Production design

Hi, this is Jim Brooks. And this is Richard Marks. We're sort of dedicating this to Polly Platt, who was, is, you know, just one of the trailblazing women in film, associated, just Google her, with more great films than you can imagine. And she was a producer and also had a role to play because she was, in her past, she was a preeminent production designer.

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I mean, that is what everybody hopes for. It's always this thing you say that, you know, I think the big thing is, you know, two actors are going to the set that day, each with an idea of how the scene should work. The director is going there with an idea of how the scene should work. The great day for all of them is when something happens that nobody anticipated. I mean, that's what movies are. I love that there's a little mistake he makes here, which is...

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when he expresses opinion like that. And now, of course, it's commonplace. The latest message seems to indicate that the Libyan pilot was acting on his own without authority from anyone else. In other words, I think we're all okay. Okay, Tom, wrap it up. Who the hell cares what you think? Coming up, you'll see Holly Hunter, whose nose... Because of the set, she wasn't able to look towards anybody. Her nose ends up two inches...

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And that's important to future writers? It is. Fluker dialogue? Know your Fluker. How many pages of Fluker dialogue is in a good script? Most of it. That's right, we have the whole glossary of terms. I know. Well, we might talk about some of those. Terms, rules, well, nothing worked. And here comes the joke from the set-up. This actually happened to our rabbi. Was it based on that story or did it happen after the fact? He was with the mayor guarding the queen. Life imitating art.

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And hopefully we'll remember some of that and talk about it. We always shoot an elaborate ending to each movie that never makes it. No, that's always rejected. And you never know that it's not going to make it? You never get a sense of it? We always hope for the best and we hope no one will notice, but... It was almost midnight when I got to my door. I just wanted a glass of vodka... Pretty good structure. You talking about the set or...? Do you still see stuff you want to change?

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Correct. Was there any kind of sexual tension on the set between any of the actors? No, but between David and myself, there were sparks. I understand. Good thing we're married now. This shirt looks familiar. It's yours. I didn't want to get stained or wrinkled. At least, not yet. Ooh. Do you mind if I slip into something? Was this all at Raleigh? You mean where we shot this? I believe it was.

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You just have to feel it. You're just there on the set. You know, that's not working. It's got to be like this. You're doing that too self-consciously. You've got to do that straighter. The humor comes from the fact that you don't understand you're being funny. It's all inspired by the screenplay, definitely. It's inspired by the screenplay, but then I think what the director does is he has to hold on to it and keep it from falling off. Of course, the movies that are always the

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planes had to be shot in two parts. One where we actually had Forrest or Tom Hanks running carrying Michael T. And then we cleared everybody out of the set and set off these explosions here on this island in South Carolina. And then blended the two parts of the shot together to look like he was actually running through the scene with the real explosions. And isn't there a rig also helping him carry Bubba?

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My ultimate vision for everything is ultimately compromised. And I think that that's what you have to do as a filmmaker. You have to just turn it over. You have to give up. Because in the morning, you're going to the set, and you've got this long list of 20 setups to do this sequence really great and get all the coverage you need and have everything you need. And then by lunch, you haven't gotten one single shot yet. And you just start crossing them all off. And at the end of the day, you've been able to scramble and get four setups.

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for any sort of comparison. Or thank you for the compliment. Oh, please. This is an insult. But Jeffrey was so funny in this scene, putting the hand against his head. Did a great job. And it's a good thing that most people don't know straight off the bat that he's really Juliet's father in real life. Yes. No, nobody knows that. Every time I tell people that, they're surprised to hear it. Actually, Juliet was surprised to hear it. We had to do a blood test on the set.

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I offer my humblest apologies to you guys. And Francesca eating the shrimp. Oh, Kristen Leeman is a vegetarian. Oh really? How much did you pay her? Kristen Leeman's a vegetarian and she read the script and never said anything. And we got to the set that day and I could see her having some kind of problem. I said, are you okay? And she said,

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But as for costumes and cinematography and production design, it was always about minimizing, just being as real as humanly possible. I think I was the only one in the film allowed to break that rule. Yes, and in the beginning you were not. It was only when we realized that something had to break in order to save the film

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And this was the Mexican embassy in Berlin. She disappeared two months ago. Help me, please, miss. She disappeared two months ago. And this is actually a set. Part of it we did film on an actual location in Berlin. And I think it's seamless, the way that it moves from the actual location to the set. Mm-hmm.

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I had a family once. I had a life. Now all I have is a mission. Great production designer, Andrew McAlpine. Yes. Did a really incredible job.

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He's a New Zealand production designer who did such amazing films as The Piano. And we did have a limited budget, and I don't think that you would guess that, given what he was able to do. And also, I think it's interesting that Stuart Dreiberg, who was our director of photography, and Andrew had worked together before. They're both from New Zealand.

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Please prepare for gravity reversal. You know, once they actually turn around, which is happening now, this whole thing turns. Now, we didn't turn the set, actually. We just turned those big ribs that you see moving right now. Those are the only things that moved. The actors stayed in the same place. So just to give the illusion that it's moving, we set our camera on a rotator that the camera...

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And that's one of the reasons, too. Tell me to ask for Mac. It's right inside. Thanks. This was the first scene we actually shot was this set. First actual moment that we shot was that fight that Colin does, because we had to kind of build this massive, like, truss and camera system within the set.

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that we had to kind of tear apart. So we started with that fight, and then we tore that down, and then we were able to patch up and build the rest of the set. Welcome. Hey. You're a friend of Merrick's? Yes. Yeah, we, uh, we work together. Is that it? And John Cho was really on board with letting me dye his hair. It feels like real life.

