:49 · jump to transcript →

when he says his last line. It worked perfectly. But anyway, Bill was the new one to the bunch. I'd worked with everybody else, and he, uh, I had... Long Beach. I had a casting session down there. Yeah, I think I read at least four times. And were you sent there by an agent, or... Yeah, I was sent by an agent. Four or five times I read, and then I tested with you. And it was narrowed down to one other guy. And, uh...

44:46 · jump to transcript →

Peter Greenaway

body language that the man had, and I think it's always a characteristic of casting. I always held a somewhat, maybe to some people, reactionary point of view that actors can really only play one person, and that's himself or herself. So the casting is extremely important for me. So though it's not entirely Fellini casting, that is to say, characters chosen not because of the way they speak or the way they emote, but simply because of the way they look, that would certainly be important for me.

49:28 · jump to transcript →

Peter Greenaway

There's also a way that the casting sessions for me, which are often very troublesome and anxious times, because I am so fearful of not finding the right characterization for the character I want. But I do believe that through extreme, I hope, hard work, but also a certain amount of luck, we found here two characters were absolutely fitted for the roles that I had written. As I have heard tell, a talented draftsman,

49:57 · jump to transcript →

John McTiernan

This is Shane Black, he is a writer. I cast him because I wanted a writer on the set. And I just, I loved his work. And he's got a great wise-ass manner.

8:20 · jump to transcript →

John McTiernan

Here is Sonny Landham. In order to cast him, insurance company insisted we have a bodyguard. Not to protect Sonny, but to protect other people from Sonny. This giant huge man, six feet six inches tall, not Sonny, the bodyguard, who was assigned to follow Sonny, 24-hours a day, and always know where he was. To keep Sonny from getting in a fight or hurting somebody.

17:45 · jump to transcript →

Lea Thompson

Here's Elias Koteas, who actually plays Skinhead, and auditioned for John Hughes for a different movie. And John called me when we were casting. He said, "You got to see this guy." And the minute he walked in, I knew. Oh, my God. John had, like, found another unique kid. He was great in it, and I thought, grounded in a comedic reality that was a very tough tightrope to walk. Getting laughs and being real at the same time is difficult.

8:36 · jump to transcript →

Lea Thompson

I wonder if that was in the script. Yeah, that was in the script. - Was he supposed to be bald? You can remember, I can't. - No. But as I was shooting, I went, "Oh, my God. I cast the wrong guy, 'cause he's bald." And then John said, "It's funnier that way."

22:27 · jump to transcript →

It didn't feel like it was coming from way down deep inside. And when he finished the audition, he just sat around talking with us and he was Joe. So we had him read Joe and it was like a slam dunk. He is Joe at this point in his life. I love this because he's trying to, he's trying to reason with him. Yeah. So what's up? She's a human being. Why do you think I keep her tapes? Gonna be valuable someday. No.

27:18 · jump to transcript →

But better yet, you're acting it so great. I felt like I was a fly on the wall a little bit. Well, I remember it's, you know, I think so much of film is casting chemistry and script. And of course, that's the most obvious thing anyone's ever said. But I don't think if I was making the movie with someone other than Ione, we would have been as good as it was. I mean, at least from my end.

52:18 · jump to transcript →

Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

And I know the best thing to do when you find yourself in a situation like that is to stay calm and let people run their course. And I asked Frank what was the matter. I found out, and everything was cool. This guy with the hot dog was a real hot dog vendor. They're going to kick somebody's ass. That's the way he really talked. That's why he was cast. He was a local that everybody loved. And so he's an actual person. OK, all these four tawarsas, this is a Budweiser plant. This is a beer plant outside of Houston.

1:00:38 · jump to transcript →

Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

where you would walk in and you'd meet one of the guys from The Beards. I've forgotten the name of the band now, but a very famous Texas blues band. And you would also have southern barbecue in places that were just like holes in the wall, and just incredible food, incredible culture, incredible music, and a great feeling of camaraderie among the cast and crew.

1:49:41 · jump to transcript →

English Commentary

And if you look at the braid on General Montcalm's coat, they have woven in shadow as if the braid, in fact, three-dimensional and cast a shadow on it. This is also highly accurate and elaborate, but it's not the kind of thing you could just rent from a costume house. You have to do it yourself, which we did. And it was, again, one of those fortuitous circumstances, such as the fort, where either the real uniforms didn't exist

1:04:41 · jump to transcript →

English Commentary

Running in is Shingachgook. Shingachgook, played by Russell Maines. It was an idea early on in the casting. I never forgot an image I'd seen in the early 70s of the two leaders of the American Indian movement in a standoff against the FBI at the Wounded Knee Reservation. Two leaders were Russell Maines and Dennis Banks. I thought it would be...

1:42:04 · jump to transcript →

Pitof, was that making fun of Americans, the way those soldiers are chewing gum? Yes, sort of. It's very Jeunet. And they're chewing in sync. And it's... Yes, it's... - Making fun of Americans. Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis made this fake Sigourney. It was a real pleasure to work with this guy. Here's our first shot. The body of this little girl was based on photographs of Sigourney as a child. Then we worked them into a sculpture based on a life cast of an actress that the casting agent got for us. Look at this beautiful morph. Oh, yes, indeed. We morphed to Sigourney as an adult. That face looks an awful lot like the way she looked in Alien 3, when we took a life cast of her. That's right. And we used a body double to cast the body, didn't we? That's right. And we used a body double to cast the body, didn't we? This is the surgery scene. That was a nice little mechanical chest I made with some digital help there. The laser beam is digital. So it's part of my stuff as a second unit director. That's right. This was a fun little surgery scene, with some of the interactive tissue. Silicone chest that was laid on top of Sigourney. I love the look of this. Darius Khondji did a great job. The way the slime looks is almost metallic-looking. It's got such a beautiful reflectivity. Isn't that great? I love this. It's really disgusting. How it's... Then pop! The head pops.

