INT: Speaking of television, let's do this for a second. As a Director, have you found yourself particularly, not as you started, but because you've done a number of movies for HBO and Showtime, has that shifted your process at all, do you feel there's a difference at all? I mean obviously the screens are even bigger now, so, you know, but for you, has it shifted at all? When you were doing 12 ANGRY MEN as an example?

WF: Basically not. It's still all about communication with the cast and crew and then with an audience, and the foundation is a great script. And I don't think I'm doing this for television and not the movies, it's for an audience. Some of whom will be seeing it on a very small screen, some on a larger screen, but what the hell, all films wind up there. That's the graveyard for masterpieces, the television screen.

INT: Let's talk about production design. How do you go about, because you said you have a vision of what this thing is, how do you communicate that to a Production Designer in the process of getting either sets built or locations? What's your process?

WF: Well, my first step is to get the vision myself. How do I see this thing? How do I want to do it? For example, THE EXORCIST might have all been done on a soundstage as Warner Bros. originally suggested--[INT: Right.]--but I wanted to do it on actual locations, with the exception of the house which needed special effects, which was done on a soundstage, three stories. But I might have gone all the way and said, “Let's try and achieve this picture in an actual house.” But I thought, no, let's do the house on a set and let's do the rest of it on the streets and in Mosul, Iraq, and whatever. So I'll tell that to the Designer, and then together we'll go out and look at locations. Before Bill Malley designed the sets for THE EXORCIST, I showed him actual houses in Georgetown [Georgetown, Washington D.C.]; federalist style, which we copied almost literally in detail. We copied the interior of the house in Georgetown as a set that we used as the exterior, the actual house. [INT: Now, will a Production Designer give you drawings? Do you ask for drawings? What’s the, you know, if you need to have something built?] Sometimes only specs, plans. Not drawings so much. But we will discuss style. We'd go to a Federalist house, and say, "This mirror. Great. This eagle over the mirror. Good. Look at this furniture, beautiful." 19th century French or British, or Chippendale or whatever, all authentic stuff, Bokhara rugs on the floor, you know, and all of the trappings of an actual place; I start with the reality. Now, I've never done a film like BLADE RUNNER or STAR WARS or something where you have to create the entire world out of the imagination, there you would need sketches.

INT: In looking for locations, I'm thinking about for example, your L.A. movie, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., what's your scouting process? I mean, again, are you saying in your mind, “Hmm, I'm looking for this kind of house?” Or how are you getting to get to where you make your final decision about where you're going to shoot?

WF: A lot of it is outside influences that have taken place over the years. I'm driving down a freeway, the 405 [Interstate 405], let's say, and I take a look and over there, are some big chimneys and flame, that I've never noticed before. And I go over to that section, which is called Wilmington [Wilmington, Los Angeles]. And I've never normally go into--I don't know anyone who lives there, not visiting something or someone, there's no museum there, or concert hall, but I make a detour and I go over there and I see Wilmington for the first time, and it looks like Oz to me; I had not seen it in a film about L.A.. And I'm driving around and there's these strange hamburger joints with a little stadium seating inside and everything dominated by the factories over there and the belching smoke and fire. And I'm wandering around and I see there's a Fijian community, with all these people from Fiji and Samoa, that would not normally see in one of the better known areas of L.A., and I find that within L.A. is a whole other world and I made that the foundation for TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.. Where we avoided anything that was a landmark. And shot 90% in Wilmington and on the Vincent Thomas Bridge, where the bungee jump took place--and then in the shadow of the Vincent Thomas Bridge, which is in Long Beach, and that's an underused area too, I see all these other row houses, and areas that were atypical of Los Angeles and that inspired me to do the film the way I did it, the location.

INT: It's interesting to me, you often choose an interior that has an exterior--particularly on location pieces, that the exterior is definitely part of the interiors environment. I'm talking about certain houses and things. I mean, I guess the house that you chose in THE GUARDIAN might be an example, or the house that the girl lives in in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., where you can see, I guess, Wilmington, or whatever it is, outside those windows. [WF: That was the Vincent Thomas Bridge, Long Beach.] The interior/exterior vision is this part of your consciousness? Or this this…

WF: Sometimes yes and sometimes no. I prefer to see what's out the window on a location, than to have the so-called sun blow the room out, because it's only seldom that I've been in a room somewhere, where the sun was so hot that it blows out the exterior and you can't see it. Usually even with a very hot sun outdoors you can see something outside and that enhances reality. When you see the windows all blown out, it says even to the untrained eye, this is a set. [INT: Now, for your Cinematographers that's often times a challenge, ‘cause we’re all so--] Yeah, but it's easily achieved, you know, you just put some filter paper on the windows and you can see outside and still have a strong sunlight effect inside. [INT: Got it.]

