- 2 days ago
Chris Columbus joins GQ as he revisits some of the most iconic films from his career so far: from the American Christmas comedy Home Alone to the first and second installment of the Harry Potter franchise.“I have re-wrote the script for you for free, no one else in Hollywood will do this… it was a brash thing to do, but in the end it worked out—I got the job,” recalls Columbus of his interview for the Harry Potter gig. Watch the full episode of GQ’s Iconic Characters as Chris Columbus breaks down his most iconic films.The Thursday Murder Club is available on Netflix August 28th: http://www.netflix.com/thethursdaymurderclub.
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00:00I take film criticism very seriously, so obviously when the reviews on Home Alone
00:05came out, for instance, that was heartbreaking. What I've learned, and what
00:09I think is essential for filmmakers, is that that doesn't matter. What matters is
00:14longevity. When Home Alone is suddenly put into the National Registry of Films,
00:19I'm like, well, the critics were wrong.
00:21Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
00:30So Harry Potter was introduced to me by my daughter Eleanor, who is now my partner in
00:43Maiden Voyage, and I knew she had tremendous instinct when she kept convincing me to read
00:47the book, and I refused. I said, I'm not interested in this kind of book. I want to
00:50read Grapes of Wrath. I was full of myself, and finally I read the book, and I realized,
00:56oh my God, there's a great film here. So I called my agent, and I said, I think this is
01:01a movie I would love to direct. She said, yeah, you and 30 other people. I said, well,
01:06is there any way I can get a meeting? She said, yeah, I can get you a meeting with Warner
01:09Brothers, and I said to her, make sure I get the last meeting. I want to be the last director
01:15in the room. She didn't understand why, but I got the script, and I spent eight days rewriting
01:20the script. Now, I didn't have to rewrite Steve Clovis's script. What I did is I wrote a director's
01:25version, where I added camera angles and how I was going to shoot the script, and I walked
01:30into the meeting, and I said, I've rewritten the script for you for free. No one else in Hollywood
01:35would do this, so you can see what I'm going to do with the movie. So I started the meeting like
01:39that. It was a brash thing to do, but in the long run, it worked out. I got the job.
01:45I'm not Harry. I am.
01:51Well, of course you are.
01:53Casting process was difficult because we had the eyes of the world on us. The books were
01:57extremely popular, and everyone wanted to know who's playing Harry Potter. We looked at hundreds
02:05of tapes, and Daniel was the person that I was really—I saw David Copperfield. He had a small
02:11role in David Copperfield, and even seeing that, I remember calling David Heyman, and I said,
02:15this kid, Daniel Radcliffe, I want to see him. And David said, his family is not interested in him
02:20being in the movie. So there was that process. But eventually, Daniel agreed to screen test.
02:25That's a dragon egg. That's what that is.
02:27A lot of people were not interested in Daniel, and I thought Daniel had this haunted quality about
02:32him, that none of the other kids had. Harry Potter had a haunted quality. Both of his parents
02:36have been killed. So he was walking around carrying this tragedy, and I felt that Daniel had that.
02:42Thanks, Hagrid.
02:44The first time Daniel had a major scene in the film happened to be the scene where he is
02:49leaving Hogwarts and going home. So we shot the end of the film first. I remember placing the camera
02:55in position, and Daniel says, I'm not going home, not really. And we were all very moved at
03:02that point. We couldn't explain why, but there was something in his performance.
03:06I'm not going home. Not really.
03:10Again, it captured that haunted quality. He delivered that line as if he had lived, you
03:15know, 60 years or something. And it was improbable that an 11-year-old could have that kind of
03:21complexity in a performance. And we didn't know it at the time. We just knew that we were moved
03:25by what he did. And at that point, I knew we cast the perfect kid for Harry Potter.
03:38Alan had had the opportunity to sit, maybe have dinner with J.K. Rowling, so he knew exactly
03:45where his character was going from day one. He was not allowed to tell any of us what he knew.
03:50So it was frustrating for me as a director because there were some choices that he would be making
03:56as an actor, and I didn't understand why he was going there. Choices where he would let his guard
04:01down a little as Snape, and I didn't understand why. I would say, Alan, why did you do that on that
04:06last take? And he goes, I can't tell you. That's very frustrating. So he was just like, just trust me.
04:13And as we were cutting the film together, even though we didn't know where Snape's character
04:19was going, those choices appeared to be right because they made his character in that first
04:24film more complex and more interesting. Home Alone.
