Rewrites & drafts

run into the crowd as they're coming towards us and start punching the women as hard as you can. And he said, well, they'll kill us if we do that. And I said, well, they're going to kill us anyway, but they're going to have to go home with the women and we're just going to have to go to the hospital. And at least you'll steal their victory. You're going to lose, but you can take away their victory. Right. Let me ask you, with the first draft of the script, where the whole thing had that other, the meaning of the scene is different.

1:47 · jump to transcript →

Francesca, we didn't want her to be sort of the classic gum-chewing gun mall, which a lot of, the role just so dangerously sort of lends itself that way, and we wanted to give her a great deal more sophistication. In early drafts, I went back and reread the first draft a few days ago, and she really is much more like psychotic almost.

9:01 · jump to transcript →

bring itself in. And in the very first draft, there were hints of a romance between Chittick and Robin that I thought were interesting. I mean, I see why you dropped it eventually. Not really a romance. There were hints, I guess, I guess what there were was just affections, that she had Chittick's affections. Right, that in the first scene, he's talking to her and speaking very affectionately to her, and we get the sense that he's about to make the move on her. Right. That you're feeling that it's kind of this disgusting

10:22 · jump to transcript →

improvising and adding lines and touches of his own. He would basically rewrite his part to make it bigger, but it was always really good, so that was always fun. And definitely he made a contribution not only for the interesting senator, but for some of his own dialogue that he came up with.

16:16 · jump to transcript →

in production and if al were to not be in the film we would have to stop and it would be a disaster and great loss and i said we'll tell you what can al come here to san francisco it's going to be friday and wait and i will rewrite the entire script that weekend on monday i'll give him a new script and then he can decide whether he wants to be in it or not and they got back to me and said yes sal is willing to do that

41:11 · jump to transcript →

And so I started and I rewrote the entire script through the night, that Friday and Saturday, and totally rewrote it. I gave it to Al Pacino on Tuesday, exhausted. And after a day or so of waiting, the word came back that, well, guess Al would do it, and he thought the rewrite was good. So, you know, it takes a leap of faith to make these kinds of movies, and it's very hard to get the script to totally...

41:38 · jump to transcript →

come what may, and he was frantically rewriting on the set whilst they were shooting it. And that was for tax reasons as well, that the film had to be shot within a certain window of opportunity, otherwise the money wasn't going to be there. Yeah, and even James Caplan, you know, he didn't have time to develop the screenplay as it should be either. And, you know, it's a very complex storyline, you know. It's film noir. It's investigative, you know, plot.

41:20 · jump to transcript →

But yeah, no, to me, it has a graphic novel feel to it. And I think it succeeded in that respect. Did Clive ever offer to do storyboards for this? I know because he was an illustrator. Did he suggest? Did he make drawings or do any drawings at all for you? No, the problem is once Clive finished his second draft, which the producers rejected again,

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I had no contact with him because they hadn't made him aware that there was a rewrite going on, which really pissed me off. And I kept begging them every day, you know, you've got to tell Clive what's going on. You know, I want Clive to be here on set with me. And, you know, we worked together on this. And it wasn't until much later, I think halfway through filming, that they had informed Clive that, in fact, there was another writer.

59:22 · jump to transcript →

And as you can see, I really didn't want to take ourselves too serious. I really wanted to have not a straight-ahead horror movie, which my first draft of the script that Trimark bought, that was very horrific and no personality in a leprechaun. He was just kind of a killing... There's Gabe's credit. He was just a killing machine that became a monster, and then through rewrites and prepping this thing,

6:54 · jump to transcript →

I think we also ran into some time problems. We didn't want too short of a movie. Again, it goes back to I love to cut things, so this sequence did give us a couple of minutes of time. It's funny, when I look at it, I'm always wanting to recut everything and rewrite everything. I hear dialogue, I'm going, wow, why did I write that dialogue?

43:59 · jump to transcript →

And the Fuck You Lucky Charms at the end was written in a draft in 1988. My very first draft of this was actually written in 1988, and it's in there. I just checked. So that rumor I've dispelled now. I thought this was funny. Oh, there's also another.

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Masha was going to be on the screen, explaining to Max that she had been killed by Videodrome for leaking Brian Oblivion's name. This was a rewrite of the scene I described earlier, which would have excused James Woods from the bathwater, and still allowed the video crew their moment of glory. Michael Lennick and Lee Wilson, with the help of David Stringer, had worked out a reliable means of waterproofing a working television set, but under pressure of a looming deadline, it was determined to be a false turning point in the story.

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Here we see Max coming up the stairs at the Crawford location, the interior of Civic TV, newly programmed by Barry Convex to kill his partners. When I interviewed Rick Baker, he told me that the first draft of Cronenberg's script had Max shooting quite a lot of people with his flesh gun, including Masha and Shinji, one of the Hiroshima video guys. There is some subtle muttered comedy when he goes into his office and finds Rafe and Moses talking about a piece of foreign programming they are thinking of acquiring.

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Moses suggests that he might rewrite the shows and fix them in dubbing, which he feels qualified to do because he used to write in high school, before he, quote, lost it, end quote. As originally scripted, Max's handgun was supposed to fire an unexpected form of ammunition, gobbets of flesh that attached to the target's face and reduced it to a mass of cancerous tissues.

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Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

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

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Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

And you can see all the videotaped stacks in the back, and boy, do I get nostalgic for a past that was more analog. Although, hey, believe me, I love digital just as well. And, of course, this is where Robo starts to interrogate a corpse. Now, this is actually a holdover from Frank Miller's second draft, which was done in April of 89 when Tim Hunter was still on. The Tim Hunter...

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Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

So unfortunately, by the time Kirshner came on and there was the unfortunate diminution of Lewis's character, all of that got lost. So a lot of the human element that was in the second draft of Frank Miller's for Tim Hunter totally changed when Irv Kirshner came on. But again, that was not because of anything aesthetic. It was just time. They had to really basically write the script around the story.

