Hello, everyone. This is Joe Carnahan.
I'm the director of Smokin' Aces and I wrote it.
And sitting to my immediate right is a very nervous...
- Walter Murch. - Walter Murch. Rob Frazen.
- Say hi, then. - Hello.
- I edited the movie. - Rob's nervous about this process.
Doesn't the logo presuppose that the movie is gonna be amazing.
- Yeah, it does. You... - You know, like,
when you hear it, when the...
- Yeah. It comes out so loud... - See, guys can clear that.
They can clear that.
I mean, it's like... It better be like fucking God that shows up.
Yeah, exactly. No kidding.
And then, of course, you get this, you get Smokin' Aces.
This little credit thing at the beginning was kind of a way to give the audience
a bit of a primer, as it were, a little bit of a qualifier.
So, you knew the world that you were in.
Yeah, the most difficult thing was to figure out how many words
- and how long it should be. - Oh, yeah.
If there's pauses, it's because Rob and I are consuming a great deal of beer right now,
provided for us by the wonderful folks at Universal.
- They want this... - No, I picked up some on the way.
They want this shit to be as entertaining as possible.
And the 7-Eleven on Lenkershaw.
That's 'cause you're 12 years old.
- Yeah, well, then, who gives a shit? - Can I get you something to drink?
This was shot out in Pasadena, and...
You know, I don't know whether anybody ever got that gag.
That there's urine in that bottle.
That's supposed to be piss in the bottle.
And I think you get it, but it's interesting to watch this with an audience
because, you know, you never quite know where that lands.
They don't know whether to laugh. They don't know whether to cry.
They don't know whether they should just leave the film at that point.
Well, I don't know how many times I can say it.
This was the most difficult scene in post. You're 40 million times...
But the one thing about the scene, that was the frame to start the scene with.
- Yeah. Yeah. - That was definitely like the starting point.
I think Rob and I had probably...
God, we must've had 20 or 21, or maybe even 22.
Dare I say 22?
No, we had a shitload of variations on this scene.
And we finally, man, after struggling with it,
and "How much is too much," and, you know, "How long..."
I mean, we had a scene that was much longer.
We just really were watching them watch the house.
And we finally kind of got it into a form that we really dug and stuck with it.
It was a combination of how much we want to tell their story,
and how much we wanna tell, you know, the exposition...
- Yeah. - ...of what they're listening to.
Exactly. And we shot this actually out of Quixote in Glendale.
There's this big stage and we shot inside there.
And Mauro Fiore,
whose name I will evoke and mention several times throughout this commentary,
did a brilliant job.
This was all ad-lib stuff.
Yeah. That Ryan's actually saying, "Fuck you," to Ray.
- Yeah, exactly. Right. - He said something really hilarious.
They just did this whole bit
about aluminium in the antiperspirant giving you Alzheimer's,
and Ray, being a true comedic genius,
said, "What? I forgot." Which I though was great.
It's like, "But watch the improv."
Yeah. "Watch the improv." Yeah.
I mentioned Mauro's name and didn't tell you who was.
He's the director of photography.
I think he did a really great job.
This is always difficult stuff, you know, shooting interiors, and...
And the whole thing... It's just completely improvised scene. I mean, it just...
Yeah. Like, the dialogue is real, but just let it kind of...
I really wanted to put them in the moment.
And we really wanted to create this kind of chaotic sense of
what happens when somebody actually picks up the phone,
and guys have been sitting there watching, basically, inactivity for 16 hours.
That is Alex Rocco and David Proval.
A Godfather and a Mean Streets veterans.
Our little nod to Mr. Scorsese and Mr. Coppola.
He'll do the imitation on command at lunchtime.
Yes, that's right.
Wait, what did do you always...
Just like, what is it on Godfather? Alex would do the...
"I'm Moe Greene. I was banging cheerleaders when you were still..."
What was it?
It was perfect 'cause we were just starting to sit...
"I was making my bones in this town when you were just still banging cheerleaders."
Alex is great. He is not shy about sharing those moments with you, you know,
as just a fan.
This was really, I believe...
Was this Ray and Ryan's first day together?
Yeah, I think it was like their first day.
And also, there's so much material available for the scene,
but at the end, there was still, like, one...
It's like there was one piece that you always needed, you know.
- Oh, yeah. - Like I wish we had a little more Sparazza
- or, just like... - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We finally got it to kind of link up so that it matched.
- Yeah. - And this is shot so well.
I mean it's such a... Composition is so interesting.
Primo wants Israel's heart.
You know that you've got Ray, Ramone, the most patient soul in the world,
who will sit there for hours on end and just remain mute and almost immobile.
Ray loves the more quiet moments of film making.
Are you kidding me?
His ass is on fire after 30 seconds if you're not working.
He doesn't... He doesn't... He doesn't do those things.
This scene that, you know, we had...
Ray doesn't do downtime. Let's put it that way.
He likes to go to bed early.
Ray's day, usually if he's lucky, will end by 7:00 p.m., in bed by 7:30.
I don't wanna think of Henry Hill as going to bed by 7:00.
Well, that's a problem if you think of Ray as Henry Hill.
- You realise how great an actor he is. - Yeah.
But I think we'd like Ryan and Ray to hook up their friendship.
Yeah, we really wanted to...
We felt we needed to invest the audience a bit in this relationship,
and just give you a sense of just... Even if it was a little bit familiar.
I thought they did really well.
It's such a tough scene. It's such a difficult way to start a movie, too, is...
And always fighting the length, everybody... It was such a big concern.
Oh, God. And then we had a real downer version of this opening sequence.
So we really messed around with it.
We just found that, you know, it was best to, kind of,
come back to this very simplistic kind of sequence.
We had a ton of additional material.
Oh, yeah, there's another complete alternate opening.
- Surplus, as we say. - Yeah.
...every year in Las Vegas for the last five years.
Ladies and gentlemen, would you give a big round of applause,
a big Las Vegas welcome, to a great Las Vegas star
and his name is Mr. Buddy Israel!
Come on out here!
Buddy "Aces" Israel.
Jeremy crashing Wayne Newton's show in Vegas,
which was an extraordinary moment for all of us.
We literally... He went in character
and we kind of took over the Wayne Newton show,
and Jeremy wound up playing drums on Suspicious Minds for Wayne,
completely impromptu, which is pretty amazing.
As those breasts were that we just saw.
There's nothing like going to Vegas, man. You just see...
There's like an hour of that stuff
- and that's the shot. - That's the shot.
- We shot poolside for an hour. - It was very upsetting.
And... Yeah, exactly.
Rob was a little bummed out, not being able to cut that more.
I could pay a little more of the pan to the blonde but...
Here we have Ben Affleck with his kind of a handlebar moustache.
And, you know, listen, Rob and I wrestled with the whole idea,
"Do we freeze on these guys and introduce them?"
And we thought, "Okay, let's just give everybody in this film
"a sense of time and place and character.
"And, okay, this is the easiest way to do it."
So, you know, you always catch a lot of whacks for that kind of shit.
The whole idea of making it perfect, like, took forever.
- But I mean, the whole idea of cross-cutting. - Yeah.
- Yeah. That worked well right away. - It did.
It was just a matter of finding the right components.
Right, yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, telling everybody's story...
Then he gets his dick wet. Strong-arm robbery.
Oh, here comes my cameo. There I am, right there.
I was the bank robber.
I just wanted to shoot a machine gun in downtown L.A.
'cause I am such a fucking Heat fan, such a Michael Mann...
I had to give my little nod.
- Very large breasts. - Yeah.
Well, yeah, you'll notice in my films that I have that.
That's a commonality, is breast size.
C- and D-cup.
Jeremy just... This is just him ripping. Just doing total improv.
We haven't mentioned, too, that Peter Berg and Martin Henderson
are the other two cops, ex-cops, ex-vice cops.
There's Pete and there's Martin. And they were both fantastic.
They had great chemistry, these guys.
That is shooting by Binion's Casino on the old strip in Vegas.
And it's got to be one of the skeeziest places.
I mean, Calcutta isn't as skeezy as this place.
Of downtown...
Oh, God, deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried Twinkies for a dollar.
It was one of the most disgusting...
A lots of cats with mullets, with construction T-shirts tucked in,
peg legs and white Reeboks.
And I'm telling you, man, they are legion on Fremont Street.
Plus, we had all that stuff at Binion, you know.
Like, we had the whole thing, if you remember, with pool.
- Yeah, tons of stuff, tons of stuff. - You know, shooting pool is really fun.
This is the back-story.
We're assuming at this point, if you're watching the commentary,
you've actually watched the movie.
'Cause there's no way we're gonna be nearly as entertaining
as hopefully watching it...
- During the back-story part. - Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Andy Garcia is acquitting himself rather well
in a role as, where you could call it the, you know,
the one stiff in the bunch,
but Andy's so goddamn good, and gives it such realism and kind of gravity
in a movie that just really kind of frolics and freaks.
He's so great on such a thankless role,
- and he did it just fucking so great. - Yeah. He did brilliantly.
This is the flashback stuff with the Heller shooting.
But I thought... Look, Martin Whist designed this,
and with the opaque, the kind of transparent background,
this idea that Andy's character,
there's always things revolving around him.
There's always movement behind the scenes,
where Ray and Ryan are, kind of, straight up and down, and no hidden agendas.
But, you know, whether or not that's actually translated,
at least it was a good production design cue.
What's his connection to Israel?
Also another long... You know, there were, like, short-term editing tasks,
and long term was how much information to dole out.
Constantly, constantly adjusting how much to show.
Yeah, it is a film, dare we say, chock-full of info.
Chock Full o' Info.
So we had to kind of, you know, we had to kind of take our shots,
but, you know, it's also a fairly ambitious telling.
So, you know, listen, once you make peace with that,
you do what you got to do to, kind of, you know, get the story out.
Here's a little, something I'm fond of, I did it in Narc,
this kind of split screen and...
You know, but then it, like, falls into place, and it feels great...
- It really does. - ...and then it's, like, you got it.
Yeah, it really does.
And we shot this at Pure in Las Vegas
with no crowd control, which I don't recommend.
Yeah. I'm pretty stridently against ever doing that again.
That was a pain in the ass. This sequence actually worked really well.
'Cause you land on the screen, you come over to Andy.
- He's talking while he's drinking water. - He's talking while he's drinking water,
which that was really tough.
And I just love this moment, you know, it was kind of the,
his whole world closing down.
The wiretaps on Serna and Padiche...
And then, you know, again, you know, the whole,
you know, Ray and Ryan trying to make sense of this whacky...
It's to get the exposition out, to be really, you know, to move it forward.
It's like sometimes it's more difficult than
- some kind of action sequence. - Yeah. Absolutely.
You know, also, too, where, you know, you make this decision
to kind of go between these two stories, like we're gonna do right here
with the introduction of Taraji and Alicia's characters, Sykes and Watters.
How about six figures for that fool? How's that love?
And Davenia playing the booker, playing Loretta.
I love that woman.
I put her in a pilot I shot, and I just absolutely love her.
And look at that getup, man.
Tell me she doesn't look like the biggest pimp-mac.
Like, she'd put your ass down.
- This was all ad-lib stuff I just loved. - Yeah, this is great.
Actually, this comes from the end of the scene.
Yeah, this is the end of the scene.
And we had this idea to put at the beginning.
And Taraji says, "You got the right bitches for this."
That's fucking great.
- This was fantastic. - Sets a great tone.
Yeah.
And that's, again, that's Martin Whist doing like this
soul food restaurant in Oakland.
It's just so rich and so...
I think it's just so great.
And here's Alicia, you know, in this scene,
with these two real deeply trained, deeply committed actors,
and she's holding her own.
In addition to being very easy on the eyes, she brought it.
There was a moment I remember thinking, and I remember asking Alicia, it's like,
"You either have no humility or tremendous confidence."
And it wound up being the latter of the two, which was good.
...and a name.
Buddy Israel.
Wait. The latter or the former. Did I say that right, there?
Well, whatever, she didn't show which one it was.
I meant the great confidence.
- Exactly. - Yeah, I mean, she totally...
She's very part of that scene.
..."heaviest bitches alive."
- Like who? - Like Pasquale Acosta.
And here's the introduction of Nestor Carbonell
who played Pasquale Acosta, aka The Plague.
And Nestor is such a sweet guy
and couldn't be further from this particular character, you know.
- That's too bad. - We did a little Abu Ghraib.
We did a little thing there. I tried to take a little shot at the...
- I was looking forward... - Yeah.
This scene has gotten a lot of, you know... Listen, I don't think it's...
I don't personally think that blow torching someone's testicles
- is all that... - Shock the balls.
...yeah, is all that disturbing, but I may be in the minority of that camp.
