Props

And so this is really about the kind of the buildup of the military industrial complex. And in fact, coming up here, we're going to have Dr. McNamara, who is based on Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during Vietnam era. And ED-209 coming up here is based on kind of a Huey gunship idea, although obviously Phil Tippett and Craig Hayes, who designed it, actually made it work. This is still a big prop.

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So when it moves, it's a Phil Tippett miniature, but when it stands there, we just built it as a big robot that's... So from here on, it's Phil Tippett. Stop motion. Well, actually, Craig Hayes and Paul Lucchese built the big prop, too, so... But this is pre-CGI. It's real-deal stop-motion, guys, just like King Kong. In front of a rear projection screen, a stop-motion miniature.

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We shot VistaVision plates for the rear projection. And now you're back to the giant prop, isn't it, here? I always loved that piece of art direction that Bill Sandel, the production designer, I guess, put in there with that kind of crow sculpture behind him. I always thought that was a really neat thing. So, Paul, how did you get involved with this picture?

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Now, I really did like the way the set looks. That's cool. That's footage from the first movie. Like the names on the monitors, they're all names of people who worked on the crew. Len picked them. Notice that Nate Robinson, who did those shots, gave himself the absolute longest shot with his name on it. You'll see there's the one that's like... Well, I used to do that. I was a prop guy for quite a while, and so it was my job to...

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Never get squared. You always have to work out the budget thing. This way, a lot of conversation about how gory to go with this. I like the idea of the whole design behind this and having it inside the rib cage. You got to just show it to see it. Who made that piece? This? I don't remember. The prop guys were doing the middle piece. Because that looks great.

21:50 · jump to transcript →

this is and this is practical this is practical yeah this is actually with with a stunt player um being suspended by a crane that's actually attached to the back of this of the stake bed of the truck props out to my boy joel wist yeah the man yeah that was i was we we actually we use that rig quite a bit and it makes the sequence it really does joel did a fantastic job with that because the guy could just right right here flying right alongside the truck

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Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

These nuke containers are very funny. Actually, what they really were were 1980s versions of contact lens fluid holders. And they were converted by the prop department and then just filled with little plastic tubes filled with colored water. But they were actually off-the-shelf contact lens holders. That...

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Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

like a portable stereo, but it converted it into a nine millimeter automatic weapon, and it is a real weapon. That was not a prop. Okay, and now we have the fight, the obligatory fight, which incidentally, again, I find a little bit of fault with. I think the choreography of it is just a bit weak. Normally, you know, fight scenes are fight scenes, but I just, this one is a little...

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Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

And, of course, all of the machinery we're seeing here is, at that time, state-of-the-art. Now, this is a prop, and it's an interesting one because anyone who has seen aliens will remember the facehuggers that were in the glass containers. I can't help but to think that this was something that was influenced by that. However, this was done by Rob Oteen's crew.

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Oh, he's gonna die. You're gonna get it. I'm gonna suck the water out of you. These were some great props that we had designed and built that came both from Katherine and Simon Burton and Jamie and Teddy's imagination.

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and all of Jamie's design props. That little kangaroo. I'm like, that's a real bear. Ew. And you have to remember that when we made this, it was...

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There's a guy in Pennsylvania who bought all the props that were available. And he has like a museum of... He bought the flyer. He couldn't buy the tank because they stripped the tank down. But he bought the flyer. He bought basically all the props that weren't either stolen or Catherine doesn't have or Ari doesn't have or I don't have because I still have a few things. And he has this massive museum of...

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Ted Tally

And I'm Ted Tally, the screenwriter of this motion picture. Thanks for watching our DVD. I got a call from my agent who said Stacey Snider wanted to send me a script. Stacey called me directly. Stacey is the chairman of Universal for those of you who don't know. It said Red Dragon, and I said, "Red Dragon. Is this "the prequel to Silence of the Lambs?" I was familiar with the book but hadn't read it. At first, I was very insecure and said, "Am I like the 'Go-to' guy on sequels? "Why is she sending this to me? 'Cause no one can mess this one up?" And then, I saw Ted's name on it and said, "This is the guy who wrote Silence of the Lambs, "but didn't write Hannibal. "So, this must be special. "Why are they sending this to me? I'm not a dark guy. "I don't make dark movies. I do comedy." -/ think they sent it because you're cheap. - Exactly. So I read it, and I was completely blown away. Not to blow any smoke up anybody's butt in my presence, but the truth is the script was amazing. I called up Stacey and I said, "I want to do this." She said, "Now you get to meet Dino De Laurentiis." And I said, "Dino De Laurentiis "of Fellini fame?" - Scary thought! So I went to his house and first thing he says to me is, "Why do they like you? Who are you? "I never heard of you. What is Family Man, Rush Hour? I don't know these movies." I said, "Dino, I'm a talented guy. Trust me." And thank God, Ted had seen Family Man and Rush Hour, and his kids or someone in his family was a fan. Brett might not have been an obvious choice but Brett is an incredibly talented director and clearly ready to try something new that he'd never done before. He is a great fan of Hitchcock and of thrillers, and brings a tremendous energy and confidence to his work. I was such a big fan of Silence of the Lambs. You know what I was excited about? Most people asked, "Weren't you scared "of following in those footsteps?" First of all, I had three brilliant directors Michael Mann, Jonathan Demme, and Ridley Scott, who made three movies in the exact genre, but completely different. I was excited about it because, by watching those films, I knew what not to do or what I didn't want to do. I was able to decide on the type of movie that I wanted to make. And it helped me choose the tone of the movie. I realized I wanted to make a movie more like Silence of the Lambs. More Hitchcock-inspired. A movie that scared you by what you didn't see more than what you did see. I've read that the most important single decision you make in directing a movie is tone. - Absolutely. Because it's the direction of the film. It helps you with every choice that you make as far as the wardrobe, the production design, the music. The tone, to me, is really everything. Dante calls it, "The language of the film." We have to integrate what we're seeing now, Kristi Zea's set design with its dark, rich color in Dante's cinematography. The choice is even of the props. The integration of all of that, the wardrobe. It's sort of overlooked by people and it should be something that doesn't call attention to itself. But when all of those elements are integrated... Look at this moment here. You get a much more powerful movie if nothing sticks out. If everything is consistent in tone. Special Agent Graham. What an unexpected pleasure. I'm sorry to bother you again... If you see on the left-hand side over there, a little detail, I found this book of Sigmund Freud's office in, was it Vienna? That's where I kind of modeled Hannibal's office. I modeled the tchotchkes, the details.

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Ted Tally

I went to New York with Dino, and I was very nervous. This was Tony, Anthony Hopkins. The thing I did know and what I was confident about was the type of movie I wanted to make. Like I said, I went in there knowing the tone of the movie, my approach to the movie, how I wanted to not show any of the gore. I didn't want to make a horror film. I wanted to make a film that was psychological, emotional, and smart. That was what was on the page. And the only scene that Tony had a concern with when I sat with him was this scene right here. Tony was concerned that as originally written, his attack on Graham here was too graphic. By the way, it's an interpretation because 10 directors would direct a scene in 10 different ways and show various degrees of violence. It's about showing the details of the guts falling out of his stomach, or the blood, how much blood to show. And I chose to play it mostly on their faces. Once the attack happens... Here's my little homage to Silence. You see the... - I see the bug. You like that. So I chose to play the violence part of this scene on their faces. I love this book. This is an original. My prop guy, Brad, found this original book from France, Larousse... When I read it, I had no idea what the hell it was. It's the bible of cookbooks. - Yes, I learned that quickly. He found this real old French cookbook. There was a lot of dialogue about how do we sell his moment? It's really just a subliminal thing. It wasn't really supposed to be so pointed where it was like, "Oh, sweetbreads." I thought sweetbreads was brains but it's not. It's actually... Thyroid. -... thymus. I learned so much about anatomy on this film. If you work on a Lecter movie, you learn a lot about cooking. I thought Edward was fantastic. There is a tremendous intensity of performances in this movie. And really a dream cast as Brett already said. If you could have anybody in the world for these parts and be lucky enough to get them. It's pretty much what happened to us. Great actors want to play good characters. They want to play great characters and all of these characters, down to Freddy Lounds, and other smaller roles, were just written so well. They were interesting and dynamic. And these actors were interested in playing this. To convince these actors to do a third in the series, all that went out the window when they read the script. Certainly once they started working. There's our cold opening. I'm very proud of this title sequence because it was actually done two days before we had to lock picture. My editor, Mark Helfrich actually was the brainchild behind this because... You re-shot the journal here in a very interesting way. Initially, this was done in a much more straightforward way with the images very flat against the screen. Yes, a lot of times. Mark is kind of... Everybody on my team, from my AD to my production designer, are filmmakers. Mark is a filmmaker in his own right and he just understands the visuals and storytelling. I love how, you know... But this was written. - Yes, it was. But the way that the camera roams over these pages and when we go in very close and it gets grainy, the camera movement left to right, up and down, is all not scripted, of course. This is something I don't really have the patience for. Mark kind of took this book that he was fascinated by. I think he has a copy of it in his closet at home. He just knew every page, every frame and went with Dante and literally just shot. This is a wonderful opportunity. This kind of title sequence is sort of old-fashioned in a way. But it's a wonderful opportunity for a screenwriter to get information in quickly to cover a lot of ground between the arrest of Lecter and where we are when the movie is going to start. Covering a period of several years, you are doing that without any dialogue just by these images. It's a very useful shorthand. Danny did the same thing that Ted did with the script in this sequence that Mark did with the visuals in this sequence. Danny did the same thing with the music. I think the music here is so fantastic. It's very much like a Bernard Hermann score, which I knew was a big inspiration for Danny. Danny is a big fan of Bernard, and this was his chance. He's done darker scores, but they've had a kind of lightness, or comedic darkness to it. Danny did something here that kind of made people's skin crawl in the theater, like, "You're in for it. "If you're gonna sit through this movie, you'll experience some stuff. "Shit's gonna go down."

