Pacing & rhythm

to pacing and clarity, which comes up a lot. And that said, I think there's also those who actually enjoy either a slower pace or actually more ambiguity within the story, having to play a little bit more detective work within the plot. And I'm hoping that those of you who are watching, just the nature of checking out a director's cut

1:00 · jump to transcript →

part of that group. So I'll try to inform why certain things were chosen and without babbling on about just the story in general. That's something that always bugged me of going and just talking through and explaining exactly what you're saying. So I'll try not to do that. But one of the main things that I talk about, whether it's clarity and pacing, one of the main differences with this cut, there was an entire layer there of Colin Farrell's character.

1:30 · jump to transcript →

It's a pacing issue that every film deals with. So there's moments within this scene here that is just bits and pieces that unfold a little bit longer. And it's funny that doing a lot of action films, I actually enjoy a slower pace. I actually don't mind it. Maybe it's just the product of 80s action films on my brain. But I love the balance of a slightly slower pace within the drama.

4:34 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

There's only so much time you can take establishing Hobbiton before you really move your plot ahead and we felt we were lingering there too long and it wasn't furthering the story for us so it didn't stay. Bag End was obviously an exterior set on the location on the farm and then this was the studio when Frodo comes in the door. This is actually a case where we changed the timeline in the book.

36:01 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

I think from memory 17 years goes past in the book from the time that Gandalf leaves to find out about the ring to the time that he arrives back in Hobbiton to warn Frodo that this is Sauron's ring. In our movie we felt that 17 years was just too long a time so we reduced it to seeming like a few months had gone by. Well for those who know the book they'll know that there are fairly leisurely time frames.

36:28 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

Please frame it. Yeah, no, there's no sticker on that apple. It's really stupid. Yeah, there you go. One rumour put to bed. We now had a major sequence that was deleted from the theatrical version just for pacing reasons that, you know, we had to move the film along. This was a real swamp. It wasn't a studio set or anything. It was a genuine swamp.

1:07:14 · jump to transcript →

And there's Alec, who's... Alec is just extraordinary. Incredible musical ear. Yep. Really great at sort of honing his dialogue, and he's a real perfectionist. He'll stop and go back and correct himself time and again until he gets it. Yep, perfect. Just a great rhythm, and it's a real pleasure to direct. It was fun. You know, you're great at writing specifically for actors, and I loved, you know, when we're going back and forth on scenes, you know,

10:37 · jump to transcript →

This hurts. This hurts. Oh, God. It doesn't hurt Jens. It hurts Tom's shoulders when he has to list them. And going up the pole. Yes. The bruise on my shoulder's real. I thought I was going to break my collarbone. And this is where I drove Joe Kramer crazy about the music. We debated for a long time what the music in this sequence would be. It had to have the right rhythm and the right tempo. Yep. And she's never done this before. Never. Never handled weapons. She was trained.

15:39 · jump to transcript →

It is. I mean, it's... I kept waiting for somebody to go, come on, move on. I know, please, I know. Yeah. And Eddie and I were constantly skirting the edge of, you know, we were always worried that we wanted to really take our time so that the pace of this could gradually accelerate, but we were always wondering how much time can you take? Yeah. How long will an audience...

30:03 · jump to transcript →

Len Wiseman

There's a thing I should be talking about. There's certain things that are... There's shots that have been cut out... ...that, really, a lot of them were taken out for just pure pacing. You never want someone coming at you with those gloves and that expression. Yeah, I can't really see anything that's that different. Is it small stuff? A lot of stuff, you're not going to notice... ...because you fell asleep during the premiere anyway. He's going to wake up now, because he's on-screen. And most of the stuff that's cut has... Nine times out of 10, it's because I didn't like Scott's hair. Well, that makes sense. - Yeah. It is kind of unruly. Oh, Forrest.

19:53 · jump to transcript →

Len Wiseman

There should have been a sinister laugh there. I love evil, sinister laughs. Those are the best. They're so funny, man. Michael should have belted one out. - If anyone could, it's him. He definitely can. See, we just bashed open one door. I was quite feeble in this one. It took a wee bit. Well, remember you kept locking your wrists? Like a ballerina? - Yeah. Those days are gone. - Gone. What's that? - No idea. Where are we? - This is a movie called Underworld. It's about vampires fighting... I'm glad you didn't make me blow dust off it. Wasn't there a movie we saw where... ...someone blew dust off five things? It irritated me. No, don't say what it was. - Yeah, I won't say the movie. What was it? - I'm not telling. Screw it. It was poor. - It was a poor movie. There was a lot of... - Dust blowing. Dust blowing. - Yeah, that sucks. Did you draw these, babe? - I didn't draw these. No, I didn't. - You can draw? I try. This is an extended scene. Let me talk about this. Okay. I'm not in it, so... - No, this is actually... ... Just goes into depth a little bit more about... ... how the Lycans were taken as slaves, and you see the branding here... ...and how they were all... - Why wasn't this in? It's cool. It's pacing. It was just taking too long... Who's Korgel? - Yeah, who is Korgel? I think he was, like, one of the transportation guys. And it shows that everybody-- Like, with the actual brands that, you know... ...Lucian has the brand of... With a V in it, so he was kind of... as a... Like Viktor's cattle, of sorts, so... I think this should have been in. This is cool. I agree with you. - Yeah. That's helpful. This is an extended version, ithas some stuff... ...that would have been in a director's cut... ...but then also some stuff that's in here that... ...was taken out for good reason. - I really like this. It looks thick for skin. It is, and looks like Play-doh when it's ripped off. Now, who's that? That is Lucian, who's in this movie called Underworld that.... I didn't see his head, man. Did you get a script? - Yeah, I read it. We don't know Lucian, even though we've seen him. It's him. He's got that necklace. So I'm just wondering... I mean, I know... lf you were asking me, I would have said Lucian, but I wanted to know. We're coming out with an animated version for children. You can get that. He only read his bit. You know that. - They only sent me my scenes. This is good. I like this. - This movie? Yeah, it's good. - You should maybe rent it. I should rent it. It's funny now. I get really... - Protective? In Blockbuster, some guy next to me was deciding whether or not he was... ...going to buy Underworld or Pirates of the Caribbean. And it really makes me quite nervous now when I see stuff like that. What did he buy? - I actually had... Pirates of the Caribbean. - I actually had to-- The good thing is... I said, "Oh, I would kind of go for that one right there. That's a good one." You did? - I did. And he said, "You know, I would have bought it... ...but I've rented it three times, and I should've bought it the first time." So that was good. - That's cool. Look at you exposing yourself. There's Forrest going in for the kill. Look, there's, again, there's close, close talking. This is the very first day for me. For everybody. Do you remember the conversation about repeating the lines? Me? - No, just with anybody. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I did it. Did I do it? You did it once, and I said I liked that. When I do it, it's great. - You can pull it off. No, but I actually like this scene. I actually... No, I think this worked well. It's because I wasn't there. - You can tell it's, like, our first day. We don't look tired and... - I was really stressed. That was stressful. - It was the first scene I've done. lt was a really small set. Everybody was, like, crammed in. lt was a tense day. Everybody was there. That's always a tense day, but, for whatever reason, it was extra tense. Between reels, we were talking a bit about the Internet. And apparently, Kate found a site where it's discussed in a forum... ... that's discussing whether or not Len Wiseman... ...iS the worst person on the planet. - What? Based on what? And I say, "Yes." - Based on what? "He's a liar, a thief, a coward, a highwayman, something." How does he know you so well? Who is it? They're talking about whether-- It's, like, listing about, "He's a coward." Why would they call you a coward? - Because he's a big, old fraidy pants. But no, seriously. Did you read on or just turn it off? We read on. It's actually a bunch of... - They said he poses like a gangster. I pose like a gangster. - That is quite humourous. Sounds like a lot of jealousy to me. - It's a lot of jealous 16, 17 year olds. I thought it was all true. - Did you? This was the day you were mean to me, babe. Why were you mean? Because she was slowing down our day. I was not. - No, I don't even... You slow down your own damn day. - I don't even remember. I think there's a few witnesses to that. - Well, that's true. That's true. I know what it was. - What was it? I had arrived at 6 in the morning, and you wanted me to work through... ... Without lunch until 4, because it was convenient to you. But my child arrived three hours before, and I was... ... feeling a little bit like, you know, "Could I please go see my child... ...for the half-hour I'm promised?" - No, it actually... That's what it was. - I was not aware of that. You may not have been aware, but you were still an asshole about it. Crap. - There's a certain way that a movie... I feel like the child of divorced parents, I really do. I'm not aware when people eat lunch. That's the AD's thing. I wasn't talking about lunch but about parenting. Sometime, I'll take you through how a movie set operates. Oh, like you know, Mr. One-Movie. Oh, crap. This does not fare well.

41:53 · jump to transcript →

Len Wiseman

Because you're so cute. And Canadian. - You're Canadian and blond. I love that scene. - Really? Yeah. I think you did a great job. Oh, thanks. Thanks, man. Yeah, I was very happy with that. With both of you. That really is some makeup. My God. I felt so great on this movie. I had the shortest makeup call of everybody. All the boys had to come in before me. lt was so unusual. Well, I didn't, not until that last week. You were always having your nipples painted blue. No. - Had to get highlights. I don't have highlights. - Blond streaks. No, no, I don't do that. Remember I asked you? Early on, I thought that you did. Everybody does. - He does! I do not. - Please. Oh, my God. I swear to God, I do not. - I'm sick of this. And those are natural buttocks too, right? No, those-- That's fake. No, my ass Is fake, but my hair is real. - But his hair, I mean, come on. ls he--? What? No, that's a belt. - But he's basically in a skirt, isn't he? Yes. - I love that. You are so weird. You so don't look like a guy who'll design, like, a man-skirt. Yeah, it looks like he's got... I would wear a man-skirt. What's wrong with that? Without the makeup... - I do think people... ...when they meet me, they think I'll be some Goth with eyeliner. I did. I thought, especially with your name being Len Wiseman... ...I imagined you having a shoulder-length mullet... ...and a lab coat. Like, a white lab coat. Thank God I changed and got a haircut before I met you. Did you ever have mullet, Len? Do you like it right now? - Yeah. That's not a mullet, though. I had a mullet in high school. I didn't know I did, but I guess I did. Because it was behind you. - Yeah. I see pictures now and realise it's a mullet. You also thought I was Jewish. - I did not. Didn't you? - No, everyone else does. Why? - I thought you'd be about 52, though. Len Wiseman? - Len Wiseman. It's like a butcher's name. Maybe. What's going on here? What's happening? This is-- Thank you. This is another added scene. This was cut, again, for pacing. It just shows, again, that... ... she's involved in this plot, just helping it along its way... ...to get Kraven a bit more pissed off with Selene. That's a new shot as well. I always liked that shot... ...but couldn't fit it in. - You were in the position... ...of having to shave and shave stuff out of it, right? Yeah. I mean, we got down to where every second was counting. How long is the movie? Putting a stopwatch to us to take out things. I think it was-- Man, I don't Know. That's a new shot right there too. That's actually Nicole. Yeah, I don't recognise that. I don't remember being there. Where was I? Was I sick? - You went home and... You were never planned to be shot... ...because it was just gonna be a car pulling up... ...and then, since she was in the suit, we had her do the walk. It was cold in this set. - This set was cool. I love this. I really had a good time with it. You were sick. - You were very sick. We stopped one day and didn't film it and came back, right? No, we didn't. We were going to. We stopped, because you came down with pneumonia... ...and we ended up having to build this set on stage. Yeah. That's right. - All right. That was so fun, when we did it on the stage. Yeah, it was. So this-- Where was it? No, this was actually on location. Yeah. That was that freezing, freezing... This is when you were, like, coughing and hacking after each take. What are these for? Lycans are allergic to silver. All the women on the set walked past that tray. They'd be like, "Damn, I must get a pap smear." Why is my nose so red? You know, it's becoming a theme. - I think it really is. I look like a semi-coke addict or something. It was cold in there. It was cold, but I didn't know it. I didn't know. I'll get your back next time. - Please. Didn't I? Pull some hair out of your nose? That's why my nose is so red... ...because I kept getting her to pull hairs out of my nose. It's because you're so blond... ...and the way you had your head, it was twinkling. I really-- You know, I'm not good at cutting all that stuff. Somebody got ahold of it. Your eyes were watering up. Yeah. This is the same, right? Yeah. After-- There's a scene coming up after... ...oelene talks about her family and everything. The scene that we originally cut of... - Oh, yeah. ...ocott, when he's telling about how he got into... My back-story. Your back-story. Everything that builds and... I like that that was in Budapest. ...and kind of creates your character, we decided to cut. Did you put that back in? - We put it back in, yes. So we have the pleasure of it now? - We do. We should have some silence... - I don't think we need to. I think we can just talk over it and talk about how my nose... ...isn't red or something. - And it was-- It was a couple reasons. One, it was pacing, because this scene... ...it took a long time, and... - Scott, you were boring. People were kind of falling asleep, including Scott himself at the premiere. I wasn't even at the premiere. - Oh, even more committed. Well, I was at the premiere, but I left. A serious reason why we did cut it is... ...because it came right after Selene's back-story, and so it seemed like: "Here's my weepy story," and he's like, "Yeah? I've got one to top that." Actually, you were very good. Yeah, that's how it felt too. I mean, that's what it was. It was like, you Know, "Yeah'"-- - It was like a sort of AA meeting. "My name is Selene, and these are my problems." That's fine. There's his tunic. Look at that. What is that? You guys have a problem with that? - It's a man-skirt. He gave me the strength to avenge my family. Since then, I've never looked back.

