-Oh, yeah! -Matrix sweat.
It smells like kung fu.
You don't often read something and go:
"This could impact how we view a particular genre."
This has that chance, and people will mimic it.
Here they come, ladies and gentlemen...
...from Chicago, lllinois...
...the Wachowski Brothers!
The Matrix revolution has begun...
...and continues to grow as time goes by.
We’re lucky WB let us put the whole creative team...
...of Matrix 2 and 3 in one place.
Andy and Larry are in Casting, the rest are getting it together.
It's still early.
We’re actually testing for physical fights...
...and we'll be shooting some special effects for Matrix 2 and 3.
In preparing for the next two films, we are trying to flesh out...
...what the film will look like.
We’re organizing...
... head castings for the actors...
...so we can design glasses, helmets and head things.
We've got more concept artists working on the movie.
It's five times as big and 10 times as difficult to put to paper.
Today, we’re training. It's the second week.
Mr. Weaving, Agent Smith, is learning how to fly punch.
There he goes.
We got a long way to go. With two...
...it's twice as much as you'd normally get on a film.
And these two films are more complex than the first film.
When we made the first one...
... nobody knew what we were doing. We were under the radar.
Only Larry and Andy really had a sense of the film.
I don't know how they stuck it out.
The film's future was uncertain.
The first Matrix, we were in Burbank...
...in kind of an empty warehouse.
We had nothing there. No coffeemaker--
We certainly didn't have trailers to change in. We had a bathroom.
We had a tiny office with a few people.
It was dinky compared to this.
Like the difference between working at NASA and working in a cave.
It was a big accomplishment to get a drawing board.
To get them to write a check at that time...
...for a drafting table was a commitment they didn't want to make.
And now we have this really wonderful facility.
It's really a dream come true.
This time, we go in with, to some extent...
...a cult-fan following, which is the greatest type...
...of encouragement you could have.
There's a lot less anxiety about whether or not...
...we will be able to execute a lot of the choreography.
We've been through it, so we’re not...
...flying in the dark like the last time.
We know how hard it's gonna be, so it's....
We know the challenges ahead.
The thing about it, it was true about the first one as well...
...you know, I love the material. I love the material.
I love the character and I love who I ended up working with.
So that is something that-- Regardless of what has to happen...
...that's what gets me through it.
A friend asked us to come up with a concept for a comic.
We didn't have any concepts. Started thinking about something...
...came up with the whole shebang.
Every idea we've ever had in our lives is in this one film.
A first film is like a first album.
They really put their heart and soul in it.
When I first read The Matrix. . .
...there was a great deal about the....
I don't know, the Eastern influence, the comic book influence...
...that had been meshed into kind of Western philosophy.
There's a synthesis from the literature...
...the exposure that they've had in cinema, their lives...
...what they’re interested in or find funny and cool.
-We like kung fu movies. We like-- -We like Japanimation.
-We like Japanimation, Philip K. Dick. -John Woo movies.
Science fiction books that are about the, sort of, nature of reality.
They really have a grasp of philosophy.
Of all types of philosophy, Eastern philosophy...
...of, you know, European philosophy.
When Larry and Andrew said:
"We want you to play Thomas Anderson, Neo"...
... I had to read Baudrillard, and Out of Control. . .
...which is about systems, evolution, robots...
...and another book, Evolutionary Psychology.
They wanted me to read those books before I even opened up the script.
To play Thomas Anderson...
... he searched for the truth, he felt something was wrong...
...Iike he was not having real contact...
...that there was something behind the veil.
You ever have that feeling where you’re not sure if you’re awake or dreaming?
All the time.
He was looking. He was looking for Morpheus to try...
...to break that veil and that's something...
... Baudrillard spoke about. Not the searching, but what gets in the way.
Baudrillard's ideas of simulacra simulation...
...is an important point within the film.
And that what we see in the film as a real object...
...is in fact often a simulation.
There's a chapter on religious icons.
The icon representing God loses its connection to God...
...then you have a simulation of an icon...
...till it's on your car's dashboard. A decay of meaning.
It wasn't like Las Vegas, where they built Paris in a casino.
The power of simulate, you know, simulacra and like--
It's a very relevant, very modern, important issue...
...that youngsters like us are noodling them about.
I read The Matrix script...
