"This is R. J. Cutler." "I am the director of If I Stay, and I'm here with..." "Alison Greenspan, the producer of If I Stay." "CUTLER:" "We're going to be, uh, watching the movie and talking about the experience of making it, and all of the wonderful things that went on in the making." "I will begin by saying that" "I think, Alison, the very first time you and I met and we talked about the movie, we talked about the fact that, at the very beginning, we would have this sense of a larger perspective of the world," "that we would be seeing this, in a way, from a God's-eye-view." "That's the opening image of the film that we settled on, that viewers can see watching this right now." "GREENSPAN:" "Well, you always talked about there being a spiritual component to the movie, and that there would be this larger presence looking down." "That's why we come through the clouds and find our family here, the Hall family house." "CUTLER:" "And that spiritual component is one of the things that" "I experienced in reading the book." "I felt like every page was infused with that, and the setting in the Pacific Northwest, and the fact that we were so much a part of nature." "I wonder what it was like for you." "When did you read the book first, and what was your experience?" "How did you decide that this was a movie that you wanted to make?" "GREENSPAN:" "Oddly enough, I read the book when I was shooting a movie in Vancouver, which we returned to for this film, and, um, fell in love with the bigger choice that Mia has." "The choice to live or die, and the universal message of how people get through great grief and adversity and death and loss, and come out the other side and triumph and love and play music and do all that great stuff." "Probably five years ago, six years ago." "CUTLER:" "Wow." "For me, it was a few years later." "You had been working on the movie and getting it together, and this script came to me." "Shauna Cross' script, which I read and loved, and it made me feel, as soon as I was done reading it, that the very next thing I wanted to do was grab the book and see what book had given birth to this screenplay." "I read Gayle's book in one sitting, as so many people have done, and I couldn't believe the way it moved me." "In fact, in one of the margins, at a particularly moving moment," "I wrote, "I think there is something wrong with me."" " Because I just found it so deeply moving." "(GREENSPAN LAUGHING)" "CUTLER:" "It's really taken the whole process of making the film for me to realize that what it was that was so moving is that it's really a profoundly mythic tale." "In a way, it's the classic Grimms' fairytale of the child who loses the parent and is wandering in the woods, looking for things to connect to that will help find the way through the darkness," "and figure out what her identity is." "It's this very deeply human, very profound thing that involves the connections we make in life, and the way our lives change by virtue of who we love, and the way we go from childhood to adulthood." "It means leaving our family home, and all of those things." "I just found it so incredibly moving that as soon as I was done," "I told everybody I knew that I had to meet you, so we could talk about making the film." "GREENSPAN:" "I have to say that very first time we met," " I fell in love with you..." " CUTLER:" "Aw." "GREENSPAN: ...and was so excited to see the movie that was in your head." "But I loved how you encapsulated the message of what you were just talking about, of that notion of," ""We are who we love. "" "You said that line to me, and I thought that summed up Mia's journey." "That she's her parents, and even when they're gone, they define who she is because she loved them so much." "And then Adam takes that baton." "She is who she is because of his strength, and she will carry on because of him and Kim." "Here's Kim." "And that kind of friendship love." "CUTLER:" "All of that, of course, is the thematic content of the movie, but then there is this great narrative story that is just an awesome story of young love, on one hand." "Mia, this outsider cellist, and Adam, this rock 'n' roll god, who come together, and you don't expect that, um, they would fall in love." "They seem so different." "And yet, as Adam says in this very scene, "I see you."" "He does, and what he sees in her is this profound connection to music." "So, the film also has this deep musical foundation that ties everybody in the film together, and it also makes it such an emotional story." "GREENSPAN:" "Well, you always described music as" "maybe the fifth character in the movie." " CUTLER:" "Mmm." "I think I used to say, "it's the air that they breathe."" "Everything is about music in this film." "In fact, later in the film, I was doing an interview earlier this morning, and there is a scene with Mia's grandfather that's a really powerful scene, and I think it's the one scene in the film where there isn't any music." "And, in an way, it's the most powerful scene." "But otherwise the film is really wall-to-wall music." "When you see at the end, the credits, there is so much music in this film." "There's Mia's music, and Adam's music, and the parents' music." "GREENSPAN:" "And their theme." "CUTLER:" "Say again?" "GREENSPAN:" "Their theme." "Yeah, and their theme." "There's Heitor Pereira's beautiful music." "There's so much that drives the film, so many different musical sensibilities." "Um..." "I have also been struck recently, in thinking back on the experience, that when you and I first met, in an effort to persuade you to hire me," "I put together a visual palette." "A series of images that would define the way the film would look, and part of that were those big landscapes of the Pacific Northwest." "But part of it were images that, as we're looking at the Hall house here, looked very much like the interior of the Hall house." "Very much influenced by photographers, this muted, primary-color palette." "It's interesting, looking back on that..." "GREENSPAN:" "How true you were to that initial vision." "CUTLER:" "Yeah, how much it remained consistent." "It's a great lesson, in making films, about how much your first instincts end up being the most important instincts that you have." "Those first responses that we both had to reading the novel." "The first sense that we had of Shauna's script, the first visual instincts, the first musical instincts, are so important." "GREENSPAN:" "You said initially that the Hall house should be warm and full of life and full of music, and there's a rhythm in that house and an energy." "You always described the nature as being very crisp and white and feeling the presence of God." "As they drive through here," "I think, A, how lucky we were that it actually snowed" "(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING) the day we were going to shoot, and, B, how you do feel that here." "CUTLER:" "So we have this great story, this great raw material, a great book that led to a great script, and we were working together." "Of course, the next critical piece in creating If I Stay was who would play Mia?" "What's your recollection of Chloe's initial involvement?" "GREENSPAN:" "My partner and I, Denise and I, met Chloé, and she felt like Mia." "Kind of innocent and mature beyond her years, and vulnerable, and yearning to fall in love." "She read the script, and she told us that she loved you, which was great." "She read the script and fell in love with it, and, like you, went to the book and really plugged into that journey." "I can't imagine the movie with anybody else in it." "It's really quite amazing." "She and I met to discuss this and instantly connected." "I think I told you afterwards it was as if I had been meeting with myself." "She would articulate things that I had thought and felt and said in other settings." "We connected to all of the same themes and the same aspects of the story." "What really struck me was that here was Chloé Moretz," "a 17-year-old child prodigy, really, who had been acting with great accomplishment since..." " How old?" "Five years old?" "Six years old?" "GREENSPAN:" "I think five, yeah." "CUTLER:" "Um..." "And that she would be playing Mia Hall, a child prodigy who had this gift as a young cellist." "We spoke, Chloé and I, at that very first meeting about the fact, um," "that she and Mia were very much related because of that prodigious talent that they have." "And because, to some extent, neither of them fully understand where it comes from." "Both of them have had to work so hard to develop it." "But both of them are, in a way, talented beyond their own comprehension, in a really exciting way." "Also, both of them are very down-to-earth, very real." "Um, it's one of the things that everybody who meets Chloé says about her, is that she's so real, she seems so normal, and it's true." "She's just a normal kid." "She just happens to be this remarkably talented actress." "I knew that, that quality would be something that she would bring to Mia, and it would be a really exciting thing." "GREENSPAN:" "She got that." "She also got, I think," "(EXHALES) that vulnerability that makes Mia feel like an outsider in her family and in her world sometimes, and the joy that she felt at the end of the movie, discovering," ""Actually, I was very loved," ""and I was at the center of it all, all along." ""I just had to realize that."" "CUTLER"." "She has such a strong family bond with her mom and her brothers." "It's such a part of her identity." "So, here was an actress who was able to bring all of those qualities to this performance and to creating Mia." "As you see throughout the film, she does that." "Um..." "The next challenge, of course, was finding an Adam." "G RE E N S PAN:" "Hoo-hoo" "CUTLER:" "That was particularly difficult because I was insisting that he not only be a perfect Adam as an actor..." "GREENSPAN:" "But a singer." "...but a singer" "and a guitar player." "GREENSPAN:" "The real deal." "CUTLER"." "Somebody who you would believe could be this budding rock star." "Sometimes we would rassle about that, whether or not he really needed to be able to play and sing." "GREENSPAN:" "No." "You wanted it to be authentic." "CUTLER"." "I was very insistent about it." "GREENSPAN:" "You thought people would read right through it if he were lip-synching, and you were totally right about that." "'Cause those scenes play so real and electric because of his gift." "CUTLER:" "But finding a guy who was all of those things and a heartthrob, who passed the Alison test of, "Girls will love him."" "It wasn't easy." "GREENSPAN:" "When he came in