Revelations regarding what ended up on the cutting room floor, backstories and insights into their nominated movies, and advice they’d impart to aspiring filmmakers were among the highlights of the Director Guild of America’s “Meet The Feature Nominees” last month, just hours before the DGA Awards ceremony during which Alejandro González Iñárritu won the coveted Guild honor for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).
Iñárritu–who later won the Best Director Oscar with Birdman also picking up Best Picture, among other honors–was joined on the panel by the other four DGA Award nominees: Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel; Clint Eastwood for American Sniper; Richard Linklater for Boyhood; and Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game.
The latter–when asked by panel moderator, director Jeremy Kagan, what of note ended up on the cutting room floor–shared that he left out of The Imitation Game a scene in which Alan Turing commits suicide. Portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in an Oscar-nominated performance, Turing was a computer pioneer who cracked the Nazis’ elaborate secret communication code, an accomplishment which Winston Churchill heralded as the single greatest contribution to helping to win World War II. Turing’s historic, heroic story is also a personal tale as he was a closeted gay man at a time when homosexuality was criminalized in the U.K. He was prosecuted for his sexual orientation and took his own life in 1954.
Reflecting on the deleted scene, Tyldum said it felt to him like the movie “stopped before” and that the suicide depiction wasn’t necessary and perhaps a bit too clever. He noted that the scene involved a poisoned suicide apple which had a fatal bite taken out of it, leaving it to resemble the Apple logo which in a cerebral way seemed fitting as a veiled reference to Turing being a computer pioneer. Tyldum concluded that the once planned “so smart” ending didn’t feel right.
Eastwood shared that he deleted an American Sniper scene in which the title character, real-life military sharpshooter and hero Chris Kyle (an Oscar-nominated performance by Bradley Cooper), was accosted by two would-be pickup truck hijackers at a gas station. Eastwood said the scene accurately portrayed a true-to-life incident in which Kyle killed the two attackers. Ultimately, though, Eastwood scuttled the scene because it sent the movie “in a different direction” and seemed too “Dirty Harry-esque.”
By contract, Iñárritu had nothing fall to the cutting room floor for Birdman. “Every transition was preconceived,” he explained, as Birdman played out in its entirely as if it were one continuous free flowing scene.
Iñárritu noted, however, that he did not go with the originally planned editing for the film–part of the Oscar-winning original screenplay which he wrote with Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Armando Bo. That initial ending was terrible, according to Iñárritu who declined to share any specifics about that ending and why he rejected it.
Challenges, coping with stress
When queried about wardrobe for Boyhood, a coming-of-age film made over a 12-year span, Linklater observed that because of the story arc he was “shooting a period film but in the present.” Thus his costume designer Kari Perkins had to be cognizant of what people of that particular socioeconomic status would be wearing, what type of clothes they could afford at different junctures during those dozen years.
Linklater related that he’d be “shooting three intense days” annually for 12 years, requiring that he and his colleagues always be “revisiting what we had established.”
Asked about how he reduces the inherent stress in directing, Anderson–flanked by Eastwood and Linklater–quipped that he was seated between “two of the least stressed directors of all time.” Anderson recalled being told by Owen Wilson–whom he’s collaborated with regularly over the years–that on The Grand Budapest Hotel “you’re worse than I’ve ever seen you”; so much for becoming more confident with each picture, smiled Anderson, noting that he takes on stress with a fatalistic attitude: “It’s going to be over, eventually.” He also finds comfort in “thermoses of soup.”
Helping Eastwood remain one of those “least stressed directors” is his abandoning the practice of declaring “action” when the cameras roll. He recollected back in the day when he was in the cast of TV series Rawhide that when the director shouted “action,” it would only rile up the horses. So as a director, he eases into a scene, sometimes unbeknownst to the actors.
Tyldum chimed in that he no longer says “action,” but rather “please” to start a scene. He finds “please” to be much more nurturing of the actors.
Figuring out how to make actors most comfortable is key. Eastwood noted for example, he keeps a small monitor close by but when the scene starts going, he watches the actors. For American Sniper, Eastwood said that Cooper “likes you right there with him.” Eastwood quipped that Cooper prefers that close proximity so he can feed off the director’s energy, “what energy I have left.” By contrast, continued Eastwood, other actors like distance from the director during a scene. Such distance sometimes means deploying a video monitor but Eastwood emphasized, “I don’t have a video village” which leads to building a committee that only “gets larger.”
For The Imitation Game, Tyldum said that the last day of shooting was of the film’s climactic end scene during which Cumberbatch became quite emotional. Tyldum explained that the injustice of what happened to Turing hit the actor and “he couldn’t stop crying.” Tyldum observed that it “wasn’t the character crying. It was Benedict crying.” The consummate actor felt “an incredible sadness,” the tragedy of how Turing ended up. “We had to stop to give him time to gather himself….You can really see when the actor is being emotional and not the character.”
Facing fears; career advice
Birdman entailed filming at the St. James Theater in New York, and on ambitious sets built in Astoria, NY. Iñárritu said he was terrified of sets because they always look like sets. “I never built a set before in my life. One of my fears was that it would not smell” like the greasy theater catacombs and corridors containing the “sweat of actors.”
Fortunately, said Iñárritu, production designer Kevin Thompson “got the spirit of what we wanted” and did a wonderful job.
As for advice they would offer to a new director about to start a picture, Eastwood offered, “Get more sleep than your actors.” Linklater cited a quote handed down to him which was simply “wear very comfortable shoes.”
And Anderson said he got some simple words of wisdom from director Peter Bogdanovich, handed down to him from another filmmaker: “Take it one shot at a time.”
