Topics / Creative decisions
First feature
95 commentaries in the archive discuss this, with 251 total mentions and 172 sampled passages below.
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multi · 2h 34m 19 mentions
James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd, Stan Winston, Robert Skotak + 8
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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.
0:04 · jump to transcript →
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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.
2:51 · jump to transcript →
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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.
4:32 · jump to transcript →
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director · 3h 43m 12 mentions
The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002)
Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens
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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.
0:33 · jump to transcript →
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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 →
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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.
1:52 · jump to transcript →
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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.
0:26 · jump to transcript →
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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
1:20 · jump to transcript →
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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.
1:47 · jump to transcript →
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director · 3h 16m 8 mentions
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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?
21:46 · jump to transcript →
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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.
30:01 · jump to transcript →
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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.
33:36 · jump to transcript →
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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.
1:53 · jump to transcript →
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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.
9:06 · jump to transcript →
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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.
34:46 · jump to transcript →
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director · 1h 54m 7 mentions
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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.
0:32 · jump to transcript →
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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.
9:50 · jump to transcript →
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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.
11:54 · jump to transcript →
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director · 1h 28m 7 mentions
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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.
7:08 · jump to transcript →
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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,
9:17 · jump to transcript →
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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.
9:45 · jump to transcript →
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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.
6:20 · jump to transcript →
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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.
24:25 · jump to transcript →
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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.
44:12 · jump to transcript →
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director · 2h 52m 6 mentions
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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.
41:14 · jump to transcript →
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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...
1:14:05 · jump to transcript →
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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.
1:24:15 · jump to transcript →
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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...
8:28 · jump to transcript →
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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...
32:21 · jump to transcript →
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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.
2:20 · jump to transcript →
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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.
8:43 · jump to transcript →
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John McTiernan
And because it was my first feature, I didn't have credibility enough to say...
12:24 · jump to transcript →
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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.
6:42 · jump to transcript →
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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."
1:09:07 · jump to transcript →
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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.
1:34:12 · jump to transcript →
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director · 1h 59m 5 mentions
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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.
19:58 · jump to transcript →
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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.
27:10 · jump to transcript →
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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.
35:45 · jump to transcript →
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writer · 1h 35m 5 mentions
Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, Greg Hale, Timo Tjahjanto + 4
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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
2:30 · jump to transcript →
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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...
5:52 · jump to transcript →
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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.
0:42 · jump to transcript →
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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 →
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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."
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director · 1h 34m 4 mentions
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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.
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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.
2:49 · jump to transcript →
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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...
5:01 · jump to transcript →
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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,
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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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director · 1h 56m 4 mentions
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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.
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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...
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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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director · 1h 26m 4 mentions
Underworld Rise of the Lycans (2009)
Patrick Tatopoulos, Len Wiseman, James McQuaide, Richard Wright + 1
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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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director · 1h 30m 3 mentions
Ed Wood Biographer Rudolph Grey, Exploitation Filmmaker Frank Henenlotter
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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.
57:33 · jump to transcript →
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director · 2h 41m 3 mentions
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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!
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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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director · 1h 31m 3 mentions
Alex Cox, Michael Nesmith, Casting Victoria Thomas, Sy Richardson + 2
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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.
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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 →
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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!
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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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director · 1h 59m 3 mentions
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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.
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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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scholar · 1h 32m 2 mentions
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Second-Unit Terry Sanders, Film Archivist Robert Gitt, F. X. Feeney, Preston Neal Jones + 2
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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.
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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.
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director · 1h 49m 2 mentions
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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director · 2h 10m 2 mentions
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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 →
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director · 2h 19m 2 mentions
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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 →
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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...
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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...
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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.
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director · 2h 3m 2 mentions
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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...
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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...
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director · 2h 10m 2 mentions
Richard Curtis, Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy, Thomas Sangster
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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.
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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.
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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...
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director · 1h 55m 2 mentions
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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
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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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director · 2h 5m 2 mentions
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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.
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director · 1h 42m 2 mentions
Len Wiseman, Brad Tatapolous, Brad Martin, Nicolas De Toth
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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...
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director · 1h 34m 2 mentions
Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas
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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
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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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multi · 1h 39m 2 mentions
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jeff Goldblum, Kent Jones
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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.
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Kent Jones
He's there in your very first film.
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director · 2h 27m 2 mentions
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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.
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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...
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director · 1h 59m 1 mention
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director · 1h 29m 1 mention
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cast · 1h 39m 1 mention
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Richard O'Brien, Riff Raff, Patricia Quinn
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director · 1h 28m 1 mention
Don Coscarelli, Cast Members Michael Baldwin, Angus Scrimm, Bill Thornbury
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technical · 1h 35m 1 mention
Steven Lisberger, Donald Kushner, Harrison Ellenshaw, Richard Taylor
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director · 1h 30m 1 mention
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Wes Craven, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Jacques Haitkin
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cast · 1h 36m 1 mention
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)
Lead Mackenzie Astin, Katie Barberi, Film Programmer William Morris
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director · 2h 24m 1 mention
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director · 1h 43m 1 mention
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director · 2h 17m 1 mention
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director · 1h 45m 1 mention
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director · 1h 54m 1 mention
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director · 2h 12m 1 mention
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director · 1h 56m 1 mention
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director · 1h 30m 1 mention
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director · 1h 57m 1 mention
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director · 1h 58m 1 mention
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director · 2h 10m 1 mention
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director · 3h 29m 1 mention
The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens
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director · 1h 45m 1 mention
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director · 1h 53m 1 mention
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director · 1h 43m 1 mention
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director · 2h 32m 1 mention
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multi · 1h 33m 1 mention
Wes Anderson, Peter Becker, Roman Coppola, Jake Ryan + 3
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director · 1h 51m 1 mention
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technical · 1h 22m 1 mention
Gary Lucchesi, Richard Wright, James McQuaide
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director · 1h 23m 1 mention
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director · 1h 25m 1 mention
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director · 2h 19m 1 mention
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