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Fred Dekker

By the way, this is a lot of exposition that's happening here right now. If I had it to do over again, I think maybe a little less exposition and a little more cut to the chase here. So Shane was really busy. His star was ascending. I think he was writing Long Kiss Goodnight. And so it sort of fell by the wayside. And then a couple of months later, Michelle called me and said, would you like to direct this movie too? We'd like you to rewrite it and direct it. And I was a huge fan of the Verhoeven film. Huge fan.

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Fred Dekker

Did you have any interaction with Frank Miller at any point? Yes, yes. He knew I was a big fan. I did a rewrite, and I gave it. Here's my James Bond set. I said to Hilda Stark, I said, I want a James Bond set. Right. Watch Dr. No. And she said, okay, okay. There's another one coming up later. There's at least two, maybe three James Bond sets in this movie. Yeah, no, Frank was fantastic. I did a rewrite of his.

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Fred Dekker

first pass and then I gave it back to him and said, here's my rewrite, rewrite me. And it was, I remember it fondly, our relationship, you know, having Mexican food and talking about this movie and talking about comics and all that stuff. I think ultimately though, I don't know that he's a screenwriter. I don't mean that in a disparaging way because he's a great writer.

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was the layering after layering of Wu Xiaopian tradition, the kind of generic tradition. They don't say things like that. They don't talk like this. So it was, I remember after the first draft. I don't know why they don't talk like that, or the writer never wrote it. But when you're facing not only Western audience, but the modern Chinese audience, that's not sufficient, what it used to be. But it's hard. I remember after the first draft, and people would say things like, well, this is great, except he just wouldn't

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He just wouldn't talk. And finally I realized the equivalent would be if a Chinese writer wrote some kind of contemporary law and order courtroom drama in which the DA comes into the judges' chambers and bows like nine times before he speaks to them. It's great, but I don't think he'd do that. I wrote basically Martians. So it was really interesting to see the process of the rewrites, both from Wei-Ling Wang and with you and the whole team.

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But here's an introduction of a theme that was nowhere near the first draft of the script, which is so central to the movie and obviously to the tradition, which is, of course, the question he's just about to ask her. Which is coming up. Who is your master? Where did you learn that? This whole theme of mastery and disciple...

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Ted Tally

I have a screenwriter friend who said, "What has become of this prop?" I think the editor has it. I'm sure Dino has one. This book? - Yeah, there are two of them. Universal maybe has one. I should have one. - Yeah, and I should have one. You and I should have one. Why don't we have one? We could auction it in 20 years. Anyway, talk a little bit about how you got Ralph Fiennes into this cast. Like I said, I went after the actors that everyone told me I couldn't get. "Ralph's never going to do a movie like this, he's a Shakespearean actor." Basically, I sent him the script. And he loved it so much he agreed to fly in and meet with me. I gave him my vision of it. I told him he was not going to live in a haunted house. He told me he was very attracted to the idea of playing a monster who had a soul. That he had some kind of inner life and was not just a bogeyman. He loved the relationship between him and Reba, Emily Watson's character. He loved that there was humanity in this horrible person doing horrible things, but there was humanity in him. Here's a great sequence. We should talk about the way you staged it. This was originally written, if you remember, as an outdoor exercise scene. I said to Ted, "I can't see Hannibal Lecter "even if there were guards all around and they cleared the whole yard, "I can't see him in an exterior location, out of prison." The scene was originally through a fence. A sort of dog run or something, or a big mesh fence. And the dialogue between Will Graham and Hannibal was through a fence. It was an electrified fence. But I said, "Then there's no threat." There's no real threat. And I said, "Why don't we put him on a dog leash?" And I found this location, which is in an actual location for the mentally disturbed. There are mental patients all over this building. This was another case where Kristi would talk to Brett, and then she would send me drawings for the design for this knowing that it might help me as I thought about the scene and wrote it. Kristi had a lot of fun with the look of this scene and so did Dante. Dante did an amazing job because his interpretation put a lot of smoke in here so that the white lights would... Dante liked the way Lecter goes in and out of the brightness so that he almost seems to be a ghost. Which is like evil light as well. He said, "Evil light doesn't only have to be dark. It can be white as well." This leash thing, I love. He meant to use the bolt cutter to enter the house, but he didn't. That shot I did earlier, where you see the line saying, "Do not cross." It was the last shot of the night, and I almost forgot it, but I said, "In this whole scene, when I shot it, I don't remember seeing the floor. "I have to establish it so that the audience knows there's a do-not-cross line." Why is he standing there? The original idea for the scene was that you'd think it was a dream sequence. If you look, it's shot very close. The way you shot Edward's entrance into the room, we don't know at first where he is or whether it's a dream. And here comes Lecter walking towards him with no bars between them. Then we pop out and reveal that he's on a leash. It's a great moment in the film. When I was working on the first draft, I just thought, "This is a scene that's not in the book." Most of these Lecter scenes are not. I thought, "If I were directing this movie, I'd like to get away from that cell for once. "And give the actor a chance to use his whole body. "And have nothing between the two actors." To me, it was really the parallel of the scene with Jodie and Tony at the museum in Memphis, in that big cell that Kristi designed, which was amazing. I needed a set piece as magnificent as that, 'cause that really opened up the movie. I thought you'd be very grateful not to have the Plexiglass between them for once. And to have them be able to move together, walk together. Sometimes just the technical challenges you face force more creativity. It was only his first time. Already in Atlanta he did much better. Rest assured, my dear Will, this one will give you plenty of exercise. I love Will's reaction to that line. Edward's great when he's not saying lines, actually. You know, the mark of great acting is: How interesting is an actor when he's only listening? He's a very good listener. - Jodie Foster is a great listener. She listens with such intelligence and such engagement, and Edward can do the same thing, and so can Tony. It really is a hallmark of great acting. You see that a lot with Ralph Fiennes here. He doesnt have a lot of dialogue. He's listening, thinking and reacting. It's a very poignant performance by Ralph. It's easy to play the monster. It's hard to be the guy who's a horrible monster... It's hard to make the audience care about the character instead of just dismissing them. This is Azura Skye who is one of my favorite young actresses, who was in 28 Days. She had a small part in Bandits and she was awesome. Again, the importance that Brett gives to casting every part, even if it's an actor who only has a one-page scene. You want somebody who looks like they could star in their own movie. If this movie suddenly became about this bookstore, it would be interesting for the next 90 minutes. Even the voice of the girl on the phone, I cast the voice very specifically. Did you drive the studio crazy by waiting to cast some of these parts for so long? Till the last minute, yeah. ...darn it, she never did. I'm just a temp. Linda will be in on Monday. I have to catch FedEx in about five minutes. I hate to bother Dr. Bloom about it because he told Linda to send it and I don't want to get her into trouble. This was hard for timing because it's one shot and it's a lot of dialogue, and I wanted the camera to land at the right place. The camera and the lens that you pick help with the emotion, intensity, and realness of the scene. Is it hard to move in like this without changing lenses and keep the focus? Yeah. Especially anamorphic. The focus on this move is impossible. Mike Weldon was the AC on this movie. He's a genius. Anamorphic is the wide screen? Anamorphic is wide screen, but there's not a lot of depth of field at all. So it's impossible to focus when you're moving into a subject. It's just the hardest thing ever.

