Was Go written on-the-fly?
While listening to Doug Liman and Steven Mirrione’s commentary track on the GO DVD, they went through numerous scenes that weren’t in your original screenplay, but rather scenes they had you write in production. I was wondering what percentage of a film would you say is original material, and what percentage is threaded during the filming process? Have you ever had to rewrite a scene you loved with something you felt was lesser for the purpose?
–Brian
This is yet another example of why writers should always be on the commentary track.
What’s unusual about GO is how little did change from the first script to the final movie. It’s pretty easy to see what scenes were new and old by looking at the deleted scenes on the DVD. We went back and reshot several parts, including the "branching-off" scene at the supermarket and the finale in Gaines’ apartment. On paper, I much prefer the Gaines’ apartment sequence as originally scripted. I thought it was smarter and much more in keeping with the spirit of the movie. Unfortunately, it just didn’t turn out very well when we filmed it, which is why we went back and did the simpler version that’s in the movie now.
The other changes made during filming mostly involved production issues, such as the names of the hotels we were using, or legal clearance problems. (For example, Confederated Products was originally American Products, but we couldn’t get permission to use that name.)
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