Rehearsal

John Cameron Mitchell

Between your lips and attached underneath your leg. It's always clear. It was hard to get a take without me, especially, cracking up during it. I think that was, in some ways, the most fun moment of the shoot. There's Lindsay Beamish. This is Severin. Lindsay Beamish, we met later in the rehearsal process in Los Angeles when an actor dropped out

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John Cameron Mitchell

This is Ray Rivas, who is the most awesome performer playing Shabbos Goy. He's amazing. He's funny as hell. Remember the rehearsal where he got shot the week before? Yeah, he got shot. We're going to talk about that in the deleted scene. But he is a performance artist. He told me that he did a performance in that exact space in Dumba where he was, like, hanging from hooks and...

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John Cameron Mitchell

We had more time to rehearse with you guys. These guys, Jan and Shanti, really jumped right into the short bus stew. Didn't hold back. In the middle of an orgy. Yeah. It was so funny when you were talking about watching the group sex there. Remember it?

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So we cut to this battlefield. It was a really hard shot to get here. We rehearsed it a couple of times in a parking lot at ARRI in Prague because we wanted to get the exact height and the lens right. And then on this day, we just shot it just before sunset and probably took about four or five takes only.

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in this case, and felt like an opening image that was a transition from the nature shots and slowly getting us into battle feeling. But also you realize that you don't hear the real sounds yet. We really only set in with the real sound, with the reality of the sound here. And this was a shot we probably rehearsed. You notice how it's uncut. You know, we run through the,

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if this could work, if this would work, because I also want to see them all. Very soon they're in uniforms, and so I want to see their faces, I want to get to know them. But it just felt more as the group, and I rehearsed this in a gym with the kids before the shoot because I was nervous if it would work, and Felix, he had never been, Felix was the guy who plays Paul.

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provoking Henry, saying, Do you think I'm funny? Why do you think I'm funny? Ray Liotta. It was in rehearsal. We were talking, and Joe was telling a story about he was with somebody, and the guy was saying something funny, and it's just something that happened to him. It supposedly is a true situation. I know that, to a certain extent, I mean, just the way he moves and what he says, I know it's true. So Pesci has too much of a familiarity with what happens in that scene. It's too real.

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I mean, it is his book. It's his painting. In fact, when I shot the film, except for opening up the story at times for dialogue that we felt we could add, myself being one of the co-writers, could add primarily in rehearsal, really. Except for those moments. The rest of the film, I was usually in a very grumpy mood doing the film because it had already been done. It was on the page. I mean, it seems...

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and got everybody laughing because it's not easy to laugh truthfully. Everybody can go, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, you know, like Burt Lancaster, but it's not from inside. So knowing this and I could see that in the rehearsal it just wasn't happening. And so I took out a little page out of my own little director's book and Martin let it all happen. That's the kind of great director he is. And he saw me doing it. I sort of took over in a way as instigator of the emotional condition.

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We spent days and days rehearsing the dirty dancing steps, and we had a theory. We had eight dirty dancers who we had cast in New York, and Kenny Ortega, our wonderful choreographer, and I had danced for them, and we'd hired these kind of gypsy dancers who were great, who you will see. And then we had a whole crew of dancers here in North Carolina, and we, for three days, shot the dirty dancing sequence. When...

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said there was a rule that said the guys couldn't contact the girls for six months after film and the guys I remember came up to us and said is this six months after we've started rehearsing or six months after the film comes out and of course we had no right to enforce any of these things but it was really rather sweet that they were trying to be this careful and specific about it. I think

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Jennifer is absolutely wonderful. We had had a camera running in the dance department all the time that we were doing rehearsals, which was very useful, because when Jennifer went back to dance, she said, I was never that bad, and we had to show her the early sequences to show her. There is Cynthia, who is so beautiful. I think it's just wonderful. And now comes the sequence that I think everybody remembers so well, when a baby comes up. Now, we were talking about casting earlier,

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rubber sword there. Always amusing to... Try to cut around. Yeah. Also, when Freddy gets thrown across the room there, he suddenly becomes giant for a shot. That was his double. If you go back, you look at that sword under the... the old sword under the armpit stab. It's funny, though, with the sound effect, it's really effective. The actors here rehearsed and rehearsed, but on the day Addie nailed...

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Big shots like that, you don't think about, but not only do they have to be lit and we have to rehearse it and get everything ready, but then we have to light all those flambos and light all the torches and wet down the floor. And sometimes by the time you're done, the floor is dried up or the fires have gone out. It's a funny thing about torches. You see all these people use torches in movies and you think, well, they last forever. Those torches, any kind of torch like that, they'll stay lit maybe three or four minutes, max.

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Doc's hand shakes there. He's afraid. This shot, it's funny because this shot is slightly out of focus at the beginning. And we picked it. It was actually just a... They filmed it, but it wasn't actually supposed to be a take. It was a second unit shot because it was a motion control camera that took a full day. This shot right here took a full day to do. And so second unit got it. And we decided the best take was their rehearsal take.

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So here's the infamous scene between Chris Walken and Dennis Hopper. And again, I can only applaud Quentin here because this scene was totally on the page. We did a half day of rehearsals for the scene. And the actors, what Chris and Dennis brought to the scene was...

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And there's a funny story here, because we rehearsed the scene, and when you're shooting on a set like this, you've got a choice. You say, okay, I'm going to shoot the left end of the trailer first, or the right end, because it took us four hours to take the end of the trailer off, redress it, and then put it back on again. And at the end of the rehearsal, we decided we were going to shoot Chris first, shoot the left end of the trailer first,

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That wasn't on the page. That came out of rehearsals. When we were doing rehearsals, the guys were laughing so hard that we never got through one rehearsal in one pass because they thought the tone that they were giving in the scene was so good and so outrageous and so funny that they broke out laughing every time. And see, it's amazing. You look at Chris Walken's side of the scene, and this is the second day of shooting.

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thing that happens in film is when they occur on screen while you're doing a take. That to me is, if you rehearse just enough, and you have just enough sense of where you might want to go in a scene, the magic happens when the camera rolls. Only one, up the stairs. He's very serious. He's a bridge between those two.

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you know what to do when this actor wants to rehearse a lot and this one doesn't want to rehearse much at all like how do you how do you balance that out and he's uh he's very skilled at that oh you feel the same way about people too what you're trying to say we got the shotguns right i don't own no shotguns why are we throwing clothes in the backyard incinerator say what a neighbor said she saw you throwing clothes in the backyard incinerator

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The rehearsal process was quite funny, really, because it was Russell and I and Curtis and Brian Helgland sitting in a church at the top of Highland in Hollywood for about seven weeks, while Curtis was also casting the other characters. So we would sit around a table and talk about character and really figure out the relationship between the two and this, that, and the other.

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And then he showed up for rehearsal six weeks later looking like that. He had put on 25 pounds of muscle. Like that? Like that, yeah, no, that, exactly. And there was a gang bang triple play. By the way, is the Andrew Davis name on the cover any sort of, was that just a coincidence? Is there an Andrew Davis name on the cover? Yeah, and the one cover of The Girl, one of the bullets on the front page is a blurb about Andrew Davis. Does he owe us money for that? I don't know. I don't even know if you know him, but I wondered if that was any sort of illusion.

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In the script, they sort of spoke a lot more of their thoughts than you needed to show in the movie. Well, again, there was a series of scenes. You cut back to this diner. I love this lady. She doesn't care less about getting them coffee. And by the way, to any first-time director, whenever you're directing a scene with extras in the background, after the first rehearsal, or during the first rehearsal, don't even watch the actors. Watch the extras.

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I don't, I'm a vegetarian. She ate 75 shrimp. Wow. Because this is one scene that I did cover. I even shot a third angle. Sure, this one. And the poor girl doing take after take after take. And I went up to Tay. I don't know if I should tell this story. I went up to Tay after we rehearsed the scene. And I'm going to clean up the language. And I said, we've got a problem.

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Jonathan Lynn

shoot big and difficult scenes a little later on in the schedule when the actors know each other well enough and when the crew will be working together, but we had no choice. Miraculously, we shot this whole scene within a 12-hour period on the first day. And we had rehearsed it first. The actors were just wonderful, remembered everything we'd rehearsed. Whatever. It seems that our dentist friend here knows where Yimmy is. Oh.

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Jonathan Lynn

when we rehearsed. And then we spent about two hours discussing exactly what had happened so that we could reconstruct it correctly and shoot it. That little moment took a very long time on the day, but it almost invariably gets a round of applause when it's seen with a big audience. The other reason

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Jonathan Lynn

we were able to shoot the film fast is because we rehearsed for a couple of weeks with all the cast. And because as a result, I was able to have a complete shot list in my head before we started the movie. We didn't storyboard anything. It wasn't all drawn out. But I think we began the movie on day one with my knowing effectively every shot in the film. And that saves an awful lot of time.

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Simon West

And we attached the ropes to it and then got 200 or 300 local Cambodian extras to tug on those ropes. And it was going to be a one-take thing. It took days to put those blocks in. And I was leaving the following day. So we had one chance to pull this thing down. And we rehearsed them and rehearsed them. And I had four or five cameras on it and one Steadicam.

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Simon West

camera in the middle amongst the guys and the idea was that the Steadicam was to run down the middle between the guys just at the moment the blocks were pulled out and fell to the ground and as I said we rehearsed this over and over again to make sure all the extras knew what was going to happen. At the last minute they got overexcited and when we gave the signal to pull they pulled so hard that they all fell backwards and knocked the Steadicam

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Simon West

Five. Four. Three. As I said, I came up with the idea of the swinging log quite late while we were already shooting. And so the set wasn't actually built with the log inside it. And so it was a late addition. And Angelina hadn't had time to rehearse jumping on this log and riding it. And so I had the stunt doubles.

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I always like to use a lot of improvisation when we rehearse and big, long improvisations. And what we did in this sequence in Lake Tahoe in Godfather Part II is we had the cast there a couple of weeks right on that location. And I went around and said, okay, this is...

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kind of told that she's like something of a prisoner. Again, the doors with the wives. Whose orders are these? Mr. Hagen's, man. He's coming over now. All right, well, I'm just going to have to speak to Mr. Hagen. We actually lived in these houses while we were rehearsing and preparing Godfather II, so these various houses that all the scenes are taking place in were where we slept at night. It was pretty funny. Then, of course, when the movie started, we...