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Ted Tally

So that sequence, those two minutes of the movie, which could have been a very boring, dull sequence. I had a long conversation with Kristi Zea. It was wonderful. She called me up and said, "This book of Dolarhyde's. "What does it look like? What's in it? "How is the handwriting? What kind of photograph?" We had a long conversation which for a screenwriter... You don't often get a call from the production designer to talk about a prop. It was a wonderful opportunity to be part of the design of the movie in that little section. You've got a beautiful setup here, Will. This was actually in the Florida Keys. You know why I'm here? Was it Marathon? Yeah, I can guess. The location is meant to be Marathon, Florida. Dino wanted us to shoot in North Carolina because he had studios there and a house on the beach or Malibu because it's close to his house in Beverly Hills. But the truth is, I wanted to stay true. When I said I chose the tone, I'd really chosen the tone of the book, going back to the book. Everybody here was honoring the book. We really gave a lot of respect to Thomas' book. Tom Harris is a wonderful writer. When you're doing an adaptation like this, it's a great resource to everybody to be able to pick up the book, as you can go into more details than the screenplay. It's a help to both the production design and the actors, who can go back and find out details of motivation. It's helpful to everybody to have that bible to refer to. So when it said Marathon, Florida, I tried to stay true to that and actually go to the location in Marathon, Florida. It just felt like it was the tone and even the location, like Grandma's house in the same description of the rural area where it was, and the type of house it was. It was an old-age home once, which is really back-story, but Kristi incorporated that into the design. I was so happy that she and Ted really stayed true to the tone of the book visually as well when it described the locations. This was so much fun being down here, by the way. It was the end of the shoot, and we were just down there on the beach. This was probably the hardest scene I shot with these two guys. In what way? Because it's exposition? Anything with exposition... -/s tough. It's tough to make it sound like real conversation. But honestly, there's not a line in this movie that I'm not proud of. I mean I can't say there's a line... It was a tight script. We did cut a few lines and a few parts from scenes but Brett and I actually worked quite a bit on the script before the production started, and we had it pretty tight. And the shooting stayed quite faithful to the script. I have to say that every scene was hard for me because I'm used to scenes with not much dialogue. I, unfortunately, am a very talky screenwriter. So it was a clash of cultures. Coming from being a playwright, I guess. There is a lot of dialogue in this movie, I tell you. And it was not a single-spaced script. It's a long script, and I kept saying, "Make them talk faster. "Don't cut the thing, just make them talk faster." Ted's advice to me was, "Brett, when you're happy, "ask the actors for a take where they talk double speed." And I did that. Probably that's all the takes that Mark ended up using in the editor's room. He kept calling me, saying, "This movie will be four hours long "If you do not get them to speak faster." The thing you run into as a screenwriter, even with the best actors, is that you try to pace a scene to fit within an act structure and fit within the entire screenplay. But then actors wanna take very long, dramatic pauses. Actors want to look down and up, across the room, at each other, and finally say the line. - A lot of pausing. And that's what you're up against when trying to time out the length of the scene or act. I wanna say something about these actors. Once I got Edward Norton, I used Edward to get another actor. Once I got Ralph Fiennes, I used him, I got Emily Watson. - You parlayed them into each other. I said, "Philip Seymour Hoffman, I'm getting Mary-Louise Parker." I knew each one, who they were a fan of. I used them against each other to get them in the movie. I literally thought I'd be able to walk onto the set, and it would be the easiest movie I'd ever made because I had these brilliant actors. I could just say, "Action." I read one article or something about this movie that said this was the most distinguished cast that's been assembled in any movie in the last 20 years. But the truth is, it was probably the hardest movie I'd ever made because the smarter the actor, the more experience they have. It's a myth that these great actors don't need direction. They want direction more than any other actor. They want direction, but they have ideas of their own because in the end, it's up to them. They are the ones whose face is filling that whole screen. And they have to absolutely believe what they are doing, or they can't convince an audience of it. What I'm trying to say is, there was a lot of dialogue going on. A lot of intellectual discussions. And each of these actors are not only smart actors, but they're highly intelligent, all smarter than myself and... A lot of them have also directed or even written as well. They all had an opinion. And my job, I felt like it was my job to save the script. This was a script that worked to me. We had a table reading of it. It was fantastic. And Ted was

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Barry Sonnenfeld

Right, then! Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Again, Bo just designed, along with Doug Harlocker, the prop guy... ...and Cheryl, the set dresser, just a wonderful bunch of dumb things. As high-tech as a deneuralyzer was at headquarters... ... that's how low-tech this thing was.

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Barry Sonnenfeld

Notice the little flying-saucer motif stuff? That's Cheryl. That's her ideas. She's brilliant. She puts all the little props and stuff on the set. The tables, the lights. We gotta figure out where it goes. - I know where. No. Not yet. - MiB code 773 clearly says... I

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Barry Sonnenfeld

You'll discover why Jarra has this long coat in about 10 minutes. I'll give you whatever you want. We were running out of money and needed one more alien. On the set, I said to Doug Harlocker, the prop guy: "How hard would it be to make this trash can get pulled invisibly?" Which he did. There's a little wire we had removed... ...but basically, that became Gatbot.

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Well, apparently simple, I should have said, because here in a minute... Well, let's first just have a look at the props, all present and accounted for. Silly to have them in the purse if we're not going to take them out and display them every now and again. Quite a wide lens they're using there, isn't it? Not so flattering on the ladies. Well, this is a little bit better. Just off centre there. Oh, and here we...

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Seems to have entered a house that obviously doesn't belong to him. I'm thinking as I watch that this is not a man to be trusted, whether or not he has Slavic roots. The acting's so strong here, isn't it? The face, so strong. But this is evidently a man without a change of clothes. And once again we're being offered a display of all the props. The gun, which we've seen before. Always a smoking or

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It's our imagination. How strongly cued, though. I mean, how marvellously suggested. And under the fish, of course, the cigarette lighter, which the studio would have us believe is engraved Lauren, when in fact it says Todor. Now, sadly, no way to tell. And on this fact, the whole story hinges, as we shall come to see. So now we have a bit more fussing about with props. These, um...

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Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. Our friend Kevin at Cinesite. Steed up many a night trying to make the scene look like it wasn't shot on a soundstage. Oh, if you call that a kiss. Um, did I miss something? Props department doing a brilliant job. Are we going into battle? Lady, there's something out there. Something underneath that sand. Yes, well, I'm hoping to find a certain artifact. A book, actually.

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hole. So that's why we keep such good track of that key and the two books and all the other really important props. And then in post-production we realize the audience doesn't really care. Right, exactly. In post-production then we blow huge holes in the movie just to make it faster. So all those things that you think are story holes, those were all taken care of in the script and were all photographed but just unceremoniously ripped out of the picture.

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According to Benbridge scholars, the golden book of Amun-Ra is located inside the statue of Anubis. That's where we found the black book. Exactly. That looks like the old boys at Benbridge. It was funny, this prop, this big stone prop, it used to be a small stone tablet. We suddenly realized right a couple days before we got to this location, we said, well, if it was a little stone tablet, and you've got a thousand guys pounding on the door trying to get in, wouldn't they just lift it up and run out to their car? And so we quickly made it into a big, huge stone tablet so they couldn't pick it up and run with it. She had to translate it right here and now.

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Len Wiseman

There was discussion about adding a scene where... ...Kate's in front of a mirror with just a razor blade... -... just shaving her head. - Wow. The hair was becoming a problem. - That'd be cool. I think it'd be good, do the Sigourney Weaver... SO people can say you're ripping off Alien as well Matrix. That'd be great. - Brilliant. Do people say that? - Yeah. Oh, far too many, because it's a black suit. You know, what are we gonna put a vampire in, like, fuchsia? You know what? - Number two.... It'll all be pastels. Look, I warned her. I warned her, but she didn't listen. I should've told you sooner. - Told me what? Her human, Michael... ...he's not a human at all. He's Canadian. - I'm Canadian. What? Canadian? - No, not another Canadian! Jesus! - Get them out of the industry. Stunned. They'll kill you. That was the one I was terrified was gonna be in the preview. Was it ever in the preview? - The, "Who are you people?" Yeah. And it was. We knew it was. There's certain lines, when you're shooting, you know... ... they're gonna be used in the trailer. I Knew that when Kate was saying, "The war between Vampires and Lycans." That's right. And that was. - Yep. This looks complicated. This was a nightmare. - Walking with those things. Walking, there's guys on top that are.... The prop guys are trying to move that thing around on top to mimic him. He was so great. - He was so cool, man. Yeah, he was. - He was such a cool guy. Is. I guess he had the toughest makeup, right? He had six hours every morning. Leave us. But he was great. He was like the visiting rock star. He's so cool, man. We love you, Bill. - Bill, we love you. I wanted him to come to the premiere, but he didn't come. We wanted him to sleep over, and he wasn't interested. I was interested either. Werewolves. There we go, right in the trailer. I'm glad we did those flashes. It's always really difficult to have that scene where it's... "These are aliens," or "These are"-- - It's a tough scene. It's tough for the normal person. So you just kept that bewildered look... ...and I threw in some inserts there and really helped you out. Thanks, man. - You're welcome.

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Len Wiseman

Oh, and you weren't here for this whole... Were you very glad, because the other babe was there? Yeah. That helped take some of the pressure off... ...but the-- Well, actually, this whole costume, we had a "wardrobe flaw"... Her whole boob escaping. - ...aS Janet Jackson would say. Poor you. Poor baby. - I rushed in as soon as I heard. Yeah, you're really good like that. How have you done that? That's CG, right? That's CG, which I don't think you've even seen yet. We shot that practically, and it just looked horrendous. It looked like three blind mice kind of popping up. And this was all a reshoot that we did. - Oh, really? Yeah, this was all back in L.A. We had a good time. It was just blood and guts. That's me throwing the paint across the window. Oh, is that you? - Yeah. Can you do a bit, like, when my coat flaps around, you're flapping it? That's the prop guy. - Very hands on. Yeah. What were you thinking right here? - "Is it nearly lunchtime? Should I buff my bottom? Am I gonna worry about my camel toe?" Remember how many people were on camel-toe watch because of that suit? No, it became "CT." I would just yell out, "CT," and, "Okay!" There were four people who made it their mission. This is new. This is a new shot here that's just showing Speedman... ...dreaming about the Olsen twins. And so we had some flashes that were supposed to happen right there. This is in the original. Coming up, there's a section where Viktor takes out some of the implants... ...and you see him unhooking himself from that stuff... ... that we had cut out of the original. This isn't it, right? - Yeah, this is. These shots, though.... These, I did all those in post. None of those shots... We didn't take any of the lights down. lt was something we did as an afterthought... ...and just darkened it to make it look like all the lights went down. It actually worked okay. I was worried I wouldn't catch it. I didn't have my glasses on. I couldn't find the takes to put on the outtake reel, but... There weren't that many, because I'd been practising like crazy. Oh, it didn't show. - Oh, really? Look at that. Yeah, look at that. Look at that now. - I was so proud of that. lf someone throws something at me, I tend to duck and wince. The amount of windowpanes we had to replace in the background.

