First feature

James Cameron

This is Jim Cameron. I wrote and directed this film back in '83, and directed it in '85 through '86. It was released in the summer of '86. July 17th, if I'm not mistaken. It started as a treatment. I was having a meeting with David Giler and Walter Hill, talking about another project, and that pitch was not going very well. I could tell by their sagging expressions that they didn't like any of my ideas. But they had read my 7erminator script and wanted to work with me on something. I was getting up and making my way toward the door and David Giler, one of the producers of the first film, said "We do have this other thing", and I said "What's that?" He said "Alien 2." And all the pinball machine lights and bells went off inside my head but I maintained a straight face and said "That could be interesting." And I suggested that I write a quick treatment, a quick outline, just to give them an idea of what I might do with it. So I raced home and stayed up for three days straight, drank about eight pots of coffee and wrote a 40- or 50-page treatment. Really what I did was I adapted a story I had already written, which was called Mother, which was an "alien on a space station" kind of story. It had the power loader machine in it. I had written this treatment a few months earlier. So I adapted it, dropped Sigourney's character and a bunch of marines into it, and in that one quick stroke created all the character names - Gorman and Hicks and Vasquez and all those folks - and dropped it on them a couple of days later. I think they felt like they'd hit the jackpot. That was the film they wanted to make. So they authorized me to go ahead and start writing the script. The problem was, that day I landed the job to write the script for the second Rambo film. So I called them up and asked David Giler what I should do. And he said "Don't be stupid. Take both jobs." So I took both jobs. I also had to do a rewrite of my 7erminator script to start production in February, so I had a three-month period where I had to write three scripts. So I decided that each script was gonna be two hours long, so it'd be 120 pages. So I figured out the total page count, whatever that is - I guess 360 pages. I divided the total number of waking hours I had during that three-month period by 360 and figured out how many pages per hour I had to write, and then I just wrote that many pages per hour.

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Stan Winston

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

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Pat McClung

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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Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

So I don't know whether they even knew about it. Did we bill them? We should bill them now. It was interesting to figure out how to start this film because the studio were quite insistent for a long time that we have a prologue, the same as the first film. They wanted Cate Blanchett, in actual fact, to give us a sort of a backstory of what's happened so far in this movie, you know, the Fellowship of the Ring, and to set us up. And we resisted doing that, didn't we? Yes, yes.

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Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

It was ironic, really, because they didn't like the idea of Cate Blanchett doing the prologue in the first film, in Fellowship. It was something we were keen on, but they weren't. And then it flipped around the other way. Yes, and then in this one, they decided that it was a good device, but we sort of moved on from there and thought, no, we're just going to go straight into this one. Nobody needs more backstory. I kind of think it's just important to be able to join all three movies up.

1:01 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

you know, what's the first shot? And then I thought the mountains. I love the idea of hearing the voices coming from the first movie. It occurred to me, it's reminiscent of what Zemeckis did on the Back to the Future Part II when the characters were sort of, you know, went back to the first film again. And I love the idea of we hear something that's familiar coming from inside the mountain, but it's not really the first film, although it's sort of going back to halfway through the first film, which is kind of neat.

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Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

Hi everybody, this is Paul M. Salmon, author of Future Noir, the making of Blade Runner, and a person who has worked on many motion pictures, including this one for Orion in 1989-1990 called Robocop 2, for which I was the computer graphics supervisor, the publicist, and a lot of other jobs. Just like the first film, we open up with a commercial that is satirizing the future that Robocop takes place in. This is called the Magnavolt commercial.

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Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

And here we have John Glover, a wonderful character actor, who throughout the 80s had just a really great run. One of my favorite pictures that he did was a thing called 52 Pickup for John Frankenheimer, when he plays one of the sleaziest criminals you could ever think of. And now we have a media break. Now, media breaks carry over from the first film. And, of course, this is supposed to be essentially the news, the Twinkies, the happy news that comes in

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Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

talking about what's going on in OCP. Here we have Ed 209 from the first film, the guy who's actually backing up the truck there and putting his arms up. That's a guest appearance by Phil Tippett. Phil Tippett was the stop-motion supervisor who did the puppet animation on the first film and did the stop-motion animation on the second.

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bring these actors back. Even the ones that had been almost extras in the first film started to have more developed important characters in the second film and then certainly on the third film whenever possible. Sure. I remember Tom from the old days. Rocco. What's this? It's an orange from Miami. Why don't you take care of Johnny's men? They look like they might be hungry. Johnny?

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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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really the same philosophy and structure. It's just that the ease between us was much greater and there was room to express ideas. I didn't feel as I did on the first film, up against this, you know, kind of crotchety school norm that just said it had to be this way. And I think I felt more free with the second Godfather. I was running the production. I pretty much had no one to answer to.

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Eng Commentary

Truffaut, who was 27 years old when he directed this, his first feature-length film, takes credit for the original story of The 400 Blows, and fairly enough since it retells in fictional form the story of his own childhood. But then he gives an adaptation and dialogue credit to Marcel Moussy.

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Eng Commentary

As far as experience goes, I was a few years older than Truffaut and had started working in television on a series that was called It Could Happen to You. We dramatized contemporary social cases a little bit like what Paddy Chayefsky was doing in American TV at the time. Truffaut's friend, Andre Bazin, had advised him to watch some of the broadcasts. Having watched those programs, he got in touch with me. Concerning my experience with children, Truffaut had read my first novel.

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Eng Commentary

because it really struck me at the time, an interior traveling shot in the classroom where the grips pulled the desks out of the way one by one as the camera went forward. So you'd see the desk that had been thrown from the patch on both sides and the cameraman threading his way between them. Nothing could have been more different from the heaviness of shooting on TV. When I eventually came to direct my own first film, Saint-Tropez Blues, that was the only style of shooting that made sense to me. Deux. Jean.

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This is the first feature for Cimino, who by the end of the 1970s would have a massive critical and popular success with The Deer Hunter, and who by the beginning of the 1980s would be persona non grata in Hollywood due to the massive losses incurred by his 1980 film Heaven's Gate, whose failure would essentially sink United Artists, the studio that underwrote Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.

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Eastwood's character asks Bridges, you Indian, on hearing the name Lightfoot. Bridges responds, nope, just American. For good or ill, Michael Cimino is a filmmaker who conceived of himself specifically as an American artist, and that's already very much evident in this, his first feature. The song we're hearing is by Paul Williams, titled Where Do I Go From Here, written expressly for the film.

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in the relationship between Eastwood and Bridges, also perhaps Eastwood and Cimino, the first-time director. Eastwood himself was fairly new to the director's chair, having started out in 1971 with his directorial debut, Play Misty for Me, released when he was 41 years old. It had been a very long trip from the days of Francis and the Navy and TV westerns to A-list status.

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Harlan Ellison was Michael's favorite writer, and when Michael passed away in November 2014, Harlan spoke at his memorial service the way Brian Oblivion would have done, by Skype. Harlan is played by Peter Dvorsky. He had made some TV movies prior to this, but Videodrome was his first feature. He went from this to a less conspicuous role in Cronenberg's The Dead Zone, and his career since has mostly been in Canadian TV movies and live theater.

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Its cover art by H.R. Giger may have influenced some of this film's ideas. This was practically Lali Kado's first feature film, but she became a major Canadian television star in such shows as Hangin' In, Road to Avonlea, which won her the Genie Award for Best Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role, and Five Years of X-Men, episodes before the feature franchise was launched. Her character of Rena King is said to have been inspired by Dini Petty,

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who had a talk show on Toronto's City TV. Videodrome was the first film that David Cronenberg made after going on his first press junket in the United States to promote scanners for Avco Embassy. David told me that this scene was written directly out of this new experience of appearing for short bursts of publicity on local talk shows, where he often had to field aggressive questions about whether his gory movies might be contributing to a climate of social malaise.

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Novelist Tim Lucas

With a series of minimal but effective touches, Colonel Mortimer has already defined himself as a man who lives according to his own rules, rather than the laws laid down by weak and corruptible men. The second appearance of those snake eyes, you will find it's something of a motif. The Tucumcari station clerk is played by Roberto Carmeldil. He played the role of Cersei in Leone's first feature, The Colossus of Rhodes, but you may remember him better as the sheriff from The Big Gun Down.

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Novelist Tim Lucas

exhilarating, such a daring stylistic advance over anything in the first film, and thrilling not only for Morricone's inspired frissons of sound, but in part because it confirms something that we won't actually learn for another couple of hours. Leone shows Mortimer and Manco occupying the same or at least similar space, and then he proceeds to contrast the laughing eyes of El Indio on the poster with Mortimer's pleasured bloodthirst as he identifies his next quarry.

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Novelist Tim Lucas

Kinski, also a renowned stage actor, had no respect for that trash, as he called it, and likely thought of himself as a failure at this point in his career. Yet this film turned things around for him forevermore. This was the first film he made that was literally shown everywhere around the world to great success. It was followed by David Lean's Dr. Zhivago, which I believe he actually shot first, but it happened to be released later.

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Partly because Al had twisted his ankle jumping on a running board of a car in the scene in the hospital. And so he had to go off to the hospital and I didn't get to finish it because I lost the actor. And they made a big stink of how my first week was embarrassing and stuff. But the first week, if the records be checked, the first day was in Best Company, Polk's Toy Store. And I have to remember what the second day was. But the third and fourth day was the Sollozzo murder in the restaurant.

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firm ideas about structure and how things should be done. And on the second picture, the second Godfather picture, I think it was much more mutually harmonious and respectful. But, you know, on the first film, I was, like, not really... The crew didn't kind of understand what I was doing there, why I was chosen to be the director. And, you know, the crew, you know, these kind of New York...

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So this Salazzo murder, I've heard it said, you know, years after the fact, people talk about how the godfather got made, and Paramount never denied that I was on the outs with them, they were going to fire me, but they said that it was sort of justified because my first week, you know, wasn't as strong as it should be.

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Hello, my name is Stephen Thrower. I'm a film writer and journalist. And I'm here with George Pavlou, the director of Underworld. Hello, George. Hello, Steve. Nice to do this again with you. So we're going to be talking about your first feature film, Underworld. So I guess maybe we should start off by just...

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the second ever episode of Doctor Who when he was a child as well. Playing a caveman's child, I believe. He was also in Black Joy. Yes, that's right. Anthony Simmons' movie. And Anthony, in fact, was going to give me my first break in movies, but I was still in college. And I decided it was a bit too early for me to try and...

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We'd have to stay out there all day. We couldn't come back to shore. And it was just a horrible experience, they said, being stuck on this. And they're small boats. They weren't very large boats. Ships, I should say. But yeah, it was quite an ordeal, apparently. So tell me, as a director, making your first feature film, under a lot of pressure, time pressure, money pressure, how did you find...

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John McTiernan

This film was, was quite a long time... It was the beginning of my career. It's my first studio film.

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John McTiernan

Jesse Ventura. I had no idea. I mean, I found out that the guy was a lot brighter than he pretended to be. And a lot more of a professional. But I was truly astonished... To find out that, you know, that he'd been nominated for governor of, what is it, Minnesota? Minnesota. I think this was his first feature, maybe his only feature, I don't know. You wanna know how I really got hired? You wanna know the real truth about how this happens? My agent said, "Look, "you want this job. "I think you need to sign up "with this particular lawyer." It's Jake Bloom's law firm. Jake Bloom is a business lawyer, he looks like, he looks like Pancho Villa. He has a wonderfully phlegmatic manner and he looks, he looks like an old hippie. He's very bright. But his law firm also represented Arnold at the time. My agent was very astute. That 5% was what got me the job.

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John McTiernan

And because it was my first feature, I didn't have credibility enough to say...

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Nia DaCosta

So here you can see a bit, 'cause of the way Jimmima was moving just then in that scene, that the shutter angle is changed. It's not sort of a standard angle. And that's something that Danny did in the first film. Whenever the infected were attacking, the shutter angle would change, the image would appear more choppy to the human eye. And... Sean Bobbitt, my DP, and I, we really wanted to use that, in a way. It was really the only visual reference from the other films that we took. But because, again, we're starting this film with the Jimmies as the real mortal threat, we thought the Jimmies and the infected should have the shutter angle change when violence happens. And this is the first infected of the film coming up, which, again, wasn't written in, but we added, 'cause we were like, "We need infected." And I like infected scenes and things like that, so, yeah.

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Nia DaCosta

And what I love about the way this is written versus what we see in 28 Years Later, the first film, is that you're seeing how he remembers what happened, how he has come to understand and what his memory has done over the past 28 years, with the memory of seeing his... his family murdered, his father turned. And you can see, "This is where "his belief system and his dogma came from."

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Nia DaCosta

I love how his hair just seems like it has muscles of its own. It's just, like, flying all over the place. This is sad, you know, killing her friends. But, you know, they would have killed her, so... It's like there's a balance of, like, obviously, they do terrible things, but also, they're people. So... And then, you know, Spike's story through this film and the first film is really this coming-of-age. Not that coming-of-age has to end when you murder or stab someone, but I think it is interesting. The journey he goes on in the first film, like where he ends up, he's like, "I'm leaving home." Like, "I don't like what's going on there." Like, "I can make this on my own." And then this film, he's like, "I definitely can't. "I need people, but not these people." And he starts to find his own sense of community. But to me, it's very much like prodigal son. Prodigal son goes out, sees the world, but eventually, the prodigal son will return. So maybe we'll see some of that in the third film.