55:50 · jump to transcript →

gap or something. So we had to constantly use the same 20 Czechoslovakian stuntmen who were really good. This sequence actually changed a great deal editorially. This wasn't initially Brendan's introduction. There was a sequence where we learn a little bit about his backstory and why he's there with the French Foreign Legion. And also the introduction to Benny is more involved. It was cut out for time purposes. Mainly for pacing. It didn't

7:52 · jump to transcript →

Right, exactly. The scene needed to get going, we needed to get into the movie, and this opening sequence took a little bit too long. The other thing that happened in the sequence, too, is that those guys on the hill, the Magi, that was actually inserted into the sequence in post-production and was not originally there. It was used, hopefully, to clarify the fact that they were different from these Tauric warriors.

8:22 · jump to transcript →

This scene actually used to go on a little longer. In fact, I think it will again for the television version. They used to explain all the plagues, like they'd name them. And for pacing's sake, we decided to cut them out. And also we figured, you know, most of the audience...

58:12 · jump to transcript →

to bring the two love, Ethan Hunt and Naya, and bring them together. And also, I like the rhythm. I like the very strong flamingo dance rhythm using the footstep. And the rhythm is so strong and so full of great energy. So that really excites us. I try to use the sound of the footstep as a, to represent, you know, Tom and Tim, these heartbeats, you know, and also use the kind of sound for the car chase scene.

12:22 · jump to transcript →

The whole scene just feel like it's funny and sexy and romantic. You know, when I'm designing an action sequence, I usually like to listen to the music. And the music usually give me a lot of inspiration and how to get into the rhythm, how to get the idea of the action, you know. So when I decided the cartridge scene, I was listening to the windmill of your smile so I could get the mood

20:34 · jump to transcript →

So when I cut a scene, I like to base on the music. So I cut with the music, and then I follow the rhythm, follow the pace, and then make the choice. If the pace goes a little bit stronger, I would like to use the 120-frame shot, or that little piece, put it into that section. And then before that, I might use another angle for 60 frames, you know, and then put everything all together, make it feel like musical.

47:00 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

We didn't try too hard to get many expressions into his face because we thought that the more expressions there were, the less he'd actually come across like a tree. In fact, there are times when he lapses into being a tree, doesn't he? Yeah, which is great. I always think if he forgets to move for too long, he's going to sprout roots and kind of find it hard to move again. This shot was about the first Gollum shot we ever did. We didn't have a clue what Gollum was going to really look like when we shot Frodo and Sam walking up this hill.

41:35 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

When we looked at it in that position, because that's where it was at the end of that scene, it was like it went into a flashback and then it came out of a flashback as the Nazgul scream happened. We decided that the momentum of the film was getting a little bit too slow. And we also felt that we didn't know Gollum that well at this point in time, and to actually then learn a lot about his backstory was maybe slightly too premature. And so the decision was made to take that scene out, not...

49:19 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

again for pacing reasons and one of the background kind of themes that we did delete a lot of from the theatrical was the whole story of Fangorn and the trees and this was good stuff for setting up the concept that the forest coming alive and that it'll be dangerous and that the Ents who are basically don't get involved in the affairs of the outside world are going to realise that their strength is actually needed and you know Gandalf refers to all of this in the scene and

55:43 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

Now this is a scene that I'm glad is back in. Yeah, it's one of my favourite scenes between the two of them picking up on the tension between the father and the son. I mean, it's one of the problems with the film when you're under time pressure and without being rude to either David Wenham or John Noble, because, you know, they both do superb work in this scene, but they're secondary characters. It's just one of those real difficulties that you have so much in the film, it's too long.

1:14:58 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

We'd never bothered with the scabbard anymore, that he only just carries a sword around with him the whole time because it was just, the thing was so huge that it was actually, physically it was too long to be able to do anything with. He straps it to his horse. He doesn't put it around on his belt. We just carry the sword into the paths of the dead as a naked sword. You cannot abandon the men. With our tiny set that we have here, and this was particularly memorable this day because it was in the middle of a storm.

1:42:43 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

It was like an event that threatened to happen, but then didn't. And we really felt it in the pacing of the film. I mean, we just tried to make it a bit more cinematic and more kind of exciting. I'm off. I won't tell you, even though I've disowned you. I'll come back to you. Probably my favourite scene in this movie. I mean, I like the stuff on Mount Doom with Frodo and Sam, but for some reason, this scene, I feel most proud of this scene.

2:32:14 · jump to transcript →

This was extremely complicated. But look how beautiful this is. My sympathies go out to everybody who worked on Jaws. Working on water is extremely complicated. And again, just their rhythm and their energy together and creating that relationship between those two people, obviously, in preparation for what was coming. This, we had done months of testing, you remember? Yes. Trying to create...

1:17:48 · jump to transcript →

Always, yeah. And we feel ourselves saying, oh, we've overcooked it here. Yeah, and quite often we will over-tighten the seam and put air back in, but then we know that it's as tight as a drum. Yes. This was terrific behaviour from them. Again, Tarzan and Shay, they are just... They were an effortless double act. They required very, very little...

1:22:53 · jump to transcript →

because we cut with no temp. Yes. The movie develops its own internal rhythm. Yes. And we find ourselves very often taking the same piece of music and it lays almost cut for cut in multiple scenes in the movie. And then here we are. This was kind of a revelation to us, this scene. You remember, we started shooting this. I remember this. We shot completely different coverage of Haley. And the camera was front on. And her hair was down.

1:41:20 · jump to transcript →

break and reform, and this was all very complex algorithms that we did at the Rhythm and Hues, the visual effects company that did all the horses and this chase through Shanghai. The other company was Digital Domain, who did the conversion to Terracotta when the emperor is cursed, and as you'll see, the entire battle sequence in the third act.

42:35 · jump to transcript →

There are over 1,000 3-D effects in the film. It's a huge load that we got done in record time... ...using two companies, primarily Rhythm & Hues and Digital Domain... ...as well as my old friend Sid Dutton at Illusion Arts. We used CIS and Pac Title... ...all of which worked very well together, and CAFE effects.

43:04 · jump to transcript →

He hated me, but he got with it, and we've now become good buddies. And I love the spontaneity of his performance. Here, the rhythm and hues, creating these icicles, and creating the Yeti, and the mountains, and the under mummies created by Digital Domain, and both visual effects houses had to work together.

1:06:02 · jump to transcript →

Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

domestic drama and in the end a kind of science fiction scary movie because of what it ends up dealing with as opposed to supernatural. But there's a certain rhythm to their life and a sense of order and you kind of have to see how life is normal before you start to throw it out of whack so you can see how far the characters end up going as you push them to the extremes. And of course a lot of the stuff in this movie is actually just little seeds that are setting up things that will hopefully pay off later in the film.

14:04 · jump to transcript →

Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

We've skipped past the part where we first started to hear what we called the tone, the sort of alien tone. There was a lot of development time spent with the sound effects team to try to come up with this idea of the tone. And in the early versions, you know, an early cut of the movie and certainly in the script, we actually had this, what we called the sort of alien gray point of view that was drifting through the house. And it would drift and make its way up the stairs. And what we found was, is that it really slowed the pace of the movie down and it was kind of giving too much away too soon.

18:54 · jump to transcript →

Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

which is in so many ways really a story about a disintegrating marriage after a child dies. And you get to experience all of that. And the film just fills you with the sense of dread, even though nothing's necessarily really happening. And the world just feels very, like it's all just closing in on them. And here, once again, we're just trying to slowly, inexorably tighten the screws on these parents

55:27 · jump to transcript →

Barry Sonnenfeld

We added all the raster lines. This was shot on 35mm film. Now, here's the opening title sequence, which was done by Sony Imageworks. We had four or five visual-effects houses on this movie. Industrial Light & Magic, Sony Imageworks... ...Rhythm & Hues did most of the Frank the Pug, talking dog, stuff.

1:58 · jump to transcript →

Barry Sonnenfeld

Almost all of Frank's mouth animation was done by Rhythm & Hues... ...who did the animation for Babe. A little bit of it was done by Industrial Light & Magic. But I would say, what you're seeing in the movie... ...IS about 80% Rhythm & Hues and 20% ILM. Jay, wait up. I appreciate the shot, man. The name of this dog is Mushu. Mushu plays Frank the Pug. Mushu loved being in that suit. He just had the best time. He would prance around. I think he really felt, when he was in the suit, that he was a Men in Black. I felt it was really important that Will have a different car... ...that it didn't feel like exactly the same movie over again. Bo Welch and I wanted to upgrade some of the stuff and make it sexier. We love also the fact that a black Mercedes probably fits in better... ...1N New York than a 40-year-old Ford LTD. before I roll it up in there. Got it. This was a last-minute decision to have him sing that song. It actually was a long monologue... ...and on the set on the day, we thought it would be funny. Frank just said, "For

18:51 · jump to transcript →

Barry Sonnenfeld

Again, this is all on the stage. The dog didn't have a cigar. There was no smoke. The cigar and the smoke was added by Rhythm & Hues... ...and they also, obviously, added his mouth movement. The worms were all puppeteered, we erased the worm puppeteer guys. But this is all done in postproduction by Rhythm & Hues. Frank?

1:11:45 · jump to transcript →

The reason for that is that I had divided the music into clean teen and dirty dancing. Clean teen was the kind of music that Baby was listening to until she found her own rhythm, which was the dirty dancing rhythm. And when we started with the clean teen and the first place we got into the dirty dancing was partly into the movie, it was too big a shock. So we needed a kind of presentiment that it was coming.

1:44 · jump to transcript →

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 →

So you see them at various places and sides of the frame practicing it so that when they come down the aisle at the end, it doesn't come out of nowhere if you look very closely. You see that all along they've been practicing it, and that's what at some point Johnny says to Neil, oh, you know, we've been practicing this Cuban rhythm kind of thing, and Neil says, no, do the pachanga. So they really have their own story, their own kind of dancing that they want to do, and at the end they're really totally confirmed with this, and this is the place that starts the...

32:14 · jump to transcript →

The aspect of the drum, which plays throughout the movie, has a certain kind of rhythm to it. And then ultimately, Hans Zimmer's score, which is very percussion-oriented, has no strings at all. One of the things we talked about very early on is I didn't want any kind of strings at all in it, because I thought it would make the movie too melodramatic.

2:03 · jump to transcript →

By this point in the movie, as I say, we were shooting in continuity. They were really beginning to get into a rhythm with one another. Very, very kind of good, natural rhythm. We are not going to Cincinnati, and that's final. Raymond, that is final. Did you hear me? Come on! What difference does it make? What difference does it make? Where do you buy underwear?

56:20 · jump to transcript →

You hear the music? Yeah. Just watch my feet. Raymond, watch my feet. Okay, just do what I'm doing. Okay? Let me see. You feel the rhythm of the music? We're just moving our feet like that? Okay? Now, you're the guy, so you're gonna have to lead, all right? And I'm the date, so you want to, uh... You want to, uh... Put your left hand up like this. Raymond, don't stop moving. Raymond, paying attention? Yeah. Don't stop moving. Put your left hand up like this. Yeah.

1:39:37 · jump to transcript →

So I got as much of it in the book as possible. That, of course, was exactly what Marty was looking for for a film. Because that particular book, you can go and you can make about an infinite number of films because there are many other stories in the book and that sort of thing. But I chose it to go a certain way. And it was all based on the rhythm of Henry Hill's language. That is a part of the whole mob world, the way these guys tell stories about themselves.

6:50 · jump to transcript →

You know the look of the movie. You know the rhythm of it. And that's something very interesting and very good for a director of photography to know. Without using a gun, and we did the right thing. We gave Paulie his tribute. Actor Paul Cervino. In the scene where we're looking at the spoils of the robbery when the money is there, and we have to all be laughing, we did about eight takes. And before each take, I told a joke. I just told a joke.

35:08 · jump to transcript →

Called my manager and I said, you know, I think this is one of the best movies I've ever seen, and I'm really good at it. Director of Photography, Michael Ballhaus. I'll never forget that moment when I saw the movie when I was done here in Los Angeles. I looked at the movie and it was so fascinating that I sometimes forgot that I shot it. And just the way it was edited, with the music and all, it had such a perfect rhythm that I got drawn into it in a way.

2:09:32 · jump to transcript →

Marco Brambilla Daniel Waters

for the sake of rhythm, Stuart and I cut down quite a bit of the kind of backstory that Chris Stallone had. But I think it improves the film tremendously. Yeah, when we get to it, I'll show where the daughter scene happened. I mean, you'll see like, oh my, you know, even though it was a fine scene, you just can't stop the movie like that.

