Structure

James Mangold

Aristotelian terms, and there's an antagonist, and the antagonist opposes the efforts and forward motion of the protagonist. Russell is not the antagonist of this film. In that sense, it's kind of, if you took away all the Western attributes and looked at its structure, it's kind of a buddy film with a struggling rancher and a super criminal somehow tied together on a journey.

18:11 · jump to transcript →

James Mangold

is that he seems to me to be someone with a kind of admirable and unique value structure. Everywhere you turn in the world that we created for the movie is compromise and evil in more masked forms. The railroad, the men who hold the lien on the Evans Ranch, the people enslaving the Chinese to build the tunnels.

22:56 · jump to transcript →

James Mangold

Also with action, it allows you to tie things together, the shooter and what they're firing at. One thing I tend to take a lot of time with in all my films is what you'd call the first act or the introduction of all the characters. And by structural definitions, we're pretty far in the movie, but in a way, it's only really just beginning. And while that might be perhaps for some viewers a struggle, I think the effort we go to to set everyone up in this first act

37:07 · jump to transcript →

which is a little Sicilian, and that music is used in the first movie. So the Godfather Part II had taken upon itself a very ambitious structure, which was that it was going to tell its story in two entirely different time periods, basically going back and forth in a kind of parallel structure between them. And actually, this was an idea before I knew I was making this Godfather Part II.

10:44 · jump to transcript →

Again, the film was photographed by Gordy Willis, and the art direction was by Dean Tavallaris, and so it had the same vivid beauty image and photography that the first Godfather had. Gordy Willis was very rigid about the structure that he wanted, you know, which I think he was correct in doing, and the second film was made in, you know,

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really the same philosophy and structure. It's just that the ease between us was much greater and there was room to express ideas. I didn't feel as I did on the first film, up against this, you know, kind of crotchety school norm that just said it had to be this way. And I think I felt more free with the second Godfather. I was running the production. I pretty much had no one to answer to.

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Darren Aronofsky

Um, and although we're not talking about spirals here, um, we didn't really want to mention it right now to be right in people's faces. We wanted, uh, people just sort of to put it together themselves of what was going on. Then we would start talking about the golden spiral, um, later in the second act. This is the last scene of the first act. Um...

17:52 · jump to transcript →

Darren Aronofsky

the world, the earth. And she's trying to pull him back and pull him in. But he turns away from it and presses return. And immediately he notices that those picks are wrong. And then suddenly Euclid starts to fall apart on him. Blackout. End of the first act.

18:49 · jump to transcript →

Darren Aronofsky

of Euclid. We've been hiding it from the audience and so we wanted to create a little suspense that there was something new going on. It's also our introduction of the drill. The drill sort of, I wanted to sort of place it throughout the film just so the audience would be prepared for the big climax in the third act. So what you're looking at is a very, very simple aluminum frame

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...more convincing just to really commit to the sung-through form... ...and not keep reminding people of naturalistic dialogue. But in doing that, you know, I've relied myself... There were very few films that did that. I mean, I think Tommy, Evita, Umbrellas of Cherbourg... ...there are very few examples of films that have been through sung. Most films stick with this dialogue interspersed with song structure. What pretty hair. What pretty locks you've got there.

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...then that it would have a completely different meaning in the film structure. And she applied a kind of raw devastation to the song... ...that revolutionized her take on it. But it's very much a response to where it's placed in the story... ...and the brutality of what it's a response to. You've got some gore. By Christ, you'll pay for what you've done. I guarantee. I'll make you suffer!

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Rebecca, don't report me, sir. I'll do whatever you may want. Excuse me. Excuse me. Tell me quickly what's the story Who saw what and why and where Let him give a full description Let him answer to Javert The effect it did have on the structure, though, was the scene with Bamatabwa, which is more involved in the musical, and actually we shot a longer version of it. It became...