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as the godfather? I never knew no godfather. I got my own family, Senator. I remember one incident about this scene is that we rehearsed it in the morning, and Frankie Pentangeling gave this performance

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one thing holly's such a great actress and she was uh but she was afraid she couldn't cry on cue so during the rehearsal period and we had an we had a big rehearsal period on this there's polly's credit a big rehearsal period on this um she would have me just at times without warning take her into another room and ask her to cry just so she could be ready for this

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I want him to like me, there was no little, he's a big deal. There was none of that. These are deeply trained actors who just did their work together. I don't hate them. Well, they say if you can reach even one person, it means something. I think we did three weeks rehearsal, but Bill didn't rehearse, which turned out to be good. He had something else that he was doing. It turned out to be really good because he came in and he was playing catch-up, which was good for his character.

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We rehearsed this scene so thoroughly, and there was so much passion in the rehearsal as well. It was always this, you know, mountain there to be climbed. And everything was to sort of just put life in it and to sort of...

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At the same time she was shooting Dr. No, Eunice Gason was also rehearsing for the London stage production of The Sound of Music, which presented some difficulties. Eunice Gason. I had met Richard Rogers in New York, who'd just seen me the week before in a play in London. And he said, you don't have to sing, do you? And I said, yes, I was trained for opera. He said, would you come and sing for me at the Shubert Theatre in New York? So I did. And then I got The Sound of Music.

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And not thinking that this series was actually going to happen. Because Terence wasn't too sure about it. And of course, the moment I started rehearsal for that, Terence rang me and said, right, are you on? I said, but I'm in rehearsal with The Sound of Music. He said, oh, come on. I've written this character now. So I said, well, can I do it rushing from the theater?

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Because I found spitting very, very difficult. You see, he wanted me to really spit, but I mean, I don't know, how much can you spit? We had an awful lot of rehearsals. I don't think he's been spat on so many times ever. Ken Adam talks about the set of the interior of Miss Tarrow's house. I tried to...

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and all these prosthetics on my face. And they had 35 seconds to get them off so that I could then be 30. And then they had 40 seconds to get them back on. And by the time we'd done two dress rehearsals, they'd taken all the skin off my face. I had the one hand that was made up old and the other hand that was made up young. So when I had to do a fight with this hand that was made up old, would I use the left hand?

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To do a fight, you have to choreograph it the same as you would a dance routine. You can't just go in there and sort of wave your arms around. You have to know where you're going. You set points to move to. So, first of all, the camera's got to be able to photograph it, the second camera, because usually in a fight, you have it covered by two or three cameras. And you rehearse. And hopefully, you...

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rehearse enough so that nobody gets hurt. It's not always the case. Oh, hell. Sorry, Granddad. Hey, wait for me! I never really liked, you know, it was odd.

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Judd Nelson

There's Judd. Right on. I told the story when we did the interview before with Jason, that you came to the audition just so ready, man. You were just there. You were already there. That's a long time in high school. - Yeah. All seven years of high school really paid off, and you got a great role. Judd, you were great. I remember from the day you came in for the audition, you just came in, like, "What movie? Can we start, or what?" Even these rehearsals, 'cause, John, if you remember, man, we did rehearsals in this space 'cause this art department had constructed this. And it was inside a gymnasium, so we had the benefit of working as if it were a stage, and it was already there, ready for us. It was cool, 'cause the studio took over the school, in a way. So, we could turn their gymnasium into this library. However, at the time, there was a USFL football team, the Chicago Blitz, they were practicing and using the school as their home base. So, they practiced in the big gymnasium. Not anymore, it became the library, and they went to the old, small gym, or had to go outside. And it was Chicago, and it was really cold, and they hated us. These hulking dudes would be like, "Get out of the way." I miss Paul, man. Paul was great. - Yeah, he was a cool guy.

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Judd Nelson

See, this is where it was cool where we had John. He was definitely a collaborative director and sought to get the best out of us all, and was looking for behavior, you know. So, I think, the wisdom of he and Dede Allen and their choices in making this all work, 'cause we had so much footage, it was great to see. All these years later, we take it for granted, what we see the final cut to be. But the truth is that, like we were talking about, Dede would come to the set and she would closely work with John. And also, he gave us the freedom to play and just have fun. And certain things, like the stuff you're seeing with Judd spinning around. I'm sticking a pen in my mouth, stupid stuff. We had no idea whether it would arrive in the film or be a part of it. I didn't. We were just having fun. But once we knew what the space was, we had the parameters. Rehearsal was key. - Yeah, it was like shooting a play. That's how I recollect and look back at it. We shot this play for 35 days and we were... Mostly in sequence. - Yeah. Yeah, we were fortunate to be extracted from Hollywood, and all of a sudden in this suburban gym of Illinois, not far from where John had grown up. So, it was a fortunate thing that we felt like we were shooting a play, 'cause we also had a week of rehearsal, which was... No, we had more than a week. - Was it more? We had more than a week. In fact, we weren't done with our rehearsal time when Hughes went, "We're ready. Let's go." All the work we've done keeping our faces in the industry since and maintaining our careers, it's still... To this day, I don't think I've ever had that since. So, it was a real... A real rehearsal. - Yeah, it was a real luxury. It was also a lot of fun, 'cause it really bonded us and gave us a chance to get a sense of where we were all at, and also made the work better, yeah. And we built real history, as opposed to that you believe you've made up a history. We actually had real experiences. Even if it's something as simple as dinner four nights in a row, you at least have some real past and things will reveal themselves to you further along in the work. And Hughes really wanted it to sound authentic. So, he never limited us. If you came up with something, you never felt like, "Oh, wow, "we took it beyond the text." Big deal. And he was always looking for it to get to that point, anyway. The freedom that he gave us, the idea that he would trust us like that, which is the point of the film. Just because they are 17 years old doesn't mean they are 17 years dumb. There's a weird thing, though, about rehearsals and stuff like that, where you think... You even said, "I've never done that before or since." It always seems to work out when actors and stuff get those chances. You hear those stories over and over. But, for the most part, people, they just don't do it. Yeah, in terms of genre, too, this is something that broke a mold, in a way, 'cause it was, in the industry talk, a talking heads film. It's really about a bunch of people sitting around, talking. So again, the play analogy comes into play. We really felt like... I remember rehearsing, and we were in these positions. I remember walking into that space, and John going, "Okay, you sit over here." We would rehearse these scenes. So, by the time we shot them, we all had a good sense of each other. We were a solid group, and we also knew where we were going with it. Now it looks like a luxury, but to this day, I've often looked back and thought about that, that it was great intelligence in just doing that, putting us in together. We sat in a room... - I thought they were all gonna be like that. I really did. I look back on that and that is a high-water mark in terms of the importance of having everyone being on the same page. Right. If you get rehearsal time and if you shoot in sequence, it's not like you are trusting the other actor to know that in the scene before this they actually threatened to kill me. So, it's a little bit heavier. You don't have to do that because before we shot this scene, we shot the scene where he threatened to kill me, so we know that. It's a great collaboration. You don't realize it till you're blessed enough to work in the business. When you're on the set, you see that there's... You know, sometimes the best idea will come from the script supervisor, or sometimes it's the guy at the crafts service table. It's a great collaboration, even though it's a director's medium. I think that sense of support was instilled in us with John, 'cause he gave us these roles and we all knew what we were doing, but he always was collaborative that way. I think that was his intelligence, too, that he allowed his scripts to transcend even the beauty that they had, because he hired people that he believed in. But there's a great collaboration, always. When you're talking about rehearsal, you're talking about the five of you guys. Were Paul and Kapelos kept away a little bit, to let you guys have your thing, a little "us vs. them" a little bit for that? Well, that was happening right away. Also, 'cause Paul wanted to hang with us, so that was perfect, 'cause it gave us the power to say, "No." So, we could. But you guys rehearsed those scenes, right, with you and Paul? But he wouldn't necessarily be sitting there on a day when... Just the five of us. - ...it was the five of us in that rehearsal, if we were gonna get to that stuff. We wouldn't do necessarily whole read-through of it. We would be taking it from the first scene and rehearsing it till it made some sense to us, and John knew, basically, how he wanted to see it and how he wanted to shoot it. It's a business, at the end of the day, like anything else, so there's always such a sense of the clock and rushing, so, as Judd said, a high water mark in our careers to start with this great project, and we had these great roles and a well-developed script. But he was smart enough to sit us all down and get our input and let us work through it. So, once we got on our feet with this and we were shooting the scenes, we had a closeness and a vibe already flowing between us. But it's funny you said that, 'cause I thought the same, too. I thought it would be like this after, and usually the director is the most stressed-out, doesn't know what the next shot is. It's like the world changed after this. But part of it was the good fortune we had to be in Chicago and do this. It was at the beginning of his career, after Sixteen Candles did pretty well, even though it was a small film. I think I remember him telling us that his intent was to do this first. I think the studio was gonna make this film first and they flipped them. So, we were fortunate to be away from everything and... Flipped it and Sixteen Candles, you mean? Yeah, exactly, in terms of the making of the films. So then we did this project second, and then we were, again, just in Chicago, and that sort of remote quality helps it, too. It's a lot of the fun of it. 'Cause then you came back here to do Weird Science, right? Yeah, that was fun. There is something about that, pulling it out of Hollywood. That's clichéd, "Hollywood's bad and you can't get anything done." But there is something to be said about that. Well, the story takes place there, and that's where he lives. Why not put it there? It's easier, it makes the most sense, and for the actors, it's one less thing you have to imagine, and hope everyone else is imagining the same thing. In fact, it is the same room where we're gonna go every day. It's a school. - Right. I remember, I went to some local schools, too, in that area at the time. It was fun just to get a sense of what... 'Cause I hadn't had that kind of upbringing. I grew up in New York City at a liberal arts high school. It was a different experience. It was a boys' reformatory, wasn't it? I was away a lot and... Very religious, wasn't it? - That's part of the fun, actually, just to get out of the mix, to be somewhere else. As an actor, the gift is getting the job, and then the sense of exploration is enhanced, I think, by being somewhere on location. It's fun. Makes it part of joining the circus, I guess. So, what, you guys went to an actual school, went in, mixed with the kids, did that whole... Yeah. Yeah. - I did some of that, yeah. Yeah, Hughes arranged it for us to go. I know that Ally, Emilio and I went to this high school, and the principal knew, but most of the teachers didn't, and it worked out perfectly. It was a school that had two halls, one called Jock Hall and one called Freak Hall. And I was like, "Are you kidding me? That's perfect." I just waved to Emilio, "See you at the end of the day," and then went over to the other side. It's great 'cause I was over 18, so I met some guys and I could buy them beer. I was like, "Yeah, I got an ID that'll work. Come on, let's go get some beer." Just treating it so poorly, it was perfect. You didn't get put in detention at that school, did you? No, but I did get sent to the principal's office, the one guy who knew that it was okay for me to be there, so it was perfect. I hadn't found my classroom yet, out of Freak Hall, and I didn't have a classroom, so I was always going to be found out there. Bender, that's school property there, and it doesn't belong to us. It's something not to be toyed with. That's very funny. Fix it. You should really fix that. - Am I a genius? No, you're an asshole. - What a funny guy. Fix the door, Bender. Everyone, just... I've been here before. I know what I'm doing. No. Fix the door! - Shut up! God damn it!

