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Report
of Screening & Q & A in NYC 5/30/05
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From GCee and Cathi:
The following is in no particular order, we’re writing everything as it comes to us. We will give you what we have as we finished the parts. Everything we’re not sure of, whether its exact words or phrases, are in parentheses (xxx) and this is about as close as we can get it. The film was shown then Joel Siegel, Ron Howard, Akvia Goldman, and Russell all came out. They started by talking about who brought the script/idea/whatever to the rest. Both Ron and Akvia pointed to Russell. Much of what was said has been in previous interviews. Russell brought it to Ron, Ron waited about 7 months before deciding to do it and it went on from there. Some of the things we can remember are that it started with Penny Marshall, but she didn’t think Russell was right for the part. Then Weinstein got in on it and bought the rights, but he didn’t think Russell was (a big enough name). Russell had talked to many people about the movie trying to get people intereste d. One day Russell had a chance meeting with Rene back (around 1998). They discussed the part about the part she was (very) interested. From there on out whenever he ran into her she would ask “how’s our movie going” and he would play it off that everything was going well with ”our movie”. It wasn’t until after the 2001 Academy Awards that Weinstein contacted Russell again and wanted to know (when are you going to be ready to make the movie I bought you). During this entire discussion they were having major problems with the audio, none of the clip-on mics wanted to work. As they were taking turns talking, they were making jokes about whose turn it was to have problems with their mic. Russell was even teasing Keith about going up and fixing the problem. Someone finally came out and give them a couple of hand-held mic and they go rid of the clip-ons. When ever Akiva started talking he would start using words that he wasn’t sure were real words and would look to Russell for conformation that it was a proper word. So every time this happened they would start laughing.
Siegel
asked about the Academy giving an award for ensembles and
Russell’s comment was that anything that would make
the Awards longer was a bad idea. Russell made the comment about Ron that (they may have rainy days,
snow days, hard days, easy days, bad days etc. but that with
Ron they never had a wasted day). He
also made the comment that their little group was like the
Beatles, Russell would be John, Ron would be Paul, Akvia
would be George and Brian Glazer would be Ringo. Akiva
talked extensively about working with both a talented director
and actor and how they could take a scene he had written
and do the scene and not really need to have the words (that
it could actually be done as a silent movie). As an example there is a scene right
before Jim goes off to the final fight where Ron kept cutting
words until finally there was no dialogue and it convey exactly
what Akvia was trying to convey. They
discussed how they picked the kids and how each of the kids
were different. (The oldest being very controlled, the
little girl being very cute and the middle boy was bouncing
off the walls just like a regular family.) Russell talked about the red carpet interview with the little girl
and how please he was that she wished he was her real dad. They
discussed how Ron was going to go about filming the boxing
scenes and how Russell thought he should do them in the same
way he had done the fire scenes in Back Draft, as individual
stories, which they had discussed previously. Ron
and Russell were joking about some of their discussions and
that Ron always forgets that Russell pays attention to what
Ron says and remembers it. Russell joked that he will use anything
Ron says against him at any time to make a point. Spoiler – In the
movie you see a receipt for what James had received on assistance. Well
Russell now owns the real receipt. Ron
and Russell were joking around that they were having a hard
time figuring out during the shoot exactly how much the Braddock’s
would have received on assistance. After the scenes had been filmed and
they had their receipt made up with what they hoped was figure
that was close, Russell was able to unearth the real receipt
and purchased it. After that Russell called Ron and said
that they needed to CGI the correct amount into the movie. Ron told Russell that it would cost about
$100,000 to change it and that this wa s one of those situations
that he could point out that it was “just a movie” and
Russell laughed. That’s all Cathi and I could remember at the moment. It’s really late and we have to get to bed. It was truly a great evening! I love learning the behind the scenes story and tonight was all about that!
Cathi
and CGee |
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