...and really flipped out for it.
I thought it was fantastic.
I thought that as a script...
...the first 40 or 50 pages were the best 40 or 50 pages I'd ever read.
And then I got very confused.
We went into the first Warner Bros. story meeting...
...and they said, "Okay, now we know we've bought something cool.
-We don't know what it is." -"Can you take us through it?"
When I read the script I went, "Am I in the Matrix or the real world?
How do I get my head around it?"
I didn't understand the script. I understood enough to say I liked it...
... but every time I read it and we got closer, I understood more.
I had questions forever and would've constantly tried to change the plot...
...and they were, "Now Bill, Bill, Bill...
...you just don't understand."
I have no idea why people who've read the script of the first Matrix...
...found it confusing. I don't get that at all.
Upon reading the script and seeing the conceptuals...
...at the same time, the immediate reaction is:
"There's no chance in hell this movie will be made."
There's a whole slew of scenes I see being chopped out.
It's just too unlike a large studio...
...to take a chance on something that seems very alternative.
You know, I've said to people often that a movie this smart...
...it's almost a miracle it got made, because it is so smart.
It took many readings and conversations with everyone...
...to fully understand the script. But I just remember thinking:
"They don't really think l’m gonna do this stuff."
Like running, like jumping from one building to another.
"Well, no, of course I'm not gonna run sideways along a wall."
Everything was specifically put in the script.
They want you to understand what you’re gonna see.
Particularly in an action movie, it's very hard...
... because people aren't used to reading it or don't wanna write it.
The legendary stories are, in a western...
...you'll see one-eighth of a page and "The lndians take the fort."
That one-eighth of a page...
...could take a month or two of shooting.
That's the director, stunt coordinator and everyone...
... planning how the lndians take the fort.
When these boys explained the helicopter sequence...
...or when they explained, in the new movies, the car chases...
...they’re very clear of what you’re seeing.
It makes it easier to budget than "The lndians take the fort"...
...since you know where it'll go.
It's easier to see what'll happen, so it's easier to understand.
And it's also great because they know what they’re doing.
One of the great things about them...
...is how idealistic and ambitious they were when they sold The Matrix.
They said, "Look, we have this trilogy."
I said, "lt'd be great to get the three, but let's try the one."
They wanted to direct it, and I said:
"l’m gonna have a hard enough time explaining...
...what it is we’re making...
...and to sell you two as first-time directors on this scale...
...with this kind of complexity, you’re asking too much.
I don't know how to deliver that." So they wrote Bound.
-I've been trying to seduce you. -Why?
There was one scene in it, the sex scene...
...and they wrote, "This is the sex scene and we’re not cutting it"...
...in the script and it-- This is....
I like that. It's funny, it's a little bit naive and it's also tough.
It was so low-budget, we did the temp music.
We came up with stuff and cut it in.
We worked hands-on together, very closely, for a long time...
...and we created this jewel of a movie. I love Bound.
I remember when I showed Terry Semel Bound...
... he was so impressed because they'd just made Diabolique that wasn't...
...that effective. I remember Terry said, "Goddamn it."
I said, "This thing, Bound, probably cost a fraction of our picture...
...and it's more interesting. They’re good. "That was the desired response.
At the end of Bound, when we were totally exhausted...
...on our last day, they said:
"Pope, you wanna do $ 100 million movie next?"
I said, "I don't think you should do $100 million movie.
Even if you do, I don't wanna do it."
The more money you have, the more heat rains down.
How are these guys gonna make the jump from a $5 million movie...
...to a $65 million movie? And I was afraid for them.
I kept saying, "Let's do a $20 million movie, a $10 million movie.
Let's work our way up." They didn't listen to me, thank God.
I thought, "That's a lot of money." I know Bound was so great...
... but lots of times, that doesn't happen. Studios aren't that trusting.
After spending an hour with them, going through the storyboards...
... I understood why someone would trust them.
So few people understood the original script...
...they decided to storyboard the whole thing.
Nobody really understood...
...the level of the action...
...or the level of detail we wanted in the action sequences and conceptuals.
They really wanted to jazz them about the action sequences...
...which were, like I said, Hong Kong and comic book-influenced.
Comics are graphic-type storytelling when you could freeze a moment...
...and make an image that sort of sustains.
