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Tag: making a scene

  • How Better Call Saul Found Its “Controversial” Final Scene

    How Better Call Saul Found Its “Controversial” Final Scene

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    It was more than worth it in Seehorn’s eyes. “I remember how thrilled I was with what Peter managed to pull off for the finale…. I was deeply affected by it,” she says. “Bob would say we talk ad nauseam about our scenes, but, this was a case, there wasn’t much talk…because I understood it. I thought, in a way, that it would be best to show instead of tell.”

    Gould had the same instinct, as he initially wrote more dialogue for Jimmy and Kim’s jailhouse reunion, only to keep paring it down. Once Jimmy walks into the prison interview room, the two share a quick hello, before almost immediately taking their familiar positions: leaning up against a wall, passing a cigarette back and forth, just 20 words spoken between them. “You had them down to seven years,” Kim says to Jimmy of the plea deal that he blew up, resulting in an eventual sentence of 86 years. He responds, “But, with good behavior, who knows,” to Kim’s amusement. “The characters know very well, this is what we do, and this is a way for us to remember everything that we’ve been to each other, and all the time we’ve spent together and this crazy journey,” Gould shares. “It felt right to do that, and it’s also a neat thing to bookend, not really the show, as much as their relationship.”

    Seehorn, who was Emmy nominated in 2022 for her role as Kim, had many seasons to prepare for those final scenes—and even more time to prepare for that smoking. “Well, don’t tell my kids, but I smoked for a little bit when I got out of college, because I did a film where I was supposed to be smoking, and it looked awful,” Seehorn says with a laugh. “You see people [who] have cigarettes in their hand, and it might as well just be another finger. So I got very frustrated with myself, and then got cast in another thing where I was smoking, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to get on top of this this time’ like a dumbass. Excuse my language. I was like, ‘I’m going to learn how to smoke.’… But I quit years ago!”

    Seehorn credits her past experience with why she appears so “physically relaxed” when Kim has her turns at taking a drag, even as she also was physically struggling to get through it. “[We smoke] these horrible herbal cigarettes that create five times more smoke than a regular cigarette,” she says. “And so any of those ones where it looks like it’s coolly going up into our eye, Bob and I are just absolutely dying, trying to keep our eyes open.”

    From Greg Lewis/AMC

    Audiences might not be able to spot how the actors were affected by that, but, if they looked close enough, they could notice one special effect. Like all of the post–Breaking Bad action on Saul, the sequence is in black and white—except for a colored flame on the match and tip of the cigarette. “This was very tricky to do, because when we first tried it, it was all you looked at, and you didn’t really look at their faces,” Gould explains. “It felt very much like a technical thing, and so I took it out completely. And Diane Mercer, our brilliant post-producer, kept on pushing me…and so we kept playing with it. And I’m sure on a lot of TV sets you probably can’t even see that it’s in color, but I would rather have it be too subtle than too bold. It was a little liberty that we took for ourselves at that point.”

    Another liberty Gould took was time—maybe too much. With it being the series’ final day of filming, he did start to become concerned that he wouldn’t finish in time and would have to call everyone back the next day. “One of the things I’m so happy with about the scene is how all the thoughts are there underneath the words and they take their time with the moments,” he says. “And I think we earned taking a little bit of time with that scene.” Luckily, director of photography Marshall Adams came up with a unique idea that Gould says “saved my keister.” “We were able to shoot both Bob and Rhea at the same time by using a mirror,” Gould shares. “So the actual angle over Bob to Rhea is using a front-silvered mirror, and then was flipped later. And it was great because it meant that every beat, every connection, they had was all shot continuously.”

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    Derek Lawrence

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  • How Keri Russell Decided to “Punch the Living Shit” Out of Rufus Sewell

    How Keri Russell Decided to “Punch the Living Shit” Out of Rufus Sewell

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    The fight took a full day to film, and while the experience of figuring it out was light and playful, the significance of it working correctly proved pivotal. Up until this point, Cahn—a veteran of shows ranging from Grey’s Anatomy to The West Wing to Homeland—had been toying around with scripts that juggled elements of heavy drama and loose farce. The Kate-Hal collision represented a kind of make-or-break fusion of those elements. “Because you’re trying to figure out the tone, you’re like, Okay, what’s this going to be?” Russell says. “By the third episode, everyone had found their footing a bit and we were like, ‘This is where we are.…’ It cranks the volume—you’re either with it or you’re not.”

    Sewell puts the moment in starker terms: “It’s like the screwball equivalent of chopping Robert Baratheon’s head off in Game of Thrones. We’ve established that you live in a world where that can happen.” Except, instead of decapitations, we’re talking here about punches to the face.

