At the Movies with Governor Tom: Crazy Heart

I almost never go to the ArcLight Hollywood on Saturday nights. In fact, Hollywood in general is a place I avoid on weekends after dark. Too crazy. Well, once you're there, it can be fun. I suppose I really mean the traffic, the very thing that makes going anywhere on any weekend night kind of hairy. Living in the East Valley as I do, Hollywood's not that far, just ten miles or so, but the main artery leading there is the 170 Hollywood Freeway. Can you hear the silence? That's the silence of zillions of cars parked on the 170. Actually I exaggerate, at least in terms of tonight. I left over an hour ahead of time. It wasn't really necessary. Traffic wasn't much. As far as the ArcLight Hollywood is concerned, another reason to avoid going there on weekend nights is the parking. That seven-story garage fills up super fast. I had to drive around and around and up and up and up until I found an open space on the sixth level (the last level's the friggin' roof). Still, I was there early enough to walk down to the Starbucks about two blocks east on Sunset, where I hadn't been in years.

It was like I'd never left. There those kats were, playing their chess tournament. That Starbucks is so interesting, situated smack in the middle of Hollywood as it is. Those older guys playing chess seem so completely separate from the Hollywood world of glitterati. But then, as I sat there at one of the indoor tables (the chess tournament monopolizes the outdoor tables), sipping a peppermint mocha and reading TIME, I'd occasionally see a lone female patron come in who was obviously a model or aspiring actress. I mean you can just tell after living here long enough. They're usually dressed in something totally out of sync with everyone else in the joint (not that I mind), and their hair is almost always a very bright blonde. Places like that Starbucks are an anthropologist's wet dream.

Anyway, while getting to the ArcLight wasn't an issue tonight, getting out of the parking garage was. It's happened to me before, but I always block it out so that it seems like a fresh nightmare when I have to endure it again: The single-file gridlock of cars stretching from the top of the garage to the pay booths on the first level. I pulled out of my spot and drove maybe fifty feet before coming to stop. When I sensed nothing was going to happen for a while, I put my car in park. Shit, I must've sat there for a half-hour. This young couple behind me finally said fuck it, parked their car, and stayed a while longer. I wonder if they saw another movie. It was kind of late for that. They could have gone next door to Amoeba Records to kill some time, or gotten a bite to eat at one of the many restaurants in the Sunset and Vine area.

Now why, you might ask, if going to the ArcLight Hollywood on a Saturday night is such a to-do, did I put myself through it? One word, dear reader: Duvall. While I've known of Robert Duvall as far back as I can remember, it wasn't until he played the title character in the 1992 HBO movie Stalin that I really sat up and took notice of this guy's talent. In the days before DVRs and DVDs and Amazon.com, and when I was still too young to have the money or the driver's license to head to the local video store, I taped Stalin and watched it, oh I don't know, maybe ten times or so from 1992 to '94. Only since Stalin have I gone out of my way to see everything Robert Duvall is in. And I've gone back to see older stuff, like the Godfather movies, Apocalypse Now (one of my faves), Tender Mercies, etc. In the eighties I watched The Natural all the time. In hindsight that might be one of the first, if not THE first, movie I saw him in. But after Stalin, I watched it with more appreciation for his performance as that reporter Max Mercy, even though, yes, it was a small role. Right after Stalin, Duvall was in that Michael Douglas movie Falling Down, where Michael sort of loses it and walks across L.A. to visit his estranged wife in Venice. Duvall shot that literally right after Stalin. He still had his Stalin gut and even kept a bit of that Georgian mustache. His performance as a robbery detective who's about to retire is of course a total one-eighty from playing a tyrant responsible for wiping out thirty million of his own people, and that's what's amazing about him. You totally buy him as Stalin, and you totally buy him as a mild-mannered cop struggling to keep a brave face while privately grieving his daughter who died of infant death syndrome. And then right after that he was in Geronimo with Gene Hackman. Duvall and Hackman started out together as starving actors, working dollar-a-day jobs in L.A. while auditioning for stuff at every opportunity. After Geronimo came Ron Howard's The Paper, which reunited Duvall with The Natural costar Glenn Close. A few years after that, just before I moved out to L.A., Duvall directed that movie The Apostle, in which he starred and for which he received a Best Actor nomination. He lost to Jack Nicholson for As Good as It Gets. I really liked the latter in that film, but I don't think he was anywhere near as good as Duvall. Silly as it sounds so many years later, but I still get kind of bent out of shape that Duvall was robbed. It's funny, when they were interviewing Duvall in the days leading up to the ceremony, they asked him what he thought his chances were for winning, and he said something like, "Oh I don't know, it's all political." I wasn't sure what he meant, but a few days later, I sort of figured it out. Whatever the reason was for giving the statue to Jack instead of Duvall, it couldn't've been solely due to talent. Yes I know these things are subjective, but everyone I've spoken to agrees. And this is no disrespect to Jack, by the way. He's awesome. In fact, as with Duvall, I try to see everything he's in. Although I should say I've never referred to Jack as God. I have used that nickname for Duvall.