to sing, you remember that, you couldn't take your eyes off him." "And Chloé said the same thing." "He left the room and she was like, "it has to be him!" "No one else."" "CUTLER:" "Yes." "She was very insistent." "Well, we searched high and low, and finally when we met Jamie and brought him in to meet with Chloé, it was pretty electric." "It was awesome." "We couldn't stop taking pictures of them because they were so adorable together." "GREENSPAN:" "And you wanted to see them kiss, too." " I think." " CUTLER:" "Indeed." "Yeah, absolutely." "You just wanted to see them be together." "GREENSPAN:" "There was a heat between them." "CUTLER:" "They were so real together." "So, they had that chemistry, which was so important." "But they also had, individually, all the characteristics that were so important to us" "in finding the right actors for those roles." "Um..." "Rounding out the cast, of course, was Mia's best friend." "GREENSPAN:" "The great Liana Liberate." "CUTLER:" "The great Liana Liberato, who actually auditioned for this role and made me cry." "GREENSPAN:" "She was the first person we saw, I think." "CUTLER"." "For Kim." "GREENSPAN:" "And we cried." "And we thought," ""Well, how do you top that?"" "CUTLER: it's very difficult." "It was difficult to imagine." "She gave the perfect audition." "(CUTLER STAMMERING)" "It was her bedside speech to Mia that she performed, and it was just so pure and true and real and honest." "All of the things that I respond most to." "I think everybody responds most to." "And so we grabbed her immediately." "GREENSPAN:" "Snapped her up." "CUTLER:" "But I think the first person after Chloé that we cast was Mireille." "GREENSPAN'." "Mireille." "Yeah." "CUTLER"." "And we met her, and she loved the material so much, and she connected to it so much as a mom, that we couldn't pass up the opportunity." "Of course, Mireille Enos is one of the great actresses." "The idea that we would have her to work with was so thrilling." "GREENSPAN:" "She's a groovy chick." "When you meet her, she's..." "We wanted a cat who was cool, and pretty, and the mom that you long to have, 'cause a lot of us are embarrassed of our moms." "And she is just so cool." "Look at her." "CUTLER:" "I would like to say for the record, I am not embarrassed by my mom." "GREENSPAN:" "Me neither." "I'm just saying." "Thank you." "Um, and then there was Denny, uh, Josh Leonard, who, again, I keep on going back to this, but the idea of initial response, first instincts, when you think something is right." "If you trust it, chances are things will work out really well." "I remember Josh came in, and we were all like," ""Whoa!" "That's Denny." "There he is."" "He had that tattoo, he rolled up his sleeves." "He had his tattoo." "GREENSPAN:" "I looked at his arms, and thought, "Mmm-hmm."" "CUTLER"." "He just had it." "He nailed it." " He was Denny." "GREENSPAN:" "And the beard." "CUTLER"." "Yeah, and it was great." "So, we put our cast together." "We had one more person." "Obviously, it was a much bigger cast." "We had to put together Adam's band and we had to fill out the family." "But then we also searched high and low for the perfect Gramps, and found out that Stacy Keach was available, which was a great coup for us." "Of course, Gramps, in many ways, provides the heart and soul of this story, his connection to Mia, and the way that he changes over the story, which is something that you don't expect to see, and is so surprising" "and so moving in the final portion of the film." "It was great to have him." "And he's a tough guy." "GREENSPAN:" "He is so macho." "CUTLER:" "He brought that energy." "It was amazing." "GREENSPAN:" "When he cries and tells her," ""if you have to go," ""then go."" "I cry every time I see him say that because you don't expect this big bear of a guy to tear up." " It's so moving." " CUTLER:" "So moving." "So, there we were, and we put our whole cast together, and built our production team, and went up to Vancouver." "GREENSPAN"." "The Great White North." "The Great White North, which is doubling for Portland, Oregon." "We were shooting in November and December, and the thing about shooting in Vancouver in November and December is, you have about three hours of daylight a day, would you say?" " Maybe four." "GREENSPAN:" "Four, and it usually rains." "But we lucked out in that it snowed when we needed it to, and it rained less than most winter months there." "It was pretty dry." " CUTLER:" "Yeah, it was kind of dry." " We lucked out." "That's how I remember it." "CUTLER:" "I know, it's a beautiful thing, the way you remember." "(GREENSPAN CHUCKLING)" "CUTLER:" "I remember darkness and rain and fog so you couldn't see your own hand." "GREENSPAN:" "Look at this beautiful night." "CUTLER:" "I know, and yet, I'm sure you're right, because every night was beautiful and dry and so many scenes that are in this film were shot in the rain and yet, somehow you don't even know." "Of course, this was a beautiful night, the night of Adam and Mia's first date." "We were able to shoot those beautiful wide shots." "Somehow, even though it's December, it looks like a beautiful spring day, doesn't it?" "GREENSPAN: it does." "I applaud you for this specific scene, it just makes the movie feel so big and like they've really gone somewhere romantic and special." "CUTLER:" "Well, this is a great example of every department working on all cylinders." "You look at this image and you see" "Brent Thomas' beautiful production design, great locations." " You see John de Borman's shooting." "GREENSPAN:" "Beautiful lighting." "CUTLER:" "Which is amazing, the way the camera moves down the steps with these guys, and you're just swept up in a certain romanticism." "You see Monique Prudhomme's awesome costumes." "They couldn't look better, more adorable, more appropriate, these kids dressed up on a grown-up date." "Every shot captures the emotion that we were seeking to find." "It worked out." "Um..." "On the screen now we're seeing" "Adam and Mia on their second date, which is when Adam invites Mia to hear his band play for the first time." "It bears us talking a little bit about the band." "GREENSPAN:" "And how we put them together, that kismet moment when we met these guys who described being in an awful accident." "They played for us and they were unbelievable, but we were really moved by their story, and just the sheer coincidence of how similar it was to Mia being in an accident and surviving." "And them going on to continue with their music." "CUTLER:" "So, these guys were actually in a band, and we said, "Come be Adam's band."" "They had had an eerily similar experience," "and we figured they'll provide this great backup band." "And then there was a question of seeing, really, do they have chemistry with Jamie?" "Because just as important as it was for Mia and Adam, for the actors playing Mia and Adam to have a certain chemistry, it was almost equally important for Adam and the members of his band to have a real chemistry." "Because these guys, these are Adam's..." "Before he meets Mia, these are Adam's soul mates." "These are the people he creates with." "These are the people who form his identity." "We lucked out because they really did connect." "GREENSPAN:" "You buy it." "CUTLER:" "But we also helped that process by getting the band together a good two weeks before we started production." "GREENSPAN:" "Every day they hung out." "They were together every day." "We gave them studio time to record." "They rehearsed together as a band." "GREENSPAN:" "In fact, they went out with Chloé and Liana." "They would go out to the movies, or go out to dinner and just chill." "CUTLER"." "That two weeks, that bonding time paid off so much in production because you felt like these people had been together a long time." "GREENSPAN:" "They knew each other." "They were buds." "CUTLER"." "And they had made music together for a long time, which was great." "They also worked with John Carrafa, who was our awesome musical stager." "He worked with them on how a band would carry itself on stage, and they really responded to that." "They had formed this unified whole, which was terrific." "We're cool, right?" " You and me?" " Yeah." "We're cool." " Hey, you finally got to meet Liz." " Yeah." "You two have a lot in common." "You ever, like, hooked up, or..." "CUTLER:" "I just remember the night of that performance we just watched, which was the first performance we filmed." "When we shot it, thinking, "Wow, he is..."" "GREENSPAN:" "A star." ""He is the rock star" ""we knew he would be."" "You can know that somebody is going to be that, you can have the instinct and think," ""For sure, he's going to be a star when he gets on stage."" "But until he gets on stage..." " GREENSPAN:" "You don't know." "...and the camera's rolling, and the audience is there, you never know for sure." "And, man, he so rose to the occasion." "GREENSPAN:" "Do you remember also sitting there, shooting that scene, and seeing the girls..." "'Cause we had to do it, what, 30?" "40 times?" "And after hearing it five times, they were singing along and singing the lyrics, (LAUGHS) jumping up and down." "I'm going, "That's a great sign, too." ""They really like the song, and they like him."" "CUTLER"." "Absolutely." "Um, while we're talking about music, there's, I mentioned before, wall-to-wall music in this film" "and all sorts of different kinds of music." "But there is a defining concept behind all of that, whether it's, uh," "the punk-oriented music that you hear, the grunge-oriented music, or the new wave, or the contemporary, more pop sound." "The concept that I was working with was that" "kids today, people today, you and I today, anybody, has at their disposal, at their immediate access, pretty much every song that's ever been recorded." "We can get it online." "We can get it on YouTube." "We can get it through a streaming service." "If you have satellite radio, you can get it." "As a result, young artists like Adam and Mia are going to be influenced, really, by all of rock 'n' roll, all of popular music, and, if they have the taste for it, music that pre-dates rock 'n' roll." "So they are as likely to be influenced by their parents' music as by music of their own time period." "And that was something that really informed the choices that we made in putting together the soundtrack for the film." "It was very important." "Sometimes it led us to spirited debates with our friends at the studio about including older songs." "They said, "What's Blondie doing on this soundtrack?"" "And we'd have to..." "GREENSPAN:" "No, you really made