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David Kalat

Grant, an A-list star of light comedy and amiable action films whose popularity would keep him a top marquee name for many decades. In contrast to Kochi's insecurity, Takarada swaggered onto the set and introduced himself as the star. The grizzled crew chuckled, Godzilla's the star. And since the monster is the star of the show, to talk about the cast, we really need to talk about the special effects director, Aiji Tsuburaya.

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David Kalat

But these preoccupations didn't just pop into place on the set of Godzilla. Honda had been ruminating on Japan's post-war zeitgeist for some time. When he served as Kurosawa's assistant director on Stray Dog, Kurosawa tasked Honda with directing the sequence in which the detective, played by Toshiro Mifune, takes his first walk on the wild side, exploring the criminal underbelly of the city, an extended, wordless sequence that stands out as one of the more memorable set pieces in that film.

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David Kalat

It was, in fact, the very first scene shot by the special effects crew. It was a pretty inauspicious beginning. As they were dressing the set in preparation for the shoot, one of the crew members broke through the floor of the set by accident and fell onto the miniature diet building, which had been pre-stressed to break on cue. Well, sure enough, it shattered. They spent hours putting it back together again and restoring the set. Finally ready to proceed, Nakajima put on the Godzilla suit and took his position, only to crash through the floor himself.

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On the set, there'd been chatter about tensions running high between Eastwood and his director, Ted Post, who, as mentioned, had directed Eastwood only five years before on Hang Him High. But those five years, as we've seen, have done a lot for Eastwood's reputation and for his view of himself as the most qualified man on almost any given set.

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On the set, to a reporter visiting, Post said, he hasn't changed since I first knew him, he being Eastwood. He was just the same in Rawhide days, always supplying imaginative ideas. I'm not no tour director. I'm interested and happy working with someone who collaborates and contributes. But, privately, Post would tell another story.

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He figures he can go right in and sail through these things. Cimino, who remained ever after extremely grateful to Eastwood for the opportunity to direct his first picture, remembers a very amiable relationship on the set. He remembers asking Eastwood for feedback

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

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And Sinatra phoning every day. Yeah, did Sinatra... - Phone Ava every day? Did he? - Yeah. Heavens to Murgatroyd. There's the lovely Jonathan Adams who was our original narrator. Brilliant. Yes. - Plays Dr. Scott in this movie. And Brian Thomson used to put in hidden detail in those things, so there would be stuff inside that file. There might have even been stuff in those files behind him there. In that it was relative, but nobody was ever going to see. No. Well, to me, Brian Thomson's set was astonishing. It was unbelievable, and I've just been to see he King and /... Mm-hmm. - ...and the set he's just done for that. I adored it. - Yes, good, is it? Mm-hmm. Pity about the... - Sumptuous. Nah, nah, nah. - What? I didn't say anything. Nothing. You didn't say a thing. - Never heard a dicky bird there. Yeah. What a charming person. He'll be remembered in my will, actually.

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Weird Fantasy, I think, is the title of that particular magazine. Ah. Of course, all his stuff was shot in a day. Because the marvelous thing about the dining room scene, that I read about in a magazine... I didn't realize why, which we will see when we come to it. I'll talk about the set of the dining room scene. Okay, I'll bear that in mind. - All right, thank you. I'll just write that down. - Write that down. No, I'll remember. Is that what I think it is, is you just rolled up over there, skinned up over there? Sorry? I never really liked the way you took so much pleasure in looking at that. What? - Your voyeuristic sense. Oh. You see that... Making those noises and things, I got rather embarrassed. Oh, really? - Yes. Do you see that thing around the television screen? I still have that. - Where? It's in my shed. I've got it in my shed. In your shed? It's in my wee shed. And what do you do with it? Well, it's at the back of the house. The kids have actually shown interest in it. - I see! Linus wants it. My son would like it. You know, and actually Joshua... - What, with all the thingies? With all the pulls and handles? Just-just the square that goes around the television screen and the handle on it, yeah. - All right. It's lost a couple of its rivets... Hmm. - ...aS one does over the years.

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Except for this one thing. Fox didn't know how to drive. No, that's right. He couldn't drive a car, and he showed up on the set and took off and drove it right into a bridge. He almost showed up at the gas station. He hit a gas pump. Well, subsequently, me and...

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It wasn't near as traumatic as when the Malibu got stolen. That was bad. We'll get to that, won't we? Well, this is that car. It is. Because when we started shooting, we only had one of these Chevy Malibus. Yes, and I kept saying, don't rent the picture car. Buy them. Let's buy three. Yeah, but we only ended up getting one. And the Teamsters suggested to me that I should, since I didn't have a car, I should drive that car to the set every day. And this went on for about a day and a half, and then the car vanished.

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who, by the way, when I met them on the set, they were totally disinterested in me. I said, hi, I'm Xander. I play Kevin the Nerd. And they said, so? But I later on ended up joining the band and playing with them for about 12 years. There's Jennifer Bogleman. You're still in the Cycle Jacks, aren't you? Well, yeah, you could say so. You know, we keep breaking up and having reunions, and now we're all kind of getting on in years, so...

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of horses that they owned. Cubby was a great gambler. He loved it, he loved Shemmy. But we played, every day we played backgammon on the sets. Cubby Proccoli was married to Dana, and their daughter, Barbara, is now producing the Bond films.