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Diamonds of Forever's production designer was Ken Adam. His first film for co-producer Cubby Broccoli was 1960s The Trials of Oscar Wilde. Now back to Tom Mankiewicz. I think Ken was the first production designer on Dr. No, and he had been on most of the pictures. He was a tremendously artistic, finicky fellow. Very charming, or still is. A German who had flown for the RAF during the war in England. And he's a brilliant, brilliant production designer. I don't care much for redheads. Terrible tempers.

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who was more a button-down sort of fellow. Now here, the diamonds are hidden in the quartz. That was my first fight with Cubby. Felix says, I give up the diamonds. I know the diamonds are in there, but where are they? And Bond says, alimentary, my dear lighter. And Cubby said to me, and what the hell does that mean? I said, Cubby, it's the alimentary canal.

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Look carefully at Shady Tree's acorns, and you'll see that the one on the left is actress Valerie Perrine in one of her very first film appearances. Perrine went on to star opposite Dustin Hoffman in Lenny, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, and made a memorable impression in Superman the movie. Jill St. John recalls shooting in Las Vegas. Because wherever we went, it was comped. You know, those are the days in Las Vegas where everything was free.

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implanted breasts back to back. You know, we're basically saying, hey, you saw the first film? Okay, great, we're moving on. You know, we did that with the first film. We're not apologizing for it, but we're also not exploiting anyone more than ourselves. So, by the way, I was a licensed crime investigator. I still am a licensed crime investigator in the state of California. That was my day job while Adam and I were making movies like the first VHS and A Horrible Way to Die because we were

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Tape 49 is a prequel, correct? That's correct. But we saw footage from the first film, but this is still a prequel. So it's not really a prequel. It takes place in the middle of the first movie. Well, it takes place at the very beginning of the first movie. The idea is Tape 56 takes place over several months. So you see them attack the people in the parking garage, and you see them watching that, and then they go to the house. Whereas Tape 49 is just a couple nights. So it actually takes place after...

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That was like Tom's thing. Anyways, but this actress is Hannah Hughes and I've known her for a long time. She was in one of my first films, Pop Skull, back when she was still only 16 when we did that. So I've known her.

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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.

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Joss Whedon

So I asked the question, "Why would I do this, again?" And the main answer was because I wanted to make a new movie. A different Avengers movie. And while providing the things that people expect from the Avengers movie, i.e. the tie-in shot that you saw before, I also wanted to not just tell a different story, but tell it differently. And a lot of that can be seen in the editing and framing and general style, the lenses. In the first film, I was very slavish to 3D. I was playing it as though anything not in the vernacular of 3D was going to be confusing for the audience. And in the couple of years in-between, it became clear that, that isn't really the case. And, besides, 3D really spoke to the way I was used to shooting. I like wide lenses. I like understanding the space around me very Clearly. I didn't like a lot of heavy cutting. I liked shots that would deliberately go from one place to another, very old-fashioned. For the second film, I wanted to do something unlike anything I had really done. It's a little bit like the film I shot right before, Much Ado About Nothing, which was kind of... We had a bunch of great actors standing around, speaking Shakespeare, and, as often as possible, three cameras, occasionally four, at least two, getting them. And quick side note, the mercenary who speaks right here... No, it wasn't. That was a bit I added very late in editing. And that's actually Jeffrey Ford, one of the editors, who just, uh, did it on a mic in the room, and we liked it so well, we kept it. You're also gonna hear his name and Lisa Lassek"s name, those editors who... I don't wanna say saved my life, but I just did. They are so much a part of everything that works in this movie. I'm incredibly grateful. Lot of moving parts, partially because of the way, um, I, uh... As I said, I wanted to shoot this differently. Where the first one was very deliberate, this one was deliberately casual. Yay. [hat little "Yay," by the way, for which both Robert and I have been given credit, was actually Jeremy Latcham, again, saying, "He needs to make a noise there," um, in post-production. And I was like, "Oh, no, he doesn't. "We could do it, but no one's gonna hear it." So, he gets all the credit for that. And we have fo talk about ILM, too, and the extraordinary work they did with the Hulk and with Ultron. I mean, what they did in the first movie was amazing, but this is a completely different level. This is a real performance. And even with all the reference that Mark gave them, it's something that has to be crafted pixel by pixel, and then made human. And I can never stop looking at these guys. Because, again, with all of these cameras and this very different way of shooting, we ended up with something like that, an over, where you see just a blurry shoulder. That blurry shoulder is about as expensive as a face. It's something we could never do in the first movie. But we talked about it specifically as wanting to have the Hulk play a character in the film, not an effect, and to use the same casual vernacular when we were shooting him as we would with any of the other, um, players. And their thing, the idea that Natasha has this power over the Hulk, and obviously this, uh, budding romance with Banner, really came from that scene. That's where it all started. The idea of the lullaby as how they deal with him spiralled up into the idea that Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff are actually very similar. And so the scene always made perfect sense to me, and we had Scarlett's side of it, but we really didn't have the scene until just a few weeks before we delivered the film. And even I was kind of stunned by the physicality, the sensuality, and the emotion of that encounter. And it's one of those things where you all say, "This will work," but then you get to feel it and It's like nobody ever told you about it. It's an extraordinary thing to work on something for two years and not understand it until you see it. Or not understand the power it will have.

5:19 · jump to transcript →

Joss Whedon

And I love the two of them. I did at one point realise that I had sort of turned Maria Hill into a girl Friday in this movie, because there were too many heroes for her to do that much. But it makes it all the better, I think, when she shows up in her old gear, firing a gun like she should ought to. This shot was very difficult. Again, one of the last shots we got. Kevin is very leery of shots that feel artificial, and when you are flying with someone and you do a camera move around them, you're in great danger of feeling artificial. And so we worked hard in the colouring and the way New York was and in the textures, to try and mitigate that and keep it real. And then we went right through that glass, which is a beautifully crafted effect. This shot is something slightly similar to what I did in my first film, Serenity, in that every member of the team is in it. Not all of them speak, but they are all visible at some point. And we get, basically, a tour of the place. Obviously, because they come in through the "A," it has only been referred to as the "A-hole shot," but what it is for me is a very important way to explain the space of Avengers Tower to the audience. There is a bit of showing off. There is a bit of, "Look at all our grandeur." But what I'm really doing is explaining exactly where everything is in relation to everything else, because later on we will need to know. Robots are down here, and party's over here, and Pietro is gonna be standing on that glass later. Charlie Wood designed the set, and it's the biggest and one of the most beautiful things I've ever set foot on. It is glorious. Sometimes it's almost overwhelming. And besides wanting to show the scope of it, to play into the epic nature of the thing, it allowed me to come up with gags like Pietro getting... Like Hawkeye shooting out the glass from under him. And it allowed me to create action, and also to just have an enormous amount of fun. Sometimes the least fun. This particular space is so big and that sort of holo area so empty that it was sometimes difficult to shoot in, to figure out what to do with people. But every frame is such candy because the work these guys put into it, building it and dressing it, and the depth in frame that you can get in these instances is never not exciting. I literally finished shooting on this set, and on that day walked into a corner I had never been in downstairs, and was like, "Wait a minute, "there's 100 cool ideas I have for this area."

15:34 · jump to transcript →

And this was intended to be my first directing contest. I remember hearing that, because you did a Q&A at the New Beverly years ago, and that was the first time that I had ever heard that. Hey! The maestro himself. Yes. And Lyle Conway, the blob maestro as well. The blobinator. The blobinator. Oh, goddammit, that's good. This is going to be a good commentary, everybody. Hoyt Yeatman, visual effects maestro as well. Dream Quest.

2:24 · jump to transcript →

But this was designed to be your first film, Chuck. I was looking to get that directing break, and Mark Irwin, sitting right beside us, had done The Fly with Cronenberg and proved that a really kitschy film about a human fly could become a great classic. And I'd already learned at that point in my career how commercial Hollywood, so my more original ideas, I was having a hard time breaking. I thought, let me take the blob to its furthest extent.

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And Jack Harris was nice enough to give me the opportunity to go out and put it together. Hey, I know those guys. There he is. Shout out to Frank. Yes. So you and Frank supposedly went off after the success of Nightmare 3. That being your first film with New Line, you had taken the Blob remake to New Line and they passed, correct? New Line passed. By the way, what an amazing misdirect here from going from

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And it's funny, I look at, there's Levi, Levi Isaacs, who really, this is my first directing ever. I had written and produced a lot of television, but this is my, you know, my intro into directing, and Levi was terrific because your DP, as everyone knows, is your right-hand person. And he was, he taught me a lot, actually. Ah, that was our...

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And as you can see, I really didn't want to take ourselves too serious. I really wanted to have not a straight-ahead horror movie, which my first draft of the script that Trimark bought, that was very horrific and no personality in a leprechaun. He was just kind of a killing... There's Gabe's credit. He was just a killing machine that became a monster, and then through rewrites and prepping this thing,

6:54 · jump to transcript →

But again, this was Simi Valley, Little House on the Prairie sets. We had a crane. I remember this was a beautiful intro shot. I remember Isaac up there on the crane. It was excellent. And there's Jennifer, who's adorable and was wonderful to work with. And again, I always have to apologize for putting her in this movie. I'm sorry, Jennifer. Forgive me. But it was her first movie, my first movie, and we had a lot of fun. Yeah, she's great.

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I went to Charlie Sexton, who recorded this particular track for us. At the time, I thought, God, nothing can ever be as good as Elvis. But in the end, I think it served his purpose, and it's a great track. And Charlie has a great voice. This first scene was the first scene I shot in the movie. It was my first day of shooting.

2:32 · jump to transcript →

Um, and, uh, it was my first day with Christian, you know? And Christian and I had been talking about the characters and who his character was, and I felt, you know, we're never quite in sync with what we were both thinking, who this character was, yeah? And, um, you know, you never really truly get an understanding of where the actors, or what the actors, where his head's at until you start to do the scene, yeah? And, um...

2:56 · jump to transcript →

Anyhow, after my first day of shooting, I realized that Christian was off to the right and I was off to the left. And I said at the end of the first day of shooting, you know, I want you to take a look at Taxi Driver. And I wanted Christian to take a look at Taxi Driver in terms of the darkness of the character because I felt his character in this first scene in the bar, he was pushing it a little too light. And I wanted a much darker soul. And...

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Patrick Tatopoulos

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

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Patrick Tatopoulos

So this is work... I mean, we had two companies doing the CGI werewolf on this movie. I need to mention that. The very first section of the movie, Sonja attacked... ...coming to the castle we saw before and this... ...was done by a French company called Duboi. And later on, the other part of the movie... ... you'll see werewolves again, the same one... ...done by another company called Luma. I need to say something about those guys. When the French started to do the first werewolf... ... they had a way of making those guys look quite elegant and sexy... ...but they were lacking a bit of weight, we felt. So we talked about that. The opposite came from Luma, giving them a lot of weight... ...but they were a little bit too brutal in some ways. And that's a typical example. When we met those guys, we had them looking at each other's work. And at the end, it sort of, like, you know, got better by looking at... Each other's work. - Yeah, covertly, and that really helped. There's a lot of practical wolf there as well, like, this is practical stuff. But there are probably 35 CG wolves in this sequence. Yeah. How many CG shots were in the whole movie, James? About 400. - Four hundred. But not just for the wolf. Everything. There's, like, 80 CG wolves. But this scene in particular, it's mixed from shot to shot to shot. And you really have to look closely now to tell the difference. Yeah, - Even in here, these three, four shots... ... they're back and forth, back and forth. That's a suit. And.... That one's CG. - Yeah. Sonja! Remember it took us, like, three different days to shoot that tunnel? That was such a nuisance, that thing. It was incredible. We really tried to prep ourselves, like great storyboard laid out. It was still a difficult scene to shoot. We're also talking over the appearance of Kevin Grevioux, and.... Fire. Who was obviously Raze in the first film... ...and, you know, a big part of the creation... ...of the writing of the first script. That's a Luma transformation. It was a great transformation. - It looks really good. And Luma's the only visual effects company that has worked in all three. That right? - True. How many visual effects companies ended up on Underworld? Is that 11, was it? Ten. - Ten. There's tons of them. This is one of the latest... - This is Kevin, guys. additions in the script of having Michael... ... actually do this roar that has the others back off. And it kind of.... It really opened up his character, and.... Yeah. Michael was really specific at the beginning. He asked if he could actually be doing the entire transformation... ...and being shot all the way to the end to bring his language. And I thought that helped everybody. CGI looking at him. He basically kept screaming almost like at the end of the transformation. And then he was replaced, but they got a good guideline. I wished we could have done a transformation back-to-human shot. Am I not master of this house? There's another shackle add-on right here. you are forbidden to remove your shackle. lt was added in later. you break my law after I gave you your life. Your days of plush living are over... We were lucky to have Bill Nighy on this movie. I mean, he's just a wonderful actor. He really is. He's fanta... And just a really, really great guy as well. He's always fun to work with and have on set. You couldn't have an Underworld without Viktor, Bill? I doubt it. - God, I don't know. It's tough because, like, you know, you kill these people off. And, you know, we'd always intended to do, you know, kind of a... In hopes and fantasize about doing a trilogy... ...which we've been able to be very lucky to do so now. And then you kill a lot of these great actors off. And, you know, I don't know. Don't know if it would feel the same without him. I mean, he wasn't... You know, it was great that we had him start in Underworld 2. You know, he wasn't in Underworld 2 for the beginning part of the film. Okay, that of... This is the best shot in the movie to see the size of the set. So now, we're in CG world. And we're entering now the practical set. So that's actually the set that Dan Hennah built for us... ...the last 20 feet of that, if you may. And there was this wall across to try to separate.... ...on the different flavours on both side. Yeah, this is one of my favourite shots. When I saw this, I was just... - Gorgeous. That's beautiful. - Thrilled. It looks fantastic. I was worried about that too. When we showed up... ...the sets were amazing, but they weren't very tall... in terms of how grand the space is. You know, to actually capture that on film... ... you're gonna have to see that it stops pretty short. Shoot off the edge. - And so it just meant... Every time you see that, it's a visual effects shot. It was basically the choice for that. Either wide or a little taller. But I felt the wise choice was to be wider for what we... The only other way to build it taller would've been to build it outside. Which would have been a disaster.

