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Hi, this is Frank Oz, director of Stepford Wives.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
This opening that you're gonna see here
is not the original opening that I had intended.
The original opening was hundreds of women
dressed in black suits and dresses and power suits
walking in Manhattan to the tune of "I Am Woman."
I loved this opening, and I thought it really set the tone for the movie.
Everybody worked so hard on it.
We actually did shoot hundreds of women in all areas of Manhattan.
No men whatsoever. We cleared the men from the set completely.
From every set.
It turned out that it didn't work.
And Ron Bozman, my executive producer,
and all the people who worked so hard on it,
it made me feel bad.
But it didn't work for various reasons.
What you're seeing right now
is something that was done in the last three weeks of postproduction.
And I love this.
I wish I had just gone to Randy Balsmeyer, who did it, immediately,
because he did such a great job.
This was done the last three weeks in the postproduction time.
And this is all original footage.
We didn't shoot any of this.
Randy had to get permission
from, I guess, whoever owned this material.
And John Corbett cut it with Randy.
They do Big Film Design. That's the company.
And they just did a fabulous job.
This really set the tone of the movie much better than the other piece.
I told you various reasons why the other piece didn't work.
One of the reasons was that my feeling was that this should be
all about very, very powerful women, a world full of women,
and this is Paul Rudnick, the writer's intent, also.
They should be determined going to work.
But actually what happened was that there seemed to be
a feeling they weren't determined as much as unhappy.
And that's not what we wanted. We wanted them happy and determined.
So, all that wonderful footage we didn't use.
However, this, as I said, worked just great.
What this set, you know...
I consider the credits of every movie the overture which sets the tone.
And this has a delightful tone. You can see the actual...
On the right-hand side
and at various times on the left-hand side and around,
there's these little squares.
Randy's thought was that those are little digital squares.
So, instead of just pretty little squares,
they're really intended to be digital elements or pixels,
which harkens to the feeling of the technology of Stepford.
And then the women here in this are way over the top,
and they set up the comedy of Stepford.
Now, the next shot here,
we did bring a thousand people in.
This is not digital here.
The "EBS," those signs there, are digitally placed in
by a Chicago company called Digital Kitchen.
But when you see the reverse here everything is real,
except on the very top.
You'll see there's some cardboard cutouts...
but everybody else is all real here.
So we had to have everybody dressed and made up and everything
for this huge shot.
I love Nic coming out here in this kind of saunter.
Her body language really told how confident and cocky she was.
The idea is to set this woman up as a confident, cocky...
very powerful woman.
You might also notice that the plan was
after we had all the women
in the original opening,
the hundreds of women in black on the streets,
we were going to go right to this.
And if you take a look at the audience sometime,
you'll notice that it's 95% women.
So the idea was it was supposed to be a world inhabited by powerful women,
as you can see here, with just a few men,
which is not the usual ratio.
Now, here, this is our first game show.
Are you ready for the final gender challenge?
- Who makes more money? - I do.
Who enters Ironman triathlons every year and wins?
I do.
Who secretly wishes they were married to a hot, sexy lesbian?
- I do! - I do!
It's Tara!
This next game show,
which is called, as Nic says here, I Can Do Better,
was actually the very, very first thing we shot in the entire movie.
It was actually before we started shooting.
What happens often in production is you set a schedule,
and just to get a little jump ahead of the schedule,
you might do a day or two of shooting before the schedule starts,
which really kind of gets the crew going and it also helps your schedule.
And this is the first thing we actually shot.
I think we shot it in two days.
We shot it with video cameras and then we...
So it looks a little bit like video.
Although the resolution's so good, maybe it looks like film too.
This was inside
a studio in New York City.
And that's Billy. Billy was just wonderful.
It was Scott Rudin's idea, I think,
or Paul Rudnick's idea, I'm not sure who it was.
Or my casting directors, Juliet Taylor and Laura Rosenthal.
But it's a wonderful idea to get Billy. He was just perfect for this.
A lovely guy, too.
And that's Mike White, who's a brilliant writer,
besides a brilliant performer.
This here for, I think, the airline version, I had been cutting it.
I had to cut a couple things because it was too sexy, I guess.
There was a couple of things in there I had to omit.
One thing we omitted completely, by the way, was--
You'll see in a moment that she has to make a choice between her husband
and this hunk here.
And just before the choice, he...
he wagged his tongue very fast.
Everybody thought it was a bit too gross. I loved it personally, but we took it out.
Actually, I was thinking, "How can we get somebody who looks really huge
and a big hunk, and ready to waggle his tongue real fast?"
I didn't know how to do it.
All the sudden we cast this fellow. I forgot his name, but he was wonderful.
Now, the EBS-- We put it in in postproduction, by the way.
That's some digital work.
Also, by the way, the set on this--
I tried to make all of New York kind of cool
and glass and concrete and harsh,
so when we get to Stepford it's lovely and warm and beautiful.
And if you look at the set here, I asked Jack De Govia to make a very harsh,
really over-the-top, glitzy set, as you see behind her,
just to enhance the idea that everything's hard and cold in the city,
and that changes when you get to Stepford.
All subtle stuff. Probably no one cares but me.
Now here we had, for this effect coming up,
I think we had about four cameras going.
We had more footage than this.
But again, you know, the audience wants the story to get going.
So if I had more footage-- We have more footage of Mike.
We have more footage of this whole area.
But I cut it way down because the audience really wants to know what's going on.
They say, "Okay, fine, I know this is happening. Now tell me the story."
And so, all this footage of him firing, we have much more,
and I cut it down because we want to get to what happens next.
Which is this.
And this is the scene where she's going to get fired.
This is Mary Beth Peil, a marvelous actress.
She was on Broadway at the time, in Nine.
And she's just a wonderful actress.
There's a moment here when she's fired,
which is a close-up of Nicole,
and I thought about this for a year prior.
I knew what I wanted to do a year prior.
So for a year, I was waiting-- or maybe less than a year--
I was waiting for the moment I was gonna shoot this
because I just love the idea of seeing Nicole totally--
or rather the character Nicole plays, Joanna-- totally deconstruct.
You'll see it in a moment. I just love--
I tried several takes, and Nic did it many different ways.
And this was my favorite take.
She is totally in denial. She just doesn't believe--
I told Nic, I said, "You know, don't think you're gonna get fired. Go in there and..."
I gave her direction and suggestions saying,
"Go in there thinking you're gonna get a promotion,
thinking, 'That was great television.'
Just think about it that way."
So she's smiling, expecting a promotion here.
And so when she realizes she's fired, it's such a long distance to travel
from what she thought was gonna happen
to what's really happening.
This is what I looked forward to for about a year, shooting this.
And that deconstruction in her mind.
This woman, Joanna,
has made her work more important than her children and her husband.
Her work is everything. It's how she defines her life.
So once her work is gone, she is totally, completely lost.
Of course, she's putting up a brave face here.
I told Nic to hold it in as tight as you can.
Hold that emotion as tight as you can.
Put as much cover as possible. Don't let anybody know you're hurt.
Don't let anybody know.
And then she'll let it out in the elevator when she screams.
Because then she just loses it.
Now, here is a situation where we cut a whole subplot.
When you get to the elevator, what should've happened
is that Matthew was coming out and we learn, by a misunderstanding,
that Matthew is having an affair with this secretary right here.
That's Andrea Anders, a wonderful actress.
And what was gonna happen here is
that Matthew Broderick was going to step out of the elevator
and, through a misunderstanding, Nic was going to realize that,
"Oh, my God, not only am I fired,
but my husband is having an affair with my secretary."
We took that out.