1:04:26 · jump to transcript →

Marco Brambilla Daniel Waters

Sorry, laughing at the scene and taking time to enjoy myself. What you see in the cut is probably one-tenth of the material that was shot for their virtual sex scene. And it was decided to, again, for pacing reasons and also for graphic nudity, it was decided not to include it in the cut. Always a wrong decision, but it's fine. We got a nude wrong number coming up, so I forgive you. And her speech here is like,

1:11:02 · jump to transcript →

Marco Brambilla Daniel Waters

And Snipes goes, hey, did you ever figure out how the three seashells work? And you guys cut the line. And then there's a seashells at the very end of the movie where it says, how do the three seashells work? And nobody laughs. And I thought if you would have kept the middle reference to the seashells, you would have got a laugh at the end. But no, you didn't do it. We had no choice. The running time was just not, it was, the first cut was too long.

1:27:12 · jump to transcript →

I'm Dorothy Harris. Well, now we ain't strangers anymore. Now, the sort of lyrical way that this child speaks, of course, is his natural way of speaking. And Tom was searching for a voice for Forrest. And when he heard this young boy speak, it clicked. And I think he matched that rhythm as the older Forrest.

12:52 · jump to transcript →

And then we cut the movie with all that film narration that we had. And then once we had to really start to fine cut the movie and hone it all down, then Tom went back again and we wrote new narration to link scenes, take things out, tighten things up, you know, weave in and out of scenes. There's a scene in there where he's talking about Bubba's mama not ever having to work in anybody's kitchen anymore.

34:06 · jump to transcript →

that you can scrape the thing together and make it work. So it's like, damn. I could have really done this better. But everybody was too slow, and it took too long. And somebody didn't realize that, oh, we didn't put gravel over there, so the camera truck got stuck. And that cost you an hour. And it's like, oh, man. There's all these things that really make making movies

1:09:01 · jump to transcript →

This computer hacking is all totally accurate. We jumped one hurdle in that it just took too long. But for him to get into the VICAP, which is basically right inside the FBI computer, you require a number and a code, which I think is probably changed once a week. I'm not even sure it's that thorough. But any FBI agent has it in the United States.

42:16 · jump to transcript →

But it wouldn't be a good idea. Besides, I think subtext to Hannibal was, as he says to her, I've been underground too long. I'm getting bored. I need some action. And I think he enjoys the process. He enjoys the chase. So he insults him there by saying, you're a patsy of the patsies. The patsies was aristocratic family, fundamentally lost their money.

51:44 · jump to transcript →

circle the problems circle the areas that were possibilities for biting the dust to get to the main plot and main characters um then he went away and got that down which was actually really rather good 135 page screenplay which was too long but it was great it was very entertaining um we had a couple of bridging problems that we didn't like

1:44:15 · jump to transcript →

Ted Tally

And here we had sort of a challenge as we were working over the script and getting ready to make the movie, because we're going here to a second house of murder victims. You don't want it to be repetitive, and you've got to find a way to make it quite different and move more quickly. Mark Helfrich, the editor, had some wonderful ideas for increasing the pace of this, which was a little bit longer. In the script, initially, I believe Graham goes into the house and has a few moments in it. Anything repetitive will never be in the film with Mark's editing. So we eliminated a couple of brief moments of him going into the house because it was too much like the other house he went into. And you try to move ahead to what's really new, dramatically, in the story. I love this shot. Jimmy Muro, my Steadicam and first camera operator, did this as one. A lot of good shots in this movie are in one, which I love, you feel like you're with him. And this was built. It's like the most incredible tree house in the world. It took about a week to build it. -/t looks pretty real. The tree is real, but we built the tree house. A platform, so that we didn't have to have Edward climbing up there. And it was awesome. It was so much fun that it was scary. Now he's looking from the killer's point of view at the murder victims' house and figuring out that the killer must have sat in the same place. But you cut the shot where he imagines the killer's point of view here. Yes. - Why was that? I cut it because I didn't want people to think he was psychic. I was worried that the audience... No. It was scripted that he would see in a sort of flashback what the killer saw, which was the woman walking past the window. I was really worried about it. I mean, it worked. I was worried that some people might be confused about his visions. I only wanted the visions when he was drinking in his hotel room alone. Where people sometimes have visions, you know? This was a great location. There was a real house here that was from 1770, that was the home of two congressmen. This is outside Baltimore, I guess. - Yeah. And here's the house that we built that we transitioned here... To a house built. ... that was inspired by the house from 1770 that they wouldn't let us use because... This entire house was built just for the movie outside of Los Angeles. - On the Disney Ranch. And here we have Kristi Zea in full-blown design glory. This is the voice of Ellen Burstyn, believe it or not, uncredited. That's interesting. You didn't know that? -/ did know that. I had Kristi do the still photographs because she's so great. In every single shot here, you see hundreds of separate decisions made by Kristi Zea and her team. Take off your nightshirt, and wipe yourself... I love this upstairs kind of lair of Dolarhyde. This was a big debate about the voice and... Now! - Please! Yeah. Should we... What are these voices? ls it Grandma's voice that has been transitioned into the Dragon's... Is it the imaginary voice of the Red Dragon? Originally, it was scripted that we heard the Red Dragon's voice in Dolarhyde's head. I got great actors reading the Dragon's voice, but I just could never make it work. I just felt it became hokey. It was a potential for people laughing where you didn't want them to. This is a CGI shot where we erased his teeth. So that you just see gums. - Yes, you just see gums.

39:12 · jump to transcript →

Ted Tally

I've always tried to hang on to what that cougar looked like. But by now, to tell the truth... This was made-up stuff that was not in the book. But I knew that they were going to have that scene later with the tiger, the sedated tiger, and I wanted to set up some deeper meaning to that scene for her. So I added this little section. You don't say much, do you? There was actually a scene that was left out. That was his arrival, but Mark thought it was unnecessary and Nis... - When they first arrived and walked into the apartment for the first time here. One of the things that amazes me about Ralph is that he... The script so often gives him so little to work with. The character is painfully shy, he speaks in monosyllables. This was a scene that I used to test the actors. - I remember seeing the test at the auditions. This is the scene that helped me decide that the actors that we tested werent right for the role because they can get the Dolarhyde torturing Freddy Lounds scene, but to have a vulnerability here... But you still have to fear this guy. It's a tremendous feat of acting to accomplish as much as he does with so little to say. My biggest worry going into production was that we would not be able to find an actor who could do everything that this part needed. This is a part where the actor has to bring so much, and the script doesn't help him as much as it does other actors. This is really where you see his imperfection, which is his cleft lip, which Matthew Mungle, who is a brilliant make-up artist and effects make-up artist did such a realistic job of. I tend to do a Iot of tests for hair and make-up and the tattoo. We spend a Iot of time. When you work with Dino and Martha, do they want input into those kind of choices or is that left mostly to you? I love working with Dino. Not only is the guy a legendary producer, but it's great working with Dino and Martha together because... It's a whole other energy. - Each one has their own opinion of things. Right. They are a great producing team. -/ never work with a producing team. - They are very shrewd about script. You did a lot of work with Dino and Martha before I even came on board and you delivered a first draft, basically, that was shootable. - The first draft was green-lit by the studio and it had a lot to do with Dino and Martha's notes because they are very shrewd about what the audience needs to know, and when they need to know it. The sense of the rhythms of the story, and the rhythms of the acts, they have a really good grasp. This is my favorite section of the film. This is where the pace really... It seems like it really takes off here. This is Run from Run-D.W.C. who unfortunately, I cut out of the film, not completely, but... That was him. - That was the top of his head? That was a wonderful appearance. The story really takes off here. The pacing of this section, to me, is very exciting. The music and the editing. This is where I was telling Harvey, "Can you do it twice as fast?" Harvey tends to pause in the strangest places. But it always comes out very natural. He's a brilliant actor. You had always wanted to work with him? - Always, yeah. You had always wanted to work with Harvey. Ever since I was a kid, I was just... I grew up on him. ... possibly from the Tooth Fairy. This was a Dante shot. - It's a spin. "Let's go around him." I said, "I don't want to get dizzy." He said, "No, it's an urgent scene." It does create the urgency of what's going on here, that events were spinning out of control as suggested by that. Because of 9/11 we couldn't fly a helicopter through the Washington skyline. So that was one of our few CGI shots. It's really called a composite, because we shot a plate and then we took a shot of a real helicopter. This was done on the set. Ralph read this on the set. - Standing next to them? Not when we were doing the scene, but he just read it once and this was the take we ended up using. This is a one-take performance. He was just so in the mode. He reads this letter very well. I love all this sort of hi-tech, FBI forensic stuff, and it's something that we couldn't get a whole lot of into the script because of just sheer space considerations. So where we could do these kinds of things, it was really fun. I love that shot, and that shot... All the shots of Lecter in this... Brett, you love all your shots. - I know, not all of them, but those specific ones. I like all the lighting changes through this. This is Tony Hopkins' stand-in. This is the only... I wondered why he had a British accent. I wondered why the superintendent of a hospital in Baltimore had a British accent. He migrated. This is Ken Leung who's been in three of my other movies. On the right? He's a great stage actor from Broadway, and he was the villain in the first Rush Hour, and he was in Family Man. He's just a... He's very good with this part. - He's excellent. He's really very real. ...are transparent to infrared. These could be the tips of "T's" here... This whole sequence is quite close to the book. Tom Harris is very well-grounded in all of these procedures. It's just a real gift to the screenwriter to have an author have done so much research, and be so on top of these things. ...they made that up. Three "T's" and an "R" in "Tattler." How do you communicate through a tabloid? You got what? News stories. This scene was much longer really, but we realized in the playing of this scene that the audience... This is an example where the audience was ahead of everybody. We shortened it because the characters just seemed like they were... The audience already knows who Dolarhyde is at this point. We held him back for as long as we could, but once we've shown him, the audience is just getting ahead of you. - That's my favorite shot!

55:10 · jump to transcript →

Ted Tally

This is an example of great operating. You go from his face down to that anamorphic... Camera operation? - Camera operation, yeah. We were back and forth about this, remember? My editor fought me on this. I thought, "Let the glove be hanging out of his pocket." When Lecter sees it, then perhaps Lecter starts to think, "Something's up." It doesn't really pay off. It doesn't pay off, but I just thought it would be intriguing. It does in a subtle way. He says, "Nice..." "Nice work with that blackout." So that's what you think tips it off. I think that's what Mark wanted. I'll have to say this. This next cut is my favorite cut in the movie. Not my favorite shot, but my favorite cut. - Going from this scene? Going from this shot, once the camera lands to when he hands him the paper. It's just my favorite edit. It's the most seamless edit in the film. Watch this. It's very subtle, but you might catch it. "_...Luke 1:7." - Code. Watch this. I love that. Only a director could get excited about that. I have to tell you... It's exciting. - lt is a great passing of a piece of paper. It's just cut beautifully. I'm thinking it's a book code. - Code? I like the pace of this. It reminds me of old films with Sterling Hayden in it. Lot of quick talking here. You need to go quickly through this. People do normally talk over each other, like we're doing now... But in a movie it's confusing, unless it's an Altman movie. But in the movies in the '40s, they would have... His Girl Friday. That movie, the script was probably 300 pages long. They got it all in in an hour-and-a-half because they were talking so quickly. Shakespeare, this is a lot like Shakespeare, you have to race through it. If we sweat him, we lose the connection. If the Tooth Fairy picked the book, he knew Lecter would have it in his cell. Can we get a list of his books? - From Chilton, maybe. No! Wait! Rankin and Willingham, when they tossed his cell took Polaroids so they could put everything back in place. Ask them to meet me with pictures of his bookshelves! Where? - The Library!

1:01:58 · jump to transcript →

predator putting this syringe thing into his arm. And again, a lot of these extensions were just done because on the DVD version, we wanted to give the pacing a little bit more breath to the sequence and just turn this into a much bigger predator moment. Because we've never seen a predator in the other movies for so long and actually seen all of the cool type of ritualistic stuff that he does as he gets ready for a hunt.

23:12 · jump to transcript →

Kelly and her husband and basically this was just you know it was a scene that was cut out just from a pacing standpoint from the theatrical version but we liked it because it you know it just it gives you a little bit more time to kind of like like the father before he gets killed yeah I mean that was really the idea was set up the father a little more as this really likable guy makes it all the more tragic when he bites it later on yeah and there's nothing wrong with enjoying a little cabernet in a movie and on character moments even horror pictures are very important

26:10 · jump to transcript →

But here's the great payoff, which is four little chest bursties saying hi to everybody. So this is the cemetery scene. This was originally removed from the theatrical version just from a pacing standpoint, but I'm really glad we got this back in for the DVD version because I think it actually gives the movie a little bit of a breath in the middle that the film kind of needs. Yeah, I mean, really, the reason I wanted to bring it back was just because when...

56:51 · jump to transcript →

at the guy in the window and then he shuts the curtains and originally the camera was gonna go up and New York changes into nighttime. We fly across New York and come down and meet Frank. But either it was too expensive or it was too, I mean, the thing is he could come up with lots of, I think, as a director you think is brilliant ideas, but then they're a bit pretentious and slow. So then you cut them out to keep the pace up.

8:15 · jump to transcript →

a really fun sequence of him, straight from the comic, of him hallucinating and having sex with spiders and stuff, but A, we couldn't afford it, but B, we just wanted to keep the pace up. Now we'll meet my lucky talisman, Jason Fleming. He's the actor on the right. I only made one movie without him and that was swept away, so he's gonna be in them all, hopefully.

