remember. Your parents were there that day.
My mother. She's so Canadian. "Oh, look at it all."
- "So many fights." - Snapping pictures.
Forgot my sword.
Yeah. Nice. Nice moment in the film.
It's great. Love this.
This was Ron Selmour, a lovely Vancouver actor. Really great guy.
Very good actor. Really cool guy; you're right.
I love his voice. He has the best voice in showbiz.
I wanted to put him more in the film.
I just love this moment up here with Triple H running after you guys.
Yeah.
I love the moment when his character takes the fall here.
Oh, my God. This stunt was good.
- Oh! - God!
- That just straight cement. - He did it about four times.
Yeah. Wrestlers, you know. They're used to it.
Well, my name is Hannibal King. And this little hellion right here is Abigail.
- Whistler's daughter. - Dun! Dun! Dun!
Okay, I wanna talk about A.D.R. for a second,
which means Automatic Dialog Replacement,
or they also call it looping or dubbing, and that's where, for whatever reason...
Oh, my God. Is that what A.D.R. stands for?
- I've been doing it for 12 years. - I never even knew what it stood for.
But this scene right here, when we recorded it,
your footsteps were so loud
that it was really difficult to hear what you were saying.
So, after the fact, we had to go back... after the movie was all done...
and re-record all of your dialog.
- It was a pain in the ass, that one. - I know.
- Because of that weird... - I know.
And you have to make it in sync, and that... and what people at home don't know is
that we do that a lot of the times, and it's a total pain in the ass
'cause you have to try to recreate the mood that you were doing at the time,
sometimes four months after the fact.
This is the most authentic scene in the movie.
She's the one who built that new serum inhaler of yours.
That runt you saw earlier... that was Sommerfield's daughter. Zoe.
- There was a lot of tension... - Very confrontational.
- between the characters of Hannibal and Abigail and Blade.
And that spilled over a little bit onto the set.
It definitely did. This is a tense take.
But it's a great scene.
And, again, I think it's one of Wesley's better scenes in the film.
When one goes down, another cell activates to pick up the slack.
Consider us your reinforcements.
What...you amateurs are supposed to be helping me?
You?
Look at you.
You're kids.
You're not ready to roll with this.
I mean, look at the way you're dressed.
That's supposed to be tactical?
I remember there was a lot of discussion with Wesley
about what you guys would be wearing in the film.
- Oh, geez. Remember? - He was very concerned.
He did not want me to wear the full clown outfit.
Do you remember the first... our first camera test?
We had to go walking down the street karate kicking and karate chopping.
- Did you have to do that? - Of course I had to do that.
I had to karate chop and kick in front of all these guys.
In mid air.
We hadn't done any of our training yet, or like a couple days of training.
I had no clue what moves. I was going to Chuck, "Chuck! Help!"
Our, you know, our fight trainer. "What do I do?!"
I had to shave my groin there.
- I know you had to shave your groin. - To put that tattoo on. It's the worst.
And... and it was itchy when the hair was growing back.
Yeah, it was horrible, man.
Oh, the things you do for movies. Poor little baby.
The thing that I was saying earlier is that Pomeranian
got very nervous around Hunter,
and for most of the movie, that Pomeranian is in Hunter's arms.
And it farted all the time.
Really? 'Cause it was nervous around Hunter?
Yeah, don't you remember that in some of the scenes in the cell?
Look at the thing. Hunter shits things that size.
I know. But it would fart all the time.
And sometimes we would have to just take a break and air out the set
because that little creature would fart so much.
I was never there with the farting Pomeranian. I missed it.
I could've sworn they were queefs.
Maybe it's time I join the game.
You cut so much disgusting dialog out of this.
I know. I have to say, there were very few lines in the movie
that were cut because they were so disgusting,
but a number of them were in this scene.
- Did you wanna say some of them? - I don't remember what they were.
I just remember there was, like, one horrific line.
Well, one of them was... you were talking about how Danica
Danica, you know, unlike typical vampires...
"Her fangs are located in her vagina."
And then you elaborated...
"Which... and I speak from experience... is the size of a high school gymnasium."
- And another one was... - And then I said...
"Just picture a baboon yawning."
- Yeah. - And then another one was, you said...
"Picture a silver-backed gorilla yawning."
Yeah.
And I think... I remember even the crew was like, "Ugh! He can't say that!"
But that's what we did on the movie, you throw out any...
You know, I wanted there to be no limits. Just throw out absolutely...
- And there were no limits. - Absolutely.
