Welcome, everybody. My name's John Polson.
I'm the director of Hide and Seek. We're gonna do the commentary.
I have with me my two very esteemed colleagues.
First of all, Ari Schlossberg, who's the screenwriter
and the original genesis of this film.
And Jeffrey Ford, our picture editor.
We're gonna talk to you for about 90 minutes
about the making of the film.
And I guess as good a place to start as any is with you, Ari.
Let's talk a bit about how the story came about and the writing of the script.
SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah. You know, there were so many different...
It's almost like it came out through the characters themselves.
They were the ones that kind of told me where to go.
Usually you start off with,
"I know exactly what's gonna happen, first act, second act, third act."
In this one, I had an idea, but it didn't all come out until, you know...
POLSON: As you were writing? SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah. It's really...
It was an organic process for me.
It still, like, was evolving, even through the drafts in the studio, you know?
POLSON: Yeah. So how long was the whole process
from when, you know, you first set down with a piece of paper
and when we started shooting it, I guess?
FORD: Wow. That would have to be... It was about a year, I would say.
Six months of writing, then the spec went out.
POLSON: And got a great response. FORD: Yeah. Well, got bought.
And then it was about.
What was it after that, around six months?
Six months to a year.
It was very quick to being greenlit and going, you know?
POLSON: Yeah.
And I have to say, from my point of view, too, unlike a lot of movies, you know,
although we did a few... Call them "production drafts" or whatever,
this, to your credit... I mean, this was the movie.
What you see here, pretty much beginning, middle and end
is the story the way I originally read it.
And I think, you know... One of the things I do
when I come onto a movie is read all of the drafts way back to the spec
and I think it's a tribute to your work that it...
You know, I mean, it changed a little in terms of, like,
we changed character names occasionally
or we, you know, shifted things around
but it was pretty much this idea.
FORD: Yeah, you know, there was a lot of notes.
Your notes, studio notes, you know, where you wanna change things.
And I think what I really tried to do here
was to keep the heart of the story involved.
So yes, it would change some scenes here and there and, you know
maybe change the ending and, you know... It did go through changes
but the general idea, the heart, the structure of the story, you know
I think it remained constant.
Which, you know, I didn't wanna give that up, too.
That's what made it special.
POLSON: I mean, just so people know, for me
you have a lot of collaborators as a filmmaker
but probably the one you're with the most
and you end up having the closest creative bond with
is, for me at least, the picture editor.
Because, you know, you sort of...
In your case, Jeff, you know, you were reading early drafts of the script, too.
We went through preproduction together, obviously.
The shooting, you were on board, cutting the movie
and right through the postproduction, right through till now.
FORD: Yeah, well, we had a unique situation on this film.
I got the job, I met with you and was hired, and then we had a bit of a push.
There was a break. We had some time before shooting
which was great, because we got a chance to talk about everything
that we wanted to do, so that was really helpful.
I remember reading the script initially, and the thing that really grabbed me
was it has these very sort of primal, almost fairy-tale or dream ideas in it
and I think that's something that comes through in the final version, too.
POLSON: Yeah. FORD: It's really... That was something
that was always present all the way through.
And that was one of the first things that really grabbed me about the story
is it's sort of this twisted dream movie or twisted fairy-tale movie.
Even though it's set in real time and present
but there's all this sort of imagery, like the cave you'll see later and so forth.
POLSON: So this is... On the screen right now is obviously our prologue.
Everything up till the suicide, I guess, we call the prologue.
And both at script level and also at editing level
you know, we did numerous versions of this.
I mean, the first scene, for example. Originally it was on the street
and then we have a very short period of time
to establish, hopefully, as strong a bond as possible
-between the mother and daughter. - FORD: Right.
POLSON: Because if that's not established... In a weird way, that's the motor
for the rest of the movie, is how much...
How attached this girl is to her mother, and therefore how traumatized
she is by the death.
So we had, you know, three, four minutes of screen time
to really try and nail that.
And I think that's one of the reasons we moved it from the street
where it was in earlier drafts, to this kind of merry-go-round idea.
SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah. We talked about that a lot, the opening scene, you know,
of setting up this relationship between the mother and the daughter
and showing him, in a sense, that he's...
Not creepy, because you don't wanna give away what's going...
But not with them either. (CHUCKLES) So it was interesting.
We have him kind of walking in the distance
but kind of smiling, like he's all right, he's a nice guy.
We don't wanna give away... But at the same time
there's something that's separate. He's an outsider within his own family.
And that was tricky.
POLSON: And part of that, too, remember, we did numerous cuts of that first scene
some of which Bob De Niro was in, and some of them which he wasn't in.
FORD: Yeah, right.
POLSON: We end up keeping him in the scene...
- FORD: Right. -...which I think was
the best decision at the end. But we fell in love with the idea
for at least a month or two in the cutting process, that this was...
FORD: Introducing him later. POLSON: Yeah.
FORD: That was an interesting approach to it.
POLSON: It was really interesting, because it made...
- It made it feel like Amy Irving's film. - FORD: Yeah.
POLSON: In a good way. It actually made the shock of her death much more powerful.
But the casualty to that I think was obvious.
- That's why we kept it in there. - FORD: I love this.
I think this is really creepy, and you get the first sense of her emotion.
- I love that shot. (LAUGHS) - POLSON: This was...
FORD: Of going into her eyes, you know?
POLSON: This was a tough scene to shoot. FORD: Dakota. That, that.
POLSON: We had a full day to shoot this scene,
which is kind of a luxury on any film
or certainly on a film with not a huge schedule.
And yet it was a really tough scene. It's such a hard thing to do
even for someone at De Niro's level
to come into a bathroom and find your wife in a pool of blood.
And it... I mean, he did an incredible job
but it's like, "How the hell do you do that?"
You know'? And what we ended up doing, remember, Jeff,
we sort of had a bit of a revelation in the cutting, was,
"Hey, what if we try and slow it down?" Which was never the plan.
FORD: Yeah, well, it made sense to make that moment attenuated
and just to stretch it out.
Because ultimately it's gonna be the thing that burns into Emily's mind
and it's gonna be, like you said, the motor for a lot of things.
So I think that playing it in a more expressionistic way
in a stylized way, really, you know, gets you inside her head in a good way.
- It was a really good choice to do that. - POLSON: And sound-wise, I remember
one of the first things you did in, like, the editor's assembly
I think even as we were shooting, was put that kind of low rumble
and take out the natural sounds and put in a much more stark...
And that freaked me out the first time I saw it.
I thought it was really...
I mean, we pretty much kept that idea right through to the final mix.
FORD: Yeah, yeah. Again, it's just more of the same thing.
The imagery in the script that's about dreams
and about the sort of other self
and about a parallel, son of subconscious world
that we are in touch with but we're not in touch with.
It all comes from that same central idea, and I think it works for that reason.
POLSON: This scene was tough. I mean... SCHLOSSBERG: I'm looking at it, yeah.
POLSON: This was... Remember?
SCHLOSSBERG: I mean, just starting with the writing of it,
how many drafts and discussions did we have? "Which angle?
"Do we use medical jargon in there? Do we not?" You know?
POLSON: But one of the reasons is we've got so many things to accomplish there.
We've gotta introduce Katherine
which is gonna become a major character in the movie.
We've gotta sort of somehow allude to their relationship.
But almost more importantly, we've got to highlight
what the sort of outcome has been of this traumatic experience
both for Emily and for De Niro.
So it's... There are three characters in this scene, and they've all got such...
And usually, you know, the scene is for one character, maybe
and the other two are sort of supporting that.
In this one, all three characters had a major part to play in the scene
and that was why it was difficult.
SCHLOSSBERG: You also have to sell the fact that this guy's gonna take his daughter
and move, and go, and that's a good thing.
POLSON: Yeah.
SCHLOSSBERG: And it's almost like it always...
The simpler the better. Which is, the more you explain it,
especially in the writing, you know, "This is why, this is why",
the more questions the audience are gonna ask.
They go, "Wait a second." You almost just wanna go, you know, right to...
But you're like, "This is the reason." You're like, "Oh."
You kind of go over it, not giving people enough time to really question,
-"Is this a good thing?" - POLSON: That's true.
SCHLOSSBERG: I mean, I think it is a good move.
I think that this is what a father could do.
POLSON: Yeah.
SCHLOSSBERG: You know? Who's to say they couldn't?
But I think the more questions you... You know.
POLSON: But I think it was always something we were all nervous about
including Fox, this idea of, you know, "Is this guy doing the right thing
-"by taking this girl to the country?" - SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah.
POLSON: Hopefully, we sort of made it work and it sort of balanced out okay.
But it was always something we were all very nervous about.
And I remember, too, another challenge with that scene was
it was a long scene dialogue-wise, and it was, you know, it's always...
FORD: There was a lot more dialogue than what ended up there.
SON: Yeah. We cut a lot of stuff out.
FORD: Again, like Ari said, we made it simple.
Just get the pieces in there.
Because so much of it's done visually with the cut to Emily.
Emily's part of the scene, even though she says nothing.
She's really the elephant in the room. She's really there and part of it
which I think works really well visually.
POLSON: I just wanna comment on this.
- Because this stuff here.,. - FORD: John loves these helicopter shots.
POLSON: I do love these shots.
- I love them because... - FORD: Because he was in the helicopter.
POLSON: I think I must've said to Jeff about 12 times,
"You know, I was there that day."
No, that was a lot of fun for me, because I love flying
and we went up for like eight or 10 hours in the chopper.
- Which I didn't have to do. Normally... - FORD: I didn't get the spooky lettering.
SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah, you did. In the final you did.
POLSON: You did.
FORD: I did? SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah.
FORD: I like the credit... Okay, yes?
POLSON: So as people watch this DVD, they're like, "What are you talking about?"
SCHLOSSBERG: You got spooky lettering.
FORD: Everybody's got, yeah, the spooky...
POLSON: Everybody, everybody. Everybody got it.
FORD: I mean, like, I would come in, you know, to see you guys sometimes
while you were hard at work once in a while.
But even that, which was just the titles, that seemed to be, like, so much work
and what direction you wanted to go and, you know, what...
POLSON: It was huge. FORD: It just seemed... Yeah.
POLSON: I mean, every decision with a film is... It feels, at least, so critical.
I mean, this... You're right. The title sequence
we had it in, we had it out, we had it in.
The reason we left it in...
You could have an hour-long discussion about that
if you wanna bore people to tears.
But the reason we left it in was it felt like
it separated New York from the country.
And without it, it felt like, "Okay, they moved up the road.
"What's the big deal? Come home." Or, you know.
But it really, as Jeff put it in the cutting, it really sort of made it feel
like a major journey to get up there.
David Chandler, who plays Mr. Haskins, I think is sensational in this film.
He's only got three or four scenes, but he's so good
and he's got a great look for this part, and gets great response from audiences.
FORD: Well, the day of... You know, I was there in New York at the time.
And John and I, actually, when he came in and he did the cast...
We were so creeped out by him that we kept looking to him
like, "Oh, my God, this guy's... He's great." You know?
