"Hi, this is Alan Parker... doing the commentary for The Life of David Gale." "I was first sent the script in September 2000." "Everybody was scrambling around trying to find their next movie... because there was going to be a strike of actors and writers in Hollywood." "Everybody was going crazy trying to find something to do... myself included." "And this script came to me." "It had been originally at Warner Brothers... where it was originally written in 1998." "It was a first screenplay written by Charles Randolph." "I guess it had been gathering dust on the shelf there at Warner Brothers." "I read it." "Nicolas Cage's company had developed it." "I knew Nicolas because I made Birdy with him... many years ago when he was a young man." "I went to meet with Nicolas and I said, "Can I have the script?"" "He didn't ever want to be in it." "He had two other films of his own that he was doing." "He was going to direct his own film." "He was pretty busy, so he agreed." "He gave me the script and I carried on with it." "The scene you just saw, Kate Winslet running, was shot in Texas." "This scene here was meant to be a news magazine in New York City." "Obviously the shot of New York was done in New York... but this whole news office was actually... a set that we did in Austin, Texas." "The actors that I cast..." "Many of the actors are local actors." "Cleo King, who you see here, who plays Bitsey's boss... was actually cast in Los Angeles." "I cast in Los Angeles, in New York and, obviously, in Austin... where actors came in from Dallas and Houston." "Many of the actors are..." "This is Cleo King here." "This whole news magazine set was actually an empty building... an empty office which was all dressed... by the art department." "Every single thing you see in it was brought in." "It was a completely empty room when we first came into it." "But it actually wasn't shot in New York." "It was shot in Austin." "Gale's going down." "Only Bitsey means only Bitsey." "When I got the script, I said to Nicolas:" ""Can I have it?" He gave me the script." "I went off to Universal and they agreed to make the film." "I'd responded to the script because it was a very intelligent screenplay." "The kind of scripts that come out of Hollywood these days... rarely are thoughtful or have a political heart... which this film obviously does." "It was written as a very exciting thriller." "It was the thriller aspect of it... which was attractive to Universal, to the studio." "They said they'd like to make it." "When you make a movie, there's three things a studio is interested in:" "One is how much did it cost... how much is it going to cost, rather." "What's the script?" "Who's in it?" "Increasingly these days, they are very concerned about who's in it." "Kate Winslet had got hold of a screenplay." "I didn't send it to her." "She got hold of it quite early and she kept phoning me saying:" ""I really want to do the film."" "She loved the script." "The studio was somewhat reluctant to begin with." "I think they saw Kate as the English rose in corsets... which is a lot of the parts that she has played." "She is a remarkable actress." "She was nominated for an Academy Award twice before she was 20... which is pretty extraordinary." "And, of course, she did play an American in Titanic... which was a reasonably successful film." "The job wasn't to persuade the studio that she was a great actress... it's obvious that she is... but that she could do an American accent." "She worked very hard with a dialect coach for many months... for her accent to be as good as it is." "I think it's very good." "Lee Ritchey is one of the local actors that I found locally... who plays the editor." "All of this was shot in Austin, Texas." "Most of the movie was made in Austin, Texas... or in the surrounding areas." " Not an intern." "I always work alone." " Not this time, Bitsey." "I'm not baby-sitting." "When you go to a place like Austin, or indeed any location... you try and absorb it." "I'd gone and spent many months looking for locations." "Most of the locations were actually in Austin or in the surrounding area... except for the Walls Huntsville Prison... and the exterior of Ellis, which we'll come to later." "Ellis Prison." "You try and absorb the place... because the place becomes another character in the film... and to try and be as authentic and real as possible." "Gabriel Mann, who plays Zack, was cast in Los Angeles." "I must have seen hundreds and hundreds of young actors for this particular part." "Some very famous and some not so famous." "I always liked his quality." "He has a wonderful, naive, ingenious quality about him... as he plays this part." "Zack is a character who is far too smart for his own good." "Even though he is kind of a smart ass, there's always a likeable quality to him... which I think is testament to how Gabe Mann plays the part." "Shouldn't it smell if it's overheating?" "I'm shooting this scene in the middle of the night... on a very busy highway." "It was pretty hairy." "All of us were in the following car." "The camera in front of this particular vehicle." "It's always difficult doing the interior of car scenes... particularly if you are on a real highway." "That was us in the middle of all that." "It was not easy to do." "It's a little easier when you get onto the quiet stretches of the road." "This was all shot just outside Austin... although in the film they're meant to be coming towards Huntsville." "For practical reasons... you try and make all of your locations as close to your base as possible." "Our base was at the old private airfield in Austin... which had been made into a de facto film studio." "Our offices were in the old control tower of the old airport." "All of our sets, which I will come to later, were all built in the disused hangars." "The city of Austin... had decided to make this film facility." "It's pretty terrific." "For the facility that it is... it's almost as good as any film studio I've been in." "It's great to find something in the middle of Texas." "The cowboy in the film is Dusty, who is played by Matt Craven... an actor whom I had met in Los Angeles." "Matt is an extraordinary actor... with an extraordinary face, and an absolute gentleman." "Terrific to work with." "Here, we hear slightly... the Turandot Puccini music... which figures very importantly throughout the film... and obviously in the conclusive moments, which we will see later." "Most of these scenes were shot... in the small towns that surround Austin." "They're almost like a back lot for a filmmaker... in that there are lots of empty buildings and empty streets... deserted as many of these small towns are, typical of rural America." "This particular scene... was done twice, believe it or not." "Originally, when we started this scene... we were in a place called Jim's Diner and we were hit by a tornado." "As the tornado was getting closer and closer towards us... everything went as black as night." "All the lights and everything started bouncing down the highway." "We were surrounded on three sides by glass." "It was a much bigger diner than this one where we reshot it." "I had to abandon filming for that day... and we all huddled in the kitchen, 50 of us." "We put Kate and her baby... into the food storage area for extra safety... while the tornado went overhead." "Once it had blown past us then we were able to limp back to the hotel." "But it meant that we had to abandon all the filming that I did there." "So I had to start from scratch again to redo this particular scene... that you are seeing here, which I then shot in a much smaller diner." "Thankfully the weather was a lot kinder the day we redid this." "In a funny kind of way, I'm quite happy to have redone it." "I think sometimes when you've done something once... it's always hard to redo it." "But it came out a lot better than how we were doing it the first time." "Again, in our story, we're on our way to Ellis Prison." "Ellis Prison was where death row was until 1999." "The death row is now actually at a prison called Polunsky." "It was originally called Terrell, but the name was changed... because Mr. Terrell didn't like his name being associated with death row." "Here we come into the real prison." "This is actually Ellis Prison." "This is not a set." "This is the real place." "Everyone at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice... was extraordinarily helpful to us." "We, obviously, were allowed only outside... because this is a maximum-security prison." "The exterior that you saw was the real prison." "These inner sequence scenes were all built... as sets at our de facto studio." "As helpful as the prison service was... they weren't going to allow 150 film crew inside their maximum-security prison." "This really is an illusion here." "We're supposedly coming into the prison that you saw the wide shot of earlier... but this was the beginnings of our set." "I had gone to Ellis during my preparation." "All of this set is very accurate... down to the signs and photographs which are all very close... to what I found at Ellis." "We made Ellis into death row... even though death row now is at Polunsky, which is a very modern prison." "Ellis was the prison in 1999." "When Charles Randolph wrote the script in '98, Ellis was the prison." "So we sort of set it then, even though we were aware... that death row has now moved to a much more modern prison." "I wanted it to be Ellis... because Ellis is cinematically slightly more interesting... than the Polunsky prison because that's a very high-tech prison." "It's very modern." "It doesn't have the feel and smell of a prison anymore... although it is extraordinarily effective." "One of the things that you always find when you get into prisons... is the extraordinary amount of identification