the point that" "I think teenagers today, I do, certainly, we all listen to Blondie." "And why not?" "Why wouldn't it be at a party that they go to?" "CUTLER:" "It's just as much a part of who Adam is." "In a way, just as much a part of who Mia is, music that's 30-40 years old as music that is brand-new." "And we have plenty of contemporary music as well." "Anyway, you talked earlier about the distinct looks that we were going to achieve." "There was the colorful, the muted primaries, the look of the Hall family home," "and then there is the cold, blue, monochromatic look of the hospital." "It's another place where our awesome production design team, costume design team, and DP" "were able to work together in complete harmony to create this distinct look." "And you see the jump between those two looks." "GREENSPAN:" "Yeah." "When you come in here with that orange wall..." "CUTLER:" "It's just a completely different world." "GREENSPAN'. ...and the livelihood..." "CUTLER:" "And that, I think, has a real strong emotional impact on the viewer." "GREENSPAN:" "It does." "I think also the other thing that you, um, were really smart about is the memories that Mia has." "When she flashes back, they look like these warm Kodachrome..." "That's a whole other look that you shot in a different way." "CUTLER:" "Yeah, there were distinct looks." "We always talked about the distinct looks." "The memory shots were meant to feel like home movies of the mind." "It's where my background as a documentary filmmaker really came most into play 'cause I wanted it to be handheld." "They were always improvised, those moments, and we shot them on the fly." "As you remember, there was never much time to do them, so we were always just grabbing a camera and running and gunning." "But it had that feel of life, those moments that you remember of your childhood, those moments that you remember of your family, those..." "GREENSPAN:" "Snapshots of time, yeah." "Exactly." " We got to get the stinger out." " No, we're not doing that." "CUTLER:" "What do you think when you see this scene?" "GREENSPAN:" "I just love Mireille's reaction right here." "(GREENSPAN CHUCKLES)" "I think it's genius." " That's so what a mom does." " CUTLER:" "It's something..." "This was a great thing, again, about Josh and Mireille," "is that they brought that..." " GREENSPAN:" "They ad-Iibbed." "...parental truth to it." "I'm sorry to say that's the furthest we've gotten since our first date." "CUTLER:" "One of the things I'm reminded of watching this is the way that Paul Barry, our assistant director, and circumstance broke out our schedule," "I think, was really critical to the success of the film." "We started shooting in the Hall family home, and even though it was this tiny house that no film ever should have been shooting in, because we were literally hanging out the windows." "The house couldn't contain all of us." "Getting cameras up and down that narrow staircase was impossible." "GREENSPAN:" "Or up a balcony, yeah." "It was nuts, what we had to do there." "It was great that we were in the house for about a week and a half because it allowed the family to bond." "GREENSPAN:" "We had no choice." "CUTLER: it allowed us to do all those family scenes in a way that really solidified this family unit." "GREENSPAN:" "They were close." "CUTLER:" "It made it real, and it also, of course, gave Chloé that emotional foundation, so that when she lost them, she was playing off something that was very, very real." "We then shot everything else in the movie except the hospital, and then we finished the film in the hospital, so there was really a sense of loss that informed all of that." "Um..." "Here, of course, we have their first love scene, which was so great and a little bit nerve-racking because we didn't know they hadn't kissed before." "We didn't know what that would be like and how it would play." "Um..." "But I think it quite worked out." "GREENSPAN:" "Yeah, I think they strode the line of being completely nervous and excited and into it." "She brings me back to my first kiss." "She plays it so real and just plugged into that grounded-ness." "CUTLER"." "That was the thing, wasn't it?" " When in doubt, be real and true." "GREENSPAN:" "Be real." "CUTLER:" "Always, always, always." "I remember, I would say to them," ""if you believe in it, everybody else will believe in it," ""and that's all that matters." "Just always be real."" "And they were." "There's so much detail in the performance and connection." "You see in her eyes..." "There are a lot of great scenes in this movie, but this is one of my favorites." "GREENSPAN:" "I don't think Adam's ever opened up to anyone before this moment, and that's why it felt so exciting." "Normally, you see the girl spill her guts, and he shares something that really brings them close together." "CUTLER:" "Now, this sequence we call the "falling in love" montage was another part of the film that we filmed in this run-and-gun style." "We had maybe 20 minutes to shoot this sequence." "No idea what was going to happen except that they were going to be falling in love on a rainy day." "That's all I think that I had ever written." "Maybe that there was a skateboard involved." "We were running out of time in production." "I think this was one of our last days before we had to go to the hospital." "We were running the risk of not using that, not being able to shoot that scene" "in our schedule." "GREENSPAN:" "It's so important, too." "CUTLER:" "We just had 20 minutes between locations and we said, "Just grab the camera, guys." "Go out in the rain."" "GREENSPAN:" "They were real good sports." "CUTLER"." "You couldn't see it in the scene, of course, but people were running around with umbrellas, trying to do their best to keep the rain away from them." "Of course, we ended up using every single frame of that sequence." "If we had had more, we would have used more." "Kim, wait!" "CUTLER:" "So, in the hospital, the scene you're seeing now, the big question was how will..." "Not only the visual style, but the way the camera is used, how will it communicate that Mia is not real, that she has a spirit presence?" "I remember, again, my initial impulse, and something you and I spoke about the day we met, was that it should always be grounded, it should always be real." "Now, I haven't been able to speak to anyone's doctors yet, but I do know that Mia and Dennis are still in surgery." "CUTLER:" "There could be a version of this story where it's about the visual effects." "It's about what I would call the ooh-iness of it." "(CUTLER STAMMERING)" "In a way, to me, that would make it more about death and less about life." "And I wanted her to feel very, very alive." "I didn't want her to be transparent." "G RE E N S PAN:" "Or ugly, or ghost-like." "CUTLER"." "Or ghost-like, any of those things." "I wanted her to be as real as possible." "So, we ended up really relying on the Steadicam to give a sense not only of her point of view, but also of the floating sense of her presence." "Between that and the way Monique dressed her, it communicated that she was this otherworldly spirit in these scenes." " And I think they work really well." " GREENSPAN:" "Very well, yeah." "CUTLER:" "So, the Liana-Chloé connection was, of course, another important..." "They had to have a certain chemistry." "They had known each other before." "They had worked together, or had met as young actresses in Hollywood." "So, they had a little bit of a friendship, but that friendship really blossomed over the course of making the film." "GREENSPAN"." "They became best friends." "CUTLER:" "Their connection was just, again, so real and so genuine, and they would spend pretty much all of their down-time together." "And this is something that you can't make up." "You can't fake it." "And so, you get that sense between the two of them." "This is such a real scene." "They were so relaxed and into it." "Of course, the original scene is about five minutes longer than this edited version." "You kept on saying to me, "it's a joke on a joke on a joke on a joke,"" "and I was like, "I know, but I wanna see it end."" " And eventually, we edited it down." "(GREENSPAN LAUGHING)" "GREENSPAN:" "But I also said, "Girls are gonna eat it up."" "Because it does feel like how we talk." "CUTLER:" "Exactly." "And that girlfriend relationship is so important to who you are when you're 16 years old." "Again, we're back in the house, and it's worth just looking at the production design." "You see how unique and distinct this family is" "and how successful..." "GREENSPAN:" "They've really lived." "CUTLER"." "Yeah, and communicating that." "It's a house that doesn't look like anybody else's house in the world." "And yet, it feels real." "It feels genuine to them." "...to my closet in the morning and go about your life." "Baby, it's one night." "CUTLER"." "There isn't a lot in this film that we shot and didn't include in the final cut." "I think that Keith Henderson's editor's cut..." "Keith is our wonderful editor, and his cut didn't have much more in it than is in the film." "When they called to say," "for the home video extras..." "GREENSPAN: "What are you extras?"" "CUTLER: "What are your outtakes?" There are only really two scenes, one of which is a scene between Mia and Kim in the hospital chapel, which is a beautiful scene, but it ended up not really fitting in." "Oh, I'm good." "Okay." "Well, it's there if you want it." "LIZ:" "Yo, Adam." "We're goin' on." "Okay." "I've gotta go do my set." "No running off with some me wannabe." "I'll try. (CHUCKLES)" "Have fun." "Oh, my God, Mia." "You look amazing." "Did you get this in Seattle?" "Hey." "Wanna bone?" "MAN:" "You're frickin' embarrassing yourself." "Come on, at least give me your bone number." "EMCEE:" "Ladies and gentlemen, Willamette Stone!" "(CROWD CHEERING)" "ADAM"." "Happy Halloween." "GIRL;" "Wh00!" " Are you coming?" "(MOUTHING)" "(PLAYING ROCK MUSIC)" "GREENSPAN:" "You had the great idea during shooting that we should do a little intro here that would be so much sexier if she were waiting for him, and I just got so excited about that." "CUTLER:" "Well, that..." "I almost forgot about that." "We actually, initially shot Adam coming to the house." "GREENSPAN:" "Right." "To set up the whole thing." "CUTLER:" "And he came to the house in his Beethoven outfit, and he had this big Beethoven wig," "and it didn't look very sexy at all." "GREENSPAN:" "No." "CUTLER: it looked, in fact..." "It was all wrong." "It was all wrong." "GREENSPAN:" "Also, her brother was there, and the parents were there." " It was not a hot