18:41 · jump to transcript →

I think it's very important, pacing-wise, just to have a little bit of a calm before the storm, and a huge storm is now coming over the hill. It's pretty obvious what's going on here, why the framing is. And we cut an earlier scene where you see he used to go to the graveyard to read comics at his mother's grave, but Mark Millar was in the shot as well. Trying to do a Stan Lee.

1:09:59 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

Yeah, Bill and I have done, I think, seven movies together. The first one we did together is Rushmore, a long time ago. But I find, often, there are various techniques, or sometimes you just have things you go to for how to deal with playing a scene. For me, as a director, or for an actor, how do you get ready for it? What are you gonna do that's gonna make you in the moment? And I learned a lot of the things that I just automatically refer to from Bill over the years. So even as a kind of-- A director is often just sort of a spectator while the actors are doing a scene. But I always refer to, often refer to, which is feeling your feet on the ground, feeling your weight, feeling connected. Because when you're an actor, you know, you're pretending, you're imagining, and sometimes you need to say, "Okay, let me just be conscious of reality." I don't know. Can you take it from there? You know, when you're imagining too much, everything gets up in your brain, everything gets up in your head, and you don't want everything there. It has to be grounded. In a lot of these movies, I've had to work with younger, smaller people, and you don't want to be giving directing lessons or acting lessons or anything, butjust things that can help are worthwhile. And I like to suggest-- I say, "How much do you weigh?" And the kid will say, "Well, I weigh 97," you know, or whatever. Or a girl will say, "Well, you're not supposed to ask a girl, but I weigh 1 16." I say, "Well, let's just feel 1 16 pounds in your feet. Just feel that weight in your feet. And I'll try to feel my weight in my feet, and just try to feel that weight in your feet." And then you can start all over again. You know, once you're set in the bottom, once you're grounded in the bottom, then everything sort of reconnects and you can... you know, head after what you need to do, whether you need to say something or walk a certain direction, take a certain number of steps, hand something over, and it puts you in a real rhythm. It puts your body in the correct space, and you sort of-- You know, you sort of come back to natural life rhythm, easier to speak and move.

32:50 · jump to transcript →

Sam

Well, it's one of my favorites, if not my favorite. It's just a spectacular film. And it's sort of what I would aspire to make if I could make a movie like that. I can't remember at this second what the heck I was thinking about in relation to Red Beard. And this-- Oh, we were talking about emotional things that were-- The thing about Red Beard that's so wonderful is the plot is very straightforward. But along the way, these sort of... These sort of little, you know, rabbit snares are set along, these little things are set along the side of the road. And there's a kind of a rhythm to the plot where your internal clock, you know, goes off and says, "Well, it's time for the climax of the movie now." But that's not what happens in this film. What happens instead are that all these sort of subplots, these little sort of traps, these little tricks that are set up along the way, they all go off at once. They all burst into flower at once, one after another, I should say. And there is this emotional, I mean, just a drubbing that you get. You just get just punched in the solar plexus, just repeatedly for several minutes, for like a whole reel that you're not-- You didn't see it coming. You sort of didn't see it coming. And it pounds you because the plot has been so straightforward and clean that your intelligence is elevated and you're available for this emotion that comes all at once, and I think that... That that movie Rushmore had a similar kind of construct, in that it seems like, "Okay, now we're gonna do this stuff." A lot of action has happened, you know, there's been this struggle between the man and the young man and the girl, and you think it's all gonna go off, and then a whole bunch of other things happened.

42:34 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

Well, I always feel like, you know, we have a sort of plan, and, you know, Edward is interested to see these little storyboard things we make in advance nowadays. Some actors, like Willem likes to watch these, Edward is interested in these. Some people, I think, they feel like, this is gonna-- I don't need to see that. And I don't make them for the cast, really, it's just if anybody wants to see them. More than anybody, it's for the production designer. So we know what we're gonna build. Adam Stockhausen, Bob Yeoman, those are the people who they're really for, and for me, so I don't mess up something. But the thing I feel is, even if you have a very precise plan of how the thing is gonna be, and even if you're not gonna change the dialogue or anything like that, I never know what the actors are gonna do. I never know what they're gonna take with this and how they're gonna bring it to life, and it's always a complete surprise to me. I actually like Wes's line readings in his animatics. So I find myself not infrequently just turning and saying, "Say that again." You know, like--[chuckles] And probably 'cause Wes just has a great feeling for rhythm of the lines he's written, he obviously hears them. And I just like to hit it. And the easiest thing for me is just to have him say it and then replicate it, in many cases. And I am kind of a compulsive mimic, so I get satisfaction out of that. But I don't usually like line readings from directors, but I like them from Wes. A line reading from Alejandro Iñárritu is a disaster. Whereas from Wes, it's actually usually very effective.

51:24 · jump to transcript →

Right at the end. Way later. As you just kept honing the music and honing the story. Incredible work. A big thank you. A big thing about this sequence is the sound design and the music and how they're mixed together. We were getting a lot of notes that the sequence was too long. And we couldn't understand why. And we realized that the music and the... That moment there. Yeah, it's great. The music. That it was all coming at kind of the same volume. And you were exhausted by the time you got here.

53:22 · jump to transcript →

And it's our second location and it's as we're starting to find the team rhythm of the movie. Yes, and the story. Yes. Shot that in New Zealand. How to make this truck look fast? Lots of cuts. Yes. There's Henry. I'm going down. Down the hill. And we forgot to shoot this dialogue. So this is months later on a hillside. And she's pregnant. She's pregnant. And that was the hill that was going to be where your helicopter rolled down.

1:51:38 · jump to transcript →

And what you've got to appreciate is how close Tom is to that hillside. And if that bag snagged on those trees, the only option the pilot had was to cut the payload with Tom. I love this pull-away shot. We got that the second day. Do you remember? Second day, yeah. We did it once, and I was like, we can do it better. He wasn't close enough as I was climbing up the bag. Do you remember? And it was too long. Yes. It was too long, and that other helicopter wasn't in the background. Yes. And I said, guys, we can do this better. And we went back and got it. And we ended up using all the shots. Oh.

1:54:03 · jump to transcript →

with one by one meter of mud on the ground and him shot against the sky. So we didn't need to build a trench again. And you know immediately, oh God, this is his friend. He's dead. And it just puts the audience more with Paul. And before that, you kind of question it for a little bit too long. Who was he looking at? Who was he finding? What was he holding in his hand?

32:16 · jump to transcript →

without being vain. And the movement, it was the exact perfect rhythm with the pan up and the tilt up and the tilt down. And look how a lot of this here works through sound. We only hear French. We only hear a gunshot off camera now in a minute, like someone screaming. We don't see anything. We always stay with Paul. And that was a very important part of perspective for me.

38:21 · jump to transcript →

Just to distinguish everyone. And I didn't know what to write. And also the rhythm of the movie was perfect at that moment. And I said, like, I can't make it any longer. I really got to get back into the story and so forth. And then I found this letter and I knew, oh, this is a good idea. And it became my favorite scene. So, you know, there you go for studio notes. They sometimes can be really helpful. So I found this scene.

46:57 · jump to transcript →

power theme, the motif that runs through the movie. The other thing he did was he showed the audience this sequence we're looking at without sound and then he talked about how music changes your perception of time. If you watch this without sound it seems to go by incredibly slowly but the pace becomes more interesting with the music in the background.

1:30 · jump to transcript →

And it seems to me there is something very musical about the way he edits. Well, it is about time. And pacing generally. I mean, in other words, because the sense of tempo also comes, is in the mise-en-scene, is in the acting. But it seems to me, I'm guessing this, that if Wells were asked which of the other art forms film is closest to, he would say music. ...authority on what people will think. The newspapers, for example. I run several newspapers between here and San Francisco. It's all right, Tommy.

1:27:51 · jump to transcript →

Senor Matiste is going to listen to Reason, aren't you? This particular scene is also one of the longest takes in the film. And it is a sequence shot. And one of the reasons that I like this kind of approach to filmmaking is that it gives the actors more control over the tempo and the pacing than the editing. And I just enjoy watching the actors handle scenes like that. Yeah.

1:28:21 · jump to transcript →

it now attacks the main film, which is like, I can't even remember what scene that's after. And it wasn't working. It's a very different rhythm than Python material. And the others in the group just kept saying, you've got to cut it shorter, you've got to cut it shorter, it's not working. And I kept cutting it shorter and shorter and shorter. And the shorter it got, the less good it got. And that was a major problem because it was sort of the point when it's going to come out of the film, we're going to throw this whole thing away. And then, I don't know, I had to,

10:52 · jump to transcript →

That's the fastest speed there is, so remember when you're feeling very small and insecure. It's very funny to hear all this scene. I keep watching John. He's very doing nothing, but he's doing everything in the background. Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space because there's bugger all down here on Earth. You have to bring the sound of the fridge closing before the fridge actually closes so that it fits it in with the rhythm of the song. Yeah. Yeah.

1:14:41 · jump to transcript →

I was a bit too busy to notice, but Terry's piece expanded and expanded until finally it was the 15, 17 minute piece that it is now. And when we played it originally in this position, it just didn't work. It just was too long and just didn't fit in. And people were looking at the film and saying, oh yeah, it's a quite funny film, but that pirate sequence doesn't work. And then Terry said, well, he'd always thought it would work at the beginning.

1:15:38 · jump to transcript →

A couple of cars have tangled in traffic there. Shouldn't take too long to get this to the shoulder. It's a very simple affair. No injuries involved. Shouldn't cost you more than a couple of minutes, though, if you're heading northbound on the 710. I'm Stacey Vinn for Metro Traffic Control. I think about my shots in my head. And I often, you know, I'll think about how I want a scene covered or if I want coverage at all or where. And I may even...

1:28:05 · jump to transcript →

Two people are sitting and talking and there'll be a shot over this person's shoulder followed by a close-up of the person who was in the over the shoulder. Then the camera turns around and shoots the other person the same way. There might be a long shot followed by close-ups or over shoulders. Today you can look at a lot of films or most television shows and you can sit there and snap your fingers to the rhythm of the cut. You know from experience

1:30:58 · jump to transcript →

pulls me in the cutting room in various directions. So I use the editing room as much in a creative way as I try to do with the shooting. And we determine the pace and the tempo and the length of the shots and the ultimate story in the editing room as we're doing it. It's like playing jazz. You have a theme and variations in your head,

1:34:54 · jump to transcript →

But what I was saying about the director, I just found my notes on it. I literally just wrote down very, very quickly a couple of thoughts I had. The pacing is weird as hell, I find. When there's something going on, there's a couple of long sequences in particular where the alien's running about and they're running about and stuff's happening and it's great. But when stuff isn't happening and it's a character scene, the pacing just never seems to be...

56:22 · jump to transcript →

chasing someone, the guy comes up into the foreground and shuts the door. There's really good comping on that. It sells it really well. I think it's just down to the angle you're shooting it from and the complexity of what the alien's doing. If it lingers on too long...

1:23:40 · jump to transcript →

that shot, it gives it away. I think that shot we saw, it hangs on it too long. And it's not lit right either. And that shot, that scene there is a prime example because there's all this fire around and looked in detail. I dare say they've done something clever to try and reflect that fire in the surface of the monster. But whatever it is they did wasn't working for me.