POLSON: He was so good. FORD: Yeah.
POLSON: He nailed it.
SCHLOSSBERG: I love Dylan Baker, too. He's fantastic.
FORD: Well, he's, yes, excellent in anything.
Every take is something great with him. He's just so good.
POLSON: He's so smart. And the deeper you get into the film
the big scenes he has coming up later, he’s just so good. And again, so creepy.
I mean, one of the challenges we had with this film, both in the...
Well, Ari had in the writing, and we all had in the production
and the cutting of it is, you know, you've got a film...
And I know we're speaking to people who've seen the film
so everybody knows now what the twist or shock ending
or whatever it is you want to call it.
But you have very few people in the movie.
And it's a hard ask
to keep people, you know, away from thinking it's De Niro
for an hour and 10 minutes or whatever it is
before it's okay to let them know.
So we worked really, really hard to try and make Mr. Haskins
the sheriff, the neighbor, you know, the guy in the fishing store
anybody we could,
look like it could be a possible Charlie
so people didn't have time to start thinking about, "Maybe it's the dad."
That impacted the writing and the casting, and the way we cut it
and what scenes we left in and what scenes we cutout.
FORD: I love this scene. This is one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
It’s just an example of De Niro doing something that's so humane
and so almost... It's something, you know, you see, you've done yourself
but to see him, you know, use it in this way, and she shuts him down.
ON: It's great. And it's a good scene to bring up.
Because if you remember when we felt the first half of the film
was potentially a little slow, which is partly the nature of the story.
You know, they get to the country, there's really... You've gotta be careful.
And this is my kind of weakness is, you know, you watch the film
so many times in postproduction, and you're so...
I personally am so anxious not to make people bored or anything
and it was one of those things we considered right at the end taking out.
And you said, Jeff, "Don't cut it," for all those reasons.
Yeah. It's so cuttable. It doesn't advance the story.
But it's such a humane moment, and it's one of the first casualties
when you're trying to drive the plot.
But no one wants to see a film, I don't think, that's just plot.
FORD: No. Well, the story has character, too.
And I think that gives you
such enormous access to what he's trying to do in a visual way.
Again, a lot of this movie is brilliantly told visually
and I think that's why its successful.
Because when you do something visual like that
the audience gets to impress their own feelings on it
in a way that is more complex and more interesting
than anything you could do if you reduce it to dialogue at a certain point.
Like, that moment is very complex, and it is because it's just faces
and a moment between the two of them.
POLSON: It's almost like the dialogue is not,
yeah, not defining the moment. It's, like you say,
it's allowing you to project your moment onto the...
Speaking of the visuals of this film, our DP, of course, is Dariusz Wolski
who's an incredibly talented man.
And I think, honestly, the look of the film, looking at it now
he just did such an incredible job with this film.
For me, at least, it's such a beautiful film to look at.
FORD: Dailies were thrilling. I mean, he's a god. It just... He has a gift.
Sometimes he can be so subtle with what he does
sometimes he can be so dramatic. He just has an enormous range.
It was just a pleasure to watch his work.
POLSON: And working with him, just briefly, the way we worked together is
you know, he read the script, he loved it as soon as he read it.
He actually responded to it partly because of
the relationship between the father and the daughter.
He really responded to that.
And, you know, after a long day of sort of preproduction,
Darek and I would, every night, get together about 7:30 or 8:00,
have a glass of wine, and just read the script to each other.
And stop, like, almost every paragraph and just talk about
what was in my head, what was in his head.
And I think that was... I hadn't really done that before.
I hadn't afforded that luxury.
But it's what you said, Jeff, because we got pushed, you know
as we were so close to the shoot.
We were a week out from the shoot when we got pushed a couple months
and that, you know, at the time was very painful.
But it ended up giving us the opportunity to do things like that.
FORD: It was great. POLSON: And, you know
we literally would pitch it to each other and talk about it
and, "Where's the light gonna be?" And, "What's the feel of the scene?"
And, "Where's the camera gonna be?" And, "What are we trying to do?"
And we sort of slowly, over those nights of two or three months
came to the same page about it, you know.
By the time we started, we pretty much talked out every moment in the film.
So that was kind of a luxury.
SCHLOSSBERG: And you did that with me, too.
So you were doing that with a lot of people.
POLSON: Well, for me, it's, like... FORD: That's how you do it.
POLSON: You've gotta... You almost gotta overthink it.
You've gotta know every second inside out
by the time you come to make it.
FORD: From all the different point of views and the different people
coming from writing, shooting.
POLSON: Yeah, you sort of do.
You go through it with the people, costume designers
and the prop people and the script supervisor
and, you know, hopefully by the time you start
you've looked at it from all angles and there's not many surprises left.
- The good old butterfly sequence... - FORD: Here it is.
...was a lot of fun.
- That was a CGI butterfly, of course. - FORD: (CHUCKLES) Right.
POLSON: Couldn't wrangle that particular butterfly.
FORD: We had one on a stick. It didn't work. POLSON: It didn't...
FORD: Wasn't there a question if there was butterflies in the winter'?
POLSON: There was. Yeah, yeah. SCHLOSSBERG: It was, like,
"What kind of butterfly?” You know.
POLSON: Yeah, that consumed about six weeks.
SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah. (LAUGHING)
That probably took about six weeks.
A flurry of e-mails.
POLSON: People see the film now,
they've got no idea, don't care what the season is.
But we still managed to talk about it for six weeks.
FORD: Right.
POLSON: If there were butterflies in winter
and if so, what kind were they?
And I think then we pushed the movie, right?
- So then it became spring... - FORD: I don't think it was because of that.
SCHLOSSBERG: No, I don't think it was. It wasn't because of the butterfly.
POLSON: So this is an interesting part of the film because this was always
our kind of danger area when we started screening the film.
It's when they've arrived at the house.
So that's happened, and that's kind of cool
and the mum's died, and you've got this great pushed... You know, in story.
But now they're here.
And really, until we meet,
when I say "meet," like, at least meet in dialogue,
Charlie, which is coming up in a couple of scenes' time, when Dakota's in bed,
it's in danger, really, just the nature of it
of treading water a little bit. You know?
I mean, we're meeting a neighbor, that's cool.
And in a minute we're meeting Elisabeth Shue and all the rest of it.
But I'm happy to say, I think, Jeff, in the end
we got to the point where, I wouldn't say it's fast
but at the same time, it's not too slow.
It's kind of... It just cruises here.
FORD: Well, we... At a certain point' you know, we felt we've gotta take the time
to set the stage for these things.
For instance, this scene. Melissa Leo's terrific in this scene.
She's just really great in the movie.
When we saw dailies the first day on this
you had her put this scar on her neck. And it's just barely visible.
It's almost impossible to see. But if you do catch it, it creates incredible tension.
And I think that's kind of what's going on in this part of the movie
is there's all these little details that you need to sort of...
You see them, and you get them, and you download them into your brain.
You don't know what to do with them, but they create enormous tension.
POLSON: They make her a little weird. It's so funny you mention that
because, you know, Melissa and I met and, you know
we offered her the job, and then we sort of parted company
for a couple of weeks as I went off to sheet or whatever.
And we came back together, and it's so bizarre.
She's like, "I've gotta talk to you." I'm like, "I've gotta talk to you, too."
And she says, "I feel like this character has gotta have a something.
"Like, just a something weird."
And she said, "What I think it should be is one of those..."
- Is it called a caliper? - FORD: Like a brace on her leg.
POLSON: A leg brace thing. And I'm like, "Wow. That's cool."
So we looked into that, and it was too expensive.
It was just... You know, because even on a big movie
there are budget concerns, so...
So were like, "Wow, what can we do?"
So we talked to the makeup artist, and we came up with this scar
which was not expensive at all. It was free.
John Caglione was our makeup artist and did a sensational job.
We put this thing on her every day, and it's very, very subtle
and I'm sure, you know, some of the audience watched the film
and maybe don't see it or don't think about it.
But you're right, it's enough to just make you go,
"What? Where'd that come from? And what's going on at home with her?"
SCHLOSSBERG: You know, you don't realize,
but I mean, this scene, it was always...
There was always swings involved, and a jungle gym.
- But first it was set outside of a school. - POLSON: Right.
SCHLOSSBERG: I mean, there were drafts
where this location had changed so many times.
POLSON: Yeah, yeah. SCHLOSSBERG: And then I guess out of
just realizing the area with the gas station there or whatever
you just keep changing, just that...
POLSON: The other thing that changed here, which is interesting is...
I'll never forget. In the first draft and subsequent drafts
there was no Dakota in this scene, remember?
SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah. POLSON: Bob's character goes out
and says, "Come on, honey, we're going to the shops."
And she says, "Oh, I wanna stay here." And he lets her stay and goes out.
And I remember you and I met with De Niro
and we're having a script meeting, and he's like, "Guys, I'm a parent.
"It's not gonna happen."
And you and me, we don't have kids, and we're like, "What do you mean?"
He's like, "There's no way in the world any parent is gonna leave this kid alone."
FORD: Right.
POLSON: And at the time, it sort of mystified me.
But we did change it, and now that we've done it
honestly, I can't imagine that scene if she hadn't come.
SCHLOSSBERG: If he leaves his daughter there, you're immediately like,
"This guy... Something's not right." You know?
POLSON: It's obvious now, but I guess you and I had lived with it for so long
it didn't feel like a big deal.
SCHLOSSBERG: I liked the scene because he left and then he comes back.
And when he comes back, the scene was that, you know,
something's going on there, somethings wrong with her
she's holding her hands behind her back.
All of a sudden, out from her hands comes these out fingers and stuff.
And he's like, "Oh, my God." And he tries to, you know, wash them
and he feels... He's so like, "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have left you."
While I think that's scary and it shows that she's going into this dark place,
it also shows that, "You know what?
"You shouldn't have left her."
We need to be really careful with these characters
especially at this early stages, you know'?
POLSON: Now, this is a critical moment, because for me this is what, you know
in traditional terms you'd probably call the first turning point.
You know, if you wanna get into that jargon.
But it's basically the moment where we meet Charlie for the first time.
FORD: Right. POLSON: And it was always something,
in all the screenings we did, I was very conscious of.
It was always about getting... I felt if we could get people
to that, like, hump, you know, through some of that stuff
that didn't feel as fast, just to where she mentions Charlie
then I felt like we had a chance at hanging on to their attention.
So Jeff and I worked really hard up until that point
to make it feel like there wasn't much fat and that we...
Remember, we kept changing the order of those scenes.
FORD: We moved things around quite a bit. POLSON: To try and figure it out.
FORD: Well, yeah, and in the end I think it actually lands
-about exactly where you want it. - POLSON: Yeah.
FORD: And they're terrific. Bob and Dakota in that scene are just, like,
at the peak of their powers for that moment. They're so good.
That's one of my favorite scenes, too.
SCHLOSSBERG: That was my favorite scene to write.
FORD: It's a great scene. POLSON: It's a great scene.