And the reason we took that out is because later on in the movie,
when Matthew is talking about Nic, or rather Joanna, changing,
that it's time for her to change,
we were thinking, "Wait a second. This guy had an affair with another woman.
How about him changing, for God's sake?"
So we took it out because it seemed disingenuous of Matthew's character
to try and have Nic change.
This scene in the hospital was originally meant to be much funnier.
And we cut-- You'll notice maybe some rough cutting here
because we cut way around things in order to take some funny stuff out
because we really wanted it--
This is hysterical. This I had to keep.
That would have-- That was--
That was Paul Rudnick's idea, of course.
But the reason we had to cut a lot of the comedy out
is because we had to believe that Joanna was actually sincere
about trying to change her marriage,
'cause this was the jumping-off point for going to Stepford.
If there's too many jokes here, then me, the audience, you, the audience,
I believed, would not have really believed that she was sincere,
that she wanted to change.
So we took out a lot of the jokes here to try and make it
that she really was quite sincere and wanted to change,
and maybe she'd been the wrong kind of woman.
And that's why you notice maybe some editorial clunkers there.
Jay Rabinowitz, who was my editor, and who was valiant,
just working day and night
and he is such a brilliant guy, he did a great job.
Now, here, I wish I could tell you where we shot this.
I can't tell you where we shot a lot of it because unfortunately what happens is,
I'm so focused on the scene that I'm supposed to shoot that day--
I'm driven out by the driver and I'm working on the script,
and I have no idea where I'm shooting this.
I think this is somewhere, I don't know, on the way to Connecticut.
This here, on purpose--
I had a shot of the guard, the guard's face,
but on purpose Jay and I decided not to show it.
Just to start that off-kilter feeling of Stepford having a bit of evil there.
This here is a matte shot.
The church steeple and that town in the background doesn't exist.
That was put in later.
And the blue sky, also. It was kind of a gray day then.
And this is-- As you see, this is where everything turns warm, lovely and soft
compared to the harshness and the coldness of New York.
That was the idea.
Again, maybe too subtle, but that's what I had planned.
These houses were in different parts of Connecticut.
And I don't, again, know exactly where because I was so focused on the scene.
I don't know where some of this stuff is.
This house here didn't have all this beautiful greenery.
Scott Rudin actually was very involved
in making the houses look beautiful, the exterior,
and he made sure that there was tons and tons of flowers everywhere.
And it was Will Scheck and, I think, Christopher Bassett and their people,
who really did a gorgeous job on all the exterior houses.
Now, there's Glenn. Glenn is so wonderful.
She's so brilliant.
And, you know, Glenn-- I didn't have to direct Glenn very much at all.
She nailed this in rehearsal.
Just as we were sitting around the table, she just nailed it.
And so, anything I gave to her were just little bits and pieces here.
She just nailed the character. She's just wonderful.
And this scene was shortened.
This scene had more things
to show about the house...
some technological features in the house.
And it had more dialogue.
But again, I'm very much involved in story
and I am essentially--
If nothing else, I am the first audience.
That's my job, to be the audience, and I hope my feelings are universal.
My feelings here are, "Okay, we know it's inside a house.
So come on, guys. What's the story?
Can we get going, please?"
So, that's why we shortened this scene.
And there's some wonderful work by the actors here.
But sometimes you have to cut off your right arm to keep things moving.
Even things you love, you know.
Here is... This looks like the inside of that house.
The truth is it's a set.
It's beautifully built and designed,
everything by Jackson De Govia, my production designer, and his people.
And this is in a big warehouse in Yonkers.
And so this is totally built.
And that little dog you saw,
which was done by Phil Tippett Company,
and Scotty Souter, who is a wonderful guy.
He was my visual effects supervisor on the movie.
There was more of that dog.
But again, even there, as cute as he is,
you have to keep going with the story.
So we had to cut that down, too.
Now, the next scene, again, trying to keep things a bit off-kilter--
That guard was the first thing--
that you don't see his face-- that was a bit off-kilter.
Now she's coming down and this is the second thing which is off-kilter,
'cause not only is it a comedy, but it's spooky that she comes down
and the very room that was completely bare is now completely furnished.
She doesn't know that robots did it during the night,
but just the idea that something's off-kilter
is kind of a theme running through the entire movie.
Even though it's a comedy, there's still this spooky element throughout the movie.
The next scene you'll see was actually shot inside the studio in the car.
And the greenery that's passing was shot at another time.
And then Richard Edlund, who is a legend, a wonderful guy,
kind of oversaw this effect and other effects
that a company called Whodoo, with Teri and Helena,
who are wonderful people--
They all put this together so it looks as if they're driving in Stepford.
But the truth is they're actually sitting still in a car.
And the scenery was shot separately, and it's melded together,
and it looks like they're driving in Stepford.
Now, this next scene is actually, again, built in a studio.
The set was built by Jackson De Govia and his people.
And this is the first time you actually see all the Stepford wives together.
The costumes were done by Ann Roth, with Michelle, and they're--
Ann Roth, again, is legendary. She's wonderful.
She did the costumes in In & Out also.
We wanted to make sure they were very anachronistic of the time.
They were soft and lovely and sexy,
and very inappropriate for the exercises they were about to do.
And actually here, I'll tell you something.
Nic started smoking a cigarette,
and at the end of the shoot, in postproduction,
I thought, "Wait a second.
Glenn's character would not allow her to smoke a cigarette."
So, I had to cut around Nic smoking a cigarette.
So all these takes, which I was fortunate enough to find with Jay,
these takes here were the takes that she didn't have a cigarette.
So, throughout the entire scene she was smoking a cigarette,
but I cut it in such a way that you don't--
There are times that she's not smoking
or her hand is hidden or something like that.
Because I felt she wouldn't be allowed to smoke in Stepford.
A woman doesn't do that in Stepford.
This again was a much longer scene. This had two other extra exercises.
But again, it's story. Story is God here.
Story has to keep moving along.
Look at Glenn. Isn't she amazing?
Now, the next scene is
Matthew driving along.
This shot of the caddies was actually-- which I love--
again, Paul's idea-- was actually gonna be used much earlier
in the scene where he first arrives in Stepford.
But again, that was too long so we found a good place for it here.
This is the entrance to the Stepford Men's Association.
Of course, that sign and those columns were not there.
We put them there.
The idea is that all the women drive SUVs
and all the men drive whatever they damn well please.
Because the men are basically adolescents.
They're pretty much arrested development.
Again, this is another area where I wanted to be a little off-kilter.
By rights, I should've had everybody come in, shaking his hand,
you could see their faces.
And I didn't want that. I wanted, again, something odd to happen.
I just wanted to have them say to Matthew he's welcome,
but just show the hands, nothing else.
Again, just a little bit of spookiness here.
Now, this is the Fourth of July...
kind of town fair.
This was a tough thing to shoot. Also, we shot it on many different days.
We had to stop for a week because the weather wasn't good,
then we had to come back.
Scenes like this, when you see them together,
they're not necessarily shot together.
They're shot whenever the weather will allow us to shoot them.
Also, all these people were dressed by Ann Roth's costume department.
Everybody had to be dressed, all these hundreds of people.
Now, here are the four ladies, who were wonderful, I cast.
This is, from the left to the right, it's Colleen and Lisa and Lorri and Kate.
And those were kind of my Greek chorus of Stepford wives.
And they kind of represented all the Stepford wives.
And they had the damnedest time, in the beginning, being Stepford wives,
and even throughout, because what I had to tell them--
And these are very individualistic, strong, talented women.
I had to tell them, "You cannot have emotions like that.
You have to be emotionless. You have to be submissive.
You have to always smile. You have to be pretty.
