Behind the Scenes: Twelve Monkeys (Gilliam, 1995) with Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe

What do you think of the intro? What intro? Please welcome one of Hollywood's true creative visionaries. Here I go. I'm not going to say... Hollywood, I've now become a Hollywood director. There's no stopping these folk. Ladies and gentlemen, our next guest was one of the founding members of Monty Python, and has since gone on to direct such films as Brazil, The Fisher King, and now 12 Monkeys, which opens today. Please welcome one of Hollywood's true creative visionaries, Harry Gilliam. Juice is abuse! Juice is abuse! Juice is abuse! And action. There's a side of me that's just permanently sick to my stomach, feeling I'm being dragged into the abyss of success, and that system. On the other hand, there's a side of me that thinks maybe I'm getting away with murder within the system. Maybe I am making a European art movie within the Hollywood system. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe I'll just be caught. Terry's movies are too big in scope to be anything but films that are intended for a broad audience. And as much as Terry might not want to be in the Hollywood system, he knows he's never going to be able to get the kind of money he wants to make those hugely ambitious movies that his vision is, without somehow involving the studio system. So that's the paradox, doesn't it? After Munchausen, I just went into a big depression about filmmaking, period. And then Fisher King came along, and it was the first one that I hadn't been involved in the writing of, and I really liked it. And it was the easiest film I've ever made, and one of the most enjoyable. And it was successful. Very dangerous stuff, this. And then I went and got a Hollywood agent, and now I've got a Hollywood lawyer as well. It was an ironic aspect of this whole thing, because Brazil was made for universal pictures. On the other hand, I'm in a situation in this film where I've got final cut. I've got control of it. And that's all I've ever wanted, is control of it. What is nice about this is just the monotonous, forever going in a circle. Everybody just dutifully following one ass after another. This is humanity, just all the monkeys, except for the one that breaks loose. The dangerous, destructive one. This script is very disconcerting, because it's dealing with time, it's dealing with madness, it's dealing with perception of what the world is or isn't. On the surface, it's kind of a science fiction thriller about a virus that wipes out humanity. It's the idea of one man traveling back through time to put together the jigsaw puzzle. But in fact, maybe he really isn't from the future, and maybe all of this is in his head. For the first 50 pages of the script, you have no idea what's going on. Let me ask you this. Do you think that as the credits roll, the audience will have figured it out? Or are they going to be going home in their cars, arguing about it? No, no, no, he could have done this. I wonder if, do we want to make it, do we want to make the answer clear enough that they can figure it out that night on the way home, or that it just remains ambiguous? The studio's been very strange on it, because they put a cap on it, because they feel at the time, I think they feel it's an art movie. They don't know what to make of it. It doesn't fit in any genre or mold that makes sense to them. And it was really only when they got Bruce involved, Bruce Willis, that it became a more viable project. They're obsessed about things like opening weekend, and someone like Bruce guarantees an opening weekend. And so, you know, with him, it became definite. Okay, let's go. Terry completely insists on a final cut, and the studio said, okay, fine, as long as he delivers the movie no worse than an R rating, and no longer than two hours and 15 minutes, we'll give him the final cut. But the financial responsibility will absolutely not be ours. The discipline that was put on us that was not particularly pleasant, but which was a finite amount of money and much less than what we needed, forced us all to work to find solutions to try and make this movie within that budget. But we have a long script, we have a dense script, we have a short schedule, we have a limited amount of money. And so inevitably, you pay the price. The first bear that Terry chose was a rip-off. I mean, not the bear, but the owner of the bear is asking something ludicrous. Because the plasterers are $350 a day. The driver is costing $2,800 a week. Well, the marshmallows are $10,000, the image of them. We could purchase either one of them for their rock-bottom price of $7,500. This thing right now, I had it bid, it was at $20,000 for the kids. And so I'm going to try and cut it. I really don't get these prices. Well, I'm like on the edge on every set. No, I know. That's why. I mean, we've got to find ways of... I had this feeling that the movie should have this kind of feeling of decay of the past with it. And because we didn't have money, we couldn't build a whole lot of big sets, but I wanted a big look for the film. So we decided to use old power plants, old crumbling buildings, and kind of show the decay of civilization within the 1990s, as well as in the year 2035. So when we got there, we started talking about, well, that machine could be this. And then they started working the script around things we found. The time machine sequence in the script was originally, I think, about two lines. Coal is wheeled on a gurney and put into