1:24:02 · jump to transcript →

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

33:13 · jump to transcript →

They just kept doing more and more tongue. It was this progression where the first one was a little chaste and then the next one was a little looser and then by the end, they were just going for it, as we saw there, and they just did a great job, and I don't believe Michelle got sick. So I think it was... - It all worked out. The other thing, too, is we were always starting off shooting wide, which you do, and we probably had sort of a bad habit of doing too many takes in the wide, which you tend not to use. You end up going in. Luckily, by the time we got in, they were sort of going for it a little more, so it worked out. We needed to do the number of takes we did in the wide to get them ready. - To get them comfortable. Which is our excuse for doing the number of takes we did. This is one of the true great moments I love in the film where he's not speaking and he's just smiling. Gets a huge laugh. - Gets a huge laugh, and again, that's at least when it feels like these guys are real characters. It's also, this is a very kind of talky, frenetic movie, and this is one of the few scenes in the movie where we really get a laugh from silence and space. And also just sort of... We get a real laugh from them as who they are, as opposed to someone doing something to them or them seeing something, which, I guess, the movie definitely falls into that category. Also, the audience is warming up to these people who they've never met before. These are strangers when this movie starts. No one knows who Jacob Pitts is. And it hurts the top of the movie. Whether you love this movie or not, and having been so involved with it, we kind of like it most of the time, the audience just doesn't know who these people are and doesn't know... There's no benefit of the doubt, and there are things that I like to think were maybe funny that just weren't working because you don't know who they are. But by this point in the movie, you're liking Jacob, you're liking them. So you kind of get his smile and you go with it. And it's, you know, one of the prices of not using big stars. It's why the second they see Matt Damon people go crazy, but it takes them a while to warm up to the four. But most people, even people who disliked the movie, I think definitely felt that the four of them were good friends on screen, and I actually think that's great, that the story of the four, the friendship works. Well, we took a lot of time in casting. You're casting at an awkward age and you... Everyone has to look great on their own and also has to look of a unit. They're all from the same class, so... You know, Michelle, who was 17 when we shot this, and Travis, who was probably 25. But they end up looking... - Like brother and sister. They found their rhythm... We had a scene that we never got to, which was in there, which is, as he is driving them to Berlin late at night... he starts talking... Tibor starts talking about this area they're driving through. He used to be a great swimmer when he was a little girl. And, basically, the idea being that he was a... Taken by the government, given a lot of drugs. Given weird steroids and drugs and turned into this bearded man you see before him, but that he still hopes one day to get pregnant and have a little girl of his own. Unfortunately, we never got to it. The Cooper shirt, we ended up lengthening those shots because people could sort of see the Cooper shirt. Yeah. I wish-- This was a big mistake, which is we don't keep him in this shirt long enough. We switch the shirt when they go to Italy. The shirt of him with his own smiling face on it, with the word "Cooper" under it is just a great shirt. This is Walter Sittler, who's... - German. He's a German sitcom star. We're hoping this'll be very big in Germany because Jessica's a very big pop star and was on a soap opera, he's a big sitcom star and also Dominic, the truck driver, who is, aS we said, the Dennis Franz of Germany. So, that's gotta be something. Making this the Love Boat of Germany, I think. And this little old lady extra, where we gave specific instructions for them to find as an extra... We were looking at hundreds of photos of old women. We wanted the walking dead. Yeah, who is nearest to death. Find that person and bring them to the set. The thing of her being deaf really makes us laugh. Also, my guess is it annoys virtually everyone else. This is one of these scenes. That old woman is Czech and speaks no English. The German guy speaks some English. The little boy that we're about to see is Czech, playing German, and speaks no English. Also, luckily, he and his father, who was his guardian, I don't believe had ever heard of Adolf Hitler. So, that worked very well for us. 'Cause I'm not sure he ever knew what he was doing. But also... - And this is a scene that's really interesting in a theater because there's about a page of dialogue that starts here. It actually was originally about half a page. And we lengthened it because we knew we needed more jibber-jabber. None of this dialogue matters. And you can't hear a word. I've still never heard a word that's coming out of this guy's mouth. And that's one of the great things. As writers, we would write scenes that have pipe. We have to explain things, and we'd always try to put jokes in and people said, "You can't do that." "No, you're undermining the scene." - And we did it. And it works. When we had the chance to do it our own way, there's important information, you kind of get it, it's repeated here anyway and you got an amazing scene, as opposed to what would've been in a normal movie, which is just a boring scene of them talking about how she's going to Italy. And, once again, this very strange modern plaza that looks like we're in Germany is Prague. And it just, you know, coming out of our earliest discussions, as you're trying to make each city seem a little bit different... You know, Paris Is very pretty. What is Berlin? Berlin is modern and cold and steel. - Berlin is a new city. And this looks different, and also very un-American. I mean, even those bizarre trees. We're not in America. We're not on a back lot. We're not in Canada. And there was a movie theater there that serves beer, which was very interesting.

1:04:45 · jump to transcript →

This is where we had the bomb threat. We actually had to shoot... - We had to come back for this. The whole airport we shot in one day. Well, actually, two days because... - It could've been done in a day. This part we had-- This was the end. We had an hour to shoot this whole scene. And I remember, there was a woman from the airport standing there and... We're distracting her with bad questions. I was talking to her and I speak a little Czech, and I was telling her that I used to drive a cab. She was talking about cabdrivers from the Czech Republic that are now Americans. And I'm like, "I used to drive a cab." Just anything to stall while we were shooting. The other thing is, 66 and 67, we're controlling. Those are our lines. And I think 77 there we're controlling. The rest is the real airport. - Everything behind is the real airport. And there's an outtake where someone comes and tries to get in our line. And the Czech AD had to, like... - Mirek. Mirek had to grab them and pull them out of line, which was funny to us. I don't know why everyone laughs when they say "flight from Rome to Cleveland." Cleveland is a major destination. - No, it's crazy. If anyone ever flies to Raleigh-Durham, you can go from Rome to Cleveland. That's my only point. This is incredibly inadvertent and we lucked into it, but as they actually hug and are happy as brother and sister, even though they made out, we really lucked into it, the fact that they both ended up in green, sort of dressed together, as they are twins again. I always thought that was really cool. Nothing we had any control over. You always hear about directors talking about color schemes and stuff. We had no control. This scene-- There was a lot of dialogue with Jenny and Cooper talking. We realized we didn't need any of it. It was just... It was an attempt at flirting, and at a certain point it was like, "No, this entire movie has been the flirt. Let's just do the payoff." And, obviously, get him in there. And there's a weird little thing in there, where it took a little too long for the door to shut. There's a little jump cut in there. That's masked by the sound of the door. - And then we tried that line there, which no one ever liked. It was weird. The first time we put it in, the first time we screened it it got a big laugh and subsequently not a... Something about that stock shot. That has appeared in every movie Montecito has ever made. It's Harvard. - It's Harvard. It's a helicopter shot of Harvard. I believe they used it in Road Trio and Old School and we've used it too, now, as Oberlin. So, that will be in every movie we ever make. And then you get into these scenes and you start having these weird discussions, like... This, by the way, the "Eat Me" shirt, awesome. The "Eat Me" shirt is awesome. And this is also a reshoot. Originally, we had Jacob in his dorm room. It felt very claustrophobic. - Very shuttered. This is actually one of the few things that was shot in the United States. That's Caltech. And most of what happens happened in the other scene, but it just opened it up. I mean, Jenny being there... Although, originally, she was reading a Jackie Collins book. So, we miss that. And then we added this American robot and people either like it or don't like it. I think the problem with this is that people don't remember Cooper hating the robot from the other scene. They just remember Scotty fighting the robot. SO, it's not as funny that Cooper fights the robot here. That's Pat Kilbane as the robot, who's a really funny guy. We used him on Seinfe/d as Bizarro Kramer. He was really funny and it just... unfortunately, I'm not sure... Again, it's a writing problem. But he's just very funny, just trying to still be a mime. This, by the way, it was 110 degrees on this day. No air-conditioning on the set in the middle of summer. And the college we eventually got cleared was Oberlin, which to people who've never heard of Oberlin... Who live in Central Europe. ...looks like "O, Berlin," which they think is some sort of a joke. Yeah, and the only reason we used it, it was literally the only college on earth that we could clear. And, again, as director, things you don't worry about... I remember lots of discussions about when he is using that computer. How is he using it? What is it plugged into? I remember arguing about what bag she's carrying into this scene. Again, there are just days where you get bogged down in things that you have no idea you were ever going to get bogged down in. Colors of walls. Things that just don't matter at the end of the day. But the trouble is, every once in a while, something does make a huge difference. Exactly. - So, you have to obsess over this stuff. I always loved just... The Green Fairy coming back, I thought, was a perfect ending to what is a really strange, perverse fairy tale. When we changed the ending and kind of made it happy all the way through, without the original downside and then the surprise happy ending... it started to-- We began to worry, "Is it all just too pat?" And the Green Fairy just going, "Fuck this," sort of, I don't know, it helps us as writers somehow feeling like we didn't just give in. This is something we always wanted to do. There are a lot of funny scenes that you can see in the deleted scenes, but like Joanna Lumley here... Joanna Lumley, which you can see in its entirety. This is the youth hostel in Amsterdam. She's hilarious. - We wanted to put some of these in, mixed in with the bloopers, and just be able to hear the song one more time. I think people end up really loving it. It's weird. Everyone always would almost get up and then sit. And later, in the airing to the movie, people just knew to just sit there and watch. It also, by putting all the major funny guys in... You get to see Vinnie again. You get to see Robot Man. You get to see Creepy Italian Guy. It reminded anybody that wasn't as big a fan of the Vatican and stuff, reminded you of things earlier that you liked. And that sort of made people leave in a good mood. It shows, "Hey, this was a crazy, wild, fun time." Look, when we shot this, it was a hundred-ring circus: three locations a day, new cast every day, strange country, people that didn't soeak English or spoke seven different languages. And it was unbelievably fun. And that's what this actually... I think this reflects that pretty well. There you go. That's the line we were talking about. You can see that scene. That's our day-one porno shoot. Our day-one porno shoot, where literally on the first take, it's running and running... - Hey, there she is. But running and running and running because we have no idea that one of us is supposed to call, "Cut." That was day one. - I remember that. Our first AD Chris was accustomed to saying, "Action," because he had worked with a couple of actors who directed themselves and they didn't wanna yell, "Action." So, Chris was used to yelling, "Action," so he yelled, "Action," and we shot. And I remember we looked at each other kind of going, "You good? Yeah, I'm good. You good?" And then we suddenly realized that somebody had to say, "Cut." While we're wrapping this all up, I guess we should mention Montecito. That's Jeff with the Hitler Kid, teaching him to walk. Greasing the wheels of the train straight to hell. I was just gonna say, the entire time we were there, we had Danny Goldberg and Jackie Marcus with us as on-set producers, helping out with a lot of things. And then we always had Ivan, Tom Pollock and Joe Medjuck. With Ivan, it was an interesting thing of... We didn't always agree, but it was always interesting because we'd talk about stuff and you'd talk about these kinds of movies and you always are referencing Animal House and Stripes and whatnot. And, of course, he made those. And that was always an amazing, sort of... It was a great... "You know how in Ghostbusters..." Yeah, of course you know. A good consigliere, so to speak.

1:22:35 · jump to transcript →

with that original transition in mind. Yeah, what the original plan was, there was a sequence where we just held off on this. It was going to be the Underworld wrap-up, where Marcus, when he awakens, he bites Kraven's neck. Through those genetic memories of biting Kraven, he ends up getting what is basically the Underworld 1 wrap-up, and kind of last time on Underworld so that everybody gets to speed. And it just, it was a bit too long to wait for that to happen at that point.

9:27 · jump to transcript →

Of the movie. There was a whole sequence, actually. We played it all as a flashback now, but the whole sequence itself was about five minutes long. Involving... Yeah, it was a little bit too long to get going in the beginning. It played very well as a flashback. This was a difficult...

1:05:41 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, this is real water. Is it? Real water. We shot this in Vancouver. This is actually a... We were kind of actually, honestly scraping by to find something for the voiceover. Originally, the voiceover was just in black. And we didn't have anything to put behind Kate's voiceover. And so we pulled some of the Vancouver aerial footage that we shot to put in behind it just because the voiceover ended up being a bit longer than... It was too long in black.

1:38:05 · jump to transcript →

Eng Commentary

The fade to black that indicates a night's passage here helps to accentuate the film's sense of structure and rhythm. That rhythm is strengthened by the now familiar shot of Antoine leaving for school the next morning to the chipper melody of Jean Constantin's original music. The snitch or spy whom we've seen watching the boys before now runs into the Doinel's building.

31:07 · jump to transcript →

Eng Commentary

Antoine will seize his opportunity for escape from this barren, loveless, and regimented existence. The rhythm of the editing of the film undergoes a profound transformation at the same time. André Bazin, Truffaut's spiritual and intellectual father, who got him out of military prison and launched his career as a film critic, had his greatest influence on film theory on this very subject of editing.

1:34:48 · jump to transcript →

This was all shot in New York, the grocery store. It was, I believe, a set right on that street that we built. And I think you see that he has a scar on his throat from the scene that was removed. We took the Fenucci scene out because it was too long in the original movie, but we did put it back along with several scenes

51:13 · jump to transcript →

The moral dilemma that Michael finds himself in is beginning to tighten and capture him in this tightening net, so obviously it revolves around

2:53:28 · jump to transcript →

Bill Paxton

and the grips shook the set and the set collapsed on us and split open my scalp. So I'll always remember that line. It caught fire and the roof came in all on the same day. And it hit Jim in the head. I saw blood spurting out of his head. It was where Sigourney was supposed to be sitting, so it was good it hit Jim and not her. We'd have gotten a day off. Think they did that on purpose? No. - I'm just asking. At that point, maybe they would've. In the pipe. Five by five." My favorite line. These shots, it's just me shaking the back of the magazine of the camera. The poor camera operator had a bruise around his eye, cos sometimes I'd whack the magazine too, just to give it a sharp jolt. This is all my shake of the camera. The operator can't do it himself. It just gets into this bouncy rhythm if the operator tries to do it. It has to be imposed from the outside and then they fight it, which is the natural reflex. Such a wonderful sound design in this movie. Much of which was generated in our living room in England. At the time, people really weren't using synthesizers in England to create sound effects for films, and we had a Fairlight synthesizer in our living room. A lot of the sound effects were generated by Bob Garret, Randy Frakes and Jim in our living room near Pinewood, including the sound of the alien queen. It really was a home movie.

