Weather problems

and it was, even then, extremely cold. Yeah, actually, when I finally joined up with you guys, it was in January, the dead of winter, and one of the interesting things is that we actually had thoughts of shooting in Murmansk, where the Mothballed K-19 is

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in the dead of winter, and it was an ice field with a few pieces of, I suppose you would call it, you know, grass that had managed to survive the ice, but it was otherwise just an incredibly barren, unforgiving landscape and painfully cold. And we were the first Western civilians ever invited to visit the naval base.

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remote checkpoint. We felt like the UN inspectors in Iraq and almost like at a German checkpoint. And we sat in a snowdrift as the snow flurries on, going outside while these young Russians all screamed at each other, arguing about whether they were going to let us in or not. And this was almost probably an hour, if not longer, that we sat there not knowing what was going to happen to us. It's rather surreal.

7:37 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, we were lucky, right? We actually really lucked out on this. That was one of the weird things. We pretty much assumed, you know, when we had our first meetings with the studio, everyone was like, look, we've got to try to keep the movie a little bit more upbeat at the beginning if it's going to be so gloom and doom at the end with the rain. So then we were like, oh, man, it's going to be overcast every day. It's probably going to be raining every day. And I think literally we had only one day of exterior shoots where we didn't want it to rain, and it did. This day we had the worst process trailer rig ever.

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I had control. Exactly. I could imagine calling up the studio. I don't feel like shooting today. They're like, you don't feel like having a career today, do you? It's like, yeah, that 300 grand we're spending today, yeah, it's fine. We'll forget about it. And we had lots of nights. I mean, nights are like the worst. Six weeks a night in the rain. That was, yeah, challenging. Buddy! Buddy!

30:10 · jump to transcript →

I don't know. This is very good work. Again, another night. Another cold night. Yeah, luckily we weren't in the rain yet. But once the rain started, you know, once you're just out there in the cold nights, it's fine. But the rain, I mean, even with the best rain gear, that stuff gets in and your hands turn numb after 10 minutes. I don't even know. We had some great camera assistants. And these guys, a lot of the camera work's handheld. I don't know how they got two. We had these great operators.

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shoved the Orc medicine down Mary's throat, which a lot of people, for some strange reason, remember. Yeah. What was it? Yeah, what is that stuff? I don't know, it looks like Coca-Cola, doesn't it? I think it was peach tea and... Oh, that's right, it was peach tea. No, you're right, it was cold tea with probably something added to thicken it up a bit. Yeah, and Coca-Cola, I think, I know, it was Coke syrup. It was concentrated, you know when you make your own soda?

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This village was built on the side of a really amazing area called Poolburn Lakes in New Zealand. And we built quite a few of the huts. Some of them are computer generated in the wide shot. But most of what you see here we did for real. It was this amazing little Scandinavian style village on the side of the lake. Now it wasn't actually raining on this shot, was it? No, this rain was added later. It was computer generated rain. We did use rain towers for the close-ups, but this is too big and wide to...

22:46 · jump to transcript →

be able to be covered by a rain tower. This is real rain, this is just coming off a tower now. The Fords of Isen is quite an evocative scene, which I really wanted to include it in the theatrical version, but I don't think any of it ended up in a theatrical version, did it? And it's establishing the character of Theodred, King Theoden's son. And this is sort of really our first glimpse of the people of Rohan, the soldiers of Rohan, certainly, and Aomea, it introduces Aomea.

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We put a guerrilla crew together so that you could film it with Andy. We were trying to figure out all the different ways we could use the set, which was really a little gully, a rock gully. So we drowned it in rain, we dried it out and drowned it in light, threw some greenery in. We just tried to give it variation and also to show, obviously, passage of time. That was a huge make-up, wasn't it? It was enormous. He was in there for how long? I couldn't tell you. Hours and hours and hours.

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on a day that it snowed. Now, you don't see the snow here, but we were at a place called Ruapehu, which is a volcano, and it was late summer, and it was absolutely not supposed to snow, but it was one of our days that we had several during our lengthy shoot where there was unseasonal weather, and it was like, oh, this is the first time it's snowed here for 65 years. It was like, oh yeah, sure, well, great. I remember you were standing out in the middle of, you know, the snow was sort of raining down on everybody, and you were saying,

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Snow, this isn't snow, it's volcanic ash. I was trying to be optimistic. And this was a big culvert. This is a set that we built and we took up to Ruapehu and you're looking at shots here that were done in the year 2000. And then we had Elijah and Sean come back to do some closeups. Now, when you look at them and they're talking and they're just the wall of the culvert behind them, there's four years between some of these shots.

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James Mangold

One of the struggles you have when you're making a film that is 95% outdoors is just the weather, the sun. We shot this in the winter. We started in October, so the days were extremely short. And on one side, it made the lighting really beautiful because the sun is always very long and casting long shadows. But on another side makes it extremely challenging because I only had about six hours a day that I could actually shoot.

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James Mangold

And on top of that, you know, an hour in the middle of that is lunch. And every day is changing. Different clouds, different kind of sun, different wind, different temperature. Up to this point in the film, except for maybe 20 seconds of stuff at night that opens the film in the Evans ranch house, it's all been outside.

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James Mangold

Here you have even Wade helping Dan Evans back to the cave. One incidental piece of information that might find interesting is this cave that they're having this campfire in is actually here in Los Angeles. And it's the actual cave that they shot the TV series Batman and the Batmobile coming out of. In the final week of production, it had gotten so cold in Santa Fe that we came back to Los Angeles for one week shooting.