As a counterpart, you can't really do that in film. We tried to do that.
They love comics, and they worked in the world of comics.
They wrote the first comic book I ever worked on...
...way back when, in my big break in comics, and was called Ectokid.
I remember watching them storyboard early on...
...and they would act it out. The storyboard artist would look.
You could see they’re drawing from life...
... not drawing things that can't appear.
They’re always there.
I don't just come up with stuff and say, "What do you think?"
They go over every shot that they want.
What they’re doing sometimes is examining.
They'll take an idea...
...they'll see different sides of it, flip it around.
That's what their camera does.
Here's an event. What's it look like over here? Or over here?
This is neat, interesting.
The immediate result of their comic background is that...
...their storyboards were far more dramatic...
...and the moments that they select to actually draw...
...the snapshot in time, is often right on the head.
The most maddening, the most emotionally evocative.
The notion of storyboards and what the Wachowskis do...
...there's no compatibility to that.
These are painting. They are, you know, master drawings.
Geof Darrow did a lot of conceptual work.
I only knew of two comics of Geof's before...
...one of them, a legendary comic, Hard Boiled.
And then Big Boy, which was not so famous.
But Hard Boiled is pretty well-known.
I had Hard Boiled on my shelf, like millions of other people.
All I could assume was that the man behind it...
...was the most demented individual on the planet.
I was expecting some guy with....
Covered in tattoos and piercings.
I assumed he was, you know...
...a very skinny, scrawny methamphetamine abuser.
When Morpheus tells Neo to free his mind, you needn't say that to Geof.
Geof's mind is free. I mean, he's out there.
One guy wanted to know what kind of drugs I was taking.
Sominex and Metamucil.
They'd seen some drawings...
...that could have corresponded to images they had...
...especially with the sentinels and the robotic part of it.
They said that they liked the level of detail that I put in drawings.
He draws so many details, that it becomes serene.
At the same time, inside it, every section of it is madness.
In many ways, Geof is wired to Larry and Andy's brain.
I mean, they’re all wired on the same circuit.
During that time, they were always, "I hope we have the budget for this.
I hope this looks the same." I had no experience in storyboards.
I had no idea how closely they would be followed.
I was amazed that they got everything as exact as they wanted it.
It's right out of their brains.
What we had to do really with the film was to establish...
...visually, the difference between the Matrix and the real world.
Our job was to differentiate the two worlds...
...in as quiet a way and as pervasive a way...
...so it took you someplace, but not in an in-your-face manner.
In the Matrix, everything was slightly decayed, slightly monolithic...
...and grid-like, like a machine would make it.
You notice in the interrogation room...
...or the office, there are grids on the walls and floors...
...even in the ceiling. So we’re hoping it'll convey...
...a feeling of artificial control, if you like.
Owen and I collaborated a lot...
...on the strength of the tones of green in the Matrix.
I also talked with Bill about...
...when the light hits a certain fabric or leather...
... how I could make it pick up green or different colors.
In the Neb we wanted to be much more about the human beings.
So we used longer lenses, and let the backgrounds get all...
...sort of soft and have the humans stand out more.
Their clothing is a little more humane and cloth-like.
Their makeup and hair are more natural. They’re less styled.
It was a very hand-hewn world, as opposed to the Matrix.
They’re a mercenary group of people...
...so they have more on their minds than fashion.
The Matrix always had a green bias to it...
...whereas in the real world, we had a blue bias.
We avoided green except for Tank's console on the ship...
...which has got green code, the Matrix.
So all of those things, which might not seem a great deal to anyone else...
...for anyone actually trying to work out the nuts and bolts of the film...
...they’re kind of like revelations, if you like.
My job is to create the environments for Larry and Andy...
...and the actors to work with.
What he did in Australia, the whole art department pulled off....
Most people won't believe it. The largeness.
The hugeness. The sort of complex set over complex set...
...over complex set and, like, built them all.
They’re beautiful and totally realistic.
I think his design was so spectacular...
...that he even surprised Larry and Andy.
He went further than they had imagined. That's a real credit to him.
We've utilized, as Larry and Andy wanted us to do...
...Geof Darrow's drawings, which were the original concepts.
The case of turning a lot of Geof's fantastic ideas into reality meant...
...some adaptations because we deal with gravity...