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

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When we were shooting the Sicilian cross, we had a little problem with controlling traffic until we had a little chat with the chief of police who happened to be Italian. And then all of a sudden we had a lot of motorcycle policemen who were all in Italian. They said, come on the set. And the great thing for us shooting in San Francisco

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Macaulay Culkin

Hey, that's you. - That's me. So this was, uh-- I guess we... We could start about... Talking about the beginning of how this whole movie came about, really. I was in dire straits at the time, in terms of my career. I had just come off of a complete disaster, a big bomb. I didn't know if I was gonna direct again. I thought I'd have to go back to writing. So I was in Chicago staying at my in-laws' house... ...and my first daughter was just born... ...and John Hughes sent me, out of the kindness of his heart, two scripts. One was called Reach the Rock and the other was called Home Alone. One of them, it was rumored... I think it was this one. was written over a weekend... ...which some critics would probably jump on the bandwagon... ...and say, "Well, we always knew that." - Exactly. Ha, ha. So I read Home Alone and immediately responded to it. I thought it was just a great, great piece of material. And it talked about some of the things that I was interested in making a film about. Now, we had a meeting, I remember, in New York. I just-- It was-- You and my father were talking most of the time... ...and I was just imitating everything you were doing. Everything I was doing. - Yeah. You'd drink your water, I drank my water. Like that. I think I did that... I think I way overdid it. I think I just kept doing it the whole, like, hour. Well, you know, the interesting thing is we... Again, it was the kind of situation where we looked at hundreds of kids, again. And I was like-- Even though I didn't know if I'd ever direct a film again... ...I was like, "Well, you know, Macaulay was in Uncle Buck... ...and I don't wanna just cast him based on John Hughes producing the movie... ...because then it looks like I'm gonna give in to John Hughes and be a wimp." And I met all these... I met hundreds of kids. And when I met Macaulay, there was just no one else who came close... ...to what we needed for this film. I mean, really, in terms of an actor... ...a Child actor, at the time, you were the most unique, original kid I'd ever seen. So that was pretty... - Oh, thank you. I mean, I totally agree with you, but thank you anyway. But it really is-- It's sort of, uh... Because it was the fact that you, um... The camera loved you, obviously. You see the shots from the film. The camera loves you, but at the same time, uh... ... you were relatable to every kid in America... ...because you weren't an idealized version of a kid. Kids are used to-- Accustomed to seeing this ridiculously... Shirley Temple, and the curls and the whole thing, you know. And there was just something enormously real about you. That, and I could remember my lines and I had a lot of energy. That is true. You did have a lot of energy. Almost a sad amount of energy. It was, I mean.... Still do too. Uh, now, do you remem--? Like, this particular scene. We're starting from the beginning of the film. And I'm curious, because there were so many scenes in the film... We were talking before we started. where we would shoot your coverage first and then send you home... ...or I'd still be in jail. - Child labor laws. Yes, I'm still well-versed in the child labor laws. So there are obviously certain elements of the film-- Like this. Do you remember this being shot? - No. Because you weren't here. - I remember we did the whole... There was a whole sequence with, you know... ...people coming up the stairs, down. - Right. He's there, and the pizza guy's there. I remember that, and just like, you know, trying to coordinate that whole thing. But, no, in general, there's a lot of stuff... There's a lot of holes in it... In my memory. And this guy went on to do something on Nickelodeon. My kids know him. Yeah, Pete & Pete. - Yeah, Pete & Pete. Is it still on the air? - No, no. It lasted a couple years. It was actually a really kind of neat show. Yeah, my kids loved that show. But what was interesting about the whole look of this film... I guess we could talk about it a little bit. You'll even notice... Some people will think, "Well, this wasn't intentional." But we intended the film to feel like Christmas sort of. I wanted the house to feel very warm. You look at... - Greens, reds. Macaulay's wearing greens, a green and red shirt. There's a green and red jumper sweater on this guy back here. The wallpaper is all... - That's very clever. All conveying a warmth of Christmas and something that, uh... It just was interesting to us. So it wouldn't be over-the-top, but it'd feel warm. I wanted the house to feel like a warm place. Joe Pesci. What do you remember about Joe Pesci? What is, like, your first--? My first-- Gosh, I don't even... I have-- I still show this. I have a scar on my finger. - Uh-huh. We'll get to that part near the end... - Ha-ha-ha. ...when, you Know, he says, you know: - Okay. "I'm gonna bite each one of your fingers off, one at a time." During rehearsal, he actually bit my finger a little harder than I think he thought. I still have a little scar on my finger. It's my little Joe Pesci tooth mark. I'm telling you something, I believe... And I know Joe would probably get a little upset with me about this... ...but there was a little professional jealousy from a lot of the actors on set... ...because you were the star. There's this little kid who was the star, who we were all paying attention to... ...who was carrying the film. And there was a lot of passive-aggressive stuff going on. And I don't think Joe meant to bite through your finger... But, heck, you know, you never know. He was not particularly happy during the course of making this film. And I don't-- I think he would probably say the same thing. He had just come off of Goodfellas and Raging Bull, and he was... I don't know, did he win the Academy Award? He won for Goodfellas. His acceptance speech was, "Thanks," and that was it. Okay. Well, there you go, so, um.... And when he... I remember I was such a fan of his. Asking him to do the Goodfellas... The clown speech, you know. "Make me laugh," you know? "What do--? Am I funny to you like a clown?" And he would do that every day, and it was great. But at the same time, I could feel it from the actors. Because there's always a sense of rivalry between actors. There was this feeling of, you were the star of this movie, and that was un... That was not really common at the time. - Yeah, yeah. It created an interesting tension on the set, I have to say. Yeah, see, I never really felt that, but I was 9. Everyone around here knows he did it. It'll just be a matter of time... ...before he does it again. What's he doing? He walks up and down the streets every night... ... Salting the sidewalks. Maybe he's just trying to be nice. No way. See that garbage can full of salt? That's where he keeps his victims. The salt turns the bodies... ... Into mummies. Wow. - Mummies!