and security that you have to go through." "I put all these little things into the original script... because of having gone through this many times myself... going to the real Ellis Prison." "I was fortunate to go to the Ellis Prison." "I even had lunch with the inmates, which was quite an experience." "The PR man here, played by Jim Beaver... is based on a similar PR gentleman... at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice." "He was incredibly helpful to us." "A very affable, avuncular gentleman." "A striking thing about the Texas Department of Criminal Justice... with regards to their capital punishment and administering of the executions... is how incredibly open they all are." "They feel that it's the law of Texas." "Whilst it's the law of Texas, they're doing their job." "They were extraordinarily helpful and kind... in the same way that Jim is playing this part." "It was based on a real PR gentleman... at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice." "We're still in our set here." "We come across into the very eccentric Japanese garden... which was something that I had seen at Ellis... which I thought was rather eccentric... for the inside of a maximum-security prison." "It's one of those curiosities you come across and you put into a film." "Here we are." "This is our visitation area right here." "All yours, Mr. Belyeu." "That's it for me." "You folks have a safe visit." " Thank you." " 'Bye now." "This is all part of our set, the visitation area." "It's extraordinarily accurate to the original." "The one that's actually in the prison." "Not only does it look exactly like the original prison... it's actually made of the same material." "The production designer, Geoffrey Kirkland, made it of bulletproof glass and solid steel." "He made it so well, in fact, that I couldn't get inside to talk to Kevin." "And not only that... it was incredibly difficult for the cameramen to get their lights and everything in." "Sometimes, if you don't make it out of the real material, it looks funny." "Steel always has to be made of steel." "This is about as real as it could possibly be." "Kevin's first appearance here, obviously." "I was in China at the Shanghai Film Festival... when Kevin phoned me to say he wanted to do the part... which was wonderful for me." "I had obviously been a great fan." "He's a consummate actor." "The great thing about Kevin is that apart from being an extraordinary gentleman... which makes it a lot easier to work with, he has a quality about him which is... he is not afraid to show the flaws and imperfections in a character." "Leon Rippy here plays the lawyer, Belyeu." "He doesn't have the normal actor looks, which I like." "He's based on a very similar kind of lawyer." "He's a very easy gentleman to work with." "Kevin has the ability... to twist those imperfections and flaws in a character... and take them by the scruff of the neck and throw them back differently... so that the character can still be noble and still be sympathetic." "The way the film was shot was for the first six weeks... we did all of Kevin and Laura Linney's story... which is the back-story in our film." "For the last six weeks... it was Kate Winslet and Gabriel Mann's part... which is the present-day, thriller aspect of the film." "Therefore, there was a slight overlap of five days... which was when we did these interviews... which were all done one after the other... although they're all interspersed within the film." "One of the great difficulties Kate had is that..." "What we're about to see is the flashbacks." "Kate, the extraordinary actress that she is... has to imagine everything that you, the audience, have seen." "Even though she was doing the scenes one after the other... and therefore her character arc listening to this man's story... she had to imagine in her head through those five days of filming... which, as Kevin always says, was a testament... to her ability to imagine things... that she wasn't even present at when they were being filmed." "Kevin and I were there for everything, so it was kind of easier for us." "I should tell you how I became Head of Philosophy... at the University of Austin." "Come on, think." "I want you to reach back..." "We filmed these sequences... at a very large university in Austin... which I'm not allowed to mention." "That was the agreement we had with the university." "It's very large and in our film it's called the University of Austin... which, obviously, is fictional." "These were all real students." "The great thing about doing this scene was that..." "Obviously, as you do with filming, you shoot it many times." "Kevin was great with the kids." "He kept them enthralled throughout the whole lecture." "Where Kevin really excels is he's very comfortable with his celebrity." "He was fantastic with the kids." "Many actors, when they finish their scenes, or whatever the day's work be... put a baseball cap over their heads, jump into their limo and disappear." "Kevin's not like that." "He'll wade into the crowd and sign autographs." "He's very comfortable with who he is." "Rhona Mitra, who plays the character Berlin..." "She is actually English." "I'd cast her in London." "I had done a great deal of casting in Los Angeles and New York for this part." "And then I thought Rhona would be very good for it." "The actual lecture that's happening here..." "I think it's worth mentioning Charles Randolph, the screenwriter." "As I said, it was his very first script that he'd ever written." "He was not really a Hollywood animal." "He comes from the world of academia." "He was a professor of philosophy, similar to the character Gale... at a university in Vienna." "I think that the brilliance of his screenplay... is that he can promulgate the ethical importance of Lacan... yet still keep an audience on the edge of their seat for two hours." "It's quite an achievement." "Laura Linney plays Constance." "I had been a fan of Laura's for a long time." "She's primarily a theatre actor in New York." "She is an extraordinarily generous person." "This particular scene was interesting." "I remember that..." "I had choreographed it for Rhona to sit down." "I don't think she was very comfortable sitting down." "But there was a reason for that, to anchor her in that position." "Sometimes actors disagree with what you're doing and other times... they cotton on to what you're on about." "I remember doing this scene." "I wanted to keep it as simple as possible and let the words do the work." "Very rarely do you get a screenplay... that's written with as much intelligence as this one." "So it's a testament to Charles Randolph." "The TA's transcribed the Governor's..." "This is the first scene we see with Laura, although it wasn't the first thing we shot." "All of this was done on location at the university." "It's a mixture of different things." "For anyone who is interested, this is a Steadicam shot... which allows you to film on the move, very comfortably." "Then we go outside." "All these students were actual students from the university, of course." "We continue the Steadicam movement." "It allows you to get very fluid movements in dialogue." "It's much used now in television... because it's actually quite expedient." "It's a lot easier to set up and track than a dolly." "I'm walking away." "10:00 a.m." " Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!" " Bushy-tailed!" "This sequence was all done in a real house." "The exterior of the house is different to the interior, in actual fact." "This little boy, Noah Truesdale..." "I had cast locally." "What I tend to do is, whenever I get to a location..." "I hold open calls for all parts... where thousands of local people come in." "I try to read with as many as possible and I gradually narrow it down." "That way you get an authenticity to the place... because the people who are coming in are from that area." "When you're casting kids, it's very hard." "You can never see enough of them." "So that was a separate exercise... we did in a very large football stadium... and narrowed it down to Noah." "I had rehearsed with him a lot." "Working with kids is never easy." "It always helps when you get actors that are good with kids... because you have to be very gentle." "In the end, the director's job is to create an environment... where everyone can be at their best and encourage the best out of the actors." "The party sequence was shot... in a very nice house in the suburbs of Austin." "It was shot over a couple of nights." "Here you see the two actors that I had cast locally." "Chuck Cureau on the right and Sean Hennigan on the left." "This is the faithful Steadicam, of course... trying to do things in one, which always... helps with regards to the fluidity of your shots." "It also helps when you've got terrific actors that you can rely upon... so you don't have to cut between it." "Again we have a Steadicam coming back into the kitchen." "It's not easy to get through that door when there's 10 of us in front of them." "The music I chose there, Leonard Cohen, The Future... seemed, to me, relevant to the faculty party... at this particular period in time." "We're back a little in time, with regards to our story... we're in the back-story at the moment." "Aren't we so fucking clever." "Berlin, the character here, played by Rhona..." "We're laying the seeds of his demise." "You see now, already, he's beginning to drink too much." "We've laid the seeds that his wife's having an affair." "His life is starting to fall apart, somewhat." "This music is Toni Price, who is a fantastic singer... whose work I didn't know until I went to Austin." "She's a local Austin singer." "That person you just saw there was the film director." "My good self, playing the neighbour stealing the food." "I try to make an appearance, as