04:28I directed a film after Adventures in Babysitting that was at box office and critical disaster.
04:48Literally, they stopped playing in theaters three days after the movie came out. So I was driving
04:53cross-country with my wife, heading back to her family's house in Chicago, and basically the
04:59conversation was, well, I can always be a writer. I had great success as a writer, so I'll go back
05:04and become a screenwriter. I gave my best shot to directing. It didn't work out. So I got back to
05:09Chicago, staying at my wife's parents' house, and I got a call from John Hughes. We had the same agent.
05:17Sent me a script called Christmas Vacation. Asked me if I wanted to direct it. I thought it was a very
05:21funny script. Somebody was giving me an opportunity to direct. It was right in my wheelhouse. Kind of
05:25had the edgy humor that I loved. And then I met with the star, Chevy Chase, and it was just a
05:30disaster. We did not get along. And I had to leave the movie, and I had to call John and say,
05:35I can't work with Chevy. And it was hard to do because this was probably, in my head, my last shot
05:41at directing. But I had to walk away. I knew I would make a terrible film, and I didn't want to do that.
05:46Two weeks later, John sent me the script to Home Alone. I just really thought I can put my
05:51imprint on the film, but I would tell the entire story from Kevin's point of view.
05:57I can't seem to find my toothbrush, so I'll pick one up when I go out today.
06:00Other than that, I'm in good shape.
06:06I had seen Macaulay and Uncle Buck. John Hughes, being an amazing producer, he said to me,
06:12look, Chris, it's your movie. I'm telling you Macaulay's good, but go on a search and see if
06:18you can find somebody that you like as much or somebody better. So I did that. I felt that I
06:22had a responsibility to do that. I looked at 300, 400 kids, and I came back and met with Macaulay
06:28and realized no one in the world is like this kid. I think the film speaks for itself. He has this
06:34very unique, approachable quality as an actor.
06:37This is it. Don't get scared now.
06:40And I think kids relate to him for whatever reason. He's not a kid from the Disney Channel.
06:45He's a very relatable kid.
06:48Hello.
06:52The booby trap sequences for Home Alone was inspired by old Warner Brothers cartoons.
06:56Close enough?
06:58I was obsessed with those cartoons, and I felt that, ironically, the most violent things that
07:04happen in Warner Brothers cartoons happened to be the funniest. We applied that to the
07:07booby traps in Home Alone, whether it was stepping on a nail or having an iron thrown down a laundry
07:12suit. Something that could potentially kill you that you walk away from is funny. And Buster
07:16Keaton showed us that through years. I just applied that mentality to designing the booby traps.
07:22And at the time, wire work was not being done in terms of stunts, so they were funny seconds
07:28after they were completed. In other words, when they were done and I called cut, no one was laughing
07:33because we thought the stunt performer was killed. So I had to walk up to the stunt performer
07:38and ask him if he was okay. Thumbs up, jumps to his feet and says, great! And then we go
07:44back and look at the video playback, and it's hysterical. But nothing is funny when you think
07:48someone's been hurt. Nowadays, all those stunts are done with wire work, and they don't have
07:53the same feeling. Home Alone 2, Lost in New York.
08:02Excuse me, but this is an emergency.
08:06Yes, sir?
08:08Let's use that over there.
08:11That's New York, sir.
08:13Yikes, I did it again.
08:15I mean, deep down, we all knew basically Home Alone 2 was a remake of Home Alone 1. You know,
08:21there's no surprise there. So if we're dealing with that particular plot, how do we make it
08:25better or funnier? Well, the stunts have to be more extreme.
08:31We had to just up the ante in terms of the dangerousness of the stunts, the violence of
08:37those particular stunts. And so I feel, yeah, that those particular stunts in Home Alone 2
08:42are funnier and more extreme. And also, Home Alone 2 became something else for me, because I,
08:48at that point, considered myself a New Yorker. I was here for over a decade. I think if you're
08:52over, if you live here for two months, you're a New Yorker. But I really wanted to do a love
08:57letter to New York. And that was, oddly, Home Alone 2 became my love letter to New York City.
09:03Excuse me, where's the lobby?
09:05Down the hall and to the left.
09:07Thanks.
09:07The title of the Home Alone sequel was called Christmas in the Park. Basically, it was set
09:11around Central Park and the Plaza Hotel. So we needed the Plaza Hotel as a character in the film.
09:17The only way we could get the Plaza Hotel was the agreement was with Donald Trump that he would
09:24have a cameo in the film. And I knew I could cut it later, which was what I was intending to do.