INT: Have there been locations that have been really sort of the big challenges for you, in the process? Where you haven't been able to find it and you kept looking for it? Or the location itself was really tough to shoot?

WF: I choose them in advance so I get rid of all that beforehand. In order to get, let's say one room of one location in a film like THE HUNTED I might have looked at a dozen, and rejected them. Or the Cinematographer had a problem with them. There was another moment where I had a bad experience with a Cinematographer on THE BOYS IN THE BAND. I wanted this Actor sitting on a bed at the Sherry-Netherland [Sherry-Netherland Hotel], where you'd see outside the window onto 5th Avenue, and the artificial light in the room would be coming from an open door in the bathroom, so he'd be lit from one side with an artificial light, and out the window you'd see the real world of New York. And I went up to this room at the Sherry-Netherland where you could do this. And I went up there with the Cinematographer afterwards, and he looked at it and he said, "I can't shoot this." "What?" "No, I don't want to shoot here. We can build this on a set." You know, "I'll have more control over it." I said, "Well, what about what's outside the window there?" "Oh, we'll do that with a process screen. And put--we'll get a still photograph of exactly what you want to see out the window, but I'll have control over the artificial, I don't want to come into the hotel and run cable, and I don't know what the light's going to look like outside." So I changed Cinematographers. [INT: And you got the shot?] Yeah, in the Sherry-Netherland hotel, from a Cinematographer who understood what I was after, and why the reality of that room infected or affected the Actor, a little better than it would have if we built a set, which was going to cost a lot more money to do, so the Cinematographer could have control of the lights. Now, there are situations where the Cinematographer must have control of the light, but then there's situations where he has to utilize real light, and that's tougher. [INT: You know, there's an air that you feel, that a backdrop never gives.] Well, not to me. [INT: Not to me either.] Although, you get away with it now with digital, you just did a movie over there, GOLDA'S BALCONY where you had the cast, the Actors--[INT: All in green screen.]--sitting in front of an empty room with green screen, and you computerized the backgrounds, but I never had that opportunity on a film, to do that. All this has come about since, you know, I've stopped making a lot of films, and I mean the technology is moving so fast, it's so different every day. I mean there are remarkable things being done by this generation of filmmakers, that we just didn't have--[INT: The tools.]--the tools and that's true of my generation as regards to the previous generations. So John Ford never had the tools, to CGI [computer-generated imagery]. He had to go out there and film it. Now, what's better? Something that a guy created on a computer or John Ford's filming of the actual location? I leave the answer to you. But the thing is, that you can't say that the new technology is meaningless, it's very meaningful, it's often a tool that didn't exist before that makes things possible that weren't even possible to dream about before.

INT: Costumes, I find can be a real challenge for us, because we don't wear them, they do, but we have a vision of what they should be wearing. How do you deal with costumes?

