MICHAËL R. ROSKAM: Hello. Uh, hi.
I'm Michaël Roskam, I'm the director of this film.
And next to me...
I'm Dennis Lehane, I'm the screenwriter of this film.
ROSKAM: And, uh, we're here to give some comments.
LEHANE: Comments. We don't know how wise or profound they'll be,
- but we will talk. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
This is the logo...
My son, when he sees it he always says, "Is this where you work, Daddy?"
LEHANE: That's nice.
ROSKAM: So here we go.
Uh...
Going straight into the film.
Where is it?
Oh, there it is.
Okay.
LEHANE: It's a great opening image. I love that.
ROSKAM: This was actually...
What we wanted to do with the camera is to...
- Actually we call it the dog cam. - LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: When we want it to be like the POV of a dog, almost.
Uh, following from a lower level into that world
and looking up and seeing everything that happens.
You know, it's like the Tom & Jerry cartoons,
you always see the adults with the feet, never their faces.
LEHANE: Right. ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Now this is nice. I remember when you put...
When this showed up in the, uh,
- script notes. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: You started writing those to yourself.
That was great.
That's nice.
Was that real snow or fake snow?
- That's fake snow actually. - ROSKAM: That's fake snow. Yeah.
And then, here, the first introduction of Bob Saginowski.
Tom Hardy playing...
And this is where he just explains what a drop bar is.
LEHANE: At the beginning,
we had so much trouble with this. (LAUGHING)
- I mean, my God... - ROSKAM: Actually it's true I have to...
LEHANE: You did it visually, and then we had the narration.
We did about...
I'm trying to think. We did about 12 drafts of the narration, I think.
- Possibly. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Uh... ROSKAM: Because originally in the...
I think in the story we were having Fitz,
the character that's coming later on.
Fitz and his brother were talking and explaining what a drop bar was.
LEHANE: We had Fitz doing it, then we had Torres doing it.
ROSKAM: And then with... Yeah, Torres doing it, and then it kept being...
Yeah, there was something problematic about it.
And then of course, we decided to have Bob talking.
And that worked.
LEHANE: Yeah. That was very smooth.
ROSKAM: Yeah, this is a funny story.
The vodka bottle is called...
That's a brand called The General, but it's a fake brand.
And it's actually production design making a little joke
because I made a joke with the crew
telling them, in the beginning, they had to call me "The General."
Because I wanted to pretend I was a crazy director. (CHUCKLING)
- Then they were making jokes. - LEHANE: Well, they clearly bought it.
(ROSKAM LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: So it kind of went from then on, but it was a joke, you know?
Um, and then, there he is.
- Our first appearance. - LEHANE: There he is.
ROSKAM: James Gandolfini being Cousin Marv.
This whole bar we actually built...
It was an out-of-business place, and it was totally stripped.
So, the only thing we had was the counter,
and all the other things, the wood, everything,
everything was built in by production design.
And it was kind of our ideal Brooklyn dive bar,
inspired by three different bars that we visited.
And we loved them, all three of them.
And we took little pieces of them,
and our production designer, Thérèse DePrez,
who did a wonderful job here,
really creating this world.
And it was just big enough so we could shoot it from every angle,
and have enough opportunities for not being repetitive in the shots.
LEHANE: I'd drink there.
- That's really low-key, I'd drink there. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
- (ROSKAM LAUGHING) - LEHANE: That's a fine-looking bar.
ROSKAM: And it was kind of cool, because Jim and Tom would very often
never go to their trailer and just sit there.
- And have their little... Like, in the bar. - LEHANE: Right.
ROSKAM: And, uh...
And enjoy staying there.
LEHANE: Yeah. Remember the few times I was actually over there on set,
- to this set... - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
- ...that Tom was always hanging out. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: In between cuts. ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: And in between takes.
ROSKAM: Instead, we'd just sit at that table or wherever there was room
when we were building up a scene somewhere else in the bar,
and then we'd just sit there, and talk and laugh and have a coffee.
LEHANE: Well, that means production design nailed it,
because that's a good bar, you don't wanna leave, you know?
ROSKAM: (CHUCKLING) Yeah.
LEHANE: That's a beautiful shot. I love these outdoor shots,
they remind me of, um...
They really remind me of...
Some of the shots from... You know, Friedkin got
- in French Connection. - ROSKAM: Oh, yeah.
LEHANE: And the feel of, uh, Sidney Lumet. ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: It's got that feel. It's great.
ROSKAM: Awesome. Thank you.
We have Nicolas Karakatsanis, was the DP.
I worked with him on Bullhead,
and he's such a great photographer.
And we inspired the whole look of the film
on George Bellows, a Brooklyn painter,
who actually painted Brooklyn, early 20th century,
1900s, Brooklyn life, street life.
And it's...
And all those colors, actually, were still there in Brooklyn,
like pistachio green,
the little cobalt blue that we see, actually, in this jacket,
and a little bit of the green in the left.
And, uh, then you had the burgundy reds.
I mean, it's in the paintings as well,
today in Brooklyn those colors keep showing up.
LEHANE: And who was that painter again? I'm sorry.
ROSKAM: George Bellows. LEHANE: George Bellows.
ROSKAM: And in his paintings, he had a lot of those more cold blue areas,
and then the warmer reds,
almost burned sienna colors, or the...
Sometimes also the burgundy.
- Like this car, you know, the blue. - LEHANE: Right.
ROSKAM: It was there. We...
- It's original, it's not set up with design. - LEHANE: Right.
ROSKAM: You see the blue feel and the reds of the wood.
And it's all original.
It's really amazing to see in 100 years
how the taste and color of a city remains intact.
Uh...
LEHANE: This was, um, actually where
the first incarnation of all of this started for me in 2001.
It was the first chapter of a book that ultimately never came together.
But it was all about this image of this guy walking home
a couple of days after Christmas, and being very lonely and very lost.
I was thinking about this idea that most...
You know, that there's a high rate of suicides on Christmas.
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
LEHANE: And so, I picked this very lonely guy to be going home
during the loneliest of holidays on a very lonely night.
And the way I had him envisioned in the original conception was that
he was truly hanging on by his fingernails.
This was... He was right at the edge of maybe slipping off the mortal coil.
And then he finds this dog.
And then this dog is left in the trash can of this woman.
- And just like that, your life turns. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: And that was kind of the inciting incident, if we will.
ROSKAM: Yeah. Yeah.
Which actually reminds me of, uh, one of the references
that I always had from the very beginning with this film,
was to have a sort of crossbreed between,
you know, uh, Frank Capra...
I would...
- Frank Capra do Taxi Driver, for instance. - (LEHANE LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: Or Scorsese, It's a Wonderful Life.
It is the same kind of setup of a lonely guy,
you know, deciding to go and kill himself.
And it's the same...
And that's what I always wanted to do, this kind of
a film noir, but with that little touch of a Capraesque, almost like a fairy tale.
LEHANE: You and I spoke about fairy tale really early.
ROSKAM: Like a fable. Yeah.
LEHANE: Remember we were... I mean in our earliest conversations
we were talking about how this was a fairy tale.
- A very dark fairy tale. - ROSKAM: Oh, yeah.
LEHANE: But a fairy tale. ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: And when people... I mean the thing that gets forgotten a lot is that
the German fairy tales are dark.
ROSKAM: Yes. LEHANE: So, this is, uh...
ROSKAM: And they always have a bit of a moral ending,
you know, a lesson.
LEHANE: Yeah. ROSKAM: How do you say it?
LEHANE: A moral is the way to put it. ROSKAM: Yeah.
And I always like to say,
what I always liked about the story is that...
Because if you had looked at the background of Bob,
and what he did, and what he was going to do...
I mean, he's a good guy, but he's good at something,
and he actually doesn't really like the consequences of what he's good at.
LEHANE: Right. ROSKAM: You know.
I think it's...
Sometimes you have a moral story, or immoral,
but you also have amoral without...
It's all within the audience.
And it's something that I always kept in mind that it was like some...
I wanna show him with empathy,
but also with a sort of a distance from the character.
- From my personal... - LEHANE: Well, that's fair. Yeah.
It's kind of, I would say, a sort of humanist filmmaking, you know...
You can take him. You take him.
I work nights. I work a lot.
We'll have to send him to Animal Rescue.
ROSKAM: Although the film noir reference was pretty clear from the beginning,
but I didn't want to do the typical shadows and smoke, and...
- You know, a visual genre piece. - LEHANE: Right. No, and it's...
ROSKAM: And we really choose for colors and making it actually, very colorful.
LEHANE: Again, it feels...
To me it feels like those sort of 1970s
- kitchen-sink dramas... - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
- ...that they did so well, you know. - ROSKAM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
LEHANE: Um... I mean, this kitchen is...
ROSKAM: It is like one.
LEHANE: Well, it's out of a million kitchens I grew up in.
Uh, even though I grew up in Boston, this is Brooklyn,
but it's the same sense, the same cramped sense of space.
The same, um...
- The religious icons... - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
...the sort of general mess, not because you're a messy person,
but because you don't have the time to deal with it.
ROSKAM: This was such a fun scene.
It's the only one where Tom had a...
How do you call it when you can't stop laughing?
LEHANE: He couldn't stop laughing? ROSKAM: Yeah.
He had like a... How do you call it, the laughing thing?
Because Jim was saying that line here when he's talking about the dog.
LEHANE: "It's a dog"? ROSKAM: "It's a dog."
"They shit, they eat..."
- That's the... (LAUGHING) - LEHANE: Yeah.
And then he said something else. Um...
LEHANE: "It's not some long lost relative who shows up
- "on your doorstep with a colostomy bag." - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: I was laughing so hard. And even Tom.
And he couldn't hold it anymore, and every time Jim was...
And then he was keeping...
And then when we were on Tom, and he would say it,
and Jim would just stay like this, he wouldn't...
He just did the lines, and then Tom's laughing.
LEHANE: You can see him almost trying not to crack up there.
- (ROSKAM LAUGHING) - LEHANE: Uh...
ROSKAM: There he gets it. There he gets it.
And Jim was like, "Are you all right?" (LAUGHING)
- Very dry. - LEHANE: It's so funny...
I mean, you know, I was the big cheerleader for Jim in the background...
- ROSKAM: Mmm. - ...before he was cast.
And when he was cast, I remember thinking
that was one of those lines that I thought of,
I'm like, "I don't have to worry about the colostomy bag line anymore, " you know.
'Cause there's very few actors who can pull off that type of line.
It's a very urban line, it's a very, kind of, off the cuff,
"I know I'm being funny, but I'm not waiting for anybody to react, "
kind of sense of humor,
- and it's a really hard thing to do. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
And there's, uh...
These are two great actors.
Two young guys who are really good.
We have here James Frecheville playing Fitzy.
Um...
He was the lead in, uh, Animal Kingdom,
that Australian film.
LEHANE: Oh, I never made that connection. ROSKAM: Yeah. That's him.
He's that kid in the beginning.
And I saw him in a list of...
I immediately loved this guy, he had such good fight.
