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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:03,416 --> 00:00:06,344 [MUSIC PLAYING] 2 00:00:16,129 --> 00:00:21,650 It's absolutely critical in any film to have a character 3 00:00:21,650 --> 00:00:23,750 that you're willing to go on the journey with. 4 00:00:23,750 --> 00:00:27,240 And people use the term a fully-realized character. 5 00:00:27,240 --> 00:00:29,540 But I think it's important to understand that film 6 00:00:29,540 --> 00:00:32,189 is a very stylized art form. 7 00:00:32,189 --> 00:00:38,000 It it's not capable of the kind of novelistic detail of a 600 8 00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:39,663 or 1,000-page novel. 9 00:00:39,663 --> 00:00:41,330 So you're never going to know everything 10 00:00:41,330 --> 00:00:42,205 about that character. 11 00:00:42,205 --> 00:00:44,948 You have to fill in the blanks with bits 12 00:00:44,948 --> 00:00:47,240 and pieces of your own life, and those of your friends, 13 00:00:47,240 --> 00:00:47,910 and so on. 14 00:00:47,910 --> 00:00:50,090 So how do you do all that? 15 00:00:50,090 --> 00:00:52,580 Well, you have to find little, universal things 16 00:00:52,580 --> 00:00:56,660 that you can relate to from one's life, 17 00:00:56,660 --> 00:01:00,650 as an audience member, and have the character do 18 00:01:00,650 --> 00:01:04,400 something or do things that you recognize. 19 00:01:04,400 --> 00:01:06,440 You can set huge challenges for yourself 20 00:01:06,440 --> 00:01:07,850 if it's a nonverbal character. 21 00:01:07,850 --> 00:01:10,130 And you're putting so much on the actor 22 00:01:10,130 --> 00:01:12,140 to express with their eyes, with their face, 23 00:01:12,140 --> 00:01:16,740 with their yearning expression, or whatever it is. 24 00:01:16,740 --> 00:01:20,420 But every character is a creation that exists between 25 00:01:20,420 --> 00:01:23,540 the screenplay-- the imagined character-- 26 00:01:23,540 --> 00:01:28,880 which is still out of focus, we don't apply a face yet, 27 00:01:28,880 --> 00:01:31,400 and then the director's imagination of what 28 00:01:31,400 --> 00:01:34,310 that can be on the screen. 29 00:01:34,310 --> 00:01:39,170 And then the actor fills in the final and, ultimately, the most 30 00:01:39,170 --> 00:01:42,200 important piece, what does this person look like? 31 00:01:42,200 --> 00:01:43,160 How do they move? 32 00:01:43,160 --> 00:01:44,300 How do they speak? 33 00:01:44,300 --> 00:01:49,820 So a character is really never more than a sketch. 34 00:01:49,820 --> 00:01:51,875 But it has to be a very compelling sketch. 35 00:01:58,400 --> 00:02:02,330 Giving an average person, a relatable, average person, 36 00:02:02,330 --> 00:02:04,940 an enormous problem and seeing how 37 00:02:04,940 --> 00:02:08,060 they solve that problem or process that problem 38 00:02:08,060 --> 00:02:10,800 is a good way to get buy-in. 39 00:02:10,800 --> 00:02:14,390 You basically want the audience to buy into the narrative. 40 00:02:14,390 --> 00:02:16,610 And they usually buy into the narrative 41 00:02:16,610 --> 00:02:17,900 through the characters. 42 00:02:17,900 --> 00:02:20,210 It's key in the way that you introduce a character 43 00:02:20,210 --> 00:02:23,990 to understand where they are in their life, what they're 44 00:02:23,990 --> 00:02:26,720 feeling, and what their problem is. 45 00:02:26,720 --> 00:02:30,200 Any character that you're going to follow has got a problem. 