SCHLOSSBERG: Because it just showed, like, for the first time, she's happy.
- And why is she happy? And secretive. - POLSON: And it's creepy that she's happy
which is smart.
SCHLOSSBERG: She's not telling him what it is.
FORD: And he doesn't know what to do, which is cool.
SCHLOSSBERG: First he thinks, "Oh, it's a doll, it's another doll." Then he thinks,
"Wait a second, is this a real person? Is there somebody
"that she met today or something?" You know?
POLSON: It's very cool. SCHLOSSBERG: Is it him? Is it the sheriff?
Then it comes back to, "Oh, it's imaginary. I see."
POLSON: I just wanna mention Brendan Sexton there, who you saw briefly.
And the reason I mention him is he's such a talented actor
and he had a huge scene in this, which was exciting, I think, for all of us.
Because he was working with De Niro, which was cool because he's young
and unfortunately, through no fault of his own,
again, for all these reasons we're talking about,
just making sure the film drives in this first critical half, you know
we felt like that scene kind of had to go
and we just had to get on with the fishing and the sheriff.
But it was a real pity.
- Is that in the deleted scenes, actually? - FORD: I think... Well, we put it in, yeah.
POLSON: Yeah, yeah, good. FORD: You'll see the full version.
POLSON: You guys should check out Brendan in that scene.
FORD: He's great, yeah, it's a cool scene.
POLSON: He's really good. Very funny and dry.
SCHLOSSBERG: Speaking of cuts...
(CHUCKLES) This area here, this was a lot of cuts, like, going around, you know,
trying to push the fishing here.
I mean, we had scenes with caves and doing this larger thing
-of what's inside the cave. - POLSON: We did.
FORD: They saw the cave right before this, actually, in an earlier version
which is interesting to...
POLSON: That was the scripted version, yeah.
- On the way to fishing. - FORD: We shot it, too.
- We had it... - POLSON: We shot it and we had it in cuts.
I'm like a nervous Nellie in any movie at this point
because I feel like you haven't earned anything yet.
You know, people have just sat down, they got their popcorn or whatever.
And they owe you nothing except maybe 10 bucks.
SCHLOSSBERG: Isn't it true that that was not a live beetle?
- Because you cannot kill... - FORD: No, it was a live beetle
but they put an appliance on the beetles underbelly
and the hook went into the appliance.
It went into this... The beetle had, like, this extra endoskeleton
-and the hook... - POLSON: colostomy bag.
FORD: (CHUCKLES) The hook went into it. And originally the blood was red.
And no beetle has red blood. Everyone knows that.
(SCHLOSSBERG LAUGHS)
And so we had to digitally change the blood to white pus.
SCHLOSSBERG: See, who would know that?
You think they kill the beetle.
POLSON: Who was the vendor on that? Because...
- Who was our vendor on that? - FORD: It was Digital Filmworks in Burbank.
POLSON: Digital Filmworks, we need to thank them.
Because not only did they change the color of the blood...
- FORD: They added... -...there's a little added bonus.
If you wanna rewind, have a look at those legs.
FORD: They're quivering.
POLSON: Because they literally twitch like crazy.
And that was nothing to do with what happened.
FORD: Yeah, it's animated legs. POLSON: But the beetle thing was amazing.
In New York state, there are very, very strict rules
-about what you can do with animals. - FORD: You can't kill a beetle.
- You can step on one by accident, but... - POLSON: Frankly, I'm an animal lover.
I'm all into that. But beetles, like, you do start to wonder. You know'?
How many beetles did you stand on on the way down here to talk to me?
FORD: And was it John, Paul, George or Ringo?
POLSON: Should we put the beetle in its trailer? I mean, it's like...
(FORD AND SCHLOSSBERG LAUGH)
Like, we had a fishing scene, remember'? And you couldn't have the fish
out of water for more than 10 seconds, and no fish was allowed
to do more than one take. I wish they looked after directors like that.
But no.
FORD: Here's the first dream. This is really cool.
POLSON: Talk to us about this, Jeff. Because this stuff, you know,
you, I mean, you really created these sequences.
- They were in the script, but... - SCHLOSSBERG: No, it's great.
I mean, the way he did this, you know, and the cuts.
POLSON: What was the idea behind... FORD: Well, we talked about this a lot.
The idea was that... And you've seen the film
so you know at the end he's got another thing going on in his life.
And the idea was his subconscious is sort of percolating
through his conscious mind, and he sees it in his dreams.
So we're starting to see the first parts of Charlie poking through.
And it had to be sort of violent and upsetting
and really kind of images colliding with each other
because it's not a happy thing that's happening.
Li's son of poking through his conscious mind.
POLSON: So when you're sitting in the cutting room alone
looking at the material for that, and... Because it's really interesting cutting.
Some shots are a couple of frames long. Others, you know,
maybe you slowed stuff down.
I know you did some stuff with some superimposition of a face.
FORD: We did a lot of different versions of it, but...
POLSON: Are you just kind of riffing when you do that?
FORD: Well, no, originally the dreams were more narrative.
They were more sort of the beginning of telling the revelation, telling the story
of what happened that we didn't see.
And we found it was better to make them more abstract
and more just a taste, just images.
Because if we told too much, you started to track them narratively
and it was more important to keep them as character beats
instead of narrative beats.
SCHLOSSBERG: This scene here, you know, it went through a lot of different drafts, too.
In my head, you know, writing it, was, "Do you have the words on the wall
"or do you not?" You know, "What's the message here?"
You know, "How far do you wanna go the first time we're in the bathroom?"
You know, "What will she do? Will we see the candles?
"Will that remind us of the mother's death?"
This is supposed to be a creepy moment of, like, "Oh, my God,
"she's doing the mother's death again, that's what she's doing."
And it's just a question of how far did you wanna go there?
POLSON: To back that up from a production-design point of view...
Steven Jordan was our designer.
I mean, just so people know, we built the entire inside of the house.
So everything you see within the house in the country
is a stage in Queens.
SCHLOSSBERG: That's a stage. This is on location.
POLSON: That's Ossining. That's Queens. SCHLOSSBERG: That's a stage.
POLSON: Yeah. And that's six weeks apart or whatever, too.
SCHLOSSBERG: That's a stage. POLSON: But Steve Jordan built a bathroom
in the stage in Queens that was an exact kind of mirror
of the bathroom that he built for New York.
So, like... You know, I thought it was a little on the nose
to build it exactly the same.
We always talked about having a much more modern, cold
stainless steel look in New York, and a much warmer country look in the house.
But I thought it would be a little, kind of, on the nose to have...
So what we did was we flipped it
so the door's in the same place, but the opposite
and the bathrooms in the same place, but opposite.
And then, like, the shower curtain is similar but different.
Obviously, the one in New York is, like, a glass sliding thing.
That one is more of an old-fashioned, like, curtain.
So, yeah, this is a stage, and I think he did an incredible job.
Beth Kushnick as well, who was our set decorator.
I mean, this place, these guys had some time, fortunately
to really work on every detail and make sure that, you know...
I mean, I think it's such a beautiful house to look at.
And that's part of what unsettles me in the movie is, you know
it would've been too easy to say, "Look, it's a horror movie.
"Let's make it a cold, scary house."
But that's crazy for all the reasons we talked about
which is, why would he bring his traumatized daughter
-to an unfriendly environment? - FORD: (CHUCKLES) To a haunted house.
POLSON: He's gotta bring her to a nice place, and in a weird way
-that's what makes it scary is... - FORD: It turns dark.
POLSON: Yeah. It turns dark, and it's not what you expect.
And whenever you can give people something they don't expect
it just naturally makes it more frightening.
FORD: No, your instincts are great on that.
Again, it's that fairy-tale, son of idealized world
he's trying to create. And the perfection of that
against the horror of what's going on is what...
Any time something familiar is perverted, it's scary.
And that's why making this so warm and comfortable was a great call.
If it had been spooky and quirky, then everything's on the same line.
SCHLOSSBERG: You know, also along these lines, John and I, we're from the city
you know, New York
and you actually spent some time in the country, a week
to see what these houses are like.
And to see, you know... Like, lived in some inn or something?
POLSON: I went to Vermont. In our push again.
That push was the greatest thing that happened to this film.
I decided to take a week completely by myself
went to Vermont and I stayed in, yeah, what do you call it? An inn or a...
FORD: Like a bed and breakfast? POLSON: Bed and breakfast, right.
And actually one of the ideas that came out of that was...
It was a beautiful bed and breakfast.
It was nice and they were lovely people
but I noticed on the walls the strangest thing.
These old weapons.
(FORD AND SCHLOSSBERG LAUGH)
Like, these kind of medieval weapons and whatever
and swords and hacks and...
Kind of vicious in amongst this beautiful furniture and books and this thing...
And I'm like... So I get back, and I say to Steve Jordan, I'm like,
"Dude..." And I took photos. Whenever anyone wasn't looking
I would take photos of these, and I showed Beth and Steve.
SCHLOSSBERG: They must've thought you were crazy.
POLSON: I show up a couple of days later. Look at this stuff hanging on the wall.
- See the top left? - FORD: That's true.
POLSON: Weird corkscrewy things, and things that look like
they could really hurt people.
And it just gave it this tone of...
And of course everyone who knows it's a thriller is...
If they're watching, is half-expecting someone to grab that in the climax.
FORD: He's putting a knife away. We all have a knife in our house.
But now it's something familiar that's twisted and it's scary.
POLSON: Yeah, so that was... I mean, that's... You must find that too, Ari.
Like, some of this stuff... I mean, I know you made this story up
but some of it must (me from...
Does any of it come from stuff that's happened?
SCHLOSSBERG: Everybody's different.
And I've heard a lot of other writers, how they write.
And, you know, sometimes you take classes and people say,
"You know, by page 10, you have to do this.
"By page 15, you have to do this."
I always stepped away from that because I write from not reality.
I write from, you know, this fantasy type of world.
I could not write about my own life.
I could not write of the things that I know or things that I've experienced.
It's more emotions.
Meaning, you know, like, what was I scared of? What am I scared of?
I'm scared of kids, creepy kids, that's one thing.
And the other thing is the woods, because I'm from the city.
So you put those two together, and then you have the emotion of fear.
And then with that, you go with it.
And so, you know, it's not so much like a story, a real-life experience.
I don't think that's what I would be able to do.
It's more emotions that I play on, you know?
POLSON: This is one of my favorite scenes, and I gotta mention Robert John Burke
who plays Steven, the neighbor, and is so good in this film
and such a talented actor.
FORD: Yeah, he's great. POLSON: And he's got three or four scenes
but he does them so beautifully and subtly.
And actually, Jeff, to your credit, that scene, I mean, you know...
For people that don't know, the editor will do an assembly through the thing
and then you'll spend the next 10 or 12 weeks really honing that
and talking about it, trying to...
That's probably... I mean, that scene didn't change one frame.
FORD: Didn't change much since the first cut.
POLSON: Since before we ended shooting.
FORD: I think we showed it to the crew at the wrap party, too.
POLSON: We did. FORD: And they loved it. It was good.