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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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Well, this is, wait a minute, let me interrupt this for a minute. This is Pat Barrington now here. Yeah, okay. Doing the Golden Girls sequence, which Apostle said was done, you know, obviously based on Goldfinger. I'll get back to what he was talking about. With John Andrews as one of the giants, and I think John Bailey is the other guy. Yeah, and let me just... Well, you mentioned that John Andrews, of course, plays the wolf man. Yeah. Yeah, now Pat, I think this is her first film.

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Motel Confidential was his first film after this one. And what's so surprising about Apostle's other films, which we should get into, especially the ones with Ed, was they were contemporary. You know, suddenly they were dealing with, you know, contemporary subjects, the black and whites. I mean, College Girls, the name of the sorority is LSD, isn't it? I mean, it's... He didn't write College Girls. Well, I said he made it. Well, he claims he wrote all those. Apostle.

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was a big shot motion picture attorney. So I'm at her cocktail party and I see a person who she introduced as her father. Now here comes the one-two pitch. I could swear I had met him before, but I couldn't remember where. We started talking and both of us brought up a lot of mutual acquaintances and, stupid me, I suddenly realized her father, who was a rich industrialist, bought out Republic Pictures. Now, Apostle's first film was that journey to freedom was released by Republic Pictures.

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The graying beard is the same, but it's mostly that soulful, hangdog look about the eyes that they share. Antonio Casas might have made a good Cheyenne. Casas' association with Leone went back as far as Mario Bonnard's The Last Days of Pompeii in 1959, which Leone had assistant-directed, and also his 1961 directorial debut, The Colossus of Rhodes. His other films prior to this included Juan Antonio Bardem's Death of a Cyclist,

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This film was shot in 1966, but its U.S. release was withheld until Christmas Day, 1967. When I first accepted this assignment, I was a little annoyed that my first commentary had to be for the last film in this trilogy. I prefer to approach these things chronologically. However, the events in this film appear to precede those in the two films that come before, so in a strange way, this film is the first of the three. Bastards! Come here!

27:47 · jump to transcript →

It was this opportunity that led to his casting in his first film, the Western classic High Noon. In this film, he played Jack Colby, one of the three desperados seen waiting at the train station for the arrival of Frank Miller, the scene that inspired the pre-credits sequence of Once Upon a Time in the West. So he was central to Leone's American Western DNA. This debut was quickly followed by two other Westerns, Raoul Walsh's The Lawless Breed and Hugo Fregonesi's Untamed Frontier.

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Designed by J. Ray Fox and Linda Burbank. Those are the aliens. That's another memorable line. Laugh away, fuck face. That's another line that people quoted. This is like the first film about Roswell, New Mexico, isn't it?

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I mean, there must have been about 50. Alex, it's the first film about anything. Just about anything! All this was taboo. Nobody was dealing with any of this stuff. It scared me to death. I'd gone to Roswell, New Mexico. I was so interested in the idea that there'd been these aliens there on this Air Force base and stuff. And I went there, and Waddell was from Roswell, New Mexico. I'm born in Roswell, so it was really funny that I ended up in this movie. We actually put in, I had lived in Roswell, New Mexico in another scene, actually.

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I like the fact that the Slim Jim makes the car alarm go off inside. It doesn't make them bat an eye. I know. I know. Yeah, you're wonderful on this side. Beautiful. That was my first scene. My very first day. This is the first thing you did? Yeah, first thing I did. That's great. So calm. Because you have to break the steering wheel column, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. But, like, it's very methodical.

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Making the film, I think, was a real attract to that complexity. I'm just looking at Laszlo Kovacs. Laszlo Kovacs did an amazing job. I'll never forget the day he got into it. John Mooney. I had a lot of... Polly Platt. Polly Platt. A lot of talent helping me out on my first time here. She did art direction on Paper Moon.

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He pays her the ultimate tribute. He's going to keep it because he might be able to sell it someday. Oh, my God. I thought he was so funny. That's my hand changing cassettes. Thank you. I didn't get it right. You never do. I mean, Joe was my first love. He was my first sex, and the whole time he was going out with Mimi.

27:48 · jump to transcript →

Lloyd had, because there was just one shot that you had just like so much that they just thought it was a sick character. Well, that probably happened because I don't know how much I was ever looking at the sweat. I was probably just looking at how amazing you are in the scene, Ione. This is like kind of a... This was my first real kind of love scene, and I just thought you guys made it so... real. And you both look great.

51:48 · 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

This is a... You know, this is an interesting scene... ... because, again, the comedy... These two really worked well together. You believe them as a couple... ...and the comic timing is really pretty sweet, I have to say. I remember when I watched a lot of the dailies... ... they would always fool around whenever you... You wouldn't yell, "Cut," and they kind of just... They'd keep going a little bit and do some silly stuff. I think they really-- You know, again, it was a kind of... At times, it was tense being on the set... ...because these actors, who are so good, didn't know why they were there. And on the second one, that eased up completely. Because everyone felt that they had a responsibility... ...because they knew a lot of people would see this movie. Now, here's something I always felt pretty horrible about because... ...particularly once you have your own kids, this is the last thing you want them to do. This was a big worry, I remember. - Oh, yeah. Whether or not this was gonna stay or not. See, no one really ever understood when I'm lining up the sled... . that it doesn't exactly line up with the door. There's people who watch it who actually giggle, I remember... ...saying, "That doesn't line up. How is he gonna do that?" Yeah. You would've smashed into the wall. Yeah. But that was Larry. I remember watching the dailies. That was hilarious. Larry, our stuntman. - Yeah. Stuntman, literally. - He was probably 20... No, maybe he was about 30 back then. - Yeah. And he was your size. - Yeah. He was built like me too. Now, he was amazing. He would do anything. There's one moment coming later when we'll talk about Larry. Where he falls? - Where he falls, and he froze that day. He didn't wanna do it, but Larry had... As most of the stuntmen did in this movie... I don't know if these types of stuntmen exist anymore. Yeah, I know. - Willing to kill themselves for... It's amazing. I have a lot of that, yeah.... ...a lot of memories of these guys doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Oh, yeah. - They were my favorite, the stunt guys. The stunt guys were great. - When you're 9... ...they can do all kinds of neat stuff. - That's true. Ha, ha. Oh, yeah. They were always my best friends. We'll talk about-- A little later, we'll talk about Troy Brown and Leon Delaney... ...the two stuntmen for Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, who were truly... Truly went above and beyond the call of duty. I haven't spoken to them in years... ...but they probably are still in a great deal of pain... ...because of some of this stuff. Daniel Stern is interesting... ...because Dan Stern was my first choice for this role... ...and the studio didn't wanna pay him at the time. We cast another actor, unfortunately-- This is the only time in my career this happened. and we did a screen test with the other actor and Joe Pesci. And the screen test was flat... ...and the other actor just couldn't really improvise with Joe... ...and you didn't believe him in the role. And I had the-- I had the horrible situation of actually telling the actor... ...I couldn't use him. Basically firing him. Oh, boy. And then the studio then understood. They saw the screen test, and they were willing to hire Danny... ...which was really an amazing working situation for me. He's one of the funniest guys I've met. And he truly was up for anything, as we'll see later in this commentary. I still have that sled in my office.... In my office here in San Francisco. I just saw it before I came over here. Signed by everyone. Signed by everyone. That's really cool. - Yeah. And when I get a little older, and things start not working out in the career... ...1 can sell it. - EBay. Yeah, eBay.

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Macaulay Culkin

Nothing to Chicago? This is her first film role. - You got a good cast there. She's obviously not French, but she is-- She did a great job.

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He was also on The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. And he's also here with... Oh, yeah, this is Taylor Nichols playing his partner here. This is a guy who I was a big fan of in this period, mainly from the Whit Stillman movies. This is pretty early in Nichols' career. He made his debut five years before this in Whit Stillman's first film, Metropolitan.

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So Marshall went and worked for Bogdanovich as an unpaid production assistant and kind of all-around gopher on Targets, Bogdanovich's first feature film as a director. And he got a real crash course in low-budget filmmaking as Bogdanovich called on him to fill a variety of different roles throughout production. But he actually didn't work on a film again until a couple years later. He was sort of kicking around working as a waiter and a musician. Wow.

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made happen. And they technically left Amblin in 1991. I mean, they keep working for Spielberg a bunch, which I'll talk about. But they left Amblin in 1991, not long after Marshall made his directorial debut with Arachnophobia. And they formed the Kennedy Marshall Company, which produced Congo, as well as some other movies Marshall directed, Alive, which he did between Arachnophobia and Congo, and Eight Below, which he made in 2006.

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Darren Aronofsky

One take, I was like, Sean, just keep saying 1-8, 1-8, 1-8, and walk down the stairs the whole way. And when he did it, everyone applauded. It was really great. This shot, the Tai Chi shot, is perhaps my favorite shot in the film. And it was actually improvised. We showed up on set at 8, 9 AM. And there was a bunch of people doing Tai Chi. And I talked to my first AD, Laura Zuckman. I was like, let's shoot it. Let's get them. And they were up for it. So we did it.

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Darren Aronofsky

cover up the brain and cover up the blood and you know have people you know tell people watch their step and but luckily there were no cops and middle of the night I don't know it was probably four o'clock in the morning I was off on one end of the platform and suddenly my first AD was like Darren uh how many more stops to Coney Island and I'm like

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Darren Aronofsky

Um, you know, sometimes you get an actor with a uniform, and all it is is an actor with a uniform. Nuff said. So here we are in Coney Island. I'm from South Brooklyn. I grew up about two miles away from Coney Island. And the first film I wanted to make actually took place all in Coney Island. And so when I started working on Pi,

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urged to please cut away sooner, and I thought, no, you gotta see the actors get out of the car. And the broken mirror on the car, by the way. But these two guys, Andres and Armando, the one on the right, the older guy, is a stuntman, and the younger guy has never acted in his life. This was his first film.

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And that was a coincidence, right? Toro? Yeah. Nobody meant to do that. We don't want your forgiveness. How do you feel about the movie? How do I feel about the movie? I'm extremely proud of everything that everybody did in the movie, with exception to myself. It's my first film, and I promise I'll do better next time. I'm very proud of it. I think you should be. I...

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I think now that I've done this film, I'm finally prepared to score my first movie. Yes. Well, you know what? I remember the day very specifically when you and I were on the recording stage and we were there to record the score of the film. And we were having a great deal of difficulty.

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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

Here's a little cameo. This is one of Jen's best friends, Laura, who also acted as her assistant on the movie. What a pleasure. May I join you? There's a fair amount of cameos in this movie, probably more than I've ever done in terms of people who work on the movie. And friends, and things like that. If you notice the policeman in the beginning of the film that's on the subway train with Joel, in the furry hat, is actually Chris Surgent, my first assistant director, who I've worked with since I Am Legend. I actually met him on I Am Legend. He was the first assistant director of the second unit, and did all the big New York City lockdown sequences for us, for the opening, and I was really impressed with him. And we've become good friends, and work together all the time now. Tell me the real reason you are here. This was actually a really, really beautiful location in downtown Budapest. It's the New York Cafe, which is attached to the hotel that we used for the exterior. And it's become a very popular tourist attraction, and a place to go eat because of its opulence. But I just thought it would be a fantastic spot for this character, for Ustinov's character to hang out. One of the things that I wanted to do, and also Maria, the production designer, was to show different facets of Russian architecture, right? The kind of classic, opulent stuff like places like this, or the ballet, the kind of socialist, Brutalist structures like her uncle's office. Some of the government housing-type environments like where she lives with her mother. But one of the things that really excited me that we got into was the idea of color. I think, honestly, people tend to expect in movies like this for it to be very gray, you know, just bleak. And what Maria and I found in our research was that there is plenty of color throughout the environments. And we had decided to really try and utilize that, and she pulled, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos that we used, that gave us a real sense of color palette and a sense of mood and a sense of light. And we ended up using that also for Jo, the cinematographer and I, in terms of how the movie kind of looks in terms of lighting styles as well. And that led us into a direction of, you know, post-World War I/ Russian art, and found that a lot of the, kind of, colors that are in that art were also found in a lot of these environments that we were finding in Central and Eastern Europe. And we ended up really trying to utilize those. And it was something really exciting for me, because to discover that this movie could be quite colorful was a lot of fun.