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Ted Tally

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

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Ted Tally

I'm leery of letting Lecter's message run without Knowing what it says. The movie's really cooking now for me, at this point. You hope it has a continuous build. You introduce all the characters, you introduce, you know, the potential danger to Reba, you've got the FBI hot on the scent. I sent Kristi down here. I was unavailable to shoot this shot and she just did a fantastic job. - Kristi was the second unit director on this? Yeah, she did a great job on that. Very simple one shot, telling the whole story, cut into the insert, and then we're off to the races. You can feel the whole story shift gears here. This was another digital shot. He actually had a phone at his ear and we erased it. Amazing! That is amazing. This is another thing that Mark pointed out about the story. I didn't shoot this correctly, so you didn't know it was a cookbook. But you can tell it's a cookbook. - Now you do, but when I shot it, you didn't know it was a cookbook because the shot was on his face. So we did an insert. Okay, Lloyd. This is an example of Dino's and Martha's kind of shrewdness about storytelling. I wanted Mark and Mark wanted to lose... And myself and Andy Davis, kind of my creative producer, as well, and part producing partner came up with the idea of just cutting to the chase, and not hearing the message. Not hearing Lecter's message about "Marathon, Florida, kill them all." I am sure I asked you. - We talked about it again and again. Dino says, "Yeah, but the audience needs to know. "It's more frightening." It's more frightening for them if they've heard Lecter's entire message. This is another example of a scene that wasn't in the script, but after I saw the movie with an audience, forget about what they write... This was actually the last scene shot. This was added later. It was added later because I thought... Originally, it just cut to this next shot, where the helicopter arrives. He gets the phone call, cut, and they're safe. They were too safe, too quickly. -/ called Ted, I said, "Maybe we can put some suspense in here. "This is a psychological thriller that has suspense in it." The studio loved the cut of the movie so much that they gave me the money to go back to do it. Sometimes you don't know until it's assembled. You say, "Something's missing here." We had an opportunity that we didn't take advantage of to have a little more tension. I had food poisoning on this shot, I remember. On this shot? - I was So Sick. -/ did not feel good. - This is a great location. This was originally written to be at the... - This is where I am gonna shoot Superman. It's Smallville. I'm gonna just... - That's Smallville? I'm sorry. Mary-Louise is very, very good in this movie. Mary-Louise Parker, and again, is not really given that much to work with by the script. So she's got to make the most of every moment. Actually, in the first draft, the draft I read... Once I got Mary-Louise, I said to Ted, "Let's give something for women to really..." Let's give her a really dramatic moment that began the evolution of the ending of the movie as we revised it where she ends up shooting Dolarhyde herself. There's Barney, we had to get him in there. - That's Frankie again. ... your latest rejection slip from the archives. It was brought... I love this scene. It goes over a lot of people's heads. I don't know why. Sorry.

1:04:16 · jump to transcript →

He's allegedly did some uncredited rewrite work on The Raven, which was one of the great Carlos Lugosi vehicles. And it may well be that the fact that The Wealth of Paris was a hit novel.

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Now, let's talk about also the uncredited contributing writers, because obviously there's one very interesting credit in there, which is John L. Balderston. Yeah, allegedly a rewrite man on this. He was Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein, Madeline. It may well have been that it didn't count as a horror script in 1935 unless John L. Balderston had shoved it through his typewriter. But we know that he was a dialogue man very much, and so maybe he came in to fix some of this dialogue. That's possible. Because obviously the script already existed as London After Midnight, anyway.

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Now, there's been a lot of controversy about the screenplay, you know, that James Agee, a legend grew, you know, that Agee had turned in a screenplay that was about 400 pages and that it was full of all kinds of incoherent rambles. But fortunately, in recent years, the Agee family has found the actual first draft, which was 293 pages, exactly twice the number of pages of the shooting script, which was 148. Oh, yes.

5:31 · jump to transcript →

This is another one-take scene, by the way. We're looking for love, Ruby, in the only foolish way you knew how. Yeah, it's a great line. And Simon Callow, in his great book on the film, he wondered who came up with the line because it's not in the Davis Grubb novel, and it is in the first draft of the AG. But it's in the page. It's marooned in a page of a lot of other dialogue, so it's the brilliance of Lawton to say, no, that's your line. That's the only line they need, you know? Yes, it really wasn't in the novel, and it enriches the characters that Grubb had created.

1:16:12 · jump to transcript →

a slight rewrite, and we wound up writing a new script. Rudy Wurlitzer wrote a completely new script. And so, you know, the gears were in motion, and the thing kept moving on and moving on, and got to the point where we did screen tests and cast actors.

