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Compiled by: Jack Foley
Q. Your role is intriguing because it is the outsider to all
this, so that's obviously attractive in itself. But was there
a sense of remaining the outsider when you were shooting? Was
there a sense of sort of keeping yourself away from the characters?
A. Not necessarily, no, I mean we were all sort of together,
we were playing together, and Whitey, although he is removed from
the familial situation, he's not a complete foreigner, in as much
as he's a partner to Kevin Bacon, and that's a kind of marriage.
He's privy to the goings and comings of people in this community;
he's just not as deeply affected, because it's his work, so his
objectiveness comes from the fact that it's a job to him, investigating
this murder, he's not personally involved.
Q. What did you make of Clint Eastwood's directing style,
and was it different from what you imagined, or exactly what you
expected?
A. I echo everything Tim
has said and would only add that it is incredibly civilized working
for Clint Eastwood. Quite often on movies, you end up working
18 hours, or 21 hours, but we never had any days like that; we
started at a decent hour and we finished at a decent hour. It
was a familial situation, so they had a kind of shorthand and
welcomed us all into it, and made us all very comfortable.
But really, the most inspiring aspect was watching Clint work
as a director and learning from him. His ability to be prepared
and to know exactly what he wants, but also to make room for things
that were going to happen, for happy accidents, and his composition
style.
I would watch him composing and thought it was really beautiful
that he was able to do it in almost an improvisational way on
the spot.
So he has this very disciplined work ethic, but it's also an inventiveness.
He's kind of like Bill Evans playing piano - he's got classical
feeling, a great sense of swing and real poetry.
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Q. What did you think about shooting in a very authentic location,
and what do you think it gave the film?
A. In Lehane's book, and Brian's translation of it, Boston
is on the page, it was really authentic, even on the page, so
it created a kind of texture.
Q. What do you think about the new governor of California?
A. All I can say is that the man has got exactly what he wanted.
He has really been after a position in politics for a very long
time, so he's got what he wanted, and he told us all that he'd
be back!
Brian Helgeland
Q. You had adapted a previous novel with Clint Eastwood, what
was the brief to you when you got this?
A. First was just to read it, and then we just had a talk
about it, like two people who had read the same book. I think
we responded to a lot of the same things, in different ways, which
was good for both of us. It was after I had done a draft that
we got into refining it and all that.
Q. What did you think about shooting in a very authentic location,
and what do you think it gave the film?
A. I think that's what really nailed it for me, that I could
kind of slip into the rhythms of the dialogue I grew up with.
I kind of recognised the place when I read the book.
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