09:30It's a fairly innocuous moment. He asked for directions. It's Donald Trump. Donald Trump gives
09:35him directions. Bam. Over with. Shot. Got the Plaza Hotel. I'm going to go back to the editing room and
09:40cut it. Well, we preview the movie, and it's one of the biggest laughs in the film. Now, I've always had
09:45this sort of mantra when I'm shooting a film that it has to be timeless. It shouldn't really be
09:52representative of the time it's shot. It should feel like some sense of timelessness. Donald Trump
09:59goes against all of that at that time because he was a character in New York culture at that
10:05particular time. Nevertheless, the studio and I agreed that it should be in the film because it was
10:10funny and people enjoyed it. So we kept it in the movie. That's how it ended up there. It's there.
10:16So make of it what you will. Mrs. Doubtfire.
10:23Hello. Mrs. Hillard, I presume?
10:26Yes. I'm Miranda Hillard.
10:28You've a Genaya Doubtfire.
10:30Oh, yes. Won't you please come in?
10:33With Robin, it was agreed that we would do three scripted takes and then we would, in his words,
10:37play. It was unlike anything I'd done except working with Macaulay Culkin because you could
10:42say to a kid, try this, do this, make this, you know. With Robin, I could say, why don't you try
10:47this or do this in the improv? So it was very freeing and it was very freeing for him. Yet at
10:52the same time, Robin was possessed by something I've never seen before or since, which is there was a
10:58spirituality about him when I would say action, suddenly he became the character of whether it was
11:06Mrs. Doubtfire, Daniel Hillard, and he would go off script and when I yelled cut, he would say to
11:12the script supervisor, what did I say? He wouldn't remember because he was so lost and overtaken with
11:18this incredible performance. By the way, we shot 15 to 22 takes. All of them were special. That was
11:25the difficulty in editing the film, but that's another story. The fact that he would do something
11:30different in every take made me shoot some of those scenes as if I were shooting a documentary,
11:35which meant three cameras. So I would have a camera on Sally Field or Pierce Brosnan because
11:41none of us knew what was going to happen. Even if I made suggestions to Robin, you never knew what
11:46he was going to do. And I had to get their reactions at that moment because the second take would never
11:52be the same. Or, sorry, the seventh or eighth take would never be the same. It was a lot of research
11:57and development. For instance, the Mrs. Doubtfire body, the costume, how would that best feel real?
12:04Well, it was all made out of birdseed. So it would have some sort of flow, if for lack of a better
12:11word. The look of the makeup had to appear not too severe so that if you saw it in public, the Mrs.
12:17Doubtfire character would be believable, which enabled Robin, as we were shooting, to go out onto
12:21the streets of San Francisco, go into any store he wanted to. And no one had any idea it was Robin.
12:27It's kind of freeing for him. I don't know if I could say he worked on the character doing that,
12:32but I remember shooting in North Beach and Robin was gone. And we would be like, where is he? He's in
12:37that grocery store. He was Mrs. Doubtfire walking through the streets of San Francisco. So we got
12:42the process of testing the makeup to a point where it would work in real life. Once it worked in real
12:48life, we knew we could actually shoot it. Can I give you a hand? Oh, no, dear. I don't need a hand.
12:55I need a face. We would do rehearsals in the morning and Robin went through hours and hours
13:01of makeup. And when we get to the set and start rehearsals, Robin was half in and half out of
13:07makeup. So we would be blocking that Robin would come to set with the Mrs. Doubtfire face. That was
13:13it. His face was intact. He'd be wearing a surf shirt with his hairy arms and his shorts. And he'd say,
13:20hey, boss, what do you want to do? But he's wearing the mask. So it was like directing a horror film at
13:25the beginning of the day. And we'd block the scene. And really, on those days, when he finally came to
13:31set as Mrs. Doubtfire, I treated him as a completely different person. I treated him as if he were a 75-year-old
13:40woman. And I'd help him onto the set. I mean, it psychologically messes with your head. You can't
13:46even imagine that character comes onto the set and it's her. It's Mrs. Doubtfire. It's not Robin
13:52Williams. So for Pierce, who had never seen except a fraction of Robin in the restaurant scene, you
13:58know, when the mask is half up, he actually never had an opportunity to meet Robin Williams. He only
14:04knew Mrs. Doubtfire. Gremlins.
14:22Oh, my God. What is it?