41:08 · jump to transcript →

Bill Paxton

Bill, isn't there dialogue that you have on this that people have used in video games? Yeah, I think so. "Game over, man" and things like that. You get anything for that? - I don't think so. I'm not even getting anything to sit here and do this commentary. They expect us to do it for no money. You got a beer out of it, though. No, it's just fun. I got a beer out of it, so that's cool. This was an amazing set, this concourse A. And it was long. And later on when all hell's breaking loose, Jim had that little video camera. He had everybody on the crew having coffee while we would run at him and do different things. It was SO amazing to see this gigantic set, one of the biggest sets I'd ever seen, and there's Jim by himself with this little camera. When did the bust-out almost happen? He was gonna move the movie. When did that happen? I remember there were some problems. There were some union problems. The crew weren't used to working the same way. With Jim. They weren't used to working. That's unfair. They were craftsmen, but they had an indentured way of doing everything. Jim needs something, he just grabs it. If he needs a light moved, he'll grab it himself. We punched a hole through somewhere cos he needed to run a line. He didn't wanna wait around. He just said "Give me a hammer." But this was an ambitious schedule. Jim was running from stage to stage. I think we had about three big sound stages with giant sets. And then there were two sound stages with miniatures. And then there was a stage with all those tunnels. I remember them putting you in that damn tunnel. That pipe. We had gone to the power station to shoot the atmosphere-processor scenes and come back to the set after it had been wrecked. So we're into Adrian Biddle's photography here. He was the second DP. I encouraged Adrian, to save time, to use as much built-in lighting as possible. This is lit by the fluorescents in the set, with just a little additional lighting. Adrian liked to work on a raw and edgy look and work with the practical lights a lot more. This is another thing that is important. With a lot of science fiction movies that are all interior, you often lose track geographically of where you are and it becomes incredibly confusing and it's hard to build the tension and the suspense. Jim was aware of this from the script stage and made sure that we established through the helmet cams, through the motion trackers, where they are, and then ultimately, later on, where the aliens are. Even in this version, you're left to fill in what happened. We don't see the baittle. We'll see plenty of battles later and this is promising you that. We have a shot coming up here where there were acid holes - acid... holes... eaten into the floor by these so far unseen aliens. And, of course, these sets were not double-deck sets. Jim wanted a scene where a character looks down through one of these holes. I think Bill spits down into it to give some perspective. So this down-view we shot on our miniature stage. We layered the set and photographed that. This is where you spit and they did it in miniature. They even did a miniature spit. - Is that what that is? To get that spitting effect, it was actually not spit. It didn't work very well, so it was a combination of milk... Milk and water in an eyedropper right underneath the lens. The complaint from the studio was that the film went on too long without anything really happening. I was winding the suspense tighter before you actually saw anything. The studio said we were just jerking around. Too many movies that I see now, it's all upfront. You start seeing stuff right away and there's no sense of a build. So this is the miniature APC that was built by Bob and Denny Skotak. Pretty good size. I remember it being five or six feet long. Most people don't twig that as a miniature. That's the real APC pulling in. They matched the lighting pretty nicely. I think Jim did some of his live-action stuff undercranked. He ran the camera slightly slower on the APC so that it felt slightly more as if it were a miniature but you knew it was real because you could see people interacting with it. So if any of the miniature stuff didn't quite work for whatever reason, it took the curse off that cos it felt that the two were blended together. I think he wound up undercranking because the APC, the full-size one, didn't move as fast as he wanted it. I think it could only go eight or ten miles an hour. One difficult thing about making this movie was 7erminator wasn't out in England and the perception of Jim Cameron, who looked about 20 when he directed this movie, and myself as the directing-producing team was met with a great deal of resistance because back then the system in England was that you had to put in years and years to rise up to the level of being a producer or a director. And we were simply not treated with a great deal of respect and it was very hard every day of the shoot. We were being second-guessed and every decision we made was questioned and the tremendous thing, of course, having Stan on the film was that... I was old. - No. ...was that you were a cheerleader for both of us. By demonstrating the respect and enthusiasm that you did, I think other people gradually relented. I knew it was the best thing for me and for everybody on that set. There are people that you know, no matter how they do it, what they're doing is special. This particular directing-producing team had been a win for me in my career and stayed that way. I never thought our facehuggers looked as good as the one in A/en. We had to make lots of 'em and they had to run around and do things, but, texturally, the one in the first film looked great. It really held up. The bits of oysters and stuff inside it looked great. But I did wanna see the disgusting thing that had been down the inside of Kane's throat in the first film. You never see it in the movie, in A/en, so I figured we'd gross everybody out. All of Giger's designs have a real sexual undercurrent to them. And that's what horrified people about the alien as much as anything, is it worked on a kind of Freudian subconscious level. And Ridley and Giger knew that and they went for that. This film was never intended to be as much of a horror film as the first one. It was working on a different thematic level but I still wanted to be true to some of those ideas, some of those design concepts. It would be natural to assume I'd wanna work with Giger, but it just didn't occur to me at the time. Maybe it was because we really only needed to design one new creature and I had already designed her by the time I wrote the script. The alien queen. I guess maybe it was my own ego as an artist. I just felt like he'd made his stamp and I knew from what I'd read that he had to do everything his way and I had a very specific idea for the alien queen to extrapolate beyond what had been done before. I got the impression from what I read that I wasn't gonna get the dynamic character that I wanted. In a funny way, part of what attracted me to doing this film was the opportunity to do cool design stuff. So maybe I was just a little bit too in love with the idea of designing the creatures and the weapons and doing all that stuff.

47:57 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

Wildor? It tasted good. Wildor? Oh, I'm going, I'm going. Now you'll see that we're losing light if you watch carefully as this scene progresses. It took much too long to get this set up. Should have been a simple day. Didn't turn out to be a simple day. So we start out, it's kind of light. You'll see if you look carefully by the end of the scene, it's getting a little dark.

24:41 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

I actually didn't want to cut away from him at all. I wanted to stay on him. This is exactly what I said. I want this energy coming right out of his nose and eyes and stuff through his hand. I want him bathed in this power, this energy, as if he's coming into his own. And I think he does a brilliant performance. The cutaways, I reluctantly agreed to. The studio felt we needed him, but I really felt this was a scene where we could stay with Frank for the whole performance. I think if I do it all over again, I probably would have stuck with that. There's these few cutaways that slightly break the rhythm, I think.

1:28:29 · jump to transcript →

It would... It costs too much? Am I making this up? Oh, they have to be here? I'm buying it. They're there too long, so... You can only work a limited number of hours. So you'd have half-empty stands. I think it had to do also with the sexual content. And you'd have a lawsuit. Exactly. Just like we're going to have when this DVD comes out. Yeah, so we get some humans with short hands. This was a big coup getting all these guys. It's hard to believe they were all out of work at this time. Today's ball game.

1:03:47 · jump to transcript →

You would have to pay the hermits? Because we actually wanted it faster. The original song was too slow. Are you buying that? No, I had no idea. I don't know. I couldn't remember the reason why we recorded it. It's the best I could come up with on short notice. I think this is a better recording. The Alamo Society. That begins to explain some of the...

1:24:25 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

Um.... This was, uh... You know, it was interesting, every time we'd preview the film... The film used to be much... Not much longer... ...but significantly, 10 minutes, which in a film like this... In a kids' movie, yeah. And it-- There was a lot of you looking around the house, looking for... And it just... We just needed to tighten it up. This was a sequence that was really harmed, really... I mean, not hurt, because it worked in the film... ...because it's really what the genesis of the film was about. But one of the things I wanted to do, was I wanted this furnace to come alive... ...to really chase you across the room. - Ha-ha-ha. And I wanted it to turn into, like, this CG furnace that got up on all fours... ...and chased you to the stairs. - Wow. And later I'll talk about it. There was a fantasy sequence that was gonna cost over a million dollars... ... that was cut from the film that I was always depressed about. But see, we ended up putting two guys with strings and a couple of lights... ...because we had no money. Again, it all comes back to your performance... ...because you're the guy who makes this all work... ...because of your reactions... ...because people believe you're in this situation, you really... You make all of these things that were a little ropey at the time... ...to say the least, you make it work. Like this. Well, I'm glad I could help. - Thank you. Look at this expression. This is truly... I remember the audience when they saw that the first time. That was one of the times where they started to burst out laughing. And we'll talk about some of the screenings for this film later. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen. - Oh, really? When this film was first screened for an audience, it was incredible. I

19:54 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

Again, we're back in that real neighborhood, which probably looks... Pretty much the same, I bet you. - ...pretty much the same today, yeah. Winnetka. Now, Joe used to tell me... I don't know how I can tell this story without swearing... ...but it's an important story because he said to me one day: "You know how I go through the script, how I do it? I look at the script, and I look at the lines." And I'm like, "Yeah?" And he... I said, "Well, how do you memorize the lines?" "Well, I substitute the F-word after every line." Ha-ha-ha. - And I'm like, "What?" "So if it says, 'Go into the house, you idiot,' I say: 'Go into the effing house, you effing idiot,' and then I develop a rhythm." And I'm like, "Wow." And then he read me that scene. - This whole... It sounded like it was from a Scorsese movie.

54:40 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

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

11:23 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

And you are the latest in a long line of Robocop movies to be set in Detroit and show Detroit for the horrible, vicious wasteland that it is. And yet you didn't film in Detroit. This one was Atlanta this time. You're in Detroit as we speak, aren't you? Yes, I am. And I have a bone to pick. They tried to put a Robocop statue up here not too long ago. And my whole thing was, that's not exactly an inspirational figure.

27:55 · jump to transcript →

Originally, the crane was sort of a central piece to this whole thing. And the notion of ropes entangled, we thought, very interesting for the story. And this was sort of a... This was supposed to be done over black, but we thought this would be more interesting. Well, we removed the scene. Chris wrote a fantastic deposition piece, which it was a bit too long for, but that sort of encapsulated the idea.

4:52 · jump to transcript →

Again, the Herald Examiner building built into a police station, quite finely by Howard Cummings. The brilliant... This is the ever wonderful Dan Hedaya. I'm thinking about this scene. This is hard because it was just a long, long shot. This was originally three scenes cut down to two pages. The script had timed far too long, and while I was...

18:08 · jump to transcript →

Well, it's again a little bit in the line of fire because he takes the bullet and throws himself into the line of fire here. He takes the bullet for the president. Instead of a Secret Service guy like Clint Eastwood taking the bullet for the president here, it's a plane taking it. It has kind of a little bit of an irony to it. I always liked that a lot. But he gets it, of course. He will not be too happy too long.

1:46:52 · jump to transcript →

where a guy honestly tells him why he was doing what he was doing. There's no time to say all that. So finally, we said, let's go just with the drama, with the incredible speed here and the pacing and the tempo and the time clock that the plane would crash any second that people can think about. He did it for the money or he did it for politics, whatever. Whatever the reason was, he just did it. And I think most of the people accepted that. Isn't this spectacular?

1:55:29 · jump to transcript →

Darren Aronofsky

Wait a minute. Columbia University, that is. Some people don't catch that. This is a really nice piece of music that Clint wrote that I tried to use a lot through the film. And we tried a lot to repeat lots of shots in the film. A, it's economical, but B, it sort of creates this sort of rhythm.

10:26 · jump to transcript →

Darren Aronofsky

So this, I guess, you know, the pace starts to pick up. We're starting to approach the inmost cave, as they say in literature. Max, for the first time, rips open some of his cardboard coverings that keeps his windows sealed shut so that, you know, his computers can function without daylight and without the extra heat. That was actually shot through an actual microscope. We shot it at NYU. A friend of mine, Ari Handel, is...

42:29 · jump to transcript →

That rock is CG. The actual rock, you know, is in there, but you couldn't see it because it came through the frame too quickly, so it was replaced with a computer-generated rock. So there's lots of visual effects in the movie that you would never imagine are visual effects. I always wanted to tighten this little bit here, but it was... You had to show where Brendan found the key and...

13:21 · jump to transcript →

Actually, we're pretty anal about not having story holes, especially during the script writing phase. Bob goes over and over the script, and I will also, because we hate having holes. And then you get into post, and every once in a while you say, you know what, it's okay to have this little hole because no one really notices or cares. And you do that for pacing. Sometimes you say, you know, here's a story point, but the audience doesn't really care, and it's slowing the movie down, so let's cut it. Yeah, I think pretty much you'll find that any hole that exists...

53:28 · jump to transcript →

John Cameron Mitchell

It's totally stolen from another part of the scene. Yeah, it looks like it to me. I thought there was some handiwork in the editing. In some ways, this scene had the most editing work on it than any other scene. You're kidding. Because it was our first day, we really didn't quite have our rhythm yet. You guys were nervous. I was nervous. Frank was nervous. And the scene was very long. The original scene was 14 minutes. A lot of the scenes were a lot longer.

11:17 · jump to transcript →

John Cameron Mitchell

masochistic classic called Venus and Furs. Oh, wow. I wondered who it was, that or Belle de Jour. Belle de Jour, I realized later, was the name of Catherine Deneuve's character who was a masochist, but I thought it'd be good to have a dominatrix with a masochist name. From the film, I just saw the film Venus and Furs not too long ago. It was a film? Yeah. It's really bad, but it's kind of great.

29:08 · jump to transcript →

And as we have seen in this moment, the rhythm of the movie is quiet and calm, trying to feel how these characters are trying to start over.

5:48 · jump to transcript →

This is probably the only moment of calm in the second half of the movie. It's the only moment because the pace of the movie is so intense. I think it was... it was the right rhythm to deliver this crazy moment. And this is, as well, it's very important to understand why these people, why this doctor is helping the kids.

1:11:09 · jump to transcript →

Let us seek out some friendlier sky. Thank you both for Cosette. It won't take you too long to forget. Farewell, Cosette. That's Cosette. Helena and Sasha are still arguing over who came up with the idea of Cosette. It's a great line. Where I go, you will be.

56:56 · jump to transcript →

Again, this is all being done with live accompaniment, so Hugh Jackman has all the kind of choices about the pacing so that he can capture the frailty of Valjean through the pauses and the changes in tempo. We're shooting it multi-camera on four cameras. I think Anne is extraordinary in this moment. In fact, they're all extraordinary.

