Producers' Panel - Movers and ShakersIntroduction| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:29 | Jon Landau: Now it's not about saying no.
| | 00:30 | It's about having alternative
suggestions, and then ultimately it becomes Jim's idea,
| | 00:36 | and you say, "great idea, let's go for it."
| | 00:38 | Jonas Rivera: Making a movie in animation
is sort of like making it in slow motion.
| | 00:41 | It's like keeping it about your main
character, and keeping that narrative going
| | 00:45 | forward in that character's shoes.
| | 00:46 | Lori McCreary: And our biggest question was,
do we wrap and then eat, or do we eat and then
| | 00:50 | call wrap? Seriously!
| | 00:53 | Mark Boal: On the first day of shooting,
half the crew was like beet red and probably hours
| | 00:59 | away from heatstroke, and
that was just the first day.
| | 01:02 | Ivan Reitman: There's never enough money,
there's never enough time, and often time there's
| | 01:06 | subtle and sometimes not so
subtle differences of opinion.
| | 01:10 | Lawrence Bender: It's his church and his actors,
in a sense, because he feels like he creates his characters
| | 01:15 | on the script and he really lets
these characters write the movie.
| | 01:18 | That's really what he does.
| | 01:20 | Mark Boal: I think there's a kind of
consciousness raising that film can do, because they
| | 01:25 | are the literature of our time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with directors| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:07 | Roger Durling: Welcome to the Producers' Panel.
| | 00:09 | We have an incredible lineup
of producers here this morning.
| | 00:13 | Jonas Rivera from Up.
| | 00:19 | Ivan Reitman, Up in the Air.
| | 00:24 | Lori McCreary, Invictus,
| | 00:29 | Jon Landau, Avatar.
| | 00:32 | Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker.
| | 00:36 | Lawrence Bender, Inglorious Basterds.
| | 00:41 | And please welcome our moderator.
He has a great column in the LA Times,
| | 00:46 | The Big Picture, Patrick Goldstein.
| | 00:48 | (Applause.)
| | 00:55 | Patrick Goldstein: I'm doing this panel because
I think being a movie producer is an incredibly
| | 01:02 | unappreciated artform.
| | 01:05 | I've spent a lot of years on movie
sets and I've seen the kind of stuff that
| | 01:12 | goes on behind the scenes that
producers have to do that they very rarely
| | 01:17 | get credit for.
| | 01:19 | And by the way as I think we'll discover,
it's not just about what they do on the set.
| | 01:25 | There is an enormous amount of work
that goes on long before the movie starts
| | 01:30 | that is often the crucial,
really fundamental work of a film.
| | 01:35 | But these are people that love movies
and that also know how to solve problems
| | 01:42 | and I think that's something that
often is underappreciated as well.
| | 01:46 | So let me start with Jon Landau.
| | 01:48 | Now the actor Bill Paxton, who goes
way back with Jim Cameron, was doing an
| | 01:55 | interview with The New Yorker about Jim
and he said, talking of Jim, "the words
| | 02:01 | no and that's impossible and that can't be done,
| | 02:06 | that's the kind of stuff
that gives Jim an erection."
| | 02:09 | (Laughter.)
| | 02:12 | So since it's usually the producers'
job to tell the perfectionist filmmaker no
| | 02:19 | and that's impossible and that can't be
done, naturally I was wondering over the
| | 02:24 | past 5 or 10 years how many
erections have you given Jim Cameron?
| | 02:28 | (Laughter.)
| | 02:29 | Jon Landau: Patrick, when I read the piece this morning
that said you were going to talk about sex at the panel,
| | 02:34 | I didn't realize you literally meant it.
| | 02:38 | Mark Boal: Jon and Jim have a very special
relationship which they don't talk about in public but.
| | 02:42 | Jon Landau: No,I think that the things you
said about Jim are true and I think that it's his
| | 02:50 | drive for the excellence that gets
everybody excited and when you could come and
| | 02:57 | whether you're using the term
figuratively or not and go to work and you get
| | 03:01 | really excited about going to work,
you get more out of people and I think that
| | 03:07 | the role in terms of the saying the no
aspect is, it's not about saying no.
| | 03:11 | It's about having alternative suggestions.
| | 03:14 | And being able to not just have those
suggestions but to be able to articulate
| | 03:18 | the reasoning behind those and then
ultimately it becomes Jim's idea and you say,
| | 03:24 | "great idea, let's go for it."
| | 03:25 | Patrick Goldstein: So because that's what I was
getting at is when you have a filmmaker like Jim
| | 03:32 | Cameron, who's trying to
push every envelope possible,
| | 03:38 | how do you bring a sense of reality to
the process because you have to worry
| | 03:43 | about the budget, the time
constraints, about all the things that are less
| | 03:49 | exciting than the wild creative
ideas that Jim wants to execute.
| | 03:53 | Jon Landau: I think Jim is always pushing the
envelope to serve his story and to serve his
| | 03:58 | character and if you can bring it back
to that and present alternative ways to
| | 04:02 | accomplish the same thing, he's not
about saying here's what I want to do and
| | 04:07 | this is the only way to do it.
| | 04:08 | He's actually very open to alternative
ways to do it and we've discovered that
| | 04:12 | as we've gone through, even going back
to when I was an exec at the studio on
| | 04:15 | True Lies and dealing with Jim.
| | 04:17 | So it's saying okay here's the
objective, here's the story point, here's the
| | 04:21 | character point, here's an
alternative way to achieve that for you.
| | 04:24 | Patrick Goldstein: Do you bring other
people in as supporters of your ideas. Does it help?
| | 04:31 | Jon Landau: I try and
approach it the exact opposite way.
| | 04:33 | I try and go to the other people first,
so that they can go to Jim with the idea.
| | 04:37 | So it's not always me coming with the
ideas. Steve Rivkin, our editor described
| | 04:42 | me the other day to someone as behind
the scenes like a little puppet master and
| | 04:47 | then rest of your crew are your puppets.
| | 04:49 | The more that those people can go to
Jim with ideas that we've shared, I'm not
| | 04:55 | asking them to do things that they
don't believe in, but that the better he'll
| | 04:59 | hear it coming from other sources
other than just from one source.
| | 05:01 | Patrick Goldstein: So I'm going to try
to prod everybody here, what's an example?
| | 05:05 | So you're in the midst of working on
some of the animation, what's an example
| | 05:12 | where you feel like you with some help
figured out a way to solve something?
| | 05:17 | Jon Landau: In the end battle sequence for
Avatar, there was originally intended and Jim was
| | 05:22 | very firm on it to have two shuttles.
| | 05:25 | Two of the big craft going and one would
go down and he would really build up to that
| | 05:30 | and it was important for me that
we make the decision to eliminate that
| | 05:34 | before we ever shot any of
it and not after the fact.
| | 05:38 | So it was about creating environments
where Jim would screen a rough cut of the
| | 05:43 | sequence or just the template version
and talk to people in advance and say,
| | 05:47 | hey Maria, Battle Campbell,
talk to Jim about this and here's an
| | 05:51 | alternative way around that and Steve
Rivkin, and sure enough, enough people
| | 05:55 | talk to him about it.
| | 05:55 | We never went ahead with a second
shuttle and it wasn't needed in the film.
| | 06:01 | Patrick Goldstein: My question is so what, and
maybe some other people can speak to this who have
| | 06:06 | similar, what do you learn from the
experience of having worked with someone
| | 06:10 | before and how does that help you the
next time around when you're producing?
| | 06:14 | Jon Landau: Well I think that when there
are moments where they would be the exact
| | 06:18 | opposite where Jim would be howling on the
walkie-talkie, "where's Landau?! Get him down here!"
| | 06:22 | So it was really a back-and-forth and
for the most part as you develop the
| | 06:28 | relationship, you do have more of a
role on the set and I feel that often times,
| | 06:32 | I am Jim's eyes and ears when he
can't be somewhere, even on the set to
| | 06:36 | look ahead at what the next setup is.
But I think if you look here I think all
| | 06:42 | of us have in some way worked with
or known all the people that we've been
| | 06:45 | working with as directors in the past
and I think history is important in a
| | 06:51 | relationship as you work forward.
| | 06:54 | Lawrence Bender: It's interesting because when
you're making a movie for the first time,
| | 06:56 | it's like a first date and then when you're
like Quentin and I, we are just like an
| | 07:00 | old married couple, still in love. And so
yeah, it's not about saying how can you
| | 07:10 | find a way to say no.
| | 07:11 | It's like Jon said and it's sort of like
presenting-- The director obviously is
| | 07:18 | so, he's so concentrated in such a
tough job, and he doesn't see the waterfall
| | 07:25 | approaching that you're on a canoe and
there's a waterfall up ahead and so it's
| | 07:29 | your job to kind of see that waterfall
and figure out how to get around and port
| | 07:32 | around it or find other alternatives and
like Jon said, have the different people
| | 07:41 | on your crew depending on what area it
is to go, in this case, Quentin, go to
| | 07:46 | the director and talked
about other alternatives.
| | 07:50 | I'll give you one example.
| | 07:52 | I don't want to say the scene,
because I don't know if Quentin would
| | 07:55 | want me to talk about the scene
particularly but the last day of shooting on
| | 07:58 | our movie. Sometimes it's that to
reverse because it's like what Mark said is
| | 08:02 | true is that every producer on here
has worked on their particular movies,
| | 08:06 | the directors have been doing this
for a while and so they have the bigger
| | 08:09 | picture for sure and they definitely
have the economics of the movie in mind
| | 08:13 | as well as the creative.
| | 08:15 | I think long-- I was about to say long
gone are days we can go over budget, right Jon.
| | 08:22 | So I can't quite say that. So we're in
the last day of shooting and we shot 13 hours,
| | 08:29 | we are on day 73 and and it's like
11 o'clock, we've been shooting 13 hours.
| | 08:37 | I forgot what day of the week it was.