0:21 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

That's also the reason I got the part. I'm such a ham. You are such a ham. - I'm such a ham. But what's amazing is, at the time... ...I was only the father of an infant, really. My daughter... - It was Rory's age. They were both born same month. Yeah, and, uh.... So I was, uh.... I thought, "Well, he's-- This kid is really kind of over-the-top... ...In terms of the way he treats his family. He's kind of a brat." Little did I realize then, after four children later, that this is kind of par for the course. This is the way kids just treat their parents. John knew what he was talking about. - Oh, yeah. He had lived through it. John-- The meetings on this film... We would be in preproduction before we'd shoot... ... then I'd have to go to... John was a night owl, so I'd have to go to John with a... John Hughes' house from about 9 at night to 5 in the morning. I would get home and get in a half-hour's sleep and go back to the set. It was just insane, and he liked to work those hours, and we'd... That's how we basically worked on the script... ...and worked on the production design. It was literally a 24-hour-a-day job. Now, oddly enough, you know, which is gonna sound odd to some people... .all of this sort of imagery... ...Was inspired by David Lean's Great Expectations. So I was-- Obviously, we didn't fully get to that point... ...but some of the black-and-white photography in that film... ... really inspired this sequence for me.

11:55 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

Someone I got to work with, Maureen O'Hara... ...on a picture right after this... - Mm-hm? ...SO... - I did a day on that. Yeah. We cut your big scene with John Candy. You cut all my lines out. - Yeah. It was kind of like we were trying to duplicate Uncle Buck. Yeah, yeah. - I remember that, and it was just kind of... Felt like we had been there, in a sense. Um.... More people saw this picture, so you're Okay. Yeah, no, I'm.... Thanks, Chris. Now, this... - Ha-ha-ha. Thank you. We resorted to stock footage for any shots you'll see of airlines... ...coming up, shots of Paris. We had no money to go shoot those things. And this was a set that already existed... ... that we put back together so we could actually shoot. The, uh-- This is first-class when you could actually have real silverware on the plane. Yeah. - Yeah. Most of our sets, incidentally, were in a... A lot of them were in a high school outside of Chicago. We shot Uncle Buck there too. - New Trier High School. Yeah, yeah. - And, um.... Some of the sets-- I'm trying to remember where the house set was. We were in some warehouse, weren't we? Or was this New Trier as well? It was in the gymnasium. - Yeah. It was all in that school, the interiors. - Gymnasium. We also shot a lot at the house, at the real house. Oh, yeah. - The second one... ...[I think we spent half a day in the real house. Because they... The people who own the real house... ...wanted a little more money in the second one. Everybody wanted more in the second one, and rightly so. Me included.

18:20 · jump to transcript →

Paul M. Sammon

Then I had a three-man team, a guy named Mike Ripple, who was wonderful. He was the artist. I was the supervisor. And then we had another guy on set who would feed the things into the monitor's live time. Basically, we would dump all our computer graphics that we did there in the office, production often in Houston, onto a three-quarter cassette, run down to the set, throw it into the recorder, onto the monitor, and there you go.

17:07 · jump to transcript →

Paul M. Sammon

So he told me the day before this was going to shoot, we need mug shots of people. So I ran around the set, and I would literally grab who was ever there, throw them up against a wall, take a Polaroid on full facial, and then turn them on a profile, run that up, scan them in our incredibly primitive scanner, and then have Mike Ribble put a layer of...

44:40 · jump to transcript →

Paul M. Sammon

Frank Miller was rewriting the script on a daily basis. And by the way, there is a rumor that he was off the film. He was not. He was there. He was enthusiastic. He was right across from my office. I was right next to John Davison's office, right next to Kirsch's office, right next to Miller's office. Frank was literally writing every single day and running dialogue down and scenes down to the set. So this was a film that was written as it went along, which is never a good idea.

47:29 · jump to transcript →

is his own, but it's like, you can see some of the production design where you've got this kind of religious aspect, the guys are all religious as well, you have, you know, where their clothes, how their clothes are hung is a bit like monks as well, and they'd be getting all the big coats on and the hood, so you kind of, there is that sort of, the building blocks of what he'd wanted is kind of there in structure, but it's, it has become this, just a prison planet, which, you know, I'm not...

7:36 · jump to transcript →

But I mean, there's nothing wrong with the way it looks, is there? Clearly, the sets are absolutely fantastic. I didn't realise, again, until digging in research, that they are all sets. I figured that at least some of it must be some horrendous foundry in the north somewhere that they've found that's been abandoned since the... But no, it's all built. It shows you, though, like the first Alien, $8 million it cost. Also, we all know it was like four that doubled due to Ridley Scott's

31:03 · jump to transcript →

Fantastic storyboarding. Aliens, what, 16 million maybe? Yeah, something like that. So then it's gone from that to 50 million for Alien 3. And I don't know if that accounts for the reshoots. Well, 20 million of that they'd spent before they even started filming, didn't they? Because they'd spent 7 million on, according to the figures I've come across, they spent 7 million on sets for versions of the movie that were then abandoned. So the sets were just destroyed.

31:33 · jump to transcript →

Michael Mann

The most fascinating about this set was that we built it in a place called Sawyer's Cove, and everything you're seeing was real. It's not a set. We built the cabin out of felled logs, all the set dressing, antiques that had been purchased. In deciding to build it, it became both cost-efficient, practical, and aesthetically much more rewarding to just go ahead and build a real cabin. Even the crops...

4:32 · jump to transcript →

Michael Mann

and built the fort partially out of some of that lumber. So the fort was built as a real place on three sides, interior and exterior. All the work on built the set for something under a million dollars, they had the benefit of being real and practical. So when they enter through a sally port, as they're doing right here, into the interior, we really are walking into the interior of the real fort.