Oh, we had a longer version of that
- where it's like a rat... - Oh, yeah, yeah.
Rob cut this version of that
where he literally had a rat, and you see him,
like, pulling the skin off of his fingers,
and I thought we had to opt for a slightly less vicious depiction.
Three of them. Same skank mom, different deadbeat dads.
And again, so we're cross-cutting all these various stories,
and one scene's leading into the next,
and people are kind of introducing other people's scenes.
It's kind of an interesting way of going at it.
Whether or not it was successful is a matter of individual taste.
And here we got the Tremor brothers wiping out a club
named after my daughter, Maile, my little princess.
I don't know what this means that they destroyed that place.
There's some psychological thing...
You working out some kind of therapy in this movie.
It's just me wanting to give my little girl some love
and immortalise her in whatever way I could.
Then you got the Tremors, man.
I mean, we can get into them. We'll talk about those guys.
They're meaner than shit, they're dumber than hell
and these motherfuckers will go megaton...
I love Ben's very dower, seen-it-all,
world-weary approach he took to this guy.
Absolutely.
And the choice to do a Chicago accent,
and mimic, ape a certain director, who will remain nameless
from that part of the world.
A lot of folks want this white boy clapped. Word is Soot is working for one of them.
Now, they don't know where he's from, how long he's been in the game,
or even what he looks like.
And here we got...
Rob and I are sitting in here, watching this in complete silence,
so we're just...
You know, there's better ways to see this movie.
'Cause sometimes, I'm looking, it's like, "That's kind of long now."
That's long. Yeah, what the hell?
It's like we're in the van for, like, 10 minutes.
- That's what happens, man. - We're talking about
it has to be a certain length and I'm like, "I think it's still long."
Yeah, we've become deeply critical.
This scene we did some work on, too.
But I love the idea of this guy in a mouth-op wheelchair,
and, you know, having the appearance of being a complete paraplegic
and he actually is the guy doing the hit.
Again, a little nod to my son, there's Rockne on the back of that van.
And there you have Tommy Flanagan
in a Rasta disguise with a completely ad-libbed middle finger.
- We love that. - That was great.
Dude, we had a ton of variations.
Yeah, there must be like 20 variations of this scene.
Good God, there was... Originally, just to hook Pete Berg,
you know, I basically did a bait-and-switch
where I wrote him this really great scene that I cut out of the movie.
But there was a huge argument between...
That was cool to admit that in the DVD.
- It was very full disclosure. - Full disclosure, man.
He knew he wasn't gonna make it. He knew that.
But there was a huge fight between him and Martin,
and Rob and I cut a bunch of different versions of it,
and ultimately it just seemed like it slowed the story down.
That was a cool shot. I mean, some of the dissolves or the blacks,
or all of the different things we did to try to get the argument like...
Yeah, we tried to do this whole thing where we just kept cutting to Ben
drinking beers, and you could hear their argument kind of winding down
in the background and ramping up.
And they're talking about all manner of things. But there was enough...
I think we left enough for the kind of the natural animus between the two.
- Yeah. - You know, it stayed...
- "That I know." - "That I know."
- Yeah, we could really start... - I hope people get this joke.
- You know... - Yeah, then you go...
Yeah, it's like, you know, Ben thinks he's like
the keeper of this sacred piece of information,
and it's really on the wind, everybody knows it.
- What are we talking on the split? - Forty-five a piece for you two.
Ten percent finder's fee for me.
And again, you know, you feel like...
I mean, the setup is obviously necessary in a story like this.
Just to put all the players, kind of...
And you take almost like a reel to put all the players in position.
Yeah, you do, you do. We really did.
We got Curtis Armstrong as Morris Mecklen. I love...
God, this is totally, like, you know... I just told him to laugh his ass off.
- Booger's in the film. - Booger's in the film.
Booger's amazing in this film, man. He's great.
Poor Curtis, he had to deal with that. He's so...
It's like, the guy's such a great dramatic actor...
I think, he's... You see him in Ray.
He plays the head of, like, Atlantic Records. He's fantastic.
Booger as head of Atlantic... He just goes around life every time he does something...
- Yeah. - Booger is Abraham Lincoln.
Exactly, doesn't matter. Curtis is so good.
And, you know, you watch him, like, in Risky Business,
- he so goddamn good. - Oh, my God.
He's so good.
We can't allow that to happen.
A Gulfstream is waiting at the Reagan National Airport
to transport you to Lake Tahoe.
And I'll be flying to Los Angeles to finalise Israel's deal.
Again, still trying to like create interplay with Ryan and Ray,
to get them connected, making fun of.
See, what's great about it is Rob goes at it like a behaviourist.
He's always looking for the little ticks in the scene.
And I go at it with, like, a sledgehammer.
And just try to, you know, cram as much shit as I can.
But we both go after D-cups, so that's...
- Yeah, that's where we come together. - That's where we meet.
That's where we're oddly synchronous, is in our pursuit of large breasts.
You guys are gonna think we're on some breast kick.
- We're really not... - We're not
'cause there's only five feet in the film.
- Exactly. - It can't be done.
And this is me indulging Mauro and giving him this whacky shot.
We shot at La Cañada, which is outside L.A. We shot this mansion.
And it was the most nouveau riche setup you've ever seen.
Anytime you have, like, $50,000 bookshelves,
and they're holding Danielle Steel first editions,
we need to get you...
We need to bring somebody in that knows a little something about art and culture.
It's Sidney Sheldon greeting you at the door.
Jesus. Yeah, exactly. I mean, literally, Danielle Steel first editions
in the most extraordinarily expensive bookshelves you've ever seen.
Here's our big set, man. This is the... This huge...
That's what's called a Translite outside there,
which is a photograph of Tahoe.
And we actually built this as a stage
and for whatever reason I love introducing characters.
I did it with Jason Patric in Narc, just kind of coming from behind.
I don't know. There's something interesting about it.
And just seeing Jeremy's, you know, face.
We're coming in with this really kind of up-tempo cue.
He is anything but.
Are you fucking kidding me?
This line sets the tone.
Yeah, and it's funny 'cause the audience doesn't really know...
Nobody laughs at that moment because it's...
And I guess it's not intended to.
You never know how these things are gonna land until you shoot them,
but him saying kind of fuck you to God, to everything, it's just...
That's not a big laugh.
It's not a big laugh, oddly enough. Yeah.
And then this, my God.
We finally... We cut this so many different ways,
and we finally realised, "Okay, we just got to get to the meat of it, and..."
Also, Jeremy came out with some just fucking great...
Oh, God. The ADR. lines were great.
He actually did a little nod to Willy Wonka. "Good day, sir."
Which I love.
Joel Edgerton is Hugo.
An Australian guy playing a Russian
who then winds up playing... Well, we'll get to that.
Hugo, you're staring at me like I just asked you...
This scene I always thought was well, not integral
to give you some sense of the complete collapse
that Buddy Israel's world was undergoing.
His idea that even his lambskin coat was not safe.
All things were being kind of decimated and destroyed.
And the idea that someone in the process of having unprotected sex with a hooker
would deflower his jacket at the same time
was funny to me.
I don't know. Cinnamon roll?
Is it cinnamon roll?
But I think it's funny 'cause we were both going for this kind of tone of, like,
funny but not funny, funny but like...
- Which this scene... - Funny, but kind of sad and pathetic
at the same time.
And, you know, certain scenes were, like, very controversial.
It's, like, people had hard-ons
for, like, whether the scenes should be longer or shorter. It was like...
It was always amazing that they were,
you know, certain scenes would have a lot of emphasis and this was something where
many people thought it should be compressed and
didn't really give information but...
- Right. - It's...
This will look great in the end.
Yeah, it's just a little piece of whatever it is. Call what you want, it's comedic, it's...
But it introduces you to this character, I think, in a really interesting way.
I mean, it's like, where are we going? Where's the fire at this point in the film?
Exactly. Exactly.
Rob and I, we always geek out on,
you can see the little cars travelling down in the Translite.
And the little CG work that was done to give this...
It's amazing how little will make that thing legitimate.
Oh, yeah, totally. It completely legitimates it. It does.
And you see, like, Mauro makes fun of the boat out there in the water.
Is that the Niña, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria?
...and start cleaning. All right?
And please, for me, will you do one thing?
Jeremy got really good with those cards.
He got really good with those cards.
This is actually the first day we shot in Tahoe.
So this was Ryan and Ray's first day together.
I think Ryan was nervous and...
But, he's just... You know, the kid's so good, man. He's just such a good...
I mean, it's always been a theory, and it's not like something I made up.
That our funniest actors, the guys who are most comedic,
also understand drama in this really unique way.
- Yeah. - And he certainly bodes out that,
you know, that theory. He's great.
Jesus, I'll tell you, engineering this kind of play against Sparazza,
going to these lengths that these two guys are going, they're playing some long odds.
Here's a scene that, Jesus Christ...
Another one.
...fucking Rob and I lobbied for this one, the pussies.
- A nine-month lobby. - I mean, you talk about...
Wow, you talk about a studio not wanting a scene in a movie.
No, not the studio so much.
We got into it with the producers a bit
because they thought it was unnecessary and weird.
But the problem is if you extract this scene,
the next time you see Georgia and Sharice, these two characters,
Taraji and Alicia, they're, like, at the hotel, you have no context,
and you have no idea who really gave them this job. And it's this guy,
David Proval, who was obviously on the phone with Alex Rocco.
But, again... And we tried to, even linking Ryan's photograph to the...
- There's like a million intros to this scene. - Yeah.
But the thing is, the scene represents a layer of the film
and sometimes it's hard to articulate that a layer is important,
even though the actual 45 seconds seems like it's a waste of time.
In the scene where they have...
And, actually, that's one of the scenes they pulled on to show R-rated clips.
- Are you kidding me? Seriously? - Yeah.
That's appropriate.
And here's the scene that may steal the entire movie.
Courtesy of one Jason Bateman, that son of a bitch.
So, Jack, he tells me you guys a couple of ex-cops?
No, he's so good in this scene. It's interesting 'cause, you know,
if you watch the scene, you don't see, like, little things...
And I think, dude, you caught this, and we never really touched it.
This is like Rob's... Like, the first time he cut the scene,
it was so goddamn good.
I think we added in that one little, I think, that one little bit of awkward silence.
- Right. - And that was it.
- And also... - And then we subbed out the...
There was some piece of information that was wrong
and we didn't catch it till we were at the mix.
Yeah, my brother had to note... My little punk brother had to note
that, yeah, there's a piece of information that seemed like it was confusing
and he wound up being right.
So we actually went back. Rob and I were, at that point,
so up the ass of this film, we couldn't see straight.
But this is all Bateman just brilliantly taking the written dialogue and making it kind of...
Not only making it his own, but throwing it away in such a delightful kind of way.
Tell us the source. How the source...
Yeah, you know what, he was getting lit,
Mauro had this overhead light and I saw Jason for a moment,
and I thought he had some kind of cold sore or chancre on his lip.
Can you get a chancre on your lip or is that just the genitals? I don't know.
I tell you what, if you can, I'll get one, trust me.
But anyway, I saw him in the light
and I thought, "God, does he have a cold sore?" "No."
I was like, "Oh, my God, we gotta put fever blisters on him."
This is such a great... 'Cause he's so skeezy.
That's a new one I'm working on.
- Really getting the hairy eyeball off that guy. - No, no. No, no.
- He's all right? - He's all right. Tell him.
This is good, though, what you're telling me. All right? I need to hear this stuff.
This is Martin Whist, the production designer's idea
just to put this bunny head in the room. And we just made it part of the scene.
And Bateman just... They went for it.
- They went for it. - It's so fucking great.
I've not been in a theatre thus far,
and again, we're recording this before the movie's ever come out,
so, you might be watching this right now going,
- "Jesus, that movie really shit the bed." - You know what, guys?
Know what? Nobody laughed.
Nobody laughed, guys. Guess what. It made $5.
But this scene has always just killed. I mean, really killed.
And the exposition is like very subversively comes out.
It's brilliant because there's a whole scene going on,
but there's a summation coming up.
And you don't mind hanging it on this scene.
If you polled people, I think a lot of their favourite scene would be that one.
$50,000 for this fucking suite?
- Yo, calm down. - Don't tell me to fucking calm down!
And here is Rashid, otherwise known as Common.
And, boy, you talk about a guy landing. I mean, look at his eyes.
I mean, he's amazing in this film.
He's really, again, just like Alicia.
He just kind of seamlessly blends in with everybody.
And, you know, you're not aware you're watching a guy, this is his first time
in a movie of any kind.
The initial approach on the scene,
I suppose you just put it together for exposition,
but then, slowly, you realise that the scene might be more about Common...
Yeah.
...you know, wanting to feel comfortable than it is about Jeremy doing his...