3:31 · jump to transcript →

I remember these signs - this is the psychological tests - and Jean-Pierre had something specific in mind, in terms of the primitive drawings of apples and pears and cows and cherries and things. He went through an amazing amount of artists trying to get primitive-looking drawings of fruits and little tidbits. It turned into such an assignment. He couldn't find anybody who could nail that style. Which had something to do with what he had seen as a Child - basic, primitive illustrations, which actually come back in his film Amélie. We get a sense of that naive, childlike graphic thing, which comes from a children's book, which, I think, is a really big deal in Jean-Pierre's imagery. I love Dan Hedaya. I love the Coen brothers' movies. You remember, he played in Blood Simple, the first movie of the Coen brothers. Interesting casting. I wondered if Jean-Pierre would have picked Dan Hedaya had Jean-Pierre grown up in America and seen Cheers. I love the lighting. You had a lot of lights coming up from the floor. Exactly. We used an optical process, and the folks were very nice with me because they made all the prints in the world with the process. And it was very expensive. And they made maybe 3000 prints with the process. The name of the process is ENR. It was invented by Storaro, the Italian DP.

8:49 · jump to transcript →

Kat Ellinger

They're both lost souls. They're both at breaking point. And so they team up and this wonderful friendship arises through that. And one thing that always interests me is when you look at older interviews with the directors and, say, the cast, a lot of the comparisons are made to Thelma and Louise. Now, obviously...

30:04 · jump to transcript →

Kat Ellinger

especially with Karen Back and started to discuss them. She was looking to cast people in the film for the parts of Manu and Nadine who would be comfortable with doing hardcore. But even Karen Back's story seems like this tragic, oh, well, if you're going to involve yourself in that, then, you know, it has this ring.

1:11:18 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

Michael Clarke Duncan, who plays Frankie Figgs, is an old friend of Bruce's. They worked together on Armageddon. And when we cast him, he'd just finished shooting The Green Mile. You're in the right place. In which he plays a very different kind of role. Extraordinarily gifted actor with a presence

20:21 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

we were able to shoot the film fast is because we rehearsed for a couple of weeks with all the cast. And because as a result, I was able to have a complete shot list in my head before we started the movie. We didn't storyboard anything. It wasn't all drawn out. But I think we began the movie on day one with my knowing effectively every shot in the film. And that saves an awful lot of time.

1:31:25 · jump to transcript →

Tom Tykwer

favorite scenes in terms of what how strange can directing be sometimes you meet you have to cast two actors the milk van driver and this woman who enters the car now and when you do the casting you tell them what the scene will be they're going to do and the only thing they do is they meet and they have sex and then they split up again that's all they have to do and still you know they're very ambitious interesting and

1:03:12 · jump to transcript →

Tom Tykwer

And casting those actors, you can imagine, is very strange. You tell them, this is what you have to do, and then you ask them, how would you do it? And then you make a little rehearsal of that scene. But nobody has met each other before at all. So it's a very, very strange and confusing situation where I always wonder, what kind of a job have I got myself into that I have to put people into this weird situation?

1:05:09 · jump to transcript →

What's your fucking suggestion, Carrie? What's your brilliant reason solution? Oh, you're going to make this about our shit now? This isn't about us. I agree. It's not about us. It's about Joel, who's an adult, okay? Not Mama Carrie's kid. People get confused here because her name is Carrie, and then Jim Carrey was cast, and so they're wondering why he's talking about Jim Carrey there. We've had that problem more than once in focus groups. There is some, like...

24:24 · jump to transcript →

But I remember watching Jim in Living Color. At the end of the show, they all gather together and dance. And Jim was like this big guy. He was one of the only two white actors in the cast. And he didn't know how to interact because everybody was dancing hip-hop. And he didn't know the move. And he feels so lonely. And I think that's one of the reasons I thought he would be great for Joel.

1:18:06 · jump to transcript →

James McTeigue

Hi, I'm James McTeigue. I'm the director for V for Vendetta. Welcome to the In-Movie Experience. Something I thought I'd put together to guide you through the film. V is a very complex film politically, thematically. And I thought it might be nice if we could get the cast and the crew and myself... ...to talk about things that, otherwise, you wouldn't get to know about. SO, enjoy.

0:02 · jump to transcript →

Evey

For three nights we closed down Trafalgar Square... ...1N Whitehall and outside the Houses of Parliament. And logistically it was really tough. We could only shoot from 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. We had, probably, between the cast and the crew members, 1000 people... ...every night to move around in a very concise and succinct manner... ...and Terry Needham, who was the first A.D... ...I think he did an incredible job on that. When you do crowd replications... ... you know, the traditional way, and people will have seen... ... you shoot various passes and versions with the crowd standing in different places... ...and then you can add all those layers together to create your final shot. The shooting restrictions we had when we were on location... ...at Trafalgar Square and down at Parliament... ...Was SO, SO tight, that the amount of time we had... ...there was no opportunity to do anything special for visual effects. It was literally, try to get what they could for the main photography. What it does is you also have to be very concise... ...about your storytelling. We were able to use a lot of alternate takes, different angles... ...to build up the crowds. And the digital V figures were mainly used for the overheads. Obviously, a normal film day is 12 hours. And when you're condensed down into a 4-hour period... ... your appetite is always bigger than what you can ever achieve. That was a microcosm of that kind of, you know, filmmaking.

1:59:35 · jump to transcript →

Hats off to them. You got to do it upside down. It's very tricky. Don't leave him here. I could have a big trench where the guy tried to do it in my yard and it just does not work. I have a comment also on his performance. John, I thought he was a good casting choice for

1:11:28 · jump to transcript →

Patrick, I don't know if you had a falling out with Guy, but Guy deserves a lot of props on this, too. Well, you haven't mentioned his name the whole movie. Guy, Guy. That's right. Guy. I'm sorry, Mini. You got so caught up. And all the cast. I've got to say, I was very fortunate to get such a great group of people together, and I was very happy with the performances, and it was great to have that.

