At the recent Los Angeles press day for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, I landed an exclusive video interview with director Bill Condon. As I told him on camera, I think the last Twilight film is the best in the series, and if your girlfriend is asking you to go, bite the bullet.
During our extended conversation I tried to ask new questions. We talked about how long his first cut was, deleted scenes, what will be on the eventual Blu-ray (he just recorded his commentary and says it'll have an extended cut), whether he's been approached to provide additional material for the eventual ultimate box set, how much changed throughout the shooting and post-production, how the MPAA originally gave the film an R and what he had to change in order to get the PG-13, mistakes/flubs on set (he tells a good story about Robert Pattinson), whether the Blu-ray extended cut will be unrated, and more. In addition, I got an update on his Richard Pryor movie, how he’s returning to direct a show onstage at the end of next year, and a lot more. Hit the jump to watch.
- :21 Says he’s done with the theatrical release, he finished the commentary the day before, and they’re doing a mix for an extended version on the Blu-ray soon.
- :52 How long was the first cut?
- 1:40 What was his motivation behind cutting four minutes out of the movie? “At the right or wrong moment in a movie when you have a scene that somehow feels redundant or it’s not pushing it forward, those things can have a big, big effect when you take one of them out. There’s a good scene where Arro is on the road gathering witnesses in Paris. It was a fun scene, it’s only two and a half minutes long, Dakota Fanning’s in it, but it just killed the momentum at a point when it was really hard to kind of make everything interconnect, and we took it out and everything played better.”
- 3:02 Says there will be an extended version on the Blu-ray, but he doesn’t believe there will be a cast commentary.
- 3:42 Has he been approached to provide additional material on an ultimate box set version of the franchise being released next year?
- 4:21 Says he doesn’t have any candid photographs or anything from the set, but Keith Clark did the documentary for the film and has a bunch of footage from behind-the-scenes.
- 5:14 How much changed throughout the shooting and post-production? Says Breaking Dawn – Part 2 was the hardest for him to get together in post-production. Talks about the finale set piece.
- 6:25 Talks about how men and women view the franchise differently.
- 7:50 Was he looking forward to the action sequence the whole time?
- 8:42 Says the film was given a provisional R rating when the MPAA first saw the film. Talks about the intensity of the action sequence.
- 10:05 Was there one great flub or mess-up onset that he couldn’t stop laughing at? Tells a story about Rob.
- 10:52 Was there one scene that he was directing that he knew people would be scrutinizing over and over again?
- 11:38 Will the extended cut be unrated?
- 12:10 In prep, was there one specific scene that he had the hardest time with?
- 12:56 Talks about the Richard Pryor movie that he’s been working on.
- 13:47 Says he’s returning to direct a show onstage at the end of next year.
- 14:44 Does he look forward to Twilight conventions? Tells a story about attending a horror convention for Candyman 2.
- 16:25 Does directing these big movies change what he’s offered by studios?