an homage to Hitchcock, I guess." "It's also a way of humiliating myself in front of the crew... which usually happens in the middle of the night... when you're shooting a scene such as this." "These limericks are a part of the original screenplay." "We did more limericks actually, but I didn't use all of them." "I'm trying to create the atmosphere... as David Gale here, getting drunker and drunker... getting ready for the event which is pivotal... with regards to his descent... and his spiral downwards with regards to his life falling apart... which then leads to making very serious decisions about what his life means... and what his political beliefs are." "We're trying different music here." "This is a Latin piece, very relevant to the area in Austin." "I try and absorb myself in all the music of the area when I go there." "It's pretty typical of what's being played in Austin." "In any one moment, you can hear 50 different kinds of music." "It's not the cliché of country and western everywhere." "This scene is obviously... the beginnings of all of his problems." "This particular scene was filmed on a set." "We had to do that because it had to be a very controlled environment." "The most difficult thing of all is shooting in tiny areas." "So this was a set." "It's always difficult when you're doing sex scenes in that..." "Most importantly... it's my job to make the actors as comfortable as possible." "When you're doing these things you try and minimise the crew... so that there's few people just gawking, but in the end... there's a camera there and it has to be operated." "It has to have assistants to make sure it's in focus... particularly like this shot." "The way in which she brings her hand up." "I think it's quite a nice moment." "...contemplate." "Or you can put your mouth on my body." "Don't reject me." "Please." "The intercutting... was done afterwards." "It was always meant to be intercut... in order to build the frenzy of the whole sexual situation... as she is encouraging him... to do something that probably he shouldn't have done." "It's a terrible mistake, but this mistake is something... that'll be relevant for the rest of our story, and the rest of his life." "When you're doing these kind of scenes... it's amazing how unsexy it is when you are shooting it... because in the end, all I'm ever worried about is:" ""Have I got the right shot?" "Is it this, or that?"" "It's very rarely sexually titillating for a crew." "They stand around, eating their bacon rolls, yawning at what they're looking at." "In the end it's quite effective and powerful." "Harder." "It's cut very well, this whole sequence." "I should mention Gerry Hambling, who's my editor... who's cut every film I ever did." "It's rather unusual in that it's all cut on film." "It's cut on a Moviola." "Michael Kahn, Steven Spielberg's editor, is the only other one cutting on film." "Gerry Hambling is retiring, so Michael Kahn is the last one cutting on film." "It's not going to work." "We shot this sequence in a real coffee bar... which is very close to the university." "It's a place where students hang out." "I like to have a combination of real places." "Whenever possible, you shoot in a real place." "You don't want to build everything." "You build things when it's convenient." "Even simple scenes like this are quite difficult to do." "There was a lot of room for us to manoeuvre so it wasn't difficult to shoot it." "There are 28 trucks out in the street which causes havoc in the local community." "That's filmmaking for you." "I think Laura is very good in this scene." "This scene is important because... it shows very obviously that he's made a terrible mistake... which horrifies Constance... who within our story is always the one who's that much more committed... and that much more conscientious about the cause... working as they both do for the organisation DeathWatch." "The deathwatch organisation is very similar to many organisations... of people who are active for the abolition of the death penalty." "It touches upon the very heart of the film... which has to do with proof of innocence." "That is, if they had proof that an innocent could actually..." "If they could prove that an innocent had been executed... then that would be hugely important for their cause." "Innocence is the one area that unites... both the for and against argument with regards to the death penalty." "These sequences were actually..." "All of this debate... was shot in a real television studio." "The idea was to replicate similar programmes... that we see everywhere, across every channel in the United States... these kind of debates." "The Governor of Texas, obviously..." "People have often said to me, "Is it George W.?"" "There are similarities between the views of this fictional character... in that he's very much for the death penalty." "And George W. Bush was a great proponent for the death penalty... authorising as he did, whilst Governor of Texas, 146 executions." "More executions than any other governor in history." "So, obviously, the views of this particular character... are close to those of Governor Bush." "When the script was originally written, he was the sitting governor." "Our film is fiction, so that's where the similarities end." "People often ask me if I should've cast a George W. Bush look-alike... which would have probably been too cheap a shot." "Anyway, I couldn't find anybody." "I particularly liked the writing in this scene." "I think that it's pretty close to how it's written." "Now and again, Kevin will slightly improvise... although he's the kind of actor who does stay close to the text." "When you have actors who improvise too much... you can, as they say, improve it to death." "I'm always wary if we get too far away from the written word." "If the words are good, and they are in this particular screenplay... then you should keep close to them." "If an actor has something to contribute which is not there... then it's my job to see that that's going to be good for a scene." "Sometimes you can improvise too much left or right of the actual lines... to be still relevant." "This scene plays out pretty well." "Accurately, as it was written." "The whole proposition... to prove that an innocent had been executed, absolute proof..." "The Governor has caught him out." "The one look really sows the seeds for everything that's about to follow." "Constance obviously displeased... with his ego getting in the way of their political beliefs." "This scene was shot close to the recording studio... and also close to the campus of the particular university where we filmed." "Again, the faithful Steadicam shot." "...is smarter than the powers that be." "Work without an audience." "Try squeezing money from the donor list." "Have you licked a single mail-out envelope?" " Mr. Gale?" " The Governor went that way." "Ramirez." "Austin Police." "This is Officer Hasermann." "Is debating the Governor a crime now?" "No, sir." "Rape is." "I should put in a word for the transitions, which I've already talked about before." "With my story going back and forth from the back-story to the present story..." "I needed a transitional device." "We didn't want to do the old..." "In the old days, you would've done a ripple dissolve." "We always had this notion of the spinning camera... which was done with a camera on a gyro each time we did these transitions." "At a later date, during the editing..." "I experimented with the subliminal words which are relevant to our story." "The key words, emotive words." "They're subliminally cut into the spinning of the camera." "The percussion music came first... and then we cut to that music... in order to get this sharp staccato transition." "Just a way of trying to find an original way to go from front-story to back-story." "Can you imagine his wife letting him stew in jail..." "Here we are at Sam's Bar-B-Que... which is a real place and the best barbeque in Austin, they say." "This scene is important with regards to..." "Kate's character arc." "At the beginning... she's absolutely convinced that Gale is guilty." "Zack has his doubts, very clearly... that Bitsey is not buying anything... other than the fact that he's guilty." "I also sow the seeds of the character, Dusty... who we find, we wipe the frame here... and find Dusty's truck." "We hear again the aria from Turandot... which will feature greatly at the end of our movie." "Here, we're on day two." "This was shot right in the middle of Austin, Texas." "It's Constance's house." "When we first see it in the film... it's in its present-day incarnation as a death-house museum... run by this strange Goth Girl, Nico." "Rain machines here, of course." "I love to work in the rain." "Anyone who's seen Angela's Ashes probably thinks there was too much rain." "It helps the atmosphere of this particular scene." "The actress here is Melissa McCarthy, who I had cast in Los Angeles." "Constance's house..." "We had the real house, which is what you see here." "We also had replicated it as a set... which we built in the aircraft hangars... which became our film studio, as I mentioned earlier." "Geoffrey Kirkland is my production designer on this one." "Geoffrey has done many films with me... right back to my first film Bugsy Malone, which we did in 1975." "I've worked with him for many years." "As I look at this scene, I think of the cinematography of the film." "Michael Seresin is the cinematographer of this particular film." "Like Geoffrey, he's worked with me for over 30 years." "The great thing about working with people over a long period of time... is that they are very good at what they do, or I wouldn't be working with them." "And they're in tune with how I film." "It makes the actual mechanics of what we do that much easier because the dialogue is..." "You