Until I had a visit from you and two producers saying, "We gotta cut it down."
Yeah, I remember that. I said, "Even I... you know, Mr. Blade...
think you've gone too far." We can't say that.
It was an honor for me at that moment to go that far, though. It was an honor.
A little homage to the roots of Blade,
which... Blade was originally a character in the Tomb of Dracula comics.
I love that.
This is just a little shout-out to the Marvel Comics fans.
You'll get to see your long version of this right here,
which we cut from the theatrical version.
- Oh. Oh, yeah. - Where'd you guys get this stuff?
I stole most of it. Danica had a huge collection.
We got stonework, ironwork, weaponry... art.
This stuff...it shows up everywhere. This symbol, this glyph. It's on every...
This was a tough scene for you because there was so much dialog.
I don't shut up. Ever. I think I'm still talking.
But you did a great job... I remember take after take after take
of about three or four pages of non-stop dialog.
- Yeah. - Movies are just a comforting fairy tale.
It's actually, uh, called, uh, "exposition."
I know, but you did a good job of it.
Well, thank you.
Now, this location was filmed
on a floating barge that used to be a McDonald's.
- Yes, it's called McBarge. - McBarge is what we called it.
And it would subtlety rock back and forth because it was on the water.
- And I remember that Jessica... - I was sick every day.
Jessica and myself were about the only two people that were sick every day.
I remember two weeks into shooting, I was like, "It's moving?"
I had no idea. I was fine.
In some of the shots,
you can actually see some of the lights subtlety swinging back and forth.
But it was terrible. I mean...
In a crew of hundreds of people, only Jessica and myself would get sick.
- And we would... it was... - And I would take... what's the..?
- Gravall. - Yeah, something.
- But it would make me so tired. - Sleepy. Exactly.
And I'd just be sitting there, ugh, dying. I would be so exhausted.
Oh, man. I grew up in Vancouver, the city we shot this film in.
And I remember McBarge... I've eaten in McBarge.
You've eaten at McBarge?
I have. Before it was, like, a decrepit, bacteria-infested wasteland.
I know. There was horrible...
When I went in there, this thing had been abandoned for over a decade,
and there were... there were pools of slime mold like you wouldn't believe.
If you had seen that... they had to run that whole thing through with bleach.
Yeah. But, ironically, still better for you than eating actual McDonalds.
Forget the movies, forget the books. There's no happy ending with this guy.
- He's been there. - I love this sequence. This was, uh...
I'm still talking. I'm growing a beard over here.
Like, literally, this... I can't believe I'm talking that long in any movie.
But you did a great job.
Poor old Dominic. We had to film that. It was about 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
And have him get naked in a vat of blood.
- In a vat of blood? - And writhe around for about two hours.
What... you just described any weekend for me.
- Just for fun that's what you do? - Yeah. Just recreationally.
And he was pissed.
- Ooh. - Time lapse.
That looks like it's shot faster.
One of the things that I wanted to do with some of the time-lapse shots in this film...
not those two in particular... was we introduced some movement
in some of them, which is a bit different from the other Blade films.
- I love his wardrobe here. - For real, or are you being sarcastic?
- No, I love it. I think it looks sexy. - Really?
Somebody described him as looking like a Russian gangster.
Maybe that's why I like it. I like all those chains.
He's got those two pecks, like, "Pow! Pow!"
- I think his pecks look good. - You got a thing for Russian gangsters?
- Ooh, yeah. - Who doesn't?
This is a kind of postmodern scene.
- I remember... - This guy was good. I liked that guy.
This guy? He was good.
It's funny because, when you film on location,
you can't afford all of the time to bring up, you know,
actors from New York or L.A. for all the tiny roles that might have one or two lines.
It just doesn't make any economic sense.
So you go to the pool of local actors and what happens sometimes
is you find actors that are really great
and you regret that you can't use them in more of the film.
And this guy was excellent.
He was so snarky and he had pitch-perfect delivery
and I wish I could've used him again in other scenes.
He says one of my worse pet peeves here. "Hey, guy."
I hate it when people say that.
- Well, that's why I had him say it. - Of course.
I'd drink his blood if he said that.
... even vampire vibrators.
That fang actually really stings on that vibrator when you use it.
I remember we were shooting in this real Goth shop
and they had all of these, like, S&M gear around.
And we were shooting for a couple of days
and various crew members were either purchasing or, I think, actually stealing...
...various harnesses and things like that.
At any given point, you would turn around and you might see, like,
the first-assistant cameraman wearing some, like, weird S&M harness,
over his... over his jeans.