46 00:02:30,200 --> 00:02:34,400 And that problem needs to be declared fairly early on. 47 00:02:34,400 --> 00:02:37,540 Sometimes you can do it in the very first scene. 48 00:02:37,540 --> 00:02:40,540 And then the whole movie should ultimately be about somehow 49 00:02:40,540 --> 00:02:43,667 that problem gets addressed, gets resolved, or at least 50 00:02:43,667 --> 00:02:45,250 we understand that it's the thing that 51 00:02:45,250 --> 00:02:50,080 drove that character into whatever situation evolves. 52 00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:53,230 And the problem may escalate as well. 53 00:02:53,230 --> 00:02:56,630 But I do believe in the kind of principle of character 54 00:02:56,630 --> 00:02:57,500 is destiny. 55 00:02:57,500 --> 00:03:01,910 That character winds up in a situation of their own creation 56 00:03:01,910 --> 00:03:03,570 in some way. 57 00:03:03,570 --> 00:03:07,477 And it's somehow related to them solving their problem, 58 00:03:07,477 --> 00:03:08,810 whatever their problem might be. 59 00:03:08,810 --> 00:03:11,990 It might be that nobody sees them, 60 00:03:11,990 --> 00:03:14,690 that they're kind of invisible to the people around them, 61 00:03:14,690 --> 00:03:16,340 that they haven't found who they are 62 00:03:16,340 --> 00:03:17,930 yet or a way of expressing it. 63 00:03:17,930 --> 00:03:21,890 It may be that they don't have love, or that they've lost love 64 00:03:21,890 --> 00:03:25,023 and are now incapable of opening themselves 65 00:03:25,023 --> 00:03:25,940 to a new relationship. 66 00:03:25,940 --> 00:03:27,860 Whatever the character's problem is, 67 00:03:27,860 --> 00:03:29,690 you need to define it early on. 68 00:03:29,690 --> 00:03:33,170 And you need to do it in an interesting way where 69 00:03:33,170 --> 00:03:35,510 the audience can sympathize because we 70 00:03:35,510 --> 00:03:39,680 have this capacity for empathy and for understanding 71 00:03:39,680 --> 00:03:40,910 other people. 72 00:03:40,910 --> 00:03:43,890 It's innate to who we are as human beings. 73 00:03:43,890 --> 00:03:45,140 So you introduce a character. 74 00:03:45,140 --> 00:03:48,440 And then we somehow relate to that character. 75 00:03:48,440 --> 00:03:51,290 Even if that character is Frankenstein's monster 76 00:03:51,290 --> 00:03:55,700 and the story is told from the perspective of the monster, 77 00:03:55,700 --> 00:03:59,840 we must somehow find a way, a sense of empathy. 78 00:03:59,840 --> 00:04:04,250 The film must create that in us, an interest in that character. 79 00:04:04,250 --> 00:04:07,310 I think it's about expressing something 80 00:04:07,310 --> 00:04:11,750 that the audience can relate to and you care about the outcome. 81 00:04:11,750 --> 00:04:15,020 Or at the very least, you care about seeing 82 00:04:15,020 --> 00:04:18,050 what this person is going to do next 83 00:04:18,050 --> 00:04:21,589 and what they're what's around the corner for them. 84 00:04:21,589 --> 00:04:24,890 In the case of "The Terminator," the initial idea 85 00:04:24,890 --> 00:04:30,560 was that there was an entity sent from the future 86 00:04:30,560 --> 00:04:35,210 to kill somebody in the past whose life had great meaning. 87 00:04:35,210 --> 00:04:39,890 I pretty quickly went to a female character 88 00:04:39,890 --> 00:04:44,030 whose son, in the future, will become a great sort of prophet, 89 00:04:44,030 --> 00:04:47,120 so basically a kind of Virgin Mary character, 90 00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:51,320 because that's an archetype that we all get quite quickly. 