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piece that got trimmed out of the theatrical version. It's the return of the Sackville Bagginses back into our story after Bilbo says hi to Mrs Bracegirdle. He just gets wind that his feared relatives

21:56 · jump to transcript →

That black rider was looking for something. Or someone. Mount Victoria again? Yep. Night time? Yep. And that is not Mount Victoria. That's Nelson. That's Nelson, yeah. Now these shots of the horse are on Mount Victoria at night, at like 2 o'clock in the morning. These shots of the hobbits are at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon. That was another scene we shot in Nelson while we were waiting for the weather to clear on the mountains.

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sort of operated pumps that pump the water out of the Bucklebury ferry so that it wouldn't sink. Come on. This is in a, actually a sort of suburban hillside really. Yeah, very close to Wellington. I love the idea of using rain in the film. I wanted to get this impression that Middle Earth is organic and gritty and real and it doesn't, you know, it doesn't sort of feel like a movie world. It feels real. I was determined to just shoot in the rain.

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That's what my brother calls my bad-gas moment. This one here? Were you harnessed in? Insert sound effect there. - The extended version. You were way up in the tower, right? You were harnessed in? No, because eventually, I didn't. There was some... That's right. That was green screen. - No, it was just somebody else. Oh, okay. You refused. - I didn't. There were some shenanigans going on. Somebody made me feel unstable, and I wouldn't get on it. It is a bit bad-gassy-looking... - It is, isn't it? Now come think of it. We went up there. It ended up being Nicole. That first shot is Nicole. I can't believe she did that, jumped off. She did not. That's a rumour. I totally did it. Oh, I'm sorry. The funny thing is, so many people get fooled by that. That shot that's coming up, they do think it's me. I'm sure it was you. You did it a couple times, she did it once. That's not me. - There's you, in the hoodie. Oh, yeah, I'm brooding in the hoodie. Now, he's a potato farmer, apparently. - Really? He is, from Idaho. - Slash vampire? Yeah, apparently he is. My makeup artist was keen on him for a minute. Lovely strong hands. There he goes. But he didn't speak any English, right? - No. As did, like... Eighty percent of the crew didn't. Right. I mean, you barely spoke English. - I tried. Neither of you speak English. Thank you very much. - Okay. There I go. I really like how she did that. - Good knees on that. They're not my knees. - Those aren't your knees, no. This is where we just drenched you for hours. I was miserable. - The rain machines wouldn't work. I felt like they worked really well. I was soaking wet. All the people running up to you wearing 15 coats... I thought it was still cool that there were rain machines... ...and I was going to get wet. By the end, I was cursing water. I Kept falling there, slipping down. This is like-- Inside the subway was the very first week we did. Yeah, we did that fake set, right? - Yeah. Was that a fake set or a real set? - Wasn't it real? It was real. - No. You were there, weren't you? I was there. It was a subway station, but didn't we build something too? Well, yeah. It was actually... lt was a repair yard for the trains. Then we built that set around the train. - I knew I was on to something. There you go. - Here's love. Immediate love. - Damn it, I have a pimple. Do you? - You don't see that? I see it first. I thought we wiped that out. - No. Oh, my God, it was so tense. lt was so hot in that subway. Yeah, it was brutal. Boiling hot week there was in Budapest before it became arctic. And everybody's in these leather coats. This was the first thing we shot, right? - Yeah. Yeah, this was the second day of filming. The first day of shooting was you in the hospital. Then I came in with those horrible boots and tried to get your approval. Yeah, that's right. I remember I did not want to shoot that scene first. That moment I won't talk about. - No, neither did I. I felt like I'd had absolutely no preparation on firing the guns. They told me, "We're going to do a take." I said, "Oh, my God." Literally almost shook, afterwards. Felt like I'd drunk, like, 20 cups of coffee. I was worried I was gonna get in trouble, because it was a cheap movie. "You have one chance. We don't have money for another pillar." Like, "Oh, great." - You did great, though. No, there was all that stress... ...because we really didn't have a chance to re-squib things. He says, "No pressure, Kate, but we only got pillar with squibs in. The thing's going to be ruined if you mess It up." This sequence is still pretty much the same. Yeah, this stays the same. Here I go, panicking. I remember all this. You did an amazing skid. Did that make it? Yeah, it did. - That was fantastic. But I do grab her crotch, unfortunately. Right. I ass-grab her. - You did that in rehearsal too. She cried afterwards. Is that why? - Probably, it was real claw. She was terrified with this squib. She had never done one before. And she was horrified. - Yeah, she had a real sob after. There she is. I did not mean to. That was unintentional. They're all looking at it now. Remember when we were shooting that scene... ... for you peeking your head out, to get the reaction, I kept firing guns? Yeah. Yeah. I was asking you to do that, yeah. We ended up doing that the entire film. - Here I go. Ass-grab! She was really cute. Everybody was harassing her because of that. Really, everybody was harassing her. - Yeah. But not after my grubby hands got all over her. Oh, my stunt guys. Look. Hank, he's always the one who was, like, pulling. He was my favourite one to pull wires. - Oh, this is where you save me. Thank you for that, by the way. - Kind of a lady-boy.