WF: Start from reality, because as I've told you, I've never made a true fantasy picture. You know, something set on the moon or in outer space or in the future, where you have to be a lot more creative and inventive. THE FRENCH CONNECTION, the Actors look like photographs of the actual people. The pork-pie hat that Gene Hackman wore was what Eddie Egan, his real counterpart, wore. The way Scheider [Roy Scheider] dressed was the way Sonny Grosso dressed, the way the Frenchman dressed was the way he had dressed. I never met him but I had photographs and the look. [INT: Jump to the--] Is this boring too? [INT: No, no but I want to go into it, BLUE CHIPS, I'm interested in, because--] Bobby Knight wore the same clothes every day. He wore an Indiana jacket and an Indiana t-shirt, that's all he wore, going out to dinner, he was that guy. He was Bobby Knight 24-hours a day, or except when he went to bed I guess, and I didn't have to show him going to bed. So that indicated to me that there be no costume changes for Nick Nolte, except in one scene where he's taking his ex-wife out to dinner at a local restaurant, and in order to impress her, he put on a sport jacket over the team t-shirt. And Nick didn't even want to do that, 'cause Nick had gotten into the Bobby Knight ethic of “This is what I wear. That's it.” [INT: Now that's an interesting issue, because since the Actor wears the costumes, when the Actor says something like that to you, how do you handle it? “Oh, I wouldn’t wear that,” or--] In this case, we got into a huge argument. He saw the costumes that I wanted him to wear in the restaurant scene with his wife, he said "You don't see Bobby Knight doing this! Bobby Knight goes out to dinner in the same jacket he wears when he's coaching, and the same t-shirt." I said, "Nick, I just want a little change here, for passage of time." It was first a polite discussion and then we started screaming at each other, and finally it was, "Well that's what you're gonna wear. Fuck it!" You know? "I can holler just as loud as you. We can stand here yelling at each other all day, but this is the costume." And the poor Costume Designer, Bernie Pollack, was in the middle, you know? And there was a lot of tension on the set, but there was supposed to be tension in the movie, and so it helps to have tension on the set if there's tension in the movie. [INT: Do you find that true?] Often. Often. [INT: Got it.] I mean it depends on what level you want to take it to. [INT: But you're comfortable with, as a human being, as a Director, if he's gonna scream, that’s—you’re comfortable--'Cause you know, a lot of people will pull back, and not match it.] Well, I would have pulled back in the early days, but that's because I didn't know anything and it was cowardice, you know? As a Director, you've got to be assertive. You just have to be assertive, and ‘cause that film is forever. I mean I just told you, a film I made 27 years ago, that was basically out of my mind, is coming back in theaters in September, CRUISING. And I never thought it would, but, you know, along comes a different medium every few years. The DVD, you know. First, the VHS, and then the DVD, then movies on television, then whole channels devoted to just movies. So now, almost anything you make can come back and haunt you, and be seen by unsuspecting future generations. And Dave Wolper [David L. Wolper], this friend of mine, wanted to buy the rights to all the John Wayne westerns from all the studios where he had made them, only for the moon. To play on the moon, because he believes that someday, after we've colonized the moon, people will be sitting up there watching John Wayne westerns. [INT: Great.] And who am I to say he's wrong?

INT: This is not the segue that I wanted to get into, how do we get into the issue of, actually I was going to go from costumes, to how do you get your Actors to deal with sex scenes, which is always a challenge?

WF: Well, they're not having sex, that's for sure. [INT: Okay, that's one.] But you know, there's only so many positions for sex, and you have to fake it, but you want to get--[INT: But how do you get them comfortable? Will Peterson [William Peterson] in--] Well, and in BUG, Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon, full frontal nudity, and sex. [INT: How do you deal with it?] Well, a lot of conversation, a lot of mutual trust, clear the set, so that only those people that need to be there are. Often when I'm shooting a scene, I'll have bystanders just stand behind the camera if they want to watch, if it doesn't disturb the Actors, but in a scene where you're portraying the sexual act, you can't have bystanders, or even guys who aren't working specifically on the shot. So they get comfortable, and they know it's acting like anything else, and you lay it out very carefully, so to speak, what's going to happen. [INT: But now, for example, let's use the William Peterson scene because there’s--He comes home. He starts to undress, she gets, starts to dress and then they end up both--] She undresses and then she puts her legs, wraps her legs him and they’re nude. [INT: Now, question is, this was your vision? Did it evolve? Did you tell them this is what you wanted to do? Did you say, let's try stuff? I'm curious.] No, I mentioned that, and they liked that and then they did it. But those two people had to like each other. He probably fucked her, for real and they dug each other. She was a hot little item and he was a good-looking guy and I think they had rehearsed the scene out of my presence, and came to a happy medium with it. I mean look, there are known to be love scenes that were played by people who couldn't stand each other. Classic love scenes. Even Bergman [Ingrid Bergman] and Bogart [Humphrey Bogart], are said to have not been the closest of friends, and yet the romance in CASABLANCA is unparalleled. The sexiest scene I've ever scene shows nothing, and that's a film called INDISCREET with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. It's all suggested. That's the best way.