15:18 · jump to transcript →

was taken from a short story. Is that correct? No, it was taken from a screenplay. Oh, it was taken from a screenplay. There was a screenplay by Will Corey, and we got Rudy Wurlitzer to rewrite it, but in essence, he never even read the screenplay. He wrote a new screenplay just based on the concept of a cross-country race. How did you get inside how this would go down in a town?

1:10:12 · jump to transcript →

In the script, you kept asking me, change this transition. In one scene, Fenster's there, and in the next scene, he's dead. And through every rewrite, I left this transition in until one day and you didn't say anything. I was thinking about, because Chris and I have a tradition, we bring our films home to our town to show them in a theater.

1:04:53 · jump to transcript →

Infamous line. Infamous line. Oswald was a fag. I actually never expected that line to make it past the first draft, and draft after draft it kept getting by, and... I loved it. How you doing? Because I think that's the only thing... If you called Oswald anything else, he might not be as offended, but for some reason... I just thought if you called him that, that might have set him off or something. Gabriel Byrne.

1:17:53 · jump to transcript →

moment here. Well, she really flattened out, too. That was the thing. It looked like she'd dispatched her pretty well, so she learned very well from O'Connell. Right hook. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, this is a scene that Rachel and I were both very nervous about. We kept writing and rewriting it, and, you know, it's when you have your heroine and she's drunk.

51:56 · jump to transcript →

Or female lead, not heroin. Never mind. When you have your female lead and she's drunk, you're always a little nervous about scenes like this. You want to make sure they work like gangbusters. And we really took some time and kept rewriting it and rewriting it and massaging it. And at the end of the day, Rachel did such a terrific job. The audience really went for it, especially these lines that are coming up.

52:22 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

It is when he grabs that ring and does not allow the ring to control him. So that it is, in a way, that's his great enemy. And that scene, that rewrite, as I said before, the great scenes, they write themselves. And that was an easy write. Once we knew, we wrote it, and we knew that we were going to hear Gandalf and we knew exactly what he was hearing in his head. I remember we did it in like 10 minutes. This sequence of Sean...

3:16:07 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

Tackling this huge task was, it found its own path, it found its own level and it was extraordinary the places you found yourself in with the old laptop open and pages and books scattered around and there were many times where Fran, Peter and myself found ourselves on the sides of volcanoes with people walking around in prosthetics trying to do rewrites and some hotel rooms.

3:23:06 · jump to transcript →

Tom Tykwer

On the other hand I had people like Anthony Minghella and Sidney Pollack. Anthony being very helpful especially in the beginning also when we were rewriting the screenplay because of course we did an intense rewrite. Meaning I took the script which was taken from Polish to French, French to English and then I took it and took it from English to German.

37:59 · jump to transcript →

Tom Tykwer

understand this whole idea of what it means to find the movie in the material and to actually understand that cutting the film means in fact to really not only rewrite it but ultimately to write it for the first, even if it's the second time, over again. So editing is something like a writing situation.

50:21 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

it just makes because i think you know if a culture like this is believable then you somehow it makes the whole film believable it it's it's a case of trying to remove that fantasy science fiction kind of artifice from the movie and give it a grounding in some sort of history and it's so important because you want to make this stuff feel authentic as authentic as possible but do not trust this scene had to do a lot but actually wasn't subjected to a lot of rewrites was it we

34:50 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

and gets to show them off. That's why they're in the state they're in. It's the amount of money this guy spent on his clothes that bankrupted the kingdom. They could do with a gap branch opening up in Idris, couldn't they? They sort of need something to get away from the browns and greens. And look what the poor woman is reduced to. This was a quick rewrite, wasn't it? Quick rewrite, get it to the actors, shoot it. Is it one of those slippers under the hotel door 10 o'clock at night before we shoot it?

1:34:16 · jump to transcript →

That's pretty much it for the film. At this moment, I was originally inspired by this first draft of the screenplay that William Nicholson wrote, where he immediately saw...

3:21 · jump to transcript →

first draft he suggested this idea. This is Lamarck's funeral and you know when you see the show on stage you go from one day more you have a drink and you come back and they're building the barricade but on film there's a chance to show what actually kicked the revolution off and it's this extraordinary day where they took control of General Lamarck's hearse and

1:36:30 · jump to transcript →

And these, you know, when we're on this side of Tom, we can be more internal with him, you know, for these moments. Yeah, so all of these line crosses are actually deliberate. I love Henry's acting. Look at his eye muscles. Oh, I know. It's just, it's so good. He's really phenomenal. And he very, very carefully rewrites specific lines, chooses additional words, willingly whispered one word. And when he adds the word willingly,

26:17 · jump to transcript →

elegant rewrite from Henry Cerny, just adding the word authentic. Yes. Face. That's better, isn't it? Yeah. Face to authentic face. So good. And the first time we watched this in a theater, in a cut much longer, no music in the third act, no visual effects. And Hayley said her line and what was really sensational.

2:32:49 · jump to transcript →

One was a book by Mrs. Fremont Older. That was the way she signed her name. It was the authorized biography, and it was called William Randolph Hearst, American. And you just saw in the newsreel here, I am only one thing, an American. And the original screenplay for this, the first draft of it, was called American. And the other book was Ferdinand Lundberg's Imperial Hearst, which was a left-wing attack, and that became a foolish lawsuit that Lundberg claimed that they had somehow plagiarized his book.

7:57 · jump to transcript →

Mankiewicz was hired after Richard Maybaum had completed a first draft script. Director Guy Hamilton remembers working with the writer. Tom Mankiewicz came out to Universal, and we sat down and we started to write the script, and we had a lot of fun writing it. Here's Tom Mankiewicz's memories of writing the script. When I was hired to rewrite Diamonds Are Forever,

5:15 · jump to transcript →

that go together in the geodesic dome. It feels to me like a bunch of scenes and ideas have been fit together. And it's like, I'd like to illustrate this idea or this little thing without any particular sense. And I would imagine that the first draft is Washburn and Cimino and then Bochco comes in. And at that time,

43:29 · jump to transcript →

The Godfather being successful, and I had a little family now with three children, and I didn't have much money, and I obviously was worried about what would happen to us. And Evans was making The Great Gatsby, and they didn't have a script that they liked, and he asked if I would rewrite it. So I figured that was a chance for three, four weeks to make some money.