I think it was Tuesday actually.
| | 08:40 | But anyway so I go to Quentin and say,
well how many shots do you have
| | 08:44 | left for this sequence? And
we go through it and we add up the shots,
| | 08:51 | and we add up the other shots
we have left to pick up and that we have
| | 08:52 | 13 shots left and we've been shooting
for 13 hours and it's 11 o'clock at night.
| | 08:57 | And so I kind of smile and I say okay
and so I said, look why don't we just get
| | 09:06 | this shot and wrap
and we'll find the money?
| | 09:09 | We'll just come back another day,
come back tomorrow and finish the scenes.
| | 09:13 | This is too important a scene, we've
been thinking about the scene a long time and
| | 09:17 | you're under a lot of pressure and
I know you want to finish but
| | 09:20 | we'll find the money for another day.
| | 09:24 | And he looked at me, and he said, no I
want to finish this scene tonight, and
| | 09:27 | And he said you know what we're going
to do? Instead of this and this is a big
| | 09:32 | thing in the script and he said,
"I'm going to cut all that out."
| | 09:35 | I was like, Quentin, I mean,
we've talked about this scene.
| | 09:41 | This is like, this is one of those
culminating moments in the movie where you wanted,
| | 09:45 | you really love this.
| | 09:46 | He said, I know it works in the script
but I don't know if it's going to work
| | 09:48 | on screen.
| | 09:50 | So I said okay.
| | 09:51 | So I give him a little breathing room.
I walk around and I go to my DP, Bob Richardson,
| | 09:56 | And then I go to my AD,
and I see now Quentin is thinking about
| | 09:58 | cutting this, and I am second
guessing myself. Quentin is thinking about
| | 10:01 | cutting this particular piece out.
| | 10:03 | So what you guys think?
| | 10:05 | "Like you know, I don't know man."
| | 10:06 | "It's a great piece of cinema on the page."
| | 10:11 | So I go back to Quentin and I said, look,
I really think you should think about this.
| | 10:14 | Why don't we just?
So he said, why don't we do this?
| | 10:16 | Well let's get this shot and
then we will regroup, and then if
| | 10:23 | we really think we need to finish this scene
the old way then we'll come back tomorrow.
| | 10:27 | And instead, we got that shot
and it was the most beautiful shot.
| | 10:34 | It was one of my favorite pieces in the
movie, and we ended up looking at each
| | 10:39 | other, going we don't need this.
| | 10:40 | We just don't need this other thing.
| | 10:41 | This other thing that works so
well in the script, we don't need it.
| | 10:44 | And it's much better this way and so
13 shots ended up becoming like 4 or 5 and
| | 10:52 | we still got out at 5. It was a 20 hour day,
We got at 5 in the morning but we finished.
| | 10:57 | We got done and it's one of
those amazing scenes in the movie.
| | 11:00 | So it's an example of the actually reverse,
it's the reverse of kind of what you're saying.
| | 11:05 | The producer's always saying well cut,
cut, cut, and in the actuality is all
| | 11:10 | of us up here work very much with
our directors and trying to get
| | 11:14 | the best storytelling.
| | 11:16 | Sometimes that means finding ways to
trim, rob from Peter to pay Paul, and
| | 11:20 | sometimes it's to pay Paul in a sense.
| | 11:22 | Jon Landau: And I would have to imagine that's
easier with a Jim or Quentin than it is with our own son.
| | 11:28 | (Laughter.)
| | 11:31 | Ivan Reitman: Are you talking about me?
| | 11:32 | Jon Landau: Oh, no, no.
| | 11:34 | Ivan Reitman: Producing is
all about establishing trust.
| | 11:38 | It's all the things that the
gentlemen have already talked about.
| | 11:41 | But its one thing to work for Jim
Cameron and it's another thing to have Quentin
| | 11:45 | Tarantino in front of you.
| | 11:47 | These are men with established careers and
the studio knows what they're getting into.
| | 11:53 | Really as a producer and of course I've
directed as well, but in my career as a
| | 11:57 | producer, I've mostly produced first
time or sort of directors early in their
| | 12:04 | careers and so the relationship with
the studio is not quite as comfortable.
| | 12:09 | The budgets are usually a fraction of
the budgets that you had and there's this
| | 12:14 | extraordinary pressure to try to get
the best possible work done against really
| | 12:20 | impossible odds and as a producer
you're facing a director and I'm not speaking
| | 12:26 | about Jason Reitman right now.
You know that's what brought me into this
| | 12:29 | conversation and I will get to Jason in a second.
| | 12:33 | But you're often facing young
directors who are just trying to figure out and
| | 12:41 | trying to get through the day and who
are often making compromises in fact that
| | 12:46 | they should not be making and I
found that my job as a producer in that
| | 12:51 | situation is really to renew their
confidence in the screenplays that we have
| | 12:57 | and also just try to find the right
solutions to getting through the day and
| | 13:01 | then beyond that sort of fight the
battles with the studio because there's
| | 13:05 | inevitably that tension going on.
| | 13:09 | There's never enough money, there's
never enough time and often time, there are
| | 13:13 | subtle and sometimes not so subtle
differences of opinion about the creative
| | 13:19 | focus of the piece you're doing.
| | 13:23 | When I had the good fortune of being
able to produce Jason Reitman,
| | 13:30 | I knew right away first of all,
I couldn't be his father on the set.
| | 13:34 | I had to be really an effective
producer and I was working this time with an
| | 13:40 | extraordinarily, even though it
was only his third movie, he's an
| | 13:43 | extraordinarily accomplished director already.
| | 13:46 | He wrote the screenplay with Sheldon
Turner and it was just a brilliant screenplay.
| | 13:54 | I had it actually. My company had the
screenplay for Up in the Air, because we
| | 13:59 | bought the book about five or six
years ago in development with a number of
| | 14:02 | different writers and it wasn't until
really Jason, just after Juno, and I bought
| | 14:08 | it because Jason had said "I read this book.
| | 14:11 | You ought to look at it, it's maybe
something you want to direct" and when I read it,
| | 14:14 | I didn't get it at all and I knew
secretly that this is something that he
| | 14:19 | wants that he was still too
young in his career to --.
| | 14:23 | So we basically just held onto it and
really after Juno, right at the Toronto
| | 14:28 | Film Festival, after it premiered, I went
to him and I said, look you're ready to
| | 14:31 | tackle this now, because really you're the one.
| | 14:34 | This is not for me, this is for you and
he went off and in about three to four
| | 14:38 | months wrote a first draft
screenplay that just was amazing.
| | 14:42 | And after that everything sort
of came together very quickly.
| | 14:48 | He was the one who brought in George Clooney.
| | 14:52 | The studio read that sort of a revised first
draft and said oh yeah, we want to make this.
| | 14:57 | And everything came together and he
moved very quickly and I knew my job was
| | 15:01 | really just to be someone he
could trust and bounce things off of.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Research and development| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:07 | Patrick Goldstein: Before I move on, I want to
ask Jon Landau one last thing, because I am not sure
| | 00:14 | that people realize how much, what I
would call, research and development Jim
| | 00:20 | Cameron puts into the process long
before any of the filmmaking begins.
| | 00:26 | And I think that we're going to see a
lot-- I think Avatar is a template for a
| | 00:31 | movie we're going to see a lot more of.
| | 00:34 | Can you explain the value of that R&D
and what your role is at that stage?
| | 00:40 | Jon Landau: Well, I think the R&D is two-fold.
| | 00:42 | It's separated on the creative
side and then on the practical side.
| | 00:46 | On the creative side, I think it's
important for Jim to invest in the property
| | 00:51 | that he's directing, whether that
be researching Titanic or True Lies,
| | 00:56 | researching the marines and the Harrier jets.
| | 00:58 | In our case on Avatar, it was really
researching nature and how evolution works
| | 01:04 | and creating a foundation so that
Pandora could be a believable world and that
| | 01:10 | includes the language, that
includes the culture and meeting with
| | 01:14 | anthropologists and the like.