8:42 · jump to transcript →

Judd Nelson

I never did it, either. At this point, too, just where the industry was, there was no video village, so one of my best memories is of John being there. He would just sit behind the camera. He would be sitting on the floor with us, just like the camera operator would be on the floor to get these low angles. He was really there, part of it all. It was great. Was he a good audience? - He definitely was. Yeah. And he was a real audience. He wanted to be moved. In fact, that was a great lesson, to see a director lens his project like that, to be that invested in it. It was cool. It's a tricky thing where you have a director and sometimes it can be, everything you do is great. Like they want you to feel comfortable and they want you to feel like, "Everything you do is great!" But there's a bullshit meter that I think you get as an actor, where you go, "No, it wasn't." And you gotta get that level of trust, where if John says it's good, it's good. Yeah. - That kind of thing. Was he pretty good about that, too? Without telling you, you suck or something. No, that's the thing, you have to be very pragmatic as a director, always aware of the clock, so in lieu of all that, I never felt like he was rushing us. It was just the opposite. I think he would work on your performance with you. It was cool. And he would give us the freedom to try things. He would allow us to know that we maybe tried something that was no good, too. If you did something that was no good, he wouldn't say, "That's not very good." He would look at us and be like, "Yeah, I guess that one wasn't so good." You know what I mean? He would let us find it for ourselves. There's a paternal instinct, I think, that directors need to have. But with him, he felt more like a big brother. He wanted us to shine. He wanted to see us get the best out of it. So, he was never really precious about his words or anything, which I found to be really cool. - It was cool that even after all that rehearsal, even once you get on set, the crew's around, the pressure is on a little bit, like you said, time is a factor, trying to get the day. And he still gave you time, even after all that. You know that classic image of... It was a saying of, I guess, Jack Lemmon's, where he talked about "magic time." John was a director that appreciated that. When the camera's rolling, he was the first audience. He was the guy right there with you, watching as if it was one of your parents in the bleachers or something. So, that was a really cool thing because he was the writer, and, of course, in that sort of paternal spirit, we wanted to impress him, him to be happy with what we were doing. At the same time, it was never any finger pointing. He just guided you through the performance. And he had a great way of, I think, empowering all of us to put our best foot forward. It was cool. His scripts have a lot of heart, and Hughes has a lot of heart. He can hear the truth, I think, and if we did something that had strayed that sounded like that color of truth that he wanted, then it would stay. He also was... I just found him very encouraging. Yeah. - As a person and as a director. And that's like a captain. If the director is the captain of the ship, I would like the captain to be encouraging if we're gonna come upon some high seas or dangerous times. Crunch time, you want the captain to not be treating you like you're something he wants rubbed off the bottom of your shoe. Because I think we would have done anything for him. I think we probably still would. It's interesting, too, because in the structure of the film, it all leads back to these scenes. I guess for everybody it becomes therapy at the end here, where we're all sitting around literally like a group therapy, as is the image of the wide shot. - Yeah, that trust is important. You want your other actors to be alive in the scene. And because this, in real time, came later for us, as it does in the movie, shooting in sequence, you don't have to earn the respect from the people around you. Right. - It's already done. Suddenly, the only redemption that we can find is with each other, and that's the surprise, I think, at this point. Where everyone is peeling away, becoming naked to each other. I think that's part of the reason why it's so important, too, the way they cut this. Emilio is doing the thing, and the camera pans around him, right? And then we go and we get everybody's reaction shot while he's still talking because you guys are going through it, too. - Yeah. He's like this... He's like this mindless machine that I can't even relate to anymore. "Andrew! You've got to be number one! "I won't tolerate any losers in this family. "Your intensity is for shit! Win! Win! Win!" You son of a bitch.

1:10:08 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

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

0:21 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

So this, uh.... What's interesting about a lot of this movie is we would always put fake snow down. The foam and stuff. - The foam, and that's really... We had a Wisconsin ski... A bunch of guys who worked for this ski resort in Wisconsin put down snow. But... - That poor statue. Yeah, the statue was a running gag, and this guy... A lot of this movie was made on an extremely small budget. At the time, the picture was at one studio... ...and that studio didn't wanna make the movie, because of a $2-million difference... ...and it went over to Twentieth Century Fox. And we still were... We still made the film for a little above $18 million... ...which at the time was still a small budget. So we had to make things stretch, which we'll talk about through the picture. One of the great things about working with Pesci, I have to say... .IS his improvisational skills were terrific. And it was because of his training with Scorsese that... ...even on a picture like Home Alone, really comes in handy. He's a very funny guy, Joe. - Yeah. And his comedic instincts were really something I'd never seen before. Little snippets in pictures like Raging Bull and Goodfellas. But his ability to improvise was just phenomenal. And then John Heard. I cast John Heard because John Heard was someone I was always a big fan of. He was in this picture... It was called Cutter and Bone. Now it's called Cutter's Way. And his performance should've gotten an Academy Award. I've never seen it. It's Jeff Bridges and John Heard, and he is just amazing in that film. I was a huge fan, and it was always a dream to work with him. He also did this old film called Head Over Heels. And he was kind of a leading man back in his day. He's just a wonderful actor... ...and another guy who didn't really know why he was in this movie. At the time, he was sort of like, "Why am I doing this?" I remember feeling a certain amount of discomfort from him. He was like, "Why do I have to do this? Why am I in this kids' movie?" You know? "I'm a good a--" Understandable. No one really knew what this movie had the potential of becoming. We had always hoped it would be successful, but we never knew. Um.... Pfft. I always knew. You always had an idea. - I always knew. Now, this scene. Do you remember coming in on a Saturday to rehearse this scene? Yeah. - We had to rehearse this because it was so... Which was so chaotic with everybody. We ate so much pizza. I didn't wanna eat lunch. And this is something that was interesting. We... You'll notice that there's a rare shot in the film where... There's your brother. - Yeah, there he is. How are you guys--? He's working now, right? He's doing very well. Oh, yeah. He's doing very good, very well for himself. Un, this is typical of the style of this movie. Not the vomiting, obviously... ...but the separation of actors in certain scenes. Because Macaulay's time was so valuable... ...we needed to shoot Macaulay separately... ...and sometimes other kids as well. So you'll always see... I tried to block sequences where I could sort of keep Macaulay off by himself... ...and keep the other actors in another space... ...so I could shoot people separately. Child labor laws again. - Child labor laws. And we're-- And Kiery had to reshoot the chair in the face, I remember. Oh, yeah. - Like, he had to come back later. He was upset he had to get his hair cut like Fuller again. Oh, he was? - Ha-ha-ha. Well, he-- We made a special, very light rubber chair... ...so when it... - Yeah, that's... Yeah. That's-- I remember that. Catherine O'Hara was someone who I had, uh... ...Just loved her work on Second City TV. - Yeah. I mean, I was, uh... Aside from Saturday Night Live at the time in the '70Os... ...9econd City TV was the-- Sort of the place where you learned about comedy. And for me it was... I was just such a huge fan... ...SO It was, again, a real honor... ...to be able to work with her on both of these films. Yeah, no, she's incredible. Even just the stuff she's doing now. She's still--? Oh, it's great. It's great stuff. Both of his kids are still going to school here. I guess he missed the family.... You got a pretty good cast. Yeah, it's kind of interesting for a film that... But we treated it... The weird thing about this film... ...and the reason I think the film has kind of stood the test of time for a lot of kids... ... IS because we always treated it with respect. We never felt that we were making a movie for kids. We were making a movie for the parents as well. It had a lot of appeal. And you never-- You wanted to... You wanted the photography to have a certain elegance about it... ...and the camera to be moving. And it was really never... So many times today, people try to make kids' movies... ...and they always cheapen them. And we never-- I mean, certainly we got cheap with our jokes. Let's not pretend that we didn't. - Ha-ha-ha. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it's Three Stooges, you know? - Anything for a laugh. I

7:04 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

Hi, pal. We outsmarted you this time. Okay, he's about to bite my finger. Now, how is it possible that he almost bit through your finger? It was a rehearsal. He didn't bite through it. He just... - But you still have a scar. I still got a little scar there. - Yeah. But it was only in the rehearsal, it wasn't in the take. Now, Marley, here.... Here's a really poor example of stuntman... The stuntman who hits... - Oh, it looks nothing like him. It's just like a 14-year-old guy. Look at that. It's just-- It's one of the things on a low-budget film you can't control. So he was a good stuntman. Unfortunately, he was still in high school. Pretending to be a 75-year-old guy.

1:29:42 · jump to transcript →

Marco Brambilla Daniel Waters

to set up and rehearse, and the frequency of visits from Joel and then the studio executives, and then even Lisa Hansen, who was the head of the studio at the time, dropped by to casually say, are we going to have a shot today? So that was a very tricky shot to set up. Oh boy, the things I don't have experience. And this is Sandra Bullock, who plays Lenina Huxley, which is

11:53 · jump to transcript →

Marco Brambilla Daniel Waters

And we rehearsed it with a stuntman. And the stuntman was injured because of this rap. This is the conveyor belt scene. So that was actually shot in the studio. Oh, I get it. Yeah, I was wondering. But this shot as well was with a camera car being on a trailer. And I think we did some of it with rear projection, like old school rear projection as well with the two real actors.

1:33:31 · jump to transcript →

Marco Brambilla Daniel Waters

using some elements from the other sets and reusing a lot of elements and then staging these scenes inside the convention center and this is where huxley is forced to resort to violence and she's good at it what did sandra bullock get to think of this finally going to do some action she rehearsed i mean date again working with the same martial arts

1:38:50 · jump to transcript →

Oh, right. For some reason, when he came home that day, he really got into the Christmas spirit for the first time. Perfect! Josh Evans plays the young Grinch. Terrific young actor. And he spent some time with Jim Carrey, who had already begun developing the character, of course, in rehearsals. But it was really fun on these days to see

28:09 · jump to transcript →

We'd rehearsed it. We knew the material was good. Jim had a great handle on it. But seeing it in character, in the cave, it just became a real highlight in the film. I'm not scared. Denial is to be expected in the face of pure evil. I don't think so. Don't! Jim was also wonderful with Taylor. I mean, just as two actors go. Jim has a daughter. He's great with kids.