Exactly.
And Jeremy just slowly kind of skis in and...
And then skis out.
This moral, emotional disintegration that he's kind of going through.
Hey, yo, Beanie.
I just love the idea of all the girls just kind of passed out, out of it.
Completely collapsed in their own...
That young gentleman standing up right now is Chris Holley.
- What gentleman? - This rather large gentleman.
That's Chris Holley, who was a kid that I met
who was bouncing in a club in Sacramento.
And he had a short film that I saw and really loved
and I decided, "You know what? Let's give the hometown kid a shot."
Man, is he great in this movie.
He's really funny. And Chris is just, you know...
Once he got comfortable...
You know, I made him come to the set and hang out,
and once he got comfortable, he was great.
And really funny and able to ad-lib, and just kind of make it happen.
And poor Boni, this stuntwoman.
In addition to being very beautiful, she's like,
any time you want to do that right there...
- How many times did you have to do that? - That was it, one time, man.
Really?
Originally, she did more of a Chris Farley and kind of went head-first into it.
Oh, my God.
Then, I think we thought that was a bad idea.
And I don't think the studio was real fond... She actually...
She, and I think Bevan was the other stuntwoman, the girl with the red hair,
the girl who's missing a wig right now. Chris picks it up.
Bevan actually gave Boni a pretty good, like, uppercut in that scene.
Because, you know, they really go at it, man, the stunt people.
Ben Bray was our stunt coordinator. He brought all these girls in.
And, I mean, they just cut it loose. They didn't even mess around at all.
Israel's awake.
There was apparently a fight with some prostitutes...
This is the same restaurant where you just saw Alicia and Taraji.
We shot at different place to try to disguise it, as it were.
I think it worked. I'm not aware it's the same joint.
For a long time, there was an earlier part of the scene that was in.
It was, like, a banter between the two of them about food.
We did this whole thing about eggs and food and Ray's character dieting.
And eventually, you know, you realise it's not supposed to...
Yeah. It just seemed lame. It just didn't seem...
It was not sexy dancer.
We were always looking for moments that we would call "sexy dancer" moments.
Yeah.
That was not one of them. It just went on.
- Not Tiny Dancer? - No, always sexy dancer.
Crazy, you know. Wall-to-wall felony offences.
Murder, of course. Extortion. Arson. Grand larceny. Blah, blah, blah.
And a paternity suit, just to, you know, round out the portfolio there.
And again, you know, you're trying to, you know, this was really...
My thing with Mauro Fiore, the DP, was let them be casual with one another,
the minute they start talking about business,
we shift the whole perspective of the scene
and we're shooting it in those angles, these kind of raking angles.
Any time an operative failed, or was perceived to have failed, he was blackballed.
And they're bringing up the... You know, again, to keep the kind of Heller subplot,
the murdered FBI agent alive,
that they were kind of discussing it post their briefing with Andy.
...since yesterday afternoon.
Israel's manager is acting as his attorney. That's what's holding things up.
So I want to be in that penthouse a half a second...
There was all this like "Should Ryan have a beard, should he not have a beard?"
You know, the thing is, Ryan's 29,
but he looks like he's 11 years old when he's without the beard.
Yeah, right, kind of like an 11-year-old with the beard.
He's got that youthful exuberance and the...
Transition.
Yeah, the FBI transition, and then you got this kid, Scott, who...
Poor kid, he's such a good actor, too,
and I made him inundate his face with prepubescent acne.
And he we went for it. It was great.
And then, Nestor, as a...
You know, we never really talked about
did we think that the people knew who the hell this guy was.
You know, did... When he turned, were they aware,
or just aware that he was a general kind of bad guy?
We never really explored that. Probably, we just kind of took it on faith.
That they would think that when we saw the torture scenes,
that it wouldn't be the same guy.
- Because he looks different. - Yeah, he looks different.
Yeah, well, we'll get our hands on those when we get inside.
This is something that you had to fight, in terms of the company.
They wanted the coverage.
Yeah, this scene was like written to be this whole...
I mean, I wrote this whole one-page scene describing this
and when I pitched it to Stacey Snider and Donald Langley,
Stacey used to be the head of production at Universal,
she was obviously concerned because it was such an elaborate scene.
I said, "No, I'll do this in one. I'll do the whole scene in one, and it'll work and..."
And the banter between these guys is great, too.
And this was kind of, again, Affleck has been narrating
this entire chunk of the movie to this point.
And this was kind of our way of letting the audience know
that no one is safe.
Not even gigantic movie stars.
There's a 35-person employee contingent that goes at 9:00 in the morning.
And this was great because these guys all had to hit this mark,
the squibs, what with the gunfire, what with everything.
So it's kind of interesting.
Except what was the thing, the leg falls with the...
Yeah, Pete Berg died
and apparently his right leg decided to die at a different interval.
So it kind of hung and hovered in mid-air, flailing about.
- What did you say? It was like... - And I just yelled on the bullhorn,
"Berg, the leg dies with the rest of the body."
This was always a moment. I always thought would be great for him to scrawl this little...
And I think we came up with that on the day.
I just wanted him to do this little Magic-Marker Hitler moustache.
That is Kevin Durand, Maury Sterling and Chris Pine as the Tremor brothers.
And, Jesus, man, you talk about three guys completely vibing
and completely coalescing as, kind of, this ad hoc team of inbred brothers
and these guys bonded in ways that, you know, was just fantastic.
- How many guys did you have to... - And remember they did that.
- There was like a whole... - We just decided...
Yeah, there was a whole argument they had about, "You ain't no Chinese,"
which, actually, I think is available on this very DVD.
You can see that deleted scene.
But it's too long a story to tell here about the whole "You ain't no Chinese,"
but it actually happened to me years ago.
That was real dialogue I heard between a husband and wife,
and it was the most bizarre non sequitur I'd ever heard in my life.
"You ain't no Chinese!"
I just thought I had to do it.
This scene is always a source of, kind of, deep fascination for me
because, I think... Dude, we didn't really do that much on this.
I think we had more in it, but it was really like... It was just...
It's like, it had to be exactly the right amount.
Yeah, it really does. And I look at it now,
it's even funnier when you don't hear the words in there,
because it's such a fucked-up moment. I just thought it'd be great.
Yes, this is what happens when you spend four years and you don't make a movie.
This is the kind of shit that's knocking around your head.
You need to move somebody's mouth for a whole scene.
Yeah, exactly.
This entire movie is just this great expulsion of wild, random energy.
You know, up here in heaven, it's beautiful.
You know, and it seems like they knew each other.
And which I like.
It's great. No, that there's like this familiar sense.
How many guys did you have to go through for the Tremors? Was it a huge...
It wasn't... You know what? The guys that came...
I mean, Durand came in, I saw his size, and kind of the way that Durand...
He's a very funny guy. He was the first one I cast.
And then, I had another,
this douche bag that was actually gonna originally play Chris Pine.
A guy who I don't wanna mention 'cause like, you know, it's pointless.
But, you know, this guy, this actor that had committed and then I, I literally...
Mary Zophres, the costume designer, flew to Chicago,
and I could tell in the fucking Polaroids that this guy took
that he was not into this part.
- Really. - Yeah.
Which I cannot thank him enough. I want to, like, kiss the guy today.
'Cause he was like flipping you off...
No, he just looked low-energy, didn't look like he gave a shit.
But, anyway, so, Chris Pine came in. And Pine's a really good-looking kid.
But he just... I told him, be really kind of scruffy.
He had this really unique energy. And he's fucking fantastic in the movie.
- I'm so glad that this other guy fell out... - Yeah.
...'cause the idea that I finally got Pine was great.
And then Maury is amazing. Maury was the last guy I cast.
And Maury just came and I looked at him
and said, "You want to shave your head and your eyebrows?"
"Good, I'm down, let's go." He did it. He did it.
We shot this scene at the Marriott near LAX
and turned it into a giant kind of casino lobby, and Martin Whist...
Including, like... I think that's like a stuffed saber cat and an elk behind these guys.
Let me ask you a question.
And this is Taraji's... I gave Taraji a little bit of a nice big rant to go off on.
As a female, that shit right there don't get you?
Okay, it's bitches like that the reason why niggas don't pay our species any mind!
They don't respect us! Yeah, we just meat for male consumption.
Pieces of ass and pussy.
The actress who played this woman was amazing. Really great.
It's like something out of a Kubrick film, the way she's lit, especially right here.
Yes, she's lit with... There's a...
It's really great.
- Her whole thing with the eye. It's fantastic. - Look how her eyebrow goes up.
Taraji nailed this, though, you know.
...mobilised, baby, moving as one! You feel me?
This scene was actually much better than written.
Again, more of our transitions from...
A key transition.
Just a random dead guy.
Yeah, random dead guy laying in a room.
I didn't ask for your understanding.
And you can see, there was actually adhesive on the top
to hold that tape recorder in place. You can kind of see it.
Make sure it sticks.
My name is Vitoli. How can I be of assistance?
I just wanted to do this, as much as I could, just kind of, in very few setups...
And also this was great 'cause, like, you suspend the reveal for a very long time.
- Yeah. - You see these, like, weird...
Yeah, you don't know what the hell, what's he cooking, what that box is.
It's everything that you could fantasise that Jeffrey Dahmer had in his kitchen.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
In addition to heads and bowling bags. That's always fun.
Tommy, you know, was willing to, like, shave his head
and he's got such interesting features, it's like it's such a bizarre kind of way,
at least in my mind, of shooting a guy and kind of keeping it a secret.
And then him just strafing his throat with aerosol like to get...
You know, the idea was, again, this, you know,
so he could alter his voice to sound like the guy who he'd shot
and took the Polaroid of.
- He sprayed that shit in his mouth? - Yeah, he did. I don't know what it was.
I think it was water, but it looked like aerosol.
- I love this shot. - This is great.
I love this moment, too, because...
And when he puts his hands up against the door.
Yeah, there's like this really tactile sense, I guess, almost,
that he could feel him on the other side of the door, you know?
Feel his heat or something.
And then, Joel... This is such a great... 'Cause when Joel falls right here,
his face is literally cut off right there. I love that. And then, down he goes.
My brother itched about, where did he put the second shot?
It doesn't matter, you little shit. Shut up.
Those are the notes you get from your...
Yeah, I call him a little shit, my brother's like 6'6", you know?
And a sharp, brilliant...
Great reveal again, like suspending the relief.
And I remember Justin Muller, my AD, putting the camera in his hand,
it just kind of manifested itself.
- And the song here is so good. - Yeah.
I'm Your Dr. Frankenstein.
I love that. The old school.
People ask me, was this like a Mission: Impossible kind of thing,
was this my little... I don't know.
Yeah, I read that somewhere. It was this like a...
I'm sure subconsciously, I was working on a lot of regress.
'Cause MI3 needs some kind of high-tech version,
you just need to pour some Play-Doh.
Yeah, exactly.
It looks like some kind of weird torture device anyway, you know?
This was good.
You got Curtis, Curtis Armstrong.
He was so into it, like some of the edges of shots had some great pieces of him.
Yeah. I love the flair coming off the top of that piano.
So great.
And Jeremy, literally looking like he had just been doing cocaine
for 36 straight hours, you know.
And if you really watch him... A lot of stuff we cut out,
but he'd always like roll his tongue over his teeth.
He had all those... If you've ever been with someone who was like either tweaking
or they're completely, you know, major, major cokehead,
they have these same tendencies, so...
Yeah, that's right, he was like rubbing his tongue on his teeth a lot.
This kind of... He had an oral fixation.
I mean, not that Rob and I would ever know,
we're strict vitamin B guys but, you know...
Exactly, drinking my...
That's what he was snorting, actually, was vitamin C.
Crushed up vitamin C is what Jeremy was...
- Really? - Yeah.
I don't know how that affects the sinuses, but he certainly did a lot of it.
Again, this idea that the sawed-off piano, and how it got that way, didn't really matter.
Now, he did all this himself. Jeremy's doing this whole gag himself,
which is really kind of impressive.
That he's able to turn all these aces.
He really got good.
He's actually... Jeremy's pretty amazing with a deck of cards, I got to say.
- I mean, he's an athlete... - Did he take some...
He's very adept and he's very facile with his... He just understands it.
And he moves his hands really well.
The guy went to the Magic Castle and he did a gig.
And worked it. And he also did it in front of the Wayne Newton audience.
And again, this is the idea that, you know... We had talked about this.
He's conscious of his betrayal of these guys.
He knew where the ace was and yet he still did it.
This was a whole thing. Remember, we got into a fight over...
Yes, it was a deal about like, how much you need to see Common.
Yeah.
And, you know, we thought the information just needed to happen at the end.
- Yeah. - People wanted him earlier in the scene.
Look, if he's gonna run, he's gonna run now, so we got to go!