| | 01:17 | Then the challenge is, okay, how do we
make the movie and identifying at the
| | 01:22 | beginning of a journey what
are the important things?
| | 01:24 | First thing we identified on
Avatar, it wasn't the world.
| | 01:29 | It was the close-up and it was
how do we create a close-up with
| | 01:34 | computer-generated characters that
could be engaging and emotive because
| | 01:38 | ultimately that's what movies are really about.
| | 01:44 | As we go through the process,
my role is understanding that reasoning,
| | 01:50 | understanding that vision and saying
here is why, and having a sense of what
| | 01:56 | tools will allow that to happen.
| | 01:59 | And I felt that on Avatar, it was my
responsibility to create a process,
| | 02:04 | a paradigm that was first performance
centric in getting the performances and
| | 02:10 | second, director centric, and not
letting technology get in the way of those
| | 02:15 | because the movie would ultimately suffer.
| | 02:17 | Mark Boal: We had a much different research
experience, which is that when I was in Jordan
| | 02:22 | sort of setting up the movie, one of
the things that naturally occurs on your
| | 02:25 | checklist is to get trailers for the
actors, because it's in their contract.
| | 02:31 | And we had Ralph Fiennes and
Guy Pearce playing cameo roles.
| | 02:34 | So, this wasn't quite as inventive as
Pandora, but finding a trailer in Jordan
| | 02:43 | turned out to be very difficult because
nobody shoots movies in Jordan and they
| | 02:47 | don't have movie trailers.
| | 02:48 | So you look at the neighboring
countries and there were three trailers that you
| | 02:52 | can rent from Israel.
| | 02:54 | So we said great, let's get those.
| | 02:55 | And getting a trailer from Israel to Jordan
was like a major diplomatic international affair.
| | 03:05 | So that was not going to work and we
tried to get them from Lebanon and then it
| | 03:08 | was Syria and finally, it became clear
as the clock was ticking down and we're
| | 03:12 | getting that much closer to shooting that we
were not going to have trailers for our actors.
| | 03:18 | So going back to the collaboration
between a director and a producer, so I kind
| | 03:22 | of made this clear to Kathryn and then
we decided to have a tent where all the
| | 03:27 | actors would just exist in between shots.
| | 03:31 | And so she had the job of then going
to Jeremy Renner and Brian Geraghty and
| | 03:37 | Ralph Fiennes and so forth and saying
like, "Really good news. For creative
| | 03:43 | reasons, in order to build the
cohesiveness of this team and replicate the
| | 03:54 | brutality of combat, we want to put
all of you guys in one tent, and you are
| | 04:01 | going to be in there with the extras
sometimes and it's just going to be
| | 04:05 | just like a war zone."
| | 04:06 | And it actually, if you
actually ever interview Renner or something,
| | 04:13 | it's actually the one thing they always
talk about "that damn tent you put us in."
| | 04:18 | But it's just that was definitely one
of those problems that didn't get solved
| | 04:22 | but sort of worked out in the end anyway.
| | 04:24 | Patrick Goldstein: Well, let's move on to you
Mark because of the following things that I know
| | 04:30 | about making The Hurt Locker, making it
in 44 days, making it on a very, very,
| | 04:36 | very tight budget, making it in Jordan
where almost no one had filmed and making
| | 04:41 | it in the middle of the summer in Jordan,
which would would rank number one
| | 04:46 | as the most arduous thing
that you'd never want to repeat?
| | 04:49 | Mark Boal: Well, the summer was the
one thing that we definitely didn't want to do.
| | 04:51 | The first thing I did when we found
Jordan was I went on weather.com and looked
| | 04:56 | because I was thinking of wow,
the summer, that might be an issue.
| | 04:58 | And it was obviously historically
really hot in Jordan in the summer.
| | 05:02 | So we all said, we'll just shoot in the spring.
| | 05:05 | That will be fine, because it
is not that bad in the spring.
| | 05:08 | But then, obviously, we didn't
have everything together in time.
| | 05:11 | So we ended up either having to push the
movie a year or shoot it in the summer and
| | 05:19 | it's hard to overestimate the heat
because it is kind of unrelenting but the
| | 05:22 | problem is that the whole movie was exterior.
| | 05:25 | Well, not the whole movie, but
80% of the movie is exterior shots.
| | 05:28 | So on the first day of shooting at
about I'd say midway through probably around
| | 05:35 | 2 o'clock in the afternoon, half of
the crew was like beat red and probably
| | 05:39 | hours away from heat stroke.
| | 05:41 | And that was just the first day and
we were hydrating people and we were
| | 05:47 | passing out Gatorade, but everyone
is really excited and no one is really
| | 05:51 | thinking about hydration.
| | 05:52 | They are just, it's the first day.
| | 05:54 | You want to go, go, go.
| | 05:56 | So heat stroke was like a real
concern for the whole movie and it was a
| | 06:00 | particular concern for Jeremy because
he had to wear this bomb suit, which was
| | 06:04 | incidentalyl the real bomb suit and
very heavy and very hot inside there.
| | 06:10 | And he'd had heat stroke actually as a teenager.
| | 06:13 | So when you've had it once, it makes
you that much more likely to get it again
| | 06:15 | and it can be a serious. It can be deadly.
| | 06:18 | So we were constantly kind of monitoring
Jeremy's condition and the summer was hard.
| | 06:24 | And shooting in Jordan was hard too, because
they didn't have trailers. They didn't have--
| | 06:27 | Patrick Goldstein: Well,
let me play devil's advocate.
| | 06:31 | Mark Boal: They didn't have-- well,
let me just tell you one other thing.
| | 06:32 | They didn't have explosives.
| | 06:35 | Well, they had explosives,
because it's like the Middle East.
| | 06:38 | But they didn't have the kind of
explosives we needed and I not being an expert
| | 06:45 | in the art of special effects,
I remember this conversation I had with Richard
| | 06:50 | Stutzman who did all our pyrotechnics.
| | 06:52 | And saying, look Richard, I've got you
like all this C-4 from the Jordanian military.
| | 06:57 | What's the problem? Like
you should be good to go.
| | 06:59 | And he explained to me that you can't
actually use real military unless you are
| | 07:03 | Jim and maybe you do, or Michael Mann,
but you don't really use real military
| | 07:07 | explosives in a movie.
| | 07:08 | You use black powder or use like
stuff that looks explosive, but doesn't
| | 07:11 | actually deliver the same amount of
detonative charge or you'll kill people.
| | 07:16 | So we had to get this stuff,
black powder which they don't use.
| | 07:20 | There is no military function for it anymore.
| | 07:22 | It's like what they used in muskets.
| | 07:24 | So it doesn't exist in the Middle East
because you can't really kill people with it.
| | 07:27 | So we were trying to find that and
literally made some of our explosives by
| | 07:32 | grinding up Chinese firecrackers, with
this little assembly line, which we would
| | 07:37 | buy the hundred pound and grind them
up and get little bits of black powder.
| | 07:42 | So the logistical aspects of
shooting in Jordan were tough too.
| | 07:45 | Patrick Goldstein: But Morocco
or the other obvious alternatives?
| | 07:51 | Mark Boal: We went to
Morocco and it didn't work.
| | 07:55 | That's where mostly basically if you
shoot a movie about the Middle East, you go
| | 07:58 | to Morocco and Ridley Scott shot there a lot and
so there is a tremendous film infrastructure there.
| | 08:03 | They are very professional and there
is like two-day level crews and it's
| | 08:05 | all bop, bop, bop.
| | 08:07 | You go and you sign on the dotted
line and they take care of everything.
| | 08:09 | The two problems with that is,
is one it wasn't the Middle East.
| | 08:13 | It's North Africa and it didn't really
dawn us originally because we did look at
| | 08:19 | Morocco, but as we did more research,
we realized that for a resident of the
| | 08:23 | Middle East, for anyone that actually
lives in that part of the world, to see
| | 08:28 | Morocco and Moroccans portrayed as
Iraqis, for example, is like a huge insult.
| | 08:34 | It would be the equivalent of having Italians
playing Native Americans in the early days of Westerns.
| | 08:41 | It's just wrong.
| | 08:43 | They don't look the same,
they don't speak the same.
| | 08:47 | There is nothing really
similar in their architecture.
| | 08:49 | So aesthetically, it was wrong, and
probably as importantly, economically,
| | 08:55 | we couldn't afford it.
| | 08:57 | It was just too expensive.
| | 08:58 | So we had to find a place where the
dollar would really go far, and part of the
| | 09:02 | advantage of them not having a film
infrastructure is they didn't really know
| | 09:04 | how to price things.
| | 09:06 | And so they would say, like I don't know.
| | 09:07 | How much is this location,
rental fee for the street?
| | 09:11 | How do you guys charge for that?
| | 09:13 | And they'd be like, "we've never had our
location rental fee," and I'd be like "good!"
| | 09:18 | "Usually, customarily, it's free."
| | 09:23 | That was the advantage of
shooting in their country.