91 00:04:51,320 --> 00:04:58,220 And she was, in the biblical story, of very humble origins, 92 00:04:58,220 --> 00:05:00,140 basically a kind of a peasant. 93 00:05:00,140 --> 00:05:03,440 Her husband was a tradesman, a carpenter. 94 00:05:03,440 --> 00:05:07,340 So I said, all right, a waitress, a very common job, 95 00:05:07,340 --> 00:05:08,600 a very dismissible person. 96 00:05:08,600 --> 00:05:13,278 I wanted the most dismissable person you could imagine. 97 00:05:13,278 --> 00:05:14,570 It could have been a secretary. 98 00:05:14,570 --> 00:05:16,490 It could have been a waitress, somebody like that. 99 00:05:16,490 --> 00:05:17,907 It like, they couldn't possibly be 100 00:05:17,907 --> 00:05:22,160 an important, earth-shaking existence. 101 00:05:22,160 --> 00:05:25,590 And I thought that's good because that's 102 00:05:25,590 --> 00:05:26,760 how most people feel. 103 00:05:26,760 --> 00:05:28,260 Most people going to a movie theater 104 00:05:28,260 --> 00:05:32,310 are not presidents, or heads of major corporations, 105 00:05:32,310 --> 00:05:34,890 or big, important people. 106 00:05:34,890 --> 00:05:36,150 They're average people. 107 00:05:36,150 --> 00:05:39,660 And they could, I thought, invest 108 00:05:39,660 --> 00:05:44,160 in the idea of an average person who is suddenly snatched out 109 00:05:44,160 --> 00:05:46,050 of their daily existence and finds out 110 00:05:46,050 --> 00:05:50,010 that their life has great meaning in another framework, 111 00:05:50,010 --> 00:05:54,060 in another frame of reference, which the film supplies. 112 00:05:54,060 --> 00:05:57,300 And all of a sudden, not only is she fighting for her life, 113 00:05:57,300 --> 00:06:00,570 but she's fighting for the future of the entire world. 114 00:06:00,570 --> 00:06:02,430 She becomes the most important person 115 00:06:02,430 --> 00:06:05,740 in the world for a moment in history. 116 00:06:05,740 --> 00:06:10,390 So now I'm telling the story from a female perspective. 117 00:06:10,390 --> 00:06:14,310 So now I have to draw upon all the women 118 00:06:14,310 --> 00:06:18,110 that I've ever known in my life and/or read 119 00:06:18,110 --> 00:06:22,550 about in anything from comic books, to novels, to the news. 120 00:06:22,550 --> 00:06:27,500 Now, it just so happens that just before I wrote that, 121 00:06:27,500 --> 00:06:30,830 I was married to a Bob's Big Boy waitress. 122 00:06:30,830 --> 00:06:33,170 So I went, Bob's Big Boy waitress, perfect. 123 00:06:33,170 --> 00:06:34,520 Write what you know. 124 00:06:34,520 --> 00:06:40,820 So I basically wrote my first wife, which was plucky, 125 00:06:40,820 --> 00:06:45,470 a lot of humor, kind of cynical, but likable. 126 00:06:45,470 --> 00:06:48,230 And so, boom, there's your character. 127 00:06:48,230 --> 00:06:51,570 Now put that character in an extraordinary circumstance. 128 00:06:51,570 --> 00:06:53,810 And I think what I would advise is 129 00:06:53,810 --> 00:06:58,530 that people be kind of authentic to their own life experience, 130 00:06:58,530 --> 00:07:01,730 but not to the extent that you're literally just telling 131 00:07:01,730 --> 00:07:02,960 your own life story. 132 00:07:02,960 --> 00:07:05,930 I happen to enjoy writing female characters. 133 00:07:05,930 --> 00:07:07,130 That's controversial now. 134 00:07:07,130 --> 00:07:08,630 There are people that say, oh, well, 135 00:07:08,630 --> 00:07:11,990 female characters and films about female characters 136 00:07:11,990 --> 00:07:13,490 should be directed by women and they 137 00:07:13,490 --> 00:07:14,615 should be written by women. 