You have to be soft.
If men talk to you, you should only talk about religion--
I mean, you can never talk about religion, politics, or sports
because that's man talk."
That's what the men made these robots to be-- totally submissive.
And that was difficult for these women,
to actually be bland like this
when their true natures rebel against that.
Now, Bette here, and Jon were just such a great couple.
I can't imagine a better pairing as a man and wife
than Bette with Jon and Jon with Bette.
Jon was amazing. He would always ad-lib.
There's a few ad-libs in here that I kept because--
And there's some ad-libs that are totally filthy and I couldn't keep.
But Jon is--
He'll always give you more comedy, which is exactly what I want.
Now, here are two wonderful actors, Roger Bart and David Marshall Grant.
Just terrific actors.
They play the gay couple,
which was a brilliant stroke by Paul, as far as I'm concerned.
That's part of Paul's genius there,
to kind of add these new elements and new layers.
- But worth it? - Roger.
Oh, I'm sorry.
- That is... - This is fabulous.
Jerry thinks that I overdo, you know, everything.
Excuse me, aren't you Roger Bannister?
The relationship here is, Roger is a very flamboyant gay person,
and David Marshall Grant, who is also a wonderful writer--
David is the very uptight, rigid, kind of conservative gay person.
So this was news to me.
Being straight, I didn't realize that a gay person could be embarrassed
because of the flamboyance of his partner, no matter how much he loves him.
So I learned this, and this is their relationship and the conflict they have.
That'll be resolved in a negative way, unfortunately, for Roger--
the character Roger, later on in the movie.
Now, this square dance coming up--
I think the actors all hate me now, because I had days of square dancing.
They just square danced and square danced and square danced,
so I had to cut the square dance down too.
But this is normal in any movie. You over-shoot.
So when you show it to an audience, especially a comedy,
'cause you do many, many previews for a comedy,
then you realize the audience is getting bored
and you start cutting things down.
And say the audience wants to know more about this,
then you put back things.
So this particular square dance, the audience was getting bored,
because what they, again, wanted was the story
and they started caring about the characters.
I had everybody square dancing for a few days and used very little of it.
So I think no one wants to hear this music ever again.
None of the actors.
However, at the time they did have fun.
I love that shot.
That's a reference to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
All these shots of Glenn up there, we had so much more of Glenn being crazy.
She was wonderful, but again, I can't use all this stuff.
This section here was meant to get the characters to know each other,
this little dancing section.
Now, coming up is Faith.
The way Faith got in the movie is pretty astounding.
Here is this huge, huge star
and she auditioned.
And she auditioned by herself.
She came into Scott Rudin's office.
I was there with Scott and Paul Rudnick
and my casting directors, Juliet and Laura.
She didn't have a manager with her, she didn't have an agent.
She just came alone and I worked with her in the audition.
She was actually exactly who I thought would look like Sarah.
Sarah in my mind looked like Faith and vice versa.
So, we continued looking for other people, thinking,
"We can't say yes to the first person."
But then we went back to Faith because...
I always felt she was Sarah.
But I have a lot of time for Faith.
Being such a huge star, coming in by herself was quite something.
And, by the way, all that spinning she did and her reactions on the floor,
again, I had much more of that.
And only for story reasons, I had to cut it down and keep moving.
And, of course, here is the amazing Christopher Walken.
At this point here-- I had some subtle, spooky moments before this,
but now we know we're in the Children of the Damned town
because she's the only one who sees this.
You see the men looking at each other saying, "Something's going on."
So now we know we're legitimately in some weird situation.
That is what this scene is for.
The scene is about telling the audience, "Okay, now we're into a weird town."
That's the intent of the scene.
Now, here is a scene between our stars,
Matthew and Nic, and Chris and Glenn coming up.
And again, we had more shots of Faith walking through the shot,
being a repetitive robot, and we cut that.
She was great, and the visual effects were great,
but I had to keep the story moving.
But this is a scene between our stars here.
Matthew in this scene, you'll see, starts getting--
It's important. Matthew starts getting a little bit annoyed at his wife because...
Matthew, you know, he's such an amazing, subtle performer,
both in comedy and in drama.
But here, getting annoyed at his wife
and wondering what's going on really keys in to this next scene.
And now-- One thing I love about Matthew's work in this movie
is he really gets dark.
He gets much darker even later in the movie.
But here, I love this scene because it's a real, legitimate fight
between a man and a woman.
Nic's frustration is so terrific here.
She is still the Nic of old. She is still the--
Or rather, the Joanna
from the scene with a thousand people in the audience
where she is the powerful businesswoman, and she here wants answers.
She wants to know what's going on.
So, now this is, finally, the moment in their marriage
where they're telling each other the truth, or he's telling her the truth.
He's always kind of been following her and now he's had it.
And so, I kind of like this scene.
It's nothing to do with visual effects, it's nothing to do with comedy.
It's really to set up this story about this couple,
because even though the movie is a comedy,
even though the movie has visual effects,
this movie always has been to me only one thing,
and that's been a marriage in conflict...
coming through the eye of the needle in Stepford and coming out better.
That's what it's about. It really is about these two people.
And also, this is really the end of Act I,
if you're gonna call Acts I, II, and III.
This is the end of Act I.
And Act II begins after this scene where she changes.
Again, I think this section here might be my favorite scene in the entire movie,
where they just sit quietly and have a tender moment on the stairs.
Again, before the set was built,
before I talked to Jack De Govia, the designer, before anything--
Again, like the previous scene that I was looking forward to shooting,
the scene where Nic was fired, or Joanna was fired,
for a year or so in preproduction, getting ready for this,
I had imagined them sitting quietly in a very sensitive moment,
just the two of them, talking.
I always think, with toys in the background
and the sitting on the stairs,
this is more where couples talk.
They don't usually talk in an office. They don't talk in a--
They don't have serious discussions
standing, looking at each other toe-to-toe.
It's usually something like this on the stairs,
or when one's in the bathroom or running out to the car in the garage.
So I kind of like this because it had more to do with a believable marriage
and there was a nice little relationship going on between the two of them here.
And Nic is, you know, wonderful in this change.
She really had to make this change in a moment, which is a big change.
What Matthew did brilliantly here is he listened.
And as every actor knows, listening is so much of the game.
And his listening really helped the scene so much.
It's going to be great for Nic because Nic has been this powerhouse woman.
She's been suspicious. She wants answers, by God.
She wants to know what's going on.
And now, in the next scene,
she's going to try to be the very best Stepford wife she's ever been.
That's gonna be...
So this whole scene here right now
is setting up the moment where Matthew says to her,
"Okay, fine. We've got to change or the marriage is gone."
Now, this again was shot on this whole Yonkers stage
and we did many takes of this because usually I'll do fewer takes
and because I'll have, also,
a shot of Matthew and a shot of Nic and I can cut around.
But this one I did many takes because it was just two of them on the stairs.
I couldn't do any cutting, so I had many, many takes
and that was my favorite one.
And these jokes from Paul were great,
where she has to change and not wear black.
Now, you'll see in a moment what I was talking about.
We're going to cut right to the next scene.
And here we are, the beginning of Act II,
and, by God, she's going to use as much energy
and as much force to be a Stepford wife for her husband,
so she can save the marriage,
as she did using that force and energy to be the head of a network.
And she inside, of course, doesn't believe it.
But, by God, she's denying everything.
And she is going to be the best wife for her husband.
Now, because the three of them actually had fun in the square dance,
now you kind of believe that this has now become a little threesome.
I call it, right now, the Three Musketeers
because now they are going on a little adventure, all three of them together.
Nic cracks me up here because Joanna has to be so incredibly cheerful
and incredibly a Stepford wife
that she's totally being dishonest.