| | 09:26 | Patrick Goldstein: You had I think of all the
movies represented up here, you had the tightest budget.
| | 09:32 | Jon Landau: No, no, we did.
| | 09:33 | (Laughter.)
| | 09:37 | Patrick Goldstein: You
knew I had a joke coming in.
| | 09:39 | You are just were going to beat me to it.
| | 09:43 | And I was going to ask
some other people to jump in.
| | 09:46 | Ivan, you certainly, you
didn't have an unlimited budget.
| | 09:51 | Lori, you had to work within your means.
| | 09:53 | I was going to leave Jon out of this.
| | 09:55 | Mark Boal: Yeah, this is something Jon
should not be allowed to address, by the way.
| | 09:58 | Patrick Goldstein: But I guess my question is,
from the producer's standpoint, how did the lack of
| | 10:04 | resources, lack of financial
resources, sometimes inspire ingenuity?
| | 10:08 | Mark Boal: Well, I don't want to hog it.
| | 10:11 | I mean we had no money.
| | 10:12 | So it was just a simple thing that we
just got used to and I mean we had
| | 10:17 | $11 million, which is not no money.
| | 10:18 | It's a lot of money, but for a war
movie, it was not very much money.
| | 10:22 | And that financier, I kept going
back to him and saying like you know,
| | 10:27 | we talked about helicopters.
| | 10:28 | We can get you the helicopters,
probably just another $80,000 and he would just
| | 10:32 | say, not one penny more, not one
penny more, not one penny more.
| | 10:34 | So it was really clear pretty early on
that it was what it was and we had to
| | 10:39 | figure it out how to work within those
means and you re-jig things on the fly a
| | 10:46 | lot times and you make it
work because "not one penny more."
| | 10:50 | He was really clear about that.
| | 10:51 | Patrick Goldstein: Lori, working on
Invictus, did you have some of those issues too?
| | 10:57 | Lori McCreary: Well yeah,
economical is a mild word.
| | 11:00 | We had 55 days to shoot our film, big
rugby film in South Africa, and he shot
| | 11:06 | it in 49 days.
| | 11:07 | The first day we shot Days 1 and 2.
| | 11:09 | So Day 1 we were ahead a day.
| | 11:12 | And this was, if you see in the movie,
the big scene where Mandela comes in and
| | 11:16 | changes the mind of the
National Sports Committee to revote.
| | 11:20 | That whole thing was shot in one day.
| | 11:22 | It was an 11-hour a day, which was
the longest day we had of the 49 days.
| | 11:31 | Go figure.
| | 11:32 | The thing that I found most
interesting was that most of the actors when
| | 11:39 | they came on set, I mean except Matt and
Morgan, we had 63 of the 70 were South Africans.
| | 11:46 | So they never met Mr. Eastwood
before, and they came on very nervous.
| | 11:50 | And they would go and they say what do I
do, will you introduce me to him and
| | 11:52 | he always like to just meet
them as they came on set.
| | 11:54 | So they would come on set quite nervous,
go on to do their scene and oftentimes,
| | 12:00 | Clint would say, okay, we are going to rehearse.
| | 12:02 | And he would do this, which was
the sign for his guys to roll.
| | 12:05 | He uses the same really crack team.
| | 12:08 | And they'd rehearse and he would say,
okay, we're moving on and the actors would
| | 12:11 | be like, wait a minute, but he got the
most spontaneous interesting performances
| | 12:16 | out of these people because they
hadn't yet gotten that whatever some actors
| | 12:20 | have a tendency to get when
they are uptight and nervous.
| | 12:23 | And throughout the film, the actors
started relaxing, the ones that were on this.
| | 12:28 | They would come in just feeling, he has
this way about him of making his actors
| | 12:34 | feel so comfortable that they will go on
and in the first take get whatever they need,
| | 12:39 | even if they're playing
across from Morgan Freeman or Matt Damon.
| | 12:44 | I found the hardest thing with Clint
was getting them to actually change
| | 12:48 | something in the script.
| | 12:49 | We had some historical inaccuracies
that I needed, and really needed to change.
| | 12:53 | We had requests from Mandela
and different people in the film.
| | 12:57 | That was probably the thing that was
hardest with me working directly with Clint
| | 13:01 | because everyone let me
make those requests from him.
| | 13:06 | So it was a remarkable experience and
we went in no earlier, except a couple of days,
| | 13:12 | no earlier than 10:00 AM and our
biggest question was do we wrap and then
| | 13:17 | eat or do we eat and then call wrap? Seriously.
| | 13:21 | And he shot a good movie.
| | 13:26 | Jonas Rivera: First of all, I love hearing
all this because for me it's fun to hear sort of
| | 13:31 | this bizarro parallel
| | 13:33 | of everything that happens in animation.
| | 13:35 | I feel very comfortable that it happens
in live-action as well, especially Hurt Locker.
| | 13:39 | Boy, that's exactly what it's
like working at Pixar every day.
| | 13:42 | (Laughter.)
| | 13:44 | Mark Boal: I know, I have heard
that actually. It was up here --
| | 13:46 | Jonas Rivera: It was almost eerie.
| | 13:52 | Sort of at Pixar, it's
almost like the old studio system.
| | 13:55 | The way we've had people. Up is our tenth film.
| | 13:58 | So we've had animators and directors
of photography and technical directors
| | 14:03 | that have been there for these 15-20
years doing what they do and really
| | 14:07 | getting really good at it.
| | 14:08 | And our sort of metric of
budget is person weeks.
| | 14:11 | I know I've got 60 animators
that are going to tackle this thing.
| | 14:15 | Instead of a 59 day shoot, I've got a
12 month cycle to animate this film and
| | 14:21 | your top animator is going to
give you four seconds at best a week.
| | 14:25 | So you are trying to divide this
massive puzzle up and my job is sort of
| | 14:31 | thinking about the budget is to help
Pete Docter, the director, to kind of save
| | 14:34 | him from himself and making the
right decision at the right time.
| | 14:37 | Because I know 11 months from now, Pete,
we are going to be animating the emotional
| | 14:42 | climax of Carl, the old guy, closing this book.
| | 14:44 | And that's when I'll fail if that's when I
tell you I am out of time. We are out of time.
| | 14:49 | So I am trying to move these puzzle
pieces around appropriately and making a
| | 14:53 | movie in animation is sort of
like making it in slow motion.
| | 14:56 | I mean you can imagine if you- and Jon,
I know you deal with this- and it's like
| | 14:59 | if you could stop the frame and every
frame and go reach your hand in and move
| | 15:03 | every single thing, you would.
| | 15:06 | And so my job is to go, are you sure?
| | 15:09 | That fold looks nice. Can we focus on this?
| | 15:13 | I told Pete Docter once that think of
me like as a producer as the "you are here"
| | 15:19 | arrow on the map in the massive national
park and I just got to make sure we get
| | 15:24 | to the other side before 8 shots.
| | 15:27 | So there is a lot of
balancing of priorities and so forth.
| | 15:29 | But I love, instead of like set
locations and location scouts, we have these
| | 15:34 | virtual set locations and location scouts.
| | 15:37 | We will go out and do research but
it's really fun when you get so
| | 15:42 | ingrained, because you work on these
things, we worked on Up for five years.
| | 15:45 | You start talking like it's
real and it gets almost creepy.
| | 15:48 | Pete would say, oh god, if we could
just go into the kitchen and get that shot.
| | 15:54 | Well, we could. But it is not real,
but we could move the camera there.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting the tone| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:07 | Patrick Goldstein: Ivan, Up in the Air
has such a wonderful what I would call tone.
| | 00:11 | It's comedic, but it has an air of
melancholy to it as well and was that always
| | 00:18 | there in the script or did
that emerge during filming?
| | 00:22 | Ivan Reitman: Well, that was the
remarkable thing about Jason's screenplay.
| | 00:26 | It really was there, the kind of
conflict between the humor and the emotionality
| | 00:31 | of the truth of the sort of
very sad situation actually.
| | 00:36 | I have to commend Jason because
really from the first day of shooting, he was
| | 00:41 | able to walk this very careful line of
making the funny scenes truly funny,
| | 00:49 | and making the journey much easier to take.
| | 00:57 | One of the things I always drummed into
him as his dad making comedy movies was,
| | 01:02 | why comedies are so tough is that you
really have to get the tone just right.
| | 01:06 | If you step over and they're too
silly or too stupid, even things that are
| | 01:10 | funny cease to be funny.
| | 01:13 | It's what's tricky on the set. You have
heard this stuff so often, that there is
| | 01:18 | a tendency especially if you're
starting out to try to push for more and that
| | 01:24 | pushing for more actually robs
the comedic moments of their comedy.
| | 01:33 | Whatever lesson he learned from hanging
out on my sets over the years, really he
| | 01:39 | seems to be a master of
tone at a very young age.
| | 01:43 | I think frankly I don't know how he does it.
| | 01:49 | It's really- it's great.