1:39:30 · jump to transcript →

I think what is truly original in this movie is to put the focus on the family, instead of doing it in all the district. It was very important, the casting in this movie. The kids was one of the big things in the beginning, and Shaheen Baig, the casting director, she helped a lot, especially with the trainings that she had with a lot of kids from different schools. I think when you're assisting these trainings, you know, you can see clearly if the kid is going to respond and if it's going to work in the way that you're expecting.

19:59 · jump to transcript →

Catherine was the first person that Juan Carlos chose in the casting of the film. I think I felt a connection immediately with her because she... You know, this character needs to show two things, which is she is a mother and she is a survivor, as well. So this strength, it's noticeable with her, but at the same time she's so tender and you understand why she's asking for the kids.

38:50 · jump to transcript →

Yeah. Another thing that strikes me on the casting is it's entirely possible that when they first thought of doing this, they intended to go with a London setting because it's full of British actors doing British voices. Now, this scene here, which is the first time we see, you know, Bela Lugosi and his possible daughter.

14:19 · jump to transcript →

and he named one or two others, and this person said, well, that's not a cast, that's a dinner party. A point well taken, and why wouldn't somebody want to be with the dinner party rather than just a cast? They were all either friends of mine or people I had admired. The location was interesting, which is always of some importance to me. It's nice to work outside of Los Angeles and in a place as...

11:46 · jump to transcript →

Roger Moore

Now, Irka is very, very beautiful... ...but has a slight cast. When we're in an interior... This is in the stage in Paris. But Irka has a slight cast in one eye. And when she looked around at me... ...the operator looking through couldn't tell... ...whether she was looking camera right or camera left. I said, "I think it's optional."