...and not just a piece of paper.
Essentially, we’re trying to evoke the world he developed, which is cool.
Well, Owen's sets...
...also beings derivative of Geof Darrow's demented imagination...
...were fascinating to see. I wanted to turn them into a club...
...after the film was done.
I think, sometimes, building sets is like the Matrix itself.
On one side is plywood, and then you walk through a doorway...
...there's another world.
Just being the Matrix...
...there's a kind of, like, simulation to every object.
That's kind of the illusion of the Matrix in itself.
Simulacra simulation was very much the case.
Basically, my job is to take the script...
...and show people who the characters are by what they wear...
...and why they'd wear them in the environment in which they’re placed.
Should we go to Laurence next?
We've got two different-- Two different kind of looks.
The directors come to the second fitting and we iron out things:
"Can you do kung fu or hang upside down so we don't see up your dress?"
You know, we work out all the practical considerations.
I might use three types of fabric for the same costume.
It might look the same but be stretchy because it'll be put over harnesses...
...or body armor or, you know, bullet hits or whatever.
Visual effects, if you do it right...
...should be a part of the conceptual process.
Because if you are going after the unseen...
...then planning the unseen should involve...
...visual effects design. Larry and Andy understood that quickly...
...so they brought me in...
...during this time of development.
We spoke before of the sort of impact...
...that comic books can have...
...in terms of their frozen graphic moments.
What we like about slow motion is that it brings some of that quality...
...to action scenes. We also like to move the camera...
...so we had this concept of shooting something in slow motion...
...and moving the camera at regular speed.
And Bill Pope, the pussy...
...wouldn't strap a rocket to his back.
The discussion was, we put a rocket...
...on a dolly so that it zooms real fast.
That wasn't really practical...
... because you wouldn't really be able to focus and see the shot.
So it had to be some sort of effect. Somewhere along the line...
...they connected up with John Gaeta.
When we prepped the first movie and looked for a visual effects crew...
...we went to all the usual suspects:
We went to lLM, Digital Domain, all these entities that are...
...well-thought of in the world of visual effects.
Gaeta was not part of that group. I mean, he was outside that world.
They showed their boards a few places.
Each time they had done that, they tended...
...to have a similar reaction. Faces turned white...
...or some proposal for a physical camera invention...
...that'd end with the camera exploding because it'd have to move too fast.
It'd have to be connected to a rocket in order to get the shots.
John's idea was to replace it with hundreds of still cameras.
A moving image is a hundred still images.
It can look like a motion picture, and it's a still image.
Bullet time is basically like "mind over Matrix" moment...
...or a moment where we can see time...
...in the speed of light or the speed of sound.
The first test I saw was an exploding trash can.
He froze the flames in midair and moved the camera around it.
Bullet time was the technical hurdle.
But the conceptual, you know...
... nut to crack was the portrayal of the real world.
Which was, oddly enough, the most bizarre part of the movie.
Which was the place where...
... horrendous biomechanical beasties lived and ruled...
...and enslaved mankind and all of those things.
I tried drawing sentinels, but I didn't get it.
And they called in a couple other guys. They couldn't do it.
I said, "Let me have one more shot at it."
And I drew it really fast, because they were going to Warner's.
They said I got it. That's the basis of the sentinels.
And they’re the villains. It's nice to have a piece of that.
My kung fu is just no good.
I want to shoot the kung fu...
...Iike the Hong Kong guys.
Have the actors exchange four, five, six punches.
Choreograph fights like a dance.
Let it sort of happen in front of people...
...instead of creating it in editing. That required...
...all of the four major actors...
...to undergo massively intense...
...study with one of the best Hong Kong choreographers...
...Yuen Wo Ping.
Larry and Andy said, "We want the actors to do the kung fu."
I would say, "What's the big deal?
Let's get people who can do kung fu."
They were convinced they wanted to see...
...these actors doing it themselves.
Actors are more believable than stuntmen...
... no matter how good they are. If actors can be stuntmen...
...you've got it made.
Sorry.
We were up-front with how demanding the film would be.
-We were hoping someone would be-- -Crazy enough to do it.
I had no idea what we were in for.
They said, "Four months." I said, "Okay."
Larry and Andy said, "There'll be lots of training."
I said, "No problem at all."