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Len Wiseman

So this is new as well. And I kind of abandoned this scene... ...early on, and I put it in now just to show that... ... he does unhook himself and gets out... ...and so it kind of makes a bit more sense. But.... He hasn't gone Hollywood. He doesn't have an assistant. That's why it's not in, right? Doesn't have somebody to help him out. I would've actually shot it a bit different. I had different little props at the....

1:18:03 · jump to transcript →

We're introducing the characters and we're also taking into account that people don't absorb the very important information. There's so much going on visually. There's so many things happening in the scene that if you're perceiving repetition, it's because you're way ahead on the bell curve. And here's another example of one of your wides, which hinges around an object so that you get like common geography, but it's always based around an important prop or object.

30:49 · jump to transcript →

But I love how these characters play. I love the air we left in this scene. And here's a move motivated by? By this prop in the foreground. It's motivated by a prop, but it's also motivated by a turn. Oh, a turn emotionally. She has just made a choice. Exactly. And these movies are obviously, these two chapters are about choice and acceptance. In that moment, she's made a choice and her life has changed. She's simply not aware of it. Yeah.

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Eric Jenderson's choice of the Zippo, that was his. So good. When they presented me with the possible props that could be a Geiger counter, he looked at it first and said, slip a Zippo in there. And without my knowing it, when I walked up to the table, of course, it's right where my eye went. It was a great choice on Eric's part. All of this stuff with being around... I will say that the amount of CCTV footage that you shot, like every single setup, they had four little tiny cameras filming.

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John Barry, who actually worked on Native Son and was part of the Mercury team, he had wonderful stories about working for Welles. He was someone who basically was holding up props when they were shooting that film for one of the stage plays.

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It's worth pointing out in terms of Wells' own biography that Wells himself was a musician and his mother was a musician who entertained other musicians. Yes, and he knew a lot about the Chicago Opera. In fact, I think his first theatrical appearance was as a baby in the Chicago Opera, a prop almost. My understanding is that he was quite talented as a musician, as a young man.

1:26:57 · jump to transcript →

Charlie, what time is it? 11.30. New York? This is a good instance of the way the film appears to be very elaborate and expensive and isn't really. Part of this is just a soundstage with a few key props, that wonderful fireplace. There's always a joke about it where Cain goes and stands in it. You know, our home is here, like that's home.

1:38:53 · jump to transcript →

It's in moments like this that Leone's masterful eye for detail and stage props comes to the fore. When Tuco asks for ammunition, Leone begins to tease us. He lets us imagine we know where this scene is headed. We don't, but that's all part of the fun, having Leone engage us in a bit of cat and mouse. Leone loved leading people around by the nose. The actors who worked with him remember that he always invited them aboard his various projects by relating their stories.

34:56 · jump to transcript →

Leone does not tip his hand with this shot. This seashell compact turns out to be one of the film's most important props. He could have chosen to show us the cushioned inlay embroidered with the name Bill Carson, but that would be revealing everything much too soon. Instead, he introduces the character who turns out to be Bill Carson, which adds a bit more to the running time and makes the whole a somewhat grander proposition.

58:13 · jump to transcript →

and that he died wearing his Once Upon a Time in the West costume. He had only one shot that remained to be filmed, but evidently he couldn't wait. Sergio Leone never forgave him. He reportedly stepped over Mulock's dead body, telling the wardrobe man to take off his costume, which was then handed to a stand-in who took his place in that last shot, viewed only from behind. There is some masterly interplay with props here on the part of Mr. Wallach.

1:46:19 · jump to transcript →

Roger Moore

The idea that I would be passing... That I would be getting into a gondola at that point... ...and be going down this particular canal... ...and the funeral... ... the hearse, the floating hearse, would come by.... Well, it is Bond. And it is ridiculous. Actually, when we were setting it up... ...and they had one area in front of the church where all the flowers were... ...and Props were busy picking up flowers, and a priest came up... ...and went absolutely berserk because he was taking real... The Props were taking a real funeral's flowers.

38:05 · jump to transcript →

Roger Moore

Now, this sequence... ...I was called for 8:30 in the morning and this was the back... This was before the Fenice Theater burnt down... ...and this was shooting just across from the back of the theater. In fact, that's the stage door over behind us. And... ...I was ready at 8:30, and came on the set, and we were all standing there... ...feady to go, and there were adjustments being made... ...and, you know, I have a cup of coffee and this went on. And I finally said, "Lewis, why can't we get on with this? You know, we must do this shot." And he said, "Well, it's a little embarrassing." You see, it was the time of the high tide of the equinox... ...and the boat that had all the props on it... ... had been tied up with the tide very high... ...and then when the tide started to drop, one of those numerous poles... ... that are in the water in Venice was underneath the boat. And as the tide went down... ...the pole came up through the bottom of the boat. Then the boat went up again and the water rushed in... ...and the prop boat sank. And on the prop boat, apart from all my wonderful Ferragamo luggage... ... that I was looking forward to stealing... ...Was a prop that was essential in this scene. ...Was a prop that was essential in this scene. And they had to get somebody to dive down and find it. Now, this shot of the Concorde landing... ... has a bit of a story for me. We had been ready to leave Paris to come to Rio... ...to shoot our sequences there. And Lewis Gilbert and Ken Adam and Letitzia... ...and my then wife, Luisa, we were... ...at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, all ready to leave. We got on to the Concorde, and then they said there was a slight problem... ...and we would have to disembark and wait in the lounge. They then said, well, there'd be a little time... ...8O we could go into any one of the five restaurants in the terminal... ...and have lunch. So off we went. We had something. I wasn't feeling that good, and I sort of just picked at something. And then before we finished, I said, "Lewis, I really don't feel good at all. Would you come with me to the pharmacy? I think I'm beginning to have a Renal colic." Meaning that-- Something that had happened to me... ...before with kidney stones. And they're extremely painful when they start on the move. And really pethadin or morphine... ... 1S necessary to stop you falling on the floor... ...with your knees underneath your chin and start screaming. So I went to the pharmacy in the airport, and they said: "No, I'm afraid we can't." And I said... They could tell that I was very ill and in great pain. But they did suggest that there was a doctor in the airport. You know, a surgery. So I went to see him. He took one look at me... ...and pulled a syringe out and started drawing off painkiller. Lewis never liked needles... ...and started shuffling sideways... ...With the "Lewis Gilbert shuffle," I call it. And he said, "Well, I think I'd better tell the others what is going on." And that was the last I saw of Lewis.

54:35 · jump to transcript →

Roger Moore

And he said, while in between takes one day: "You know, my mother likes you." I said, "Well, that's really nice." This fellow. He said, "My mother likes you." I said, "Well..." You know, I tried to be... Because a lot of people told me their mothers and grandmothers liked me... ...and their aunts and.... I said, "Why, thank you. That's very nice of you." He said, "She'd like you to have dinner one night." And I-- "Oh, dear." And the next day he said, "I don't think you know who my mother is. It's Michele Morgan." Wonderful, wonderful, beautiful, beauteous French actress. And I did have dinner with her. Most beautiful eyes. Colonel Scott is the character he played. His name is Michael Marshall. Father was George Marshall, a very well-known director. I think when we were shooting one of these sequences up the corridor... ...our prop man got dressed up as a creature from space... ...with antennae on his head, and came up outside the window. I think there's an outtake of it somewhere. In fact, in the documentary... ...that accompanies this DVD, there is that outtake.

1:43:43 · jump to transcript →

I was told the reason at the time, but I can't remember now if it was claustrophobia or something about the weight of the prop putting too much pressure on an old neck injury, but he wanted no part of it, so David Cronenberg sat in for him in the shop with the camera pulling away for Max on the chair.

52:41 · jump to transcript →

Love comes in at the eye, and the eye is the window of the soul. I think that even... These shots of James Woods approaching the stage were shot in December. The reverse angle of Les Carlson recognizing and backing away and getting shot were filmed in March on the stage rebuilt inside the Bathurst location. Then, in an elaborate effect supervised by Steve Johnson, cables were run through the holes in the stage to a prop head articulated with push-pull cables...

1:19:48 · jump to transcript →

Costume designer Delphine White, who I remember removing her pullover sweater to reveal a t-shirt that said, Courage, my love. Video effects team Michael Lennick and Lee Wilson. Gaffer Jock Brandes, who held the coveted eye-popping syringe. Wardrobe master Arthur Rousel. Set dresser Angelo Stia. Prop master Peter Louderman. And me. I was the stiff's upper lip. Four Paniflex cameras were trained on the effect.

1:20:41 · jump to transcript →

And you broke one of those at least. I remember killing any dogs. I didn't kill any dogs. Not in this one. But still, when you're watching a movie as you're a 12-year-old kid, kids were a safe space. And between the blob and Maximum Overdrive, killing kids off. Here it goes sometime. Oh, it's great. That was terrifying. So having that representation and setting those kids up back then was a perfect way to pull the rug out from under you. Can we just give props to Kevin Dillon for a second?