a steel tube. And as we were wandering around these power stations in Philly and looking at these gigantic turbines and these huge, massive machinery, I just felt we've got to make a time machine. And so I convinced everybody, let's go for it and let's create a massive time machine. It seemed that even by the time I had arrived on the film, that everybody, Terry, Jeff, the producers, must have talked endlessly about the time machine and yet never quite honed in on it. And it started to happen in daily meetings that Terry and Jeff and I had. And what developed was using found objects, using things that I would literally find in the gutter or in flea markets, coming across some piece of scrap metal or some domestic item and adapting that and making it into something unusual. Well, I became more and more obsessed, as I was through this whole film, about condoms and bubbles and sealing the boy in the bubble, sealing things from other things. And so we built a cocoon that would transport him into the machine. And it was just extraordinary. It seemed like an amniotic sac. Something to do with birth and death, the two things being closely related in my mind. I think Terry's always looking for a different edge. He approaches it very straight. He goes, we're going to make a little movie. And then suddenly it becomes a big movie. He said, I have to start out little because it's going to become big anyway. It's me. You know, that's what he says. It is harder doing other people's scripts because I feel a great responsibility to the writers. And I fight making it a Terry Gilliam film. So just as I'm in mid-flight, Terry's in mid-flight, Chuck, you're going to open up. Look a bit closer to camera. Into the lens even. Try it. I would like to have you across the street where we've had all the press all day that have showed up. Bruce Willis sees you here and he tells us we're not going to do any filming because you're out here. You're going to be holding up the works. Then somebody on higher authority than me is going to ask you to move across the street. So the best thing for you to do is to do that right now. I think it's fortuitous on the producers' parts to have signed Brad Pitt when they did. Because when they signed him probably three, four months ago, Interview with the Vampire still hadn't hit theaters. Legends of the Fall still hadn't hit theaters. And all of a sudden that all happened three, four weeks before we started filming. And they've got the hottest guy in Hollywood. So I mean, that'll give time for Roz and Joey to get up and make their way over there. And once everybody's over there, then back comes the Pied Piper. One of the interesting things about this film was to get Brad Pitt to play a character very unlike anything we've ever seen him play before. I mean, somebody fast and furious and neurotic and frenzied. And we decided he really had to train for this role because his voice didn't have the qualities needed to do it. And Brad worked really hard at this. Turn around like this, like this, like this. And they need to know. And they need to know something. You've got to tell them. You've got to wake them up. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. And man doesn't like two, does he? He doesn't like number two. It makes him itch. Truth is not how you see it or how I see it or they see it. There is just a truth. There is a truth. And you either see it or you don't. Excellent. Okay. I hope it's useful to you. So what else can you tell me? Well, I think some of the distraction, the motor movement, I mean, if we're staying with a manic kind of level, you know, some of the motor stuff, I would expect you to get up and probably pace around a little bit. Move around more. Move around a little bit more. We can go much more irritable. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are happy manics, that videotape that you saw of the lady, if you remember. Right. Right. She's kind of a happy manic. Right. And then there are angry manics who are more irritable. What do you know about the music? Open now! Now's the time for all men to seize the moment! Moment! Ha! Ha! And the opportunities, they go, oh, oh, they're really dosed, Jim. Major load. I mean, we know we've got big-name stars to open the film, whether it opens it the right way, it lets the audience know what they're in for. That's something else. I'm more worried about the first couple previews we're going to have where the studio sees it and the audience sees it and everybody panics. It's going to be very different than they expected. And then it's going to hit the fan, and the panic starts, and then the pressure's going to be on. And then they will even more... The more they feel that, the more they will push the selling of it as a Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt movie. But it is how the film got made, by putting some stars in it. Twelve Monkeys has a credit, and it says, based on the movie La Jetée by Chris Marker. La Jetée was a film made in the 60s, early 60s, in France. And it's a film I've never seen, but it's about 27 minutes long, and nothing moves in it. It's black-and-white photographs, still photographs. But what it is about is a world in the future where people have survived some apocalyptic end of the world, and they're living underground, and people are being sent back to the past. And it ends with a man seeing his own death. We stuck to that from the very beginning. This is a story of a man who has a dream and is haunted by a dream, and he has one dream, and it's