I didn't think about it enough.
I totally knew because I screen-tested...
...for three hours doing this stuff. This was part of my screen test.
Without other actors so I could have a breather.
I'll tell you one thing, those first two days...
... kicked my ass.
After the first day, I was so shocked and I realized I was so unfit.
And I was working with...
...these incredibly skilled Hong Kong performers...
...who thought I'd never get there.
We started on the last rung of these bars.
We would walk in and say, "Hey, Hugo...
... put your leg up."
We'd get our legs up. "Get your leg up, Carrie-Anne."
And then you'd kick.
You'd kick for about 45 minutes.
We’re kicking and we’re sweating...
...you’re sweating and you’re grunting and going, "Ouch!"
Next day you come in limping.
Keanu made this decision...
...and went through the toughest training periods for an actor...
...in modern film while he was recovering from surgery.
To his neck.
Coming into training for the first one, I had a two-level fusion...
...in my cervical spine.
I was getting paralyzed, so I had this surgery done.
And then it was just a waiting game.
But it hindered me, because l couldn't train and kick for two months.
Ah, fuck!
It was devastating to watch.
Because it hurt me to watch.
Wo Ping, the fight choreographer was very nervous.
In the film, I don't kick much.
I do a couple wire kicks, but I don't kick that much.
The Chinese say, "Pick a job you love, you never work a day."
We're playing out there together.
There's a lot of playtime that goes into...
...this hard work of the training process and choreography.
We have fun.
And Wo Ping sets that kind of tone.
He has such a wealth of knowledge and experience.
Him and the people that he works with are great teachers.
We basically had the basic structure...
...of how we wanted the fights to work.
-And then he'd-- -Work on the fight.
He'd do things, we'd see them. We'd decide what we liked, what we didn't.
What we had in mind was being able to see the guys jump and hit.
-Jump and hit. -ln the two shot.
How do they hit?
Is this just a takeoff?
Is this a two shot?
They actually fly out of the shot.
Then in one shot they hit each other.
That's what I thought he was thinking.
So, you want to see them flying and hitting in one shot.
-Right? -That's what we were thinking.
He says he doesn't have enough people to draw....
We'll get on there.
Let's go!
One, two, three, go!
One, two, three, hit.
Okay, good.
Wo Ping and the Wachowskis are working on the shots.
Camera position is all worked out.
Basically, they would start training the actors...
...with the team to learn those exact moves...
...and they would practice over and over.
-You sure we don't move on that? -Yep.
-Coming at you. -Okay.
For the dojo fight, we can't tell you how much we practiced.
Like just the first part of it. We spent two months...
...on just the first movements.
He would look at us and develop with us, collaborate...
...with what our style was. He'd let that develop.
So, maybe...
...when I come in...
-...can I go like this and step in? -Yeah. No problem.
And then....
Okay, good.
Not too much pressure, but enough. Right?
The American training.
Good.
It seems ready for Australia.
I think we were ready. I know I was ready.
Let's go, let's go, let's go.
The city's beautiful. I've never seen anything quite like it. Gorgeous.
Australia provided many things that brought the cost of the film down.
It's odd the studio was so hands-off with...
...fairly new directors. They had done Bound previously...
... but obviously this project had a much larger budget.
We didn't have as much immediate supervision.
And that allowed a lot more artistic integrity.
That's one of the reasons we ended up in Australia.
The brothers knew far away is better for your first film.
No. We saw it as a way of making a movie.
We would've gone anywhere.
On the first day of the shoot, we had a Buddhist ceremony.
We had a big pig. A big feast.
Let's get some fruit, some candles, some incense.
Auspicious day.
Once we started filming...
...we looked forward to five months of filming.
It's hard to imagine the end part of it.
There was a really great excitement about it.
When we showed up, it was in a new studio.
Costumes were being built. Everyone had a genuine...
...enthusiasm for what they were doing.
I was feeling good until I got the news my neck didn't fuse.
We would train and then fight.
And have a chunk of time and train and fight.
And I was ready to go and they said, "You can't fight."
We knew his neck was injured...
...and the schedule was back-loaded action-wise so that...
...in the beginning Keanu could do quieter scenes...
...and the fighting scenes later.
Action.
Shit.
He needed to look ill at ease in his clothes at work.