POLSON: And I don't think it's any different
to what we showed at the wrap party.
FORD: No, it's pretty similar. POLSON: Yeah.
I just always loved that scene from the minute I saw the cut of it
and it was like, "Wow, this was..."
SCHLOSSBERG: This was your thing.
POLSON: The kettle. SCHLOSSBERG: I love the teapot.
- The teapot's great. - FORD: Yeah.
I mean, and it plays great. It does.
And you get it. It's one of those things that you look back and get it.
You were very passionate about that teapot.
You should talk about the office here because this is a good example of what...
POLSON: The office was one of the things we...
Through the entire process of writing
and, you know, production and cutting.
It was the concept that this guy is two people.
He's two personalities.
Now, when Bob De Niro and I did our research, we found that what happens...
Because, you know, this is an actual disease, I suppose you'd call it
that people have, this is not make-believe
although we've sort of obviously fictionalized it here.
But what actually happens is the host personality, as it's known
will black out while one of the other personalities takes over.
And if you talk to someone with this dissociative identity disorder
as it's called, it used to be called multiple personality,
you'll find people who say, "I was blacked out and someone else..."
Obviously, that's not very cinematic.
You can't cut to black.
So, you know, Ari's concept, and what we really tried to hone
in the screenplay was the idea that, "Okay, he doesn't go to black.
"Okay, let's lie about that.
"He goes to his office."
And so, you know, we've made a real point of showing him
setting up the office in that scene earlier
and then he's always in the office whenever Charlie is doing something.
So that when you come back in the end
and you realize he's never even been in his office, never unpacked it
then hopefully the audience gets...
You know, I'm starting to find, recently at screenings, people get that
which is such a relief, frankly, because we worked so hard on that.
SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah. I mean, in the writing of it
the neighbors were imaginary. It used to be that way.
And while he was dealing with these imaginary neighbors
that's actually when he was being Charlie and doing the creepy things.
So he was imagining this whole thing.
So the problem was to switch it, because we switched
from the neighbors to be imaginary to be real.
The problem would be then, like, "Okay, well then, when's he Charlie?"
And that's when we said,
"Okay, you know what? The office."
That whenever he's working in the office, that's the Charlie time.
POLSON: And we worked really hard... Remember, Jeff, how can we forget?
SCHLOSSBERG: You can't have just, like, blackout times, and you know...
FORD: Well, it works really well, too, because I think in the thematic sense
in an overall sort of arching sense, you know, Bob's playing this character
who's sort of a repressed guy.
He can't deal with his daughter emotionally.
He deals with her intellectually.
He's trying to cure her, to analyze her. He's trying to solve the problem.
And so it's a perfect idea, visually, to put him in this intellectual place
where there's books and he's writing and solving the problem intellectually.
Meanwhile, he's off being this crazy person who's solving it emotionally.
(SCHLOSSBERG LAUGHS)
So the idea is totally... It's again, from character comes these visual ideas.
And that's why I think this movie works really well exploding visual ideas
from character and from story.
POLSON: It's really easy to get caught in that vortex of, like, intellectual ideas
or written ideas. Things that are, you know...
You've gotta constantly, whether you're writing, directing or editing, whatever
you've gotta always be thinking, "How can I make this a picture?"
Forget about what's said, because for my money
what's said always takes second place to what people see.
Someone said to me years ago,
"You should be able to watch a movie on mute
"and still understand and enjoy the story."
And I think there's some truth to that, you know?
I mean, obviously dialogue is of utmost importance.
But it's always gotta be supportive, for me at least, of a visual concept.
FORD: Yeah. I mean, a lot of people say, "Hey, that's good dialogue."
Dialogue, whatever. Yes, it's important.
And you'll remember some of the good lines, you know, of your favorite movies.
But it's really, like, you know, it's the scene itself.
And it changes so much, the dialogue, and through the editing room, too.
You don't realize when you're outside the movie, outside the business
how much gets chopped of the dialogue itself, you know
of people talking to each other and how that can change, you know'?
And it's almost... It's the emotions that play in the scene.
POLSON: Looking at this scene right now, it's probably as good a time as any
because it's, I think, one of the scariest scenes in the film
and largely a tribute to Dakota Fanning.
We should talk for a second about how incredible this girl is.
- I mean... - SCHLOSSBERG: She's amazing.
POLSON: She is amazing. She was 9 years old on the day we shot this.
She turned 10 as we were shooting the film.
FORD: She's 9 and she's going head-to-head with Robert De Niro.
And she's playing on his level in every scene.
SCHLOSSBERG: I think they both actually, you know, liked that.
Worked off each other, you know'?
POLSON: Because you imagine, like, how potentially intimidating it would be
for a 9-year-old girl.
And, you know. But it was great.
You were there, Ari, the first day we read the script together.
And I was as nervous as anything
because I knew they both... Obviously, De Niro is De Niro.
Dakota, I knew, was an incredibly talent...
But one thing that you cannot... It's not about talent, it's kind of about luck
is the chemistry that happens between two actors.
And it's, like, up in the air
until you sit down and read it. And obviously with two people
at the level that they are
you know, you're not really in a position to audition.
I wasn't in a position to audition Dakota.
And frankly it would've been disrespectful
because she had a lot of work I could look at on tape and stuff.
So the first time we ever saw them play scenes together
was at the first read-through.
And there was a great, you know, sigh of relief, from me at least
five or 10 minutes in, where I realized these two...
I mean, I think you felt even Bob sitting up and going,
"Wow. This is... You know, this is not just a 9-year-old girl I'm working with.
"This is someone who's A, incredibly experienced,
"and B, incredibly talented."
FORD: They both have this incredible gift for emotional truth.
It's like she'll know when she's being truthful, and Bob will know
when he's being truthful, and together they're...
You know, when that clicks, it's really great
because they both have that ear, and they know when it's right.
And that's a gift.
POLSON: You know, having worked with a few kids before
one of the first casualties of working with children is subtlety.
And what was great about her was she had subtlety down to a fine art.
I mean, she was able... She knew that in front of the camera
unlike, say, being on-stage, or maybe other formats,
in front of a camera, it's kind of about thinking the moment
rather than trying to act it out, or pull a face
or, you know, do some kind of physical body-language thing.
She was able to son of make the gear changes all within her own head
and have it completely, you know, read by the camera.
SCHLOSSBERG: Before I was done writing the first draft, before this thing sold,
before anything, I was like, "Oh, my God. Dakota."
POLSON: And wasn't she a family friend or something?
SCHLOSSBERG: She is a family friend, yeah.
And, you know, I wanted it, but I also thought,
"You know, this is just not very likely." You know'?
Because she is, you know, the most sought-after...
POLSON: I think... I mean, I don't wanna speak for her or her parents
but I think, you know, they really wanted to work with Bob.
And that obviously helped us.
And I think, too, to your credit, Ari, this is...
You know, usually the kid in a movie is, like, literally the kid.
The kid to the lead role, or the kid to something.
Even in, you know, other movies, like, she's been so incredible.
But this film, she carries the movie with Bob. You know, it's a two-hander.
And I think that was a great attraction for her.
SCHLOSSBERG: I knew she would.
I knew she could.
POLSON: She'd done a lot of movies already.
It's hard to say, like, "Hey, you wanna cast a 9-year-old?
"But is she overexposed?"
So one of the things we worked on was her look.
And obviously, we changed her hair color.
And I think something about that just totally worked.
And we worked on it week after week to try and get the right...
- Because this is a wig. - FORD: Right.
POLSON: We couldn't mess with her hair, because, you know, she's young
and we didn't wanna son of take the risk of making any damage.
So we got a great wig made, and we got the color right
and it did something to her blue eyes that made them just go nuts.
- And I think that's part of her appeal. - FORD: Yeah, that was a great call.
I remember seeing the original makeup tests with you
and I was like, "I hate when..." Wigs are always so tough
because sometimes you have to even cut around them if they don't look right.
And there's a lot of active stuff in this film.
And when we started shooting, it was such a great idea.
It just changed her persona, her demeanor.
POLSON: This is her scene. This is the one moment she has
where she has to be stronger than everybody else.
You know, this is the moment, you know, Emily's moment right here.
- She's totally in control. - SCHLOSSBERG: She's taking over
and you're like, "Oh, my God, this is the devil child."
FORD: She's totally in control, and he has no chance of competing at this point.
He's just gonna have to do whatever she's gonna tell him.
SCHLOSSBERG: Just at this moment, you know. I think this is the height of that.
POLSON: When I first read the script, this was the scene about...
Probably this is about halfway through, where I thought,
"I really wanna do this film."
Because there was something about this scene.
It felt like it came at the right place, that everybody was saying the right thing.
It was disturbing and scary and real and honest at the same time.
SCHLOSSBERG: I like how you smudged her lipstick a little bit.
POLSON: Yeah. Well, actually, I think, if I remember rightly
at first, we tried to put it on as if she'd done it herself.
And it looked like we'd tried to put it on as if she'd done it herself.
So I said, "Look, just wipe it off, give her the lipstick, give her a mirror
"and chuck it on." I think, if I remember correctly
that's what we ended up with. That's Dakota's handiwork.
And then, of course, we had to replicate it every time we did a new shot.
There was a huge dialogue scene, if you remember, at the end of this.
It was a good lesson because it was one of those moments,
"We've got an opportunity for everyone to explain themselves."
FORD: Yeah, the interesting thing was, you know...
POLSON: Trying to figure out... FORD: Why he becomes Charlie.
And we went through so many different versions.
There was one thing where we had this medical file coming out.
You have that line in there now which is like, "Hey, her childhood..." You know,
"I wanted to give her a better childhood than I had."
POLSON: It felt like the harder we worked to make it make sense...
FORD: Again, the more questions the audience would ask.
And we'd say, "Well, wait a second. Why is he Charlie?" You know.
POLSON: And I tell you, the thing I kept coming back to was... A film that I love
is Fatal Attraction.
Now, you know, it's a popcorn movie, whatever.
But I just love it, I think it works.
And I've always thought about that film, it's so kind of great and bold
and sort of unusual for one of these kind of films
that they never try to explain why Glenn Close is who she is.
- There's one moment... - SCHLOSSBERG: You just get little hints.
POLSON: But, like, one hint.
Like, Michael Douglas has a scene where he fakes a heart attack
and then she gets upset, and then he laughs at her, and then she says,
"That's not funny because my dad died of a heart attack." Right?
And then he gets really upset, and then she says, "I'm only joking."
But then when he breaks into her apartment
he finds an article that says her dad died of a heart attack.
And it's just, that's it. It's, like, literally a drop in the ocean of back-story.
And it's so cool because all these movies
they so desperately try and explain away their kind of neurosis or whatever.
And maybe I'm wrong, but I just feel like
just be bold and say, "He's nuts." I mean...
FORD: It's always gonna be a combination of factors
that creates this situation, genetic and environmental.
It's not gonna always be just one thing.
If they knew what it was, it would be something that could be treated.
But I think the ambiguity is good because, again, the audience will impress
their own ideas about it, and that's always better
than anything that you could tell them directly.