And you could see a look on his face like it totally set him free.
I... I took my, uh, my strap-on home with me.
Your strap-on?
Because... the thing that I'd carry my guns on...
that I wear almost in every scene is that black leather... it's really a strap-on.
- It's actually used for... - Strap-on what? For the people at home.
A strap-on dildo. Like you would put a thing in the...
There can't possibly be things like that that exist.
There are.
- I know it's amazing, but it's true. - You horrify me, Jessica.
What I wanna know is, like, who looks at the strap-on dildo
and goes, "Hmm, this would also make a nice instrument of death."
That would be L.J. Shannon.
- That would be our wardrobe designer. - She's the one.
She's genius, 'cause it was great. It worked perfectly.
Let's see if we can see a shot of this strap-on harness.
... food source. It makes no sense, right?
- You're not wearing it in this scene. - No, I'm not. This was the one...
Remember... we had a big discussion about that... do I wear my gun belt...
In this scene or not.
You're being so earnest here. You're being Alec Baldwin here.
I'm tryin'. I tried to lower the voice a couple octaves.
Maybe Billy Baldwin.
For you sighted people...
... here's a little show and tell.
For the last year, I've been working with synthesized DNA
in order to create an artificial virus targeted specifically at vampires.
We're calling it DayStar.
Think about it, Blade. We can wipe 'em all out in one single move.
So what's been holding you back?
The lethality in vampires is still spotty.
The bottom line is we need a better strand of DNA to work with.
We need Dracula's blood.
Because Dracula is the progenitor of the vampire race, his DNA is still pure.
It hasn't been diluted by a hundred generations of selective mutation.
We get his blood,
we can boost DayStar's viral efficacy to 100%.
All the vampires go bye-bye.
So... can we just go right ahead and sign you up
for one of our secret Nightstalker decoder rings?
And here we have Patton.
Oh, uh...
- I love him. - He's so great.
I remember Patton was a bit nervous
because, you now, the bulk of the scene is basically Patton opposite Wesley.
- Yeah. - A variety of tasty calibers.
Explosive rounds.
Yeah, with a concentrated burst of UV light
instead of your standard hollow points.
I call 'em sun dogs.
Hedges. Super-size me, sweetheart.
This is the Bone Jack. the Therapist. The Grace.
- I know. - Grace.
Unfortunately, it didn't make it into the final cut of the film.
... stakes, heat-seeking mini rockets...
But, damnit, we will use it again somehow, somewhere.
We will find a way. That thing weighs 20 pounds.
Doesn't have the range of a sword, but, uh...
Patton. I didn't know... you loop that in?
- Yeah. - That was great. Oh, my God! God...
- He's so funny. - Yeah.
I remember this was incredibly awkward because we had the full version
of the ark after it had opened and then we had just the handle,
and we would have to shoot up until a certain point
and then say, "Okay, everybody freeze."
- "Don't move. Switch it out." - Switch it out. And then go... it was...
The things you have to do that have nothing to do with performance.
Maybe.
Not into a bat or a wolf or anything like that,
but another human...with practice... could be possible.
Because he wouldn't have a traditional skeletal structure.
Something more like a snake's, with thousands of tiny bones...
I have a...I have a question about that, Hedges.
Have you ever been laid?
Many times.
With ladies.
Time for a little pressure.
The weakest link in the vampire chain of command
has always been their familiars.
Since the vampires can't go out in the daylight,
they get the humans to do all their dirty work.
We bleed the wannabes...
... sooner or later, they'll take us right to the real.
I got you some new wheels.
You take care of it now.
This ends up being a great shameless plug, but, you know...
a lot of people think that we were getting kickbacks from Apple or something,
and they didn't give us caca.
- They don't give anyone shit. - No.
Which is amazing, because it's like an Apple commercial here.
Now, you did a million different versions of this joke.
Yeah, I liked, uh, "I'm more of a Celine Dion fan.
She's a Canadian treasure." That was my favorite.
Well, you get to see that in the outtakes.
We've got an outtakes section on this movie.
- Oh, this was fun. - This was fun.
- I loved this day. - We filmed all these little vignettes.
- That was awesome. Yeah! - Throughout...
We would just sometimes come to a location
and say, "Okay, this is a great place to do a little bit."
This is all new. I haven't seen this, um, in the actual... the first screening I saw.
Oh, really? Wait till you see it in, uh, when it's integrated...
Yeah, when it's all integrated with the music, it's really fun.