So he was disheveled and nothing quite fit him properly.
The brown coat, the brown jacket.
We went shopping for that. One of the first experiences I had with her...
...was going to an antique flea market. Just walking through.
We saw shapes that worked on me and didn't work.
The important part is the reveal. And...?
And a bit of...
-...the guy in a box. -Guy in a box?
-What if they...? -Cut.
-You guys met Robert? -Not yet.
-This is Mr. Steadicam. -How are you, Robert?
The bailout guy. The parachute. Save us.
It's nice because two directors can act things out.
Show him that shot, guys.
This is the good thing about having two directors--
Action.
Somebody's gonna be here.
Somebody doing photo. He'll see it, say something....
-Stand by. -Action.
We figured a lot out.
Working with each other. How are we gonna make this film?
Cut!
Perfect.
Keanu's first trip back...
...to the Matrix once his veil has been lifted from his eyes.
That's his trip in that car through Chinatown.
Then I go for the jump.
I try to free my mind and go for the jump.
Then I can die. Then I learn I can die in the Neb.
Then I find out I'm not even the one.
The thing that used to convince him...
...before he was told the truth now looks fake.
Green screen is too sophisticated. We could make it look real.
So I wanted to use something as fake as a rear screen projection.
The same way Cary Grant looks fake driving down the street...
...in North by Northwest.
They got a pretty cool quality out of it.
It's an unusual thing to do these days.
The colors were saturated. The defocused nature of it made it dreamy.
That was the first day I worked with Mr. Fishburne.
Unbelievable, isn't it?
You know what was great about that scene?
Was that even with...
...the knowledge that his life was a simulation...
...was that he's still fascinated...
... by the technology of what the Matrix is.
Laurence is perfect for his part, because he has a regal bearing.
We dressed him very formally.
He's a formal character. The god through the world.
How nice!
G'day.
Here we are in Oz.
And I have one question: Where is Skippy?
I had an idea when...
...this sequence with the cat and they talk about déjà-vu.
Déjà-vu.
So we decided to include that in the fountain scene....
...to continue the idea that the Matrix was glitching.
So we cast a lot of twins and triplets...
...and costumed them identically. I don't know if anyone noticed.
You want to put some twins over there.
Could you put a couple more nuns in the second row?
The Matrix is a system, Neo.
Hey! One day I will no longer be a computer nerd.
I will be a superhero! I can fly!
Just stop it! Stop--
They agree on everything.
Does that tell you what I think of your idea?
Are you listening to me, Neo? Or were you watching the woman in red?
Look again.
It's hard to hold this damn gun. It's like holding a brick.
So, you liked this...
...better than this? Or just nothing?
Just freeze it. We'll try it clean and naked.
Freeze it.
We're establishing everybody?
First we’re going to shoot the background with nobody in it.
Then we shoot the fountain with a closed shutter.
Like when you shoot those crisp water commercials.
Then we bring in the crowd.
We shoot those guys for all three angles.
And while they are walking through the frame...
...we’re gonna ramp the camera from 24 to 96.
And in that moment, we’re going to stop...
...and pick a frame that looks crisp...
...and digitally hold that frame so everyone's, like, stuck.
-This isn't the Matrix. -No.
It's a training program to teach you one thing:
If you’re not one of us, you’re one of them.
I like villains if they're funny.
I always thought Smith was funny. He amused me...
...so it was easier to enjoy playing him.
We wanted to convey the idea of a secret agent...
...Iook. And the ‘60s silhouette seemed to fit well.
That J. F. IKKK. undercover look seemed to be the right one.
I was excited when we did that scene because I felt I was actually...
...acting. I was involved in something that was...
...gonna extend me, I suppose.
Door.
Cut.
After all this preparing, I felt I was actually involved in it.
To see what Hugo Weaving was doing with Smith was so fantastic.
As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time, Mr. Anderson.
It seems that you've been living two lives.
We tried to use a very neutral accent...
... but a more specific character.
And the character kind of evolved.
I wanted him to be...
... not robotic, but not really human.
I kept thinking about a ‘50s news reader.
It's Walter Cronkite. It sounds like:
"That's the way it is. "You know? It's so great.
In one life you’re Thomas Anderson, program writer for a software company.
After a while, I picked up on Larry and Andy's rhythms.
