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William Friedkin

whose name is Waxman in the film, Max Waxman, and a church right across the street from Waxman's office. I chose those locations because I wanted an office that had a church across the street. And so that location is out in Pasadena. And we made the rain for that scene. We manufactured the rain because I just felt the location was pretty dull otherwise. But I wanted...

35:08 · jump to transcript →

William Friedkin

The character Masters is certainly inspired by the character in Jerry Petievich's novel. I think I went a lot farther in making him kinkier than Petievich intended. Petievich had written him as kind of a, just a cold criminal. But I was looking for the feminine inside that. To me, once I had cast Willem Dafoe...

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You know, unlike Network, a film that I admire so much, and one of the two times Paddy Chayefsky's Stone Cold saw the future, this was a movie very much of its time, but it was a pivotal time where we made it, and it was where everything was changing, where it was that moment of layoffs, the last moment where wholesale layoffs were scandalous.

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which makes him more sympathetic. The House Armed Services Committee has a secret report which says that the Allen fighting vehicle the Army poured a fortune into, plane won't work. I've got it cold, confirmed. They have $5 million in this thing already. Billion. Right, billion, okay. Of course. They said I could have... And somehow that makes him more sympathetic. And I want you.

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I remember the reason you liked Dallas so much is it had this big building that was outlined completely in green neon. So you wanted to shoot the picture there, and when we got there, it was broken. As long as we shot. Yes, when we left, they fixed it. You can't stand the heat. You better stay out of the kitchen.

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And this is the only time where I think I kind of worked the wrong way with an actor. Because he just wanted to say the toughest, toughest lines he could. And I wrote this line that's coming up here. It's so bad. I'm going to shove so much of this factory so far up your whop ass you're going to shit snow till something or other. Which is a terrible line and I'm sorry about it. And yet he did come up with some really good stuff himself here. Like the guns, guns, guns line was something he did on the day of on the set. Well, Clarence Boddicker, the character...

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So this was the genesis of animatronics for our little dudes. It was unbelievable. I called myself the Snow White of the 80s because I was with the Garbage Pail Kids, and they were all played by the most extraordinary little people actors. Yeah, the other MVPs of the film. The MVPs. Those guys endured. It's just unbelievable what they put themselves through in order to play these characters.

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Those poor souls, those are the ones that we're about to see experiencing very, very insane things. That, again, nobody bothered to tell them why it was happening. Like, no bother. There's a wind machine, and you're going to act like something smells very, very bad. And that's about it. We're not going to do any more. Why should we? You didn't sign an NDA. It's none of your business.

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I don't know what I worked so hard for. Was it terrifying? I remember, yeah. Doing this speech. Actually finally doing the speech. I had a really bad cold, which distracted me, but not really because, what's the actor's name who just sang the greatest? Lauren Dean. Lauren Dean. I just remember thinking that would be harder to have to, like at that point in my life, I was still an insecure teenager. So I was thinking, well, at least I don't have to do that. I just remember during this. But I got into this. I remember Laszlo was mad at me that day. Really? Uh-huh.

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The new, the power loin, all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rain on my car is a baptism. Yeah. Look, why don't you just... I love this. I left him driving around by himself, you know? And this replacement song killed me. Just... Brilliant. You have to understand, her family is being ripped apart. Like you and she were ripped apart. Ripped apart. Like Joe and I were ripped apart. Johnny and the fishbone T-shirt. Visitor at the home. I'm not going back there.

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Those two places. Hand me another Freddie Mercury. This one's dead. This one's cold. This one's cold. Hand me another Freddie Mercury. Pass me another Freddie Mercury. This one's cold. Pretty amusing. That jacket now is the jacket I'm wearing in this film. I traded to Jeff Beck. He gave me one of his guitars, and I sent him this jacket, so he has that somewhere in England right now.

1:12:49 · jump to transcript →

And now, for me, as a director, the movie becomes even more complicated and compelling because I'm not sure who to root for. I don't want people to be sure who to root for here, in terms of Lea and Mary Stuart. Because look how he... To her, this is the moment of her life. He's lying down next to her on her bed with her, needing her, confiding in her. She's completely overwhelmed by it and plays it like that. And Lea, we feel, he may even have a shot with her now, because she's apart and separate and away from Hardy. So a triangular love story is a true triangle now. You don't know who is gonna wind up with Eric, because we don't know who we want with him, I don't think. I think, yes, everybody's pulling for the underdog, as Mary Stuart, in the sense that you don't want to see her hurt. But Lea did such a great job and is so vulnerable, especially now when her friends reject her. So again, John's now upped the stakes so that if you're invested in all these characters, what are you feeling? And that's what I wanted. I wanted complete sense of being torn and conflicted as an audience of what's gonna happen.

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Richard Donner

Great Mike Riva set. And it was done in a refrigerated unit. So that the breath... It's so hard to show breath in film unless it's really freezing cold. And so we built this set in a unit that was sealed and refrigerated. And, oh, my God, it was cold.

1:08:35 · jump to transcript →

and uh... obviously uh... there is the theory that the military uh... for various reasons wanted people to think that ufos existed assuming they don't they wanted people to think that ufos existed because they were testing their own weapons they didn't want to reveal that they had the stealth bomber they want to freak the russians out saying that they had superior technology was the cold war so how do we uh... get these two strands together

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