1:21:17 · jump to transcript →

Computer Simulation Division Richard Taylor

When we came to make a decision about what film format to use for Tron, we felt very strongly that we needed to shoot it on a larger negative than traditionally done. And it came down to a choice between 65 millimeter and VistaVision for the whole show. But the availability of 65-millimeter cameras was far better than the availability of VistaVision cameras, so we made the decision to shoot the entire show in 65 millimeter. And to keep a certain consistency, and as long as we had rented the cameras, we felt that we might as well go ahead and shoot the real world in 65 millimeter and not in 35 millimeter. It was kind of one of those nice to have things, and nobody objected strenuously to it, and also it would be the first time since Ryan's Daughter that a film had been shot entirely in 65 millimeter. And I think you can see the results. I mean, it looks wonderful. In the monitors in Lawrence Livermore, one of the things that Triple-/ had to do was create lots of imagery that appeared on monitors, and that imagery had to be shot and created long before we got to production. So, there was a lot of planning in creating all of the monitor imagery, and Triple-I did a great job on that. Spent a Iot of time on this shot. To accomplish the effect, what we did was get a 4-by-5 still camera and photograph Jeff Bridges in his position after he's been zapped, and then immediately moved him out and took another photograph, which was the background by itself. So, as you pull away chunks of Jeff, you see the background behind him, and then to put the laser and the grid and all that on top of him was basically the effects animation of John Van Vliet. When Flynn is de-rezzed and pulled into the computer, we go through one of the most interesting sequences in Tron, which is the real world to electronic world transition. This sequence was created by Robert Abel & Associates, primarily under the direction of Kenny Merman. It was a sequence which I had designed, knowing that the way that Robert Abel & Associates was making these computer graphic images with the Evans & Sutherland computers, and, really, using vector graphics to create this particular look, would give us a look that would be unique just for this transition. The three-space transition, the movement through all these binary bit patterns and this polygonal landscape, was done by making multiple passes through a traditional animation camera that was pointed at a high-resolution, vector graphic, Evans & Sutherland computer screen, and making multiple passes, frame by frame, using different colored filters, coming back, making multiple passes of rewinding other filters, until you finally end up with this, which seems to be solid objects. But it's really made out of lots of tiny, tiny lines put together to make solid blocks of color or objects. Oh, man, this isn't happening. It only thinks it's happening. When Flynn says, "This isn't happening, it just thinks it's happening," it's a key line, because it means that the reality that he finds himself in now, not even he can fully believe exists. And if anyone should appreciate and understand this alternate reality, it's him, and now he finds himself trapped in it. All right, now we see Sark standing on the bridge, and all of a sudden, he is enclosed with these shrouds of light as he begins to have his conversation with the MCP. The database for the MCP was a human figure that we had created at Triple-/ called Adam Powers and was originally on the Information International sample reel. And if you look at that sample reel, you'll see a juggler character who was juggling balls. Well, that face of that character is the face of the MCP. So, the first time that you see him, he is a polygonal drawing of a face. And that's basically the underlying database of the face. So, it's made of polygons. And those polygons, we play them out on the Triple-I computers as the line-drawing polygons, and made 12-and-a-half by 20-inch stills, high-con stills of those. But we created the mouth positions for the vowels and the syllables so that you could take these interchangeable transparencies and lay them down and make him Say, by whatever order you put them in, whatever you wanted him to say. 'Cause he was voicing a lot of different dialogue. Then those were backlit, and then we applied an effect to those line drawings of putting a steel mesh screen over the taking camera, and it made it have that much more, kind of, complex look. And then we also animated the exposure occasionally. Early on in the film when I started working with Steven, we did a lot of experiments to work out how these characters were created. The thing that we finally decided was that the characters needed to have this energy inside themselves. They are obviously in this electronic world. Now, these costumes were unlike any costumes anyone had ever created for a picture before, in that they were costumes designed to have effects treatments done to them. They were white with black drawing or black lines over them. All of the black elements on the costume were turned into circuitry which could be backlit and light could be pushed through there. We originally shot a 65-millimeter image of these people, live-action photography of them on these black sets. Then from that 65-millimeter film, we created some photo-rotoscope machines, which basically could project the 65-millimeter film down to large pieces of film, which were pre-punched with animation punches. This film was created by Kodak for us, and we would project down with these photo-rotoscope machines, which would hold this film into a vacuum frame and make a continuous tone positive print of each frame of the film. Then these continuous tone prints were taken to a light table, it was a vacuum light table, where they were contact printed to high-con film to make a number of high-con positive and negative images. So that you basically have for every character a large cel and you have high-con positives, negatives, and a continuous tone positive. Then these high-con elements were hand-inked and painted to isolate the circuits on the body, the whites of the eyes, the whites of the teeth and any other circuits that we wanted to treat as a separate exposure. The characters are more often than not... The live-action characters are shot on an all black stage. When there is a set, the set is also black, but is measured out to conform with what we're seeing in this artwork. So that if a character appears elevated in a shot, like this shot, there was an elevated platform for him to walk on, but it didn't look at all like the set. Then we would composite these actors over paintings, transparencies, and once that was done, we would add the light and the color separately. And to simplify it, you can describe it as a sort of perfect blend between live action and animation in that we took live-action film, photographed it in a way that we could break it down to individual frames, then blow up those frames into large slides or transparencies. And we had 75,000 of these, which seems like an appallingly large number, but it really isn't if you compare it to an animation film. And because we were at Disney, they were not overly swamped. That's an actual Frisbee, by the way, and those are actual Frisbees on their backs. We had a excellent Frisbee coach, Sam Schaiz. I like the fact that the deadliest weapon in Tron is a Frisbee. A Iot of effects animation in this sequence and in the film. And that is the animation that makes the glows, and as the Frisbee gets brighter, and you see the reflections of it on their costumes, all that has to be done frame by frame. This is hand-drawn animation that, although it is drawn, a negative is made of that, and it is placed over a light source and then re-photographed, and the ability of the effects animators was such that we were never waiting on the effects animation on the show. They always performed very well. It was never a problem. They did very few redos, and that's because they had had experience doing this beforehand, whereas everything else that we were doing, outside of the effects animation, was the first time through. So, that had a much tougher and steeper learning curve. In the holding cells for the game grid, those are backgrounds that are entirely hand-drawn by the background department, again using Rapidographs and line drawing and airbrushing and then turning those into high-cons. But those drawings are all drawn to match the actual physical sets, which were built so that when someone passes behind something, or leans on something, those are actual physical sets that were built. But again, the sets were just black on black. They're as if they were made of black velvet. Part of the interesting thing as a cinemagraphic problem that was presented to Bruce Logan was that he had to shoot, unlike anybody had ever shot before, sets that were entirely black with white line drawings and white characters running around on these sets. Bruce Logan's job in photographing these people was very difficult because, unlike most photography for most films, you try and get as much chiaroscuro in the picture as you can. You let there be a lot of dark and you create shadows and you create this moodiness, which a cinematographer takes great pride in. In this film, during the sequences in the