Not Nic. Joanna's being dishonest here in order to keep her marriage going.
It's funny, there's these jokes here
and we didn't think the joke about the New York apartment would work
because, well, in New York, it actually is true, unfortunately.
I experienced it, too, looking for an apartment in New York in the 1960s.
And I was told I could have one of two apartments.
One was bigger, but you had to wait for the lady to die.
So I said, "No, thank you." So that joke is true.
We didn't think it would work,
but every time we showed it to other places in the country it actually worked.
Now, here we are inside an actual house. This is not a set, okay?
This is a house that was actually either being...
I'm not sure it was sold or not, but it was empty
and it was in the process of being sold.
And so, our location manager, her name is Maria,
she, in order to find houses for us to shoot,
she would look for houses that were empty and about to be sold.
Now this scene...
This is where the kind of ecstasy cries
before the orgasm and the orgasm occur.
We actually did Faith's voice in postproduction after it was all done.
And I've done this before,
where Faith needed a drink to do this.
And I think she wouldn't mind me saying this.
She said, "Boy, sure wish I had a cosmo."
So I said, "Great, let's get two cosmos for her."
So Faith had two cosmopolitans and relaxed
so she could do this kind of...
this intense orgasm screaming.
It was embarrassing, but it was fun, and she was such a good egg about it.
So the two cosmos helped.
Now, here again is another spooky area.
But this spooky area is mixed with comedy, as you see.
We had Faith do many more ups and downs of stairs here.
This section we have now,
the breasts inflating was thought of much, much later.
And so, we had her going up and down, up and down, up and down.
But again, it took too long.
Again, it's story, story, story.
And so, we had her just go down, up and then fall
because that was enough to let the audience know that she was a robot
and controlled by the remote control.
Now, the next scene
is not in a home that's about to be sold,
but rather this is a set.
This entire set was, again, built
in Queens, in Kaufman Astoria Studios.
That's a great shot.
Well, the shot isn't great, but the intent is great.
And this is where Bette's home is completely and utterly a mess
and you kind of see that she is the anti-Stepford wife.
This scene also had...
kind of a quiet moment for Roger.
I felt if-- and I think Paul did, too--
I felt if you were just laughing at this guy,
then he was just this gay guy you're laughing at and there's no depth to him.
So I asked Roger-- We did the scene many times, and I said,
"Roger, be as sincere and sweet as possible here."
And I think that's why Roger's so...
Roger Bart is so good, and Roger's character is so good here,
because I think there's a sweetness here you believe in.
It's not just laughing at a gay guy or laughing at a guy.
You really, in this particular scene especially,
you sense he has legitimate troubles with his partner
like any couple would have.
And I think this scene has a lot to do with how much you care about Roger,
because he is confused, he is concerned here.
Now, poor Bette got sick the next day
because she was eating this ice cream
and thought it was funny-- which it was, but you can't see it--
to put all these little crackers in there.
Every take she would be eating this and then she just got sick afterwards,
but she was a real trouper and continued through it.
We did many takes. And that's the trouble.
When you start committing to eating something,
you commit for many takes.
What if we actually gave this whole thing a try for real,
the whole Stepford thing?
This scene was great because this...
I'm not suggesting the scene is great, necessarily,
but the setting and the people are great because--
This, again, is a set that's built in Kaufman Astoria Studios.
And this was kind of a men's club,
and so we had computers there and we had screens...
with car racing and such.
We had tables to play cards, and we had cigar smoke.
And I'm telling you, me included-- especially me-- became an adolescent here.
All the men were just kind of playing.
All the actors between takes were playing cards and smoking cigars,
and I loved it.
It's amazing how quickly we men turn into a wolf pack
and just start playing games, hanging around, playing cigars.
So, there was not a lot of push for me to have them do this
because again, me included, it was very natural.
We'd become adolescents.
These men here, these actors are such terrific actors.
I want to go through all their names, but maybe you can do it--
You can see it in the credits later on, or I can do it individually.
That's Tom and Chris, terrific actors there.
And Matt and C.J. and Jay.
In any case, that scene was meant to set up
how the men are, how they react together.
And this scene was meant to set up how the Stepford women react together.
And so, obviously the men are having a gay old time because--
Well, maybe not gay, but they're having a great old time
because they can do what they damn well please.
The wives, of course, are totally controlled,
and this is the way the men want the wives to be.
The men, really, are idiots. They're twits.
They are frightened to death of strong women.
And because they could do it,
because they're very wealthy dot-com guys,
because they're very brilliant computer guys,
over the years they have been able to change their wives
into these submissive women,
because the men could not handle strong women.
That's the only way the men could actually feel superior
and feel good about themselves is to feel superior to women.
So, that was the basis of turning the women into Stepford wives.
Again, this is very difficult for these women.
These women here had to smile and be wonderful and soft.
Between takes, I know Faith and a few others
had to just stop smiling and had to press their cheeks together like this
just so they could get the smile out,
because they were smiling continuously as Stepford wives.
And that is not easy. Try it some time. Just smile continuously.
And, of course, I had to watch every second,
because if anybody didn't smile
and if somebody wasn't soft and wasn't lovely and submissive,
then they wouldn't be Stepford wives.
Now, Glenn is so brilliant here again, with the "Hanukkah."
Now, Nic here, she is trying her very, very best.
She's terrific here.
She's trying her very best to be that Stepford wife.
She's still intent on saving her marriage here.
And, of course, Bobbie-- Bette-- couldn't give a damn.
She's the one who bursts all the bubbles. And that's the kind of relationship--
As a matter of fact, when I first had a meeting with Bette,
she said, "What's my role in the movie?" And I explained to her.
She said, "So I'm comedy relief?" And I said, "Yeah."
She knew the gig.
She knew she was comedy relief. She was good with it. She was terrific.
Now, this section here,
this whole section of the women was meant to be in three separate scenes.
It was supposed to be intercut with the men.
We were going to go from the men to the women, the men to the women,
and it just got too much, so we made this all one scene,
and the men one scene coming up.
Bette was not that pleased wearing this next thing here.
I'm not sure if that's Bette or Bobbie reacting that way,
but she was a trouper.
Now, this is, again, the Men's Association.
And by the way, these actors actually don't look this way.
They're not that nerdy, not that twitty. I asked for them to look this way.
They chose glasses and, of course, the costume department
did a wonderful job making them look very nerdy,
Chris and Tom, and everybody there.
So, these actors can actually look a lot better than this.
Of course, David always looks good there.
Now, this is a tricky scene because this is a scene
where there's a lot of darkness underneath here.
The intent was to be that way anyway.
And the darkness is that Christopher,
in a second here, is going to make a judgment.
He's saying to himself, "Okay, it's time. Now it's time to let this guy in."
That's what's happening now.
He's taking a chance that they've seduced Matthew enough,
Matthew's character enough,
that he will respond positively to what's about to happen.
Now, if he doesn't, if he's about to call the cops,
they'd probably kill him, okay?
So, this is a very tense moment between everybody, for the guys,
to see if he's gonna be one of the Stepford husbands with them
or if he's going to be against them.
And that's what they're waiting for.
And they're hoping that when he sees this
and the control the men have over the women, he'll join them.
That's what they're hoping, but they don't know.
Now, this was a nice visual effect.
This is Lorri, who's wonderful. I love her.
And this is-- These sound effects...
were of an ATM machine by Ron Bochar,
who's our wonderful supervising sound editor.
We hear the ATM sounds and then, of course, the money comes out.
So, the money she grabbed from her mouth was real
and the visual effects people had to match that money in the previous shot,
so when it came out, it looked like the money she was going to take.