have the rapport that any film director has... with a cinematographer or production designer." "It's very important because it's difficult if you work with new people each time." "It can sometimes lead to interesting things." "It means that I'm forever having to explain what it is I want to do." "With people that you've worked with a long time, over 30 years... the dialogue becomes minimal... because you absolutely are in tune with one another." "One's aesthetic tastes are similar... and so I completely trust them and they..." "I guess, trust that what I'm doing is correct, too." "This is shot... inside a set... and therefore easier to control with regards to light, etc." "Not all the scenes inside the kitchen and the living room were set." "Often, if we went from inside to outside, it helped being in the real place." "Here we are back at Sam's Bar-B-Que, in the rain with the rain machines." "The rain is just to give an atmosphere... particularly when you've got a scene which is an expository scene... one that tries to explain things... where you want to take the edge off the information that's being given." "There's always that fine balance." "We have to lay the seeds." "Everything fits with regards to this story." "And then, by the same token... you still want to go for realism and naturalism." "You want everything to be as real as possible." "Off the record." "Here they are back in the visitation room of our prison... and back into our set, courtesy of Geoffrey Kirkland... made of solid steel and bulletproof glass." "So much so that Kevin was completely trapped within." "I could only talk to him through the grill at the bottom of the screen." "It looks pretty real, however hard it was to film in." "We can see Kate starting to think differently about this man." "Kevin has the hard job here... in that he has to be convincing to her." "He's lying to her throughout, which is quite difficult to pull off... which is the dramatic choice that Kevin made." " Are we back on the record?" " Yes." "The tripod had no fingerprints on it." "That means somebody brought it..." "I suppose I was attracted to this screenplay at first... because it's about something important, that I care a lot about... with regards to capital punishment." "It's the polemical heart of the film." "It's not a political diatribe." "It's a thriller and let's not be pretentious about this." "This film got made because it is a very exciting thriller." "But it is about something very important." "I, as a filmmaker, am very much against the death penalty." "But I hope it's not a diatribe." "It's meant to be balanced." "It's meant to be ambiguous." "In the end, most people's views are..." "It's about 50-50." "Those who are for the death penalty and those who are against it." "Half my audience is not necessarily agreeing with what I've got to say... but I'm of the opinion that film can affect debate." "It won't change people's minds... but to be provocative is my job as a filmmaker." "Hopefully people will discuss the film afterwards." "All right, you go get Cloud Dog." "Here we see another aspect... to David Gale's descent downwards." "Elizabeth Gast, who plays David's wife, I had cast locally in Austin." "This was shot in Austin." "After a while, crocodile." " Take it easy, Japa-nee-zee." " Okey-dokey, artichokey." "His wife is leaving him." "Seeds of which we had sown before." "To get an email is the new modern way to be told you're being dumped." "Losing his son is hugely important to what happens to Gale... and the decisions that he ultimately makes." "The music of our score was written by Jake Parker." "I've been very fortunate in that I was able to work with my two sons..." "Jake Parker and Alex Parker, who did the score for the film." "Jake is classically trained and did all the orchestral, emotional pieces." "Alex did the more contemporary, rhythmic pieces... which were relevant to the thriller aspect of the film." "They came together for a number of cues quite effectively." "It was done organically." "They did the music exactly as I was cutting the film." "Normally you finish your film and you hand it over to the composer... and the composer just does his or her thing." "On this particular film... the music was an intrinsic part of the editing process... which was made possible, I suppose... because I was able to work with my sons." "We got through the film without arguing, which was a miracle." "I'm very proud of the work they did." "This scene was shot, actually... in the real university in Austin." "The corridors we had seen earlier, we had to echo that." "This is the beginnings... of his more drastic spiral downwards with regards to what's happening in his life." "His drinking is becoming more and more open... and more of a problem for him as his life starts to fall apart." "This swimming pool was an image that..." "I thought was very powerful." "We didn't invent it." "I went to this apartment complex." "The pool had been filled in, probably for safety reasons." "I thought it was an extraordinary image... to find, it's something that you could never invent, quite frankly." "The fact that the kids no longer have a pool... but they still enjoy the mud... was something that I actually saw... and then tried to replicate it for the film." "Here Gale is desperately trying to get in contact with his wife... and getting nowhere." "This is the mud I was telling you about." "This is an extraordinary image... quite eccentric and bizarre." "This restaurant scene was shot right in the middle of Austin." "I particularly like this actor, Cliff Stephens, who I had cast locally." "I think he does a good job in this scene playing the university president... telling Gale that even though he might be innocent... the rape charge is going to be hard for him to shake off." "Even though he had never been found guilty of that particular charge." "The charges were dropped suddenly." "But with regards to the whole concept... of political correctness... he's someone that could never do his job." "His job was very much a part of who he was as a person:" "A charismatic professor." "If you're a professor of philosophy..." "If you're interested in philosophy at all... teaching is the only place where you can be a philosopher... so to take that away from someone who's as intellectually bright as Gale is... is taking away a huge chunk of who that person is." "This was shot on 6th Street, right in the middle of Austin." "Actually amongst some extras, but a lot of real people." "It was shot with a Steadicam... and we wanted to grab it, so we did it with a very small crew." "A lot of people thought that it was actually Kevin Spacey... completely tanked up, walking along the street." "They were quite surprised to see him because we did it almost for real." "The actual scene is hugely important... not just to see his spiral downwards... but from a philosophical point of view... it's about the Socratic sacrifice." "A man who sacrifices his life for his ideals... which absolutely is at the heart... of what the character ultimately does within the film." "So although it's a drunken rant... it actually is hugely important to everything that the film is about." "Well, minae." "That's plural." "Minae." "$30!" "This was actually the last thing that Kevin shot." "It was his very last scene." "It was done very late at night." "After the scene we went to the bar next door to say goodbye to Kevin." "...who was also a prissy dresser." "Here we are back in the pool, full of mud and now full of rain and water." "As we see..." "David Gale spiralling downwards, his life falling apart." "Drinking more, not able to get through to his kid." "The fish tank is an echo of what went before." "It being the only thing he has to remind him of his previous life and home." "Without a successful completion of an alcohol..." "This bar scene was shot on 6th Street." "6th Street being the main music street in Austin." "More music goes on here than I've seen anywhere in my life, including New Orleans." "Every bar has some kind of live music and it's all different kinds of music." "This particular bar is right in the middle of 6th Street." "Obviously we shot during the day here." "As we see David obviously at rock-bottom... and his lawyer friend, Belyeu, telling him to pull himself together... to get his act together." "That's a whole different kettle of crawdads." "You want to see Jamie again?" " Then you get your life together." " I'm fine." "Pronto." "This is the Alcoholics Anonymous scene." "David knows that he's got to pull himself together." "This was shot just outside Austin, in a small town called Taylor." "Taylor was a small town where I filmed... a lot of the scenes in the film." "It's very typical of small-town America... kind of half empty, which made it very useful to film in." "This is the Radio Shed executive." "As you notice, it's Radio Shed and not a similar name... for obvious reasons." "The actual place..." "The actor here is Chris Drewy, who I'd cast locally." "Here we are in Constance's house... in its incarnation as her house... and not the hideous version that Goth Girl turns it into." "Remembering that Constance is also... a university professor of poetry... although we didn't really figure in our story... but it was important for Laura to feel who she was... and who her character was with regards to her sensitivities." "Kevin here, humiliated... trying to get his act together... and cleaning up with regards to his drinking." "Welcome back." "Thanks." " You look good." " I feel good." "Laura plays the part of Constance." "She did a lot of work to understand the kind of character she plays." "She met with similar university teachers... who are also activists against the death penalty." "Where did you get that bruise?" "Just doing chores." "Is your cowboy getting