"This is George and I'm here with Grant Heslov writer, producer of the film." "And I'm here with George, the writer, producer, director, co-star." "All-around dancer." " That's a lot of credits for one person." " It is a lot of credits." "Too many." "These are financiers." "You'll see their names all over the place." "Where did we shoot this, Grant?" "We shot this in..." " We were in Miami of Ohio?" " That's right." "Miami University in Ohio." "I'm not a Christian." "I'm not an atheist." "I'm not Jewish." "I'm not Muslim." "I don't have anything to say about this, Grant." "Do you?" "Well, you had a pretty specific..." "You had a very specific idea of the way you wanted this first scene to feel." "Yeah, we wanted to take our time with it and sort of set it up." "When we first did the adaptation, we didn't have this scene and we started with the actual debate that's coming up next." "But we thought it would make it a little more cynical if we had him do this first." "Yeah, it makes for a good callback later." "I don't know how many people..." " ...pick up on that." " I don't think anybody does." " You don't?" " No." "That means that we failed in our callback." "Sometimes you can be too subtle." "And this was great when you sort of discover that this is how the stage worked." "Yeah." "This was good fun." "We enjoyed this guy too." "He just sat..." "In fact, we actually just lowered him back down and then left him there." "He might still be there." "If I'm not mistaken, I believe your parents came to visit this day." "My parents did come to visit." "They were confused by what we were doing." "Okay, go ahead." "If I'm not religious enough for you, don't vote for me." "All of the set dressings were all courtesy of MSNBC." "That's right." "You conned them into letting us use their name." "They actually sent us that." "That's actually their debate wear." " It is?" " Yeah." "We figured it's a Democratic primary so we could do that." "Seemed fair." "Can we get the monitors up?" "I'd like the governor to hear himself." " You got it." " Okay." "Are we gonna put risers under these podiums...?" "And we aren't really shooting in those other cameras." " But we did later." " Yeah, we did." "And some of the stuff, we shot that stuff." "They're short, so it makes it hard for him to read his notes." "Thank you." "See you in a few hours." "Here we go." "...the governor had trouble reading his notes." "He doesn't." "Pullman's 5'8"." "He's gonna look like a hobbit." " Is it bad to laugh at our jokes?" " It is." "Now, this is the score by Alexandre Desplat who's a really wonderful composer." "We sort of wanted the Yankee Doodle Dandy kind of military drums..." " That's your nephew." " That's my nephew there." "I can't cut that shot out." " There's your other nephew." " That's my uncle." "We shot in my hometown, basically, of Cincinnati, Ohio." "So I ran into a lot of..." "There's a lot of friends and neighbors." "It was great." "It was like..." "It was really cool shooting in a place where people just came up and like:" ""Hey, George, remember me?" "I was..." You know?" "You don't..." "You don't get that much." "No, you don't." "You like to not have it all the time." "...Florida and Tennessee and Virginia and Missouri." "This opening here, this was sort of a..." "This was an audible." "We called this at the last minute." "In fact, we just pulled this off the wall and started moving pins around." "Yeah." "And we did it at the..." "That last place we shot where we shot the plane." "The airplane scene." "Yeah." "Would you call yourself Christian?" " There's Evan Rachel Wood." " Miss Young Evan Rachael Wood." "She has a bounce to her step." " Very cold here by the way." " You can't tell it." " No." " It doesn't look cold." "...Catholic." "I am not a practicing Catholic." "I have no idea what happens after we die." "This is back at Miami University again." "I'll vote for him." "Is that your idea of...?" "Yeah." "Which always was confusing to me." "I am not a Christian or an atheist." "I'm not..." " This..." "This is..." " The callback." "This is our callback." "...of paper called the Constitution." "Meaning that I will defend your right..." "That guy's supposed to be an MSNBC anchor." "...as long as it doesn't hurt others." "And these were all mostly students from the university." "We..." "Because we know about YouTube and things like that, we did..." "Oftentimes, we would do one speech when we were shooting towards the audience and we'd let them go home and I would do the speech later so that the speeches didn't end up on YouTube." "If you think that these questions..." "That's Yuriy." "...in a general election, you are living in fantasy land." "And the young gentleman in front of us is Max Minghella." "Who played my son in Syriana, actually." "Yep." "And now, there you go." "These guys don't need introductions." "They don't, but they sure are fun to watch." "Yep." "It would have been fun to write a couple more scenes where we put those guys against each other." "Yeah." "It's just..." "There just was no way to get them in the same room." " No." " It just didn't make sense." "Fucking national security." " Out of the park." " Home run." "The alumni of Miami University of Ohio thank you for attending tonight's debate and ask you to remain in your seats until candidates have left the stage." " There's..." " This also I believe, was Philip Seymour Hoffman's first day." " It was his first day." " So he was thrown right in there." "We'd been shooting for about three weeks at that point, so..." "He had to play catch up." "...been you that did that prep work, Stephen." " Paul's not that clever." " You've always had the brains." "But me, I've had the balls." "These guys don't like each other, so that made for a good fight." "It worked out." "In fact, no one liked anyone on the set." "What a prick." "Now, this guy was a local who actually was singing in a bar in Detroit, which is where we're shooting now." "We've moved quickly to Detroit." "We're..." "The next set is Detroit and..." "You know, we cast a pretty wide net." "We cast in New York and Chicago for a singer and we ended up finding a local guy." "Actually, right in the bar." "And sort of in every film I've done I like to do a little jazz break of some form and this is one of them." " What do you think, Stevie?" " I think it's ours..." "Marisa Tomei." " This was a great bar called Cliff Bells." " In Detroit." "No." "Not Cliff Bells." " Cliff Bells." " Cliff Bells." "Yeah." "How's the memory?" "Not so..." "What?" " But how's your memory?" " Not so good." "These are tricky scenes because you have you know, more than one person and they're sitting down talking and this is actually a scene directly..." "Almost directly from the play." "So they're wordy scenes so you have to really get the actors to jump in and go." "And these are the right actors to do that." "Yeah." "I mean, this was always one where we talked..." "I mean, I think this was probably, what, an eight-page scene originally?" " Yeah, we cut it down." " Yeah, really cut it down." " It works." "I think it works really well." " Yeah." "In the last 30 years, 73 Democrats have run for president." "How many have won?" "Three." "That means 70 guys ran who thought..." "I mean, you can..." "When you can watch a scene on a film you've made and still be engaged by it after, what, the 50th time of seeing it then it's a scene that you can be proud of." "That or you're a narcissist." "That." "Yeah." "That or you're drunk." "I wasn't watching the scene." "I was just staring at the screen." "For this moment, this election, this primary..." "Is... "And that, Ida, is the State of the Union."" "And on that note..." "Here's my favorite line." "...I'm gonna take a shit." " He only said that once." " Yeah." "And only did that line one time, but it worked great." "And this is..." " He's getting on a plane." " That's what you do, yeah." "This was a scene that you wrote, like, the last minute." "You wrote this sort of..." "Yeah." "During while we were rehearsing." " We..." " It came out of rehearsals." "Yeah." "It came out of just sort of knocking around." "What if I said North Carolina?" " Is that your guess?" " He's going to North Carolina." "So funny." "Marisa tries to make herself look dowdy to look like a reporter and she's still stunning." " She looks great." " Yeah." "You love him because he gives you the scoops." " Sexual favors." " You're engaged." "If it meant a good scoop, my fiancé would understand." "You really buy into all this crap." "Yeah." "...The country" nonsense." "Interesting, too, on these scenes, you really get to see..." "All these actors, they're all great and they work in completely different ways." " Yeah." " They all have a different approach." "You really have drunk the Kool-Aid." "Yeah." "It's a funny thing." "Evan sort of just..." " You just say "go" and she goes." " Right." "Philip has all kinds of..." "You know, Philip has a great sort of process." "When you watch him work, that's fun." "He underplays it the first time and then really gets going and then it just blows it out like crazy and then sort of brings it back in." "He's really..." "It's a really interesting process to watch him work." "He really..." "Also, he like..." "He doesn't..." "You know, he's not afraid to show warts and all." " He just sort of lets it all hang out." " Yeah." "He really does." " Paul's like that too." " Yep." "And Ryan's..." "Ryan's also such a funny, interesting actor because he's..." "I keep trying to think of myself at his age and I was doing, you know The Facts of Life with, you know, Tootie and Jo and, you know, terrible combination of overconfidence and bad acting and he's so clean and such a smart actor." "He's a nice guy." "Yeah." "But he had, you know..." "He had his..." "He had his coming up too." "He started a lot younger." " Exactly." "He was a Mouseketeer, man." " That's