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Francis Lawrence

Here, we deal in psychological manipulation. You'll be trained to determine a target's weakness... Sparrow School was always one of the aspects of Jason's book that really intrigued me. It was one of the really, truly unique pieces of the story. And I always thought that it was gonna be a standout segment in the movie. But it was something that Justin and I had to really, kind of, develop out specifically. And it was fun to try and figure out what makes it hard for her, the kinds of horrible things you have to learn to do, but what specifically they would teach you that's not the obvious, right? Not just how do you put makeup on, how do you look sexy, how do you act sexy and, you know, walk in heels or something like that. It was the idea of having to get past what you might find disgusting to try and foo! somebody. But more importantly, to figure out the human puzzle, right? There's a great line that Justin came up with that every human being iS a puzzle of need. Find the missing piece, and they'll give you what you want. So that idea of really learning how to figure out the target, figure out what they need, and become what they need was really interesting, because that actually becomes the sort of, the objective for her later, as She Starts to target Joel. She has to really be smart, because she's not dealing with an amateur when she's dealing with Joel. Simon... I've been with this guy for three years. He is not going to deal with anybody... You can see here Joe! now. He's such a fantastic actor, I mean... He was my first choice for this role. I think he's probably one of the best working actors of his age right now. I've been a fan for a really long time. I mean, all the way back from Animal Kingdom. And he was in my friend Scott Cooper's movie, Black Mass. But what I always really like about him is that he feels really honorable and feels really honest, and I wanted those elements to the character. And I think he brought that in a big way. And it was really fun to work with him, too. He's just a good guy, and kind of gelled in with the group. Worn on the hands, after intimate contact... the subject will be traceable for up to six weeks.

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So, this I love. He should just walk home, right, Ilya? That's correct. He's good. Tell us who he is. Fuck! Sasha? - Sasha is not just... Sasha is a very good friend of mine. He's a big actor from Russia. Big in the sense that he has quite a big following, he's been in a bunch of great movies. And I did... He was in my first film for a little cameo, and then we did a couple of music videos together, and I've just been a huge fan of his. And soon as Universal said, "Let's make the Russians more interesting," I said, "Well, the way you make it more interesting "Is you get Russians to play Russians." And... Which is rare for a studio film, not just a studio, for an American film to really go out and get you know... If you have a... If you have a certain nation portrayed, then you actually get people from there, which is what we got with this film, which is fantastic, makes me very happy. And also, I can go back home and people won't look at me weird. Which is also something to consider.

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Well, he's gonna get into his car and then he decides, "Forget about that. "Remember that car that neighbor told me about that was so good? "Let's take that and do that." I love how his neighbors come out of their houses to see his house burning down. This was the first scene that I storyboarded because it's a music video and I thought I'd start with easier stuff. Right. - And... I just loved the idea of everybody seeing... And then Hutch, he doesn't give a shit, 'cause he steals the car in front of everybody, while everyone's seeing. Yeah. - One thing I do miss, though. lf I was a little bit smarter, I would have had Paul Essiembre, as Jim the neighbor, run out after screaming. That would've been a perfect ending to this drive off. Yeah. But I realized in the edit, great. My character's probably upstairs in his bedroom with a stripper, knocked out from two nights of drinking and partying. Wait. The nursing home? What's this? Yeah, remember he warned his dad that he was tangling with some big, bad guys and to watch out. And speaking of big bad guys, there's Ilya Naishuller, our director, right there on the right. My first Hollywood part.

1:02:07 · jump to transcript →

Here comes this other extra moment. Whose idea was this? Derek? Well, originally, one of our earlier endings was the whole family together, and then the RV would arrive and you would get on the RV and drive away. But we felt that it's... lt makes sense for the character, but it also feels a little cold. Yeah. - So I think we split it. We came up with the idea of the basement, the realtor scene, but we also wanted to have a bit of Lloyd and RZA at the end. 'Cause why the hell not? So this was the first thing we shot with them. And they met each other only once. They got into the RV. "I'm your dad" and "I'm your son." "All right, let's do this." So right into the deep end. With this luggage? This was not filmed on the actual PCH. This is all green screen in Winnipeg. Oh, yeah. We were lucky that these plates exist, and the light matched. Congratulations, Ilya. I love this little movie. It's not so little. It's big. I love this movie. -/ love it. I love it. - I enjoyed working on it very, very much. I never would have imagined I could feel such affection. I knew this would be a challenge. I knew I'd be out of my wheelhouse. I'd be pushing myself. I knew I wanted it to be non-ironic. I've done a lot of comedy in my career. I've made fun of action movies a million times. I've made fun of the swagger and the surety that action stars put forth. But I think I've now had this experience of years of playing someone without that safety net of comedy and making fun, and I find it to be the greatest magic to try to conjure up the non-ironic and intense big feelings that TV shows like Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, and movies like Nobody work to present and to explore. And so I was thankful to have you. I mean, you just did a great job here, and we all understood what we were making. And Derek did such a great job, and we were so lucky to have these producers. Kelly McCormick was the first one to... Well, Marc Provissiero, my manager, understood immediately. Braden Aftergood also seemed to immediately connect with it. Kelly McCormick was the linchpin, because Kelly has great experience with action movies. And David Leitch then joining and leading, I think, tonally, this whole project. David has been a part of the biggest action movies of the past 15 years. And so that's what brought us all to where we are. I just gotta thank you and, you know, you were with this movie through two different regimes, two different companies. Yep. - And you hung in there with it. And, of course, your experience... We didn't once mention Hardcore Henry, your first film. And I'm sure that's worthy of hours of talk too. Anyway, thank you. - Thank you very much for listening, guys. This was Ilya and Bob, talking about something we spent a couple years of our life on. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. And have a nice day. Thank you so much. I'll see you next time. Bye.

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So I've got two more mouths to feed. And that's Gloria Castillo. This was her first film. And she was very nervous. A lot of Lawton's direction to her was simply trying to put her at ease. But she does a lovely job in this picture. Yes, she does.

1:08:32 · jump to transcript →

It crushed Lawton's spirit. It just totally threw him, which it shouldn't have. It was a brilliant, brilliant first film for a director. But he expected so much from it because he'd come off so many great successes with his stage plays, Kane, Mutiny, Court Martial, and so forth.

1:31:30 · jump to transcript →

who was location manager on Dr. No. And my first request for Chris was, can you find me a room with a piano and preferably no windows, but certainly darkened room because I couldn't work in that wonderful lotus life sunshine. So he did find that for me. He was also instrumental in introducing me to the Byron Lee

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made a partnership with Cubby. I don't know the details of that. And they both came over and started a production company, which they called Warwick Films. And their first film was Red Berry, I think, with Alan Ladd. Stanley Sopel, who had worked with Dr. No producer Cubby Brockley on many of the Warwick films, remembers receiving a fateful phone call from the producer. Stay right where you are.

1:15:04 · jump to transcript →

My first love scene, and it's with myself. I think we actually tried a song underneath it, One is the Loneliest Number, to sort of go with the hand movements. Ray Walston comes to play. Am I hallucinating here? Just what in the hell do you think you are doing? Learning about Cuba, having some food.

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And I said, wow, it was great. She says, what are they saying about me? And I, you know, this is like my first lesson in how to talk to actors. I thought I was being like the coolest guy, you know. So I said, well, Phoebe, I think people are really, really loving what you're doing. And she said, well, what did they say? I said, well, God, I heard someone say she's really great for a model. Oh, God. And...

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Hoyt Yeatman

Hi, I'm Hoyt Yeatman. I was the Visual Effects Supervisor for Blue Thunder. And this was the very first film that Dream Quest Images... ...the company I founded a number of years ago, worked on. So it was our big break. And John was so nice... ...giving a chance to show what we could do. Does Cochrane drive a grey Corvette? Yeah. Why? Check 9:00. At the time... ...the shots that we needed done-- And there were many shots needed for this movie. --Were very expensive. And when we got a quote on them... ...they were in the area of $25,000 a shot. And a shot may only last for two seconds or something. So Columbia said, "Oh, that will never work." And... And so the Columbia guys went out and they found some guys that said: "We can do this for $5000 a shot." And that particular group, that will remain nameless... ...came and did some test shots, and when they finally came back to us... ...they were unwatchable. And the producer, Phil Feldman... ...would not even show them to me. I said: "Well, Phil, I can see it. I'm a big boy. I know what stuff looks like." He says, "I'm not showing you these shots." So at this point, we discovered Hoyt. And Hoyt, if I remember right, you, or you and your company... ...was working in kind of a garage in Culver City. That's right. It was a very small little room where we had built... ...our first motion-control system. And on this show, what we did, instead of building exotic models... ...we went down to the hobby store, basically, and bought a Tamiya... ...a very finely made, you know, model of an F-16... ...and Greg Jean, a renowned model maker, built it for us. And so that was the first real model shop that we had. It was Greg building a standard, off-the-shelf model. And that's what we used for the model work in Blue Thunder. So the shots that came in from Hoyt were just fabulous... ...and at an amount that we could afford... ...a little bit more than the $5000 that Columbia wanted to spend. But on the other hand, thank goodness we were backed by Ray Stark... ...who was powerful enough to tell Columbia... ...that we had to have the thing look right... ...and not cheesy-- - Right. --like some old horror movie. Right. Believability, I think, in this picture, was of prime importance. Yes, we always wanted to have things very, very believable. And with the helicopter... ...to do as much real stuff with the helicopter as possible. But then when we get into areas with F-16s... ...and some trick things the helicopter did... ...we would have to rely on, you know, some new technology. Right.

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Hoyt Yeatman

This sequence, I was told by the assistant director... ...would never wind up in the movie because it was too silly and too crazy. But it is definitely one of my favourite, favourite scenes in the movie. And, yes, it's silly, but, you know, it's just great fun. This is-- Hoyt, you were there shooting. - That's my first day of shooting. Kind of woke me up, because after the explosion... ...we looked at our matte box and it had melted the front element of it... ...so it got pretty hot.

1:31:49 · jump to transcript →

A real tour de force cut, isn't that wonderful? Cutting from one side of the window to the other, and we see it's not actually a window, but one-way glass. To what end, I'm not quite sure. Still, you have to admire that cut. Perhaps the one-way mirror was put there so that we won't see the movie camera that was filming the sad fellow on the other side, which would obviously spoil the illusion. You see, you must keep the movie camera out of shot at all costs, something these filmmakers knew so well, even though this was their first film.

9:46 · jump to transcript →

And you can run this video back if you like, and I think you'll confirm that you didn't see any of those things in the mirror. And this, remember this, their very first film. Absolutely marvelous. And now we have some more talking here, some more bi-play. And once again, I think you have to admire the human face. I, in fact, defy you not to. They've been joined here by the sad, unpleasant character. We know him from the other side of the mirror, don't we? And we know we're not going to like him, really. And that's what storytelling is.

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I can always remember the great thrill I had in 1954 having been brought up as a kid seeing MGM movies and going to a sneak preview of my first film at MGM. The last time I saw Paris. John Barry,

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in Udaipur. And Maud would speak to him every day on the phone, and then he finally arrived. And he said my first words to him were, you don't by any chance happen to have a Hershey bar with you? Desperately missing Hershey bars in India. But they were visiting the set, so...

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Film Stephen Prince

This is the first film entirely scripted by Kurosawa since 1945 when he made The Man Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail. Kurosawa typically worked with at least one other screenwriter, sometimes more. His shift to writing solo correlates with some changes in the films that he made. Dreams and the two that followed, Rhapsody in August and Matadayo, are much more personal and meditative.

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Film Stephen Prince

He used slow motion occasionally, but always to very powerful effect. He drops a slow motion insert into the action in his first film, Sanchiro Sugata, and he intercuts slow motion with normal speed in a violent sequence in Seven Samurai. That intercutting set the template for using slow motion in violent action that generations of filmmakers copied, including Sam Peckinpah and Arthur Penn in The Wild Bunch and Bonnie and Clyde.

31:59 · jump to transcript →

It taught me a great deal because I directed my first film right after that, right after Goodfellas. And I learned two things in that regard is be prepared, tell everybody what you're planning on doing, and then when you get there, do whatever you think is best at that moment. So you have your parameters, but then the freedom to work within those parameters. Hey, I'm trying to bang this fucking broad. You want to help me out? It's, it's, it's...

27:53 · jump to transcript →

And, you know, I mean, I think the movie looks... I mean, I love the way it turned out. I love the way it looks and sounds, and the actors are great. But the emotional reaction of the audience was kind of a shock. You know, I can be trusted now, Paulie. I'm clean. On my kids, I'm clean. You looked in my eyes, you lied to me. You treated me like a fucking jerk. Paul Servino. At my first screening of Goodfellas, I was expecting good things because, you know, Bobby De Niro, who's better than he is...

2:07:37 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

collaborative. And she had also done a show for Michael Mann called Crime Story, which I was a big fan of. And so I knew that she could pull off that kind of stylized kind of retro stuff that I gravitate towards. Because I think this was her first feature as a full-fledged production designer. Yeah. She had done work before this, obviously, but this was her first big feature as a production designer.

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Fred Dekker

And again, it's subconscious. We talked about this a little on the other films. It's not a plan. It's not like, I want to make something that's character-based. I just feel like we have to because the story is fantastical and we want to ground it somehow. And here's the inversion of the line. That's right, from the first film. And the idea there was, there's the new family unit. If this movie was successful...

1:37:11 · jump to transcript →

Alexander Payne

He read and nailed it, and I knew that he was Paul. And he really took to it like a duck to water. This was his first professional acting job and obviously his first film. He really was not nervous ever and always delivered the goods much better than I had even imagined it. Student, counsel,

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Alexander Payne

Did I ever know if she saw me? Probably not. But in that moment, all the bad memories, all the things I'd ever wanted to say to her, it all came flooding back. My first impulse was to run over there, pound on her window, and demand that she admit she tore down those posters and lied and cheated her way into winning that election. But instead, I just stood there.

1:37:28 · jump to transcript →

And with the knowledge of the first film, we went into this film with a much better idea of what that should be. So it made actually cutting the film from a tone standpoint much easier. It was pretty much A to B. Bob just kind of put things together. Yeah, it was really easy. What was really nice just working with all the actors is they also got the tone, they understood. And it's like before I started this movie, I thought, well, if I could go back and change anything on the first one, I wouldn't because it made so much money. But I thought...

