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But the public wanted an encore.
Action is, simply, where the action is.
But its also, for me, my favorite thing a process film.
Meaning a film about the actual process of doing a thing.Right.
It sounds stupid to say that I was surprised at how good it was.
So it was a big phone call.
If Channing and Reid and the choreographic team hadnt created the live show, the movie wouldnt exist.
There was no compelling reason to make a third film prior to that.
Certainly, I feel that American movies have gotten a little weird about sex.
Its not gone, but its treated in such a strange way!
Its either explicit but kind of clinical, or its just avoided.
Its interesting the way its presented because it is a dance routine.
They both have their clothes on, but theyre basically having sex in a variety of positions.
And when I came back, Salmas like, No, no, no, no!
Lets push it further!
I want to lock and fold him!
I want to do all this other stuff!
I thought,Okay!
She felt like,If were here, letsdoit.
and theyre just really going at it.
Thats what its like to get into a creative conversation with Salma.
Youve gotta step up to her level.
How do they make money?
How do they pay rent?
Hes never been with anybody for whom where the moneys coming from is not an issue.
Your parents were middle class, right?Yeah.
My dad was a college professor, but he had six kids.
One of the best things I inherited from my parents was a lack of interest in acquiring money.
Money really didnt matter to them.
I think Mike shares that attitude.
Hes struggling to make a living thats his issue.
Does a check show up every Thursday?
What does it cost to live on that ship?
Who were your filmmaking inspirations on this movie?
Thats the kind of energy and freedom I wanted to get from her.
Where does Lubitsch come into play?Lubitsch is for the classic Hollywood comedy complications and characters.
That whole setup and their attitudes are right out of one of those movies.
And then Bertolucci for the movement, the visual language of the film.
The wordvoluptuousalways comes to mind when I think of Bertolucci.
Theres an abundance of everything.I miss when its …
I dont know ifcontrolledis the right word?
I can make it do anything I want.
Theres a purpose to the movement.
Our window each day was about 45 minutes.
In my mind, those two things are thematically connected.
He creates a dance out of the idea of this scene with Salma in the rain outside the theater.
So I always knew both of those were going to be done handheld.
That shits hard to do when itsdry.Hes deadlifting her and throwing her around, and its fuckingwet!
We had this tiny little seat with coasters, like five sets of wheels on the bottom of it.
I was moving myself around the stage, around them, with the camera.
I was just chasing them.
I wanted it to feel sloppyis not the right word, butrough.
I was not going for a kind of typical, classical composition or movement.
I wanted something that just felt spontaneous.
And lets be clear: I dont have a lot of takes.
They cant just do this shit repeatedly all day.
I said to Chan that morning, Its Omaha Beach.
The entire water dance, from the introduction to its conclusion, took ten hours to shoot.
And, you know, we got through it and nobody got hurt.
Im aware that this stuff is gonna get judged and compared to other movies that have musical sequences.
But then, at the same time, I dont know!
My metabolism isnt really built to do that.
To grind on one thing for seven or eight days?
That would not be fun for me.
In your heart, I wonder if youre not a cameraman?
It had to do with my experience on set.
I wanted a more intimate relationship with the cast.
I wanted control over the momentum of the set and how quickly we were moving, period.
I wanted to control that.
I did not like relinquishing or sharing that control with somebody else.
So Im giving up that Im not Roger Deakins or Emmanuel Lubezki.
If you cant be Roger Deakins, being Albert Maysles is not a bad trade-off.Not at all!
Thats why all these discussions about capture medium are kind of irrelevant at the end of the day.
Jorge Luis Borges described something as two bald men fighting over a comb.
All the audience cares about is the story and the characters.
They dont care what you shot it on; they just want a story and characters that they like.
Thats my ultimate goal.
But another thing I like to do is watch somebodys idea evolve as theyremoving.
I try not to impose those things, but when they develop organically, I embrace them.
I never feel like,Oh, youve done that before.
You shouldnt do that again.
Sometimes, rarely, its one.
Im trying to view it as kind of a Japanese line drawing.
Like,How few strokes can I create an image with?
You tell a lot of jokes with cuts.
Theres no way in hell Im going to do that!
Cut to: them doing it.To me, thats the equivalent of a spit take.
But there was a lot of discussion about whether the movie needed it.
There was some experimentation with What if Victor was the narrator?
and What if VictorandZadie were both the narrators?
We tried a lot of different things before we circled back to the original idea.
There used to be more of it and then we backed off a little bit.
But it felt like the universe of the movie needed that note.
I wanted somebody to say that out loud.
It was important to me.
That was the appeal of making this movie.
It isnt often that youre able to do that with something that doesnt feel cheesy or cloying.
I want to read them to you now and get your reactions.
And he stares blankly and says Were gonna have one!
When Im shooting, I dream every night about shooting and its always going wrong.
The lunch scene is that.
Channings great at playing someone whos not quite prepared for the thing theyre being asked to do.
He has a specific kind of panic and incredulity at whats being asked of him that is very funny.
Its fun to watch him flail.
Hes like, Okay, Harry, try doing a lap dance.
And Harry does these moves.
And Channing does exactly the same moves as him but better.
He just does it better.
What I liked about that scene is, as youre watching it, it feels like Channings winning.
Why dont you make it more expansive?
She completely destroys what he just did.
Its not always sunshine.
You sometimes have to hear stuff you dont want to hear.
Only.Oh, she crushed that!
Theres a micro-pause in there that if you dont nail it, its not funny.
It works on a couple of different levels if you execute it as well as she does.
We didnt want to be winking at the audience, you know what I mean?
The line that really, really hit me was Theres absolutely nothing sexier than a body in motion.
That statement applies, to some extent, to every movie youve done.
You like shooting people, you like shooting bodies, you like shooting faces.
Faces are in action too.Thats what I see when I imagine something.
If Im reading something that Im sparking to or if Im imagining something from scratch, I see faces.
A face with a certain kind of expression on it.
I dont come in with shots.
It can be frustrating for people on the production.
But I really resist determining anything before Ive even seen where people are gonna stand.
Every scene has to fight its way into the project.
As far as Im concerned, the scene had better prove to me that it needs to be here.
Youve joked that the physicality of your filmmaking style is directorial CrossFit.
Ive seen you doing what look like yoga poses for get the shot you wanted.
How long can you keep going like that?Ive asked myself that.
Would that still be pleasurable to me?
I guess I wont know until Im confronted with it.
I think the more difficult question is about maintaining the love of the job and of the medium.
Will I just at some point feel like Im out of ideas?
I dont have the grandiosity gene.
I dont have the ability to makeApocalypse Now.
Thats tricky, to do that much and keep the level of quality consistent.
Thats the best I can hope for.