INT: Well, speaking about the opposite, how did you do the CRUISING sequences? I mean you've got some--

WF: Well, I shot in those clubs. The S&M clubs, there weren't extras, those were the guys who went into the clubs, and they had no problem. There's a lot of exhibitionism in that world to begin with, so the only person who was ill at east was Pacino [Al Pacino], ‘cause everyone else in the club was a regular at those clubs, The Mineshaft and The Anvil, which have since been closed, but replaced by other clubs. [INT: Did you go to those clubs with your Production Designers? How did you get them to even agree, that's I guess where I'm going.] Well, first of all the clubs were owned by the mafia. And I knew a lot of the guys in the mafia. The guys who are portrayed on THE SOPRANOS, very well, by the way, are guys I knew. From THE FRENCH CONNECTION experience, and other experiences. And there was a guy who owned all of these clubs, he controlled everything on the West side, from 42nd Street to the Battery [Battery Park, New York City]. He was getting a payoff or he owned the businesses outright. And I sent one of my friends who was involved with him, to go talk to him, and ask him if we could shoot in one of his clubs. And this friend went to his house and this fellow said, "I don't know what you're talking about." He said, "Shoot what, where?" "You know, this place, The Mineshaft, it's on Little West/Washington." "I don't know what you mean, what you're talking about. It's good to see you though. Real nice to talk to you, come on I'll see you out." Then he'd walk him down the middle of the street, and my friend would say, "Well, if there's anything you can do for us." And this guy said, "Why don't you make a call over there tomorrow. Go back and ask for this guy Dusty. And tell him I told you to call. Here's the number. Don't write it down, just remember it." And he gave him the number, because he didn't want to say anything in his house, 'cause he knew his house was bugged! And so he got me permission to shoot in his clubs, but then I had to down there and talk to the guys who worked there, and who frequented the places. And I would go in, I actually went in on some nights when it was dress code nights, where you had to come in and check your clothes at the door, and wear only a jock strap. And 90% of the guys were naked. And I was walking around in a jock strap, with shoes, and believe me, I mean I was the ugliest guy in the place, but I'm asking for permission, and these guys, I'm telling them what I'm doing, a picture with Al Pacino. "Oh great! Yeah. Hey, that sounds like fun. What do you want us to do?" Just what happens here. So I had guys doing their thing, in the movie. Blowjobs, fist-fucking, golden showers, they did all that. Now, you couldn't get extras to do that, and Pacino had to walk through it, and it freaked him out. It freaked him out to be there, 'cause it was so different a lifestyle from what he knew. And again, like Nolte [Nick Nolte] coaching real basketball players, Pacino was now in scenes with hardcore S&M guys, and that was the story of the film. But see, these guys knew that I was only using that world as a background for a murder mystery. It was not a comment about anyone's lifestyle. Pro or con. It was just to me, an exotic background that had never been shown before, certainly as a background to a mainstream movie.

INT: Now when you're in that location, are you thinking also editorially, saying “Okay, how many shots am I going to need to make this sequence work?” 'Cause we're going to move into editing. And I know you said, yesterday, or today, or depends on the minute their looking at it. [WF: Well, what day is it in this?] Exactly. [WF: This is your own reality.] In cyberspace, was said by you, that editing is actually a period that you really do like a lot, in terms of comparison with rehearsal. [WF: Yeah, there's no pressure.] Okay, knowing what you need--[WF: I don't like pressure. Go ahead.] Is that true?

WF: Yeah, I hate pressure. I like tension and conflict, but not pressure. "We're gonna lose the sun in two minutes," or "If you don't get the shot, you're screwed." I don't like that kind of pressure. [INT: But, Actor's saying I don't feel--] Well, if the Actor needs to be tense in the scene, I'll encourage that, and take it farther.

INT: This doesn't have to be the sequence into the editing room, but I am curious now, how you now work with an Editor? Have you worked with one or two Editors for long periods of time? [WF: Yeah, yeah. Perhaps only three or four Editors throughout my long and distinguished career. Why are you laughing?] Because it is and you're trying to mock it. It is a long and distinguished career. [WF: Okay, thanks.] It is true. [WF: No well, but, no, I've worked with several Editors on any number of pictures and then I'll often work with their assistant on the next picture, if they're not available.] Now, in terms of your process there, do you feel first of all that you cover a scene, you cover more than you need? When you're in the editing room will you use mostly every setup that you've done? Or will you give yourself more so that you have more choices? There are two sides to this question, one a shooting side, and one is an editing side, in terms of the material that you get into the editing room.