38:10 · jump to transcript →

Michael Mann

The canoes were built by Wolf Kroger. Wolf did a fantastic job building the fort and every other structure in this piece, as well as constructing the cave behind the waterfall. I mean, he was just a great, great production designer. Nothing is too intimidating for him. He'll take on anything and just relish the challenge. The detail he afforded me at the poltroons was quite amazing.

1:20:33 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

Now, you mentioned Hilda Stark before, your production designer. She does some really, truly amazing work in this movie, some really diverse set pieces, some very real, natural, lived-in stuff like the catacomb sequences and very arch-stylized sets like the James Bond set pieces you mentioned before. How did you come to work with Hilda on this, and what was she like? I love Hilda. She just had a wonderful portfolio, very inventive, very humble. She wasn't brassy or, you know, it's got to be this, it's got to be that, just really complicated.

41:44 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

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

42:13 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

Although it's funny, our sound mixer, Kirk Francis, you know, he's got his headset on all day, so he hears everything. And we had a lot of looky-loos. We had a lot of onlookers, and some of them were sort of inner-city folk, and they would say amusing things at the periphery of the set, and he would write them all down. And I think we actually had a crew T-shirt. I love this shot of Nico when it goes back to her. You know, looking at this again recently, I mean, she's good. Look at her.

55:50 · jump to transcript →

They're always brass films, and brass's films are set in his own time and place. But the production design here is very different, despite being, as we've said, this is kind of the leitmotif of this commentary. It is brass, but different. And in that sense, even the production design, it is brass, but also different. The person responsible for the...

38:49 · jump to transcript →

Set design is Carlo De Martino. For anybody wondering, nothing to do with director Alberto De Martino. De Martino is a very popular, very common surname in Italy. He had already worked as a production designer on the previous Frivolous Lola. Will continue working with Brass on Fallo and Mon Amour. So he's kind of

39:18 · jump to transcript →

the scenes are staged and the way the sets are designed. What do you think? Yeah, I would agree with that. And interestingly enough, for a film that involves London as part of its plot, it's curious it doesn't go for an English look at all. I mean, normally when you have something like that, you'd go for sort of like a colder kind of grayer look, which doesn't do at all. But yeah, again, this is just Tinto Brass Land where he's shooting it. This shot right here, by the way, looks much more classical brass as well, with that sort of rose-colored light pouring through the window. That's...

40:16 · jump to transcript →

That shot of Mary looking backwards was actually, I remember that night, that was Dominic on his knees in the mud with the scale doubles in front of him, wasn't it? Yeah. And then we're tilting up to see a matte painting of Bree. And the set that we built for Bree, these streets, is actually an old army base, Fort Dorset. It was a military barracks from World War II. And we just nailed all these facades right onto the side of the army barracks.

58:01 · jump to transcript →

which is basically like a big swimming pool that was outside in Wingate, which was right next to a railway line. If you hear the real sound that we recorded on the day, it's just full of trains rumbling past the set. In fact, I think people could look out of the window of the train and actually see what we were shooting. This little moment here was studio request from Mark Ordesky. Because he was worried about what the audience might think.

2:00:43 · jump to transcript →

Real fans of the book have loved that scene and not objected to it at all, which is great. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but this was actually shot on a massively hot summer's day. I mean, there were probably 40-degree temperatures, like over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And we were literally carrying Urukais off the set who had fainted and all that, because you can imagine these poor guys wearing all that rubber and those leather costumes and stuff in the...

3:04:41 · jump to transcript →

This opening shot looks like a production designer's fantasy, but it's inspired by an actual photograph by a photojournalist after a gun battle in Monrovia. There really was a carpet of bullets like this. I suppose it's obvious, but a military consultant pointed out to me that for every bullet that kills or wounds the enemy, thousands of rounds of ammunition are expended.

0:40 · jump to transcript →

Again, I didn't dress the rooftop. That old chair Yuri is sitting in was actually there. I gave the production designer the day off. This is the Berlin Arms Show, shot naturally in Cape Town. It's actually an air museum at Cape Town Airport.

12:07 · jump to transcript →

This Beirut set was brilliantly constructed by my production designer, Jean-Vincent Pouzos. He made it out of a demolished fertilizer plant at the back of the studio lot in Cape Town. And the way he put together these piles of M16s was also a stroke of genius. There's no back to the piles, so you could halve the number of guns you needed.

14:36 · jump to transcript →

James Mangold

Them beeves of yours, they wouldn't even fed a hungry dog. I tell you what, that should cover it. Watching TV this fall, I realized that the entire town of Bisbee that we shot on in New Mexico has become the set for the reality show Kid Nation, which is slightly alarming to watch all these feuding children.

33:15 · jump to transcript →

James Mangold

and the room that they're going to be staying in. And Andrew Menzies, the production designer, and I had many, many discussions about what this room was going to be like and how the view out the windows was going to work in relation to the layout of the town. One of my only regrets in this town was because we got hit with so much snow, it was impossible for me to shoot any kind of geographical shots of the landscape.

1:19:05 · jump to transcript →

James Mangold

The day I was shooting this sequence where the marshal walks out, I literally went downstairs and we were shooting their surrender, where they put down their guns, which is going to happen in a moment. And I watched them putting down their guns and stepping outside, and Faden Papamichael turned to me, he's the director of photography, and he said, don't you think this looks stupid? And I said, yeah, it does. They should kill him. And we decided there and then, on the set that day we shot it,

1:31:44 · jump to transcript →

slightly in order to allow this moment of spiritual conversion to land. The interior here we actually found in Paddington in London. It's in the crypt of a beautiful church which Eve Stewart, my brilliant production designer, adapted to be the bishop's lodgings. Here we fleetingly set up Jean Valjean's relationship to God at this point and his lack of connection.