So when I saw that Robert Duvall was going to be at the ArcLight Hollywood tonight for a screening of Crazy Heart, going was a no-brainer. Are you kidding? The chance to see Duvall in person? The ArcLight only announced this a few days ago. Crazy Heart opened last night. When I saw the announcement, I didn't hesitate to buy a ticket, and for the front row to boot (the ArcLight is all about the reserved seating), Saturday night Hollywood chaos be damned.

If you're a Duvall fan and you haven't seen Crazy Heart, you should know that Duvall's role is pretty small. He's a bar owner in Houston and a longtime friend of Jeff Bridges' character Bad Blake (yes, it's a stage name). Bad lives in Houston, but because he spends the first half or so of the movie on the road, it takes a while for Duvall to enter the picture. Duvall also produced the movie, so there's that. Whether or not you're a Duvall fan, see this movie anyway. It may very well be THE performance of Jeff's career. Well, maybe after the Dude. Personally I'd pick the Dude as his best character, but I'm being very biased since The Big Lebowski is one of my favorite movies. The only reason Bad Blake might be placed higher is because it's, ya know, more serious and dramatic and so on.

Bad Blake is a country singer. You do eventually find out his real name, but not until near the end. And no, I won't tell you what it is because I want you to see this movie. Anyway, Bad used to be hot shit. While his time has passed, he's still sort of legendary in the southwest, a status he, with the help of his tireless manager back in L.A., is trying to milk for everything it's worth. Bad drives (mostly drunk) around the southwest in his piece-of-shit pickup. The first gig we see him do is a bowling alley, which sort of sums up his sorry state right there. If that weren't enough, in the middle of this one song he has to head out the back in a hurry so he can puke. My mentioning his drunkenness parenthetically is sort of misleading. It really is the conflict underlying everything else and something Bad will have to face up to before the end credits roll.

While doing a gig in Albuquerque, he's approached for an interview by a local journalist named Jean, played by the adorable Maggie Gyllenhaal. They do a couple interviews back in his motel room. At first he only talks to her reluctantly. And he dodges some of her more personal questions. That first interview ends abruptly when she asks him if he has any kids.

Eventually Bad tells her, and without her having to ask, that he does have a son he hasn't seen in twenty-some years. The last time he saw him, the kid was four. Jean, it turns out, has a son of her own, Buddy, who happens to be four. That helps explain why Bad gets along with Buddy so famously. Soon enough Bad and Jean are having a passionate affair. Any downtime Bad gets is spent at her place.

Country's biggest star at the moment is Tommy Sweet, played by Colin Farrell. By the time we meet him about a half-hour into the film, we've already heard a lot about him, most of it from Bad, and most of it not very flattering. Tommy was Bad's protégé. And then at some point Tommy's career blasted off into the stratosphere, and Bad was left behind to suck on the fumes. Bad's obviously bitter. His manager lands him the gig of opening for Tommy at an upcoming concert in Phoenix. At first Bad's like no way, he couldn't abide opening for that youngin'. But the man's gotta earn a living, right? And he's gotta keep the booze flowing, so in the end he gives in and goes to Phoenix. When we meet Tommy, he's actually a pretty decent guy. He still holds Bad Blake in high regard. For his part, Bad warms back up to him in no time. One of my favorite scenes is when Bad's doing his opening act. Tommy surprises him by coming out on stage. They perform this one song together. I'm not a big country fan, but that was a pretty cool scene.