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explain it rationally, but that's why I think the film does have this psychoanalytic sort of structure, right? It is about revealing these layers and being able to strip them away so that the characters themselves are able to come to terms with what they've experienced. They know what has happened to them, but they haven't fully absorbed the levels at which that's affected them.

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And so the film does have this structure, which is very unusual, where it's peeling away. And that's where the music is essential, because music, like in this theme, which is in a very nascent sort of form, is gradually going to become more explored, right? It's going to go further. And go to the darker places that aren't really suggested here. Right. But I think that that's a really, you know, I mean, if you look at the films...

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before this films like The Adjuster you know again someone who has access to other people's lives someone who's able to kind of make these inventories of what it is they've lost someone who has this at least superficial sort of sense of being able to understand things structure them in that case actually put things back together again but you know is dealing with such inexplicable kind of confusion in his own life

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We really wanted to create a nice story between Boromir and Aragorn because really from this point on until the end of the film, the relationship between Boromir and Aragorn becomes one of our central pieces of dramatic structure, really. Ironically, one of the first scenes you shot with them together was the last scene that they had together. And the connection was so great and they worked so brilliantly together that we tried...

1:34:41 · jump to transcript →

All who look upon her fall under her spell. Introducing Galadriel and the concept of Lothorian was difficult. It was also difficult in terms of the story of the film because it's one of those situations where if you were writing an original screenplay, Lothorian probably wouldn't exist because you'd be wanting to keep the momentum up straight through to the climax. We always regarded Lothorian as being potentially problematical because of the...

2:30:20 · jump to transcript →

The Lothlorien sequence was always very difficult for us in the movie because it's a point in the film where you naturally would be wanting to increase the pace and be building up a sense of momentum to head towards the climax of the movie. But obviously the sequence in Lothlorien is very, very significant in the book. It's significant in the movie as well because it's the point that Frodo has to decide whether or not he really is best staying with the Fellowship or leaving, and Galadriel obviously gives him advice.

2:33:53 · jump to transcript →

And how all of this serves to lay up the cut to credits. We were always struggling with where do the credits go? Yes. And once we built this structure and presented it to Tom, we had the credits in a different place. Tom was very happy with the structure and the only note he had was the credits are in the wrong place. He says the credits have to come after a cake. Come after a win. They should come after, you should have a lift when you go into the music. Correct. You want to feel a cheer. And we said, yes, but that's 28 minutes into the movie. I know. Nobody does that. And he said, yeah, but.

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all four of these actors working together, really, really carrying one another through the scene. And then here, this was, boy, this was a challenge to edit. And we knew we had to get into the third act, but we also knew we had to tell this very important story, which is Luther's departure. Luther has to leave the story. This was twofold. One, really wasn't anything for Luther to be doing in the third act of the movie.

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at Ultra HD and 4K and we can review them without having to compromise. Now this was a- And the reason I work with Eddie Hamilton is so I don't have to understand any of that. All that nonsense, but there's people out there who will hear it and enjoy it. Now what were you gonna say about the training? Well, this whole scene was interesting because we had a different setup for the third act. Yes. And we leaned into this slightly different

1:50:29 · jump to transcript →

These scenes at Los Angeles International Airport were filmed after shooting was completed in Las Vegas. The film unit then shot the climax on an oil rig off the coast of California before returning to Pinewood, where the scene of Bond confronting Blofeld inside Willard White's penthouse was first on the schedule. The attendants who take Bond for a ride are played by Mark Lawrence, about whom we'll hear more later, Sid Haig, and Mike Valenti. The scenes were shot on a single day.

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That's rather than just racing up streets, which is so ordinary, that the only way you can do a car chase is this is something fresh and new. So let's try one in a car park. And we had little models, little dinky toy cars, and laid out what the chase would look like. And off we went from there, and knowing that the climax, what the climax would be. Come in, Larry. Larry? Larry?