39:54 · jump to transcript →

again, didn't exist in the book whatsoever, but they're a real outgrowth of what we've developed through the first half of the story and provided a great performance opportunity for Jim and for Taylor. Look at that walk. Jim is so physical. When we were rehearsing this movie, of course, without the costumes, air-conditioned sets, Jim in a T-shirt and jeans,

41:25 · jump to transcript →

And by the meantime, she's just exactly similar quality of Andre Urban. And she looks so elegant. That's what we need, elegant and sexy, you know, and smart. And then to pair with Tom, it just looked like the golden couple and the very charming couple, you know. So we are very excited about her. And then we did some, a little bit of rehearsal before we start shooting. And we put Tom and Tandy in front of the camera.

15:06 · jump to transcript →

I usually like to give them a lot of creative freedom. And I like them to improvise their dialogue and changing, you know, something. And I respect their ideas, you know. And I try to find a way to work it out, try to find a way to work into the scene. And I like instincts. I like they do everything by their own instinct. And I hate rehearsal. You know, I've never liked to do any rehearsal in advance. On a set, all I need is just a rough,

1:01:13 · jump to transcript →

rehearsal and, you know, walk around on the set and make everybody understand what the scene is about and make everybody feel comfortable on the staging. And then we just shoot it. I like happening. I like something unexpected thing happen. In face-off, even in this movie, I also did the same thing with Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and Douglas Scott, and everyone. You know, I have never...

1:01:41 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence and Akiva Goldsman

follow the story and feel it emotionally without the use of dialogue and without the use of music, just with behavior. It was a big challenge but a lot of fun. We started moving to a place where during rehearsals we were almost trying to understand the scenes without the dialogue to just sort of finally get to what the behavior of a scene was and how much of the storytelling is really in that and I think

10:02 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence and Akiva Goldsman

We are all used to a lot of, especially in American movies, we're used to a lot of words. And it was really exciting to strip them down in rehearsal, in the making, and even in the editing of the movie, just to let the composition, performance, and story architecture sort of shine through. Yeah, but we had to be very, very specific too in the creation of the scenes and the layout and what kind of information emotionally we're sort of doling out. You know, are we doling out the feeling of family?

10:31 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence and Akiva Goldsman

This was the Bob Marley virologist philosophy, which is something that we sort of came up with as we were working through sort of character and theme and early version of the screenplay and then in rehearsals. Yeah, and we're all big Bob Marley fans. And I remember, I think, I think Will came up with starting the use of it, just he was looking up Legend, I Am Legend, and came up with, saw Legend on the internet and Bob Marley's album, you know, Bob Marley's album, and brought it up and started thinking about it and

1:16:53 · jump to transcript →

Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

up to that point. He was, you know, just a little rain man. He knew the script by heart. Literally on our first day of rehearsal, you know, Josh and Carrie, you know, years have been acting since they were his age. And they were laughing when, you know, I would say, let's work on this particular scene. And Caden would already say the first line and they would flip through their scripts going, what scene is that? I don't even know my lines yet for this. And there is our six-year-old who already knows all of his lines by heart. But it was really important not to make him

7:25 · jump to transcript →

Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

like he was, you know, how he rehearsed the lines with his parents and how to make it sound more natural. And so what we discovered really early on, and David Boyd helped a lot with this as well, was just we just, whenever we had a scene with Caden in it, we would aim all the cameras at him first. And we would do all of his, because his level of his focus, which you can see even at the beginning of

8:05 · jump to transcript →

Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

definitive that what she was rehearsing or researching was actually what was really happening and that she thought, our children are in great jeopardy now. You would expect her, you wouldn't buy that Daniel comes home with some surprising news and that she decides to let it go and have a night of amour with him. And so we felt like it's really important that it

45:03 · jump to transcript →

and we lined up all the cars and the actors and we figured out the shot and rehearsed it and then went to the location to get it. So we were very well prepared. I love Tarzan. Tarzan's so energetic. He's so good. So great. And Tarzan is just, a lot of what you're seeing is just his natural instinct as an actor. That moment with Shay. Yeah. That was Shay on set feeling that moment and creating energy between him and Ethan because we were still,

59:41 · jump to transcript →

I think, I seem to remember, we only had one night to shoot all of the coverage of their fight, the two of them. This was really, really challenging stuff to do. Lots of rehearsal went into it. And Tom's running. When to cut to Tom. And again, that's point of view. Keeping that character in there, keeping that point of view alive. This is a drone. It was the only...

1:38:28 · jump to transcript →

And then this was an idea that developed as we were rehearsing the fight and suddenly came up with the idea of 18 inches of clearance and what kind of complication that would present for the characters, but also for the camera. Because suddenly we realized the camera could at no time be higher than the actors or you'd be disconnected from the reality of the scene when you suddenly realized the camera was...

2:18:05 · jump to transcript →

Oh, look. Nice car, that, that woodie. Yes, and what was the tape playing? Was it Nixon? Nixon's-- which I... I don't like that speech being played, actually because it locks the movie into a time frame. I thought it was terribly clever. And that late November evening wasn't in time with Nixon's speech. Speech. And, you know, there's lots of things. Now we see this motorcyclist here. Those people who played Transylvanians were on the back of those motorbikes. They would have to go to the studio this very night, dress up, put all their Transylvanian gear on, and then put motorbike leathers on as well. Yeah. - And then go out on these motorbikes. They didn't drive them themselves. No, no. They had motorcyclists. They paid pillion passengers. Yeah. And, as Ramon Gow said, you know, I said, "Why are they coming in to do this? It could be anybody wet in the dark. And he said, "Could be a gorilla with a pipe, luv." Gorilla with a pipe? But I'll never forget the first day I saw the Transylvanians, 'cause they were rehearsing in a room in the house. And we didn't have Transylvanians in the play, and suddenly this door was open, and I don't want politically noncorrect, but it was so freaky because they were freaks. Sorry. - As indeed we all are. No, speak for yourself. And in the amazement of tall, small, fat, thin, you Know... You lost a sense of norms, you do. Sense of center. Yes, and I saw all these people dancing doing the "Time Warp," and I almost collapsed. I couldn't believe it. I thought... Because I didn't know they were going to be in this. I didn't know there was a cast of Transylvanians. No. - No. Well, when I went into the room and David Toguri was rehearsing them, Well, when I went into the room and David Toguri was rehearsing them, Well, when I went into the room and David Toguri was rehearsing them, and Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon was standing amongst these people, with hugely different, physically, SO very... I'll never work again for using the word "freak." It seemed to me that Susan and Barry, who most people would say are relatively good-looking human beings, seemed just as freakish. There was no standard. The standards had disappeared. Yes, that's what freakish-- yes, right. And that was interesting.

12:03 · jump to transcript →

Oh. - Whoo! Now this little-- That was a great little-little dance there. I-I-I came up with that little dance step. Did you? - In seconds. And I don't know how I did it. And I've never been able to do it since. I could've killed you, because I could hardly do it. And Toguri kept telling me... I kept falling over. It was that wiggling on one foot, and I had high heels. We did it very easily and very quickly. I know. Did you make it up? In seconds. It's not from the "Time Warp"? - No. Or did we just follow you? Obviously. Well, Nell went... ... That looks good. That's good." And I don't Know where it came from, because you know I'm a terrible dancer. And we did it in seconds. And, uh, it was all over. But it looks rather good, that little leg movement. Yeah. Yes, I love this bit. "He's okay." Because when-when we did it in rehearsal, I gave Nellie a note for this. She'd hate the word "note." You know, and she goes, "He's okay." And changed it completely from however she'd done it before. And Tim Curry was so shocked, that he really did react to it like he was furious with her. Because she completely changed the tone of it. Mm-hmm. And I loved it because it was, like, it wasn't what he was expecting, so his fury was real.

38:13 · jump to transcript →

It was very difficult to rehearse. They would have to use another level of truth in them. It sounds pompous, but it isn't as pompous as it sounds. Nate could probably make a deal for you. I'll bet you you could probably go back. I always have great feelings of inadequacy when it comes to explaining any kind of art, anyway. I've always totally...

2:01:37 · jump to transcript →

I mean, a lot of people like to plot through the whole sequence of events and storyboard and have an overall picture of what will be the final movie. I have a very, very sketchy overall picture. I find it very difficult to rehearse scenes before coming to the set.

2:03:04 · jump to transcript →

You choreographed this pavan between Mike and the tall man. How many times did we rehearse that? I don't know. I just remember talking about the sort of Western style of it. I mean, like a Western movie, you know. Like a gunfight. Gunfight kind of thing, right. It had to be very precise.

37:45 · jump to transcript →

word here in the film i never realized it would have so much impact when we were first rehearsing it this thing was an afterthought as i recall and i had got a haircut and no one to this day has ever accused me they don't seem to notice that the tall man for the first time doesn't have his long hair anymore well get on upstairs get your gear that's right i didn't even remember

1:25:18 · jump to transcript →

He would write me these little notes that was like, you know, aim, you know, costumes went very. Wow. And then when we were going to rehearse, and I had never rehearsed before, so I didn't know what you were supposed to do. And I thought, okay, let's just all go to high school and we'll have a pretend class. Oh, wow. I didn't call it rehearsing, I called it pretending.

28:03 · jump to transcript →

How great. And so he said, well, okay, but I don't want to be in the class. I want to like, you know, barge in on it. And he decided him and his friends would like disrupt it and they'd bring Chinese food. And that was the only rehearsal we did. That's right. So his thing was he felt the other characters looked at Spicoli a little bit as a nuisance. Yeah. And so he was a nuisance to them. To them.

28:28 · jump to transcript →

I said, yeah, you know, that's fine, Steve. Let's rehearse it a few more times. And each rehearsal that he did, he'd bring it down more and more and more until we got to this. But you know what? He came in and he said, your secretary gave me the wrong scene to read. And I thought, fuck. You know what? We've only got one day to shoot this. It's winter. It's a dual aspect, Windows.

14:56 · jump to transcript →

I had no rehearsals with anybody. I didn't know what I was going to get until I got there. There was no time for rehearsals. I would have loved to have seen that performance before we were on set shooting it. That was the first time I saw it. It was almost too late to do anything about it at that point. This is what you're going to get, George. This is what you got.

44:31 · jump to transcript →

All the, you know, their vision being completely... Vision and sound. Non-existent. And the screenplay and some of the production value. It really was the blind leading the blind. It really was. But yet, we could not see and we walked forward. Did you have... We could not see. Did you have a lot of rehearsal? Speaking of all these things with all the heads and not being able to see, did you run through a lot or was it kind of just going for it?