electronic world, basically, he had to light them so that we could see as much of the costume as possible with as little shading as possible because all of the shading and all of that were done by hand by making different masks and airbrush elements that were used under these costumes in post. The ring game was an interesting technical exercise. The set itself, again, was black flock paper with the rings drawn on this paper with tape. The actors had to realize which rings were there and which ones were not as they acted out the sequence, imagining that they were hundreds of feet above the ground. One of the inspirations of Tron is the movie Spartacus. And there's quite a few similarities to the persecuted people who had to fight in the gladiatorial games. This game, of course, was inspired by Pong and jai alai. I think one of the interesting parts of Tron was the synthesis of new games that were created. The design, for example, of the glove that's being worn here, we took a traditional jai alai glove and then rebuilt it and made it out of foam, added other elements to it to give it a more technological quality, and then again, I put the designs over the outside of that to make it blend with the rest of the costumes. Shooting in 65 millimeter, from a director's standpoint, is a lot of trouble. The cameras are huge and bulky. The format requires an enormous amount of light to fill that negative, so if you are shooting Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago and you've got lots of snow and big exteriors, it's fine, but in low-light-level situations, it's very troublesome. The depth of field is sometimes as little as a half an inch, and you find your cameraman is asking you, "Now, which part of the eye do you want in focus? "Do you want the front of the eye or the back of the eye in focus?" Or if the head of the actor is not square to the camera, they ask you the really insane question of, "Which eye do you want in focus? "I can give you the front eye in focus or the back, "but the other one's gonna be blurry." Now a lot of these shots where you see actors talking to each other and we're doing over-the-shoulders, the camera couldn't hold focus for the blow-ups to be made, and I had to shoot the actors on separate passes. So, in a shot like this, where you see all three actors talking to each other, it wasnt filmed that way. I filmed them separately and they were composited. And there's quite a few shots like this. Whenever you see them walking around and they're separated by more than a couple feet, those are all separate shots, and then the actors are composited. So, it's very difficult for the actors because not only do they not see the environment they're in when we're filming, all they see is an all black stage, but they don't even see the actor they're talking to. Forming of the Lightcycles, again, is almost entirely done by hand-done animation done by the effects animation department in creating the way that these cycles form around these characters. We built an object that the actor could sit upon, and it was literally a mechanical shape that was the seat and the handlebars, so he could sit down and it would thrust his arms forward and pull him down into that locked position. So that everything that he sits upon and touches, it was, again, drawn by the animation department, and not until you see the final completed cycle, which is actually a CG/ rendering of the cycle, is any of it done by computer. The Lightcycle sequence was done by MAGI. Their way of creating an object were to take basic geometric shapes, cones, cubes, spheres, cylinders, and make an object by collaging those particular pieces together and creating an object. And that's how the Lightcycle was created. All wide shots that you see are computer-simulated. All of the shots, other than the very tight shots of the figures inside the canopies, are computer-simulated. The shots inside the canopies are actually hand-drawn artwork of parts of the Lightcycles, and the animation that's happening over the Lightcycle windshields is hand-done animation to give them a sense of speed. But virtually every scene that you see of the Lightcycles is entirely computer-generated. And there's not even effects animation in those scenes. If there's an explosion when a Lightcycle hits the wall and a tire bounces across, I think those were basically all CGI. Syd Mead worked really hard on designing these motorcycles so that they would incorporate the characters. But if you look closely at them, you'll see that the second half of the bike is flattened and sort of two-dimensional, and that was done because the computers couldn't handle too many compound curved surfaces. So, we restricted those curves to the wheels and the windscreens, and then the rest of the bike was simplified. The ability to move the camera through 3D space with these computer-graphic-looking landscapes is just great. The Recognizers are a sort of King Kong. There's a little head on top of that gate structure... Suggestion of a face, but it, sort of, got lost. The Recognizers were created by MAGI-Synthavision. As I mentioned, there are graphic vector lines, red lines outlining all of these objects, the same way with the tank. The tank was another unique design of Syd Mead, who is a futurist, a fabulous designer. Once Ram, Tron and Flynn have escaped the Lightcycle grid and are off through the canyons being pursued by the tanks, we cut inside the tanks and see another example of a Syd Mead set that was built as a three-dimensional set, again with black background, and all of the elements on there graphically put on so they could later be treated. So the camera, you can see, is moving through scenes in ways that no physical camera or no model shot could possibly do. The animators that I worked with to create the choreography for all of the CG/ sequences were Bill Kroyer and Jerry Rees. But to communicate all this information to the computer technologists, the people that are sitting at monitors at that time, took a new language which we had to create. So, what we did was, first of all, we had to think of each sequence as a real physical reality. Not only would they draw the point of view that they saw as an animator that we would work out together, that was the story point that Steven wanted to make, and also the point of view that we wanted to take. But after we would draw the original storyboards in a traditional, kind of, storyboard manner, we would have to go back and draw a top view, side view and front view of the objects, where they were in time, where the camera was in time, and what the camera's point of view was. So, we really had to define everything to the CG/ technologist in a three-world, three-dimensional space. And that was the first time that that had ever been done. They must've gone right past us. We made it...this far. Now, all of this, this revolt, it's all being led by the user who's gone in the system, Flynn. The Tron character and Ram character, they would have toed the line and gone through the software the way they're supposed to. We'd better, Null Unit. Null Unit. Get the computer dictionary out. Look up "Null Unit." What does that mean? In this sequence, you can really see some of the flaws. I don't really mean the flaws, but the imperfections in the cels, little bits of dirt that pop on and off. Yeah, but they're few and far between considering. Yeah. Come on, you little bugger. Come on. Look at that. A lot of pops and a lot of glitches in there that we would always Say, "Well, that's what happens in an electronic world." When we started there were going to be no differentiations between the flesh tones and the rest of their uniform. But at a certain point they looked, well, not very good. So as a result, that added, approximately, 120,000 extra frames, extra elements to the shot, so it did grow in many aspects. The cave sequence where Flynn, Tron and Ram finally re-energize their selves with this liquid energy was a very interesting technical problem to solve here. In the sequence in the cave when the water is being handled by the actors, literally, frame per frame, rotoscope animation is isolating the water from the body so that it can be treated with a different filter and a different exposure. And again, this is an example of how light is used to portray motion or energy, as Tron drinks and you see his circuits light up and they become energized. The set itself was a complex geometric shape, which was designed by Peter Lloyd, and we built into this set, basically, water channels, and the water itself was reflecting light sources that we put in angle so they would reflect to the camera, and the water was in black tanks so that all we're really seeing are the highlights on the water. Yeah, but the biggest problem at that time was do we fill this with colored water or clear water? Had to do tests, you know. - Right. That was your problem. Do we put milk in there and make it purple? I think that what Flynn is surprised now, ironically, to see that there's parts of this mirror world that are more alive than he anticipated. So, it's not just the harsh computer reality, there's something living about it. It's a very complex shot, again, with all the elements. Probably about 30 different elements, 30 different separate exposures for each frame. Normally in a special effects movie, you get a very bad bottleneck