Anyway, it's Bad's alcoholism that the film keeps returning to, because it's his alcoholism that keeps screwing everything up. At the top of that list of casualties is his budding relationship with Jean. Despite their age difference, it really does become serious. And then Bad fucks it up. He's hanging out with Buddy in a Houston mall. Jean has to go somewhere and do some stuff related to her job as a reporter. So Bad and Buddy are wandering around this mall. Like a lot of malls, it has restaurants. With bars. Sure enough, Bad spies this one bar in this one restaurant and takes Buddy in for a refreshment. No, he doesn't get Buddy a real drink. He gets the kid a soda while he gets himself a few measures of his favorite poison. It's early in the day so they're the only ones there. While the barkeep prepares the drinks, Buddy heads back to the restroom...and doesn't come back. Bad goes back to see what's up, but Buddy is nowhere to be found. He becomes frantic and looks all around the mall and reports Buddy missing to the security guards and so on. Jean shows up. She knows what happened before Bad can say anything. They sit in the security office while the guards continue their eventually successful search for the little man. That Buddy is found safe and sound doesn't matter. Jean's done with Bad. It's over. She and Buddy head back to Albuquerque.

Although Robert Duvall's role as the bar owner Wayne is a small one, it's also pivotal. Wayne's a recovered alcoholic who's been dry for years. Funny that he'd run a bar, right? Masochist much? Although I do remember that Ted Danson's character in Cheers, Sam Malone, was a recovered alcoholic, and he also ran a bar. Anyway, Jean's dumping him is a real wakeup call for Bad. With Wayne's moral support, he embarks on the road to recovery. Will he make it? Will Jean take him back? Will he ever have a stable career again?

I'll stop right there. Seriously, even if you're indifferent to Robert Duvall and Jeff Bridges and country music, do see this movie. It's worth it for the performances alone. I love it when actors, especially ubiquitous ones like these two, disappear into their roles to such an extent that you forget they're actors.

The Q&A after the film was with Robert Duvall as well as writer-director Scott Cooper. Scott was introduced first. He came up and took his seat. And then Duvall came up. I don't need to tell you that everyone in the sold-out house gave him a standing ovation. Because Crazy Heart is such a mature film peopled mostly with characters who are much older than Hollywood's target demo, I suppose I took for granted that Crazy Heart was made by someone who was, well, a little bit older, which is why I was startled by how young Scott Cooper is. I'd say he's in his mid thirties or so. What's more, Crazy Heart is his directorial debut. Good lord, what a debut! He's not new to Hollywood, mind you. He's been acting fairly steadily since the nineties. I'm not sure he's played the lead in anything, but he's found supporting work in film and TV, a season seven episode of The X-Files, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, The District, etc. Kid's got a pretty diverse resume. He also had a role in the 2003 film Gods and Generals, the prequel to Gettysburg. Despite the fact that it's a terrible movie, based on perhaps the worst novel I've ever read, it was during the production of Gods and Generals that Scott met and befriended Robert Duvall, who played General Robert E. Lee (Martin Sheen played Lee in the far superior Gettysburg). In fact, Scott and Duvall became such good pals that Scott's wedding was on Duvall's sprawling Virginia ranch. He and his wife have a youngin' who's now four (what's with the recurring four-year-olds?!). Apparently Scott's kid likes to say he was made at "Bobby Duvall's ranch." Lucky bastard. During the Q&A Scott and Duvall shared this one funny anecdote about the wedding. One of the guests was actor Adrien Brody. Well, after the wedding was over, Duvall had to leave town to shoot a film. And Scott and his woman went to the Caribbean for their honeymoon. As for the guests, they all went back home...except Adrien Brody. Apparently the dude stayed there for three days and only left because the ranch proprietor called Duvall to ask what they should do with him. And then Duvall called Scott in the Bahamas or wherever, since Adrien was Scott's friend after all, and asked him what the deal was with that weirdo.

