Non-actors / first-timers

WERE THESE REAL PEOPLE OR EXTRAS? I SUPPOSE THEY WERE EXTRAS. NO, THEY WERE EXTRAS, YEAH. THEY HAD SOME FRIENDS COME AND BE EXTRAS FOR THAT NIGHT. RIGHT. THEY WERE USED TO IT, THOUGH. YEAH, YEAH. HERE'S A BIT OF VORGE ART CREEPING IN ON HIS OWN TRACK.

8:49 · jump to transcript →

William Friedkin

Of course we could only work around moments when the traveler traffic was light. There were many other areas they didn't want us to go through and other areas that they indicated we could use. They didn't want to get a lot of real people who were traveling from one city to another caught in this film. So they asked us to use

25:34 · jump to transcript →

Eleanor Bergstein

are kids you've seen all around. And you got to really get used to them because you saw them around in their chambermaid things. And so you just got used to them as part of the scenery there. And we gave them little stories for each other. You know, you were with him at the beginning of the summer. Now you're interested in him. So they had whole personalities and stories. And they therefore did relate as real people. Something else which you'll see is they're often practicing the step they do at the end, which is the Cuban rhythm thing that Johnny refers to later on.

31:44 · jump to transcript →

And it was interesting for me as a writer because I'd written this stuff based on what I'd seen in movies or what I thought things might do. But it wasn't as good as when they just did it, of course. And I mean the dialogue and the procedures. Because all the people you're seeing here, with the exception of Peter Weller, are non-actors. They're all the doctors, the surgeons and nurses of the hospital playing all this.

24:38 · jump to transcript →

It's so cool, our different worlds. The sets are really amazing. Yeah. They really are. Polly definitely kept an eye on that stuff. Jim Brooks, too. He would look at dailies and sometimes have comments like, you know, the house is too clean. Why don't you have her put something on the floor and pick it up like real people do?

17:20 · jump to transcript →