Here's that tense moment.
The men are wondering, "Okay, is he with us or is he against us?
If he's against us, the sucker's had it."
And he is now seduced so much
and he needs these men so much,
because his wife has not been particularly nice to him,
he decides to join in.
He is kind of temporarily insane here, Matthew's character is.
Normally he wouldn't do this, but you get a wolf pack like this,
that's kind of believable, unfortunately.
Now there was a nice scene where...
he was initiated into the organization.
I loved that scene. But again, it was story.
It wasn't necessary. We kept on moving.
These cupcakes...
Tom Allen, who's terrific and who'd done In & Out with me,
he and his people had to make all those cupcakes.
They're all real.
By the way, there's another instance where we had a longer scene with that dog.
We had it done. All the visual effects were done.
But, to be an old saw, it was story.
And it was not story, it was an effect.
And it was too long and we kept on moving, we cut it down.
Now, this again,
this set we're in is not a real house.
That's why you see the door opening a little bit.
When you're in a set like this, the background is not real.
The background is a drop.
It maybe has some real trees,
but essentially, you don't want to open that door wide.
So, whenever you see a door not open wide in a movie,
you know you're inside.
Because you can see how phony it is outside.
Call a sitter.
Bobbie, are you sure about this?
We're not spying. We're just visiting.
Fellas, I can't tell you how happy we are
to welcome all of this new blood.
- You said it, Mike. - That's right.
I love, love this space.
It's very Ralph Lauren meets Sherlock Holmes.
It says, "I have taste and a scrotum."
- Roger, you promised. - What?
- Whore. - Bore.
Sorry.
This scene here is where Roger is going to be changed
by the Stepford Men's Association people.
This is meant to be the beginning of a little spookiness here.
The men are acting as if everything is innocent and wonderful,
but you'll see in a second that Chris gives the high sign
and that means that we're going to close the curtains.
Originally, we were going to close all the curtains and have the idea
that the men put on the burgundy jackets
and that is kind of a ceremonial spark
to get Roger changed.
But we, again, took too long on that so I only closed one curtain
and cut back right away to Bette and Nic because the audience was wondering,
"What's happening to Bette and Nic? Come on, let me know."
Now, here I wanted, before this section right here,
I wanted the men to start laughing, so I asked Jon to tell a joke off-camera.
And he told the filthiest joke.
Even the men groaned, so it was that bad.
But it did start the men laughing.
This looks like they climbed through the window
above the mansion there,
but actually what happened was...
This was part
of a real location which you'll see later on.
It's called the rotunda.
What Jackson De Govia did is he made it look like there was a window.
He put a piece of scenery there that looked like a window
and put a tree outside.
So it looks like they climb through the window, but the truth is it really isn't.
It's just part of a hallway.
And all these photographs, by the way, all these paintings, rather--
We had to have pictures of all the Stepford husbands and wives.
And we did so many photographs, but in the long run,
we couldn't show them all because, again, of story.
It just takes too long.
So, in film, unfortunately, what you do,
you have to be, it seems, a little wasteful by overdoing things
in order to make sure that, at the end of the day,
when you're editing, you have enough.
It's better to have more than all of a sudden have less in editing
and say, "Oh, my God, why didn't I get this?"
Now, this scene here, Roger had so much fun with it
because there's one moment where he said,
"Let me do this for you."
And so, he was, on one shot, dragging his foot like Igor.
I said, "You know, I think we can't do that, Roger."
Now, here, when you find out it's Roger...
and Bette and Nic come out of the shadows,
you'll hear the footsteps, in a second, of the men.
And the idea was that the ladies leave
and the instant they turn the corner, the lights come on.
And then, you'll see, Roger does this very funny take here.
Okay, now we get back to a little spookiness.
Now we get into Roger changing.
And you'll see, part of the reason, I think, why I empathize with Roger,
is because there's just a sweetness about the character here.
All these guys you know are up to no good,
and yet here's this innocent guy who's loving life
and there's nothing wrong with him.
He just happens to be a little flamboyant. He's wonderful.
But these guys want everybody to be controlled
and to be the way they want them to be.
So, they're there and you know they're up to no good.
Now, this here,
you'll see that Roger sees something rising up in front of the camera.
People said, "We should see what it is."
I'm saying, "I don't want to show it."
Because if you show what it is, there's no mystery.
I didn't want people to know what it was.
I wanted the audience to say, "Okay, something's going on,
I don't know what, but something."
And I think that keeps the interest.
This scene was shot about a month and a half or so
before the movie was out in the theaters.
We never had this scene in the movie.
This was an additional scene. We brought Nic back.
We brought Bette back, re-did the hair, everything.
We shot this...
The reason we shot this is because in the previous scene,
you saw something about to happen to Roger.
In the next scene, we see Roger change.
That's in the scene you'll see in a moment which we call the "town hall scene,"
where Roger has changed.
It's a political rally and he's running for senator.
Well, the change was so sudden, I felt, and we felt, that the audience
didn't have a chance to understand what happened,
so we put this scene in to show that,
"Wait a second. What happened? We haven't seen Roger for two days."
By saying two days, that allowed some time
between the Men's Association where he was gonna be changed
and the town hall where he was going to be seen as changed.
It also had some humor in there about throwing all the gay accoutrements out,
the things that made him flamboyant.
So, that scene was really there only a month and a half
before the movie came out in theaters.
This here, I believe, was shot in New Canaan, Connecticut.
And I may be wrong because I'm driven everywhere
and I'm so focused, I have no damn idea where I am.
I could be shooting this in Tuscaloosa for all I know.
I'm just always focused on the script.
This here is the first time you see Roger changed.
And, again, the costume department, the hair and makeup all did a great job.
He is now the way Jerry, his lover, wants him to be.
Now all the flamboyance is gone, all the life, all the joie de vivre.
All the love of life is gone. He is exactly as all the other men are.
He is straight.
And this is part of the problem with Stepford.
Not only do the women need to change,
but any spouse needs to change in order for the man to feel good.
Now, this scene, we had...
We had a shot at the end
where in order to convince the audience,
or rather the Stepford audience-- not the audience in the theaters--
that they were sincere about wanting to change,
or rather Roger was sincere about wanting to change,
and being a good Republican and a good conservative fellow,
in order to do that they say they adopted two kids.
We had a scene where these two 18-year-old, great-looking guys
came out and said, "Vote for our dad."
Okay, it didn't work for various reasons,
mainly because this is a serious moment here at the very end.
It's very dark and the comedy of that undercut the darkness.
You can't stop Stepford. You can't stop Stepford.
You'll hear that Ron Bochar did a Nuremberg Rally kind of sound
at the very last few seconds of this.
So, it's very, very spooky and very scary for Nic.
And you can hear kind of the stomping Hitler-type footsteps at the end there.
Here we are again in a set, not a real house.
This is the set that was built in Yonkers in a warehouse.
And again, this is another moment where there's a few laughs in here,
but this is now Matthew being dark.
We know Matthew's up to something.
We know Matthew has actually taken the bait.
He has actually said yes
to be part of the Stepford Husbands' Association there.
And so, he's looking at her and he doesn't understand her
'cause he's kind of gone temporarily insane with these guys,
and she knows something's odd.
So, there's a moment here which is very important,
when Matthew says, "You'll never change, will you?"
We had a scene, which is in the DVD features, I believe,
which is three men and Matthew
walking out in front of the house on the gravel,
and Matthew being in conflict, and the men trying to support him, saying,
"Listen, I know you're in conflict. I know it's difficult.
But it's the best thing you can do for your wife and for your family and kids,
to change your wife."