| | 01:52 | Jon Landau: Good upbringing.
| | 01:55 | Patrick Goldstein: Jonas-
| | 01:56 | In the Pixar films, certainly with Up,
| | 02:00 | again, there is a remarkably
consistent tone and I'm so I guess willfully
| | 02:06 | ignorant about the process of animated films.
| | 02:08 | Does that come during when the voice
actors come in? Do you know it then,
| | 02:12 | do know it in the script phase?
| | 02:14 | Jonas Rivera: You hope you identify it in
the script phase and we certainly with Up,
| | 02:20 | Pete Docter put together not
just a script but a story reel.
| | 02:25 | We could see the kind of the tone,
especially in the beginning of the film which
| | 02:30 | there is very little dialogue.
| | 02:31 | He really wanted this kind of almost
Frank Capra setup and this silent
| | 02:36 | montage and then, where
the story actually begins.
| | 02:38 | He kept saying he wanted this to feel like
one of the older films, like an old movie.
| | 02:44 | He tells I want to almost make a
throwback. And we thought what is that?
| | 02:48 | We looked a lot of old movies, and we looked
at lot of old even animation, the old Disney's.
| | 02:52 | The 30s pre-war films and there is a
certain cadence that takes their time, which
| | 02:58 | is very hard to do and rare in animation.
| | 03:01 | Animation is all about the frame range
and what's the cut and get to it and the
| | 03:04 | gag and we want it to breathe.
| | 03:08 | So it was sort of the goal.
| | 03:10 | There is one thing that happened and we
talked about this, when I was a kid,
| | 03:16 | my dad, I remember, I will never forget,
took me see Raiders of the Lost Art, which
| | 03:18 | is the opposite of slow and tone,
| | 03:20 | but it does play like an old movie in a way.
| | 03:24 | When we were there, I'll never forget this,
my dad said, oh, we have to take Pop to
| | 03:28 | comes to see this, his dad, and that
was such a cool thing and we talked about
| | 03:32 | this a lot, like we want to make a
movie that you would take your grandparents
| | 03:37 | to go see, like it should feel of
that era, but be now which is a
| | 03:42 | tall order and it was
sort of this ethereal thing.
| | 03:45 | But yeah, there was the Pete
Docter, he is the sweetest...
| | 03:50 | These films to some degree are self
portraits of the director I think.
| | 03:54 | They really are who these people are and
Up is no different and Pete just brings
| | 03:58 | his gentle soft touch to it.
| | 04:00 | He is just really this kind of,
he can't fake it and he really is like both
| | 04:03 | a 10 year old kid and an
old man at the same time.
| | 04:06 | So I don't know my job was to try to
help preserve that through the minute
| | 04:10 | detail of animating a shot frame
by a frame and with Pete's direction,
| | 04:14 | I think we landed it there.
| | 04:15 | Patrick Goldstein: Lawrence, the other movie that
I would think where the tone could have, one like
| | 04:23 | little moment, could have
really sent it awry is Bastards.
| | 04:30 | Are you able to feel it when you're in
the room, meaning on the set and when it's
| | 04:36 | working, when it's not and is there
anything, again, you're able to do in a
| | 04:40 | constructive way, to note when it
might have gone little over the top?
| | 04:46 | Lawrence Bender: It's interesting because listening
to everyone talk there are a couple of things leading
| | 04:50 | up to that. In terms of the research
and then the script and then the tone.
| | 04:55 | Quentin had been working on this for ten
years, had done an enormous amount of research.
| | 05:01 | He could be like many professorships
on this period of World War II and Nazi-
| | 05:07 | occupied France, it's extraordinary.
| | 05:09 | We went to the Yad Vashem in Tel Aviv.
He kind of knew everything that was in
| | 05:14 | that building, it was pretty amazing.
| | 05:17 | Then after all this research, he throws
it all the way and then just and as if
| | 05:24 | there is no resources, and then
it unconsciously comes into his head.
| | 05:32 | But then when we're shooting,
well, when he finished the script,
| | 05:40 | that is the script.
| | 05:41 | That's the Bible, that's God, that's our
church and it's rare that anyone really
| | 05:47 | wants to change it and every once in a
while someone will have suggestion, but
| | 05:52 | certainly there is no ad-libbing
because you're lazy, because you can't
| | 05:56 | remember the dialogue.
| | 06:00 | Not to say he is not up for suggestions,
not at all, but it's one of his
| | 06:05 | wonderful things is the dialogue that
he has written is poetry, it's not poetry,
| | 06:09 | it's rap, it's not rap,
it's music, it's not music.
| | 06:11 | It's this amazing thing that he does,
which takes you to the tone which is, you know,
| | 06:20 | he is one of those guys that--
everyone on this panel is great-- have these
| | 06:25 | wonderful directors.
| | 06:26 | He is like the only guy that when you
see that movie, you know it's a Tarantino movie.
| | 06:31 | It just is. It is a mixture of--
It's comedy but it's not a joke.
| | 06:38 | So I know I've been? (inaudible)
| | 06:40 | Because it's hard to know what's funny
and what's not funny really until you have an
| | 06:48 | audience and you're screening it. And
if even the people are laughing on the set,
| | 06:54 | it doesn't mean it's funny when you see it.
| | 06:58 | Some of the greatest moments in
cinema are when an actor wasn't funny on
| | 07:04 | the set or wasn't crying in the scene,
held it back and allowed the audience to
| | 07:09 | cry for that person.
| | 07:10 | So it is very tricky and it takes
the director to really understand that.
| | 07:17 | So with Quentin, he has that unique
kind of-- it's like I say it's not
| | 07:23 | sometimes-- by the way, always, not
always but there are many times where there
| | 07:27 | is a lot of humor on the
set and people are laughing.
| | 07:30 | There are many times when like
when Hitler walked on to his set.
| | 07:33 | Mark Boal: And he is always
good for a laugh, by the way.
| | 07:35 | You know what I mean?
| | 07:36 | (Laughter.)
| | 07:39 | A joke a minute!
| | 07:41 | Lawrence Bender: It was really bizarre when
Hitler walk down to the set and it was a bizarre
| | 07:46 | moment, because none of us had--
He was a wonderful actor, a well
| | 07:51 | known stage actor in Germany.
| | 07:53 | But we had not seen him in his full
makeup, the special effects makeup, and
| | 08:00 | he walked out and Quentin,
| | 08:02 | Quentin always refers to
everybody by their character name.
| | 08:04 | So to Brad, he doesn't
say hey Brad, he says Aldo.
| | 08:08 | Eli Roth, the Bear Jew, whatever and
everyone just walking on and so in walks
| | 08:14 | Hitler, and he goes, "Hello, mien Fuhrer."
| | 08:20 | (Laughter.)
| | 08:21 | When he walked on, everyones
on the set tweaking lights and doing
| | 08:26 | all the things and everyone just stops.
| | 08:28 | It was one of those days where there
was very little said on that setting, and
| | 08:32 | just a small digression.
| | 08:34 | I felt sorry for Hitler during
lunch. No one was sitting with him.
| | 08:38 | (Laughter.)
| | 08:40 | He was like, he was sitting by himself.
| | 08:45 | I had spent a bunch of time in rehearsal and--
| | 08:48 | Patrick Goldstien: And being a nice Jewish boy.
| | 08:50 | (Laughter.)
| | 08:51 | Lawrence Bender: Having some of my relatives
massacred in the Holocaust I felt there was my duty
| | 08:55 | to talk to Hitler.
| | 08:58 | So I went over and it was really odd
because I sat down next to this wonderful man.
| | 09:02 | I found myself making the
weirdest small talk with him.
| | 09:06 | It was very awkward and I eventually
said well, uh, have a nice lunch and I got up
| | 09:11 | and laughed because I felt so bad,
because I was like- I just never felt
| | 09:16 | such so awkward.
| | 09:18 | That was a digression, sorry.
| | 09:20 | But in terms of going back to tone,
there is some things in the movie like I
| | 09:25 | was saying, Quentin-- I was thinking to myself.
I did't actually say it to him. I didn't want to
| | 09:28 | break his creative flow.
| | 09:31 | I was thinking I don't know if that works.
| | 09:32 | Every time I had that feeling,
| | 09:36 | it was wrong and some of the nicest,
funniest stuff in the movie were things
| | 09:41 | like I don't know about that.
| | 09:44 | He has this uncanny feeling.
| | 09:46 | It was just extraordinary to--
And he loves actors, and actors love him.
| | 09:52 | It's like his church are his actors
in a sense because he feels like,
| | 09:59 | like he creates these characters on
the script and he really lets these
| | 10:03 | characters write the movie.
| | 10:05 | It is really what he does.
| | 10:08 | He didn't set out to write a movie
where Hitler, I'm sure everyone has seen
| | 10:11 | the movie, I won't give up the
end, but you know where he kills Hitler.
| | 10:15 | He didn't start out that way but his
characters went out in the direction.
| | 10:18 | Same with Reservoir Dogs.
| | 10:20 | He didn't start out when they were all going
to know what's going to happen like that. So...
| | 10:27 | Patrick Goldstein: Ivan, I want to ask one
other question. There is something, one of the
| | 10:31 | really striking things in Up in the
Air is the appearance of the real people
| | 10:37 | telling their stories.
| | 10:39 | How they reacted to being fired.