And here, I like to play with the mirror kind of thing.
We always...
Little things here and then...
Oh, there they are.
I love those masks. (CHUCKLING)
And that's also something that I really liked was bringing this scene, um...
Very, almost, like, very quick.
And, just, like, it happens.
- And they're gone. - LEHANE: Right.
ROSKAM: Not too much of jumping over the...
Like making it a spectacle.
- You know, a spectacular... - LEHANE: No, no. Because the gun is...
I think that's where it gets lost in American movies,
after a certain point is,
the gun's in your face, it's scary enough.
- You know what I mean? - (BOTH CHUCKLING)
LEHANE: In real life, you know.
ROSKAM: These guys are also very terrified.
They're not like Navy SEALs, you know, who can, like...
LEHANE: Well, you know, look at how Tom's playing it.
I mean, Bob knows enough.
One of the things you don't want to do is
- seem as if you're meeting anybody's eyes. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Look away. Look away. Look away.
ROSKAM: Yeah. And another thing which those guys...
It's not like they're trigger-happy, they're just scared.
LEHANE: They're just scared.
ROSKAM: (IMITATING GUNSHOT) It can, like, go off in a split second.
And here. Yeah.
LEHANE: Here's poor Rardy. ROSKAM: Oh...
"Gonna be sick." No.
Here again, you see the colors, a little of the red in the front,
and then the colder blues in the back.
Like almost white, whitish blues.
And I love to do just one-takes, like, go a little bit,
pull back a little, go back a little.
You know.
And there he is.
LEHANE: And for the film school graduates,
who are probably the only people left listening to this.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
LEHANE: What do you, um...
When you do come up with that sort of color composition, for example,
how much time do you spend on them?
Like this is beautifully composed
- in terms of color. - ROSKAM: Hmm.
LEHANE: So what are you doing? You're sitting with the DP and you're saying,
"We need to paint that door red, we need to..."
ROSKAM: Yeah, we had this, um...
Because the whole bar of course we had it available
for us to prepare it totally just...
All the lights are movie lights. Uh...
And we took places and I'd like to have...
So we said, "Yeah, that's gonna be red."
And it will shine on the face and...
Because I wanted that spot as well when later in the film,
Bob gets Eric Deeds
- and when he hears about Nadia. - LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: You know, that literally... Fury, red fury on his face, and red.
It's like little, subtle things.
And, yeah.
With choices like here as well, again the red, blue, red. And it's...
Nicolas is pretty fast, and he knows what he wants.
LEHANE: We should also mention that's John Ortiz, that's just...
I'm a character actor fanatic.
He's one of the great American character actors out there.
ROSKAM: Yeah. LEHANE: Um...
ROSKAM: He was my first choice, as well.
Like when I was reading the script, I remember I want...
Because...
Did we change it?
LEHANE: He was originally an Irish cop. ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: And then, in the interest of making it
far more realistic to the world of today,
there was a... I can't remember who brought it up to me,
but somebody said, "Could we make him Hispanic?"
And I said, "Absolutely."
ROSKAM: I did, because I wanted him. LEHANE: Right.
- And then we both... - ROSKAM: Yeah.
Of course him having the background.
- We changed him to Torres. Yeah. - LEHANE: Yeah.
- And then he's just... - ROSKAM: And you came up with this...
I don't know if it's ever said in the movie,
but his first name, remember?
- LEHANE: Evandro. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: What a name! I love... LEHANE: Evandro Torres. Yeah.
I used to park cars with a guy named Evandro.
ROSKAM: Evandro Torres.
LEHANE: I love that name. ROSKAM: It's so good.
I remember you calling me about like,
"Yeah, I have a name. It's called Evandro Torres."
I'm like, "Cool! That's good."
LEHANE: Um...
But, yeah, he's just...
He's one of those guys, whenever he's on the screen
- he's just a joy to watch. - ROSKAM: Oh, yeah.
And another great line.
- With a "Twist the nipple." - LEHANE: Oh, yeah.
ROSKAM: You know, that's again something that
- nobody else can say, just like... - LEHANE: No.
ROSKAM: Easily like that. LEHANE: No.
ROSKAM: It's only a guy like Jim.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
It was very unlike me, Marv.
They took us for five thou and some change.
ROSKAM: Oh, I love that shot.
Thank God they picked up the envelope, so we're not on the hook for that.
So we're all right. We're okay.
LEHANE: There's just such a chemistry between these two.
ROSKAM: Oh, yeah. LEHANE: It just...
Leaps off the screen.
They're going to want it back. So we're not so fucking okay.
ROSKAM: And I like that jacket.
I think I'd been trying 30 jackets.
LEHANE: Before you got that one? ROSKAM: Before we got that one. Yeah.
And it was so hard to describe what I exactly wanted,
but I knew that if I see it, I'm gonna recognize it.
And I needed something...
Forme, visually, it is...
- It's like the ears of a dog. - LEHANE: Oh, yeah.
ROSKAM: You see? The white of the collar? LEHANE: It's a bomber jacket, isn't it?
ROSKAM: Yeah. And with the color, it's like...
- If you look at it, it's almost like... - LEHANE: Rocco.
- ROSKAM: And then we have Rocco. - (LEHANE CHUCKLING)
ROSKAM: It's something I discovered...
Uh, in doing some research,
that the statue of Rocco is the same that was carried around in The Godfather II,
during the procession in the streets when he's gonna kill...
LEHANE: I didn't realize that!
- Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wow. - ROSKAM: It's Saint Rocco. Yeah.
LEHANE: Uh, that's great. ROSKAM: And there he is, our little Rocco.
LEHANE: And that was... Saint Rocco was you.
That was, Michaël came up with that.
The dog was originally named, uh, Cassius.
ROSKAM: Cassius. LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: Because he thought it was a boxer.
- LEHANE: Yeah. - (ROSKAM CHUCKLING)
LEHANE: Which is a one-beat, uh, line.
Essentially, it was okay, but then when you came up with Rocco
- as patron saint of dogs, it was perfect. - ROSKAM: Yeah. Yeah.
It's a little...
Symbolizing a little thing, and it kind of made sense.
I thought, you know, with Bob being Catholic,
- going to church. - LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: And not really having an idea, like a dog.
And then a name? What's he gonna do?
And then he was thinking...
Of course (CHUCKLING) this is a nice scene when he...
This was, uh, actually Tom's line, he was just...
Remember what...
Well, we'll come to it later in the scene.
But anyways, it made sense that then, this guy would, you know...
- Knowing all the saints. - LEHANE: Would know... Right.
ROSKAM: That he would say, like, "Yeah, that's a good name for a dog."
Let's call him that way, and call him Rocco.
LEHANE: Noomi is great in this scene.
- I loved it. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: This is just a really...
This is one of those scenes... I wrote this scene really early, too.
Um...
Very vivid recollection of writing this scene in the book,
that then became the short story, that then became the script.
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm. LEHANE: Um...
And to see it play out,
normally you see a scene play out and there's a disconnect.
It doesn't feel right because it can never be what was in your head.
But this always felt as rich on the screen as it did in my head.
- ROSKAM: Oh, awesome. - I love that.
ROSKAM: Oh, and that's that one where he says,
"Mike?"
She asks like, "How are you gonna call him?"
LEHANE: And he goes, "Mike?"
ROSKAM: "That's not a name for a dog. Rocco, that's good."
LEHANE: That's good.
ROSKAM: And that's where you can tell when an actor is feeling the character,
is when he can improvise
- within the character. - LEHANE: Right.
ROSKAM: And come up with little things that,
you know, you instantly love about him.
- You have him? - Yeah.
Be patient.
Bye, thank you.
ROSKAM: And it was also one of the things we decided about the dog,
because sometimes people...
Some directors would humanize the dog.
You know, make him a character, and make him do things.
And I just said, "It's a dog.
"Let the dog be a dog, and be there."
LEHANE: It's just a dog, it's not some relative who showed up
on your doorstep.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
- It's just a dog. There you go. - ROSKAM: Exactly. Exactly.
- Let it be a dog. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: These are great because that's a big thing in the...
In his sort of backstory,
- in the prose, is his parents. - ROSKAM: Yeah. Yeah.
LEHANE: But this is just...
ROSKAM: And then here, this was all stage,
all built by, uh, Thérèse.
It's so full of detail,
and it just reflects on the whole atmosphere of that frame.
And having him, like... (IMITATES SCRUBBING)
Cleaning, cleaning. You know, all those little rituals that he does.
LEHANE: And even the way he cleans,
I mean, that's the physicality of a good actor.
Even the way he cleans, it says something about who he is.
ROSKAM: And there we have Chovka, uh, Michael Aronov.
LEHANE: I just saw him playing the polar opposite
of his character on something.
I literally was watching him 15 minutes before I realized,
"Oh, my God, that's the guy who plays the villain in The Drop."
- He was so wonderful. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Um...
Yeah, I love to see that kind of range.
Excuse me?
ROSKAM: It's something, um, I...
One of the things that I remember, that was very much
setting the tone for the film, consciously for me,
and the process of pre-production was when I was talking to Michael
when he's saying like, how he was gonna play...
Because it's a villain, and a lot of villains,
like the gangster and, like, how to play originally a gangster and not...
And then I told him, "I want you to play
"that if someone would observe you from a distance,
"and couldn't hear you talk.
"That he wouldn't be suspecting him of being so threatening,
"or saying the things that he said."
That he would almost,
- like, be talking to a friend. - LEHANE: Right.
ROSKAM: So if you kind of look at it, it's like he's so...
The threat is in his almost non-expression of threat.
LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: See, like, if you would turn the sound down,
and just look at the scene again, and watch him.
I remember when we were doing a color grading, a pre-color grading,
uh, for testing vision.
Uh...
It was a young color grader, and he just had the movie without sound.
And it took him so long to realize that he was watching, actually, a crime thriller.
Like a crime drama. He thought it was, like...
He couldn't tell because everybody is kind of...
But that's what that world was about.
Everybody's hiding, everybody's lying.
And it's just a facade.
And you wouldn't let people know who you really are.
And that's something that is all over the film.
- LEHANE: It is, it is. - Especially with him.
Um...
LEHANE: I think there's also the added thing, though,
of people who are...
Um...
People who have true power don't need to show it.
There's a great line on, uh, Game of Thrones where the guy says,
"Any man who has to tell you he's a king is not a king."
And that's the feeling you get from this performance as Chovka...
He's not gonna... He doesn't need to say the hard guy things.
He doesn't need to look like a hard guy.
- He just is a hard guy. - ROSKAM: Yeah. Yeah.
Um...
I like the way he's, like, "Find my fucking money, eh."
That "eh" at the end, it's so good.
LEHANE: (LAUGHING) But James' reaction too,
"Find my money."
Oh, that's great.
ROSKAM: Those fucking Chechnyans.
LEHANE: Oh, that's right,
is that the Chechnyans line right there?
Oh, yeah, that's right. That was fun. Copied from "Ireland, Irelandians."