his death. He sees his own death. We used the situation of La Jetée and the dream and so on. And by the same token, 12 Monkeys is not based on it in the sense that somebody's trying to copy this masterpiece. In that way, it's not a simple remake, and yet it has an enormous debt to La Jetée that should be and must be acknowledged. I don't think this film is La Jetée. I mean, we've done this very complicated, possibly lumbering, clunky, crash-bang version of that, such an ephemeral connection to it. At least, it was the springboard, but the diving board is not the dive. This is the dive, and we're in a triple gator at this moment with a double flip, and we're about to hit the water. If there is water in the pool, maybe there's no water in the pool, we'll find out. I am the man who shoots Bruce Willis. And then I go, stop, police! Actually, Bruce Willis has, I don't think, ever been killed in a film before either. It's never been done before. And this kid's got these beautiful eyes that are really what it's about. Yes. You should do a kid thing. You should be doing a little kid thing, like he's excited or something. First time in an airport, he wants to go through. I think as you walk through, you can look around, and it's like, cool, there's just something. Made it! And it didn't kill me. Photographed beautifully, but it's just... Once he realized that he had made a mistake, he completely lost sight of everything else that we had to do there. From the very beginning, he said, I want the movie to open on the kid, I want the movie to close on the kid. I know that that's really, really important, that's how I see the film. And here he was losing his ability to have the very image that got him to make the movie. He was in danger of losing it. Terry is very, very specific about the images that he has in his mind. Sometimes images become the crutch on which he rests. So sometimes he misses the theme or the point of the characters or the script and relies upon his visual solutions. Some of the days that have been the most excruciating to complete are the days where Terry and the actors are still working through trying to understand the material. One of the things that he told me that I believed in because I saw it happen was that his life somehow starts to shape itself so that he's suffering from the same things that his lead character is. And action! So if you've got Bruce Willis in the film losing his focus and not knowing what's real and not real, Terry as a director, I knew at some point he was going to lose his focus on the movie and he was not going to know what was important and what wasn't important or begin to be a little shaky about it. Who's mad? Is Cole mad? Oh, as Riley begins to think at the beginning, then she thinks she's mad. Who's mad? Is Terry mad? Probably. Very. I feel more disconcerted on this one than anything I've ever done. It's like, it's kind of a feeling of not sure what we're doing. Oh, God, I wish we were going here. But I can see an image of her, and you think, oh, poor helpless thing. And then she goes, wham! And it's so violent, and you're thrown back, and then she's got you. And then she was just doing that, and she hits you in the second one, that one, the roundhouse, and now she's on you. Is that? Okay, I don't agree. I mean, I'll certainly do it. I'll try. I just think we have a can of worms here that she's a frail woman. That's why I was saying give her a weapon or something, because I could stand here, and she could kick me eight times, and I wouldn't really be going anywhere. I'll do anything to make a movie. Are you in focus on that one? Oh, yeah. That's what it's like. I don't have a clue what the film is anymore. I've lost it totally. I just know we do one scene after another, and we try to make the scenes as good as we can. But as far as having a real sense of where we are, I'm not certain, because it's kind of like we're making pieces of the jigsaw, each one we make, and that's beautiful, and there's that one over here that we do. And I'm just worried about how it all goes together. I don't know. I think it's a very disjointed kind of crew. It isn't like everybody's completely united in our approach to how we're making this film. There's such a fear around this place. Fear seems to permeate Hollywood filmmaking. There seems to be too much desire to please the director or please the star. But we want to please you, Terry. I'm not interested in pleasing me. I'm not interested in you pleasing me. I'm interested in you doing what's best for the film, and that may not please me. I may be the problem. The function of that room, as far as I'm concerned, is to be like a... It should be, in a strange way, the inside of Cole's deranged mind. The whole film should be in that room. It should be the jigsaw of the film in that room. All the key bits and pieces around there, but not necessarily in the right order. We had this whole discussion about what kind of technology they did have, and then they gathered all the technology they could. They're underground. It's rough. It's scraping an existence together. But everything that they have in the future is based on pre-1996 technology. We're dealing with the future. It looks so attractive. So I wanted angles and strange shapes and anything you couldn't quite make sense of. Nothing is too slick. Nothing's streamlined. Everything's got a damp stain. Everything's a little rusty. Everything always relates to something else. So you feel sort of comfortable in a way in the room. Well, he's communicating with