effect in that all these things have to be composited through one or two optical printers. Now we have digital compositing machines. But by putting it into a manufacturing system like this, where it became like an animated film, we could use 14 or 15 animation stands, and we could use a slew of effects animators and ink and paint people to do all of this work simultaneously. As far as I know, we still have more shots with human beings composited into an artificial environment than any other movie. I believe there's 1,100 special effect shots in the film and 900 of which have human beings composited in them. And that number is just very, very large. Just the organizational task alone was monumental, not even considering the creative side of it. For every frame you would have an additional five to 15 cels that isolated the different colors and the different... We had body mattes, we had face masks, continuous tones. You made print backs on top of print backs. So, those 75,000 original cels grew to over half a million. I think we ended up with something like 600,000 cels, all of which had to be kept in order. We had to pull trailers, literally these large house trailers, kind of, industrial trailers onto the lot. We ran out of space and we ended up with 10 trailers that would house all these cels and had to be organized and sent over... 80% of them were sent overseas and had to be numbered and then painted and kept in order. At one point we thought if we had 1,000 scenes, and this was around Christmas time, the film was going to come out later that summer, and we had no idea of how we were going to get it all done in that short a period of time. And we thought, "Well, it's summer vacation. We have two weeks. "We'll get college students, 500 college students in a room." We really believed this might happen. We discussed this for about an hour and we Said, "You'd have 500 students in a room. "We'll teach them how to do inking and painting and rotoscoping, "and they only have to do two scenes each. "And so they do one scene a week. "At the end of that time, we'll be done, "and we'll just go and shoot them on the animation stands." It didn't work out. So, we brought on Arnie Wong, who was an animator. We put him in charge of supervising Cuckoo's Nest, which is a ink and paint service that was in Taiwan. Approximately 80-some employees in a single room. And what we did is we went through and we made a videotape of every situation and what to do in that situation. So that if an inker over there, who didn't even have to understand English to do this, could go to a TV monitor, roll to this particular problem and see exactly what you'd do in that situation. And then he was there to answer questions that were unusual. And the most interesting thing, and one of the things that I'm particularly proud of with this technique is that in spite of what a pyramid it was to build, we managed to get all of this post-production done in six to nine months. And that is using a technology that we had developed. It had never been done before and we developed it and used it on this picture and delivered on time. And that was only possible because of this manufacturing technique. It's interesting the computer animation iS the simpler part of the set. - Yes. Ironically, one of the things that was a creative philosophy that we enjoyed and were proud of was that we were taking computer animation and letting it stand on its own. We weren't trying to make computer animation mimic reality. And the job was then to make reality, the actors and the sets, look like the computer animation. We used to say, "Well, if you've got lemons, make lemonade." Everybody else, and certainly since this point, has been going nuts trying to make computer animation mimic reality perfectly. And I found that the limitations of computer graphics at the time were the most exciting thing. If computer graphics... If computer animation is no longer different from reality, maybe we've lost something in that. Certainly you gain special effects technology and you can do certain things, but it's the limitations, I find, to be the creative challenge. I think at the time we were using four computer animation companies... Yes. -... which were probably the only animation companies that existed in the country at the time. Yeah, I had been visiting some of these companies for two years before we started making the movie. Maybe even longer than that. And I used to show up at their doorstep and Say, "One day I'm gonna make this movie. "You know, we're gonna do this and this is gonna be great." And they'd say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I'd come by every six months and say this is really gonna happen, and I think they were more surprised than anybody else when we really did this movie. And they got to show their stuff. The way the de-rezzing effect was created, for example, when Ram passes away and he's in the cabin of the Recognizer, there's a combination of the original photography of the character, and then that is overdrawn with literally hand-done, line-drawing animation done by the animation department. And between that animation and light exposures, you can make it just, basically, run off, dissipate and fade away. Also, upon viewing this again, for so many years, you tend to kind of lump it all together visually in your memory and we forget, I forget, how much detail, how much layering of texture was put into this film. - Mmm-hmm. Ai! these shots are all completely storyboarded. Even the electronic world and all the simulated shots were all on storyboards. There must have been thousands of storyboards. Yeah, it was very detailed. Because rendering times in computer graphic imagery, the time it takes for the computer to draw each frame, are high. They're even high by today's standards. It takes sometimes as long as an hour or more for each frame of film. Probably the most complicated CGI images that were in Tron were done by Information International. The Solar Sailer hangar, the Solar Sailer, its formation, the walls of that environment, that's all CGI. As far as Cindy Morgan's involvement, she was very brave to get involved because a lot of actresses Said, "What am I going to wear? "You're going to put what on my head? "I've got to have a helmet and headgear "and wear all this spandex?" And that scared a lot of actresses away. Yeah, it was very hard to get anyone to take us seriously. You'd call people up, they'd come in for casting sessions, and Steven would do his best to present the film, and they'd look at you askance, think you were crazy. You'd run some video on them, and they just didn't believe it was going to happen. And as a result, it was very, very difficult. And I think that was one of the last major parts that was cast. Yes, it was two or three days before the first shot or something. Yes. - It was very close. And one of the people we tried was Deborah Harry. Right. We screen-tested Deborah Harry. The Bit was created by Digital Effects Incorporated, and we didn't have the time to choreograph a CGI Bit for every scene. So, what we did was created a series of stills that could be cell flopped, and these transparencies were created by Digital Effects so that the Bit could be rotating and have these different pulses in it, and then when it wanted to express itself, we flipped to the next sequence of stills, which would make it become more spiky or change its shape, and literally those were cell flopped and then flown around by moving the animation camera on the object to give it its motion from left to right or up or down or wherever it moved, we got it closer to you. That was all put in by moves on the animation camera, on these stills that were being cell flopped. These characters were very interesting. I especially liked the one that looked like a vacuum tube. Other programs... - Other programs and... ...in the system. The Recognizer sequence is another set that was built based on designs by Syd Mead. The interior of the Recognizer, as the interior of the tanks, was all a physically complex shape that the actors moved around on with white line-drawing vector material over the surface of it, and isolated animation coming back and colorizing and animating those elements. I think one of the most successful pieces of computer choreography in Tron is the whole Recognizer sequence, when the Recognizer hits a bridge and becomes multiple pieces and Flynn pulls them all back together with his energy and the choreography of the way those parts all fall back into place and tumble. The thing that people don't realize about computer simulation, especially at this time, is there were no programs that imitated the effects of nature on choreography. Every piece and every part of every computer-simulated object had to literally be choreographed frame per frame by an animator. When the Recognizer moves along and bounces off the ground floor and the pieces separate and then come closer together and have that real, elastic, rubber-banding kind of quality to them... Simple things in choreography... I mean, when an object goes around a corner, does it just swing around the corner or does it have back animation? Does it weave left and right? Does it back animate before it moves forward? Those are the things that the animators brought to this and that the computer-simulation people did a terrific job of interpreting.