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We couldn't get one of those at Vegas, so we had to make do with some smaller machinery. The scenes of Bond inside the pipe were completed back at Pinewood Studios. After seven weeks of filming exterior scenes and location shots, the crew returned to Pinewood to film interiors on Ken Adams' sets. These shots of Bond inside the pipe are reminiscent of the climax of Connery's first James Bond film, Doctor No,

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head that was Michael Lantieri and he is in charge of the hippo so ILM had him doing that and then they also have Scott Farrar doing the computer part and that comes in mostly in the climax and then Stan Winston did the apes so that was kind of the delineation of duties um but Michael Lantieri he had done like you know Jurassic Park kind of things um dinosaurs won an Oscar for it um

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in the climax and it's kind of fast and you know you don't have too much time to spend there um but some of the crystals that they put into the the ceiling and the walls were hundreds of dollars a piece so it was it was quite a an endeavor this so all the amy stuff here really gets me yeah no she's really adorable

1:22:08 · jump to transcript →

lava from methylcellulose, which I guess is in tons of things, like even milkshakes. I don't know anything about methylcellulose. But that and plastic beads, which I guess kind of gave a bubbly structure to it. And the beads would go wherever the flow went. And it was actually white. So then they controlled the color and made it glow and made it red and different colors in the post-production process.

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He should have a drink with the kid. That's your little Kubrickian. Also, on the sonogram machine, which you'll never see, it says Robin Sarno is the patient's name. Maybe when High Def comes out. I love that the OBGYN chills out in the stirrups after hours. That was my nice little touch, my little point of having a movie filled with prostitutes, you know, the third act filled with prostitutes, and you only see a naked man. Dirty dancing? Oh, this was just...

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is the beginning. This is where we're really entering the second act. And the second act is the theater of imagination. And if you're not willing to participate in the little clues that I'm giving you, the second act is fairly uninvolving because I'm not giving you anything. It's a really strong rewatch in that way because once you get through the film and you understand where it's going and what the film

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that I actually painted myself into some pretty ugly corners in the second act of the film. So there's a lot of essential information that you want to convey, but there's no way to cut to it any quicker. You painted me in a corner. Yeah, I certainly did. And I guess if you're going to, Neil Pollack, who's a director friend of mine. And the interview guy in the beginning. Right, the interview guy at the beginning of the film. Neil spoke to me the day before I

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He's the one that breaks out in hypodermic needles from Nicole's powers, let's say. How would you describe the situation in a film like this where you have two, in a sense you have two villains, don't you? Because you have Savory and Motherskill and they're kind of sort of in cahoots with each other to a degree. Did you feel that that was a strength or a problem in how you deployed the climax of the film? Because you've got two...

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So what kinds of things... I know that we'll talk about the climax when we get to it because I know that was affected by financial and time constraints. But what other kinds of things did you have to drop as a result of the sudden slashing of the budget or your more realistic budget? Well, just a lot of scenes, really. And the way it's shot, I would have liked far more set-ups. Yeah. Yeah.

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ropes in terms of how you would structure a movie narrative i think it was all to do with with him wanting to create a character who's lost and unconnected with the world um and his love for nicole um gives him that connection again yeah well something i noticed in in clive's draft uh reading through it was that um he's afraid a lot of the time as well

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And the shot in on Robo's eye. It's such a neat moment. Because I think Paul was trying to get the eye. He was trying to find his humanity before we revealed the third act's face. And watch this right here. It's so fucking cool. I think I also have to credit Joost Vecano there in making the shot really work, you know, because...

1:11:53 · jump to transcript →

I mean, otherwise it would have been... It would have been fucked. It would have been a good move. And I think it's a nice move that you finally see in this scene these two people coming together, isn't it? Well, it's a third act scene. Actually, this scene violates a little bit the idea of third act exposition. But, you know, you don't mind it so much. And you really do... I didn't know it then because I was a younger writer. You really do want to see the forces against the hero coming together. Well, I guess we're going to be friends after all.