2:21:44 · jump to transcript →

John Mackenzie

That's where we did do a bit of rewriting again because we wanted one big last patriotic speech defiant from Harold before he was defeated. But that's settled it. Once and for all. Yes, I'd like a porter to... We shot it actually in the Savoy, this, in a suite in the Savoy.

1:46:59 · jump to transcript →

Filmmaker Paul Davis

which he did write a first draft screenplay when Polygram was sold by Peter Guber and John Peters in the early 90s. I can't remember the name of the guy who took over, but he came to John and asked him to write a sequel. And John deliberated about it. He thought about it for a long time, didn't really have anything that was significant

50:28 · jump to transcript →

Now, he wasn't going to be a preacher, was he, in your first... No, in the first draft he was a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist and a film buff, if I remember. He had posters up. Did he not? Yeah, and we had lunch that day. Here she comes, dynamite. He had done Equus on Broadway and just played the psychiatrist, so he came up with the concept of the preacher. Well, I'd seen, since I was in America...

9:12 · jump to transcript →

for the rights of other nerds. I mean... As Steve and Jeff said, you know, substitute nerd for I'm gay. Yeah. I'm black. That was always the... I'm short, I'm tall, I'm anything. Yeah. I think we both wrote our own speeches. Yeah, I remember some rewriting going through here. That's not at all the way it's written in the script. And the script only has three pages in it, folks. I'm a nerd.

1:23:12 · jump to transcript →

technical jargon. And I would go with the script lady and rewrite the whole paragraphs and get her to type it up and then get the director to give it to him just before the take and say, oh, we have these changes. And watch Desmond. So the panic would come into his face. And then we'd have to say quickly, no, no, it's a joke.

14:47 · jump to transcript →

James Cameron

This is Jim Cameron. I wrote and directed this film back in '83, and directed it in '85 through '86. It was released in the summer of '86. July 17th, if I'm not mistaken. It started as a treatment. I was having a meeting with David Giler and Walter Hill, talking about another project, and that pitch was not going very well. I could tell by their sagging expressions that they didn't like any of my ideas. But they had read my 7erminator script and wanted to work with me on something. I was getting up and making my way toward the door and David Giler, one of the producers of the first film, said "We do have this other thing", and I said "What's that?" He said "Alien 2." And all the pinball machine lights and bells went off inside my head but I maintained a straight face and said "That could be interesting." And I suggested that I write a quick treatment, a quick outline, just to give them an idea of what I might do with it. So I raced home and stayed up for three days straight, drank about eight pots of coffee and wrote a 40- or 50-page treatment. Really what I did was I adapted a story I had already written, which was called Mother, which was an "alien on a space station" kind of story. It had the power loader machine in it. I had written this treatment a few months earlier. So I adapted it, dropped Sigourney's character and a bunch of marines into it, and in that one quick stroke created all the character names - Gorman and Hicks and Vasquez and all those folks - and dropped it on them a couple of days later. I think they felt like they'd hit the jackpot. That was the film they wanted to make. So they authorized me to go ahead and start writing the script. The problem was, that day I landed the job to write the script for the second Rambo film. So I called them up and asked David Giler what I should do. And he said "Don't be stupid. Take both jobs." So I took both jobs. I also had to do a rewrite of my 7erminator script to start production in February, so I had a three-month period where I had to write three scripts. So I decided that each script was gonna be two hours long, so it'd be 120 pages. So I figured out the total page count, whatever that is - I guess 360 pages. I divided the total number of waking hours I had during that three-month period by 360 and figured out how many pages per hour I had to write, and then I just wrote that many pages per hour.

0:04 · jump to transcript →

Well, yeah, I mean, it's not like Fast and the Furious, but, you know. Exactly. Those are things, I mean, what they've done with special effects is rewrite the laws of physics so they don't apply, so that things have, things happen in action sequences that could not possibly happen just in terms of the weight and speed of things. Yeah, it's just kind of funny. I remember, like, when this hit, blockbuster video, you know, you walk in, you run a movie called My Best Friend is a Vampire. You don't expect to see this big.

54:28 · jump to transcript →

Lea Thompson

And the idea of the scene, teaching him how to kiss the girl that she would like to see not living on the planet Earth, is pretty unique. And John wrote it, I remember... After the script was completed, we were doing rewrites and he said, "You know what? We need another scene. We need a scene." And he just started writing this, and it was done in... I don't know. You know, five minutes, and... It's a great idea. - I read it and went, "Oh, my God. This is so much fun, but also, underneath, so poignant."

57:30 · jump to transcript →

Macaulay Culkin

I love how the family never finds out all that stuff he did. It's true. - They never-- They have no idea what he did. Well, may-- We miss between the two movies. I'm sure he talked about Harry and Marv. - Maybe. Maybe they don't believe him. - I don't-- Exactly. But there was that sequence at the beginning of the second one... ...where it was me cleaning up the house. Oh, that's right. - At, like... Cleaning up the Micro Machines... - Right. And stuff like that. Yeah. Now, in the original script, this did not exist. Oh, the tooth. - No, none otf it. The movie ended with, "Just hung around." - Oh, really? Laughter, freeze-frame, boom. Home Alone. Marley, now I'm convinced, was an added character. And we added him throughout the course of rewriting the script. To me it solidifies the movie, you know? - It worked. Yeah. It really solidifies the point of the movie. - It'd be a different movie. And coming up is my favorite shot in the film. That was when he looks over? - No, your close-up as you're... And then Buzz yelling. But I do remember talking you through this scene... ...because I was off camera telling you to think about something that was happy. I can't even remember what I was telling you to think about... ...but I was trying to make you laugh or think something happy. But your performance is so good there. It's so genuine, and.... Oh. It just really works.