WF: I don't believe in overshooting. I don't own stock in Eastman Kodak [Eastman Kodak Company], so I won't do a lot of takes, as I've told you. I won't do a lot of angles, I will pre-visualize the scene and shoot it that way. But I'll often make a couple of angles off that, so there is room to shorten the scene or lengthen it, for that reason only. Not so that I can shoot a scene around the clock and have umpteen hours of footage to choose from. I don't do that. But I will make usually more than one angle of a scene, for the purposes of pace, and length. But then it often gives you the opportunity, even with a limited range of shots, to as I say, move a sequence somewhere else, or shorten it radically, or lengthen it to some extent, and those are the things that make the picture. [INT: Have you gotten caught in the situation where I know that I can do this shot in one, and done that and said, “Oh, I wish I had given myself options?"] No. I have shot scenes in one, because I believe that that's how they belong, like the scene in the taxi with Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger [in ON THE WATERFRONT], I shot that you know. [INT: I know, you did a very good job. Rod told me.] No, no. I didn't shoot that, Elia Kazan did and Boris Kaufman, but that's in one and it's great. There are times when you don't want the intrusion of a cut; there's a whole movie, this film RUSSIAN ARK that's done with a digital camera. It's an hour-and-a-half, or an hour-and-35-minutes; it's all one take, going throughout the Hermitage [Russian State Hermitage Museum] showing the Russian history. [INT: Yeah.] It's a great movie, done with one shot. If I didn't tell you it was one shot, you might not even be conscious of it. [INT: Now have you done 'one-ers'? Is that one of the things? Or do you avoid it?] Sometimes. I mean, I'm not one of those guys who makes a shot in order to say, "Wait 'till Martin Scorsese sees this, he'll eat his heart out," you know. I don't give a shit about that stuff. I think, I like to take as much in a scene as I think I can sustain, and then move the camera and let the Actors do it again if necessary, to bring something fresh to it. Not to necessarily repeat what they just did. And I have a phrase that has become a joke on my film sets, but I mean it, which is "Matching is for Sissies." You know, the idea of matching; in one shot you see me pick up this bottle with my left hand, open it with my right hand, and then take a sip as I'm about to do, and then do another shot of it, and do the same thing. I tell the Actor, he says, "Did I pick that up with my left hand?" I say, "I don't care." "Well, why?" "'Cause I'm gonna use one or the other." I'm not going to try and cut on the action. I'll use the best piece of it, and if I want to make a cut in the scene, I'll find a place where you don't, where you're not conscious of whether the action matches or not. So I told you, Godard [Jean-Luc Godard], BREATHLESS, it doesn't match. 24 doesn't match today. And what happens is, if the audience is deeply immersed in the film, they don't pay any attention to that shit, only continuity people do. They don't care, you know, unless you changed Actors on them.

INT: In the editing room, will you allow your Editor--or do you want your Editor to do an assembly of the cut?