POLSON: This particular disorder, you know, in the research that we did
I mean, it always came back.
Ii is true like 99 percent of people with dissociative identity disorder
do have some kind of a serious trauma as a kid.
Sexual usually, you know, whatever it is.
The most grotesque crimes I read about, all the rest of it.
No one's saying he didn't have that, but do we need to go into it in the film?
Do we need to do the classic Hollywood thing of,
"Let's spend 10 minutes now explaining."
SCHLOSSBERG: I mean, that's just it. It's, you know, a lot of people
they go into this deep thing. It's a movie.
You know what? As long as you're on the ride, and it's enjoyable
and it's realistic in some sense...
I mean, when I was playing with that idea
I was actually talking to a family... A friend... A psychiatrist.
And, you know, it's like, it's the human mind.
And there is a creative license there.
You know, maybe this wouldn't happen to 100 out of, you know, 101 people.
But anything is possible.
You just take that creative license with, you know, a guy who's sick.
POLSON: And hopefully just, I mean, in my opinion, not break the rules
but not necessarily kind of adhere to them.
SCHLOSSBERG: No, but the rules are... I mean, in this movie anyway
the rule is that when he's Charlie, he's in the office.
- I mean, that kind of... - POLSON: That's the rule.
SCHLOSSBERG: Don't break that kind of stuff because they'll say, "Wait a second.
"How could he be in two places at once?"
That, to me, are the rules, you know'?
You know, make it convincing.
Convince us that this guy can actually... Is insane and can do this, you know?
POLSON: I wanna spend a minute talking about De Niro
because everybody takes for granted, you know, he's Robert De Niro
and Academy Awards and Taxi Driver and all the rest, and it's all true.
But, you know, let's give it a little insight into what it's actually like
working with De Niro. I know for me, this is my third film
it was obviously kind of a daunting prospect, you know
meeting with him and all that
but I mean, I couldn't have met a more supportive man.
He's very director-driven. He's all...
Once you've got the job, and obviously I had to meet with him
and be son of approved by him before. But he is all about you.
I mean, it's almost like your opinion matters more than him
and, "I wanna make sure you've got everything you need" and all the rest.
And I couldn't speak more highly of him.
But probably more interesting than that is his process, at least on this film.
And I don't know with Bob whether he's the same on different films
but, Jeff, I mean, nobody can speak with more sort of authority than you
about how Bob works. So why don't you tell us about it.
FORD: Well, it's really interesting.
A fascinating thing about working on this film was
I grew up on Scorsese movies, and he's one of my favorite directors
and he did a lot of films with De Niro
and it's interesting to see how Scorsese's style of editing
was sourced from De Niro's style of performance
because Bob acts like... The best analogy I can make is a jazz musician.
Bob will talk and say the lines sometimes three or four times
until he hears it right in his head
and then he'll son of just follow that line.
And it's kind of amazing watching him in dailies.
He'll stop and restart and stop and restart.
He always gives you the piece that you need, but it's done in a way
that he's looking for that moment of truth.
He's looking for it in tiny capsules.
And it's never done fully, you know, beginning to the end of a take.
Sometimes it is, but most of the time it's not.
It's done in these little capsules, and I think it's fascinating
watching him work because he does find it.
He has to hear it and find it and then he presents it.
And it's always the piece that you need.
You just don't know you need it until you're searching for it.
(CHUCKLES) And we did a lot of searching. He's brilliant at finding that moment.
And he's brilliant at hearing it in his own performance.
POLSON: Here's what I love about him, and what I respect about him is
in my career, which has not been huge, but it's been around,
I've never met a guy who's probably got more right
to be less experimental, and yet is more experimental
than any actor I've ever worked with.
FORD: He's fearless, yeah.
POLSON: He gives you everything there is to give.
I mean, he literally, in one scene, he will give you the entire rainbow
of emotions and lines and try things and improvise lines
and go back to the script and whatever and happy, sad.
And then it's kind of like he delivers it on a platter.
And it's really up to you and your editor to figure out how to make it work.
And it's by no means, like, offloading the responsibility.
It's like, he understands moviemaking so well.
FORD: He's a true film actor. He understands that.
POLSON: He's directed movies, and he's acted in so many movies
that he knows that your job... I mean, the cliché is true
that a film isn't made in the shooting
it's really made in the postproduction.
And he understands that better than anyone I've ever met.
So he will give you everything there is to give in terms of ingredients
and then he kind of says, you know, in not so many words,
"Good luck. I gave you everything you needed.
"Go and make it happen."
And you know, frankly, it takes so much trust to do that.
And it really does. There's no other way to put it.
And it means that our job is much harder
but, I think, much more interesting at the same time.
Starting with Jeff, and then when I came into the cutting room, too,
we looked through sometimes literally 35 lines
because there might have been seven takes of a scene
and yet, in each take, Bob's done it like five times, whatever,
because he, like Jeff said, he will get to the end and he'll start again.
Or sometimes he's halfway through a scene, and he'll start again.
But what's clever about Bob is he'll only do it when...
He understands the process so well. He'd never do it with a tracking shot
or a master shot, or anything where he's...
FORD: When he's in separation, he knows he can give you a piece.
POLSON: He does it with his close-ups or with shots that he knows you can loop.
FORD: My sense, and I didn't have much to deal with him on the film much at all
because I was cutting a lot of the time
but I know he was very fond of you.
And the way I know this is because when we screened the film
for him the first time, he seemed in a terrible mood
when he walked into the screening room.
You weren't there, and I screened it for him.
POLSON: Let me just say, I purposely stayed away because
I didn't want the lights to come up and be standing behind Bob, going,
"Hey, what'd you think?" So I said to him,
"Listen, go down there. It's on Sunday, 8:00.
"Just call me when it's finished." And what happened, Jeff?
FORD: Well, he showed up and he seemed in a terrible mood
and he wanted a number of espressos, which we provided for him graciously.
When the film was over, he came out
with a smile on his face, and I knew he had loved the movie.
I was just absolutely certain.
And he came up to me and he said, "Are you gonna talk to John?"
I said, "Yeah, I was gonna call him to let him know that you watched the film."
And he's like, "Okay, here's what I want you to do.
"Tell him I hated it.
"I want to let him stew, I want to let him, you know, sweet on this.
"So I'm gonna call him in two hours
"but call him right now and tell him I hated it
"I was in a bad mood, I walked away angry."
I always feel like the director is the most important person
I answer to on a movie, but Robert De Niro trumps the director.
(ALL LAUGHING)
POLSON: And I don't take that personally. FORD: There's no way I'm gonna not do this.
So I called John. I'm like, "John, I don't know.
"He was... You know, I think he had some problems.
"He seemed a little concerned. I don't know what to do."
POLSON: And I'm like, "What do you mean, 'concerned'?"
FORD: John was freaking out.
So then, of course, I go back to the cutting room
and I'm working on some stuff, and four or five hours go by.
And John is... I know John is just freaking out.
And he calls me, he's like, "What's going on? Bob hasn't called me.
"I don't know what's happening. What happened? What happened?"
And I'm like, "John, I don't know."
And I'm still trying to pull this off.
And about an hour after that, I got a call from John.
He's like, "I can't believe you guys did this to me."
(POLSON LAUGHING)
And I was so relieved that Bob had actually remembered to call him
and let him off the hook because I'm afraid John's on a flight to Australia.
POLSON: Exactly. I was so nervous. I thought my career was over that day.
But the funny thing for me was when I finally did connect with him
and he said, "Hey, I love the movie." He said, "I had no idea I was Charlie."
(ALL LAUGH)
And I thought, "Well, that's cool.
"If you didn't get the twist, that's probably a good sign."
SCHLOSSBERG: When I first heard he was in the movie, I was just, like, beside myself.
POLSON: Yeah, how was that? Because originally...
Let's talk about that, because originally the character was younger.
When I first read the script
I mean, I think you said early 305, late 30s, something?
SCHLOSSBERG: You can't go out and write something and expect it to be
you know, De Niro starring in it.
You just don't,.. People asked me, "Did you have De Niro in mind?"
I'm like, "What?"
POLSON: "What the hell are you..." Yeah, yeah.
SCHLOSSBERG: You can't have that in mind. I mean,
you know, being this was my first produced film
it was, you know, really, really exciting.
It's almost beyond words, you know? And you're just sitting in this situation.
And, you know, just the idea of it, it took me a while...
I almost had to just not even focus on it, just kind of go away from it
to deal with it because, you know... Or else I could be, you know,
taken up into the stars with it.
POLSON: In this business, so many things happen for a week,
and then they don't happen.
And you hear De Niro's interested, or Clint Eastwood.
SCHLOSSBERG: A lot of things like that.
POLSON: And then it never happens or whatever the hell it is.
- It must've been nerve-racking. - SCHLOSSBERG: Oh, yeah.
But when he was finally in it, you know, it was just so exciting.
And, you know, I come to New York, and New York's my hometown
and I'm coming back there, you know. Have some friends there, you're there.
And you know, we're getting ready, getting everything set, all the sets.
And, you know, then finally the day had come where I was gonna meet him
for the first time.
And I didn't wanna seem overanxious,
like, "Oh, my God, I'm such a big fan."
POLSON: I remember that. Let's talk about that
because we went up to Bob's apartment...
SCHLOSSBERG: I wanna be cool. That was it.
It was just, like, going in there, "Hello," you know, that's it.
POLSON: And were you cool, Ari? Tell us what happened.
SCHLOSSBERG: We went... POLSON: Because if I remember rightly
you weren't that cool.
SCHLOSSBERG: It was almost over-cool that turned out to be not cool.
It was walking into the kitchen.
You were there, John, Barry, the producer,
and Bob De Niro.
And he was sitting there and it was this small, kind of intimate table.
And in the center there, there was these sandwiches
you know, all different kinds of sandwiches.
POLSON: Best sandwiches you'd ever seen.
SCHLOSSBERG: I don't think he made it. I don't know.
But anyway, they were there. And I, of course...
POLSON: You know, just so I can say, I don't think he made those sandwiches.
SCHLOSSBERG: I don't think he... POLSON: I just wanted to add that.
SCHLOSSBERG: Was he, like, in the kitchen cooking? I don't know.
But what I did wanna do was definitely give this idea that,
"Hey, this is an everyday thing for me, its fine." You know? So I start to eat.
And I'm eating, and I'm looking around, and no one else is eating.
And I'm eating these sandwiches not to try to be bashful, you know'?
And then he starts talking to me, and I'm realizing that my mouth
is filled with this food and I'm like, "What am I doing?"
(FORD AND POLSON LAUGHING)
I'm trying to be so comfortable, like, "Oh, yeah."
You know, you always hear the Italians, they like you to eat.
And so we're sitting there and he's going over the script.
And that is such a thrill, taking notes from him, you know, for the first time.
You have this guy giving you his thoughts.
You know, and that was such a thrill.
POLSON: And they were incredible thoughts, too.
Like, so instinctive.
SCHLOSSBERG: What he does is he comes through...