rough with you?" "There he is." "This is in the real Constance house." "The garden takes a very different turn... when it's Goth Girl's house." "They were filmed very close together, just a couple of weeks apart." "Constance's back porch becomes quite important... for one of the most important scenes in the film." "...thinks-she's" " Roosevelt's- bathrobe... but I mean stark-raving, screws-loose, in-the-belfry insane!" "Seventeen." "Seventeen is very important." "The execution of juveniles... which is anybody who is above 17 when they actually committed the crime." "Texas is one of the very few states that does that." "Jo Edna is the name I gave to the babysitter... that we'd seen earlier in the house looking after his kid." "Jo Edna happens to be also the name of... one of the casting directors in the film." "A rather unusual name, so I gave it to the babysitter... so we could recognise it." "This is the deathwatch interior." "All of this was shot in a small town called Taylor... just outside Austin." "This was an empty shop... which was dressed by Geoffrey Kirkland and Jennifer Williams... to be the deathwatch office." "...maybe some cable." "Cable's good." "Listen, I need to run." "I agree the first press release should focus on the woman's youth." "At this moment, we have some hope that he will be okay." "But the humiliation that happens in this scene... sets him once again on his downward spiral." " No." " Good." "Keep it that way." "His relationship with DeathWatch is over." "Last thing we need is this rape thing coming back to bite us." "These guys don't stay on the wagon for long." "I'm serious, Constance." "Ban him from the premises." "I realise the two of you..." "The exterior here was shot, again, in Taylor... just outside Austin." "This music cue is used a lot through the film." "It's actually one of the very few cues that..." "Alex and Jake did together." "It obviously has this rhythmic pad... which Alex did and then..." "Jake laid his cello motif on top of it." "It adds to the sombre feel of what's happening right now... as Gale is losing it." "He finally gets through to his kid, but the phone is taken away from the kid." "Don't hang up the phone!" "God damn it!" "These kind of scenes are always tough to do... whenever you rip something apart like this, this is all for real... and then, of course, he does cut his hand... which is hard to act and must have hurt a lot." "That's when you trust the good actors." "Here we see Laura, who with regards... to the development of her character... she's getting sicker and sicker, and we're aware of this... in a very subtle way." "Probably we're aware of it before Gale himself is aware of it." "She walks up and finds him there in a sorry state... having been drinking all night." "He's clutching, of course, the kid's sheep... which is called Cloud Dog... which we'd seen earlier with regards to how important it was to the kid." "It's his one contact with... the memory of his child." "And this furry animal... figures quite importantly at the end of the movie." "Never easy to play drunk. when you're delivering quite a complicated speech." "Again, thanks to Charles Randolph, rather elegantly written." "Constance is about to collapse." "Not that he'd notice at this moment in time." "Ergo, they never really gave him business... unless absolutely desperate." "That's why." "And then they changed his name." "Your mail is blowing." "Oh, shit." "This is one continuous Steadicam shot through 180 degrees." "We filmed in a disused mental hospital which we obviously dressed for the scene." " Please." "Is there a doctor?" " Wait here." " I have to go with her!" " Hold up, Professor!" "The hospital orderly is played by Chris Warner... who I cast locally, and he also helped us with the casting." "Now go wait." "Again the camera pans around, all one continuous shot." "Here Gale finds out the seriousness of Constance's illness." "The doctor here is played by Cindy Michelle, another local actor." "I must say I was very fortunate in Austin." "Because it has a very... vibrant film industry... there are lots of excellent local actors." "And I was very fortunate." "There aren't many places that you could go outside the major centres and... have such an incredible catchment of really good actors." "You didn't know?" "It helps because there is also an authenticity and... a freshness when you see... actors playing parts such as this, that you aren't overly familiar with." "We go through the transition sequence again... to seeing Gale obviously... very upset by Constance's illness." "Important for..." "Again I'll say..." "Kevin's got the hard part because he's obviously completely distressed." "I think it's also worth saying that..." "Kate is reacting to his pain." "And obviously her character arc is moving considerably... towards being sympathetic to what he has to say." "Although he's deeply emotional and truthful... because obviously he cared a great deal for Constance... you have to keep reminding yourself that he's not entirely telling the truth... to Bitsey." "Here we are outside the real Ellis Prison." "Those were actually real prisoners you just saw there, playing ball." "We were allowed to be in this area." "Obviously, as I said, it's a maximum-security prison." "So beyond that fence there... was when our set kicked in when we first saw those scenes." "Seriously fucked up the penalty phase." "Once again the faithful Steadicam here." "Not always the best thing to use because... the difficulty is when you come to rest and you don't want any movement." "So you have to have a pretty good..." "Steadicam operator with a very stiff back to make it work." "We pick up the payola money in Houston tonight." " Houston?" " That's what the head office said." " Overheat light came on twice..." " Come on." "You'll notice it's The Randolph Motel." "Our homage to our screenwriter." "This is shot close to Taylor, where a great deal of our filming was done." "Here we are with the rain machines working again." "Extremely uncomfortable for the actors, not to mention the director and the crew." "Oh, man, I never knew $1 million could weigh so much." " $500,000." " It's still heavy." "These kinds of scenes are the hardest for the sound man because... they have radio mikes but the sound of the rain machines... is much heavier than real rain." "So the moment it hits roofs and things, it's a nightmare for the sound man." "Excuse me?" "You want to come in?" "This is a lighter moment." "I would describe it as the fact that he thinks she might... be at all romantically involved with him is beyond her comprehension." "And probably the audience's, too." "Zack being Zack, he still gives it a try." "Look." "Here they discover the tape." "The tape on the door, and the tape hanging from the ceiling." "Wait." " What is that?" " I don't know." "Once again the cello motif is there... but obviously the higher strings are helping to... punctuate the drama of the situation." "This is not good." "Although we were in the real motel just previously... this was actually shot two weeks after the scene you just saw." "This was actually shot in our set." "All of this motel complex was a set." " Bitsey!" " What?" "It always amuses me every time I've seen screenings of the film... how the audience jumps in the air at that moment." "Quite rewarding." "Here we're back into the real rain machines and the real motel... all of which was shot prior to shooting these interiors... which, as I said, were done much later." "All the keys are different." "She and her husband have masters." "These kind of scenes are always difficult in that... this was the first time, really, that... they'd seen a hint of the videotape that we're about to see." "I think that the video of Constance, which we're about to see... was probably singly the most difficult thing that we had to do." "It was very harrowing, obviously, for Laura as an actress." "Not only the discomfort of having the bag on her head but... that's not a body double, that's actually Laura." "The discomfort of being naked is one thing... and the discomfort of having that bag on your head, which is done almost for real." "So it was quite dangerous to do." "This was very disturbing for all of us when we actually shot it." "It was obviously done with great care and with regards to safety... but one of the hardest things I've ever done." "This scene originally was a little longer than we just saw... but it was so tough to take that I cut it down to the minimum." "Here we are now, back into the real motel." "We're no longer in the set itself." "This is one of our main themes that you hear... which is called Almost Martyrs, the name of the cue." "It's the cue we use through the film." "All the orchestral pieces were recorded at Abbey Road Studios." "This diner was right opposite the university, right in the middle of Austin." "I had originally more interviews." "You saw the girl being interviewed there." "I was going to have more interviews... but I didn't put them into the final cut in the end." "I thought that I should get into this scene quicker." "There's a great deal of exposition and theory coming out within this scene." "Originally I had an idea that there would be some right-wing threat... that could give us another thread to the story." "But it sort of unbalanced things and there's latticing." "I'll explain that." "This scene was the very first scene that Kate shot when she first arrived." "One of the great difficulties when you're making a film... is that often you're shooting out of sequence." "It's tough on the actors." "It's tough on the director, because in the end... you have to hold the whole movie together in your head as you're making it... tiny piece by tiny piece." "This sequence was shot in an area... outside of Austin." "A couple of different times