Here's Ray doing what he loves to do.
Move and talk and get the hell out of the scene.
That's what Ray wants to do. Get the fuck out of the scene.
No, I'm sorry, the penthouse is currently under construction.
Here's Matt Fox, who came in for a day and...
Yeah.
And really, he just rocked it, man.
- Killed the scene. So great. - He really did.
See, we had a whole other thing here with this guy and we cut it out.
And were you sending people in just arbitrarily during the shot?
Yeah, yeah. During... Off-camera. Because we built all this...
I think we built this at the Herald Building, downtown in LA. We built this set.
And I told Matt, "Listen, throughout the scene,
"people are just gonna walk in, they're just gonna kind of come in."
I was on a walkie-talkie right outside.
And I kept firing different things into him just to keep him off rhythm.
As you'd be. 'Cause rarely, these situations are ever just clean,
where you're just able to have a conversation unbroken
or uninterrupted for five minutes with somebody.
That's me. And I almost get him right here.
If you watch, you can almost see him start to crack up.
He really holds this together.
A little blue-haired lady there who's rolled about 14 times. Thank you.
But I almost get him right here. Right there.
Table 12!
- And Nestor and Matt play it great. - Yeah, but they had such good chemistry.
And they're both old pros, man. They both come out of television.
You know, it's like they both... They just get it.
You know, Nestor, you see him in that Brooke Shields TV show,
and that's nothing like what he does in this movie.
And he's genuinely, you know, creepy and believable. Utterly believable.
- Yeah, from the top of his performance. - Yeah.
...serving lunch and dinner.
If you notice, Rob and I start to slow down as this commentary wears on,
it's because we're consuming again more and more adult beverages.
Vitamin B.
It's a little blue-haired lady. I'm looking at her right now. Table 12!
She is killing it, all right? I want you to keep an eye on her! That's all!
When you're putting the film together, like,
there's just these scenes that you know they're gonna be great, they're gonna kill.
I think we did, again, the same thing on this one,
we didn't really change this a lot.
No, because, you know, the interruption is really what makes the scene.
Because if they just went ahead and did the conversation, it would be...
Yeah.
Yeah, but all this like laughing between and, kind of, you know...
You know, we found these other pieces of him,
you know, throwing the microphone because he's so frustrated.
Yeah.
- "Can you believe this shit?" - Yeah, it's great.
Yeah, it's like two professionals kind of sharing this moment.
I just can't believe it. And this is so... He really...
I wanted Matt to channel a guy I went to high school with.
So that's why he's rocking the mullet
with the outdated moustache and chops there, the sideburns,
and then, of course...
This is a guy who would rock that same kind of mullet,
tucked-in construction shirt,
peg-leg jeans with the Reeboks, the white Reeboks.
- Now, if we can just see your ID... - Absolutely.
Hello? Hello? Is anyone there? I need to speak to security right away.
Well, this was like a moment. And it's so funny 'cause Nestor...
I remember telling Nestor, "You know, it's great,
"'cause you guys, you turn this very kind of homoerotic moment."
And Nestor being, like, the most kind of red-blooded straight guy,
he goes, "What are you talking about, man?"
"Do I have to stand this close to him?"
It was. It was, no. There's this great intimacy.
Then we got them, like, putting their foreheads together like that.
Yeah, it's great. I love him taking the thing off his neck
and putting it over the head. It's great. It's great.
And then, that's just kind of this idea of your central nervous system collapsing.
I don't know how this would really be, but I think that they did it...
I don't know, there's something about Nestor saying, "This won't hurt,"
that somehow made you able to watch the scene.
And then, he's just, like, fucking him right here.
I know. It's really... I don't think... Yeah.
He comes down on him and there's something very weird.
Yeah, there's something very sexual about it, you know.
And then he's lit... You know, Mauro lit him with kind of this angelic...
And I love this line. This about, "Heaven may hold it against you."
It's such a great... I mean, not such a great,
like I'm sitting here, fucking breaking my arm patting myself on the back.
No, it's like...
I thought it gave it this great kind of emotional... It gave it this moment.
And I think that's what this movie is,
this series of really interesting moments stitched together.
Well, everybody... I mean, this is like the second time where he's killed somebody
- and then he feels... - Yeah, you feel bad.
Everybody gets their moment in this movie to kind of show their humanity.
You know what I mean? No matter how freakish or grotesque the character,
they all get a moment in this film to kind of share with you this great humanity.
Remember this? That scene originally involved
Nestor dragging Matt Fox into a closet,
then seeing the Tremor brothers on one of the monitors in the hotel.
And we finally, one day, got this brainstorm,
what if we cut to Martin coming out as he lifts him up?
- Right. - It's the same kind of cut.
You're on speakerphone.
- Am I on the speakerphone? - Yeah, go, go, go, go.
We got an ID pending on a Jack Dupree.
And we went at this about a billion different ways,
and actually my assistant on this movie, Tunde, actually took a whack at this scene.
And just jumped all over the place.
Yeah, 'cause he had this idea of, like, going, like, 360, he said.
Yeah, 360 around, which I loved.
So, it'd be like Ray and then Ryan and go around and...
And even just the thought of it...
And then, the way he was able to figure how to, like, skip frames.
- Absolutely. They went nuts. - Yeah, it was great.
He's a fucking deeply talented kid and a really great director.
He's just so talented in accelerating and, like, pinpointing the action.
He kept trying to get that helicopter shot.
Yeah, he did. He tried to get that helicopter... Tried to get...
I was like, "Dude, we're not doing, like... This isn't that movie, homie.
"We can't do the helicopter shot."
But anything that's... All the accelerated pieces...
I mean, he really just... He totally honed in on...
- He did, he did. - ...how to do that.
...I don't want to be killing no women. No matter how they make their living.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm getting some fucked-up feedback off of that earpiece.
This was interesting, 'cause remember when we did this,
this was a much longer scene, too.
And we just got in there and started to kind of like,
"Okay, what do we really need to..."
And I think at least part of it was motivated by we had already eaten
a certain amount of CG shots
because CIS created the... If you look across from Taraji's vantage,
they created the top level of that Nomad I mean, it didn't exist.
It's Caesars. It was Caesars. Then they created it.
So I think part of it was just like,
"We gotta get these shots in there, man. They cost a lot of money."
I love that cut where the rifle goes up. Took, like, four frames out.
I took a couple of frames out. It actually worked pretty well.
This is a scene from an editor's point of view,
where like Taraji's side was one of the first things that came in,
and you're thinking, you know, you want to stay organised
and you want to keep up with camera.
Then I look at the schedule and I realise the other side doesn't come in
until the last week of shooting, and it's like, "This is fucked."
And then I tried putting blacks in,
like I tried to select them, just to get ready for it.
Right, right, right. It didn't matter.
It's like I was so excited. It's like, "What?"
- What the hell? - It's coming in 30 days later?
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
...this shit is itchy as hell.
I remember showing Alicia the scene where she actually saw her breasts
in the way that... Right there, which is really extraordinary.
I'll never forget her saying, "God, they've never looked like that."
And it was Mauro using, like, this odd partition that was all gold
and it just gave her skin this incredible, like, luster.
And they're both gorgeous women.
I'll tell you what's impressive is that as great as Alicia looks,
Taraji's on the flip side with absolutely no makeup on
and that's how beautiful she is, that she can pull that off and not have any, nothing.
And her feeling was, and it's such a brilliant choice as an actor,
why would this woman ever put makeup on if she's gonna kill these people?
And she's absolutely right.
Four skank-ass bitches. That's your crew.
Hey, fuck you. All right.
Fuck you and this fucking wig 'cause this shit is getting on my nerves.
This was an ad lib. I remember that, you know.
"This wig's getting on my nerves." That was great.
This was all just little pieces of just like water and...
And it's great because, you know, Alicia had the benefit of, again,
working across somebody who was really wonderful.
And I actually put them on the phone with one another.
So, when this dialogue's happening, it's not like her reading with a PA,
it's her reading with the actual actor.
And here we get into our "everyone converges on the reel."
I love the reel-to-reel, it's just so perfect for this film.
No, nothing on my end.
This is great, too.
This is before Joel got the idea that he'd put on this guy's clothes and this horrible wig.
And there's the Tremors all.
And you have another shot, too,
you have the one where they're doing, like, the Seven Dwarfs.
No signs of trouble, nobody lurking, no threats? Nothing?
Absolutely no. We got nothing to worry about.
Alicia looks hot in this film, man.
Jeremy, not so hot.
And there's Ray. Ray loves it when he's moving, man.
I say, "Yeah, I gotta walk. Let's go. Come on. What the fuck? Shoot."
No, Ray's the best, man.
We got to get him, Buzz. Everything, and I mean everything is riding on this.
There's a lot of material to pull from,
like they did different things, the Tremors did different things in the elevator.
You had some different ways to go into the shot.
- Like one coming down from the sun... - Yeah, remember that was like...
- It was a little too heroic there. - I don't know what he's doing.
Does he put something in his mouth?
No, he's actually wiping blood off his fingers.
That was Nestor's idea, to kind of lick the blood
from killing Matt Fox's character off his fingers.
And again, these scenes are always interesting
'cause you're trying to put all the stuff together
you know, we jump cut this whole thing with Jeremy.
The gun, the cash, and then just cutting with Martin falling in the forest.
I mean, it's an ambitious, interestingly put together picture.
- That was your brother. - That's right.
- Showing that he's walking toward... - Yeah, toward the house.
We needed a shot of him moving toward the house.
I just always loved the idea for her to block out everything
except for her eye to that scope.
And her target, which is Buddy Israel.
But this is eyes only.
They told me to hand deliver.
And Andy... I mean, I've said it a number of times,
but I just have never worked with an actor
who I thought had a better physical sense of himself.
And the relationship to the camera,
my God, man, it's like...
It's just an amazing innate ability that he has.
Some actors when you're editing,
they just have a really good sense of rhythm.
- They almost know when you're gonna... - And he's a musician.
I wonder if that is anything to do with it.
I mean, he just gets rhythms and he just understands that stuff.
This was again, dude, how much information do we give?
And I know some people say, "Well, I picked that up early on."
Great, I'm glad you did, 'cause it's irrelevant whether you got...
It's complicated, 'cause it's so subjective.
And everybody was coming in with their point of view
about how much information, how little.
And there was a constant barrage of, "You don't need it."
Yeah, but at the end of the day, we felt like, okay,
- we do need it and we do want it. - Yeah, you have to keep it alive
- otherwise it just shows up at the end. - Yeah.
Now this, I went for this kind of stylised cue with Andy,
kind of the way that the light would hit him like that
and then when he dropped his head as if to say,
"You're fucked." Everything would change.
And then Joel just again channelling
this really weird, bizarre kind of stiff mannequin-like...
Look at the way he barely moves his body
and it's all kind of like he's wearing a mask. Joel looks like he has a mask on.
- And that's his actual face. - Yeah, like his head just...
- He does that little half turn. - He doesn't want to move too hard.
I can't say enough again about Martin's design.
This was all built. All these hallways, all these...
Everything was built. It was pretty amazing.
And there is the shot that Mauro fought. Man, he wanted this shot so bad...
- Really? - ...with a certain kind of light.
And you know what? It's fucking great. It's really great.
The circular lights and the whole bit, he really fought hard for that.
And Jeremy literally looks like his mind is leaving his body.
Like he's just gone.
I didn't really need to see inside his nose for nine months, but...
I know, but it's okay. Could be worse, right?
We could've been making a movie about Kosovo.
The fuck do you mean? I ain't trying to clean this shit up myself, dawg.
Hey, don't even think I'm touching my man's coat...
And then this is great 'cause you had the thing where you wanted to
- have them sense each other... - Yeah, exactly.
...on the other side, which worked out really well.
Exactly, like, again, the heat, it's almost through touch that he kind of has this...
- And then find a place with Jeremy where... - Understanding, yeah.
...he's feeling it, too.
And then this scene I just love.
It's just one of those moments where it's the attempt to kind of convey someone...
This is your whole Knife in the Water.
Yeah, it really was, it was. It was inspired by that, it was this moment
where you look at yourself in the mirror, and it's like, "Well, who are you?"
He loses his contact lens, and the guy's literally having an identity crisis
on the spot, and I think that's always kind of a cool...
This was so great, with one eye or the other.
You know, when he puts his hands up, that's great.
Yeah, like, "Who are you?"
And then just kind of crossing the axis.
Actually that axis stuff, I think, is bullshit, but I just love the way...
What the scene was saying about anything.
Even about a guy's mental state, you know?
So, what did Mecklen have to say?
They're getting close, man.
And Common kind of... I loved the way that we timed this.
It's just got this really bizarre greenish kind of, you know?