138 00:07:14,615 --> 00:07:18,380 It's like, okay, so I can only write 139 00:07:18,380 --> 00:07:21,320 paunchy, middle-aged Canadian white guys? 140 00:07:21,320 --> 00:07:23,150 I don't think that's how art works. 141 00:07:23,150 --> 00:07:25,670 The whole point of acting, the whole point of storytelling, 142 00:07:25,670 --> 00:07:27,920 I think, is to live outside yourself. 143 00:07:27,920 --> 00:07:31,940 But you have to do it with some connection 144 00:07:31,940 --> 00:07:34,550 to your own personal experience. 145 00:07:34,550 --> 00:07:35,780 You have to make it personal. 146 00:07:35,780 --> 00:07:38,060 But that shouldn't prevent you from writing a character that 147 00:07:38,060 --> 00:07:38,900 is not like you. 148 00:07:43,280 --> 00:07:47,660 How am I going to introduce my main characters? 149 00:07:47,660 --> 00:07:49,640 And how am I going to do that in a way that 150 00:07:49,640 --> 00:07:54,248 is the quintessence of that character? 151 00:07:54,248 --> 00:07:56,040 What is the quintessence of that character? 152 00:07:56,040 --> 00:08:00,960 And how can I encapsulate that in a kind 153 00:08:00,960 --> 00:08:02,940 of almost a synecdoche. 154 00:08:02,940 --> 00:08:06,510 A synecdoche is-- if I get this right-- 155 00:08:06,510 --> 00:08:09,120 it's like if you call somebody a suit. 156 00:08:09,120 --> 00:08:12,360 You're using the suit as a stand-in 157 00:08:12,360 --> 00:08:14,310 for an entire description of them 158 00:08:14,310 --> 00:08:16,650 as a corporate executive or whatever. 159 00:08:16,650 --> 00:08:18,660 It's basically taking a person or reducing them 160 00:08:18,660 --> 00:08:21,540 to a single object or principle. 161 00:08:21,540 --> 00:08:26,250 But you want a kind of creative synecdoche of your character 162 00:08:26,250 --> 00:08:30,030 when that character's introduced. 163 00:08:30,030 --> 00:08:33,840 So I think that there are interesting ways to do that. 164 00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:37,150 Colonel Quaritch in "Avatar," he was a military guy. 165 00:08:37,150 --> 00:08:38,070 He was very formal. 166 00:08:38,070 --> 00:08:41,159 And he was in a position of command and authority. 167 00:08:41,159 --> 00:08:44,700 And he was introduced with the image of his military boots 168 00:08:44,700 --> 00:08:45,960 on a steel floor. 169 00:08:45,960 --> 00:08:47,520 We hear the creak of the leather. 170 00:08:47,520 --> 00:08:49,160 We hear his voice. 171 00:08:49,160 --> 00:08:51,660 He was a very verbal character and he carried a lot of power 172 00:08:51,660 --> 00:08:52,380 in his voice. 173 00:08:52,380 --> 00:08:53,730 We see his pistol. 174 00:08:53,730 --> 00:08:55,260 We see his broad shoulders. 175 00:08:55,260 --> 00:08:58,710 We see the back of his tightly-clipped Marine Corps 176 00:08:58,710 --> 00:08:59,610 haircut. 177 00:08:59,610 --> 00:09:02,130 And we think we know who the guy is. 178 00:09:02,130 --> 00:09:05,490 And then he turns to us and he's got these massive scars. 179 00:09:05,490 --> 00:09:07,650 And he delivers a line on that turn. 180 00:09:07,650 --> 00:09:11,160 Wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes. 181 00:09:11,160 --> 00:09:14,220 I was reasonably pleased with that as a as a character 182 00:09:14,220 --> 00:09:16,350 introduction because, once again, he 183 00:09:16,350 --> 00:09:21,790 was reduced to that synecdoche of his greater character. 