we did this... although it was a continuous sequence... as often with these kind of sequences... they're done piece by piece on different days." "You're always crossing your fingers that your weather is going to match." "Here we are in Austin... the capitol building you see at the end of the street... in Belyeu's office, which is shot pretty well... close to the capitol, just as the wide shot indicated." " I couldn't sleep afterwards." " I understand." "I tell folks I'm no more afraid of the Grim Reaper..." "Leon Rippy, the actor who plays Belyeu, is an extraordinarily nice man... an absolute delight for a director to work with." "He has a great face, and those teeth are something else." "He must be the only actor in Hollywood who didn't get his teeth fixed." "But it was a good move on his part." "That's why he gets all the roles he does, because his teeth are not immaculate." "This ain't my first rodeo, Miss Bloom." "This, obviously, was a set built into an empty building." "It looks like it's been there forever but, of course, it's a complete set." "Again, beautifully dressed by Jennifer Williams." "You've been fraternizing with the condemned." "Leon Rippy, playing the part of Belyeu... he has the same difficulty playing the part as Kevin does... in that we're never quite sure if this guy is legit or not." "At the end of the movie we find out that he's actually in on everything." "For a long while we wanted to give the impression that perhaps... if there was a villain of the piece then it might well be him." "He certainly appears to be an incompetent lawyer... and yet suspiciously involved with everything." "This was shot on a totally separate day, obviously... and totally different exterior, compared to where the interior was." "I had to have a reason for her to go back, which is where the coat business came in." "Where she now sees Dusty, who's on his way up to see Belyeu... obviously involved in everything, but not sure what." "I remember it took hours to get those pigeons to come back... every time we did that shot." "He was here?" "He's in the lobby!" "See if his truck's out front." "Tail him." "Again you hear what we call the Lacan theme." "The cello piece coming in." "This scene we called "cat and mouse"... was, again, shot on different days." "All to become one piece." "Matt Craven was a pretty useful driver, so we didn't need stunt drivers for this." "Also the difficulty of working with trains... obviously there's a safety factor involved." "The cameras have to keep away from the tracks and all those things." "It's an illusion." "It looks much more dangerous than it is." "The scene at the end with birds flying up... was fortunate because I saw that and it helped punctuate the scene." "You're not being straight." "I walk out of Belyeu's office, the guy's in the lobby!" "This is very difficult for Kate because, as I said earlier... all of the interview sequences were actually shot one after the other... in a very short space of time." "The cat and mouse hadn't been filmed even when we did this scene." "For her character arc to occur convincingly... is very much to Kate's credit... in that really understanding, each time that we did these sequences... where we would be in the story, even though she hadn't seen it filmed... and obviously hadn't seen it complete and cut together." "This is obviously an important scene because what we're doing... is trying to persuade the audience... that Dusty is more of a threat than he actually turns out to be." "Also we're seeing him as someone who is very much against Gale." "Gale, the character, and Kevin, the actor... have to convince us that this man is a threat." "Even though, once again, Kevin is not telling the truth." "Gale is not telling the truth." "Respect for life means every life." "These sequences of this particular abolitionist rally... were all shot at the capitol, as we see it there." "This was originally going to be a much longer sequence." "What I kept of it is this speech by Constance... which I think is a very important speech with regards to... not just articulating what Constance, the character, believes... with regards to the death penalty, but in many ways it sums up... what myself and certainly Charles, the writer, believe... with regards to our own personal attitudes to the death penalty." "As Constance says at the end of this speech:" ""In the end, a civilized society must live with the hard truth. "" "He who seeks revenge digs two graves." "That last sentence absolutely sums up how I feel about capital punishment." "Here we see Constance's growing frustration... that another death, and that conventional activism... just doesn't seem to be working for her." "Just look." "Look at those losers." "Rednecks, ghetto hustlers, drug addicts, schizophrenics!" "They're murderers!" "And who cares if they die?" "Who cares if the cycle just goes on and on?" "This following scene is my favourite scene in the film." "I think it's very beautifully written by Charles." "And extraordinarily well-acted by both Kevin and Laura." "When you're faced with a scene like this... it's important to shoot it as simply as possible." "That movement of the camera was about as tricksy as it gets." "Feel better?" "I shot it simply because I wanted to do justice to the acting." "And to the words." "And I think that... both Kevin and Laura are pretty terrific in this scene." "Anger." "Denial." "I think it's also worth noticing that... once we get away from this very formal, simple, two shot... that because I shot it in a very simple way, medium shot here... and closer eventually... editing a scene like this sometimes can be very difficult to do." "When people think of great editing, they always think of the flash-bang... action-type films." "But actually the most difficult scene to cut... is something as simple as this." "And I think this shows Gerry Hambling at his best." "The choices he makes and the subtlety with regard to how he cuts it... which absolutely does justice to the acting and the words." "Sometimes this kind of editing is... so much more difficult to do than action sequences." " I should have had more sex." " Really?" "How many lovers did you have?" "Including college?" "Including college." "Sex is really..." "It's not all it's cracked up to be." "It's so overrated." "You should have had more sex." "You work so hard not to be seen as a sex object." "Before long, you're not seen at all." "I see you." "You want to make it five?" "Complete the hand?" "What?" "A pity lay?" "No, thanks." "It wouldn't be pity." "This sex scene, I shot very simply." "And in fact..." "I never really thought of it as a sex scene." "To me it's a dramatic scene... that happens to take place while the couple are having sex." "It's shot very simply, on a very long lens... so the depth of field is very small." "So you're aware of what's going on... but there's nothing that's gratuitous to the imagery." "Laura is pretty terrific in this scene." "So I kept it simple." "That one simple panning shot across from the foot to the head." "Everything that's happening is happening because the actors are making it happen." "What we're doing is observing it... and the camera doesn't get in the way of the drama." "It's all one shot until we cut to the wide shot." "Just make it go away." "I'm right here." "I'm not going anywhere." "The light going on indicates this is the moment when... they come to their very important decision about what they're going to do." "This is Gale on the lawn of his old house, which now has new owners." "This Christ-like shape is something I've done often in my movies." "That was shot on the end of an arm with a remote camera." "What Gale is doing is telling Bitsey this story." "What we're seeing is all narrative from him to her." "We introduce Dusty." "In the same way that Gale is misleading Bitsey... we, the filmmakers, are deliberately misleading the audience... at this point, with regards to the involvement of Dusty." " Can I help you?" " No." "I'm leaving." "I'm sorry." "Thanks." "Again, the closing of the door punctuates the end of the sequence." "A man alone... thinking about the decision that he's made with regards to how our story will unfold." "The toy, obviously a memory of the child." "This was shot, again, in the small town of Taylor." "The ever-present rain machines." "Yet another wet night for the crew." "And this music by Alex Parker... takes us into the transition... puts us back into the prison." "It was Dusty." "He had a motive." "He knew you both." "He visited that morning." "If I could answer that for sure... we wouldn't be having this conversation." "Here we see the completion of her arc... from the person who arrived in prison visitation... absolutely convinced that he was guilty." "And now he's told her lies really... and completely convinced her that he's innocent and been set up by Dusty." "That's what's in her head right now." "I stress that Kate did these scenes one after the other." "For her to be able to develop her character just... not even day by day but hour by hour... when she had no knowledge of his life... that we've seen in film." "Except, of course, she did it by really thoroughly reading the text... and knowing the script... every moment, every word of the script off by heart... to know exactly where she is with regards to her character." "...its obsessions." "When your habits... survive your dreams." "And when your losses..." "Maybe death is a gift." " You wonder." " That's it." "Let's go, Gale." "All I can tell you is that by this time tomorrow, I'll be dead." "I know when..." "I just can't say why." "You have 24 hours to find out." "And with that sentence he sets off the ticking clock... which informs the last part of the movie... with regards to tension and how it's cut." "Here we are at the real prison