And then Martin, whatever that thing is in the background, that kind of opaque
tree-lined whatever, it's just really great.
All the reflective surfaces, all the cool stuff that we did.
I'm working.
- Yeah, okay. - What's up?
You believe in loyalty, don't you?
This was originally much longer, this scene, wasn't it?
Yeah, there's some more conversation between the two of them,
but again, you can't metre this stuff out till you sum up the film.
Absolutely.
You start to get a sense, and there's a point to which this movie
really becomes like a trip hammer. It just goes, you know?
And you're just kind of along for the ride.
What are you trying to say?
What I've been saying. I need to get your head of security right now.
He's not picking up the extension.
Ray being impatient. That's again Ray's favourite emotional cue.
Ray, I need you to be impatient in this scene. "I got it, let's go!"
Excuse me?
You know, when you say it now, it does seem like...
Isn't this like forcing you to direct him always on the move?
Ray is a ricocheting bullet throughout this entire film, he really is.
Remember that, dude? We didn't have that look.
- We needed that little look to the kid. - Yeah.
Again, all built, none of this is real.
The elevator's not real. This was all built in the Marriott.
And, God, this scene, every time it's played, it's just killed.
It's great, 'cause once I told all the boys here,
"You guys, a lot of this you're gonna be doing shirtless,"
those sons of bitches hit the gym so fast and so hard.
Look at them. Look at Durand, he's like an ad for a washboard.
His pants are going down now.
Yeah, and Durand loves his... Like, he has no problems
literally grabbing on to his joint in the middle of a scene,
pulling it out of his pants. He doesn't care.
He's pushing it, man. He's pushing it.
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. The ho train has left the station.
This was shot in Tahoe, this was shot on a stage,
and this was shot in Tahoe.
That is our stage. It actually worked quite well, though.
- And then, oh, God... - This one got back in.
Martin missing those fingers is like a horror film.
And then Zach,
who I affectionately refer to as Boner Kid, and you'll know why in a bit.
But, yeah, we just threw lines at him to constantly ad lib, and he went for it.
And he's like a direct descendant of the Coen brothers, Raising Arizona,
like the little bastard kids that Frances McDormand has in that movie.
Cause I'm obsessed with that film. The most distinct inspiration
for Smokin' Aces is Raising Arizona.
And if you look at the way that movie's set up, it's not unlike...
The baby in that movie is essentially the Buddy Israel character.
Right.
Listen. Hold it. need to speak with Locke.
Get him on the phone.
If the situation's changed, I need to hear it from him.
This is Ken Rudulph, who played an FBI agent in my very first film,
Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane, and I wanted him to play a fed again.
And I just thought it'd be a great little piece of redundant
for the six people that saw my first movie. I thought...
I came up to him at the wrap party, he was very excited.
He was like, "I saw both your films."
There you go, that's a rarity.
'Cause I think only, Rob, you and me, and I think a cousin I have in Toledo
have actually seen both of his performances in my movie.
This is shot in the basement. The English call it a carpark.
You never did settle when he does that move,
and I was always like, "Is it goofy Ryan Reynolds or is it funny?"
Because it was always like a weird... He'd get hung up on little...
Yeah.
What, you stuck on stupid or something?
This is... Again, I had Chris just improv a lot of stuff about
about the lotion he was wearing, his hair cut,
and all this other stuff, this idea...
Look, Joel is just so goddamn menacing.
And just so creepy.
Hey, but you need to bring your ass down here and help me out, Hugo, for real.
I ain't cleaning all this shit up myself, man.
- What's he really thinking right now? - Yeah, exactly.
Kind of like, I gotta hit my mark, I gotta make sure.
- Like he's waiting for the camera to... - Exactly.
And then, Chris... That was my little Stanley Kubrick right there,
the little kind of Kubrickian stare.
And I think originally I could see the rig in his back,
but he's wearing a holster. That's what he's wearing.
You're not seeing the squib, you're seeing the holster.
Now, Chris actually did this. This wire removal on this.
He actually did this fall.
- Which is... - He's a big dude, man.
And he went down, that's a 290-pound man hitting the ground hard.
- There's pulling. - Yeah.
What I've always been saying, let's make the fucking deal.
I remember the script was really descriptive about the guy
watching his blood go...
- He heard it. - ...down his spine.
He felt it, he thought he got stung in the back of the neck by a bug.
And then he looked down, he just saw the wobbling,
the shell casings settling.
And then he realised, "Wait a minute, that was a gunshot.
- "Wait a minute, I've been shot." - Right.
And in the script, it's actually really cool,
and I just don't think we had the, you know...
This is Ryan again, doing all this stuff.
Spinning the ace, doing all that kind of, you know...
...to show you.
And this is the moment in the film where he's really kind of given it up
that maybe he's bullshitted the FBI.
Maybe he doesn't really have any information that'll be of any use.
But the way he's made his living is, he's an illusionist.
He's a professional magician.
And so deception and misdirection, those are de rigueur.
That's part of his repertoire.
- I don't know why I dropped that. - Is that a technical word?
I really sounded like a douche bag there.
- Yeah. - We can go back. What is that?
De rigueur? I don't know, I've always wanted to say that.
Because I know it's French. It makes me sound smart.
You know me, dude. I'm always struggling. I'm always trying to prove myself.
See, my vocabulary is quite advanced. Isn't that great?
I want to know what it is.
Isn't that great, single girls? Don't you wanna, like,
- get with me because I'm smart? - Yeah.
"I'm going home with this guy."
Exactly, I'm glad you called me on it, dude.
You're like, "Did you say de rigueur? What the fuck was that?"
I probably mispronounced it, too.
There's some linguist going, "Nice job, shithead!"
"It's actually 'de rigueur, ' not 'dee rigoor, 'you fucking idiot."
Okay, here's where, listen, dude, if we ever gave up the ghost,
we did it in this scene.
And, I still think we made the right call in just kind of keeping it Andy's little...
And the daily of Andy, when it first came in,
he's doing all these things. It looks kind of goofy,
and then you realise he's contributing all these pieces that you're gonna need later.
- Looking at the window, looking back... - Fantastic, absolutely.
Yeah, Andy's much smarter than me, so he knew what the hell was going on.
Forget it. You won't get a signal in here. You'll have to wait.
What about that line? Can't you contact...
This is probably the most heavily designed scene
because I had a really specific way that I wanted to shoot this thing.
And, just their proximity to one another in the elevator,
this idea that Ray kind of gets hip to the fact that this guy is not who he says he is.
And once that happens, you're just dealing in a world of distortion
and these odd reflections like that.
That's great, when he lowers his head at the end.
Yeah, and I was actually looking at myself in an elevator one day,
and I realised, when I drop my head, my eyes would kind of hood
and everything went dark and I just thought, "Fuck, that's great.
"If I could ever work that into something..."
This provided the ideal opportunity to do so.
An emergency shutdown...
Dude, I need coffee. I mean, I'm literally... All this beer...
Rob and I are drinking a combination of beer and coffee.
Pretty soon, we're gonna mix some Jäger in.
Maybe some Goldschläger, you know.
We're gonna get just colleged.
This is a little Orson Welles Citizen Kane homage, but also, this...
Little Shanghai thing going on here.
Yeah, the multiple reflections, the multiple kind of, "Who is this guy?"
There's the shot, right there, which we both love.
And that's my voice panicking.
This was fun to watch, these pieces, like to watch that piece.
Yeah, oh, God.
- How many times they... - And his knee just kind of detonating.
We cut the hell out of this scene, man. I mean, we really...
Tunde gave us a run on this, too.
Also, he found these little... Like, they get shot,
but there's like tiny little bumps of inserts of the actual wound.
Yeah.
That just fucking kills the scene because it really highlights that shot.
- Kills the scene in a good way. - Yeah.
Rob's got two young sons, so the vocab spills over.
- Exactly. - Kills in a good way.
Please don't tell me this motherfucker just went off.
- Man, these fools. - What? What's wrong? What?
Man, fucking security's shutting down the elevators in your building.
The elevators shutting down. This all worked so well, I thought.
Then these freaks just being plunged into darkness.
I never realised how long it was this dark onscreen.
There we go. Lighting a cigarette with a road flare.
You know, I'll tell you what, Pine had guts doing that.
'Cause he put a really fucking hot flare very close to his face.
Yeah, that's actually a flare.
That thing gives off the most noxious... Whatever the hell that is, wow, man.
I mean, it just filled the set with stuff you shouldn't breathe if you have a choice.
And Kevin had these great grunts and shit.
Oh, yeah.
He sounded like some kind of Peking Man.
And he and Maury were generally like, wonderfully adversarial. I loved it.
I stole that shot. I stole that light bulb shot from a Fox pilot that I shot.
That was on Genesis. That was the one thing that was on HD.
We stole it.
There you go, Fox. I got something out of it.
You didn't put it on the air, but I won.
...get my heating pad, get my blanket.
- Nana, not during training. - Okay, Grandma's big helper boy?
- This is Marianne. - Yeah.
God, and the way that Mary Zophres costumed her,
I thought was so great.
She's got that old red, white and blue... The long shirt that doubles
as the housedress.
This is great, and again, Tunde just goes into this hyper...
Yeah, Tunde is the one that really kind of put this scene together
with all the freeze frames and just the psycho... You know.
And again, he was licking an ice cream sandwich
as opposed to biting it.
And I just thought, again, anything I could do to make him annoying.
Yeah, that was pretty...
And Zach was just amazing, here you go with the prepubescent boner.
Him being sexually aroused by throwing punches at an inert, wounded man.
Window shade to the Ritalin.
And then the Ritalin. Yeah, we window-shaded, we thought...
- We wanted to land on that gag. - We were cracking up at the...
I love that Grandma comes in and just pulls that Matrix shit
where she just blocks this supersonic kind of punch.
This is something Bateman decided to do, that he wanted to do, that just kills.
This is where jump cuts work really well.
Yeah, when they see him in the bra and panties.
Really? He said...
Yeah, he's like, "Do you mind if I play this scene in the bra and panties?"
I'm like, "Oh, it's your career. You do with it what you will," you know?
Don, if you can hear this, I'm in the hotel, north side.
Those were both... The guy that we just saw there was a reporter, John Alston,
who I used to work with at Channel 31.
We gave him a little love, too.
This is probably my favourite shot in the film.
Common talking to Jeremy's reflection.
That he's just no longer present. That he's already made his decision,
that he's kind of ratted him out. I just, I love that.
That's my favourite kind of shot.
- ...than a fucking fist your whole life. - Ivy...
So if you think I'm gonna...
And if you see it, Jeremy's actually upside down.
Right there, upside down.
The last couple of things that we did on the stage.
Yeah, we did, we did.
- Let's add Joel, yeah. - Let's continue bringing...
- And it worked out great. - Yeah, it did.
Motherfuck! Motherfucker!
This was just crazy, I mean, he fires a six-shooter 12 times,
but it didn't matter, we loved it.
And then, Patrick St. Esprit,
some people may have seen this guy in United 93.
He was the guy who plays... He's amazing.
And I love it, Patrick's just such a... He's got two speeds, man.
On and off. You know what I mean? And he's just gonna give it to you.
And he's just such a wonderful guy 'cause he's so in the moment
and he's so kind of, you know, there to kind of do his thing.
Joel put his hair back on.
- We messed with the scene quite a bit. - It's backwards.
Yeah, that's backwards. Reversed that.
Reversed that shot.
I love it, how you can just come on...
All the magic you build. All the magic you work to create in the edit.
All the little sleight-of-hand stuff. You just give it up in the DVD thing like this.
We just give up all the secrets.
"Yeah, we reversed that. Oh, yeah, we fucked that up."
Jeremy wasn't actually there that day.
That was, I tried to do a reflection 'cause, you know,
Tommy's got these really interesting scars
that I'm sure aren't that interesting to Tommy.
But I tried to kind of mimic those in that reflection.
All right? You with me?
You with me, baby? Huh?
And this is again Jeremy improvving his line.
You know, we're almost home. And it just seems so heartbreaking.
Remember that? We added that shot in of Chris.
- Yeah. - It was just an individual shot.
The scene just had to be clear, that's all.
Yeah, it had to be really clear.
These two are down.
Really? But I thought that one was up and that one was...
Yeah, exactly.
- But wait, I think the... - Wait, I don't understand, I'm losing it.
I mean, listen, here's my feeling...
- What's his name? - Yeah.
Dude, that was... You cut it like that. I thought that was great.
- It's just like they're feeling him. - The idea that he could hear him.
- It's like La Ronde. It's like that play. - Right.
And everybody's kind of intersecting and crossing.
There's certainly hugely farcical elements to this movie.
Well, trying to bring everybody in at the same time,
it's like the big noose around its neck.
But also, you don't get many opportunities in your career
to really throw everything at the wall.