11:53 · jump to transcript →

this movie for the first time and not having seen the first picture. So it sort of complicates matters and you'll see that throughout the picture where there are references to the first movie for the enjoyment of audience members that saw the first film. Was that clear? I don't think it was at all. I was trying to follow that. I couldn't even follow. I kind of understand why you...

52:36 · 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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Richard Curtis

Abdul could not believe that day. It was his first film. I think it was his first day, and we Said, "This is what you've got to do now." I love that shot of you as well.

2:08:30 · jump to transcript →

They call themselves the Monacans. This was my first day, wasn't it? It was. Coming down the stairs here. Yeah, that right there is the first thing we shot. And let me tell you, those heels and those steps, trouble. Can you imagine? I twist my ankle just coming down steps and high heels on this film, Eon Flex, with all the special effects. I would be such a lame-o for that.

3:34 · jump to transcript →

This was my first time doing a film like this. And actually watching it right now, you realize how you shoot these really tiny little moments constantly because it really is impossible to shoot everything at one place. And if you do that, I don't think it lends itself to the visual film as this one is. And so I'm realizing all these little moments that you just shoot like three seconds here on one location and then...

8:35 · jump to transcript →

always in the shape of an AK-47. This was my first time shooting with a vulture. This is, according to the animal wrangler, vultures are untameable. But it was actually very cooperative. We were concerned it was gonna bite off a finger of the extra who was

55:33 · jump to transcript →

Even though she's sort of a drunk floozy, she nails Yuri in this scene when she says you have a beautiful everything. That's the thing with Yuri, of course. My first painting. I'm officially an artist. This calls for a drink. It's all superficial to him. Yuri, this is, uh... Candy. Ah, candy.

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What did you do here? What I tried to do with the sky and the clouds. I thought it would be really smart if we said Paramount. And there you go. There it is. On the mountain. Hi, I'm J.J. Abrams. No, you're not. Yes, I am. No, you're Line of the People. I am J.J. Abrams. And I am Tom Cruise. Okay. You produced this film with Paul Wagner. You directed it. First film directed. Thank you for doing it. Thank you.

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How amazing is that? Isn't that incredible? Of course, Luther knows what's going on. There's a nice little, you know, when he says, you know, Langley was a cakewalk compared to this. I love the reference of the first film. You know what I mean? Yes.

1:21:43 · jump to transcript →

Because I knew we always needed that shot, and we planned it for second unit, and we never had a chance to shoot it. But no one ever notices. Yeah, that's great. I mean, now that I've opened my big... Man, these guys, if anybody heard the other commentary on the first film with Kate and Scott, that when you have the two of them together, like in a scene like this, it's very dramatic and very serious. It is so brutal to get them to stop laughing. They, uh, it's, uh... We actually have a lot of fun, but, man, they just, uh...

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And just a little bit of wrap-up on the... There's a lot of questions that I find out there with just internet and such. This was all shot in Vancouver, and we had about a 71-day schedule, I believe, which was the same schedule that we shot Underworld 1 on, difference being that on this time, on this film, we had the second unit running from the beginning. And first film, second unit was kind of scattered about and a bit more of a...

1:40:24 · jump to transcript →

Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

also from a practical point of view no one really wants to you know night shooting is hell and a cinematographer friend of mine on my first movie described it as akin to waterboarding and said never make any major decisions in your life while shooting nights don't refinance the house don't buy a car don't have an affair don't do any of these things because you're under tremendous emotional and physical distress um

20:48 · jump to transcript →

Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

But David used the sun and we just ended down the windows and colored them blue and And that was a way for us to shoot days most of the time in the movie. There was almost no night shooting True all night long night shooting should talk about Josh Stamberg who played a police officer in my first movie Legion as well And even though I originally wrote the role of Mike for him Karen's husband that rich Hutchman plays Josh decided

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Wes Anderson

Thank you. Very kind of you. Well, here's where we had to do a cheated-- We had to do a fake painting to get the apple in the right place, you see. That, I will say, was some good advanced thinking. I said, "Let's just see how we're gonna rip this open." And then we said, "We're gonna need a different painting to get this..." That's something I would not have done on my first film. It took about 15 years for me to have a thought like that in advance.

1:24:09 · jump to transcript →

Kent Jones

He's there in your very first film.

1:39:44 · jump to transcript →

she can be giving a speech and watch her hand. You can see with her hand right there, she was actually, that's the one indication that she was actually singing. And we needed to feel the threat, but also we always talked about her and her brother, her character's brother, as being the daughter, son and daughter of Max from the first film. And that was always going to be a secret between us. Yeah, it was always like stuff that McHugh and I loved and we cut the song out and he put it right there. I was like, oh man, you're going to do it. If you're listening. I loved it. I loved it.

36:46 · jump to transcript →

You're there going, you're going to be okay. We're going to get through this. It's going to be all right. We're going to live. Come with me if you want to live. And you can see, I would not be the filmmaker that made this movie had I not been making movies with you since Valkyrie. And you can see a clear delineation between the first film I made and the three subsequent films I made with you. And so all of those things that you're saying, which are on the one hand very kind, they're also greatly influenced by...

2:22:39 · jump to transcript →

And, you know, in a way, you can see a development of the idea of the first film Welles originally wanted to make in Hollywood, Heart of Darkness, which was going to be done through the idea of subjective camera and point-of-view shots and everything. And in a certain way, there's a kind of modified point-of-view aspect to the way that William Allen is used. Yeah, it's over the shoulder. Yeah. Whoever hated his guts. I don't mean go through the city directory, of course. I'll get on it right away, Mr. Olsen.

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Commentary With David Kalat

Ifukube had gotten as far as he ever had by never paying attention to other people's advice. Ifukube's first film composition was for Snow Trail, which happened to be Toshiro Mifune's first film as well. Ifukube later scored The Quiet Duel for Kurosawa and argued with the temperamental director, which was a no-no, so that was his last job, scoring for Kurosawa.

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Another time when everybody was wincing. Now this was my first foray into shooting simultaneously with two cameras, which is something that I've...

1:09:18 · jump to transcript →

We are now watching a film in which there is only one human being on the screen for the rest of the film. But 2001 wasn't the first film to do that. You could argue that Robinson Crusoe on Mars, which is another sort of cracking up in space story. Yeah. You mean that Friday is not a human being? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'll buy that. Yeah. And in that, Robinson has visions of his dead comrade.

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Gerhard

And her first film attempts were not only short films, which, among other things, also dealt with the friendship between black and white, but also documentary films for the Rei.

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Do you know that we wanted to use this logo? This is against Richard Hartley's piano playing, I think. Of the 20th Century Fox theme. - Yes, maybe I will... We wanted to use that for the denouement. Ah. - Instead of the RKO sign. So that was interesting. Michael White and Lou Adler's names there, our producers. Yes, that's correct. - Erstwhile people. I'm rather... And now whose mouth do you think this might be? Ooh. M-m-m-mine. Yeah, it is. Now, interesting... - There we go. Course, when we did the stage play, it was you that sang this song. That's right. - And then they offered you the part of Magenta in the movie, and what did you say to them? I said-- well, they told me that I wasn't going to be able to sing the song 'cause they couldn't have an usherette open the film, so I'd lost my song "Science Fiction." And, um, I said, "Well, you can take your movie and shove it up your..." Where the sun don't shine. Yes. - Mm-hmm. And they were very amazed 'cause they'd taken me to a restaurant Yeah, yeah. - Jim Sharman. Always do it after lunch. Always tell them no after lunch. Yeah, after lunch. And I said I'm not interested. Don't want to do it. Then they took me round to John Goldstone, one of the other producers, round to his house to see the sets. They said, "No, please, Pat, come and see. Come and just have a look." And then they showed me the pink room, the laboratory. And then they showed me all the drawings of the costumes and whatever, whatever, whatever, and, um, I said, "I can't wait." "I'll begin tomorrow." I didn't mind about the song. Yeah, well, I didn't know anything about that until this moment in time and, uh... Well, I have blamed you for it ever since. Well, you see, I got along to the studio, and they'd done the backing tracks... Richard Hartley and the crew had done the backing tracks at Olympic Studios. I love my name dripping like that. Oh, yes. And... Sorry. It was a bit of a drip. And... - I said-- They said "We want you to sing the opening title song because you're the author of the show," and I said, "What do you mean, as a backing, guide vocal for Pat?" They went, "No, we want you to sing it." And, um, so I did, but until that moment in time, I had no idea that I was... Well, ladies and gentlemen, or whoever's listening, today is the first time this has been revealed in how many years? Oh, um, 25? So in all these years, I have begrudged you taking my song. And in all these years, I've begrudged you for being you and having that delightful mouth. Thank you. I mean, look, it's a wonderful mouth. One wonders, you know, oh, well, wonders, just wonders, really. Has your dentist seen this movie? Yes, I really wanted to give her a plug today. Veronica Morris. Because, really, she's been keeping my teeth in great order. This is marvelous. And Veronica'll be so pleased. This mouth, of course, is Brian Thomson's idea. It was the Man Ray photograph of the mouth and the sky is where he got that from. Yes, it... Is ita photograph or was it a painting? It's a photograph. - It's a photo. Lios Over Hollywood. Yeah. - Is that what it is? That's what it's called. It's over the Hollywood sign-- a mouth. Man Ray picture. - And this was the first mouth. I mean, I'd never seen a mouth this symbolic before. The Rolling Stones got a mouth after that, didn't they? Yeah, they got a mouth after. Not a mouth before. Bit mouthy. - A bit mouthy. No, no, and it was wonderful when they asked me to do this 'cause they asked me to do this mouth on the very last day of the film. Mm-hmm. Jim Sharman came up to me, it was a wrap, finished. We'd done it, and he came up and said, "We've got an idea about this mouth." Yeah. - "And will you do it?" And they painted all your skin black. Yes, they did, And I went out to Elstree Studios... - But your timing was perfect. I mean, your lip-sync is fantastic. Yes, well, I'm good at that. And I sort of know how you do things. So, uh, so we... We, uh... Ramon Gow. Look, the hairdresser, Ramon Gow. We'll talk about Ramon a little bit later on. Yes, he was wonderful. - Yeah. He kept us happy. Did he keep you happy? And Pierre. Pierre did the makeup, didn't he? Pierre La Roche. Oh, God. He did Bowie's makeup. You know, for what was that Bowie thing? You know, when he had the makeup. - When did Bowie never have makeup? All right, with Bowie. Ziggy Stardust. Yes, and it was fantastic. And I thought Guy La Roche will give me the most fantastic face in the world. And he looked at me, and he said, he gave me no bones... No, Pierre La Roche. - Pierre. Pierre La Roche. Guy de la Roche is... - I beg your pardon. Pierre La Roche. And I was so shocked that he just said, "We're going to totally whiten the face." And what-- here we are. And what-- here we are. And what-- here we are. The fade into the cross there. - Fade into the cross, yeah. And down the old... And now this is interesting 'cause this was just a facade, wasn't it? That little room-- There's a little room on stilts behind that door. Just tiny little room. There's darling Henry Woolf. He's just such a darling friend. A great, um, Pinter. Pierre Bedenes in the front here. Now, Perry was the boyfriend of Brian Thomson at the time. Uh, we should say... that little girl there, where is she? She's gone now, but that was... what's her name? She was the photographer that went out with Prince Andrew for a while. What was the name? - Koo Stark. Koo Stark there, yeah. She's in the back there. She's there. Uh, I was gonna point at the screen as if that made any difference. Yes, -Gaye Brown. There's Pierre. And Henry. - And Henry. Henry was in my house the other evening. He now teaches in Saskatchewan. Yeah. He's been over here doing the Harold Pinter plays, hasn't he? That's right. He was in the first play that Pinter wrote. He made him write it, actually. Well, there they are. - There's our Brad. The two lads-- so very butch. Ouch, that hurt. And there she is, Susan Sarandon. We didn't know either of these people when they arrived, did we? No, we didn't, but they... - Weren't familiar with their background. Although he'd been doing Grease on Broadway. Great dancer, great legs. But it was wonderful. - Wonderful. There's my wife there jumping up and down. My ex-wife. My first wife. Is it Kimi? - Yes, in that little plaid dress there. Yes, and that lovely handbag. - With the bangs. Yes. Gorgeous. And this is Rufus Thomas, I think, driving the car. Rufus was with the-- there he is. He was with The Living Theatre for some years. He choreographed Jesus Christ Superstar in its first British incarnation. Gosh. Such class we had in this. Oh, yeah, we were all, yes, very groovy. - I remember those two. Now there's us in the background being American Gothic. Yes, which was such a surprise to me, and it was freezing cold that day. And I swore I'd never talk about the cold again on this film... We were walking to that set the first day we ever walked to that set, and we'd smoked something rather exotic. And I'd never smoked before. - No, no. Richard really led me into really bad ways. It was a bit difficult clinging on to reality, wasn't it? It was wonderful. I loved it. Ah, there we go. - There's our signs. In the graveyard. - "Denton." "The Home of Happiness." "Dammit Janet." "Dammit Janet." "Dammit Janet." She looked very pretty. Sue Blane did some wonderful costumes, and they've really hung on, even though we do the stage show 20... well, it's longer than 25 years from the movie, the stage show. But we still use Sue's designs. She reinvents them, and it's still the same kind of look. Well, I must say, the thing... she's stunning-- is at the time... I demand that Sue Blane invented punk, and this film invented punk. And down the road was Vivienne Westwood with a shop called Sex, and she thought she'd started it, but no, sorry. She'd copied us from up the road. We were on the stage at the time. I think there's a certain amount of truth in what you say. I think we were a precursor of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne. That's correct. - But then again, you say, as Coco Chanel said, "Anyone who thinks they're original has got no sense of history." 2 If there's one fool for you Then lamit > Janet 2 I've one thing to say And that's damn it, Janet > Now look at that heart there. I want you to see that heart there, 'cause when we go back and rub it out, I think this is... Maybe it's the same heart. I thought it was a different one. Maybe they got it... There's a boom microphone shadow we'll see, I think, soon. Somewhere out there. - Why do you point out the faults? Well, why not? You know... I mean, that's what the fans do. - Do they? Yes. Oh, look, she dropped it. What a shame. Wasn't she meant to? I have no idea. - Or was she not? Now, this is interesting. This room, we could only afford this end and the other end. The altar end, and we didn't have any sides to the room, so we could only shoot it looking this way or looking the other way. We couldn't pan around 'cause there were no sides to this room. 'Cause we didn't have enough money. So there we go, you see, walking towards camera without background. Good heavens. And walking away from camera to there, but there were no sides. > Oh, Janet 2 For you? 2 I love you too } They were very good, these two, weren't they? When you consider we'd been doing this for the show... We were like a family, and they came in, and they joined in, like, so easily, so quickly. I find them astonishing. This must be... I don't want to go into detail, but it's a very small coffin, isn't it? Oh. - One does wonder. About what? Could have been a rabbit in there probably. Well, every day was a great surprise to me on Rocky Horror. I never knew what was going to happen next. Yeah, me neither. I mean, I didn't know what even American Gothic was. Till I saw the painting in the hall a few days later. I thought, "Why am I dressed like this?" Were you not familiar with that picture? - No. There we are... three good-looking people. And those opticals were rather good I thought. And those opticals were rather good I thought. And those opticals were rather good I thought. They really were mechanically derived by... But, you know, today, of course, you'd have optical wipes and all sorts of things with video. There's dear Charles Gray who's departed from us recently. Yes, Charlie has parted from us. And I loved it when you said to me it'd be wonderful if you and I were Charles Gray and Ava Gardner. We could visit each other often. Yes. - 'Cause they were great friends. They lived next door to each other. And I thought they've both gone. So we've got to now move into the same street. I think they're probably on a similar street in the sky somewhere doing the same things.