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This was miserable, in this location. It was. It was the hardest. lt wasn't the coldest. There was something about that spongy mould. It was actually nice to go from... Because it actually went in order. We went from the subway, which was unbearably hot... ...to this cellar, which was... - Full of fungus. Yeah, which was pretty cold. It just stunk, and it was miserable for everybody. I thought the locations were hard. Weren't they? Yeah, they were. I guess locations in general are usually pretty hard.

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You got off lightly with the costumes. - Me? Yeah, you. - I had one. Well, then I got screwed. Why? - With my second costume. I remember some producer trying to get him into a beige cardigan. What was it? - Yeah. Yeah. That was the first time I ever met you. That's right. Horrifying. - Yeah, I think Richard had brought in.... We were talking about how much rain there was going to be... ...and all of that. And so he comes in with a... I think it was a beige sweater from... I think it was, like, a Gap sweater. I wasn't liking it. No offence to Richard. That was quite funny. We used to have meetings about whether we should shave you or not. We still do. - Oh, we did. What, shaving my face, my head? Do you know we had conversations about that? We did the test. We did a test, you still had the scruff... But it looked stupid. With the lighting, it didn't look right. I agree. No, actually, I remember, because we... - You couldn't decide. You were so damned attractive. Because we went up to my room, and we checked oult.... We checked out that tape. And there was some younger pictures of you. Oh, yeah, those horrifying... - No, you looked nice. I think I didn't decide to actually shave your beard until the day... ...of the first-- The first day. - Pretty much. Who's that? What's going... - That's your best friend. Have you seen this movie, Scott? - Who is that guy? What was his name? - Oh, him. Erwin. Erwin. - Erwin Leder. Loved him. - Erwin, the set poet. How do you pronounce his name? - Leder. Yeah, it is, right? - Yeah, I guess. He wrote, like, three poems a day. He did? - Yeah, he did. Did you read them, ever? Well, a lot of them were in German, so I had a good try.

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And that's all the job I did. The pitch was pretty short, though. It was like five minutes. It went surprisingly well. Yeah, it was great. Maybe we can talk about the image. We wanted to have snow. You had written a lot of snow in the script. I wrote snow many, many times. But we found out really quick that we could never afford it. So you wrote again without the snow. I just...

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I just erased the snow. I mean, it was a big ordeal because I really wanted it. We all really wanted it. But we didn't know if there was going to be snow or it was going to be a cold winter. We had no way of knowing, so we had to do without it. And then we had this amazingly cold winter with a lot of snow. So it was fortunate. Yeah, it was great. But the thing we found out is that it was a contradiction. Basically, to do a movie with snow, it means that it's all special effects. And then if you want to do it like a

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But the funny part is that it was so much snow we had to, like in this scene now, the beach was cleared from the snow. It was completely snowy all around. Oh really? Wow. How long did that take? I don't know. During the night they put some protection and then they have to wipe it. So this shot, all this is shot really in Montauk.

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It had to be built, and we stroked the set just a day before the station opened, and people were starting to ski again. So it's hard to believe it's a ski station, but that's what it is. But when we went there for prep, which was on a Friday, just to go look at the whole set and everything, there was no snow. And we were shooting on Monday, and we had to have snow there. Well, the thing is, we didn't seem to be able to get enough cash to get fake snow. No, we didn't. It's funny, because we didn't have the money to bring in fake snow. But then the thing is, once you're actually shooting in snow,

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That takes its own money to just be equipped to shoot in snow, which is a bit of a beast. But in fact, we're very blessed that day because, you know, I mean, the day before, the thing was dry. And the day before, a couple of days before we shot. Yeah, and I was really depressed about it. The night after that meeting, it just started dumping. Yeah, literally, what was it, the day before we started shooting, the snow came in. I was very depressed because of the whole reason we went on this mountain.

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and went up here and built this was in hopes to have snow there. I feel sorry for Zita. Yeah, the voice. Her voice got dubbed over. I did, too. It was very hard for a lot of the audience to understand. Yeah, and there were technical problems, too. She was not available at the time of ADR, right? How long were we shooting this, do you remember? This was my portion of the first unit, I think,

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Oh, did you? Yeah. Everybody did. Yeah, that was an exciting day. That's D to the second AD. I watched it from like a mile away on the top of my trailer, and I felt the heat wave blast my face. Fingers are pointed at rookie director Damien Cockburn. Yeah, it was a real big explosion, and it went off without a hitch thanks to our special effects guy. Dude, I love this part. Hold on. There you go. Here it is.

13:11 · jump to transcript →

That clip? No. No, mine was a travesty. Oh, really? This one was a corrective experience. This was all stuff we got at the very end. That's one of the last things you shot, right? That was one of the last things I shot. Oh, no. Yeah, and then Maria Menounos was nice enough to come in. Look at that shit. Yeah. His career has gotten cold. Look at you. That was a naturalistic thing. Here it is. Tyra was nice enough again to become a part of it. That was good, too.

14:27 · jump to transcript →

Oh, this is good. Shooting in the rain, fake rain, because this was on a stage, is not fun, though. You poor son of a bitch. I can't imagine doing a whole movie in the rain. It's really, really uncomfortable. Has there ever been a movie all in rain? Like that, wasn't that movie Hard Rain? Who'll Stop the Rain? I don't know.

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And this is the House of Culture in Berlin. Combined with the studio set, we had like a little set, right? Yes. That part. It's the rooftop. So much of it just runs so seamlessly onto each other. This was a freezing, freezing, freezing night. I felt so bad for everybody.