ROSKAM: Elizabeth Rodriguez. LEHANE: Which...
Was that weird. Remember we had that weird coincidence
when I was writing, um, Romsey.
Remember we... I don't think we discussed...
Maybe the producer discussed it.
When I was writing Romsey, for whatever reason,
I never mentioned it to you guys.
For whatever reason, I had her in my head 'cause I'd just seen her in this play
off-Broadway, The Motherfucker with the Hat.
ROSKAM: Oh.
LEHANE: And so I just had her in my head.
So all the while I was writing Romsey,
for whatever reason, she was in my head. I never said a word to anybody.
And then when you guys told me the first day,
she was on the first day of shooting.
And you guys told me, "We just shot a scene with Elizabeth Rodriguez."
And I was, like, "Wait a minute, the girl who was in
- "Motherfucker with the Hat?" - ROSKAM: Wow!
LEHANE: It was so cool, yeah.
ROSKAM: I've never heard this.
- Wow. - LEHANE: And she was, um...
The other thing she was great in, she stole every scene she was in
was in Miami Vice. The Miami Vice movie.
ROSKAM: Yeah. LEHANE: She was terrific.
ROSKAM: That's how I... Because I discovered, um,
Torres in Miami Vice.
That was the first time I consciously was, like, intrigued
by the performance of John Ortiz.
And so, of course, Elizabeth was in there.
And it was also Tom Hardy suggesting Elizabeth.
LEHANE: Okay.
ROSKAM: He's friends with her.
LEHANE: We just saw the scene, first scene with
Marv and his sister, Dottie,
which was a relationship I loved, fought very hard for in the script,
- even before you came along. - ROSKAM: Yeah?
LEHANE: Yeah, that was something that was, uh...
I always considered it would be the first thing to go,
because it's not instrumental to the plot, it's not.
- It doesn't drive the narrative... - ROSKAM: Hmm.
...but it says so much about that guy
and the world he's in. Um...
And where he comes from, who he is, what his family background is,
this is all connected to that relationship he has with his sister.
Um...
ROSKAM: This was also funny. The place we were shooting this,
we needed to do four days on a stage.
And this scene was originally, I think, in a...
- Fitness room? - LEHANE: Yeah.
It was in a gym.
ROSKAM: But then because it was interesting to have it,
but to be faithful to the script, it meant we had to go and shoot it somewhere,
because we couldn't build it anymore, budget-wise,
we had a little bit of a problem.
And then suddenly it would've took one day off the bar
out of my schedule because of it.
So, I was trying to think, "Can we not just build it in there?"
"No, we're building this and that, and that."
So this doors actually the stage door. This is the...
LEHANE: Oh, that's great.
ROSKAM: This is the fire exit.
LEHANE: I remember that door, right. Yeah.
I remember that door from going on set.
- That's right. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
Oh, that's great.
ROSKAM: And I said, "Technically, is this still the studio?"
And they're, like, "Yeah."
"Okay, let's just use this corner as a secret spot for them to meet up."
So, it was just more like a solution, and it became...
Sometimes it's the proof that within the limits...
LEHANE: Is the great stuff. Yeah. ROSKAM: Yeah.
You know, being limited in there and then and you find solutions
and I love those moments.
LEHANE: Well, the thing, too, was having the comedy being in the script,
was always that Marv would actually go to the gym.
ROSKAM: (CHUCKLES) Yeah.
LEHANE: Because he doesn't do any... He never works out.
He just goes there for the steam. Right?
- And that was always the point. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
Uh, so, losing that, we lost a joke,
but it might have been a lot of pipes to lay to get the joke.
ROSKAM: Yeah.
Uh, this is actually secretly one of my...
Not script-wise, but in performance,
one of my favorite scenes. I just love the natural...
Naturality of it, the way they talk and...
You know, the way she looks, you know, and he...
And he's like, he's actually a little shy, but he doesn't show it.
And he's, like, "Oh, good idea," and he doesn't find the pen.
And it's so just them, it's pure acting, it's...
I didn't do anything, I just looked at the video system
next to the camera, and just let them do it.
LEHANE: Also, I wasn't here for this, but it looks cold. Was it cold?
ROSKAM: It was not that cold, but cold.
LEHANE: They look... I often think sometimes
any sort of adverse weather actually helps the performances.
ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: 'Cause they're not thinking as much.
ROSKAM: I mean, you can tell it was already spring,
so there's no leaves on the...
It was the end of the winter that we were shooting it.
Happy New Year, by the way!
Happy New Year!
ROSKAM: I like that "Happy New Year." LEHANE: I love that. Yeah.
ROSKAM: You know, that's my kind of idea when I was...
I had this little bit of a touch of Jimmy Stewart in my head.
- With Bob, with Tom. - LEHANE: Right.
ROSKAM: And that moment for me was like...
LEHANE: It's the first moment you really see him coming alive.
ROSKAM: And the way he does it, a little stiff, you know.
Wonderful moment, scene, this one. Ann Dowd, she is so amazing.
LEHANE: This, um...
ROSKAM: I love that, that was... I personally think...
I don't know how, but a dialogue between two people in a kitchen,
I'm proud of my own directing... (LAUGHING)
I'm, like, you know, this is my fit.
I'm happy with how it was cut and set up.
LEHANE: This scene was, um...
- This was my favorite scene to write. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
- I can imagine. - LEHANE: And...
And I fought it tooth and nail to keep it in the script. (CHUCKLES)
There was this... Uh...
But this to me is...
This works on so many levels in terms of who this guy is,
in terms of the world that he lost.
In terms of the world that he thinks he lost.
'Cause Marv, like most people, who's, uh, kind of fucked-up.
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm. LEHANE: He actually thinks
he's the hero in his own narrative.
ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: He thinks that what he's doing is actually good.
Um...
And he's got a lot of pain that he's carrying around.
- He's got a lot of loss. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: And a lot of it's self-inflicted, and a lot of it's self-imposed,
- but at the same time... - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: And then the way she just says, you know,
"I'll get to Europe in another life."
ROSKAM: And, "That's electricity." That one when...
LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: "It's life. No, it's electricity." LEHANE: It's electricity.
ROSKAM: Such a beautiful line. So beautiful.
But the whole dialogue, you felt...
When you feel... You can tell when dialogues work,
because then as a director, I don't have to do anything.
Because the actors just carry it and they're off.
And here as well, like I said, they...
I didn't do any real acting directing. I was just
creating frames and a little bit of a choreography.
But that's it, they had to just do it.
And it was awesome from the first take.
- Come to heel. Come to heel. And sit. - (WHIMPERING)
(ROSKAM CHUCKLES)
ROSKAM: And with the little dog.
When I watch TV, he sleeps on my leg.
Really?
- Out. - ROSKAM: "Out." (LAUGHS)
Okay, now, we're here. I loved that park, it was so great
with those stands here and the...
And now, we have Eric Deeds coming, Matthias,
Matthias Schoenaerts.
LEHANE: That's great, the way he comes in out of focus.
That's a nice dog.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
ROSKAM: I also liked the music here, Marco Beltrami,
like really starting to bring the atmosphere and...
Don't forget to feed it.
ROSKAM: The little piano, it's like...
That piano was a specially tuned piano that he made himself.
LEHANE: Oh. ROSKAM: Um...
Tell me where the hospital is?
(CLEARS THROAT)
Bang a U-ey, go down to the end here.
Take a right. There'll be signs.
ROSKAM: "Signs." (CHUCKLES)
I like that hesitation, the way it's done naturally.
Jim plays that, when, you know...
LEHANE: Yeah, we did. We did something there, where I think...
I didn't even notice it I think until it was cut.
I mean, there's two extremely threatening scenes
where nobody even remotely threatens.
One guy asked about another guy's dog,
another guy asked for directions to the hospital.
But it's the sense, I think, at this point now,
where it's sort of the one-quarter mark,
it's the sense of we are entering into a very...
You think you're in a dangerous world, it's about to get very dangerous.
ROSKAM: And it also describes the paranoia of those people,
the way they always have to watch their backs.
And even just a guy asking directions could be dangerous.
LEHANE: Could be dangerous. Exactly.
ROSKAM: And, of course, as an audience, it was then...
The normality of it was just the thing, like, "Okay, this is not normal."
It cannot be normal, so it isn't, it's like this always...
Nothing seems to be the way it is.
LEHANE: Particularly, you know, one of the great scenes in
the last quarter century of film is that scene when, uh,
Jimmy Conway tries to get Karen to go down
to buy the coats in Goodfellas. She comes to visit him.
He says, "Yeah, there's a couple of coats,
"just go pick out a couple of things for yourself."
And she knows not to go in that, no matter what.
- She knew, she says, "No, Jimmy, I'll..." - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
She goes running back to Henry,
that's when they go into witness protection.
And it's all just him saying, "No, no, just go down a little further.
"Little further."
ROSKAM: It's true.
LEHANE: It's funny, we used to say... When we were on Boardwalk...
As writers of Boardwalk Empire we used to say,
- "Everything goes back to The Godfather." - (ROSKAM CHUCKLES)
And sometimes now it's becoming "Everything goes back to Goodfellas."
ROSKAM: Yeah. Yeah.
Actually the...
Ellen Lewis was our casting director for this movie.
She started... She works always with Martin Scorsese
since Goodfellas, that was her first job for Scorsese.
And he was so happy with what she did and ever since,
she's casting every single Scorsese movie.
BOTH: And she cast this movie as well.
ROSKAM: So she's the one who found us all those great actors
like Ann Dowd and Michael Aronov.
- It's all her. Yeah. - LEHANE: She was terrific.
ROSKAM: And this scene, I love this.
The way these two...
I mean Matthias and Hardy. Two guys, two actors that
have been in very physical roles, now, suddenly...
Two power guys face-to-face, almost touching their noses.
And it's all balanced, the whole choreography,
in those two square meters, I recall it.
LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: It took more than an hour to set it up. (LAUGHING)
LEHANE: To set that up. To block that out? ROSKAM: Yeah, that scene. Yeah.
Because they were, like, "Okay. And then, I close the door..."
LEHANE: When he holds up the umbrella like that, that's not...
It wasn't in the script. That's great. That's excellent.
- That's beautiful too. - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
You never ask about it.
LEHANE: There's a great light in this too
that's, I think again, is a...
Is a credit to the cinematographer, where it's just this sense of...
It's growing as winter gets more wintery.
You know what I mean? It's rawer.
- The movie seems to just get... - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Just goes... It goes more and more threatening.
ROSKAM: And it's so typical also of New York
to have snow, and then it rains,
and then it freezes, and then it goes back.
Overnight it can change, it can be white and then at noon it's gone.
LEHANE: Yeah. ROSKAM: You know.
The mornings.
LEHANE: And it's all gurgling out of the gutter, the drain pipes.
ROSKAM: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
LEHANE: Everybody loves snow. Nobody loves slush.
(ROSKAM CHUCKLES)
LEHANE: I like movies that have a lot of slush. I'm a big fan of slush.
ROSKAM: I think snow can get really dirty in New York, getting all black almost.