right." "We recorded all the music in all of the films we've done live on the set, so we don't have..." " Yeah." "No looping it or no dubbing it." " No." "I think we dubbed one line in this whole movie." " This is off-off-off the record." " What?" "This is a oner." "It wasn't..." "You didn't plan it as a oner and you actually have coverage on it." "But it worked..." "It just worked better in the oner." "The funny part about it is when we..." "You know, when it starts here it looks like we're on the set." " And it was cold that night." " Yeah." "It was really cold." " Detroit in the mid-winter." "I tell you." " Yeah." "Nothing more fun." "...till you get them alone." "So this is for real." "But, Grant, we're..." "This is supposed to be Cincinnati." " So don't tell people." " Sorry." "Nope, that's all you get for now." "Here's our favorite part." "The sound effect." "Right there." "We..." "We did that sound effect I don't know how many times." "Just to get it to sound like..." "It still sounds like lettuce in a box." "It doesn't sound like a cell phone." "I gotta believe we can do it." "So this one was interesting, right?" "We shot that in prep." "And we just went out to a factory and took a video camera and you just spoke to the people out there." "I was saying a lot of things that I don't think a lot of those people would agree with." "Then I get around to jobs and everybody agreed on it." "They love the job stuff." "Funniest thing was you wanted me to shoot it and I had just gotten my first iPhone." " I wanted it to be on an iPhone." " Yeah." "I shot it, got great stuff, and we looked and realized that I had shot it in the wrong aspect ratio." "You shot up and down instead of sideways, so we couldn't use it." " And I was like, "You directed movies."" " I know." "You were in the camera unit." "I know." "I know." "That's why I don't make my living as a cameraman." "Still checking on it, but..." "This "diamond mines in Liberia" line came from a televangelist who owns diamond mines in Liberia." "And I thought it was always a funny thing." "These two kids, and..." "Both local." "They are both local there, which is..." " Michigan local." "Right?" " Yeah." "They're Michigan local." "And went to college at Michigan..." "Is that Michigan State?" " No, Michigan." " Michigan." "You'll get in trouble for that." " They'll get you for that." " Yeah." "They will get you for that." "Here comes Evan." " Hey." " Hey." "Nothing but trouble, this girl." "Look at her." "Okay." "Thank you, I've been waiting." "This set, this was just one big, empty, unfinished, old, stinky place." " Freezing cold warehouse." " It was freezing and our production designer, Sharon Seymour and her team turned it into..." " A real campaign office." " A real campaign office." "All this is set." "It's all set." "Yeah." "It's all built." " Even these." "The offices were built." " Yeah." "We had to figure out a way to, you know, get light in on him." "Yeah." "Anytime that we can sort of shoot through glass..." " We're happy to do it." " ...we're happy to do it." "Watch Good Night, and Good Luck." "That's all we did." "Oh, yeah." "I know." "Tell him it's fine." " Should've done this black and white." " We should've." "And more glass." "It's really exciting, isn't it?" "What are you, a Bearcat?" "Am I a what?" "Yeah." "The bearcat line didn't play all that well in the Italian premiere." " No." " They didn't understand it." "A lot of this stuff was a little..." " Under their heads." " Colloquial." "Is that the right word?" "You can use that word." "I..." "But you changed something." " My hair?" " You changed your hair." "No." "I see." "It's nice to see Ryan get got a little bit..." " ...because he's always so in control." " Yeah." "She really holds her own here." "Oh, it's not like that." "You get to stay at the Millennium." "The cinematographer, Phedon Papamichael is the guy who shot this." "He shot Sideways and 3:10 to Yuma." "He's..." "Also he shot Bio-Dome, which a lot of people don't know." "That's true." "Also very tall Greek." " He's a tall Greek man." " He's a tall Greek man." "But German too." "So there's no drinking in his family." "Yes, he talks like this." "He's a very..." "A good DP for us to work with because he works very fast." "Yeah." "We were shooting like eight-, nine-hour days and did the whole thing in about seven-and-a-half weeks." "The whole film, so..." "My name is Molly." " We're proud of that." " It's important to get to dinner." " Yeah." " My priority's straight." "Yeah." "We even rewrote some scenes that were supposed to be at night into day, just so that we wouldn't have to miss dinner." "Now, here's Jeffrey Wright who I worked with in Syriana who's a wonderful actor from Angels in America to a million different things." "I just like watching him." "The Republicans have dick." "They're disorganized." "A lot of guys with deep voices in this movie." "Do you notice?" "Listen to Jeffrey." " Jeffrey's got an incredibly deep voice." " So does Phil." "...to vote for their guy." "If Pullman gets the Democratic nod, they will show up..." "So you think he gets into the Independent." "He's got a good voice." "We need your delegates." "It was really..." "This was..." "We shot this in Michigan in suburbs." " Yeah." " Pontiac..." " Ish." " Hills?" " Yeah." " Something." " You know..." " We'll get letters for that." "I don't remember where we shot anything." " Beautiful." "This was a beautiful area." " Yeah." "And this house was beautiful." " Thank you." " Estella." "Him and that ice bucket." " We can just do the scenes." " We should act them out." " Is this Paul, or is this you?" " Paul knows and Paul agrees." "Ben, where's my op-ed piece on national service?" " It's easier for me to work off of that." " Got it right here." " Give me a hard copy." " Can we print it out?" " That's actually true." " Yeah." "That's true." " I can't read off of a computer." " You're bad with the computers." "I can't write on a computer." "I can't read." "I can't do anything except sometimes check my e-mail." "Your national service isn't polling the same as the rest of your policy." "I don't give a shit about the polling." "I'm not gonna play this game." " Your good-cop, bad-cop act with Paul." " Good-cop, good-cop." "I'm not changing it." "Trying to think of something interesting about this scene." "This scene?" "No." "We built in a nice long pause." "We shortened it here." "Here we go." "This was a policy that my dad used to talk about about national service and that the idea's you could pass it because..." " Where does that fail?" " All of that's exactly right." "Just, if you're gonna do it, do it." "Make it mandatory, not voluntary." "No one would vote against it." "Mandatory." "Everybody who turns 18 or graduates high school..." "What's it like on a day like this?" "You know, having to sort of direct a scene." "This..." "You know, there's a lot of people and..." " And you're in it." " And you're in it." "Yeah." "That's why I just let you direct that and I just sat back." "Paul likes this?" "It is true." "It's a question we get..." "I get a lot and it's sort of like..." "You know what you want more than anybody else." "Can't vote." "You look to me to make sure you didn't miss something, but..." "It's not so much of that." "I mean, the truth of the matter is there's some element of modesty where you don't want more takes on yourself than on anybody else and I'll go, "Okay, I got it."" "And you'll say, "Go do it again." "Do another take."" "I'll go, "I got it." And you'll go, "Do another take."" "So it's a big help having somebody I've known for 30 years sitting next to me behind the camera, so..." "And what about me?" "I wasn't talking." "I didn't even know you were here." "Right." "Yeah." "Why am I doing him?" "Charlie was offended when he heard that. "Why am I doing...?"" "Yeah." "Just for reference, I had Charlie Rose to my house and I got him drunk and jumping in the lake at 2 in the morning." "...at a Morris campaign office." " What do you want?" " You got a couple minutes?" "I'd like to sit down with you." "Here we go." "Well, I think it's important." "Yeah, well..." "So this is where we first kick in the score." "Yeah." "For the first time." "Yeah." "I mean, you know I think it's cool the way that you don't..." "We don't have a lot of score in that opening." "It's a long way." "Yeah." "It's a trick." "Makes the score more powerful I think when it's not..." " Because we use it liberally later." " Yeah." "The trick is always to try and start things off slow and get them to accelerate and start them out wider and try to close it in as the film goes on." "This was pretty cool." "We went to..." " Abbey Road." " Yeah." "Scored..." "They scored..." "Recorded the score at Abbey Road and we, George and I, got to be there for a couple days and hang out there." "It was..." "That was a very..." "That was one of the more fun things we've gotten to do." "That was one of the more fun things we've gotten to do." "I'm always amazed by that just sitting there with a 60-piece orchestra." " That's..." "Yeah." "That's..." " It's the London Symphony Orchestra." "It's a pretty amazing group of musicians." "This is also talent that..." "It's..." "I have..." "There's nothing in me that's musical." "No, there isn't, except, you know, you're a very, very good tap dancer." "Gotta dance." "Now, here's a funny thing." "So Paul Giamatti comes to Cincinnati and we're shooting in the Heads First Sports Bar." "Now, Paul Giamatti's father was Bart Giamatti who was the baseball commissioner who banned Pete Rose from baseball before he died of..." "I think of a heart attack." " Bart, not Pete." " Yeah." "And Pete has never been able to be allowed into the Baseball Hall of Fame." "And many people in Cincinnati sort of blame Bart Giamatti." "And the Heads First Sports Bar is called that because it's across from the Cincinnati