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It was actually, I think, below freezing. It was so cold. And everyone who was on the rooftop had to, because it was so icy, there was a lot of removal of safety wires. Not that it affected the action, but just to make it a safe location.

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One of the most difficult sequences. You wouldn't think it's this stuff. But it was a bear. Yeah. It's very difficult to shoot this stuff, too. And you do get kind of, you know, because you're stuck in front of the same green screen, different banner, different wind machine. You're hanging off all these very strange apparatuses and machines that they build to make you look like you're flying. But there's something really painful about it.

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So everything in this castle is basically... ... lmagine, carved into the rocks. Every room, every-- Imagine... There's, like, channels underground, a sewer system. Basically, everything... I didn't want a castle that look like a mediaeval castle... ...1n the middle of the countryside, but more like Petra. You know, those building carved in rock. That's why it feels very claustrophobic... . like, you know, every other Underworld. And there's not many windows. It's always quite dark. Which actually became a challenge in a period movie... ...because you light everything with candles or torches. And after a while, it sort of like, you know... ...becomes a bit of an issue, because it looks the same. SO we came up with a couple of ideas... . like green windows to protect against the sun... ...and things like that, which gave us a different tone. This is one location that changed a lot during the preparation of the film. We're trying to figure out... We were up against it with a budget, trying to figure out... ... how to have them get away from the castle... ...to have this tryst. Then Patrick came up with this idea of the ruined guardhouse. The set piece is actually quite small, with set extensions. And it works. It's just gorgeous, works really well. That's one that I... A set that I really love from Dan as well is Sonja's room. Because it feels still cold, but there's a bit more... ...of a feminine texture in there, which I think is great.

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Leave? We did-- This... Tried to match in as well as it could. This was all ADR in the end, right? - Yeah. It's just these wind machines and everything, wasn't it? We had to keep them warm enough because there was wind machine. Again, the space we had was great for its size... ...but the sound was not... We had a lot of work to do on post. Tilt-up concrete warehouses that had been built... ...to house sheep feed, those pellets that sheep eat. And they were definitely not sound stages. Also, there's little ADR add-ons in here.... I wish we could've gone in a little bit more detail... ...about the shackles around their neck that... Right, yeah. - The moon shackles. Yeah, that he actually said that if I can remove this shackle... ...and they've got the silver spikes in them that... I wish we had. We wanted to. I mean, we'd talked about it and had a scene for it. That you see, if they tried to transform, those silver spikes... What happens, of course, their neck grows, they get larger... ...and it immediately digs into their skin... ...and stops them from transforming. We never really had a chance to bring that across in the dialogue.

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That's one of my favourite shots of the film right there. Really beautiful. Steven Mackintosh was in the second film as well... ...playing Tannis, so he reprised his role. I Keep saying I wish Steven had more, more... There was more of him in the movie. Such an incre... I mean, really, I felt that every day. I totally agree with you. I was saying the same thing on Underworld 2. That I didn't have him in enough. And we had a pretty long scene with him on 2, remember? The scene was like.... - Yeah, I Know he's got... And a lot of people don't recognise he's the same character... ...because his look was so different. - True. That's a shot that came at the end, last minute. It would be nice to see the presence of the wolf... ...outside the castle so it's not always disconnected. Thank you, Clint, for coughing up that extra dough for us. And this is one shot, I gotta say, you know... ...when you have, like, a big bad-ass day, and you can't... You just-- One camera and you ba... You know, this is really.... When you feel a little cornered sometime... ...and you're like, "Okay, guys, we have to shoot this." You know, I remember this. This one, and then the scene against the fire... ... Where Rhona's talking to Bill. At the end, there's no time... ...had to kind of stack them up soap-opera style. And actually, it's great. - It worked very well. That scene is great. I love how she never really turns around to see him. That's cool. - Sometimes that works out. I gotta say that people are gonna think this is a set a la Sleepy Hollow thing. This is actually a real forest there. And really weird. The trees look like they're dead. All the foliage is really high in the tree. And we're, like, 200 feet from the water, from the sea. Yeah, there's people surfing 200 yards from... Incredible-looking forest. - Where we're shooting. And that was one of our key locations. All the forest scenes were shot there. I really love that place. It was very cool. lt was strange when we walked in there for the first time, remember? We all sort of looked at each other like, "Whoa, do we have to shoot here?" We're walking there with Richard. And we're looking at the trees, and then we started losing our minds. And we Say, "What if we use the tree?" We will make little miniature... We shoot them green screen people. Horses running through the trees, but the trees would be 50... Giant trees. Because that forest got a weird quality... ... almost like a gigantic forest. lf you're shooting miniature stuff in there.... We were losing-- We were a little... Well, it got to the point about New Zealand too... ...because when we first got the script... ...We Initially thought we were gonna shoot the movie in Romania. And then the idea of shooting a winter film in Romania... ...1S a little bit... - Exteriors. Exteriors was a little daunting. And one day, I had actually seen the making of The Lord of the Rings... ...and I said to Richard, "What about New Zealand?" And he kind of looked at me. "New Zealand?" And then we met this woman, Beth DePatie, who had worked... ... for us before, and she worked on Narnia. She came back with a budget that showed that New Zealand... ...WaS as inexpensive, if not less expensive... ...than Romania. And everybody wanted to go to New Zealand. We were on the plane two days later. I remember calling up Len. I said, "Is there a chance that--?" "What are the chances of you getting to Romania?" A pause. "But what are the chances of you going to New Zealand?" It was a big yes, So.... Have you been to Romania? - Yeah, I have. There was always the Romania discussion... ...and we've gone out there, and.... For the first one, we were almost set on shooting there, weren't we? We were very close, yeah. - Well, there were castles, and.... Transylvania and that. Hungary was a little bit more expensive. You were in love with how Budapest looked that we said the hell with it. We'll figure out some other way to save that money. We shot in Hungary instead. I was the only one that really wanted Romania in the first place on this... ...because I was worried New Zealand would be too pretty for us. I remember... - That was very... I was thinking... - Too green. Yeah, it's too green, it's too beautiful, and then we went there in the forest. But the other key thing was that we had to shoot... .1n January, February and March. And in Romania, that would have been minus 20 degrees. And we thought at that time we'd have to build the castle outside. So 40 pages of the script would have been outside... ...at night, in Romania, freezing to death.