If it's this cold long enough.
This is also one of...
The photography here is so amazing,
but that light square of the window, and then have them...
I'm not a fucking idiot.
On both sides. Love that scene.
What about you? The guy with the umbrella.
Oh, he's just interested in the dog.
- The dog. - Mmm.
How do you know? Maybe he's just telling you that.
ROSKAM: It's just fun to watch him. LEHANE: Yeah.
...put them back where they found them, because that would require courtesy.
You should just get a dumpster, Marv.
ROSKAM: This one was a scene we really worked hard on to have...
Because it's very particular with all the actors.
These guys absolutely needed their choreography
of where to stand, where to go, where to walk.
It was a whole play, like a dance, almost.
And this one took...
They really wanted to find themselves in the space.
And then it needs its own logic.
And, uh, we worked very hard on making this happen,
and then one of the things was where we're gonna put the bag.
- LEHANE: Where are we gonna put the bag? - (ROSKAM CHUCKLES)
ROSKAM: With the arm. Uh...
So then we decided to do it like this, and that worked so well.
Then everybody, kind of, tuned in and found
like how we walk, where we're standing, where we're going.
And I like that moment when Marv says, "No, I don't."
LEHANE: Yes.
"I do not have to look in that bag."
- ROSKAM: "No, I don't." - (LEHANE CHUCKLES)
I don't need to do anything.
I'm just going to stand right here. I'm going to stand right the fuck here.
No.
You really should take a look at this.
I don't need to see Europe.
ROSKAM: Here, as well, we have
those little details that we put in, like those...
That's something you're gonna see further on, are like plastic bags in the trees.
Also because of the...
What was that storm again, in Brooklyn?
LEHANE: Wasn't that awful? ROSKAM: The water storm?
- Sandy? Yeah, the hurricane. - LEHANE: Sandy.
ROSKAM: So, lots of plastic bags always...
And then you have the yellow bucket there at the left.
So we always had those with us to bring those little touches
like strokes of painting, like a little bit of the red
between Marv and Bob.
But then again the green there, if you see, is original. It's not dressed.
LEHANE: Right. ROSKAM: Yeah.
That kitchen was also almost original.
Just kept it and dressed it up.
And always, you know, like this little yellow, blue, red,
little spots that we put in.
Like you've done it a thousand times.
ROSKAM: I think here it's the moment we start to
realize that Bob is not just the guy.
- (CHUCKLING) You think it's the look. - LEHANE: It's the look that,
again, that Jim gives him, it's this kind of, "Ooh, I may have just...
"May have taken that one step too far.
"Let me give him a friendly smile."
No, we're closed.
Well, your door was unlocked, so...
I'm sorry about that, but we're closed now, so...
Yeah. Yeah.
You got to go.
Hey, Bob.
ROSKAM: Love that look.
So good.
See in this, you know, that spot with the red.
Now he's gonna turn, and then he's gonna stand there for a while.
And that's really him being angry, like "Whoa!"
That moment that he's realizing, now, things are really going...
In weird ways.
LEHANE: Yeah, "We're not getting out of this."
Uh... We got a little blood.
ROSKAM: And that's the first time we see him,
kind of, really getting worried.
LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: And you feel it, the way he looks.
Such a subtle, beautiful performance of Tom.
I remember, I was watching it. I originally had goose bumps.
When I was just feeling it how...
How he was, like, nailing it there, so...
I mean, he does it over the whole movie, but during the course of the shooting,
- it's a process that's not chronological. - LEHANE: Right.
ROSKAM: And I had already a couple of great moments,
but this was also one of the moments I said, like...
I totally know what he was doing.
I started totally understanding
the logic of Tom's, uh, creation.
LEHANE: Yeah, it's funny because when I was on the set, Tom, um...
God, it was...
The first time we talked, we talked
- for just a half an hour trying to... - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
...just sort of explain his perception of Bob.
The journey he was trying to take him on.
Not just from film-on, but from, kind of, birth-on.
ROSKAM: Yeah. LEHANE: Uh...
And it was, uh, both kind of dizzying,
but it was also just deeply impressive.
He was making this character 100% his own by that point.
ROSKAM: Yeah. LEHANE: And, uh...
And yeah, what you're seeing here, I think, in this performance, is
- its own type of narrative. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Just in the performance alone, just in the looks.
ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Um...
ROSKAM: Absolutely.
And I remember that conversation it was, uh...
Uh, I heard a couple of... There was a couple of moments
I was there with you guys, and then I remember
him coming back, that he really liked talking to you,
that was really something.
- It confirmed what he was thinking. - LEHANE: Yeah.
I remember, we spoke then, we spoke that night, we spoke the next day,
and it was just always, again, it was just...
He had a different conception than me of what Bob was, but...
It goes under that conception of human beings are 32 things,
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm. LEHANE: 40 things.
So, um, his Bob was different than my Bob, but it was a real Bob.
ROSKAM: Yeah. LEHANE: Um...
And it was always authentic.
- The way he throws that, it's just very odd. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
LEHANE: (CHUCKLING) It's so great. ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Um...
Because he does it... It's funny because as I wrote it,
he sort of tomahawks it.
But his throw is better,
because it's the throw of a guy who really doesn't want anybody to see that arm.
ROSKAM: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was the first, uh, scene I did with...
That was, uh, day one.
Uh, my first day with Tom on set.
And, uh, that was his first appearance on set.
LEHANE: For... ROSKAM: Yeah, this scene. Yeah.
That was the first time I saw Bob.
I liked that.
The way... And it's like with Bullhead as well.
I never saw the character...
LEHANE: Until this first "action." ROSKAM: First "action."
That's when, I mean, I see it dressed,
but not in character like...
And, uh, that first moment of seeing Bob coming alive,
is such a great moment.
And I love the way, here, he tells you how Bob can lie.
LEHANE: Yeah. ROSKAM: I mean, this is not a guy...
He's under control. This is...
LEHANE: He's not getting rattled.
ROSKAM: No. LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: You know it's, like, uh, he just threw an arm
in the water and there's a cop.
Just, look at the guy, he's just, like...
That's right. Yeah, he left.
ROSKAM: And then there is this moment when
Torres is gonna show the picture of Deeds,
and then you see Bob scanning a little bit with his eyes.
That was also that moment I knew, "I'm gonna use this in the editing,
"and it's gonna come in there."
I mean, you working in that bar. Come on.
(ROSKAM LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: Look at that little smile.
(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: There it is, it's gonna come.
LEHANE: He reminds me of Brando here. ROSKAM: There he goes.
You see, and that's a beautiful detail.
I just love it.
- Yeah, it's true. The Brando thing is... Yeah. - LEHANE: Yeah.
I'm hearing here and there that this guy...
...has something to do with the Whelan disappearance.
Really?
ROSKAM: "Really?" (LAUGHING)
That's a really good-looking dog.
ROSKAM: That dog was so photogenic.
It could do whatever it wanted, it just worked all the time.
LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: I loved that dog.
LEHANE: My wife and I came out and played with the dog.
They had the trainers outside,
- their dogs in the car. - (ROSKAM CHUCKLING)
ROSKAM: Yeah, we had three dogs in total. LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: Uh...
Because it was, you know, the age thing.
And that one was the first.
I'm wondering if this is the...
I love Noomi's performance here, so good.
Again, I mean, it's throughout the whole movie, they're all nailing it.
But there are these moments...
You know what? It's a really long story.
I'm sorry. I should have called you. I apologize.
ROSKAM: You know, and how
when she comes up and says, like, "What?" (CHUCKLING)
You see the blue bag in the distance.
LEHANE: I do see it. ROSKAM: And there is a...
Between... And the other shot there, left of, uh...
LEHANE: There it is. ROSKAM: Yeah.
And it was all there, these are the little, I call them, paint strokes.
You know that we...
And then, her background is that burgundy red.
That's, you know, that's Brooklyn, it's everywhere.
That's the colors.
I was just asking a question.
No, you were insinuating.
No, I wasn't.
Now you're arguing just to argue with me.
No.
- See? - I'm not.
I don't need this shit, okay?
LEHANE: This, I think is nice. Again, it's just Noomi giving the big payoff.
You feel, I think, for...
You know, 45-46 minutes of the film, that this is a pretty damaged woman.
ROSKAM: Yeah. LEHANE: And then you finally see it.
You know, you get the hints, but then it's... This is where it pops.
He trips the wrong wire and it's...
He has that wonderful look that all men know.
"What the fuck did I do?"
- ROSKAM: Yeah. - (COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: And then he sits in a cellar with a dog.
LEHANE: "I apologize. I don't even know what I said."
(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: Yeah, the only thing you know is that you have to apologize.
LEHANE: Yeah. ROSKAM: Yeah.
I asked her one question.
A question. Simple. And then it all came out sideways.
You don't get it.
ROSKAM: Here, we worked on the editing.
We've been working a lot on this scene. It's really, here...
Christopher Tellefsen, uh, great editor.
Uh...
He's such a great guy, and he did a...
I mean, again, throughout the whole movie, did a great job, but here,
this one was, uh...
This scene needed particular attention to make it work.
Although it was, totally, the writing, the dialogues, was perfect.
We really have been working hard on building this scene and making it work,
because we had a...
LEHANE: That great moment with his hand.
He goes out to reach his hand. I love that.
And he taps the bar as if he meant to do it, you know.
It's great. Um...
Just a little plug for a whiskey I drink.
- Every now and then. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: And this was funny, a Belgian journalist asking me,
if there was a little Belgian joke by me to put Stella Artois in it?
LEHANE: Really? ROSKAM: Because it's a Belgian beer.
- Stella? - LEHANE: Right, I know it's... Yeah.
ROSKAM: And I said, "No, it was written that way." (CHUCKLING)
LEHANE: You know, it's funny, the reason I put it in there
was because, remember, it was sort of the beer du jour
of the States, about a year and a half ago.
- So that's why it ended up going in there. - ROSKAM: Oh...
LEHANE: Um...
Where the Midleton was, um, just...
It's as fine a...
- Liquor as exists. - ROSKAM: Sorry?
LEHANE: That's as fine a liquor as exists.
I mean, what Chovka's drinking there.
ROSKAM: And look at that. Look at that face.
Oh... (LAUGHING)
LEHANE: "I drink your milkshake, " moment.
- You know? - (ROSKAM CHUCKLING)
We die.
ROSKAM: Such good lines.
...Andre.
But before you do, you have to try this fucking whiskey, man.
Yeah, get him one. Come on. Here.
You handle the drop.
All right. Which night?
Super Bowl.
ROSKAM: And again, a great sound design and soundtrack from Marco here.
Loved that little touch.
With the theme, the Chechen theme in it.
Ah, this is another Bellows kind of painting we... (CHUCKLING)
- Love those. Yeah. - LEHANE: It's so beautiful, it looks great.
The only thing I remember was that he left the bar to score weed.
And the guys he got it from were a couple of shitheads.
A nutjob named Deeds...