2:26:39 · jump to transcript →

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

10:50 · jump to transcript →

Don't be too proud. You know. - Steal. Do good things. - Steal madly. Well, it's from another art form, at least. It's actually sort of a Bufiuel moment too. Isn't it? It is. It is totally Bufnuel. Did we blow this up or was it shot this tight? This is shot this way. By this point, we weren't afraid of going... ...a little bit closer. We were told you cannot do close-ups. I know. - That-- Bullshit. Whoever said that, you know... - Should be... ... taken out and whipped. And here's also-- You see-- It's also interesting if you watch it in 3D. The black side of his face, because he's lit like that. Said, "It'll just be a hole in the screen and you won't get it." Yeah. We were told... - Wrong. Wrong. That's a load of crap, actually. - Yep. It looked gorgeous. - This is truly sick, guys. And here-- This is, yeah. But... The theme here works very well... ...because this film's very much about family. A family that slays together stays together. I was completely serious. But Kate and her daughter and this is father and son. But I love the way Kris says, "Yes, Father." Remember that "silver munitions" sign argument? Yes. - I wanted to put it on the day... ...and you were like, "No." - There was never no argument. Oh, please. - We said, "Of course." And we shot it. - It didn't say "silver munitions" before. No. - How will they know it's silver? We put it in later. - They did. This is my one "I told you so" in the movie. Okay? It says "Ag" and everybody knows, right? Everybody knows the elemental symbol for silver. Of course. Do not underestimate your audience. They do know. All this was shot with four cameras. What do you call these? GoPros. - GoPros. And it was.... We thought it actually would save time. But it was.... - No. It was a mess. But it ends up looking great, though. No. It looks exactly what we wanted. It's also interesting how technology moves. When we started shooting this, you had to... Since we mounted these small cameras... ...we had to go up, take out the disk and put it in another place. And turn them on. We'd play for 45 minutes before you were ready to shoot. And then, in the end of the shoot, you could have a video assist to it. So it just develops. Yeah. - We couldn't shoot in... When we shoot slow-motion, when you shoot film... ... you have go to another camera. Here you can do 120 frames, which is.... Regular speed is 24, or 25 in Europe. And you couldn't do more than 72 in 3D... ...but by the end of the shoot, you could do 120. We're the only film ever to do that. Oh, really? - And the Epics, not even today... ...in 2D can do 120. They made that special build just for us. And they've never updated the build to 120. Why not? - I don't know. They should. - Because we're cool. This scene was.... It was dropped for a long time because it was too slow, people thought. But then, I think it was Gary or someone.... You wanted it back and we were so happy... ...because it's actually giving us some kind of backbone... ...on why they work together. - Yes. And it was emotional for Michael Ealy. And it actually showed that Selene was sensitive to his back-story. And it showed why he was helping her. That's right. - Yeah. This is us being Swedes, having a Volvo. Sorry about that. That's actually something we had to fought for. It was brutalistic. - Yeah. It is. Boxy. - Now this was... They're boxy, but they're good. What was it called, Fraser University? Simon Fraser. - Simon Fraser. Yep. - Yeah. Yeah. It's in the... - Here's brutalism galore. It's just... Insanely. - Yeah. In the script this was set in a skyscraper, an ordinary lobby. Right. - And we thought, "That's so boring." And then we saw this place and it was like, "Wow, this is so...." We have more space for guys running around shooting and stuff. Yep. She takes bullets. Don't you get excited when you see that? Don't try this at home, kids. It really does hurt to get shot. - I love this. I love that. Taking a bullet. These guys running had Werewolves' teeth... ...and they looked ridiculous. We had to cut out so many of them. This is one of my favorite shots. The li-- The-- What do you call it? The color? Perfect. - Yeah. And also this whole sequence, the elevator sequence... ... that starts kind of now until we blow everything up... ... It's one of the things, from a directorial point of view... ...we're extremely happy with because it's so... Planned. - It's very complicated. Deceptively complicated. - Yeah. You don't realize how many pieces are stitched together... ...to make it work. - And everybody did their share. Yeah. And at the end, it becomes cinema, I think. Yeah.

57:42 · jump to transcript →

Jake Szymanski

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

0:13 · jump to transcript →

So It Meant We Had Bloody Marys At 5

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

1:10:07 · jump to transcript →

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.

6:35 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence

So now we're in London, which was our last location of the shoot. This is where we finished off, primarily at the Corinthia Hotel. We also shot at Heathrow. I was amazed and very thankful that the people at Heathrow allowed us to shoot there. But we shot here at the Corinthia, which, funny enough, was the hotel that we would always stay at whenever we would go to London for the Hunger Games press junkets, so it was a hotel that we were all very familiar with. And also, funny enough, that the room that we shot in for the meetings, the hotel room we shot in, any time that we would go there to scout it, we had to rent the room out, and it ended up somehow, lining up with a school vacation or something. And so my kids would come out, and my wife would come out, and we would end up Staying in that room since it was rented anyway. So we would stay in that room, and then, you know, my family would leave and the whole crew would pile in, and we would do a tech scout... Of my hotel room. It was very strange. I'll just be leaving. I love this bar, too, and I love the way this bar looks. I will say, too, that Mary-Louise Parker was really fun to work with. I thought she did a great, great job. It's always weird. I mean, we shot for 85 days, and I mean, she had, I think, one evening of shooting with us kind of in the middle, when we did that embassy sequence in Budapest, but really, all of her work was at the very, very end of the schedule. And you can imagine that, you know, a crew who's been in three, four countries already is, you know, quite bonded, and she's done long-running television shows, and plenty of movies and things like that, so I think she quite understood. She kept saying that we were a cult by the time she got there. I think she was right, But she was great, and also brought in a great deal of levity, sort of a nice, little needed tonal shift for this portion of the movie. And it was fun working with Mary-Louise here, just in terms of the sort of drunkenness of it all. You know, we did many layers of it in terms of how paranoid she might be, how sloppy drunk she might be, and it was really fun to just kind of let her go and let her try different things. We ended up cutting a decent amount of dialogue out here, but there was some fun stuff. It went on for too long, but there was some fun stuff about why she's doing it, why she's selling the secrets, and, you know, there's some pretty basic ideas of why people do these things, why people become recruitable. Might be ideology, might be they've become disillusioned, and might be a different kind of patriotism. It could just be plain old greed. And I'm sure that if you are as important as you Say you are... then you don't want to waste any time. So, do you have anything to sell? I have the first set of discs with me. Today. I just want to be clear that I'm not doing this... 'cause I'm an ideologue or pacifist or something, you know. Where are the discs, Stephanie? Where's my money? What we always liked was this idea that she'd really sort of turned on her boss, that she always felt that she was much more deserving of the job, and smarter than her own boss, and had become really cynical about it. But I like that there's this sort of paranoia underneath all of it, too, this kind of nervousness about all of this that leads her to drink so much. And that was all Mary-Louise. Some fun stuff. I just need to authenticate them.

1:30:11 · jump to transcript →

but it was just taken too long, so you don't see it. The old Slavic or old Ukrainian was done by Ukrainian poet Yuri Andrukovic, and I can't know how great it is, but it does sound beautiful, and Ania does it very well. I use the water.

36:21 · jump to transcript →

I think we probably should have just... We should have woken up now. Instead of there. And then we could then start panning now. And it would have been a lot better. I think we hold on this sort of poorly composed academic painting far too long. But you win some, you lose some.

1:11:20 · jump to transcript →

SFX Maestro Christien Tinsley

I'm really excited we're going to be spending Christmas together. It's been too long. Yeah, it has. I'm really looking forward to it. Well, uh... Fun little detail, like the scars on her face. See you soon. Love you. I love you more.

41:43 · jump to transcript →

SFX Maestro Christien Tinsley

new casts, but your teeth also shift. So Dave and Samantha, everybody, they all talked about how, you know, they weren't uncomfortable to wear, but they, you know, they had moments of being uncomfortable, and too long in the mouth would make them uncomfortable. So again, all the right reasons for making new ones. And so we took new casts of their teeth,

1:13:49 · jump to transcript →

It reminds me slightly of Karloff's introduction in Frankenstein where you see the back first. And so your lead guy is sort of given a bit of mystery. Do you think it was done on purpose like that? My sense is that there was another scene which we've never caught up with. That's also possible. And Barrymore, one of the things he does is he... You can see why he got his star billing because he walks in, he takes over this film. He, in fact, changes the pace of the film. Watching it again for the first time recently...

19:39 · jump to transcript →

Novelist Tim Lucas

And now we see the cell invaded by its liberators, who address themselves not to the pacing man, but rather the lazy man. This is Jean-Marie Volanté as our third principal character, El Indio, destined to be our next poster boy with an even higher bounty on his head. He will become the shared quarry that will bring our two competitors together.

20:19 · jump to transcript →

which wasn't very difficult to do because we got one of the jackpot mechanics to come and fix the machine, and sure enough, the jackpot comes up every time. The mechanic is quite interested because he works very hard. On weekends, he has to tighten them all up, and on Mondays, which is the slack day, the ones outside by the door loosen them up so that people pull and say, oh, this is my lucky place, and come inside.

1:31:02 · jump to transcript →

I have to go to the bathroom. Is that all right? You're gonna go, you're gonna go. I frisked him. He's clean. Don't take too long. I frisked a thousand young punks. This was the actual bathroom in that restaurant.

1:26:45 · jump to transcript →

is so grounded, you totally believe that this would happen. That's Barry Snyder there, the guy wearing the suit. And he was, again, kind of a character actor fixture. And I think we have, it's not too long from now, where the character known as the Hippie reveals himself as a police officer.

1:22:02 · jump to transcript →

the boss is Clint Charles Okun who was the first assistant director on the film said that quote Clint was the only guy that ever said no Michael said okay let's go for it another take it was take four Clint would say no we got enough we got it and if Chimino took too long to get it ready Clint would say it's good let's go

1:11:52 · jump to transcript →

Strange how music works that goes completely against the rhythm. On the square we did play music, too, so the people would move with the rhythm.

1:30:56 · jump to transcript →

Did we cut it before we shot it or did we shoot it? No, we cut some of it before we shot it and then we shot it. And you looked at it and you said, well, you know, something's got to go. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, films have to be a certain length. Most films are too long. Yeah, but unfortunately you ultimately have to make these choices. Indeed. And some certain characters have to suffer as a result. But I don't think the character suffered as such because...

44:26 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, play the shrimp luncheon special. And in fact, the guy, there's Bobby Ellis. Yeah, there is. Number one teamster in... And I had to call time here because it was a working phone booth and it would start... Because the scene was too long. So as I'm talking on the phone, I'm listening to time. Yeah. There's Miguel. LAUGHTER

46:59 · jump to transcript →

cut the blinks out when I'm holding a gun, because I blink before the gun goes off. The trick, of course, of firing a gun is that you sort of squint your eyes together a little bit, which Gary Cooper used to have a little yip when he was, yip, and those eyes would just tighten up around the edges so you didn't blink.

1:18:35 · jump to transcript →

I assume he was auditioning for Empire of the Sun before this. I don't know what it was. And, of course, this is before he really hit it big with Dead Poets Society, so it must have been cool to see him make it, you know, suddenly have a big hit not too long after this came out. Right. And he really carries this whole film. I mean, he's in virtually every scene in the movie, you know, so it's kind of a make or break based on his performance. Well, yes, and that became a problem because during the movie he came down with mononucleosis. Oh. And...

3:32 · jump to transcript →

So this is Long Beach now. This is a little area that we... You have to realize the politics of the movie were very interesting at the time because when we were shooting in Pittsburgh, that was the end of the movie. And we had already shot too long, according to the studio and our own schedule. I had gone over schedule. And John said, you know, we have no time to finish the movie this way. And...

19:37 · jump to transcript →

Lea Thompson

And so, just looking, you know, at pacing and a sense of momentum, you can feel what John was after. You can feel how this movie's now getting to the point where something's gonna blow, and here it is.

1:01:57 · jump to transcript →

What was the other job you were doing at the time? Oh, it was actually a commercial. Oh. But it was a whole bunch of commercials, and this was the last one I did for this company. But when it happened, we started this 10 days later. Wow. You lost points for driving too slow. Well, this is where it rebroke, okay? You're kidding. No, but I'll show you where, because originally...

1:00:29 · jump to transcript →

I think you're both right as well. At some point, it's just going to take too long to try to explain what's actually going to happen, so you may as well just go for it. Yeah, no. No. Right, yeah. It would have required half of the day. Nobody got time for that. I'm very curious when, so you finish the film. You're done. It's pretty quick. Three months, right? Pretty tight turnaround. Three months done. Film comes out.

1:20:10 · jump to transcript →

Film Stephen Prince

At the top are the emperor and empress, and we see them in a series of five shots that are cut together in rapid succession, a little montage that is different from the slow tempo that Kurosawa uses through the movie. It's the kind of compressed, rapid editing that Kurosawa excelled at using in his earlier films to create tension and pacing. The I character tells the group that one of their members is missing, and they deny this, which creates an intriguing discrepancy.