That was the idea of that scene, and I think it's in the DVD features.
The reason we couldn't use that scene, 'cause in that scene
Matthew's character was in conflict,
and once Matthew said this line here-- "You'll never change, will you?"
Right here. "Not really." He was no longer in conflict.
He couldn't go from this scene to the next scene where he's in conflict.
We had to take that out. So, now we know that he has had it.
He is going to change her. And now he's being devious.
What I like here with Matthew is...
The stuff with Matthew I've seen before,
he has such a delicate touch in drama and especially comedy,
but here, he's a mean bastard.
I mean, this guy is going to change his wife.
And yet, here he's hugging her.
And he gets darker.
And I like the fact that we're allowed to do that and get really dark
and get him really mean, but he can be redeemed at the end.
So, you can see that this guy is up to no good here
and she's buying into it.
However, here's the moment that she's going to find out what's going on,
at least the beginnings of it.
The key here was for something
to spark her into being suspicious,
and the something was this remote control,
which she sees her name on.
This bedroom actually was in a real location.
However, it was in a house that was about to be sold again
and we had to take everything out afterwards.
I had to actually reshoot this close-up of "Joanna,"
because what I did is I just had a close-up without the camera moving
and I had to reshoot it at the end of the day, the end of the movie really,
just because it needed more drama, to push in.
Now, here we are again back in Yonkers in the warehouse,
and this is a set.
The art department had to create a lot of images here
to suggest that there was a connection between the Stepford wives
and these powerful women of industry,
and executive women.
And so we just used a bit of it.
Again, we had a great deal given to us by the art department,
but we only used a small section of it.
Now, this idea coming up with the dog, which is a wonderful idea--
the dog was stolen and became a robot--
was shot a month and a half prior to the movie coming out in theaters.
Because we had about eight times the dog was in the movie.
But we couldn't afford eight times. We had to cut it down to three or four.
And so, Paul had a brilliant idea, saying,
"Okay, they stole the dog and the reason the dog is there...
giving her the remote control, is basically he's asking for help, too."
That at least helped tie the dog's story together.
I like this little moment, the moment where she looks--
Actually, Debbie, who kind of helped us just for a few days in editing,
created this moment where she looks and he looks,
and the question that was asked originally was cut out and was not asked.
It was a nice little moment by her.
Now, what's coming up is a painful thing to talk about.
This is a scene that was shot in the first two weeks
we started shooting the entire movie.
And we see Nic now
looking at Bette come in as a Stepford wife.
And we did have a short scene, which I cut out for story purposes only,
between Nic and Jon-- I cut that out.
And we kept the scene between Nic and Bette and the three kids.
However, the painful part to talk about as the director
is there was a whole scene here of major, major visual effects.
It took two weeks to shoot. Bette was a real trouper shooting it.
Nic was too, 'cause she had a tremendous amount of reaction to do here.
And we never ever used it. We had to cut it out after the previews.
All the visual effects were done.
And the reason we had to cut it out-- Before I tell you the reason,
what it was, was
Nic feels attacked by Bobbie
to the extent that she grabs a knife,
just like Katherine Ross did
with Paula Prentiss in the original movie.
She grabs a knife and stabs Bobbie.
In this case, it causes a short circuit
and it causes Bobbie's robotic functions to go all haywire,
which means that, all of a sudden, you see a whisk coming out of her finger.
You see a vacuum tube coming out of her arm.
You see...
You see music coming from her stomach, from a speaker.
You see her head spinning off.
All these things, we shot in two weeks
and it probably took about seven months for the visual effects house,
Scotty Souter and Tippett to do.
What happened was, we couldn't use it.
What happened was, I realized
the audience we showed it to at previews didn't like it.
They didn't like all the robotic stuff.
And I realized why.
The reason is because Nic, being such an honest actress,
she didn't go for the comedy, she went for the real honest emotions.
And as a result of that,
the movie was grounded more than I had originally thought.
I originally thought we were going to go more for the higher comedy.
So, when your lead actress or actor does comedy,
then everything emanates from that comedy, from that lead actress or actor.
And that allows you to do wilder things.
But now, the lead actress was so honest an actress
that she grounded the whole movie
and you cared about her and her relationship with her husband,
which is wonderful,
but that also caused us to ground it to the extent that we couldn't go higher
and go for the wild visual effects.
So, as a result, we had her run out the door here.
But actually, prior to that, was a whole scene where Bobbie
totally short-circuited and you had all these visual effects of the robot.
That was painful for me, but especially for the effects house and Scotty Souter.
But, you know, it has to be done. You're doing it for the audience.
I'm not doing it for myself.
And we tried this many times
and it felt like the audience was more concerned now
about Joanna's dilemma than showing robotic effects.
So, you know, I learn every movie. Learn every movie.
Now, what's interesting here, which is pretty damn cool,
is this exterior is one place but the interior is another location,
this interior here.
And this interior we called the rotunda.
But what's cool about it is it's exactly the same interior
that was used in the original Stepford Wives.
So, in other words, when you see Nic walking here,
and you see Nic in a moment going to the center of the rotunda
with all the men,
that's where Katherine Ross walked so many years ago.
So, it was not because we wanted an homage.
It was just because it was a cool place.
Now, I've held off talking about Rob Hahn, my director of photography,
until this scene
because this scene here is one of my favorite scenes in the movie
and his lighting was so superb.
Besides the rest of the movie, Rob has done also two other movies with me,
In & Out and The Score.
But I love the lighting on this scene. He just did a fabulous job.
It's so rich and so dense and it was just what I wanted.
That's why I've held off talking about Rob 'cause it's such a beautifully lit scene,
as you'll see as you continue on.
Now, what's happening here is, there's a ceremony about to happen
which is going to supposedly change her into a robot.
In the script it talked about this, but what I imagined was,
it was like a Druid ceremony.
It was like all these men were like Stonehenge rocks around her
and she couldn't escape.
And what cracks me up is, the truth is, if they wanted to make her a robot,
they'd grab her and make her a robot, no big deal.
Just grab her and take her. Okay?
But these idiot men have to have some sense of credibility.
So, Chris, the leader, is making it
so it's a very big, important moment.
The truth is, it's not. They could just grab her.
But these idiot men need to feel self-important in what they're doing.
Now, Matthew here is--
This is where the dark Matthew comes out--
the dark character that Matthew plays comes out.
And I really looked forward to shooting this, too.
I pushed him. I kept on saying, "Get mad, get mad."
And I pushed him and pushed him.
And he's such a smart actor. He knows that he can't go overboard.
He's still got to be subtle and angry, and dark at the same time.
So he always has a limiter. He knows how far he can go.
But I thought he was wonderful in this scene.
And you can see how beautiful the lighting is in this scene.
It's just great.
Now...
This scene also is one of the two scenes that really has a lot of meat to it
as far as men and women, and the ideas involved.
And Paul Rudnick, in his writing, felt this and another time later on
was an opportunity to discuss and explore
what men want, what women want.
And it was explored through an exaggerated filter, as it were.
And you'll see in a moment that the filter was very exaggerated because--
I love Chris's reading of that line.
It was exaggerated in a way,
in the sense that there's a cartoon about to be shown here, okay?
And we didn't know if we should put this cartoon in.
It was out, it was in, it was out. I'm so happy we kept it in.
This was Asterisk Company who did this, Brian and Richard.
And they did a terrific job. I love this cartoon.
It was meant to be an old educational kind of cartoon
from the 1960s in a classroom.
And what I loved about it was that besides their work,
was that here is Chris playing Mike.
And Mike thinks he's so damn hot
that he can actually be a narrator when he's a lousy narrator, okay?