ROSKAM: Now, here he is, um,
- Chris Sullivan. - LEHANE: Chris Sullivan.
ROSKAM: Great, great actor.
And he came in for ADR and he had this huge beard and glasses.
And I'm like, "Who are you?" (CHUCKLING) "I'm Chris."
I'm like, "Holy shit."
It was for another play. For a play that he did.
And then we have this beautiful background here.
Again, that was another reference to George Bellows.
Who had those beautiful paintings.
When they were still building houses and...
LEHANE: "Don't fuck with my bar." Come on.
- It's a line in the movie. - ROSKAM: Oh. (LAUGHING)
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it was...
LEHANE: That's just... That was... ROSKAM: Was that properly recorded?
LEHANE: Um...
I actually saw somebody say that once, so.
ROSKAM: "Don't fuck with my bar." LEHANE: "Don't fuck with my bar."
And it was said the way some people say,
"Don't fuck with my church."
You know? "Don't fuck with my wife."
- It was, "Don't fuck with my bar." - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
LEHANE: Uh...
Chris Sullivan has a very distinct Boston vibe to him,
even though this is a New York movie, I wonder if he's from Boston originally.
ROSKAM: I thought he was from Chicago.
LEHANE: Is it Chicago? Okay. ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Same thing. ROSKAM: Yeah?
- I don't know. (LAUGHING) - LEHANE: Pretty much.
It's pretty much the same city, you know, so...
One of them, they say "God". And one of them say, "Gawd."
That's pretty much the big difference between Chicago and Boston.
ROSKAM: I can still not tell. It's sometimes a little hard to hear differences.
You know, for the listeners here, I'm from Belgium,
so that's why my English is a little weird.
LEHANE: Oh, It's pretty exceptional.
- It's a hell of a lot better than my Flemish. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
(ROCCO WHIMPERING)
He used to be my boyfriend.
In the beginning, he was charming.
ROSKAM: And there was a scene that got deleted.
LEHANE: That got deleted? Right, yeah.
ROSKAM: What was it again? Uh... "Don't be Flemish, " or...
LEHANE: No. "I'm speaking Flemish?"
- I think that's what the line was. - ROSKAM: Yeah. Yeah.
And I am Flemish.
LEHANE: I think, he wasn't being understood.
ROSKAM: It was a sign forme to do the movie, when I...
- (LAUGHING) - LEHANE: When you saw that line? Yeah.
ROSKAM: I knew. I said, "That script's for me. I'm gonna do this."
LEHANE: So this is the make-up scene, right?
ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: This is sort of the...
I think, deepening of their relationship, now.
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: I have a friend who says,
"You really can't be friends with somebody till you've had your first fight."
So, they've now had their first fight.
I'm so sorry.
I'm sorry.
You don't have to explain.
LEHANE: Her jacket is great.
ROSKAM: Yeah. LEHANE: I grew up with those jackets.
- We used to call them Eskimo jackets. - (ROSKAM CHUCKLING)
ROSKAM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's again, you know, David Robinson was our costume designer.
He was very patient (CHUCKLING) with my trying everything out, all the time.
And Noomi, of course, helped very much
building up the character by choosing, as well.
Helping, you know...
This is an interesting thing about the angel.
Um...
This is also something that came in later in the script.
What happened was, we had to go forward,
is that the angel came from another scene,
and got back into it. And we were writing it during the production,
because it wasn't there originally.
And it was because Matthias was picking up that angel
that was just there, in the kitchen scene when he's waiting for Nadia.
LEHANE: Right.
ROSKAM: And then he takes it, and that's where we came up with the story...
Something like that, and then we gave it to you and you wrote
the scene, where she's like, "It's broken."
- "You want to fix it?" - LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: And it's such an intimate, beautiful moment.
LEHANE: Did that survive?
- I couldn't even remember if that... - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: Okay. So that was it. Okay.
All right.
You want to fix it?
Yeah.
Sure.
You want another beer?
Yeah.
ROSKAM: And that was, uh...
LEHANE: I will say, if I was on set, the only thing I would have said is,
those characters never would have drank Dos Equis.
ROSKAM: Not what? LEHANE: Dos Equis.
They're drinking Dos Equis in that scene.
ROSKAM: What's Dos Equis?
LEHANE: It's the beer they're drinking in that scene.
ROSKAM: Oh! Oh... I was supposed to know that.
LEHANE: That's the only thing I would have...
ROSKAM: But what did they drink? LEHANE: If I was on set...
- They'd be drinking Bud Light. - ROSKAM: Yeah?
LEHANE: Yeah. They'd be drinking Bud Light, or Bud, or...
Maybe... Trying to think what else.
Uh...
ROSKAM: What kind of beer is there? LEHANE: Miller...
Dos Equis is a little uptown for Nadia.
ROSKAM: Oh, God. LEHANE: It's a little uptown for Nadia.
ROSKAM: And Bob? Would he buy it for... Maybe his mom would drink it.
And that he still buys it.
LEHANE: No, I don't see it. ROSKAM: No?
- (ROSKAM LAUGHING) - LEHANE: Sorry, I just... I tried.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
LEHANE: No, I'm sorry, but I'm glad, you know...
The Most Interesting Man in the World would drink Dos Equis.
It's small. These are the very tiny things that, you know,
are fun to talk about on a DVD commentary.
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm. LEHANE: Uh...
I was just saying.
This was always, I think, in a lot of ways, this was the heart of the film.
Well, (SIGHS) let's see, we cut it
- several times in script... - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
...because it was always way, way, way long.
And then, you guys cut it several times in editing.
Um...
This was a tough scene. This was a tough scene,
'cause you're trying to encapsulate
- everything in the movie. - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: And I think, it was also written in two chunks,
and you cut it, thank God, in the editing.
You come back to the scenes several times
- in the editing, do you not? Yeah. - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: And that, I think, uh...
ROSKAM: We also brought this one bit in earlier,
in the screenplay, in the script,
- this scene came a little later... Yeah. - LEHANE: This comes later.
ROSKAM: And we kind of brought it in here. LEHANE: It's much better for the film.
It's much better coming in this way.
ROSKAM: And it's also nice because he's talking about his cousin.
It's actually my cousin, Marv, you know.
"We were a crew once."
And then you see this scene. What he's gonna do here.
The hard part about cutting that scene in the kitchen was
that all the material we had was so good.
All the dialogues made sense.
'Cause we cut away a little bit about, um,
him talking about sins.
LEHANE: Yeah, there was a lot of that.
ROSKAM: Which we used as a voiceover now.
- At the end of the film, when he's driving. - LEHANE: Yes.
ROSKAM: It's actually literally taken
- from that scene. - LEHANE: From that scene?
ROSKAM: From that scene, yeah.
LEHANE: But I think it's better without, you know, there's a lot of...
One of the reasons I like to over-write
is so that we can have a lot to carve from,
- you know, to get to the marble. - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: But then, when you see a film, you look and you say,
"Oh, no, the images and the actors are doing far more
"than my dialogue was doing then." You know, so that's...
Um...
I'm one of the few writers who actually likes to see my scenes cut.
(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: Well, it was with great pleasure. (LAUGHING)
LEHANE: I don't like whole scenes cut out.
But I love to see good trims, you know.
'Cause then you go, "Ah, we got there so much faster."
This was, actually, one of the last scenes I ever wrote.
Um...
In terms of...
I think in terms of the final locked script.
I remember re-writing this scene
- when I was in Brooklyn. - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: Working on Boardwalk.
I think I was having a little bit of fun with...
I think, dude, if you watch this scene
from the perspective of... I'm having a little bit of fun with
the whole idea that
the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: I would argue that the good guy with the gun
doesn't stand much chance against the smarter guy.
ROSKAM: Yeah, yeah. LEHANE: Um...
So...
ROSKAM: That was also great shooting the way we did it.
LEHANE: This was so cool
that I actually took it, and I used the red light.
When I was asked to write the novel of this after I wrote the script.
My publisher said, "Would you write a novel of it?" And I said, "Sure."
Now that I know what I'm actually trying to write. Um...
I used the red light.
Which was not in my original...
It's not in my original scene,
it's not in my original script.
It came from seeing a clip of this.
I love the way he runs away. (LAUGHING)
That is so classic.
- It's... - ROSKAM: Right?
- It was awesome. - LEHANE: "Nothing...
"Don't pay no attention here.
"Off I go."
ROSKAM: Oh...
Yeah, we had to...
We were working there, and we had to hurry up, because there was fog coming in.
- Literally, like, coming in. - LEHANE: You can see it.
- In the background... - ROSKAM: You can literally...
Yeah, yeah, it's starting.
And it's like literally we had, like, the next take.
You couldn't see the car disappear in the distance.
We just had to cut it, and we were done.
Here you are.
(SNIFFLES)
LEHANE: Yeah, I grew up in a city kind of like this.
ROSKAM: Nice moment.
LEHANE: Very similar, very similar neighborhood.
And spent a lot of late nights
walking home in the cold, to be honest.
And what I love is that's captured so beautifully here.
ROSKAM: Oh. LEHANE: So many scenes where you feel...
Well, this is it. You walk a girl home on a very cold night, this is what it feels like.
- This is what it looks like. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
Yeah, it's really beautifully done.
- I love it. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
And then, it's a little... That walk, a little drunky.
- You know? - LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: And then that smile...
And it's fun to know that the house...
Nadia's house was actually
literally around the corner from where we were shooting the bar.
LEHANE: Right.
Remember we walked down over there one time?
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm. LEHANE: You told me where it was,
I walked all the way. Yeah.
ROSKAM: "Want a chewie?"
LEHANE: It's funny, sometimes characters talk to you in a different way.
They just tell you things.
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: And that was a "Deeds" moment, that wasn't a "me" moment.
That was Deeds tapping me on the shoulder,
at some point when I was writing this scene.
He put the umbrella back.
- At some point he put that umbrella back. - ROSKAM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it had to. You know, if he takes the umbrella,
he has to do something with that umbrella.
LEHANE: It's the Chekhov line, you know.
"If you put a gun on the wall, you gotta use it."
ROSKAM: And it's so scary.
LEHANE: I love what Matthias also... What he captures here.
And he captures it mostly in the eyes,
is that there's something about Eric Deeds that,
as much as Eric Deeds is scary and a horrible problem,
and a big threat,
there's something very sad about Eric Deeds.
He's mentally imbalanced.
I mean, he's not just a bad guy.
This guy has been so...
His brains have been so scrambled through God only knows what.
Um...
- And you see it in this scene, I think a lot. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: You almost feel like you wanna give the guy a hug,
even though he'd probably stab you for it.
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: And that's also when, I remember
discussing that scene with him,
that he told me, and he's like, you know...
Uh...
When he's saying...
Because when I was reading it, I remember, when he said that, "Yeah, I regret it."
- That he was hurting the dog. - LEHANE: Yeah, yeah.
ROSKAM: And then he said, like,
"The way I'm gonna play it, is like he really means it."
And I'm like, "Yeah, of course, exactly."
And then he was playing it that way, and I'm like,
"Wow! This is exactly how Deeds is."