184 00:09:21,790 --> 00:09:27,210 He was also a character that didn't exist in shades of gray, 185 00:09:27,210 --> 00:09:30,900 kind of to a fault. He was, what you see is what you get. 186 00:09:30,900 --> 00:09:33,990 And there wasn't a lot of nuance to his character. 187 00:09:33,990 --> 00:09:37,590 There was just a lot of flourish in creating 188 00:09:37,590 --> 00:09:40,350 that relatively simplistic character, which 189 00:09:40,350 --> 00:09:41,910 is another way to go. 190 00:09:41,910 --> 00:09:43,555 I use the Darth Vader example. 191 00:09:43,555 --> 00:09:45,180 Darth Vader didn't have a lot of shades 192 00:09:45,180 --> 00:09:47,490 of gray in the first movie. 193 00:09:47,490 --> 00:09:49,710 But there was some subtlety that was 194 00:09:49,710 --> 00:09:52,110 brought into it later, obviously, which 195 00:09:52,110 --> 00:09:53,250 was interesting then. 196 00:09:53,250 --> 00:09:55,890 But he was kind of archetypal. 197 00:09:55,890 --> 00:09:57,630 And that was okay because it was just 198 00:09:57,630 --> 00:10:01,230 do the archetype really, really well and in a new creative way. 199 00:10:07,490 --> 00:10:09,890 You also look forward to the moment 200 00:10:09,890 --> 00:10:12,680 where that main character meets that main character. 201 00:10:12,680 --> 00:10:16,290 So that moment of introduction is also very important. 202 00:10:16,290 --> 00:10:18,380 So when you went to Titanic, and you probably 203 00:10:18,380 --> 00:10:20,975 knew from the poster, at least, that there 204 00:10:20,975 --> 00:10:22,850 was going to be a girl and going to be a guy. 205 00:10:22,850 --> 00:10:25,225 And if you knew more about the film, that there was Rose, 206 00:10:25,225 --> 00:10:27,950 and there was Jack, and Leonardo, and Kate Winslet. 207 00:10:27,950 --> 00:10:29,360 Well, how are they going to meet? 208 00:10:29,360 --> 00:10:31,400 Are they going to meet cute? 209 00:10:31,400 --> 00:10:35,713 Which is the sort of classic screenwriter term for, 210 00:10:35,713 --> 00:10:37,880 do they get in a car crash, and have a big argument, 211 00:10:37,880 --> 00:10:39,838 and then realize they actually like each other? 212 00:10:39,838 --> 00:10:42,230 And there are infinite number of variations of that. 213 00:10:42,230 --> 00:10:45,320 And people generally look forward to that moment 214 00:10:45,320 --> 00:10:47,360 when the characters collide. 215 00:10:47,360 --> 00:10:49,910 In "Terminator" it was interesting, structurally, 216 00:10:49,910 --> 00:10:53,270 because it was the end of act one 217 00:10:53,270 --> 00:10:55,580 was the three main characters meeting. 218 00:10:55,580 --> 00:10:58,670 And they met in a violent life-or-death confrontation. 219 00:10:58,670 --> 00:11:01,460 But we had been following them as individual story streams 220 00:11:01,460 --> 00:11:04,340 for an entire act, and literally just jumping back and forth 221 00:11:04,340 --> 00:11:07,760 between three plot lines, and watching these plot lines 222 00:11:07,760 --> 00:11:12,320 slowly converging to a point in space and time 223 00:11:12,320 --> 00:11:14,402 where everything exploded. 224 00:11:14,402 --> 00:11:17,228 [SHOTGUN BLASTING] 225 00:11:20,060 --> 00:11:25,370 And that turned out to be a powerful storytelling method. 226 00:11:25,370 --> 00:11:27,380 There's a stylistic cinematic relish 227 00:11:27,380 --> 00:11:30,800 in how you introduce Character A and Character B. 228 00:11:30,800 --> 00:11:33,590 And then you look forward to the inevitable moment 229 00:11:33,590 --> 00:11:36,080 where Character A meets Character B, interacts 230 00:11:36,080 --> 00:11:40,390 with Character B. And then you, I think, as a filmmaker, 231 00:11:40,390 --> 00:11:42,140 as a screenwriter, you have fun with that. 232 00:11:42,140 --> 00:11:44,610 And as actors, you have fun with that. 233 00:11:44,610 --> 00:11:47,660 And typically, where the characters are going to wind up 234 00:11:47,660 --> 00:11:50,330 is not where they are initially. 