You know, it's funny how different people give different notes.
You know, a studio will give notes, basically, on structure.
They're all across the board, but De Niro really comes from an actor...
An emotional point of view.
And he says, "Would my character do this? Would he say this?"
You know, so he's looking at it, you know, from that way.
I don't think he's ever given any structure notes or anything like that.
So while he's doing this, you know, and I still have sandwiches
all over my mouth and crumbs over my shirt
and I'm taking notes in one hand and you guys
are just kind of acting cool in the corner, I cro... It's very simple.
I'm sitting next to him, we're on a circular table
I cross my leg, just cross my leg, my foot grazes his pants.
Just grazes it, but he jumps up. He jumps up.
(POLSON AND FORD LAUGHING)
And I'm like, "Oh, my God, I just kicked him.
"I just kicked De Niro."
And I'm like, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." And he's like, "It's okay. It's okay."
POLSON: And I'm looking at you like, "You wanna stay on this movie or not?
"What are you kicking De Niro for?"
SCHLOSSBERG: "What am I doing?" So I'm like, you know...
But the end,.. And you were there and you saw he did jump
and I think it shocked him, but it was obviously an accident.
POLSON: And, you know, frankly, I don't think he'd been kicked by a writer before.
(ALL LAUGHING)
Let me talk about this for a second because Melissa Leo's on the screen
and she's so incredible in this film, and this is her scene.
This is, you know, where we have an opportunity
to develop this kind of red herring, I suppose, of her husband.
FORD: Right. POLSON: As a possible.
So talk to us about this, Ari. I mean, how did this scene come about?
SCHLOSSBERG: This was one of, actually, my favorites.
I think that... You know, talking about, like, how sometimes
it comes differently than you'd expect, I think that this is a version
of something that she and you have done
to excel my expectations as far as what was on the page.
I think that, you know, we wanted to make a scene
that we could sell the fact that the husband could be Charlie.
And if you look at her, you know, just there, the way her tears
you know, tearing up, you see there's something really painful in there.
You know? And you sense that... Okay, and this lock of the door
you know, we had talked about that. Like, okay, he doesn't trust them.
Somethings going on across the street.
POLSON: What I realized early on is the more we make him,
De Niro's character, David, feel like there's a threat outside the house
the less likely we are to point the finger at him.
So the more we can make him look out the windows, lock the door
think about the neighbors, you know, you almost don't have time to go,
"Is it Bob?"
SCHLOSSBERG: Well, and you also want him to be proactive in doing something.
So he's actually going across the street to the neighbors'
and he's searching.
POLSON: We tried this movie without that scene.
And it felt like... Frankly, it's a slightly passive character through...
You know, it has to be because of the nature of the story.
This is one of the sequences where David actually goes and does something.
And when we cut it out, it really made it feel like,
"Wow. The one thing he does is gone."
FORD: I always felt that it felt... It had a thematic resonance
which is that the movie's about people who are scarred by trauma
and how they deal with it.
Emily deals with it by creating this imaginary friend
in this imaginary scenario.
David creates it by creating an imaginary personality named Charlie.
And Melissa Leo deals with it in a much more sort of conscious way.
She's terrified. She's shut down. She can't do it.
And I think that that scene always felt like it sort of
reached the sort of central theme of the film.
POLSON: So Elisabeth Shue, who I'm such... I mean, you know
frankly, I've become friends with her since this
and she's just the greatest person.
But she's also so good in this film.
FORD: I love this scene. POLSON: I love this scene.
Yeah, this scene probably...
FORD: She's reaching out to Dakota. You can see she's sweet.
POLSON: This is the scene... You know, when people walk out
of the theater, this is invariably the first scene people, you know...
Elisabeth going out the window. And it's so good.
And the dialogue, Ari, a credit to you.
It's just so creepy and perfect and understated and right.
And for whatever reason
Darek and I had this idea to shoot these profile...
You know, we've got the traditional coverage here, which is fine.
And I gotta tell you, when you've got a limited schedule
as you, frankly, always do, even on a big film, whatever
I mean, no matter how big the budget or schedule
it always feels like you're pressed for time and money
to try and get this shot and the next shot
it's like the icing on the cake, and you know you don't need it
but for whatever reason, we fought that day to just get it.
You know what? Today... I think I remember saying to everybody,
"I don't want just the coverage I need today.
"Today, I want the coverage that I actually want."
FORD: I remember seeing this in dailies and I was like,
"I know where to go into that."
And it's a fantastic composition.
And Elisabeth's performance in this scene is fantastic, too
because it's almost musical.
It's like, again, it's the way Bob is like a jazz musician
she's also so musical in this scene.
It's the way she's sort of...
She's playing this silent childhood game
and then it's just going dark, and you can hear it in her voice.
POLSON: And this shot here, right here of Dakota.
That. I remember seeing that in dailies, and we go,
"Oh, my God, that's just so cool."
It wasn't planned, it wasn't scripted, it wasn't anything I hoped to get.
SCHLOSSBERG: Cartoons. This was...
I mean, at one point, that was a big, big part of the script.
I mean, it was in every scene.
POLSON: I think it was Tom and Jerry when you wrote the script, right?
SCHLOSSBERG: There was a lot, right.
POLSON: That was ruled out by the $7.8 million that they wanted or something.
So then it was left to Jeff and I to go through every tape
we'd been provided with that was kind of a bit more in our budget range
and we found the stuff that pops up two or three times in the film
that was kind of this period cartoon
and was such a great look, and such great music
and so kind of weird and creepy.
FORD: Well, the period element is great because, again, what I said before
is it really informs a son of dreamlike element to the movie
which is, there's no particular time or space.
It's all sort of this subconscious dreamscape that you're living in.
And the fact that the cartoons aren't modem
you don't see commercials, you don't see any relation to reality.
We're seeing this movie through David's perspective. And he's...
POLSON: He's gone. FORD: He's gone.
And we're in his subconscious. So the fact that they're from another time
is just really beautiful.
POLSON: But originally, Ari, how did the cartoon thing come about?
SCHLOSSBERG: You know, it comes back to this idea that... Which is in there now.
But the idea is that, look, her dad is not fun.
She lost her best friend, which was her mom. She's searching for a playmate.
She's up in this lonely place. She has no one to play with.
So, one, cartoons are violent, I always see.
- So that could help her violent behavior. - POLSON: It's true, actually.
SCHLOSSBERG: Or when Charlie does something violent, she'll be like,
-"Hey, it's just like cartoons." - POLSON: Yeah.
SCHLOSSBERG: You know, that kind of thing.
You're kind of justifying... That's how he teaches her, through the cartoons.
Also, because it is playful and it is, you know, a fun kind of behavior.
And it's something that Charlie would watch, but her dad would turn it off.
So I think that getting that dynamic of her dad not, as you said, Jeff, before
not being, you know, emotionally involved with her, more intellectually
you know, where Charlie is this emotional being.
Basically, Charlie is everything that David wants to be, in essence.
POLSON: That's interesting, because Jeff and I always talked in the cutting room, too,
about the great irony of this story is that the father, on the surface
wants nothing more than to solve his daughters problem.
SCHLOSSBERG: Right.
POLSON: Meanwhile, he's being Charlie and the great irony is
that he actually is solving her problem in a weird way by being Charlie
by playing with her, by son of...
I mean, it's kind of a dark way to look at the story, but I think it's true.
It's kind of a nice full circle
that even though he dies in the end, in a weird way,
and she's obviously traumatized at the end of the film,
he's somehow done what he wanted to do
albeit in a completely different way than what he wanted to do it.
SCHLOSSBERG: And with these split personalities
something that is realistic here is that one will be dominant over the other.
And what this really is is the case of his alter personality
becoming more and more dominant over the movie as he loses his grip.
This movie is basically Charlie winning over David.
And he takes him over at the very end, with Dakota's help.
POLSON: When he says, "Daddy's gone now," that's it.
SCHLOSSBERG: With his... Because she doesn't really like her dad that much
so she's using... Charlie's using her, and she's using Charlie
because they're gonna, "Hey, were gonna play together forever and ever."
You get that sense that she's helping this other guy take over her dad.
- But once he gets there... - POLSON: Then regretting it.
..."Wait a second. This guy's not what I thought he was," you know.
POLSON: Let me talk about this scene for a second
because this is one of my favorite scenes.
Dylan Baker is so incredible in this scene
but also, we shot this in a day.
And the reason I mention it is
it's probably the closest thing in the entire movie to a theatrical production.
I mean, we rehearsed this. It's quite a long scene.
It's probably three or four pages. And we rehearsed it quite a bit.
And when we came to shoot it, even though it's three or four pages
usually you would break that down, but we shot this in one piece.
And we got a master shot and then a tighter master and then close-ups.
And I just think Dylan Baker is so incredible in that scene.
This is like his showcase scene in this film, although he's great in all of them.
FORD: Yeah.
POLSON: But it's the scene where he comes around. And remember, Ari,
we fried to walk that very difficult line of, "This is the sheriff
"but we also want you to kind of believe that maybe this is Charlie."
SCHLOSSBERG: But not too much, because then we're cheating the audience.
So everything is a delicate line, you know.
POLSON: See, I'm such a cynic, I always felt like the neighbor...
Although we clearly tried to say the neighbor was Charlie,
I'm sitting in the audience going,
"If you're trying to tell me the neighbor is Charlie, then I don't believe you.
"Because it's a movie. And there's no way in the world
"that you're telling me the truth in a film like this."
So for me at least, the sheriff was always the one that I thought,
"Well, for those cynics like me who are sitting out there in the audience
"they're gonna go, 'I know it's not the neighbor. I know it's the sheriff.”
That way we still get to, you know, kind of trump them when we say it's...
FORD: Yeah, you know, it's strange because I was always thinking
how my intentions were trying not to have people guess who it is.
Don't even go there. Let them, you know... Like, I...
Because once you start guessing, you're gonna get it.
I mean, especially with the reality of casting and everything.
POLSON: But how do you not guess if...
By this point, someone's gone out the window.
You gotta be thinking about who pushed them out.
FORD: Right. But also enjoying the drama of what's going on
and not trying to think so hard into the red herring.
POLSON: Just, yeah.
FORD: Right. Because if you go into a movie like this and you're like,
"I'm gonna get the ending. I'm gonna get the ending"
and you're not even enjoying what's happening.
You know, yeah, you will get it eventually, and you know, but...
It's the misdirects, but it's also the enjoyment of what's happening
you know, his destruction here.
POLSON: I love this moment because it's Bob crying.
It was just one of those sort of vulnerable moments that, again,
I think helped sell the idea that it wasn't him.
FORD: Right.
POLSON: But also showed us Robert De Niro doing something we haven't seen a lot of.
I mean, how many times have you seen Robert De Niro cry in a movie?
We had that other scene earlier that ended up getting cutout.
Actually, he was really good in it, too.
But that one, I'm really glad that's in the film.
SCHLOSSBERG: It is different for him to play this type of role, you know.
POLSON: Well, the son of concerned father.
