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 moll, 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 Chidduck 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 Chidduck'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 →

Francis Ford Coppola

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 →

Francis Ford Coppola

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, Al is willing to do that

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Francis Ford Coppola

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 Caplin, 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,

58:53 · jump to transcript →

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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Tim Lucas

Masha was going to be on the screen, explaining to Max that she had been killed by Videodrome for leaking Brian O'Blivion'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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Tim Lucas

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.

1:05:57 · jump to transcript →

Tim Lucas

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.

1:06:27 · jump to transcript →

Paul M. Sammon

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

47:29 · jump to transcript →

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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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.

54:22 · jump to transcript →

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.

2:23 · jump to transcript →

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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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 wuxiapian 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 Hui-Ling Wang and with you and the whole team.

32:44 · jump to transcript →

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.

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

30:05 · jump to transcript →

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, Mad Love. 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.

31:32 · jump to transcript →

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 Corry, 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 →

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.

1:17:56 · jump to transcript →

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.

52:09 · 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 →

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 →

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 Sydney 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 →

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 →

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 →

Tom Hooper

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 →

Tom Hooper

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 Maibaum 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,

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Francis Ford Coppola

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.

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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 →