235 00:11:50,330 --> 00:11:53,680 There's the classic sort of, you get two characters together 236 00:11:53,680 --> 00:11:57,500 that you know are going to be together later 237 00:11:57,500 --> 00:11:59,150 and you create conflict. 238 00:11:59,150 --> 00:12:01,220 And there's an art to that because the audience 239 00:12:01,220 --> 00:12:08,850 can smell that a mile away if that conflict feels forced, 240 00:12:08,850 --> 00:12:11,250 like the screenwriter really needed them to fight. 241 00:12:11,250 --> 00:12:12,917 So put a lot of obstacles in their path. 242 00:12:12,917 --> 00:12:14,542 And if it doesn't feel authentic and it 243 00:12:14,542 --> 00:12:16,170 doesn't feel natural to the situation, 244 00:12:16,170 --> 00:12:18,750 it feels overblown, the audience goes, yeah, predictable, 245 00:12:18,750 --> 00:12:19,260 I knew that. 246 00:12:25,700 --> 00:12:28,265 If you're doing a character from a certain period, 247 00:12:28,265 --> 00:12:31,820 a historical period or a certain specific situation 248 00:12:31,820 --> 00:12:35,930 that you're dramatizing, do your research. 249 00:12:35,930 --> 00:12:39,065 Learn everything you can about that world. 250 00:12:39,065 --> 00:12:40,940 And if it was a real person, learn everything 251 00:12:40,940 --> 00:12:42,670 you can about that person. 252 00:12:42,670 --> 00:12:45,830 Ask yourself what was really going on. 253 00:12:45,830 --> 00:12:48,650 Because we can't even get the facts right 254 00:12:48,650 --> 00:12:53,740 in a news story about something that happened the day before. 255 00:12:53,740 --> 00:12:57,580 And different outlets will argue with each other 256 00:12:57,580 --> 00:13:00,430 over what actually happened and what it means. 257 00:13:00,430 --> 00:13:04,060 Now imagine history as a distillation 258 00:13:04,060 --> 00:13:08,560 of a little bit of coming down to us of, basically, a bunch 259 00:13:08,560 --> 00:13:10,600 of news stories from back then. 260 00:13:10,600 --> 00:13:12,160 How much can we trust that? 261 00:13:12,160 --> 00:13:17,080 So as you go into history-- and I found this on "Titanic"-- 262 00:13:17,080 --> 00:13:19,267 you have to ask yourself questions about like, 263 00:13:19,267 --> 00:13:20,350 what was really happening? 264 00:13:20,350 --> 00:13:22,190 Who was really doing what to who here? 265 00:13:22,190 --> 00:13:23,590 So you got to do your research. 266 00:13:23,590 --> 00:13:25,090 You got to understand the character, 267 00:13:25,090 --> 00:13:28,150 if it was a real historical person, really understand them. 268 00:13:28,150 --> 00:13:32,290 If it's a made-up person in a real historical setting, 269 00:13:32,290 --> 00:13:36,290 what would the forces be at work on that character? 270 00:13:36,290 --> 00:13:38,800 What would expectations of them be? 271 00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:41,440 How is this character unique? 272 00:13:41,440 --> 00:13:44,530 What makes this character interesting? 273 00:13:44,530 --> 00:13:46,750 It's relatively easy, in a sense, 274 00:13:46,750 --> 00:13:52,570 to write outstanding women outside of the present time 275 00:13:52,570 --> 00:13:58,750 because they were always misunderstood and dismissed. 