Mark Welsh retweetledi
When making The Departed, Jack Nicholson told Matt Damon, “I never would've made it this far in my career if I wasn't a great fucking writer.” Meaning, he would contribute great ideas to a story through his performance and improvisation. Damon recalls a perfect example of this:
“And I'll give you one story - it was my favorite thing that happened on The Departed, was this story about a scene that I was not in, but he (Nicholson) was - it was 1 eighth of a page, and it said Costello - which is the name of his character - ‘Costello executes man kneeling in the marshes.’
Now, most people look at that, and they'll go, ‘All right, it's gonna be one shot - that's gonna be an hour of work, and that's all I'm doing that day, or whatever.’ He looked at that, and he goes, ‘Okay, I can do that, but I think I can make it better.’
And so he's telling me this story. He goes, (in Jack Nicholson’s voice) ‘So what I do is,’… he goes, ‘I come from the Roger Corman School, so I'm not gonna add any time, and I'm not gonna add to your budget. But instead of a man kneeling in the marshes, I make it a woman.’
...And he goes, ‘So I'm gonna execute a woman, but I'm not gonna be alone. I put Ray (Winston) in the scene with me - and I shoot her in the back of the head like it says in the script.
But if you leave the camera rolling, after she falls, I turn to Ray and I say, geez, she fell funny. Now that's a really sinister thing to say. Because it means I do this a lot, and there's a way people fall. And she didn't fall that way.’
And I go, ‘oh yeah, I get it man, I get it.’
‘Now you could end the scene there, but if you leave the camera rolling, Ray steps forward, and he reveals that he's holding an axe. She's gonna chop her up.
Now you could end the scene there.’ He goes, ‘But if you leave the camera rolling, I turn to Ray and say, “wait, I think I wanna fuck her again.”’
And he goes, ‘Now that's a very sinister line.’
I get it, I get it, it's really, really, really disturbing. And he says,
Now you could end the scene there, but if you keep the camera rolling, Ray stops and looks at me, and there's a pause. And I go….ah!
He goes, ‘And that's a sinister thing to do, “'cause we're making a joke out of this whole thing.” And I go, yeah, I get it, I get it.
‘Now you could end the scene there, but if you leave the camera rolling, Ray says, “Francis, you really oughta see someone.”
And so that's what they did. He took this one eighth of a page scene, and he did all of that, and they had two cameras on it, so it could cut back and forth.
And what Marty ended up cutting was he shoots her, she falls, he says, “Geez, she fell funny.” And Ray looks at him and says, “Francis, you really oughta see someone.” But he just gave him all of these options, as dark and as sick as you wanna go.”
Quote comes from Matt Damon's appearance on the What A Joke Show with Papa and Fortune
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