1:37:08 · jump to transcript →

Off his script. Yeah, or a combination. A combination, yeah. Yeah, the prison planet was an idea early on. Was it Eric Redd? I can't remember who came up with it. Or was it Giler who came up with it? I can't remember who came up with it. But yeah, so yeah, it's an amalgamation really, isn't it? They seem to have taken the worst aspects of all the possibilities and slammed them together and then decided, actually, no, let's rewrite the script on a daily basis anyway. Yeah. But if you look at the teaser trailer for Alien 3...

13:03 · jump to transcript →

Marco Brambilla Daniel Waters

but I love it, it was a total stranger pitching me. And this is, we had a great writer, Jonathan Lemkin, who came in for a production rewrite. He came up with that joke of him cussing and using the paper's toilet paper, which I thought was a great, I love when a rewriter actually improves my stuff instead of trying to change it, and that was a great example. Now, this is also very precedent. This is about the chips installing machines

39:33 · jump to transcript →

Well, except Chloe, right? I mean, Chloe was the only one that we had to... That's true. Because we had to test it. And that was the weirdest part about that process, right? It was the first time we had to kind of create this faux score, right? But I think that's a lot of the time why my scores for you are very original and fresh and very, very identified with the film. Because I'm not replacing something else that's there. But having to rewrite the field theme...

29:52 · jump to transcript →

when I read the screenplay, the very first draft of the screenplay, and this is the Eric Roth screenplay, because there were many screenplays prior to that that were done over many years. I just kept turning the page to see what was gonna happen next. I mean, I had no real desire or compulsion to make a movie about a guy with a low IQ. It seemed to be the right character, and I kept wanting to know what was gonna happen to this character.

0:28 · jump to transcript →

I mean, I was lucky, yes, but, and fortunate, but to have an editor as good as Steve Rosenblum was to really bring his own thing to it. I mean, he took what I gave him and he managed to sort of make it better, you know, which is, when it comes right down to it, the edit's just the final rewrite. And he's a master of it.

2:03:35 · jump to transcript →

My Question Initially To Jean-pierre Was

This idea about the bullet on the roof - it's a little bit later - it was an idea from the first version of The City of Lost Children. We didn't use it. I don't remember. In fact, it was a very good pool player, and he used a gun to kill the people, shooting on the roof exactly like this. I used this idea on this film. Yeah, but you didn't shoot it. No. It was in the first draft. Suddenly I thought I was going crazy. The weapons were based on existing ones. I remember leafing through encyclopedias of guns, which were given to me by Steve Cooper, art director. I guess somebody thought "We'll get around to the weapons." Actually, I jumped off the storyboard on to the weapons because panic was setting in. People were saying we needed to get them going. So Steve Cooper brought in all these volumes of books on handguns, rifles, whatnot. I started doing little sketches one afternoon. I think I did one page with eight or nine guns, and out of that one page almost everything came out. We showed them to Nigel and he said "Why don't you expand that one?" Then we started detailing them, and then finding ways to stick them into the wheelchair wherever possible. This was great, cos Tom would always play the hero alien. We had Mark Viniello in one of the other suits, and David Prior was in another one, but Jean-Pierre wanted to keep Tom as the main performer. That was that torso we made with all the guts and the... That's self-explanatory, isn't it? This was a neat effect. This was a prerigged floor with an elevator that would lower all the guts and so on. It would appear as if the thing was melting, but it was a simple little rig. See? They never learn in these movies, do they?

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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 →

He just shifts in his... His shirt, as you can see, is kind of Cuban. I just noticed now. I just noticed right now. He's wearing sort of a... Yeah, that's it. That was a controversial... Well, again, there we go, yeah. That was very good. Yeah, very good. And I remember we had to rewrite it because we'd originally said New York and then we had this journey and then...

45:14 · jump to transcript →

One of the things that we began talking about, you know, early with... ...the screenwriter Seaman and Price... ...later with the guys who came in and did the rewrite, Berg, Schaefer and Mandel... ...with Jim, with Rick Baker, Brian Grazer and I talking about it... ...was just trying to get the tone. It really needed to be a live-action cartoon, and yet... ...you know, I also hoped that audiences would connect with these characters... ...as they would any human character.

37:23 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

And the jokes with the tulip here I asked Mitchell to put in on the very first rewrite as part of several places where I wanted to boost Bruce's character and give him some more laughs. This scene was originally going to be shot in a little cobbled street in the old town. We couldn't afford to go there because all the shop owners got together and...

13:15 · jump to transcript →

Stealing from tombs has worked out very well for the O'Connells because they have a hell of a house. Brendan's going to laugh at this, but when he read, Brendan read the first draft, I think one of the things he said was, you know, I don't think we would spend our money on a, you know, big, beautiful house. Couldn't we just have some sort of, like, eccentric flat of some sort, you know, some apartment? And he was pretty...

23:46 · jump to transcript →

Michelle asked me if I would rewrite her monologue using, what, 25%? Is that what you said? Yeah. 25% of actual stuff that she says in the Velveteen Rabbit monologue so that we can cut away from her when she's not saying what we have on film. And he thought I would be excited by the challenge, and I was, and I did it. It was like 15 minutes, I think. Yeah, I know. And it became, people really love this scene.

