Anne Thompson is one of my favorite writers about movies, her blog Thompson On Hollywood a favorite at Indiewire. Here is an example why: Yesterday Anne posted a great interview with some of the principals involved in the indie feature Birdman which has been getting rave reviews and doing huge numbers on limited screens its opening weekend. Here is an excerpt from that interview:
Two companies that financed and produced Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s just-opened “Birdman,” Fox Searchlight and New Regency, also collaborated on “12 Years a Slave.” The 20-year Searchlight executive who runs production, Claudia Lewis, and New Regency president and CEO Brad Weston, who has spearheaded a surge of director-driven projects (including David Fincher’s “Gone Girl”), sat down for a Q & A at Sneak Previews.
Anne Thompson: How did your two companies end up collaborating on this film?
Claudia Lewis: Searchlight got the script first, and loved it, thought about it. It was a little out of our reach, budgetarily.
Because you have a budget cap.
Lewis: We tend to have a cap for the movies that we make. But, about two weeks after my initial meeting with Alejandro, I heard that Brad had gotten it as well, and that they were interested. So it was a loving partnership right from the start.
Brad Weston: We had worked together on a film that hadn’t been released yet, but we were just in previews on, “12 Years a Slave.” So we had just started our relationship, and it was going nicely. Regency was trying to make another movie with Alejandro, which he’s actually in his third week of shooting in Canada right now, “The Revenant,” that had to shoot on a specific schedule of seasons and start on a specific date, in the last week of September. We had missed the window and wanted to find another picture to do with him so that we could protect the backend of when we started on “The Revenant.” So Claudia had read the script, and then Alejandro gave it to me when we knew “The Revenant” wasn’t happening, and we just decided to partner up as we were on “12 Years a Slave.”
Lewis: Also, that sense of pace, being able to put it together so quickly in order to make room for “Revenant,” was part of the exciting quality of the film. I think it shows a little bit in the film. There was a freneticism in getting it together, in the same way that the play that he’s putting together has that sort of frantic quality.
How did the script read? How did Alejandro explain his concept? Because it’s a risky thing, what he did.
Lewis: It read beautifully. The script was terrific. It went through some changes in the development process. He described it, in an Alejandro-esque way, as being the high-wire act that it turned out to be. But he knew he wanted the one-take style. He had it all in his head; the guy has everything in his head.
Weston: And most of it was cast when we got involved. We switched out a couple of actors. Originally it was Josh Brolin who was playing the Edward Norton part, and we switched that out for scheduling conflicts. But Michael was cast, Emma was cast, we added Edward, and Naomi & Zach Galifianakis were cast. What was really interesting about this script process, though, is, because of the one-shot style of the movie, we couldn’t edit the picture — it was just assembling the picture. So the editing of this film took place in the screenplay. And I think the first draft of the script was, what, 125 pages?
Lewis: It was very long.
Weston: And we shot something like 103 pages. So we went through a pretty extensive script development, cutting, because we knew that was the only time we could actually edit the picture.
Lewis: Which thrilled Alejandro, by the way. [Laughs] “We can’t touch it once it’s shot, sorry!”
Some clips from the movie:
For the rest of Anne’s blog post, go here.
Follow Anne on Twitter: @akstanwyck.
And for heaven’s sake, Declare Your Independents and go see Birdman! In a theater! This week!