19:41 · jump to transcript →

Well, I mean, I believe we rehearsed and shot like pretty much anybody rehearses and shoots, you know, on a motion picture. I mean, they did cover us. You know, we had our masters and we had our tights and we had our medium shots and what have you. But there was not a lot. I remember the, I don't think there was a table read. Was there not? I don't remember. No, not that I can recall. Yeah. I don't remember a table read. So this was Alligator and he was played by a fantastic actor.

20:09 · jump to transcript →

But Leslie's great. He never lets on that it's a comedy. He just... And was unaware we were shooting most of the time. Yeah. He thought this was a rehearsal. But he was terrific. Does he take a lot of takes to get it right? Okay. No, no. No, it's not him, but we do a lot of takes. Yeah, because? Mostly we can't remember which ones are the good ones.

39:24 · jump to transcript →

Remember they tried to build some baseball launcher thing? The ex-German rocket scientists we had in the effects department. That thing never worked. Probably just threw them up in the air. Is that the one we labeled the pigeon shooter? The pigeon shooter, yeah. That scared some people. They thought we were actually going to shoot pigeons with it. Those were the days, huh? Oh, you remember this? We rehearsed this. Well, do you remember we came in with all the dailies for this and the editor said, what's a rundown? Oh, yeah. It's like, uh-oh.

1:12:55 · jump to transcript →

the first introduction to Malcolm McDowell I have a very strong memory of, which is this was the first scene I shot with Malcolm. We'd been rehearsing together, and he was fantastic and very enthusiastic about doing the show and very happy to be off. He'd just done Star Trek, and he was happy to be doing something much more in tune with his past. But he walked on set in the scene and said...

7:42 · jump to transcript →

Those are my Michael Jackson tape fingers. I have Michael Jackson tape fingers and I'm League of Their Own too. Because that's how nerdy I am. And here's the Ripper dance, which Ice-T was like, there's no way I'm dancing. Ice-T was like, yeah, I'm not doing that. I'm just sitting in the chair and that's it. And I'm like, okay. Because Adam's like, he won't come to the choreography scenes, the choreography sessions, rehearsals. And it's like, okay, now I know why.

1:17:43 · jump to transcript →

My Question Initially To Jean-pierre Was

I do have to ask, you know, why they would transport a little cube of jelly as opposed to a container of liquid. That's a big question. - It was square. That's a real big question. But anyway, the effect is funnier. - Yeah. At the beginning it was more complicated, but because of the time-consuming... The effect was very simple. We just had the glass with water, and then the cube, and then to check a little bit the water to have some effect, and a quick morphing in post. It's efficient. I love this one. I remember the story about the lemons. Dan Hedaya found this idea during the rehearsals. It was a good idea, but he had to eat lemons all the day. At the end of the day he was sick, because he ate maybe five, six lemons... to match the shots. But Michael Wincott had to smoke all day. Yeah, but it's not foreign for him. -

22:12 · jump to transcript →

My Question Initially To Jean-pierre Was

So acting like you can see something when you can't see something. That's great. Was it a practical? - Yeah. We built some wax aliens to blow up for that moment when they blow up. The explosion's practical and the bubbles are real. Everything was really here. Tom was in this underwater - in the suit as well - for a couple of shots. That's a beautiful shot. - How deep was it? 15 feet? In a closed set. You couldn't swim to the surface if you wanted to. The difficult thing about this was that the rehearsals you performed with a mask on and breathing from a breathing apparatus. They were all calm. You were marking what you were going to do in that particular shot. You were gonna swim from here to here. This was your action. When they were satisfied that everybody knew what it was they were supposed to do, there's a countdown from six where you're asked to take six deep pulls of the oxygen. When you get to two the mask comes off. Then you're blind. The mask comes off then so there's no bubbles in the shot. You hold your breath for as long as it takes for them to slate, then start the action. In postproduction we put some noises, some voices, and we recorded the voices in a swimming pool with pipes, like... ...to put the pressure, to feel the pressure. This thing - there was no escape from this. You swam up into that thing. The only way to get out was to swim back down and out. Waiting in the wings would be stunt doubles with hookah masks for us, once the shot was completed, to give you air. In rehearsal you could go longer. It was calm, you were swimming gently. Once you were acting and the energy was up you used more oxygen and there was less time to stay under. Virtually every shot in the sequence you're in jeopardy, so the stakes are high. You're operating on pure adrenaline, which is not the case in a calm rehearsal. And then you got Jean-Pierre on a microphone screaming: "I want to see bubbles because they are making it look like you are afraid." So the bubbles are created by you getting rid of your whole store of oxygen and you're only good for about half of what you were during rehearsal. Made it difficult. I don't know about you, Leland, but I for one ran out of air on five separate occasions. Yes. - And started for the surface. Unfortunately the surface was a ceiling because this is a kitchen set. So there was no escaping it unless you knew where the escape routes were, and since you're blinded and disoriented as to where you are at any given time... I was literally saved five separate times by stunt divers who saw me panic, saw me swim for the surface, saw I wasn't gonna make it, followed me and stuck this thing in my mouth. We each had one assigned to us. I just remember the one time that the guy who was assigned to me that day decided to take a bathroom break during one of the takes. I ran out of air and there was nobody there. Remember? It was your stunt double who gave me... I shared air with you guys. He was so used to saving my life that he was just on guard.

1:11:06 · jump to transcript →

The way those shots are accomplished is that they're rehearsed initially... ...with Arnold Boslow in the scene with her... ...so that the eye line is figured out... ...and exactly what the performance is and the timing. And then the actor, Rachel, in this particular instance... ...has to go it alone and work without anything else in the scene. And, of course, the mummy is added in post-production. What is he doing here?

1:13:56 · jump to transcript →

We rehearsed this scene over and over without the rat. And then we put the rat in for this take. And Rachel, you know, here she is, she sees the rat, feels the rat, she sees the rat, and she turns and the rat happens to jump over onto the female mummy. And right as I called cut, the female mummy flapped off the altar screaming. She wasn't expecting the rat to jump onto her. She was petrified of it. But I thought she was a real trooper to just sit there and not move until I called cut.

1:40:13 · jump to transcript →

E. Elias Merhige

The interesting thing here is that I asked, it had been raining for hours and hours when we were shooting, and I had asked my production designers and art director's assistant to go down and ask a farmer for some grass. And you see this area here that they're all walking on. Instead of grass, they put down all horse manure. And while I was rehearsing with the actors, I was trying to figure out what smelled so bad.

22:46 · jump to transcript →

E. Elias Merhige

In other words, all you have to do is, as they say, relax, and the vampire will do all the work. You had me leave rehearsals in Berlin just to do that. Hey, watch it! Now, this is one of my favorite moments where you have Carrie, you know, taking his measurements for focus, and you have Willem very vainly and enjoying himself completely.

1:13:54 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

Luke had to take three or four months off to grow the beard. So he was the-- Luke and I were the only ones who actually-- Luke and Seymour Cassel and I rehearsed together. We got a chance to work together because Luke was free. Because he couldn't get any other work with that beard.

26:17 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

Most movies, somebody gets shot or somebody dies, things happen that are very dramatic, more dramatic than real life. In the movies we'd made before, the only time anybody dies is if it happened a few years before the movie starts. And one thing I really wanted to do is to make a movie where it was going to be possible for someone to die. Because in the other movies we'd done, it just didn't seem like it could happen. It was a tonal violation of the movie. I sort of felt like, it was like we wanted to stay on the surface of some stuff. Not that those movies are superficial-- I don't think of them that way. --but that there's a lightness to them that it's hard to break out of. And this one, I think, is probably a lot darker. And, you know, there's somebody who tries to commit suicide, and there's death that really occurs in the movie. There's wounds that are kind of deep and sharp that I don't know if you find so much in the other movies, where they're wounded people, but there's not as much violence to the emotions in a way, maybe. This is a scene where... There's certain scenes where Gene Hackman would show up and we'd do our rehearsal, and he'd have a kind of different approach. Uh, what it usually was was he'd wanna do a scene moving fast. And you'd see him do it, and I'd throw out the whole plan I'd had and have a new way to kind of shoot the scene. That's the best thing that can happen. Somebody comes in, and you say: "Throw out whatever we thought of before. This is better." And his thing was to just bring a real charge into something. Richie!

1:14:24 · jump to transcript →

And we had rehearsed the scene for a couple of years, so. You got it right. You got it right by now. We got it right by now. So we didn't have to do anything digital, which was, I think, really great. And we kind of tried to do that as much as possible in this film to try and stick with as much reality as we possibly can instead of just throwing a green screen up or taking the easy route out. And I like that. We have an assignment.

4:31 · jump to transcript →

into one of the hardest places I think a producer can be in, which is where your actor gets hurt. I herniated a disc doing a back handspring on our tenth day of filming. Yes. It was an accident. It wasn't even while we were filming. I was just kind of rehearsing, and my foot slipped, and I landed on my neck. And I think, you know, once we realized what it was, and I realized...

21:12 · jump to transcript →

James Mangold

Meaning that when an actor first comes on board a film in the period where they're first starting to rehearse, the other thing that's happening so that the costumes are ready when the movie begins is that they're being fitted and trying things on. It obviously happens weeks and weeks before the first frames get shot on the film. So what that does and what that means is that those first fittings are incredibly transformative for the actor. They become a chance for them to walk

1:14:19 · jump to transcript →

James Mangold

Well, I did what you said. I read that Bible from cover to cover. Took me three days. She never came back. Now, two things I want to say about this piece of Russell's here. One was when I rehearsed it with him and he was sketching in this book, what I thought was so powerful was the way

1:40:11 · jump to transcript →

Roman Coppola

So this scene is a... Here the conflict is brewing among the brothers, the suspicions and the questioning. And I remember we decided that-- I thought there was something nice about working in the compartment and not having cuts. And sort of-- You know it's a real space, and we'd also get this building kind of tension that's happening here. So anyway, to shoot this, I remember we built a mock-up of this compartment on the... At our art department, which was actually at the-- Which was actually, like, on train tracks. It was some kind of train-- At the train station. Yeah, it was like a train station. We built a train station in it, in fact. And I remember we rehearsed that shot-- It's one of the few times I remember actually rehearsing an entire shot with a dolly and the camera and everything on a completely different location. You know, in a-- You rarely rehearse with a crew present before you start a movie. But that one, we wanted to make sure we'd be able to do it, because the space was so compact, just because it's a real train rolling along.