8:30 · jump to transcript →

So Anne had her hair cut for real and she was very keen to do that I think because she wanted to go through some of the emotions of what it's like to lose your hair in that way and because she thought she could feed those into her performance and also you know both Hugh and Anne were always looking to make the film as real and ground as possible in terms of what she did with her characters. The set actually stank because we had

24:45 · jump to transcript →

an unbelievable amount of fish imported into the set, which then slowly rotted. So when you went onto the set, it really did feel real, and we left the heating off to keep that cold feeling, so it was pretty unpleasant. Join your sisters. Make money in your sleep. That's right, dearie. Show him what you've got. That's right, dearie. Let him have the love.

25:13 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

We'll fact-check ourselves on this. It was a very nice small, small island with one house on it. Anyway, the set is a combination of all those things and Naushon.

5:19 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

So it was very clear when Roman and I had finished this script that the crucial thing was going to be who plays Sam and who plays Suzy, our two main characters. And that's really-- There's no movie if they aren't great. Well, we got our casting director, Doug Aibel, on very, very early, and we spent, I want to say, six or eight months or something searching for them. And along the way, we picked up all our scouts. There were lots of people auditioning, and we'd say, "Well, this one's still not quite the right one for Sam, but this is a great one. This is a kid at this moment in his life who's gonna be very interesting." And so by the time we did find the two of them, which was quite late in the game, we had all the other kids too. Jared, I remember, in his audition, was just... It wasn't his audition, it was him that really was entertaining. And Kara, in her audition, she played this scene as if she was making it up completely herself and just seemed completely authentic. And they were great to work with. They were very invested in the movie. And sometimes when you work with very young people, they learn the script and they know it better than anybody on the set. And they know everybody's lines. And they brought some special kind of emotion that only they know that has to do with they're really that age. They're really like these people. They understand them in a way we can only try to recall. If the movie works for them, it works because of these guys. Yeah, I remember seeing the tests, and Jared just stood out. I remember thinking, you know, he had such a different energy than I expected in our lead role 'cause we had sort of described him with his corncob pipe and kind of a little bit of a JD, and he had just this other quality, but I couldn't totally see it at first. But then, of course, it just couldn't have been better. It was just so right for it. But it wasn't really written in the way that he portrayed it. At least my mind's eye didn't see someone like Jared, but he's so one of a kind, it's hard to even imagine that till you meet him.

26:35 · 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 →

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.

