Day for Night : The Making of "Insomnia" (Al Pacino, Hillary Swank, Robin Williams)

I saw Insomnia right when it first came out in the States in about 97 and I heard that Whit Thomas and Warner Brothers were going to do a remake. They had a script written by Hilary that was just tremendous and had really tapped into a lot of the things that I'd hoped an American remake of this film would. One of the things about the movie that I like so much is the conceit that for the first part of a movie it's a whodunit but it very quickly becomes a how and a why-dunit. I think it has an incredibly compelling central situation that is very Hitchcockian, almost in an old-fashioned way. It takes place in Alaska in a fictional town called Nightmew. It's so far north that they have what's called White Nights. The sun doesn't set 24 hours a day and his body clock, like a lot of people who go up there, are not used to it. His body clock wreaks havoc and he's not able to sleep. We wanted to make a very dark film that had ever-present light which was an interesting idea to us, to make a very dark film where the sun is basically always out and always putting daylight in the background of things. The biggest challenge in a movie like this is creating the impression of fatigue and what it means to be tired without making the audience tired. And that's tricky, actually. You have to come up with some sort of interesting visual ways to suggest that state of mind without lulling people into some stupor. I'm very interested in stories that take a very subjective point of view. You are experiencing a character's increasing struggle with his inner demons and increasing struggle against his lack of sleep and his increasingly tense situation. I was very concerned to keep the audience in his head and really pull them through this descent with the main character. I was certainly nervous going to meet Al for the first time because this is an icon, this is somebody with such an incredible history. But he makes you feel at ease right away. He gives so much to his craft and he is present in every moment. It's all about small stuff. You know, small lies, small mistakes. I've learned so much from him just watching everything that he does and absorbing it so it's kind of a parallel between what my character does with his character and me and with him, so it kind of works out perfectly. We thought it would be very unusual and different for Robin to play the part of a killer as opposed to he's really against type, not what you think of with Robin Williams. I don't know if you can actually define Robin Williams. I feel like I could be Peter Lorien except I never meant to do those things with her but it would have been difficult to play like that the whole time. Robin loves to hang around on set and joke, make the whole crew laugh. Today we look for the tiny fish near the log jam. Whereas ours is a more interior sort of process. Yeah, it's Mr. Method versus Mr. Anything. But you find a way though. I mean, Chris will tell you. Whatever their different working styles are, that's one of the incredible things to me about working with these great actors is to just see them approach their tasks from completely different directions and yet interact in the most wonderfully constructive way. It'd be like two different styles of jazz and then we'll both usually hit about the same. We'll both just go, that's it, you'll find it. I think the phone calls are really fascinating. They're sort of the heart of the film in a way because he has to listen to this guy even though he despises him because he's hoping he's going to trip up and he's going to say something wrong. But Walter's pretty smart. If you ask Mr. Dormer, he is a loner, freak, shitty detective novel writer. If you ask Walter Finch, he's a victim of accidental provocation. Otherwise engaged, another Jay Brody mystery. Who reads this kind of crap? Being a crime writer in Alaska is a bit like being the Amish tech rep. You're not going to get a lot of work. There's not going to be a lot to write about at that moment except for his own crime. You keep the dress, Kay's dress, and nail clippings. What'd you do with those things? It's a great dress. We could use that. I remember watching a documentary about Jeffrey Dormer. And they asked him, they said, when you started cutting up the bodies, what did you do? And he said, well, I stored them in a case exactly like that camera case right there. And you could see the interviewer go, okay, let's cut. That's it for today. Thank you. We'll be right back. We're cooking with Jeffrey. And yeah, the creepier, the more normal and regular it seems, the creepier it is. Because that's the way it is. To play it just as straight and regular and much like this. Because people like that feel that they are not entitled, but that's how they function. That's why it's been interesting to play with him. So direct. It is direct. I'm doing these evil things now. It's like, no, no, listen to me. You know, talking like that. I know this isn't easy for you, but I'm trying to get you to understand. We're in the same situation here. You didn't mean to kill her any more than I meant to kill Kay. It's not black and white. There is this gray going on constantly. A confusion, a doubt, a conscience being kind of tweaked and pushed back and forth. A man making a decision, going against his conscience and in the end hoping that he can find his way back. That's what I think he'll be. And I think it's Al drawing from what I've seen him do. He'll draw you into that. It'd be just like a memento in that way. That you'll be following a man's conscience and his mind deteriorating. Through guilt, through lack of sleep, through stress. All of these things working on him. I think that's what will be intriguing. I think that's what makes it interesting to watch. It's not enough to set the strong man up and knock him down. It's not enough to just construct a simple scenario and then resolve it. In some ways it's as valid or more valid to raise difficult questions and acknowledge that they're not easy to answer. And that you can't, as a filmmaker, just wrap things up neatly and say, well, this is the solution to these things. The type of stories I'm interested in telling, they do have a slightly more messy approach to them in a way. A slightly more unsettling approach perhaps. People will ask me whether I know that the films I'm making are a little bit disturbing or they get under the skin a little bit or whatever. But as far as I'm concerned, if you're dealing with the subject matter of people being killed and people murdering other people, it's entirely appropriate that these things should be somewhat unsettling. It should make you question various aspects of the characters surrounding these incidents. To me that seems entirely logical and a very positive thing.