people, not directly, but through these videos. It's kind of like distances. They seem to be pack rats. Is it a fish? It's meant to be a little fish. They're trying to piece together what happened. If you're doing a scientist in a lab coat with a plastic cover on it, that says, don't touch me. Cut! I find sometimes I just overcomplicate things. I put too many things in. I'm just desperate to say stop. I've encouraged people to go for too much detail, and they've lost track of just the basic narrative, the key information that has to come through. And it just seems to be impossible to communicate what we need in the room. The script dictates certain things, and it's just getting basic information across the film. It's like I've set this machine in motion. In all the pre-production meetings, I'm saying, I want this, that, the dwarves, and I want giants, and I want that. Everybody goes out and does it. And then on the day, there they are, 10,000 of them doing stuff. And I say, what have I done? Stop, stop, and it's too late. I mean, the machine is just running over you. I'm assuming that's it. Okay, that... Cut! We can put it down low. You're still rational. You're still following a logical path of questioning. Like a doctor would. Well, but a lot more than I am. I'm just fielding these things not very well. I'm not... Except you... I mean, on the other hand, you're starting out with the thought that you understand what's wrong. You're mentally divergent. You're mad. No, but I think that's what you're starting with, the idea that you're mentally divergent at the start. You think you're insane. And she keeps throwing things at you. They're saying, you're not insane. These things happen. No, they couldn't have happened. I'm mad. This is all in my mind. It's not in your mind. Look at this. Actually, the stuff we'd done on the car the other day, it didn't have... I just felt it was a bit flat. It didn't have, you know, something... It was too flat. Yeah, it didn't... It needs... That's why I think anger or a kind of bitterness in there, but not whining. We were just going along with it because... Oh, wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry. We're talking about... I'm thinking about two different things. Yeah. You're not talking about the stuff we did the other day. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. I'm talking about that little... Man, that's not flat. This was flat because I... No, no, no. I knew it wasn't. No, that was... Oh, thank God. That whole day we were shooting was flat. That's what I'm talking about. That one where you jump out of the car. But that was told that that wouldn't be used. Well, you made sure it wasn't. Wait, wait, stop. Here, right here. Terry and I shared a concern early on about that whole area, which was why we called it the rail from hell because it was bang in the middle of the film. It's a transitional part of the film and the logic of Rayleigh's character I think is most under scrutiny at that point because he's the aggressive one. So we had to create a situation where she is both terrified and yet magnetized to him in some way. We had concerns about Bruce. I mean, occasionally he would veer off perhaps into an area which wasn't useful to this film and we'd be concerned about monitoring that and bringing it back on board again. If people don't know what you have, it's all going to be gone. You see? Fascinating, isn't it? Yeah. I think we nailed it. It's great. I thought it was very good on his close-up. I mean, in a way, when he does that, you think, oh, he's... You know, when he nails it, you sort of think... I mean, there's a sort of shyness and toughness in conflict. I think it's wonderful seeing this man sentimental because it confuses you as to whether this... whether it is a truly felt emotion or he's barking mad. I'm sure the reel from hell will be the one we love in the end. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Please do. I mean, the alarm bells aren't ringing. As foggy as it is in here, the sense is that something's happening. All right, Terry. Take care. Bye. Very sad. Perfect, Joe. Thanks. From early on, reading the script and in discussions, I've always felt that the ending of the film would take place in the airport between Rayleigh and the boy, their eye contact. I mean, that's why I started the film on his eyes and end on his eyes. And the boy is touched, scarred, damaged by what he's just seen, something that's going to stay with him for the rest of his life. The scene that then came after that was a scene in the airplane where Dr Peters and his viruses meet the astrophysicist, and we know that somehow the astrophysicist will get the virus and will be able to save the human race. Jones is my name. There was an argument that we needed that scene because otherwise Cole's death would have been in vain, that he wouldn't have achieved anything. This way, we, the audience, can see that he has achieved something, that his death has led them to the virus and he saves the future. And I was convinced that was all nonsense anyway and it was unnecessary and emotionally it would weaken the emotional ending. And so once we had agreed to do the airplane shot, Chuck kept lobbying for the parking lot shot, and I said, ah, no, no, because we're not going to use the airplane shot anyway. You're still a dreamer, I can see. Well, I couldn't work out how to shoot. I didn't have a shot in my head for the boy in the parking lot, so I said we're not going to do the shot. And Chuck was adamant that we do the shot. Fine, I said, okay, I'll do it, but we need to have this huge shot. We've got to see thousands of cars in the parking lot. We've got to see the entire world out there because I was encouraging everybody to come up with very expensive solutions to this so that Chuck would eventually say, no, we can't afford to do it, and he'd back down, I wouldn't have to do the shot. And so suddenly we've got a crane on top of another crane, we're in a parking lot, we've got a boy, his parents, we've got the whole world out there. Isn't that an amazing thing, that? And action! Oh, that's nice. That's a very nice angle. Slow, take it down. Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. That's a strong shot. So that shot got in, and the shot wouldn't have been made had not Chuck persisted and me being just spiteful and coming up with the most expensive solutions hoping that it wouldn't happen. But the result is a really good shot. I think Terry needs angst to fuel his motor. And action! His creative motor thrives off having arguments, having arguments with himself. I think that he needs to, in his battle of David and Goliath, which he revels in, and which he's had in Hollywood and with this studio, he wants to feel as though this movie is the little champion fighting the great big Goliath. When you're shooting, there's this constant pressure because every day there's another $125,000 being spent. And you're part of this huge machine that's just churning forward. There's 150 people there every day. There's questions, it's just, the pressure is incessant. Where with editing, you're not dealing with any of that. At this stage, we're down to an editing room with a few people. Production matters, you know, they're in the distance. This is the quiet, reflective part of filmmaking, it seems. We're just trying to make something out of these pieces and it really frees you. I think the difficulties with this film were the puzzle of it as an overall piece, which is certainly why I was attracted to it. I knew it would be an editorial challenge, stroke nightmare, because anything that deals with time or the fragmentation of time, editorially is always the toughest thing to achieve. I think the challenge for us was really finding out if certain confusions or ambiguities are in effect the pleasure of this particular film or have we just failed in communicating ideas at the right time. All I'm saying is, I'm going through the argument that I think we want to think he's crazy, and it's not a time-travel film. But I don't see how you lose that by telling them it's 1996 before he goes there. The whole point of the future is really psychological, and it seems to me we're going to send you to 1996 if by putting those specifics in at that point, it weakens it. I know, that's my feeling. Why does it matter? Because if it's in your head, you wouldn't do that. Because you're in 1996. Then you don't know that he went to the wrong place. Maybe he thinks he went to the wrong place, but the scientists really sent him to the right place. It throws up so many things because the scientists haven't told us, the audience and him, where he's got to go. So how big a deal is it that it's 1990 instead of 1996? We didn't even know 1990 was important! I think the difficulty is it's a hard thing for most people to get their heads around. How can he be 2 people at the same time? But it makes total sense when one sits down and thinks about it. But I don't want people to have to sit down and think about it. We've got to believe it at that point. I'm constantly pulled, because on one hand, I don't want to confuse people unnecessarily. On the other hand, I don't want to explain things too much. We're fighting that right now. Whatever I do, I seem to accept the fact I'm trying to make a film for a broad number of people. I'm trying to communicate to a large number of people. So once you do that, then how far can we push it? How far can we be obscured for the sake of obscurity? We talked a little bit about the symbol of the army of the 12 monkeys. We just feel that graphically there's so much strength involved with that. And we see a sort of wide-ranging campaign, teaser, applications in outdoor, etc. So what we'll do is you'll see a lot of versions of it the way we want to do it. We're not really sure how that will work, but we thought as a teaser, a newspaper campaign idea, just this kind of thing. It's so provocative, and what is it? And then the final payoff, bang. What I kind of liked about this, it's interesting. It's sort of rough, and it's been stamped and stenciled, and what is it? They're coming this winter. I think the rougher you make it, the better it is. The bits go blurry. The paint didn't get in a certain way. Another idea we had was to do bus signs. And perhaps buses synchronous with each other would have question everything, the future is history, all with that stamp of the monkey in some configuration. Again, just to sort of be provocative. And deliberately obscure. In the early print, it doesn't matter to define what the 12 monkeys are. If he works with the trailer and the confluence of things happen, people will know. And those that don't know, it's interesting enough. That's why I think the enigma is the good thing. Looking at that page in the newspaper, that's just extraordinary. It's Jurassic Park. It's so ballsy to do that. Everybody in the industry would say, what the hell is that? The idea of what we were doing, the circle, that's the rest of it. That's the world going around following each other's