moment." " CUTLER:" "We had Teddy there, saying," ""Take me out." And her parents were there." "At one point, we looked at each other and said," ""Why are her parents always around" ""when the two of these guys are getting together?"" "So, it occurred to me, we could just jump from that scene with Mom to outside the club." "We were gonna do the montage, and then go outside the club." "But then we cut the montage and ended up just going outside the club." "You see them, and it's so much better." "I remember the day I told the costume and hair department that we were gonna lose Adam's wig," "and they were so happy." "(GREENSPAN CHUCKLES)" "CUTLER:" "They were so grateful because look how awesome he looks." "Imagine him with a two-foot high Beethoven wig." "Not so sexy." "GREENSPAN:" "The looks between them here are so great." "He sees her dancing and fitting in, and she's worshiping his music and she's having fun." "CUTLER:" "It's another one of my favorite scenes because the whole story is told without dialogue." "The whole story is told in those performance moments between the two of them, and they do it beautifully." "So..." "Do you like me like this?" "CUTLER:" "Now, this is an interesting moment in the film because it's leading up to a well-known part of Gayle's book that we included in the script and included in the production, but it's the only thing" "that we changed in the movie after we test-screened the film." "GREENSPAN:" "Mmm-hmm." "CUTLER:" "And for fans of the book, it's the night that" "Adam and Mia get together for the first time." "There is a scene in which they..." "They play each other like the instruments that they love." "He plays her like a guitar." "She plays him like a cello." "Even as I'm saying it, it sounds like that must be awkward." "Um, when you read it in Gayle's book, it's quite beautiful." "GREENSPAN:" "Yeah." "You imagine it, and your brain takes you to a place where it works." "CUTLER"." "It's detailed, and it's gentle, but it has a romanticism and an eroticism that feels appropriate for first love." "We shot it here in this barn, where Adam says to Mia," ""Play me like a cello."" "And they did a great job with it." "But when it screened, the audience laughed." "There were nervous titters." "And we couldn't quite figure out what." "If they were nervous, if it seemed cheesy." "Somehow, it didn't quite have the effect that we wanted it to have." "It didn't..." "As a result, really, it wasn't a successful moment." "It was the only thing that really was impacted by the test screening, other than the usual things of..." "Sure, you're going to find out pacing, and tighten up here and there." "Some joke might land better or something." "Maybe you'll have a different music choice." "But the real scene that we changed became this scene, and as a result of the change," "Adam no longer says to Mia, "Play me like a cello."" "But the scene, the content, is still the same." "It's the two of them getting together, making love for the first time." "GREENSPAN:" "And she's the right amount of vulnerable and real." "CUTLER:" "And it worked." "It's one of those things where you think," ""Oh, how can we change this?" We tried losing the scene." "Of course, you couldn't do that." "That didn't work." "GREENSPAN:" "You have the moment now, just without that line." "CUTLER"." "Exactly." "Without that action, without that idea of playing like an instrument, and yet, it still worked." "Keith Henderson, our editor, is at his finest in many, many sequences, but this is really one of the great demonstrations of his work." "G RE E N S PAN:" "The intercutting there is beautiful." "CUTLER"." "Just beautifully, beautifully done." "GREENSPAN:" "And then we come back to the bleak hospital, after that." "CUTLER:" "Again, you see the distinction in the production design and the palette that..." "The way the whole film is designed." "Transitions were a thing we talked a lot about." "Are we going to need really direct transitions that answer the question," ""Why does Mia go back and forth in her memory?"" "I always felt that the emotion would carry the moment, and if the design elements were" "as we've been discussing, then that would tell the story." "And they have." "This is a very powerful sequence to me, in that it's the moment where Mia finds out that she's lost her parents." "And I've always described this feeling of loss, those of us who have lost a parent know this feeling, of just being lost in suspended space." "Sometimes when you're walking down a staircase and you think that there's another step, but there isn't." "For a moment, you're just floating in space and you don't know how long it'll go on." "If it'll go on forever, and you're just gonna fall, fall, fall." "That's how Mia is feeling in this moment." "That's what I found it was often like, in the days and weeks and months after losing my dad." "Just the sense that it's bottomless." "And I said all of that to everybody, whether we were editing, or whether it was Heitor's score, or whether it was the way that John shot that scene, or the way that Chloe performed it." "I think it really conveys that sense, only alleviated when she arrives at Teddy's room and sees that he's still alive." "GREENSPAN:" "She has one person left." "Yeah." "It's funny, I just realized that I read the book for the first time right after I lost my father, and you started this movie right after you lost yours." "I'm just realizing that connection now." "(CUTLER STAMMERING)" "CUTLER:" "It's a movie about children and parents." "It's a book about children and parents, in ways that we don't necessarily think of it." "But certainly that experience, losing my dad, informed so much of what the movie was about." "(WHISPERING) You're mine now, Teddy." "CUTLER:" "So, we get to dedicate this to our dads." "GREENSPAN:" "That's a good idea." "Excellent." "We're gonna make it." "CUTLER:" "This is another scene that changed in late script stage." " This was originally a moment..." "GREENSPAN:" "A big speech." "...that flashes back in time, remember'?" "This was Teddy's birth scene." "And then we realized, rather than it being a scene where Mia, as a little girl, is watching her mom give birth to her baby brother, it should be grown Mia talking to Teddy in the hospital room," "saying the same things." "Exactly." "GREENSPAN:" "Telling him to live." "CUTLER"." "That was a big change." "Before we started shooting, but late in the script process." "GREENSPAN"." "A lot of running in the movie." "CUTLER"." "Yeah." "That's how we answered the question of what's going on in the hospital." "There's running." "There's going through the halls." "There's Mia talking to herself." "These are the things that distinguish this level of existence, where she's between life and death." "GREENSPAN:" "I think, also, the way the movie is structured, and you did this so cleverly, is..." "There's a big reveal every so often, and we have these flashbacks, and it keeps people wondering," ""What's going to happen next to her in the hospital?"" "and "What's going to happen next in the love story?"" "So, it's not all just about her parents dying." "Now, we're going to see what happens next in their love story." "They're just building, and falling in love, and really coming together." "CUTLER:" "Those still photographs you saw were taken as production stills." "No intention to use them in the film." "GREENSPAN:" "Literally next to a garbage can in an alley." "CUTLER:" "Absolutely." "But when we were editing and we wanted to tell the story of Adam's band getting more and more successful," "Keith and I dug out those old photographs and started using them, and what do you know?" "They worked." "It was great." "You get very resourceful." "Some things you use every frame of." "In one of the memory montages, the footage when Mia is having memories of her family, where they're playing football and they're running around?" "All of that was taken during camera tests." "GREENSPAN:" "During prep." "There was no hair and makeup." "They just went for it." "CUTLER:" "There was no intention, ever, of using that footage, and we used every frame of it." "Still photographs." "No intention, ever, of using it, and we used every photograph." "Now, we haven't spoken about Chloé Moretz" "and the cello." "GREENSPAN:" "And the cello." "(CUTLER LAUGHING)" "CUTLER:" "So, I hope we're not revealing any secrets, but Chloé Moretz is not a cello prodigy." "GREENSPAN:" "She did take lessons before, but was so busy doing four movies before ours, the cello followed her around from Leipzig, Germany, to Switzerland, wherever she was." "CUTLER"." "We just made it our business." "GREENSPAN:" "We would send the cello." "CUTLER"." "Because I was always in a panic that she wasn't spending enough time with a cello, so you approved the costs and we made it our business that, wherever Chloe was, a cello was sure to follow." "GREENSPAN:" "I think she thought there was some stalker in every hotel room." "(LAUGHING) Every hotel room, there was a cello in there." "CUTLER:" "We also had our cello teacher available to her on Skype, so that if she would have an extra few hours..." "This must be the busiest..." "Chloé was 16 at the time." "Must be the most overscheduled, busiest 16-year-old ever, so she rarely had a free couple of hours." "But when she did, she could Skype with her cello teacher, and she did start to pick it up." "But, nevertheless, it became necessary for us to have somebody else play the cello on film, and for Chloé to also do the physical mannerisms of playing the cello." "We would shoot her in close-up, and then we composited Chloé's body with Haigan Day, our cello double's body." "Haigan, of course, is in her own right an extraordinary cellist, so the performance of the cello playing is fantastic." "The visual effects ended up working beautifully, though there was a fair amount of trial and error." "And the thing, I believe, that sold it most of all was that Chloe spent a great deal of time studying videotape of the great cellists." " No." "Why?" " I don't know." "CUTLER:" "And she communicates the soul of the performance" "in her face and her body language." "GREENSPAN"." "And her eyes." "CUTLER"." "Yes." "And her eyes." "I've heard her speak, while doing interviews about the film, about the feel of the body, the way that you breathe through the cellists." "The thing that she noticed most about the great cellists that she studied was that they were breathing with the cello, and that their personalities opened up and emerged as they were playing." "She speaks beautifully and articulately about this." "But