Reds baseball stadium." " Literally across the street." " Literally." "And head first is how Pete Rose always slid into base." "So you walk in there and the whole bar is filled with pictures of Pete Rose." "And Paul is standing there for a minute, and he goes:" ""Oh, shit." "This is Cincinnati." "This is Pete Rose."" "He goes, "Am I gonna get hurt?" I was like, "Just don't tell anybody."" "No." "Fuck, no." "No, they hate him." "They think they can beat my guy." " He kills in this scene, I think." " Yeah." " They're both great in it." " Yeah." "So starting tomorrow morning, you're gonna see a fucking blitz." "I think we did two takes on Paul." "I think that was it." " Yeah." " He's just so clean." "The thing about it is he's such a specific actor that you can give him a paragraph and every line is very unique and very different and very specific." "Polls don't mean shit." "Tomorrow everybody's gonna know." "And I don't think you mentioned this, but behind the bar is...?" "Oh, my buddy since third grade." "Pete is..." "Pete Harpen is back behind the bar bartending." "We gave him a line and then we cut it which I gave Pete his first lesson in show business." " It's a tough business." " Tough business." "Almost cut my nephew out of it." "But I didn't." "I'm thinking down the road here, man." "That is why I want you." " I can't do it." " Bring you in at the top." "All right." "I don't need an answer right this moment." " Look, I've played dirty." " I'm sorry to hear it." "But I don't have to play dirty anymore." "You know why?" "I got Morris." "None of this is about the..." "This was all from..." "When we were writing this was right when Hillary and Barack were running against each other and they really did do Operation Chaos so we threw this in as sort of the idea." "I've been in this business 25 years." "I've seen too many Democrats bite the dust because they wouldn't get down in the mud with..." "That's a great line." "That's from the play." "Such a good line." "Beau really wrote some beautiful characters." "...or do you wanna work for the president?" "Think about it." "You got my number." "And now this is actually outside the bar." "There's the stadium." "Not that I'm aware of." "What's going on with Thompson?" "I think I did these..." "The scene with both these guys." "Yeah, you did the voice on the other side." "Funniest thing was we weren't gonna shoot the side." " The side with Paul." " Right." "And we kind of at the last minute thought, you know we may need to cut to him and the truth is I'm so happy we did." "Yeah, it's good to have that side." "We scrambled to get it." "Literally, we..." "It was like..." "We went into a hotel and found this, and said:" ""Okay, think about what we can see."" "That morning and shot it like couple hours later." "This will be the only time you see me actually putting makeup on." "Because the only time I ever wore makeup was when we were doing this scene." "Here's Jules." "He's married to the campaign." "Good answer." "What you can't tell is that we have an entire camera crew jammed into the back of a toilet, shooting over the top of me onto the guys right here." "There's like 15 guys standing on the toilet standing in the bathtub." "This was a weird location." "This was in Detroit, and this was a..." " Empty hotel." " Empty, but it was a luxury hotel." " It wasn't a dump, it was a nice place." " Yeah." " It had been empty for a while." " They were redoing it." "And it was huge." " And we just sort of took it over." " Yeah." "But I can't see myself or anyone..." "Charlie flew in to do this..." " ...which was a wonderful favor for us." " Yeah." "And he liked the table there so much that we sent it to him and he's using it on his..." "When he does the show in Washington, D.C." "He'd been looking to match the table in New York in D.C and he hadn't found a good one." "This is a scene that was taken from Mario Cuomo doing an interview talking about the death penalty." "He said he'd take a baseball bat and kill somebody." "So you, you, governor, would impose a death penalty." "Which I always thought was the best argument against the death penalty without sort of..." "It was the Kitty Dukakis argument for that which was Mike Dukakis saying that he wouldn't defend..." "I think that was the last thing we shot on this film, that scene." "Might have been." "Yes, it was." "I think we literally, like, went to the plane a few hours later." "This is music from the same guy playing underneath from the Detroit location." "Yeah." "This scene came together quickly." "We shot the whole thing in about five hours or something." "They were both really good at this." "This was a bar back in Cincinnati." "They both hit close-ups really well." "We looked at stuff like scenes that..." "Like when Soderbergh shot Out of Sight and things like that just for that kind of lighting." "Sort of longer lenses." "And if Morris wins, he's gonna be your dad's boss." "When we went to go scout this place..." "Remember we went to go scout it, and the alarm went off?" " Yeah." " It was on for, like, an hour." " Yeah, but, like, a serious alarm." " Yeah." " What?" " The kind that make your ears bleed." "I'm showing the new interns how to robocall." "They're really good in this scene, they both get it, you know?" "Both actors." "I see." "It's the old trick, look at the girl's mouth when she's talking." "How old do you think I am?" "Thirty." "Remember he actually asked us to lower the age of the character?" " Yeah." " Because the character was 35 and he was like, "Come on, man." We're like, "Okay."" "How old are you?" "How old do you think I am?" "Twenty-one?" "Twenty." "That's young." "This is the line that always gets them in the theater." "Is that too young to fuck a 30-year-old?" "Wait for it." "Wait for it." "Well..." "Everybody's like, "Let me think about that."" "...at your hotel here in Kentucky, it's frowned upon." "This didn't play well in Ohio, this part." "No, they didn't like this in Ohio." " They liked it in Kentucky though." " Yeah." " Do you have a car?" "I don't drive." " I took a cab." "Fun." "That's it." " That was fun." " That..." "We were always wondering if we were gonna get a laugh on it or not." " And I think people get it and like it." " Right." "We got Chris Matthews to jump onboard." "We got Rachel Maddow to jump onboard." "We got John King to come onboard." "It was nice to have the real people." "But we believe the polls are within the margin of error and that the senator will win Ohio." "Yeah, what time's Paul get in?" "Shit." "Who do we talk to about polling?" "I gotta get some internal polling on the independents and wing nuts." "Do you want me to go?" "This was one of our sort of bigger days of shooting." "You know, this scene was a..." "Because we shot other scenes here too that took more time." " So we had to shoot the fun ones first." " Yep." "Get him on the line." "It's a tricky thing, getting dressed and matching." " Yep." " That was big deal." "We had to do some opticals later, split the screen and that kind of thing." " Yeah, just getting the time." " Just to match." "You called me the cleaning lady." "In one of these spots, we split the screen." " No, why would I be mad?" " Right." " I spoke with Jack Stearns." " Oh, hey." "Look." "I know you're looking for a reaction, but listen." " He's great too." " Yep." "And at the end of the day, the voters will decide who best can represent this party." "Yeah, getting dressed while you're doing a scene is always tricky." "Was...?" "Did we have playback this day or was this something..." " ...we burned in later?" " We had to burn that in." "Most of the stuff we have in here is burned in." "Yeah, we didn't have the actual footage yet." "This is one where we actually had to split the screen so that over her shoulder, we match." "So I'll show you where it is." "Like, right in there while she's pulling her jacket on on the other side, she was not putting her jacket on." "So we had to split the screen and put it back on a different place." "Just to match it." "All right." "That's where things get a little complicated." "You are kind of a player, but..." " I was being polite." " Bullshit." " You were trying to pick me up." " No, I wasn't." " That's a bit they both got really well." " Yeah." "They have chemistry together." " They do." " They're good." " I thought I was being subtle." " No, you were pretty forward." "You were pretty forward asking me to the bar." "Well, been trying to fuck you for a while." " It's kind of slutty of me, huh?" " Not at all." " I respect it in some strange way." " Good." " You have no idea how to tie a tie." " No, no, not a clue." "Yeah." "You're very mature." "For a 12-year-old." "For a teenager." " That makes people uncomfortable." " Yeah." "This was the first day of shooting right there." " Lunken Airport." " Lunken Airport in Cincinnati." "I love how mad he gets in this." "This was as cold as you could get, believe it or not." " It was very cold." " It was about 10 degrees out." "And I was standing about 40 feet to the left on a cell phone..." " ...talking to him, doing these lines." " That's right." "I gotta go." " One of our last days of shooting." " Yep." "It was hard flying..." "You know, we had to fly a full day up in the air just to get this shot." " Just flying around." " Flying around." " And then getting the storm to match." " That's always hard." "No, this was..." "This was on..." "Interesting, we shot this on a stage outside of Detroit and it's like the..." "I think it's like the biggest stage for shooting cars." "Had a huge lighting rig, unlike anything that I'd ever seen before." " Right." " Really, really cool." "I wished we were shooting a car that day." "Yeah." "No, the campaign." "How we doing?" "Remember we were gonna use a James Taylor song for this..." " ...underneath this for a while." " Before that, we had a Sinatra song." "Yeah." "Like "Fly Me to the Moon" or something." " Yeah." " Something." "Okay, Paul." "We always do that, we lay a song out and write scenes around it a little bit." " Usually end up not using them." " Yeah." "Somehow they inspire the tone of the scene somehow." "I'll do or say anything if I believe in it." "But I have to believe in the cause." "You and I, we did a show on K Street for about 14 weeks with all these consultants, and worked with them and this scene really came out of that, you know?" "When we were talking about eating at The Palm and all this stuff that's really sort of what happens." "...pimping out ex-senators to Saudi princes." "Pimping out ex-presidents." "Then I better win." "Yeah." "We had whole jokes about Carole Lombard there too." " We cut that out." " Yeah." "We have a normal marriage." "Which means when we disagree..." " This is a pretty great set here." " Yeah." "This was in..." "This was also in Miami." " Right?" " No." "This was in Michigan..." " ...at Ann Arbor." " Right." " Right." "Never mind." "Oh, you're right." " You'll get in trouble for that." "No, yeah, you're right because we made it Kent State because we were at Michigan, you couldn't make it Ohio." "You couldn't wear anything red or they'd shoot you." "Right." "...against the distribution of wealth to the richest Americans..." "This was the fun part." "We actually were gonna shoot this scene this next part of the scene, up against the ropes." "And then once we lit the set up we really saw that it looked kind of great up against the flag." "You walk in, you go, "That's where the scene is."" "Well, exactly." ""Well, we're shooting here."" "What?" "You were on a plane." "He called me and asked if we could meet." "I said, "Why?" He said it was very..." "Had to write these long speeches that we knew were just gonna be in the background." "It was so funny because we sat around writing political speeches like..." " A couple of political hacks." " Yeah." "Knowing that it was never gonna be heard except for somebody who's trying to pick it apart." "Thank God it was you who was saying it." "He laid out their strategy." "Doing robocalls, traffic jams, fake lit, and Thompson." "They offered Thompson secretary of state." "Know how you fight the war on terror?" "You don't need their product." "Their product is oil." "This is a piece that my dad wrote in 1979 about the..." "About the oil shortage." "And he just said, "If Saudi Arabia came out tomorrow and said:" "'There's no oil, ' we'd find a way to power our cars."" "So..." "My fucking blood pressure's going through the..." "He's so good in this." " Yeah, he really goes after him." " Yeah." "Here's where loads up." "Look, he gets back here because he knows he's gonna turn and nail him." "It matters what you did, what you didn't do." "It's fun watching actors load the gun before they fire, you know?" "I really love it." "I honestly believed you were gonna come back..." "Yeah." "I think this was a hard scene for Ryan to play." "You know, it's a scene where you have to..." "Kind of gotta lose." "Yeah, I mean, look, all actors like to win in the scenes they're in." "And, you know, this is a difficult part for him because for long periods of time, he loses in scenes." " And that's hard to do." " Yep." "...is run on an internal combustion engine." "Yeah, this was the Apollo speech." "...we will start the next technological revolution..." "And, yes, I am reading my lines off of a big glass." "How perfect was that for you?" "Oh, it was great." "I wish I could do every movie on the campaign trail." "So I could read it right off the glass." "That's it." " What's he have after?" " He has a fundraiser." "We had the choir singing..." "It never quite gelled." "It never felt right." "They were wonderful singers but it never felt right." "And then we hired a young singer to come in and really bump it up, and she was great." "But it just didn't work." "So we just got Alexandre to get a guy to play this for us at Abbey Road." "We knew we wanted to take the sound out and just play music here." "It sounded very collegiate, this song." " Like something out of Animal House." " That's right." "You will see glimpses of the wonderful Jennifer Ehle sitting there..." "Right there." "...who is an unbelievably great actress who was kind enough to do..." "This is in a dance hall, right?" " The dance rehearsal hall?" " Rehearsal room, yeah." "I love how simple it is." "I like this scene a lot." "This is one of my favorite scenes in the film." "Always liked this scene." "Well, there's an intimacy to it, but there's also really again, you know, filmic stuff." " So specific." " Yeah." "The stakes are pretty high at this point." "Not if you get Thompson's endorsement." "I'm not gonna do it." "What's he want?" "Head of the FDA or something?" "Reminds me of a scene out of a film that we would've watched that we would have loved, any number of films..." " ...you know, in the '70s." " Yeah." "This was about John Bolton who was..." "They were trying to appoint as the ambassador to the U.N." "And he wanted to cut the top 10 floors off the U.N." "So we thought we'd just do it to our senator." "If we walk from Ohio, take Thompson, give him the Cabinet post then we take North Carolina, his state..." "This was the trickiest part for us, was figuring the math out of delegate counts and stuff." "Yeah, we went back and forth a bunch of times." "Because there's..." "When each of these primaries takes place where the math would be, who's a senator or governor where and how they would carry their state." "Sometimes you split delegates, and sometimes you win them all." " Complicated." " Remember when we were shooting we had a panic that we had messed up the numbers?" " Yeah." " But it worked out." "This was an interesting thing." "We set it one way, this scene." "It was supposed to be three sort of small scenes in a row." "We were just looking at the sets." "We pulled the camera, go, "We could shoot all the way through all of this."" "You can see Phil in the corner there, actually, in a reflection pretending to be talking on the phone, waiting and then we pan over to him." "But that was something we found on the day." "Initially, we'd set the shoot inside." "We were just looking for different ways to shoot an office." "I mean, have I ever said to you that we had Ohio locked?" "Give me the courtesy of printing that in your column." "This was his last scene." "That was Phil's last scene." "What are you writing?" "The greatest speech ever given on hydrogen power." "The bar is set awfully high on that one." "Don't I know it." " She's so good in this." " Yep." "I was hit up by Mitchell's wife for you to show up at her Daughters of the American Revolution luncheon." "A big part of this was trying to find ways of shooting it that felt really super-close and intimate." "Even if you don't see half of your face while you're talking, it still felt close." "Like this, you know?" "Because she can really carry the scene for you." "It's a deal." "This..." "My father ran for congress and this was an issue my father talked about which was the deals that he didn't..." "Was never gonna make, and the things he was asked to do and so that's sort of where this scene came from for you and I." "Is Paul working on you?" "And this scene was shot..." " On a sound stage." " On a sound stage." "Yeah." "We put those lights in afterwards because we felt like there wasn't enough light out there." " Is he worse than Pullman?" " Yes, Stephen." "But, you know, shooting a scene like this you know, on a stage..." "Poor man's process just makes it so much easier to shoot the scene." "Especially to be intimate." "Yeah, you can really concentrate on the scene." "This is also a big setup right here." "I mean, it's the biggest setup in the game." " Yeah, yeah." " This..." "You know, at this point, we're just making our guy..." "Good." " You know, we believe him." " Yeah." "You know?" "Yeah, that's what we always talked about." "You know, you've gotta make it somebody that even if you weren't gonna vote for him, you'd still..." " You'd still think he was a good guy." " Right." " Gay marriage." " It's a silly argument." "This is actually the theater department at the school." "In Michigan." "...we frame the argument is as well." " From a religious...?" " From a religious to a civil-rights issue." "But one could argue a great difference between gender and race." "We used to ban interracial marriages." "I've got the cue cards on the floor here for me in there." "Once I got used to reading off a teleprompter, I couldn't stop." "It's like a drug for you." "Next film, we're gonna just do the earwig thing." "The argument is that men and women can be considered separate but equal." " Races cannot." " How so?" "You have separate bathrooms for men and women but it would be illegal to have separate bathrooms for races." "Yeah, a lot of these kids were theater kids there." "That was fun." " What time is this thing airing?" " Nine o'clock." " How'd we do?" " We did good." "That's funny." " This is when we totally blew." " Yeah." "We shot the insert here, and said..." "Instead of "The Cleaning Lady," which is her line..." " ...we said, "The Housekeeper."" " The Housekeeper." "We had to go back, digitally change it, because we were like:" ""We're idiots." "It's The Cleaning Lady."" " Well, housekeeper's a nicer term." " It is." "On the phone it says, "Housekeeping."" " It doesn't say, "Cleaning Lady."" " Cleaning Lady." "This is where you start to become uncomfortable with yourself in a movie when you put yourself into a love scene with two other people." "This is where it crosses from ego to real problems." "That's what I believe." "That's where I stand." "Do you think your candor is your appeal?" "Sorry." "It's funny, whenever we screen this, you and I are sitting at a screening this is the moment we turn to each other and go:" " "Here