It's something that really everyone I think
| | 10:44 | has really remarked on
how that grounds the movie.
| | 10:48 | Where did that come from
and how was that to execute?
| | 10:51 | Ivan Reitman: Well they weren't there in the
original, in that screenplay that Jason first
| | 10:55 | turned in and just as when we were
getting the okay, the bottom fell out of the
| | 11:01 | market, everything changed in our economy.
| | 11:07 | This is I guess where good
producerial influence comes. I said, we can't
| | 11:11 | ignore that. You can't just tell
exactly the same story today that you
| | 11:17 | could even two months ago.
| | 11:20 | I think you have to pay attention to it.
| | 11:21 | He said, yeah, I know but this is
really all about these characters, and I could
| | 11:27 | tell he was thinking about them and trying
to find a solution without losing this
| | 11:32 | kind of careful tone that was
constructed between the drama of this sort of
| | 11:40 | lonely man, really lonely man's life.
| | 11:46 | He suddenly came to me one day and
he said, I think I know what to do.
| | 11:49 | Because there were number of scenes where
this character was firing people but they
| | 11:54 | were all scenes that Jason had written.
| | 11:56 | And they're mostly comedic scenes.
| | 11:57 | They're actually very strangely funny
and ironic but set against the kind of
| | 12:05 | economy of let's say three years ago.
| | 12:08 | He said, I'm thinking I should go
interview a number of people that have actually
| | 12:15 | being fired, who just lost their jobs.
| | 12:17 | I'm going to film them and see what happens.
| | 12:21 | This thing-- that sort of initial idea
sort of evolved and by the time he got to
| | 12:28 | Detroit for his preproduction,
| | 12:30 | he put an ad in the newspaper and
said anybody, I'm going to do a--
| | 12:35 | I think he said he was doing a
documentary on unemployment and job loss and
| | 12:43 | if anybody wants to come in and talk
about it, so they got hundreds of applications.
| | 12:48 | I think he finally filmed about 60 interviews.
| | 12:52 | First of all, the people, Jason
would ask them like questions about their
| | 12:56 | real-life and then after about ten
minutes, he said look, I want you to
| | 13:01 | relive that moment.
| | 13:02 | This gentleman here is going to play
| | 13:04 | the HR guy who was firing you
and just save whatever you happened to say
| | 13:09 | the day you actually got fired or what
you'd hope you had said or wished you had
| | 13:14 | said and just be as real as you were at that
time and just go and let's see what happens.
| | 13:20 | I wasn't there for any of that
shooting but I did see all the dailies,
| | 13:26 | all the footage that was the result of it.
| | 13:29 | You could see them immediately go.
| | 13:30 | They were like the best actors who use
sense memory to go back to a real situation.
| | 13:37 | It was so raw in their lives.
| | 13:39 | It was very natural for them to go
there and it's very, very effective and
| | 13:45 | it grounds the movie in a reality and a weight.
| | 13:50 | Patrick Goldstein: In terms of the story sense
of things, Jonas, a lot of times these wonderful,
| | 13:59 | immaculately beautifully constructed
movies, it turns out that in the beginning
| | 14:04 | the movie, the story and the script is
gone in an entirely wrong direction and
| | 14:08 | at some point they just stop, throw
it out, or throw it out a lot of the
| | 14:12 | ingredients and start new.
| | 14:15 | How much of that happened with your film and
again, what's your role in those story sessions?
| | 14:21 | Jonas Rivera: Yeah. Well, it's true.
| | 14:23 | We spent a lot of time, five years in
production on this thing and three of
| | 14:26 | those years were just in the story room.
| | 14:28 | Storyboarding the whole thing, cutting it,
looking at on story reel, throwing it away.
| | 14:33 | We made the movie probably 15 times
and 13 of them it was a really bad movie.
| | 14:37 | In case of Up, it was no different.
| | 14:39 | We started off, it was this really
great, I thought when Pete pitch it to me,
| | 14:44 | it was one of the most magical things I'll
remember in my career is this because it
| | 14:48 | was such a bizarre premise.
| | 14:51 | That's one of things that made it a tall
order I think even for us in our studio
| | 14:55 | to get a green light, if you will,
Because I joke now, if you think about
| | 15:01 | it as a description, it actually sounds awful.
| | 15:03 | It's like okay, it's a movie about an
old man and his wife and they can't have
| | 15:08 | kids and they're going to lose the house
and when then she dies, it's going to be great.
| | 15:13 | It will be really good.
| | 15:15 | (Laughter.)
| | 15:16 | But that's just a
setup until the story actually begins.
| | 15:20 | What I do is I nurtured along,
I remind Pete constantly like how this felt
| | 15:25 | when you first told me.
| | 15:27 | When he first pitched me the movie, and
he kind of went into that whole setup of them
| | 15:32 | as kids and the montage of their life
and her, us losing Ellie and then Carl
| | 15:38 | walking home alone with his balloons
and he said that's just that's where
| | 15:42 | the story begins.
| | 15:43 | And I just about died.
| | 15:45 | This is phenomenal and then the whole
house going up, it just had this magic to it.
| | 15:49 | I just would remind of him of that day
because when he pitched it to me,
| | 15:52 | I came out of the conference room where
we went and I called my wife and I say,
| | 15:55 | I love you.
| | 15:56 | It just made me like crave my family
and that's the theme of the picture.
| | 16:02 | So my job was this as a kind of a
compass to try to keep it back to that.
| | 16:05 | I was wrong a few times.
| | 16:06 | There was a whole different end of
the movie that I thought I swore I would
| | 16:10 | have stuck my career on this, this is the
coolest thing. And it was all about, I don't know if
| | 16:14 | you've seen it, but Muntz, the old guy
who was the explorer, had actually found the
| | 16:19 | fountain of youth up there.
| | 16:20 | That's what they were after.
| | 16:21 | They were out there and this is a
great idea. I thought why don't we board
| | 16:24 | the whole thing out and the bird actually
laid the egg, that shell was the fountain youth
| | 16:29 | and a hundred years had gone by and
this guy from the twenties had not aged.
| | 16:32 | I swore it was the greatest thing
and we boarded the whole thing out.
| | 16:36 | I thought it was wonderful.
| | 16:37 | We watched it, and even Lasseter
liked it and Pete went away and
| | 16:41 | two days later he came back
and he said, it's wrong.
| | 16:43 | It's shifting too much on the villain
and you couldn't see that until we have
| | 16:46 | the whole thing boarded out.
| | 16:48 | So even some of the things we had set
up for that third actor were wrong and like a
| | 16:51 | house of cards it fell over.
| | 16:53 | We went back to it and rebuilt the whole
thing up with the kind of that original
| | 16:56 | premise and kept it about Carl.
| | 16:58 | For us, and I am sure there
is problems in every picture,
| | 17:00 | it's like keeping it about your main
character and keeping that narrative going
| | 17:04 | forward in that character's shoes.
| | 17:05 | When there's so much entertainment value
in all the other ancillary characters
| | 17:09 | that come along,
that seems to be the real trick.
| | 17:13 | In animation, it's probably no different
but we just watch that on our story reels.
| | 17:17 | And we'll actually get Brad Bird and John
Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Brenda Chapman,
| | 17:21 | all the directors, all the
producers of Pixar in a room.
| | 17:24 | We'll screen it and it's some of those
most awful meetings I've ever been in
| | 17:28 | because we'll just have it out.
| | 17:30 | Brad Bird will get up and
make no qualms about going
| | 17:32 | "That's horrible! You guys had it better here."
| | 17:35 | Thanks Brad. You're taking your notes
and we will do that for each other's
| | 17:38 | pictures until we feel we've
got them in a place to make them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Social and political considerations| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:07 | Patrick Goldstein: Lori, your film,
Invictus, is not just based on real life events.
| | 00:14 | You shot the movie in South Africa.
| | 00:16 | I presume that you used a lot of the
real life locations, where the events
| | 00:22 | actually happened, and it's a story that's
incredibly central to the history of modern South Africa.
| | 00:31 | So first up, the logistics.
| | 00:33 | Did the script have to be vetted by
the Mandela family, by the current
| | 00:37 | government, by a million people?
| | 00:39 | And how did you deal with that?
| | 00:40 | Lori McCreary: Yes, many people, including all
those you mentioned, and the current government,
| | 00:45 | which was changing to a new
government during our shooting.
| | 00:48 | So that was a little bit interesting.
| | 00:49 | Patrick Goldstein: So
both the outgoing and the--
| | 00:51 | Lori McCreary: Yeah, both the old
and the new, and Zuma, the new guy.