Well, which is how the people at home will be seeing it.
Cool.
Now, this was your first day shooting, right Jessica?
Yes.
It's really funny when I watch these scenes
I'm so thin and not, like, ripped.
And as the movie goes, whatever scene we shot later and later
I just get ripped and more ripped and more ripped.
You literally watch our bodies grow, and I miss my shoulders.
- You do? - Yes.
- Hans and Frans. - I do.
I know, because you look like a normal, athletic woman here,
and then later on, in the final fight sequence of the film,
you look like you should be on the WWE or something.
I look like I should be part of the, uh, like those fitness competitions
where they dance and back-handspring and things.
You got ripped.
You also did a lot. Like, you were doing fights, archery, and lifting weights.
I miss them.
- I miss all the studio-sponsored trainers. - Yeah.
This is one of my favorite little moments in the movie.
You might wanna consider sitting down with somebody.
You know, have a little share time.
- We only did... you what? - Remember I didn't want it in?
You didn't want it in? People love it.
But we only did... I remember, this particular one we only did one take.
But, see, I didn't know why you wanted it out because this is a great moment.
I'm sorry. I, uh... I ate a lot of sugar today.
Hey, you just can't walk in here like that.
Nice move there, though.
Excuse me, sir.
That one, I kicked that guy and knocked the security thing over, and he fell over.
- Remember that? - I know. You damaged the location.
You damaged a lot of stuff, Jessie, in this movie.
- Including a little $300,000 camera. - I'm a damager.
- Exactly. - That's right.
We'll get to that later on.
- This became a fun little moment. - Yeah. Oh.
Again, you guys are hearing it without sound, uh, without the effects...
- Reshoot. Reshoot. - That's right.
- Nice! See? It helped, though. - I know. It does help.
- Totally helped. - Sit.
The woman at the, uh, at the desk there was Michelle,
who was one of the women that worked at the hotel that I was staying at.
I love that. You just put her in.
I would just say, "Hey, you're interesting. You wanna be in the movie?"
Oh, Jesus.
It's him. Abbie! It's Drake!
- This was a fun moment to do. - That's cool.
Blade was the first movie to do that... that crazy bullet time stuff.
- Before The Matrix. - Yeah, that's right.
- A lot of people don't know that. - I know.
- And that was all... - That was all reshot, wasn't it?
- No. This stuff. Yeah. - This right here.
- This is where I hurt my thumb. - I know. You got your little blood blister.
We reshot that because we thought
the hand-held was a little more exciting and edgy.
I loved that. It looked good.
Oh, my God. Here comes my least favorite shot of the entire film.
I hate this shot.
That. That I'm not crazy about, but this I really hate.
Why do you hate it?
It's just an uninteresting composition. It just sucks.
All right. I'll give that to you.
Now, this chase sequence was shot during the first three days of filming.
- I love this chase scene. - It's a fun sequence.
Yeah, it's good.
One of the things I wanted to do in this movie
was have it set much more in the real world.
Have the war spilling over into the civilian world.
And, you know, this is a great example of that.
That right there is where the stuntman cut open his artery.
- Oh, yeah. - That was our first day of filming.
Woa! Hey!
I love watching Wesley move. He moves really well.
- Oh, my God. He's... he's amazing. - Like a ninja.
He understands the character of Blade so well,
and... just all the little innate gestures that he does are perfect.
I learned a lot from him regarding action.
Especially about the intention.
Like, you'll notice in the film the way he moves his head to the side.
He always... whenever he looks to the right or the left,
it's always a very deliberate and quick look.
- Yeah, and it works. - There's an economy of motion he uses.
It looks strange when you're seeing it on the day.
- Right, but there... - It looks, like, over-the-top.
- Yeah. But it's not. - And you think it's gonna look cheesy.
He has a really great, innate understanding of movement.
- There he goes again. - He can get away with that.
- Well, it's good for Blade. - He's Blade.
- Exactly. - Exactly.
We did a lot of running on these days, though.
I'll say. Poor Dom.
Poor Dom.
I remember Dominic was just, like, "I can't do this."
- Dominic just wanted to drink beer. - Yeah.
He just wanted to get back to... once the movie finished...
He was on the diet we were on working out every day.
He hated it.
He's an Australian and doesn't do diets too well.
You're gonna get a letter from the Prime Minister of Australia.
No, come on. They drink those big cans of Fosters. Don't all Australians do that?
- No, they don't drink Fosters at all. - They hate it.
- They say it's a big misconception. - Really? Wow. I didn't know that.