Like, he goes... (IMITATES TICKING)
He flips all the time.
LEHANE: Well, he's like the guy who beats his wife
or the guy who beats his kid.
- When they apologize they do mean it. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: They do feel bad. ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: It doesn't change the fact that they're gonna do it again.
ROSKAM: Yeah, exactly. LEHANE: You know? Uh...
ROSKAM: Here, I love that shot with the reflection of
- those two faces in the table. - LEHANE: Yeah, it's nice. Yeah.
ROSKAM: That was a cold day, that I remember. (LAUGHING)
LEHANE: That's why poor Ortiz is moving so fast.
(ROSKAM LAUGHING)
Eric Deeds' psych file.
ROSKAM: I always like to make those, with the camera behind.
I like having, um, shots where the camera is behind the character.
LEHANE: Right. Yeah. Coming over. ROSKAM: Yeah.
I just like the way he...
- We can just keep looking at this guy, right? - LEHANE: Yeah.
It's funny 'cause you said you first saw him in Miami Vice,
and I've never forgotten him from Carlito's Way.
ROSKAM: Oh! LEHANE: He was Carlito's young cousin
who gets killed in the first 15 minutes.
He had to be probably 20 when he did it.
ROSKAM: Oh! LEHANE: You'd never forget him.
It's just an unforgettable performance. It's just such a great character.
- You know? - ROSKAM: Yeah, yeah.
LEHANE: "This is my cousin, Carlito Brigante."
(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
He's walking down the street.
He's like five minutes from his own death, you know?
Uh, he gets killed in the pool hall.
- Remember that great sequence... - ROSKAM: I have to... Oh, yes.
...in the pool hall? He's reaching down and gets the...
"Hey, where's the beer?" You know?
- He's so great. - ROSKAM: Oh, yeah, yeah.
LEHANE: Um...
I let you do all these great things here.
The way that you constantly have Deeds kind of, come in
out of soft focus in the background, it's just beautiful.
- You know, he just... - ROSKAM: Just appears. Disappears.
That was a great day for me, shooting this one, because it was...
We're gonna see a little later on, when... How Bob... Tom is looking at him,
- when he says that about the dog. - LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: And, I was literally... I said, "Cut, " and I was cheering.
Like, "Yay!"
And Tom was looking at me, he's like, "What's wrong?"
(LEHANE LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: I said, "This is awesome. This is awesome."
LEHANE: It was a beautiful job with that.
"This is what life is.
"Somebody like me coming in unannounced."
ROSKAM: Beautiful line. Beautiful line.
- And it's true. - LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: You know, that's the whole point, that it's not just, you know...
LEHANE: Well, one of the concepts,
one of the central concepts, is sort of film noir,
which again, this doesn't look like it, but it is in a lot of ways.
This idea that you can never, ever,
- ever run from your past. - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: And if anybody embodies Bob's past, as a sort of a specter,
and I think that comes out, too, in how it's shot, it's him.
I mean, he just keeps floating up.
You can't get away from this, Bob. Whatever it is, you can't get away from it.
Um...
ROSKAM: Here. (GASPS)
That's the moment, I was like, "Yay!"
LEHANE: We know what's about to happen. ROSKAM: I had to bite my finger
for not screwing up that take. (CHUCKLES)
LEHANE: That's right. That's right. ROSKAM: Not to yell.
And then, here, that cellar scene, which was, believe it or not,
it was the first scene that Tom and Jim played together.
LEHANE: Oh, that scene in the cellar? ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Oh. ROSKAM: Can you imagine?
LEHANE: Oh, this is Jim's finest hour, I thought, in the film.
ROSKAM: I was wondering,
"Okay, these guys haven't seen each other yet."
- Literally, they'd just met. - LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: And they're, like, "Hey, how you doing? Let's nail this scene."
- And they just do it. And, look... - LEHANE: Just punched it out.
ROSKAM: These guys, you feel
they know each other for exactly 35 years.
Or whatever, 36, 7, 8.
And look at the way this...
The chemistry between those two guys is just...
LEHANE: It's palpable. ROSKAM: (SIGHS) Oh.
I can assure you, as a director,
when you see this happen, how happy you are.
It's like you just know this is gonna be awesome.
LEHANE: Yeah, you're in good hands. ROSKAM: This is their first scene together.
It's the end scene of the movie. They're nailing it.
And everything they will do now is gonna be brilliant.
I was so impressed by those two guys at that moment.
And then you literally have like this, "Yes, yes, yes, " kind of feel to it.
I'm just gonna listen to it again.
(ROSKAM LAUGHING)
And, again, a beautiful example of how...
And that's really some candor dialogues here, man.
It's just... It's there. The guys take it and they just play it.
Well, I'm not the guy who wasted his entire life waiting for it to start.
- I did that? - Mmm-hmm.
At least I had something once.
I was respected. I was feared.
When I walked into a place, people sat up.
They sat up straight. They noticed.
What'd you ever have?
And the fucking bar stool you put that old biddy at.
You don't think I don't know that you did it on purpose?
That was my stool and nobody sat on that stool
because it was Cousin Marv's stool.
And that meant something.
That meant something!
But it didn't.
Ever.
It was just a stool.
Are you doing something desperate?
Again?
Marv?
Are you doing something that maybe we can't clean up this time?
I told you, I don't feel good.
So why don't you get the fuck out of here?
Really.
Good-bye, Marv.
ROSKAM: Oh!
LEHANE: That's right.
ROSKAM: Yeah, I still... You know, that's...
(SCOFFS)
LEHANE: This is the self-loathing right there
- in that moment on his face. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: It's just amazing.
(GRUNTS)
ROSKAM: (SIGHS) Yeah. LEHANE: Wow.
ROSKAM: Now, we are back in that cellar.
LEHANE: Back in the basement. Back in the cellar, yeah.
ROSKAM: With that oil tank.
And the money, and the church.
The Body of Christ.
ROSKAM: Yeah. Oh... (CHUCKLES)
I like... That was a little play of mine, having that money.
We put it in there digitally
and wanted to have a little bit of a clock ticking around it.
LEHANE: You put the money in digitally?
ROSKAM: Yeah, because we wanted to go...
We had it from every angle
and we wanted to have the cuts,
like ticking as a clock... (IMITATES TICKING)
So we'd do it very, um... In a limited...
I mean, very modest way.
We have a long day.
ROSKAM: I like the light at the back there.
That's how he gets prepared.
Okay, this is, you know...
That's where Thérèse DePrez came to me and said...
Because we had that reference in the script that we never put back in the movie.
We shot it though.
It was the angel, the Mary with the broken neck in the church,
that would be a little bit like the way we did Rocco with the statue.
And then he would contemplate, Bob in the church.
See the Mary's, you know, holy...
And then with the broken neck,
would refer to the scars on Nadia's, uh, neck.
But we never used it.
But it was Thérèse DePrez, when we were shooting the scene,
she said, "Oh, look, a little reference, a little secret for us.
"A broken angel."
And she put it there,
and then when he came in and sat down,
he just took it.
- It's like improvised almost. - LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: And he takes it and he puts it there.
And that's when I was like, "Oh, wait a second, that broken angel."
And then I called you.
That's why we called you and said,
"Can you write something about that angel? That she has to fix it?"
That's when you put it back in.
When they were at the kitchen table,
which we shot after this.
LEHANE: Here's a lesson for all aspiring screenwriters,
who may still be with us, um,
I don't remember that at all.
(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
- I don't remember that at all. - ROSKAM: No?
LEHANE: I think I was working around the clock
on Boardwalk at the time,
and then I was doing some other things.
I remember I was rewriting the narration nonstop.
We were doing that. Remember? We were just over and over on that.
And, uh, so I have zero recollection of doing that.
- Of adding that in. - ROSKAM: Oh.
Well, there you go. I'm happy to help you bring that back.
LEHANE: That worked out.
ROSKAM: And you did a great job.
LEHANE: Why, thank you. Thank you very much.
- Glad I could just phone that in. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: You were very, very busy.
LEHANE: Yeah, and also we were doing a lot of that kind of, you know,
"Oh, can we change this line, or can we do this?
"What can we change this to? We just ran into a problem here."
Because you don't even know
- what's going on sometimes. - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: You don't know what problem is gonna present itself
until all of a sudden you're shooting.
Or an actor asks a question that you can't answer.
Or a production designer asks you a question that you can't answer,
whatever it is,
then it's like, "Oh, wait a minute. That isn't in the script, is it?"
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: Um... ROSKAM: Exactly.
LEHANE: I think here's where you go back
to the sort of double-edged sword, uh,
of both menace and mental illness.
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm. LEHANE: Because poor Eric Deeds,
he actually believes he can have a future
with Nadia, (LAUGHING)
as long as she doesn't talk back.
Um...
ROSKAM: This is a shot that I really like. LEHANE: The guys.
ROSKAM: So we go here with a pan.
We just left Bob and we see the guys, and then he's here.
It's like a way of bringing time... Time lapsing.
It's one of those things I always like to do.
And here Marco did a great job in scoring this thing for like...
I don't know how long it totally was.
Uh...
I think it's like almost nine minutes of non-stop music.
LEHANE: Really? I didn't realize that.
ROSKAM: He did a great job there.
(MARVIN EXHALES)
(INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS)
ROSKAM: And then there she is. LEHANE: Yeah, that's great.
That's a killer shot.
That was always meant to be sort of,
- "This is the price of belief..." - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
...kind of moment for Bob.
The reason most people close off their hearts
is because the time that it got broke is so fucking painful,
that they can't ever go back there again.
And there goes Bob. He's done it.
The dog's opened it. She's opened it.
And here he is looking at it. Tom's playing it perfectly.
Here he is looking at the moment where it's...
"If I could do it all over again, I'd keep it closed, " kind of vibe.
- You know? Uh... - ROSKAM: Yeah, yeah.
It's the first time, and it's also...
You can tell how love brings us very...
Always makes us young in a way
that the kind of reaction, like a little boy.
- Like a little kid. - LEHANE: Yeah.
This is a great shot, and that shot of the money going in.
(LAUGHS) I was there the day that you were obsessing over that shot.
And, uh, it really pays off 'cause I see it now.
I see it in the coming attraction.
I like this about Marv too.
Getting characters who tell you certain things.
(LAUGHS) Well, Marv there, when, uh...
I believe it's in the script. I'm not sure if it's even in the film anymore.
But when Fitz gets in the car,
Marv says, "What do you think, I got plastic bags in the trunk?"
- It's in there. - ROSKAM: Yeah, yeah.
LEHANE: The point is, is that's actually the moment that Marv gets the...
"Hey, maybe that's not a bad idea.
"Maybe I should have plastic bags
- "in the trunk." - (COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
"That would have been simple."
ROSKAM: "That was smart of me to think that."
LEHANE: The next time you see him, he's,
"Okay, this is my new draft.
"It's my new plan."
Rardy, two Amstels and a Stella.
Why is she here?
ROSKAM: And you can...