0:05 · jump to transcript →

perfectly well understands what the story is and how to tell it. But from his first film, from performance, you can already see all the concerns that obviously had been spinning around in his head. That thing that he loves to do, which he's done in almost every film, that juxtaposition of two different channels of activity, usually lovemaking opposed to something a bit more violent.

1:47:48 · jump to transcript →

My name is Laurens Straub. I'm sitting here with Werner Herzog, writer, director and producer of the movie "Nosferatu" that you are currently watching. And we now want to talk about that movie. Werner Herzog and I have known each other for about 20 years and have worked together on many different projects. What do we see here? These are actual mummies in the Mexican city of Guanajuato. You have to realize that Guanajuato is located in a gorge. Because of that the cemetery was very narrow and there was no space. So they dug up the bodies every eight years or so, and because of different climatic conditions and the soil, they mummified without human preparation. They leaned them against the walls on both sides in a long underground hall and a hallway. I saw them there many, many years ago in the early 1960s. The story behind this is that I was in the U.S. on a scholarship but I resigned from it a few days in and gave up my legal status in the US because I had to earn some money. Out of desperation I went to Mexico because otherwise they would have returned me to Germany. I went to Central Mexico and Guanajuato and lived there for a while. I did all kinds of crazy things. For example, at rodeos, the so-called charreadas, I rode on wild bulls. Like a complete idiot because I don't even know how to ride a horse, but with the money I could live one week at a time. And there I saw these mummies. Are they similar to the ones at the volcano Vesuvius and formed from lava? No, those are real dried human beings. They barely weigh anything. They were in display cases so we had to take them out and carry them somewhere else. They weigh very little... 10, 12 pounds maybe. Is this something like a culture of death? No, it's completely normal. Isabelle Adjani. She is great at acting scared. That was a real and very large bat we brought in for this. The bat you saw earlier I could not shoot myself. The footage came out of a science documentary because bat's flapping motions are extremely fast, and this was shot with 500 or 800 frames per second. The bats had to be trained with food for that because it took very strong lighting, and normally they would not move under those conditions and not leave their hideout. Here we see Delft. In the Netherlands. That's my city. And I know when Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein teaches students cinematography he first introduces them to Flemish and Dutch painters. Why was Delft chosen as an alternative to Wismar where Murnau shot? Yes, but Wismar was not Murnau's location. I believe that was Lübeck. There is one single shot later in the movie where you see a few buildings that Murnau actually used and that are still standing. I used those as well. We chose Delft because the continuity of the architecture was uninterrupted and we only had to make very few changes in order to shoot there. We took down some antennas and moved a few cars. Other than that it was very easy to shoot there. The concept of "Nosferatu" was definitely to do a variation on Murnau's movie, not a remake in the classical sense. A Biedermeier image like this, for example, is unthinkable in a Murnau film. Moreover, this is in color and the movie's character is completely different. We had to show a very secure bourgeois world. We deliberately planned this, especially the furniture. That was done very thoughtfully by Henning von Gierke who is a painter by trade. With the furniture and the lighting, you can tell that a painter was involved. It reminds me of "Kaspar Hauser" which was done by Henning as well. What era are we in here? That is the Biedermeier era as you can see clearly by the costumes. We researched how to best do the building arrangement and the urban landscapes. Schmidt-Reitwein and I wracked our brains over that. I didn't simply want to recreate paintings. That was never planned. With one exception because we knew we had to work a lot in darkness with nothing but candlelight. Therefore, we studied the painter de La Tour and thought about how to do it if we only had one or a few candles. How do we light that? And Schmidt-Reitwein is exceptionally good at working with light and darkness. This is Roland Topor. - Yes. The famous illustrator, poet, and crazy man. Unfortunately he is already dead, I believe. Yes. - How did you find Roland? I coincidentally saw him in debate on French television. And he laughs in such a mad way. He laughs after every sentence he says. But in such a desperate and strange way that it impressed me deeply. Afterwards I contacted him I told him I was going to shoot a vampire movie and asked if he would play Renfield. Roland Topor immediately agreed. Unfortunately his voice is dubbed in some versions. And it is impossible to fully recreate his laughter. It was his strangest characteristic. What I love about this... I recently saw an exhibition with English surrealistic works from the 19th century. It reminds me of an old office, the cloth, and this blue. It was very carefully lit, and the costumes had to match. Bruno Ganz. And also the faces we chose. Those are not faces that fit into the 20th century. You have to carefully select actors who match. So Bruno Ganz is a great fit for this. The beautiful paper. - Yes. That was so much work, and it was prepared very, very thoughtfully. A beautiful country. Here I see a recurring theme of yours... maps. I already know that from "Aguirre" and other movies. In "Fitzcarraldo" geography is a crucial dramaturgic element. I'm a map fanatic. Oddly, I'm pretty good at determining locations ahead of time, too, because I understand maps. I know which formations you should find in a certain area. I was rarely wrong. It is always about uncharted territory, the Dorado, or doom. Yes, at home I don't have pictures on the wall. A few photographs every now and then, but generally, I can't stand my walls being covered in pictures. If there is anything on my walls of my home it's maps. Oh no. - You will be in danger. This was your first film in English, the first with big stars and a big budget, correct? Well, not really. "Aguirre" is also a big movie with a big star and great effort. But I have to say, we shot "Aguirre" for about 700,000 deutschmark... $360,000. What matters is what you manage to get on screen with the resources you have. To come back to paintings, I like this vase. Yes. Okay. This reminds me of a painting by Seurat. I think the still life-like and emotional atmosphere is phenomenal. But be careful, I always want to show inner landscapes. This was done very quickly, by the way. On that day we happened to have some time and drove to the beach. It was freezing cold, windy. There was foam. We set up the camera in three minutes and sent the two actors, Bruno Ganz and Isabelle Adjani, into the image. We only told them that the music would most likely be slow and solemn. We already had received ideas for the music from Florian Fricke from Popol Vuh. These two, three shots here we did in 15 minutes. We never thought about paintings. It was born out of the situation... - Spontaneously. ...that we found there. Bruno Ganz has tears on his cheek because it was freezing cold. Lotte Eisner came to visit for a few days. We had to wrap her in 20 blankets because it was so cold. I was so proud that she could be there. She was very important for me and maybe for the new German film in general because she bridged the gap to the expressionistic movies back then that she knew very well. She also knew all the representatives of that time. She was friends with Fritz Lang, Murnau, Pabst. She knew them all. For us she was like a bridge to the generation of our grandfathers. We were a generation of orphans who did not have the generation of our fathers. Here I see your wife. Yes, Martje. Martje Herzog on the left. Essentially everyone who was there is in the movie at some point. Later you see the executive producer, the costume designer, the sound technician, and the gaffer. It was also a matter of how quickly can you get something done with very little money. This is the farewell. Bruno Ganz was actually pretty good at riding horses, which was great for me. Now he travels to Transylvania. The choice of the production company... Was this a Century Fox production? No, I produced it myself. Many people believe that 20th Century Fox produced it. But 20th Century Fox only bought an advance guarantee to the U.S. rights for very cheap. They only bought the rights for the U.S. A distribution guarantee. I believe this was... - German Romanticism. Well, you have to be careful. There is a hint of that, but I always try not to be connected with Romanticism because I myself have no real connection with that cultural epoch. Usually I refer to eras before that. The Late Middle Ages speak to me much more. They inspire me. This was shot in Eastern Slovakia. I was not allowed to shoot in Romania where I had scouted locations for months in the Carpathian Mountains. But you also have to see the context. That was when Ceausescu had just been awarded the honorary title of the new Vlad Dracula by the parliament. So he was named the new Count Dracula. That was an honorary title because the historic Count Dracul had been an important figure in the defense against the Turks. This is in the High Tatras, just 1,000 feet to the left was the Polish border. Bohemia? No, Slovakia. - Slovakia? Eastern Slovakia. This is a real group of gypsies that I had brought in from the very East of Slovakia. Among them are a few Czech actors. The gypsies actually speak their own language. Unfortunately I don't remember what it was called. ...my food. I still have to get to Count Dracula's castle today. This is a scene that in a very typical way fulfills all the criteria and conditions of a genre movie. This is one of those traditional scenes. He has to go see Count Dracula, and everyone immediately freezes in fear and the maid drops the dishes. Do you really have to go there? I wanted to integrate certain general rules of the genre into the movie. From there you can go farther and expand. But this right here is a very typical and traditional scene for this genre. The space has this wonderful of depth in the back. And the bed in the background. The set design was by Henning von Gierke who has a spectacular sense for these things. Yes. Spectacular. Parts of this we also built ourselves. The oven and things like that. It was a former hunting lodge of party functionaries. At that point there were only lumberjacks living there. During the day you only found lumberjacks there. ...were already on the other side. Here you have this sense of foreboding and doom. I liked the gypsies so much. They were very good. Watching this reminds me of Degas' "The Execution of Emperor Maximilian" in Mexico. Yes. Careful. Not too many paintings, otherwise... That's just a sign for how interesting and good this is. This is a wonderful face. I also enjoy the way they speak. Yes, definitely. He says you should... They said the dialogue I wanted but in their language, which I believe was not Romani. They translated it themselves and did it very well. You can see this was outdoors and at night which was always a problem for me because I'm not a night person. I had to stay awake until very late, and I've always hated night shoots. I had to force myself to stay up with gallons of coffee. This is also a recurring theme in your films... Native Americans, Mexicans, and Gypsies. Something completely foreign. But also the dignity of these people.

0:04 · jump to transcript →

So Don, how old were you when you made this film? Actually, I was 23 years old when we started it. I think it was released when I was 25. It was kind of a long process. The first film that I made, it was called Jim the World's Greatest. It was...

40:48 · jump to transcript →

Filmmaker Paul Davis

They could the the rain machine that they had wasn't powerful enough and they couldn't see the rain on camera So they just got a guy to come and stand with an industrial fire hose To stand next to them firing it up into the air in an arc so that it dropped down and he was wearing a waterproof jacket and his Pockets were absolutely filled with water throughout the entire thing his hands just froze And because it was his first film he didn't didn't understand that he had to go and do ADR for

52:46 · jump to transcript →

The first day of shooting was we drove through the mud to go to Nate and get the tool made to cut the safe in Los Angeles. The Burning Bar. Which was the Burning Bar, yeah. The infamous Burning Bar. Actually, Nate Davis is Eddie Davis's dad. He's an old Chicago actor. This is Robert Prosky's first film performance.