- They drink mayonnaise. - Oh? Okay.
Ah. Careful, Daywalker.
I've been told about you.
Your weakness for humans.
- Why'd you kill Vance? - He outlived his purpose.
He died a good death.
We have two different kinds of prints... we have prints on Fuji
and prints that are made on Kodak Vision Premiere
which is a higher-end stock, so, I don't know,
there's like 100, 200 prints that are on Kodak Vision Premiere.
A lot of people at home don't necessarily realize
that sometimes there'll be prints made with different stocks...
Oh, really?
And depending on the theatre that you go, you may see a better print.
The quality will look better.
Or you may see, uh, a theater with a much different sound system.
And, so, the movie-going experience
an be quite different depending on where you see your film.
... scurrying around like insects.
They don't know anything about honor or living by the sword.
Not like you and I do.
That baby... we reshot this scene three times.
The first time we had a real baby.
And it slept the entire time, no matter what Dominic would do.
- Oh, really? - It would just lay there like a doll.
Wouldn't do anything.
Then we used a fake baby, and that just looked really fake.
So then we went back and used a real baby
and then, this time, the baby just screamed and cried the entire time,
so Dominic had to re-record all his dialog later on.
Oh, really? That's funny.
Dom holds a baby like... he's a father of four.
You'd never know it. He's a young guy, but he's got four kids.
But you see him holding that baby like a dad.
Then this is one of Blade's moment of humor, which...
- I love that baby's face. - I know.
- I love that. - I know. It's great.
I wish we had more of that.
- We put your, uh, your joke in. - My line? Oh, good!
- You took out "goddamnit," though. - Yes.
- Why? - 'Cause people don't like blasphemy.
You have enough lines. Can you give me some lines, goddamnit?
See you in 28 days.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Hold on! What is that? What are you doing?
It's an elastic protein, okay? It's gonna stop the hemorrhaging.
Okay. Is it gonna hurt?
Yeah. It's gonna sting a little.
- Really? - Ow. God.
And it's just shaving cream and red food coloring.
Yeah.
We love that, though. The magic of movies.
Okay, if you're cool with this, the...
coming up is the shower scene, which... which people hate doing.
Yeah.
- Do you wanna explain why or... - Sure.
I think it's definitely more of, like, a girl thing
because being a girl in Hollywood, they're always like,
"So when are you gonna get naked?"
"When are you gonna take it off?" And, "What can we see?"
And always having to deal with nudity, you know, nudity clauses and this and that.
And all the questions I always get asked are "Did this nude scene"...or whatever,
"...did it really play a part in your character's psyche," or whatever.
- "Was it gratuitous or was it not?" - What do you think?
I think this one is really beautiful without showing anything,
'cause we didn't show a thing.
I was wearing full underwear and I was wearing a complete cover
to cover my top part, and...
But it was cold.
It was cold, but nothing was...
you know, I didn't have to expose myself to the crew or to, you know,
the country and the rest of the world, and it's kind of a nice, quiet moment.
I don't... I don't think it's gratuitous, and I'm not embarrassed about it.
No, because I remember the deal I made you was
if you didn't like it, I would cut it out.
Right. That makes me feel really comfortable
when I have to do something like that because if I'm dealing with someone
like you who's just cool with it
and understands that it's a sensitive issue for me,
then it makes me want to find a way to make it work.
- Right. - ... we wipe out all the vampires.
What then, huh?
You ever ask yourself that?
Somehow I don't picture you teaching karate at the local Y.
- I love that line. - I laughed my ass off.
- Karate. - You improvised that line.
- Right after I said it. - I know. Just a millisecond after you said...
- Yeah, you cut at the right time. - Everybody started laughing.
He hates me, doesn't he?
Yeah.
I liked William Shatner there doing a little Esperanto.
You know, that's probably one of my favorite moments...
that you put that in there.
- The fact that I... - William Shatner.
Who I don't think is called William Shatner anymore. It's just "The Shat."
The Shat.
Which could be interpreted in a lot of different ways
depending on whether or not you live in England.
But, uh... yeah, well, we decided that there should be a secondary language
spoken in this fictional city and what should it be, you know, Spanish, whatnot.
And we came up with Esperanto,
which is this language that was created during the turn of the century
that's kind of an amalgam of all these different languages,
in the hopes that there would be world peace.
And Shatner was a big proponent in the '60s and '70s for Esperanto.
He was like the spokesperson for Esperanto.
And he had filmed the only film ever filmed in Esperanto,
which was this movie The Incubus.