19:46 · jump to transcript →

We can give props to him all day long. He did a fantastic job. He was perfect casting. Was he offer only or did he come in and read? Oh, gosh, I don't remember. I think he did read for me. I don't remember. Was there something about... Because I don't remember him... He's truly not the typical even anti-hero. No. He was legitimately reminding me of a kid in my high school who was always in trouble. Very much so. So between him and Shawnee being such a great cheerleader type and Donovan being the classic...

20:14 · jump to transcript →

So it was a warehouse, but it was all right. So watch this now, folks. This is just so interesting. I have to narrate this a little bit. So full scale set. Right. But when Jeffrey DeMunn and one of Tony's better moments with the makeup prop effects comes floating up, it's well set up in that you want these two to get together, but not this way. We anticipated. She's trying to call the guy to save her. And he ends up as blob bait on her phone booth. Then Eric Allard.

44:43 · jump to transcript →

Alexander Payne

This card was produced by Jeff O'Brien, the prop master, who was also the prop master on Citizen Ruth. Tracy's mom very much has a great sense of humor and one that goes well with these two films, with Citizen Ruth and Election. I want to say, too, that...

13:27 · jump to transcript →

Alexander Payne

I used many, many, many of the same people between Citizen Ruth and Election. The production designer, Jane Stewart, and the DP, Jim Glennon, and the editor, Kevin Tent, and the composer, Rolf Kent, and even the same assistant cameraman, and the same prop master, and a lot of the same grips and electricians, and Omaha crew people, a lot of the same actors. In a way, Citizen Ruth was something of a dry run for Election.

13:48 · jump to transcript →

Alexander Payne

choreography, not a complete circle, but again, trying always to associate Jim with circles and a guy who's going around in circles. Circles on his pajamas too. This is the actual basement of that house where we were shooting and this is all their crap, actually. All we did was remove some of it so we could get a camera and our props in there and our furniture, but their basement really has this wonderful

19:26 · jump to transcript →

Richard Curtis

All right. Yes, I'm very busy and important. How can I help you? Don't laugh. That line was improvised. That's the first time you guys have laughed. -/ didn't write that line. - No, it's not the first time we've laughed. It's Hugh's line. - You're just oversensitive. You used to know that Em was Hugh's sister earlier in the film and you used to know that Alan and Emma were married earlier in the film. This is better though. - Clever, much cleverer. The idea was that you should be thinking about the Heike-Alan story, "A fun story, funny, let's see what happens." And then you suddenly realize the flip side of it's not so good. I've always wanted a shot like that where one side of your face is dark and the other side is moody. I can't begin to tell you how critical Emma was of these two dolls. And she said, "I can't lift these up "because they're clearly just Ken dressed up." And I'd told the prop department, "Just dress up Ken." And it's a brilliant idea.

44:16 · jump to transcript →

Richard Curtis

In your head as the writer, who do you think she really prefers? Her husband or this bloke, now? No, she's got no time at all. I mean, she likes this guy as a friend. But when she runs out later and kisses him. - That's just being nice. That's my favorite bit of acting. - Well, that's interesting. That wasn't my reading. I thought, "Dirty bitch, she wants them both." Keira looks like to me like a girl who's done that, who's just found a way of being kind to men like Bill who, you know, want more to do with her than that. - But she kisses him on the lips. I never kiss anyone anywhere else except the lips. God. I think Andrew cannot believe this was the take we used. This was like a joke take. I couldn't believe he was gonna go for it the third time. No! Yep, he's done it. Good heavens. - More times than... He Zips... This is the fantastic Dido. She sent us her new aloum and there was one so beautiful, sort of hidden track on it that we wanted to put in the movie. But it's weird how a movie will demand its own songs and you cant just put stuff you adore on it. There was a song by Ron Sexsmith, Gold in Them Hills, I just spent days trying to fit into the film. Just couldn't. Wow. - That's great. He's doing a very good job of walking. Bill, do you find walking very difficult on camera? -/ do. Yeah. - Particularly if you haven't got a prop? Something to do with your hands? - Yeah. Well, that's why he did that thing of scraping along the wall. Yeah, I could see all the tricks. Hands in pockets. She had a little problem there, walking across the room. Colin's a very good walker. Yeah. She was so good. She didn't make a single mistake. Sweet girl. - Attractive, too.

55:33 · jump to transcript →

Richard Curtis

That's a heck of a mustache. Do you know, that's not a prop mustache? That's fantastic. We paid him 100 quid for the night's work. And the mustache 250 quid. I love this. She looks so fantastic in this scene. This is a restaurant in Marseilles. - Poor Colin. Poor Colin, did you say? Acted off the screen? Just sort of outshone. You can see him trying his little heart out here. Come on, Col. He learned Portuguese and everything. It wasn't my idea, this. You've even had to cut away from him to these people. This Romeo and Juliet thing was the luck of the find of the place, that we found a place with two levels. I hadn't written this.

2:03:14 · jump to transcript →

and shoot this supposed screen test, which was, in Marlon's mind, a little makeup test. I said, let's just go, and no one talk ever. We'll just kind of make gestures. And we got to his house very early, and we set up our little lights. And I had brought a bunch of provolone cheese and little Italian cigars and little, like, props, and just to kind of put around. So I set up, and we were very quiet.

1:35:21 · jump to transcript →

He walked out, and he put on a jacket, and he started mumbling, you know. Remember, he went through great effort to bend the tip of his collar, and he said, so, like, oh, does Italian guys always have the collar bent like that? And he picked up a cigar, and he started to gesture with it and use it as a prop, and he nibbled on a little bit of provolone cheese, and he just started to gesture, and he rolled up the ponytail, and he kind of pinned it up, and he...

1:36:10 · jump to transcript →

I would like to take this opportunity to thank United Telephone and Telegraph for their lovely Christmas gift. This is the solid gold IT&T telephone. I still have that prop. Come to Nibam Coppola Winery and see it there, along with the Godfather's desk.

1:19:21 · jump to transcript →

I love the way this actor, Fanucci, Gaston Moschini, stirred the coffee and the way he works with props. Everything is so precise. The difference between Italian actors, really from Italy, and American actors, Italian actors come with it all worked out. They have this whole thing they invent and they do it

1:57:52 · jump to transcript →

The dressing of these sets. Now, that's not actually not a set because that's a real train going by, but that's probably shot in Brooklyn in and around, you know, what is now known as the Transit Museum. But again, all of the textures, all of the props, even the wardrobe, everything seems old and used, which...

20:28 · jump to transcript →

I guess when they were rehearsing the scene beforehand, I guess Shaw accidentally banged his toe, kind of stubbed it, and the spark shot out of it. Apparently it just scared the crap out of him. So it's funny to imagine Robert Shaw being terrified by one of his props is an amusing idea. But yeah, apparently he didn't realize exactly what that shoe was going to do. Oh, sure. Yeah, but it's still a funny story. This got a huge laugh. And then...

1:35:49 · jump to transcript →

Frank Morriss

Terrific shooting, colonel. It was beautiful. Beautiful, was it? Goddamn it! I had another stoppage. Interesting that... This is in the early days of Steadicam, which was being used a lot. But John Alonzo felt that he could operate hand-held... ...better than any Steadicam. And so what we're watching here, for the next several minutes... ...is all completely hand-held by John Alonzo, out in the desert. It no more looks like hand-held than something on a dolly... ...but he always felt that he had a flexibility to it... ...and he was able to manoeuvre quickly. So I would just turn him loose on these scenes. Stage the scene and say, "John, you shoot it." And he would go along and shoot the scene beautifully... ...get all the coverage. I almost could've gone home or taken a nap... ...while he was doing this. John said he was built for hand-held. Because he was not very tall... ...and he said his centre of gravity is low to the ground. And a taller person has real trouble staying as steady and stable... ...as he could do. But this is-- It's just wonderful, as I'm watching here... ...how steady the hand-held is and how manoeuvrable it is. We're on a rough desert floor... ...and no special kind of plywood floor laid down for him... Twelve sharp. On a hard surface, he had his little apple-box dolly too... ...that he would scoot around like a monkey with. Yes, apple boxes are kind of hard wooden boxes... ...that we'll use on a movie set for all kinds of things: For people to sit up higher or prop something up. And they're used all the time. And John attached casters to an apple box... ...and he would sit-- if it was on a concrete floor or a hard surface... ...he would sit on what he called his "silly dolly"... ...and push himself around with his feet. And it was another kind of wonderful operating trick that he had.

35:07 · jump to transcript →

Frank Morriss

This helicopter, as you've seen-- I mean, it actually flew. And we had two of them as backup in case one was not working... ...because with movie props, you have to always be prepared... ...for them to break down. Things are happening all the time to them... ...and they're not coming from Toyota or Honda or General Motors... ...with 100,000-mile guarantees on them. They're fantasy things... ...so our job is to try to make them look real.

48:17 · jump to transcript →

This was our first moment on camera, right? I mean, for the rest of us. Yeah. I remember the, thank God, the prop, Art Lipschultz, the prop guy, got me that luggage cart. And we got it in about seven minutes before we went. And I said, wait a minute. What if I bring my, what if I have a rack, a clothing rack? Can I bring that out? You will be provided with the best possible food, shelter, and accommodations. Ted McGinley.

13:38 · jump to transcript →

Look at that, production value. We had a scene that became a black and white still, and we didn't use any computer graphics for that. We actually had a still and shot the two scenes on two separate days so that we could do that. I'm impressed. I requested the Beatle poster. You did? Yes. Remember they did that when we were setting up the Nerd House? Art came to us, the prop guy came to us and said, you know, whatever you want, what do you want?

56:33 · jump to transcript →

Lea Thompson

They're all over all the prop houses in L.A., portraits of me. I should have taken them all. We only have one of them.

1:14:39 · jump to transcript →

Lea Thompson

Where is that painting? - That's not the one we have. Who has that? It's in the prop house somewhere at Paramount. Well, I want that. It's nice. You picked it after 12 paintings. - No, I'm saying... I forgot... Well, anyway, that's... The reason I picked it is, it's great. But the idea of the scene that he takes you to see a painting of yourself that he had done, it's pretty romantic, and I'd never seen it before in any movie.