When asked about the genesis of the project, Scott talked about growing up on country music in Virginia. For a long time he's wanted to do a biopic about Merle Haggard. He thought if and when he finally had the chance to direct, a Merle movie would be just the ticket. When he thought about who could help him with this, Duvall was the obvious choice. During his decades of acting experience, Duvall has also racked up credits as a producer and director. And he's a country music fan. He said he started listening to it when he enlisted in the Army right out of high school, in the late 1940s and early '50s. When Scott pitched Duvall the Merle Haggard idea, Duvall told him he also wanted to do a Merle biopic. He'd been ruminating about it for years but just hadn't gotten around to it. It's next to impossible to write and direct something when you're acting in seemingly every other movie. Duvall saw the perfect opportunity here. Young Scott could do all the writing and directing legwork while Duvall could sit back and produce.

Ultimately the Merle project fell through. Unlike a lot of fact-based films, they didn't have a specific book to adapt. A lot of biopics and what have you are based on a book, for which the author has already done the historical research while you, as the writer-director, only have to worry about being faithful to the result of all that labor: The book itself. No such luck here. Of course, Scott could make up for that by interviewing not only Merle but also the people Merle has known throughout his long career (he's about Duvall's age). Pretty soon into the interview process Scott realized it just wasn't going to work. Among the interviewees were Merle's ex-wives. Their accounts of various periods in Merle's life were inconsistent with what Merle said. Sometimes Scott would be told stuff that flat contradicted what someone else told him. Finally he and Duvall said fuck it. They could do a country music character piece, but the character would have to be made up.

Eventually Scott came across the 1989 novel Crazy Heart by Thomas Cobb, a fictionalized version of the life of Hank Thompson. By sheer coincidence, Hank was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989. He passed away in 2007 at the age of 82. Scott didn't go into detail about how much of it was pure fiction and how much Cobb drew from Hank's life. Hank started recording in the 1940s and pretty much went nonstop until he died, a good solid sixty years of steady work. He literally died five days after his last concert. At first blush he doesn't seem to have had any serious mishaps like what we see Bad Blake go through. Maybe Cobb knew stuff we didn't. At any rate, there you have it. Plus, having a book to draw from meant Scott's research, such as it was, was already done for him. All he had to do when writing the script was, ya know, keep the novel at his elbow.

Like all good screenwriters, though, Scott didn't let himself be a slave to the source material. The most glaring example of that is the last act of the story. Bad Blake makes some strides against his alcoholism. When he goes to patch things up with Jean (she's still mad at him for losing Buddy in the mall), she rejects him outright. In the novel, this pushes Bad off the wagon. He drinks himself silly and wakes up in a ditch. Scott changed that.

If you've seen Tender Mercies, you'll recognize some obvious parallels. Like Tender Mercies, Crazy Heart is about a washed up country singer who falls for a woman with a four-year-old son. Mac's got a daughter from a previous marriage he's trying to patch things up with. Bad Blake's got that long-lost son. The big difference, though, is that in Tender Mercies Rosa Lee supports Mac. He has a support system through all his troubles while he pieces his life back together. In Crazy Heart, Bad Blake has no one. Jeff Bridges, who just turned sixty on December 4, is also ten years older than Duvall was when he played Mac Sledge. I haven't seen Tender Mercies in years, but in general it's much more upbeat. In Crazy Heart Bad Blake hits rock bottom. It's a much more intense, in-your-face depiction of someone truly down and out. Speaking of parallels with country singers, both Scott and Duvall mentioned Jeff Bridges being long-time pals with Kris Kristofferson. Apparently Jeff not so discreetly set out to make himself sort of look like Kristofferson, what with hair and beard all over the place. Jeff never said anything to his good friend, but when Kristofferson attended a screening of Crazy Heart, he recognized himself immediately and playfully gave Jeff a lot of shit about it.

