Studio notes

Yeah, I remember that. I had to turn a corner. Every time we ran, somebody had to be in charge of Jim. Who's got Busfield? We were told to preview this movie in the South because the head of the studio felt that a movie where the black guys come in the end and back down the white football players would not play well in the South. But in fact, everybody got it and was exhilarated by it. We kind of crossed the color line here. Nobody was rooting against the Lambdas. They were all for them.

1:22:42 · jump to transcript →

I'm leaving. No matter who they replace me with here, they were going to make me leave anyway. And I think it's an important fact that broadcast news was, at best, an extremely modest success financially. I mean, at best. I don't know the exact figures. And it was, I think, including the studio, it was just great for all of us.

1:46:38 · jump to transcript →

But the scene ended up getting cut. I liked it, and some people liked it, but the studio didn't like it, so it went away. That's the way it goes. And this is Ken Kimmons, who's had a really interesting career of tons and tons of work, different pieces. It was interesting. He and the other three actors palled around quite a bit whenever they...

27:12 · jump to transcript →

That was cruel. That's a funny line. That was a cruel thing to stop somebody from getting undressed. Now, this is always something that amazed me. This dog would find and bring that back no matter where you threw it. I remember when we picked the dog, Carl. I remember one day being at the studio, and you had a number of dogs out there with their trainers. And then at the end of the row was Wondermutt. And he really looked like a dog. He looked like a bunch of different dogs.

25:59 · jump to transcript →

Barry Levinson

I know that after some early screenings, the studio said, look, if you have any other thoughts about shooting another ending, sure, that'd be fine. Why don't you go ahead and do that? And what they were really saying is we're really looking for a much happier, more uplifting ending, which seemed inappropriate to the piece. I think there was a conclusion, in a sense, an emotional conclusion to the work rather than a happy ending, and I think that would be enough. In fact, I think if we did have that happy ending, that it ultimately, although we'd want it,

2:07:45 · jump to transcript →

the story might change a little, or maybe, oh, I remember this happened. Once we had the script, that was pretty much our Bible, what we stuck to. And I think he just wanted our own version of it and not an imitation or anything to that. This is just the life. When I seen the movie, Warner Brothers had let me use the theater over there at the studio. They said you could take as many people as you wanted. I took about a half a dozen people.

2:17:03 · jump to transcript →

Tony Scott

With Christian in the telephone booth, we shot Dick Ritchie, Michael Rapaport sitting on the toilet. Actually, it's one of the studio toilets that we use as a real toilet on the studio lot where we're shooting our inserts. Has he looked through it? Have you looked through it? No. Well, tell him to go look through it. Go and go look through it.

45:48 · jump to transcript →

That movie got Spielberg a contract directing television at Universal and he tried to bring Daviau with him but the unions were really restrictive and it was impossible for Daviau to break into the system at that time. So while Spielberg kind of went through the studio system at Universal, Daviau kicked around the independent world shooting for Roger Corman and on oddities like Mooch Goes to Hollywood until he finally did get into the union and shoot some TV movies.

1:15:11 · jump to transcript →

Pete's jacket. Yeah. Arced right over him. That actually is not in the elevator. That was shot in the parking lot outside of the office. Yeah. The shot of Steven on the roof. And this building is actually another building. We used another building, but that building couldn't be used because it was in the background of the other shot. A whole big mess. And John and I were in the studio. John Ottman and I were in the studio the day that we were...

1:08:38 · jump to transcript →

I'm somebody who sits in the first few rows of a movie theater... ...and gets goosebumps when I just see the studio logo. I love film more than any inanimate thing in the entire world. And I can't think of anything more exalting than the conspiracy... ...of trying to make something look wonderful and be wonderful. That's pretty cynical. That's an example of what I was talking about... ...about rooms that lead into other rooms... ...and backgrounds that are lighter than foregrounds.

56:00 · jump to transcript →

Those were studio notes. Somewhere, Jim Brooks is vomiting. Oh, no, no offense to him. No, no, no, I know. No offense at all. Here's another. Now, this is a scene, directorially, you lost a whole scene by putting some dialogue over Benicio's back. By putting the line over his back, I cut out an entire scene in which they explain the complications of their plan. Jeffers, in a later scene...

46:14 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

We weren't actually allowed to shoot inside this stately home, so the three or four steps that the UPS man takes is as far as we're allowed to go, and then, of course, it cuts to the interior of the studio, where we'd built Lara's mansion.