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And we cut it eventually because it poured down that day, absolutely poured down, and we couldn't film it in any way that disguised the fact that it wasn't raining. It's important to the plot that it doesn't rain in London for quite a long time, as you'll see later. But we got permission from Docklands Light Railway to let us walk on the railway, which is very unusual in Britain to get that kind of permission. Very grateful to them for that. And this is his parents' home with a nice Volvo, which is a...

22:01 · jump to transcript →

moved by him really. Something I feel that you learn as a filmmaker is that you not to be frightened sometimes of being emotional. You have a tendency sometimes to be quite cold or cool. You're scared of being sentimental, but there's also a danger that you don't give people the emotional trip they sometimes want really, especially with a story like this. And Killian was playing it quite...

24:26 · jump to transcript →

As opposed to good TV drama, there's lots of that, but there's also bad TV drama, and some of this would be right at home there, I think. It's really towards the end of the scene where it begins to collapse. It was originally set inside the house, this, but because we were shooting sequentially, we were really bored by then, by the inside of the house, and we just thought, let's put it out on the balcony. And there was this storm coming as it happens, and we didn't want it to rain, obviously, because of what I've said, so we had to shoot it very quickly to...

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Hello, I'm Richard Curtis, I wrote and directed the film. I'm sitting here in a room in Soho with Bill Nighy... Hello. -... Thomas Sangster, and they have not seen the film before. That's the bizarre thing. This is going to be the first time they've seen it, DVDs are done so early. And Hugh Grant is late and stuck in traffic. - What's new? But we'll just chat our way through and slurp tea. In fact, Colin, my tea is cold now.

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We never decided... Here we go. Stop, Hugh's turned up. Okay, this is the first time they've seen the film. Don't be ridiculous. - No, it's true. I'm just recovering from the sight of myself in that dodgy shirt. Yes, you do, you look terrible. - Yeah, I know. See what I mean. When Hugh first got the film, you were quite cross about Bill's part, weren't you? I'm still quite cross about it. I still think it could be trimmed, to be absolutely honest. You felt that you would take some of the attention. This was a controversial piece of casting. What do you think about this guy, Hugh? Very bad. - Oh, yeah. No, no, no. No, he has been good. - Who is he? He just looks a little long in the fang. I love you. - I Know. SO... - Who's that girl? That's not part of... No, that's Sienna Guillory, who's... -/ think we're watching the wrong film. She's so beautiful it hurts. We in fact shot this scene later. We thought we wanted to know a little bit more about Colin. Oh, good God. Bloody hell. - That was a tough shock. I've never seen this scene. Let's see that... Can we wind back? Right, so... - So what's the idea, that she dumps him? Yeah. That's the girl who, with the brother, dumps... So here we have Liam. It's very odd, just looking at that phone, it was very odd, talking on the phone to Liam Neeson, trying to ask him if he'd do the part. It's such a legendary voice, it strikes you that you're probably talking to an impressionist, not to the real person. Understood. Emma"s very good with vegetables. - Yeah. You used to always have food in your films. Yes, I used to get letters about it from my Japanese fans.

3:45 · jump to transcript →

Come on and let it snow." All the people in the world I most admire are people who are honest, like this. I could never be. But it's the sort of John McEnroe type of John Lennon person who alarmingly manages to tell the truth in public situations. in public situations. I've never been able to pull it off. Yes, yes. I fear this is going to be a difficult one to play. Alex. This is when people start to be chilled by the authority of your performance, Hugh. It's when I'm chilled by the fact that you cut out the first half of the scene. Yeah. There used to be a bit where they discuss which record was gonna be number one at Christmas. Hugh said, "I've got a very, very important thing to discuss." But we cut it because it looked like the prime minister was just a joke. But we wanted to make you more serious. - A joke? This is an exact replica of the cabinet, I think. Yes, with some of the real cabinet members in there. See if you can spot them. See if you can spot the actual minister for transport.