1:22 · jump to transcript →

Computer Simulation Division Richard Taylor

Time lapse. This is a wonderful time lapse shot that... Shot in 65 millimeter. See all the airplanes landing at LAX. That's what those... - Yeah. Those little things. Were flecking through the... Right. Who's this guy? I forgot what went into this movie. I literally haven't seen it in over 10 years or... Really? - Yeah, I'd forgot. It's overwhelming, isn't it? Yeah. -/ mean, it's really a piece of art. - It's remarkable. You know, you have to go into these projects not looking at the whole global reality. Because if you would, you would never have attempted it. It's easy in retrospect now to look at it and judge it and say, "Well, it should have had a little more this or that." But we never had that luxury. We had no luxury at all. - We were going flat out. It's like getting into a car and they say the only way you can go is if you put a cinderblock on the gas pedal. And there is no brake. - Right. And when it runs out of gas, wherever you are, that's where you are. And we're not sure of what the course is that you're going to take. Right. So, get out there and drive where you think you should be going. And there was no map. And that was it. We had one saying though, when anyone from the studio asked, it was, "No problem," right? Nothing was a problem. - Well, that's... But we had the technology. Because at night we knew the little fuzzy animals were going to come down the hall and help us. I tell you, the lot has that juice in it, though. There is a certain vibe. We were in the animation building and you are inspired when you are there. You feel that this is, sort of, hallowed creative ground and that, you know, you do want to push the envelope. I think this film got willed into being. There was a great deal of just brute will to get it done. Force the issue. If we say we're going to have dailies tomorrow, then we'll have something to show at dailies. And to add insult to injury, this was my first film. Right. Animalympics, which was two television specials put together, it was fully animated. But this was my first feature film. And that's what Tom Wilhite always... Whenever people said, "Well, isn't this Steven Lisberger's first film?" Tom Wilhite would say, "No, he's done another film before," and then hoped they wouldn't ask what. Because he would always... He would say that each time. And then, you know, the fact was that it was a full-on commitment and there was no turning back. This was the most no-turning-back film I've ever been associated with. And I'd like to add to that. We all owe a debt of thanks to Tom Wilhite, who was the president of the Motion Picture Group at the time, for green-lighting this picture. And I think he felt that the picture was in the tradition of experimental cinema that Disney Studios always had. I always felt that Tron would remind you of something you've never seen before, and I think it accomplished that. Tron was a once-in-a-lifetime combination of technologies that'll never happen again. The evolution of computer graphics has gone on from Tron. The incredible complexity of what we can do today compared to what we could do at that time is much more intense than I ever thought it would be by this time. But it was phenomenal what was created at that time with the very, very limited state of the art of computer graphics. And then that whole technique by which the characters in the electronic world were created will never be done again. It was just too labor intensive and too unique and there are other ways to do maybe that same type of imagery now. Steven Lisberger really created a unique piece of communication, it was right on time, and his insight into the technologies and the combination of technologies to create that film, I think, was a one-time situation that will probably never arise again. The labor-intensive quality of the film, I think, Is... No one really to this day understands. "How did they do this?" - Yeah. I know, I know. How did we do it? I don't know. We were nuts. We were young is what we were. Well, thanks for all the help, guys, really. I can't believe we made the whole thing.

1:31:01 · jump to transcript →

Here we are at the Lincoln Heights Jail, which is now condemned for asbestos that we spent weeks down there breathing. I always thought that we'll all end up dying at the same time in 20 years from now. Or from the bee smoke that they pumped in. Yeah, they use safer smoke now. Although the credit is to Wes that we used actual steam. He went to the trouble. That's a big deal to use steam because you have to have boilers and everything, and there's nothing like it for quality. Oh, look, introducing Johnny Depp. Who knew who he was? This was his first film. That's right.

1:16 · jump to transcript →

Jennifer. Jennifer. I think the first cut of the film was really long. How long, Dito? I believe it was something like three and a half or possibly four hours long. But that's my first cuts, which are long, trying to put everything that's shot into the film. Well, I'm not sure I'd be good company tonight. Eh, I'll be the judge of that.

1:02:44 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, it certainly did. It became kind of, especially in the 90s, it was like a really big hotbed of filmmaking, all the Stephen King adaptations and a lot of other films that were made over there. Now, how did your first films come about? Because this is far from your first film, things like Death Driver and Dark Sunday. How did those films come about? Well, they were just things that he had come up with there and had been just things he wanted to do, and so I...

13:01 · jump to transcript →

Okay, we are now at my first scene in this film. Here she is, ladies and gentlemen. Now, there are some important pieces of information here. First of all, I was running 102 fever the day we shot this. And the doctor said... Yeah, you look hot. Thank you, darling. We can either put her in the hospital... Oh, you meant it the other way. We can either put her in the hospital...

10:37 · jump to transcript →

My name is Terry Rawlings. I'm the editor of Alien 3. And it was a thrill to work with David Fincher on his very first film, which was a very difficult task, in a way. And it was nothing to do with David Fincher, who I think did an incredible job. And I wish that he had fought for it harder in places because it became very difficult handling sort of the front office at Fox. They never let us properly complete the film in Pinewood Studios before we left, so there were things outstanding for the film. So when we first got it all together, it just didn't quite work because of the areas that were missing.

0:03 · jump to transcript →

visual motifs, but we needed an amazing score. And what was so beautiful about this is that Michael and I had been working already together for 10 years, really, since Family Viewing. And from that very first film, we developed this language, this ability for me to write a certain type of script, knowing that Michael's collaboration and artistic understanding

6:28 · jump to transcript →

You can't sit here. Now, I knew that this scene was going to stay in the movie because Bob's son, Tom's daughter, Don Burgess' son, and my nephew were all on that bus and all had speaking lines. I don't know when I went on my first outdoor picnic. I do remember the first time I heard the sweetest voice in the wide world. You can sit here if you want.

13:23 · jump to transcript →

And this is Bryan Singer's film, as you might have noticed there. That was Chris's idea. The impetus of this film, the original idea behind The Usual Suspects, came from a discussion with a friend of mine, an actor named Dylan Cussman, in the lobby of a movie theater. And he asked me what our next film was after our first film. And I said that I had read an article... Our first film being Public Access. Probably not seen.

0:23 · jump to transcript →

My Question Initially To Jean-pierre Was

At the beginning I thought "Okay, they are going to fire me after one week." And, no, because it's like another movie. After a while, you are inside and you work, you're friends with good guys. And it's just a process. Like when I did my first short film. But when I made a short film, we were five. And for Alien Resurrection, 905 people. But, then again, it's the same thing. And I'm very proud, because for me, it's my own thing now. I am very proud because I did it. It was so heavy, so big, and the inspiration was Giger, and he is very happy about the film. I know, because I met him recently in Paris, and I'm very happy and proud of that. You wonder about what it's like to direct a film in a language that isn't really your mother tongue. And you wonder whether or not somebody fully understands, um... It's interesting. Something I've wondered. I don't know if Jean-Pierre is actually familiar with all of the actors

1:27:28 · jump to transcript →

I think my first reaction in reading the screenplay was probably a little confusion because it's clearly a dense plot and the beauty of the script really and the film and the story is that it doesn't clearly indicate, you know like so many other films do, the sort of black hat wearing bad guy and the white hat wearing good guy. It doesn't have that sort of delineation and the delving into the sort of the grey area or the sort of the murky confusion of

54:12 · jump to transcript →

Taylor Hackford

...things that we did from research, looking at religions of Dahomey. But as Phillipe Moyez says here, played by Delroy Lindo, this is not voodoo. This is not Candomblé. This is not Santeria. This is his own amalgam of a very old religion. Now, in no way, shape or form was this a desire to put down African religions. More importantly, it's to say that individuals, whoever they might be... ...find ways to establish power, and we certainly know this... ...from preachers of all ilks, whether they be Jim Jones or whoever. The fact is that Phillipe Moyez seems to be in a very weird situation here. He's got body parts in the refrigerator. He is using a lot of superstition here. It looks like a very meager and downtrodden place. You'll find out later that he's quite a rich man. What we wanted is a little bit of a creepy situation here that Keanu is faced with. He's a lawyer. He's representing a client, and that client seems to be... ...completely oblivious to him. But, at the same time, the client was interesting. "I thought I would recognize you, but I do not." It's bizarre. Now meanwhile, Keanu's in this situation and he's now having to confront... ...using his brain, how he's gonna win almost an unwinnable case. They caught him. They caught him dead to rights, sacrificing animals. He's going to have to delve into the health codes. Is he gonna give up or not? You look at this sequence, and what I've done. Mary Ann is redecorating... ...and she's getting one frustration after another, after another. I used digital wipes here to kind of interconnect the two. While she's working and getting more frustrated... ...he's getting deeper and deeper into his research... ...until he finally finds a key that is going to help him in this trial. And Jackie, who is very, very helpful, Miss Helpful, Miss Best Friend... ...and just trying to help. She's very sophisticated. She's trying to help Mary Ann get into what it's like to live in New York... ...and really be a top-rated housewife. But Mary Ann's getting frustrated. Kevin, on the other hand, is getting deeper and deeper into his work. You see him eating hamburgers. She's eating Popeye's Chicken. They're no longer eating together. They're eating separately. They're separate. She's getting more and more frustrated and confused. She needs his help and he's not there. And in this scene that's coming up, you get a sense now of what her life is going to be. This is a scene in which Jackie kind of lays the law down. "You have to understand, it's a bargain. You've got a job. He's got a job." And this is not what Mary Ann bargained for. And I think Charlize and Tamara Tunie, who plays Jackie... ...Tamara is absolutely fabulous in this role, I think. You know, they're girlfriends. They're talking turkey. They're talking plain. Jackie is truly trying to help her. But there's another level going on here. There's a little bit of... ...an animal of prey and the preyed upon going on here. This decor, by the way, you get a sense of Mary Ann's empty apartment... ...and then you can see what Jackie did with hers. This is right across the hallway. It's done to the nth degree. She's paid a lot of money to a lot of decorators. "Look around, honey. "This is why I do what I do. This is what I get paid." And it's kind of establishing here a kind of life of sophistication in New York City... ...which is not exactly what Mary Ann had in mind in a marriage. Now I cut... ...directly to the bacon, as it were. Keanu has developed a defense for Phillipe Moyez, and it's based on religion. It's based on the fact that you couldn't have religious freedom. And I must tell you that this case is absolutely based on fact. There was a Santeria case in Florida in which the neighbors attacked a church... ...sued a church. They were sacrificing animals. And it was won on the basis of the fact that this is ritual and religion has ritual. I mean, religion has circumcision, as Keanu says here. You have kosher butchering... ...which is, of course, how he wins the case. He's got a Jewish judge. And he is defiant here. He is arrogant. He is using a system and pointing out... ...hypocrisies within that system. At the same time with this happening... ...his opposing attorney starts to cough. It might just be a frog in his throat, whatever. But remember, Phillipe Moyez was going to put nails in the tongue of that cow... ...down in his basement, and he basically says, "I have done all I can do for you. "I'm not gonna help you with the case. I'm doing what I can do." And in this moment, where you see a really brilliant piece of lawyering... ...you know, Keanu feels this is below him, but he does do a huge amount of work... ...on health codes and wins the case. He wants to show John Milton: "You may be insulting me with this case, but damn it, I will deliver," and he does. At the same time, his opponent can't talk. Phillipe Moyez, I intercut with Delroy's face, back and forth, and you kind of see... ...there's a moment here in which you start to realize maybe, in fact... ...Phillipe Moyez has more power than we gave him credit for. Maybe there is something else happening here. And these elements of subliminal intrigue, supernatural element, this is... ...in fact it has to have, because it's about the devil, some elements of supernatural. I tried to keep them questionable, are they real, or are they not? Throughout. But they're here. And meanwhile, after they win the case... ...John Milton has been there to watch. He snuck in to kind of watch his new protégé. Look at those frescos in the background. That's a real New York courtroom. You know, just fantastic. Again, another courtroom, a great location. Now I come out and I'm on Canal Street. When you know New York, it's so fantastic. The street life is so incredible. And to me, Chinatown in New York... ...is one of the great places. Canal Street, which is in lower Manhattan, is alive. It's vibrant. It's also a major thoroughfare. You see these huge trucks rumbling along. You see Chinese fish markets and vegetable markets... ...and all those things happening, and that crush of real New York. Now Al Pacino is the kind of actor... I first saw him in Panic in Needle Park. It was his first film. You see him in Serpico. You see him in Dog Day Afternoon. He is uniquely a New York street animal. And what I wanted with John Milton is a man who is incredibly powerful. He's head of an international law firm. He's smart as anyone you've ever met. And at the same time, he was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. You know he's from the street. And in this scene, he takes... ...his son to the place that he loves. He wants, he feels the vibrancy here. He wants to say, "I saw you work. You're terrific. You're also arrogant. "You've got those good looks. You're tall. You're not short like I am. "You know what I've got are those eyes. What I've got is that ability." Look at those Pacino eyes. "What I've got is that ability to fool people. "I'm charming. I have to sneak up on them." What I wanted from my devil is not the obvious. I didn't want a godlike devil. Pacino said, "Why don't you go to Robert Redford or Sean Connery?" I said, "Well, you know, the devil looked like that before. "What I want is somebody who is bored. He needs a challenge. "He has to overcome obstacles," and in this instance, Pacino liked that. He could have got up and walked out of the room, but he loved it. "Because you never see me comin'." That's the key to this... ...and Tony Gilroy understood it, and we made this uniquely for Al Pacino. Now here's a sequence that I thought was another thing that's important. Pacino is a character you meet. He seems all powerful. He seems like a corporate lawyer. Now he looks, seems like a street guy. He speaks fluent Chinese. Pacino speaks five or six languages in this film... ...and every single one of them is accurate. He is speaking Chinese here. I think what you get out of the character is: here's a man who is all powerful... ...at the same time he says right here, "Stay in the subways. "I only take planes, or the subway. I don't take limousines. That's not me. "That's the only way I travel. Stay in the trenches. Stay close to the people." That's who Pacino is. But you also feel throughout: this is a man who has incredible intelligence. He can learn anything. Cut back to the apartment. There is an evolution happening. Mary Ann is starting to decorate. She's trying to get control of things. She's now become Jackie's friend. She's talking to all the wives in the building. She is building a nursery. That means she's telling him, in no uncertain terms... ...that this is what it's going to be. "I'm staying home.