I mean, really try to create this kind of collage of a movie
where you're doing all these things. Heavy drama...
- And it's consistently malleable. - Yeah. Yeah.
Heavy drama, comedy, action, you know. Farcical stuff.
Deeply dark humour, all of it.
Like when Jeremy's coked out and he's grabbing the gun and the...
I was so pissed off because you went and did all those jump cuts,
and like that's so fucking... Because it just kept showing me that it was completely...
The movie was constantly able to be in motion.
Yeah, absolutely. It was, no, it was... It was such a great process for us.
Because it did, it had that fluid sense about it.
Them police officers, too?
There are such cool lines in this about her hysterectomy and all that stuff.
And I just got Zach saying, "I'm gay because I have a beard."
The kid just went... He was such an obnoxious little shit.
This worked out great.
This robotic little... This is my brother.
This is my younger brother Matt when we were kids.
He would make sure he did this kind of annoying shit constantly.
And I just thought... And then, two days speeding him up
so he did this kind of, again, this Matrix-style move.
And it just works out when it's sped up.
You're not even aware that the continuity is completely off in this scene,
- because you're just watching the kid. - Right here she puts it...
Like trying accelerate...
- No, it's great, and all her stuff was... - For her to sit down here.
- What she says is just funny. - It's just funny.
It's good, it's great. What she's saying is funny.
- The shit that he's pulling out of this thing. - Yeah.
What is this magazine?
Yeah, an old Bible. All these old books.
And ever since then, little Boogie there has been man of the house.
I love the way she just kind of dismisses the...
Look at Martin looking at that like he's truly found his salvation.
Your IFB working?
No, that's why we're on walkies.
That is Ryan with Brian Bloom, who is a really good friend of mine.
Brian was a major teen idol when he was a kid.
And he's such a goddamn good actor.
Tell him exactly what happened, nice and slow.
He was actually in Once Upon a Time in America
when he was 10 years old.
- With Jennifer Connelly when she was 11. - With Jennifer Connelly, yeah.
There's a story about that.
I can't talk out of school.
But, yeah, I love Brian. I put him in a pilot I did for Fox.
He was this really bad, nasty kind of
murdering goon of a police officer, and he was tremendous.
Yeah, he's the handsome guy, when you're growing up, that you hate.
Exactly, that's exactly it.
Those good-looking dudes that you just despise
'cause they're getting all the tail.
Yeah, you're running around with your head cut off.
- Right. - They just stand there.
You're like, "I'm a geek and no girls will talk to me.
"My high-school experience was miserable. I don't know why."
It's like, "Why can't I not get near any ass? What the hell is going on?"
Should I get rid of some of these keys on my belt?
You know what? Between our comments about breasts, getting ass, tail,
there's not one woman watching this commentary
who's going, "These guys are just absolute profound pigs."
You think I should get rid of some of these keys on my belt?
Yeah, I think that'll help.
Maybe. You sort of look like Schneider from One Day at a Time.
But when I pull it...
Okay, we need to get these elevators powered up.
All right, maintenance,
I need somebody to power up these elevators immediately.
I need to get Deputy Director Locke on a hard line as soon as possible.
All right, done.
Come on, step back, step back.
These were girls we brought from Tahoe.
Except for Natascha, who plays the girl who was most aggressively going at it.
She's a stuntwoman. And you'll see why she's a stuntwoman
in a little bit.
I thought you were gonna go...
This was Jeremy again. We tried, we really tried
to include enough stuff where we kind of kept going to his chest
and we wanted to create this sense that he was having, like,
heart palpitations or some kind of difficulty with breathing or something.
Yeah, I think, in the mix, there's, you're bringing in a...
Yeah. Yeah.
A heart beat, which I think they forgot.
We did. Oh, yeah, God, that was one among our many problems.
And then right here when the elevator powers up, remember,
we didn't make a big deal about it. Alicia looked up and...
Yeah.
And then we had this moment, "Should we shoot a bullet casing
- "blocking the door." - Yeah, something gets stuck.
We just decided, "You know what? It doesn't need it."
She just kind of gets cut off.
Nobody's ever squawked about it, so I guess it worked.
- Just chill for a second. - Shots fired. West tower. Nomad...
This was a moment, it's great, the way this moment plays.
Because I think what we did with Ben Affleck earlier,
killing him, you've kind of been told, the audience is on
really uneven footing. Hopefully in a good way.
And we see that spike retract.
And I had Alicia just expose that really gorgeous little swathe of neck there.
Thinking, she's gonna get it.
Yeah, people were really disturbed at that.
For one thing, it's like, she says both of them are kind of impostors,
but one of them's wearing a...
That's how we maybe overlooked a bit.
No, but this idea of, "Which one are you?"
And I think by the time she makes that distinction,
and I never really explained why...
I just completely lost my train of thought, Rob.
What the fuck was I talking about?
- About Alicia and... - Oh, how she...
- In the elevator. - Yeah, in the elevator.
Yeah, like why she wanted to kill one of them.
I'm thinking she's like, "Okay, one of you guys blew it for me.
"If this gag gets blown, whatever." But I thought it was enough.
I love Common slowly backing away.
- This was a scene that was taken out... - Yeah.
Yeah, I'm not gonna name the producer. He knows who he is.
He wanted it removed.
Now, this is not Jeremy. I'd love to say that this was Jeremy.
These were these two kids who were twins who were aces with cards.
And just being able to do this is extraordinary.
But it's funny, I look at them, and they had the same kind of...
- Fingers, they had the same like... - Same fingers.
So it completely looks like him.
Obviously, I wanted to promote the myth that that's Jeremy.
But it's not, but the fingers are the same, and we just got lucky.
You get these Dead Ringers slash instruments that...
Yeah, yeah, Cronenberg would've had a blast with that stuff.
One of them's an organ scoop, and it's just... Yeah, it's bad.
They revoked the deal.
And here's Curtis just literally melting down.
We got it, we got 'em, we got 'em. What do you mean?
And this is Jeremy kind of at the peak, at the apex of just,
he is just completely fucked off at this point.
His eyes, he was wearing contacts that were bloodshot, he had...
- Did he stay up? - He stayed up, yeah.
He went to some big VH1 awards and stayed up the entire night.
But you know what, stayed up and didn't drink or didn't kind of party,
stayed up to really have the Dustin Hoffman method moment,
you know, from Marathon Man, when he kind of
channels that exhaustion and that sense of this really haggard,
just absolutely frayed emotional state.
He put the gun on his back, and we thought the Christ-like comparisons...
- Carrying the cross - ...were too heavy.
But we retained all the information, we just collapsed it, you know.
Yeah.
It's still as it was. It's just there's less filmed.
Yeah.
And this is just...
It's like this idea of inviting God. Like, here's my last,
my kind of curtain call, right here, this moment.
- And there's Vladimir. - Yeah, who's that guy?
Vladimir Kulich.
Yeah, that's the Swede. We haven't even talked about him.
That's the Swede.
Yeah, that was a thread that Rob and I, as we've been just kind of rambling on,
pointless and endlessly, have forgotten about.
That there's several characters, I think, we haven't mentioned.
The Swede being one of them.
North elevator door's open.
Possible aggression inside.
- Ryan has a funny outtake here with... - Yeah, where he's...
- Lavender, lavender. - Nice, he was sniffing the leaves there.
- "Oh, great, lavender." - That's great.
And this is kind of the prelude to a tremendous, if we do say so ourselves,
action sequence where you're gonna see some people really get jacked.
This is Andy Garcia's double.
That is actually Andy Garcia in Burbank, and that is back in Tahoe.
That's how you shoot those things.
You only have the actor in... You don't want to fly the actor
all the way to Tahoe for a three-second scene.
- So you just shoot him walking with sky. - You don't even use it, right?
- He walks up, the door closes... - Yeah, the door closes.
Yeah, we really got... We just collapsed all that stuff.
This day on set was really tough because Jeremy was in a really wracked kind of
emotional frame. I mean, really an interesting frame of mind.
'Cause he was just destroyed.
This Prodigy song that they did for us, which is called First Warning,
which is a track they kind of redid.
This is such a great piece of music for this part.
I love all the ramping here. It really works out.
There's a great reveal of Common getting away, walking.
- Yeah. - It's like the information comes later.
Yeah, and then the Tremor brothers really kind of fly out of that elevator.
Yeah, and this, hopefully that pulled really well about dropping down on them.
Yeah, it did, you know. We're watching something...
And then we had a lot of speed issues 'cause we had a lot of different...
This was really the one piece,
the major piece of linkage between all the characters.
And geographically, to show you where everybody was in the hotel
and how they were kind of situated.
There's one right here, right there you see the Steadicam operator's tennis shoe,
but other than that, for as many mirrored surfaces...
Dave Emmerichs is the Steadicam operator.
I was never a Steadicam guy. He completely changed my mind.
When you see it done the way Dave does it, it's extraordinary.
I mean, it's a complete art form.
Boy, this was the big CG shot that kind of, that tips off the whole thing.
- And here we go. And Denney Pierce. Boom! - How fast was he?
- That's the shot, wow. - He was pulled...
He went literally... Tom takes the hit. Tom Harper.
These guys went literally... I think Denney went 20 yards
in about half a second. I mean, his body was kind of a horseshoe shape
when you slow the film down. It's unreal.
And that gun, you're not ever going to get a sense of how powerful that thing is
when it went off. I mean, it literally stole... It felt like time stopped and then restarted.
That's how much sonic force that gun unleashed.
It was unbelievable.
These guys were trained by a gentleman named Paul Maurice.
I don't want to go too much into it.
Paul maintains a rather active role in the counter-intelligence community
to this day.
But he trained Ryan and Alicia for this gunfight.
And you get a sense of how fast they are, but not nearly...
I mean, they were so goddamn quick with those things.
Georgia, where are you? I can't fucking hear you.
This idea of this movie being... Again, we're talking about it
before it's come out, but this idea of the movie being really violent,
I think what we're trying to do is, we were really trying to,
in the spirit of kind of throwing everything at it,
trying to juxtapose really over-the-top outlandish,
almost cartoonish violence with this really vicious,
immediate, raw, sense of consequential...
- And stay real at the same time. - What violence really is.
And stay real.
That's all Rob and I are trying to do, is keep it fucking real.
That's what we always do, right, dude?
Keep it real while somebody sits on a chainsaw.
Rob just tipped off a moment.
Taraji's running around. That was still a 25-pound version of the gun.
That .50 cal is actually 60 pounds.
Never mind! Just get in there. Get in there and pin that girl!
Sharice? Can you hear me? I'm hit.
Now it's about also keeping all the balls in the air.
Absolutely. Everything's kind of going off now.
'Cause we're about to go to another... To keep everybody interested in this.
Yeah.
Listen, this is when the movie is just absolutely on fire.
Speaking of which... Perfect segue into this moment.
I mean, this was the idea, that we really shot
the Tremors the way they would want to be shot.
Almost like a Sergio Leone film.
Look, they like stuff like this. The guy on fire, getting shot.
Slow motion. You know, this to them is like candy.
- Different versions. - Different versions.
When it really comes to an end is when Common does
what he's about to do, which kind of brings an end
to this particular little fantasy.
Right there.
And I love that you can kill people two or three times.
Yeah, it's pretty great.
There's some stuff, there's some choice bits,
I mean, this stuff is just gorgeous.
He doesn't have to get stuck in the chandelier that long.
- And then this is... - And then here we go.
Somehow, he lost the chains.
I remember thinking, "Oh, this'll be great if the guys sat on the chainsaw."
Yeah, just right there, what you're seeing now
is a very diseased mind having years of inactivity
and then coming back to a movie and just needing to kind of
let the air out of one and just really go.
But again, you know, you got these scenes back to back,
they're very difficult to reconcile because one is completely kind of...
Right, and you hope that you're keeping the audience
moving from emotion to emotion without getting tripped up with confusion.
Right.
Girl, where are you?
God damn it, Georgia! Just say something!
These were great, the way you cut these, 'cause it's all Alicia's kind of struggling,
and Taraji really trying to find out where she was,
and they'd lost contact because she got shot
in the receiver.
And then Taraji obviously feeling,
"Oh, my God." You know, the hooker that was shot that we didn't comment on
is actually Alicia.
Taraji had a really horrible kind of personal thing in her life happening and used that...
You know, we shot this scene that day, and my God,
I mean, the tears and the pain and all that stuff and that rage was absolutely real.
And I see this and I get chills,
'cause it was so extraordinary to see an actor do that,
but to see them literally make that admission on camera and say...
Oh, when she turns around, she sits on the bench,
starts kicking, it's just so cathartic.
It totally is.
You know, it's Ray's eyes, I think, open a little bit right there.
And you don't see him. Hopefully, that's like...