16:18 · jump to transcript →

Roman Coppola

I really liked this temple. We went many times to this temple in the center of Jodhpur. I think we brought the cows ourselves. Okay. Spray in face. - Spray in face. This was shot much later, as I recall, actually at the location where we had the final convent, if I remember correctly. Yeah. - Yeah, outside of Udaipur. I remember when we were scouting, there was a day when it looked like this. It was all women. And I don't remember what the occasion was, but we recreated what we saw there. We invited back all the people who had been there on this day that we had scouted at the location and this ceremony was happening. This is a scene I remember we rehearsed in the temple itself and really kind of found the scene, the three of us sort of improvising it and acting it out. And we had a little text we were reading from, but sort of, you know, realizing it just the three of us. Yeah. When we were writing the script and we went to India on our reconnaissance mission, it was like a writing session and it ended up being a location session. And we found this temple and went back and shot there many months later. But as Roman said, this is-- We were walking around, we found this, we went in, we took our little micro scripts out, we rehearsed the scene to see if it was working and saw what worked and what didn't. And then we actually became so attached to this place that we went back and shot the real scene there.

23:08 · jump to transcript →

means bath in Swedish. This is one of the most complicated track shots in the film. We had a lot of differences to avoid the reflections in the windows here. We had to rehearse it for like three hours before shooting it. And actually, this is, it's in the movie too, but actually Mr. Avila, the gym teacher here, he's actually the only good adult in the book.

1:42:11 · jump to transcript →

This was, of course, this sequence was very complicated to do, to work underwater. And I think we made this in like two days, this sequence. And it contains a lot of complicated shots and a lot of rehearsals to...

1:43:18 · jump to transcript →

Interestingly, our original idea from rehearsal was that as she died, she would see Javert coming down, and so she would have a kind of tragic death where she died, realizing that her daughter was perhaps not safe. And I remember Karen McIntosh in the edit saying something very interesting about how we should allow her to have a peaceful death, a beautiful death. And I realized there was an echo between the death of Valjean and the death of Fontaine, that this idea that

43:06 · jump to transcript →

This was, I think, an idea that came out of rehearsal. We had a wonderful nine-week rehearsal, which is very unusual in a movie. In King's Speech, we had three weeks, and that was considered long. But this moment of, I suppose, the hesitation about whether they should give up, it's the little kid Gavroche who recommits them to the cause of the People's Song.

1:58:10 · jump to transcript →

the director's cut aspect of it and what's there, but also just the production of it as well. This was Kate's first day. She had just come off of Underworld, kind of just put her on a plane and flew over. She had about two days in between the two and threw these guys in together. We did this scene and then right after this scene started the fight scene within the same set, which was quite a tall order to come right in from another production, just no rehearsal, no practice. Luckily, she'd been doing a lot of training on Underworld as it is.

5:28 · jump to transcript →

Brian and Colin didn't have much time to rehearse their fights either, and Brian came into it, and we had a stuntman set up to do it, just in case, and he was just so into it. I was very impressed with him. He did the majority of that. So that right there, you'll see that when that... That's the first time we see the watch.

1:41:37 · jump to transcript →

Jeff Goldblum

Ah. - [Anderson] And I said, "Well, why?" You said, "Because I don't know this fact, and it was actually proven that this is correct..." And it was a logic thing. I was like, "Oh, yes, you're right. Yes, that would be the proper thing." So we added an "ostensibly." [laughs] - [Goldblum] Oh, thanks. Hey, thanks. And remember-- I don't think everybody did this, but remember how we rehearsed. Remember? I kind of cornered you that day at the hotel, months before, as you were preparing. I was coming through town for something else.

29:31 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

Yeah. Oh, yes. I remember it very well. In fact, that hotel where we filmed it, it's the Hotel Börse in the middle of Görlitz, and it was the center of everything for us. When we first scouted the place, I saw this location where we made the hotel and thought, "Well, that could work. What can we build around here?" And the first thing we did after that was we walked through the town and went to all the hotels, and we found this place, Börse. I said, "You know, this could be a makeup area. And this is big enough for us to have our dinner each night here." And there's this many rooms, but they have some other rooms across the street. And a lot of things like that happened in that hotel. That's where we had our first rehearsal with Deputy Vilmos Kovacs.

30:17 · jump to transcript →

There we see they have a past. She's got a... They're in kind of an adventurous place in that photo. And you can think that maybe this couple has had an interesting and exciting past with some adventure. Anyway, there's the sweetest little girl in the world, played by Paisley Cadorath. Paisley Cadorath was an amazing little actress. We did auditions in Winnipeg because we knew we couldn't fly another person out from anywhere, and she was the only girl that could take directions. But more importantly, you can tell that she was really enjoying the process. And we, you know, make them do four or five takes of the same thing just to see how they'll fare. And she was just excited. Every time she'd run out of the room, we'd get the cameras all ready, Every time she'd run out of the room, we'd get the cameras all ready, and she'd run in and we'd rehearse, and she was perfect all the time. And I think when you watched the audition tapes... I remember getting a message from you saying, "We have to get this girl. I'm so happy that we matched perfectly on her." Fuck!

8:17 · jump to transcript →

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

1:18:06 · jump to transcript →

It's odd because this scene has no narrative purpose at all. It is just atlas. As you say, there's nobody watching it at all. They don't need to do this if they really were actors. Maybe they're method actors. It's like rehearsal, yeah. In fact, in the recent Shadow of the Vampire, they explain the director tries to pass off the real vampire he's hired by saying, oh, he's worked with Stanislavski, he always is in character. Of course, there's a little bit too much of this already in the film. Yes, the comedy made. Not, I think, anybody's particular thing.

15:20 · jump to transcript →

be caught on film. So in a sense, he was filming his rehearsals as well as his final takes. Yes, that's right. I mean, of course, not all the takes were a full 10 minutes long, but some of them were. Yes, but the point is that as long as they were shooting, the camera was rolling. Also, he felt it would help the actors concentrate on their character, not to have to stop and start with the slits. I think he's right, too.

49:58 · jump to transcript →

these electrodes in my arms, put airplane dope all over my arms, and explained to me what to do. They were very, very careful about it. They said, when we say cut, don't put your hands straight out. Don't put them up in the air. Don't do this. And then they rehearsed it through one time. And they did it, ignited it, and did that. And it was fine.

1:57:11 · jump to transcript →

At least you're being authentic when you're insecure about what the bigger picture is that you're doing. I think the actors worked so well together because of a rehearsal period that we had before the movie started. I remember...

1:17:59 · 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 →

Hoyt Yeatman

Now, we're looking at a lot of stunt people running around... ...because they all participated in this sequence that came up... ...as the F-16s lock in on the heat source... ...of our Blue Thunder helicopter. And Scheider gets his plane where it's up against the sun reflection. He's hoping to decoy the helicopter into this. That was the miniature helicopter, too, going across right there. There's the miniature helicopter. Certainly the idea of it going into a building like this... ...was viewed by us as complete fantasy. And it never, ever occurred to us... ...that somebody would actually do something like that, you know. It's just beyond the range of thinking. At the time of 9/11, you couldn't have shown an image like this. Everybody got so sensitive. And then, suddenly, they realised... ...that people weren't as terrified of it... ...as we were saying they were going to be. Remember, people were saying, "We'll have nothing but Doris Day movies." Or, you know, whatever today's version of Doris Day movies is. But then, suddenly, the video stores started telling us... ...that every terrorist movie they had was gone from the shelves... ...that everybody was suddenly fascinated... ...with the very thing we said they wouldn't be... ...which proves William Goldman's old adage of, "Nobody knows anything." And you'll remember, when I talked about the first shot... ...with Malcolm McDowell. Well, here it is. This is the one where he comes... ...and has to jump inside the helicopter and take off. We probably won't be able to get permission... ...to do practical work like was done on Blue Thunder. In other words, I think the laws have changed... ...and people's concern for safety has increased. So we won't be seeing the same kind of amazing, live stunt work... ...which is really, you know, just some of the best ever done. They would depend on visual effects, other methods, to achieve the look... ...but it wouldn't be the real thing, which is what we got here... ...which is a real treat. So he didn't know he had the option of-- No option here. No, no option. But it looks really good. I mean, it looks like he's taking that helicopter off. And the pilot, Karl Wickman, was-- I don't know where Karl was, but I couldn't see him. At that point in Los Angeles, in the early 1980s... ...lots of new, giant structures were being built... ...and here we got to use one where we could shoot through it. And this is where we lost this helicopter... ...this little Hughes 500 helicopter. Its engine blew up. And the helicopter auto-rotated down to the ground... ...onto those parking lots that you see. And only because we had cleared the lots out... ...and had no traffic down there and no cars, no people, was it safe. And we thought we had killed Karl Wickman... ...because the engine blew up. But he was a Vietnam helicopter pilot... ...and he had rehearsed auto-rotating to the ground hundreds of times... ...and he took his helicopter down to the ground... ...and it only bent a couple of skids. And as it hit the ground, he actually was jumping out of it... ...right simultaneously backwards with a fire extinguisher... ...in his hand to put out the flame. But now you can see, we're down 40, 50 feet... ...above the Music Center in Los Angeles. That was not Bill Ryusaki. Good for him.

1:34:03 · jump to transcript →

the next verse as well, so that's this verse. But Eric hadn't rehearsed this one, so this verse was just, you see him look at camera occasionally, because he hadn't actually rehearsed this, and we're just walking along sideways to the stars, which is totally not what you're meant to do. This bit was just meant to be a temporary filling. In fact, in the end, Terry never sort of did the rest of the animation.

1:13:16 · jump to transcript →

When Max grabs the microphone, Jimmy would set a lot of different things during rehearsal, like death to videodrome, SpaghettiOs on a stick. He was a riot. Cronenberg decided at one point, without telling the extras, to fire a real blank pistol toward the back of the stage to get their authentic reactions to gunfire on film. Some people weren't very pleased about that. I later found the blank casing lying on the stage, and I took it with me as a souvenir. I still have it.

1:21:07 · jump to transcript →

I don't remember any. Not that I'm against it if it's good, but they didn't need to because they couldn't do better. Did you rehearse? You didn't rehearse that much. No, I don't believe in over-rehearsing. It gets stale. I really do find that. I mean, it's important to work out the choreography of where they're standing, where they're going, but to keep on...

15:42 · jump to transcript →

because he had seen the rehearsal. But it's totally fine. In fact, I remember you said, don't worry about it, it's fine. Oh, we gave him a Repo Man hat to wear. So there you see him, he's pointing. So instead of trying to control your environment, just going with it sometimes really works. You don't really see that it's a Repo Man cap, but it's completely postmodern, yeah, because it's one of the extras. It's saying, okay, well, now you're going to go over there. That's right. It's probably cool.