Speaking of Jeff, one thing Scott said that surprised me was that Jeff Bridges has a reputation in Hollywood of being the single most difficult actor to attach to a project. I could've sworn I already heard that about Bill Murray, but I suppose such a claim is relative. At any rate, Scott cited The Big Lebowski as an example, saying it took the Coens a solid year to convince Jeff to play the Dude. Duvall went out of his way to say that Jeff isn't difficult to work with, just difficult to get a commitment from. I can only imagine that Jeff is snowed under scripts all the time. He has to pick carefully. What's more, when you read a new script, even if it's a good one, it's almost impossible to tell if it'll be a good movie. Good movies are made by a great cast and great direction as much as they are with great writing. You could have a so-so script and still end up with a great film. History is rife with examples that would fill up a hundred blog posts.

I'm sure Duvall was key to getting Jeff. When a big Hollywood star produces a movie, one of their main contributions is using their clout. Duvall said he's been friends with the Bridges family for decades, since Jeff's late father, the great Lloyd Bridges, was younger than Jeff is now. They didn't say how long it took to rope in Jeff for this gig, but they obviously convinced him somehow. Maybe the short shooting schedule had something to do with it. One of the things Scott said that blew me away was that this entire film, with a budget of seven mil, was shot in twenty-four days. That's kind of amazing. With a final cut that's almost two hours, you've gotta figure they shot a lot more that was edited out. The rule of thumb with movies is that you try to shoot three pages of the script per day. They must've been doing double that. One bit that Scott said they cut was when Bad Blake confronts his long-lost son in person. In the final cut, they only talk once, and it's on the phone.

Man, I can't tell you how cool that is, that they shot it all in barely more than three weeks. It gives me hope that if I ever have the funds to shoot a feature, the shoot itself need not consume huge gobs of my life, not if it's budgeted and scheduled appropriately. Scott said the script was shot wildly out of order. This one very poignant scene toward the end between Jean and Bad was actually the very first scene they shot on day one of the production. That's kind of baffling. So Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal had to pretend the first hundred-plus pages of the script had already happened so they could be in the right emotional state. Scott said Maggie had a very tough time with that scene. No kidding.

The kid who played Buddy had an even harder time during the shoot, it sounds like. Scott said it was hard for him to know when everything was make-believe. There's this one scene, shortly after the mall fiasco, when Jean goes back to Bad's place, collects her things, and gets a cab. She and Buddy drive away in the cab while Bad pleads with her to give him another chance. Well, Scott said the kid who played Buddy thought they really were leaving. And during that first take he started crying. Scott had to explain to him that it was just pretend and they weren't really leaving Jeff Bridges. They waited for the kid to recover so they could shoot it again. When you see it, you'll notice that the kid doesn't say or do anything while his mom takes him away. He just looks calmly out the cab window at Jeff Bridges. Now you can appreciate how much effort it took to pull that off.

Besides the kid crying and Maggie struggling on the first day, the set sounds like it was drama free. Duvall had high praise for Scott as a director. As the producer, Duvall visited the set a lot. He said Scott did a great job keeping the set relaxed. The only obstacle to their staying on the tight schedule was Jeff Bridges' habit of checking his performance on the feedback monitor after each and every take. Control freak? Obsessive compulsive? What's the guy worried about? Scott and Duvall laughed it off. They sort of made fun of Jeff for having to do that. During the Q&A, that is. I'm not sure they made fun of him to his face, although I'm sure Duvall would have no problem doing that.

Regarding the concert scene at the Sun Pavilion in Phoenix, Scott said those were not extras in the crowd. They had all come to see a Toby Keith concert. Before the concert, Duvall asked Toby if he'd allow them to shoot their scene. Toby said sure. His handlers said sure, but you only have ten minutes. The approximately ten-minute gap between the opening act and Toby. That means the duet with Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell was shot almost in real time. Their duet goes for several minutes, and it's not one long take. There are cuts from different angles. They did all that in ten minutes? God damn, that's something. I can only assume Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell rehearsed that song ahead of time. Although, now I think about it, with such a tight schedule, how would they've found the time? Scott said shooting that scene was chaos. He hadn't a clue if it would work. Jeff and Colin stood at the mic and sang and played guitar while Scott ran all over the place like a madman with his Steadicam strapped on, gathering as much footage as possible.