The idea of this was to show
how simple it was to turn a woman into a Stepford wife,
and how wonderful and easy and simple it is, okay,
to convince the men that it's not painful,
it's lovely and a wonderful thing for both parties.
So that was the idea-- that's why the sugar and spice and everything nice.
Obviously, it's much more intrusive than this,
but the idea was to convince the new member
that by changing his wife, it would be very simple and very, very easy.
However, now this is where Matthew starts wondering, "What the hell am I doing?"
I love the cartoon coming out here and being the submissive Stepford wife.
Now, this next line that Jon says is an ad-lib.
It cracked me up, and I loved it and I kept it in the movie.
It gets a big laugh. You'll see and hear it in a second.
It's a painting again.
"It's a painting again." Total ad-lib.
And I loved it, so I kept it.
There's a joke coming up here which I love,
and the audience, whenever they hear it, there's a beat and then rolling laughter
and then there's scattered applause.
It's the AOL joke here.
Is that why the women are so slow?
I've always loved that joke.
Now continues, again, the exploration.
"What do you want from women? Do you want us to be slaves?
What is it you want? Is that what you really want?"
I think this is what Matthew does not want
and most men don't want.
I think these men who are part of the Men's Association
are really a minority of men,
but nevertheless that minority exists.
I was really taken in my research.
I went on websites and I looked at male websites
just to see what kind of men really have problems with women.
And I was shocked when I saw some websites that had real hatred towards women.
So, although a minority, they are there
and that's what these goons in the background represent.
Now, this here is a moment for Matthew.
He's got to choose between his wife
and the wolf pack, as it were.
We had the scene go on longer than this with more dialogue that Paul wrote.
But when she says, "But do they mean it?"
I thought that was a wonderful place to end the dialogue between the two of them.
But do they mean it?
And that's a big question.
That's more important than saying it. "Do they mean it?"
Okay, now, Mike-- Chris Walken--
is now bringing up the bier-- B-I-E-R.
Now, this is meant to echo the scene
where Roger sees something coming up in front of him.
The audience may not catch the connection,
but hopefully they got the idea that there was something in front of Roger coming up
and there's something in front of Nic coming up.
That may have not worked as well as I'd wanted.
Now, Joanna is walking over here.
Now, this was not in the original movie or in Ira Levin's novel, I think.
But this essentially is indicative of the body
that she will have eventually as a robot.
And she is very shocked by this.
Now these eyes opening up is totally visual effects.
That's in postproduction, too. The eyes didn't actually open up there.
So, here we have a conflict for Matthew.
Is he going to go with his wife,
or is he going to go with the wolf pack?
And my contention is that he knows he's not going with the wolf pack right now.
He knew that after he saw the cartoon.
But he can't say, "No, guys, I'm not going with you," because they'll kill him.
So he's got to put a cover on it now.
He's got to pretend that he is going with the wolf pack.
He's got to pretend that this kiss means nothing.
Otherwise he'll be killed.
So, therefore here, knowing full well he's not going to go with them...
I love that shot of Chris. He's going to go forward.
I think-- My feeling, behind the scenes, he makes up his mind downstairs.
Or not makes up his mind, but rather he lets his wife know, Joanna, downstairs,
that he has no intention of changing her into a robot.
And that's where they concoct a scheme to change the wives back.
Nic was wonderful here. I never expected her to be this emotional at this moment.
And this smile against her crying, it was just a wonderful moment.
She did beautiful work here. Just beautiful.
Now, again, I mentioned this is the rotunda
where they actually shot the original movie,
but there was no hole in that actual place.
That was Lockwood Mansion where they shot the original movie.
But there was no hole. That was all visual effects.
We had to create that hole in postproduction.
Now, this scene here is the only scene I've ever done in any of my movies
that is an homage.
I felt Bryan Forbes's work in the original here--
It's so iconic, I had to do it.
Now, we did it differently. We had everything perfect.
In the original scene, it was not as perfect.
But everything is lined up beautifully here.
And you'll see the design here is wonderful with these egg cartons.
Everything's absolutely perfect. So, this is my only homage here.
I just wanted Nic to float, and just--
This is the reveal of her as the robot. I just wanted her to float here.
Now, there was more dialogue and more jokes after this
with the wives in the supermarket,
but again, for story purposes, we said,
"Hey, we've got enough jokes.
The audience is invested in this character.
Let's see what happens next."
And now, we start Act Ill,
if you're going to use the structure of acts,
which you don't have to, but in this movie, I did.
This is Act Ill. And this dance here is not the dance that Chris says it is,
that Mike says it is.
It's not a midsummer night's dance. It's a victory dance.
It's a dance where he now is in control of everyone in Stepford.
That includes our new characters.
If you notice, it's kind of fun what Ann Roth did. It's wonderful.
Look at his cummerbund and his tie.
They match Glenn's dress there, the lower part. It's quite wonderful.
This scene-- It's a rare scene for a director to be able to do.
This is like old Hollywood. You'll see the waltz in a moment.
This is like 1950s, 1940s.
It was very sumptuous and very lush to be able to shoot a scene like this.
Again, it's Jackson De Govia.
And Scott Rudin also helped make this lush.
It's rare to be able to shoot this.
The music you'll hear in a moment is by David Arnold.
Actually, Nic Ratner did some wonderful work on the cutting of it.
But David is the composer of the movie and he did a beautiful job.
What he did was he made it very full and rich, but quirky,
like there was something a bit off-kilter through the whole movie.
And I think David did a fabulous job.
This waltz, in particular, you'll hear, is full and lush, and it's wonderful.
But there is some menace in it.
And I thought that was pretty cool to have a waltz with some menace.
It's a lovely shot there. Rob Hahn's shot, actually.
Now, what you don't know,
and this happens in most musicals and areas where music is involved,
sometimes the dancers have to dance without the music.
Now, in this case the dancers could dance with the music,
but you'll see soon that people are dancing while people are talking.
Now, if people are talking,
then you can't record the music with them talking
because you have no control of the dialogue in postproduction, okay?
So, what happens often is you will have what we call earwigs,
which are little speakers that go inside your ear like little hearing aids,
and the music is played there.
So, when we're actually shooting the scene
the people are dancing and we can't hear the music on the set,
but some of the people can hear the music through their ears.
Other way to do it is, there's kind of a very low thump in rhythm.
So they get the rhythm of it, but they don't hear the music.
The little thump, I think, can be controlled in postproduction.
But you have to separate the dialogue with the music.
So, whenever you see something like this, even the barn dance,
sometimes it was necessary for the dancers to dance
just with the rhythm and no music whatsoever,
so we could actually record the dialogue separately.
Now, this set here was built also in Yonkers.
It was on a part of the warehouse
that was not used by the large house set.
And the idea here, scriptwise anyway, storywise,
is that Nic, who's pretending to be a robot,
is upstairs taking care of Mike,
while Matthew's character is downstairs
trying to figure out what the hell he can do to mess things up here.
Now, you see him going back?
He's reacting to something that's not there.
We shot just him and this glass plate.
In postproduction, Whodoo--
that's Teri and Helena and Rich Edlund's people--
they are the ones who put those light effects in.
So, when Matthew backed up, went forward and backed up,
nothing was there.
So, he's terrific at that, just being able to act
without having a reason to react a certain way.
So, now here again, this is all postproduction.
He's looking at nothing.
Matthew is just pretending to see what we see.
All he sees is a plain piece of glass, okay?
Now, this section here, this is called the gazebo section.
This was in many more scenes, and funny scenes.
But, not unlike the rest of the movie,
the audience was more involved in the story
and didn't want jokes at this point.
They wanted to be invested. They were invested in the characters.