28:30 · jump to transcript →

Frank Morriss

When we were casting this woman, there were lots of possibilities. But I had always liked Candy Clark from American Graffiti. And there's just something slightly, you know, wacky... ...and kooky about her. She just had kind of a fun thing about her. So she was the one that wound up with this part.

22:06 · jump to transcript →

Terry's performance was wonderful. Now, Mr. Creosote here, I think I should have listened to Jim Atchison. Jim had designed this costume. I had a body cast for it, and the sculptor designed the shape and everything. Then I pushed Jim to go a little bit bigger, and I think Jim's original thoughts were right. We also had a sequence of Mr. Creosote outside the restaurant, walking along with his stomach on a pram, on a wheelbarrow.

1:18:51 · jump to transcript →

The dark unpleasant fellow, the filmmakers had actually meant to cast Rosemary Clooney. They'd conceived the part quite differently. As in many films noir, many of the stories of Raymond Chandler, for instance, and others, the Mr. Big Figure was conceived as a large, hectoring female. That's one of the stock characters in the genre, the detective genre, the massive, bullying woman. Somehow more monstrous for its being a woman, I suppose. The eternal feminine lures to perfection, so we like to think.

37:33 · jump to transcript →

Judd Nelson

There's Judd. Right on. I told the story when we did the interview before with Jason, that you came to the audition just so ready, man. You were just there. You were already there. That's a long time in high school. - Yeah. All seven years of high school really paid off, and you got a great role. Judd, you were great. I remember from the day you came in for the audition, you just came in, like, "What movie? Can we start, or what?" Even these rehearsals, 'cause, John, if you remember, man, we did rehearsals in this space 'cause this art department had constructed this. And it was inside a gymnasium, so we had the benefit of working as if it were a stage, and it was already there, ready for us. It was cool, 'cause the studio took over the school, in a way. So, we could turn their gymnasium into this library. However, at the time, there was a USFL football team, the Chicago Blitz, they were practicing and using the school as their home base. So, they practiced in the big gymnasium. Not anymore, it became the library, and they went to the old, small gym, or had to go outside. And it was Chicago, and it was really cold, and they hated us. These hulking dudes would be like, "Get out of the way." I miss Paul, man. Paul was great. - Yeah, he was a cool guy.

4:49 · jump to transcript →

One of the choices that you have to make in terms of casting with Valeria, I was looking for someone that didn't speak English as the first language. The reason being, in scenes like this, I thought that by having someone who was a foreigner, that she could interrupt more often and kind of break certain rhythms and at the same time doesn't quite understand what he's trying to get at.

11:33 · jump to transcript →

Taylor Hackford

Hello. My name is Taylor Hackford. I'm the director of Devil's Advocate. And. I thought that you might find it interesting for me to give you a little... ...commentary about what went into making this film. The opening credits were particularly important to me... ...because I was not going to have a normal credit sequence... ...meaning two minutes of listing everybody who worked on the film. I wanted to get right into the action, and I asked Richard Greenberg... ...and Lauren Schluter, who are fabulous title designers... ...to come up with something very unique that could speak to the fact that... ...this film is a little extraordinary. It's going to have a little something... ...let's call "supernatural" to it, because we immediately go right into the film... ...which is extremely realistic. It's a courtroom scene. The actress you see in full close-up... ...is named Heather Matarazzo. She is probably known to a general audience as the star of... ...Welcome to the Doll's House. You now see Kevin Lomax, who is the star of the movie played by Keanu Reeves. But you see his boots. I wanted to say, this guy dressed in a wash-and-wear Southern suit... ...has something a little bit wild about him. Tony Gilroy, who is the writer with... ...my collaborator on this piece, we wanted to basically say this guy... ...may look straight on the upper half of his body. But look at those boots! They're $500 boots. They show that he's got a little flair... ...a little wildness to him, and those are little characteristics that one wants to use. You see him just basically doing his job, supporting his client... ...and then, all of a sudden, you want to feel that this man believes in his client. He's there. He's confident. He's about to take this girl apart. And then he discovers something that completely changes the course... ...of one, this trial and two, his life. He realizes that the man next to him, who he thought was innocent is guilty. That revelation, right now, and this moment of decision... ...is what the film is all about, because this is a moral tale. One has to make these choices, professional choices, in your life... ...where you realize your job says: "I must go forward. In this instance, as a lawyer, I have a professional oath." But on the other hand, you have a personal code of morals and ethics. What the entire film is about is this moment of decision, right now... ...where Kevin Lomax has to decide: "Do I go forward? "Do I take this girl apart on the stand, and do I win the case for my client... "...or do I do the right thing?" And he takes a break, and he takes a moment to think. At this point, we go into what the film is truly about... ...which is moral choices. Kevin's client, Lloyd Gettys, is a math teacher at the local high school. He's played by Chris Bauer, who's a fabulous, young actor... ...I discovered in New York. I didn't discover him... ...but I found him in the casting process. He had gone to Yale. He doesn't look like this. It just shows the chameleon quality... ...of what an actor can do. But at this point, you can really see the passion and the anger in Keanu here. I wanted to establish: here is a guy who thought he was on top of the world... ...who had it all basically lined up. He sat there calm and collected at the table. You can tell he's not at all upset. Everyone in the room thinks: "Oh my God, this girl is gonna take him apart." But right here, he's got to look at himself in the mirror... ...and realize, "My God, what do I do? "I've never had to make this choice before." I think that maybe some lawyers never have to make it. But I think this is a moment of truth, where you realize: "What do I do, my professional ethics or my personal ethics?" At this moment of choice, in the bathroom enters a character... ...that you will see later in the film. He's the Southern reporter, newspaper reporter... ...a friend of Kevin Lomax's, a drinking buddy. He's played by Neal Jones... ...who's a wonderful New York actor. You want to feel a sense of familiarity here. These are a couple of cynics who like to get together and drink... ...and laugh about life in the courthouse. But basically, right now, he's setting up the fact that this character, Kevin Lomax... ...is unbeaten, he's a hotshot, he doesn't really take anything too seriously... ...because he's got great confidence. But right now, he's about to lose his first case. While looking in the mirror... ...Keanu has to decide, "What am I gonna do?" I thought particularly interesting, and it was an actor's choice... ...Keanu goes through that whole thing. He has his moment of seriousness. He's looking at himself. And then he checked his teeth. It looks like a smile. It's not a smile. It's a smirk. It basically is saying, and is in the best kind of cynical sense: "Hey, I'm going to do my job. I'm a tough son of a bitch. "And I'm gonna go in that courtroom and I'm gonna take this little girl apart. "Because that's what I do. I'm a lawyer and I'm a winner. "And I'm not about to become a loser here." And I think that choice that Keanu made, it was the only time he did it in a take... ...and I included it in the film. He comes in this courtroom and he starts very nice, very sweet to her... ...and appears to be... You know, she's been warned by the opposition that he's a killer, so be careful. You can tell that Heather is being very wary of him. But she's a little arrogant herself. She tends to feel that she's pretty confident. She's supposed to play a character who's very bright... ...and kind of the leader of her group. I think she feels that she's righteous... ...and in a good position right now. So she challenges him a little bit... ...and then Kevin springs a trap. He has this piece of evidence... ...which is a piece of her homework... ...where she's doodled and made a derogatory comment about Mr. Gettys. The fact is, however, that this is an unscrupulous bit of professional behavior. If you notice at the beginning of the scene, Kevin Lomax goes over. He doesn't know whether the judge will admit this or not. He turns his back to the jury, holds the piece up so that they can see it. If the judge doesn't admit it as evidence, he's already shown it to the jury. And this, actually, is a lawyer's trick. It is a bit of an unscrupulous trick... ...but it shows how far Kevin Lomax will go and how tricky he is... ...in terms of getting what he wants. He does, at the same time, get it in place, because he is also a very good lawyer. He's able to, as you see, he starts very nice and then he gets progressively tougher... ...and he's nice, kind of nice to her for a while. When the attorney objects, immediately you could see... ...Keanu Reeves jump like a cat... ...in terms of qualifying why he wants the objection sustained... ...and why he wants to win over the objection. Pardon me. And in this instance, he starts getting tougher and tougher and tougher... ...with Heather. Barbara is the character's name. He is going to take her apart, and slowly the opposition and everyone... ...in the courtroom starts to realize that this guy is not gonna be Mr. Nice Guy. He is perfectly capable of destroying a 13, 14-year old girl.

