Nice job in this.
Yeah, it's funny. I was, I was actually, I, I'm a kind of a fan of this film because
it has good heart.
It has a really good heart to it.
That's, it's a dirty word
to use sometimes. I don't, I don't know if you want to hear that, but I,
no,
I do.
And, and, uh, it can be a curse though to say a
movie has heart because people, you know, go, you know, please don't, you know,
they don't, they're afraid to see Bill Murray do something sentimental.
I mean, he's,
he and I both have always dodged that bullet, you know,
for years we've been trying to stay away from the sentiment in our films.
And, uh, but suddenly along came the script that had a lot of heart, you know, and we,
we went for it.
Are you pleased with the film? Very pleased. Yeah.
What, what pleases you the most when you look at your own film,
I know you were close to it.
You know, I,
after all these years of working on movies, I,
I think it's like 15 years since I wrote my first screenplay.
I still am afraid that I'm gonna turn in some piece of work or make
a film and everyone's gonna say what makes you think you could make a movie.
You know, this is what happened to you before. I don't
know.
But, you know, I, I, I'm afraid that it's gonna be amateurish and, you know,
that things aren't gonna cut together at all and, you know, it's gonna be stupid. And
so the first thing I wanna hear is it's ok. You know, at least
I reach the and then usually I reach a point somewhere in the process where I go, ok,
it's ok.
But with this movie as we cut it and kept editing and
editing and tuning it and the music started to get composed and
more and more good people, you know,
everyone along the way was great from the cinematographer John Bailey,
even the assistant directors.
And then
we had a wonderful composer named George Fenton and
editor Pam Herring who I worked with on vacation
before and
each thing just seem to fall in so nicely. I just couldn't believe my luck.
And I thought this is turning into a really good movie
and I was like a spectator in the process myself.
You know, I'm in there making decisions. But
finally, when I watched a, a re a cut at reasonable length, like, uh
you know, closer to two hours or
I thought this works, this movie works
and uh the rest was, you know, just fun.
So, you didn't have a four hour Oliver Stone Cut.
We had a 2.5 hour
cut. The first one. Yeah.
And I would imagine that comedies, the tighter they are for the most part,
the funnier they are.
Depends. And woody Allen films tend to be pretty short.
I've noticed 90 some of them are under 90 minutes.
We've, uh, the ones I've worked on with Ivan Reitman, the ones I've done myself
n95 to 100 and five. Somewhere in there.
We're right at 100 minutes. So somehow I got it in my head.
100 minutes would be perfect. 100. What a nice number. You know.
So you're one of these guys that picks up a script kind of goes,
it's about 100 and five minutes,
but
that's about 100 and 12 minutes. And I go, no, it's about $30 million.
Um, frivolous question time.
But one of the, one of the questions I wanted to ask you is about, you know, when,
when you call for a groundhog Wrangler
to come in and do those groundhogs like a day rate.
How does that work? You know,
Groundhogs are,
oh, man, they're little critters. You know, they,
we got this guy Bill Hoffman out of Chicago and,
you know, I'm sure he'd never done groundhogs, but
you can't say anything to a Wrangler that he can't do. You know,
you say, you know, can you teach a boa constrictor to dance with a mongoose. Yeah,
I need 100 smiling mice and
they'll do it. But he shows up with,
what did he show up with a group of them? Out of 33 adults,
three fully grown adults,
three year links were smaller but worked for stand ins and
five babies that during the were born during the production,
we had a family shot that was cut from the film
and he did it and he gentled them, you know, he worked with a, a
woman.
Uh and together they conditioned this groundhog to hang on to a steering wheel and
he was fine as long as he was eating a banana
and he ran out of banana, he started eating Bill.
That was you doing films with,
uh I think what is his fourth or fifth film with Bill Murray
sixth?
Do you,
when you get scripts,
do you think Bill a lot or do you think generically when you first get him?
Uh inevitably I, you know, II I think Bill and if not, who else, you know, are
there are only a handful of people that, uh
that, that get all the scripts, you know, on the comedy scripts. Uh And you know, I, I
don't even need to name them, you know, they're the,
it's the same 56 people that keep starring in all the comedy.
The list is expanding a little now to
include some of the younger Saturday night guys,
Michael Meer
and Dana Harvey De Niro, big comedy star.
Um, but builds up there, you know,
it's high on everyone's list and certainly on mine and,
and also knowing him, I mean, we, you know,
it's a little easier for me to give him a call and get him to read something.
I don't have to go through the agent process. He'll answer your phone call,
you will eventually return my phone call.
So, is there, is there a pretty good stream of communication between you and bill?
You know, if you work with him six times on and off, on and off, you know, I mean, he'll,
he'll,
he likes to disappear. He, he's a man of mystery, you know, he,
he keeps his cards close and, uh, you never know where he's going, you know?
But, uh,
or he'll call you from the strangest places at the oddest times of day and night.