14:26No. It's your new pet. Ironically, we are sitting one block away from the loft I lived in in New York
14:33City. I mean, a stone's throw back in 1981, maybe. And I was living in a loft that was about
14:41108 bucks a month. We had mice. And I would sleep with my arms draped over the bed. And mice would
14:48sort of scurry by in the middle of the night and wake me up. And it was very creepy. And I thought
14:53there's nothing more frightening or creepy than these tiny creatures. So I started thinking about
14:59a horror film. I always wanted to write a horror film. So I started thinking about a horror film
15:03based on tiny monsters. And I remembered my father, who was a World War II veteran, who would
15:10discuss gremlins going into his, you know, if it was an airplane or that was the reason that there
15:18was mechanical failure in World War II because of gremlins. So that gave me the title. And then I wrote
15:23the script on spec thinking no one would ever read it. My agent sent gremlins out to about 50 to 60
15:34producers and studios at the time. Everyone passed. It was very bloody. It was too violent. You know,
15:40we didn't hear much else except it was too violent. So no one read the script. And I kind of thought it
15:46was over. And suddenly I got a call in my loft and my roommate answered and said, it's Steven Spielberg on
15:55the phone. I said, yeah, right. I didn't know Steven Spielberg was getting the script. So I thought it was
15:58one of my friends playing a joke. And I got on the phone and I recognized the voice and it really was
16:04Spielberg. It turns out that the script was sitting on top of, this is luck, you know, it's pure luck on top of his
16:11assistant's desk on a pile of scripts. It said gremlins. He liked the title. It was Friday night.
16:17He picked it up and decided he was going to read it over the weekend. He read it and fell in love with
16:21it. So it was very fortuitous and it was sort of the big, people talk about the big break for your
16:28career. That was the big break for me. Cute.
16:35Steven was adamant about one particular thing in gremlins, which is my concept,
16:41was that all of the mogwai, which are the cute little gremlins, became gremlins. But Steven felt
16:48that Gizmo, the head mogwai, should remain intact throughout the film. He felt that the audience
16:54needed a relatable character and that he felt that Gizmo needed to be that character. And he was
17:02100% right. It was just a brilliant idea because it turned gremlins from a standard horror film into
17:10something much more special, something much more unique and something much deeper. In terms of toning
17:15things down, I think he only, you know, Steven and probably Warner Brothers only toned down
17:21what were sort of my excesses as a writer. In other words, when you're cutting off a character's head
17:29and it rolls down the stairs, people have a tendency to think of that as one type of horror film. We were
17:36trying to do some sort of elevated horror film. I didn't know what at the time. But to Steven's
17:41credit and Warner Brothers' credit, they pushed it as far as we possibly could. And because of
17:46gremlins, you know, the PG-13 rating. Gremlins was rated PG, as was Indiana Jones and the Temple
17:52of Doom. And Steven, you know, as a result of those films and those films terrorizing a lot of younger
17:58children, Steven went to the board and said, we need to have a PG-13 rating, which I think is a good
18:04thing, you know. The Goonies.
18:09Slick shoes! Slick shoes, are you crazy? Data!
18:19Data!
18:21Gremlins actually paved the way because at that time I moved out of New York for like eight months,
18:26maybe a little longer. And I went to, you know, I went to meet Steven and then Steven offered me an
18:32office at Amblin when Amblin was just beginning. So at Amblin at that time, it was a magical time.
18:37Just about eight of us there. Kathy Kennedy, Frank Marshall, John Williams had an office.
18:43Robert Zemeckis had an office. And I had an office three doors down from Steven. So
18:47it was like working at a newspaper. I'd run to his office. We'd discuss things. And in those meetings,
18:53that's where Steven started to come up with the idea and the storyline for Goonies.
18:57And we'd start to talk about it. We'd look at his old hardcover EC comics. And there was a comic I
19:04remember called something The Goon Children. Look, if we keep going, someone's really going to get
19:09hurt. Maybe dead. Besides, we got to get to the police. Maybe Chunk already got to the police.
19:16Maybe Chunk is dead. Don't say that. Never say that. Goonies never say die.
19:21And the first draft of Goonies, ironically, which I have in my New York apartment, says The Goon
19:26Children. For some reason, we called it that. And then it changed to Goonies. But Steven started to
19:32talk about this story. I was taking copious notes. And then we decided to start writing it. So I was
19:38just three doors down. I'd write three or four pages, take them to Steven's office. He would make
19:43some corrections. And I would go back. And that's how the script came to be. And as a result of that,
19:47it was sort of my graduate school of filmmaking. I learned a lot about how to structure a film.