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Richard. Now this is a oblique joke about Richard Nixon, the poor guy. He gets to be the butt of every joke. But here we go. Now here we go. There's some third act exposition. You're going to need some major firepower.

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

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I think that Vincent Ludwig was involved in a number of... Again, there was some laughter at that point. No, it's a compelling... There you go. That's pretty funny. Big laugh. Isn't this the part in the second act where you can go have a drink or something? This was another concession break. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm worried about you. I don't trust you. But there was a very good, faint, you know, physical thing coming up. It's coming up right now. We're in the famous pass-out scene that she does not notice at all. Oh, yes. Done in the background.

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Where were you? Without walking. Oh, so this marks, this scene marks the end of the second act. How do you know that? Because... The small sign on the set that says it. How do you know that, David? How do you know that? This is where she says they're going to be at the baseball game, and then that marks the start of the third act. Launches them into the third act, which is the baseball game? Yeah. And that's the whole third act, the baseball game to the end? Yeah. What have you got? I overheard Ludwig. I couldn't think of anything else. Ludwig is planning to have someone assassinate the queen. Where?

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Stephen Prince

Although other characters appear in the dreams, what we mostly have is a dyadic structure involving the encounter between I and the other principal character or groupings of characters like the foxes in this dream or the Hina dolls in the next one. The interesting thing about all of this is its bearing on drama in the Noh theater. Noh plays work in this way. The main characters are a traveler known as the Waki,

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Stephen Prince

and the warrior, ghost, or demon that the Waki encounters, who has a story to tell and is known as the Shde. Kurosawa has fashioned his dreams to approximate this structure. The I character is a kind of Waki, and those that he meets are the film's Shde. And like Noh plays, many of these dreams have a lesson or a virtue that they are presenting. Kurosawa has always loved the Noh theater, and it's not surprising that it found its way indirectly into this film.

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Stephen Prince

He's already there when we meet him, as a full participant in the action. He is one of the characters who inhabit the strange landscape of this segment, not a visitor to it. This dream then has a different structure than the others, which tend to borrow the dyad of Wacky and Stay from the Noh theater. There's no dyad here, no passages of declamatory dialogue that present a lesson or a moral to the audience.

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Actually, the other thing that this scene does, ironically, is it shocks all the fans of the book. All the people who know the end of this story are now on the edge of the seat, because if we can do that, what the hell else are we about to do? This was originally edited to be continuous after Faramir leaves the hall. So he talks to Denethor, and then we go straight into this. But in rearranging the structure, we put a little bit of a time gap and went to Frodo and Sam on the ledge.

1:28:57 · jump to transcript →

how the film was gonna play, and we just wanted to push forward to the climax of the movie on Mount Doom as quickly as we possibly could. The one thing that these wonderful scenes, these beautiful scenes did was emotionally drain you so that by the time you got to the end, you kind of were all emotioned out, weren't you? And the weight of the front of the movie started to crush the end. Well, hopefully, most people that are watching this extended cut will be watching it over two nights, I would hope, and this is like the second night. Yeah.

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just exclude other plot lines because we felt we wanted to concentrate and tighten up the climax. But this is nice, and this does certainly earn you the moment of them being together at the coronation. It is in the book that their hands meet and hold like that. I think it's fantastic. I think it's really great that Erwin and Faramir, who are two troubled men,

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It's something that's in the movie but never actually mentioned in the movie anymore. But we liked it. So we like there sort of being architecture even if you didn't really understand it. We also like the idea of juxtaposing that time cover with who he is now. These scenes are what would in another movie typically be your first act, get to know your characters by hearing them talk to other characters' scenes. And here instead, it's all behavior and performance.