13:57 · jump to transcript →

Will I Be A

It's interesting, there's a couple of movies that were saved because the effects props didn't work very well. And one was Alien. In the movie Alien, if you had the camera on that thing for more than a second it gave itself away. Ridley set it up So you saw it for less than a second. And it actually made the movie more... That first movie really helped establish a technique for this horror-action stuff. And Jaws was a nightmare for Steven. He couldn't get this big rubber shark to work. But the few frames that it did worked really wonderful. Whereas maybe, if it had worked better, he'd have overdone it. Left it on the screen too long, which is always the...

2:05:02 · jump to transcript →

Forgive me, I'm getting excited watching my stuff all over again. Actually, that was a cut we made. We actually had the camera move up like this in one shot, but pacing, we had to do certain cutting. Nathan, come on, what are you doing? But I think Tori, or Jennifer, looks adorable, and I don't know, she was so cute and really did have a presence on the set and sort of a charisma, I'm sure, gave you...

31:11 · jump to transcript →

...on Bronson whilst he's waiting and prepping for Clowns in Alabama to arrive. Which is brilliant. It's very, very funny. It just, when my final cut, it felt a little bit too long. So that's why I took it out. But if you've got the DVD, you can see it. The scene in the elevator, I think, is also... ...one of the great scenes in the movie. And really the tone of the scene...

1:34:44 · jump to transcript →

wasn't but there are some things like the mary ellen trainer and stewart penkin or peter jason or there's a geode room later um where i feel like did they have to cut some things you know um that just couldn't you know just be too long well it's a nice tight you know hour and 45 minutes or so when you think about a lot of movies like this tend to have this kind of bloated two and a half hour running time that's one of the things i like about this is it's nice and you know

1:00:09 · jump to transcript →

To cauterize it? No. I'm not messing up my booty for that. So this scene, which I wish that they had kept in full because there's several... Initially, when the studio recut the film, they cut it into an absolute disaster. And they were particularly... This is too long, this is too long. And they cut out some of your best material. But they left it so that the...

53:51 · jump to transcript →

My Question Initially To Jean-pierre Was

It was a bit longer, this scene. - We had an additional hole. Exactly, an additional hole. You can see something strange on the hole, because... You can see something strange, because he's grabbed by the feet by the alien through a hole which doesn't exist here. He had to walk for an additional 10m or something to get there. It was too long. That was one of the remarks we had from the first test screening. They made, if I remember, something like 100 remarks. I remember, sometimes we were defiant, but we were pretty upset. And sometimes we said "They're right." And sometimes we said "They're right." We were very upset at first, but looking at the questions which were asked, we realized that, each time, it was somewhere where... we thought it could go like that. In the time we had for doing it, we thought it was OK. As we could have more time, that was... Most of the notes, we found an answer. We never really followed the propositions we had, but we found the creative answer to the question asked. I think that was what the studio was waiting for us to do. But it was a good lesson for me and for us. Since that time, for each film I'm cutting I'm organizing previews, which is not in the French tradition. For Amélie we did some test screenings. In fact, I copy the answer from Hollywood, but the big difference is: I have the final cut, I can choose. The difference is on the use you do from the answers. Exactly. But we don't have to complain. - I love this idea. This is a simple shot that was hard. That head was long and heavy, and trying to keep it smooth and even and not drag across Michael's face, and make it all the way up to that opening in the chest. You always said that this cut, the final cut, was your cut. We did it with the production notes and... If the studio would ask me to make a director's cut, I would say "That's mine." Yeah, that would be a problem, because we're very happy with what we have.

48:31 · jump to transcript →

You know, it has the feel of reality to it, as though if you were in one, that's what it would look like. The abruptness and the, I always think that violence, they always tend to, you know, the fights now, because they don't know what to do with it, they always string them out too long. All I ever wanted was to measure up to my father. Now's your chance.

1:59:57 · jump to transcript →

Taylor Hackford

And Mary Ann, who's innocent, just like she was in the beginning... ...she's right alongside. What I wanted to do at the end of this film, and that's why at this point... ...you see Neal Jones morph into Al Pacino... ...you realize you can't beat the devil every time. You might win one battle, but he's back there the next morning. I would not leave this film with you having a happy ending. I did that with Officer and a Gentleman. I want to basically say: Every single day of your life you can't get smug... ...and you have to confront morality. I think we all do. And that's why this is a moral tale. I'm not deeply religious and I don't think of this as a religious film... ...but I do think that it is a film of somebody who still feels... ...a certain idealism, and a realization that we have responsibilities in our life. And I think that all the people that worked on the film worked on it... ...in a fairly righteous way. You know, Andrew Neiderman wrote a novel at the beginning. Four writers contributed to the screenplay. And I want to mention the people I haven't mentioned. There's Mark Warner... ...who is my collaborator, my editor, fabulous collaborator through... ...this process. You can feel the pace of this film. Everybody put themselves into something here. I also want to give credit to Per Hallberg, who was the sound designer. All the way through this I think there are subtle effects in addition to the score... ...that really give you the feeling that there is something else going on. There are a lot of artists that worked on this film, and when you go through... ...the process of collaboration, you have a vision as a film maker... ...and you want to get that vision on the screen. But you can't do it alone. I know it's trite to say this, but you utilize... ...and when someone has a great idea, you grab it. I encourage that, and I worked with a wonderful group of collaborators... ...on this film, and I'm very proud of it. After having gone and talked for two hours here, almost nonstop... ...this must be a lot of dribble. I apologize if, in fact, it's gone on... ...ad nauseam, but, again, we had an opportunity to make a film. I appreciate Warner Bros. was very tough to work for. We had a lot of disagreements, but they did allow me to make a film... ...and, they did, ultimately, give me final cut of the film... ...so that I was able to make the film I wanted. No excuses. I'm very proud of it. I hope you enjoyed it. Subtitles conformed by SOFTITLER

2:17:38 · jump to transcript →

Peter Hyams

A gift from your daughter? Hm? Amy? Don't stay in there too long, you'll turn into a prune. Emily. Come on, darling, it's time to get out. For this flashback, the walls were painted lighter.

1:10:29 · jump to transcript →

to actors or stuntmen to bang the, to get the rhythm right. Right, so there's no real definition to it. And unless you're training for eight, ten years, it doesn't look like anything. Right. It's very difficult if you want to get it right. And it's elastic. It's hard. Mr. Yuen Ho-Ping told me he never, of his career, like 30, 40 years, he never really done sword. It's hard.

12:56 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

Too slow, ladies. Too slow. Come on. That's it. Count it down. The timing needs to be exact. Also, the sets were so big that we would get our own weather systems within them. So late in the afternoon, sometimes we had clouds of mist gathering in the ceilings and...

48:50 · jump to transcript →

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland

These scenes are always a nightmare for when you film them. Dinner party scenes, because it's all about left to right, right to left. Who's he looking at when he's looking that way? And you end up, basically, the truth is, no matter who you are, you end up going round the table, shooting everybody, and you double up sometimes because you want to make sure the editor's got enough in editing where the editor can control the pace of the scene and shape it a bit, you know? But it's basically...

1:14:58 · jump to transcript →

Commentary With Kathryn Bigelow And Jeff Cronenweth

create a kind of acceleration in the pace, then you have this kind of understanding of our grasp on the physical reality in which these men are inhabiting. And I think it helps a lot in your kind of innate understanding of what they're going through. I mean, we expected an audience to understand

1:48:47 · jump to transcript →

That was a much longer scene too. I thought that was a good scene. In its original form. I mean, I think it's still a good scene. You mean it's run now? No, no, no, I don't mean that. I mean, you know, we had to cut it because it was way too long. But I think it worked, if it were just a short movie. Yeah, exactly. No, it's what I thought when we projected the scene. It was really totally captivating. It's just when you put the whole movie together, you have to find somewhere to cut that. Yeah.

49:03 · jump to transcript →

but I buy it and I know it's fake. One of the few scenes we cut out of the film was Yuri and Ava's wedding. It was supposed to follow this scene. It was shot at the same synagogue where Yuri meets his first gun-running contact. But the wedding scene sort of slowed the pace of the film, even though it has a funny moment.

31:36 · jump to transcript →

It threw us forward. The thing is that Ving, of course, couldn't be driving doing that. That was a stunt driver driving. And as soon as the camera went away from the car, Ving ran in. He was off camera. God, what is that? You can't hear that? What's wrong with her? Now, Carrie really set the pace for me later when I have that in my head... ...because I basically just did her version.

21:39 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence and Akiva Goldsman

This was fun. And we actually did this in really long takes. So we pretty much would shoot everything from them coming through the crowd and down and out here and up to the helicopter and into the helicopter in one, which was kind of fun that we set them up as big masters and let everything run. And obviously it goes without saying, so I'll say it anyway. The movie alternates between really intimate and really giant, which is a fun rhythm. And this was...

42:12 · jump to transcript →

But this struck me when the first time I saw the finished movie as a very brave shot to do, to include this, this very, very, very long shot of his face crying. Yeah, it's too long. But on purpose, too long. It's a way to start again, to give us a blank page for a short time, isn't it?

1:40:46 · jump to transcript →

Patrick Tatopoulos

This was all a... A restructure edit as well. You know, you're going through it... ...I do believe you make your movie three times. And you get everything in and you put it together... ...as the script has laid out... ...and just sometimes, just pacing-wise... ...It doesn't work all together. This we flopped around quite a bit. Yeah. - And.... I think just to cut up... Remember we spent all the time in the forest. We never cut back to any of Viktor and all these things... ...and the conversation between Raze and Lucian... ...and then him gearing up. lt went straight from just him talking to Raze... ...and then the swords going in and it just felt awkward.

57:31 · jump to transcript →

It was a pain in the ass because it's literally sitting on my shoulder, sort of, and it's tied to my body very tightly, and I have to have my head kind of crooked to the side a little bit so that it's as centered as possible. And there's a monitor that's kind of swung out in front of me so that I can see what I'm shooting, but it was really uncomfortable. Well, that camera weighs like 25 pounds. That's my brother's video game. It's called Rhythm Destruction. The character, we wanted to imply that...

11:04 · jump to transcript →

But they were all miles too long and contradictory and again took us further and further away from Amy. And so we ended up being quite simple, really, and reducing it. Because actually Nick Szymanski had got married this weekend and we had footage of his wedding, that at one stage was in this sequence, of him making a speech on his wedding day, having just found out. So...

1:56:03 · jump to transcript →

Joss Whedon

So this is where the movie kind of unabashedly turns into Rio Bravo. Little bit of Zulu, Dawn of the Dead. It doesn't matter. If you've read the comic books, there are very famous panels by George Pérez of just a sea of Ultrons attacking the Avengers, and that, to me, was what I wanted to evoke. I also think that the work of Bryan Hitch, who did the Ultimates, which is really in many ways the father of the MCU, particularly the Avengers, that style of very muscular action, is going on here. But most importantly, what's going on here is not a sort of laid out, literal fight. The detail work in the backgrounds of shields and arrows, and the idea of all the teamwork and all of the things that are going on. What specifically is going on is much less important to me in this than the idea of this fight, than the feeling of it. Rather than set up specific stakes beyond "We must protect this" and "Here they all come," what I wanted to do was just show the feeling of an Avenger. It's the closest I feel like I've ever come to panel art and, to be specific, Thor there has ripped out someone's spine and head and is hitting other people with his head, which means that this movie is, at least on one level, awesome. I feel about the sequence that there are more missed opportunities, that I should have spent months more fine-tuning it, but I also feel that it is as beautiful as anything I've ever put on film. I feel this combination of despair and extraordinary elation when I watch it, I just want... Again, I want to make sure I've earned it, and I want to spend even more time watching Thor hit people with somebody's head. The rhythm of it was done very musically. That big hero theme is another piece by Danny Elfman, and among the most important, if not the most important, in the film. And it came in somewhat late in the process, but then Jeff Ford re-tweaked everything to fit its rhythm. Its rhythms were very close to what we had been using, but then, uh, we had to play to it.

1:55:05 · jump to transcript →

We did not have Bobby Digital for too long. He was only there for what, three days? -/ think four, including the rehearsal. Yeah, this is a lot of work to do, but, you know, he's done action before, many times. Directed it, starred in. Of course, you know, he knows... He's definitely seen more action movies than I have. Yeah. - Which is rare. It's hard to find. - Yeah.

1:18:06 · jump to transcript →

Tim Burton

that felt sort of right. So it wasn't just deadhead slight undulating quality to it. It's just so that there's a weird kind of a hypnotic rhythm to the whole thing. So it's like with costumes, sets, cinematography, we discussed all of this in terms of creating what it ultimately is. You are no more my king, but with the blessing of the angels of undying love.

1:05:14 · jump to transcript →

Nia DaCosta

Take it. Pick it up! Too slow, pal. We had to re-record dear Connor's dialog a couple of times because of his Glaswegian accent, which I, you know, understand just enough. But I think for the average American audience, they were a bit confused. Shit! It was really fun to do that stab. I really like special effects, especially when they have to do with, like, cuts or blood or gore, I think it's really fun. And so this is... And I wanted also much of the blood to be practical. I really hate VFX blood 'cause it looks so fake. And so in this scene, we have mostly real blood, but then VFX to either clean up or to match certain things. But everything we do is like a rig. So when you see the blood spraying out, it's always or almost always real... well, not real blood, but like real red fluid coming out of a pump. And then right off-screen, there's, like, SFX artists, like, pumping away at this can full of, you know, fake blood. Sir.

4:10 · jump to transcript →