32:35 · jump to transcript →

It took us about two years of development. It's a very expensive shot. We went into it, I think it was budgeted originally at $200,000. This shot actually cost about as much as Steve's first film. Yeah. So we kept saying, see, there's a dog there. See that dog? We had them put that dog in and all those people. There were people in there, but we wanted a lot more. Now, the wall on the right here is real, and the pharaoh's real, and those soldiers kneeling are real.

0:33 · jump to transcript →

Who is in charge? Who's in charge? Well, for the purposes of this commentary track, we've got two people in charge for Tinto Brass' first film of the current millennium, or at least of the 2000s, whether you consider the year 2000 part of this millennium is still being debated, but it's a new era, it's a new time for Tinto, and we'll be talking about how that is true in very many ways for this film. My name is Nathaniel Thompson from Mondo Digital, and joining me here today is Eugenio Ercolani. Hello. Hello. It's...

0:02 · jump to transcript →

It's been months and months on this. It's totally fascinating. We were so into the shot that you could hear the music swell, just an appreciation of our one big special effects shot here. Halfway, as they're still making that, we had the music, so I told those guys, you hear the music, you have to live up to that music, to that gong. Now, I recognize that guy. Yes, it's my father figure from my first three movies. Mr. Lang Xiong, the good old Lang Xiong.

6:04 · jump to transcript →

to make a PG-13 film. I must tell you, this is my first PG-13 movie ever made. We are very careful about everything. So no matter the action or the drama or anything, we got to so much careful about it. And I also need to tune down about the violent thing. And I also need to tune down the bullet head and the body counts. The whole movie is all about love. It's not about violence.

45:03 · jump to transcript →

E. Elias Merhige

knowing that you're spending the night with him in the castle alone. You watch him. Orlok, drop your paper. When I made my first film, Begotten, that was a feature silent film. And I did the cinematography on that film, and I talked to my actors while I was filming them. And that experience as a silent film director is something that I talked a lot to John about and also

38:03 · jump to transcript →

I thought this was great for Barney, who'd had a relatively small part in the first film, Silence. And to use him in the book as the person, as the way in... ...was, I think, a great stroke by Tom. And Frankie Faison really turned out to be the right man for the job. So it's one of those circumstances where instead of recasting...

24:48 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

into something that has a little bit more significance. And was doing more than one thing. Yeah, it was introducing Mary and Pippin is what it was, which was great. And it's also magic. I didn't want to have too much magic in the movie because I don't like magic in fantasy films. But having a dragon like this, a firework dragon, is a pretty cool thing. My first introduction to The Lord of the Rings was when I saw the Ralph Bakshi cartoon film in 1978.

23:39 · jump to transcript →

Tom Tykwer

what some people consider his testimony. It was the last screenplay that he had worked on together with Piasewicz. And even though it wasn't completely clear whether he wanted or intended to direct it, it was definitely the last proof of his genius that was left behind. So when Harvey Weinstein had the idea to give it to me and have me have a look at it, my first instinct reaction was,

2:33 · jump to transcript →

Ted Tally

Mr. Metcalf, do you still have the Jacobis' check stubs and credit card statements? We're looking for any kind of service call or purchase that might've required a stranger to enter the house. A repairman or a delivery guy. When you would watch these dailies with Dino and Martha, I was only there once or twice, but again, it seemed to me like they had a very shrewd sense of where the best takes were. Their shrewdness came in length. Dino is very sensitive to pace, I think. - Right. He, like myself, likes to get on with things. Not just within an act or within the whole movie, within a scene. Within a scene, yeah. - A true sense of what you can do without. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes you get lost. When you're making it, you get too close... Where I got the most out of Dino was right before we wrapped the shoot. He started going through the script with me, he started pulling pages out. Remember we... - He would say, "We already know this. "We'll understand this without it being said." I guess if you've made as many movies... - Making 600 movies, you Kind of... ...aS Dino and Martha you really begin to learn something about storytelling. They were a huge help in that way. It's Chromalux. This was a great stock shot. We just got a fax. This is the first thing I shot. First day of shooting. It wasn't in my first cut. I ended up putting it back. Because it helped explain that... - That Dolarhyde is in some transition. Or, maybe, he's trying to stop. - Maybe. Which helps us explain the story of why he's eating that painting. But, unfortunately, which comes later. If it came before or while seeing the scene it would have helped more. But here... - You weren't happy with the way that scene came out in some versions. It seemed like very important information, emotionally. I love this location. This is a real photo lab that we just took over and... This is a long nighttime shoot. - Yeah. This exterior and the interior of this location are two different places. This is why I wish she was hurrying more, so that it would catch his interest more. Why is she running into the office? - That was my fault. That was one of the days we didn't talk on the cell phone. I would usually call Ted and say, "Ted, this is what I'm doing." Pick his brain.

1:40:42 · jump to transcript →

Len Wiseman

I don't think I'm gonna have an experience like this again. I mean, it did feel like, you know, a family... ...and that it was a bit like making a student film... ...where everybody was really passionate. Everybody was. It was like everybody's first... It was my first time playing a part like that... ...and Speedman's, and Brad's first time stunt coordinating. Wasn't it? Yeah, and first time, I think, doing second-unit directing as well. lt was a first time for a lot of people. I think Bruton Jones, my production designer... ...who I had worked with on videos and commercials and things... ...fight there, had not done a feature. And, you know, it was Danny's first... Danny McBride's first screenplay. And it was the first time for a lot of people. It was really special, and it was really, really great. Thank you for being so nice then... ...and such an asshole now that you've gone all Hollywood on me. No, I had, really... Just the support and everything that I had from everybody.... And like I've told you, it's because when you have... ...from the actors and everybody... ...when they're trying to make the best project... ...and they're really as passionate as you... ... you can kind of just put yourself in this bubble with the actors... ...and it helps take away the stress and nightmares you're dealing with... ...with the studio and the schedule and all that stuff. And it was such a great help. Forrest. So everybody, thanks again... ...to all of the 12 of you who are listening to this track... ...and we will see you again. We'll probably see you on Easter... ...because that's probably Mom Wiseman, right? Yes. Thanks, guys. We'll see you again. - Bye.

2:05:41 · jump to transcript →

It's funny, watching it, I really remember now reading the script and my first emotion. It's like when you talk to somebody over the phone and then you meet the person and it's a different person than what you imagined.

1:31:34 · jump to transcript →

James McTeigue

I know there's no way I can convince you... ... this is not one of their tricks, but I don't care. lam me. My name is Valerie. I don't think I'll lve much longer. I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography that I will ever write and, God... .../'m writing it on toilet paper. There is always that great history of the first people... ...picked on or imprisoned are minorities. And it was important to, you know, show the Valerie character... ...and where she starts off with... ...and where, you know, where her life leads her... ...and then, you know, how the government come in... ...and they sweep up all those people... ...and then... ...and then how it affects Evey... ...and how Evey comes to, like, understand what has happened to those people... ...and how it, I guess it really sparks her political consciousness after her parents. Natasha, who plays Valerie is really, really lovely. And she, I mean, incredible actress. And James had her on set so that when I was reading the letter... ... that she would be reading it live for me... ...Which made it so much more human, instead of... I mean, not to disparage script Supervisors in any way... ...but a lot of times when there's voiceovers that you hear... ...the script supervisor will just read it from the script. And obviously they shouldn't be trying to act it out or anything... ...but that can be a very cold feeling. When you have the actual actor there, that's pretty amazing. For me, it's a point in the film where you're both propelled on... ...and also you're propelled backwards. And so you're going down this fantastic rabbit hole... ...at a point in the film where it expands the film... ...and it expands your mind. And you have to stay on the train you're on, but also at the same time... ...get onto another train. And I love it when films do that. So It's a fantastic thing to do at that point in time. It also is a very important back-story for V as well. Because it's to that note... ...1S something that links all three characters. And, you know, I love that all that... The thing that changes them... ... IS written on a piece of toilet paper. I think that is, like, totally fantastic. You would. I'd always known what I wanted to do with my life... ...and in 2015 I starred in my first film, The Salt Flats. lt was the most important role of my life. Not because of my career... ... but because that was how I met Ruth. The first time we kissed... ...I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again.

1:12:51 · jump to transcript →

John Cameron Mitchell

We were in rehearsal and you had something sort of like that. I walked down, I walked into one of our early rehearsals. I had gone to Girl Props in Soho. I bought a big freaking flower and then it started to become part of our improvisation and we ended up incorporating it within Sophia's ensemble. Kurt and Bart are costume designers who were known for their rock and roll stylist's work and videos from Britney Spears, etc. This was their first film.

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James Mangold

And one of my first goals here in this film was to create a sequence that grabbed you and pulled you into the film very quickly, and that we didn't indulge in a kind of extended opening credit sequence, that we just plunged you right into action and into the world of Dan Evans, played by Christian Bale and his family, out here in Bisbee, Arizona. God damn it, William! William! God damn it, put that down! Come here! Let go!

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the pedophilia theme. We took that out from the film because I thought it would really take too much space shadowing the love story. Yeah, I think it was like one of the first things we said when talking about how to do the script. This must go out. But for me it was necessary because my first version of Hawkeye when writing the book was a terrible Patrick Bateman American Psycho type of character doing it for money and power. And I had to...

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at the Shanghai studios of Jonathan's nightclub, which, how could it be more perfect than to be an Egyptian-themed nightclub? And that's my dear friend Marcia Nassiter, my first agent, literally my first friend in California, who's acting with our inimitable John Hanna. She plays a Russian princess, just, you know, after the war, after World War II.

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...a veteran of four or five of the great musicals the last few years. Nina Gold, who first cast my first commercial when I was 21 years old. And Universal, who so beautifully backed... ...the ambition of what everyone was trying to do... ...and gave us such great support. That's a huge thank you to everyone involved.

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Wes Anderson

In this movie, there are two of your costars-- You play an attorney. You're married to Frances McDormand. That was my first casting thought of this movie was, "Boy, I would like to have Bill and Fran together, to have them married in this story." And the other interesting relationship I liked was Bill and Bruce Willis, who plays Captain Sharp. Maybe, Bill, you could talk about these two collaborators. Well, the scenes with Frances were... that was like dancing. That was like dancing at night after a few glasses of champagne. It was really-- We were pleasing each other and moving together and doing things effortlessly and exchanging, matching each other's energy and progressions. I think the scene I did, the bed scene I did with Frances, where we're in separate single beds, was one of my favorite scenes I've ever done in the movies. I really enjoyed it. I could have done it all day long. So we just kept doing it. I don't think anyone wanted it to stop. It was really, really a delight. She's really, really talented. Now, with Bruce, that was my first time working with Bruce, although I have some history with Bruce, knowing him. And the first timers in all of Wes's movies have a difficulty with the sort of precision, the insistence on a very specific script, you know. And it's a hard thing to wrap your head around. And Bruce is a kind of a natural, he doesn't necessarily, in most of his movies, he just sort of lets it go, he feels a certain way and he lets it go. Precision dialogue was never something that was too demanded because it wasn't his natural way, and he was able to do it in his own words most of the time. So it was a little different for Bruce doing that in Wes's because it's sort of-- It's very mathematical. It doesn't bounce the same way. So he needs it to be a certain way, and you have to really get on yourself to get the lines right. And there are tongue twisters. There's lots and lots of tongue twisters that are hard to say. I just remember being in a car and doing some car scenes, and just enjoying the heck out of it and saying, "Let's do some more of this." We did many, many scenes of it. Many, many takes. And it was always interesting. I think we were both enjoying it. I really enjoyed being on the other side, you know, just hearing him go. And he has his own funny timing that's, you know, unique. And it was fun to play. "Okay, let's see." And we did just wonderful stuff. He's really wonderful. But I really had fun with it. I really enjoyed it. And when people are giving, you're just like, "Okay, I like that. Try this one." And we just kept throwing them at each other and really having a good time. I've worked with him again since. We really had a wonderful time working on Moonrise Kingdom. And I think I told him when I saw the film that when I saw the ending shot, the climax shot on the bell tower, I laughed. That was the biggest, hardest laugh I've had in movie history. That's the biggest one I've ever seen. It made me laugh so hard when I saw that. Bruce holding on to the kid. It really killed me.

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This coming up here, too, this was the reason I did the movie, was this chess game, this scene I loved, which is no surprise that my first... Hello, I'm Len Wiseman, director of Total Recall, and we are watching the director's cut, which I'm very excited about. I'm really happy with the theatrical cut. There's just things that, as a filmmaker, that you...

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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.

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I know it's completely different, right, on the script? Originally on the script, this wasn't like this. This came out later. I think this might have been my first... Actually, yeah, you're completely right. This is actually the first moment you showed up on set.

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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.

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What's your short about lessons? Oh, yeah, first lesson. Yeah, that was a wonderful experience of rules. It's all these people taking their very first lesson of different disciplines. Cool. God, a first lesson. You're like, oh, I remember my first violin lesson. Can I ask them how many people would come in? No. What? I'm not.

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Hi, I'm Edward Berger, the writer, director and producer with my friend Malte Grunert on this movie, All Quiet on the Western Front. I'm so happy that you decided to listen to my commentary of this DVD. I've never done it before, so this is my first DVD commentary, so please bear with me if I make some mistakes or I correct myself.

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