0:04 · jump to transcript →

You know, we may have been partially successful, but I'm not sure in the end that we totally were. It's very difficult to have two sets of separate people both wearing black and expecting the audience to understand that they're different. Yeah, originally the Magi were going to be completely tattooed from head to toe. But then when I cast Oded Fair, I just couldn't do that to his face. He looked too good. And in fact...

8:47 · jump to transcript →

You know in Hong Kong they call them action directors instead of choreographers. Right. This is one of my favorite lines in the movie. Now we know. Mr. Yeo has been kept complaining about I keep casting those big guys.

1:25:06 · 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 →

Len Wiseman

You have broken the chain and the Covenant! "Must be judged!" I love that your eyes well up with tears without, like, me having to cut away. You see that as he's talking to you. I love that scene. Now, what was challenging about this? This was not a happy day for all of us. Why? Do you remember? Wasn't that the first day I was back after the pneumonia thing? lt was stressful that day, because I had so many things... I think you weren't happy with the red carpet. That's right. - Why didn't you like the carpet? That it was red. - It was red. It was really red too, I guess. - I guess I wasn't really... I don't love colour all that much, and it just was really red. Jarring? - This day, though, here, I had fun. You didn't know it was red until you got there? There was nothing you could do? - I didn't Know how red it was gonna be. I wanted it more of like a... - I see. This was all, like, up in that corridor, right? Towards the end. I had fun. It was a fun time. Yeah, so we're actually back from a break... ...and you will notice Speedman is not with us anymore. He had to skip out. He has an audition. - He has an audition. He wants it, so we can't hate him for it, because it's something he wants to do. I wish him luck. It's something with the Olsen twins... ...and I don't know what the name of the film is. I think it's set in Paris, and he wants to do the whole thing, right? Yeah, he's been talking about it... ...and I know he's really excited about it, so we wish him luck. Since it was his dream job, we decided not to be mean while he's not here. No. - Anyway.... I hope he's reading with the Olsen twins, just to.... Anyway. Why was this funny? There was funny things about this. Well, that was the shot that Danny McBride had done. I tease him about it, because I think it was the most takes that we had done. There were 19 takes of that gun falling, and I used take one... ...and I give him a hard time about it. It's a beautiful take one, though. It is.

1:11:50 · jump to transcript →

Roman Coppola

Remember him? Sriharsh. Yes. He was a pro. - Yeah. He was a pro. - We flew him in from Bombay. From Delhi. Yeah. Didn't he sing a Green Day song to you, Wes? We're gonna include Sriharsh's audition because he auditioned on tape and... We didn't really have a role for him, but we-- I just remember-- - He was just so good. He was so funny in it that we just brought him in and kind of made him a part of the operation. He's the De Niro of... Of India.

53:01 · jump to transcript →

How'd you do that leaf? That leaf trick. Talk about the leaf trick. Who played the leaf? Who played the leaf? How many people did you audition for the leaf? It's funny, actually, because I feel like

1:00:03 · jump to transcript →

Nia DaCosta

So this is really fun, 'cause, again, I was like, "That's obviously Spike and Ink." But I was like, "We're not in their story anymore. "We're in this story." And this story leads us into the third film. And so everything is done from that point of view. Which is why, of course, you have, in a heartbeat, the theme from 28 Days Later coming back in here, it's Jim's story. Because, again, we're coming back to his story. We're catching up with him in a way that's really exciting and fun. So, yeah, I mean, I love that scene, I love this whole movie. But it was really, for me, so exciting, so exciting. It was just really exciting for me to be able to direct this film, to be able to work with Danny and Alex, and our producers, Peter and Andrew and Bernie, and... and put my stamp on this world that I loved for such a long time. Yeah. Anyway, everyone you can see here... everyone listed here is an absolute genius. And... And it's such a gift to be able to work with my crew, like some of whom I worked with multiple times, like Sean and I, it's our third film, Hildur, our second film, et cetera. And then the new crew, some of the crew that stayed over from Danny's film. Des Hamilton, he's my guy. I love them. It was just great. It was a real privilege. And then this whole ending, the main-on-ends that you're watching now, are done by Matt Curtis. And so this is a fun... Yeah. And again, the cast. I cannot speak more highly of them. Like, there were no duds on the cast. That's what I like to say.

1:43:33 · jump to transcript →