1:16:11 · jump to transcript →

I don't get, I've not gotten in a hot tub since I saw this scene. I'm good. Just in case. Just in case. I'll do a sauna, no hot tub. Thanks. I'm good. Truly. That book is so, that's one of my favorite props in the movie. It just says really black magic underlined. Right. Really black magic. Again, art department. The art department had a lot of fun. They did. The art department was great.

51:28 · jump to transcript →

especially in a skirt I'm not interested in doing that but Mac was all over it that was a really really cool moment for him you know what I think also maybe halfway through the film we realized it probably wasn't a good idea to give her money yeah make the day there was already quite a bit of improvisation happening around us I just want to point out that's a beautiful car right there that's probably the nicest prop in the film oh come on

1:04:13 · jump to transcript →

for people looking for this cap. Yeah, and they wanted the clip or something? They wanted the clip. I don't know, something about a glove. I don't know. Now, this is actual footage of O.J. or the movie? I'm not sure anymore. This is the movie, but there he is. We spent a lot of time on the props, as you can tell. It's all here. This completes our first shipment of heroin, 100% pure. Yeah, it better be.

5:23 · jump to transcript →

porcelain thing of Don Quixote with the long lance. So he sits down. I hear this little crack and a snap. He gets up, and I see the thing is completely trashed. So I've got the prop guys trying to glue it together. We put it back on the shelf and ran away. How many days did you tie up? How many days did you tie up the office? This was one day. This was actually one day. In the middle of the park and full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards. That's my policy.

48:46 · jump to transcript →

Film Stephen Prince

the youngest of his three sisters. He was very fond of Momoyo and played often with her. His older brother Heigo didn't spend much time with him, so Kurosawa was often with his older sisters, especially Momoyo. He played with her on the day of the doll festival, and the family had an elaborate set of Hina dolls that included the empress and emperor, their attendants and musicians, along with numerous small props such as folding screens, lanterns, braziers, and serving trays.

17:52 · jump to transcript →

Film Stephen Prince

The dolls and their props were arranged on an altar with a red felt covering, as we see in the movie. Kurosawa sat with Momoyo, whom he called Little Big Sister, as she made offerings to the dolls and shared a little sake with Akira. The tiered display in the movie, attended by the I character and his sister, is a transposition of what Kurosawa remembered from his own youth. He remembered Momoyo as being very fragile and delicate,

18:23 · jump to transcript →

This scene makes me laugh a little bit, because in the pre-production meetings, David Fincher was joking that he didn't want any miscommunications. He said, "This is a team of oxen, not dachshund." He said, "I don't wanna show up on the beaches in Northern England with 12 little dachshund. I want oxen." Of course he tells it better than I do. Again, Sigourney-- You can tell how lean she was in this movie. She had really worked out and I guess she had just a... I don't know if it was a few months, six months maybe, after having her baby. So this was what became of the beloved characters from Aliens. There's Bishop and the rest of them. All of which we labored over. And there's Hicks. Yeah, that's Michael Biehn, that likeness. A broken jaw and a twisted hand. I think Fincher kind of liked... He liked messing with the audience in that way. I think it was his way of putting his stamp on it by eliminating the previous characters except for Ripley. He wanted to create a world that did not make you feel safe. He wanted you to be thrust right back into danger and throw your equilibrium off. Which I think is part of the reason why fans, when this movie came out, fans didn't have a great reaction to it, because they expected something more along the line of Aliens. And as we know now, as we see how Fincher's films have developed, he is a unique filmmaker, a unique director with his own vision. And I think that's part of wnat he wanted to establish with this movie. And there's the team of dachshund. And that full scale EEV, which was a very cool prop, very nicely detailed.

7:09 · 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 →

and executes Dennis and puts the gun to Dennis's head. Dennis didn't like the idea of anybody putting a gun against his forehead. Obviously, it wasn't loaded and firing it. He just said it just made him, you know, it made him squeamish, didn't like it. And I said, come on, you wimp, I'll show you. Look, so I said to the prop man, you're in front of Dennis, and Chris said, rehearse on me, show me. You know, Dennis, the chamber's empty. It's not going to, what's it going to do to you? You know, I need that gun right up against your forehead, though, you know?

57:41 · jump to transcript →

So the prop man put the gun against my forehead, pulled the trigger, but we didn't realize the barrel came out of the gun about almost a third of an inch here and put a perfect hole in my forehead. So I rolled back. I didn't roll back. I was punched back on the floor, laying on the floor with a dream of blood coming from my forehead down into my eyes. And Dennis Hopper said, I fucking told you. So there's no way I'm fucking doing that scene.

58:10 · jump to transcript →

The hold the door, that was... That's hilarious, I love that. The bloody hand is great too. I seem very angry at all those people. They're not doing anything. This was nice. Oh, and this was a lot of production. A lot of production there. Yeah, props department. But then we have this amazing shot.

12:32 · jump to transcript →

This was Jay and I making sure you didn't get delayed. We said, let's really make Dave wear no shirt. Damn! And a banner graphic. One of the greatest newspapers ever. If only the props department had put... I think it's because we changed the city on them. It's another strange coincidence. Yeah.

31:33 · jump to transcript →

Everything about the film had to be sort of run through the Sousa meter, and trees, clouds, clothing, every prop needed to be designed and thought through, and as I said, myself and the rest of the creative team spent a couple years in this Sousian mindset. They say he lives up here in a big cave, and he only comes down when he's hungry for the taste of...

3:53 · jump to transcript →

I think we took this line of dialogue out. He's so desperate. He had lived a line where he said, eat my dust, which is a throwback to one of my old Roger Corman car crash comedies. But I don't think I left it in. Great little prop, that car. We had a blast with it.

57:19 · jump to transcript →

By the way, the car, in order to get rid of the engine noise, we had to pull it up the driveway with a rope. Wow. And the crane crashed into the car and there was all kinds of disasters. So the money, Benicio. The money, Benicio came to me and he said, how much does $15 million weigh? And my immediate response was, who cares? And he said, look, I want to know if I'm going to be carrying this bag. I went to the prop guy, Ian, and I said, all right, figure this out. How much does it weigh in thousands?

1:18:24 · jump to transcript →

Every time I see you coming around the corner, I see the barrel of your gun or I see your foot, I know you're coming. You've got to just come around the corner. And then as we were choreographing the scene, I looked down and saw the stunt guy's foot. And I just said, shoot him in the foot. And it got us out. It would have taken forever. There were squibs and all this other. It was this long choreographed scene and shooting him in the foot worked so much better. It's funny. Of course, sending a prop guy down to the prop truck to rig an exploding shoe unexpectedly.

1:43:47 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

smaller than a tennis court and just by careful shooting and using different areas of it and moving the props around for each shot it looks like a much bigger area. As I said this full-size

4:40 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

This is where great prop people come in when you're in the middle of nowhere and you want to build an Inuit village and they have to come up with tents and dead fish and dogs and sledges and things like that. And I had a great prop master with Terry Wells who put all this together and built this, what I thought looked like a very atmospheric Inuit village in the middle of Iceland.

1:12:01 · jump to transcript →

Help her to come out and do this crazy stuff she's doing. It's really funny, we did all this oversized props. It's always a good time to shoot like that. It's always better than to do blue screen.

1:02:01 · jump to transcript →

who gives the props to the actor is not the same guy who gives the props to the extra. And the plates were a different color. So I was like, why? How would you believe they are part of the same party? And it's just stupid. It's a detail. But sometimes you get upset with very stupid things.

1:25:18 · 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 →

That's a little clip from the Summer at Sea. Trying to look at any other cast people and things we should be mentioning. I guess... - The prop guys, by the way. Just Lukas and Michal. Good guys. Really good guys. Lots of the stuff that you're seeing here you can see in their entirety in the... Including probably a little more of that. We were one of the few movies that have ever gone in and used a lot of key Czech people as heads of big departments. Usually... We did have some guys shadowing guys that we brought in, but we really did try and use a lot of Czech crew. And I think we were rewarded for it. - They were awesome. I think it was a really good set. People seemed to go out of their way to tell us that. Anyway, so that's the movie. It was, hopefully, as fun for you guys to watch and hear about as it was for us to make it. Very odd for us to watch it. - Yeah. Hopefully, it was less odd for you. It was Maurice Chevalier, not Charles Aznavour. Oh, God. Jesus. James Venable. Yes. Our composer. And, by the way, there'll be... If you're watching the unrated DVD, there's another commentary you can enjoy, and also secretly buried on the DVD elsewhere is us doing three separate commentaries where we talk about each other. But James Venable is the composer. He's done stuff for Kevin Smith. I worked with him on the Clerks animated show, and he kicked ass. There was just-- Creepy Italian Guy's theme, a couple of the other pieces were... I love the music. He was a real pleasure. It's like the end of the Oscars. I know, I know. It's like, "Who did we forget?" Everybody was great. Everyone was great, except the guy who did coke and tried to steal that we had to fire. - But he was still good. And here's our favorite thing. That's why we made the movie. A little reward for those of you who sit in your seats. Good night, everybody. - Goodbye. Bye.

1:29:52 · jump to transcript →

Now, this was Steve Melton's idea, our prop genius, that he would extricate himself from these handcuffs using the pen refill. Benjamin Dunn? It's me, Ethan. What? No. Really? The music here is terrific as well. I need a trace location. The last call made from this phone.

1:42:35 · jump to transcript →

He has, you know, risked his life God knows how many dozens of times. He finally gets to her, he's got a thing in his head that's going to kill her. It is literally so insane and so extreme that even though it's the I love you is a legitimate thing, it's like, it's such a sort of small drop in the bucket compared to the content. But you know it's so important to get that through. We're trying to figure out how does she see him? Oh, yeah. One of our prop guys just came in and put it right there. One of our prop guys said, you know, I just found this, this cart.

1:53:36 · jump to transcript →

John Cameron Mitchell

And also, it did start to smell a little funky after a while. You can't describe the scent. Bentley and Yolan, who are props people, had to clean up after. I was like, oh, honey, let me just clean this up for you. Just big old buckets full of sloppy mops full of bleach. That's what my bedroom smells like anymore. Mr. Clean comes walking in. Yeah. Oh, God, this moment.