And it's a ridiculous movie,
but when I heard about it I said, "We have to get the rights to it and show it,"
and we got it, and it was expensive, I remember.
I love that Hannibal King is watching that on his deathbed.
And New Line legal was saying to me, I remember they called one day and said,
"Do we really need this?"
And I said, "Absolutely! It's critical!" You know.
To the film. The film cannot survive without it.
And, of course, they don't now. They were like, "Okay."
It can't. You know, what this film needs is more Shat.
- More Esperanto. - Yes.
I know.
... you're a murderer. Kill a million...
Ah, this is the little sort of vampire sex scene.
This scene is on the extended cut but not in the theatrical version.
I like this scene. I don't know. I'm mixed about whether or not we should've cut it.
But, uh, now people can see both versions of it.
- But this part is still in, yeah? - No.
- None of it? Oh, wow. - No.
Ah, the little girl.
What I like about this scene is we think it's gonna be a nice, sweet little scene...
you know, with this little girl.
- He just slams her, you know. - Yeah. Drop-kicks her.
She says, "Why can't you just be nice?"
And he says, "Because the world isn't nice." So shut up, you know.
- In perfect Blade, you know. - She's gonna grow up well-adjusted.
- Just smacks her down. - Yeah.
You know, "Sorry, honey. There is no happy ending."
Because the world isn't nice.
I think you should've kept it rolling on her, and just watched her weep.
You know, this is... through the wonders of editing, this is a scene
that Blade was supposed to be in that he didn't film that day
and we ended up... the footage of Blade here is actually from another scene.
- I remember that. - And we cut him into it.
- The miracles of movie. - That's incredible. I love that.
- Patton. Done! - Done!
Patton as Alec Baldwin.
I love Patton Oswalt.
I love Patton Oswalt too.
If I could adopt Patton Oswalt, I would adopt Patton Oswalt.
In fact, I would have joint custody of Patton Oswalt with you, if you want.
Yeah, I would love some shared custody of Patton Oswalt.
It'd be weird having a son older than me.
It'd be like Mork and Mindy.
And this guy Mark was the, um...
I read with him when I auditioned for this movie.
He was the reader for our casting director in Los Angeles,
and we just thought he did a good job and we offered him a part.
- And he was thrilled. - That's pretty cool.
- I know. Hey, come on. - Really great guy, too.
One of my favorite effects in the movie coming up.
What are you doing here? Talk.
- Spill it! - You know what we're doing.
What's inside?
- Aw! Yeah! - Nice.
- How cold was it that night? - Oh! Freezing!
What's behind door number one?
I was directing that scene in one of those giant parkas that you wear in the Antarctic.
Yeah.
And I had... there's hand-warmers stuffed in my... I had mittens,
and... and snow pant... like snowboarding leggings,
and you're in this tiny little Lycra whatever.
With tights... I wore tights underneath my pants,
and I had my my hand-warmers taped all around my waist.
- Oh, keep kittens warm. - Yeah, keep that core warm.
- That core. - It was freezing.
Lights.
I remember I enjoyed filming these days quite a bit.
Some days are fun to film, some days aren't.
We filmed for so long... we filmed for about 90 days, which is about 41/2 months.
- And it's... it's just like a war. - Mm-hmm.
This is a sequence that you actually wrote for the other Blade movie, is that right?
I wrote this sequence... I wrote a version of it for Blade I,
and we ended up doing a crappy job of filming it. We cut it out of the film.
And then I wrote it for Blade II and it was cut out and never filmed,
and I said, "Damnit, I'm gonna put it in the movie."
- Cool. - That's your stand-in Dawn.
- That's right. That's Dawn. - We gave her a tiny little part, too.
I actually saw Dawn up in Vancouver about a month ago.
Will you tell the audience at home what a stand-in is?
Yeah. A stand-in is, um,
somebody who's hired to basically stand on your mark
while they... while the rest of the... the lighting crew lights.
'Cause you're too fabulous to be able to do that.
- That's right. - I just can't bear to stand.
- So you sit in your trailer and have... - That sounds terrible!
- I sit in my trailer and count my money. - You count your money?
- Count my money. You know. - And eat chocolates.
I eat chocolates, I count my money, I get a rubdown.
- You know. - Yeah. All right.
But, truthfully, sometimes a stand-in will be required to be there for hours.
They just stand there. It's not easy!
- No, I know. - To stand in one spot.
But the reason why we do it is if we're filming for 16 hours,
we just can't have you, the actor, standing there for 16 hours nonstop.