    The beauty of Russell’s performance in this scene is that, while it descends into a rather pathetic display of petty violence, the Emmy nominee never loses sight of Kate’s devastation. “It’s so painful,” Russell says. “She’s not saying, ‘You fucked my best friend’ or ‘You stole all this money from me.’ She’s saying, ‘We loved each other so much and we tried so hard to make it work, and we both agreed that we’re not going to do it anymore because it’s been so painful for us. We both agreed to quit at the same time so we could make it okay for each other. Were you telling the truth?’”

    Sewell calls it a “scary scene,” meanwhile—one in which he played Hal’s fighting for Kate’s continued belief in him, for their ability to move forward together amid the great dysfunction around them. (As the scene consistently shows, security guards loom on the other side of the garden, uncomfortably watching this very private moment.) Kate slowly winds him up, goading him into confessing his deception, which he tries helplessly to explain. “That’s his position,” Sewell says. “That’s what’s hilarious about it, because he fucking means it. He does!”

    The actual mechanics of the fight were figured out largely on the fly. Of course, there was the punch, which Cahn, Russell, et al. felt very in sync on as they got to filming. There was the wrestling in the grass, some moves of which Cahn demonstrated for her cast. (“I have a big brother. I gave them moves that I used as a nine-year-old to wrestle to the floor a 17-year-old.”) There’s the way in which Hal essentially gives up and lets Kate overtake him—a dynamic shift Cahn pushed for as the actors got into it. In one moment, Kate plays dead. (“Keri is small, but when she plays dead it’s quite difficult to handle her,” Sewell says.) Through it all, Russell felt at one with the elements. “At one point, my dress was up, my underwear was showing,” she recalls, to which Sewell interjects: “Oh, yeah. Arse in the wind. There goes Russell!”

    But it’s all in service of a poignant resolution, even as the fight ends with a simple interruption. (There’s a lot going on this particular day.) Russell was surprised by how emotional the scene felt the longer they filmed—and how oddly that dovetailed with the material getting funnier. This is in many ways a credit to the patient, focused direction. “[Andrew] wasn’t giving us much direction for a long time, he was just letting us play,” Sewell says. Bernstein, who’d worked with Cahn on The West Wing and Russell on The Americans, favored moving, long takes in handheld form. “It really set the glamour and the drama of the world—and the funny too,” Russell says.

    Cahn and Bernstein were aware of how difficult it can be to comically depict one spouse hitting another, but they were willing to take that risk and depict a core reality of this particular couple. “I knew that I wanted it to get physical in a way that was completely undignified and ridiculous—and that never felt dangerous, but did feel out of control,” Cahn says. “They are able to hit that sweet spot of feeling like they’re having a good time with each other, and I hope it feels safe for the audience.”

    From here, The Diplomat richly explores this dysfunctional marriage with an underlying caustic sweetness, having shown us what Kate and Hal can look like at their desperate worst. “I try to push them about 15 degrees more ridiculous, so that we’re all living out either the fantasy or nightmare version of what a moment like that is,” Cahn says. Sometimes, the wilder you go, the closer you get to the truth.

    Listen to Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast now.

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    David Canfield

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  • How a Real Urine-Soaked Bathroom Inspired a Key Scene in ‘Beef’

    How a Real Urine-Soaked Bathroom Inspired a Key Scene in ‘Beef’

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    When trying to pull out of a parking lot, Danny (Steven Yeun) nearly collides with another car, a white luxury SUV whose driver then proceeds to flip him off. The road rage incident escalates into a high-speed chase through a nice neighborhood that leaves both drivers shaken — though they never get a good look at each other.

    But then comes the moment in Beef when Danny finally meets his adversary — and discovers it’s not exactly who he expected. Danny tracks the car to its home, and knocks on the door, pretending he’s a contractor who noticed an issue with the recent remodel. He meets Amy (Ali Wong), who gives him a tour of the home. When Danny asks to see the garage, he mentions that he sees some “warp” with the cabinets, which sends Amy into a tailspin about how there’s never an end to the work.

    “This is a nice car. Does your husband like driving this?” asks Danny, pointing at the white SUV. When Amy says that she actually drives that car and her husband takes the minivan, Danny pauses, realizing his road rage nemesis is actually the woman standing in front of him. You can see the wheels in his head turning as he figures out what he’ll do next. He casually asks to use the restroom, where he proceeds to urinate all over the floor before making his escape from the home.

    For Beef creator Lee Sung Jin, the scene is the ultimate payoff for the tension that’s been building up as the viewer followed Danny and Amy’s separate stories. “You have a whole episode now of going back and forth, and back and forth, and it’s almost like just stretching this rubber band, waiting for them to meet,” he tells Vanity Fair. It’s also the first time that one of the main character’s expectations are thoroughly dismantled, a theme that will run through the whole series. Lee talks to Vanity Fair about this key scene and how it was based on a disturbing moment from his own life.