we go." - "Here we go."" "Hopefully." "Hopefully "Here we go."" "Yeah, it's usually a pretty..." "We heard gasps and things in the audience and people were very..." "Get very upset." " Molly?" " Hello?" "Our whole phone setup just for that, right there, Grant." "Hey, your phone rang." "Your phone rang." "It did?" "Who's calling you at 2:30 in the morning?" "This is where she's good." "She could be sitting telling the joke just before the scene starts, and then..." "I thought it was my phone." "Right then..." "Yeah, you were being careful." "Yeah, I was being all, for the first time in my life very sensitive about something, and she's like, "Take it easy, pal."" " Oh, boy." " Give me my..." " No." "I'm calling him." " Stop it." " It's not funny." " I'm saying I'm your dad." "It's not funny." "Give me my phone." "Hang up." "This is where the score really picks up." "Ryan was gonna do it shirtless." "I was like, "If you do it shirtless, it's gonna be a scene about your shirt off."" " So you and I did it shirtless instead." " I directed it shirtless." " And?" " And just in my boxers." "Why is the governor calling you at 2:30 in the morning?" "The score is so good right here." "Why is the governor calling you at all?" "I'm in trouble." "This is..." "With the governor?" "Now, we wrote this before John Edwards." "Before Anthony Wiener, before any of that." "We were sort of just trying to throw a scandal in there to screw with them and..." "There was a party with you and Ben and the governor?" "No, he wasn't there." "These guys are really good in this scene." " Yeah." " And this is the kind of scene that, you know, if this scene doesn't work..." "In fact, I believe we kept saying that to them." "If this scene doesn't work, then we're screwed." " Directing by fear." " Yeah, that's the trick." "Direct and scare the shit out of them." "...talking for a really long time." "She's the funniest to light because she almost lights herself." " She's so luminescent." " Luminescent." " Yeah, she really is." "It's amazing." " Yeah." "Jesus fucking Christ." "Pick up score:" "Yeah." "Were you drunk?" "Not that drunk." "I threw that in for my own ego." " How many times?" " It was just that once." " Just the once?" " Just once." " Does anybody know?" " No one." " Anybody see you?" " No." " How could you know?" " I know." "Then why is he calling...?" " She's so specific." " Yeah." " Why?" " I didn't know who else to go to." "And I needed 900 bucks." "She can cry on a dime too." "For what?" " Me too." " You do cry on a dime." "We're Catholic." "Remember we actually had her say, "I'm pregnant"?" "And that was not needed." "Sometimes when you're writing, you don't..." "You don't trust the audience as much as you should." "You don't trust the audience as much as you should." "But here's one where we did." "We let the music and the mood tell the story more than anything." "We change the color a little bit, the color palette and start to darken the film down." "Everything in the office is gonna look a little darker, and a little further off." "The trick now is to..." "Start to really put the clamps down on Ryan's character." "To say about one thing..." "I've never done a film without Steve Mirrione, the editor and specifically scenes like this." "He's so specific about taking time to get to..." "You know, he's..." "Editors, a lot of times, will cut as quickly as they possibly can and cut it just..." "You know, cut right to a reaction and he really is such a talented editor." "He really understands letting something lay." "And he's an awesome gamer, just as an aside." "He is." "What's our limit on petty cash?" " It's probably 500." "Why?" " I need everything we can get." "Everything okay?" "Max." " Need help with anything?" " Yeah." "Max, on top of everything else, had to shake an English accent." "He did great." "What should I put it down as?" "Now, this is one of those where we had to have him yell and everybody look up." "You don't want everybody stopping and looking." "So you just had to get them to glance a little bit." "Yeah, this is sort of the..." "What you always talk..." "You know, the..." "Actually, the scene before." "But this is, you know, the transition." "His transition is really sort of..." " It's pretty steep." " Yeah." "You know, from here to the end, it just sort of..." "That's his actual handwriting, by the way." "So..." "You know, judge that." "Judge him by his handwriting." "That's all." "Yeah." "It's more desat, the film here." " This is a bank in Cincinnati." " Yup." " But not a normal bank." " No." "It didn't, like, have tellers so we built that piece." " Yes, Ida?" " Stevie, off the record..." "We kept changing things because we didn't want Ida just running up and catching up to him every time so we found a different location." "Yeah." "Basically split the scene." "This scene was all one, this and..." "With this next scene." "We didn't want her standing outside when he came out and then walking with him, so..." "Much warmer for us to shoot it." "Much warmer inside this crosswalk." "These..." "In Cincinnati, they have a few of these over the streets to..." "And why?" "Because it's so cold." " Because it's damn cold." " Yeah." "It was turning out to be a blessing because it's a cool place to shoot." " You thought we're friends?" " I've given you everything you wanted." "That's Fountain Square behind her." "The only reason you treated me well was that I work for the Times." "You give me what I want, I write you better stories." "Why'd you meet with Duffy?" " Go fuck yourself." " Okay, I'll make it easier on you." "Yeah." "What happened at Paul and Thompson's meeting?" "Keep your voice down." "We could have shot this from anywhere." "We went..." "We had shots through windows." "We could..." "We had anywhere we wanted to on this one." "So it's not a difficult one, is it?" "I've gotta file by 3 p.m. tomorrow." "There, we were out in another office building shooting." " You motherfucker." " Excuse me?" "Now, this doesn't look like it, but, oh, was it cold." " Yeah." "It was really cold." " Stinging cold." "In front of Fountain Square in Cincinnati." "Right, and what is that other hall?" "It was a great place that we shot in." " Music Hall." " That's..." "That was really cool." " Right here." " Yeah." " You think I leaked it to her?" " Yeah." "Who else?" "I didn't leak it to her." "We had to leave the scene on him all the way till there or if we cut back and he was standing in front of this it would have looked very odd." " Well, too late." " What did she tell you?" "Ryan's really good in this." "She knows where we met, she knows when we met she knows you had fucking buffalo wings." " She has a source?" " Yeah, she has a source." "It's interesting too because Ryan's rhythms are slower in general." "And if you see other films that he does he likes to take things in and sort of chew them for a while." "And that's part of..." "One of the things he does really well and that's part of his charm." "And this is one where he had to push it because it wasn't, you know...?" "It didn't come naturally to him." "That's what makes him so good in this movie." "You can't stop her?" "She's trying to blackmail me." "She wants info about Thompson." "Well, then tell her what she wants to know." "It's funny." "You can watch Paul and he could do anything." "You can't let this story get out." "It's always believable and always interesting." "If I tell her about Thompson, I have to tell her he's endorsing you." "So this is a place that you grew up going to, right?" " Yeah, Fountain Square." " Yeah." "Although they didn't have the skating rink right out there." "It had, like, protestors and things out there a lot." "This is funny." "We're trying to build some suspense." "Some suspense." "And I didn't realize it until I got..." "I was standing next to the camera, couldn't see it." "We had this background artist and he's just hitting that trigger like a hundred times on the camera and I was like, "Jesus."" "As if he's never taken a picture before or something." "This is actually..." "That is the office." "And this is in an office on the next floor up." " This is the stairwell and it is creepy." " And it..." "It's creepy and cold, and wet, and ugly there." "I'm up here." "But this was a funny one just..." "Because the Art Department had got the signals mixed up." "They actually took this and made it nicer." " And more..." " Made it nicer." "We had to have them go back in and re-sort-of-paint it and sort of make it look more down." "Yeah." "They cleaned it up." "Didn't really matter because you can't see it." "No, just in that wide shot." "It's funny." "We had wider shots and it just felt like..." " Didn't play?" " No, you didn't need to." "There was, you know?" "They're really good in it and there was no reason to get cute, you know?" "We have plenty of stuff in the oners and plenty of wide shots in this..." " You mean I can't be here." " Right." "Stephen, I wouldn't tell anyone." "I hope not." "Then why?" "I remember we were eating just outside that room." " That's where lunch was." " That's where lunch was." "It was literally right through that doorway right to the right, right there." "The crew was there." "I was like, "Shut up."" "Molly, you gotta wake the fuck up." "This is the big leagues." "It's mean." "When you make a mistake, you lose the right to play." "Phedon lit the shit out of this one." "I like this." "Make the appointment." "Tell me when and where we have to go." "He actually went farther than we'd talked about, but it looks great." "Bumped like 600 fucking articles." "Tom Duffy, 2008..." "This was written by a friend of ours, Drew Stephens." "This..." "The..." " This whole piece that Max is reading." " Right." "We had asked him to..." "Just for..." "You know, he was consulting with us." "He's a Republican strategist and..." "Did he do, like, work on the Bush