- You would collapse. - My stand-in was great. He became me.
- He, like, grew a beard, he... - He was your doppelganger.
- He was Warren. - He was your "Earth to Hannibal King."
Yes, exactly.
You don't have a choice.
Now, I remember we, uh, we had to psyche you up to cry here.
- Yes. - Remember?
Yeah, that's right. I enjoy being talked to.
It's helpful when you would say things.
You got 20 seconds.
I don't even remember what you used to say.
I think I just used to tell you weird stuff. But I always write on my paper.
I write on my sides. I write all this stuff down.
Before an emotional scene, you would tell me what it was that you were thinking
in order to get there, and then if it was a really emotional scene
what I would try to do is just have the camera crew shut up
and we wouldn't say, "Okay, rolling," you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And we would just start in complete silence
and whenever you were ready, you would just nod to me.
I'd give the little...
And then in silence we would start rolling
so that we wouldn't break your concentration.
I like this scene, though. It's very dark and brutal.
One of the things I like about the Blade movies is that
sometimes they're very uncompromising in that they're not always,
you know, the perfect happy ending.
They live in a brutal world.
I like it. I think it's the only rated-R comic book, too, isn't it?
- The Punisher. - Oh, The Punisher.
"...and the Gnome King, having never tried to be good,
was very bad indeed."
"Having decided to conquer the land of Oz..."
Back on the barge from hell.
I got it.
Oh!
I remember, contrary to stereotypes, I had wanted Ron, who plays Dex,
to sink a basket in this scene... I wanted them both to sink a basket.
And Ron couldn't. He was... and he said to me,
"I'm the worst basketball player of all time."
And then I said, "Really? You can't sink a basket?"
And he said, "No, no, no. I can't at all."
And then we went to Patton and, "Can you sink a basket?"
And... I'm not joking... he sank ten in a row."
Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
- Of course. - We're adopting him.
This is my only scene with Kris Kristofferson.
- Oh. - The legend. Such a sweet man.
- Until this. - You're dead.
Mom, the lights are weird.
What do you mean?
They're going on and off.
Guys?
Zoe, I want you to go and I want you to hide, okay? Like we talked about.
Go on.
You can tell she's blind because she wears glasses.
And you can tell 'cause she can smell blood.
Zoe!
- Get out of here, Zoe. - Get out of here, Zoe!
- Doing her Katharine Hepburn. - Get out of here, Zoe!
Goddamnit!
These shots... it's really funny.
She was... Haili is the girl. She's a really cute little girl.
But we were having difficulty.
We were telling her to look around for places to go.
And it just looked really staged.
And I remember my assistant director said, "I have an idea.
"Let's tell her that we're going to write her name, literally, on the set
"in three different places, and look around for her name,
"and until she's found her name three times,
she can't go into the little shaft."
- And did that work? - And we did that.
We literally wrote her name, "Haili," on the wall in three different places
and it was perfect. And we said, "Okay, now here's the game.
you have to look around until you see your name three times."
That's great. That's genius.
- The secrets of movie making. - Yeah.
Haley Joel Osment looks a lot different with the long hair, I have to say.
You're so funny, you should be a chameleon.
Oh... you didn't. You didn't.
And these guys... we were... they had to sit there in these pools of blood.
- On the freezing concrete. - On the freezing concrete. I remember.
Sometimes... Patton was there for over an hour.
And when he got up, he was actually stuck.
- The blood had frozen... - Really? This was in the barge?
Yeah. On the barge. And the blood had frozen.
And they had to literally chisel him... and I remember that was Thanksgiving.
Oh, right. You guys were working and...
You guys were off having Thanksgiving dinner.
- I was eating. - I know. I was... hating you.
It's a little Wait Until Dark homage.
- A little cowboy. - Yeah. A little cowboy switch.
"Cowboy switch" means literally one character ducks out of frame,
and then the other character steps into frame.
And it's a kind of old-school way of doing it, but it works.
There's a reason why they did it.
I did one cowboy switch in this movie.
- I wonder if you remember where it is. - No. Where is the cowboy switch?
Let's try and see if you know.
- Is it coming up? - It's coming up at the end.
- My little fight with Danica. - Oh... Oh, yes. I know.
Now, that scream that you just heard Natasha do wasn't really her scream.
She smokes a lot of cigarettes, and when we asked her to scream,
she was going, "Ahh... ahh."
She literally could not scream.
'Cause she's got this kind of scratchy voice that's great.