tail. Relentlessly around and around, the one broke loose. The next group you're going to see are trying to use the likenesses, the three faces in various ways. This is for the Academy Award campaign. Yes, that's right. I just love Brad's face in that one. It's so twisted. This is kind of wild, isn't it? Metropolis. Yeah, exactly. That's actually very good. For some other time travel ideas we did. That was pretty bizarre. It's really haunting. I think that's brilliant. Imagine that up big. We could do that as a newspaper ad too. What is this? The future is in the hands of a man who has none? Excuse me? What is that? It's supposed to be he has no future. It sounds like he has no hands. Wow. That is out there. I think that's worth putting on. I love the tattoo up here. That is out there. Wow. The audience is going to go to see that. It's going to like this film, I think. And I don't think we're close. We're going to be in Washington, D.C. Because everybody says New York is, you know, they're ruthless, vicious there. In Washington we thought they would be nicer. So we thought we'd go to a nice place. Please check all of the following items that you feel describe the movie. Entertaining. Confusing. Dull. Boring. Action-filled. Too violent. Well-acted. Suspenseful. Stupid. Dumb. High quality. Heartwarming. Different. Original. Dramatic. Romantic. My age group would enjoy it. That's how I describe it. Predictable. Has likable main characters. What do we want in a movie? Likable. Involving. Not my kind of music. My age group would enjoy it. That's what I like. Yes. Exciting. Now, intelligent. Can we put intelligent in here? What about intelligent? Do you think that's a good one? No. What they sometimes do is thought-provoking. Thought-provoking. I like that one. Thought. What about thought-provoking? Provoking. That's a good one. Just like Die Hard 3. A cerebral feel-good movie. Treats its audience intelligently. Intelligently. Well, the great thing about Brazil was a lot of them just scrawling at it. People who really obviously got and like music. No more paperwork. And those were all discounted. This is supposedly where the public gets to vote. Where the public gets to be filmmakers for a brief moment. So you show the film to the public. They fill out cards, questionnaires about the film. That's how it was begun. And then, of course, then it became a tool for the studios to cover their ass. For studio executives to cover their ass. Because there was this specious scientific methodology that would tell you whether a film was going to play or not play. It would be successful or not. There's so many times you see a thing play and then you look at the results on the cards and they don't seem to match. First question is the hand counter. The overall rating. Excellent. Very good. Average. Fair. Poor. Let's see where we stand. How many people voted for the hand counter? How many people rated the film excellent? Nobody? I was watching the backs of people. There was a guy sitting right in front of Nick, the editor. Right towards the end there as he walked into the terminal. He's like that. He just did that. He's just like that the whole time. Watching it unfold. Because you don't get that in movies today. How many people felt that it dragged in spots or moved too slowly? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. How many people feel that the romance doesn't fit in? Can I see hands? All right. Almost everybody? You guys don't feel like there's a certain film noirishness and a romance and a vertigo and all that stuff? Did anybody enjoy that element of the film? How many people liked Bruce Willis in this film? We haven't really talked about the big star in the film too much. How many people liked the performance character of James Cole and or Willis' performance? 4, 5, 6. How many people felt that the ending seemed unresolved? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Any comments about that? In 10 words or less, when you see family, friends, coworkers, whatever, and they say, how was the preview? In 10 words or less, what are you going to say? The movie may be one of those weird ones, you know, the famous story of Airplane. The scores on Airplane were phenomenally low. Yeah. And the picture was a huge hit. And what people finally realized is people, the humor was so vulgar in Airplane. Yeah. That nobody dared admit that they loved it. Yeah. But they all loved it and all told their friends to go see it with great embarrassment. Now, that's not, I hope, 12 months. I think the focus group wanted us to know that they think it's a black comedy. And if you say it's a black comedy, then they can go with it. People are going to knock us and try and get us to explain more. And I'm saying that that's not what the audience wants. They want to know what kind of movie it is. And once they know what kind of movie it is, then they'll go with it. Oh, it's a black comedy. I don't need to know what it is. What they want to know is it's not a Bruce Willis movie. It's deeply disturbing, all of this. It is deeply disturbing. And I thought I liked the movie a whole lot last night, but that it was painful to sit through the focus group and listen to them, because I always value their opinion. You have to be prepared for that, and that's a lot of pain. We set out to write a very entertaining movie, hopefully, right? But in doing so, we set ourselves certain obstacles, right? To not make it as easy. Like I said, you know, you just never know. They hate it. They hate the film we've made.