most of all, she communicates it in her performance." "This scene is a perfect example." "GREENSPAN:" "She knew this part." "This part she could do." "CUTLER:" "Well, this is Haigan." "GREENSPAN:" "Yes, but..." "CUTLER:" "And this is Chloé." "And you see it, and she's so connected in the moment." "Of course, the great place you see it is in the audition." "GREENSPAN"." "The Juilliard audition." "CUTLER"." "At what we called Jolari Hall." "But this was not an easy thing to pull off." "I was very nervous about it, as you know, Alison, because I would call you in the months before we shot pretty much every day, saying," ""How is she gonna learn to play the cello?" "How are we going to pull it off?"" "GREENSPAN:" "And I kept saying, "Don't worry, it'll look great."" "CUTLER"." "But what did you really think?" " GREENSPAN:" "I'm not sure." "(BOTH LAUGHING)" "CUTLER:" "We pulled it off, and it does work beautifully." "And she has a physical relationship with the cello, which is the most important thing that we could've hoped for." "Well, now is a perfect time for us to discuss Jakob Davies." "GREENSPAN:" "Teddy." "CUTLER"." "Our Teddy." "Another person..." "When we were talking about casting, we didn't mention Jakob and the importance of finding the perfect Teddy." "And I'm a redhead." "I want to clarify that I did not insist that Mia's mom be a redhead, and I did not insist that her brother be a redhead." "GREENSPAN:" "It just so happens." "But I'm delighted that it worked out that way." "But, boy, Jakob came in to audition." "He was adorable." "He was real." "He was funny." "He improv-ed." "He had an instinct for the drums, and then took some drumming lessons" "'cause he had to..." " GREENSPAN:" "Very studious about that." "CUTLER:" "He was very studious, and he was a great presence on the set." "And then, on his final day of shooting, he made a little drum kit for everybody, and he gave them all to us with a thank you note." "He's just a great kid." "But if your heart doesn't go out to Teddy, if you aren't in love with that kid, then the movie isn't the movie." "If I Stay isn't If I Stay." "It's hard not to be in love with the Teddy that Jakob Davies performed." "GREENSPAN:" "He's a delicious kid." "CUTLER"." "A delicious kid." " GREENSPAN:" "Delicious kid- -(CUTLER CHUCKLES)" "Speaking of the devil." "Hello?" " Hey, babe." "(CROWD CLAMORING)" "CUTLER:" "This is another scene that there was some discussion about, some debate about whether we should have this sequence." "I felt very strongly that we should because I felt it was important not only to see Adam having success outside of Mia, but to see them separate." "This is actually the only time the two of them are not together, once they become boyfriend and girlfriend." "You need to have a moment where their relationship" "is under stress prior to..." "GREENSPAN:" "There's conflict." "Yeah." "CUTLER:" "Here, they're not together, but she's just getting the letter that's gonna inform them." "But you need to see them apart in the same scene." "You need to see that something is threatening them." "Not an infidelity or anything, except that they're both having so much success." "In this sequence now, you see that." "He's succeeding by getting a..." "There's a record label that wants to sign him." "She's succeeding by getting into Juilliard." "They are both just being themselves, their truest selves." "They're becoming their truest selves, and yet, there's immediately a sense that this is going to tear them apart." "So, that was a very important sequence in the film." "GREENSPAN:" "You always said that music is tearing them apart." "It's not anything they're doing." "He doesn't cheat on her." "He doesn't become a jerk all of a sudden." "It's that they are both having success at what they love." "CUTLER:" "Yeah, I think that's a really distinguishing quality of this story, of Gayle's story, is that the heartbreak in this film is not because either of them are..." "Do stupid things the way teenagers do, or we all do." "This relationship is being torn apart by the two of them being their truest selves." "And that's the tragedy." "That's what's so difficult, because if they could find a way to be themselves and be together, of course that's what both of them would want." "I applied to Juilliard." "GREENSPAN:" "This was actually one of those days where it was pouring rain." "(GREENSPAN LAUGHS)" "CUTLER:" "And yet, you don't know." "Right?" "GREENSPAN:" "No." "Very good sound mix." "CUTLER:" "That's why you hear those crickets in the background." "That's covering rain." "Isn't that amazing?" "That's a sound thing." "Here..." "Just watch for a moment 'cause this really is that beautiful scene where they're both realizing what's going on." "In San Francisco." "Wow." "Wow." "Juilliard." "Mia, that's..." "Way to go." "That's cool." "Yeah, well, I won't get in." "But it's kind of a big deal that I even got an audition." "Most people don't." "Well, Yo Mama better watch his back." "Right?" "GREENSPAN:" "He's trying so hard to be supportive." "You just love him." "But his heart's breaking." "CUTLER:" "One of the fun things we got to do with Adam's band was show the arc of their growth, their success, over the year-and-a-half that the film takes place." "GREENSPAN:" "Here, they've made it." "CUTLER:" "And here they are having..." "Yeah." "At the peak." "And that's why we get that beautiful spotlight shot of the marquee." "GREENSPAN:" "We went to a concert here, in prep." " CUTLER:" "We did." " This is how you loved that location." "CUTLER"." "That's right." "We saw, uh..." "GREENSPAN:" "Kurt Vile." "CUTLER:" "Kurt Vile and, coincidentally, the opening act was Johnny de Courcy, who was the young son" "of the homeowners of the house that we shot." "The Hall family." "GREENSPAN"." "That was a weird coincidence." "CUTLER"." "It was a remarkable coincidence." "And this shot, I loved." "Seeing the sea of people and their hands up in the air." "I just love it." "And then this- And that is pure John de Barman." "Beautiful button on the performance." "Just terrific." "ADAM:" "Thanks." "Thanks for coming." "Did you like the show?" "Good." "CUTLER:" "We're now getting towards the scene that is their big fight scene." "The big breakup scene." "And this was, of course, the roughest scene between them in the film." "The scenes in the hospital are very, very emotional and there is great loss, but in terms of the story that takes place in the past about Mia and Adam's relationship, this fight scene is the raw scene." "It's the only scene that we shot fully handheld." " It's shot as if it were a vérité documentary." "GREENSPAN:" "Raw and rough." "CUTLER"." "It's raw and rough and shot handheld, and you feel that rawness as a result." "GREENSPAN:" "It's that scene, or that moment in life, where you just say things and go too far." "I don't know if you feel this way, but it seems like they never really 100% recover from some of the stuff that was said." "It's hard to take it back." "CUTLER:" "It's always hard to take things back." "That's one of things you learn as you get older, is that..." "Especially in moments like this, you gotta be careful what you say because it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle." "In the same way that Adam and Mia experience first love, they also are experiencing first cruelty and that first raw fight." "But, again, whenever I watch this, I'm so thrilled with the performance, and the camerawork that gets inside here." "And then, of course, the way that Keith cut it." "This is another example of everybody operating." "The full team operating on all cylinders." "I can watch it over and I can watch it a thousand times, this scene." "GREENSPAN'." "They both really let it rip." "We had plans." "One minute, it's one thing." "The next minute, it's the other." "I grew up with that shit, okay?" "I don't need it." "Even if I do go to Juilliard, we can figure it out." "Baby, we can text and we can Skype..." "Skype?" "Skype?" "Jesus, Mia!" "Have you ever even had a long-distance relationship?" "It's bullshit." "Okay?" "It's like dating a ghost." "GREENSPAN: if anything, this is Adam's big crime in the film, is that he is shortsighted, as we all are." "We don't think that maybe the next moment, some accident is going to happen and take the love of our life away." "He comes to realize he should not have let her go, in this instance." "CUTLER"." "It's true." "And yet, I feel that one of the great things Jamie does in his performance is create an Adam, who you understand when he says, "I had that shit growing up."" "And then, in the make-up scene that's coming up in about three minutes, when he explains himself, you really believe it, and you feel for him 'cause he's feeling like the rug is being pulled out from under him," "and it's heartbreaking." "Boy, did Beck come through for us." "A principal collaborator is Beck." "This song that covers the montage is so important, and this shot, to me, if I have to pick a favorite shot in the whole film, this is it." "Because what we don't realize as we're watching this is that the camera is Mia." "We have no idea." "We haven't seen her in this scene." "We're back in the hospital." "Everybody is getting an update on her status." "Maybe she'll pull through." "She seems to be stable." "We still don't know that it's Mia." "Adam has to leave." " And then we see that it's Mia." "GREENSPAN:" "Revealed." "CUTLER:" "And it's a reveal." "I find it so moving and beautifully done, and then it takes us back into her memory, and here, again, is Beck, who guides us through this montage." "And, boy, we were really fortunate." "We got this song in post-production before the album was released." "GREENSPAN:" "We got it on the album." "CUTLER:" "And then, of course, it's on our soundtrack." "But we received it before Beck's album was released, and we tried a hundred different songs at that moment in the film." "And then Beck's album came in, we put it there, and the moment we heard it, we knew it was..." "If we could get the rights to it, it would stay forever." "And we got the rights to it, which was terrific." "When are we gonna open presents?" " Mia?" " KAT:" "That's gonna be fun!" " Yeah, you wanna do that?" " Yeah, sure." "CUTLER"." "It's a heartbreak montage, but it also has to propel the story forward, so all of these little scenes really made a difference." "GREENSPAN:" "You love this shot." "CUTLER: (LAUGHING) I do love this shot." "I do. (STAMMERING)" "It was the first shot I saw in dailies where I thought, "Oh, yeah, we're getting the look that we want."" " Look at the color." "It's just