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By the way, there's my daughter, I should say. In the car. Ashley McQuaide, her big cameo. She's great. She's gonna go do good. She's very sought after in Hollywood. The one thing I can say is this. This crash coming up was a bit of a fuckup. The taxi was supposed to fly over the other car. SO we were disappointed... ...but I think that the shot still looks pretty bitchen. It looks fantastic. Your eye is drawn to the Lycan. Which is what it should.... - Could have been better. And here-- You know, Paul Haslinger did the music here. I love this, you know, how we changed into this new... ...Style in the music exactly when we get into close combat here. Paul, being an old hand... ...having done the score for Underworlds 7 and 3. He did an amazing job. - Amazing job. Yeah. - Yeah. Every-- All these Lycans are CG Lycans... ...but they mostly are.... There were guys dressed in blue with funny heads. So they look like really big... - Suits kind of looking like... This was a big moment. - Looks great. And India's face.... We really didn't do anything to it. She was able to scrinch up her face. - Yeah, she's a badass. Well, there's a bit of CG going on. We changed her eye shape and the color of her skin, obviously. But she was good. - This is an old trick, you know. The guy dry his fist across his mouth. I told Theo to do that. But it really always looks good, I think. It's the moment too, where Selene realizes... ...that this creature back there has... ls connected to her. - ls connected to her. She saw a level of power in there she hadn't imagined. Here's the Kris Holden-Ried introduction. Yeah. Here's where he comes in. Might have... And it's not even the last new character. In the script, this is the third time we see Kris... ...or Quint. - Quint. And here, we talked about that scene... In the apartment when she throws the guy out of the window. If you look at the monitor, there's actually a shot from... ...coming out of the club... ...which was Prey. So we used footage for that as well. lt was not a waste of time shooting there. Very expensive stills. - Those two days... ...that we spent shooting there. - That town is all CG, and then we.... Somebody gave us that in the last... There were so many people working so hard... ...for no money for this one. I love it. - Yep. How did you find me? Now we have an actual conversation. An actual dramatic scene. Yeah. - The first of the entire film. There's not a lot of talking. - Yeah. I think Michael Babcock, who did the sound design... Which is so beautiful, I almost cry when I think about it. When we heard about... "What did you do, Michael?" "I did Inception and Dark Knight." We're like, "Okay, good." And I think when he showed us the first reel... ...we had, like, no notes. lt was perfect. Anyway, he said... ... after we'd done this, "I really enjoyed working with this. ll even do a talkie with you guys." That's nice. - Yeah. I remember at the end of this scene, when we did India's side... ... that Kate went up to her and complimented her and said: "You did a really great job." - Yeah. And it was a.... It shows Kate's consideration... ...for other actors, and really the.... The person that Kate is. You know, because here's this young girl... ...who was clearly a little bit nervous acting... ... against a movie star, and an actress of Kate Beckinsale's quality. Yet Kate was very generous with her. The funniest thing-- Not funny, but extraordinary thing about India... .IS that she is like a very old soul in a young body. Oh, my God, yeah. She's 17 when we shot this movie. But she's incredibly mature. - Yeah. Incredibly. And sometimes when I talk to her, I feel very like a kid... ...and she's the old-- Yeah. Yeah. - She's the grownup. But she knew this character. And so many times, "No, let's do it like this." And she always stood her ground, saying, "No, she wouldn't do that." And I love being told that... ...because that means the actor knows. Are your fingers crossed? - No. No. No. Okay. All right. Okay. No, I like it when the actors know their characters, so they... Yeah. This is also our first day shooting. I loved shooting this scene. Oh, God. This scene. "Blight of nature." That's, you know, epic Underworld dialogue. It's one of those scenes that in 2D doesn't look great. In 3D, it looks spectacular. - Yeah. Why is it raining? Because it looks nice. Why is it thunderstorms? - Because it sounds nice. Theo James, stunt driver. - Yes. You can actually see that a bit. Yeah, and if you look at the van, I mean.... All the.... We wanted everything to be low-tech... ...as all the other movies. The low-tech is very important. That combined with the Vampire aesthetics that you see. The Celtic signs of Kate's corset... ... the weaponry and stuff like that. This area here is actually shot in that dam. In the actual hydroelectric dam. What's the name of that dam, Richard? I can't remember. Spencer Dam or something? - I don't know. It's outside... Up above Vancouver. - Up above Vancouver. Nobody shot there. Like, 20 years ago... ...someone shot there. I can't remember what film. It's been closed down, so.... We were the first to... - Part of the water supply. Amazing location. - Yeah. Absolutely beautiful. And brutal. - And remember how it--? Brutal as well? - Brutalism. But it also rained... ...torrentially before we shot. We thought we'd get two streams of water... ...and we got the whole megillah. lt was fantastic. This is one of the things I love about Underworld. These, you know.... The looks. And it feels... It makes me believe that this world exists. Now we're also back in... This is Underworld. We've been in brutalism. - Yeah. Now we're back in-- Oh, yeah. This is a wonderful set that Claude Pare designed. Our production designer. Wonderful production designer. Award-winning production designer, might I point out. And this, actually, was fun... ...ecause I was walking the streets and suddenly: Here in L.A. before we started shooting. I started talking to Kate and Len, and Len... And Kate says-- I don't know how she came up with it... ...but she says, "I know Russian." So I said, "We must get some Russian in, then." So.... Because I think it's so sexy. - Yeah. Of course that means Charles Dance... ...as to Know Russian too. Yes, and Theo James. That's Kate's mother, by the way. The Sony people, when they heard that, were excited. Because internationally, Russia is now a big territory. So.... At a certain point, they said, "Can you have more Russian in the movie?" This, again, being Charles Dance... ...a well-known British actor. Charles Dance is one of those fantastic old-school actors who... ...when you give him direction, he looks at you and he says: "Thank you, sir." Then he does exactly what you asked him to. He does exactly what you ask for... ...and It's such a pleasure to work with him. Listen to me. I start speaking British. And the actress here playing the doctor is... Her character's name is Olivia. Is Catlin Adams... ...who is Kate's.... Acting coach? - Occasionally. Kate recommended her. - Happy family. That's how Underworld is. - Yeah. Or SCars. I've never seen a child... We should have had more Swedish in the film. We have a little. Underworld 5, actually, I've heard that there's a big Swedish subplot. I had Kate say: Which all Swedes will understand, but she said it. It's very cute and.... So she, you know.... Because she's.... The musicality of it here. Her Russian is perfect and it... She speaks, I don't know, how many languages? Five languages. - A lot. Yeah. And she could just start speaking Swedish. That was insanely fun. I love this sequence... ...because it's so many things at the same time. I think it's terrifying, but I also think... ... It's, you know, touching, but also sexy. I think it's one of the most disturbing scenes in the movie though. Where you realize that this girl... ...who you thought was this innocent child... ...now has this voracious taste for blood... ...and has now gone to a different place. She is a creature of the night. - Yep. The blood on her face was great. You added that afterwards, James? - It was all CG, yeah. Good.