This moment is so great, these two guys.
And again here also, Christopher Tellefsen,
great, great editing here.
The microchip and the license, like we agreed.
Why would I do that?
ROSKAM: I think during the whole period of editing,
he always, time to time, went back to that scene and polished it, polished it.
He's been... That was like...
LEHANE: Well, this is such a massive scene.
This had to be a murderous scene to direct.
It was a murderous scene to write for a script.
It was easy to write in the original short story,
- but it was very hard in the script. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Um...
There's just so many moving pieces in this scene,
that I can't even imagine what it would have been like to...
I can't imagine what it'd be like to direct,
and I certainly can't imagine what it'd be like to edit it.
ROSKAM: Yeah, editing was the...
That was the toughest part of that. (LAUGHING)
Directing wasn't easy but the editing...
And then Chris just did it perfectly.
And there we have that swing shot again.
ANNOUNCER: What an amazing game!
Twenty-seven to 23, your final score!
ROSKAM: This was the one where we turn it again when he's upside-down.
- Are you with him? - No.
LEHANE: It's here, I think, too... With everybody
kind of closed in now on each other,
you really get a sense of, I think... (EXHALES)
The usual danger in life is not a serial killer,
and it's not a gang.
- It's just the people right around you. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: Something is coming to a big head tonight.
Is this... I think, the vibe we always kind of wanted here.
ROSKAM: Uh-huh. LEHANE: And I think we get it.
ROSKAM: 'Cause what wasn't easy was that you have...
You had to go from a very dynamic surrounding
of Super Bowl evening people.
It's a lot of things going on. It's chaos.
And then it comes together
to that very silent moment between just three people.
LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: And that was a big challenge to do.
To make that work.
And that's everybody's contribution here.
The actors, the photography, the framing, the editing.
Of course, the dialogues.
This line where he starts talking about Cousin Marv,
you know, the whole...
It just comes all very beautifully together.
But it was a big challenge to balance it out. That was the great...
LEHANE: All right, and she's so great in here.
He has a gun.
ROSKAM: I like that simple line. It's so old. "He has a gun."
It's so old-school in a way.
You know, the girl telling the boy,
and warning him for the other guy.
"He has a gun." And the way she said it, I just loved it.
What were you talking about?
Football.
Give me another shot, will you?
ROSKAM: And again here, um,
very subtle, beautiful scoring of Marco.
What was the name of your partner?
Wouldn't be much of a threat if you knew who he was, would he, Bob?
Yeah, but...
...he helped you kill Richie Whelan, right?
That's the rumor, Bob.
More than a rumor. It's what you said.
Then it's more than a rumor, Bob. What time is it?
You know, you don't have to keep calling me Bob all the time.
I'll see what I can do, Bob. What is that?
The 10 grand you wanted.
LEHANE: That was actually something I learned from a cop.
If you want to have power over somebody, keep calling them by their name.
ROSKAM: Oh, yeah? LEHANE: Yeah. It strips them.
It makes them feel...
It enforces an intimacy that isn't necessarily natural.
So it makes the person feel powerless.
It makes them feel naked.
That's why cops will constantly use your name.
- ROSKAM: Oh. - They'll be, like, "Sit down, Michaël.
"Would you like a cup of coffee, Michaël? Can I get you some cigarettes, Michaël?"
So I had Eric Deeds doing that.
And then when Bob says, "You don't have to do that, "
- he keeps doing it. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
That's what I love, 'cause that's Deeds, you know? To the core.
"I'll see what I can do about that, Bob."
ROSKAM: Deeds doesn't pick up the right signals.
- LEHANE: No, Deeds misses his cues. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: I didn't know about the names, but then that makes sense, absolutely.
Eric, please. Please don't do this.
ROSKAM: And then that look.
- Where's Marv? - Marv?
You need him for something?
I don't want anything.
ROSKAM: Like I said, it's been a while. I haven't seen it.
So I'm sometimes (CHUCKLES) just watching it myself again.
LEHANE: Well, I think Tom is embodying...
And one of the other things, was always with Bob,
what I always had about Bob from the very beginning.
You know, this old line,
"The guy you have to worry about in a bar fight
"isn't the guy who talks, it's the guy who doesn't."
And that's Bob throughout.
- Um... - ROSKAM: Yeah. Yeah.
LEHANE: It's the looks that, again, you captured that Tom was giving.
It's those moments when nobody is supposedly really looking,
that you see him for real.
It's 1:57, all right?
And then the kid goes to A.C. and he...
...hits up a slot machine for 22 grand.
Bam.
Who'd have thunk it?
ROSKAM: "Who'd have thunk it?"
- LEHANE: "Who'd have thunk it?" - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: I never understood because my English isn't good enough.
LEHANE: It's purposely bad English.
A lot of people like to use that phrase. "Who'd have thunk it?"
I actually just put it in something yesterday.
- So I gotta stop using that, clearly. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
LEHANE: It's hard, too, I think to have...
It's hard to have characters tell a story on-screen...
- ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm. - ...and make it compelling. Um...
And, again, this is credit to Tom. This is a credit to the editing.
This is a credit to you.
This is really, uh... There's a lot of ways...
For you struggling screenwriters out there,
there's a lot of ways this could have gone badly.
(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
LEHANE: Uh...
ROSKAM: But that's acting, you know.
LEHANE: But, again, it's the cuts, too.
This is a Peckinpah level of cuts in this scene. There's a lot of...
And that keeps it going, it keeps it popping.
ROSKAM: Now, here we start... We use a clockwise,
and then a counterclockwise editing structure.
LEHANE: Ah, that's great. Such a great shot.
(ROSKAM IMITATING TICKING)
Her.
Him.
Bob.
- (BEEPING) - It's 2:00, Bob. It's 2:00.
ROSKAM: Now we're going back to him, and then we go backwards.
Back to him.
Now we're here, her, him. See?
So we're going back in the rotation.
Listen to me.
His name...
...was Richie Whelan.
Everybody called him Glory Days?
I killed Richie Whelan, okay?
Sure you did.
- (GUNSHOT) - (GASPS)
(CHOKING)
(GUNSHOT)
LEHANE: Eric Deeds will not be getting the therapy he needs.
ROSKAM: (LAUGHING) No, he doesn't.
Fucking punk.
ROSKAM: You saw, um...
I loved it the way that Matthias played,
that the guy was grabbing his gun, but not like always in the movies.
- Where they were always grabbing... - LEHANE: Yeah, yeah.
The way people really do.
ROSKAM: Really do it and being a little late.
And he's just, you know, almost execution-style.
How Bob, you know...
LEHANE: It's funny because I had in the story
and in the novel, and in the script,
um, I always have that Bob's first shot doesn't go off
because he forgets to, um...
He forgets to release the, um,
what do they call it, the safety.
He forgets to release the safety on the gun.
And I understand why it was cut and you don't need it now
because Deeds proves the same thing.
It's that under these circumstances,
it never goes the way you see it in the movies.
It's always messy
and you can miss somebody who's standing four inches in front of you.
ROSKAM: And the reason we never shot it with the safety.
It was Tom who said that Bob would never forget to do that.
LEHANE: Forget to do that, yeah, right.
ROSKAM: He's too organized and, um, prepared,
and he doesn't make mistakes.
LEHANE: Right, he's too detail-oriented. ROSKAM: Yeah. Yeah.
He was like, you know... And that's when we...
It was Tom who said, "I think he would never forget the safety.
"He would be ready."
And that's when I followed Tom and said, "I think you're right."
We actually never shot it that way.
LEHANE: Right, I know it was never shot.
You were all wrong, of course. I was right.
- Uh... - (COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: Well, you tell Tom.
LEHANE: Oh, no, we did. We had a big, huge fistfight about it.
That's the thing about, again,
the actor now making the character his own, and he is.
That's a great point. That's a terrific point.
Bob is so meticulous. Bob is so...
ROSKAM: Yeah, meticulous, that's the word.
(DOOR CLOSES)
(MARVIN BREATHING HEAVILY)
ROSKAM: I like that line she says, "Your people, Bob."
LEHANE: Yeah. ROSKAM: I think that was really...
Because it was also something that had been written pretty late.
LEHANE: Because, again, a lot of that had to do with Tom.
ROSKAM: Yeah. LEHANE: Um...
Bringing up this thing of... Tom kept fighting for this idea of,
"What is her perspective about all of this?"
- "Why would she trust this guy?" - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: "Why would she feel that, with this violence being visited
"into her life, that this is a good thing, and not a bad thing?"
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm. LEHANE: Um...
And, I think that was...
There was a great job of him both protecting his character,
- and Noomi's character. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: And you... I mean, that's what you want.
You want intelligent actors who are gonna fight you.
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: And fight your preconceptions of a character,
because, God, I came up with Bob Saginowski in 2001.
- ROSKAM: Oh. - So, he lived with me a long time.
And, well, one side, you say, he lived with me so long,
that I'd know who he is. But on the other side,
he lived with me for so long, I could lose perspective on him.
BOTH: Yeah.
LEHANE: So...
ROSKAM: Frozen meat.
I like that suggestion of, you know,
knowing what's gonna happen with that freezer,
by emptying it, and throwing frozen meat,
it's like another way of saying...
Dragging... Instead of dragging the body and putting it in,
- and visualize it? - LEHANE: Right.
ROSKAM: I chose to do the other way around.
And you're telling the same thing.
One of my favorite shots, here... Nicolas wonderfully
put that white light on the side.
The dark back of Bob.
And then... Bam! There he is, Chovka.
Also...
LEHANE: It feels like Bob is in a cell at this point.
That's what's beautifully done, too. You feel like he's truly in a box, now.
He didn't get out of the box. He just got into a different one.
ROSKAM: Dialogues are great here.
The one with, "You're alone."
LEHANE: Oh, right! Oh, see, again... ROSKAM: Love that.
LEHANE: Did we save that "He fit fine" line?
ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: Did that survive? ROSKAM: Yeah, it comes at the end.
"Does he fit?" "He fits fine. We gotta break his legs."
- LEHANE: "Break his legs, he fit fine." - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: And there was... This is such a funny part.
When we were shooting this,
the dog fell asleep, and starts snoring.
But Bob's performance, Tom was so great, that I couldn't say, "Cut."
But everybody was like in his ear, like listening...
I heard the headphones,
I heard this dog just like... (SNORING)
(LEHANE LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: But literally snoring. I didn't know dogs could snore.
LEHANE: Oh, yeah, you clearly have not had a bull breed.
ROSKAM: Wow! (LAUGHS) No, we never had that, so...
And, because there was even one take that...
Tom couldn't hold his laughing anymore, that he was, like, suddenly...
Started laughing because of the brutally loud snoring (LAUGHING)
interfering with his performance.
So we have, really literally, the guys of the sound design had to clean up
the whole stuff.
Because, otherwise, he was like... (IMITATING DOG BARKING)
You know, doing that kind of stuff.
Oh, dogs.
CHOVKA: I said, "Of course, it's your bar."
"But it's not your money."
