Anything I think isn’t working or might not work, I don’t even put it in the director’s cut. And usually it’s the studio suggesting I put stuff back in, as opposed to studios saying, “You got to lose 40 minutes,” they are always saying, “You’ve got to gain five minutes.”
I don’t believe in leaving a scene in because it was really hard to shoot, or because it’s the reason you took the movie, or because you always wanted to work with an actor . . . If it’s not making the movie work, get rid of it.
And then through editing, and finishing the effects and adding music, you get to make the movie better again. So I’m really hard on myself and on the movie.
I’m not the one or two take guy, but I’m not the 20, 30, 50, 70 take guy either. If I do a bunch of takes, like more than five or six, it’s usually for some technical reasons.
I was seeing a lot of really good things about Get Shorty when it came out, and my wife pointed out that if you validate the good reviews, you also have to validate the bad reviews.
Michael worked one day. Everybody was a little freaked out and nervous because he’s a really big star. We were already working with really big stars, but Michael is Michael.
When I move from being a cameraman to being a director I looked at a lot of other cameramen who tried to make the move. And in each case they moved up their camera operator to be the DP, which really meant they didn’t want to give up being the DP, and really wanted to do both.