31:45 · jump to transcript →

John Cameron Mitchell

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

55:22 · jump to transcript →

Patrick Tatopoulos

Now, there's a very Underworld prop. Yeah, it shows up all over the place. - You know, this was something that.... There's many things to.... Actually, that I can actually address now. I'm hearing questions that are asked, and I don't really get to answer them. The.... The Sonja back-story... You know, Sonja was always the one that.... Well, Selene reminded Viktor of his daughter... ...and there was a similarity between them. And when we actually shot the death scene of Sonja... ... ln Underworld 1, we actually... People talking about, "Why is she blond?" "And now you've got Rhona Mitra, and she's got dark hair." "And couldn't the filmmakers just go back and watch the first film?" Of course we watched the first film. And it really just came down to a budget in the first one. And, Richard, you'd probably remember... ... that we literally, we had... We were given the okay to actually shoot that. One day. We got one day. - That back-story. One day, and no money, and one actress... ... that even remotely had an interesting look, but had blond hair. And at the time... Then we had, like, a day to find her too. And it bugged me at the time, I'm thinking: But it's supposed to be Sonja who reminded... Viktor. - Viktor. And so she has to have dark hair. And we asked the actress to dye her hair... ...she wanted more money. It was one of those things that you just think... And it just couldn't happen. We literally did not have the money to pay to dye her hair... ...and then have it coloured back again. And we didn't have time to build a wig that looked appropriate in one day. And so there we have it. And Sonja was more of a blond girl. And so that's.... I would actually now love to, in some version... ...take the death scene that we have now... ...and put it in Underworld 7. Funny you should say that. That's what I was doing all day today. - What do you mean? Recutting the genetic memories using footage from 3... For fun? - Yeah. For who? For a future... Exactly, just to have it in the bank. Cool. - Yeah. You know, there's a.... You know, I'd love to see this whole series all put together... ...because I think, unlike a lot of series... ... this actually does tie in fairly well, hopefully, to the other films... ...and actually arrange them in a proper timeline. With this one first. - Yeah, it really does. And therefore, kind of swap out... And also, just money-wise, we didn't have the ability... ...to do the kind of set and setting for her death scene in the original one. We had to revamp the crypt, which I never think really sold... There was an interesting thing when I watched it again... ...While we're doing this one, that there was actually Lycans... ...people standing around the room. Yeah. It was interesting. Actually, when you first talked to me about directing this one... ...I was thinking she was gonna be blond... ...because of that, because you had established that. I was not thinking. When I was starting to think about casting... ... I was like, "Oh, so she's Eastern European blond. That's what she's gonna be." - No, not at all. I was actually.... I was amazed at how many people actually, for a scene... ...that shows up for, you know, maybe 30 seconds... ...1n the original film, how much everybody really remembered... ... that she had, you know, blond hair, and.... I guess of course they're going to. For me, it's just... To do an entire film where the whole basis... ...of Viktor saving Selene is that there was such a parallel... ...to his own daughter that she had to be dark hair.

36:47 · jump to transcript →

Patrick Tatopoulos

Well, one of the things that makes Underworld so unique... ...1S that it's based on original material. There haven't been that many movies in the last few years... ...that have had two sequels to the original product... ... that weren't based on books or adapted material, you know. This isn't The Lord of the Rings. This is something that Len and, you know, Kevin Grevioux... ... sort of created out of their brains. And Len always had this great desire to make three movies... ...and son of a gun, we were able to. I love this wall. Today, I still get people, you know, say, "I don't get it. How did you go from being a prop guy doing, like, set dressing... ...to somebody handing you a comic book to direct? Like giving you the rights to a book, or giving you rights to a comic book." And I think a lot people just assume that it is developed... ...Off of a comic book already and it was already existing material. I think in fact the only reason I was able to direct it... ...1S because I had written it. Otherwise, I would not be here at all. - Yeah. lt would've gone to some other guy. We all had a good feeling about Len Wiseman when we first met him. I don't know what it was. I think it had a lot to do with your personality and your character. Well, being able to draw certainly helps too. You could show people what it is you wanna do. You'll find out soon enough.

40:45 · jump to transcript →

And Colin, I hope he's okay with me mentioning this, but he was, like, fantastic with this character. He really wanted to just get into the idea of Quaid and his headspace. And when that set was completed, this house apartment that we made for him, he spent a night in this set. So we kind of cleared it down, locked it down on stage. And, you know, once the construction crew was completely done and painted and everything and had all the, you know, he wanted to have all the props and...

5:58 · jump to transcript →

and interacts with is real. And then D-Neg blew it out into the massive scale that it is. But again, it's just using everything where you can, where you can get away with. I'd spent about seven years in various prop departments or set dressing and things. And I've been on many very big movies that I just saw so much waste of

1:09:15 · jump to transcript →

And he really shot it well. He brought props. He was so good, we just kept going, this guy's too good. We can't kill him. Just a total waste. So we ended up adding him to a scene later. His first day on the movie is that scene where he opens the door in the hotel. And then we thought, well, we're committed now. But he's wonderful. And this was lovely. This is, again, this is things that were coming from you in development. The notion of nice shoes.

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The armor, our props. Simon Atherton. Yeah, he did. Our whole crew. I mean, the crew on this movie, thank you, because these sequences don't get done without that kind of commitment. And you can't take for granted the fact that what's happening in the midst of all of this chaotic sequence, that's a full opera that they have staged. And a separate opera director came in. We cast the entire thing. And all of that had to be...

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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 →

Then here's his dad watching a cowboy movie with a lot of guns going off. It's a family of violence, these people, this dad and the son. And then we had RZA on the ham radio there, playing Hutch"s brother, Harry Mansell. Yeah, I'm okay. RZA was a very, very, dare I say, great choice. He was the best choice. Having such an iconic and unique voice. Do you remember who we used to be? You know, the first three times we come across this character, we don't see him. We only hear him. - There he is as a kid, and there I am as a kid and there's Chris Lloyd as our dad. And Chris Lloyd just couldn't have been a better choice as the father of these two. A funny guy, he's got a dark past, and he just brings a lightness to an otherwise very dark film that is just a joy. I think it's having Christopher Lloyd was what started pushing us towards the idea of... We always knew we were gonna end up in a more poppy, sort of colorful last act. But getting Lloyd in the film, which... I want to give more props to you, Bob. It was your idea. You came across the thought... We were looking at a bunch of different actors potentially for the dad, and you were like, "What about Chris Lloyd?" And it just made total, perfect sense that, of course, someone with such positive baggage... - Yeah. ... wielding a shotgun, killing people is gonna be much more fun to see than someone we've seen do that. is gonna be much more fun to see than someone we've seen do that.

17:41 · jump to transcript →

And props to Greg Rementer and Larry who was... I forgot Larry's last name, but Larry who was a DP, who did second unit on films like Top Gun, so he's got quite an experience. And they had to shoot... So we shot all the stuff with you, and then we went off to do more dialogue scenes. And quite a bit of this was done by Greg on the coldest possible Winnipeg night. Brutal. Yeah. The second unit was shooting at night, we were shooting day, so I went over after... I think it was one of the kitchen scenes that we shot. I went over afterwards and it was just... You know, I had two jackets on, three pairs of pants, snowboarding pants... it just... lt was so cold that you really felt it in your bones. Not just the saying. It really was that bad. So the fact that they were able to pull all this off and, you know, Stick to the storyboards when needed to, and step away and do slightly their own thing... -/'m super excited by how great they did. - Yeah. Yeah. As a director, you're like, "I don't wanna have second unit," but you have to. There's no other way we can get this filming done in days. Very important that he pulls into the owner's spot 'cause he bought the place. I think it's very important. It's... lt matters to him. Jesus. That car is a wreck now. His neighbor's not gonna like that. Here they come.

1:14:20 · jump to transcript →

What secret shall I tell? Ooh, uh, what's your name? You're just fooling. My name's Pill. Playing off the back of his head. That's really great, too. Well, I reckon we'll have to try again. Uh, where's the money hid? Oh, you swore you wouldn't tell! You swore you swore you wouldn't tell! They did many takes of that, so we can only assume it was a special prop from Joe DiBella. Now, you see, we just can't have anything to do with John.

36:45 · jump to transcript →

Well, I held it about as long as I thought we could, you see. And now when it's run, a few of the conoscente, I mean, there are still, there are some people who begin to giggle, and this pleases me very much because it was meant as a faintly comic effect. If you remember, you first see his hand, then all the props, the gunmetal case, the little lighter, the woman shoveling the money across, and finally she says, and this is a very, very interesting point, she says, and to whom do I make out the check?

8:01 · jump to transcript →

I mean, all these ideas were wonderful, these props and presents. It was glorious. I find it wonderful just to watch it all happening.

40:09 · jump to transcript →

How the familiar is different anyways. Obviously can't keep his food down either. Egg white, was it? We had a very enthusiastic prop man, Tommy Rayburn. That's right, Tommy Rayburn. Enjoyed all the foulness and the phlegm. Any phlegm required today, governor?

28:42 · jump to transcript →

In Angus, it actually starred for me in Jim the World's Greatest. Under a different name, Lawrence Rory Guy, he played the key protagonist of the father in that film. One thing here I'd like to point out about Bill's acting, the layperson doesn't always understand how difficult it is for an actor. Here, Bill's got to tell two full pages of dialogue, and at the same time, he's got to work all these props. He started with the shotgun, took the gun out, got to do all the stuff and synchronize it so it ends

44:18 · jump to transcript →

John Mackenzie

Varga Street. And it lent itself beautifully to filming because very often, you know, the interiors are too small. You can't get a camera in, never mind a camera crew. It was quite spacious in a way. We did a few bits of little bits of rebuilding, but not much. And a few extra props we put in, but apart from that, it was really easy to use.