"So why you always trying to take my money?"
So I made him a deal.
"You and your druggy friends leave my money alone...
...and I'll pay you a ticket to a nice, quiet place."
So what do you think?
Hmm?
Take down his name, put up yours. "Bob's Bar."
ROSKAM: "Bob's Big Bad Bar."
ROSKAM: Yeah, that's the...
Smile. Don't mind, everything's gonna be okay.
Get some rest.
LEHANE: It's funny. That's something again that Tom and I did talk a lot about.
Was this idea that you can look at this
as a triumphant ending, or you can look at it as
Bob moving from one...
He just moves from one box into another box. Um...
Yeah, he's part of something, now, but what he's part of is maybe...
- The stakes just got infinitely higher. - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: So... ROSKAM: But, also... Yeah.
But, then of course, he also realizes, that, you know...
Uh...
The Chechen's not gonna take action against him. You know, he's...
LEHANE: I've never heard this narration before.
BOB: ...he already owns your soul.
And then I think, maybe, you know, there is no devil.
You die, and God, He says:
"Nah."
"Nah, you can't come in."
"You have to leave now."
"You have to leave and go away and you have to be alone."
"You have to be alone forever."
LEHANE: That's nice. ROSKAM: It's cool, huh?
LEHANE: That's a first for me. I've never seen the version with that in the scene.
ROSKAM: Oh, you haven't? Oh. LEHANE: No, never saw it.
That's cool.
Because, again. That's that dialogue we took
- from the kitchen scene. - ROSKAM: From the kitchen scene.
LEHANE: And this was interesting, because remember we had this...
ROSKAM: The two last scenes, we had two times.
We had this one first written at the church.
LEHANE: This was written early... But we also had the line...
His sort of final line that he says to Bob,
originally showed up in the middle...
Originally showed up in the middle of the film.
Showed up in the scene where he throws the arm into the river.
And then, everybody... You guys all said, "I didn't know anything about this."
But you guys on the set said, "It's such a better line to come at the end."
ROSKAM: Yeah, yeah. LEHANE: And you were 100% right.
It's a way better line to come at the end.
Again, I moved... When I did the novel,
I moved it into the end of the novel.
ROSKAM: Oh, great, great. LEHANE: Yeah.
Because, it's just so much better placed here.
Yeah, I remember.
ROSKAM: I cannot remember when it came in.
When that was decided, or just happened.
LEHANE: Yeah, because you had a... I mean, John Ortiz was shot out early.
Right? He wasn't...
ROSKAM: Well, the thing is we had this scene...
- Originally, it was set outside a church. - LEHANE: Right, right.
ROSKAM: And then, Ortiz would follow Bob, and tell him these lines...
But, we felt that it wasn't working, that there was something...
LEHANE: Right. Until you
- brought back this... - ROSKAM: Yes.
And then, during production, I managed to get it re-shot in the bar.
Where we thought it would be a better place to...
That he would come and see him.
Instead of, you know, at the church,
because something... I don't know what it was.
We couldn't figure it out.
And, it was bringing it here...
And in the meantime, I think,
we asked you to rewrite it, and adapt it to this situation.
LEHANE: Right. ROSKAM: And that's where you brought
that last line back in.
'Cause in the meantime, we had been already rewriting lots of things.
And everything came together at the right spot.
LEHANE: Right. ROSKAM: And that's where, um,
you brought that line back in, like,
"Nobody ever sees you coming, do they, Bob?"
Here, it's gonna come. Here it is.
No one ever sees you coming, do they, Bob?
ROSKAM: And then Bob's reaction.
LEHANE: "No they don't, motherfucker."
(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: You're right. That's very...
(LAUGHING CONTINUES)
ROSKAM: And of course, that's his moment after...
After Chovka actually giving him
the sign, like you know, "It's cool. You're safe."
- That's what Chovka actually says. - LEHANE: Yeah.
ROSKAM: Then the cop comes in, and says, "I have nothing on you."
And now, he feels that nothing of what he did will bring that to Nadia.
LEHANE: Right. ROSKAM: 'Cause that's a little
of the backstory...
The psychology of this
was that Bob needs to know that there's no heat on him.
LEHANE: Yeah. ROSKAM: From both sides,
before going back to Nadia.
And talk to her.
LEHANE: We agonized over this a lot.
ROSKAM: Oh, this was... How many?
LEHANE: My goodness.
Do you remember when I was... (LAUGHS)
Do you remember me and you walking down that street in Brooklyn?
- Write... Rewriting this scene? - ROSKAM: Yes. Yes.
LEHANE: That was insane. I was writing and walking on a sidewalk.
ROSKAM: Yes. LEHANE: That was...
- Then we brought it to Tom... - ROSKAM: It's actually there.
LEHANE: That's it. Yeah. ROSKAM: Yeah.
Because also here, the end scene, the original one,
was something also that...
And you feel it... Sometimes you just feel
that an ending...
It's like when the actors have to...
Um...
How would I say?
Because the other one was in the park.
LEHANE: Yeah, the other one was in the park.
- You shot it. It did not work. - ROSKAM: No, it didn't work.
That was... And you know what it is that didn't work,
is that it's very particular to see the opposite in...
- Here, he goes to her. - LEHANE: He goes to her.
ROSKAM: But in the original scene, she comes to him.
And then, in the scene before, in the bar,
it's also, um, a different dynamic of who's gonna come and see who, where.
And that made, um... And now we're at the ending.
LEHANE: And it was, again... I mean, there was a lot of, you know...
God, we had...
Um... (SIGHING)
We had a lot of arguments about this. We had a lot of arguments in...
I had an argument with Tom about this scene.
We were just... Went back-and-forth, back-and-forth.
But, this idea that ultimately
he has to reach out, that he has to take the step.
- I mean that's, you know, that was key. - ROSKAM: Yeah.
LEHANE: So...
ROSKAM: You know, there was also the fact that,
for me it was important that Nadia...
That we at least had one morally sane person.
LEHANE: Yes. That was key. ROSKAM: You know?
LEHANE: That was pretty key. Yeah, and that she represents.
ROSKAM: And she being there, and he coming to look for her.
LEHANE: Yeah. ROSKAM: Was the logic.
And the consequence of it. That was logic forme.
LEHANE: It's strange, yeah. This actually, this whole thing,
has gone through the strangest journey. I mean this started as a...
This started as a novel.
The first chapter was a guy finding... Bob finding a dog in a trash can.
Meeting Nadia.
And then, the rest of the novel just wouldn't come together, fell apart.
And then a few years later,
I took the first chapter, I turned it into a short story.
Then, was contacted to turn the short story into a screenplay.
I turned the short story into a screenplay.
You turned the screenplay into a film.
And then, I was contacted at the end of all of that,
to then say, "Oh, is there anything you wanted to do in terms of a novel?"
And I thought, "Why not?" So then,
to then take it one step further,
- and write a novel out of it. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
LEHANE: So, this has been a... I mean, this thing...
If I knew that this was gonna take this long
when I started in 2001,
I think I would've stopped.
(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: Yeah, yeah. LEHANE: But, here we go. Yay.
ROSKAM: The novel...
LEHANE: Thirteen years later, an overnight success.
ROSKAM: And what a work...
What a work in progress, like, kind of, uh...
The whole process of working to get someone to make a film before...
LEHANE: Yeah. I think it also says, I think it also says...
What's kind of cool, though, is... I like this too.
You know, if anybody is kind of watching this in terms of aspiring writers,
or aspiring directors, or anything, it just doesn't come out like a baby, man.
You know what I mean? It's not like the whole thing comes out.
It's always this messy process
in which you're trying to figure out what you're saying.
ROSKAM: Yeah, the inspiration is one, but it's the transpiration, you know?
Work, work, work.
And then yeah, sometimes it has...
Every book has its own process of being made.
But, I'm gonna read the novel.
LEHANE: You're gonna read the novel?
I would be so sick of
- these characters if I were you. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
ROSKAM: Honestly, I still... LEHANE: I'll never look at that novel again.
ROSKAM: Oh, no, I just still love them. LEHANE: Actually, I think you'll like...
One of the things you'll like,
is that there's a whole chapter that's Eric Deeds' backstory.
ROSKAM: Okay. LEHANE: All this stuff that never shows up
anywhere in the film, or the script, or in the... Anything.
I've always liked... It was from the original book.
Deeds was from the original book, too.
ROSKAM: The thing that I kind of missed in the...
That I regret that we couldn't use more of it in the movie,
was all the Torres and his, uh, Catholic...
LEHANE: Yeah. ROSKAM: Talking, and referencing.
You know, that being very...
He has a little bit in the movie, but there's a lot more of it.
And I always liked that.
LEHANE: Well, it's so central to the original conception.
It was always the reason Torres comes after Bob.
Is because they are two different
- types of Catholics. - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: And they are two different types of Catholics
- in the wake of the child sex abuse scandal. - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: And how do you deal with that?
So, Torres is much more, sort of, "Toe the party line."
- Um, "You, uh, pray, pay, obey." - ROSKAM: Mmm-hmm.
LEHANE: And Bob is much more, "Voice of the Faithful."
There has to be meaningful confession by the institution itself.
ROSKAM: Yeah. LEHANE: And, what Torres then says is,
when Bob sort of offends him by bringing that up in the bar,
then he makes the connection to the fact that Bob never takes confession.
Which in the Catholic church means, you are in a state of mortal sin.
Or you consider yourself in a state of mortal sin.
And he says, "Well, what could this guy be in mortal sin about?"
And that gets the wheels turning.
But, the other great thing is, that I love about Torres, is he's...
Uh, he could walk the walk, but he already knows by his own admission
he's a terrible Catholic. He's a terrible... He's just a terrible moral human being.
He's having an affair with a woman who's not his wife.
He has a wife and kids at home.
He's messed up his entire career.
Uh, you get some backstory on that in the actual novel. What he did.
Uh, but he's just an incredible fuck-up.
And I love that about him, because I love having...
Um... I don't know. At the end of the day, I just like having very fucked-up characters.
(ROSKAM LAUGHING)
LEHANE: They strike me as human, you know?
I don't know too many non-fucked-up people.
ROSKAM: Well, it's a fucked-up world.
Inhabited with fucked-up people.
LEHANE: But, in a good way, of course. ROSKAM: In a good way.
Well, the good ones are making movies, right?
- LEHANE: We hope so, we hope so. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
LEHANE: This is the end. This is the part that...
There's nobody left at this point.
- There's nobody... - ROSKAM: Well, for those who...
LEHANE: Even the biggest Michaël Roskam fan...
- (ROSKAM LAUGHING) - ...he's gone, man.
He's checked out, closed the fridge.
Uh, he's going to bed.
So, goodnight everybody.
ROSKAM: I think my mom is still listening, so...
LEHANE: Oh, sorry,
- Mrs. Roskam for all the f-bombs. - (ROSKAM LAUGHING)
LEHANE: I hope they don't translate to Flemish.
ROSKAM: No.
LEHANE: Cheers. ROSKAM: Cheers, bye.