52:34 · jump to transcript →

One other interesting note about this scene, that is a real keg with real beer, and Jacob Pitts, our delightful Cooper, really liked these scenes a lot. It's what we like to call method acting. That's one of the things we learned. Or simply drinking. - Aren't they the same? I guess we should introduce our cast, now that you've been watching for ten minutes. Scotty Mechlowicz as Scott Thomas. - Which is why we cast him. Make it very easy on ourselves. The beautiful and talented Michelle Trachtenberg as Jenny. And Travis Wester is her twin, Jamie. And that's Jacob Pitts going off to take a leak. And this was another one of our delightful cameos that we got because we were in Prague. Yep, that's Matt Damon, which... Everyone in the theater sort of goes, "It can't be. Is it? Is it really?" Why is his head shaved? He was actually in Prague shooting Brothers Grimm for Terry Gilliam at the time. And we actually went to college with Matt years ago. So we've been sort of friendly ever since. And he was in Prague and we asked him to do a day of work for us, and he agreed. The biggest favor ever. - Thank you, thank you, thank you, Matt. Yeah, Matt's just hilarious here. Matt's not watching this DVD. We're going to make him watch it. That'll be another commentary. That would be the biggest favor he's ever done. But the band was actually started by some other friends of ours from college. I guess this is as good a time as any... A couple of them were of Matt Damon's roommates in college. The band Lustra... - One of them. The band Lustra, good guys. And they wrote the song, which is really fun. We've known each other since college. I'm going to just talk now 'cause no one's listening to what I'm saying, because there's a naked girl on the screen. I wasn't listening. What were you talking about? Now this, in the unrated version that we're watching, she started off topless. In the theatrical release, if you saw it, we actually cut a different version where she started off with her top on and Cooper talks her out of her top. - He convinced her to take it off. And it was very strange, sort of, when you get into this whole nudity thing. Obviously, it's a hot tub scene, but somehow when her top was on and he talked her out of it, while it was a very exciting moment that he talked her out of it, it oddly made her dumber, even though she is sort of a stereotypical dumb blonde. - Right. And we always liked it this way, the way you're seeing it. We liked the scene to answer the question, "What is beyond gratuitous?" That's the answer. - There it is. And there they are. The answers. The other stuff we added back into the scene is just more of him screwing around with her. Because, to us, once you're at the nudity, it's how far he goes. This scene... - It's not about nudity. No, this scene was always about the crazy extent to which he got her to play with herself, as opposed to just getting her to take her top off. By the way, the banner in the background originally... This is what happens when you work in Prague. It's a big congratulations banner. The first day when we got there, it just said "congratulation," like one singular congratulation, which is a word we didn't know existed. Sort of a funny story about this scene, which, hopefully, we can tell. We were actually rewriting another movie, which I guess we'll leave nameless, that had a hot tub scene in it and we came up with this idea, which was the fact that a guy saying, "You have a smudge. You've got something on you." And we were really enjoying what we were doing so much that we didn't put it in that script. And we're like, "We'll use it one day." And here it is. Screw it. The movie was called Out Co/d, I think. Yeah, exactly.

7:55 · jump to transcript →

Noah Baumbach

And Bill's reading one of your actual notebooks. Yes, the notebooks in this-- Jane's notebooks are modeled on the notebooks that these movies are written in. So The Life Aquatic is-- Originally, while we would sit here talking, I would write everything down in longhand in these notebooks like this, then take it home and type it up, then bring in the pages next day, then we'd write more in the notebook, more on the pages. That's what the notebook-- I mean, I guess it's worth noting that the way we write these things or not, we don't both do separate scenes and then bring them in together and try and sort of edit them or anything. We actually come up with everything together in the room. I mean, stuff is done later in rewriting or when you're directing and stuff, but... You know, it is a... We make the story sitting here together. Yeah, in Jane's notebooks. - Yeah, in Jane's notebooks. Why don't we talk about some of the people who work on these films? Maybe we start with Robert Yeoman, the cinematographer. He shot all my films, Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and Royal Tenenbaums, as well as your most recent film. The Squid and the Whale, yeah. Yeah, from my perspective, I tried to hire Bob for the first movie I did, Kicking & Screaming, and... Only to hear later that he was shooting a movie called Bottle Rocket by some neophyte Texan writer, director, actors. Yeah, I think we both probably responded strongly to Drugstore Cowboy, which was a film Bob had shot. - Right. And, you know, Bob, he lights his movies, he's drawn to very natural lighting, and I feel like he's sort of a Nestor Almendros kind of... His style of director of photography. He's also a very good operator, camera operator. He's great at hand-holding and he knows how to get the image. And he's tireless too. This is probably a good-- Now we're underwater, in the underwater forest, a good time to talk about Mark Friedberg. And you did this in a tank in Cinecittà? Yes, this is in a tank, where we built this undersea forest, and it was very difficult to do. It's hard to keep the water clean, hard to get the temperature right. You've got to build the whole thing, and the set starts to disintegrate. It's very complicated, but a bizarrely exciting thing to film. You know, it's just a crazy experience. And, you know, it's very-- It's-- You know, it looks fake and... It's fake to X degree, and not fake to some other degree, although it's pretty fake. And the thing we liked the most here was we took a scene that could be staged in a broom closet somewhere or in somebody's living room, but we just put the scene at the bottom of the ocean, where they have to push buttons to say each sentence. It's just really a scene about, "Can I call you 'Dad'?" And, "No, you can't." Yeah, I think maybe we'd initially written this scene on deck-- - On land. Yeah. - And then... Then we decided to go underwater with it. It's also a scene where we sort of, you know, where Zissou manipulates-- We get to see Zissou sort of first-hand manipulate the reality of his film. Yes, we see how it works. We're restaging.