22:16 · jump to transcript →

Well, actually, the kick in the nuts that was just on Scott's screen was something that we licensed. It's a piece of real videotape, but we couldn't find out who owned the rights to it in... I believe it was England, Japan and Germany. So if you're watching in England or Japan or Germany, you will probably be seeing something different. Very different. - We had to actually matte that out and replace it with something else for those regions. This scene. - This was-- Was this day two or day three? Yeah. - This was due to a schedule change. We had to shoot that scene... I guess we'll talk more. This is the first of many commentaries, so we'll hopefully get to different bits and pieces. This house, again, is in Prague. Next door to a farm and something that looks like Lenin's tomb. But this one little plot of land seemed like a backyard in America in Ohio and it worked for us. We shot this-- We were wise enough to shoot these night scenes during the shortest nights of the year, June 21st. Literally the three, whatever it is... the summer solstice or the equinox or whatever the hell it is... Literally the three shortest nights of the year. I think we had about five and a half hours of usable darkness each day. And it was cold. - It was freezing. Freezing cold. Kids in the pool and all those people, you can almost occasionally see them, sort of, shivering a little bit. And at one point, I remember, late in the evening... I think the second night was probably the coldest night and I was wearing my Himalayan explorer outfit because it was so cold and these kids in the pool and all these girls in tank tops... - And that guy. In between takes, they had to wrap him in blankets. These kids would all dive into their coats. And I remember late one of the nights, we said, "We have to shoot, everybody take your coats off," and girls were honestly crying because they were so cold.

6:02 · jump to transcript →

One other interesting note about this scene, that is a real keg with real beer, and Jacob Pitts, our delightful Cooper, really liked these scenes a lot. It's what we like to call method acting. That's one of the things we learned. Or simply drinking. - Aren't they the same? I guess we should introduce our cast, now that you've been watching for ten minutes. Scotty Mechlowicz as Scott Thomas. - Which is why we cast him. Make it very easy on ourselves. The beautiful and talented Michelle Trachtenberg as Jenny. And Travis Wester is her twin, Jamie. And that's Jacob Pitts going off to take a leak. And this was another one of our delightful cameos that we got because we were in Prague. Yep, that's Matt Damon, which... Everyone in the theater sort of goes, "It can't be. Is it? Is it really?" Why is his head shaved? He was actually in Prague shooting Brothers Grimm for Terry Gilliam at the time. And we actually went to college with Matt years ago. So we've been sort of friendly ever since. And he was in Prague and we asked him to do a day of work for us, and he agreed. The biggest favor ever. - Thank you, thank you, thank you, Matt. Yeah, Matt's just hilarious here. Matt's not watching this DVD. We're going to make him watch it. That'll be another commentary. That would be the biggest favor he's ever done. But the band was actually started by some other friends of ours from college. I guess this is as good a time as any... A couple of them were of Matt Damon's roommates in college. The band Lustra... - One of them. The band Lustra, good guys. And they wrote the song, which is really fun. We've known each other since college. I'm going to just talk now 'cause no one's listening to what I'm saying, because there's a naked girl on the screen. I wasn't listening. What were you talking about? Now this, in the unrated version that we're watching, she started off topless. In the theatrical release, if you saw it, we actually cut a different version where she started off with her top on and Cooper talks her out of her top. - He convinced her to take it off. And it was very strange, sort of, when you get into this whole nudity thing. Obviously, it's a hot tub scene, but somehow when her top was on and he talked her out of it, while it was a very exciting moment that he talked her out of it, it oddly made her dumber, even though she is sort of a stereotypical dumb blonde. - Right. And we always liked it this way, the way you're seeing it. We liked the scene to answer the question, "What is beyond gratuitous?" That's the answer. - There it is. And there they are. The answers. The other stuff we added back into the scene is just more of him screwing around with her. Because, to us, once you're at the nudity, it's how far he goes. This scene... - It's not about nudity. No, this scene was always about the crazy extent to which he got her to play with herself, as opposed to just getting her to take her top off. By the way, the banner in the background originally... This is what happens when you work in Prague. It's a big congratulations banner. The first day when we got there, it just said "congratulation," like one singular congratulation, which is a word we didn't know existed. Sort of a funny story about this scene, which, hopefully, we can tell. We were actually rewriting another movie, which I guess we'll leave nameless, that had a hot tub scene in it and we came up with this idea, which was the fact that a guy saying, "You have a smudge. You've got something on you." And we were really enjoying what we were doing so much that we didn't put it in that script. And we're like, "We'll use it one day." And here it is. Screw it. The movie was called Out Cold, I think. Yeah, exactly.

7:55 · jump to transcript →

And it was very fun and it all, sort of, interconnected, which was... Matt knowing the guys from the band made, sort of, I think, his performance more fun for him. The fact that the band that wrote the song was actually playing... Playing the song. It makes the scene look real. I hate these movies where you see four extras who were put there on the day, who can't play their instruments, pretending to play along. These guys were actually playing the real notes. There's Alec's least favorite thing in the movie. That purple toilet paper. The purple toilet paper which only exists in Europe kills me every time I see it. Also, watch this European toilet with the top flush. No toilet in America... - Like they have in Ohio. No toilet in Ohio flushes on top. But on the wall, by the way, were some comic books by some friends of mine, I'll shout out to them. One of the weirdest things about making a movie is everything has to be legally cleared. So if you see a book or a poster ina movie, everything has to be legally cleared, and we spent... Including this commentary, which no doubt will be censored. But everything you're seeing on the walls, toys, things on the table, whatnot, had to be cleared, and we spent more time clearing things and trying to call in favors from people we knew who had posters of things. There are actually... - Is this how real movies work? There were actually pieces of this scene that we had to cut because I remember there was a toy that didn't clear... and I'm probably not legally allowed to say what toy it was... sitting on Scotty's desk and we couldn't use... It was a toy from the movie Out Cold. But, yeah, I mean, we spent a tremendous amount of time trying to clear this, trying to clear college names. Also a special thank-you to my parents who went to the Cleveland Indians store when we had nothing to put on the wall. - And spent like drunks. Yeah, spent like drunks and shipped it all to Prague.

