True story / real events

Tom Tykwer

Also the ambience comes back and the noises of the real world come back. But this moment was meant to be something like the decisive situation that for him already sets off this kind of sparkle that makes him so determined to do something about it, to change the situation in a direction that will not leave things the way they are.

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Tom Tykwer

Well, six days a week, ten hours a day, ten months. Not a real holiday in between. And Mathilde Bonnefoy, the editor who I've been working with since Run Lola Run, who for me is one of the real geniuses behind this work, she really made me...

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Andrew Niccol

And potatoes, they seem bizarre, but it's actually based on the real precedent. South Africa, but it's supposed to be in Colombia, of course.

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Andrew Niccol

This is probably the most elaborate set we built for the film. The apartment's actually far grander than the real apartments in the New York building where we shot the exterior.

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James McTeigue

That speech, because it's such a muscular piece of writing... ... It needs to be attacked with great kind of gusto and flair. And passion and belief. And so, if that's all there, it's a wonderful introduction to the classic masked man. He just appears and you get that persona very, very clearly and very, very quickly. I would say there's not enough talking in films, nowadays. And, you know, there's not enough use of language. I think that introduction, you know, when he first turns up in the Fingerman Alley... ... throws the Shakespeare out to you, then you get the big alliteration speech. I think it's, like, it's nice to use words. And, you know, he uses them beautifully. I thought it was a cool way, also, to preserve from the graphic novel... ... how each chapter has a V word, which I love that. And I was like, I wish we could've kept that in the movie. But that sort of structure... ... 1S sort of condensed into that crazy use of V's in that speech. The important thing about that speech Is you're never gonna understand it. I mean, you know. But you're gonna understand the intent of it. The performance gives you the intent of what that speech Is. And then Natalie's reply is sort of, you know... ... you're the audience, you know, "Yes, what are you, a crazy person?" V does say that he's a humble vaudevillian veteran. He's an actor. I mean, he is an actor. The character is an actor. He's an actor activist. Or something. Who has been picked up and chucked inside... ...and then experimented on and tortured. Hugo's ability to use his physicality and his voice so expressively.... You're so intrigued by what's going on behind that mask... ...as an actor, as a character, as an audience member... ... that you're always going, okay, is he crying now? Is he happy? Is he angry? And because you're so, sort of, entwined in his emotions... ... you become V. And at the end, everyone is V. Because they've been trying to figure out his emotions... ... you know, everyone's trying to play him at the time... ...because they're trying to figure out what's going on under that mask... ...SO it's an amazing, sort of, engagement tool. And afterwards, you'll return home safely. All right. When you go up on the rooftop and you start hearing the music... ...I wanted you to be able to look out over London... ...and have some recognizable landmarks... ...even though it wasn't true to the direction that we were looking. We went up onto a rooftop nearby. We shot stills at night that we bracketed to get the full range of lighting information. Then we removed a few obvious buildings. The St. Paul's Cathedral stands out, there. It's very obvious. And just added a few extra skyscrapers and so on. Painted all the lights out for much lower levels... ...to sort of fit in with a late-night curfew. The Old Bailey Justice Courts itself is always a miniature... ... whenever we see it in this picture. And that's partly because the real building, if you go there at night is not properly lit... in any way that you'd, you know, really want to do it... ... If you were focusing on it like we were. We also made some slight design changes to the Old Bailey miniature. We changed the, flattened the, sort of dome roof, slightly... ...and enlarged the statue that's at the top... ...because she's quite an important part of the story, there. I still went with building miniatures for all of the intricacy and detail that you get... ... IN a very complex pyrotechnic explosion. To do that with a computer, although aspects of that are feasible now... ... the simulations are hugely complicated. And there are always these little happy accidents... ...and things that you get from doing something for real... ... that you're not... Not totally in your control. Which is a big reason why we do it. How beautiful, is it not?

6:41 · jump to transcript →

She was real. - Yes. She's beautiful. Did you know her? - No. She wrote the letter just before she died. And I delivered it to you as it had been delivered to me. Then it really happened, didn't it? Yes. - You were in the cell next to her. And that's what this is all about. You're getting back at them for what they did to her. And to you. - What was done to me created me. It's a basic principle of the universe... ... that every action will create an equal and opposing reaction. Is that how you see it? Like an equation? - What was done to me was monstrous. And they created a monster.

1:27:19 · jump to transcript →

he will actually lose the prosthetics and go for the real thing. In fact, in that film, we even see an oral sex done for real and the use of actual pornographic performers, both in male and female roles, something that we still don't have here. But you definitely feel that maybe Brass, and this is, I'm thinking out loud here, maybe Brass...

