John August

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The Nines on BitTorrent

Projects, Sundance, The Nines

Since well before our Sundance debut last year, I’ve been curious-slash-paranoid about when The Nines would start showing up on the BitTorrent trackers, the online repository of pirated movies and a few legitimate wares.

It was inevitable that the movie would get bootlegged at some point. The timing was the delicate issue. If it showed up before Sundance, some distributors might be frightened off (why spend x dollars when people are already watching it for free?). If it showed up online before our theatrical release, we could anticipate a hit in ticket sales, and a tougher time selling it overseas.

So for a while, I was checking every day. And nothing.

But yesterday, my Google News Alert feed showed the inevitable had come to pass: there was a DVD rip of The Nines online. Given the subtitles attached (Spanish and French), it was almost certainly the North American retail release, which I haven’t even held in my hands yet. ((We’ve had plain DVD screeners available for months, mostly for journalists and folks in the industry. But they don’t have subtitles, which is why I strongly suspect this comes from the official disc.))

I haven’t downloaded or watched the rip, but I have gotten three emails in the last 24 hours which began, “I recently saw The Nines…”

So it’s out there.

And that’s okay. Not “okay” in the sense of “legal” or “right.” But okay in the sense of c’est la vie. People are going to watch the pirated version, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Sony, Interpol and the MPAA will do their best, but as the guy who made the movie, I honestly want people to see the movie. If the only way you’re going to watch The Nines is illegally, so be it.

In fact, for a writer/director, there’s not a meaningful financial difference between someone watching an illegal download and [getting it from Netflix](http://www.netflix.com/Movie/The_Nines/70066350), which distributes a limited number of discs to a large audience. Discuss.

But as the director, there are some good reasons to steer you towards the physical disc once it [comes out on January 29th](http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FNines-Ryan-Reynolds%2Fdp%2FB000YW8RN6%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Ddvd%26qid%3D1198301424%26sr%3D8-1&tag=johnaugustcom-20).

→ It has a ton of the usual special features: two audio commentaries, a making-of, gallery, deleted scenes (with commentary), and a bunch of Easter eggs.

→ It has one thing I’ve never seen before. For the opening sequence, you can see the script scroll by in the upper half of the screen, matched up to the movie and the storyboards for each shot. It’s a lot to process at once — you’ll probably need to watch it a few times — but it’s very cool.

→ You can loan a DVD, without passing along that troubling knowledge that you’ve done something illicit.

→ If you’re seen buying (or renting) The Nines, you’ll immediately identify yourself as someone drawn to challenging, divisive movies. So make sure to put it at the top of the stack as you slide it across the counter.

→ Hidden in five DVD cases are magical golden tickets. ((This is not true.))

But if these reasons and/or your conscience doesn’t persuade you, it’s not hard to find The Nines online. And I won’t think less of you. Probably.

Changes while directing

Directors, Projects, QandA, The Nines, Words on the page

questionmarkWhen you were directing The Nines, did you find that you wanted to change some of the action and dialogue because it didn’t come across in production the way you thought it would when you wrote it. And, if you changed things, was it because you were maybe hypercritical of your own work and saw problems where nobody else would or did you consider making changes just because you could (being the writer and everything)?

— Dennis Feeney

The action changed somewhat, based on the geography at hand. For instance, there’s a scene in Part Three where a family is coming back to a parked car. As scripted, there was a certain sequence for who would be where for what line of dialogue, but once you have real actors, real dolly movements and real reflections to contend with, that all changes. And that’s after storyboarding, during which some of those things were already decided.

In terms of dialogue, I didn’t find myself changing that many lines. We’d had the luxury of some rehearsal, so if there was a line that an actor really had a difficult time landing, I could change that ahead of time.

Once we started production, I really saw myself as a the director, not the writer. If something wasn’t working, my instinct was to look at changes in the performances or the camera movement rather than the words. Indeed, the few times I did go back in to writer-mode was when I saw unanticipated opportunities. During a confrontation between Hope Davis and Melissa McCarthy, I added this line…

SARAH

He’s an actor. If no one’s watching him, he doesn’t really exist.

…which ends up being fairly important to the scene (and, ultimately, the movie). Yet I added it at six in the morning on the day of shooting, based largely on something I overheard the actors talking about between takes. That kind of serendipity is what made my dual roles rewarding.

What’s it like being the writer and director?

Directors, QandA, The Nines

Being the writer and the director on a project it seems that you both
create the story and then bring it to life. What are the biggest
struggles in doing this? And how much liberty do you allow an actor to
take with the lines?

— Steve
Lakeland, Florida

For readers who don’t know, I just finished directing an indie movie that will hopefully see the light of day in 2007. (I’ve been chastened against continuing to call it a tiny movie, because it’s not about an albino’s friendship with a cricket, or somesuch. The producers would like me to stress that it actually does have commercial prospects, even if not measured on a blockbuster scale.)

For me, the biggest challenge in being a writer/director is that I really wasn’t a writer while I was on set. I was 100% director, figuring out how to get the scene to work, how to get the performances right, how to get in four more setups before lunch. On other films, when I’ve been “just” the writer on set, I’d often notice things that the director might overlook — small inconsistencies or subtle changes that could screw things up four scenes later.

But here, there was no writer. There was just me. And I was too busy directing the scene to step out and think about the bigger picture.

To some degree, I’d anticipated this going in, so I tried to compensate. “John’s Big Notebook” was a fat three-ring binder that held not only the script and the storyboards, but also my notes on every scene — sort of a last chance for the writer to tell the director what to pay attention to. (In truth, I ran out of time in prep, so the scene notes stopped after the first act.)

During production, I got up at five every morning to write the day’s shot list, which is basically a crib sheet for what shots I thought I would need to shoot in order to complete a given scene. That was usually my last chance to really study the scripted scene and figure out what was important.

I also relied on others. The script supervisor would point out if I was omitting a scripted action, and my producers were nearby to offer assistance.

But at times, the writer resurfaced. One night while watching dailies, I realized something new about one of the characters. So I rewrote a scene for the next day. After two solid weeks of strictly directing, it was oddly exhilarating to remember that I am in fact a writer. Directing is just my day job.

In terms of leeway with the dialogue, I was always willing to let the actors say something better. Often, it wasn’t better, so after a take or two, I’d nudge them back onto the text. (This is also the script supervisor’s domain.) I don’t think I was being particularly writer-ly in getting actors to stick to the script. John August, director, knew what he wanted. Most actors, these actors, respond well to thoughtful requests.

One section of the movie has a combination of scripted and unscripted scenes, which ended up being my favorite thing to shoot. The luxury of having gifted actors and a lot of videotape is that they could simply start having a conversation in character, and seamlessly work in all of the scripted material. One scene had an 18-minute continuous take.

To me, this section was the best synthesis of writing and directing. While I was listening, I had to keep thinking how to steer the scene in an interesting direction. It was a screenwriter’s dream: My characters were alive in front of me, looking for something to talk about.