All language subtitles for 9 - Working with the Script

one of the key things

no matter how great a screenplay is

or matter what form it takes really

one has to remember that um

it's not the final project

the final product is the film

so the screenplay is a step to get to the film

and a lot of things could happen

between the two stages of development so to speak

terrific director

filmmaker named Alexander Mckendrick

said that scripts aren't written

they're rewritten

I remember once

I was trying to work with a really great writer

and it was a friend

a friend of mine warned me listen

this guy's great

he said but you only get one draft out of him um

for this writer

one draft in his job was done

uh but for me

it wasn't done

I mean working that way

I had to find uh

I have to find that for me

it's somewhat

it's really just the beginning

I have to go further with it

I mean I read the draft

and then you know

I read the draft

and I react to it

in terms of what I'm seeing in my mind

or it sparks something new for me

and we build on that

and we alter it

and then the next rep sparks something else

and so on and so on and we

it really is a process of discovery

but primarily

in the case of coming up with an idea

or having a theme that I want to explore

or working on an adaptation of a novel or um

a adaptation or should say non fiction material

in a sense particularly non fiction material

is just the beginning in terms of the script

especially if you don't have a structural concept

you know visual structural concept

and it's not on the page yet

it's almost a matter of of

taking it down and in a sense

and distilling the non fictional source material

until you get it to the size of a film in a way

I think it was the story of Sartre writing

Freud for John Euston

when he came in

the screenplay was 200 pages

and Houston

and this is paraphrasing

Houston supposedly said

what's really good

but it's too long

could you go back and see

yeah I can't

you said I think I can make it even clearer

and said good

go ahead and do that

it came back with the screenplay of 300 pages

and it was clearer

it's just that it still wasn't

it wasn't a picture that used to make at that time

under low circumstances

I love the richness of

elements that we put into the film based on research

um the rules of the world

of the picture reveal themselves as it

as you develop it

so your research into the way of life

or the period

or the yeah

particular customs and habits

of a particular part of the world are gonna

are gonna be something that

you must feel comfortable with something

that you couldn't

you couldn't rely on

something that gives you the bedrock of the picture

but again um

it's really important not to let the research

lead you away from

what sparked you making the film in the first place

when we were researching

oh The Age of Innocence

Gangs of New York

and silence um

the research LED us into

in a many fascinating directions

and at times

these directions

could have threatened to overwhelm the entire picture

but again you have to keep remembering okay

this is fascinating and rich

but it's leading me away from what drew me

and excited me to take certain things to

uh let's say

in the case of age of innocence which was um

fascinating

because we were able to go into the story

discover the actual families

that the families in the book were based upon

and then do some research to get a sense

of the type of paintings they had in their houses

um and then base our paintings on that

actual paintings

um but again

we didn't lock ourselves into anything

this was an enjoyment of the process

in a way um

accuracy is good

but it's it's a

well there's a

there's a famous quote there's a

there's nothing more boring than accuracy on a film

so one has to have a sense of how to use it and how to

transform it

you know and in the case of silence

for example

the research

was something that had done over period of years

cause I have to feel comfortable with

as much as possible with 17 century Japan

by the end of the

the film um

character Rodriguez is laid to rest

played by Andrew Garfield

and we had it worked out so that he's laid out

in his in his wooden coffin

and his wife is allowed to

see him for the last time etc

and during the

during the progress of the pre production

we Learned that the

it's a Buddhist ceremony

and he's not laid out

he's buried in a barrel they say

which changed the look of the shot of course

and also changed the

the staging of the film

and the same

because the way the wife had to move in

and place the memento Mori in his hands

the guards watching her

all of this changed

the whole tone changed

and I must say

what I mean by the tone

is that even the tone on set changed

so then we see the barrel

and we see all the paraphernalia of the Buddhist ritual

for the dead

this created

kind of dictated the framing dictated

sound and the movement of the actors

so was a major change was like making a different film

this is really important in the scripting

which usually comes by way of lots of discussion

days and days

and then weeks and weeks

but also in rehearsals

but the rehearsals

become almost writing sessions in a way

Wolf of Wall Street was very much that way

at point times in the rehearsal sec

rehearsals of Wolf of Wall Street

I'd have to tell the actors to

take it to a certain point

stop and save it for the cameras

because I knew I'd be going there

and I knew that I would shape it in the cutting

in certain ways

between Leo and Jonah Hill and all the others

Margo and that sort of thing so um

getting the actors involved with saying

in the characters

casino you know

Daenerys character

and Sharon Stone and

and Joe Pesci

I mean the conception of who the character is

sometimes changes subtly and sometimes changes greatly

but we're really trying to find

in that particular instance

truth for the characters

so that if something

develops a different way in the scene

they know how to move

so that it's within character

they know how to respond

so that's within character

cause you got to explain something constantly

to see the actor

about the world that they're in

um and that

this person wouldn't say that to that kind of person