1:05:41 · jump to transcript →

John McTiernan

They were competing about everything. They were competing about how many cigars they can smoke, they were just competing. In a odd way, you know, Carl had his own way of competing because he was the most professional of the actors, the most experienced. Arnold would come around at times and just watch, you know, when Carl was working when Arnold wasn't. But Arnold was quietly, you know, watching and learning. Obviously Arnold in this, looks a little like the cartoon character, Sgt. Rock. And it was something he was talking about doing at the time, and sort of, got this, in the end of the movie we did a joke with Shane Black reading a Sgt. Rock uh, comic book. Yeah, of course, look at him. He looks like Sgt. Rock. In the in-effect rehearsals we had, the military to the bootcamp we had, helped... It helped not just on-camera, probably helped off-camera too. 'Cause it did make them friends, it did make them feel like they were part of a unit and we probably had far fewer morale problems than... When you get a bunch of actors together, like Sonny Landham in particular, you can have a crazy time and we actually had a very easy time.

38:59 · jump to transcript →

Anyhow, so what I said that this is what you see burning in the background is still the result, more or less, of the explosion. We had to shoot it very fast after the explosion. I think we rehearsed it even before the explosion so we could rush to this spot with the cameras and shoot it while the building was still burning. And the fire department was trying to get us out of town. Now, this is the CompuLab. And this is a sequence which, you know, normally would be an exposition sequence that would be pretty dull.

52:49 · jump to transcript →

I love that. It's funny how a line like that captures the whole character. You know, I remember, Carl, that you spent a lot of time rehearsing. You gave us an opportunity to take the set and rehearse. Well, there's no... Funny how that makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. I think in life. It was really a little bit like doing a play. Yeah, well, you can only get better by trying to discover what's in each scene.

15:07 · jump to transcript →

The boys were in Chicago and you'd met them. And you said, hey, what about these guys for these guys? And we put some riff down. We rehearsed. No, you guys made a film. That's right. We made a tape on it and sent it out to you. And you said you wanted them out there, but the studio didn't want to pay to have them out. So I think you and I flew them out. That's right. That's right. And then we shot this, I think somewhere in the first third of shooting, I believe. After that night.

1:10:05 · jump to transcript →

because I don't like to watch actors on the screen thinking up lines. When we're working things out, when we're in what I call rehearsal, which are just these large table readings with the cast, and when we're blocking the scene out, if an actor wants to try something or he has an idea and we can make it work or I think it's right, we'll design it into the scene and we'll write it down because it's just not fair to other actors for actors to start saying lines that...

1:39:38 · jump to transcript →

But Tim Curry, you know from Rocky Horror Picture Show initially, but Clue, It, Legend, Annie, I mean, even as a little kid, I knew who Tim Curry was. But he said that this was one of the best crews he's ever worked with, no underlying tensions or anything like that. And at the time that he was promoting the movie, he was rehearsing a musical number for the Oscars.

23:02 · jump to transcript →

He does reappraisals for people. Sometimes he buys, sometimes he doesn't. Anyway, the word is, he carries around a lot of cash. So I figure I keep the merchandise. The idea of these jewelers is actually based on jewelers that I used to work for as a bodyguard. So it's rehearsing for my own death when the two bodyguards get shot later on. And the two bodyguards were sort of based on you. Me? As you can see in the first scene where my stomach is prominently displayed.

44:08 · jump to transcript →

I even didn't say it. I think she planned it right away. When she says, my father is a great man, and you're nothing like my father, the tear goes down, you see? That's a real tear. Yes, it's real. I don't know how she did it. And right on cue, I mean, right with the right line, it came. Well, she's good. A scene like this, did you rehearse this a lot? Yes, you have to rehearse that.

54:02 · jump to transcript →

Taylor Hackford

We rehearsed this scene for about a week. It was the one, I must say... ...for Warner Bros., a great thing they did for me. And although we had our differences, I was able to get my vision on the screen. I have no excuses. So, I do thank them. There was a great thing here in that Warner Bros. allowed us... ...to come back from New York. We built this set in Los Angeles. I had a week to prepare the set, to light it and to rehearse with the actors. Al, Keanu and Connie and myself, worked there alone... ...and really kind of built this scene. Tony Gilroy was there also, pardon me. It is not an easy scene to do when you realize it's basically a monologue. How do you keep it moving? How do you keep it visual? And it's basically a confrontation. And again, as I said... ...I want the devil to be confronting us. We all take credit for the things that we do in life that are good. When it's a good decision, "I made that decision. I'll take credit for that." But when they're wrong, we look for people to blame. That's exactly what Keanu is doing here, and Al won't have any of it. Milton is basically saying to him, "Hey. You made every decision yourself. "In fact, I told you not to. I said take care of your wife." I mean, I love the argument. And this is what we were trying to do. I give a lot of credit to my collaborative partner, Tony Gilroy, on this project... ...because this piece was a script that existed with a lot of special effects... ...and not many ideas, and it wasn't worth making. And every Hollywood star turned it down. Al Pacino turned it down five times. What we did with this script, from a page one rewrite... ...is try to give it some ideas, try to make it about free will. Not make it a special effects piece, a ghoul piece, a monster piece... ...but make it about something. Not just about lawyers... ...because lawyers are convenient and they happen to be a major target... ...and I think are the most pragmatic of all professions. However, all professionals find themselves in a position to blame... ...or be able to use their corporate entity, their boss, their organization... ...their professional oath as a screen against having to confront... ...moral realities, personal choices. If you can say "My personal, professional oath," pardon me, not my... "My professional oath says that I'm absolved from responsibility... "...because I have to represent my client to the best of my ability." Or, "My corporation says I need to do this, pollute this lake, and I'm doing it." It absolves you of your personal, moral responsibility. What this whole scene is about is confronting your own hypocrisy... ...and saying your ambition, your own vanity, in a world that's fiber-optically... ...interconnected to satisfy our every eager impulse, "You," meaning, "You humans"... ...as Milton says, "are exactly... "I've succeeded beyond my wildest dreams just by letting you do what you want. "You're so selfish. You're so self-involved." So that's what this scene is about. Kevin realizes that it's true... ...he was responsible for Mary Ann's demise... ...and when he does, he falls apart. Now watch Milton. He starts picking him up. He starts trying to say: "Hey, you know, think of it in a positive way. You have to think of yourself. "She wasn't up to you. Here's a woman who is. She's fantastic. "She happens to be your sister, but so what? She's beautiful. "She's smart. She's intelligent. You know, there's something more for you." And I think at this point, when confronted with the fact that he knows it's the devil... ...and now what Milton is gonna do, is talk about... You know, remember, Keanu is half and half. He's half Judy Ivey. He's half Al Pacino. He's half Alice Lomax. He's half John Milton. He's half God and half the devil, and this is relating to a lot of us. We all have our good side, our bad side. In this particular instance, this next sequence is, I think, really interesting... ...because Al Pacino is basically talking about his father. He's talking about his former boss. He's his own boss now. But if you think of Lucifer, the fallen angel... ...the brightest, the most honored and the most... ...you know, he was God's favorite... ...being thrown out of heaven because of ego, because he didn't want to take orders. That's what Pacino's doing here. Look. He's angry. He's losing control.

2:00:18 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

a good idea and we realised it wasn't a good idea when it was shot. We actually had an Uruk-hai attacking Frodo in the water as he was attempting to escape in the boat. Did we actually shoot that? Yes, well, half of it was shot. You were down to rehearsing the fight sequences. No, we shot it. We filmed some of it, but it sort of just didn't really, it wasn't ultimately what this part of the story should be about. So it was reconceived and we travelled back down to Lake Mavora doing pick-ups and we actually shot

3:14:37 · jump to transcript →

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland

people trying to work out what's going on, and then having to do something about it. It might be a measure of me and Danny being a bit sad, I don't know, but there was one rehearsal. Do you remember this? They were rehearsing this scene a couple of months before filming it, I suppose, and we got choked up. That was pathetic in a way, but it happened. I shouldn't say that. Cut that.

1:05:52 · jump to transcript →

Tom Tykwer

And casting those actors, you can imagine, is very strange. You tell them, this is what you have to do, and then you ask them, how would you do it? And then you make a little rehearsal of that scene. But nobody has met each other before at all. So it's a very, very strange and confusing situation where I always wonder, what kind of a job have I got myself into that I have to put people into this weird situation?

1:05:09 · jump to transcript →

Richard Curtis

It was one of those lucky moments where an actor didn't absolutely stick to their guns and finally she just did it. Now, Hugh, this was... This was a... This is the scene I look forward to more than any. We had some fights over this. Hugh wouldn't rehearse, wanted not to do it. I thought it was funny on paper but un-actable. I don't know. Take a look. Wow. Did you think about doing it in time, or did you think, "No, why?" - I say I did do it in time and you edited it wrong. - We moved the music. Yes. Oh, it's brilliant. - l'm in time there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah! Oh, no. - This is in time. This is brilliant! Well done. That bit's not, I grant you. And the disaster here was that you mimed, "I'll take you down." So we've had to totally cut a minute and a half out of the song in order to get there. It was a disaster on the day. Oh, God. - Was there supposed to be more? Well, no, we just let the song run, but we then had no choice how long the song had to be. - It's brilliant. This is almost my favorite scene just in terms of how pretty it is.

45:31 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

He'd come up with the idea of riding along and dragging the sword along the spears. He thought it was almost like something that Theoden does to raise the morale of his troops. It was a really neat idea. It was hard for Bernard to do because he's left-handed, and yet I wanted him to ride towards the camera. So I remember the look on his face because he'd rehearsed it with the horses holding the sword in his left hand. And I said, well, hang on, Bernard. The camera's here. The horses are here. And if you use your left hand, you're going to have to be riding away from us.

