That was fun. Here's a good bit: Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot—the telephone book? Or this: Sometimes I’d have an actor so stubborn that I’d say, All right, let’s do it two ways. We’d do it my way, and I’d say to my assi…
> Sometimes I’d have an actor so stubborn that I’d say, All right, let’s do it two ways. We’d do it my way, and I’d say to my assistant, Print that. Then to the actor, All right, now your way. We’d do it his way with no celluloid in the camera. This bothers me. Why the deception? Was film really that expensive? Just capture the footage both ways—as in, actually capture it—and see what works better in the editing room…
I got sucked into watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtT0zb9L7V8 last night (Billy Wilder on Dick Cavett) which is fascinating and great. He wasn't kidding about his accent.