crazy." "GREENSPAN:" "Beautiful." "CUTLER:" "And Brent Thomas, our production designer, would point out that purple door at the center" "indicates death and change." " GREENSPAN:" "That's his death door." "CUTLER:" "It was central to his design of the house." "See?" "This make-up scene is..." "The performance of this is as important as the fight itself." "When Adam explains himself, it's so critical." "First time that this was put up," "Adam's mosaic was put up on the ceiling, they did it very..." "It was perfect, and I said to Brent," ""What would it look like if an 18-year-old guy had put it up there?"" "And that's when all of the masking tape came in, and the thumbtacks, and it got all crooked." "He was like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right."" "What do you want, Adam?" "Mia, I'm sorry." " I know, I suck." " No, no." "You can't just disappear from my life like that and pop back into it whenever you feel like it." "I know." "It's just, the people in my life have a habit of disappearing on me and when you started making plans..." "You're not gonna lose me." "CUTLER:" "There you go." "So, that's what wins you over with Adam." "Which is beautiful." "Now, we have another scene coming up, which is their make-up..." "After they make up, it's the scene..." "They make up, they kiss, they go to bed, and we're with them after they went to bed." "This was a scene that you're about to see, that we shot on the final day of production and was written during the final days of production." "It was written at the encouragement of Jon Littman, our dear friend." "It's a cello and a guitar." "Do you get it?" "CUTLER"." "He kept on saying," ""You need to see these guys getting deeper." ""You need to see that relationship getting deeper."" "And we shot it not knowing where it would go." "We all thought, and, in fact..." "When you make a movie, you number the script and you number the scenes, and we gave it a much earlier number because we all thought it would come much closer to that scene where they first make love in the barn." "Here's the scene." "But it was Keith Henderson, our editor, who said," ""No, no, no." "It's gotta go after they make up." ""Because if it goes after they make up," ""then you feel they have really come back together," ""and then you're really deeply invested in the relationship."" "Because it's only here now, it's only after they've been together, and they've broken up, and they've come back together, that Adam can tell this story about his dad." "GREENSPAN:" "This, actually, we shot in the hospital." "We built a little bedroom set in the hospital." "You would never know." "CUTLER"." "On the final day." "And I realize it's him." "It's my old man." "And I just stop cold." "And he just looks right at me and walks out." "No idea who I was." "Shit, Adam." "Then that night, I played like I was on fire." "I don't know if I thought I was good." "I just knew that nothing else mattered." "Till now." "Till you." "(BREATH ES DEEPLY)" "When I play..." "CUTLER:" "This is equally important to the scene, her opening up to him." "It's like my little house." " Really?" "Actually, no." "I'm totallyjust in it for the guys." "CUTLER:" "Then, of course, because they're kids, they have to cover." "GREENSPAN:" "Can't get too sappy." "Yeah." "CUTLER:" "But really just beautiful, and a beautiful addition, and Jon was right." "GREENSPAN:" "Jon was right." "CUTLER:" "We needed that scene, and thank goodness, Shauna..." "There were many drafts of it." "Many drafts." "Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and then finally, the day before, we settled on the scene." "It's a beautifully written scene, a beautifully performed scene." "In post-production, we found the perfect place for it." "GREENSPAN:" "It all worked out." "CUTLER"." "Yeah, really nice." "Really nice, the way sometimes that happens." "We're now getting ready for Mia's audition." "By the way, this voiceover here is actually..." "In the book, is the prologue." "It's the very first page of the book, is this interior monologue from Mia, where she says the decision is so terrifying to her." "GREENSPAN:" "It's her choice, and she has the power to make it." "She really struggles with that power." "CUTLER:" "In the movie, we decided to put it there, and have that lead us right into her Juilliard audition." "This is the place where I think, really, if Chloé hadn't spent all that time with the cello, if she hadn't studied the great cellists," "if she hadn't been able to really communicate that, you wouldn't get the sense, and this is so important to this film, that young Mia is having, for perhaps the first time in her life," "a moment of artistic transcendence, where she is..." "The art she is creating is larger than anything she can even comprehend, and it's a bit of magic." "GREENSPAN:" "She says she doesn't know she had it in her." "That's what I always think of here." "(PLAYING CLASSICAL MUSIC)" "CUTLER:" "This is, of course, also the moment where we really meet Gramps." "We have seen him, but we're now meeting a man who's going through a transformation, so affected is he by the music his granddaughter is creating." "We always say," ""How do you know the king has walked in the room?"" "The answer is, "Because everybody bows."" "How do you know Mia's this great?" "Because Gramps cries." "(some ENDS)" "(PANTING)" "GREENSPAN"." "I love that look she gives." "CUTLER:" "Can't believe it." "So, that's an exciting moment in the film." "With this shot, which is an unusual shot, 'cause you don't see the reverse on Mia because we actually never got to shoot it." "But we kept that shot in because it's Mia's point of view of the house after that moment, and she's seeing it differently." "She's growing up now." "GREENSPAN:" "You've been out in the world, and you've done this great thing." "CUTLER"." "She is Mia the great cellist now." "Everything has changed, and that's why it was important to have that shot, just that point of view, and that was something that was in Shauna's script from the very beginning." "She sees the house in a different way." "Mia." "CUTLER:" "We talk a lot about the scene of Gramps in the hospital, and we'll talk to it when we get to it because it's such a powerful scene, but I am absolutely certain that the impact of that scene comes because of this scene," "because he opens up to her in this way and says, "I want to tell you what I didn't tell your dad."" "Thank you, Gramps." "CUTLER:" "This is something he could not have done a day ago." "GREENSPAN:" "Yeah, it's an interesting thing." "It goes back to just carving real characters." "He's not the perfect father or grandfather, and he has a change throughout the movie that really wins you over." "CUTLER"." "I did an interview earlier today." "A journalist is doing a piece on tearjerker films, and he was like..." "He said, "So, what's the secret?" ""What's the sugar in the spaghetti sauce of tearjerker films?"" "And we talked about several moments, including that scene with Gramps." "And I kept on saying," ""I think the secret is that you keep it as real as possible." ""If the moments are authentic, and the people are genuine," ""and they're in that moment," ""and they're being as real as possible," ""it's going to be moving."" "Because a moment like that, where a grandfather opens up to his granddaughter that way and says, "I don't want to make the same mistake with you" ""that I made with your dad."" "If it's performed by somebody as brilliant as Stacy, and as brilliant as Chloé, and it's real," "it's gonna be moving." "GREENSPAN"." "It really works." "CUTLER"." "It's gonna jerk the tears." "That was a really beautiful song, Adam." "It's gettin' there." "CUTLER:" "By the way, that song that we just had Adam play, that was a late addition." "Originally, we were going to do that song as an electric song." " It was a slower, more of a ballad." "GREENSPAN:" "In the club, yeah." "CUTLER"." "We prepared as an electric song." "Even in here, he was gonna play it electric, and when we got here that day," "Jamie was just fooling around on the acoustic guitar, and it sounded so great, and it was so different than everything else he had done that we figured, let's do it that way." "Let's hear a whole different song from Adam Wilde, and a whole different tone." "We ended up using that song in the closing credits, we loved it so much." "Yeah, me too." "You know, for once, I actually felt like I could do this." "Why didn't you call me after the audition to brag?" "I know..." "CUTLER:" "Now, you and I discussed this scene" "a great deal." " GREENSPAN:" "Many times." "(GREENSPAN CHUCKLING)" "CUTLER"." "My feeling is less is more." "GREENSPAN:" "Yes." "You were right." "(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)" "CUTLER:" "It's not the only reason I bring it up, but I do really love..." "GREENSPAN:" "How a look says so much." " CUTLER:" "Yes." " Yeah." "CUTLER"." "And this pause here." "And how painful that is, and then how later in the night, they just are trying and trying to put a laugh on it." "Trying to make the best out of it." "GREENSPAN:" "You said and you pointed out that Gayle had this great line in the book," ""It's like we were breaking up in slow-motion. "" "CUTLER:" "Mmm-hmm." "GREENSPAN:" "And so, you wanted to capture that rolling..." "How people really break up." "You love someone." "You know where it's headed, but you can't let go, and you're trying to pretend." "This is that scene." "CUTLER"." "Trying so hard." "So hard." "And she got it, too." "Chloé got it." "Again, talk about a look in a scene, the final moment of this scene, right before she kisses him, and then when she runs out, really captures that." "Okay?" "And I'm still crazy in love with you." "Yeah, me too." "CUTLER"." "Just beautiful." "And now we're in the final run of the film." "Um..." "Because you see where the relationship is going." "We're about to find out the real emotional blow, which is..." "We're building up to that of point where we find out about Teddy." "This is the hospital section that begins that." "Now, I can't remember all of the places we thought about shooting this scene." "And finally..." "GREENSPAN:" "I was just gonna say, we found this" "(LAUGHING) a week before we shot this scene." "CUTLER:" "A week is much longer." "It may have been the day before." "GREENSPAN:" "Was it that close?" "CUTLER"." "Yes." "But it was a space that Brent found that worked perfectly" "as the hospital roof." " GREENSPAN:" "Totally worked." "Beautiful." "CUTLER:" "And gave us a different look and a different feel." "But it was another example of a happy