(no subject)

[firsttiger]

Pete is doing the jury duty thing today and I'm so tired as to be whippy so I wrote this for him.:) 

Sidney Lumet on making 12 Angry Men:

Well, you know... it can get a little boring making a faithful adaptation for a brilliant story so I decided to really mix things up. I mean, an actor like Fonda is a real professional so getting him to loosen up wasn't easy, but we told the crafts services people to only have stale tuna fish sandwiches to eat. A lot of people don't know this, but Henry was a stickler for fresh bread. I mean, even if it was just a little stale, he'd get this tic on his face and you just knew he was mad. Add in the fact that we really had the studio hot for the sake of authenticity and John Fiedler was smelling a little...shall we say *ripe* and you just had the perfect recipe for some real acting. I told Henry "do what you feel like doing." Man, I never expected things to go the way they did though. I gotta tell ya, I was a little surprised when Fonda snapped and went after Webber. When Cobb jumped into the fray and helped Fonda by holding him down, I was all like "dude!", but told the cameras to keep rolling. While they may have been adversaries on the stage, it turns out that they both had a big beef with Webber. It was pure cinema gold, but the studio didn't think so. UA told me that as a new director, I should have just stuck with the script and been happy. To this day, I wish I'd been able to keep that in, because it was one of the finest beatings ever captured on film and it just kills me that only a handful of people have ever seen it.