WF: No, I did that early on it was disastrous. [INT: So what's your process then?] I come in, and we look at the footage together, the Editor and I, and I don't start cutting 'till after I finish shooting the whole film. The Editor's just organizing all the film during shooting, keeping a record of it, so he can pull up shots quickly and then we go at it from the beginning--I'll come in with an idea, "What if we start the film..." on something that we never intended to start with. [INT: Now, will you look at, before you do that, will you then, are you looking with your Editor as you're shooting? 'Cause you're not having him cut.] No, we'll look at it, but I'm only looking at it, not to determine how it's going to be cut, but just to see if it is properly exposed and in focus. [INT: So you won't be saying like take two, take 16?] Occasionally, but he knows that that could change once my mood changes and I'm in the cutting room. [INT: And will you--when you are in the cutting--] There's no take 16. [INT: That’s mine. My film.] I don't own stock in Eastman, do you? [INT: No, not anymore.] You must have, did you do take 16? Not with Valerie Harper, you didn't do no take 16. [INT: No, no, not Val, are you kidding? Val was one. I'm trying to think the longest number I've ever done. I've hit the 20s, a couple of times. That's about it.] Basically you try not to do that though. [INT: Oh no, you know you're in trouble after ten, I mean at least as far as I'm concerned.] Two. [INT: Okay.] No seriously. If you can't get--something's wrong. Either you got the wrong Actor over there, or you've directed them wrong, you've made the wrong choices, or there's some technical thing that goes wrong. This boom mic falls in the shot, the camera falls over. [INT: So are you now looking at all of the--when you're in the editing room now, are you looking at all of the footage, sort of everything you've shot with your Editor before he starts to--] No, scene by scene. We'll look at this scene, I'll say, sometimes not even the first scene in the picture, but often it is. I'll say "Okay, let's look at scene one." And we'll look at it over and over and over and analyze it, and then I'll start making choices. I'll say, "I think from here to here, and then I think we'll cut and go to this. And then I think the scene's over right here, we don't need the rest of it," which is stuff I wouldn't do on the set. When I'm on the set I think I need all of it. When I get in the cutting room, I find I don't need half of it, or more. Overstatement. [INT: But you'd rather not start to edit yourself on the set?] You do to some extent, but not to the ultimate extent. I mean, I don't shoot everything, but I will make choices on the set, but I'll make further, deeper choices in the cutting room. [INT: Now, will you spend the day? I mean are you--] A few hours is enough for me. Like these interviews, after three hours man, I don't even know what the hell I'm saying. [INT: They will then continue with the notes you've given?] Yeah, and then I'll look at something the next day, and unravel it or say, "That's pretty good." And I will also give the Editor the freedom to try and invent something that we didn't even talk about. And if I like it, it's in the movie.

INT: Now, first cut. What's your experience usually looking at the first cut?

WF: You want to kill yourself. You've made the choices, you've achieved a first cut, and it's horrible. [INT: Have you ever had a first cut that you actually thought, “Okay?”] No. No. Usually the film is talking to you, all the time. And the film is saying, and I'm serious, "I'm not this, I am this." THE FRENCH CONNECTION. There were nine scenes that I shot. It was a whole panoply, a kind of an epic story of the contrasting characters of the Frenchman and the cop. And the fact that the cop was a brutal, sadistic guy, and the criminal was a gentleman, who had a wife, a young wife that he loved and respected, and he had a business, he was in the contracting business, on the docks in Marseilles [Marseilles, France], which was true, yet he was a big drug smuggler, and people were dying because of his actions. And the cop, the guy with the badge, is basically a thug. So I set out to do the film that way, with constantly contrasting scenes from their lives, and then in the cutting room the film was saying to me, "Man, I am not that picture. I'm not that." You can't sustain that kind of thing with this movie, and I would look at it over and over, it was a kind of a dialogue develops. While I'm looking at it I'm saying, "Well, what in the hell are you?" And each film would say to me, "I'm just a fucking little chase picture. This whole picture is a chase! It's got to move. This ain't moving. I'm not moving. Get rid of this, you don't need that! What is this bullshit? It's all scaffolding. Everything you've shot is scaffolding.” Now, if you want a building, where people can live and have fun and have a life and enjoy and explore, you've got to remove the scaffolding, otherwise they can't even get into the building. That's what I mean, literally it's that. The film is talking to me. It's like Pinter [Harold Pinter] has told me, whole plays come to him from one overheard line of dialogue. In a restaurant, or in a room somewhere, and I said to him, "Harold, what do you mean?" He said, “Well, for example, I don't write plays anymore...” This is recently, he said, “But I remember when I met my present wife, that we were both married to other people at the time, and they were giving me some kind of an award for playwrighting at something and she had attended it, and it was the first time I met her. And I knew about her, and she knew who I was, but now there's all these people at the table, and we're focusing on each other. And finally all the people start to leave, but the two of us stayed behind. And finally she got up, after we'd been drinking all afternoon. And she said, 'Well, I guess I'd better be going.’” And he said to her, "Must you go?" And that was the beginning of their relationship. And he said, "Now, I could write a play about that. Starting with the line, "Must you go?" Three words, that can give me an entire play if I wanted to write one, and like the chilling last line of act one of THE CARETAKER, where this old man has come into a building that he doesn't own, and made himself at home. And one of the, there are two brothers and this old man, and one of the brothers comes in and the old man doesn't know he's in the room, and the brother stalks him because the guy has invaded the house, and the brother comes up behind him and puts a stranglehold on him and says, "What's the game?" And the lights go out. And the power of a succinct line like that can either give birth to a play or end a play or end an act. [INT: That's great.]