It's very Natasha, but she couldn't scream.
So we had to audition other people to come in and scream.
It's nice of you to let all her stalkers know that she can't cry for help.
- You know. I'm just... - Thanks, Goyer.
- I just gotta be me. - Yeah.
Okay, here's a line in the movie that I think sucks, and I wrote it.
- Do I say it? - Yeah.
So does... it probably sucks 'cause I said it.
Something's not right.
I like that. I'm a genius at that moment.
- I'm sorry. That's brilliant. - That does not bug me at all.
Really? I'm telling you, that's like "generic movie comment" number one.
- No. - I don't know. I hate that line.
"Generic movie comment" number one is, "What do you want from me?"
Screaming it to the...
No. "Generic movie comment" number one is, "Let's get outta here."
- Let's get outta here. - They say that in every movie.
Tom Cruise in every movie says, "What do you want from me? Let's get outta here."
I like these, uh... I call this the "X-Files sequence."
You know. And I remember we talked about it. But it's fun.
- But I gotta say, that gun was so heavy. - Really?
I held that gun up for so long. My God. Remember?
- Thank God you were stronger than me. - I know. It's lucky.
Remember we had Lynn hold it up, I said, "Timer." 'Cause two minutes of this.
I held that gun up for two minutes, and we go all the way around.
- I think she lasted about five seconds. - Yeah.
Now, coming up is a moment... you won't actually see it in the cut of the film,
but it's on the outtakes...
where you were moving through all these darkened corridors,
and I decided to do an homage to Texas Chainsaw for you.
And at one point you had to kick open a walk-in freezer.
- Yeah. A meat locker, or whatever. - A meat locker.
- And I, uh... - You hid... you hid in there.
On the third take I hid in there and I jumped out at you.
- Oh, my God. - In this hallway.
So, when you go to the outtakes...
And luckily I didn't crack you with my gun or my flashlight,
which were both very heavy items.
I thought it was quite possible that I could take a hit, and you didn't. But...
I don't know, we were always playing jokes on each other throughout the movie.
Yeah.
But, coming up... one of the reasons why I like this sequence
is I was trying to kind of bookend the Blade franchise.
In the first Blade film, you know, Blade has to deal with all this loss,
and he's very emotionally shut down.
There's this scene where he's talking to Karen... who's played by N'Bushe Wright...
sort of talking about, you know,
how every time he kills one of them, he gets a little piece of his life back.
And what I liked about this film
is that Blade has sort of moved on in terms of psychology.
He's at a different place in his, you know, journey,
but Abigail is sort of where Blade was in the first film.
And this is Abigail's opportunity to find someone that she loves
in the way that Blade found Whistler in the first film.
And then, later on in the film,
Blade is in the position of trying to counsel you
when you're the one who's emotionally shut down.
I just like that progression. How we've come sort of full circle.
And, you know, Wesley did a really nice job and so did you.
Although, if the audience looks very carefully in one of these first two shots,
they'll see Natasha moving.
- Really? - She had trouble being dead.
She had trouble being dead. I know.
Right up... it's coming up.
- There. The shake of the head. - She moves a tiny bit.
But it almost looks like maybe the barge shook her.
It looked to me like the camera was moving, not her.
Maybe. Maybe. Later on, she was also blinking her eyes,
and we digitally removed her eye blinks.
- Really? - Are you kidding me?
- Yeah, in about four shots. - Wow. And about $40,000 later.
Yeah.
Later on, there's another scene as well.
This was meant to be the kind of bookend
to some of those scenes that happened in the first Blade film.
This is a beautiful scene for you, Jess.
I have to say, Ramin Djawadi, one of our composers
did a really beautiful job with the music in this scene.
Building. Yeah.
I got chills.
I love that scene.
I'm telling you, you should've just hired me to play her screamer.
That's so true, though. Use it.
- Use it. - Use it. I know.
Oh...
- One of my favorite scenes of the movie. - Oh, that...
We were trying to get the little Pomeranian to lick your ear
and they ended up putting dog bait on your ear.
- Smearing... do you remember that? - Liver pâté is what was on my frickin' ear.
On your ear.
Now, here, this dog is just farting like a freight train.
Were there two "what-the-fucks" there or one?
- Two. - Yeah, there were two originally.
- There's only one now? - Yeah, I think so. I don't know.
- I love the special effect of the mouth. - The mouth?
I think it looks great. How it comes open like that. It looks disgusting.
The little kind of uncircumcised penis-tongue.
- Ugh! - Ugh. Yuck.