| | 00:56 | We were shooting in the Union buildings,
which no one had ever gotten permission to use.
| | 01:00 | It's basically the equivalent of our White
House, and it was right during the regime change.
| | 01:05 | So we didn't really know until about
three days before that we finally got
| | 01:09 | permission, after five months of
literally going in and asking for
| | 01:12 | permission, parading Mr. Eastwood and
Morgan and having them say no for five months.
| | 01:19 | I made a film in 1992 about South Africa,
in Zimbabwe, that Morgan Freeman directed.
| | 01:26 | It was my first movie as a producer.
| | 01:29 | And most of our crew-- It was about
South Africa, it was an anti-apartheid film,
| | 01:33 | and so I had longstanding contacts with
the ANC, who is the political party in power.
| | 01:40 | And so that allowed a little bit of history.
| | 01:43 | I had been there before.
| | 01:44 | I made a movie that was against apartheid,
so that helped me in getting in there now.
| | 01:50 | But also, I have longstanding relationships.
| | 01:52 | The crews in South Africa have been
working for years and years and years in a
| | 01:57 | very small community and
they all know each other.
| | 01:59 | Not only do they know each other,
they have worked in almost every department.
| | 02:03 | Sometimes a grip had
worked in the hair department.
| | 02:06 | And sometimes the guys on
set had worked in production.
| | 02:09 | And they literally, because it was such
a small film industry, knew almost what
| | 02:14 | every other job did, not only knew what
they did, but supported each other and
| | 02:19 | knew how hard their jobs were.
| | 02:20 | So we have this.
| | 02:21 | Of 240 crew members, 202 were South Africans.
| | 02:25 | Not only had they worked together, they
lived through one of the most important
| | 02:28 | moments they would say in
the history of their country.
| | 02:32 | And so for them it was really important.
| | 02:35 | And when we were interviewing even like
the 3rd ADs, they would talk about where
| | 02:39 | they were when the 1995 World Cup was played.
| | 02:42 | Everyone, to a person, would get teary-
eyed and talk about what it meant to them
| | 02:46 | and how they are really happy that
they were going to be reminded of the
| | 02:50 | reconciliation that the
country still really needs.
| | 02:54 | The hard part about it is everyone
remembered where they were and everyone
| | 02:58 | thought they knew what
everyone else was doing at the time.
| | 03:01 | So the white Afrikaners couldn't
imagine that Mandela was going through such
| | 03:06 | angst with his own people during this time.
| | 03:10 | And the black bodyguards and everything said,
no, no, no, that's not what was going on.
| | 03:14 | This is what was really going on.
| | 03:15 | I had to serve many masters.
| | 03:18 | And this was all behind the scenes, so
that Clint and Morgan and Matt and all
| | 03:22 | these guys wouldn't have to deal with it.
| | 03:24 | So I did a lot of meeting with people
who had never read scripts before,
| | 03:29 | the Mandela Foundation being one.
| | 03:30 | If you haven't read a script before,
you don't really know how to read a script.
| | 03:33 | And so I sat many, many hours with
many of the people that we portrayed.
| | 03:39 | Warner Bros. didn't make us or mandate
that we got rights from everyone that we
| | 03:46 | portrayed, but we wanted to get rights.
| | 03:49 | One, because we could give them a small payment.
| | 03:51 | And two, because I wanted their support.
| | 03:53 | And so we had a laundry list of
everyone that you saw that was portrayed.
| | 03:57 | That was real, we got their rights.
| | 04:00 | And it took quite a bit of time to
explain to them that when it said "crazy
| | 04:05 | drunken white Afrikaners throwing
things at Mandela," that it wasn't going to be
| | 04:09 | every single white guy in the
stands throwing something at Mr. Mandela,
| | 04:13 | because the Rugby
Union had a big problem with that.
| | 04:16 | So that was a lot of my--
| | 04:17 | Jon Landau: I have heard stories about
when you screened the movie for the Mandelas.
| | 04:20 | I thought it might be interesting to share that.
| | 04:23 | Lori McCreary: Zindzi Mandela, the daughter, she is the
most outspoken, if you guys follow South African press.
| | 04:31 | She has had a lot of problems with her father
in the past, but has kind of made up with him.
| | 04:35 | And we took a little bit of
liberty during the creation of the film.
| | 04:39 | Her scene is really not accurate in
terms of the time frame it took place in, so
| | 04:43 | she was really intent on us changing it.
| | 04:46 | So we rewrote the scene, and on
the day that I finally convinced Mr. Eastwood
| | 04:51 | to change the scene to the new scene,
the actress wasn't able to really
| | 04:57 | realize the scene in the
way that it should have been.
| | 04:59 | And so Clint asked her to do the
original scene, and she did it perfectly,
| | 05:02 | because she had months
and months to practice it.
| | 05:04 | And I had to tell Zindzi that we didn't
have the new scene, and she had already
| | 05:10 | signed the release form, and
I hadn't sent it yet to Warner Bros.
| | 05:14 | So long story short, sitting at the
premiere in Los Angeles, the opening
| | 05:21 | premiere of the film is Zindzi Mandela
in front of me, and it's the first time
| | 05:26 | she is going to see the movie.
| | 05:27 | And she wasn't there when we shot that
scene, and I know it's not the scene that
| | 05:30 | she likes, because she read the
scene and said we have to change it.
| | 05:33 | And I literally sat there just watching her
the whole time, waiting for her either to--.
| | 05:38 | Now, I knew we weren't going to be in
trouble if she had problems with it legally.
| | 05:42 | I was just going to have heart
problems if she didn't like it.
| | 05:46 | And I promise you, I mean, every
movement, she grabbed her son, and when she
| | 05:51 | turned around at the end
of the money, she hugged me.
| | 05:53 | And I thought, okay,
I hope this is a good sign.
| | 05:55 | She is not squeezing too tight.
| | 05:58 | And she said, thank you for
letting the world know who my father is.
| | 06:02 | So that was a big relief
for me, a really big relief.
| | 06:05 | Patrick Goldstein: Everyone
remembers history in their own special way.
| | 06:10 | So what was the reaction in the
political circles in South Africa?
| | 06:19 | I have seen documentaries.
| | 06:21 | I know you stayed very close to the
story, but did people still see it that way
| | 06:26 | when they saw the dramatization of it?
| | 06:28 | Lori McCreary: I think that probably the
most criticism we had, and I can understand why,
| | 06:32 | is that we had to really take a
black and white, for lack of a better word,
| | 06:37 | look at the situation and not every
Springbok, not all of the national team, was
| | 06:42 | as racist as probably
they came across on the film.
| | 06:45 | They actually, for those of you who have seen
the movie, they learned the national anthem.
| | 06:48 | They hired a coach to
teach them the national anthem.
| | 06:51 | They were actually quite
interested in learning the Xhosa, which is a
| | 06:53 | very difficult language.
| | 06:54 | But for dramatization and for the film,
we really needed, especially for some of
| | 06:59 | the world that didn't really know how
racially divided South Africa was at the time,
| | 07:03 | we really needed to for
dramatic reason show them that way.
| | 07:06 | But everyone to a person, I had most
of the Springboks at the-- We did four
| | 07:11 | screenings in South Africa, and to a man,
every single person came up to me with
| | 07:15 | tears in their eyes, really happy that we had.
| | 07:17 | Patrick Goldstein: And Lawrence, I am curious,
what was the reaction to 'Basterds,' both in
| | 07:25 | Germany, and then I know you
went with the film to Israel?
| | 07:28 | What did they think of its
portrayal of the ultimate tough Jews?
| | 07:32 | Lawrence Bender: You mention those, those
are the two most cathartic screenings we had.
| | 07:39 | We had great screenings all over the world.
| | 07:42 | But in Berlin and Tel Aviv
were these just emotional moments.
| | 07:49 | Berlin was interesting.
| | 07:50 | Well, of course we shot there.
| | 07:52 | It's their history.
| | 07:54 | A lot of their language is in the movie.
| | 07:56 | The actors from their country, so
there was a ownership I think they felt.
| | 08:00 | It was the second biggest territory
in the world, in terms of box office.
| | 08:05 | So they loved the movie.
| | 08:07 | I guess Germans are always the butt
end of the jokes, or they are the bad
| | 08:12 | guys in World War II movies,
so they are used to it.
| | 08:14 | But I think in this movie, there is a feeling,
one, that they could laugh with the movie.
| | 08:21 | And two, at this point-- It was interesting.
| | 08:25 | My parents had never been to
German. They came to visit.
| | 08:28 | Eli Roth's parents had never been to Germany.
| | 08:29 | They came to visit.
| | 08:31 | People who are Jewish, from another
generation, tend not to go to Germany,
| | 08:35 | because they grew up with this.
| | 08:38 | But what's interesting is we spent
seven months there, and people of our
| | 08:43 | generation and younger generations kind
of hate Hitler as much as the Jews do,
| | 08:49 | in a sense, because Hitler destroyed
their country, and they have grown up
| | 08:53 | dealing every year, and rightly so,
they are taught everything that happened.