276 00:13:58,750 --> 00:14:01,505 And audiences hate it when they're 277 00:14:01,505 --> 00:14:03,880 investing in a character and that character is dismissed, 278 00:14:03,880 --> 00:14:07,840 or misunderstood, or judged harshly, or not 279 00:14:07,840 --> 00:14:10,270 seen for how great they are. 280 00:14:10,270 --> 00:14:14,740 So these are all techniques for getting your character 281 00:14:14,740 --> 00:14:16,240 to be interesting. 282 00:14:22,800 --> 00:14:25,890 Ultimately, what's important is that your characters 283 00:14:25,890 --> 00:14:28,580 come to life in your mind. 284 00:14:28,580 --> 00:14:31,430 And then they're going to come to life again when 285 00:14:31,430 --> 00:14:32,690 you cast the film. 286 00:14:32,690 --> 00:14:34,370 How you imagine that character is 287 00:14:34,370 --> 00:14:38,040 going to find its final expression through a living, 288 00:14:38,040 --> 00:14:42,650 breathing human being who has a look, has a physiognomy, 289 00:14:42,650 --> 00:14:44,270 and has a skill set. 290 00:14:44,270 --> 00:14:48,740 And they are going to change that character. 291 00:14:48,740 --> 00:14:54,830 The key to it is to get the actor to a safe place 292 00:14:54,830 --> 00:15:00,470 where they can explore and they can feel empowered to go 293 00:15:00,470 --> 00:15:02,930 as far as they feel like going. 294 00:15:02,930 --> 00:15:04,430 Maybe later in the cutting room, you 295 00:15:04,430 --> 00:15:06,097 say that might be a little bit too much. 296 00:15:06,097 --> 00:15:10,040 Or maybe on the set, your own instinct kicks in 297 00:15:10,040 --> 00:15:15,890 and you say, you know, maybe let's try muting that. 298 00:15:15,890 --> 00:15:21,207 And let me feel that that crazy energy is going on in your mind 299 00:15:21,207 --> 00:15:22,790 but there's something holding you back 300 00:15:22,790 --> 00:15:25,080 from saying it quite that way. 301 00:15:25,080 --> 00:15:27,950 And let's feel that tension. 302 00:15:27,950 --> 00:15:30,080 I mean, after a while I think one 303 00:15:30,080 --> 00:15:34,370 learns to speak a language that actors can hear. 304 00:15:34,370 --> 00:15:36,620 Because I think the most sacred part of the job, 305 00:15:36,620 --> 00:15:43,120 ultimately, is to help the actor achieve their best work. 306 00:15:43,120 --> 00:15:48,620 I like to have done rehearsal so that we can talk through ideas, 307 00:15:48,620 --> 00:15:50,720 not lock them in, but stand them up. 308 00:15:50,720 --> 00:15:51,700 Try it, workshop. 309 00:15:51,700 --> 00:15:55,880 But I think of it more as sort of work-shopping the script. 310 00:15:55,880 --> 00:15:59,480 And often I'll find the dialogue shakes out. 311 00:15:59,480 --> 00:16:01,370 Because I'll say, all right, just 312 00:16:01,370 --> 00:16:03,440 forget about the written word. 313 00:16:03,440 --> 00:16:05,060 Forget about the page. 314 00:16:05,060 --> 00:16:07,243 Just improv the scene. 315 00:16:07,243 --> 00:16:08,660 This was very helpful in "Titanic" 316 00:16:08,660 --> 00:16:10,910 because some of the language was a bit stilted 317 00:16:10,910 --> 00:16:12,650 because it was of its period. 318 00:16:12,650 --> 00:16:14,540 And I wanted these two young actors 319 00:16:14,540 --> 00:16:16,970 to get a sense for, well, just play 320 00:16:16,970 --> 00:16:20,390 the scene the way you'd play it now in your current idiom, 321 00:16:20,390 --> 00:16:21,910 the way you would speak. 322 00:16:21,910 --> 00:16:24,620 And so they just played it as themselves, essentially. 