11:53 · jump to transcript →

I think the film has started here, hasn't it? It is a very subtle start here. We tried to create the sound of snow falling here, which was quite complicated when you come to think of it, because snow hasn't got any sound if you listen when snow falls, but inside your head it has a sound.

0:53 · jump to transcript →

It's sort of rotten, rotten blood inside that. Yeah, and he doesn't clean it very properly either. It's very basic. It's not so hygienical. No, it's not the issue here. In the background, you hear the weather report.

7:31 · jump to transcript →

which is very useful when you do the sound editing to have an everyday feeling to a situation. The weather report is very good. It makes you feel calm. And I was up there to visit when you recorded. I wasn't here that night that this was recorded, but it was extremely cold, wasn't it? The situation, yes.

8:00 · jump to transcript →

and he would be wrapped in blankets, freezing. But the minute I called him to camera, he'd just get up and do it. So he really gutted it out through that fight sequence. It's always fun to have sand blown on you, too. This was all shot in Morocco. These are called the Merzouga Dunes, some of the most spectacular dunes in the world. We shot a lot of The Mummy.

2:23 · jump to transcript →

And in fact, you know, if you were to study it closely, you could probably find a few places where it's raining because it's raining in most of this photography. We were very careful in cutting it to avoid any stuff where you could really see it. And then also on even a couple of effect shots later in the sequence, I'm not sure what ILM did to remove the rain, but they did somehow. It rained the first time on The Mummy we shot in England. We were there for four months.

17:11 · jump to transcript →

Run away or head towards? Well, no matter what, I'm sure that Greg is really happy that you brought that up. This is the shot I was talking about earlier that, you know, there was clearly rain in the background. As these lights pan, you would see the rain being, you know, backlit by the light. I think you're looking at other things at this moment. Yeah, you are. You are, and I think it all works out. If you notice, there's no... You can't see anything in that pit back there on that shot. We still want to spend the money.

19:07 · jump to transcript →

Andrew Niccol

Our marine coordinator actually found this one in Angola. It had an Indian crew. I didn't ask a lot of questions. If he could get it, he could get it. The ship almost didn't make it to Cape Town because it got caught in a storm off the coast of Namibia. It almost sank. We had a lot of near misses like that in the film.

18:59 · jump to transcript →

Andrew Niccol

The cinematographer Amir Mokri can't actually even watch this scene because the weather kept changing as it does in South Africa or in Cape Town. And the skies don't match, but of course only Amir is looking at the sky. This scene has an actual precedent.

19:29 · jump to transcript →

Andrew Niccol

perverted in some way. I don't know why I keep shooting next to the ocean. I had to loop this entire scene. But Bridget and Nick did a great job, you don't notice. And sometimes in looping you can even improve the performance. Also, I was shooting in the winter, which was a mistake. Not just because the water's freezing here.

30:09 · jump to transcript →

James McTeigue

Who's that? Don't piss me about. You show me ID, or I'll get Storm Saxon on your ass.

16:37 · jump to transcript →

James McTeigue

/'// tell you what I know. I'll tell you what I know. I'll tell you what I know. England prevails. Clear the halls. - Sir. Help, Storm, help!

18:04 · jump to transcript →

James McTeigue

Right there. What's he thinking? Is he considering leaving her? After she just saved him? He's a terrorist. You can't expect him to act like you or me. Some part of him's human. And, for better or worse, she's stuck with him. I wanted the mood to almost stop, like she's being stopped. Or she's being trapped. And so I thought it was, like, good that she wakes up... ...she hears the music and then she comes out and, you know... ... she discovers the reality of her situation. And in some ways, you know, I wanted the music to draw her out. Because that was gonna be used as a recurring motif for later on. I think the Shadow Gallery is a, um.... And V is a custodian of many, many, um... ...art forms that have been either banned, that have been banned by the government. And so he's collected all these things together in this one space. So it's a place of refuge. And it's, in a way, it's a place of refuge for the viewer as well. As a result, because there are only two characters you see in the Shadow Gallery... . It's a place of intimacy. And it's where Evey and V start to connect as human beings, rather than.... You don't see the masked man, although, of course, he's still in a mask. You start to find out about the human being. It's also something that makes her.... It's a place that makes her understand the cause, I think. Because all of this art and literature and music and everything is there. You know, it's like the Churchill thing that he said during World War Il... ...when they asked him to cut arts spending... ...he said, "Well, then what are we fighting this war for?" It's like, you can't sacrifice... ... the very things you're fighting for. My favorite line in the movie... ... which obviously comes later in your chronology. But my favorite line is when V says... ...a revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth, you know, fighting. I think the other thing about the Shadow Gallery that I really liked... ...and it was a really nice part of the book, is... ... the art that they had in there. The books that they chose. The music that they had. And the things that they thought were gonna be banned. Which I thought were very interesting, you know, choices in the graphic novel. And then I just used an extension of that, almost. And it was a really good chance to put a lot of stuff in there that I like. And James won't brag about this, but, like... ... the jukebox... ... had, like, 300 handpicked songs... ...by James of, like, what he would save. It was all written out, like, very specifically. You were unconscious and I had to make a decision. I did have this crazy idea, at one point. I was gonna light the day scenes different to the night scenes. Just because I thought that V wouldn't perpetually live on, like, a... ...some sort of 24-hour clock. So I was gonna do this blue hue at one point... ...and then this, sort of, like, golden hue. But I went for the golden hue in the end. Because I thought the blue thing was a little cold.