19:53I became a much better writer. And it sort of paved my way in terms of becoming a director by
19:58working with Steven on the Goonies script.
20:01Are you good?
20:08When Goonies was released, it was a moderate success and was fine. And suddenly it came out
20:14on VHS. And that's when it became this monster hit. Kids were watching it over and over and over,
20:22exchanging copies. So Goonies became this touchstone for a lot of kids. And I realized it's a much more
20:29complex movie than even I gave it credit for. There's something about Goonies that is so relatable
20:38to kids between the ages of like nine and 14. And it's managed to stay with those kids forever.
20:47But I do think it's a sense of wish fulfillment. These kids, they not only save their town in the
20:53process, but it's this wish fulfillment of having an adventure of their own. And I think that's why
20:58it connects with so many kids. Rent.
21:05Make yourself comfortable, Mark.
21:11Who wants to begin?
21:15Well, I'm...
21:17When I first saw Rent, I saw it twice the same week. I had never been moved
21:22that emotionally by a piece of theater, a musical theater. I was always a fan of musical theater,
21:28but that one knocked me out. And I realized after seeing it, boy, I would someday love to make a film
21:35out of this. So after Harry Potter, I was given the opportunity to be able to direct the adaptation,
21:41almost as intimidating as doing Harry Potter. There was a lot of pressure to not use the original cast
21:47of Rent and go with people like Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera at the time. But Rent was an
21:54emotional experience because this is the first time in history, probably the only time in history, where
21:59you're about to go into your opening night and the creator of the musical passes away. And you're taking
22:06that tragedy into this performance. No actor in history has had to deal with that. No group of actors. So they
22:12brought that to the stage every night. And that's something that's indefinable. You can't
22:17capture that on film with other actors, with other musical stars. So I was adamant about using as much
22:23of the original cast as I could. And that, you know, did not go well with some people. Some people
22:28thought they were too old for the roles. Some people felt the movie would have been more commercial with
22:32a more contemporary musical cast. But I felt that I wanted to capture what I saw on the stage on film.
22:39Adventures in Babysitter.
22:41I had a film teacher, Haig Mnugin, who taught at NYU. He taught Martin Scorsese and De Palma.
23:04And Haig passed away my senior year and was really instrumental in helping me form my career.
23:11And he would always say to me, you know, the best way to become a director is to become a writer.
23:16So that's really why I put so much effort into writing things like Gremlins and Goonies
23:22and young Sherlock Holmes is because I knew, Haig said to me, if films that you write are
23:27successful enough, they'll give you the opportunity to direct. So that's what I was sort of, that was
23:32my goal. So by the time Adventures in Babysitting came along, there were a lot of people who weren't
23:39willing to support me as a director. Some very, people who were very close to me just did not
23:44go there. Deborah Hill and Linda Obst were two producers who believed in me. They never should
23:50have taken a shot on me. I had one student film that was okay, but they said, we believe in you as a
23:56director for this film, Adventures in Babysitting. And I read the film and I realized,
24:01I could sort of put my own stamp on it because it felt, again, it felt grittier than what you
24:06would expect from a title like Adventures in Babysitting. We ended up shooting an R-rated
24:11version of Adventures in Babysitting and it was basically because of language. But at the very
24:16same time I was able, and I hired the cinematographer from 48 Hours, so you could tell what my influences were.
24:30I always think the movie, any movie will be better with a musical number. I mean,
24:34even The Godfather has a musical number. It's The Wedding, but it's a musical number.
24:38I'm obsessed with music and I'm obsessed with doing musical numbers. And the Babysitting Blues
24:45came out of this bizarre idea I had about these terribly unmusical kids getting stuck on a blues
24:55bar stage. It really did not fit into this movie. I had to construct the entire movie around that
25:02sequence. It was total joy shooting that sequence because we shot it very late in the film. We spent
25:08three days shooting it. I shot it like a concert documentary. And it really is the highlight of
25:14the film. And one of the interesting things about it is the two editors who worked on Adventures in
25:19Babysitting were overwhelmed with the amount of footage of The Babysitting Blues. We shot
25:25hundreds of thousands of feet. And so we had to bring in a special editor to cut The Babysitting Blues.
25:32And that editor, his name was Raja Gosnell, and he did such a phenomenal job that I kept
25:37him on as my editor through Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire. And he's now had a directing career of his own.
