The Official "Behind The Scenes" TV/Movie Thread

[SwedishHeat]

Closer is probably the one film in my collection that sticks out as a "Hunh, I didn't think you'd be into a movie like that"

I love the opening of this movie.

I think I first watched this when it was mentioned that Panic and Fall Out Boy reference this movie in their songs. Then when I researched the movie and realized that Mike Nichols directed it, the same guy that did The Graduate, I was like "Well heck, it's gotta be good"

 

[MeatHookGekko]

The Blower's Daughter by Damien Rice

"And so it is just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time
And so it is the shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky

I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes

And so it is just like you said it should be
We'll both forget the breeze
Most of the time
And so it is the colder water
The Blower's daughter
The pupil in denial

I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes

Did I say that I loathe you?
Did I say that I want to leave it all behind?

I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind
My mind, my mind
'Til I find somebody new"

Spoiler

 

[MeatHookGekko]

 

[MeatHookGekko]

How We Made Closer – by Clive Owen and Patrick Marber

Patrick Marber - "I was in Atlanta in 1996 with a tour of my play Dealer’s Choice and I was dragged along to a lap-dancing club. It seemed a potent, haunting place for a scene about power and ***. That night I wrote a version of the lap-dance scene in Closer with characters called A and B. I wanted to figure out who the guy was, who the young woman was, and what happened to them before and after.....I’d recently directed a Craig Raine play, 1953, which is a version of Racine’s Andromaque and is about power relations between two men and two women. So is ***, Lies and Videotape, my other main influence. Soderbergh’s film was a commercially successful independent movie. I wanted to make a sort of indie play....I wanted a sort of Shakespearean scene, with someone in disguise, so spent an hour in a cyber cafe and went into a lesbian chatroom pretending to be a gay woman. I just wanted to impersonate someone else. Then, while walking my dog in Postman’s Park in London, I stumbled on a memorial.... I thought one of my characters could take her name. In the play, (Natalie Portman's character) saves Anna, Dan and Larry in a way.....I took Closer from a Joy Division album."

"Sam Mendes was going to direct but had to pull out..... When we opened in the National Theatre’s Cottesloe theatre I was really scared. It didn’t seem funny at all, just relentlessly grim. I was surprised when it got good reviews. By the time it closed on Broadway in 1999, I’d devoted three years to the play. It was so heavily reviewed and scrutinized that it was nice to tinker with it for each production, reminding myself I still owned this thing....

Clive Owen - Patrick played cards with people I knew. Some of them inspired characters in Dealer’s Choice. Closer was one of the most exciting, visceral pieces of writing I’d read. I really wanted to play Larry, but Patrick thought I was too young. Ciarán Hinds was cast in that role but I got a message from my agent: would I like to play Dan instead? Yes, I would....My strongest memory is Dan’s softness. Larry rips him apart and he is really exposed. He is in love with the idea of being in love and just has a brutal awakening. Closer is such an honest examination of the pain from relationships and what it feels like to be bereft....We got great reviews and the play became a big thing but we had walkouts, too. It starts almost like a romantic comedy – witty and light – then slowly you’re pulled into something deeply unsettling. There’s a big scene that goes into the explicit details of the affair. Some people found that too much.....Years later, I got a call from Mike Nichols asking if I wanted to play Larry. A part I’d really wanted was suddenly being offered to me, with an amazing director and cast....As an actor you look at every piece from your character’s perspective. You read a play or film with one character in mind. To play two parts in a piece like Closer was a totally new thing for me. I knew the play, the rhythms of the language, the impact of certain things but was now looking from Larry’s perspective. It felt both new and familiar. It was like I’d been given the most incredible gift..."

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/jul/09/how-we-made-closer-patrick-marber-clive-owen

 

[Otomofan]

"Closer" is an excellent film. One of my favorites to explore that well-worn territory of relationships, but it just stands head and shoulders above most. Probably on my list of actual classics made in the 21st century so far. It's a small list.