By Sidney Lumet Page #5

Day's Journey into Night," I never did try to

define it, the reason being that every once

in a while-- it's not going to happen often

in your career-- you have a text that is so great

that if you try to say it's about this, if you try to

define it as one thing, you're going to limit it. The words are for the world. The best thing you

can do with that is just investigate

it to such a point where you feel free to let

whatever happens happen. But that's on a great text. If you try to do that on a

very good text or a good text, you'll just have anarchy. You can't leave it to define

itself because it won't. So in selecting that

definition and limitation, you are not only

determining where you want to go emotionally, but

how you're going to get there. In other words, it

defines the style in which you're going to make the movie. Yeah? EUGENE MORETTI (ON PHONE):

What are you doing in there? Who's this? EUGENE MORETTI (ON PHONE):

This is Detective Sergeant Eugene Moretti, a**hole. We got you completely

by the balls. You don't believe me. I'm looking you

right in the eye. Right now I can see you. SAL: Who is it? Cops. [sirens] SIDNEY LUMET: On "Dog Day

Afternoon," here is a real life incident and the actors

all portraying real people to whom this actually happened. The picture was

about, hey, we're not these outrageous characters,

like Pacino's character. These people are not the

freaks We think they are. We have much more in

common with the freaks than we'd like to

admit about ourselves. Now that immediately defined

the Way the movie was going to be done because

in order for that to be clear, the first

obligation became, hey folks, this really happened. That means that nothing about

it could feel like a movie, look like a movie. It had to look as close

to a live television transmission of

action that was taking place right at that moment-- [music - elton john, "amoreena"] --which in the terms of the

real incident actually happened. Channel 5 had it

on for four hours. So it defines not only the

inner life of the movie and what we're going

to work on-- actors and myself-- but

camera, clothes, the entire visual

approach, in other words, the style of the movie. It's a movie that I

did not realistically, but naturalistically. I very often make up a

color palette for a movie, and in certain cases like,

"Dog Day," no palette. Let it all be accidental. Nobody had a costume

made for that. I asked all the actors to

wear their own clothes. Needless to say, on the

outside with 300 extras and 500 neighborhood people just

hanging around and watching, there was no control

of the color. But I didn't want it. I wanted it all accidental. The thing that I

think makes "Dog Day" what it is Pacino's

performance, because it could very easily

have degenerated into a sensationalist piece. That was the thing I

was most afraid of. It is really not my job to try

to estimate what an audience is going to think of. All I can do is do the

piece as best I can and hope that they come along with it. I talked to the

actors about that the first day of rehearsal. I said to the cast,

this is the only time. I've got to talk about what's

going to happen with this movie on a Saturday night at

the Loew's Pitkin, which was a fancy movie house

in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. I don't want a voice coming

from the balcony, hey you fags. If that happens, we've

done a lousy movie. And we've got to reach,

on a fundamental level, into anybody watching

this movie to make them aware of the

humanity of these two men. And I couldn't have

had a better person to unearth that feeling

than Pacino because he's like an open wound up there. Being of sound mind and

body, you know, and all that. To my darling wife, Leon,

whom I love more than any man has loved another

man in all eternity. I leave $2,700 from my

$10,000 life insurance policy to be used for your

sex change operation. If there is any

money left over, I want it to go to

you at my first-- at the first anniversary

of my death at my grave. To my Wife, to my

sweet wife, Angela, $5,000 from the same policy. You are the only woman

that I ever loved. I do feel very good about what

I can get other people to do, and it's never

through manipulation. By the way, there is no

right or wrong in this. Kazan, who was, god

knows, a great director was very exploitative of

the actors in the sense that he would quickly discern

where the neurosis lay and then play on that as part

of getting the performance-- with some actors, not all. But I've seen him do it. I could never do

something like that. I'd rather let the

performance go. OK, so we didn't-- I

get it by knowledge of their craft and empathy

to them as human beings. My dad. Oh god. It's not fair! It's not fair! All my life I've been afraid of

becoming like him, all my life, all my life with you

and it's not fair. He can't just say he's sorry

and make it all go away. It's too late. It's not that easy. It's not fair! It's not f***ing fair! No, Dad. Oh god. He can't do that. SIDNEY LUMET: All good

work is self-revelatory. The good actors,

you know everything there is to know about them. If I'm directing you, you're

going to know everything there is to know about me. I mean, my casts at the end of

the rehearsal period know me. I was a member of

the Actor's Studio, the original group that

Bobby Lewis and Kazan began. And I was thrilled, of course,

because like every actor, you want a place to work. Americans were the

best realistic actors in the world at that time,

in movies and in the theater. And I said, look,

realism, realistic acting is only one style. It's got no

superiority about it. There are a million other styles

that we need to know about. I mean, how do you do

restoration comedy? How do you do the

Shakespearean comedies? How do you do Oscar Wilde? And I got thrown out of the

studio, and it was a big shock. It was a very, very

god awful feeling. And the only Way to handle it

was to form my own workshop. The actors said, Sidney,

as we work on scenes, it would be terrific if one

of us could direct the scene. So why don't we start

with you directing them? And that's literally how

I fell into directing. I was a very good

friend, at that time, with Yul Brynner,

who was a marvelous guy and a director at CBS. Television had barely

begun, live-- drama. And what most people

don't know about Yul is that he was a

terrific director. I was also flat broke and Yul

said, Sidney, they don't know what the f*** they're doing. Come on in. It's fun. [music playing] ANNOUNCER: The Alcoa

Hour, brought to you live from New York by

Aluminum Company of America. And now for the best in

Sunday evening drama-- "Tragedy in a

Temporary Town," yeah. "Tragedy in a Temporary

Town" was about one of those communities

that had been put up around a construction

project in which the houses were

trailer homes and about the insecurity of life there. Now I got half a plan here. I want to tell it to you. Me and the boys

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes