Filmmaker David Lynch's Explains To His Crew Exactly How Long A Scene Needs To Be (NSFW, language)

For what its worth, Hearts of Darkness (the documentary) is at least at fascinating and compelling as the movie its about.

I just read some crew stories on the set of Megalopolis and that truly sounds like a horrible fucking nightmare:

A crew member recalls: “He would often show up in the mornings before these big sequences and because no plan had been put in place, and because he wouldn’t allow his collaborators to put a plan in place, he would often just sit in his trailer for hours on end, wouldn’t talk to anybody, was often smoking marijuana … And hours and hours would go by without anything being filmed. And the crew and the cast would all stand around and wait. And then he’d come out and whip up something that didn’t make sense, and that didn’t follow anything anybody had spoken about or anything that was on the page, and we’d all just go along with it, trying to make the best out of it. But pretty much every day, we’d just walk away shaking our heads wondering what we’d just spent the last 12 hours doing.” As a third crew member puts it: “This sounds crazy to say, but there were times when we were all standing around going: ‘Has this guy ever made a movie before?’”

I’m a Script Supervisor (continuity) and worked on a movie with an infamously unhinged director and I just had to work around him lol, it was a nightmare but I got it done

So, a little off topic from OG post, but the 1st AD on Apocalypse Now was Jerry Zeismer, and he has a fantastic memoir where he talks about it in depth from the 1st ADs perspective. As a fellow AD I found it quite the enjoyable and insightful read! LINK TO THE BOOK

It sounds like it's been an ongoing note he's getting, of having scenes be faster, and he's fed up with that, so when he misinterprets the note, he's ready to pop.

And of course it is the day an EPK team are in the way getting BTS content, which tends to make directors antsy at the best of times.

Opening your mouth on a film set is the worst mistake you’ll ever make. Stay quiet and move shit around, go home, get paid, get your IMDb credit. Repeat until dead.

^/s

I guess the script supervisor is asking if/when they shoot the close up on Candie whether they need to run the whole scene.

You know, her job. Every time this clip comes up it reminds me that he's an asshole to people doing the job they were hired to do. He doesn't deserve the godlike praise he gets.

I'm also guessing Lynch is the kind of director who likes to have a lot of options to use in the edit, so it could be a frustrating note for that reason, as well

LOL “if Lynch knows when he’ll cut to it in the edit.”

The fact that she says "still" suggests that it was previously discussed and was still on the table. Personally, as a script sup, if the director says we might grab a CU on someone, I make sure to circle back on that before we move on from that scene.

Obviously there's a lot of context we don't have, though.

As an Editor, I would never suggest such a thing. First of all, a closeup won’t affect scene length, so that’s not an issue. If they are running long in the day, why would the editor care? Second of all, even if I was on set, why would I suggest losing something that will make my job easier? Besides, that guy who raised his hand saying it was him does not look like Mary.

Lol yeah never in my life even being editor on set have I told a director to shoot less. Unless they directly ask me if they are running slow that day and need to see what I think we absolutely need in case we don’t have time to shoot everything. I want everything and full takes of every angle if possible. The more material the better, we will cut it down in post if it’s too long of a scene.

Hehe, true.

[On a Tuesday.]

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The problem is they are probably on hour 16 of filming, everyone is exhausted and they only get a 10 hour turnaround to drive an hour home, eat, shower and sleep before coming back to work. Try that for a month like we do on movie sets and you’ll understand. Plus this causes the entire production to bleed money paying crew overtime to grab hours of shots that will never be used.

He stated he's talking about an attitude and not a verbatim claim.

He's also talking about that attitude on a hallmark movie, and I highly doubt Lynch has ever done a hallmark movie, so he doesn't need to provide evidence he sent crew home crying.

A certain amount of pushback on stupid shit is good (although I'm not sure if the concern was the length of the scene which is the director's realm, or making the day), but you're basically defending toxicity. GP u/shim-slady has been on sets and knows how it works, as have I. Have you? Toxicity is like shit and flows downhill, and you might not be there to witness the stink created when you're the one making it. Have you witnessed this on a set? Most crew have.