Speaking of Colin Farrell, Scott had high praise for him. Colin's got range, he said. He'll do any part you throw at him. Colin, Scott claimed, is actually a character actor masquerading behind his movie star good looks. His being Irish came in handy, Scott half-joked, since we know all Irish can sing. He purposely wanted the audience to think Tommy Sweet was an asshole by the time we meet him a half-hour into the film, just before the Sun Pavilion scene. Then we see how deferential he is to Bad Blake. This allows us to see that bad-mouthing Tommy Sweet before we meet him is a reflection of how wounded, and maybe jealous, Bad Blake feels behind his tough, booze-swigging facade. It shows Bad Blake's a complicated human being like the rest of us. I have to admit that was a shrewd writing tactic. You don't see that very much in mainstream films.

When Scott finished his final draft of the script, he gave it to Duvall and said he needed two people to make the film work: Jeff Bridges as well as T Bone Burnett. He obviously got the former. And he got the latter too. T Bone handled the soundtrack. Do you know who he is? I didn't come across his name until the Coen Brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou? He did the soundtrack for that, one of my favorite soundtracks ever. I got it in 2001, soon after the film came out. Indeed, the O Brother soundtrack became so successful that in 2001 or '02 or thereabouts, T Bone went on a nationwide tour with all the performers from the soundtrack performing their songs. Even old Ralph Stanley, God bless 'im. I think they had one L.A. stop, the Universal Amphitheater if memory serves. I didn't go, but writing about it now sort of makes me wish I had. Seriously, how often have you heard of the soundtrack to a movie going on tour?

T Bone was in his fifties when the Coens tapped him to do O Brother. He'd been producing country music for years. The Coens already had a rapport with him from The Big Lebowski, which they did just before O Brother. T Bone was their music supervisor on that, helping them select the appropriate classic gems for certain scenes, like that one sequence when the Dude passes out and has that weird dream after being drugged by the porn producer Jackie Treehorn. Since then, T Bone's done other soundtrack work: The Ladykillers (another Coen Brothers flick), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Don't Come Knocking, Walk the Line, Cold Mountain, All the Kings Men, Happy Feet, Mad Money, and, most mysteriously, Did You Hear About the Morgans? He'd done soundtrack work before the Coens came calling, but only sporadically. O Brother really changed his life. I remember him saying as much in an interview shortly after that came out. He didn't compose the entire soundtracks of all those films, but if he didn't, he at least wrote original songs that appeared on them. For Crazy Heart, he was the composer, and he wrote one of the songs Jeff performs in the film, "The Weary Kind." Speaking of songwriting, I mentioned Bad Blake doing a gig in a bowling alley. Well, he has a backing band there. The foreman of this band, who plays guitar and provides backup vocals and only appears in this one scene, also had a big part in the soundtrack. Scott said Ryan Bingham helped write the songs. All of the songs in the film are original, which is kind of amazing if you think about the schedule. I wonder how much lead time T Bone, Ryan, et al had before the shoot started. Scott never said. The late Stephen Bruton also helped with the soundtrack. The film is dedicated to his memory, as he passed away from throat cancer at the age of sixty back in May. Stephen performed with Kris Kristofferson for a long time. He also worked with T Bone, including on Don't Come Knocking.

