Structure

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.

25:20 · jump to transcript →

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.

1:47:24 · jump to transcript →

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 →

yeah that's you're stating like the main challenge of something in this format which is like how do you how do you structure it and control it in a way that a feature requires but not get rid of all the doc-y stray hairs on the couch i mean the one thing in this movie that is

5:43 · jump to transcript →

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

56:08 · jump to transcript →

Look at this guy. He's not even gonna eat his frigging eggs, he's so frustrated and blue. One of the additions that we wanted in the script is that Hutch doesn't eat until the morning after the fight, when he becomes himself again, the real Hutch. Yeah. Whereas Yulian eats before and doesn' eat after. And we kind of re-cut some of the Yulian stuff, so that doesn't land. But I've always enjoyed the juxtaposition of you chucking the eggs out in the bin here compared to the second act which starts with you biting into a pancake with bacon. That's right. He's got his mojo back. - Which was my everyday breakfast on set.

10:52 · jump to transcript →

This is a matter of need, principle of need." Tough guy. And I don't think the slap was written. I think he came up to me between the takes, said, "Ilya, what do you think of... "It feels like Charlie should be more of an asshole and buddy slap on..." Such a condescending slap. But he was so afraid to suggest it to you. And now you look at him and you go, "This guy's messed with guns before, "and he's not sure he wants one in his life again." But look out. Well, hide it in the fridge. That's always a good place for your extra guns. It's almost like he knew it might come in handy in act three. Yeah. - It's Chekhov's fridge, pretty much. What's that? - Chekhov's fridge. You know, the Chekhov's rifle? Chekhov's gun? If you see it on the wall in the first act, and it fires in the third, well, that's our fridge. Yes, that's right. Michael Ironside. - Yay, Michael Ironside. A great, great actor. - The man, the legend. And he's really good in this role. Kind of supportive, kind of friendly, but also hard on Hutch. Everybody's hard on Hutch. Bunch of hard-ons around him. If I'm gonna sell it, I want it to be... But he's a great actor and he delivers here, big time. Ilya, you put together a hell of a cast around me. Boy, the best. The best. I do. Well, it's pretty easy to get a great cast when you say that Bob is the lead. SO... You know, one thing that was concerning to me, and I love seeing Charlie and I love seeing the father-in-law here, is my character is so down for such a huge chunk of this movie. There's a... I mean, he starts to smile when he starts to cut loose and let out all his rage and frustration. But that's a long time in, and we talked a lot about this. This movie has always been... Has an offbeat construction with this long prelude, longer than most, with a lot of hard feeling and kind of... This guy's got an internal struggle that takes over this whole first 40 minutes, half-hour, 40 minutes. I think in the script, the bus fight used to happen around page 30. And I remember we saying, "Whenever... We'll get to it quicker. "It'll be like minute 25 at most." 'Cause I remember looking at several films as examples, and I think my favorite example was Oldboy, where the first real fight happens on minute 41. But there is a little pre-fight around 27. But it's also a much longer film than this was ever intended to be. Right. So it was that balance of, "Yeah, we want to set up the pins "before we shoot the ball," but at the same time, you're also releasing a film in 2020. Well, now it's 2027. But there's a certain expectation, a certain pace that you can't really rely on as a comfortable pace for a bigger audience. Hopefully, we'll have a bigger audience when it does come out. We are recording this six months before the film hits theaters, which is a little early. But you're absolutely right. There was a lot of discussions on how long and what we should spend time on before we hit what everybody paid to see. It's a different kind of action movie. It's trying to be... Just have more story, more character, more complexity, and I think a more delicate kind of complexity to these family relationships. The son's annoyed with the dad, the wife and the husband love each other but are estranged, but in the house, you know, together, they have a past. We don't quite know what it is. The little girl's oblivious and bringing nothing but sunshine into their lives. And then there's a feeling that this guy just has his own issues, his own challenge of being who he is. And all that turns out to be true and comes clearer as the story goes.

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Edward Berger

And Heike Merker, the makeup designer, was standing next to me looking at me and thinking, oh, now my plan for the makeup is gone because, yeah, he stuck half his face in the mud, but she always went with it and then used that and created this two-face structure in his face. So here's a shot coming up. We shot with four different cameras, just to explain in a second. There's a wide shot coming up.

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Tim Burton

It sets the tone. Even though it's a bit organic and moving, there's a structure to what you're basing it upon.

1:28:31 · jump to transcript →

in what you could structurally call the third act of the film, this whole other group of guys turn up and in effect, this is sort of crass terminology I think for this, but become leads. It's a dumb word to use in this context, but it's to do with the way the film does not function structurally at all with the rhythms of normal cinema.

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