accident, where we were running out of options." "I think we were looking at this for the New Year's Eve party, in fact." "GREENSPAN:" "Yes." "CUTLER:" "It was scouted for the New Year's Eve party, and it didn't work for the New Year's Eve party 'cause it didn't really feel like it would be a twenty-something's apartment." "But Brent came back one day to production and he said," ""I think I found the hospital roof." "We can do the scene there."" "When you have a happy accident, it's a good idea to grab it." "GREENSPAN:" "Speaking of happy accidents, we would not have gotten through this crazy schedule, 'cause there were basically two Mias working every day, the Mia you see walking around as a ghost and the Mia you see lying in bed." "We were really lucky to find a girl whose height and face and body looked exactly like Chloé, and that helped us get through all of these hospital scenes without having to shoot the actual Chloé twice in two locations." "We really need someone down there right now!" " Shi't!" "(WHISPERS) Go!" "GREENSPAN"." "That's funny to me every time." "CUTLER: (CHUCKLING) I love Liana in the moment." "It's so important in this film, it actually brings up an interesting thing, that we were able to find moments of levity." "Moments that the audience could laugh, even in the middle of the most intense moments." "But this is what you're talking about, where you see both Chloé and the double." "Of course, we put Chloé's face on the double using visual effects, but it was great to have that body there to work with." "GREENSPAN:" "That was your conceit of being able to see two Chloés at the same time." "CUTLER:" "So important." "You gotta." "Mia had to see herself, and it's so powerful when she does." "...handle it from here." "CUTLER:" "Again, here, you see that floating camera that we used, that's Mia's point of view." "This is actually the scene..." "Shooting this scene was where we realized that, that floating camera was going to be so helpful to us." "Well, she's gonna need you now more than ever." "Hey, what's going on?" "Willow, what's happening?" "CUTLER:" "And this, of course, is the most powerful emotional sequence, when Mia realizes what's happened to Teddy." "We've neglected to mention, of course, Gabrielle Rose, who plays Gran." "Another wonderful member of this ensemble who had few words to work with, but delivered just another knockout performance." "Here is that memory footage we were talking about before." "MIA:" "And never learn to drive." "CUTLER"." "The interaction of editorial and narrative, the way this material was shot, performance, another example of all of it working together" "at the same time, and you get this feeling that Mia has given up." "...to be over!" "(MACHINE BEEPING RAPIDLY)" "CUTLER:" "Yeah, we haven't talked at all about the facility where we shot." "The hospital." "It's not a hospital." "There are no hospitals in Vancouver, are there, where you're allowed to shoot?" "GREENSPAN"." "None that will let you shoot..." "CUTLER:" "There are plenty of hospitals in Vancouver" "if you need a gall bladder operation." " GREENSPAN: ...for three weeks." "CUTLER"." "But not if you're making a film." "Which is amazing, because they have so much production there." "You would think somebody would let you use their hospital." "So, as a result, there is one place where everybody who shoots in Vancouver shoots hospital scenes." "What's it called?" " G RE E N S PAN:" "Riverview." "Riverview." "GREENSPAN:" "It's an abandoned insane asylum, and this really is credit to the great Brent Thomas, because it's just hallways, and he built the set." "CUTLER"." "Now, you say that it's abandoned, but it's abandoned by all living humans." "Ghost spirits still occupy it." "GREENSPAN:" "We think so." "We heard a weird clanking during shooting." "CUTLER:" "Whenever the cameras would roll," "the pipes would clank." "GREENSPAN:" "The pipes would clank." "CUTLER:" "Some people were more sensitive to ghost spirits than others, and more creeped out by it." "So, it made for an eerie couple of weeks of shooting, but we got through it." "Thank goodness we had that space." "And upstairs in that abandoned institution," "we found..." "GREENSPAN:" "Was our New Year's party." "CUTLER: (CHUCKLING) ...a space to shoot New Year's, and thank God we did, because we wouldn't have been able to fit it into the schedule if we couldn't just run upstairs and shoot New Year's." "This is no twenty-something's apartment." "It is a rooftop of an abandoned..." " GREENSPAN:" "Insane asylum." "(BOTH LAUGHING)" "CUTLER:" "But a place where a great love story could be told." "I promise you." "Wait, what am I promising?" "That we'll spend next New Year's together." "CUTLER:" "There was always this question of, "When do they break up?" ""How do they break up?" And, again, like life, sometimes it happens not in a big, dramatic movie scene, but just in a realization." "I guess we both know where this is heading." "CUTLER"." "And there it is." "Yeah, I guess so." "CUTLER:" "We talked at the very beginning of this conversation about reading the book, and how certain emotional moments" "just blew me away." "I know you had a similar experience when you read it." "One of them was the scene between Mia and Kat at the kitchen sink on New Year's Day." "And that is this scene." "For me, this was a defining moment in the very first experience" "I had with this story." "Reading the book." "And I always knew it would be a defining moment in the film, because of the way that mother and daughter connect." "The way that mother can't solve the problem her daughter is begging her to help her solve, but the way that she loves her through it, and embraces her through it, and promises her that she'll be there" "no matter what decision her daughter makes." "It's just very powerful to me." "Consistent with that theme of seeing, and being seen, and being understood." "GREENSPAN:" "I love that she doesn't try and whitewash it for her daughter." "Say, "Oh, it's all gonna be okay."" "She basically says, "Life's a bitch," you know?" "It's messy." "It's a great scene." "Oh, God." "I'm such a mess." "You know, we had this perfect year and a half together." "And now, we're just moving in different directions." "Is it over?" "Yeah." "You're supposed to break up with someone because you're not in love with them." "Not because you're completely in love with them." "GREENSPAN:" "This was also day three or four of shooting." " It was early..." " CUTLER:" "Very early." "...for them to find" "that rhythm and groove." " CUTLER:" "Mmm-hmm." "GREENSPAN:" "They both just snapped into it." "CUTLER:" "Also, we shot this scene for several hours because we couldn't complete a shot without an airplane coming." "It was like all of a sudden, this house had become ground zero for all overhead flying in the country of Canada." "GREENSPAN:" "And Chloé kept on bringing the tears." "It's so hard to stay in the moment." "CUTLER:" "But they did it, and they did it so beautifully." "I am being completely torn in half." "You're going to go to Juilliard and play the hell out of your cello." "Or you're not." "You're gonna stay with Adam and have lots of amazing adventures." "Or you're not." "Or maybe tomorrow, the Earth's gonna smash into a meteor." "Or it's not." "Life is this big fat gigantic stinking mess." "But that's the beauty of it too." "Whatever you do, I support you." "Either way, you win." "And also either way there's something that you lose." "What can I say, baby?" "True love's a bitch." "CUTLER:" "And so, at the same exact moment that Mia in the past-tense story has to be deciding what to do," "Mia in the present has to be deciding what to do." "GREENSPAN:" "The two storylines have caught up with each other here." "CUTLER"." "That leads to the scene we've been referencing throughout this conversation," "which is..." " GREENSPAN:" "Gramps." "...the Gramps bedside scene." "And there are so many things about this that are wonderful." "We should just let the viewer watch the scene." "These two remarkable performances." "Except to add that it is the one sequence in the film where Mia," "her spirit, can be felt by one of the other characters." "I've been trying to think of what Denny would want me to say to you." "The kid was a helluva of dad, wasn't he?" "He sure had me beat." "I remember the day that he quit the band." "He just up and said," ""That's it." "The time has come."" "I was surprised." "I never really liked the way the band sounded, but I knew how important it was to him." "And so I asked him, I said, "Why are you quitting?"" "And he said," ""You make sacrifices for your kids." ""For your kids."" "He said that without even blinking." "That's why he quit the band." "For Teddy." "For you." "It was when he heard you play so well." "I think that's when it clicked for him." "Your incredible talent, it..." "He just couldn't believe it." "And all he wanted to do was to give you more." "So, he quit the band, he sold his drum kit" "and he bought you that cello." "Sacrifice." "That's what we do for the people that we love." "And here's mine, Mia." "I want you to live." "I want that more than anything in this world." "I want you to fight like hell to stay with us." "But, with everybody else gone," "I know it might not be what you want." "It might be too hard for you to keep fighting, so..." "If you wanna go," "(VOICE BREAKING) I want you to know it's okay." "It's okay." "I understand." "Thank you." "Gramps?" "CUTLER"." "My feeling was somehow that, as we get closer to leaving the earthly realm, those whom we love" "can feel us most strongly, and that's why that moment was so important." "There's a moment, one moment, later on, as she's saying goodbye to Kim, that she touches her, and Kim looks down at her hand where she's touching her," "and they both got it." "They understood that." "That's why that moment works so well." "I love this scene." "How she moves, the spirit moves around the room." "This brings us back to the first scene we saw Liana do in audition." "GREENSPAN:" "That made us cry then, yeah." "Hey" "CUTLER:" "But all of the things we've talked about, the connection between these people, and the fact that we filmed this at the end of the film, and that they were saying goodbye after this powerful experience..." "GREENSPAN:" "It just worked." "...it all contributes to it." "Some are related to you and some aren't, but we're your family." "You still have a family, Mia." "(CHUCKLES)" "Look. (SNIFFLES)" "CUTLER:" "This is an interesting narrative thing that comes straight from Gayle's book." "At exactly the same moment in the book