52:14 · jump to transcript →

James McTeigue

I wanted it to be like a fascist state but more about... ... how people live now. About more how... ... society is, and politic is... ...and people are controlled by capitalism. It's not about beating people into submission anymore. I think everyone's worked out that those manifestos don't work. Today, I think a dystopic vision... ...lncludes something more like, you know... ...material comfort, sort of, you know... ...quelling your desire to speak out against injustice, or something. It's more like an Iran totalitarian society... ... than a Soviet Union totalitarian society. You do have the creature comforts. Maybe your choice is limited. But it's not about being beaten into submission. It's about being complicit. He should conclude that the New Bailey will become the symbol of our time... ...and the future that our conviction has rewarded us. Mr. Heyer. Our surveillance cameras captured several images of the terrorist... ... though the mask obviously makes retinal identification impossible. We also managed to get a picture of the girl that Creedy's men were detaining. Who is she, Mr. Finch? - Not sure yet, sir. But we're working on several leads. - Anything else? We located the fireworks launch... ...and found traces of the explosives used at both sites. Unfortunately it appears that despite the heavy level of sophistication... ... these devices were homemade with over-the-counter chemicals... ...making them very difficult to trace. Whoever he is, chancellor, he's very good. Spare us your professional annotations, Mr. Finch. They are irrelevant. Apologies, chancellor. Gentlemen, this is a test. Moments such as these are matters of faith. To fail is to invite doubt into everything we believe... ...everything we have fought for. Doubt will plunge this country back into chaos, and I will not let that happen. Gentlemen, I want this terrorist found... ...and I want him to understand what terror really means. England prevails. England prevails. TV is so ubiquitous, you know. I mean, it's everywhere. You can't escape it. Part of it is a bastardization of what happened in the novel. There is, like, a TV station siege. Then, I think it's pretty obvious... ... that, you know, capitalism has won out, everywhere. Part of your social strata in some countries... ... 1S how big your TV is and how many TVs you've got. That's a way of disseminating information. And whether that information is right or wrong or it's bad or it's good... .or it's true or it's untrue. I think that's what I was trying to get at. It's also a part of the, obviously, part of the system of control. You have a government broadcasting station and it seems to be the only one. I mean, I can't remember. I might be wrong. But it seems like it's the only station that everyone.... And then you see everyone watching that very station... ...and Evey's working at it. And Deitrich is ready for his tea. I don't get it. Why does he wear a Guy Fawkes mask? Didn't Fawkes try to blow up Parliament? It's not too late. He's still got another 16 hours. Maybe he's just getting started. Yeah? Okay. A lead on the girl. Look, don't get me wrong, I love it. A cow getting crucified. It's hysterical. But you'll never get it approved. You've got to rewrite it, okay? Gotta go. I don't recall getting stood up by a more attractive woman. Mr. Deitrich... - Gordon, please. I don't need "mister" to make this body feel any older. Gordon... ...I was on my way last night, but there were Fingermen... ...and I got scared and went home. Sadly, after last night, I think our curfew will only get worse.

11:00 · jump to transcript →

John Cameron Mitchell

Photography, beautiful shots from the window. And this scene was done afterwards? We reshot the scene because we didn't have much time to do it on the day, and we wanted to do a little rewriting. Also, we had a lot of airplanes going overhead, which whenever Paul had an emotional scene, there was a plane. And we shot this in our friend's Heath...

1:16:30 · jump to transcript →

Shane wrote the first draft, and he wrote the last draft. Usually multiple writers come and work on it, and Shane was able to stay in this process from beginning to end. And it was great continuity, and it was great having him around when he needed little fixes and all. Now, this scene has some interesting history to it. We were supposed to be in this other location. We had this whole thing choreographed and blocked out and storyboarded and pre-vis. And then literally, what was it, like three days before the shoot?

1:01:05 · jump to transcript →

throw everything out and rewrite it and think, what could make a person to do something like this, killing young people? And it would have to be some sort of obsession or love. And that he would be a pedophile. And it would be because of this that his being with Eli. Some people say that this is an old lover to Eli. That a long time ago when he was young, he was like Oscar.

45:42 · jump to transcript →

Patrick Tatopoulos

SO.... You know, putting the film in context of the time too. There was an ensuing writer's strike that was approaching... ...while we were writing the script, and we had to turn the script around... ... from a first draft to a shooting script in, like, 30 days. Really quick. And it was really a wonderful experience. We would have lunch in our offices every day. And we'd go through the script, and then the two writers... Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain. would work on the script. Len would work on the script, Patrick would work on the script. Bob McMahan would collate everything. Yeah, we all had our different colours. Different jobs, and in the evenings at 3, 4 in the morning... ...We get pages from Len. lt was just a wild experience, but we got the script done. lt worked, yeah.

43:02 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

Exactly. The thing I love working with digital effects and things is compositing things. It's the ability we now have to take something and replace it, or reposition it, or change text, or modify things in the frame that are absolutely indistinguishable from if we had filmed it that way. All the time we rewrite text and it disappears. But that's a different kind of effects work, I guess. You know, it's often the signage. Probably, I would say, 80% of the shots in the movie have some kind of visual effect. And that all happened in postproduction.

6:42 · jump to transcript →

Everything was all in one case. And Robert Ells would ask, what was supposed to happen? And it caused us to blow the scene up and rewrite it all on the morning we shot it. Which became a theme. Yep, with her, yes, it became a theme. But it's important to always challenge the material. And that's something that we are tireless about. This set was specifically designed for this very reason, is to create...

17:00 · jump to transcript →

Boom. Yeah. Oh, that dog. The dog... The dog gets an award. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Particularly for the one that we were on set and we know that he wasn't hitting his marks all the time. But in the movie, really, you know, he does what he has to do. He's very menacing. It's that extension of the will of the bloke, right? Yeah, I think the first draft that we wrote didn't have the dog. Mm-mm.

13:16 · jump to transcript →

Nick wrote that It Will line. I remember we were, like, you know, trying to write and rewrite the climax of the scene. The night before we recorded it. The night before we recorded it. It all just felt, like, way too much. I think we probably had, like, a long monologue at one point. And It Will just delivered happily as... That's it, man. You're Sherry. You're Sherry. Yeah. Is that okay? Can I film while you guys are shooting? Whoa, those gentlemen were not wearing feodorants. Ha, ha, ha.

56:06 · jump to transcript →

And I was rewriting this scene, particularly her lines, like every time we did another take of it. And this is very demanding, like, you know, long take and great on her for being able to remember all the rewrites as we were going. And Clace also...

1:37:16 · jump to transcript →