323 00:16:24,620 --> 00:16:27,793 I mean, the sort of halfway between the character 324 00:16:27,793 --> 00:16:29,210 was the character, but interpreted 325 00:16:29,210 --> 00:16:31,790 through contemporary language. 326 00:16:31,790 --> 00:16:34,490 And some interesting ideas came out of that. 327 00:16:34,490 --> 00:16:37,557 An interesting dynamic came out of it. 328 00:16:37,557 --> 00:16:39,140 I said, all right, I'm going to go off 329 00:16:39,140 --> 00:16:41,060 and I'm going to rewrite the scene. 330 00:16:41,060 --> 00:16:44,630 And I'm going to put it into the idiom of the time. 331 00:16:44,630 --> 00:16:46,340 But it'll be these ideas. 332 00:16:46,340 --> 00:16:49,070 It'll be these things that we discovered in rehearsal. 333 00:16:49,070 --> 00:16:51,230 I mean, a really good example that I think really 334 00:16:51,230 --> 00:16:54,420 added value to a particular scene in "Titanic," 335 00:16:54,420 --> 00:16:58,820 we were rehearsing the scene where Cal, her fiancee, 336 00:16:58,820 --> 00:17:02,150 grabs her arm and tries to drag her aboard the lifeboat, 337 00:17:02,150 --> 00:17:06,050 tries to control her, not listen to her, as usual. 338 00:17:06,050 --> 00:17:08,390 And the way I had written it, she 339 00:17:08,390 --> 00:17:11,510 pulls a hatpin out of her hair and sticks him in the arm, 340 00:17:11,510 --> 00:17:13,520 forcing him to release her. 341 00:17:13,520 --> 00:17:17,000 And she runs away into the crowd. 342 00:17:17,000 --> 00:17:20,150 But then we were talking about the hatpin 343 00:17:20,150 --> 00:17:25,119 and Kate said, well, why don't I just spit in his face? 344 00:17:25,119 --> 00:17:26,467 And it was so brilliant. 345 00:17:26,467 --> 00:17:28,300 I don't even think she realized how great it 346 00:17:28,300 --> 00:17:32,080 was because it was a callback to a previous scene, the scene 347 00:17:32,080 --> 00:17:34,450 in the film where Jack-- 348 00:17:34,450 --> 00:17:38,820 Leonardo's character-- teaches her how to spit like a man. 349 00:17:38,820 --> 00:17:41,020 So it was a perfect closure of the ellipse. 350 00:17:41,020 --> 00:17:43,810 It was something Jack taught her how to do. 351 00:17:43,810 --> 00:17:47,110 And she used it in that moment to break, 352 00:17:47,110 --> 00:17:52,210 to end the relationship, or at least she thought so, with Cal. 353 00:17:52,210 --> 00:17:54,320 Where are you going? 354 00:17:54,320 --> 00:17:56,350 What, to him? 355 00:17:56,350 --> 00:17:59,140 To be a whore to a gutter rat? 356 00:17:59,140 --> 00:18:01,090 I'd rather be his whore than your wife. 357 00:18:05,080 --> 00:18:06,910 No. 358 00:18:06,910 --> 00:18:09,175 I said no. 359 00:18:09,175 --> 00:18:13,360 WOMAN: Rose, please stop. 360 00:18:13,360 --> 00:18:14,150 It was perfect. 361 00:18:14,150 --> 00:18:17,820 It was like it was like a moment a writer would go aha, 362 00:18:17,820 --> 00:18:19,300 this is great. 363 00:18:19,300 --> 00:18:20,840 I've solved the problem. 364 00:18:20,840 --> 00:18:22,500 And she solved it. 365 00:18:22,500 --> 00:18:23,500 So that's how we did it. 366 00:18:23,500 --> 00:18:25,540 Now, poor Billy Zane didn't particularly 367 00:18:25,540 --> 00:18:29,005 like having a big old loogie shot into his face 50 times. 368 00:18:29,005 --> 00:18:30,880 By the time we were done shooting that scene, 369 00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:32,680 he was well over the idea. 370 00:18:32,680 --> 00:18:36,630 But I think it turned out to be a nice moment. 30215

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