25:43And for me, it was the highlight of that film. I look back on that sequence and sort of,
25:50if I'm doing a musical number, I go back to that sequence and sort of not study how I did it,
25:54but take inspiration from how I did it. Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lightning Thief.
26:07Percy Jackson was an interesting adaptation because, I mean, to be quite honest, it taught me a lesson.
26:20I liked the books. I didn't love the books. And I put myself in a situation where I, for the first time,
26:28probably only time in my career, where I was approaching a project not as a full-fledged,
26:33adoring fan. So when I got into Harry Potter, I was a fan. I was a fanboy, first and foremost.
26:40When I got into years down the road, Thursday Murder Club, obsessive fan. When I got into Percy
26:46Jackson, I liked the books. They're fine, but I think I can make them better. Mistake. Huge mistake.
26:54I realized that by doing certain things that I was, I didn't realize it at the time, but after the movie
27:00came out, I realized I was alienating a good part of the audience who loved these books. And I felt
27:06badly about that because I, I changed certain elements of the books because I thought it would
27:11be, it would be more interesting to me as a filmmaker, quite honestly. I don't disagree with my choices,
27:16by the way. I like Logan Lerman's version. What can I say? I think Logan Lerman is one of the great
27:21actors and his time has yet to come in a weird way. I think he's going to do a lot of amazing work over
27:27the next decade. But I saw Logan in 310 to Yuma and I thought, oh my God, this kid is an amazing
27:35actor. I have to work with him. So to be honest, I based all of Percy Jackson. I changed everything
27:41so I could put Logan in the movie. And I think, I think he's great in the movie. And I think he's a
27:48great Percy Jackson. So there you go. The Thursday Murder Club.
27:54Dear God. It is a lot of blood. Would you care to join us to discuss things further?
28:01Who is us? I'm sorry. How rude of me. We're the Thursday Murder Club.
28:06So when I first read Thursday Murder Club, two things occurred to me. One is I love
28:11what Richard Osmond did with the characters. These are four very funny, edgy British characters,
28:18complex. The murder mystery was fine. It wasn't about making a murder mystery. For me,
28:24most murder mysteries that we've seen, even the great ones, are very cold and procedural. But I
28:28love the idea that these are real people and real people going through very complex emotions. The other
28:36thing that attracted me to the material was the opportunity to go back to the UK and my love of
28:42Britain and my love of all things British and be able to work with the caliber of actors I was able
28:48to work on in Harry Potter. So in Harry Potter, I had Maggie Smith and Richard Ayers and Alan Rickman. And
28:53now I had the opportunity to work with Helen Mirren and Sir Ben Kingsley and Pierce Brosnan and Celia
28:58Emory. People that are so professional and have done so much more work than so many other actors. And
29:05by that, I mean, they do theater, television, and film. In the year 2000, that was a rarity. Now,
29:12a lot more film actors are doing television, not as many doing theater, maybe Clooney, a couple other
29:19movie stars, but that you don't really, those areas don't cross over. In Britain, they do, which makes
29:24everybody in the UK better actors. So as a director, you get the opportunity. It doesn't make you lazy,
29:31but you get the opportunity to sort of step back and let them do their work. You don't interfere too
29:38much because as opposed to doing take after take with a kid who's never been in front of a camera
29:45before, you're dealing with the utmost professionals. And they give you three takes, each one varied,
29:50each one interesting on its own right. It just makes my work as a director much more enjoyable because I'm
29:57sitting back as a fan. Again, watching all of these great actors performing together,
30:03there's nothing better as a director. Joyce, what are you doing bringing a coffee machine?
30:07This isn't a village fake. This is serious business. Yes, of course, but good coffee means we can protest
30:13longer. Part of the reason for doing the film was this concept of, I saw with my grandparents,
30:18my own parents, that there's a sense of invisibility when you reach a certain age. You just sort of blend
30:25into the background. And I felt that it was important to show the vitality of someone who's
30:30getting older and how they can be sort of more vital and more important to society than someone
30:3740 years younger. I want these films to last. I want to have some sort of lasting quality with my
30:43films. None of us are naive enough to think that every film we make is going to change people's lives.
30:48But you hope that the film has, again, some lasting power, some longevity. You know,
30:54I've probably got about 20, 25 years left. So I plan on doing some more things. And so I don't tend
31:00to dwell on the past. If you dwell on the past, I feel that you really can fuck up the future,
31:08for lack of a better word. If you think about the past too much, you're dead in the water.
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