41:35 · jump to transcript →

And you came in and you went, Jimmy, bust the beat. Where's the props? They had no props, you remember? And that thing bucked in the middle of it. And when I did it, I got a round of applause from the guys. That was terrific. What Jimmy's talking about is there were no props on the film. There's no reason to have props. There was a reason, Michael. We didn't do it that way because it kind of limited the authenticity.

3:50 · jump to transcript →

All right, props to Sean again. Handcock Memorial Hospital? Well, you know, Handcock. God, I'm just picking up the nuances now. Ray Wilson's in this movie a lot. He's so adorable. He's good. Didn't he ride a bike every day?

1:13:28 · jump to transcript →

Tom is good. He's a good guy. Yeah. Abby Wall, video coordinator. Tom Muska, producer and writer of Stand and Deliver. Ramon Menendez will show up here if he hasn't yet. Ramon's mother appeared earlier, actually, making tortillas, even though she doesn't really know how to do it. She's from Cuba. There's Tom Richmond. All the additional camera men on this. Bob Richardson, Tom Richmond, beautiful. Good work, those guys. There's Ramon, future director, writer, was our prop master.

1:30:59 · jump to transcript →

Judd Nelson

I don't even remember thinking that I understood that concept then, when we were making the film. That the simplicity of one room unlocking all of that potential, he really had something in mind here. And you're right, like you said, Jason, before, the school is definitely a character. These are the actual hallways of the school. And it was empty, so it was kind of... - And you get that feeling. They don't shoot that much outside the library, but you get the feeling it's this big, empty building. You really do. These hallways and the ADR with your footsteps and the whole bit. School on Saturday, who's gonna be there? Kids that get in trouble, the teacher unlucky to have the job, and the janitor. And then you set us out on this journey, which also represents risk here, like we're risking together to come back safely. Yeah, for all of you to agree to do it. 'Cause basically, I'm going to get my dope. Right. All these themes. - Look at that locker. It's very funny. The Doors, he's got The Doors going on in there. Yeah, all sorts of shit. Did you get to decorate the locker? I got to remove things that were incredibly bad, that I was like, "I ain't putting that in there." Meaning, for that particular character, I don't think we got... It was a little awkward. Most of the prop guys were like... "It's a little bit soft rock vibe for me, "so let's take Hall & Oates out."

44:07 · jump to transcript →

And within five minutes, the store manager had the Treasury Department there. And they grabbed these kids, where'd you get this money? I got it from my dad. Where'd he get it? Visit him, boom, up props the name of our property master, Barry Bedeck, who was in charge of the counterfeit money. And so for weeks, if not months, the Treasury...

15:11 · jump to transcript →

By the way, what a great prop, Karen, cleaning out his office. It's not fair, Donny. Thank you, Jane. Thanks, sweetie. Good luck. I'm sorry. When we made this picture, there were still a lot of people who thought of these kind of layoffs as an outrage because costs could have been cut and...

1:49:36 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

building the props, building the costumes, while we were shooting these things. This is pretty funny. Gwildor's the first one to discover food. He's got that little grappler hook that he used before, and he smells something. An interesting thing is we had no second unit on this. I had to shoot every frame of the film. I requested a second unit, but Canon was very tight on money.

23:13 · jump to transcript →

John McTiernan

That was one of the back to the drawing board parts. The only image of an alien life form that had captured the imagination or looked halfway plausible, or functional was this stuff that came from H.R. Giger. Illustrations that became Alien. You know, one of those images of the ultimately terrifying other life, only shows up once in a generation or more. You're not just gonna, you know, hire some cartoonist and say, "Come up with a next H.R. Giger." 'Cause H.R. Giger only comes along as I said, once in a generation. And I didn't see how you could do anything associated with it without just being that derivative also-ran. And, frankly, having seen what they did in the sequel, that's exactly what I thought. I thought it was, it was best that they didn't shoot it. Here you see Jesse actually carrying Painless. He had no ammunition at this point, that's why he could carry it. And there's obviously no battery connection and it wasn't operable that way. We shot this in Palenque, where we could get a real snake. The worry was that Painless would buck and get away from him, and spin. Even if you had everybody clear out in front for 50 feet, that the man firing it might not be able to control it. And that he could wind up in the way of all this wading and bits of brass and stuff that was flying out of the front end of it. So the first time, they fired it, they did a Iot of... They anchored it. And yet tried to give him a chance to figure out if he can control it, so it was like bungee cords and things. So that if it started to get out of control, they could yank it in and protect him. But to let him see, you know, what other... You know, what other concussive forces... You know, what happens when the thing starts spinning. We learned that there was enough gyroscopic force in the spinning of the cylinder, that it kept it online. That actually was very difficult to move it around or aim it, and in an odd way, it was very safe. You couldn't have it wind up aiming where you didn't want it, 'cause it wouldn't move. Because of all the gyroscopic force and the spin, but it took us a while of experimenting with it, and I think he first tried it out over, with the second unit. And it was like half a day, you know, we kept hearing reports of, "They're gonna fire Painless, "in 45 minutes. "Well, no..." It's like a count down to the moon launch or something, "They're gonna fire Painless." And I think later that afternoon it fired, and we were about a mile up the valley. I could hear tt. It sounds like, it's the loudest buzz-saw in the world. Some people, I guess, were concerned about how impractical it was, but the notion was that, Painless was... Look, it's a movie prop. You know, we never would've used it, but it's a lot of fun to watch. Here we got Bill Duke to fire Painless. You notice he is not walking while he does this. Now, this particular sequence, I made when I first went to work on this project, I had the feeling that people had a sort of perverse fascination with pictures of guns firing, literally almost a pornographic desire.

44:06 · jump to transcript →

These four rabbits, Carl, the one they're using as props right there, I took a couple of them home and put them in a plastic bag and put them in my icebox. And I just left them there. And then I heard a scream from Pam and she said, what is this? And I said, they're rabbits. And she said, well, what are we supposed to do? I said, I don't know, cook them? You are Mr. Shoop. Kind of become the character after a while. See, that's something I didn't know that you took...

24:33 · jump to transcript →

There's a tremendous amount of improvisation because he knows the parameters of what he wants to say and do. So that allows him to change things as people come up with ideas. Whether it's a cameraman or a prop man, a set designer, he'll take all this and very often put it on film and then decide later on what he wants to do. Don't forget, Marty was originally an editor. So that's the process he likes to go through.

27:24 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

Yes! You're having a great time. - I was. All I can see is you having fun. - "All right, Mac, this is what you do. You're standing at the door. You cheer, go, 'Yes, he just burned his hand. ' And then you run off the screen. And action." It could've been worse. Now, this... Audiences screamed in pain. First they all screamed, and then they released it with laughter. Dan, of course, sells this to a point where you actually feel... . like he's really in total pain. He just gives up on that front door. Yeah. Now, this was a gag... Because we didn't have... We certainly had no access to ILM or any money at this point. This was all done with mirrors. There was a mirror in the camera... ...and it actually made the flame look as if it was, you know, frying Joe. This is Troy, the stuntman. Then, of course, we go back to Joe. I still, you know, have this lovely prop of this fake head. I actually had the hand, the model that they made the M hand on. It's probably somewhere, some box somewhere. The fake head's obscene-looking, so you don't wanna keep it around. Yeah, you don't keep in the living room. - No.

1:20:50 · jump to transcript →

Fred Dekker

What was the budget on this movie? $24.5 million. That's not a small amount. That's pretty decent for a film like this. In $91. Yeah, so that would be what? Like $60, $70 now? That sounds right. Yeah. And of course you got the ticking clock. You know what's funny is we didn't build that. That was actually from a prop house. It already existed.

1:34:43 · jump to transcript →

visual palette right because this takes a tremendous amount of commitment and talent on the part of you know the art directors and the props people and you know the costumers you know but the actors here look at what you know is happening between elias and bruce i mean they are not you know they're not even looking at each other they're completely separated but each of them is in this very very particular place and they are very connected to these

53:49 · jump to transcript →

See, you look at a scene like this, and how as an art director are you supposed to comment on putting a bunch of buses around and a giant hippie camp with tons of props in the background as though that has any real meaning? And yet, that's the only thing that makes it different than if you were a tourist in Washington, D.C. today as far as the staging. But that's not something that you're really even going to look at. You absorb it, but...

1:12:17 · jump to transcript →

My Question Initially To Jean-pierre Was

I was thrilled when I watched this scene, because Ripley was carrying my gun. I can't tell you what a charge that was. It was great. I was, one night, looking at Sigourney Weaver and she was harnessing this gun, and I thought "I designed this." I was back to being a kid watching the first Alien movie, and thinking about Ripley running down the corridors, dreaming about what that meant. Many years later, here I was in Los Angeles, and Sigourney Weaver was playing Ripley, and she was harnessing my gun. It's hard to explain, but it's such a high. This is like traveling through time and grabbing the kid inside of you and saying: "Here's what you've been missing." "Here's something for you and for years of frustration - wishing to make something out of your life that's very specific, and the obstacles." And suddenly there's this woman - she doesn't know I exist and couldn't care less - but she's got a prop, and it can mean the world to somebody. Nigel Phelps, the production designer, designed chunks of corridors, and this was really the essence of what the set of The Auriga was about. Some chunks of it were actually reusable. The whole idea about this set was that you can make it go on endlessly - there's different layers and levels. One of the original design ideas that Nigel had, which he explored with Darius Khondji, was that as the story progresses and as the characters go through the ship the walls change colors and become more and more ominous. Since Darius uses a very specific lighting and processing technique for his film - by which he extracts the blacks and reprints them later to get that very very crisp, sharp contrast - the idea was that the walls would be painted and the paint change as the film progressed. They actually tested this and Darius shot plates, and we experimented with the exposure, etc. They collaborated closely. Ideas that one had were integrated by the other. Frequently, Darius would come down to the set as it was being built, and Nigel would explain some of his intentions. Darius would make suggestions and they would create opportunities for lighting. It works extremely well, actually. You could walk through that set and it was prelit. You could have taken a home movie and it would look like a million dollars. It was unbelievable. I remember, Sigourney laughed at this time because I misspelled a word. Instead of saying "Easter bunny", I said, for two or three takes, "Eastern bunny".