campaign?" "He's doing Mitt Romney's campaign right now." "And, you know, he's a great guy and a great friend." "And he wrote us this e-mail." "In the e-mail was..." " The whole thing about experience." " Were some of those words." "This was right across the river from Cincinnati." "This is in Kentucky." "We actually are in Kentucky, in a hotel." "Where the child endangerment laws are..." " No, that's..." "It was the other way." " ...much more strict." "Yeah, so..." " That car bump always bothered you." " Always bugged me." " We even tried to take some of it out." " Yeah." "This is where the score comes up right here." ""Molly's Theme."" ""Molly's Theme."" "If we'd seen Drive before this, maybe we wouldn't have taken those shots." "What's that bridge called?" "The Singing Bridge because it's metal." "It's not the Brent Spence Bridge, that's the other one." " It's great for sound." " Yeah." "Yeah." "We had always planned on not having any dialogue in these scenes." "Just creating sort of a montage of pieces until we get to here." "So just call me when you can leave, okay?" " This was a tricky scene." " Yeah." "It was tricky." "Ryan had a smart idea and he'd kiss her on the head at the end because the loss of humanity that he's getting is such a quick drop off, that it's nice..." "You wanna see that he..." "It still bothers him a little bit." "But she does end up looking like a little girl." "This is a scene really from the play, like, deeply from the play." "It's really well-written." "Just rethink everything." "Well, yeah, I know how to handle it." "Phil really looks like, you know one of those, like, David Axelrod kind of guy." "We had a good long talk on the way back." "He's up to speed with everything." "How'd he take it?" "This is all in that same hotel, that abandoned hotel." "Still won't take Thompson's endorsement." "I gotta tell you something I don't know how to tell you." "What's up?" "Ida knows that I met with Duffy." "And now we reveal that Max is sitting there." "Max gets a big laugh here..." "I don't know how she knows, but she knows." "...in a bit without saying a word." "Yeah." "She's gonna release the story unless I tell her about your meeting with Thompson." "We shot..." "We ended up shooting a whole scene where Ryan and Phil sort of yell and scream at each other or Ryan yells at Phil just to sort of feel it out and get a sense of what it felt like even though we knew we weren't gonna have it in the movie." "I leaked it to Ida." "Here's the laugh." "When he does this, for some reason everyone in the audience thinks it's pretty funny." "It wasn't really even..." "It wasn't intentional." " But we..." "I kind of knew it..." " It was..." "I knew it was funny, it's like, "I shouldn't be here," but..." " But I didn't think we'd get, you know?" " No." "Paul, they're gonna..." "They're gonna print that story in the paper tomorrow." "I know." "So why'd you do it?" "Why would you do that?" " We did this, like, in a day?" " Yeah." "We shot this pretty quickly." "Why would you do that to me?" "Also, you know, you have actors that sort of come in..." " Yeah, can do that." " ...and know what they're doing." "It certainly makes it go fast." "I love when he says, "Oh, fuck." "Yeah, you did."" "Yeah." "It's great." "...stupid mistake." "No, you didn't make a mistake, you made a choice." ""You didn't make a mistake, you made a choice."" "Right." "Why'd you make that choice?" "Because I didn't think it was important." "Oh, fuck, yes, you did." " That makes me laugh." " Yeah." "It's..." "I always..." "It's just that you've heard it from real people so many times, you know?" "To think that Duffy wanted to speak to you instead of me." "You thought, "Maybe I can get something"..." "This is a really, really, really tough scene for Ryan." "Even when he first saw it in the movie, I think he was really unhappy because, you know, it's not satisfying for him." "It's a really hard scene to get your hat handed to you by Philip Seymour Hoffman..." " ...as hard as he gets it." " Yeah." "...no money, no fucking office." "He's smart." "But in the arc of the picture, you know..." " ...he has it back." " Yeah." "...running this campaign a few districts over gives me a call, and he says:" ""I really like what you're able to do for poor old Sam"..." "Also, it's really tough doing a monologue like this..." "To sit and just sit and take it?" "Yeah, to sit and take it, and also, Phil's part to perform a monologue in a film, you know...?" "Make it not feel like a play." "Make it not feel like a play, not get the benefit of being in a play where you get run-up, you know?" " Did you just hit the microphone?" " I bumped it." "...more of a nobody than you are." "I'll be damned if I'm gonna jump ship just because the shit hits the fan."" "He gets up and walks away." "...but when Sam decided to run for governor who do you think he called?" "We won that race, and 20 years later, I am where I am fucking now." "Yeah." "...one thing I value in this world, and that's loyalty." "Ryan really, he's and you have no one." "He really changes quickly in this scene." "Yeah." "All of a sudden, he gets very cold." "That's why I'm letting you go." "Not because you're not good enough, not because I don't like you." "But I value trust over..." "Right there." "It doesn't matter whether you trust me." "It matters whether the governor does." "The governor already knows..." "Yeah, this is an interesting..." "So after this, you know he did a whole thing of, like, "Who the fuck is gonna replace me" and he gets up and he's like, "Ben, fuck you."" "And they yelled and screamed and it feels really good as an actor because it feels right, you know?" "But the only way this thing works..." "But the only way this thing works in general, is if, you know, Ryan gets beat up gets beat around." "And so I think it was a tough scene for him to go through." "But, boy, he did it beautifully." "This was a piece that we heard her talking when we first started." "She was good, this actress but we wanted to connect her to Ryan musically." "This is all driving stuff that we shot before we started shooting the movie." " Some of it is..." " Prep..." "Yeah." "Yeah." "...in Cincinnati." "Up near where I went to school, Grant." "Yeah, well..." " Where you..." "You..." "Yeah." " I visited college." "You know, I felt that it was important to stop by college." "There's a woman named Debby Dixon there who was a reporter on my dad's news at WKRC in Cincinnati, in the '70s." "Very talented reporter and I ended up taking her voice out again..." " ...which I feel very badly for." " Yeah." "We needed the music though, to sort of..." " Yeah." " ...tie this all together." "These are things we did, like, Soderbergh was really good at the pre-lab kind of stuff." "I'm not feeling great today, Ben." "You picked a hell of a day to call in sick." " Jesus, it was a fucking wild-ass day." " Why?" "What happened?" "Stephen's off the campaign." "Again, this was just a reg..." "This was just a regular hotel room, not a set." "Everybody was jammed in." "If you could see how many people are in the corner..." " ...and then in the room next door." " Yeah." "Stephen said, "Who's gonna take over?" And Paul said me." "Yeah." "We were all jammed up inside the toilet." "This is actually the scene where, you know?" "You were telling everybody "be quiet" and being careful for her because it's such an emotional scene and she's telling a joke." "She's literally telling a joke." "She's that good." "So starting tomorrow morning, we go into full damage control." "She can do anything, this girl." "...Stephen's going apeshit." "And can sing." "And she can sing it up." "Like any second now, she breaks into a song." "No." "Paul." "What's up?" "I'm mailing you all those files." "Bye." "Remember, initially, we had these big timpani drums playing here?" "It's..." "They just..." "It just seemed, like, too much, you know?" "There's times I miss it, you know?" "It's a tricky..." "It's a fine line, you know?" "One too many and then all of a sudden, all the score becomes really obvious so I'd rather underplayed then..." "Can we have the room for a minute?" " Okay." " Thank you." "It's not too bright walking in here like that, Steve." "This was another set we built inside another..." "Yeah." "This was like the Department of Tourism or something in Detroit." " I'm coming to work for you." " A reporter phoned me this afternoon." "Yeah." "I know who leaked it." " Who?" " Paul." "You told Paul?" " I told Paul, and he leaked it." " Oh, Steve." " You shouldn't have told him that." " I felt like I should." "Yeah." "Ryan just gets beat up everywhere he goes." "He gets beat up by some of the best actors in the game too, so it's..." "There's just nothing fun about it, you know except that you get to work with these actors." "Paul gave it all to Thompson." " But he wins." "I mean, at what cost?" " Yeah." "Yeah." "He beats them all." "Revenge makes people unpredictable." "I can't have someone who's unpredictable, unstable." " I'm not." " If this had been..." "So that's also..." "I mean, that was really the more..." "You know, a lot of people say:" ""You guys wrote a political film" or, "It's about politics."" "The truth is it was more about that." "It was more about this guy's journey." "Yeah, you wanna take him from, you know, something not innocent because he's not an innocent in it, but he's a true believer." "And he..." "Until he's completely disillusioned and then uses every advantage he can to win including some really evil stuff." "No, that's not gonna happen." "I'm sorry." "I love how he does that." "Go take a nice long vacation." "You're a smart guy." "Yeah, this is the B word." "It all really sinks in for Steven." "Yeah." "...maybe politics isn't for you." "Yeah." "Politics is my life." "This is weird." "There's an interesting parallel because, you know, in a way, you know, he tells