comes the memory" "of the family picnic." "GREENSPAN:" "The best day." "CUTLER". "The best day of my life."" "Usually, you would expect, at this moment, for the scene to have some narrative propulsion, something dramatic would happen." "But really what happens is an emotional moment." "It's a moment where Mia realizes, as she says, that she's part of something larger." "We borrowed this realization she had in another place in the book, that the cello, she always thought of the cello as a solo instrument, but then she realized it was part of something larger even as she realizes that she's part of something larger." "And that's the transformational moment." "But a moment, as well, that her spirit realizes can no longer exist." "Or at least she thinks that, and that's what leads her to make the decision to..." "GREENSPAN:" "To go." "CUTLER:" "To go." "GREENSPAN:" "This was a tough song to find, the Smashing Pumpkins' Today." "CUTLER:" "It was, it was." "There was a lot of discussion about this, as well." "There were a few different songs that we that we considered." "There was a song I love that we couldn't get the rights to." "We tried for a long time, and then we tried a number of different songs, and it had to work not only as a song that a bunch of musicians with guitars and" "banjos would be able to play." "GREENSPAN:" "And a cello." "CUTLER"." "But to work on a cello!" "And that it would have a great cello solo." "And how did we arrive at this song?" "(GREENSPAN LAUGHING)" " CUTLER:" "Somebody had the bright idea to use the Smashing Pumpkins' Today." "I can't quite remember who it was, Alison." "MIA:" "Just me and my cello." "(GREENSPAN LAUGHING)" "GREENSPAN:" "John said we should look at songs that had been done with cello, and in searching online for YouTube videos or videos from the '90s with cello in it," "I stumbled across this song." "I always loved Billy Corgan." "And then, thankfully, you liked it, too." "CUTLER:" "And thankfully perhaps even more, Billy Corgan..." "GREENSPAN:" "Let us have it." "..." "let us have it at a price." "He gave it to us at a rock-bottom price because he really responded to the material." "Here's a shout-out to him." "And then, most of all, thankfully, Adam Lasus, who produced this, and the whole team who performed it, just crushed it." "We'll let you listen." "It's just a great, great performance of Today." "ALL: (SINGING) Today is the greatest" "Day I've never known" "Can't wait for tomorrow" "I might not have that long" "I'll tear my heart out" "Before I get out" "CUTLER:" "And here is Mia's revelation coming up." "MIA:" "The thing is, Mom and Dad always had their scene." "And Adam had his." "And I was always jealous because I didn't have mine." "Until the night of the bonfire." "That was my scene." "That was where I belonged." "(ALL CONTINUE SINGING)" "MIA:" "That's what happiness felt like." "CUTLER:" "It's funny, I always knew that I wanted to put, um," "Mia's spirit in this memory." "That's the only time she appears in one of her memories." "GREENSPAN:" "You felt very strongly about that." "CUTLER:" "That's something we talked about a lot." "I felt if she could see it in the moment of decision, that it would have a certain power." "I think it really quite works and sets up this moment, where she says goodbye to her body and is preparing to leave." "This walk is one of the very first things we shot in the hospital." "We had time and we shot it the very first day we were in the hospital, and I thought, "No way she's gonna nail it," and she did." "This is the moment I was talking about where she touches Kim." "I love that Kim and Liz have become friends over time, and then Kim looks down." "What's very subtle on the soundtrack is the sound of wind, which is something that Shauna had written in at the very beginning, and I'm pretty sure was also in the book, the sense of wind." "We wanted this to be beautiful." "We wanted the world that she was going towards to be as beautiful and compelling as one could imagine." "But there is only one thing that could bring her back." "(CELLO PLAYING CLASSICAL MUSIC)" "Just after this piece." "CUTLER:" "Of course, it's the same performance" "that Mia and Adam listened to on their very first date, which is the remarkable Alisa Weilerstein," "who came to Vancouver and performed for us, took time out of her touring schedule to do it because she wanted to be a part of this." "GREENSPAN:" "I think it was the day before Thanksgiving." "She flew out on a red-eye, performed, flew back that night." "Really lovely, lovely woman." "CUTLER:" "That defines their first date, but it also is the music that compels Mia to come back..." "Adam." "...at the very end of the film." "Mia." "Don't." "Sta)'" "I know a huge part of your life is forever ruined because of what happened today." "I'm not dumb enough to think that I can fix it." "You can't." "But I went to your house." "And I had to climb up the balcony to get in like I used to." "And I found this in your mail slot." "(SNIFFLES)" "I totally broke and entered and stole your mail, so the Feds might be comin' after me." ""Dear Mia," ""it gives me tremendous pleasure..."" "Mia, you got in." "To Juilliard." "Mia, you did it." "CUTLER:" "We always wondered when we were prepping this..." "And if you want me to come with you, I will." "...if Mia getting into Juilliard, Adam agreeing to come with her," "Adam playing her a song, if it would feel like too much." "We always said," ""Well, if it feels like too much, we'll cut some of it out." ""We'll cut back."" "And then when we put it together and watched it, it all made sense." "GREENSPAN:" "It worked, yeah." "CUTLER"." "It all fit together." "GREENSPAN:" "It felt like he did something heroic for her, I think." "I can't." "You know I can't." "(SIGHS)" "I'm still kinda working on this thing, but... (CLEARS THROAT)" "(ADAM PLAYING BALLAD)" "You wrote me a song." "(SINGING) Breathe deep, breathe clear" "Know that I'm here" "CUTLER:" "I know we're supposed to be talking about the movie, but we're both caught up in just watching." "GREENSPAN:" "I'm just remembering watching this on set, crying. (CHUCKLING)" "CUTLER"." "It was a pretty powerful moment, when Jamie, who really poured his heart into this, performed this song." "We all had the same reaction." "The entire set." "You could hear a pin drop, except for the sound of people moved to tears." "How could I live before?" "How could I have been so blind?" "(AUDIO DISTORTING)" "So blind" "CUTLER:" "And here, we rely on that handheld memory footage that becomes increasingly de-saturated." "Sounds of Mia's life, her memories, as she's struggling to make the choice." "I always said there would be a sound of something breaking, something cracking, and a real sense that, at the end of the day, she had chosen to go, after all." "(SILENCE)" "(GASPS)" "Mia." "(BALLAD PLAYING)" "CUTLER"." "Then she chooses life." "And that is the end of If I Stay." "Um..." " I'll say this..." " GREENSPAN:" "Thank you, R.J." "CUTLER"." "Thank you, Alison." "I'll say this about the song you're hearing by Tom Odell, which is called Heal." "We knew so much more about what this final song needed to be, the closing credits song, than we did about how we would ever find it." "What we knew about the song was it had to be a beautiful song that somehow spoke to the content of the movie." "The name of this song is Heal." "And would allow the audience to transition down from this very emotional roller-coaster experience that they had just been on." "Again, this was a case where we listened to hundreds of songs, and only when we heard this song did we feel that we'd found what we were looking for." "And then Tom went into the studio and did a special version of it just for us that included this choir" "and elevated it to an even more spiritual level, which is what we were looking for." "So, thanks to him." "Thanks to you, Alison." "Thanks to our dear friends at MGM." "GREENSPAN:" "The great Jon Glickman and Matt Dines and Gary Barber, who took a chance on our movie." "CUTLER:" "Thanks to our good friends at New Line Cinema." "GREENSPAN:" "And Warner Brothers." "CUTLER"." "And Warner Brothers." "GREENSPAN:" "For distributing the film." "CUTLER:" "To Toby Emmerich." "GREENSPAN:" "We're so grateful." "Richard Brener." "Kevin Tsujihara." "CUTLER:" "And everyone else there." "Sue Kroll." "Thanks, as well, to everybody who worked on the film." "You get to see their names here." "Hopefully, we've spoken about all of them a little bit, and given you a sense of their contribution to this film." "Certainly, one of the things that becomes clear to me in having had this conversation" "is how much this was a complete collaboration." "How everybody's contribution is cause for whatever it is in the film that may have succeeded as we hoped and dreamt it would." "These names of these people are the ones..." "GREENSPAN:" "Made it happen." "...who made that contribution." "And, really, if everybody wasn't rowing the boat in the same direction, and giving it their all, and working like dogs on rainy, dark days in Vancouver and through weeks and months of post-production," "none of it would have come out the way it did." "So, thanks to everybody who contributed to the film." "And once again, my friend, thanks to you." "What a thrill, what a joy." "GREENSPAN:" "Thanks to you, for bringing it to life." "CUTLER:" "And this was a blast." "GREENSPAN:" "A true labor of love, this one." "Couple of years, and you did it." "I think everybody worked their butts off on a shoestring, but you said it beautifully, just really a labor of love." "CUTLER:" "And thanks to you for watching." "We couldn't appreciate it more." " Okay, this is us high-fiving each other." "(BOTH HIGH-FIVING)" "GREENSPAN: (CHUCKLES) Ow." "CUTLER"." "And checking out." "(SINGING) I played the odds" "Full of black and blues" "From all the nights with you" "I never wanted to go" "I don't want you anymore" "I don't want you to feel the same as me" "I never wanted to go" "But now I'm letting you know" "I just wanted to feel" "The life in me" "I went from solid steel" "To broken glass" "The darkest side in me" "You brought out fast" "The things I said were true" "I'm taking them back from you" "I never wanted to go" "I don't want you anymore" "I don't want you to feel the same as me" "I never wanted to go" "But now I'm letting you know" "I just wanted to feel" "The life in me" "I miss you" "I wish you" "Will let me be" "Just leave it" "We stopped breathing" "I need to be free" "I never wanted to go" "But now I'm letting you know" "I just wanted to feel" "The life in me"