In talking more about his directing style, Scott said he watched the two films Duvall's directed in the last ten years: The Apostle and Assassination Tango. One thing he noticed was Duvall's penchant for using non-actors. He tried to emulate that in making Crazy Heart. One such example is Rick Dial, who plays Maggie's uncle, the pianist in Bad Blake's backing band during the Albuquerque bit. Duvall told us his very interesting backstory. Rick Dial is originally from Arkansas, the same part of Arkansas as Billy Bob Thornton. He owned a furniture store there for a long time. He and Billy Bob are longtime pals. Well, when Billy Bob made Sling Blade back in the mid nineties, he gave Rick Dial a supporting role. It turned out Rick wasn't such a bad actor. Right after Sling Blade, Duvall cast him in The Apostle. This was followed by more roles while he continued running his furniture store. He landed parts in The General's Daughter, Mumford, Secondhand Lions (also with Duvall), and a few other films. When he's back home, Rick's also the official announcer for both the football and basketball teams at Malvern High School. He's lived in Malvern his whole life. Like all good things, Rick's run was bound to end. The recession hit him so hard that he finally had to close his furniture store. He'd been running it for decades. His part in Crazy Heart wasn't that big so he couldn't have made too much. A budget of seven mil stretches more thinly than you might think. Duvall said he's doing everything he can to find Rick more jobs. In addition to living in Malvern his whole life, by the way, Rick's been married to the same gal since he was eighteen. He's fifty-five now. That's awesome.

Scott also mentioned how he wouldn't shoot coverage in certain scenes. You know what coverage is? Basically, when you shoot a scene, a rule of thumb is that you shoot it from multiple angles. You won't necessarily use them all in the final cut, but in case one of the angles doesn't turn out right, you can use another one. You're covered, if you will. In some scenes, though, Scott couldn't imagine doing it from any other angle except the one he'd storyboarded, so that was the only one he'd shoot. That was very shrewd because a youngin' like him wouldn't have final say on the final cut. The studio would. If the studio sees a scene from an angle they don't like, they'll go ahead and use one of Scott's coverage shots. Only, they couldn't do that if Scott hadn't shot coverage. One example Scott cited was from the second half of the film, when Bad Blake's back at his house in Houston. I think it was in the morning. Bad Blake was hung over. For most of the film he's hung over or drunk. But in this one scene he was especially screwed up. He stumbles into his bedroom and collapses on the bed. For that scene, Scott put the camera at the back corner of the bed, adjacent to the pillows, so as Bad Blake fell across the bed, his face would land literally right in front of the lens. The audience could then see Bad Blake full on in all his screwed up glory. Scott only used one camera for that scene. Something told him that, because it showed Jeff Bridges in a hideous light, the studio wouldn't like that angle and go for another. Only, they had no coverage to turn to, so Scott, a young filmmaker with no clout in the studio system (although being friends with Duvall has got to count for something), outsmarted his would-be bosses. That's pretty cool. And again, it gives me hope should I--no, when I--make my own feature.

Scott was nervous as hell when time came to watch the film with Thomas Cobb. Would he hate it? Especially considering how vastly different the ending is from the novel? Apparently Cobb loved it. He cried even. At first Scott thought he was crying because he hated it. But no, apparently those tears were his seal of approval.

As for what's next, Scott's not sure. For Duvall, probably a million things. The guy doesn't miss a beat. He did mention one of his upcoming projects will be playing Don Quixote for Terry Gilliam. That elicited a lot of applause, including and especially from me. How awesome is that, not only that Duvall's playing Don friggin' Quixote, but that Terry Gilliam's resurrecting that project from the dead? If you follow the movie biz, you may already know that Terry "Monty Python" Gilliam tried to adapt Don Quixote several years ago. But the thing ran so over schedule and over budget that the production was finally shut down. They even made a documentary about it called Lost in La Mancha. A doc about an aborted production. How about that? But you know why? Because, like any great film, there was so much drama. It was made by these two guys who went to the same school as me, Temple University in Philly. Terry Gilliam had hired them to document the production of 12 Monkeys back in the mid nineties, a lot of which was shot in Philly. When they started out on the Don Quixote project, of course, they thought they'd just be documenting its development like they did for 12 Monkeys. When the whole thing imploded, they figured their doc was a wash, but then Terry Gilliam, proving he's one of the best sports around, went to them and was like, "Well, someone should get a movie out of this. I guess it'll be you." Or something like that. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has long been one of Terry's passion projects. You could say his vision of it is quixotic. And now he's getting another chance. The shoot starts next spring. Johnny Depp's playing Sancho Panza, as he was going to do originally. You'll see him in the documentary. Isn't it awesome Terry's getting another chance, and that Duvall's going to be front and center? What a role, huh? Don Quixote. Directed by Terry Gilliam. I can't wait!