Go

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.)

Did you originally write GO as an out-of-sequence story,
or was that something you and Doug Liman changed after the script was written?

–Chris

Although there’s hardly a trace of it left in the script, the deep underlying
story of GO originated from Alice in Wonderland. Even before I came to L.A.,
I’d been pondering ways to stage a modern Alice centered around a rave, with
a white Volkwagen Rabbit to get us into the action. (The White Rabbit would
ultimately become the Mazda Miata that Adam and Zack drive, and the Cheshire
Cat is still there, though now he speaks telepathically to Mannie.)

Fortunately, I never wrote that script, because it would have been horrible
– clever for the sake of being clever. But those Alice thoughts were still
rumbling in my head when in 1994 an aspiring director friend asked me to write
a script for him to direct as a short film. What I wrote was called "X," and
detailed a supermarket checkout clerk’s attempt to pull of a tiny ecstacy deal
at Christmas. My friend never got around to directing it, but other friends
would read the script and ask questions: who was Simon, and why was he going
to Vegas? What’s the deal with Adam and Zack? Are they cops or what?

I knew the answers, so two years later when I had the time, I wrote out the
full version as a feature. The first section, "Ronna," is the short
film script, almost verbatim. Rather than wedging all the new plot into the
first section, and ruining its tension, I started the movie over twice, each
time following a different set of characters. It became one story told in three
parts.

Inevitably and frustratingly, GO gets compared to PULP FICTION. While I think
they’re vastly different movies, the truth is, I don’t know if GO could have
been made without the success of Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary’s film.
While there had been plenty of non-linear movies before it (RASHOMON, MYSTERY
TRAIN, NIGHT ON EARTH), none had the kind of popular acceptance PULP FICTION
did. By the same token, GO
wouldn’t have worked told "straight."