SCHLOSSBERG: The concerned father and vulnerable, you know. And, you know...
She... At times in this movie, she has the strength, you know.
And is trying to deal with this crazy daughter.
But then you realize, "No, he's actually a maniac," you know.
POLSON: Dakota's so good in this scene, too.
SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah.
POLSON: This is really informative of making a film
because I remember shooting this scene
and I was so under the hammer and so stressed and whatever.
And I was thinking, "How the hell is this ever gonna work?"
You've got hour problems, and we've gotta wrap and all that.
Then you put it together, and Dakota is in front of the camera
and she's acting like you wouldn't believe
and you put it together, and, you know, it works.
This sequence probably shouldn't have worked, but somehow...
Jeff, I remember you saying, "This doesn't actually make any logical sense
"but somehow it doesn't matter."
FORD: This was a very difficult section of the film because we're dealing with stuff
that very soon you're gonna be able to reference back to.
How was he able to be in this place and that place and so forth.
In a weird way, as long as you follow the emotional truth of what's going on
the audience is gonna go with you.
POLSON: Yeah, as long as... Within that moment, right?
FORD: Exactly. Yeah. If you betray that, they're confused.
But, you know, as we learned from... As we worked the film, as we edited it,
if you stay true to the emotional tact that you've taken
the audience will go with you. And it worked.
I was skeptical. Once we put it together, it worked real well.
SCHLOSSBERG: That was also the scene where he went out. Like, you see,
the way it was done now, you see, all of a sudden, he's wearing this jacket.
But what he was actually doing was going out to bury...
To dig the hole for Elisabeth, basically. But we're skipping that.
But we go right to that and you don't even know that and you miss it.
POLSON: I can't tell you how many of those...
That raincoat he has there, the yellow thing.
FORD: Yeah.
POLSON: I mean, I have photographic evidence of Bob trying on maybe 60...
(FORD AND SCHLOSSBERG LAUGHING)
Literally, I'm not kidding.
The costume designers could've killed me, I mean, and Bob, frankly
because obviously he has specific kind of ideas about those things, too.
And what I was trying to find...
And I wanna talk about the yellow thing because it's actually quite interesting.
I always thought that Charlie...
Even though we don't go into the back-story,
and I think that's the right thing to do,
I did learn from all the doctors
that these split personalities or whatever you wanna call them
do always, without fail, without exception,
do come from a childhood trauma.
So I always felt that Charlie himself, which we're getting to in a minute,
you know, was a child, you know, this other personality.
Because, again, if you read the books,
they're not confined to gender or age.
You can have a 40-year-old man with dissociative identity disorder
whose various identities are a 9-year-old girl
you know, a 21-year-old drag queen, a 76-year-old man, whatever the hell.
So I always felt Charlie, even though we, you know, really tried...
I tried not to be explicit about it because I thought it was kind of on the nose.
I thought he was a 9-year-old boy.
And the reason I fell in love with this raincoat or whatever you wanna call it
and I think why Bob did, too, was, to me
at least growing up in Australia, and I don't even know if it exists here,
but that whole kind of 9-year-old, 10-year-old boy thing
of going to school and having a yellow raincoat that could be seen in the rain
and you wouldn't get run over and all that.
It just felt like this kid thing.
And as soon as he put it on, I fell in love with it.
And I'd literally seen 60 of them.
So, what we did was, when he buries the eat, like, half an hour ago in the movie
we introduced that coat, so that it didn't just pop up out of nowhere.
Then, obviously, because this is the beginning of the last night of the film
we had to find a way for him to put it on and keep it on as Charlie.
So it just was very important to both Bob and I
what he actually wore when he makes the transition to Charlie
which is this scene. I want you to talk about this, Jeff
because this is probably the most important sequence in the film.
FORD: Yeah. I'm sure that we spent more hours cutting this material
than anything else in the film. And it's extremely delicate.
I mean, if you go one frame, literally at times, in one direction or the other
it no longer works. And we found... It took us forever to find the structure
of having the first barrage of flashbacks.
Then he goes to the other boxes as he's doing now, opens them
and then that sort of releases the deluge
of the full disclosure of what happened at the party.
And I think balancing this was extremely difficult.
It was actually the most fun I had on the film, putting this together
because we had so much material that we wanted to sort of reference back.
And when we finally found the sweet spot
of how much the audience could take at this point
and how much informed them and spun the narrative in another direction
which was always what Ari's script did,
which was, at this point, it just completely spun you around
in another direction, sent you on a totally different course
and made you reevaluate everything that you had seen.
If we had gone too far, you wouldn't have had that feeling.
If we had gone too short, you wouldn't have had that feeling.
So I think it was... It couldn't have been more delicate.
You know, the pieces that we had to work with were great.
There was just so many of them.
We ultimately ended up with this balance.
This is always thrilling to me when I watch the film.
I think it's really well shot, it's really well constructed.
And I think... There's two moments in the movie that just blow my mind.
One's coming up a little bit later. This one is the first.
And it's Bob's reaction when Dakota says this. And it's coming up here.
POLSON: There's two things that are interesting to me about this.
One is that you're absolutely right in everything you said
and what's interesting to me and fascinating is, actually, we came...
I mean, in my opinion, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff,
we ended up coming back to the structure we started with.
FORD: Yeah. We changed.
POLSON: At least when I was in the cutting room. We changed it a lot,
we tried it different ways and we tested it, we previewed it.
But like a lot of things,
we ended up going,
"You know what? We were right the first time."
What happens is, I think you have this gut instinct in the cutting room, like,
"Let's do it this way," and you're right. And then you preview it
and you get other opinions, everybody has an opinion,
and you know, audiences or whatever, and you sort of change it.
Then you go, "You know what? We were right the first time."
FORD: Yeah, you and I... POLSON: "Let's just go back..."
FORD: During your director's out, we put this together, I remember.
Structurally, it was what we ended up with. It was, you know...
As Jack Kerouac says, "First thought, best thought." And it was what we did.
POLSON: The second thing I wanna say about this is, the way it was scripted
-you know, when Ari... - SCHLOSSBERG: Five pages of flashbacks.
(FORD LAUGHS)
POLSON: There's that. That's another...
SCHLOSSBERG: There was a draft. It was five pages.
POLSON: Yeah, yeah. I felt, when I first read the script
I felt that it was a little bit like "The Making of Hide and Seek."
(SCHLOSSBERG LAUGHING)
- It was like... You remember'? - FORD: What do you mean?
- We were trying to explain everything. - POLSON: Yeah. It was like,
"You know what, rather than think about it as explaining everything,
"why don't you break it down and go, 'If we don't explain it..."'.
You know, "What do we need to explain?"
Rather than, "Let's explain everything"
it's like, "Let's figure out what we don't need to explain and go too far.
"And then go, 'Well, we went too far, so we've gotta explain that.”
But, no, what I was gonna say was that De Niro's performance
where he becomes Charlie, and there's a great close-up of it.
Was never scripted, it was never planned, it was never whatever.
But we did roll the camera, and he had this great moment.
And I never even planned to use it, but by the time I got to the cutting room
Jeff had sort of put it in and I'm like, "How can you not use that?"
I mean, it's Bob De Niro.
FORD: It's amazing. It's a moment where he freezes.
POLSON: It's in the cut. It's this kind of moment where...
- FORD: He freezes. -...he freezes and he flickers his eyes
and he looks at the light, half-smiles, and does all these weird things.
SCHLOSSBERG: Is that through the mirror'? POLSON: It's right before that.
FORD: She says, "Daddy's..." Right before he says, "Daddy's gone now."
It's really cool.
POLSON: So this is Dylan doing the...
SCHLOSSBERG: See, originally, he was afraid of the dark. Nyctophobia.
POLSON: Right.
Let's talk about it because it's kind of interesting.
SCHLOSSBERG: Sure. You know, we had this idea that the sheriff here
was talking to the doc... Because we wanted David, as a psychiatrist,
to be helping someone or doing something as a psychiatrist, you know.
And this guy was a weird sheriff in town
but he had this little quirk, which was, like... He was afraid of the dark.
But the way he would ask about being afraid of the dark
it almost seemed like, you know, "How's that girl doing up there?"
Ii almost was like giving...
POLSON: So we had a scene in the general store.
SCHLOSSBERG: Yes, yes, where he was explaining his problem.
And, yeah, and that's...
You know, you could take it out and you still have him scared
because it's, you know, dark or, you know, it's a scary situation anyway.
POLSON: We had more of a back-story here.
And what happened was, again, we found it slowed down...
I mean, it's like the age-old cliché, "Kill your babies."
It felt like a great scene, and Dylan was so incredible in it.
But from a story point of view, it sort of ground to a halt.
FORD: The invocation of the Marco Polo game is great, too,
because it's another childhood game.
It's Charlie riffing on the hide-and-seek theme.
I think the minute you hear Bob say "Marco," you know what you're in for.
And it's just... It's a matter of just waiting for it to happen.
SCHLOSSBERG: John and I, when we were trying to come up with the ending
what would be, like, good things in the end, we were talking about,
"Okay, let's have this guy be playing games."
POLSON: We got on websites, remember'?
SCHLOSSBERG: (LAUGHING) We were looking at games.
POLSON: What are childhood games? I didn't even play them when I was 10,
-let alone now. - SCHLOSSBERG: We had this scene
which we actually pitched to the studio.
But we had this scene of him playing hopscotch.
He's gonna do, like, this hopscotch, like, approaching Dakota as Charlie
-like, trying to scare her. - POLSON: Yeah, and it was bad.
SCHLOSSBERG: It was almost like they were like, "Are you guys..."
POLSON: We should've been fired right then.
SCHLOSSBERG: (LAUGHING) "I'm gonna pretend that this is not happening.
"I'm gonna go over this."
POLSON: They were like, "Let's pretend we didn't have this meeting."
SCHLOSSBERG: "We didn't hear that one. I think that one might be over."
You get excited because you get passionate in the moment
of, like, what this guy can do.
You always push the envelope, you go there, you know.
But that... Sometimes, you know, you go too far.
Well, it's a good thing we didn't shoot that. (LAUGHING)
FORD: John, I have to ask you about this because this is one of my...
Well, it's not one of my, it's my favorite scene in the movie.
And I was just wondering when you were shooting this...
Because we never really actually talked about this as we were cutting it.
But Bob and Dakota are in a place that's just unbelievable here.
They're just totally matched, and it's like a matching of wits.
And I was wondering if you felt this when you were shooting it?
POLSON: Well, no. I mean, usually
you're so under the gun with the time and the schedule and stuff
you're trying to get what you can.
I find, at least, maybe it's just me,
I never feel like I've got it until we get back and cut it and whatever.
But I'll say two things about this.
One is Darek and I, the DP,
made a decision that once De Niro is Charlie
rather than, "Let's do the in-the-face, on-the-nose Charlie," you know,
it just felt like it'd been done before,
what happens if, like, the less we see, the more scared we are.
So we made a very conscious decision, and Darek really followed through on it,
which is, let's not light his face.
You can see that through every scene, the scene that's coming up on the stairs.