2:34:05 · jump to transcript →

Len Wiseman

That's what my brother calls my bad-gas moment. This one here? Were you harnessed in? Insert sound effect there. - The extended version. You were way up in the tower, right? You were harnessed in? No, because eventually, I didn't. There was some... That's right. That was green screen. - No, it was just somebody else. Oh, okay. You refused. - I didn't. There were some shenanigans going on. Somebody made me feel unstable, and I wouldn't get on it. It is a bit bad-gassy-looking... - It is, isn't it? Now come think of it. We went up there. It ended up being Nicole. That first shot is Nicole. I can't believe she did that, jumped off. She did not. That's a rumour. I totally did it. Oh, I'm sorry. The funny thing is, so many people get fooled by that. That shot that's coming up, they do think it's me. I'm sure it was you. You did it a couple times, she did it once. That's not me. - There's you, in the hoodie. Oh, yeah, I'm brooding in the hoodie. Now, he's a potato farmer, apparently. - Really? He is, from Idaho. - Slash vampire? Yeah, apparently he is. My makeup artist was keen on him for a minute. Lovely strong hands. There he goes. But he didn't speak any English, right? - No. As did, like... Eighty percent of the crew didn't. Right. I mean, you barely spoke English. - I tried. Neither of you speak English. Thank you very much. - Okay. There I go. I really like how she did that. - Good knees on that. They're not my knees. - Those aren't your knees, no. This is where we just drenched you for hours. I was miserable. - The rain machines wouldn't work. I felt like they worked really well. I was soaking wet. All the people running up to you wearing 15 coats... I thought it was still cool that there were rain machines... ...and I was going to get wet. By the end, I was cursing water. I Kept falling there, slipping down. This is like-- Inside the subway was the very first week we did. Yeah, we did that fake set, right? - Yeah. Was that a fake set or a real set? - Wasn't it real? It was real. - No. You were there, weren't you? I was there. It was a subway station, but didn't we build something too? Well, yeah. It was actually... lt was a repair yard for the trains. Then we built that set around the train. - I knew I was on to something. There you go. - Here's love. Immediate love. - Damn it, I have a pimple. Do you? - You don't see that? I see it first. I thought we wiped that out. - No. Oh, my God, it was so tense. lt was so hot in that subway. Yeah, it was brutal. Boiling hot week there was in Budapest before it became arctic. And everybody's in these leather coats. This was the first thing we shot, right? - Yeah. Yeah, this was the second day of filming. The first day of shooting was you in the hospital. Then I came in with those horrible boots and tried to get your approval. Yeah, that's right. I remember I did not want to shoot that scene first. That moment I won't talk about. - No, neither did I. I felt like I'd had absolutely no preparation on firing the guns. They told me, "We're going to do a take." I said, "Oh, my God." Literally almost shook, afterwards. Felt like I'd drunk, like, 20 cups of coffee. I was worried I was gonna get in trouble, because it was a cheap movie. "You have one chance. We don't have money for another pillar." Like, "Oh, great." - You did great, though. No, there was all that stress... ...because we really didn't have a chance to re-squib things. He says, "No pressure, Kate, but we only got pillar with squibs in. The thing's going to be ruined if you mess It up." This sequence is still pretty much the same. Yeah, this stays the same. Here I go, panicking. I remember all this. You did an amazing skid. Did that make it? Yeah, it did. - That was fantastic. But I do grab her crotch, unfortunately. Right. I ass-grab her. - You did that in rehearsal too. She cried afterwards. Is that why? - Probably, it was real claw. She was terrified with this squib. She had never done one before. And she was horrified. - Yeah, she had a real sob after. There she is. I did not mean to. That was unintentional. They're all looking at it now. Remember when we were shooting that scene... ... for you peeking your head out, to get the reaction, I kept firing guns? Yeah. Yeah. I was asking you to do that, yeah. We ended up doing that the entire film. - Here I go. Ass-grab! She was really cute. Everybody was harassing her because of that. Really, everybody was harassing her. - Yeah. But not after my grubby hands got all over her. Oh, my stunt guys. Look. Hank, he's always the one who was, like, pulling. He was my favourite one to pull wires. - Oh, this is where you save me. Thank you for that, by the way. - Kind of a lady-boy.

1:15 · jump to transcript →

When we did the rehearsal and we started to practice, you know, having them record their voice, play a little cassette player, and then be the other character, I mean, themselves, but knowing or not knowing. I knew something was strong and was going to work because hearing the voice of them talking,

1:40:51 · jump to transcript →

Noah Baumbach

So now they're on their way out of Ping Island. Bill Murray's running to the safe, this yellow safe with Ned's inheritance in it. I always wonder if we're clear about things like the issues with Ned's money and all that kind of stuff, but I guess it's all in there. Yeah. I always like what Scott Rudin, the producer, does. Scott said about... I remember when he read the draft of the script, where we had come up with that idea of the hole in the back of the safe, and he said, "Well, he's looking for the money, but he finds Ned." And I always thought, wasn't that a touching idea, you know? I hadn't consciously thought of it. - He had a real way with words. Cody is left behind. I think you came up with the name Cody. Cody was... Well, there's some debate about who came up with the name Cody, but as we alluded to and as, I guess, basically suggested by the fact we're doing this commentary at the restaurant that we wrote it in, Cody's a regular here who we run into, and so... And at one point, I think it was literally like, I said to Noah, "What's your dog's name?" Doing Jeff's dialogue, and Noah thought for a moment and responded, "Cody." Cody. As he stared at Cody through the front window. It was the summer. I feel like I've said enough... What's that stand for over there? That's Esteban. It was working okay until late last night, but now the whole tracking system's gone completely on the fritz. Screw it. We'll sell it for scrap, along with the boat and the submarines. I'm going home. One thing about Willem is, Willem was always on the set. You know, he was there for the whole movie, and he doesn't like to hang around in his trailers. So he weaves himself into scenes, such as this one, where Owen says, "Ho," and Willem is standing in the background there. And you'll see, when they do the Team Zissou "ho" with the hands thing, Willem does it out of focus deep in the background. Did he do it in rehearsal then you included it? I don't remember. You know what? I think he was back there and I may have mentioned one thing to him. Well, it adds this whole other thing. And it's also, we know that Klaus feels left out, so at this point, though, it's almost a little bit of menace in the background, even though he's... This, again, also is something you do a lot, which I like, is this-- But he's also been touched by Ned, including him already. That's true. He hasn't saluted him yet. - He hasn't acknowledged it. I was gonna say, the thing I like that you do a lot, that I mentioned earlier, but this very deliberate cut to an insert of a written note, which it sort of has a... It has a kind of energy. It sort of brings energy to something that would be normally just static and feel like just, you know, information. Well, you know, one thing I always think of is, I remember reading Pauline Kael somewhere, Kael who really brought me into a certain kind of movie watching. You, your parents were well-versed in films and introduced you to all kinds of films, and your mother was a critic, and your father had done some film criticism as well, right? But I kind of got that stuff from reading Pauline Kael, some of the same kind of, you know, somebody's gotta tell you about it. Right. - And I got so many things from her. And I remember, you know, she certainly made me interested in Godard. We seemed to keep talking about him. And she talks about how Godard's movies are filled with... They're literary. They're filled with words. There's titles on the screen and there's letters and there's writing everywhere. And there's people quoting, people just reciting from books. And, you know, this movie here, now we're looking at another letter. It's filled with writing, something... And I like the-- I mean, it's sort of, again, something maybe, you know, he might do, but is... I mean, we see Ned reading a crumpled-up letter that's obviously been around for a long time, but then when we go to the insert, we go to the original letter in a very formal way, with the pencil above it and-- In fact, I think... One of the letters is situated in the environment where Zissou would have written it, and Ned's is situated in this place where Ned would have written it. Like his desk when he was 11 and a half. And it brings-- I mean, it's something that we've talked about, I mean, sort of how you use words and letter writing, and, you know, we were talking about, how in Adele H, when people write letters, they actually speak to the camera and they're often superimposed over other images. We should probably be talking about this scene. Well, actually, that shot of the feet falling was something I had thought of a long time ago, and Roman shot it for me. It was shot a couple of times by different people, and then when Roman got there, we talked about it, and Roman went out and shot it perfectly. And then we do this odd effect of, you know, the red and the thing-- I don't know what I was really thinking of, but something going into silence and, you know, trying to prepare the audience for the fact that we're gonna kill him, which is hard to do, actually. For me, I mean, I feel like I get so attached to these characters, and, you know, we're not really working from something that begins with a plot. It's more like, you know, trying to bring these people together, and I may be, you know what, probably overly sentimental about it, and probably indulgent about it, but it's hard for me to get to separate-- I feel like they're real people to me. So it's hard to kill them. But it was one of the ideas. We talked about people who read the script. Peter Bogdanovich, our friend, he was upset that we killed Ned. I think my brother Nico, who the intern is named after, also felt sort of... Was unsure about it, and I think, you know, it is a choice. That scene where he's in the water was crazy because the sea was rough, and we had this fire in the water, and we're all standing out there, and underwater are all these tubes with gas to make these fires and things, with hunks of cement and wire. But it was fun, and it brought this crazy energy to it.

1:33:50 · jump to transcript →

It shocked a different level of performance out of her, I think. It was an interesting technique. Please, stop. And here, Nick's line, when he says, I'm good at it, is something that came out of the rehearsal. I like to rehearse. Some people believe it takes away some spontaneity.

1:27:57 · jump to transcript →

I liked the rehearsal. Let's do it for real.

1:23:07 · jump to transcript →

It always happened with Ethan in a room or Benji in a room saying, here's what we're going to do. And it tells you that it's safe. It tells you that it's not really happening. Look at this shot. Look at your whole design. We rehearsed this at a track out in France. And your whole idea was this. And you'll remember that when we were in Paris and we were being very sensitive to Paris with our presence there, there were paparazzi across the river

44:21 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence

One of the things that Trish and I worked on, Trish Summerville, the costume designer, and I was, the different kinds of looks for Jennifer. Because when you think about a character like this, right, she's actually playing two completely different people, right. You've got Jennifer the dancer in the beginning, right. And so dancers have their own culture and sense of style and how they dress when they're not at work and how they dress in rehearsals or how they dress on stage and things like that. But that's the real Dominika. And then you've got the Sparrow, right, in the uniform, and that's a bit utilitarian. And then you've got the young woman who's sent to Budapest that's playing a part, right. And so she's not supposed to be a dancer, she's actually supposed to be somebody else. So, the decision of how do you dress and how do you present yourself to the world when you're supposed to be a young woman from Moscow who's a translator at the Hungarian embassy. It's really interesting to dive in to doing different kinds of things. And also thinking about the seasons, because, you know, we Started in just before the dead of winter and then Sparrow School! took us through the dead of winter and then we decided that Budapest, it was the end of winter, and into spring. We never really wanted to see leaves on the trees at all, but we wanted to sort of get in at a slightly nicer, I would say maybe sort of damp weather, as opposed to icy weather as the story progressed. He told me about what happened at the park after I established trust. Hmm.

1:11:09 · jump to transcript →

I should kill you. And all that is dear to you. But you love me. A son loves his mother. A mother loves her son. All these hand gestures were very carefully choreographed and found in rehearsal, like in the pulling of his tunic. And what I particularly liked was this finger across his neck and the choking him.

1:32:23 · jump to transcript →

Tim Burton

The first day at the school, we were there all together. It was interesting because that was, I think, our first time of seeing the three of them together. Because, again, we didn't rehearse this whole thing. Like, you know, when Michael came in, he just came in to be able to shoot. So we started shooting, you know, everybody. So there was that kind of spirit. So, you know, you kind of showed up on the day and didn't really know. But like I said, I just saw it right there. It was really nice. The three different generations sitting there at one spot. So it was very helpful to kind of shoot that early and see what that dynamic was.

16:37 · jump to transcript →