25:55 · jump to transcript →

Rob Cohen

I definitely, I saw him in The Wind That Shakes the Barley and had to have him. And of course, the kid over his right shoulder actually is my son, Kyle, who was going to university in Shanghai at Fudan University. So I said, here, I'm gonna put you to work, make you a fly boy who's a bully boy intent on beating up Luke Ford now. That would be an interesting fight to wager on.

28:44 · jump to transcript →

Rob Cohen

It was first developed at ILM. So here we have a combination of aerial photography in mountains on the west coast of Canada, combined with full CG characters hiking through the snow. This, of course, was on stage with no glass in the canopy, I might add. That's all digital glass, digital plane, real plate.

53:36 · jump to transcript →

Rob Cohen

but everybody was sweating, so he didn't look any different than anybody else. We created the snow out of about 100 tons of Epsom salt. So all this crystalline stuff that looks like dry powder snow is Epsom salt, and the blown snow is a very beautiful device that will spin a liquid soap

1:02:14 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

in the sort of style of Stephan Grappelli, the great French jazz violinist. And this scene, like every scene in the movie, had to be shot on the day it was scheduled. There's no room for worrying about the weather changes. And David Franco, the director of photography, managed to disguise the fact that in some shots,

6:28 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

in a bathing suit, one piece bathing suit and a sun hat. And we thought we weren't sure whether people would see the rain or not, so we put her in a dress and in fact it was a good choice anyway. This was a scene that was six pages long and we had to shoot it in one day. And to complicate matters, it was our first day. Normally you

25:14 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

That doesn't really mean that it's not funny. It means it's just not funny to you. What you can't do is leave the actors hanging out there to twist in the wind because you shot something in such a way that something that they tried and is not getting a laugh can't be removed from the film. You have to be able to remove something that isn't working.

44:45 · jump to transcript →

It's a designing abstract kind of art and entertainment form. Yeah. Well, I was about to say, it still doesn't look as realistic as that Hong Kong movie Storm Riders from a couple years ago where all the women were wearing these kind of Tiffany wedding dresses. That, by my standard, had gone a little bit too far. Okay. My kids loved it. My kids loved that movie. Okay. I noticed a little wobbly woo-woo-woo-woo sound here with the sword.

9:48 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, how'd you get to go there? That was tough. A lot of the stuff was shot the first month of the shoot. We based out of the way west and boy was that difficult for everybody. Oil plants, that's where we're based now. Not even hotels sometimes. Yeah, that was tough. And the heat. And we begin the movie from here. Yeah.

1:02:22 · jump to transcript →

And there's, like, sandstorms. And then remember that night with the freak, freak rainstorm that hit us on the drive back? You ended up driving your van, right? Yes. And then the sound guy, sound guy, I mean, a great sound recorder, Drew Kunin, who was along for the entire shoot in China, he's done, he did Ride With the Devil With You and Ice Storm, ended up driving our van back over the mountain pass, and the trucks were getting blown over. And then you get back to Urumqi, and it's like, and it's Lauren Hutton! She was great.

1:03:19 · jump to transcript →

fantastic style for this shot. Something interesting about Tom's makeup. I was suggesting for Tom's first appearance, he was short hair. It's the same look as the first one. Short hair, clean, and a little cold, and handsome, you know, so that kind of look. And then after he takes his face off, reveal emerald, it's going to be to shock the audience. And then come to the next scene for the rock climbing, he got long hair that make the audience feel

5:47 · jump to transcript →

to make it look more warm and passionate. So he came up with the idea of a color. He was suggesting using more of a red, orange, and green as a key color. That will make it totally different from the first one. The first one was a little cold and have a blue lighting, and even though the set is pretty dark, but I want this one a little more charm, more open.

22:03 · jump to transcript →

So we just wanted to keep the excitement of the action, you know, and without feeling grossly or too much violence. We have so many problems for shooting this scene. We have the major weather problem, always raining, and we have the continuity problem with the lighting. So sometimes we got a sunny day, sometimes we got rain, sometimes it's pretty dark, so we have to use the...

45:33 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

And as I said, we got through thousands of them. This set was actually freezing cold. Although it was supposed to be set in Cambodia in the height of summer, we shot it in England.

47:55 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

on the 007 stage, which is actually more of an aircraft hangar, really, and totally uninsulated. And it was freezing cold every day, and sometimes you could see the breath coming out of the actors' mouths, but everyone is sort of stripped down and constantly being sprayed with fake sweat to try and make them look like they're hot. But actually, the second the camera stops, everyone was throwing on puffer jackets and scarves and hats to try and keep warm.

48:20 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

I don't think Angelina or Noah still to this day knew just how close we were to taking a swim in that water. When I scouted the glacier months before it was all covered in beautiful white snow and very easy to get around on skidoos but when we came back months later that had all melted and it was down to the perma-ice which was full of crevasses and very dangerous and treacherous to move about so it was quite hard to

1:13:58 · jump to transcript →