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What am I doing? I'm not gonna let this happen. Let? This isn't up to you. You can't... There's our next scare. And, you know, the scares are built sort of sequentially. And, you know, we're already a ways into the first act, and clearly there have been no monsters. So even though you know you've come to a monster movie,

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knowing that a lot of this movie was performance. And so Will and Akiva and I really would workshop, and with Alisi too, workshop a lot of this. So it had a structure to it, and Akiva had written it very specifically. And then we went way off track in terms of workshopping and coming up with ideas and different things for people to say and not to say, and who are you looking at and who are you paying attention to, and what are you thinking about, and is it your family, and are you disappointed, and...

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since they're both, he's Kyle 6'1", Luke 6'3", but Kyle's a Krav Maga guy, which is how I got to Krav Maga for Brendan in this film. Krav Maga is an Israeli martial arts system of great brutality and directness, which is what we train Brendan in to fight Jet Li in the third act in the mano a mano sequence.

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break and reform, and this was all very complex algorithms that we did at the Rhythm and Hues, the visual effects company that did all the horses and this chase through Shanghai. The other company was Digital Domain, who did the conversion to Terracotta when the emperor is cursed, and as you'll see, the entire battle sequence in the third act.

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But again, little moments of levity and fun as we're getting all of the loose ends wrapped up from the previous first act of the film and the second act rules being laid out, the goals. This was a good scene.

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This is avuncular, pipe-smoking Gene Herschelt, whose name is immortal because it's read out at the Academy Awards every year. They give a Gene Herschelt Humanitarian Award for somebody in Beverly Hills who's given a lot of time and effort to charitable works as well as the usual backstabbing and crawling that gets you awards in Hollywood. And this is an unusual role for him in this film. He normally played the nice guys in movies. Well, he started out as kind of baddies. He was the Karloff role in the first version of The Climax, which

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If we look at this film again as being entirely about making a fool of Gene Herschel, yeah, and imagine all the other characters are giggling a bit when he gets more and more scared. Exactly. It makes sense. It's like when they say you should watch backwards. Yes, yeah. From the climax and watch it backwards and see actually how clever it is as a piece of construction.

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But it's great. I mean, again, by this point in the film, we're now building towards the climax. We're only into the end of the second act. We've pretty much got all the other stuff out the way now. Yeah, and the climax then goes off in a completely different direction. Absolutely. We've spent all this time and money setting up this vampire scam to get the guy, but they do something else. You know, it's the old... And this, I think, is one of the creepiest moments in it. Well, particularly because they should know that it's not true between the two of them. Yes, that's right. They're acting. I mean, yeah.

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Alan K. Rode

With Hayden in tow, United Artists guaranteed $200,000 to finance the killing, but not a penny more. And of course, their money would come back off the top, just like Marvin Unger's front money in the movie. This scene was shot at the old Hollywood Greyhound bus station at 1409 Vine Street, which is now occupied by a parking structure and a McDonald's.

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Alan K. Rode

near Normandy and Exposition Boulevard, close to the Coliseum, to ask for assistance. I don't think Ted's motto is to protect and serve. This overhead shot tracks DeCourcy's police car from Grand Street as the car turns north from 3rd, heading towards 2nd Avenue. The main aspect that attracted Kubrick and Harris to adapting Clean Break was the structure of the book with its unique,

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Alan K. Rode

non-sequential, non-linear, episodic vignettes to tell the story of the heist. So the killing was filmed copying Lionel White's narrative structure. So everyone was pleased until the film was previewed in Huntington Park.

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Science fiction, of course, already sets up a kind of sensibility of its own. It frees the poetic sensibility to a certain extent because you can play with ideas, some of them completely loony and some of them very reasonable. You know, the metaphorical structure is already built in and the audience will allow things to happen that they'd never allow to happen if they're watching what they consider to be real people doing real things in real time.

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It's a tremendous film in its sense of reality. All those young people were not like actors. They all seemed the real thing. And from a class structure that wasn't unusual, it was not rich, it wasn't desperately put, it was just like a wonderful... I enjoyed it tremendously. As a foreigner, when I was watching it in England, it had a...

