Casting

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?

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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,

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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 →

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.

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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

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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...

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 →

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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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...

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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 →

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?

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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

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Patrick Tatopoulos

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

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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.

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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.

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