- "Can I go home yet?" - ...his soul leaving his body. Yeah.
- But this, right here, man... - Yeah, when she... This is just...
If I could hear it, I'd probably be emotional. This is so, so sad.
But she's such a brave soul to kind of make the choice
to openly disclose that to the crew,
needing that kind of emotional emphasis to get through a scene.
This is a scene where she originally had some dialogue, but it was so much more.
It was better for her to just walk up and stick the gun...
Yeah, she had a really cool couple of lines, like,
"Know a killer, know what they look like, know what they sound like,
"and know you're about to die by one."
And we just thought silence was golden.
Exactly, especially since the sprinklers were as loud as she was.
Yeah.
- Yeah, the sprinkler's powerful. - It pretty much fucking
blew everything out, you know.
That was great. I love that he slides in there.
That's great. And then, Common just grabbing her,
and rushing her out of there was pretty great.
And this was so cool, man.
This sense of just kind of jump cutting through this...
Yeah. I kept getting confused what floor he's supposed to be on, like...
Yeah, I don't know if it matters.
- Yeah. - Floor seven. Sometimes...
I don't know that it matters. Yeah, exactly.
Forgive me.
And then Jeremy's "forgive me." It's not so much to Hugo.
It's actually Lazlo.
So, it's not so much to him as to whomever, you know, the heavens.
Check the vitals on this guy.
Initiate all clear.
And that is Scott Bloom.
That is Brian Bloom's younger brother, who's also a good friend of mine,
who I thought would be an ideal agent.
And this idea that they hire within families, it's kind of interesting.
Carruthers is dead. Messner's unaccounted for.
Account for him!
This was a scene that went through a lot of different...
This idea that these two people could kind of fall in love,
or just have this complete kind of chemistry in the moment.
And again, it's also the proximity. He's carrying her.
- In act three. - In act three. Yeah.
Finally, room for a love story in Smokin' Aces.
You hurting pretty bad, huh?
Would you say, "I really don't need to learn how to spit," in act three or something?
Yeah.
Like the Titanic. I really don't need to learn how to...
Yeah, once the fucking Titanic is going down,
don't turn on the faucets and help it. You know what I mean?
I'll teach you how to spit once the boat's going down.
Yeah. It's, like, we're not really concerned about that, dude.
The fucking thing is sinking.
Now, this was just again...
This was us really kind of looking for these moments,
'cause the scene was originally much longer and they said a lot more,
but I thought, you know, something about their being kind of punctual,
in a way, it's dramatically expedient.
We isolate this intimacy for two seconds.
And just the way they're backlit, they're just gorgeous.
And then again, in keeping with the idea that nothing is safe,
this idea that, you know, they're about to connect,
and then Ryan is there to blow the romantic mood.
Put her down. Put her down and get up against the wall right now.
Show me your hands. Show me your fucking hands!
And then they're gonna go at it, you know.
Originally, this was written that he did it, and Alicia was still being held,
and she just kind of had a gun under his chin,
but I thought in this moment, nobody's really gonna back down.
And this idea that
either he's gonna shoot or somebody's gonna break in, somebody's getting shot.
But I love what she's saying to him, which is,
"Hey, man, we just cannot continue down this road with any level of success."
Well, at this point, you're just trying to watch his,
I guess, trying to watch his transition to letting her go.
- Yeah. - Also he says something like,
"Did I really say I'm gonna drain you?
- "Did I?" - Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- "Did I say that?" - Yeah. Yeah.
You were, "I'm gonna fucking drain you."
- And then, this is just... - This is just... Yeah.
This is post-funhouse.
This is one of my favourite shots, too, this big travelling shot across
to seeing all the various death and destruction.
I never saw all the blood on the sign, until we...
No, that's probably it, too. Again, you know, people are gonna...
We're a fucking puritanical society. It bugs me.
No, I mean, now, I think, you see it. I didn't see it till we went to the DI.
What the hell? God, it's covered in blood.
That's bad.
I remember this scene, they...
One of the police cruisers had gone over the kerb
and ripped out the transmission crashing over the kerb.
We're gonna own that one, guys. We're gonna buy that big rig there.
This was one of the last things we caught, dude.
This one took a little bit of time to bring together,
'cause again I think we were looking for...
Oh, hey, we did kind of like a Ryan pass, you know.
We went through the movie and we tried to find some more moments of...
Because Ryan, you know, seemed to emerge as kind of the...
It was difficult because it really had to centre around him
by the time we got to the last act.
Director Locke?
- Who's that guy? - Who's that? I don't... Is that the...
There's some gigantic blonde man here. Does anybody know who he is?
Okay, gentlemen, let's get him up on the roof.
See, I always loved the idea of Joel looking okay.
And his neck. I just like the way his movements were.
- Yeah. Yeah. - He really had that down.
- I need you to go back to Washington. - What the hell happened here?
I'm sorry, I cannot disclose anything more right now.
This is Ryan kind of at his most desperate in this moment.
Like, you know, just tell me what the hell is going on.
- And you don't notice... - This is great. You're jumping frames here.
I mean, this one, you can always make the argument this is very quick,
but I like the fact it was that fast, because it's like,
"Wow. How the hell did he do that? And he's still wearing his glove.
"He didn't have time to get that glove off."
This is when people say, "That's your MI3 moment. "
Yeah, there's my MI3 moment. Only better.
- It's under a bed. - Yeah, it's under a bed.
And then Pine just killing this.
This is actually Dave Emmerichs' idea, that the Steadicam operator would have
this frame start empty, and then Pine's reaction.
My son, Rockne, of the scenes I was able to show him,
he's fascinated with that one, right there.
And what'd he say? It's like, "I love..."
He loves when the blade pops out of Nestor's leg, you know,
'cause I think he understands it has some deeper meaning down the line,
and then Nestor's gonna escape.
Make room. Make room, please.
This shot really came out about as well as it could.
Because it just feels like...
There's some kind of surreal element
to Ryan walking into this kind of completely blown out white, you know.
You don't know what the hell this means, but you just feel like
you're definitely at the end of something, but him walking out,
and then this matching flare of the helicopter, it's just... I love that.
Even though on the version we're watching right now, it's completely blown out.
- And we're not watching... - This was another version.
We're not seeing the same visual you guys are seeing right now.
You're seeing something that looks like final and...
There was another scene here.
Yes. There was another scene that Taraji actually shot and killed Common and Alicia,
and I think there was... We really went at it with him about, you know...
Should we, you know, infer that... Should we...
And I think we kind of split the difference.
And, you know, you could make an argument either way,
that the cops killed her, or that those two kind of went off in the sunset together,
and, you know, so on.
Hey.
- That your car? - No, I...
I actually bought that car. That car is now mine.
- Seriously, it sits in your driveway? - I own the Tremor brothers' car.
I paid for it. Yeah, I had to buy it. I had to.
So if the movie hit, I could turn it on eBay.
Again, we're talking before this movie's ever come out.
I see on eBay Jerry Lewis' limousine from '58 is up for sale,
that he doesn't actually remember ever sitting in.
- But, it's like for $200,000. - Exactly.
I mean, you've got the limo from The Patsy? I want it.
- Yeah. - You've got...
Wait a minute. You've got props from Cinderfella? How do I get them?
- You got some of the fake grass? - How old is Jerry now?
- He's 70... - No, dude, he's like 80.
- I don't think he's 80 yet. - And still swinging away at MDA, man.
Yeah. Well, prednisone is an amazing drug.
Or is it the Muscular Dystrophy Association?
Yeah. It's MD, is what he's swinging at. Muscular dystrophy.
Yeah.
Not a hot-button disease these days, man.
We're not even talking about the scene now, you know.
I just love Martin. I mean, this guy is just kind of going.
He's just having fun in the scene.
We shot this in Tahoe.
And, I mean, I love the shit in films where you get these two people together...
- Yeah. - ...that have been in the opposite ends
- for the whole film, and they have this... - Absolutely.
And they have this moment about, you know, "Fate just up and fucks you."
I love this. I love this moment.
This could've been a much longer scene, too.
- We had a lot of... - Well, basically, he talks about the engine.
- And the air conditioner's not working. - Yeah.
And the AC's not working. And you might have some problems.
Then he smokes a joint, and he's like,
- "Do you want some of it?" - Yeah.
- And he's like, "It's good." - Yeah.
But I love... I just love... You know, Pine's just so like,
"All right, we're old friends, man. You know, this is how it goes.
"We're just, you know... We're soldiers. This is what happens."
And then Martin's got the best shot out of everybody.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't he great? Yeah. Not even looking.
Martin's so good, though. I remember having that moment, it was like,
"Hey, just put the keys on his remaining finger.
"You know? It'll be fun."
And Pine took such a great...
We had a close-up of this, but Pine looks like Jagger, right there.
He really does when he goes down.
- At Dodger Stadium. - Yeah, exactly, it's like... Yeah, exactly.
Now, this is an interesting scene because this was originally Ryan...
We shouldn't even talk about this, but we will.
- It's a whole different... - Ryan's seen Martin Henderson's character.
- Right. Driving up. - And Rob and I made the decision.
You know what we should really do? We should just really climb
inside this guy's head, so you get this sense of... You get his perspective,
and it's like, "Okay, wait, I got to do something."
- And Ryan's look was so kind of great... - He was actually looking at Martin.
He's actually seeing Martin right there. Yeah.
But right there, he just looks like he makes a decision to do something.
- It actually worked out really well. - It did.
The other way is, like, they take off to Vegas...
Yeah, they actually had this whole dialogue and then they take off to Vegas together.
- And they actually... - Spend the weekend together.
Yeah, they're getting married in Vermont.
That's a sequel. We don't want to talk about that.
This was shot at Children's Hospital.
God, where is that? Somewhere in downtown LA.
And this is one of the rare instances where the elevator was actually real.
Of course, there's an outtake where the elevator door doesn't close.
Doesn't close and Ryan... Yeah, that's right.
This is Joe Drago. Joe, right there, the guy who just took the file,
was Andy's stand-in on a number of movies.
And Joe's such a good actor in his own right.
And Joe had this idea, that he'll play it like his assistant, his executive assistant.
Like J. Edgar Hoover's executive assistant.
And it's Clyde... What the hell is his name? And Joe is so funny about that man.
You are instructed to get out...
Okay, there was an idea here, an aborted idea by some people,
for him not to pull the gun.
Oh, yeah, they didn't want him to pull the gun.
I remember thinking, how the hell can he...
Why would Andy then let him take him toward a secure area?
Because Andy's like 5'1" and Ryan's like 6'3".
Yeah. Ryan's like 6'11" and...
- Exactly. Exactly. - That's one reason.
- But I think it was great. - It didn't make any sense.
It was great, 'cause Andy's such an opinionated actor and he's a director, too.
Didn't you say you told Ryan, "Get in his face"?
Oh, I told Ryan. No, no, I told Ryan.
I told Ryan, "Hey, you know what, dude? Just manhandle him.
"I don't care how you have to do it, just get Andy down that hall.
"And if Andy resists, I don't give a shit. You gotta take him."
And it was so great, 'cause you really had, you know...
You have guys with very distinct ideas and opinions,
and Andy is not a wallflower, man.
He's gonna tell you what's on his mind. That's what makes him a great actor.
And Ryan just picked up and grabbed him.
Ryan just picked him up. I said, "You have to physically move him."
These scenes are always touchy because you're really now...
Okay, this is the culmination of the story.
And you can bitch about this and go, "Well, it reminds me of..."
Or you can go, "Okay, it's absolutely necessary in this film."
You're linking all these disparate pieces together.
And you're either gonna go with this experience and go,
"Oh, okay, that's what that meant."
And this is all... You know, listen, the chain of events that transpire in this film
are set into motion by bad information, by misinformation.
These two goofballs, mobsters, heard the wrong thing.
And that's why this whole thing kind of unfolded.
They heard that somebody wanted Buddy Israel's heart,
right here is where they start talking about it.
That wasn't it. They're actually bringing in a surgeon
to perform a heart transplant and they wanted Israel's
because he's his son.
It's an ideal transplant, an ideal donor.
Unwilling donor, but a donor nonetheless.
And so, yeah, listen, it's a fairly complex story. You gotta stay with it.
This is very complex to try to figure out
- how to lay it out. - It's like a lot of things, man.
Yeah, it's like a lot of things and it's unlike anything else.
So that's the good and the bad news, you know.
Whatever you wanna say about it, but I love it, in the way that, you know...
Well, in the way, you love a kid.
No matter what they look like or how they behave... This one has ADD.
I just heard a parent who said that she's very disappointed with her children.
- Yeah, that... - So...
That's not this one. I love them all equally, you know.
But, like, you know, people coming in this movie thinking
they're gonna get something like Narc, it's just, you know, there's many shades...