Molly:" ""Grow the fuck up, this is the big time."" " And he just got played in the big time." " Yeah." "That's right." "You stay in this business, you're gonna get jaded." " Like you." " Yeah..." ""Just like me."" "He did one where he yelled and he actually ducked, he scared himself." "No, I didn't know." "I thought you might, but I didn't know." "You knew I was gonna tell him, and you knew he was gonna fire me." "Ryan's so, like, tall and good looking and all of us, we just wanna kill him because he's like, you know, 6'2" and..." "You were never gonna hire me." "Put yourself in my shoes, Steve." "Your opponent has the best media mind in the country working for his team." "What are you gonna do?" "You're either gonna hire him, or you're gonna work it so if you can't have him, the other team can't either." "This is a win-win situation for me." "We threw that in, you know?" "Win-win." "We gave him a little credit for his own film." "Paul." "Paul or Paul..." " Tom McCarthy." " Tom McCarthy's film." "And the moment I got you to sit down in that chair..." "I knew." "This is..." "It's my life that you're talking about." "It doesn't make me happy doing this." "Don't think it gives..." " I think it makes him happy." " It does give him some pleasure." "Take care of yourself." "And this is interesting." "We had one night to shoot and it was about 35 degrees." "It wasn't quite cold enough to snow, and it started raining and we had to shoot all night and it rained steadily all night." "Because you can really get screwed with rain." "If it rains for a minute, then it stops." "And it rained steadily and we actually got to get everything we needed..." " ...in that night of rain." " Yup." "And it hadn't been raining." " No." " It was that one night." "That guy always looks like Paul Giamatti walking out of there." "Nothing." "No." "No, ma'am." "She's not breathing." "Yeah." "We didn't wanna show her face ever in this." "We thought it might be too much to get past." "It's pretty bad already but her face would have been too much." "Do you know her?" "Ryan's great in this scene coming up too." "I'm sorry, what?" "Oh, yes, now, I can hear them now." "That's always the trick too is figuring out where you're gonna show emotion." "Show that there's something..." "I mean, I think in the script we wrote in this next scene because he's looking at the phone here." "We had him take the phone and walk out and it looked terrible to take the phone and walk out." "If he stared at the phone, we could do it." " It's hard to get back from that." " You can't get back." "We wrote in the screenplay that from this moment on right up here inside the car." "The minute he drives on, he's..." "You know, whatever was left of his soul is sort of washed away." "We've got the In Cold Blood shot here that sort of happened just because we were shooting and had to." "Yup." "It's one of those things where Phedon's, "Oh, look, it's quite nice."" ""It's quite nice." "Look, he's like In Cold Blood."" "Where are you?" "It's..." "It's 4-something." "It's once we get into the side shots when it really plays well too." "Stephen, it's Ben." "It's where you get to see..." "Like, the shot even goes soft a little bit here towards the end and we just liked him." "He was so good in it." "It was better to keep the performance than worry about the shot." "Goddamn it, you motherfucker, pick up the phone." "Right in here it starts to get you." "I'm not going away." "This is one of those where we're all standing outside in the pouring rain." "That was a tough night." "...based on evidence found in that hotel room this was an accidental overdose..." "This was actually at the University of Cincinnati Hospital." "Police Chief Darryl Matthews has called for a full investigation pending a toxicology report, which could take up to two weeks." "This was a scene that had dialogue in it between Ryan and..." " And Phil?" " No." " Oh, I'm sorry, Jeffrey." " Jeffrey." "And it felt as if after we'd shot it it felt as if Ryan were to speak at all you couldn't get past that either." "We had to jump in pretty quickly into doing some pretty dastardly shit." "So the conversation could take place in that wide shot under the music." "I want on the ticket." "You need me on that ticket, and you could use..." "Jeffrey could carry the scene." "And you need them before Tuesday." "Make a fine story on the Sunday-morning news cycle." "So I expect to hear from you by noon tomorrow or I endorse Pullman and take that Cabinet seat." "Gee, that never happens." "There's a bunch of..." "There's a whole dialogue scene here, and we cut it out." "It makes so much more sense, you know?" "Think of all the time we could save if we stopped writing all these scenes." "Oh, man, we'd be done so much quicker." "The entire staff is..." "We're in a state of shock." "This was sort of a bit from All That Jazz when you take the sound out and as time goes on." "When he was having a heart attack." "...that it appears to have been a drug..." "An accidental..." "There is a cameo coming up here in a second that I think we should pay attention to." "Pay tribute to?" "Here it comes." "Grant's voice-over." "Right here." "We just wanted to say that..." "Right." "...our prayers go out, to the entire family." " Did we hear it?" " No, we haven't." " No." "Good." " You'll know it." " Yeah." " Did you know her well?" "Right." "Here it comes." "And what I saw was a hard-working young woman..." "Get ready for it, everybody, because this is important." "It's just a sad day..." "How long did you know her, governor?" "And it's a sad day for those of us who know Jack." "Governor, how long has she interned for you?" " That was good." " I still don't know I got paid for that." "You know?" "You..." "Or credited for it." "...been on the road with us for a few weeks." "Maybe four weeks, I think." "I can check." "We always like this device." "Dead girl calling." "How could she be calling?" "It's long distance, I'll tell you that." "It's a toll call." "This is where we took the sound out and sort of playing with..." " When we first did it, we had, like..." " My God." "Yeah, we did terrible sound effects or, you know:" " And it's a hard one to get right." " Yeah." "Strangely, it really is, without it being comical." "We bring a little score in." "This is where we really wanted to make it an old, like, showdown at the O.K. Corral." "And go ahead and tell them." "I mean, we wrote..." " We wrote this scene..." " We wrote this first after we got the play." "And then we sort of wrote backwards from here because we wanted there to be very smart characters sort of with their backs up against the wall, being very smart." "And then once we sort of figured out what the dilemma was then we sort of worked our way backwards." "This is a fun one to see because when we wrote it we really talked about what it should feel when he walks in that place to have the governor's guy standing there." "And that's the whole thing." "It's fun to see it." "Yeah." "Using the all the bottles to sort of hide everybody." "Seems like you have something you wanna talk to me about." "Does it seem that way?" "We had trickier shots going through these different colored glass bottles you know?" "And then you sort of realize this isn't the time to get cute with the camera." "Yeah, it takes away from the..." "What's happening at the scene." "Yeah." "The biggest laugh in the movie is coming on." "And it gets applause." "It was the funniest thing I said to Ryan when we did this." "I go, "Wait for three beats after you say the first line before you say the second one, or no one will hear it."" "And he was like, "This isn't a sitcom, dude."" "Now, we heard that from here." "And it was, like, three beats, and then you could hear the line." "It was very funny." "He looks at me and goes, "All right."" " And he acknowledges it?" " Yeah." "...you can bankrupt the country, but you can't fuck the interns." "One, two, three." " He jumped me." " Yeah." "He didn't listen to you." "What do you think you have, Stephen?" " Troubled young girl tells you a story." " Troubled young pregnant girl..." " That what she told you?" " ...who needed cash for an abortion." "It's good." "This is..." "This had to be a fun scene to play." "Yeah, it's fun." "Also, I don't get to play this character ever so it was really fun for me, because this is..." "This is a real turn here in a minute." "And what people don't know is that this is closer to you." " To the real me." " Yeah, that's right." "Yup." "Just without the tie." "...well, go home." "Sometimes it will be a bolo tie." "Always makes me crazy." "See that pitcher in the background on the right?" "The light starts to flicker on it in a minute." " How would you know that?" " I was cleaning up..." " Really?" " Yeah." " I don't think I ever noticed that." " You'll see." "Why didn't we fix it?" "There was no fixing." "We could have fixed it with a..." "Digitally, maybe." "Is it too late?" "You didn't see it?" "There was a flicker." "No, I don't see it." "It's flickering." "It's not now." "It did a second ago." "Then why would she leave a note that could only do that?" "Because she's 20." "We'll see it some more." " What do you want?" " Paul's gone." "Today." "I set a meeting with Thompson." "This is..." "You get 356 pledged delegates, you get..." "This is also a tough." "Ryan's from Canada so understanding even the electoral processes..." "There's some more flickers for you." "...is tricky." " Yeah." " And he knew..." "He figured out." "That also gets a big laugh." "This was a..." " We shot this in a day." " We shot in a day." "But it was, you know..." "This is a big acting scene." " Yeah, this is a tough one." " You know?" "But it's also the kind that you can chew on." " It feels like it was fun to play." " Yeah." "You know?" "Because of the long dialogue scenes." "I believe this is the longest scene in the