29:25 · jump to transcript →

Ron Howard

One of the real attractions for me in choosing to direct this film was going to be the opportunity to direct Jim Carrey in this particular role. Incredibly challenging trying to bring a character like the Grinch to life in a live-action

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Simon West

late at night, obviously, and so it's quite a different lighting look to the first time we were in this room. And we shot this in the middle of the night, I think, because of the size of the windows in this building was so great that we couldn't tent the whole building to make it look like night, so we had to wait for the real night. And there's always a downside with shooting at night, because although it's very quiet, there's no aeroplanes, there's no traffic, there's no telephones ringing, everyone is working at four o'clock in the morning. And to try and be creative

1:05:11 · jump to transcript →

I was amazed to see the dailies. This is a scene you sent me dailies of. I was amazed to realize that the adult male tiger in this scene is not even sedated. - I called up Mark and I said, "I think we're gonna have to re-shoot this." There's a new law that you're not allowed to sedate the animals because there's been a lot of deaths from sedation. You can't see it as you watch the movie, but just to the left of this tiger, near its head, is its trainer sitting there, trying to coax it into being still, while this terrified actress... When you saw the dailies, did you think we didn't have a scene? Also, the real-life tiger is roaring like crazy. You can hear some of it. In the dailies he's roaring so loud sometimes you can't hear the dialogue. Every once in a while, he starts to... We actually adjusted the scene on the set, where he said, "He's a bit noisy." Of course, Emily has to reach out and start stroking this unsedated tiger that's probably 10 feet long and weighs 800 pounds with all of its teeth, and the trainer is at the other end of the tiger, just to the left there holding out little tidbits to feed it. I thought, "The audience will never understand the courage it took to have the concentration that these actors had..." The only thing that we wouldn't let her do for insurance purposes was this shot right here. This had to be another trainer. She's actually fondling the testicles of the tiger. She couldn't even be with a male in the room, the one that she is petting is a female because they seem to be calmer than the males. In the dailies of this scene, what you see again and again, is the tiger start to get up and the actors take three or four very quick steps back. But Ralph never moved. - Everybody else clears away very quickly. Ralph remained very still. And I couldn't believe that the animal was not sedated for this scene. I went in without the tiger and did all these emotional things. I love this, where she hears the tiger's heart beating. It's in the novel and it's a wonderful moment. What was the meaning of that scene, can you articulate that? That scene is about... - The parallel of The Beauty and the Beast? It's about him trying to give her something that she has never experienced. She's never seen a tiger, and she had the whole story about the cougar she saw as a Child. It's one of her last visual memories. It's his way of trying to give her something in this strange... It's also a foreshadowing of what she'll be fondling... Yes, it also is very sexual. They're becoming more sexually interested in each other. That scene's a brilliant invention by Thomas Harris. It's from the book. What a weird kind of date. If you're going on a date with Francis Dolarhyde, what would it look like? You're at a Zoo, and a tiger is lying on a table. What do they want to know? I love both performances in this scene. I really can't take my eyes off of these two actors. I think they're hypnotic. It's strange, if you notice in this, she's looking directly into the lens, the angle is straight on, not really a standard kind of... You totally believe that she's... You feel her blindness. I just looked at the lens and found the right position for her. She asked, "Am I looking in the right direction?" I said, "You're blind. There's no really right direction. "Why don't you look right into the lens?" It really worked.

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I just love that you're just sort of numb. I like this. That goes out of focus. There he is. Now... Watch him. It's great. Now, watch the performance. You see where he was before, and I love that you say it's complicated. It's complicated. Come on, just... You know, the whole thing. It's just, what a great... It's like seeing the audience. Again, when I read that, I went, come on. You can't just... Come on. We had to make sure you brought the real thing. The rabbit's foot. Now we know.

1:38:20 · 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.

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Roman Coppola

I really liked this temple. We went many times to this temple in the center of Jodhpur. I think we brought the cows ourselves. Okay. Spray in face. - Spray in face. This was shot much later, as I recall, actually at the location where we had the final convent, if I remember correctly. Yeah. - Yeah, outside of Udaipur. I remember when we were scouting, there was a day when it looked like this. It was all women. And I don't remember what the occasion was, but we recreated what we saw there. We invited back all the people who had been there on this day that we had scouted at the location and this ceremony was happening. This is a scene I remember we rehearsed in the temple itself and really kind of found the scene, the three of us sort of improvising it and acting it out. And we had a little text we were reading from, but sort of, you know, realizing it just the three of us. Yeah. When we were writing the script and we went to India on our reconnaissance mission, it was like a writing session and it ended up being a location session. And we found this temple and went back and shot there many months later. But as Roman said, this is-- We were walking around, we found this, we went in, we took our little micro scripts out, we rehearsed the scene to see if it was working and saw what worked and what didn't. And then we actually became so attached to this place that we went back and shot the real scene there.

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What? - Stop this. He is one of our protectors. - They are but beasts. This could stir up... It's a first movie and thing. This is to me probably my favourite scene of the movie. I like from the moment you see him. That dialogue with Bill, I was very happy with how this thing came out. I mean, you kKnow.... This one felt good. Bill's fantastic, and now again. And he looks like a vampire. - That's right. Did you actually count back and see if there was 21 lashes before then? Oh, yeah. - There was? Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. - That's another big set. This is the dungeon. And we miss Kevin before on the wolf. I don't think we talked too much. So Kevin's back. Kevin Grevioux, you know, Raze. And nobody believes that that's his real voice. I'll actually go on record saying it is his voice. We spent a lot of time with Kevin, and it's.... It's always been his real voice. That's his voice. He's not faking. - It's even more insane in real life. In the movie, you think... But when you hear him in real life, you just don't believe it first. was most touching. So this is the scene we were talking about earlier where.... And I remember, Patrick, you were kind of stressed of that, you know... ...the fact that all the blocking... The blocking initially had them walking around rooms... ...and turning to hide their reactions. And it just, we were running out of time... ...and had to stack them up just right next to each other. Actually, like you said, I think this one worked okay. The other, I think, would be a problem for them. Bill and....

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