Nobody's stabbing somebody in the neck in the first five minutes of the film.
- Exactly. You're not getting... - And gurgling sounds...
Yeah. A pregnant woman is not being accidentally shot.
So, yeah, a different movie.
Fifteen separate procedures since 1952.
Same year that Sparazza supposedly murdered Freeman Heller.
I'd like to show you exactly what I meant when I said, "Change my face."
Using the latest techniques in cosmetic surgery,
I will have my ears pinned back.
Man, do we ever take a run at this thing, at this scene.
Yeah, laying out this, but...
You know, staying till 6:00 in the morning and, like, "Okay."
Totally. I mean, you're trying to figure out how to lay out the information.
- Yeah. - 'Cause he's gotta talk, I mean, that...
- Yeah. - ...you know, get boring about it,
but, you know, Heller's gotta talk, then you got to see a piece of information,
- it's kind of, like... - Yeah.
That's him.
And my name...
I love this, though. I mean, I think it worked really well, and that...
Then you got a reveal... Oh, that was great. That was great.
CIS did a hell of a job on the CG...
- Yeah, they did. - ...and computer stuff.
And then, Mike Falkow, this really great young actor, played Heller,
and they put fake ears on him and a fake jaw and a fake nose.
And then he played himself as Sparazza.
But as Heller he had
the idea of the multiple plastic surgeries he had to undergo.
Changed the shape of his ears. I love it. Why not?
And we didn't kill him.
That was the little bit of inspired bit,
because that was Joseph Ruskin who plays Primo Sparazza.
He was like... I think he was waking up from a nap or...
You were saying he thought he was feeling like,
"I'm getting a little too close to real life here.
"I'm really treading an age
"where this isn't comfortable, playing a guy who's dying."
But Joe's so great, man. He's such kind of a vibrant...
It's like the end of a take where he couldn't wait to get the tube out of his mouth.
Yeah, he couldn't wait to get the hell out of that oxygen tent we had him in.
Until now. Heller's op predated the second World War.
About 60 years of amassed intel.
This is no small feat on Ryan's part, man.
You're going head to head with one of the great dramatic actors
we have working today
- and acquitting yourself. - And he's gotta go through...
Ryan's got to go through all these different transitions
of figuring it out, you know, being angry, trying to figure out what's right and wrong.
And really kind of straddle this line between some sense of,
I guess, justifying the actions that they've all kind of undergone.
There's the reverse zoom, which I love, and it's just a little... Whatever.
Also I didn't realise till later that Andy played the...
You know, he didn't play the cardboard cutout head.
- No. - The department guy, he actually...
You know, when he talks about why he needed to do what he did,
it sounds like he's got a layer, he's got a thoughtful...
No. You know, Andy's kind of in the unfortunate position
of having to discharge
a duty and orders that he may or may not agree with.
But he kind of sees the larger picture.
We don't really have a choice in these instances.
And if there's anything allegorical in this entire film, it's this moment.
This is how I feel about the way our country does stuff.
Like the minute we get a better deal somewhere else,
we immediately forsake the deals we have standing.
You know, it's like, we just walk away from them,
and we kind of burn down everything about them,
and leave people in the dust.
And it's certainly what we're doing now abroad, you know, and I think that's it.
This idea that you can't betray your people.
And this idea that there would be this betrayal, this conscious betrayal,
and not really know that it would pay any dividends.
Not really know that what you've traded up won't be worth anything.
You know, it's kind of a big question mark, and I love that.
And it's great. I've gotta hand it to Working Title, Universal.
They really let this film be its own kind of platypus,
and do all these kind of different things and be dour and be comedic and be...
You know, this is not a...
Listen, this isn't necessarily this gigantic upbeat ending.
It's really its own creature.
- Of course, Andy's probably... - Does that make any sense, Rob?
I was just thinking...
Rob's like, "You know what? I cut this fucker and that's the first time I heard that."
You know what I was thinking? When I was cutting this,
I was thinking that Andy was standing there, thinking about
what his distribution on Lost City would be like.
Like he was completely...
'Cause I know that he was completely immersed in his project at the time.
And he was struggling, and there was a re-cut.
Andy did this wonderful film called Lost City,
- that he was so deep into. - And I remember thinking that.
It's like, you know, he's really good, 'cause I know he's not thinking about this.
Oh, shit, man. He's trying to. Yeah. Exactly.
His attention is definitely divided, but you never would have known it.
He was fantastic.
Remember? This was a much longer scene.
- Which played for a long time... - Remember that? Yeah.
- ...until it connected up. - I always thought that the longer scene...
I never really had a problem with the longer scene, but I think we thought...
I forgot how it got collapsed.
Eric Fellner was always of the mind
that we'd left the hotel, and that was end of the movie.
- Right. - He was not... And you know, what?
That's not a good sign, 'cause there's another 15 minutes to go.
- There's another 15 minutes. - We got the producers saying,
- "That's the last reel." - "Yeah, that's the last reel".
But Eric's also smart. I mean, this is why I love Eric.
He actually said to me at one point, 'cause we had...
You know, as you do in every kind of situation like this, you...
We had our differences of opinion.
And because he's such a stand-up guy, I remember him telling me,
"Listen, I'll disagree with you and I'll fight you tooth and nail.
"But at the end of the day, I will never do anything less than support you completely."
Anytime you hear that from a guy who's been that successful,
and the guy who's been around the business that long,
it's a hell of a thing. And I think it's very rare.
- And I was really fortunate... - And you're willing to listen...
- I was really fortunate... - ...and execute.
Yeah, they were creative partners in this whole thing.
The unplugging scene.
Man, this was a moment. This was his idea of really like,
"Okay. We have to... This legacy, this kind of twisted, warped legacy has to end here."
And we have another... I don't know.
I think it's on this DVD that Rob and I called the cowboy ending.
To say was brief is an understatement.
It was a lot less.
I think we thought we needed some theatricality.
And not like just empty kind of vapid theatrics.
It was just this kind of... We needed his guy to really...
There's something very ritualistic, almost like this kind of...
He's really kind of ceding his professional life at that moment and going,
"Okay, I'm out. That's... I'm done."
But there's also this great look.
You know, Ryan plays it so beautifully, kind of almost like
he's happy that he's made this decision.
You know, that he feels like, "Okay, some good has come from this
"because I'm just not gonna let this stand," you know.
Yeah. I mean, the scene's great but it's gotta centre on Ryan.
It really seems like he's done that.
Yeah, 'cause there's that little look on his face.
Like, "Okay, well, whatever happens, happens."
And just this kind of hanging his head,
and then again, you're really... Now you're sucked into this moment with him.
And it's really all about him and...
And I think we put one more hit on here.
One more kind of... The idea of the door.
Everybody else, the outside world, kind of falls away.
You're just left with that image, which I love.
Oh, that's right. There's like a sound, that there's like...
Yeah, there's like one more sound, boom, right on black that...
And then we went into this Common song,
which is just such a fucking great kind of upbeat.
- Oh, I haven't seen these. - You haven't seen these yet?
- Does this go into the crawl? - Yeah.
I think so. Yeah, this is the version of it, homie. This is it.
You really needed to come back into the movie, and kind of remind yourself
that it wasn't this desperately morose experience you've just had.
VooDooDog in London did this sequence. Goddamn, I love this work.
It's such a cool... It's such inspired kind of weird graphic,
kind of throwback '60's treatment of this stuff, which I love.
Yeah, this is cool.
It kind of restores the levity in the movie, I guess, a bit, you know.
Hopefully it does.
But we had lot of fun, man.
- Yeah. - We had lot of fun.
We spent a lot of time.
You may not know it to look at the film, but God damn it, we were in there a long time.
- It took me... - How long?
Two months to lose the 20 pounds that I gained.
That's right. Rob and I packed it on.
We got in there and ate nothing but the aforementioned deep-fried Twinkies.
Yeah.
We had Gordon and Jonny.
We had a great editorial staff.
Yeah, Gordon and Jonny.
And that one freak that was your assistant who we bust out of there so I could bring...
- Who'd we bring in? Oh, Lou. - Right.
But you did get to find out from that person about the monkeygram.
Oh, Jesus.
Rob had a... I'm not gonna name her, 'cause it's pointless.
Rob had an assistant on this film that was one of the most antisocial chicks
anybody had ever laid eyes on.
And she sent one of those Monk-e-mails from...
I think it's careerbuilder.com or something.
You were having a blast 'cause you'd call her up on the phone.
Yeah, I called her to the phone. I would do it to my kids.
It's funny. See, here's the crawl, dude.
Now, we're gonna digress for a moment. Isn't that cool, though?
- Oh, that's great. It pulls up. - Isn't that great?
But anyway, I think she had some kind of thing for Rob.
And she left him a Monk-e-mail.
Where she said essentially that she wanted to get "rapey" with him.
And I've never quite heard it put that way.
- It's a monkey saying it, though. - Somebody wanted to get rapey with you,
and it's a chimpanzee on a fucking golf course.
Yeah.
It was really bizarre. Really bizarre.
You know what? I'm gonna get that.
That's Lorna Scott. Lorna Scott was that wonderful receptionist
with Taraji.
When Taraji went on that ranch, she was great.
There was one woman on there, Clare Carrey right there, she went by.
We had a whole... And then Goldy.
They played a flashback scene,
where you see Israel's mother eight months pregnant
and Clare was really eight months pregnant.
Then David Goldsmith, who is a fucking tremendous actor in his own right,
who is my video playback guy, who I put in there,
they had a whole scene that was so fantastic,
I was bummed out that I had to cut that out of the movie.
But I think it actually wound up in the alternate opening.
- Yeah. - In the deleted scenes.
Yeah, this was a blast.
- It was hard and it was fun and... - Yeah.
You know what was great about this?
I've never worked with a greater group of people and a better crew.
And I don't think I ever will.
And as many of them as I can roll over into future projects,
including that guy right there, Jamie Trueblood...
Oh, and Todd, he did all the selects.
- Yeah. - That was a gift.
But Jamie T., what a still photographer.
I mean, really great. Really, really great.
You didn't have one... You know, listen, the biggest shithead involved in it
was probably me.
The one with the greatest shortcomings was me.
But, no, we had such a good crew and they were all kind of...
They were all very much into it and excited to be part of it,
as we were.
I don't know if this has helped anybody kind of maybe...
We thought we maybe engendered the love of film.
- If they're stoned, it did. - I think we may have turned them off.
Hopefully you smoked a shitload of weed before you listened to this commentary.
I'd love to get actual numbers on the people
that sit all the way through a director's commentary.
I'm telling you, it's probably shocking how many people actually do it.
Like, if you've got this kind of time to waste...
Are you saying that you think there are a lot of people?
Yeah, I think, there probably is. I mean, I've done it.
You know, listen, you know who's great is Ridley Scott.
Did you... Like on Blade Runner?
Oh, man. Blade Runner. Alien.
I love watching Alien
because it completely kind of demystified the process for me.
I mean, you watch it, you really...
I think a lot of people are against it because they feel like it kind of cheapens
- the experience. - Right. 'Cause, like some people...
I listened to Paul Thomas Anderson on Magnolia.
But he had these diaries that he did.
He kept film diaries on every single day that he shot.
So that was included, so that was really fun.
And then, I listened to him on Boogie Nights.
That guy is so fucking uniquely talented.
- Yeah. - He really is.
If there's one guy that I'm like desperately jealous of, it's P.T. He's amazing.
And he's able to say exactly what it is that you wanna know about.
- Yeah. - Somehow he's...
But, I mean, he's just like that really freakish kind of gifted, you know...
You look at him and go, "I could never make that movie, man."
I don't know how the hell he made Magnolia. And the fact the guy made...
But we thought Magnolia was part of this film the whole time.
You know, it was always like... I felt like it was...
I mean, for me it like a reference the whole time
in terms of how to bring all these stories together and keep it emotional.
It's true. Spottieottiedopaliscious the song by Outkast which I fucking adore.
And I don't know, Ray, as I'm speaking,
I don't know that I can get it on the soundtrack.
I'm trying desperately.
I wish Andre could hear this from Outkast,
how desperate I am to put that song on the soundtrack.
But by the time you're watching this, it'll already by out.
Where is it? Where does it sit now?
I don't know. I'm trying desperately to get it in there.
There's is all the people I wanted to thank, including Watches by Polanti.
You're the biggest, flakiest kid with the Polanti.
But I'm not gonna get it. It's at the end of the credits.
That's a whole other story.
- So I guess we gotta sign off, Rob. - Okay.
This has been Robert Frazer and Joe Carnahan
on the Smokin' Aces commentary.
If we didn't bore the piss out of you,
we hope we helped you learn a little something about yourselves.
And that there's better ways to spend two hours of your life.