film." " You think?" " I think it is." "I think it's longer than the other scene." "Then I am ashamed." "I should start wearing makeup." "Be honest." "When we wrote the scene, you're like, "I wanna write me."" " Me." " I wanna write me in a long scene." "Me." "I bet you did." "I like the bluff here." "Okay, there's no note." " Yeah." " This is a good example of..." "I mean..." "You know, you're both pulling the rope to win in this scene." " You're both..." "It's a classic." " Yeah." "But eventually you choose to lose." "You have to choose to lose." "Yeah." "Yeah, well, I can't take the chance that I'm wrong." "Right." "And you wouldn't fare too..." "And I don't lose that much, you know?" "You were fucking her, and she told you about her situation." "This is when people really hate me." "The abortion DNA." "That's the tough one." "Some people are, like:" " Yeah, well, this is who you are." " That's right." "That's what I told you." "I got asked that question in an interview." "And they said..." "Somebody said:" ""Would you vote for Morris, you know, having seen the film?"" "I said, "Well, if I didn't see this scene, yeah, I'd still vote for him."" " Right, if he'd just screwed the intern." " Yeah." "But if I saw this scene, no, I can't vote for the guy." "No." "And he won." "And he won." "This is an old gangster movie move we liked." " Sure." " Taking right to the..." "Usually, you'd take a razor and slit his throat right here." "We thought we'd walk him outside and slit his throat." "We thought we'd use a guy with a buzzer that's not really even cutting." "This is sort of an example, stuff that we liked that we wrote in the screenplay and stuck with, and..." " Amazing how many people say:" " Who's that?" ""Why didn't you show the scene in the car?"" " In the car." " We didn't shoot it." "Didn't shoot it, didn't write it." "I mean, we always..." "From the moment we talked about it we said, "Every audience member will write a better version of the scene than we could."" "Yeah." "Because you know what's gonna happen." "So..." "So write away." "There are a lot better versions of that that I think we could have figured out." "It also plays into all those things that Paul..." "You know, his speech on loyalty, all of it, it just goes sour." "If this were other film, when the camera stops here the car would blow up." "Get ready." "And camera stops." "And..." "He's just bleeding a little." "He'll be fine." "How much could a shake-up like this..." "Here's a shot where it always sort of..." " ...bugged us." " Yeah." "We..." "The governor and I felt that in light of said putting..." "He said putting..." "Putting a new face on the campaign." "And we'd actually shot that in camera." "We never liked the idea that he says:" ""Put a new face." And we pan over to his face." "But there wasn't much we could do at that point." "This is beautiful." "This is up..." "That was up in same area..." " ...in Michigan." "Beautiful." " Yeah." "Beautiful." "...events out of sequence the order of things." "There is no greater grief..." "This was a wild shot." "I've seen the shoot." "This was actually the hardest role to cast." "Yeah, it was." "It was interesting." "You had to believe him as a head of the DNC." "...where every mistake is magnified." "And she was smart and pretty..." "And it also tell..." "You know, do this speech..." " ...without feeling like they're pushing." " Yeah." "Father, you ask us to accept God's plan to not question his judgment." "Yeah." "I just like how he leaves his mouth open at the end." "She made the world better." "Yeah." "Not just for me..." "And he's trying to hold it back, you know?" "That is..." "Phil's just so great, man." "Cigarette." "You should hire Jack for a speechwriter." "I'll keep it in mind." " We were trying to beat rain on this." " Yeah." "This was exactly..." "When we talked about this scene this was exactly what we wanted to feel..." " ...just brutally cold and, like, stark." " Yeah." "We even wrote that he doesn't look back." "You know, he just..." "Doesn't it?" "Governor couldn't make the flight?" "He's meeting with Thompson." "It's funny, you know, once this thing starts to go, it goes so quickly for him." "It all just goes south so fast." "Trained Ryan." "It really helps having these good actors, doesn't it?" "Boy, I tell you." "It makes all the difference." "...what you had on the governor that put me out." "How do you know I didn't have something on you?" "Good." "We had alarms going off in the cars." "We'd do the scene, get to the end, and then you just hear:" "Well, you better get going." "You have a campaign to run, I've got offices to look at." "Farragut North?" "We threw in the title." "Nice consultant firm right off of K Street." "Million a year." "No one to fuck you over." " Sounds relaxing." " Doesn't it?" "And then Jeffrey Wright just takes this thing home, man." " Yup." " He's so good." "There's so much that we left out." "There was just so much to choose from." "Yeah." "You know what we're gonna do, don't you?" " Yeah, I got to." " Yeah." " Yeah, I got to." " Yeah." " It'll be on this DVD." " It'll be on this DVD." "Oh, right, we're doing commentary on the DVD, I forgot." " Yes, we are." " I thought we're watching the movie." "...that all of us stand shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm in a united Democratic Party." "He's so good at this." "He's so, like, I believe him." "Coming up, one of our favorite things." "Yeah, that's what I was saying." " Oh, that's what you're talking about." " Yeah, yeah." "So, of course, we'd do a recall, with bringing the new intern in just to show how replaceable everyone is on the campaign." "Governor Mike Morris, ladies and gentlemen." "First, I gotta hug the guy I hate." " Give him that fake..." " And then we bring in the new intern." "Who kind of hops like Evan when she walks." " Mr. President!" " Well, the polls aren't quite closed but I congratulate Senator..." "She was a background artist..." " ...and we gave her some lines, right?" " Yup." " She was very, very good." " She was." " There's that shot that is not sped up..." " It's not." "It's not sped up." "I made that guy run out." "...I am honored to stand here with you today." "There's a humbled by your kind words." "Thank you." "So..." "Today marks the..." "Here comes some more speechifying and then we cut to our favorite guy." "He's a background artist over Ryan's left shoulder." " On the right when looking at Ryan." " On the right." "...or we are going to bury our heads in the sand." "He's..." "A lot of times, background artists will overdo it and you can't stand it." "We love this guy." "Yeah, he's fantastic." "It's just greed and corruption ruin our industries and our shorelines..." "Here he comes." "See him with the gray hair?" "And ready." "Hey." "Yeah." "Yeah." " We love him." " He's great." "The musical scores were really great." " Rachel Maddow again helping out." " Yup." "We burned all these in." "...contests to go, and Ohio was a big win for us." "Then do you have the funds?" "Get him out there and bring in the new girl." " Hey, Ben?" " Yep?" "I was told to talk to you." "I'm supposed to get a phone." "This is a..." " And you are...?" " Jill Morris." "This is in Ann Arbor here." "But we're gonna go to Xavier." " You know?" "A couple of seconds." " That's right." " Right." " Now, we're at Xavier..." " Right." " Now, we're at Xavier..." " ...in Cincinnati, Ohio." " No, we're still..." " We're at Ann Arbor." " No, Xavier." " That is?" " Yeah." " That scene." "That's Xavier as well." " You're right." "You're right." " I give it to you." " Thank you." "And you can guess this is Xavier because of the X." "This is why we didn't want Marisa Tomei come out the other place..." " ...because she comes out here." " Yeah." "And she came out in the scene earlier that we cut." " When she first..." " Oh, that's right." "...an opportunity to comment on my next story." "She's so good in this part." " Yeah, this was her first day." " That's right." "It's always interesting to see somebody's first day." "No press behind this point." " I'll read about it in the funny papers." " Come on, Stephen." ""Aren't we friends anymore?"" "And we talked to Phedon about how we wanted this hallway to look and how we wanted him to go from dark to light, dark to light and he really did a beautiful job of just forcing these overheads which was great." "Because we wanted to just powder him with light and just drop it out." "And let the theme music play from here on in." "We've always had sort of a military drum corps theory to a lot of the score which we get back to in that." "I think we should do the commentary through the credits too." " So we can comment on everybody." " Let's do it." "Liked him." "Hated him." "This was a fun one to shoot because we got to shoot baskets." " Yeah, we got to shoot basketball." " At the Xavier court." "That was good fun." "That guy, Sean, in New York, actually is the assistant editor." " Sean." " Oh, right." "If you could count to 10 for me." "On, two, three, four..." "Here's the scorching:" "All right." "Pretty soon." "Not quite yet." "Once we square up on him, it's the last shot in the movie there." "This is all one shot." "As we're pushing in, we also start to fade the light out on his right eye." "So we're taking the..." "We're giving it a much darker tone as we get in." "Looking in the camera, it seemed to be the proper way to end it." "So you can see the light fading if you're paying attention." "...Governor Morris' senior campaign adviser..." "We keep pushing." "...where Senator Thompson has endorsed Governor Morris..." "This is John Cain again." "Stephen, can you give us some insight into how this whole thing unfolded?" "Stop:" "That seemed about right." "Now, if you wanna talk about the people during the credits, Grant I would start with:" "All right." " Alrighty." " So that's it." "We're done."