33:36 · jump to transcript →

The painter is never finding, oh, that's my masterpiece. That's it, isn't it? Only nature has masterpieces. The rest is, never quite made it. Otherwise it would be complete. Now they had a similar physicality, the fine skin, the bone structure, very fine, very slim.

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What a great nose this man has. He also did a really good job. Obviously none of these people had ever been in front of a camera before. Casting Bruno and Isabelle...? Because of "The Story of Adele H", Isabelle was already a big star, which wasn't true of Bruno... - No, he was a star of the theatre. ...even though he had just done "The American Friend". There were several films that had made him very well known. He wasn't a big international star, but he was already quite important for the European cinema. Did you choose the cast yourself, or was that...? Yes. I decided that myself. And Kinski as we will see. We always knew we would not make the film without Kinski. That makes sense. For Kinski... The strange thing is that even though we haven't seen him yet, you can already feel his presence. The whole film works towards that. You get closer to him. Right, that is the result of the dialogue, images, and the text. We planned how we would work towards that. In total, I believe that Kinski is in the movie for less than 17 minutes runtime. Nevertheless, he dominates it completely. ...in the graves and the undead. That is great dialogue with the undead and... For this I read a lot of the vampire literature of the 18th and 19th century, and then used parts of it. Neither Bram Stoker nor Murnau have that. You have always been interested in liturgy and things like that, right? Maybe that's the result of a traumatizing religious period when I was younger. When I was 14, I converted to Catholicism. Texts like that, liturgies, or very ritualistic things... The ritual itself. All that resonates somewhere in the background in many of my movies. Along the street... The ritualistic and liturgy necessarily are connected with the film structure and the music. Yes. I also noticed that frequently you use references to the music of the Middle Ages... Yes. Without it being spherical. It confuses me... Then I'll just have to walk. It confuses me that you see yourself in connection with the Middle Ages. I see a lot of Biedermeier here. Laurens, this is not the Middle Ages. That would be mistaken. I am fascinated by the Middle Ages where everything that had been valid for centuries... Knightly life, thinking, and behavior... suddenly fell apart and new ways came about. I'm similarly fascinated with the Migration Period where 1,000 years of antiquity were lost. Afterwards, that knowledge was only preserved in monasteries. It was no longer common knowledge. - Ah, I understand. So here we have a Goethe-like person on his way to the monastery. Here you can associate pretty much anything. It has something very gloomy, and it was shot in fast motion. Here we jump... This was built in the Partnachklamm in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. You enter right behind the ski jumps. I absolutely wanted to shoot there because it is such an impressive location. This is also a theme that already appeared in "Aguirre" or with the waterfalls in "Fitzcarraldo". The interesting ritualistic element reminds me of church choirs. Beautifully done by Florian Fricke. This was a so-called choir organ. It wasn't electronic at all. It sounds as if it was half-natural and half-electronic, but it does sound idiosyncratic and weird. It was not easy to shoot here because it is so very narrow. You can see here that there is barely enough space to let someone pass by. And again Jörg did a great job, I think. Yes. Here we jump to the High Tatras. This is a white water on one of the highest mountains of the High Tatras. These landscapes work seamlessly together. My home, Bavaria, and this landscape have something that makes them look interchangeable. Yes.

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Completely unthinkable. Everything is perfect here, the structure, the furniture, the candles. The fireplace we built. The monkey columns were made by Henning von Gierke. Have you ever seen the movie in a sold out theater in Mexico? Was there a murmur when he appears? Yes, there was. - Cries of fear? No, no cries of fear, but silence, absolute silence. Just like us, we also went silent. It makes you be quiet.