35:00 · jump to transcript →

Tom Tykwer

because they had had experiences with each other. Anthony had shot The Talented Mr. Ripley with Miramax. They had been working together on The English Patient. They had a lot of experience. And also in terms of the fact that it was a film that had to be shot in Italy most of the time, except the studio, the whole studio part, which we're seeing here now, this is all construction in the studio, that was shot in Germany, in a German studio in West Germany.

35:35 · jump to transcript →

If we could fix that, that'd be great. So that was the... What do you think of the Studio Canal? -/ think it's beautiful. - lt's got weird tweeting noises. It's pretty good so far. What do you think, Tom? -/ like it, yeah. - Good stuff. So here we go. - Oh, no. So these... This is my favorite bit of the film, in fact. This footage was shot by a hidden camera which was in Heathrow Airport for a whole week. And every time they saw something they really liked, then a runner would charge off and ask the people to sign a bit of paper, whether or not they were happy that it should be shown in the film. I still think it'll be quite a surprise to the people who go to the cinema and see themselves. But this was my inspiration for the film because

0:38 · jump to transcript →

But they said if you spend more than 5,000 feet tomorrow, you're sacked. It was really funny. Was that them talking or was that from the studio? Well, it's more from the Bond company. You know, they see the Bond company is a company who makes sure you don't go over budget. And they charge a lot, in fact. But there are people who like movies. Not all of them, but the ones we work with, they like movies. You know, we can talk with them. So...

46:59 · jump to transcript →

A lot of violin in the soundtrack. And this is a reprise of all the people that we saw. That's your friend? There's Eric Gilliland, who's one of my buddies. Went to college together. He wrote for Roseanne. He was the executive producer of Roseanne, if you can believe it. I can. There's Paul Stovall in the back. And then... Here comes J.D. and Yolanda. Mm-hmm.

1:29:02 · jump to transcript →

James Mangold

One of the wonderful qualities for making this film for me was that I had final cut on this film and that it was a unique experience and that it was Completely independent of any studio. We made it including the studio that distributes at Lionsgate They came on right before we started shooting the film but this film was put together with completely independent financing separate from any studio at all and

56:00 · jump to transcript →

This was the way that the studio actually originally thought and wanted us to do this, was to sit in L.A. and be on sound stages and create it all later. But we refused. Yeah, and Will and Akiva and I really fought, fought, fought to just be out on the real streets. It just informs everybody in such a different way when you feel the real wind and air, you know, on your back, and you're standing in the middle of an empty street and where there should be cars and should be people, and it's just such a different experience.

6:16 · jump to transcript →

Rob Cohen

But then, as you will see over and over again in this film, it is really him doing the wire ratchets or the fights. He took a lot of punishment, but he gave a performance that I think you can feel great authenticity within it. This is a set, again, built in a parking lot outside the studio in Montreal.

1:01:16 · jump to transcript →

I love this shot. We see the scale of the pack. I remember when we screened this film to Screen Gems for the first time... ... the executives were looking at each other, going: "Holy shit." They had no idea it was gonna be that big. I like how Bill turns like: Again, super fast.

1:13:53 · jump to transcript →

Hi, I'm Scott Stewart. I'm the writer and director of Dark Skies. I'm Jason Blum. I'm the producer. I'm Brian Cavanaugh-Jones. I'm the executive producer. And I'm Peter Gavazdis, the picture editor. You know, I came to Jason and Brian with this idea of a story. I knew that they were making these films, these scary movies where they were letting directors, you know, kind of make some scary movies outside of the studio system

0:03 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, this is one of my favorite tracks. Yeah, this is great. I remember on our board when we were working in the studio downtown, there was something that said, everything should take forever, like for Marcel to do. Yeah. And I remember thinking, this is not going to be a commercial film, if that's the case. But I feel like this sequence really captures the idea of that, but still making it fun. But it's so exciting, yeah. Yeah.

7:36 · jump to transcript →

This scene is really crucial narratively, but I hate it to death because it's frontlit. There just should not be any frontlit exteriors. It's borderline not professional. But when we were in Iceland, we had an incredibly small schedule, and also the head of the studio was there, so I couldn't just sit around and wait for the light to be right. And it was a shame, too, because when we arrived in the morning, it was very gloomy and...

41:15 · jump to transcript →