How to make a great movie | Stanley Tucci on collaboration, creativity and thrift | Big Think

How to make a great movie | Stanley Tucci on collaboration, creativity and thrift

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"The most crucial part of filmmaking is that it's a collaboration," says Stanley Tucci, as he opens the door on this seven-minute crash course on what it takes to make a great film. Tucci is a lauded character actor, three-time Emmy winner, two-time Golden Globe winner, and Oscar nominee who has appeared in films such as The Hunger Games, The Lovely Bones, and Spotlight. Tucci also has a life behind the camera, where he has most recently written and directed Final Portrait (2018) starring Geoffrey Rush and Armie Hammer. In this behind-the-scenes look at filmmaking, Tucci lets us in on the dynamics of creative partnerships, how restrictions fuel imagination, and why you should try to yell "Cut!" as little as you possibly can. So without further ado, here's how to make a great film, the Stanley Tucci way.

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STANLEY TUCCI :

Academy Award nominee Stanley Tucci has appeared in over 90 films and countless television shows. He has performed in more than a dozen plays, on and off Broadway, and has been behind the camera working as a writer, director and producer.

Lauded for his work in all mediums, Tucci was nominated for an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, SAG Award and received a Broadcast Film Critics nomination for his performance in Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones. He also won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his starring role as fast-talking tabloid tattler Walter Winchell in the Paul Mazurksy-directed TV movie Winchell. He received another Golden Globe for his brilliant portrayal of Lt. Colonel Adolf Eichmann in HBO's Conspiracy. Tucci received Emmy nominations for his work in Murder One and ER, and an Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for Monk.

Tucci is also a writer, director and producer. Big Night, Tucci's f

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TRANSCRIPT:

Stanley Tucci: The most crucial part of filmmaking is that it's a collaboration and the actors and the director and the designers, and the DOP, everybody has to be on the same page and they have to be able to communicate. They have to be able to give feedback to one another, accept that feedback, throw out more feedback so on and so forth. It has to be a give and take.

You're constructing something, you're building something, you're building towards something, but then as you go through that process you're tearing it down again, you're deconstructing it, you're building it back up again in a different way.

You have to be prepared, whenever you're going to make a movie, to just throw anything and everything out of the window at any point during that process. That's your primary—not obligation, but it's of absolute necessity that you be prepared to do that as a filmmaker. Don't be precious. And during that process, you find that the thing that you're trying to create is always changing, it's always in flux and that, ultimately, it really is never really finished.

I'm also a big fan of not cutting—unless I really feel it's necessary—and forging ahead and having somebody repeat lines. I'll say, "Okay now go back to the beginning of that monologue and just do it again. Do it again and just do the whole thing with your eyes closed," or whatever. Just to keep the camera rolling, otherwise what happens is people start to think too much and thought can be the absolute death of creativity and then everybody else on the set starts doing this: they start grabbing their thing and they start adjusting it and the guy comes over with the makeup and the thing comes in with the hair and blah, blah, blah and that's ten minutes and all the energy is gone, and that actor's concentration is gone, and we've lost time.

You hope for a certain budget, you usually don't get it. You get maybe close to it, but you know what your bottom line is. You know, like, okay I can make his movie for blah, blah, blah. I really can't make it for less than that because then it just becomes—it won't look good, it just won't work. So you have to know what your bottom line is and that's basically what you usually end up with on a movie like this. Once you have that you have to stick to it, and I'm very happy to overspend my own money, but I'm not interested in overspending somebody else's money. I'm only interested in coming in under- or on-budget. And I rather like those restraints because throwing money at a problem doesn't always solve that problem, as is evidenced in so many ...

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