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We got so much mileage out of that set too. Yeah. - It just looks like it goes on forever. And most of all, it looks really real. Yeah. The texture-- The scenic painting and the texturing is first-rate. Claude, the production designer, said that he took great pride in detail. He said, "That's my middle name." And also in the wood too. The way they sandblasted the wood... ... to make it look ancient, it's just great. Yeah, I remember I talked to Gary, who was the art director. When they presented to Claude... ...Claude just... Like I said, they were working so hard with the detail... ...and Claude had been doing some other stuff, came back... ...and walked around, and then took Gary's head and kissed it. On the forehead. And he said, "Thank you. It's gorgeous." - Sounds like Claude, yeah. And here we are. - This is a fantastic scene. Yeah. There's a shot coming up that is just... ...beautiful, that Brad Martin, the second-unit director, shot. It's just... This oner. This is one of the things we.... This one. This one here. It's fantastic. There was no way we would have staged this shot as we did... -.../f it wasn't a 3D movie. - Yeah. Yeah. We wanted much more, actually, than we... That's all one shot. - Yeah. All with CG. It's... - That was a blend of CG and suits. Here, it's just CG. In the end of that scene, it was suits as well. Yeah, everything mixed. Like every trick we had In one shot. Here's suits and CG mixed. - That's a suit. Suit, suit. Background guy's CG. - Background guys are CG. That's a real one. Yeah. - If they're moving, they're CG. I remember at a certain point too... I remember at a certain point, for budget reasons, we had to cut... ...a lot of the CG shots of this sequence. You look at the sequence now and you can't imagine.... Well, Clint did give us more money. No. But I remember once we got the rule... James just said, "We can only have--" - There she goes. "We can only have 36 Uber shots in the movie." It's more. - Oh, yeah. There are 275 creature shots in this movie. Is that right? - The other thing is... ... for the audience, we keep using this word Uber because... It's not in the movie. - It's not referred to in the movie... ...but this larger than... This five-times-the-size Lycan. We sort of... - Nine foot tall. We... - We called it the Uber-Lycan. The inner circle called it the Uber-Lycan. He's not 9 foot tall. - Twelve feet tall. Fifteen feet tall or something. Theo, extremely... - Nine hundred pounds. Did all the stunts himself. The Necklace. - Yes, the Necklace. We give all these kind of moves aname. That was the Necklace. You threw that in, the head getting blown off. Had to happen. - Yeah. It's an Underworld movie. I love that when she bites him. - What? Where'd that come from? This one's great too. - Yeah. It's great. Oh, I remember... - The blood spray. We had to fight for that ax in the head, which I don't understand... ...because it's kind of given, I think. Always... - Was that a gibe? That was a gibe. No. And always put people in water. - Oh, this too. Yeah. Because they like it. - Yeah. Actors really like being cold and wet. No. It was freezing cold. Theo was extremely cool. Yeah. Not cold. Cool. - I really hate Theo, actually. I sincerely hate him for being gorgeous... ...and he played me the first two days, and I thought: "Oh, is he slow, this guy?" And he was so much smarter than me. And he was pulling my leg and just, you know, he was.... He's a perfect human being and so kind. So, you know.... I hear he's single. - Yeah. I hope he can't draw. He actually had a very nice... He has a very nice girlfriend. Even the sun has spots, I guess. Anyway, he's just one of those perfect human beings... ... that walk around there which makes you feel not perfect. Yeah. - The weaponry here... ... you saw that little glint there, or what do you call it? The: On her gun. I mean, the weaponry Is real important... ... for the Underworld movies. One of the things that we also love. I don't know how many hours or days we actually talked about what kind of... ...guns shall she have and when and where. It's an enormous amount of research. This was inspired, by the way, to shoot... To have the Uber-Lycan appear... ...and to do his first shots where you didn't see him... ...and then have a second reveal. We actually-- This... That came up because of the set. We didn't plan that. Then we saw the set, and I think... . James, it was your idea that we should have... This is the Uber-Lycan. And this is what we talked about. We really wanted to hurt Selene. We really wanted to, yeah. Although she hurt him, didn't she? Yeah. - That'll teach him. That's a setup for later on. You know, look, the fact of the matter is, when we shot this, we had... ...Kate or her stunt double in the foreground doing all the stunts. That's Kate there. - The Uber-Lycan... ...was placed in afterwards and.... - Yeah. Just brilliant. Just brilliant. - Yeah. Remember the giant to-scale Styrofoam gray Uber head? Which we all laughed at on the set. - No, I remember... Kate doesn't like shooting these kinds of things. She's like-- Because she feels like... You know, she does it perfectly, but it's, you know.... It's not her favorite thing to do. - No. It's hard. Because you look at the Styrofoam thing... ...and it's hard. - Yep. But she does it perfectly. - Yep. There's our dam. The Suede pose. - Yeah. This is beautiful in 3D. Yeah. He looks like Brett Anderson in Suede. Beautiful death. Death position. Yeah. Yeah. He died with style. - Like a dying dandy. One of my favorite Swedish paintings, The Dying Dandy. Yes. Wow, you really snuck that one in, didn't you?

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Kent Jones

On The Life Aquatic. - [Anderson] On The Life Aquatic. And we had-- And it was a very exciting-- I mean, you guys can comment on this, but we all had a lot of fun there. But the way it worked when we did that film was we shot at Cinecittà and we shot at sea, and then everyone went to their apartments and hotels, all sorts of different places all around Rome, and went to dinners and did things... And I found that that was not a... That was fun for a week, but then when it came to: "Are we getting our work done?" or "Are we able to be--?" I would prefer to be doing a movie where we live in it. Like, Jeff, for instance, you don't particularly leave the set. Jeff, I know you like to stay in the moment, in the scene, while it's happening, and--

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Wes Anderson

I was gonna say, both Jeff and Roman, you-- We-- It had an effect on how we made this movie, Grand Budapest Hotel, because, Jeff, you know, you and Willem both-- I saw that you would stay on the set and you were always watching what's going on. By the time we got to where we're gonna figure out what we're doing next, you already always know everything. You've seen anything that would be happening while other people might be off in a trailer. And on Life Aquatic, there were like 1 1 of them. And starting then, I thought: "I want everybody to stay on the set all the time now as much as we possibly can." And if there's a place to go, it needs to be within range that I can shout to it. If there's some chairs and a thing behind a screen or a greenroom or something, it can't be too far that we can't just shout to it. When we did Darjeeling Limited, as Roman was talking about, Roman in particular had some thoughts such as: "Let's not have... Let's have everyone do their makeup themselves, like a play. Everyone can be responsible for their makeup." In fact, we had then-- We wrote a script where there are different makeups. Owen Wilson's face has been damaged by a motorcycle accident. He's covered with bandages. We needed some makeup. In fact, we have a great makeup artist, Frances Hannon, who was with us. But nevertheless, it was part of our-- Of a new system where we say, "We're gonna keep everything very contained." And especially this thing where we started all living together when we do the movie, and we have-- Someone's gonna cook for us, and when we finish the shooting day, we're all gonna go to the same place. And at the end of the movie, everybody can go off where they would like to go again. But during the movie, let's just stay in this little bubble until we finish the thing. And I have to say, not only has that been wildly more efficient for us in so many different ways, but I find it to be a more fun way to make a movie.

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Jeff Goldblum

Michael Chapman, he gave me a copy of Das Kapital on the set of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I took it home to Pittsburgh. My dad, who was still alive then, went, "What's this? Why do you have this?!"

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