at Ellis, as they leave the prison." " Miss Bloom?" " Yeah." "Thought I'd return your coat." "It's getting kind of chilly." "Any news from our video intruder friend?" "Once more I introduce Belyeu in a very shadowy light... to add to the suspicion of his involvement." "At this point we're not sure if he's friend or foe." "What's shaping up with regards to our story is that obviously..." "Dusty was involved in some way... which is what's going through her head right now." "Will you tell him I'll take care of it?" " About his son, I mean." " I'll do that." "You staying for the execution?" "Then I'll see you tomorrow." "Watch yourselves." "Were Dusty Wright and Constance close?" "Yeah." "Thick as thieves, those two." " Lovers?" " Whoa, now." "You're ploughing a little too close to the cotton." "That was just a rumour." "Nothing more." "Night-night." "The sequence of the video that we've seen so far." "Each time that I introduce the video..." "I try to show a little more of what went on." "Originally, when I first cut this sequence, I had a whole lot more of the video." "I minimised it partly because it's tough to take more than once." "Obviously I have to have a place to go... with regards to what we're about to see when we see more of the video." "This sequence here is the only sequence... we shot inside the actual prison at Huntsville." "This is the alleyway that goes to the real execution chamber." "We were allowed in with a very small crew to do this." "It's eerie when I watch it, because I know that van is pulling up... not to a set but to a real place." "Here's the car, then we're not in the real place at this point." "We're back into our set... as we see him come to the small building which is a replica... of where all the executions take place in Texas." "Building 1835, there." "These holding cells are an exact replica... of the real place when I went there and was shown around for the first time." "The camera is at the door to where the executions take place." "Here we see Bitsey waking up the next morning." "This was back into our set situation." "The only reason it is a set is because... tiny motel rooms are quite difficult." "It's hard enough getting the actors in those tiny rooms... let alone 40 film crew, as well." "That's why we make our life a little easier by making it into a set." "This is the moment where she sees the crumpled towel... which triggers... her idea as to what actually happened." "Wake up!" "Did you throw the towel on the floor?" "What?" "This towel was on my bathroom floor." " Did you throw it there?" " I guess." "What?" "It's a motel." " Would you do that at home?" " No." "It's not like we're staying in the frigging Four Seasons." "Come on, get the TV." "We're taking it with us." "What are you talking about?" "Where are we going?" "This scene always amuses me... when the two of them encircle one another in desperation... to do what is seemingly quite simple but it is the hardest thing for actors... to unplug things, grab them, and still keep the action going without it." "In the real world, of course, plugs never come out that easy." "Here we're back to Constance's old house... now the Goth Girl's house, because we're in present time." " Want to make $100?" " $100?" "What do I got to do?" "We're going over the crime scene." "This is a classic example of how great Kate can be... to help everyone, with regards to her action." "She helps the cameraman here because there's a low light level, as you can see... and therefore very little depth of field." "She unselfishly choreographed the thing so that she could help the camera guys." "Can you move that stuff off the counter for me?" "This was quite interesting to shoot because... it's all happening in real-time with regards to... what you see on the television screen as opposed to what's happening in reality." "That led to some quite interesting formulations... of angles and shots and things." "I used the small video camera all the time... even when all the stuff you see of Constance on the right-hand screen... was never shot on film." "It was always shot on a very simple video camera... similar to the one that Zack has... in order to make it as authentic as possible." "It's always difficult when you're doing such a scene... of which we see more of later, obviously... the temptation is, to be safe, you should film it actually on film... not on a cheap video camera, because you never know what'd go wrong." "I didn't want to take it from film and then transfer it to video... because there's something... aesthetically and dramatically interesting about the fact that... the whole of Constance's situation there... was filmed on a very simple camera." "It gives it another dimension, another life." "I have to say that as a director..." "I'm not one to go, what they call in England, a "love you" route... with regards to how good people are." "I have to say a good word about Kate and Gabriel Mann:" "Incredibly nice people." "Kate, in particular, is one of those actors... who not only help me but every single person on the crew." "It seems that that would be normal... but in an industry that's plagued with egocentric actors... it's actually very rare that you get someone who's so generous to everyone." "This was a particularly generous cast to one another as actors, certainly to me." "I remember these cells when I first went into the prison." "The real prison at Huntsville I found kind of creepy." "It's weird that we replicated it so accurately." "This is the re-enactment of..." "Constance's death." "I have to say, it's probably tougher on Laura because she did it first... and then Kate has to re-enact it." "Slightly more difficult for Laura... because she also had the added humiliation of being naked." "But what Kate's doing here is not easy." "That bag goes on, that tape goes on, and suddenly you feel... that you have quite a responsibility as a filmmaker... because film is an illusion and yet what we're looking at is a real person." "That's Bitsey Bloom, but that's also Kate Winslet there... with a real bag on her head, and it's absolutely sealed." "There's danger to these kind of scenes." "We, of course, take huge precautions with regards to..." "We have paramedics on hand, just a yard away from where Kate is." "It's my job to make sure that everyone is as safe as possible." "It's scary because where is the line between:" ""Is this Kate acting or is this a person in real difficulty?"" "I know that I found that extremely disturbing when I filmed this." "No more experiments, all right?" "Just tell me what's going on." " Are you okay?" " She did it herself." "Here we see Kate figuring it out." "She's actually not figuring it out correctly." "But as far as all the information that the audience have and she has... this is the revelatory moment for her." "The fact that the slight red herring where we're taking the audience..." "This is her logic for what happened... in that Dusty and Constance were perhaps in it together." "This was a particularly difficult scene to shoot in that I did it twice." "The first day I did it... we had very bad light." "We had very bad weather and suddenly everything went very dark." "It made it almost impossible to film." "You persevere for a while and then you realise... it's actually better to abandon and start again the next day." "That's what I did with this... so that you have constant light to film with." "Particularly in such an important scene where Kate has so much exposition... and it has to really click... with regards to what's happening... because we, the audience, have to be extraordinarily attentive... because she's supposedly solving the riddle for us." "As we know, with regards to the whole film, it's absolutely not what happened." "But as far as the audience is concerned..." "Dusty in his little shack here is responsible." "We filmed this..." "This shack, believe it or not... although we dressed it with that wall of horror up there... was pretty well how we found it." "We borrowed this shack from a family who were living in here." "We put them up in a hotel for a week whilst we did these scenes." "The place looks pretty shabby and eccentric but there are many such buildings... in the rural areas outside Austin." "What a dump." "The guy's a freak." "This disused bowling alley... was actually dressed to be..." "It was a regular building by the side of the street... quite close to where Dusty's shack was." "An important scene, in again... she's piecing together a jigsaw puzzle... where the pieces seem to make one particular picture." "Actually that's not the picture that's correct... but as far as the audience... and the construction of the film and the original screenplay... this would be the usual summing up of where a film might go like this... with regards to obvious conclusions of clues that have taken us to this place." "It's an unusual story and an unusual construction." "Everything that's happening here, with regards to its conclusiveness... is actually not what's going to happen." "I think that's what gives the film its edge." "This aria we keep hearing is obviously from Turandot... not Turandot as I used to call it before I knew better!" "We recorded it at Abbey Road." "Very beautiful aria that it is, every time we come to Dusty we play it... because it figures rather importantly when we see the whole opera later... which I'll talk about when we get there." "So, don't move from the phone." "Call the second you see his pickup." "Let it ring once." " Then get into the woods." " I know." "Go." " Into the woods, Zack." " Go!" "Oh, shit." "Here we are outside Huntsville Prison." "It's the actual prison where all executions in the State of Texas take place... and have done for well over 100 years." "We tried to recreate it as authentically and as accurately as possible." "I