I think they were saying to me in the previews,
"Okay, fine. We've had the jokes. We got the jokes. That's fun, Frank. Fine.
Now, what happens next to the characters that I like? Okay?"
Now, here is the first Stepford wife change.
This is Faith. She did this really nice.
Again, all that stuff in front of Matthew doesn't exist when we actually shot.
That doesn't exist. That's all postproduction.
And now Faith changes here and pretends that there's something in her forehead.
And you'll see that's all postproduction, too, that light.
The light that emanates through her body also is postproduction.
So she made the motion knowing that later on I would,
or the special effects house would put the light and everything in.
Now, what's happening here is all the women are changing
as a result of what Matthew's doing downstairs.
And that was originally gonna be the climax of the movie.
But what happened, structurally in the script,
was that we gave more of the scene later on--
you'll see the last scene-- to Glenn.
She was so brilliant that what we realized
was that this is not the climax of the movie, but Glenn is the climax.
What she did really stands out-- what her character was saying.
So, what we did here was, I hurried this whole thing.
We had a lot more here,
because we thought the whole movie built up to this.
But what happened, really, was I cut it way down
and this is no longer the climax here, all these women changing.
It's only a road to the climax.
And you'll see the climax-- soon I'll show you--
is Glenn's performance.
I'll tell you that when that comes.
It's an apocalypse!
I love that when she says, "It's an apocalypse!"
She just nailed that character.
What's interesting here is, for me anyway, there's so many women and men here.
One job here is script continuity, which means that Mary Bailey,
who is wonderful,
she is the person who has to make sure that
everybody's holding the remotes in a certain hand,
and tells me that,
so when we shoot from another angle, they're in the same hand.
And all these women, make sure they're in the right places.
There's a job called script continuity, which means every note has to be taken,
how every person is standing, how every person is holding something,
so it matches the next angle.
It's a job I thought I'd mention because it's such a vital job.
Now, this is where Chris realizes
that Matthew's character has been up to no good.
And what was difficult for me here is,
I have a whole room of 135 people,
and by rights, I should be paying attention to those people.
So, there's a kind of phoniness here.
It's not honest of me just to concentrate on my stars,
but I can't concentrate--
I can't shoot everything going on, because the audience doesn't care
about all the 135 other people in the ballroom.
So, I have to be dishonest here 'cause nobody would actually stand there
in the center of a room and start talking
without anybody in the background reacting, you see?
But I kind of have to be that dishonest in order to...
satisfy people's longing to know what is happening to these characters.
Now, Chris here and his shouting, you see--
When they're shouting in the background, the men are pretending to shout.
They're pantomiming because, again, if I recorded them
while Chris was shouting,
I couldn't control Chris's dialogue.
Now, this is pretty cool here. I love this change.
Don't you touch him.
No!
It was great to see the audience because they were kinda--
They're just shocked that Chris's character, Mike, was a robot.
And what happened was
the stuntman wore a blue mask over his head
and they took that blue out
and then they created a headless dummy...
in postproduction.
I love when she can't decide if she should go to the head or the body.
Now, what I had asked also is,
in order to justify the electrocution at the end, I asked for--
There should always be a little bit of electricity coming from his neck.
So, the body is dead,
but there's the remnants of electricity coming from his neck.
Throughout the entire scene, up until she's electrocuted,
there's a little bit of electricity, just so there's a justification
that he's still a little bit-- there's still a little energy left.
Now, if you remember, I said to you I hurried what I thought was the climax,
which is the women changing,
because I realized, at the end of the day, that was not the climax.
Glenn's performance was the climax. And this is what I'm talking about.
This is what we built up to. And this is where Glenn is so brilliant.
And the audience needs an explanation, and it's done through absurd humor,
it's done through high emotion...
and it's done with extraordinary acting here.
This is actually the climax of the movie, not changing the women.
That's what we had to change around in editing.
I told Glenn here,
"Right now, this is where you give up your dream.
Your dream of Stepford is over."
She's just so wonderful, she took it and realized her dream was over right there.
I didn't have to tell Glenn very much.
I just whispered a few things here and there to her,
because she's so brilliant.
We don't need to be perfect.
How could you do this to us?
This is the second section where I was really pleased with Paul's writing again...
as far as the important stuff to be said about men and women.
The first was in the rotunda when Chris and Nic were talking to each other.
This one now is talking about
why a woman would do this to other women.
And it is because Glenn is playing a character of the older generation
who believes that this is how men and women should be.
And so, she believes that women should be softer and lovelier.
It was just an interesting idea that a woman would do this to other women.
I thought Paul did a really nice job of exploring this in the dialogue.
Glenn here is so brilliant. I told Glenn--
Again, a little whisper. I didn't do much.
I said, "Glenn, when you talk about seeing your husband
with that other lady in the kitchen, you're in the kitchen.
You're inside that kitchen, reliving it."
And she just did it.
But here again, this dialogue here
explaining why Glenn's character did all this,
I think, you know, Paul really did some wonderful work.
And this joke worked everywhere.
"Where would people never notice a town full of robots?
Connecticut."
And I live in Connecticut.
It worked great.
I decided to turn back the clock to a time before overtime...
Now, this is going to be the demise of Glenn's character.
And the idea was that--
I know she dies, but she dies with such love,
and her world is gone,
so what's the use of living without her world and her perfect man.
Now, what's interesting here is that Stepford ain't all bad.
Even some of the women say, "This is fun, getting back in heels and dresses."
And the men were saying, "Hey, this is pretty good,"
the actors and me.
The only problem is that the women had no choice in the matter.
So it's not all bad.
It's just that women have no choice in Stepford.
I love this crawl. I call this "the Mother Courage crawl."
I said to Glenn, "Really go over the top."
It's real and it's emotional.
I love that reaction of Bette.
But it's tongue-in-cheek also, at the same time.
We had Mike say, "Good night and thank you for visiting Stepford,"
and we took it out.
I'm almost sorry we took it out. The audience felt it was creepy.
I'm sorry I took that out because I thought it was a wonderful ending.
I thought it was a nice tableau at the end there, too.
We had an original ending-- It was not six months later.
We had an original ending where everybody was happy
and saying goodbye to each other in front of the house,
and Nic and Matthew and the kids and the wives.
It was very sweet, all of that warmth and saying goodbye.
And I almost vomited. I thought it was just so damn warm.
So, we changed things and Paul wrote this.
I think it was important because it wasn't full of warmth and cuddliness,
but it had a hard joke,
and it also showed Roger and Bette back the way they used to be.
I think that's important because that's what the audience enjoyed,
this threesome together here.
Not the new Roger, not the new Bette, but the old Roger and the old Bette.
The old Bobbie.
And Larry was wonderful here. He was such a trouper.
He had shows to do, but he stayed off-camera and delivered the lines.
He was terrific. He was just great.
And delivering off-camera lines, I mention, because it's very important.
Sometimes you have script supervisors or other actors saying lines
and it affects the actors.
By Larry staying there,
it made the acting of our three principals better
to hear his voice and not somebody else's voice off-camera.
And his presence, too.
Now, this scene here coming up is the same supermarket
where we had the homage,
where the women were shopping
when we saw Nic come floating by.
I love these costumes. They're just such twit costumes.
And you'll notice in the background there, the supermarket really isn't that big.
A lot of those shelves in the background were added in postproduction.
Oh, it's black, so I guess I'm finished.
Except to say there's a few people here that I didn't mention.
Danny Michael doing sound was wonderful.
And the kids, Fallon and Dylan, who were terrific.
And Leslie Converse, coproducer, who kept the whole damn film together.
So, thanks for spending the time and I hope you enjoyed it.