    THE SCRIPT

    So much of this scene is taken directly from Lee’s own experience as a first-time homeowner. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the term ‘warp’ in the first year of owning a home. And you trust people that come into your home, but it was a hard lesson for me to learn, ‘Oh, they’re all there to kind of up the bill a little bit,’” he says.

    Originally, the script for the first episode started with the road rage incident and then followed Danny’s story. Halfway through the episode, it would switch to Amy’s story up until the meeting at her home. But in the edit, he realized the tension would be more intense if they bounced back and forth between their stories. “Truthfully, through a lot of Netflix and A24 notes, it felt just like you’re watching two trains collide, and so cutting back and forth between their stories helped ratchet up that tension a little bit more,” says Lee.

    The scene was written in a way that allows Danny, a down-on-his-luck contractor, to have the power position, tricking her into thinking there’s warp on her cabinets and getting a look inside her home. “Danny has the upper hand here, really for the first time ever in his life it seems like in any situation,” says Lee.

    But the payoff comes in the moment he realizes that the car doesn’t belong to Amy’s husband, but to her. “It’s step one of many assumptions and many subjective things that Danny views the world in, having to get unraveled through this incident,” says Lee. “Steven, the way he plays that moment, it’s so funny to me because he is so trying to tamp down how shaken his world is. He does this turn with his head that makes me laugh. It’s almost like whatever my dog is trying to figure something out, he cocks his head, so that’s very funny to me.”

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    Rebecca Ford

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  • Marcel the Shell With Shoes On: You Will Believe a Shell Can Skate

    Marcel the Shell With Shoes On: You Will Believe a Shell Can Skate

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    Animation meets the real world at every moment in Marcel the Shell With Shoes On—but maybe less than you think. Set inside a house that happens to be occupied by a chatty shell (voiced by Jenny Slate) and his grandmother (voiced by Isabella Rossellini), the movie uses stop-motion animation to bring Marcel to life in ordinary settings, like a kitchen floor or a bathroom sink. It’s technically a hybrid of live action and animation, and in the two-decade history of the best animated feature category at the Oscars, no film like that has made the cut.

    But Marcel the Shell didn’t just make the Oscars shortlist, it’s been on an awards season streak, nabbing nominations from the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards in the best animated feature camp, along with winning the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review awards.

    Marcel’s director Dean Fleischer-Camp and animation director Kirsten Lepore are honored to be pioneering the bridge between the two worlds that have gone unrecognized for so long. “I know some people are salty about what constitutes an animated movie. And ‘is that an animated movie?’ because it consists of live-action elements,” Fleischer-Camp says about Marcel expanding the animation branch. “But I think the place I’ve come to is that overall it’s a great thing because it means that there’s so much animation now in even live-action films that we’re even having to have those conversations.” 

    Lepore adds, “It feels cool to be recognized for creating something unique, like something that is largely animation, but it’s something different. And I feel like that’s always exciting to celebrate in filmmaking.”

    For a scene that perfectly encapsulates that balance, look no further than a table, a shell, and one very uncontrollable squirrel. (You can see a glimpse of it at 1:57 in the trailer below). 

    The Scene

    Part of Marcel’s beauty is in the combination of real-life things—including animals and people— and the stop-motion shells, creating the vivid illusion that Marcel and his grandmother exist in our world. According to Fleischer-Camp and Lepore, no scene exemplifies this more than the scene in which Marcel skates across a dusty table with his grandmother, Nanna Connie, until a squirrel disrupts their fun. Even the music—Jock Jams classic “Pump Up the Jam” and Shakira’s “Whenever, Wherever”—is perfect. “Those are just the type of subtle things that add to what you’re talking about that makes it so realistic and feel so naturally captured. But actually, it’s very good editing and sound design that went into the movie,” Lepore says.

    When Shell Meets Squirrel

    The arrival of the squirrel was, according to Fleischer-Camp, one of the most difficult scenes in the movie. There is so much precision and preparation that is going into this,” Fleischer-Camp says. “But also, it involves a live squirrel and stuff like that. It doesn’t matter how much you prepare, the squirrel is still going to do whatever it wants.”

    Most of the production took place on a stop-motion stage, using motion-controlled rigs for the careful camera movements required for this animation technique. But, Lepore says, “when the squirrel comes in and everything becomes hectic, then the whole idea is like, ‘Oh, my God, handheld camera! The camera needs to be all over the place.’ Every shot required a lengthy conversation to maintain the stop-motion effect alongside the film’s documentary style. “We were just trying to be strategic and choosy with those scenes,” Lepore says. “It looked so off the cuff, but it’s actually very planned and controlled.”

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    Rendy Jones

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