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Equilibrium Commentary
Kurt Wimmer &
Lucas Foster
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17. Paying
the Price
Transcription
by Walldude
KW: So the palace that I wanted to
shoot in, which we weren't allowed to shoot in would have looked
something like this I think. Wolf actually modeled this room after...
LF: ...one of
Fredrick's palaces...
KW: Yeah, that's
right. It's not as sumptuous as I would have liked but uh, you
know I was pretty down on it at the time. I was pretty depressed
about it but at the end of the day it does it's job. And it's kind of
funny because I look at this scene now and then I look at the teaser
for the Matrix and it's interesting. You know there are people
who said that this film took the costumes from the Matrix. I don't see
that at all. You know Neo wasn't wearing Prada in it at all, but
it's interesting when I see the teaser for Reloaded the costumes are
very similar to this and I'm sure the motivation was the same that uh
Neo is assuming the theological um, god like proportions and so that's
why he has sort of the semi-religious tone to his outfits. But also the
set in the teaser where his fighting is actually quite similar to this,
sort of 19th century semi-classical.
LF: We taught all
of these guys, Taye, Christian and Angus everything they needed to know
to work on this, to do the martial arts and sword fighting moves.
 KW: In not much time too I might
add. They were all very good at absorbing the choreography.
LF: I have to say
Jim Vickers did a pretty amazing job...
KW: He certainly
did given what he had to work with..
One interesting
thing about this scene was I was losing Taye at that lunch and I had to
shoot him out of this whole scene... from Christian's entrance to the
end ...so I had to very quickly figure out how I could shoot around the
fact that Taye wasn't there and get the stuff that I needed to get that
had to have Taye in it. It was pretty difficult, pushing it, but
that's filmmaking.
LF: This uh, I
know in the other commentary you were talking a little bit about
this. This was a much more elaborate sequence that we literally
just ran out of time to execute. We wanted to do something pretty
spectacular in here...
KW: Which we'll
save for another movie.
LF: Which I'm not
allowed to talk about because you'll see it in another one of our films
but uh, it was pretty cool what we were going to do and we just
literally... it was just a time and money thing that we could not
finish it.
KW: I just
can't. There were a lot of people that said well, we'll do just a
truncated version of it and I just said no we won't do it and um,
people were pretty disappointed, in particularly the fight coordinators
who were really into it and I appreciate that but um, at the end of the
day though people talk about this scene a lot because I think if I'm
not mistaken it's the first time it's been done on film. And it seems
so obvious, hand trapping with guns but nobody's ever done it and I'm
glad that we Americans were the ones who were able to invent this.
KW: No it wasn't
the case. You know if I could have gone back I would have shot a
quick shot of him sustaining that bullet graze in his neck during that
last fight. But what really happened was that Christian said to me
after we'd shot all that and before we shot this "shouldn't I have some
blood on my neck. It may not make sense," and um I decided he was
right and I thought the audience would extrapolate that he was just in
a gun fight and it wouldn't be too hard to buy that he has blood on his
neck. Um, a lot of people did say... there's some things that you have
to include and some things that the audience will just fill in.
That was one that a lot of people needed filling in.
LF: We had various
designs for that room that we ultimately, we just liked that thing
where he crosses his arms and shoots the screens as he walks by.
KW: Well, you
know, it doesn't work. I mean it's a combination of a lot of
considerations. Utility in shooting being one of them, in terms of
being able to cover it easily and overall design. I'm not that
happy with it at the end of the day but it serves it's purpose...
There's that cute
dog.
LF:Yeah.
KW:That shot was
not originally in my original cut of the film but so many people asked
on the cards, "What happened to the dog?" So I had to answer that
question.
LF: This is Italy
right?
KW: Yeah and one
thing I do that you might notice is that there are no blood
squibs. I used all powder, basically a black dust in all of the
squib hits in the movie and the reason was, I didn't want to cut any of
the action and I was concerned that the MP double A... they're like
bulls and they react at the sight of red... and so I didn't. I
felt that all the audience really needed was the visual visceral impact
and that would be enough.. and I think it was.
And there it is.
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