Larry and Andy both have an incredibly deep voice and...
...Agent Smith started to talk like that.
One of these lives has a future.
One of them does not.
Somebody said he was imitating us at one point.
We fired them.
How about I give you the finger...
...and you give me my phone call?
To play what was going on...
...scared, but kind of...
...some of the chutzpah that Thomas Anderson has:
You know, "Fuck you."
I keep getting into this attitude when I do it. I turn into this guy.
All of a sudden I feel like l’m some ‘70s hippie guy.
See what I mean? I really feel like that.
Then I had to have my mouth covered for five hours.
I hadn't thought of how I would communicate that day. So I was:
Trying to find a pen.
What?
-Some paper? -Write it fast. We’re on the clock.
"Hit, resist, swing at agents?"
-They’re pretty mighty. -Action.
You’re going to help us, Mr. Anderson.
Whether you want to or not.
-Cut. -Cut.
That was a good day. That was fun.
He says, "Don't worry." l’m worried.
What's the stop right now? What's going on?
This is a Bill Pope light right here.
The early days were terrible. It was physically...
...debilitating to go up on those rooftops. Geer up and down.
I was excited. It was, "Okay, here we are.
How's this gonna happen? What are we gonna do?"
I've got a good feeling.
-Sometimes you gotta go-- -With the flow.
You know what flow is backwards.
I repeat. We are under attack.
The first thing I did was a four-kick.
"Kick him in the head."
I've been training for four months not to kick anyone in the head.
"Kick him in the head." Okay.
Action! Die!
That day we shot on the rooftop, I woke up and my neck went out.
I couldn't move. I was crying and thinking, "Oh, no!"
They brought a masseuse over to get it out and we did it.
Thank God for Advil.
Terrible. No style.
-ls it too tight? -No, it's gonna be good.
As this guy is flinching back...
... he's gotta reveal Trinity in the distance and Keanu up close.
Could you pull that out of my head? Thanks.
Trinity, help.
-Cut! -That sucked!
You go from the 150: to:
To: Trinity, help.
You wanna be in on that.
Have them go down here?
Just let them down.
Cut!
-The second one was good. -lt was okay?
Okay, so you've got that one.
Well, this is in bullet time. This is bullet time action.
That was the backup plan.
We had not completed making the rig that we needed to do the real shot.
We wanted to make sure that we could do that scene...
...if the bullet time process didn't work.
We had all these rehearsals with stunt folks. There was some rigidity.
It just felt clunky and we were worried that Keanu would...
... not be able to go that far.
Can we do one where he goes...
...two and try to start back the other way?
All of his performances were more fluid.
There was this extra whole emotional inertia that...
...allowed him to stretch his body...
...into that ultra limbo-like position.
-This one's first? -The gun?
I mean the hit.
-Yes. -Okay.
Okay.
Okay. And you want this knee to come up?
Yeah.
Dodge this.
Raid! Police! Hands on your head.
Do it! Do it now!
Trinity wore the most bare skin of everybody.
So you had that distinct difference between...
...something black, shiny and metallic-looking...
...and then flesh.
We spent a lot of time experimenting with...
...what fabrics did in different types of light.
So that we could get Trinity really like a mercury oil slick.
One, two, three!
I spent a lot of time, last time on the wires because I did wire work.
It's challenging, and then all of a sudden you...
...find your way with the wire and you feel--
It's also very sore, like, it hurts to do the wire.
Then you find your way on it, and you can do things...
...that you thought you couldn't. It's more your mind getting around it...
...than anything.
The crew didn't know what we’re doing.
When l’m running alongside a wall, I really am doing it.
The nurse was like, "Do you need Gatorade?
I think she's done too much."
I’m like, "No, I wanna do it again!"
Action!
Stunt people don't work on wires all the time.
It's a specialized thing and so my stunt double--
It just didn't feel right.
So Larry and Andy look at me. I said, "Okay."
Ready?
-Should I get changed? -Yep.
I got up and did it.
We’re on a mission, don't forget.
Joke's over, mission time.
When we got to move inside and made the government lobby...
...scene, the world changed.
I give you the finger...
...and you give me that finder?
Once we shot and cut the government lobby...
...the cloud lifted and The Matrix had a voice.
It became obvious this was a movie unlike anything seen before.