You know, let's put him in the dark. Let's figure out how scary he is.
It's almost like the less you see, the more scared you are.
FORD: I mean, that's, yeah. That's the old rule. It's true, you know, yeah.
What scares you the most is what you don't see.
It's what you're imagining, what you're thinking, you know.
POLSON: And Dakota, you're right, Jeff, that scene we just saw, Dakota is...
Like, that's where I think she's the most brilliant she is in this entire film.
She's so real and so there.
And in Bob's favor, too. It's like what I was saying before.
With Bob, he will do the series thing, he'll go back and do the...
But even that, which is a very slow track in, if you notice that
he would never dream of resetting himself in that scene.
FORD: He didn't. That was one piece, right. POLSON: Because he knows you're tracking.
FORD: I mean, did you say, "Hey, this is what I'm thinking for you and Charlie”?
Or were you like, "Do what you want"?
POLSON: Bob and I talked endlessly about that.
FORD: Right. POLSON: We talked about who Charlie was.
He has kids, so he gets the whole childhood thing.
And he actually went to some...
When he went to pick up his kids, he would go half an hour early
and see what they were doing on the playground and stuff.
So he had a lot of ideas about, you know, the games they play
the way they talk, the sort of sing-songy thing they do.
I wanna mention Famke here because she's so incredible
and we haven't son of touched on her.
This is where she, you know, she sort of comes into the film as here to stay.
She's been sort of... Had her few scenes along the way, but she's so incredible.
And here's what l love about Famke. She's so gorgeous that you think,
"Okay, she's gorgeous but, you know, how smart does she come across?
"Can she play the child psychologist and all that?"
And what I loved about her when we met was I totally believed
and when I looked at all of her work.
She's one of those, I mean, very, very rare actresses
who is not only, like, drop-dead gorgeous
but you totally believe how intelligent she is on-screen.
And, you know, that was exactly what we needed.
FORD: She's really committed, too. It's amazing, in a lot of these scenes
she has to be, like, at the end of her rope a lot of the time.
Coming up you'll see. She's really at a point where
she's got a lotto deal with emotionally
in terms of action, in terms of everything, intention.
And there's just this utter confidence in her performance.
POLSON: It's so great. She's one of the few actresses
that can come into the room with a gun in her hands and call out"Emily'
and not make it feel like a cop show, you know, but make it feel real.
I originally met with her to play the mother, to play Amy Irving's role.
And she was like, "Well, I read the script, and I was thinking,
"you know, how would I be as Katherine?"
I've gotta admit, initially I was like, "Well, I'm not so sure."
And then we sort of did a couple of scenes and I was like,
"Wow, this girl is so kind of gorgeous but talented at the same time
"and so smart on-screen."
I mean, I just think she's really great.
FORD: Was the shower-curtain thing always something you intended to do?
Was that something you and Derek came up with?
POLSON: Just totally on the spot. I mean, totally on the day.
SCHLOSSBERG: What, him behind it? POLSON: Yeah.
FORD: That's so great.
POLSON: What I try to do when I shoot a shot is...
SCHLOSSBERG: I think it's my favorite shot. It's that creepy...
POLSON: It's creepy. SCHLOSSBERG: Creepy, creepy.
POLSON: But it's completely just, like, luck of the draw.
Because what I try and do whenever I do a shot is try and, for coverage's sake
shoot what would happen before and what would happen after it
so you have some options in the cutting room.
So that shot was really meant to just be the close-up of him, you know.
But of course you get back to dailies, and you go, "Hey, that's pretty cool."
Looking through that shower curtain and the blood and the knife.
It's pretty good. But I cannot take credit for that. That just happened on the day.
FORD: This was also something we restructured in editing.
It was your idea, John. It's a great idea, which is to intercut
Famke smashing through the door
with the door burst-through.
SCHLOSSBERG: And sound-wise, it's really cool, too.
FORD: It's fantastic, because you're so invested
in Famke trying to get out of that closet
and with Emily trying to get out of the house
and the two things sort of just lay in perfectly. It's really cool.
POLSON: Yeah, originally in the script, I mean...
It's real interesting for people watching that originally
De Niro/Dakota's storyline of going up and trying to get through the door
happened before Katherine arrives, right?
Then, in the cutting room, Jeff and I are like,
"Hey, what happens if we intercut these two ideas?"
So it didn't feel like it was as, you know...
It felt much more urgent and everything was happening at the same time.
This is the kind of scene I mean with Famke.
She has the ability to come into this room with the gun and just feel so real.
And she's got the bruises and it just, you know...
I mean, honestly, there is a bad version of this scene where, you know
the actress comes in and it's, like, so, kind of, on the nose
and I think Famke just sells it. She totally sells it.
So now we're at the cave, which, I mean, what can you say? It's...
Jeff, I mean, we...
(FORD LAUGHING)
FORD: We spent a lot of time in the cave.
POLSON: A little bit, yeah, yeah.
FORD: But again, you know, this is where the movie comes full circle for me.
You know, the first time I read the script...
And I think this is something that comes through in a subconscious way
the dreamscape of the movie, the idea of, you know...
The cave is such a perfect metaphor for this guy's subconscious.
All three characters are gonna end up in this subconscious world
this world of darkness, this world of sort of inability to see.
And they're gonna have to battle out their final moments in this place.
And I think it's a brilliant screenwriting conceit to put this in this place
because all the comfort of the house, all of the comfort of reality is gone.
We're now in this total primal world, and anything's possible.
SCHLOSSBERG: It's where they met. FORD: Yeah.
SCHLOSSBERG: You know? And that's why I think it's cool that it comes full circle.
FORD: It was originally, like, okay, she goes out into the woods, you know
the first day that she's there.
We're trying to misdirect everyone, thinking that somethings down this trail.
You know, something maybe supernatural, who knows?
You go down this trail, and what she discovers is this cave.
We think he's back at the office, but really, he's in this cave as Charlie
and they meet that day in the cave.
And that's why, you know, I feel like, it's almost like this is their playground.
You know? So it's good that it comes back into the cave.
POLSON: That's true.
I love the way Darek shot it. You know, it's hard.
You're shooting a cave. You don't want the Hollywood version of a cave.
You want the cave that's real.
I mean, if you've ever been in a cave at night...
SCHLOSSBERG: I remember the day we were like...
We were sitting there. It was at lunch
I was outdoors in New York at some café in the Village
and we're like, "Wait, with this cave, what are we gonna do with the cave?"
We're like, "Water. Water! Put the water in the cave."
- You know'? And then, you know... - POLSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What I...
SCHLOSSBERG: And even with Barry, it was like,
"Flashlights. Like, beams of light." You know?
It just kind of came together like that.
POLSON: I was so glad we got the water. Because it was a huge expense.
It just always felt like the moisture of that, the kind of sexiness of it, almost...
- SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah. -...and the kind of emotional quality.
SCHLOSSBERG: The actors didn't like it though, did they?
POLSON: Well, no, I mean, none of us liked it.
FORD: But they probably used it, that's the thing.
POLSON: Well, yeah, it made it much harder to shoot.
But it also made it much more real.
Everybody was struggling.
SCHLOSSBERG: If this was just dirt, you know.
- It does add something. - POLSON: This took us three days to shoot.
And there's a reason for that.
I mean, it takes you, like, an hour or two hours to move the camera.
Everybody's got, like, the whole plastic thing going, the legs.
SCHLOSSBERG: This is my favorite Dakota moment.
This face, this close-up of her, you know.
POLSON: Yeah. It's just so good.
SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah, it's, you know.
POLSON: She's so good here and so real.
SCHLOSSBERG: Believable, you know? It's just...
POLSON: And I do think there's something about... Like, I'm not a Method guy at all
but there's something about putting actors in the real scenario.
You can't help but, like, be traumatized or whatever it is.
Something happens, something chemical happens
that makes you just feel like you're in the moment.
FORD: This was also your idea' John, which is a great one
which is using the black, you know, on and off with the flashlight.
We had originally shot it slightly differently blocking-wise
and to intercut these sections of black
to create the progression to the final moment.
POLSON: Yeah, originally there was a lot of dialogue there between Katherine.
And it just didn't feel like we needed it.
SCHLOSSBERG: No, yeah. It's... You know, you go to the scene of,
"David. Can I find David?" Like, "Please, David, come back to me."
Any time you go there, trying to talk to someone with a split personality
trying to appeal to the other side
it's gonna get, "Okay, come on," you know?
POLSON: Yeah.
SCHLOSSBERG: I think we went without it, you know?
POLSON: Yeah.
- Less is more, I mean... - SCHLOSSBERG: Less is more in that.
POLSON: We definitely tried versions, drafts where, you know
you'd talk, and split personalities, and it just always felt...
For me, it was the Fatal Attraction rule.
It's like, "You know what? It's not about explaining..."
- FORD: No. -"...what the back-story is.
"It's about not unexplaining it.
"Just let me think my version of the story."
SCHLOSSBERG: Talk about this. (CHUCKLES)
FORD: We went through many versions of this.
SCHLOSSBERG: Well, yeah, the first time in the script, it ended in the cave.
- That was it. - POLSON: Right.
SCHLOSSBERG: Then one day you came into my office and were like,
"Ari, okay, listen. Write a tag, because I think they might go for a tag.
"Some kind of tag, some kind of ending scene." And then that progressed into...
POLSON: Yeah. Well, there was this scene, which we always loved from day one
and then we had a couple other ideas that'll be on the DVD as well
on the alternative ending scenes, which are great in their own way
but at the same time, when we looked at it, you know
purely, objectively and in terms of, like, the US. domestic release
this felt, like, the most real
the most original, and just kind of the best ending.
And that is the two heads. I mean, there's no way in the world
this girl has gone through what she's gone through in this film
and has come out of it unscathed,
and that last image is what happened to her.
SCHLOSSBERG: And there's the version of the one head, or just happy ending.
But, you know, I think it's good to go dark.
POLSON: It always felt to me like, why come back to the scene if nothing happens?
What's the point in having the scene unless it's gonna be new information?
And for me the new information is she's got a problem.
If you don't wanna have a problem, that's cool, just end it at the cave.
But it didn't feel right to come back and say,
"Hey, by the way, everything's okay."
FORD: Thematically, the whole story has been about how people deal with trauma.
And now Emily has seen her mother die, and now she's seen her father die.
And she's now gotta deal with that trauma, too.
It would be a betrayal of everything we've set up
in the earlier part of the movie to not have her deal with it
in some unique, interesting...
SCHLOSSBERG: It's almost like she's been through so much death that now she's fine.
FORD: No, you couldn't do that. SCHLOSSBERG: No. Now she's crazy.
FORD: You've gotta end it... It's like Carrie, with the hand
coming up out of the grave. Or it's like any of those movies.
You know, the idea is to always end it
with it expanding and exploding into a new, different direction.
POLSON: Well, thank you very much for listening to the commentary.
And we appreciate you being here. I'm sitting with Ari and Jeff.
- Thank you very much. - SCHLOSSBERG: Thank you.
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