{"id":20793,"date":"2011-09-22T13:37:01","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T17:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=20793"},"modified":"2018-12-17T11:59:58","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T16:59:58","slug":"mystic-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/22\/mystic-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystic River"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Think of all the takes of all the shots of all the movies ever made. Think of all the scenes and angles and alternate readings and alternate lines that were recorded on film\u2014and then discarded in the cutting room. There are endless reels that have been perused and discarded by editors, never to be seen again.\u00a0Many filmmakers would consider the discarded material worthless, but I, as an actor who has spent fifteen years in front of the camera, consider all of it valuable. They are the essence of my art. Usually each shot is taken four to ten times and, in the final edit of the film, only one of these takes, or portions of a few of these takes, will be used. At best, only one tenth of my total output is ever seen by the public. The other shots are filed away or destroyed. Sometimes these takes are inferior. But sometimes\u2014as when they feature an actor like River Phoenix in a film like <em>My Own Private Idaho<\/em>, the best of his generation giving his best performance\u2014every scrap is gold.<\/p>\n<p>Gus Van Sant made <em>My Own Private Idaho<\/em> in 1990 and released it in 1991. All the dailies were on film, nothing digitized; when I heard that Gus had held on to the editor\u2019s film rolls, I told him that I would do anything to see them. We spent two days in Portland watching as much as we could. While we were watching, we discussed how Gus\u2019s movies have changed in the intervening decades. His films now are much more spare in story and dialogue; they involve longer takes and fewer cuts. We were naturally led to wonder what <em>Idaho<\/em> would be like if he made the film now, and Gus offered to let me make my own cut.\u00a0 It was overwhelming to be able to cut the raw material of my favorite film, a film that had moved me, that had helped shape me as a teenager.\u00a0The only way I could justify cutting such material was to do what Gus and I had discussed: I cut it as if Gus had made it today.<\/p>\n<p><center><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Think of all the takes of all the shots of all the movies ever made. Think of all the scenes and angles and alternate readings and alternate lines that were recorded on film\u2014and then discarded in the cutting room. There are endless reels that have been perused and discarded by editors, never to be seen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":236,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1186],"tags":[3860,3858,3856,3857,3861,3859],"class_list":["post-20793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-film","tag-dailies","tag-gus-van-sant","tag-my-own-private-idaho","tag-my-own-private-river","tag-portland","tag-river-pheonix"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mystic River by James Franco<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 22, 2011 \u2013 Think of all the takes of all the shots of all the movies ever made. 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