51:13 · jump to transcript →

You're kidding. Well, just don't shoot me. Sometimes things happen when you actually put a costume on. Something changes. And I suspect that I began to discover, you know, as you do, when suddenly you have a prop or you have another actor or you have a set where it's no longer a concept. It's now flesh and blood and you've got to deal with the environment. So all kinds of things just occur. And very often my favorite...

47:59 · jump to transcript →

There was a first big gun battle movie for me. So I asked the props guy demonstrate how to use a tool gun for me. And I said, I like to use a tool gun, feel like a machine gun. I like to continue firing and also have some kind of a musical drum beat feeling. And then the guy, they keep demonstrating the tool gun. I feel very interesting.

1:17:22 · jump to transcript →

And he gives it to Rachel, and it worked out. A lot of cobwebs. I like cobwebs. I think they kind of, you know, they're adventure movie stuff, but I don't know. I've never seen a place with that many cobwebs, except in movies. Don't tell anybody, but I may have kept that prop for myself.

13:51 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

A little peckish. Just when you're waiting for the lunch break to happen and you look around and see if there's any nibbles and the craft services table's a bit far away, but there's always a lambus bread lying there in the prop department. Pete, that's desperate. Yeah, no, that's where it all went when the props people were complaining that somebody was stealing it. It was me. It wasn't Gollum after all. There should be enough. So these are the pick-ups. This stuff here that we're looking at, these close-ups, were done four years after the original shots. The journey home.

8:15 · jump to transcript →

Noah Baumbach

One thing that was always appealing to us was the idea of having Bill Murray, who'd never-- I don't know if he'd fired a gun in a movie before. In Ghostbusters it was kind of a gun. And he'd fired some guns in Razor's Edge, he's at war. I know he shoots out some headlights in Razor's Edge. Right. - But here he was for an action hero. The first one time as action hero, but he plays the giant action scene-- I say "giant," but-- For us, giant. The action scene in a striped Speedo, a bathrobe, and flip-flops. Well, we'd also talked about sort of the choice of the music, you know, the-- You know, the-- Like you were saying about the color timing and the, you know, the sort of score you use... here, sort of breaks into sort of the Iggy Pop song, which I think sort of brings us back into the sort of playful Zissou world, you know, that sort of-- - The Iggy Pop. The Iggy Pop does. You'd talked about at one point maybe doing it all silent. At one point, we had a version that didn't have any gunshots or anything like that, and all the sound was gone. It was totally silent, we had some music playing, and the effect was much more grave. When we put this music on-- I liked the other way too, but this seemed maybe to be more right for the way the whole movie needed to work. I don't know if I-- I feel like I could've shot more coverage on this. We were struggling. It's got an energy though. I'm not a professional action-sequence director, but I can do better. I guess Bill Murray also fired a gun at the end of Stripes. I think they go to Argentina to rescue some people. One thing with Bill, put a gun in his hand and he can't wait to empty the magazine. This is interesting. We had to throw this gun into the-- Well, you can't throw a gun into the ocean. So actually, he switches hands with the prop guy who's out below the frame and gives him a rubber gun to throw. But we did, when he knocks that guy out and throws him overboard in the earlier part of that scene, we lost a gun. Bill actually accidentally hit the guy, and the guy went in the water, was knocked out by Bill hitting him, and his gun fell, and Bill's gun fell into-- The gun Bill was grabbing out of his hand fell in the water. And then they said we couldn't shoot anymore, and they called the police, who came out and flew over helicopters while our Marines searched for it. I was like, "Can't we keep shooting while we look?" "No." And we were worried our stunt guy was going to get arrested. But then the Marine guys found it in the bottom of the ocean there, which is only like 20 feet deep or something there. But they found the gun, brought it back up, and we were allowed to continue when the helicopters went away. That's why you went a few days over. Things like that. - Variety of things, yeah. How you holding up there, intern? Doing okay?

1:03:18 · jump to transcript →

New York and now South Africa. All these props and all these guns had to be recreated somehow to match the container we filmed in New York. I'm sorry to demystify the process, but if you're listening to this commentary, that's probably what you want.

1:35:42 · jump to transcript →

Evey

Goddamn it! That son of a bitch sat there... ...and spoon-fed me that bullshit, and I ate it up! So, what do we do now, inspector? We do what we should have been doing. We find him. I guess V, for the whole film, has... ...been playing everybody off against each other in his own way. And once we get to the domino sequence... ... it's about V putting all the pieces in place... ...and setting the train in motion. The inexorable, kind of, rush to the end of the film... . IS set in place by the dominoes. With this film and a film like this... ... there's a lot of talk about, you know, what it means... ...and the political content and the ideas that it expresses. Which I really like, but, at the end of the day... . itis a piece of fiction from a comic book. And I don't think that should really be lost, you know? Because I just want to make a piece of entertainment to start off with. And then if you get that stuff on the back side... ... then that's a good outcome. And so, there is a lot of devices like that... ...which is just straight out, movie devices. And the domino piece Is one. You know, it's just like a cool piece of... ... you know, set piece to put in there. That started off, funnily enough the props department had rigged... ...we had made a lot of dominoes... ...to do what we thought, essentially we would do... . like all things. And we set it up... ... where we had built a very flat floor... ...1n a kind of a ring which is about 12-foot in diameter... ...three-point-six meters in diameter... ... which was always in the design of the floor of the shadow gallery. And we'd set this up so that James could come and look at this with Larry and Andy. And so they came along and we had, I think... ...one or two rows of dominoes going through... ...to demonstrate the size and the shape and the look. And it went off and did exactly what it had to do. It went...right around and... ... stopped exactly where it should have. It might have just missed by one. But it was really close. But it was incredibly underwhelming. For want of a better word. Soa gentlemen was contacted from Holland... ...who's an expert in these things. Well, I'm Robin Weijers and also known as Mr. Domino. And that is because, well, I have my own company... ... solely based on the domino effect. And we are especially working with dominoes... ...and to communicate with dominoes all kinds of stories. We had to know exactly what it was about, here in the Shadow Gallery. How to make that shape. The size of the shape. But not only the size, of course. How should the dominoes be toppled? And for that we tested all kinds of different settings. Special small settings to get the V in the middle... ...the circle around it... ...and in the meantime, we wanted to have... ... really amount of dominoes filling out the black. So that made, in total, 22,000 dominoes. ...and all trapped by it.

1:39:13 · jump to transcript →

Certain roles, if you don't find the right people, then we would bring them up. Start flying them up. Yeah, by the way, I grew up in Colorado and was happy to leave because I found it such a boring place to grow up. So the fact that we destroyed this town made me very happy. Now this place, there's some funny stories about this. This house, there's not a single prop in here.

16:16 · jump to transcript →

the floor mop hairdo. And this I know is one of the things that has been suggested as merchandise for this movie, to be able to buy one of these kits. A murder kit. Yeah, Håkan's murder kit. When we were discussing these props, I said that I wanted it to be smelly. So when you see this stuff, you could really feel the smell of it.

7:02 · jump to transcript →

This was one of the funniest things I think I've ever shot. Sasha would just constantly improvise stuff with the props and just at the end of singing that section would just go back and re-sing and again because you're live he could just pick up and start and stop.

50:18 · jump to transcript →

let's give a little bit of props to D.O.P. while we're at it. Gary, Gary Javier, man. He came in and pretty much almost exclusively handled almost all of the POV stuff himself. All the hardcore stuff with running around and clashing into zombies and running down corridors. All of that was Gary doing that himself. So that's why you see the same hands all over again. Like Fahri there, his hands are hairy.

49:53 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

Roman did this shot. He was involved in it. He did this shot. Yes. - [Coppola] The two Romans. That's the other Roman. The propman. - [Anderson] This is Roman-- That's Roman who is on-set props and set decorating, and who worked also with Till. Roman and Till then became part of our ongoing company. I mean, some people work with us on one movie, then they come on to the next one. So Roman and Till are two Germans who have stayed on with us.

48:14 · jump to transcript →

Joss Whedon

It was a big decision whether to go off on her smile or this grab. Ultimately, the grab very specifically said, "We have a problem, and the problem is Tony." And, um, one of the things that also sort of hit me late in the game is that you can really look at this film and just straight-up Say, "Tony Stark is the villain." It's not just the beard. He's a good man who is corrupted by his own anxiety, by this vision of a disaster, and makes what is obviously a really bad decision. And I spent so much time in the writing process and during filming trying to protect Tony Stark. Trying to make sure that he was still a heroic figure. And at one point I watched the movie, and I went, "You can just go ahead and lean into this, "that he's now evolved into a villain." Obviously, he's not just that. He's redeemed, and he is a hero in so many ways. But it was very freeing to be able... And I think it's not something you get to do a lot in something like this, narratively. To just go ahead and Say, "Your guy just might not be okay." And again, that's something that, thematically, the entire movie is about. It's been commented on, and it's not by accident that the word "monster" is used by most of the team about either themselves or each other. Feels good, yeah? I have a "Jarvis is my co-pilot" sticker on my laptop. Because how could you not? That's one of those things that I thought of and asked for while we were shooting. "Can we just throw that in?" And the prop guys just disappeared and came back with the perfect one. And, of course, it comes right after he says, "Jarvis, take the wheel," so clearly we're already leaning into the Jesus thing. And that's, um, again, not by accident. We're not saying anything specific about religion, but we are playing on Christian iconography a great deal, partially because both Tony Stark and Ultron have god complexes, and partially because the Vision himself does represent an ideal. And when he picks up the hammer, it's... I don't want to say a miracle, but it's playing on that idea of... When we think of that kind of religious figure, we are thinking of the best idea of ourselves. Of what we wish we could be. And this play is so much about the best and worst. This little bit's a bit of embellishment that Robert and I came up with on the day. The two Enhanced? It's always nice to be able to have people who know their character so well that they can give you what you've asked for, but then make it feel lived in. I love this shot. It is very much of the idiom of the first movie, in the sense of, "Look at this big, expensive space. Isn't it grand?"

12:11 · jump to transcript →