Obviously u/Vuelhering has said everything I want to say, but I’d like to add that anyone who’s worked on a set (it’s very clear you haven’t) knows that time is money, and every extra take could cost tens of thousands of extra dollars - money that 9/10 directors aren’t putting up themselves.

A director like Lynch who nitpicks every detail is running up a major tab with every take, and his whole “wHy iS eVeRyOnE aGaInSt mE” attitude disrespects both the people who put up money for his “grand vision,” and the people whose job it is to make sure director’s like him don’t drain the studio budget on day one - mainly the AD that he’s talking down to here.

I don’t often side with producers and/or studios, but there have to be constraints in place to keep tyrants from running production into the ground. The AD was respectful and just doing her job, and the way David spoke to her is not just immoral on a human level, but disrespectful to the entire crew. The way to handle this was to say “Hey, could we maybe just get 5 minutes for one more reset? I’d really like to try again.” Not throw a temper tantrum that puts my toddler niece to shame

definitely not the DP. he has a walkie hand unit clipped to his shirt. 1st AD for sure

I've had my fair share of people (often DPs and producers) try to talk to the director via me. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it's just annoying.

You can also just see his soul being crushed when Lynch acts like a prick.

That's fair, like I said there's a lot of context we just don't have. We don't know what it's typically like on their set, what their working relationship is like, or what the rest of the day was like.
And you're probably right that it's not even on the top 10 list for that script sup--it's just made more awkward by the fact it was captured on camera.

Completely agree. Film sets can often be a pressure cooker, especially for a director, directors almost always have people hounding them all the time, talent asking for feedback or to share opinions, or change lines, or being difficult, 1st AD trying to rush them or sometimes constantly question everything in the hopes the director will decide to just cut something for time, DP asking about lighting/framing etc (DP is usually the easiest and most chill person, usually the directors right hand for that reason because they want the same things), then you have producers counting the money every day and putting pressure on the director, then sometimes if it's for a studio there are more random people chiming in.

I've seen a few directions hit a point where, to varying degrees of rudeness/politeness, they've basically just snapped or told the entire crew to stfu for a while they think.

I've also directed a few things and from experience, sometimes a scene isn't working, which is why it's taking so long. But everybody flapping and trying to rush you, or offer 10 opinions, although they want to help and think they're helping, they're actually just making things take longer because sometimes you just need 20 minutes to sit there quietly, try a few little things with an actor and think.

It sounds dramatic but I hit a point on 1 project where I couldn't figure why twi emotional scenes which were connected were just shit. We had an hour and a half to do them and wasted 45 minutes with the crew all throwing ideas out, stressing, suggesting we cut them, trying to rush a creative process and nothing worked whilst getting rushed to finish it.

Eventually my breaking point was basically kicking the entire crew off set, sitting in the room on my own for 10 minutes and literally just staring at the room thinking. Then I asked just the sound of, the DOP and actors in and told everyone else to stay outside. Set design were stressing that we'd mess with continuity, the 1st AD and their assistant were stressing because we wouldn't be marking and logging the takes, the producer didn't like being shut out, costume didn't like not being able to do tweaks etc but I had to just accept all that and say fuck it.

Out of a crew of 25, it was just the 6 of us (me, DOP, 1 sound guy, 3 actors) who blitzed the 2 scenes in 30 mins easily and apart from the editor being annoyed by the lack of clapperboard and someone's costume missing a piece (which nobody noticed anyway) the scenes were excellent.

Sometimes even though it comes across as very rude, you really do just need to tell everyone to shut up for a while otherwise nothing gets done. Too many cooks in the kitchen is very real.

seriously. if you don’t want a scripty, don’t hire one

But also, if you decide not to hire a script sup, re-evaluate your decisions.

There is a time and place for this. On set in public is usually not.

For a script sup to ask a director "do you still want to get that CU?" Like I said above, we're missing a ton of context, including the type of working relationship those two have. There's so much we don't know since we just have this little snippet.
But generally, a script supervisor stays close to the director and communicates directly about that kind of thing.

It's not telling the director what to do but rather just asking about his plan. It's the director's job to make those decisions but it's the script sup's job to raise those questions. If the script sup has an appropriate question/comment about the shot or the way the scene is working out, then that's pretty much exactly the time and place for this. If you wait to ask those questions, it'll be too late to resolve them.