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All of this was also shot in Delft. You have to know that this was tricky in Delft at that time. They had had a problem with rats for years and had finally gotten it under control. With difficulty, we obtained a permit to release 11,000 rats. Where you see the water were nets. All manholes, entrances, everything was hermetically sealed. In the back of the frame near a small alley was a wooden wall which was carried out when the rats came to close. Nevertheless, we got into trouble with the population, even though we didn't lose a single rat in Delft. Really? - Yes. Unfortunately, that complicated our lives for a while. This is LU beck. Murnau also shot a scene right in front of these buildings. Oh, this is Lübeck? - That is Lübeck. I was confused because the structure does not match Delft. Granaries in Lübeck, I believe. They still stand today. In Murnau's film you see some bushes. To the left or the right you see the large old trees they've become.

1:07:28 · jump to transcript →

You know, the simple structure of the movie, it just worked for me. The second I read it, I remember saying when I said, I don't know what to do, there's a movie, Revenge of the Nerds. It's going to make $100 million, but it's Revenge of the Nerds. I mean, you could see at the time. You could if you weren't a Fox distribution executive. Right.

1:16:32 · jump to transcript →

I thought it's there. I mean, the structure of just the classic structure of they win, we win, they win, we win. The way that lays out and the introducing of Betty's turn, especially when you added that giving her head is what makes her life turn towards, you know, I mean, the the the nerds. Better way to a woman's heart. You know, it amazes me that you think that.

1:16:59 · jump to transcript →

Tim that you because I wouldn't well it's just the way my mind works I would never have seen a hundred million dollars when I read that script I remember saying those words I said this movie is going to make a hundred million it's going to work and if I can find I don't know if I want to be in it because it's Revenge of the Nerds but the script works I can see that this from first read that the structure of the script worked I mean we made it much better I believe with a lot of the stuff that we came up with through Jeff's supervision thanks

1:17:25 · jump to transcript →

I like to have events just unfold without the audience's expectation of what's coming or what it's leading to. That's what I prefer in all of the arts that I care about, whether it's music. I love, for example, the compositions of Stravinsky, where they're completely unpredictable as to where the rhythms are taking off, the melodic structure, the films that I most

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value. Films like Citizen Kane and All About Eve and The Treasure of Sierra Madre and Paths of Glory and any number of others are films that are unpredictable in their structure. You have no idea where this story is going. You have no idea, for example, in Citizen Kane that the meaning of Rosebud will ever be determined for the audience but not to the characters in the films.

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You want the photography to almost be caught by surprise by what the characters are doing. And so I let that attitude follow me into the cutting room, where I'm improvising not only the structure of scenes, but the order of scenes. I'll very often change the order of one scene or another while the film is telling me what it wants to be in the cutting room.

1:35:53 · jump to transcript →

Right around that time, I think it was, 86, all the way through 86 and 87, Nick and I were working on the script. And basically I went through the book, along with Nick, but primarily I started choosing sections. I mean, the book was the book, but now the movie was an entirely different thing, and you have to begin to cull the book for the structure that would make a movie, which is what we did. We both took the book, and he said, come back with a structure of the movie. What's the structure of the movie?

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And, you know, you had to get rid of a lot of stuff. The book is the book, but a movie is a movie. And so we got rid of all that Army stuff and a whole lot of Henry stuff that was irrelevant. And oddly enough, we both came back with a structure that was so similar that we said, well, this is a structure. We just began blending the scenes, and we locked in each scene structurally to see how it would work. He and I sat in a room in his old office with his...

12:49 · jump to transcript →

What's interesting about that is that there's no climactic scene in the film. That's the climax of the movie. The climax of the movie is stirring the sauce and watching out for a helicopter and going to pick up his brother and Jimmy with his blue terrycloth robe with a cigarette in his mouth saying, those drugs are making your mind into mush. When we closed the door, he started laughing. De Niro and Ray Liotta started laughing because of the way he said it, the way he had that, he just threw in there with the cigarette in his mouth and he looked like some

1:53:53 · jump to transcript →