intercut the PR man... describing the poisons that go towards lethal injection... which is often done to explain how matter-of-fact the whole process is." "And as they're always pointing out, how cheap it is." "I intercut it with this odd and curious obsession... particularly with the media, with regards to people's last meal." "There's a whole website... where all of the last meals of everyone who's executed is described." "Gale's last meal is relevant... to the meal that his child originally wanted." "Faithful Steadicam." "The best way to show someone's point of view as they're moving... particularly over rough ground." "I had put together this wall of images... which she's about to find out." "In a way, I suppose, it was to show... that there are right-wing zealots and left-wing zealots." "And there are people like Dusty who are so passionate about their cause... that in an odd way these images... that Bitsey, Kate, is about to find... are really about man's inhumanity to man... which Dusty has made into his own collage." "Although it's there because he believes these things to be wrong... in an odd kind of way... the fact that they're all there together, all these hideous images... makes its own obscenity, which is the point I was trying to make." "This sequence was rather tricky to do, if you count just the mechanics... of trying to keep the pace of the whole thing going, intercutting here." "All of the images that you see on the screen..." "Pavarotti, are relevant... to Dusty's obsession with opera." "The cliché programmes that people have videos of." "We saw a very quick glimpse of the Christmas party... with Laura and her colleagues at DeathWatch... very briefly intercutting with the other video images." "This isn't Dusty, but Zack thinks that it is." "This gas station was quite near to where we filmed the shack... and had its own aesthetic, obviously... with regards to being very indicative of that area of Texas." "This scene was done... with Kate... in one, as such..." "But it was when she finally gets to the video... we suddenly then cut out all of our music and our sound... just to make it that much more powerful." "The video itself, Kate had never seen before." "She asked that she wouldn't see it until the moment I had the camera on her." "This is Kate reacting to the character, Constance... but also reacting to Laura... who is actually about to do something that is very disturbing." "With regards to what's happening on Kate's face..." "This was the first time I revealed to her the actual video." "Obviously a huge amount of acting going on... but this is Kate reacting to her friend Laura." "The two actors..." "She'd never seen this scene before." "Therefore a great deal of this pain is real... with regards to watching Laura putting the bag on." "As I said before, this was by far the most harrowing scene I've ever done." "And I've done some difficult scenes in my movies." "But this was for real." "This was Laura, not a body double." "This is a real bag sealed with real tape, and they are real handcuffs." "As I've said before, we have the added humiliation of being naked." "This is a huge revelation for the character Bitsey... because it absolutely involves Dusty in Constance's death." "Therefore very crucial to our story." " Fuck!" " He didn't show!" "Come on!" "Please, Bitsey, come on!" "From here on, we have... the conclusion to the thriller aspect, the ticking clock." "With regards to the energy with which it's cut... and all of the other elements that go towards... making it as exciting an ending as possible... if you can use that word with what's about to happen... with regards to a man's death." "The Governor, the warden, New York, the Supreme Court death clerk!" " How far is it?" " You've got eight minutes..." " maybe more." " Okay, we'll make it." " You can do it." " Go!" "The oddity of this particular ritual is that... prisoners have a shower before execution." "The theory being that the undertaker appreciates a clean corpse." "Oh, my God." "Give me the time." "...on that big pileup on..." "Give me the goddamn time!" "Oh, no." "Not now." "Not fucking now." "Shit!" "These scenes were all shot... just outside Taylor." "There we have the image that we saw at the beginning of the film." "It begins her run to save a man's life." "The scenes outside the prison were pretty realistic." "The Texas Department of Criminal Justice... were extraordinarily helpful in allowing us to have helicopters." "There's more than one helicopter." "There's a helicopter above that helicopter filming the crowd beneath." "The chief PR man at the Texas Criminal Justice Department... actually was at dinner and said... he met a friend who asked if there was an execution that day." "The local people thought it was a real execution." "Of course it wasn't." "It was us replicating the media madness... that goes along with a high-profile execution... as, of course, David Gale's would have been very high profile... being as he was the state's leading abolitionist for the death penalty." "I use a lot of video and cameras... with regards to trying to reflect upon... the way in which the media covers such situations." "It's also to do with the fact that the media and mass media... is being manipulated in a way... that is the opposite to how it usually is." "The whole media circus is something that they are quite used to at Huntsville." "They have a huge building just for journalists." "It's a very sophisticated media-management situation." "These quick snippets of people, I had recorded all the way through the film." "They are not actors, they are real people... giving me their opinions of what they feel about the death penalty." "Unscripted." "The clock, courtesy of Fred Zinnemann and High Noon, my mentor." "The whole of this sequence... was shot in a couple of days." "It was not easy to do because inside there are real prisoners... and inside those walls is the place where real people die." "...strapped to the gurney at 6:02 p.m." "David Gale was officially pronounced dead at 6:12 this evening." "Texas has executed David Gale was pronounced dead at 6:12..." "Death was pronounced at 6:12 p.m., at the Walls Prison, Huntsville." "There was no final statement." "Since none of the victim's relatives was in attendance... there will be no statement from the victim's family." "At this moment, we're not sure if Dusty and Belyeu are in on it together." "There's certainly money in that case." "That's not clear." "What I tried to do here is what I call Media Frenzy... a piece of music that Alex wrote." "It's called Media Frenzy and it's just to show the madness of the media." "Anyone who has lived in the United States will be aware... of how much television is part of everyone's lives... how many channels there are and how many reporters there are." "It was a sequence that we spent quite a lot of time cutting." "I showed a lot of material of different commentators, as we see here." "Piecing it together was quite tricky for Gerry Hambling." "I hope it builds up the tension... and drama that goes towards the end of the movie." "What we've done is to "kill off the hero" in normal movie terms." "Usually there is the stay of execution with the phone call." "He's dead because this is a very different film... and we come to different conclusions at the end of the film... as we're trying to say different things." "This is a montage of the way in which... the media would cover an event like this." "The saturation, craziness and madness of this media frenzy." "Of course, the ultimate irony is that David Gale a man who became an unwitting martyr may achieve in death what he worked for but could not accomplish in life." "This is A.J. Roberts reporting from Bastrop, Texas." "Here we are in Barcelona." "I filmed this whole Barcelona sequence much later... after we had finished filming in Texas." "We had filmed in Texas... from October to Christmas in 2001." "This was shot much later... in the spring of 2002." "We thought we'd have a rest and get our sanity back... after making the movie in Texas." "I must say it was rather strange filming in Barcelona... after being down in Texas." "This was an incredibly beautiful, old house, apartment... that we had as a location." "There is Gale's ex-wife." "Back to the news magazine... which I said at the very beginning of this commentary... is a set." "It was an empty office... but everything you see here has been dressed in... by the art directors." "Cloud Dog comes out of the FedEx box." "We must be the only people in the world who didn't get money from FedEx to do that." "Back in Barcelona." "David's sweater." "His Harvard sweater." "It was going to be Yale... but the Yale people wouldn't give us permission." "Harvard did for some strange reason." "Odd these things." "The postcard from Berlin." "This Turandot opera we filmed at the Barcelona Opera for the crowd shots." "We recreated the opera itself at Shepperton Studios." "It's our version of it." "The character Liù martyrs herself which is the metaphor for our film." "Janis Kelly is the soprano and we recorded that at Abbey Road." ""Key to your freedom"?" "What?" "The final dénouement of the film." "Cloud Dog." "The tape is inside of it." "This scene, I think, is pretty explanatory." "It's obviously the most powerful moment in the film for me." "Hopefully the audience still doesn't know what's gonna happen." "It's interesting to know at what point people absolutely realise... that Gale was in on the whole thing from the very beginning." "That was The Life of David Gale." "I'm very proud of this film indeed." "As I said before, I don't think films can change people's minds... not in two hours of information or communication." "Hopefully it will provoke debate about a very important issue." "So I leave you with Alex Parker's song."