| | 08:57 | So this is a weight that kids, or not
kids, young people, people in their 20s
| | 09:01 | and 30s have dealt with their whole life.
| | 09:05 | So they loved what happened in the movie.
| | 09:09 | And in Tel Aviv, it was really extraordinary.
| | 09:13 | The opening sequence of
course was even more harrowing.
| | 09:17 | Everyone in that audience had a family
member that was underneath those floorboards.
| | 09:22 | But at the end of the movie, when
Shosanna is on the screen and she says,
| | 09:25 | "This is the face of Jewish revenge," and
like spontaneous applause erupted in the theater.
| | 09:32 | And I turned to Quentin and go, for
this moment is why we made the movie.
| | 09:38 | It was great.
| | 09:40 | So I was doing this screening at the
Jewish Theological Seminary in New York,
| | 09:45 | and my father was there.
| | 09:46 | My father is a psychoanalyst.
| | 09:50 | So we were talking about revenge and
the cathartic feeling of shooting Hitler
| | 09:54 | and all this kind of stuff.
| | 09:55 | And my dad-- and the unconscious desire of
having that revenge, and is revenge Jewish?
| | 10:01 | We were having this kind
of interesting conversation.
| | 10:03 | And then my dad stood up, and I was
very proud of him, and he said, being a
| | 10:10 | psychoanalyst, he says--
Because the movie was very successful.
| | 10:14 | It did $320 million worldwide.
| | 10:17 | And he says, it's not Jewish people
that have this unconscious desire to have revenge,
| | 10:23 | you don't do it because we are a civil society,
but the movie was able to release--
| | 10:28 | you were able to have this fantasy
of release, and non-Jews as well.
| | 10:33 | Obviously, you have seen in the box office.
| | 10:38 | But those two countries were
particularly-- that feeling you have at
| | 10:43 | a screening, that you just can't--
It's not just, oh, the movie is great and
| | 10:46 | everyone loves it, but there is
something much deeper that went on.
| | 10:48 | So there is one other quick story.
| | 10:50 | In Germany, I wasn't there,
but Daniel Bruhl told us a story.
| | 10:56 | He plays Zoller.
| | 10:57 | So there was a screening in one of
the not so good areas of Berlin, and
| | 11:03 | there was a couple of like neo-Nazi
skinheads that were in the audience and
| | 11:07 | started saying, in the movie theater, some
Hitler, Heil Hitler, just saying some bad stuff.
| | 11:16 | And normally the audiences in
Germany are pretty sedate and wouldn't say
| | 11:21 | anything, and also these guys are big
tough guys, and most people going to movie
| | 11:25 | theaters, they are not
going to get into a fight.
| | 11:27 | And everybody in the theater stood up
and told these guys to stand down, they are
| | 11:31 | going to call the police, which
rarely happens when these kind of incidents occur,
| | 11:36 | which was a very
heartening experience to hear about.
| | 11:41 | Patrick Goldstein: I guess my question to all of
you guys is, there is an age old-thing that people
| | 11:48 | ask, which is, can movies
change the way we see the world?
| | 11:53 | I would love to hear your thoughts
about that based on your films and other
| | 11:58 | films that you admire.
| | 11:59 | Do you think movies can actually
change the way we look at things?
| | 12:01 | Lori McCreary: Absolutely!
| | 12:04 | It's the reason that I love this business.
| | 12:10 | The first movie I made,
again, anti-apartheid movie.
| | 12:12 | I grew up in a family that wasn't that
progressive, small town California.
| | 12:18 | My dad used the N word more than I would like.
| | 12:22 | First screening of this anti-apartheid
movie in 1993, for my father, absolutely
| | 12:27 | 100% changed his outlook
on people of other races.
| | 12:31 | 100%. He has been a different man since then.
| | 12:35 | That to me was very personal, and I said,
that's the reason I made that movie.
| | 12:39 | I mean, Lawrence said he had the movement of,
oh, this is the reason we made the movie.
| | 12:42 | I thought that I was making Invictus
because I thought that it was, when we
| | 12:47 | were talking about it, it was right at
the time when our country was in a real
| | 12:52 | racially divided state, and 2006 is
when Fred Spector first sent us the proposal.
| | 12:58 | What I found out was it was
for a very different reason.
| | 13:01 | It was because South Africa needed to
be reminded that divisiveness doesn't work,
| | 13:06 | and reaching across a barrier
sometimes seems really difficult, but
| | 13:11 | it's as easy as pouring a cup of tea or
putting on a number 6 rugby jersey and
| | 13:17 | supporting your team.
| | 13:19 | I first met Nelson Mandela in 1993 and I
thought, if people could see that this is--
| | 13:25 | He wasn't a saint, but he had this
presence that I felt like I was the only
| | 13:29 | person in the room at that moment.
| | 13:32 | And it was my mission for many, many
years to try to figure out the right way to
| | 13:36 | get him on screen, where he wasn't a
saint, where he was someone that we could
| | 13:40 | all relate to and say, oh, he is a man.
| | 13:44 | He has men's problems, family problems, but
he did something that was incredibly great.
| | 13:50 | And it may have taken a lot of
political savvy, but the things that he did were
| | 13:55 | not so outside of the realm
of something all of us can do.
| | 13:59 | And my a-ha movement for this movie
was I had the incredible pleasure of
| | 14:04 | showing the film to Mr.
Mandela right before Christmas.
| | 14:07 | Morgan and I took it to him in South Africa.
| | 14:09 | He is 91, so he is frail, so we had
to wait for the right days to show him.
| | 14:13 | And we actually cut it into two parts
and showed him in two days, because he
| | 14:18 | doesn't sit well for long periods of time.
| | 14:20 | And the second day.
| | 14:24 | The first day he was a little tired.
| | 14:25 | The second day, on the second half
of the movie, he was so animated.
| | 14:30 | He grabbed Morgan and said, "I know this man,"
every time Morgan would come on screen.
| | 14:35 | And the smile on his face and the tears
in his eyes and again, just like with
| | 14:41 | Zindzi in front of me, I was sitting
like this the whole time watching him,
| | 14:43 | because I just-- It's a
moment I will never forget.
| | 14:48 | His aide told us the next week that he said to her,
"Zelda, maybe people will remember who I am."
| | 14:57 | I mean, who can imagine that someone
as great as a man like Nelson Mandela,
| | 15:00 | who did so much for his country and the world,
would be afraid that people would forget him?
| | 15:08 | And so I am really proud that we are
in an industry that can remind people.
| | 15:12 | (Applause.)
| | 15:18 | Ivan Reitman: For thousands of years, for
as long-- in recorded history, art has had
| | 15:24 | extraordinary power, all kinds of art.
| | 15:28 | It's why totalitarian governments go
to such trouble to try to control it.
| | 15:33 | The art of propaganda is remarkably
influential, and the art of the 21st
| | 15:40 | century is really, and the
20th century, has been film.
| | 15:44 | I think it's the most
powerful medium ever invented so far.
| | 15:49 | Because it manages to combine all the
historical great arts all in one, and when
| | 15:55 | used together effectively is
remarkably influential, remarkably powerful.
| | 16:02 | It moves us both emotionally and
intellectually, and can tell great truths
| | 16:11 | and great falsehoods.
| | 16:13 | That's why I am frankly,
personally, so proud of my son.
| | 16:18 | He has chosen in his three movies
really, really difficult, really difficult
| | 16:25 | stories, filled with difficult
characters, and managed to do things that are
| | 16:31 | very interesting, that really have
something to say about lots of stuff.
| | 16:37 | Jon Landau: I think it is powerful and
can change people, and I think we have a
| | 16:42 | responsibility as filmmakers to seek
out those type of movies and to make them.
| | 16:47 | And if we can make movies that have
themes that are bigger than their genres,
| | 16:52 | that's when emotion and
ideas resonate with audiences.
| | 16:56 | And I think that's what each of these
movies that are up here today really have.
| | 16:59 | They have themes behind the stories
they are telling, that are important, that
| | 17:03 | are relative, and are provocative.
| | 17:06 | Mark Boal: I don't know that there is
necessarily a direct cause and effect, but I think
| | 17:10 | there is a kind of consciousness
raising that film can do, because, Ivan is right,
| | 17:16 | because they are
the literature of our time.
| | 17:20 | I wrote plenty of articles about the war.
| | 17:22 | I spent six years writing about it, and
however many people read those articles,
| | 17:26 | they would probably fill this room.
| | 17:27 | Whereas the film has a much more global reach.
| | 17:31 | So I think, hard to quantify,
but clearly it can be important.
| | 17:36 | Patrick Goldstein: So listen.
| | 17:39 | Thank this panel for being here.
| | 17:41 | (Applause.)
| | 17:46 | I really appreciate it. Thank you.
| | 17:47 | Lawrence Bender: Thank you Patrick.
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