or she wouldn't move here she would

then it's a matter of

then it's just a matter of recasting at that point

Taxi Driver was so strongly scripted

that it allowed us to open up two or three scenes

not much but two or three scenes

a couple of

one scene I think

one or two scenes with Harvey Chi

telling and Robert De Niro

where we improvise

we improvise

improvise dialogue from a rehearsal

from rehearsal and to the street

when we shot the scene

some stuff was kind of reconstructed

with the civil chapernale

the Brooks but

but primarily the

the most exciting

and call improvisation

or happening

use an old term on camera

was Robert De Niro in front of the mirror

and that was in the last week of shooting

and that's when we were over schedule

and I knew that it's written in the script

that he's practicing

with these guns and this sort of thing and devices

in front of the mirror um

and he's acting out this fantasy

but I want him to

I want him to say something

I really didn't have much I could offer

we find ourselves sneaking the scene into the schedule

and um him what you see on screen

is really him revving up and finding that moment

finding that character fully

but that really took I'd say

about eight weeks of shooting before getting to that

and we shot up within two hours

you know um

already pushing against the end of the day

so was not a relaxed easy

what I mean by easy

nothing's easy

but what I mean is a relaxed atmosphere

so to speak

in fact we had to lock the doors

and keep the assistant director out

because they kept pushing us to finish

and I guess I'm

give me five minutes

two minutes here

so you know

but this this allowed itself

I think allowed itself to

the combination of the actors myself

cameraman all of us

and the script

we were allowed

or the script allowed us

to open it up in places that we don't think it might be

those disagree of course

but we don't think that it

disturbed the structure of the story

of course Goodfellas and casino was something entirely

different they were very clearly written

but then we went from the page and open those scenes

same thing particularly in Goodfellas you know

and then of course

what you really hope for

particularly in films

Casino Goodfellas let's say

or Wolf of Wall Street

what happens on the set

and it's always rewritten on the set right there

meaning that you will

you need to allow the life to come through you know

because you depicting worlds have a lot of life in them

you know in a very overt way um

and so that gets us up to a point

where you get into the editing room

and that's rewritten there too

sometimes dramatically altering the structure

or in some cases

you do add narration

or you try not to add narration to explain

to explain the progression of the story

like exposition

but kind of another element of

of commentary

or you do something small but significant

that changes the whole tone of the picture

so it is to a certain extent you really

you rewrite it

and you rewrite it again and you rewrite it again

and then you rewrite it sometimes in the final mix

you know uh

and some people well

we always find

we take it even to the color correction at this point

I found that at times

in terms of shooting a film

some films that have a pretty strong plot point

plot line I was able to go in with the actors

with the writer

and rework each scene consistently

to the point of

staying on track with the plot

but changing characters

changing motivations

all sorts of things all the way through

and experimenting and trying different things

all the way to the point where

I think keeping one character

in this case

it was Vera Farmiga in the departed

keeping her to the end

because I wanted to see how we could incorporate

as best we could in that world

that film The Departed

how you couldn't cooperate

her character um

since she is non active that way

they're all very active

you know and so um

the same thing with Leo

we'd worked on with the Bill Monaghan and ourselves

and the script Matt Damon

Alec Baldwin

Mark Wahlberg

everybody basically

and Jack Nicholson of course

and so all of this changed radically

while we were shooting the film

you see and so uh

it was constantly

constantly going off into new territory

and sometimes it made out of work

I don't know

in terms of my own head

while I was shooting it and thinking well

maybe I'll try it

I don't know

and then finding we had to come back to the plot

so to speak

I was joke about that

but it's not funny

it's not a um

it's not meant to be funny

it's it's uh

ironic uh uh

I like the plot very much

but I found I was um um

feeling straight laced about it

and so I wanted to open up character

in the world of the fatalistic Irish

Catholicism and the underworld

you know in Boston

and so we just pushed him

push him push him

finally was redone completely

in the editing

we figured out new scenes to shoot

shot them for four days

put them in the picture

and that's the final picture

but it was a work in progress

more than a number of other films I made over the years

so talking about

new elements

for example um oh

there's a scene with Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon

in which he taunts Matt

but his manhood you know

and there was a lot of friction

a lot of tension in the scene that on set

and during it

I realized well

Matt you know

one thing is interesting

since this element came up

and the scene was in the movie theater I said

what if part of the problem he's having with Madeline

the fear farmingus character

is his inability to perform as sexually

and so this is something that

Matt and I hit on at the same time

and so later we shot another scene

underlining that

which also opened it up a little bit for

at least her attraction to Billy

you see but this came out of something that happened

with Jack and Matt

and it started to go skew

and we pulled it back and found another value

and in a sense of

we thought enriched the character Matt

Matt Damon's character in the picture

there are many different instances

of that sort of thing

some succeed

some don't some

I don't know

some I don't know

people tell me if they're

if they think they succeed later on

people are watching

and that means anything to them

I have no idea